Wild Honey

Sarah wasn’t worried about herself. She was strong enough to resist his well-meaning impulses. But she worried about him Would this blind spot in her otherwise sensitive brother cause him problems someday?

“Sarah—” Travis’s voice was concerned when he finally spoke “—are you sure, absolutely sure, about this thing?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anythin’ in my life.”

He nodded. He believed her. But sweet God almighty, did she realize what a bomb she’d be dropping? Smack in the middle of their already fragmented family? Did she see the enormity of this? Was she prepared to be cut off-like him?

“Look, Sarah,” he began carefully, “you know what’ll be runnin’ through his mind when he hears. Maybe I can—”

“Hold it right there, big brother! I meant what I said. I’m a big girl now, and I don’t need you runnin’ interference for me. I want your promise—right now—that you’ll stay out of it. It was my decision, no matter what you think, and I’ll handle it. Promise me you’ll respect that.”

He expelled a long breath, then regarded her adamant face. “You’ve got it,” he said. Baby sister really had grown up. Grown up smarter and gutsier than he’d ever suspected. He’d loved her from the first, but now he really admired her, too.

Yet as he escorted her out, Travis couldn’t help worrying that Sarah’s decision would wrench the family further apart. One thing hadn’t changed: the old man was still a heartless bastard who’d never tolerated being crossed.

CHAPTER SIX

TRAVIS RELAXED behind the wheel as he cruised south on I-95. He was headed for Langley, although he knew Jason Cord wouldn’t be happy to see him. Jason might be his friend, but he was also Travis’s immediate superior, and he’d ordered him to take a month’s leave. Travis viewed the shoulder wound as no big deal, but he intended to take that leave; he simply needed a stop at headquarters first.

He left Georgetown feeling more upbeat than he’d felt in a long time. Not that he’d been depressed or anything, far from it. But he realized his life had lacked…balance. The past few years had been entirely devoted to work. Which was ridiculous, because while he liked his job, he wasn’t passionate about it. Reestablishing ties with his sister had added a dimension he’d badly needed. After all, Sarah was the only family left to him now that—

His mind tripped on an image of a small boy with blond curls. His son, unless he was imagining things, and he didn’t think so. Especially after the discreet inquiries he’d made at Hopkins before he left.

His name was Matthew—Matt, according to a night nurse he’d charmed into sharing what she knew. Matt. He liked the sound of it. A solid masculine name. Which the kid would need, considering who was raising him: a pair of females, with not a male in sight. Or at least, none anyone at the hospital could tell him about.

He’d learned that Nurse Miranda Terhune was unmarried and to anyone’s knowledge, had never been married. She was a single parent to four-year-old Matthew, and they both lived with her sister, who was helping her raise the kid. Two women, both of them single.

The thought of a child, especially a boy, being raised without a father, or at least a father figure, didn’t sit well with him. Why hadn’t a beautiful woman like Randi Terhune ever married? Why did she want to raise a kid by herself? More importantly, why had she used a sperm-bank doner to have one? Was she involved with a guy who was infertile, maybe planning marriage at the time she’d made use of the clinic’s resources? But if that was the case, where was the guy now?

These were the kinds of questions he couldn’t ask of the people she worked with. As it was, he’d treaded on dangerous turf in seeking the answers he had. Hospital personnel, like personnel everywhere, were hardly obliged to divulge personal information about coworkers. Only by spreading his inquiries among a number of nurses and using that old standby—charm—had he managed to get the information he had. That, and the fact that Terhune was so well liked, people were happy to talk about her.

To give Nurse Randi her due, everyone he’d spoken to regarded her as an excellent mother. But what did they know? Coworkers saw only certain facts of a person’s life. Maybe only the facets the person wanted them to see. So how much insight did anyone have into her home life? Into how she handled her son?

His son. Almost certain the child was his, he wasn’t content to leave it alone. Which was why he was heading for Langley. He needed to know more. And headquarters, with its vast data base, was a good place to get information on people.

He came upon a slow-moving van in the right lane and swung out to pass. As he did so, he felt a twinge of conscience regarding the ethics—or lack thereof—in using the CIA’s data base to serve his own personal ends. He decided to ignore it.

A state-police car appeared in his rearview mirror, and Travis checked his speed. He wasn’t over the limit. He rarely broke any laws, traffic or otherwise—a legacy of Judith McLean’s rearing. Even as a youth, he’d never experimented with drugs, never raced the little MG they’d given him for graduating prep school with the highest honors. He’d been a super straight arrow, all right. Except for one fine summer night in Cambridge, when he’d gone out on the town and…

Muttering an expletive, Travis focused on his immediate objective: the life and habits of one Miranda Terhune. The final tidbit he’d learned about the lovely nurse was that she was shortly leaving on a “much deserved” three-week vacation. He hadn’t been able to ascertain where, but that shouldn’t present a problem. Airline tickets and hotel reservations were usually secured with credit cards. And credit-card use was traceable.

He frowned. The problem was getting past Jason Cord.

“YOU NEED TO WHAT?” Jason Cord thundered, his straight black brows meeting in the middle.

“I said, I need to use the main computer for a bit.” Travis ignored the scowl that rearranged Cord’s features—his aunt Louise would have called them disgracefully handsome features—and kept his voice casual. “It’s nothin’ that’ll compromise security, Jace, ol’ boy. I’ll only be a few minutes, ‘n’ then—”

“In a pig’s eye, you will!” Cord rose from behind his desk and thrust out his arm, pointing to the door. “Get your injured hide out of here, McLean, now, and I’ll forget what you just asked.”

Travis stood his ground. Cord intimidated a lot of people with that scowl. But not Travis. For one thing, he was taller than his superior, although Cord came in over six feet. For another, they’d been through hell and back together. In the old days, when they’d been field operatives, along with Rafe O’Hara and Brad Holman. Hell, when they’d lost Brad, Travis and Jason had wept in each other’s arms.

Not that he was about to mention Brad. His death was still a raw wound to the three men who’d regarded him as a good friend. Brad had been tortured and killed by a Mexican drug lord; Rafe, despite orders to take the man alive, had recently gunned the bastard down. While Travis sympathized totally with Rafe’s action, he doubted Jason felt the same.

Travis wished he’d confide in him, but fat chance of that. Jason was a closemouthed bastard when he wanted to be; the best thing, when he was in one of his moods, was to avoid him entirely. If he hadn’t needed the info on Terhune, Travis would have already been out the door.

“Look, Jason,” he said calmly, “you know me. Would I ask for somethin’ like this if it wasn’t important? In fact, when before have I ever—”

“Stuff it, McLean! You’re asking now, and it’s one time too many. Get the hell out of here.”

Travis heaved a sigh. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy, yet he’d been hoping…Ah, hell. He hadn’t wanted to tell Cord what this was all about, but it looked like that was the only way.

“Jace…this really is important,” he said quietly.

Jason had his mouth set to blister his friend’s ears, but the look on Travis’s face stopped him. McLean was a rogue sometimes, using that Southern charm to get his way. Sometimes, when he had to, he trod the gray areas—they all did—but he wasn’t dishonest and he wasn’t devious.

In fact, the worst that might be said of him was that he never took life too seriously. Not his personal life, anyway. That break with his family—it could have gotten to some men, but not McLean. “Life’s too short to sweat what you can’t change,” he’d once said when someone asked him about it. And then there was his famous pronouncement on love—that if it existed, it was for poets and fools.

No, Travis McLean wasn’t known for getting “deep-down” about things. Not that he didn’t have depths; if McLean were shallow, he’d never have had the bond they shared. It was just that Travis rarely tapped into those depths in the day-to-day. Which was why the look in his eyes now stopped Jason short.

“How important?” he found himself asking.

Travis sighed. Hooking the chair across from Jason’s desk with his foot, he swung it out and dropped into it. “This’ll take a bit,” he said. He motioned for Jason to sit, much as if their roles were reversed and it was Travis’s office.

Jason snorted, but sat.

“What I’m about to tell, ol’ buddy, stops here, okay?” Travis indicated the confines of Jason’s office. “I mean, I want it treated like it’s classified.”

“You’ve got it,” Jason said.

And then Travis told him—about the night in Cambridge, about a nurse at Johns Hopkins who’d looked familiar, and finally about a little boy with blond curls.

“And I need to find out about them, Jace,” he finished with an intensity few ever saw. “I can’t just ignore it. The kid’s almost assuredly my own flesh and blood. My son.”

Jason pursed his lips and whistled softly. When Travis decided to get deep-down, he didn’t mess around.

“Travis…” Jason began slowly, focusing on a paperweight he toyed with on his desk as he gathered his thoughts. He tried to put himself in Travis’s shoes: what would he do, faced with such a thing? And what a thing! What an incredible helluva thing! “Let’s say I…I look the other way while you do this.” He met Travis’s eyes. “What then? Where do you go from there?”

“I’m not sure. I s’pose that depends on what I find out. And I’m gonna find out, Jace, make no mistake about that.” Travis’s gaze was resolute. “If not through our files here, I’ll do it the hard way.” He shrugged. “It’ll just take me longer, that’s all.”

Jason shook his head and gave a sardonic half smile.. “And I just gave you a month’s leave,” he said disgustedly:

“Uh-huh.” Travis flashed the familiar roguish grin and stood, the movement all catlike grace, despite his size.

“Wish me luck, ol’ buddy,” he drawled. He gave Jason a flippant two-fingered salute and headed for the door.

“Now, wait a minute, McLean!” his superior growled. “Did I say…”

But Travis was already out the door. Muttering something about cocky Southern bastards, Jason sighed and returned to his paperwork.

FROM THE BACK of her Jeep Cherokee, Randi hauled out the last of the bags she’d packed. Matt was in the open doorway of their rental cottage dancing with excitement. He’d already changed into the new swim trunks she’d bought him. Since Matt’s suitcase had been the first she’d unloaded, he was way ahead of her. Randi grinned as she approached him. “Ready for the beach, huh?”

“Yeah! Can we go now, Mom? Can we?” Matt looked at the dunes visible beyond the Jeep, then back at his mother. “It’s awful sweaty here, y’know!”

Randi chuckled as he followed her inside. “That’s because this place was all closed up, sweetheart.” The air in the five rooms had been stifling, and opening windows had been the first thing she’d done; already she could feel the fresh ocean breeze sweeping through the cottage.

“Besides,” she added as she headed for the bedroom that Matt would occupy, “you might want to check out a couple of the things in this bag.” She set the bag down beside one of a pair of twin beds, and Matt tore into it.

“Barney! Yippee!” The four-year-old pulled out a pillow case decorated with a magenta dinosaur and waved it at her. “Thanks, Mom!” He began singing the Barney song as he dug through the rest of the bag.

It contained beach towels and Matt’s sheets and pillowcases from home. The cottage came furnished with linens and towels, but she knew Matt preferred sleeping between sheets decorated with Barney, his favorite TV personality.

“You bet, son,” she murmured, then went to her own room to change into her swimsuit.

The sweetly sung lyrics followed her out the door, and when she reached the other bedroom, she paused and reflected on the Barney phenomenon. Why did kids love it so? The answer came at once. Barney’s message was simple and clear: love. The eternally smiling dinosaur embodied the very bedrock of the only thing children really needed. Love, especially within a happy family.

A tiny frown knitted Randi’s brow as she absently reached for the bikini Jill had talked her into. Matt was still singing. About a happy family. Are we a happy family? a voice in Randi’s head asked. Of course we are! her rational self countered. Matt and Jill and I, we’re exactly that.

But Jill will be leaving to make a home of her own in a few months, the voice whispered. A family of her own. And then where will you be?

“Right where I’ve always been—beside my son,” she found herself saying aloud. “We’ll still be a family, and a darned happy one!” To emphasize her certainty of this, she pulled off her T-shirt with gusto and flung it on the bed. “Who says what size families have to be?”

She could still hear Matt singing about love. Right, she thought, as she peeled off her jeans. Matt loved her and she loved him—unconditionally. It was all they needed.

But as she continued to get ready for the beach, the questions wouldn’t go away. All you need? the silent voice nagged. Is it really?

THE WEATHER was perfect for the beach. With temperatures in the eighties and a good breeze off the ocean, they couldn’t have asked for better.

Randi slathered Matt’s back and shoulders with sunscreen. “There, that ought to do it, honey,” she said at last, recapping the bottle of lotion. “Wanna get wet?”

Matt didn’t answer. She was about to repeat the question when she saw where his attention was focused. A pair of boys not much bigger than Matt were tossing a beach ball. With them was a man whose matching red hair and freckles plainly marked him as their father.

Randi flicked a glance at Matt’s beach ball, a red-andyellow affair lying next to their blanket beside a plastic pail and shovel. She touched her son on the shoulder. “Want to toss your ball?” she asked.

Tearing his gaze away from the redheads, Matt glanced at the ball. “Nah,” he said with a hint of diffidence. “It’s still sweaty out here.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Randi grinned. “Race you to the water!”

Matt’s answering grin was instantaneous. With a whoop, he took off running, the trio with the ball forgotten. Randi laughed as she followed suit. She’d make it a close race but let her four-year-old win.

They shrieked happily as they splashed into the water, Matt a step ahead of her. “It’s cold!” Randi shouted with an exaggerated shiver.

“Oh, Mom, girls always say that!”

“Oh, yeah?” A handful of other bathers frolicked in the waves nearby, and she had to raise her voice above their excited shrieks and yells. “Says who?”

“David ‘n’ me! You ‘n’ Aunt Jill both said it when we went swimmin’ in David’s pool, ‘member?”

He chortled as she made a face at him. Randi was secretly pleased, however, that Matt remembered this so clearly; it had occurred when he was only three. He was bright and observant, not to mention remarkably coordinated for his age, she thought as he dodged a wave and swam a few yards. The mother-and-child swim classes they’d attended at the local Y had paid off.

They spent a good hour in the water before Matt opted for building a sand castle. Stopping to give him another. application of sunscreen first, Randi was surprised to hear him offer to coat her back with the lotion.

“Sure,” she answered. She handed him the sunscreen and plopped down on her stomach. As he went diligently to work applying the lotion, however, she saw what had likely prompted this: the red-haired father was in the process of applying lotion to the back of a woman who shared a blanket with him and his boys. Aware his own mother had no husband to help with the task, Matt had assumed the role.

Randi’s reaction was ambivalent. On the one hand, she was warmed that her son would be so solicitous of her; on the other, she wondered if Matt was beginning to think of himself as the “man of the family.” Had the lack of an adult to fill that role settled more firmly into his consciousness? Was this a fair burden to place on a four-year-old? She frowned.

Without warning, an image came to mind. Of a big blond man who resembled her son. Travis McLean. Randi stiffened. She’d actually pictured him sitting on the blanket with them!

“That’s great, son,” she said hastily, banishing the image as she rose to her feet. She reached for the pail and shovel. “Let’s see about that sand castle, okay?”

But as Matt followed her cheerfully to the wet sand near the water’s edge, McLean’s lean handsome face hovered at the fringes of her mind. Kneeling in the sand beside her son, she began digging with a spurt of energy meant to drive the image away. That, and something else. Something that felt suspiciously like guilt.

Don’t be silly, she told herself as she molded the damp sand. Matt can’t miss what he’s never had. As for McLean, what he doesn’t know isn’t hurting him, either.

Yet the argument in her head persisted. She told herself McLean’s actions precluded his right to know of the son he’d fathered. He’d chosen to donate his sperm, chosen to be an anonymous father, hadn’t he?

But far more disturbing was the question of whether it was right for her to choose to bring a fatherless child into the world. Unbidden, more questions came, try as she might to ignore them. Had she robbed her son of one of life’s inalienable rights? The right to have and know a father? Had she been selfish in doing what she’d done? Had she stolen from her own child’s future?

The sand castle was the largest, most elaborate structure built on the beach that day. Other children and their parents came to admire it, including the trio of redheads. Matt grinned at all the praise, even boasting to a man and his young daughter, “Me ‘n’ my mom’s the bestest team in the world for makin’ sand castles!”

And through it all Randi laughed and smiled, determined to shut out the doubts. Doubts that made her wonder if the happiness of one-parent families and sand castles didn’t have something in common.

Perhaps neither was built to last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“HERE YOU ARE, Mr. McLean.” The owner of the bedand-breakfast handed Travis a beach badge. “Go around the side porch and you’ll find a path leading straight to the beach.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Muncie,” Travis said with a smile for the elderly widow. He fastened the badge to his trunks, relishing the simple pleasure of having both hands free; the bullet wound was healing rapidly, and he’d discarded the sling. Waving to Mrs. Muncie, he slung a towel over his shoulder and headed for the beach.

With any luck, he’d find Randi and Matt Terhune on that beach. One of the things the Agency’s computer had turned up was the location of Ms. Terhune’s vacation spot. She’d rented a cottage on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just a stone’s throw from Mrs. Muncie’s bed-and-breakfast. Through sheer luck, he’d called Mrs. Muncie just after she’d received a cancelation; he was now booked for the weekend and two weeks following. A stay that just happened to coincide with the remainder of Randi Terhune’s vacation.

The computer had turned up other information, too. Terhune and the kid lived in a quiet suburb near D.C., sharing a home—as he’d already learned—with her older sister. Their modest house was in a good neighborhood, served by a decent public-school system. It had been left to the sisters by the aunt who’d raised them; they were orphaned in their early teens.

Randi had a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in nursing, and had twice graduated in the top ten percent of her class. She had an excellent work record, had advanced rapidly in her career.

So far, so good.

Then there was the fertility clinic in Cambridge, where she’d worked before having the kid. He’d learned it was still being operated by Dr. Philip Burgess, its founder. Posing as a journalist doing an article on such clinics, Travis had learned a few interesting facts. Facts that convinced him Randi Terhune had acted on her own unethical initiative if she’d availed herself of the clinic’s services.

Make that when, not if, he amended. Any uncertainties he’d had about whether she’d done so had all but vanished. The facts he’d assembled were just too overwhelming to amount to a coincidence. Yeah, she’d acted unethically, all right. According to Burgess, a stern no-nonsense New Englander, employees had always been barred from using the clinic themselves.

But Travis was deeply concerned about the final piece of info that had turned up about Matt’s mother: both she and her sister, Jill Terhune, had undergone years of psychological counseling when they were younger. He’d been unable to find out why, but the discovery jarred him. Just the thought of Matt being raised by two women who’d required extensive therapeutic counseling raised his hackles.

Cresting the dunes, Travis halted, his concerns thrust aside for the moment. The salty tang of the sea filled his lungs. Gulls screeched overhead, their cries vying with the rhythmic susurration of the waves. For several minutes he didn’t move. He simply drank in the panorama of sand and sea, of sunlight glinting on blue water.

Located north of Ocean City, the bed-and-breakfast and a handful of cottages enjoyed a stretch of shorefront relatively free of the crowds that packed the busier tourist spots. He noted a sprinkling of people in the water and knots of sunbathers here and there. In between were mercifully vacant stretches of clean white sand.

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