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“I do.”
“And you enjoy it.”
“Yes.” She ran a finger around the rim of her wineglass and slanted him a glance. “Mitch, I…” She seemed not to know how to finish.
He waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, he asked, “How’s your mom?”
She groaned and tipped her head back. “Oh, God. Now, there’s a story…” She leaned toward him. “You remember the famous Bravo Baby, kidnapped for a fortune in diamonds? The ransom was paid, but the baby was never returned to the parents.”
“Of course, I remember.” He reminded her, “You told me about him, back when we were together….”
“That’s right. I did, didn’t I? But ten years ago, nobody knew that the baby had lived, or who the kidnapper really was. I used to imagine I might be related to them, to that rich family named Bravo from Bel Air. I used to fantasize that I would go down there and knock on the door of their beautiful mansion. They’d know instantly that I was part of the family. They would want me to live with them, so I’d move into the mansion. I’d have a whole wing to myself….”
He couldn’t get enough of just looking at her. Her skin had a tempting glow. He ached to reach across the table and brush her cheek with the side of his hand. Would her eyes go soft, welcoming his touch?
He asked, “You always wanted that, didn’t you? A family of your own?”
“I did.”
Ten years ago, he’d wanted to be her family. He’d wanted to be all she’d ever need. He’d demanded to be the center of her world. And because of that, he’d lost her.
He said, “It was five or six years ago, wasn’t it, that they found out the Bravo Baby’s kidnapper had been his own uncle? I remember reading about it.” It was a major story, all over the wire services and the talk shows. The notorious Blake Bravo, who had previously been declared dead in an apartment fire, had stolen his own brother’s baby and lived for more than thirty years with no one knowing that he was very much alive the whole time. “He actually is dead now, right?”
“Yes. He’s dead.”
About then, Mitch realized where this story was headed. “Your own dad, the one you never met. His name was—”
“Blake. Yes. The Blake Bravo was my father. The Bravo Baby—all grown up now and living in Oklahoma City—is my cousin. And the famous Bravo Billionaire in his Bel Air mansion? He’s my cousin, too. I was related to my fantasy family the whole time. Also, as it turns out, Tanner and I have half siblings all over the country. Beyond being a kidnapper and other scary things, my father was a polygamist. He married a lot of women.
“He would marry them and get them pregnant and then abandon them. If he did return, it was only long enough to father yet another baby. Oh. And that reminds me. Tanner and I have a sister, too—a full sister. My mother had a third child neither of us ever knew about. My sister is a couple of years younger than me. Her name is Hayley. She’s married, with a new baby. Lives in Seattle.”
“Slow down a minute. You’re telling me that your mother had three kids and put them all in foster care….”
“And told each of us that us we were the only one. Yes.”
Mitch had met Lia Bravo a couple of times back in the day. A thin, quiet woman with a faraway look in her eye. “She never seemed strong, your mother.”
“She wasn’t. She had no education to speak of and she had trouble keeping a job. She couldn’t take care of us, and yet she would never agree to sign the papers so we could be adopted and maybe find new families for ourselves—and, as I said, she lied to us and never told us we had siblings. I don’t know what drove her to do the things she did. I’ll probably never know.”
“What drove her? Past tense?”
“She died last May. That’s how we found Hayley. We met her when we all just happened to show up in Mom’s hospital room at the same time.”
“Damn. That must have been quite a surprise.”
“Oh, yeah. I look back and realize it would have been the same with Tanner and me, that we probably wouldn’t have found each other until last year. We were lucky because Tanner vaguely remembered that there had been a baby when Mom put him in the system. Ten years ago, he had to practically blackmail her to get her to admit that yes, he did have a sister. One sister. She never did cop to Hayley’s existence. So another decade went by before we found her.”
He asked carefully, “You and Tanner are still close, then?”
“Very.” Her smooth brow creased. “You don’t still hate him, do you?”
Before he could answer, the waiter appeared. They took a few minutes to look at the menu and order.
Then they were alone again. And Kelly was watching him.
Time to face the music. From the moment he’d seen her the night before, standing there on the edge of that stage, he’d known he would find a way to be with her again—and that he would need to make amends.
He said, “I was way out of line. An idiot, ten years ago. Believe me, Kelly. I know that now. You heard me last night. It’s a major point in my book and my lectures that ultimatums just don’t work, but I made you choose between me and your newfound brother. All I can say is, I was eighteen and crazy in love with you and sure I would lose you—which, as it turned out, I did. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was stupid. And self-defeating. And wrong.”
Now her eyes were as soft as a summer sky. “So I left you—and then you lost your mom, too.”
“Pneumonia. At least it was quick. Sometimes I think she was relieved to go. She was never the same since we lost Deirdre—and my dad.” Deirdre had been two years his junior. She’d died at the age of nine, hit by a drunk driver while she rode her new bike home from a friend’s house down the street. His father couldn’t stand the loss of his adored daughter and deserted them soon after. His mom had done her best, but they couldn’t afford the house. She’d spent her remaining years in a cramped, single-wide trailer.
“Deirdre,” Kelly softly whispered. Her eyes welled with sudden tears.
He did reach across the table then. “Hey.” She let him take her hand. Damn, it felt good, just touching her. Her palm was soft and cool. “You would always cry, remember, whenever I talked about DeDe?”
She swallowed, nodded. “I…I knew you loved her very much. And nobody should die that young. It’s just…so sad.”
Even now, he could close his eyes and see her, his lost little sister. She would look up at him through those wide-set hazel eyes, trusting and proud to have him as her own big brother. “She was the greatest little kid. Nothing got her down, you know?”
Kelly glanced away. She swallowed again. “Mitch, I…”
“What? What’s the matter? Whatever it is, just say it. I can take it, I promise you.”
“Yes. I…well, I…”
The waiter arrived with their appetizers.
Kelly gently pulled her hand from his so the waiter could serve them. He asked if they wanted refills on their drinks. When they both passed, he left them.
“Now,” Mitch said, “what is it you keep trying to tell me?”
“It’s only that I…” she picked up her fork “…I want you to know that I did come back looking for you, a couple of months after I left….”
He shook his head. “Not a trace, huh?”
“No. The trailer had strangers living in it. They knew nothing about you. The guy in the park office told me about your mom and said he had no idea where you went. You’d left no forwarding address.”
“I had no forwarding address. And we were renting the trailer. The weekly payment came due. I didn’t have it. I realized I didn’t want to be there, anyway. So I took what I could fit in my backpack and I hit the road.”
“And you went…?”
“To Dallas. By way of L.A. and Las Vegas and Phoenix. I lived on the streets for about a year.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry….”
“Why? It wasn’t your fault. And living on the streets can be damn instructive—and you know what?”
“Hmm?”
“We’ve got this one evening. And then I’m on a plane tomorrow. Here we are again, after all these years. It’s like magic. And I don’t want to waste another minute of tonight talking about all the grim stuff we’ve been through since we were last together.”
Another of those beautiful smiles trembled across her mouth. “Oh, Michael.”
“Mitch,” he corrected.
She sighed. “Mitch.” She sent him a teasing look. “I like your attitude, Mitch.”
“Well, I’ve been working on it for the past decade or so. It’s good to know you see improvement.”
“Oh, I do.” She glowed at him. “I truly do. But as for the grim stuff, well, it’s what made us who we are, right?”
“That’s true.”
She sipped the last of her wine. He had the feeling she was about to reveal something important, one of those secrets he couldn’t wait for her to share with him, something about her life now that she found difficult to speak of. But then she only asked him more about himself.
“Your name. Why the change?”
He teased, “What? You don’t like the name ‘Mitch’?”
“I do like it. It just seems like a big step, I guess.”
“People do change their names. It’s more common than you might think.”
“I’m not asking about ‘people.’ I want to know why you changed your name.”
“I wanted to be…someone else. And now I am.”
“But you are still Michael. Deep down. No matter how much you change.”
He reached out. And so did she. Her fingers met his in the middle of the table, by the white magnolia blossom, in the candle’s golden glow. Met. And held.
He said, “I’m not Michael. Not anymore. I’m someone different. Someone named Mitch. And believe me, I like myself as Mitch a whole lot better than I ever liked Michael.”
“When did you change it?”
“When I was nineteen.”
“A year after…”
“We broke up. Yes. By then I’d created my first video game and I was working on the second one. I had a little money, at last. I’d rented an apartment. It seemed like total luxury to me. To sleep in a bed, to finally stop wondering where the next meal was coming from.”
“That must have been a great feeling.”
“Clean sheets and food in my stomach. Oh, yeah.”
She laughed again. “Actually, I meant how you came from nothing, and within a year you found success.”
“Well, I still had a long way to go. But things were definitely looking up.”
He’d still missed her like hell back then. It was an ache that never completely left him. But time had been kind and dulled the pain more year by year. He’d thought himself over her the past couple of years….
And then, last night, there she was, standing off to the side, her smile nervous and hopeful.
Since then, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Again, she pulled her hand back. She picked up her fork and went to work on her asparagus salad. He ate some of his stuffed portobello mushroom appetizer. They were quiet for a few minutes. The food was good and the silence held promise it seemed to him.
Eventually, she asked, “Why Mitch Valentine?”
“Well, it starts with the same letters as my given name, so it was a change, which I wanted, but at the same time, it felt comfortable, you know? It felt… right. Familiar.”
“But why Valentine?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s not a name I can picture you choosing, I guess. It’s a little too…” She couldn’t find the right word.
He gave her some help. “Soft? Girly? Romantic? Imaginative? Kelly. I’m hurt. You don’t think I’m imaginative…?”
She groaned. “Excuse me while I remove my foot from my mouth—and actually, I like it. It just surprises me you chose it, that’s all.”
“I actually did have a few reasons for making the choice. I’d already chosen Mitch some time before. As I said, I wanted a last name that started with a V, like Vakulic. And it was Valentine’s Day when I went to see the lawyer about making the change. I thought, hell. Valentine. Vakulic. Same first two letters, just like Mitch and Michael. And I thought Valentine sounded like the name of somebody famous. I liked that. A lot.”
She sat back in her chair. “So. That was nine years ago today….”
“That’s right, now you mention it.”
They shared a look. She broke the eye contact first. “Mitch,” she said softly. Her mouth kept tempting him.
He wanted to kiss it. “I like it when you say my name.”
There was urgency in those blue eyes. And something else. Something…what? Worried? Afraid? “Mitch, I…”
“What? Say it. Tell me.”
She shook her head—and then she slid her napkin in beside her plate. “Be right back.” And she got up and headed toward the arch that led to the ladies’ room.
He watched her go, admiring the slim, softly curving shape of her, thinking that he was probably pushing too fast, promising himself he’d slow it down a little when she returned, smiling wryly as he realized there was no way he would keep that promise.
The ladies’ room was blessedly empty. An orchid in a black pot graced the white marble sink counter. Beside the elegant flower a stack of neatly folded linen towels waited. So much nicer than ordinary paper ones.
Kelly braced her hands on the rim of the sink and leaned in toward the mirror. “You will tell him,” she commanded in a whisper, glaring at her own image. “You will go back out there and you will tell him that he has a daughter and you will do it the minute your butt hits that chair.”
She straightened. With slow deliberation, she smoothed her hair and then her skirt. She washed her hands and dried them on one of those beautiful cloth towels.
And then she drew her shoulders back and turned for the door.
