Love Inspired Suspense June 2014 Bundle 1 of 2: Undercover Marriage\Collateral Damage\Forgotten Past (29 page)

She focused on her breathing and willed her heart rate to return to normal. “You asked me this morning if Shelby was Emma's birth mother. I didn't lie to you. She isn't. I just left out the rest of the story.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Sarah,” he whispered. “I believe I was
with
Shelby that night. Then nine months later there's a new child in the family? What was I supposed to believe?”

It was past time. “Shelby wasn't at the party. She spent the evening in the bathroom at home. I told you she was sick. That wasn't her you were with.” He deserved the truth, and it wasn't going to be put off any longer. This was the whole reason she'd been afraid to come to Jolly Mill. “I decided to be Shelby that night. It was me. I'm Emma's mother.”

He recoiled as if she'd just given him a hard punch in the gut. Cut to the core, she pivoted and started walking around the perimeter of the yard, just inside the shoulder-high shrubs that served as a fence.

“Sarah, please. Wait.” He touched her shoulder.

She clenched her right fist as if she might slug him. Instead, she jerked from his touch and walked faster. Here she'd begun to believe what he and Edward had told her, that he'd never loved Shelby, but now he was obviously horrified to discover she, not Shelby, was the one he'd been with that night.

“Why is it so shocking to think that instead of with the ever popular Shelby Russell, you conceived a child with the ugly twin? What a sight I must have been compared to her. Me with my black clothing and black eyes, black hair. Was it so horrifying for you to—”

“Would you stop this? Sarah!”

She increased her pace.

“Sarah, you're wrong. Please stop and talk to me.”

The wound she'd held deep inside for so many years ripped open once again. Everyone had loved Shelby, and Shelby had craved that love. For as long as Sarah could remember she'd sensed that need in her twin, and so she'd stood back, out of love for her sister, and allowed Shelby to receive what she craved, both at church and at school, and often at home, as well. Only when Sarah was with Edward and Aunt Peg, or fishing or hiking or exploring caves with Nick, did she feel free to open up and be herself.

“Honey, you aren't giving me a chance.” Nick caught up with her. “I never dreamed that you... I didn't know you were there, that you were one of the victims.”

“You think being that beautiful child's mother makes me a victim in any way?”

“No.” His voice softened, gentled. “No way. Emma is nothing but a blessing. I'm sorry. It was a shock. That's all. I've been glad all these years that you didn't get drugged like the rest of us. Now to find out that you did... It took me by surprise. Please believe that if you believe nothing else.”

She kept walking. The deepest pain she felt was something she'd caused herself. She'd pretended to be Shelby, and it wasn't until she discovered she was pregnant that she realized Nick had accepted the advances from the person he thought was Shelby. That night, if nothing had happened and no one had drugged their sodas, she would have kissed him goodbye as Shelby and left that memory in his thoughts forever—not her, but Shelby. Despite what Edward said, and what he and Aunt Peg believed, Sarah knew she and Nick had never been anything but good buddies when she'd lived here—not in his eyes, anyway. Not then. There'd never been any romance between them.

Except now they had a child together, and she'd just finished telling him that, and she certainly hadn't received the response she'd hoped for.

She stopped so suddenly that Nick continued several feet before stopping and turning back.
Get the job done and get away from this situation as soon as possible.

He heaved a deep breath. “You're as changeable as Emma.” He grasped her gently by the shoulders, as if she might bolt again. “Listen to me, okay? Like everyone else, I don't have a lot of memories of the night of that party, but I do remember seeing who I
thought
was Shelby Russell coming toward me and sitting beside me on a bale of hay in the loft, and I thought about how strange that was, because she didn't usually waste her time on me. Later I thought that must have been part of the drug talking, because I knew that popular Shelby, who could get any guy she wanted, wouldn't be sitting beside me. By that time, I didn't want her to. I knew who I wanted beside me.”

Sarah stopped breathing for a few seconds. She looked up at him. This was no time to get let emotions rule. “Let me guess,” she said, trying to smile. “Petra Journigan.”
Try to lighten the mood.
“She had a crush on you back then.”

Nick grinned. But even that seemed wobbly, his breathing uneven. “Silly.” He took her hand. “Want to walk some more? Only this time, a little slower?”

Sarah imagined tingles up her arm.
Let 'em tingle.
She needed time to decipher all he'd just told her, but for now, this was enough. So she walked beside him and enjoyed his touch.

“So, first of all, wow,” he said as he tightened his hold gently.

She looked up at him.

“Emma. My child. Our child.” He said the words reverently. “And that's what you were telling Dad about on the way here.”

“Right.” She felt warm all the way to her core. This was more what she'd hoped for.

“No wonder he lost control. That darling girl is ours? We made her?”

More than just tingles now. Far more. “I won't say for sure, because of the drug that night, but there was no one else I'd have wanted to be with, and you have some of the same memories.” She listened to the sound of their footsteps, wondering if the senses she'd experienced today might dwell in her memories for the rest of her life.

“I'm not going to give in to instinct and run into the house and grab Emma up in my arms and hold her and welcome her to the family,” Nick said. “But just so you know, that's what I want to do.”

She smiled, but his words shot such warmth through her she wanted to cry. How well she understood that feeling.

“Just... Wow.” He dashed the back of his hand across his face, and she saw a wet sparkle there. “This is like all the Christmases and birthdays I've ever had all rolled into one bundle of...total amazement.”

“Thank You, God,” she whispered, then more clearly, “You can't imagine how relieved I am to hear you say that.”

“I want to tell the world that she's my daughter.” He laughed with abandon. “Okay, I have so many questions, so many things I want to know. But first, why the pretense that night? Why did you make everyone believe you were Shelby?”

Sarah walked in silence for a few seconds. “Being Shelby that night gave me the courage to be more than just buddies with you. I know you didn't have a clue that I had a little crush on you.”

A crush? Really? She'd given birth to his child and never seriously looked at another man since then. She was still withholding information.

His gaze gradually traveled to her face, his eyes filled with delight. “You came to the party for me that night?”

She nodded, looked away. “And then everything went so...crazy. I've always been pretty sure she was yours, but without recalling it all, I couldn't just flat-out say it's the truth until you told me what you did today. I couldn't incriminate you and ruin your career when you were just getting started.”

He reached up and grasped her chin with both hands, as if he was holding something very precious. “After what Alec said about Mom's high school picture this morning, I couldn't help wondering. Hoping, Sarah.”

Her throat tightened, but she swallowed back tears. There'd been enough tears.

“I just wanted to...” She closed her eyes. “I wanted to give you a simple goodbye kiss.”

His hands closed around hers.

She opened her eyes. “I know I was just a kid and didn't know anything about love, but I knew how I felt about you, and I felt as if my heart was breaking, and you'd told me you liked Shelby...you know...that way. I didn't want to leave. I'd rather have died than leave Jolly Mill, but I never in a million years expected my actions would lead to pregnancy.”

“How much do you actually remember?”

“Not enough. You?”

“I remembered a kiss, and brief flashes that have confused me for years, some of them so embarrassing I couldn't bring myself to tell my parents. When I heard about Emma nine months later—”

“My parents adopted her and loved her as their own. They never guessed it might have been you.”

He did something that took her breath away. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her cheek, then just held her. “I'm sorry, Sarah. I would never have thought I'd have done what I did.”

“I'm a preacher's kid, too, you know. And I got pregnant.”

He released her and took her hand again. Together they strolled around the side of the house into the backyard, listening to the shuf-shuf-shuffing of their footsteps through the freshly mown lawn. She glanced over her shoulder toward the sliding glass doors that led to the back patio, and she hesitated. There stood Emma, her expression one of childlike delight. She nodded and smiled and mouthed the words, “Go, sis!”

Sarah tugged on Nick's hand and nodded toward the window. Together they waved.

“Our child.” Nick caught his breath. “She doesn't know?”

Sarah shook her head. “She's never seen me as anything but her loving, overly protective sister.”

“Is she the reason you never married?” he asked.

She sighed. The whole truth was going to be a little more difficult to expose. “She's my life. I had to be forced out of the family home by my parents, who wanted me to live a ‘normal' life, whatever they meant by that.”

“How could they expect that?”

She looked up at him and wanted to wrap her arms around him and kiss him and never let go. He understood.

“Thank you,” she said. “Finally, someone who—”

“Knows what you're thinking? Didn't I always?”

Yeah, but she had to keep her wits about her. Mustn't get carried away. “Look, Nick, the only reason I told you and Edward about Emma was...well, to bring some joy back into your lives and make sure you knew the truth at last. You deserve that. But I'm not asking for anything from you. She's not your responsibility, and you have no legal obligations.”

“But I want them. I'm her father, Sarah.”

“Mom and Dad made her the beneficiary of a life insurance policy that will see her into adulthood, college, anything she needs.”

“I'm not talking about that—though I want to do that, too. I'm talking about being her father. Teaching her. Loving her. Giving her what she lost when Mark...died.”

“I know we'll be able to work things out as soon as we catch her attacker.” But Sarah felt herself pulling away, both emotionally and physically. She released his hand and withdrew a couple of feet from his side. She wouldn't take advantage of Nick's natural desire to be a real father to his daughter. He could do that without marrying her mother.

She'd expected this part to hurt, but she hadn't been prepared for the depth of the pain.

He stopped walking and frowned at her. “Sarah? What's wrong?”

“This is an emotional time for both of us. We can't get caught up in all of it and lose sight of what we're dealing with.”

“We'll keep her safe. Don't worry.”

“I know that. What I'm saying is that we're different people now.” He'd moved on with his life. She hadn't.

“I'm sure with a little more practice we'll be able to finish one another's sentences again.”

“I think we're already doing that.”

“Here's the thing, Sarah,” he said when they reached the shrubs that bordered the lawn in the back of the property. “If we had known sixteen years ago what we know today, I would have married you.”

“But that isn't how it worked out.” She'd refused to impose herself into his life then, and she wouldn't do it now. Wouldn't take advantage of his good heart. The only thing worse than not having Nick would be having him in her life when she didn't know for sure he wanted to be there.

“And yet now you're here, I'm here and Emma believes she's an orphan, but she has a grandfather, a father and a mother on this very property right now. All three of us are crazy about her, and you obviously need help keeping up with her, if the past twenty-four hours are any indication.”

Sarah found herself mesmerized by those dark eyes. This moment was like one of her teen dreams, the two of them grown up, still together, loving each other...

That was the problem. Loving each other? They didn't even know each other anymore.

“Stay here with us, Sarah.”

“I've already agreed to stay a few days.”

He pulled her to him again. She wanted to relax and melt into those arms, but she couldn't. As he'd said, if he'd known sixteen years ago what he knew now, he would have married her, and she'd have gone along with it because it would have been right. She was still, in reality, an unwed mother. She had her hands full with Emma, and her parents weren't around to help her. Nick was exactly the kind of man who would do the right thing and marry the mother of his child.

She would never forget this moment. In one way, it was a dream come true. The scent of grass and hay from the field behind them, the smell of clean sweat from Nick's skin, the sound of a tractor somewhere in the distance and the fishy odor of Capps Creek, the warm May air on her skin... But this dream wouldn't last. After all these years, she still believed in love—reality love, not just an act of doing the right thing.

“Give Emma a chance to get to know her father and grandfather,” Nick said. “We'll catch the killer, and even if we don't, if someone wants to get to Emma, that person can get her across the state as easily as here.”