A Woman's Heart (4 page)

She said nothing.

"Where is Alexander?" He needed to see the child, hold him, find a piece of Claire still left on earth.

"Alex is at home..."

The woman was looking like Claire again, all bristly and cross.

"...where he belongs."

"I expected you to bring him with you this time."

"You don't always get what you expect."

"I'd like to see him."

"Not yet. We have to talk first."

"We did enough of that the other day."

"We have to lay some ground rules."

She couldn't be as sure of herself as she sounded. She stood behind the bench as though she needed its protection.

"Come out of hiding then," he said, offering her his hand.

Ignoring it, she walked around to where he stood. She had seemed taller, somehow, standing on her own. Now the top of her head barely reached his chin.

He motioned her onto the park bench then sat down himself, as far from her as possible. He couldn't get too near. Something about her attracted him, and he had no intention of falling under the spell of a woman like her. "Claire would have loved this park," he said, looking around at the lush, well-tended greenery.

"She did," Jann answered. "She said the trees were different, but they still reminded her of home."

"She liked to climb trees," Peter said, remembering. "She climbed to the top of a maple tree once." And he'd stood beneath ready to catch her if she fell.

Only he hadn't caught her when she really needed him. After his parents died he'd let her go, and her free fall to disaster had been final and swift.

Peter straightened his shoulders. He would not allow the same thing to happen to Claire's son.

"So?" he asked tersely, shifting the conversation back to the business at hand.

"You've agreed then to supervised access?"

"Unlimited supervised access, yes." Not nearly enough, but it would do for the moment.

Her blue eyes clouded. Reaching down, she snapped off a blade of grass and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. Her hair now hid her face like a veil of fire. She seemed too young to care for a baby, but when she faced him again, he saw that her eyes were old.

"You do know you can't see Alex without my being present?" she said.

"Why?" he asked, more sharply than he would have if he hadn't suddenly wanted to touch her, to smooth the worry lines away from her brow. "Are you afraid I'm going to make off with him?"

"Yes."

She didn't trust him, but he didn't blame her for that. He didn't trust her either.

"You keep an eye on me," he suggested, "and I'll keep an eye on you." He leaned back against the bench, tried to steel himself against her appealing magnetism. "The court will need reasons to deny you permanent custody. I intend to find them."

"There are no reasons," she protested, but her face turned pale.

He tried not to care but couldn't stop a rush of sympathy. He'd had Moore check up on her. She had no family, few close friends. Without Alexander, she'd have no one.

He knew how that felt. Since being informed of Claire's death he, too, had felt alone. He couldn't allow Claire's baby to feel the same. He had to gain custody, had to keep Alexander safe.

"If I were you," Jann Fletcher went on, "I'd concentrate on how you're going to prove you'll make the better parent, because as far as I'm concerned, you have a lot of proving to do."

"I was like a parent to Claire."

"She didn't say that," Jann replied.

"She knew it nonetheless." Pain threatened to choke him, and with it came anger.

He'd been ten when Claire was born, young enough to be thrilled by the thought of a baby sister, old enough to be entranced by her crinkly smile and helpless need. He'd played with her, read her bedtime stories, had done all the things his parents were never around to do. Claire had meant more to him than to anyone else, as he had to her.

Until he failed her. Peter pressed his lips together. That wasn't going to happen twice.

"As soon as the court realizes," he continued, "that my sister was not in a proper state of mind when she died, they'll give Alexander to me."

"What makes you think Claire wasn't thinking straight?" Jann demanded.

"Surely that's obvious. She was a well-brought-up young woman from a respected family." His hands clenched but with deliberate effort, he forced his fingers straight. His sister had been too young, thank God, to understand the scenes that had left him shaken; the stormy arguments between their parents, their sudden silences, their frequent absences, sometimes one, sometimes the other.

It was usually his mother who disappeared, dispensing absent-minded hugs then airily trailing off with the latest in a line of incense-burning, guitar-strumming friends, taking her warmth and laughter with her as she went.

"When my parents were alive..." Peter stared off into the distance, determined that Claire's friend see no pain in his eyes.

"Things change," Jann said softly.

Yes, they did. Too much.

"Your parents died," she prompted.

"Yes," he said. Too soon to realize they owed their children more than money. "Claire always wanted to live in Willow House," he went on. "I know she'd want her child to be brought up there too."

"Willow House?"

"Our country home outside of Boston. It's been in my family for generations. I own it now. It's where we will live, Alexander and me." His parents had been happy there once, as he and Claire had, too, before their mother became enraptured by her pleasure-seeking life and their father refused to follow her flower-strewn path.

"Alexander is happy here with me."

"He'll love Willow House as much as Claire did."

"Who took care of Claire when your parents died?" Jann asked.

"She moved in with my aunt and uncle. She was surrounded by her family."

"She said she was alone."

"It was Claire who left." But she'd left because he hadn't been there to stop her. A pain clenched his gut. "If she hadn't, she'd have been safe."

"No one is ever safe," Jann whispered.

"Safer than running around New York with vagrants and drunks, becoming like them and losing sight of who she was."

"Is that what you consider important?" Jann looked at him pityingly. "A person's background, their place in society?"

"That's not what I meant." Only one thing was important and that was that Claire wasn't there anymore, would never be there again. "Claire's background should have kept her safe, would have if she had let it. She was too trusting, was always being taken in by con-artists. She believed all sorts of sob stories." God alone knew what the woman beside him had convinced his sister to believe. Those blue eyes worked their magic even on him!

"If she had remembered who she was," he went on fiercely, "and what she had, she would never have gotten involved with the wrong kind of people, the wrong kind of man..." His skin felt tight, as though his insides had grown too large for his body. "...or allowed herself to get pregnant."

"She wasn't ashamed of that."

"What do you mean?" He took hold of Jann's arm, intending not to let go until he understood, but the minute he touched her, he wished that he hadn't. For touching her ignited a warmth he shouldn't feel, not for this woman who had his sister's child.

Her bare skin burned where Peter's hand held hers. "Claire was ecstatic about being pregnant," Jann said, shrugging free, ignoring the inexplicable loss when they no longer touched. "She glowed with happiness."

Peter glowered.

"When I first met her—"

"Where was that?"

"Not at some drug party, whatever you might think!" She gazed over the lawns rolling toward the ocean and attempted a smile. "Right here," she finally said, trying vainly to re-capture the peace of the place.

"What do you mean, here?"

She stroked the smooth wood beneath her. "When I bike through the park in the morning, I usually stop at this bench to eat breakfast."

"Breakfast?"

"You know. Oranges, bananas—"

"That doesn't seem enough."

"What do you mean?"

"Is that what you've been feeding Alexander?"

"He happens to love bananas mixed with rice cereal. Babies don't eat steak." Heat burned her cheeks. "Are you spying on me already? I thought you wanted to hear about Claire?"

"Go on," he said tersely.

Jann concentrated on the waves rolling in to the shore, remembering, never wanting to forget. "I was peeling my orange when a young woman came up that path from the beach. She seemed pale for someone with such dark hair." Jann glanced sideways at Peter. "Except for her paleness, she looked a lot like you."

The sun filtering through the Plumeria tree caught the line of Peter's jaw and the muscles rippling across it.

Jann hurried on, with difficulty wrenching her gaze from Peter's face. "She was out of breath, looked sick. I went to her." Jann swallowed hard. "I'll never forget her eyes. They were enormous... beautiful eyes." As her brother's eyes were beautiful, she thought, looking at him again.

"I asked if she was all right and she told me she just needed to sit down for a moment, that she felt a bit dizzy. I took her arm and helped her to the bench."

"Was there nobody with her?"

"She didn't have any friends in Honolulu. She told me that later. She said she didn't need any. She just wanted to be alone." Jann's throat clenched. "She seemed afraid, though, as if she didn't really mean it."

Abruptly, Peter stood, his movement creating a draft. Then his shadow fell over Jann, chilling her. "She didn't have to be alone."

Jann stared up at him, tried to slow her suddenly rapid breathing. It was humiliating. She had spent years working to take control of her life and emotions, and in one fell swoop a stranger had turned everything upside down.

"I asked if she was sick and could I call someone for her," Jann went on, desperate to finish with this conversation. "Her face lit up as though someone had just handed her a present, and she told me, no, she wasn't sick. She laid her hand on her belly and said she was pregnant, that there was no one to call for the only person she cared about was right there inside her."

"Claire was wrong," Peter said, his face white and set. "She had me." He held out his hand again, the expression on his face demanding that Jann take it.

The surrounding air suddenly seemed stifling, as though all the oxygen had been siphoned away. His fingers captured hers and jerked her to her feet.

She lost her balance, for an instant, almost tumbling into his arms. Then he steadied her, his free hand touching her waist, but that was all it took for a current to surge between them.

Chapter 3

First Peter's arm, then his hip, brushed against Jann as they walked together along the narrow beach path toward the marina. He held himself stiffly, not wanting to touch her again, for when he did, she drew him to her. He couldn't afford to be drawn to a woman like her.

To anyone watching, they must seem an ordinary couple out for a morning stroll. But they were no ordinary couple. They weren't a couple at all.

"You must be hot in that jacket," Jann said, glancing at him sideways. She pulled a hankie from her pocket as though she too was hot and dabbed beads of perspiration off her forehead.

"I've been hotter," he said, trying to ignore the sweat inching up his spine, trying to ignore, as well, the reaction of his body to hers. Along his right side, where they almost touched, heat radiated as though he was next to a furnace.

She glanced at him again, eyebrows meeting in a frown.

"India, Africa, Asia," he said. "They're all hotter than Hawaii."

"That's right," she said, the crease between her eyes deepening. "Claire said you were always away."

The way Jann spoke, it sounded a condemnation, and his fingers balled together in protest. He had been traveling in the tropics for what seemed like forever, but no matter how difficult, he'd always returned home regularly. To check in on Claire, to make sure she was all right.