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Then he blinked and it was gone, replaced by the circumspect comprehension of a man experienced in exercising absolute dominion over his own emotions. He adjusted his cuffs, a gesture Chessa perceived as a delaying tactic by one who disliked losing control.
Feeling hollow inside, she twirled the glass between her palms. “This has all been a terrible mistake.” She barely recognized the guttural croak as her own voice. “It’s my fault, of course. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I have to explain—” She gasped as Nick reached across the table to cup his hands around hers, squeezing them between the warmth of his palms and the coolness of the glass. His touch was firm yet tender, so warm that the heat radiated up her arm to tingle at the pulse in her throat.
Compassion softened his features. Regret clouded his eyes. “I’m the one who begs forgiveness. If I’d known, if I’d realized that—” he paused, clearly confused and struggling for words “—that our time together had resulted in a child, I never would have left. You must believe that.”
Groaning, Chessa could only shake her head. “No, no, you don’t understand.”
“Yes, I do,” he insisted, and confirmed that by squeezing her hands. “That was a foolish time in my life. I did things I’m not proud of, things I deeply regret I was angry and impulsive, resentful of those who had the kind of family life that I could only dream about. I acted out what was expected of me. It was all I knew at the time, all that I’d been taught.”
A poignant ache spread behind Chessa’s ribs. Memories flooded back, rich and textured, the distant image of a sad young man with no joy in his eyes, the lonely adolescent who’d become a man long before he was ready.
Everyone in town had known Nick as Crazy Lou’s kid. According to local lore, Lou Purcell had always been down on his luck, a less-than-ambitious fellow who’d tried to support his family with a variety of jobs that for one reason or another had never worked out When his wife died, Lou stopped trying and started drinking. Chessa thought Nick had been about twelve at the time.
Pitied at first, the bereaved youngster had been subjected to whispered speculation about bruises he couldn’t hide, the constant hunger in his eyes. Over the years, Nick had grown taller, angrier, wilder. Eventually town gossip turned from sympathy to condemnation. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Rotten to the core. Like father, like son.
From Chessa’s perspective, Nick had done everything humanly possible to prove them right. He’d hung with a rough crowd, faced his detractors with swaggering bravado and garnered a reputation for never turning his back on a fight.
For some reason, girls adored him. At the time, Chessa hadn’t understood the attraction. He’d been handsome enough, but there was always an aura of danger about him that she’d found personally offputting. They’d never spoken to each other. She doubted he’d even noticed her. It hadn’t been difficult to keep her distance, since he’d been two years ahead of her in school. Even so, most of her female classmates swooned whenever the town bad boy sauntered past, and by the time he was a senior in high school, townsfolk had been willing to believe any sordid story attributed to him, no matter how skimpy the source.
When he finally skipped town one step ahead of the law, most folks said good riddance, and presumed they’d seen the last of Nick Purcell.
Which is exactly why his name had been chosen for her son’s birth certificate. Now Chessa had to explain it to him. She didn’t have a clue how that could be done, particularly since she barely understood it herself.
“Mr. Purcell,” she began, amending it when he hiked a brow. “Nick.” She swallowed, extracted her hands from beneath his and folded them in her lap. “I made a terrible mistake ten years ago, and I regret it.” The shock in his eyes stung her. She quickly looked away. “I never meant for you to be involved in this.”
His gaze narrowed. “In other words, you never meant for me to know about my own son.”
Shaking her head, she sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. God, this was difficult. “Bobby is not—”
An envelope was dropped on the table, an envelope with Nick’s name printed in an all-too-familiar childish scrawl.
Stunned, she straightened, staring at the item as if it were a ticking bomb. “What is this?”
“Read it.”
Every fiber of intuition in her body forbade her to do so. She didn’t want to know what was inside, didn’t want to open this paper Pandora’s box that she instinctively realized would turn her life, and the life of her son, completely upside down.
It was too late for caution. Nick Purcell was here. Their lives had already been irreversibly altered. All she could do now was minimize the damage. Perhaps the contents of this envelope held a clue as to how she could do that.
Trembling, she extracted a folded sheet of lined paper. One edge was ragged with circular tatters, as if torn from one of the spiral notebooks Bobby favored for his schoolwork. She carefully opened the letter and started to read:
Dear Dad
Hi. My name is Bobby. I’m your son. I don’t know how come you never come visit me. I figured maybe it is because you don’t know where I am.
The reason I am writing you is because my school is going to have a father-son picnic next month. It will be real fun if you can come. If you don’t want to, that is okay, but I don’t want to borrow other people’s dads anymore so I will just watch TV. We have a real cool TV. Mom bought it last year. It is not very big, but I like it anyway.
I think about you all the time. What do you look like? Are you real tall? Do you like to play soccer? Mom promised she would tell me all about you when I got big. I am big now. I wish she would tell me, but it makes her sad.
I hope you can come to the picnic. I love you.
Your son, Bobby Margolis
Their address and phone number had been carefully printed at the bottom of the page.
Moisture gathered in Chessa’s eyes, blurring the lines. “Where did you get this?”
“It was couriered to me from a San Francisco law firm, along with a copy of Bobby’s birth certificate.”
“San Francisco? I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I.” He leaned back, regarding her thoughtfully. “So I called the law firm and spoke to Bobby’s lawyer.”
“Bobby doesn’t have a lawyer.”
“Oh, but he does. One Clementine Allister St. Ives, Esq. She claims Bobby has put her on retainer to handle his affairs. Don’t worry,” he added when Chessa’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “I’ve checked it out. Ms. St. Ives is quite legitimate, a highly regarded family-law attorney with a fine reputation in the community.”
Chessa pushed away from the table. “This is madness. My son is nine years old, for heaven’s sake. He doesn’t need an attorney, he doesn’t have any ‘affairs’ to handle, and he’s never even been to San Fran—” the memory of a recent school outing popped into her mind “—cisco,” she finished lamely. “Good grief. His class museum trip.”
“Apparently.” Tucking the letter back into his pocket. Nick relayed what he’d learned about how Bobby had sneaked away from his classmates, taken a cab to Clementine’s office and hired her to find the man whose name graced his birth certificate.
With every word Chessa’s heart sank lower in her chest. Over the years she’d pushed the memories away, always believing she’d never have to face what she’d done, what she’d been forced to do. She’d thought her son was happy, that the life she’d struggled to create for him had been enough.
It hadn’t been enough. The pain and loss expressed in his letter had proven that. How could she tell her son that the father he’d searched for, the father he’d dreamed about all his young life, didn’t even exist? Tears swelled, spilled down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them.
“Chessa, please, don’t cry. It’s all right.” Reaching across the table, Nick slipped his thumb beneath her chin, a touch so gentle it made her heart ache. “You don’t have to do this alone anymore. I’m here now. I can help.”
Her breath backed into her throat, nearly choking her. There was something miraculous in his eyes, a poignancy and compassion the depth of which she’d never seen. It soothed her, comforted her, made her feel as if everything might be all right after all. It wouldn’t be, of course. It couldn’t be. But at that moment Chessa wanted desperately to believe.
A jarring slam broke into her reverie. “Dad, Dad!” Muffled thuds shook the living room floor as a dozen sneakered feet stomped into the house. Bobby skidded into the kitchen, followed by a sweating group of his buddies. “Dad, Dad, Danny wants to see your gun!”
“Gun?” Chessa’s head snapped around. “What gun?”
Nick, too, seemed perplexed. “I don’t own a gun.”
Crushed, Bobby avoided Danny’s smug grin. “But I thought private investigators always carried guns.”
“I’m not a private investigator, son.” Smiling, he shifted in his chair, laid a paternal hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I own a private security business. We install alarm systems, communication equipment, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Clearly disappointed, the child managed a brave shrug. “That’s kinda cool, I guess.” He brightened. “Do you like to play soccer? You wanna come outside and see my bike? There’s a really neat park down the street. You wanna go there? And Danny’s got a swell dog. He knows how to shake hands and roll over and everything. We could play with him, if you want. Oh!” Bobby grabbed Nick’s hand, half hauled him to his feet. “You’ve gotta come up and look at my room! I’ve got all kinds of neat car models and some airplanes. Do you like Star Wars? I’ve got a real Jedi Knight light saber!”
Before Nick could respond, he was surrounded by the gaggle of chattering children and hustled away. A moment later the front door slammed again. The house fell into eerie silence. Chessa was alone. Alone with her fears, alone with her memories, alone with the crushing guilt.
“I know about the bid opening tomorrow morning, Roger. I’ll be there.” Shifting the cellular phone, Nick paced around the sofa in Chessa’s small living room, using his free hand to riffle through his appointment book. “Have my secretary reschedule all appointments to end by two o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next ten weeks.”
“Impossible.” Roger Barlow’s voice was thin and strained, as always, and high-pitched with the stress of being second in command for a business growing faster than a paranoid pragmatist could comfortably handle. “We’re meeting with the CEO of National Technologies on Thursday to pitch a marketing strategy for outfitting their corporate headquarters and three satellite manufacturing facilities. That contract could be worth a half million dollars. We can’t reschedule.”
Barlow was a good man, with a by-the-book persona that provided needed balance to his own loosely creative management style. His constant whining was irritating, but Nick respected his business acumen. “If it can’t be rescheduled, you’ll have to handle the meeting yourself.”
“Me?” The poor man’s voice squeaked like a rusty hinge. “I don’t know a surveillance cam from a zonal keypad. I’m only a lowly finance director. You’re the technology guru. Without you, there is no meeting.”
That was true. Nick had always been good with electronics, he had put himself through college installing alarm systems designed by others. Now he designed his own systems and had built a successful company from the ground up.
“Okay, fine. Cancel the meeting.”
“Cancel it? Have you lost your mind? What in hell could be more important that a half-milliondollar contract?”
“Soccer.”
The poor man sputtered as if he’d swallowed a peach pit, but Nick was distracted by voices upstairs, where Chessa was explaining that Bobby couldn’t stay up any later because it was a school night. The frustrated boy was pleading his case, quite eloquently at that, insisting it wasn’t every day a kid got to meet his very own father.
Nick’s chest tightened. He was suddenly impatient with Roger’s nattering on about meetings and money as if there was nothing more important on earth. A week ago Nick might have agreed with that. Today he knew better.
Today he was standing in a home filled with odd bric-a-brac, decorative crafts and unique furnishings that would have appeared garish in less-talented hands. Chessa clearly had a knack for creating character out of chaos. A giant cable spool had been turned into a telephone table from which huge, dried flowers bristled in an oddly appropriate wilderness bouquet. Coats by the front door dangled from the plywood antlers of a Bullwinkle cartoon character, five feet high and lacquered in primary colors bright enough to make the eyes bleed.
An olive-green sideboard stenciled with Dutch designs towered beside a brocade sofa spruced up with embroidered throw pillows and a draped afghan, studded by riotous cartoon characters. Every space on the wall was filled with twisted wreaths of dried twigs and flowers, puffy quilt miniatures trimmed with handmade lace, and peculiar garage-sale items like gigantic carved salad tongs, eighteenth-century bedwarmers and a rusted wagon wheel studded with spears of dried lavender and windflowers.
And of course there were photographs. Dozens of them, set proudly on the spool telephone table, the green sideboard, an iron plant stand that had been converted to a knickknack shelf, and dotting the walls—all lovingly framed with handmade lace or tucked into a nest of braided twigs.
Every photograph was of Bobby. Bobby as an infant, as a drooling toddler, as a grinning first-grader with no front teeth. Bobby in a football jersey. Bobby at the beach. Bobby throwing a snowball. School portraits, candid snapshots, year after year of his son’s life captured in pictures.
Nick had already missed all those years. He wouldn’t miss any more.
Closing the appointment book, he tucked it back into his pocket, interrupting Roger’s sniveled protest with a tone that brooked no argument. “I’ve agreed to assist my son’s soccer coach. The team practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll be unavailable on those afternoons for the duration of the season. As for the National Technologies meeting, you can either reschedule it, cancel it or handle it alone. You decide.”
“But—”
“I’ll be in the office tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss it then.”
The poor man sounded apoplectic. “But what about the fish?”
“Fish?”
“There’s a goldfish in the water cooler.”
“Oh, that fish.” Nick chuckled, having nearly forgotten what was bound to have been one of his most memorable pranks. “Is the fish in question causing any distress?”
“Er, well, Ms. Pipps from Accounting is quite troubled. She won’t drink the water, of course. No one will.”
That came as no surprise, although the cooler had been disabled lest an unobservant soul attempted to use the converted fish tank for its original purpose. “You’ll find several cases of imported spring water in the lunch room. Oh, and there’s a box of fish food on my desk.”
“Fish food?”
“Just a pinch, Roger. Mustn’t overfeed, you know.” With that, Nick thumbed the cell phone off, folded it into his jacket pocket, and focused his attention on the soft footsteps descending the stairs. He knew it was Chessa. There was a distinctive pattern to her movement, a delicate rhythm to her step.
Over the past few hours he’d studied everything about her, from the timid smile that she offered too rarely to the way her eyes widened when she was taken by surprise, as she had been when Bobby had insisted Nick stay for dinner. He’d recognized her anxiety and felt guilty about not having graciously extricated himself from the situation.
The truth was that he’d wanted to stay, had wanted to continue his study of this intriguing woman with the haunted eyes. Everything about her fascinated him, even her unique manner of wielding a dinner fork as if it were something regal. Nick had pieced every mannerism into his memory, searching for something, anything that would jog him into recalling details of their past together. The image remained elusive, a fleeting ghost from a past he’d escaped long ago and the memories he’d left behind.
Halfway down the stairs, Chessa paused when she saw him, gripped the varnished oak banister so tightly that even from his vantage point in the living room, Nick could see her fingers whiten.
She moistened her lips, regarded him with thinly disguised disapproval. “Bobby would like to say good-night to you.” Avoiding his gaze, she descended the final steps and crossed the living room without so much as a glance in his direction. “Please leave his bedroom door open and turn the hall light on when you’re through. Bobby is afraid of the dark.”
With that she disappeared into the kitchen. Nick went to say good-night to his son.
Thirty minutes later Nick came downstairs just as Chessa emerged from the kitchen carrying a flat sheet of carved apples. Her eyes widened a moment, but she recovered quickly and swished past him as if unaffected by his presence. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten how to get downstairs.”
He stepped around the old steamer trunk that enhanced the eclectic decor by serving as a coffee table. “Bobby is a very verbal young man,” he said. There seemed no reason to explain that he’d spent the past half hour explaining why refusal to move into their guest room didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be a part of his life. Not that the idea didn’t hold a certain appeal, although it didn’t take a psychic to realize that Chessa would be less than amenable to the idea.
Stopping at a closed door behind the stairwell, she propped the flat pan against her hip, freed one hand and opened the door, disappearing inside before Nick could spring forward to assist her.
The hollow sound of footsteps on wooden stairs filtered from the open doorway, along with the occasional creak of old boards strained with age. A light sprayed from the opening, which Nick presumed led to a basement.
Acutely aware that he hadn’t been invited to follow, he clasped his hands behind his back, rocked impatiently on the balls of his feet. He glanced at his watch, then back toward the basement door. Sounds filtered up. A clunk, a thunk, a rustling scratch, as if something heavy had been dragged across metal.
It was a two-hour drive back to Marin County. If he left now, he’d make it before midnight.
More scraping from downstairs. Nick sidled toward the doorway, peered down the narrow basement stairs. A low ceiling obstructed his view, so he descended the first few steps. Fluorescent lights flooded the room with brilliant illumination. Two more steps, and he stopped in his tracks, stunned by what he saw.
The huge basement had been transformed into a large assembly bay, with supply bins and long counters heaped with fabric. Sheaths of dried weeds and flowers hung from the rafters, and one section was a mailing area, complete with stacks of boxes, tapes and labels. “Good grief,” he mumbled. “You’ve got quite an operation down here.”
Startled, Chessa leaped away from the large dehydrator into which she’d been arranging the carved apples, touched her throat, then sagged against the counter.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Continuing down the steps, Nick glanced around the room, noticing an old sewing machine on a counter heaped with bolts of cloth, and bins of what appeared to be tiny doll clothes. “You actually sell these things?”
“Yes.” Across the room, Chessa completed loading the apples without embellishment. She’d been quiet all day and apparently wasn’t feeling any more talkative now.
Nick sauntered past the mailing area, glancing at a few of the packed boxes, which had been neatly labeled to specialty stores around the country. “A nationwide clientele? I’m impressed.”
She closed the door, crossed her arms and regarded him warily. “Is there something I can do for you?”
Puffing his cheeks, Nick blew out a breath and jammed his hands in his slacks pockets. “I didn’t mean to intrude. You left the basement door open, so I presumed you didn’t mind if I joined you.”
“I always leave the door open so I can hear Bobby.” Her gaze skittered away, settled on a spot in thin air. “He sometimes wakes up during the night.”
“Nightmares?”
“No, not really. He just wants to make certain I’m here.”
Nick regarded a nervous twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Has he ever awakened and not found you here?”
The nervous twitch hardened into a flat, angry line. “I have always been here for my son,” she snapped. “How dare you imply otherwise?”
He managed to stifle a groan of regret at having uttered such an asinine and insensitive comment. “I’m sorry. Of course you have. We both know that I’m the one who hasn’t been here. I can’t change the past. I’m here now, and I intend to be part of my son’s life from this day forward.”
Every trace of color drained from her face. She swayed slightly, and for a moment Nick feared her knees might buckle. As he reached out, she stiffened, held out a hand like a shield. Since she appeared ready to bolt, he dropped his hands to his side and stepped back, giving her space.
She took one deep breath, then another. When she finally met his gaze, her expression was steel hard and determined. “I realize you’ve been put in an untenable position, Mr. Purcell, and I deeply regret it. Please understand that none of this is your fault, but my son is my first and only priority. The longer this goes on, the more deeply he will be hurt. I don’t want you to be a part of his life. In fact, I don’t want you to see him again. Ever.”
