Beach Baby

Memories flooded back—a scrunched face, tiny fingers, a warmth against her breast. For a few minutes she’d known pure joy…then the nurse had taken her baby away and Nina had signed the adoption papers with tears blurring her vision. When she was sure her voice wouldn’t shake she said, “What about her?”

“She’s living forty miles south of Vancouver in Beach Grove,” Dora said softly.

“H-how do you know?”

“Her mother called me. Apparently the girl has run away and is looking for her biological parents.”

“Why did—?” She stopped. “I don’t even know her name.”

“Amy,” Dora replied.

“Amy,” Nina repeated. In her heart she’d always thought of her as Sweetpea. “Why did she run away?”

“She found out accidentally that she was adopted.”

“How did she find out?”

“She gave birth to a child of her own, a little girl,” Dora said. “She had complications and—”

“Wait a minute—Amy had a baby?” Nina whirled to face her mother. “I’m a grandmother?”

Dear Reader,

When I was growing up I lived a couple of miles from where Reid’s fictional house is set, high on the hill with a view of Boundary Bay and Mount Baker. I have so many fond memories of the beach, it seemed a natural place to set Beach Baby.

As a little girl I roamed happily over sandbars and shallows with my sisters and brother as we hunted for crabs and sand dollars. My mother taught us to swim in the sun-warmed waters and we built forts out of driftwood on the beach. As we grew older we rode our horses across the tidal flats.

When my own children were young I took them to the same beach and relived a happy childhood through their eyes. Now when I visit my hometown I walk along the dike and dream of the good old days.

If the idyllic summer setting of Beach Baby was an exercise in nostalgia, writing about parenting a mischievous toddler was a reminder of the busy, distracted life of a young mother. In Beach Baby Nina has the added challenge of dealing with an ex-fiancé, two teenagers and a whole host of extended and blended family.

I had a lot of fun writing this book, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I love to hear from readers. Please write to me at P.O. Box 234, Point Roberts, WA 98281-0234, or visit me at www.joankilby.com.

Sincerely,

Joan Kilby

Beach Baby

Joan Kilby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When Joan Kilby isn’t working on her next romance novel she can often be found sipping a latte at a sidewalk café and indulging in her favorite pastime of people watching. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she now lives in Australia with her husband and three children. She enjoys cooking as a creative outlet and gets some of her best story ideas while watching her Jack Russell terrier chase waves at the beach.

To Becky, Gael and Johnny for many

happy childhood memories at the beach.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Midnight, Paris. Luke Mann lurked in a darkened doorway listening for muted footsteps. Tucked inside his leather bomber jacket were documents that could bring down a Middle Eastern government. A dash across the cobbled street and he would be inside the safe house, his mission accomplished. Spurred on by visions of a peaceful retirement in a sun-drenched Tuscan villa, Luke stepped out of the shadows.

An Uzi submachine gun rent the stillness. Rat-a-tat-tat—

REID ROBERTSON STARED at the computer screen. Now what? Why was he killing off Luke just as he was about to retire? Come to think of it, why was Luke retiring when he was only forty-five? Maybe Luke was merely wounded. Maybe the guy with the Uzi would miss. Maybe there was no Uzi. Maybe Reid wanted that villa in Tuscany.

From Tara’s upstairs bedroom came the reedy scrape of a bow traveling up and down a minor scale. Distracted, Reid dragged both hands through his hair. He shouldn’t complain; at least she was practicing. He gazed past the computer monitor, out the window of his beach house. Tidal flats shimmered under the hot August sun, yanking Reid’s mind further away from dark alleys.

Sales on his ten previous spy thrillers were respectable but Reid wanted this book to break out, maybe even make the New York Times bestseller list. If he didn’t fold under the pressure of the deadline his agent had talked him into so the book would be out in time for Christmas, the new Luke Mann story could lift Reid into the major leagues.

The doorbell rang. Reid groaned at the interruption. Daisy, his golden retriever, raised her muzzle off his bare toes and lumbered to her feet to follow him out of his office and down the hallway.

Reid opened the door. If this was another Boy Scout selling raffle tickets—

“Amy!”

His other daughter, the one he couldn’t acknowledge but who occupied a special place in his heart as his first born, stood on the doorstep. He hadn’t seen her for three years and suddenly, or so it seemed, the braces had come off, her skin had cleared and she was all grown up. In her arms she held a little girl about a year old with curly red hair and curious blue eyes.

“Hey, Reid. How’re you doing?” Amy licked her lips nervously as she shifted the child to her other hip. Her naturally blond hair swung almost to her waist and she wore a low-slung long cotton skirt and a batik top that left her taut midriff bare. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in.”

In the neighborhood? Amy lived clear across the country in Halifax. Although come to think of it, Reid hadn’t heard from her in over a year, even though he regularly sent cards and letters—in the guise of a favorite “uncle,” that is.

“Come in.” He stepped back, noticing now that her hair needed washing and her clothes looked as though she’d slept in them. With a glance at the toddler, he added, “Who’s this?”

“My daughter, Beebee,” Amy said.

Reid did his best to hide his shock. The last time he’d talked to Amy she’d been excited about getting the lead role in her high-school play. Now she was a mom and this was no dress rehearsal. But she was too young!

Despite his misgivings he was drawn irresistibly to stroke the child’s downy cheek. “Hi there, sweetheart.”

Amy tightened her grip with an anxious glance at her daughter. “She makes strange.”

Maybe, yet at Reid’s touch the little girl’s face crinkled into a dimpled smile. She chuckled softly as she gazed up at him from beneath curly dark brown lashes. Reid smiled back. “You’re a little charmer, aren’t you?”

“Well, what do you know?” Amy said with a wondering grin. “She likes you.”

“Of course she does.” And Reid couldn’t help being tickled at finding himself a grandfather to such a cutie. “When did she come along?”

“Nearly twelve months ago.” Amy’s smile faded as she assessed Reid. “Didn’t Jim and Elaine tell you?”

Jim and Elaine? Since when had she stopped calling her parents Mom and Dad?

“Elaine didn’t send her usual chatty letter with the Christmas card this year.” He’d wondered about that but assumed she’d been too busy. Reid knew what that was like. Since Carol had passed away he often didn’t get around to cards until it was so late he was embarrassed to send them. He picked up Amy’s duffel bag. “Come in.”

Amy glanced around the foyer at the brilliant white walls, dark chocolate floorboards and tall vase of blue and purple hydrangeas next to a slim mahogany table. “You have a nice place.”

“Thanks.” Carol had had good taste; he, on the other hand, lived inside his head and barely noticed his surroundings. “Do your parents know where you are?”

Amy tossed her head. “If you mean Jim and Elaine, they’re not my parents.”

Jim and Elaine not her parents? Had they finally told her she was adopted? Reid had warned them that someday Amy would discover the truth. It looked as if that day had come at last.

The nervous energy that had carried Amy this far suddenly seemed to evaporate. “Do you think I could sit down?” she said. “I walked from the bus stop at the shopping center and Beebee’s getting too big to carry.”

“You should have called me. I’d have picked you up.” Reid led the way past the formal living room he rarely used to the family room adjoining the kitchen. A wall of windows overlooked the bay and French doors led onto a small lawn separated from the beach by a retaining wall. “I’ll get you both a cold drink. Then you’d better start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

Tara appeared at the top of the stairs, her violin hanging loosely at her side. At fifteen, she was tall and graceful with a pale oval face and long chestnut-brown hair. “Who’s here?”

“You remember Amy, the daughter of our friends in Halifax?” Reid said. “And this is her little girl, Beebee.”

“Hi, Tara.” Amy smiled warmly. “Long time no see.”

“Hi.” Tara’s gaze flicked to Beebee, surprise and curiosity evident in the slight lift of her dark eyebrows. Well she might wonder—Amy was barely nineteen.

“Go ahead and finish practicing,” Reid told Tara. “Amy needs to recuperate from her trip.”

Reid brought a pitcher of orange juice and a plate of muffins into the sun-filled room facing the beach and set them on the glass coffee table in front of the wicker couch. He waited while Amy and Beebee drank thirstily, then asked, “Was it Beebee’s arrival that caused the rift between you and the Hockings?”

“They blew their stack when I got pregnant,” Amy admitted. “Then during the birth I had complications requiring a blood transfusion. Neither of them were a match. That’s when I found out I wasn’t their biological daughter.” She sat forward on the couch, her fingers curled tightly into her palms. “I confronted them and they admitted I was adopted.”

Reid would never forget the day Nina gave Amy up in a private adoption. He’d been heartbroken. And furious with Nina for giving away their child without his knowledge or consent. Later, after they’d said irretrievable words that had broken them apart forever, he’d also been furious at himself for not being with her sooner, when she’d needed him.

“It’s true,” Amy said, taking his silence for disbelief. “All those years they let me believe I was their child.”

“You’re still their daughter,” he said. “They raised you as their own, loved and cared for you.”

“My whole life has been a lie. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive them.” Amy picked up her muffin then set it down again, untasted. “It wasn’t just that they’d lied, although that was bad enough. When I got pregnant they tried to pressure me to marry Ian—Beebee’s father. They said they were too old to raise her and I was too young to do it on my own.” Her voice tightened and became fierce. “I’m not too young to be a mother.”

In Reid’s eyes she was still a little girl, but he remembered being nineteen, headstrong and so certain he was as mature as any adult. “No,” he said, quietly. “You’re not too young.”

“I knew you’d understand.” Amy blotted her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’ve known me all my life. Did you know I was adopted?”

Reid hesitated. The Hockings had allowed him contact with his daughter on the condition that he never tell Amy he was her biological father or that she was adopted. Even now they must not have told her the whole truth or she would never have come to him.

Luckily for him, Beebee chose that moment to wriggle off her mother’s lap and drop to the floor. Within seconds the toddler was pushing at the French doors.

“Come back, Beebs.” Amy ran after her daughter and swung her into her arms. “She’s a miniature Houdini. She can open practically any door,” Amy said almost proudly. “You have to watch her all the time.”

“She’s certainly fast on her feet,” Reid said, seizing the opportunity to steer the subject away from himself. “How old did you say she was?”

“Eleven months and one week,” Amy told him. “She was walking at nine months and saying her first words at ten.”

“What about Ian?” Reid asked, trying to recall what Elaine had told him about Amy’s unassuming young boyfriend. “Is he in the picture?”

“No,” Amy said decisively. She sat back down with Beebee on her lap and curled her arms protectively around her child. “We were living together up until I got on the bus to come out here. Now I don’t want anything more to do with him. He’s a murderer.”

Reid’s eyebrows rose and he bit his lip to suppress a smile at Amy’s melodramatic emphasis. “Don’t tell me Ian’s turned to crime,” he joked.

Amy closed her eyes on a long shudder. “He got a job in a meat-packing plant.”

“A meat-packing plant? You mean, as in food?” Perhaps it wasn’t the high-flying career a father might wish for in a son-in-law but it was honest work. “Is that why you broke up with him and moved across the country?”

“You act like it’s nothing! They slaughter animals and wrap their body parts in plastic.”

Reid thought of the defrosted chicken thighs sitting in his fridge, ready to be cooked for dinner. “I’m sure he only wanted to support you and Beebee.”

“Well, yes, but he’s a vegetarian just like I am,” Amy cried. “So what if the job pays well? Where are his principles?”

“Jobs are tight and you two probably need the money,” Reid argued.

“I was working part-time at the grocery store. He could have looked around for something better.” Amy dug a purple stuffed rhinoceros out of her duffel bag to distract Beebee, who was again eyeing the doors longingly. “Oh, you don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t.” Reid couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ian whose main crime seemed to be a sense of responsibility and a desire to take care of his family. There had to be more to their break up than simply Ian’s choice of work. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve come to Vancouver to work in the movie industry,” Amy said, brightening. “I’m going to be an actress. It’s what I’ve always wanted ever since I was a little girl.”

“Amy, be sensible,” he said, filled with dismay.

“Don’t you start in on me. You’re not my father.”

Reid bit his tongue. Now that Amy knew she was adopted, was the promise he’d made to the Hockings still binding? He’d never agreed with their decision not to tell her even though Elaine had strong reasons but he’d better not say anything until he spoke to them. “Toronto has a film industry,” he pointed out. “Why didn’t you go there? It’s not as far to travel.”

“I don’t know anyone in Toronto,” Amy said. “I wanted to get as far away as possible from Jim and Elaine. And Ian. Besides, you’re here.” Amy’s eyes grew large as she kneaded her fingers into the soft fabric of her skirt. “Could Beebee and I stay with you awhile? Just until I get a job. We won’t be any trouble, I promise. I’ll help with housework and stuff.”

Reid had wanted to be a father to Amy ever since the too-brief moment when he’d seen her puckered newborn face and felt her tiny hand curl around his finger. His heart leaped at the thought of her and Beebee living in his house. But he had a book deadline—how would he ever finish with the two of them around? And what about Tara? Although Carol had known Amy was his daughter, Tara didn’t. How would she take to having Amy and her young child, virtual strangers to Tara, sharing their home, interrupting their quiet lives?

“You should call Jim and Elaine, let them know where you are and that you’re safe,” he said, stalling. “They must be worried to death.”

“If I do that, can I stay?”

She looked so desperate Reid wondered if she’d used her last dime to pay for the bus ticket out west. “Of course,” he relented. “You’re welcome in my house for as long as you want.”

“Thank you, Reid. This is going to be so cool.” Amy jumped up and hugged him. “There’s another reason I came out west.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Elaine told me I was born in Vancouver and given to them in a private adoption,” Amy replied. “She wouldn’t tell me who my biological parents are but I’m going to find them. I’m going to find my mother and father.”

God help him, Reid thought. He ought to tell her the truth right now. That he, who’d followed her progress from hand puppets to art-house productions, was the father she was seeking. He ached to tell her. But she wouldn’t see the truth his way. She would run from him, too, if she found out he’d also lied to her all her life. Where would she and Beebee go with no money and no friends or family to stay with? On the street, in a shelter?

Later, he’d tell her, when she’d settled in, when she wasn’t so fragile and hurt. He just hoped he found the right time before she discovered who he was.

And before she found Nina.

“NINA, HONEY, THERE’S something I have to tell you.” Dora Kennerly wiped her sudsy hands on a tea towel and sat opposite Nina at the kitchen table. Her tired hazel eyes appeared anxious but a hopeful smile played about her lips.

“Good news?” Nina took off her suit jacket, having gone from her air-conditioned BMW to the sweltering heat of her parents’ tiny bungalow on Vancouver’s east side. Today the temperature had climbed into the nineties—almost unheard of in Vancouver.

“I think so.” Dora wore a cheap cotton housedress and thin leather sandals, and dyed her graying auburn hair herself yet she had a serenity and an optimism that decades of low income couldn’t extinguish. “I mean yes, it’s wonderful news.”

Nina produced her weekly gift of a box of her mother’s favorite chocolates and handed it across the table. “Have one of these to celebrate.”

Dora peeled the cellophane off and lifted the lid. Eyes closed, she breathed in the rich chocolate aroma then gave Nina a beatific smile. “You spoil me.”

“You deserve it,” Nina said. Her mother and father had a hard life with few luxuries. They wouldn’t accept Nina’s offers of trips or clothes or a new car, so she gave them small treats like Belgian chocolates and Cuban cigars, specialty teas and subscriptions to magazines. Without asking, she’d had their old water heater replaced and paid to have the house painted. They’d made sacrifices to give her an education and she wanted to repay them now that she was able to.

Dora chose a chocolate and popped it whole into her mouth, then pushed the box across the table.

Reluctantly, Nina waved it away. “I’m on a diet.”

“You’re already thin,” Dora scolded, her voice thick with chocolate. “I don’t know when you eat. While other people are having dinner, you’re in the studio. Would you like me to heat up some cabbage rolls?”

“No, thanks,” Nina said. “You know I can’t stomach food before I go on air.” She picked up a drugstore flyer to fan her face, lifting wisps of blond hair away from her damp skin and made a mental note to have an air conditioner delivered. “You were about to tell me something important.”

Dora reached across the table to take Nina’s hands in her cool dry fingers. “It’s about your baby. Can you believe it’s been nineteen years?” She shook her head. “Time goes so fast.”

Nina tugged away and rose to go to the cupboard for a glass. Memories flooded back—a scrunched face, tiny fingers, a weightless warmth against her breast. For a few minutes she’d known pure joy…then the nurse had taken her baby away and Nina had signed the adoption papers with tears blurring her vision. Now she ran the water till it was cool, then filled the tumbler and drank. When she was sure her voice wouldn’t shake she said, “What about her?”

“She’s living forty miles south of Vancouver in Beach Grove,” Dora said softly.

Nina lost her grip and the glass dropped into the sink with a clatter. The adoptive parents had moved across the country to Halifax. For years afterward Nina had ached for her lost child the way an amputee aches for his severed limb. Through sheer effort of will she’d put the whole painful episode behind her. Now her child was nearby and Nina’s heart quickened as if her daughter were in the next room. “H-how do you know?”

“Her mother, Elaine Hocking, called me,” Dora said. “Apparently the girl has run away and is looking for her biological parents.”

Elaine and Jim Hocking, the wealthy older couple Dora had cleaned house for who couldn’t have a child of their own. Nina sat down with a thump. She used to fantasize that this day would come but had never dared to truly hope.

“I know this is a shock,” Dora said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Hockings never wanted their daughter to know she was adopted.”

“I never understood that,” Nina said. “Why not?”

“Apparently Elaine Hocking was herself adopted into a family who had tried for years unsuccessfully to have a child,” Dora explained. “No sooner had they got Elaine than the woman became pregnant. Elaine says she was treated diffrerently from the biological child and never felt as loved or as special. She didn’t want her adopted daughter to feel in the slightest way second rate so they let her believe she was theirs in every way possible.”

“I should never have given my baby up,” Nina said. “I should have tried to keep her somehow.” But at the time she’d felt she’d had no choice.

The summer after she’d finished high school, she’d worked at a golf course in the same beach community where her daughter was now. That’s where she’d met Reid Robertson, the father of her child and the love of her life. When the summer was over, he’d left his lifeguard job and gone back to Yale with a pledge of love and a promise to return. But when Nina had found herself pregnant, Reid’s mother had stepped into the picture.

Serena, smoothly coiffed and impeccably groomed, had craftily treated Nina as an equal collaborator in her determination to do what was best for Reid. Nina had been swayed by her arguments, too young and inexperienced, too in awe of the Robertsons’ wealth and social standing, to realize how controlling Serena was.

Maybe if Reid had been closer to home and he and Nina could have talked face-to-face, things might have turned out differently. He called her every week but that wasn’t enough to counteract Serena’s intimidating personality. Over a formal luncheon for two at the Robertsons’ mansion in Shaughnessy, Serena calmly, rationally, kindly, explained how Nina was ruining her son’s life.

“He says he’s going to quit university and find a job to support you and the baby,” Serena said. “Naturally, I only want what’s best for you both but such a course of action would be a terrible waste of his potential, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course.” Nina watched Serena to see which fork and knife she used on the radicchio salad served by a uniformed maid. “He loves Yale. I don’t want him to give it up.”

“Just imagine the scenario that would follow,” Serena went on. “He’d end up in some dreadful job for minimum wage, in a fast-food joint or washing cars. Probably he’d have to work two jobs just to make ends meet without a spare moment to write his stories. Within a year or two he’d resent you and the baby. Oh, he wouldn’t say anything, not Reid, but you would know how he felt deep inside. You would feel responsible.” Serena drank from a crystal water goblet then delicately blotted her mouth with a linen napkin. “I’d hate to think what that would do to your relationship.”

Nina knew all about Reid’s dream of becoming a writer, how much it meant to him and how tenaciously he was pursuing it. It was his unshakable belief in himself, his utter certainty about what he wanted to do with his life that she most admired about him.