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In a daze, he turned the page again and saw himself sitting up, eating in a high chair, crawling, in virtually every picture guarded by his big sister. He was walking when they apparently moved into another run-down place, but a bigger one. It was decorated in colors that reminded him of the famous Painted Ladies in San Francisco, Victorian houses that flaunted their lacy trim and gaudy hues. A garden bloomed in a yard that had been bare in the first picture. He was running around, soaring on a swing set, crouching in a sandbox frowning with intense concentration at something out of sight.
The mother was pregnant again, and he tensed at how close the story was to over.
This newborn looked like the others, red-faced and raisinlike, but he and Suzanne seemed to find her fascinating nonetheless. A studio portrait appeared in there, the three kids dressed up like dolls and posed, with him sitting next to his baby sister and Suzanne hovering protectively over both.
His third birthday choked him up. His face held such wonder as he stared at a birthday cake with three lit candles.
On the next to last page, Gary—Lucien—rode a fire-engine-red tricycle down the sidewalk toward his father, who seemed to be saying something to him.
Hand not quite steady, Gary turned the final, stiff page to see mother and kids around a dining room table that looked a hell of a lot like the one he sat at now. The father must have been taking the picture. Baby Linette appeared to be banging a spoon on the tray of her high chair, Suzanne to be talking, him to be stuffing a cookie in his mouth, their mother smiling lovingly at them.
The End, he realized. As if he were unmoved, he closed the cover, but kept his hand splayed over it. It seemed as if through his fingertips he felt the life within, so much he didn’t remember but had ached for since he was little.
“It’s yours,” Suzanne said. “I made one for Carrie, one for you. There are other pictures we can look at some day, but I made copies of the best ones.”
He swore and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Thank you.”
Carrie’s smile was painfully like their mother’s in some of the photos, gentle and caring. “Feel wrung out?”
Startled, he said, “How…?” then knew. She’d looked at an album just like this—her album—not that long ago. He met her eyes and saw in them a complete understanding of everything he felt. Nobody had ever, in all his life, seen inside him the way she did at that moment. It was the weirdest damn feeling.
“We looked…close,” he said, glancing down again at the closed book.
“We were,” Suzanne said. “Mom and Dad would have hated more than anything in the world to think of us all split up, not even knowing each other anymore. I hope they can see us now, together again.”
“I hope so, too,” Carrie murmured.
Gary wasn’t so sure he liked the idea of these parents he didn’t remember gazing down on them with saintly smiles. If they could see them now, what about the rest of the time? Had they seen him, locked by his adoptive father in the old outhouse for punishment, spending the night bloodying his fists trying to beat his way out? Had they seen him screwing women and leaving before first light? The idea both angered him and encroached on a sense of privacy that was important to him.
“When you’re ready, I’ll show you a packet of love letters that Dad wrote Mom,” Suzanne told him. “And Mom kept baby books for each of us with the dates of milestones. You know. First smile. Rolled over. Crawled. For you and me, first word. They even have locks of our hair from our first haircuts.”
The panic that felt like claustrophobia had been nudging at him, but now it swelled to fill his chest again. He took a hasty swallow of wine. Shouldn’t he be happy to know that he’d been loved as a little boy? Why did the knowledge fill him with resentment and something too much like the fear he’d felt when he lost it on that curve?
“If you want to go settle in…” Suzanne suggested.
He shot to his feet. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” He meant to leave the album on the table for now, to show himself if not them that it didn’t mean that much to him, but he couldn’t do it. “Thanks for, uh, doing this.” He gripped it, white-knuckle tight.
Carrie rose, too. “I’d better get going. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you in a day or two.” She held out her hand.
He shifted the album to his other hand so he could shake.
“Big brother,” she said, with a saucy grin, then kissed Suzanne on the cheek. “Wow. This is amazing.”
“Amazing,” Suzanne echoed.
Okay. Yeah. He guessed it was. Suzanne hadn’t been that old in the last photo, and yet she’d held tight to a memory of them all together.
He envied her that memory, but was glad he hadn’t kept it to taunt him all those years.
He escaped to the bedroom while the sisters said goodbye and made plans for what to do with him while they had him. In the quiet after he shut the door, he set the album atop the dresser, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, his gut churning.
Give him a choice between another day like this and a dive from his Harley at seventy miles an hour, he’d take the dive. Without a second thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
REBECCA WAS SAILING down I-5 when her car died. Just like that, with the car still going sixty miles an hour, the power steering and brakes were gone.
Swearing, she wrestled with the wheel to steer onto the shoulder while she stamped on the brake pedal. She hated to think what a dead car in one lane would do to traffic. The wheel moved as if the column had rusted fifty years ago, but it did turn. The car slowed and finally came to a stop on the shoulder.
Whispering her thanks for small mercies, she sat shaking, adrenaline coursing through her body. It was several minutes before she felt steady enough to turn the key and try to start the engine again.
Absolutely nothing happened. It didn’t even make an effort. Did that mean her starter was out? But then why would the engine have died? Something electrical, she supposed. All she knew about cars was how to drive one and how to fill it with gas.
Great. Wonderful. She was stuck on the shoulder of the freeway halfway between Lynnwood and Edmonds, traffic whizzing by. Thank God for cell phones. Hers had sunk to the bottom of her purse, but she found it and called information, asking for a nearby towing company.
“Fifteen, twenty minutes,” the dispatcher promised.
Now she’d have to cancel the home visit at the Coopers. Rebecca opened her briefcase and pulled out their file. The phone number was in here…. She found it and pushed the keys. Before she completed the number, the roar of a motorcycle brought her head up.
A huge Harley-type bike was easing to a stop behind her car. Her adrenaline surged again. As she hit the lock button on her door, images of rape and murder flashed through her mind. Forget the fact that it was broad daylight and they were in plain sight of busy freeway traffic. She wouldn’t even crack the window, she’d just give her head an emphatic shake no.
The driver, in jeans, boots and a black leather jacket, set the stand and took off his helmet, revealing long dark hair and a face she recognized. She’d met him, she knew she had.
Her mind raced as she peered in the rearview mirror. Where did she know him from?
Suzanne Chauvin’s. That was it. He was the long-lost brother. The one whose mouth had curled ever so slightly when he said, “Ms. Wilson.”
Why had he stopped? Did Good Samaritans come in the form of bikers in black leather?
He swung his leg over the seat, hung the helmet on the handlebar and strolled toward her passenger door. A semi thundered by in the outside lane, whipping his hair, but he didn’t even glance sideways.
When he reached the car, she hesitated, then unlocked it. He opened the door and bent to look in. “Ms. Wilson.”
Damn, he was handsome. Chocolate-brown eyes and a narrow face with spectacular cheekbones might have made him movie-star sexy, but a mouth that didn’t seem to be made for smiling erased any hope of charm.
“Mr. Lindstrom.” Now, why had his name popped into her head so easily? she wondered with surprise. Usually, she had an awful time remembering names.
“Flat tire?”
She shook her head.
“I was driving and my car just…died.”
His heavy brows rose. “Power steering?”
She nodded and realized she still felt shaky.
“Have you tried to start it again?”
“Yes, but it won’t even turn over.”
“Then it’s not likely to be anything I can take care of here.”
“I’ve called for a tow truck. I’m just waiting for it.”
His gaze flicked to her plum-colored blazer and skirt. “Working?”
“Yes, I had a home visit scheduled.” She lifted her cell phone. “I was about to call and cancel.”
“Where do they live?”
“Mountlake Terrace.” She could see the exit up ahead. So close.
“I could give you a lift,” Gary Lindstrom suggested.
She was embarrassed by the knowledge that her eyes had widened. “On your motorcycle?”
The very corner of his mouth lifted in the sketchiest smile she’d ever seen. “You can wear the helmet.”
“The tow truck…”
“Call them back. Tell them you’re leaving your key.”
She did hate to cancel. She knew how eager couples were at this stage, how long they’d yearned for a child, how much time they probably spent getting their house to a point of perfection whether they’d deny it or not. Still, to arrive, windblown, on the back of a Harley-Davidson, her arms wrapped around the waist of a perfect stranger who happened to be dark, sexy and a little scary…
Oh, heck. It was a fantasy come true.
“If you mean it,” she capitulated. “I can call a taxi to take me home…”
“I mean it.”
While he waited, she phoned and arranged to leave her key under the driver’s side floor mat. There wasn’t anything in the car to steal, and unless they could throw it over one shoulder and carry it, no one would be taking her Tercel today.
A moment later, carrying her purse and briefcase, she followed him to his motorcycle.
“You don’t have to give me the helmet.”
Even though his mouth had only that faint crook, his eyes narrowed in amusement. “You’re prepared to risk life and limb?”
“It’s not very far to Mountlake Terrace.”
“Wear the helmet anyway. You’ll feel safer.” He unhooked it from the handlebar, brushed her hair back from her face and settled the helmet on her head. She clutched her briefcase to her bosom and stood like a child being dressed as he matter-of-factly fastened the chin strap and then stepped back. “You may have to hike your skirt a little to get on.”
A dignified, professional woman wouldn’t be nodding obediently and letting him stow her briefcase in a leather bag that was strapped to the motorcycle carriage. He climbed on and watched as she lifted her snug skirt, first a little, then more. Cheeks hot, she finally freed her leg enough to get on with all the grace of a newborn colt trying to stand for the first time.
“Hold on,” he said, and started the engine with a roar that made her jump.
Her first grip at his waist was tentative, but as the motorcycle started to move, she grabbed hold tight while still trying to keep some distance between them. By the time he reached freeway speed, she was plastered to his back, her cheek pressed to him and her arms locked around him.
She’d no sooner dared open her eyes than the bike headed onto the exit and began to slow.
At a red light, she loosened her grip and pulled back.
“Doing okay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Fine,” Rebecca said, as if she rode one of these every day instead of never. Her mother would have a heart attack if she could see her.
“Good. Hold on,” he warned, as the light changed.
She grabbed tight again as he accelerated. For a moment they proceeded sedately, but then he swerved and shot through a gap that seemed frighteningly small to her to pass the car in front of them.
“Where are we going?” he shouted.
She yelled directions at the back of his head, and he nodded. Half a dozen turns, and he drove slowly down a winding street lined with modest but well-cared-for houses. Lawns were neat, and jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows and dried cornstalks decorated doorsteps. The Coopers didn’t make a great deal of money, she knew; the husband drove a bus for Snohomish County Transit and the wife was a hairdresser. Neither was especially articulate, but she’d liked their answers on the questionnaire in the file. They sounded like good people.
Fortunately, she’d memorized the street address, and he pulled to a stop on the gravel strip in front of a white-painted rail fence. He turned the engine off.
“Safe and sound.”
She felt the rumble of his words in her hands, locked around him. She let go and straightened. “Thank you. This was really nice of you….”
He turned, eyes narrowed and the skin crinkled at the corners in what she thought was a smile of sorts. “Want me to give you a lift back to the office or home, too?”
In the act of lifting the helmet off, she stared at him. “You’d wait for me?”
“Come back,” he corrected. “I have a cell phone. You can call.”
“I can get a taxi.”
His voice was sexy, too, husky and tempting. “But they’re not nearly as much fun.”
No. They weren’t.
“You’re serious?”
“I don’t have anything better to do,” he pointed out. “I can’t do much for Suzanne at her knitting shop.”
A tiny giggle rose in her throat at the image of him sitting with a circle of ladies, demonstrating the purl stitch. “No, I guess you can’t.”
“So, what do you say?” One brow rose. Of course he was the kind of man who actually could lift one eyebrow.
“If you mean it,” she said weakly.
He took the helmet from her. “Got something to write with? I’ll give you my number.”
“Oh. Okay.” Horribly conscious of him watching, she scrambled off the bike and then tugged down the hem of her skirt before she pulled her briefcase and purse from the leather bag. When she found a pad of paper, he scribbled the number in dark, slashing lines. “I usually spend at least a couple of hours,” she warned.
“No problem.” His mouth crooked. “You might want to brush your hair.”
Her hand went to her head in instant reaction, and he grinned, then put the helmet on his own head and started the motorcycle, raised a hand as if to say, See ya, and took off with a small spurt of gravel.
She was left gaping after him, stunned by that smile. She’d been wrong. Oh, so wrong. His smile was devastating. Cocky and yet also somehow sweet.
Which was a very strange word to use about a man who looked as tough and self-sufficient as he did.
Shaking her head, Rebecca walked to the front door and rang.
The Coopers were as nice as she’d anticipated, accepting with apparent equanimity her explanation of a car breakdown and a chance ride to explain windblown hair. Beth Cooper showed Rebecca to the bathroom where she discovered her skirt had swiveled so that the zipper was to one side instead of in back where it belonged. She turned it, smoothed wrinkles without much success and brushed her hair, then returned to the living room.
Beth smiled. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“I would love coffee,” she agreed, with more fervency than was probably appropriate.
Her hostess laughed and went to get it, leaving Rebecca to chat with Ronald Cooper.
In the next couple of hours, she coaxed them to talk about their own childhoods, their parents and the family gatherings that Beth admitted had begun to depress her these last five years as they struggled to get pregnant and her two sisters had three kids each.
“Mary Ellen once said just thinking about getting pregnant is dangerous for her.”
Her husband rumbled.
“She didn’t mean to be tactless,” Beth said hastily. “But it stung. Because I’m the one with the problem.”
Ronald laid his hand over hers.
Rebecca knew from their file that Beth couldn’t carry a baby to term, so in vitro fertilization wasn’t an answer for them. “Did you consider finding a surrogate mother?” she asked. “Perhaps one of your sisters?”
“They haven’t offered,” Beth said.
Her husband said firmly, “I don’t care that much about having a son who is mine. You know? We just want a child.”
“Do you have a preference as to gender?” When they didn’t answer immediately, she amended, “A girl or a boy?”
Their heads shook in unison. Neither cared. Yes, they’d consider a child of mixed race, although they guessed their druthers were for a Caucasian baby just so he or she didn’t stand out at those family gatherings and so people weren’t always thinking, Oh, she must be adopted, when they saw the Coopers together.
The agency’s policy was to, whenever possible, place babies with parents of their dominant race. It took unusually committed parents to provide a child of another race some sense of identity with his biological roots. In the 1970s, many black children had been placed with white parents, but in the decades since, there had been a shift in attitude. In any case, too few babies of any race were available for adoption to satisfy the hunger of childless couples. Many, frustrated, chose to go overseas.
Beth’s parents had been sterner than Ronald’s, but the couple agreed on how they wanted to raise their children.
“We’ve spent years shaking our heads and saying we wouldn’t say that or do that, so confident we’d be having kids when we were ready,” Beth confessed. “There’s never been any doubt that someday we’d have a family. We’ve saved so I can stay home for a few years, until they’re school age, for example. We talked about using that money for a foreign adoption, but then I’d have to go back to work and put the baby in day care, and we just never wanted that. Not if we could help it.”
They showed her around their small trilevel, including the bedroom upstairs right across the hall from theirs that would be the nursery. It was a big, sunny room, the walls painted yellow, a twin bed, child’s table and chairs and toy chest the only furnishings.
“Our nieces and nephews spend the night sometimes,” Beth said. “We enjoy having them.”
Rebecca guessed the pleasure was bittersweet, a chance to sample what was denied to them, but she smiled in agreement.
“We haven’t really decorated,” Beth continued. “In case we never—” She stopped, pressed her lips together. “This could be a sewing room.”
Rebecca talked to them about the birth mother’s role in choosing the placement for her child, and the profile birth parents would be shown of the couples like the Coopers who were waiting. She warned them of how long the wait might be before they were likely to be offered a baby. Faces shining, they assured her they’d wait ten years if they had to.
“Does this mean you’re approving us?” Ronald asked, voice gruff.
She smiled at them both. “I think you’ll make wonderful parents. I have no hesitation in recommending that you go on our list.”
She was moved to see that Ronald’s eyes got as damp as his wife’s before he harrumphed and wiped at them. It made her wish she could call them tomorrow and announce that a newborn was ready to go home to them. Unlike some older couples, though, they had time; they’d started trying to get pregnant when Beth was twenty-four or -five, so now she was thirty-three and her husband only two years older.
Rebecca used her cell phone to dial the number Gary had given her. He answered with an abrupt, “Lindstrom.”
“Hi, this is Rebecca Wilson. Um, if you’re still willing—”
“Five minutes.”
Dead air told her he was gone. Well! So much for her prepared speech about how it was fine if he’d gotten busy doing something else, getting a taxi was no problem, etc., etc.
Next she called the auto repair shop where she had asked that her car be towed.
“Can’t get to it until tomorrow,” she was told. “Check with us, say, eleven o’clock?”
Yes, fine, she could do that.
Obviously, she needed to rent a car. She had an appointment in Seattle tomorrow morning and had promised to go to dinner at her mother’s house in Woodinville that evening. Instead of having Gary take her back to the agency, maybe she’d have him deliver her to a car rental office.
She borrowed the Coopers’ phone book to look for the handiest location, finding one not a mile from her agency. By that time, the distinctive throaty roar of a motorcycle outside gave notice that her ride had arrived.
The Coopers thanked her profusely and waved goodbye from the doorstep as she left.
When she reached the street, her cynical Good Samaritan nodded toward them. “Are they still trying to convince you that they’re great people? Or did you make them happy today?”
“They can’t just be friendly?” She took the helmet from him, both relieved and a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to put it on again for her.
“It would be normal to go back in the house now. Don’t you think?”
She turned and gave a reassuring wave at the couple, who waved back. Yeah, okay, it would be normal for them to go back in the house. Instead, they stood side by side, holding hands, smiling at her.
“I gave them hope.” She settled the helmet on her head and fumbled with the strap.
He lifted a tanned, calloused hand and fastened it for her. “They’re going to get a kid?”
“They may have to wait for a couple of years, but probably.”
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