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“Yeah?” His face worked as he stared down at her. “Well, you thought wrong! Dammit, Annie, if I’d known you were pregnant, it would’ve changed everything!”
Even though it was what she’d expected he’d say, it hurt.
Yet it was a survivable pain, she realized slowly. Three years ago it would have destroyed her, but not now—not after everything else she’d been through.
She lifted her chin and gave an eloquent shrug. “I’m sorry.”
“Damn you.” Gavin wheeled away and stalked over to one of the windows, where he braced a hand against the sash and stood staring out at the deepening twilight.
She sighed, but her voice when it came was level. “I didn’t do it to hurt you.” To be honest, she hadn’t known she could hurt him. “All I can say is that it’s in the past. We have to go on from here.”
The cotton-covered muscles in his back flexed. “Yeah? That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t missed out on your kid’s entire life.”
A half dozen retorts trembled on her tongue, chief among them a pointed reminder of where he’d been the past few years. But she swallowed it and the others, afraid to tread any deeper into the past. This was hard enough as it was. “So what is it you want?”
He turned, his blue eyes hard. “What the hell do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully.
“I want to be a part of my son’s life.”
Annie bit back an automatic refusal, determined to remember her vow to put Sam’s interests first. Still, now that the moment was at hand, it wasn’t quite so easy to say the words that would allow Gavin access to her child. She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said finally. “I’m sure we can work out some sort of schedule for you to visit—”
“Visit?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve already missed too damn much. I’m not missing any more.”
Her breath froze in her lungs. “Then what?”
“Hell, I don’t know!” He looked around, as if the answer could be found lurking in the corners. A curious expression suddenly moved across his face. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Sam?” The clock struck six, its muted chime marking off the hours. Her heart sank. She was now officially late. “He’s at the sitter’s.”
Gavin frowned, as if only now registering the significance of having encountered her earlier out on the porch. “Why? Did you just get home from somewhere?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, then dropped her hand. She hadn’t even worked her shift, and already she was exhausted. “No, I was just going out. As a matter of fact, I’m late. Do you think we could table this until tomorrow?”
“No.”
A small spark of desperation flared inside her. Though she didn’t think Clia would fire her just for being late, she didn’t want to find out. She couldn’t afford to lose her job. “Please. It’s clear we’re not going to settle anything tonight.”
“The answer’s still no.”
“But why?”
He smiled, completely without humor. “Why do you think?”
It took her a moment to correctly interpret the distrustful look in his eyes. She sighed. “You think. If I were going to take off, I would’ve done it a week ago. I swear I’ll be here tomorrow. Maybe by then we’ll both be calm enough to talk this through and decide what’s really best for Sam.”
Amazingly, the mention of their son’s welfare did the trick. The suspicious gleam in his eyes flickered out, although his expression remained cool and probing. He searched her face. “What time tomorrow?” he asked finally.
The breath she hadn’t known she was holding sighed out. “How about noon?” This wouldn’t seem like such an ordeal after a few hours sleep, she told herself firmly. They would be able to work something out, something adult and civilized.
“The boy—Sam—will he be here?”
“Of course.”
He continued to give her the same piercing stare before he nodded abruptly. “All right.” He started for the door, only to rock to a stop after a few feet and look back at her over his shoulder. “But I’m warning you, Annie. Don’t even think about running. Now that I know about my son, I’d find you.”
With that he turned and slammed out the door.
Annie stood staring after him, not certain what she wanted to do more—yell, plead, throw something, or sink to her knees and cry until she didn’t have any more tears.
In the end she did none of those things. She didn’t have time for histrionics. Instead she grabbed her things, turned out the lights and ran for her car.
The Palomino Grill was located off Interstate 25, at the end of the freeway ramp that led to the little town of Mountainview. It was open around the clock and looked considerably better at night than during the day.
Its floor plan was simple. Booths lined three of the four walls, tables dotted the center space, and an open-ended counter with padded swivel stools stretched the length of the kitchen. An old manual cash register topped a glassfronted counter that was filled with the usual assortment of gum, candy and antacid tablets. Garish red-and-black carpeting, sun-faded red curtains and a jukebox crowned with a decade-old display of dusty plastic geraniums completed the decor.
Annie was an hour and a half past the end of her regular shift when she dropped the tray of dirty dishes. There was a ringing crash, interspersed with the tinkle of breaking glass and the clatter of bouncing cutlery.
It might not have seemed so bad if it hadn’t been the second tray she’d dropped that night.
Or if she didn’t suddenly have an overwhelming urge to cry.
But it was and she did. To her horror the room began to blur, while a lump the size of one of Sam’s Nerf balls bloomed in her throat.
Mortified, she stooped down, righted the tray and blindly began to pick the silverware out of the debris, stubbornly blinking back tears. She hadn’t suryived the past three years just to fall apart over a bunch of broken dishes, she told herself.
The reminder helped. But not nearly as much as the irreverent female voice that sounded above her head a few minutes later. “Wow. Two trays in one shift. It’s gotta be BFS.”
Annie glanced up at her friend, Nina. “What?”
“You know. BFS.” The other waitress wiggled her fingers. “Butterfinger syndrome. Occupational hazard of waitresses, data processors and brain surgeons. Of course—” she bent down, scooped up the remaining pieces of silverware and whisked away the tray “—as far as that last group goes, the consequences tend to be an eensy-weensy bit more serious.” She gave Annie a meaningful look. “Know what I mean?”
Annie stared at her thirty-something friend, looking past the rose tattoo on Nina’s wrist, the improbable burgundy hair and the triple-pierced ears, to the sympathetic hazel eyes. A grateful if shaky smile spread across Annie’s face. “I guess that does put it in perspective.”
“You betcha.” Nina set the tray aside and offered her a hand.
Annie took it. To her surprise when she looked around, she saw that the diner was empty, except for Big Bob, the night cook, and Leo, the dishwasher, whom she could see through the pass-through to the kitchen. “Where’d everybody go?”
Nina shrugged. “You should’ve dropped the dishes sooner. I think you scared the last group off. They lit out a few minutes ago.”
“Clia’s going to kill me.”
Nina looked at her curiously. “Clia, my pretty, slithered onto her broom and went home hours ago. Furthermore, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“She’ll know,” Annie said firmly, “because I’ll tell her.”
Nina groaned. “I swear, Annie, you make Dudley DoRight look like a piker.” She disappeared through the swinging doors into the back, only to reappear seconds later, broom and dustpan in hand. She thrust the latter at Annie and began to sweep. “You really need to work on your attitude,” she said without missing a beat. “Try thinking about it this way. Clia owes you for agreeing to stay until Char and May show up.”
“She owes you,” Annie said. “I was late, remember?”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Get a grip. At least you called. And it was probably only the third time you’ve been late in two years. Those two haven’t been on time once in the past two months. And I, for one, am getting damn tired of covering for them.”
As if on cue, the bell above the door jangled. A trio of burly truck drivers came in, closely followed by the pair of giggling blond twins who worked the graveyard shift.
“Finally,” Nina said. She took the dustpan out of Annie’s hands, gave her a quick once-over and pointed toward the far booth. “Go. Sit. We need to talk.”
“But—”
“I’ll be right there.” Not waiting to hear any further protest, she marched away, dumped the broken dishware into the trash and went to have a little talk with their blond co-workers.
She joined Annie a few minutes later. “Honest to God, those two make Jenny’s gerbil look like an intellectual.” Jenny was the second of Nina’s three children; she had one from each of her marriages. “Here.” She handed Annie a steaming cup of coffee, set her own on the table and slid onto the seat. “You look like you could use it.”
“Thanks.” Annie dredged up a tired smile. “Does that mean I look as bad as I feel?”
“Ha. You couldn’t look really bad if you worked at it. But you’ve jumped like a scalded cat every time anyone’s so much as hiccuped tonight. It doesn’t take one of those brain surgeons to figure out something’s wrong.”
“Oh.”
Nina grimaced at the carefully neutral answer, twisted sideways and stretched out her legs on the seat with a sigh of pleasure. “So. Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or am I going to have to pry it out of you?”
Annie rolled the cup between her hands and considered her answer.
When she’d left Denver three years ago and started driving north, she’d been numb, so overcome by the events of the preceding months she hadn’t been able to think past escaping the city where her entire world had collapsed. During the previous year she’d graduated from an exclusive Boston college, returned to Colorado after a fourteen-year exile and been swept off her feet by the man of her dreams. She’d gone from being her wealthy father’s golden princess, to Gavin’s prized possession, to being a twenty-three-year-old orphaned ex-debutante with five thousand dollars to her name, no marketable skills, a husband who didn’t want her and a baby on the way.
In the back of her mind she’d had a vague plan of starting over somewhere like Montana or Idaho. Instead the muffler had fallen off her car after a mere forty-three miles, stranding her in Mountainveiw, and she’d simply been too overcome to move on.
Yet she hadn’t given up entirely. The child stirring inside had refused to let her. For the first time ever, somebody had been depending on her. Annie had been determined not to let that small, precious somebody down.
Somehow she’d found the energy and strength to rent her little house, to husband her limited financial resources through the remainder of her pregnancy, to make it alone through the long, scary hours of childbirth. Three months later she’d found her way to the Palomino, determined to do whatever she had to, to support her new little family.
Beyond the bare particulars, she hadn’t talked about her past to anyone. At first because it was too painful. And then because she’d put it behind her.
Or so she’d thought.
She looked over at Nina’s expectant gaze and realized she was finally going to have to say…something. She sighed, trying to decide where to start. “I ran into Gavin in the grocery store last week,” she said finally.
“Gavin?” Nina’s blank look spoke volumes.
“My husband. Sam’s father.”
“You mean, you really are…married?”
It was Annie’s turn to look startled. “For heaven’s sake, Nina.” She glanced from her friend to the heavy gold and silver wedding band on her own hand, and back again. “Yes. What did you think? That I’d made it up?”
“Well…yeah. What was I supposed to think? You’ve been alone ever since you first walked in here desperate for a job, when Sam was just a little tadpole. You never join any of the discussions me and the other girls have about sex. I just figured some guy had given you a real bad time. That because of Sam, it was easier to say you were married than talk about it.”
Bemused, Annie shook her head. “Is that why you think I’ve turned down every offer for a date since I’ve worked here?”
“Well, sure. That and the fact that you look and sound like one of those high-class types they use in ads to sell mink coats and pearls. You’re light-years above the yahoos we get in here, and we both know it.”
Annie winced, but recognized that now was not the time to dwell on what it was about her that prompted people to see the surface, rather than the person underneath. “Be that as it may, I am married. And Gavin is very, very real.”
“So where’s he been? Is he military or CIA or something?”
“No.”
“Alien abduction, then?”
Annie took a deep breath. “He’s been in prison.”
Nina nodded. “That was gonna be my next guess.” Her eyes narrowed. “So what’d he do? He didn’t beat on you, did he?”
Annie shook her head, shocked at the very idea. “No. Gavin would never do that.”
“So what are we talking here? Too many traffic tickets? Mass murder? What?”
Annie sighed. “The charge was accomplice to criminal fraud.”
“Huh. And what does that mean in real-people English?”
“It means he worked for my father, who owned a company that specialized in building big commercial structures—high-rises, shopping malls, that sort of thing. Gavin started as a carpenter, but eventually became one of KinnairdCo’s most valuable foremen. Until three and a half years ago, when a Pueblo high-rise under construction collapsed. A worker was badly injured. It turned out—” she stared into her coffee “—it turned out the company was in financial trouble. And that my father had tried to economize by substituting substandard steel and other low-grade materials for what was specified in the bid, even though he knew it could compromise the structure. Charges were brought, but before anything could be proved, he had a heart attack.”
“And?”
Annie pushed her coffee mug aside and looked up. “And by then, Gavin and I had been married for three months, and Daddy had made him a partner in the business. So he—” she exhaled tiredly “—became the one held accountable.”
Nina stared. “But…but that’s not fair! How could he be blamed if he didn’t know?”
“He knew,” Annie said quietly. “He wasn’t part of it, but at some point he found out and chose to say nothing, and that was enough to make him legally responsible as far as the Pueblo County D.A. was concerned. He came after Gavin with everything he had. On advice of counsel, Gavin pleaded ‘no contest’ in return for a reduced sentence. Not,” she added tiredly, “that he ever discussed it with me. Verbal communication was not our strong suit.”
Nina studied Annie’s drawn face. “God. No wonder you left him.”
Annie’s mouth quirked with a faint, ironic smile. “That’s just it. I didn’t. He broke it off—” she paused “—the day I was going to tell him about Sam.”
“He didn’t know you were pregnant?”
Annie shook her head.
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“No.”
There was another long silence as Nina digested this last. “But why?”
Annie shrugged, no more willing to explain to Nina than she had Gavin. “It’s not important.”
“I see.” Nina regarded her thoughtfully. “So why didn’t you divorce him?”
Annie toyed with a spoon, her gaze on the dull metal handle gripped in her slender fingers. “I guess at first I hoped he’d change his mind. And then later, after I left Denver, I didn’t have either the money or the energy to bother. I simply wanted to forget.” She laid down the spoon and looked up at her friend. “And now…well, now, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he knows about Sam and he showed up at my house tonight. That’s why I was late.”
Nina whistled inelegantly between her teeth. “No wonder you’re all shook up. So what does he want?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure he does, exactly. We’re supposed to get together later today to discuss it.”
Nina, hardheaded about everything else, was still a romantic at heart. “I bet he wants you back.”
Annie shook her head. “No.” It was the one thing she didn’t doubt. “He’s only interested in Sam.”
Nina didn’t look convinced. “How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“Do you still love him?”
“No.”
Nina looked even more skeptical, but wisely didn’t say so. Instead she cocked her head. “So what do you want to have happen?”
“I—I want him to go away. I want him to be a good father to Sam, but from a distance.”
“Then tell him to take a hike,” Nina said flatly. “And if that doesn’t work, demand money. In my experience that’s usually enough to make most guys take off. Look at the trio of losers I was married to.”
“You don’t know Gavin,” Annie said, remembering his warning about leaving. “When he wants something, he’s the most single-minded, determined person I’ve ever known.”
Nina made a rude sound. “Except you.”
Annie stared at her in surprise. “What do you mean by that?”
Nina reached over and patted her hand. “It means that if anybody can handle good old Gavin, it’s you, hon. Open your eyes. At least where Sam is concerned, you’re not some lily-livered little girl. And if nothing else—” her expression turned wry “—you’ve got the advantage of intelligence. After all, your hubby already proved he wasn’t too bright when he let you go.”
Annie’s face softened. “You’re a good friend, Nina,” she said softly.
The redhead nodded. “You bet. Try and remember that the next time we’re working different shifts and I need you to fill in for me.”
“You can count on it.”
They fell silent. After a few moments Nina glanced at her watch. “Lord, it’s after four.” She yawned and climbed to her feet. “Good thing it’s Saturday. I’m going to go home and sleep a zillion hours. How about you?”
Annie stood and gathered up their coffee cups, dropping them onto the bussing cart as they went to get their purses. “First the grocery store, then sleep, then Sam.” Then Gavin.
As if she’d heard that last, Nina reached over and gave her a quick squeeze. “It’ll be okay,” she said softly.
Try as she might, Annie didn’t think so.
Two
He had a son.
The realization had kept Gavin up most of the night.
Yet it was only now, as he once again drove toward Annie’s house, that it was really beginning to sink in.
After a week of wondering, of cautioning himself against getting his hopes up, he finally knew.
He had a son. A bright, bold, beautiful little boy with an angel’s face and the Cantrell talent for trouble.
Joy, as fierce as anything Gavin had ever known, threatened to overwhelm him.
He took a deep breath and attempted to rein in his elation, a little uncomfortable with the strength of his feelings. Still, he couldn’t help thinking it was an exceptionally beautiful morning. Last night’s brief storm had passed. The sky was clear, and dawn was in full bloom, tinting the dew on people’s lawns silver and painting the snow that capped the peaks to the west with lavender, pink and gold.
He had a son.
In the scheme of things, it was almost enough to balance the anger Gavin felt every time he stopped to think that if not for a quirk of fate, he never would have known of the child’s existence.
Almost. But not quite.
Nor was it enough to blind him to the fact that, given last night’s conversation, the boy’s mother would prefer him to quietly fade right back out of the picture. Or at least limit his involvement to some nice, neat, orderly little schedule she no doubt felt she should be the one to devise.
If that was the case, she was in for a rude awakening. Although he still was a little hazy on the details, he intended to be an active part of his son’s life.
With that thought firmly in mind, he slowed as he approached the small, rectangular bungalow, still a little amazed that his designer boutique wife was living in such a bargain basement place.
And then he saw the empty spot in the driveway where Annie’s car should have been, and it drove every other thought from his mind. Oblivious to the squeal of protesting rubber, he hit the brake and sent the pickup skidding into the curb.
Alarm splintered through him. Yet even as his stomach twisted painfully, he told himself not to panic, not to jump to conclusions. She’d been on her way out last night. Chances were her car had broken down on the way back, or she’d lent it to a friend, or something.
She had to be here. She’d promised, dammit.
Heart pounding, he scrambled out of the truck. He tried the front door first, knocking hard enough to silence the birds singing in the surrounding trees. When he got no answer, he began a clockwise circuit of the grounds, stopping first to peer through the living room windows.
Inside, everything was dark and still, untouched from the way he remembered it last night.
He forced himself to step away, telling himself that it didn’t mean anything as he vaulted the waist-high fence that enclosed the backyard. The first thing he saw was a small inflatable wading pool. It sat, abandoned, in the ankle-high grass, one lone rubber duck bobbing on the surface.
The sight made his heart clench.
He averted his gaze and strode across the neat concrete patio, up three shallow steps to the small service porch where he tried the back door. It was locked, as he’d expected. He leapt down, unlatched the side gate and started down the drive. It didn’t take long to find that, while the shades were down on both bedroom windows, there was still enough of a gap at the bottom of each to see that neither bed had been slept in.
There was no doubt about it. Annie and the boy were gone.
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Anger and self-disgust choked him. With a strangled curse, he planted his feet and slammed his fist into the rough clapboard siding, needing some outlet for his anguish.
He cursed the pain that radiated up his arm.
Yet it was nothing compared to the ache around his heart.
Dammit. Despite his tough-guy words, his big brave threat to track Annie down like some modern-day bounty hunter, she’d split. She’d probably taken off the minute he’d cleared the corner last night.
And to think he’d actually felt guilty about threatening her! God! He had to be the biggest fool imaginable. Hadn’t he learned the hard way you couldn’t trust anyone?
Shoulders heaving, he shook his head at the irony of it.
Until he’d seen Annie and the boy in the store last week, he would have sworn he’d made his peace with the past. Two years and ten months in prison gave a man plenty of time to think. Although he would never forgive Max Kinnaird for what the older man had done, Gavin accepted that he had only himself to blame for his own situation.
It had been his decision not to turn in his father-in-law, his decision to allow the older man time to try and fix the mess he’d made. The result had been disastrous, a painful reality he lived with every day.
As for his wife and his brief marriage…Well, that was a different story. For a variety of reasons he hadn’t let himself think about Annie or the life they’d once had from the day she’d raced out of the Colson visiting room.
He’d closed the door on that part of his past.
In much the same way, he’d also resolutely refused to consider the future. Instead, he’d redefined his life by simple pleasures—a cold beer, blue skies, the chance to play a game of pickup softball after work. He’d been thankful for the job provided by an old friend and openly overwhelmed when the same friend had agreed to cosign the loan to get him his pickup. He’d been fiercely grateful for every small freedom, from driving fast on the highway, to taking his morning run, to sleeping in a room without bars on the windows.