His Ten-Year-Old Secret

Things like this simply didn’t happen to sane, rational, normal people like herself.

At the moment, though, Tess felt anything but sane and rational.

Erin.

Erin Minster.

Staring unblinkingly into the mirror, Tess saw an older version of the child’s face. Erin had her eyes. Erin had her nose. Her mouth. Her chin. Her hair.

There was no doubt in her mind that Erin was her baby.

Her daughter was alive!

And Tess had run from her the instant she’d made the connection. Her eyes rolled upward and she closed her lids. Why had she made such a dash for her car? Why hadn’t she simply stayed and talked things out with Dylan? Why hadn’t she introduced herself to her daughter?

She had no other excuse except to say that the discovery had been staggering. No, it had been mind-blowing. A literal bombshell that had devastated her thinking processes.

Alive. And well. And living with her father in Pine Meadow.

How could this be? How could this have happened?

Worrying the small pearl pendant that hung on the delicate gold chain around her neck, Tess resumed her pacing.

Had Dylan somehow kidnapped Erin from the hospital in Connecticut where Tess had given birth?

She knew that Dylan had been rebellious in his youth, but she’d never witnessed him break the law. Besides, the idea that he might have abducted their child simply didn’t make sense when she thought of the awful accusations he’d made when she’d come to him with the news of her pregnancy.

“You won’t trap me into marriage,” he’d railed at her.

His choice of hurtful words had clearly told her that he didn’t want her. That he didn’t want their baby. So she really couldn’t imagine him turning around and stealing their child from the hospital nursery.

Furthermore, even if Dylan had been the type of person who could do such a thing, with doctors and nurses milling around, she just didn’t think it would be easy to pull off. No matter what the movie-of-the-week scriptwriters might want TV watchers to believe.

But the Minsters were wealthy enough to pay off a doctor or nurse. The thought floated eerily into her mind, and she shivered.

People who chose to work in the medical profession did so to help people, not hurt them, she reminded herself. Yes, but, a tiny voice piped in, there was always someone who was desperate enough to act unethically. Especially if money was involved.

Suddenly Tess felt sick to her stomach to think the man she’d thought had been the love of her life would hurt her so terribly. Would rob her of her own flesh and blood.

He had been vicious when he broke up with you all those years ago, the tiny voice echoed in her head.

Yes, she remembered. He had been vicious.

She unwittingly nibbled the cuticle of one thumb. Why didn’t things seem to add up? she wondered. Why didn’t the pieces fit?

The scene at Dylan’s garage earlier today unfolded again in her mind. All afternoon she’d been replaying the bit where Erin had come into the picture. Her gorgeous little girl had stepped out of the driver’s seat as if she’d been born there. Tess couldn’t help but smile.

However, she forced herself to push the endearing image aside and focus on what had happened prior to Erin’s appearance. What had she said to Dylan? More importantly, what had he said to her?

“So, ” his words floated into her mind, “you’ve finally come to see how your little puppy dog has fared after all these years.” Her breath caught as his meaning cut her to the quick. Then, she remembered him saying, “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about the little stray you so heartlessly sent back to me. The waif you thought was so useless you didn’t even give her a name before you got rid of her. ”

The realization was enough to make her knees buckle, and she sank onto the mattress, burying her face in her hands.

Dylan thought she hadn’t wanted Erin. He thought she’d heartlessly sent her newborn daughter away without even giving the child a name. He thought she hadn’t wanted to raise her own baby. He thought she’d known all along of her child’s whereabouts, but that she hadn’t even cared enough to call or visit or—

Tess groaned audibly. Dear Lord in heaven, Dylan had thought all these horrible things about her for the last ten years! She pressed trembling fingers against her mouth as one final, chilling question came to her.

What must her little girl think of her?

Without another thought, Tess grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

“The garage is closed.”

Tess spun around to see the same elderly lady with whom she’d talked before, the same one who had urged her, only a couple of hours ago, to stop in and visit Dylan.

“Yes, I see that,” Tess said, still wrestling with the disappointment she experienced over seeing the Closed sign hanging in the window of Dylan’s place of business. She’d had the thought of going to Minster House to look for him, but didn’t know if she had the nerve to do so. “The sign there says he opens at eight in the morning.”

She hated the thought of waiting all those hours before having the chance to talk to Dylan. And Erin.

A thrill shot through her body with a jolt when she realized all over again that her baby was alive. Really alive!

“Eight, sharp,” the woman said.

Defeat rounded Tess’s shoulders. “I guess I’ll come back tomorrow. Thanks for coming over to talk.”

“Aww, now—” the woman actually seemed embarrassed “—there’s no cause to go thanking me. Just trying to be neighborly. And seeing as how you sped out of here earlier like an arrow out of a bow, didn’t seem like you and Dylan had much chance to catch up on things.”

“No.” Now it was Tess’s turn to feel chagrined. “You’re right, we didn’t.” But she simply couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation.

What could she say? That she’d just discovered today that she has a daughter?

This woman would think she was a raving lunatic!

“Well, I’d better go find someplace to grab some dinner.” The last thing Tess wanted was food. But she needed a means to politely take her leave. She had a hotel room floor that needed pacing, hours that needed worrying through. She turned away and started toward her car.

“You know...”

Something in the woman’s tone made her jerk to a halt and spin around. The elderly lady’s mouth was curled into a soft smile.

“I know how you can contact Dylan,” she said. “If you’ve a mind to, that is.”

Tess’s silent, eager expression was answer enough to make the woman chuckle.

“You see, Dylan has his phone number listed there—” she pointed to a small, index-card-size note taped in a lower corner of the window “—just in case of an emergency. I had to call him once when a bunch of boys were hanging about in the parking lot here and getting up to no good.”

With her hopes soaring, Tess rushed to the window, scrambling in her purse for something to write with at the same time.

“Thank you,” she told the woman. “Thank you so much.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t do you any favors. His number is there in the window for all the world to see.”

Tess protested, “Yes, but—”

“Would you stop already,” the woman said, grinning. “And go make your call. There’s a telephone right there on the corner.”

“I will.” Tess stuffed the ink pen back into her purse and then began fishing for change as she headed for the phone booth.

Dylan answered on the third ring, the sound of his voice like a soft caress against Tess’s ear.

“Dylan,” she said, making every effort to speak smoothly, “it’s Tess.”

There were several seconds of dead silence.

Finally she heard him exhale in a short, puffy sort of sigh.

“I’ve got to admit,” he said quietly, “you’ve surprised me again. I thought I might hear from you, but . not quite so soon. How’d you get my home number?”

Not wanting to get the elderly lady who had helped her into hot water, Tess only told him half the truth. “From the emergency card you have posted in the front window at your auto repair shop.”

“Ah.”

The small sound was velvet soft over the phone line.

“And you thought this constituted an emergency.”

Tess listened hard, but detected no censure in his tone, and she was left believing that this was his way of filling what would have otherwise been an awkward silence.

“It is to me,” she told him. “We need to talk, Dylan.”

Again, he sighed, but this one was tinged with irritation.

“Look,” he said, “this isn’t a good time. I’m trying to get dinner. And thanks to my mother, Erin has a boatload of make-up work that needs to be done before school tomorrow. It isn’t a good time for you to be coming over here and disrupting Erin’s life—”

“I have no intention of disrupting anything,” Tess said, cutting in. It broke her heart to hear him talk of cooking dinner and helping with homework so mundanely when she’d never once had the opportunity to do such things for her daughter.

“Dylan...” The pleading in her voice was so thick, she had to stop.

All she wanted to do was make him understand. But if she were to simply blurt out the situation; that she’d been lied to, that she’d thought all these years that their baby was dead, that someone had committed a horrendous crime by stealing her child, he’d think she’d gone completely insane. She needed to see him face-to-face. She needed to tell him everything in a calm, rational manner. That was the only way to make him understand she was telling the truth.

Before she could speak, he said, “I want you to know that I won’t allow you to upset Erin. I don’t want you overwhelming her.”

“I understand,” she said. “I don’t want to overwhelm her, either.”

She’d never dream of causing her daughter one moment of worry or trouble.

“M-maybe,” she stumbled over her thoughts as they came at her, “it would be best if you and I met. Just to talk. To catch up.”

The third sigh he expelled was weary sounding.

“I told you, Tess. I’m in the middle of fixing dinner. And then there’s Erin’s schoolwork. I want to be here if she needs me.”

“Of course,” she quickly agreed. “But maybe after? There’s a coffee shop down the street from your garage. In the same building where my dad had his shop. We can talk there.”

“It’ll be at least two hours. And I don’t know if I can find a sitter.”

“I’ll wait,” she said in a rush.

She heard yet another exhalation.

“Please, Dylan. Please try.” She could think of nothing else to say except, “I’ll be waiting,” and then she gently hung up the phone.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t coming.

Absently Tess tapped the teaspoon against the palm of her hand. She glanced at the door of the small coffee shop for what surely must have been the millionth time.

Her eyes latched onto the large-faced clock behind the wide, white counter. Ten after nine. Nearly three hours had gone by since she’d called Dylan. Without thought, she raised her thumb to her mouth and searched nervously for a cuticle to worry.

He wasn’t coming.

But he wouldn’t not come. Would he? Not after the way she’d pleaded with him. Not when she’d just discovered—

“Here you go,” the waitress said softly, setting a tall, icy glass of lemonade in front of Tess. “This is on the house. You won’t sleep a wink tonight with all the coffee you’ve had.”

A shadowy smile of appreciation barely curled the corners of Tess’s mouth. Sliding the empty coffee mug away from her several inches, she murmured, “Thank you,” and reached for the glass.

“I wish you’d let me bring you something to eat,” the waitress said.

The concern she heard in the woman’s tone surprised Tess. She was a complete stranger to the waitress. Only in a town as small as Pine Meadow would total strangers take such an interest in another’s welfare, she thought.

“Thanks,” Tess said, noticing that the woman’s name tag identified her as Sue. “But I couldn’t eat a thing.”

Sue’s distress deepened into creases that marred her brow. “Are you sure you gave him the correct address? I mean, is there any chance he might have gone to some other coffee shop? There’s a diner on High Street,...”

This time Tess’s surprise had her mouth inching open, her eyes blinking. She’d guessed Tess was waiting for someone. Waiting for a man.

Shifting her weight onto one hip, Sue absently slipped her pencil behind her ear, shook her head and said softly, “Honey, you’re watching that door like you expect it to slip off its hinges and walk away. And no woman sits around for hours unless she’s expecting a man. An important man.”

The feathery-yet-intense inflection the waitress placed on the last short sentence clearly conveyed that she was sure that the man Tess awaited was no less than a lover. In any other circumstance, Tess was sure she’d have blushed. But the chaos reigning in her brain had her thoughts, her emotional responses, fragmented, splintered.

Dylan was an important man, she realized. Not because of any close relationship she shared with him, but because of what they had created. A precious child. A daughter. Erin.

The beautiful name whispered across her mind, and Tess latched onto it, focused on it and enjoyed a small moment of calm.

But the mere idea that her daughter was alive and well soon had her head churning all over again. However, she knew getting lost in the questions wouldn’t help her one bit, so shoving the roiling thoughts aside, she looked up at the waitress.

“He is important,” Tess admitted, although she didn’t feel up to straightening out the woman’s erroneous thinking by clarifying all that her statement meant.

“Well, you wait as long as you like,” Sue told her. “We don’t close till eleven.”

The front door opened then, and Tess and the waitress were turning their heads to look before the small bells attached to the door’s hinge barely had time to tinkle.

He looked good, Tess mused, her pulse pumping to life through veins that suddenly felt too small. Even though trouble clouded his eyes, the intense green of them had her breath catching in her throat. She remembered years ago how the long, wavy hair at the back of his neck would curl in silky tresses around her finger. But his chestnut hair was cut shorter now. In a more respectable fashion.

“Dylan! What brings you out at this time of night?” Sue greeted. “You’re usually home with Erin, doing homework and housework, playing Daddy.”

Tess didn’t know why she was so taken aback that the waitress knew Dylan—his shop was just up the block from the coffeehouse—but startled she was. However, maybe it wasn’t so much that the waitress knew him, but the familiarity with which Sue greeted him that had Tess feeling so...odd.

Jealousy.

When she put a name to the emotion that was constricting her chest, she nearly gasped. Impossible! It was completely out of the question.

Then what was it?

Despite the anxiety shadowing his gaze, Dylan smiled at the waitress—and it was then that Tess correctly identified what she was feeling.

Envy. She was pea green with it. Before she could analyze the feeling further, though, Dylan’s intense gaze was once again focused on her, silently demanding her attention.

“Let’s go,” he said, keeping the door propped open with one hand.

Tess felt as if she moved in slow motion as she made to rise. A small exhalation of shock erupted from the waitress. Looking up at the woman, Tess saw questions in Sue’s eyes.

You’ve been waiting for Dylan? her gaze seemed to ask.

As if she were in a sleep-fogged dream, Tess decided she simply couldn’t concern herself with the woman’s curiosity. Tossing some bills on the table, she turned toward the door.

“I’ve got a fresh apple pie in the back,” the waitress said to Dylan. “You sure I can’t talk you into having a slice?”

“Some other time, Sue,” Dylan said. “Erin’s with a sitter, and she won’t go to bed until I get home and put my foot down. Thanks anyway.” Then his gaze darted to Tess and he curtly repeated, “Let’s go,” his tone urging her to hurry.

The waitress softly called, “Bye.”

And Tess was surprised to realize she was the one being spoken to. She nodded to the woman and offered her a distracted smile as she moved toward Dylan.

He was holding the door open and she was forced to brush the broad expanse of his chest with her shoulder as she passed between him and the doorjamb. The woodsy aroma of his cologne struck her full force and her instinct urged her to hesitate, to savor his heated scent. But luckily, he planted his hand firmly on the small of her back and propelled her out onto the sidewalk. Normally she’d have been incensed by such overbearing behavior, but she was relieved to follow his lead at the moment. How idiotic would she have looked if she’d paused to sniff the man’s cologne?

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