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He was dead? he thought incredulously. Emily had simply erased him from this world with a few carefully chosen words? Yep, Trevor, your dad was a super guy but, hey, he croaked in a car wreck. Tough luck, kid, you’re joining the rank and file of the multitudes being raised by a single mom because your daddy is dead, dead, dead.
My God, Mark thought, dragging both hands down his face, not only had Emily never felt about him as he had about her, she had been capable of wiping him off the face of the earth. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of her heart where he had never really been.
“Incredible,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Just when did you drop this bombshell on my son?”
Emily sighed. “Trevor has always had a great many father figures because of the size of the MacAllister family. It wasn’t until he started school that he questioned why he only had uncles instead of having a daddy, too.”
“So I died, so to speak,” Mark said tightly, “when Trevor was about five years old.”
“Yes. I informed everyone in the family that that was what I had told him and they agreed, although reluctantly, to go along with it. I also told them that I would never divulge your name to Trevor, would tell him just to envision a special angel in heaven whenever he wanted to think about his father. Trevor, I’m thankful to say, has never brought up the subject again.”
“How convenient for you.”
Mark ran one hand over the crown of his head. It was a gesture that was so familiar to Emily, so endearing, a telling sign that Mark was upset, stressed, and one that Trevor executed whenever he was emotionally disturbed about something.
“You never loved me at all, did you?” Mark said, narrowing his eyes. “Jessica was the homecoming queen, the cheerleader, the president of the student council and on and on. Trip was in her own little world of rebellion that set her apart from the ever-famous MacAllister triplets. You were caught in the middle, always trying to please everybody, attempting to…hell, I don’t know…find your place, or space, or something.
“Then here I was, arriving in our junior year in high school. Poor funny-looking Mark Maxwell, whose mother had split when he was a little boy and who was being raised by an alcoholic father who finally wiped himself out by driving into a tree when he was drunk as a skunk.
“You found a purpose, a cause. You’d take pity on the weird new kid, be his girlfriend, which would give you a status you’d never had before. Plus you were romantically involved with a guy, which was great because neither Jessica nor Trip were going steady with anyone. And, hey, wow, you would even lose your virginity before your sisters did. Score points for Emily.”
“Oh, Mark, don’t, please,” Emily said, feeling the sting of unshed tears burning her eyes. “I did love you—as much as any seventeen-year-old can understand love. Don’t make what we shared ugly, tacky, something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t like that.”
“No?” he said. “You sure were capable of turning that love off like a faucet after I left here. Then I was killed and became an angel five years later? Oh, yeah, that’s really strong evidence that you loved me. What a joke. You used me, Emily, to feel special, to make it possible to have something your sisters didn’t. You really outdid yourself, didn’t you? I mean, hey, you even had a baby out of wedlock. Neither Jessica nor Trip would top that one.”
“Don’t,” Emily whispered, tears filling her eyes. “Please.”
“The truth bites, huh? Well, there’s a lot more truth where that came from. Truth…I’m Trevor’s father. Truth…I’m alive and well. Truth…I intend to tell my son exactly who I am.”
Emily got to her feet and started across the room, stopping in the middle and pressing clutched hands against her stomach.
“Listen to me, please, Mark,” she said, her voice trembling. “I know you hate me, but don’t destroy my…our son because of your feelings toward me. I know I can’t keep you away from Trevor, but won’t you just be his friend, get to know him, let him get to know you? Then, when you’ve built a firm foundation with him, we’ll find a way to tell him that… Oh, God, how do I tell my child that I lied to him?”
“Write him a damn letter,” Mark said, getting to his feet.
“Mark, I’m begging you, please don’t shatter Trevor’s world. Don’t do that to him. Think about him, what it will do to him if you just blurt out the truth. Can’t you find it in your heart to take this slowly and…forget how you feel about me. Put Trevor first.” Two tears slid down Emily’s face. “He’s just a baby who needs to be treated gently, kindly, with love. Oh, Mark, please.”
Mark planted his hands on his hips and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, before looking at Emily again.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll do this your way…for now. For Trevor’s sake. Make certain you understand that, Emily. I’m doing this for my son. I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
Emily nodded jerkily.
“I’ll be here to have dinner with you and Trevor tomorrow night.”
“What?” she said.
“You heard me. You invited your old school chum, as you so quaintly put it, to share a meal with you and your son. There’s nothing unusual about that. Trevor and I can talk, chat while we eat, which will break the ice. What time?”
“I…”
“What time, Emily?”
“Six o’clock,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “We always have dinner at six.”
“Fine. I’ll be here,” he said, then started toward the door.
“Do you still like sun tea with honey, instead of sugar?”
Mark spun around. “Don’t go there, Emily. Don’t even think of trying that routine. Don’t attempt to soften me up with cute little trips down memory lane because it won’t work and…” He paused and frowned. “Why did you remember a dumb detail like that, my liking honey in my sun tea instead of sugar?”
Because I loved you, you dolt, Emily thought. You don’t like cloth napkins. You eat the seeds in watermelon because it’s too much trouble to pick them out. Your favorite color is pale pink like the inside of a seashell, but you thought that sounded too girly so you always said it was blue. You like French fries but detest hash brown potatoes. These aren’t dumb details, you idiot. They’re memories. Mine. To keep…forever.
“Forget it,” Mark said, continuing on to the door and opening it. “Good night, Emily. No, correct that. There hasn’t been one good thing about this night. I’ll see you at six tomorrow.”
Mark closed the door behind him with a quiet click as he left, but even so, Emily cringed, feeling as though she’d suffered a physical blow. Two more tears slithered down her cheeks, and she dashed them away. She returned to the chair and sank onto it, staring at the door.
In the next instant she got to her feet and went into the kitchen where she opened the refrigerator freezer and reached for some comfort, some food, her shaking hand gripping a carton of ice cream. She snatched her fingers back as though they had been burned, and slammed the freezer closed with more force than was necessary.
Nearly running, she hurried to her bedroom, opened the top drawer of her dresser and picked up an exquisite mother-of-pearl hand mirror, which she hugged to her breasts as she settled onto the edge of the bed.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to float back to the day in January when her grandfather had asked her to come to his study to receive the special gift he’d spoken of at Christmas. Each grandchild was to meet with Robert MacAllister privately and be given a present he’d selected just for them. Whether they told anyone what it was would be up to them.
Emily remembered, tracing one fingertip over the edge of the mirror that she had gasped in awe when she’d unwrapped the gift and seen the beautiful mirror.
It belonged to my mother, Robert MacAllister had told her. It always had a place of honor on her dressing table because my father had given it to her. Now? I want you to have it, Emily, for a very specific reason.
Emily looked at her grandfather questioningly.
My mother taught me, Robert went on, with that mirror, to see past the outer trappings of myself and understand, get to know who I was becoming within, to never lose track of the real Robert MacAllister.
Emily nodded.
That’s what I want you to do with the mirror, darling Emily. Gaze at your image in a private place when you’re alone. Discover who you really are behind that smile you keep so firmly in place and beneath those extra pounds you’ve put on to put distance between you and the world around you.
Oh, Grandpa, Emily had said, her eyes filling with tears, it’s…it’s safe being fat and unattractive and… I hide in here, just keep smiling as I’ve always done and say that I’m doing fine and… She shook her head as tears choked off her words.
I know, Robert said gently. You’re also hiding in your house by running your business from there. It’s time to step forward, Emily. The mirror will help give you the courage you need to accomplish what you must do. I love you, my sweet Emily. Come out of the shadows and walk in the sunshine.
You’re so wise, Grandpa. This is a wonderful gift that I’ll always cherish and I promise you that I’ll try to do what you’re asking of me. I will.
And she was, Emily thought, lifting the mirror so she could see her reflection. Right after the new year holidays, she’d gone to her Aunt Kara, who was a semi-retired physician, had a complete physical, then asked Kara to outline a healthy diet and regiment of exercise. Kara had agreed that Emily had fifty pounds to shed, a fact that Emily knew embarrassed her son when his fat mother was seen by his friends.
Slowly but surely the pounds had melted away, one after another. Thirty gone; twenty left to go.
“You still look like Porky Pig’s sister,” Emily said to her reflection. “Mark must have been thoroughly disgusted when he saw how you’ve let yourself become a blimp.” She paused and sighed. “No, forget that. Mark doesn’t give a rip about what I look like. He’s too busy hating me because I…”
Emily got to her feet and replaced the mirror in the drawer.
There was no purpose to be served by tormenting herself with the long list of Mark’s accusations. He believed that she had never loved him at all, which wasn’t true. It wasn’t.
She had never stopped loving the Mark Maxwell she had known when they were teenagers. She’d hidden in her cocoon of fat and inside her house, and when she became too lonely she’d reach within herself for that love, wrap it around her like a warm, fuzzy blanket as she relived the memories of what she’d shared with Mark.
But those days of hiding were over. She’d rented an office downtown two months ago and was a successful businesswoman who greeted the public with new confidence and self-worth.
And Trevor, her sweet, darling son, took his dessert to his room each night so Emily wouldn’t have to watch him eat it while she wasn’t having any of the calorie-laden treat. She was, indeed, stepping out of the gloomy shadows into the brilliant sunshine, just as her grandfather had wished her to do. If she didn’t feel like smiling, by golly, she didn’t smile.
Everything had been going so well, Emily thought, as she swept back the blankets on the bed. Until now. Until Mark had reappeared in her life and turned it upside down. An angry Mark. A handsome and self-assured Mark, who was so intimidating and made her feel fat and sloppy, vulnerable and…
It was as though, Emily mused, taking her nightie from beneath the pillow and starting toward the bathroom, Mark had somehow pricked her with an invisible pin, creating a tiny hole where the self-confidence and self-esteem that she’d struggled so terribly hard to achieve were slowly escaping, and she didn’t know how to keep it from happening.
Emily stopped at the bedroom door, then went to the dresser and took out the mirror again, staring at her frowning reflection.
“Get a grip, Emily MacAllister,” she ordered herself.
She would not, she vowed, allow Mark to destroy the Emily she had become. No. She’d square her shoulders, lift her…darn it, her double chin, and decide with him how best to reveal his identity to her…their son.
There would be no more begging, pleading, acting like the child she had been when she had loved him. She didn’t love him now, for heaven’s sake, so her emotions, her heart, would not get in the way of making the proper decisions for Trevor.
No, she had no feelings whatsoever for the Mark Maxwell who had returned to Ventura after so many years.
None at all.
Did she?
Three
Honey instead of sugar in his sun tea.
“Damn it, Maxwell,” Mark said to the dark room, “give it a rest.”
He glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed in his hotel suite and groaned as he saw it was after two o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t even been able to doze since attempting to sleep hours before.
His mind, Mark thought angrily, was a jumbled maze of disturbing information he’d gathered while at Emily’s house earlier that night.
“Yeah, Emily,” he said, dragging both hands down his face, “I still like honey in my sun tea.”
Even though he’d lashed out at her when she’d asked him that, Mark thought, he’d known from the look on Emily’s face and from the way she’d flinched when he’d yelled at her, that she hadn’t been playing tricky games. Her asking him that question had been an honest reaction to her knowing he was coming to dinner.
And Emily had remembered after all these years that he liked honey in his sun tea.
And for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, that fact warmed him to the very depths of his soul.
“Ah, I’m losing it,” Mark said, dropping his arms heavily onto the bed.
He was on mental overload, that was for damn sure. He had nowhere to put all that he’d discovered since returning to Ventura less than twenty-four hours ago.
He had a son.
Trevor MacAllister, who from the moment he was born should have been Trevor Maxwell.
It was time, it was long overdue, for Trevor to know the truth.
Yeah, okay, he could see Emily’s point that a news flash like that shouldn’t be dropped like a bomb on a kid of that age. But the existence of Trevor, plus the package of lies that Emily had told her family wasn’t all that was keeping him from getting the sleep he so desperately needed.
No, it was more than that.
It was Emily, herself.
Mark sighed.
Emily, his mind echoed. She was still so beautiful, so…her. In all his travels he’d never seen brown eyes as enchanting as Emily’s. He’d never seen lips so perfectly shaped, so kissable. He’d never seen hands so delicate that they fluttered gracefully in the air like exquisite butterfly wings when she became animated. He’d never seen—
“You have three seconds to knock it off, Maxwell,” Mark said aloud, anger and frustration making his voice gritty. “Or I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”
Mark rolled onto his stomach, punched his pillow with far more force than necessary, then total exhaustion finally claimed him and he fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep.
“Why are you putting flowers in a vase on the table, Mom?” Trevor said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to do that when a guy comes to dinner. It’s lame. Girl stuff, you know what I mean?”
“Company is company,” Emily said, peering into the oven. “I’m simply setting an attractive table because we have a guest sharing our meal.” She straightened and looked at Trevor. “You, sir, need to go take a shower and put on clean clothes before Mark gets here. Shoo. And shampoo your hair, too. If you don’t get the chlorine from the pool out of it, it’s going to turn green.”
“Really? Cool.”
“Trevor!”
“I’m going, I’m going,” he said, stomping across the room. “Sure is a bunch of big deal about some old guy you used to go to school with. Geez. You’d think he was somebody important, for crying out loud.”
As Trevor disappeared from view, Emily leaned back against the counter and sighed.
Important? Mark Maxwell? she thought. No way, Trevor. The man is only your father, who you believe is dead, an angel in heaven. The man who intends to inform you of his true identity in the very near future.
“Oh, what a mess,” Emily said, pressing her fingertips to her temples as she felt a painful headache beginning to throb.
She glanced down at the pretty border print of bright flowers around the bottom of the white summer dress she wore, then smoothed the full skirt over what she knew were her much-too-broad hips.
She’d considered wearing a long-sleeved dress but that would have been uncomfortably warm for a July evening, she mused. So there she was in a square-cut neckline and no sleeves, chubby arms displayed for all to see. For Mark to see.
“So?” she said, pushing away from the counter. “There’s just more of me to hug, that’s all. Not that there’s a long line of admirers panting to hug me but…oh, Emily, just put a cork in it.”
She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and saw at the same moment that the doorbell rang that it was exactly six o’clock.
Typical Mark, she thought, leaving the kitchen. He had a thing about being punctual. She’d learned to be ready to go when he arrived at her house to pick her up for a date because if she kept him sitting in the living room he got antsy and out of sorts.
He’d once stood in the rain on her front porch, getting soaked to the skin, because he thought it would be as rude to be early as it would to be late.
At the door, Emily hesitated, drew a steadying breath, then opened the door.
Oh, cripe, she thought dismally, Mark was just so gorgeous, so blatantly masculine…. Black slacks, a trendy gray shirt with no collar and— Why didn’t he have a cowlick anymore? A person was born with a cowlick, and it was there for life. You couldn’t just decide not to have a cowlick anymore, so…
