The Second Family

“You can’t go in there! She’s on the phone!”

The door burst open and two people shot into the room. Two small people. Children. They lurched to a halt a few feet beyond the door and stared at her. Carrie, standing in the doorway behind them, raised her shoulders apologetically.

Tess pressed down the hold button. Her gaze shifted from the tall boy with the thick chestnut hair to the little girl clinging to his leg. There was something familiar about her. The large, vibrant green eyes and the raven tousle of hair. The same oval-shaped face and a smaller version of a delicate nose. Her nose.

She released the hold button, keeping her eyes fixed on them. Alec Malone was still talking. “Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that they left behind two kids who’ve just—”

Tess jabbed the hold button again. “Who are you?” she asked them. “What do you want?” But she knew what the boy was going to say even before he spoke.

“I think—well, uh—that you’re our sister.”

Dear Reader,

Some of you who have read my other Superromance novels will note a recurring theme of family, combined with mystery and suspense. This is no coincidence—I have always been a “family” kind of person. My favorite childhood memories are of sitting at our kitchen table on Saturday mornings over coffee (milk for us kids!) and doughnuts listening to my uncle and my parents tell stories from their pasts. Now my favorite family thing is to reminisce with my own grown children.

Although most of us have family traditions of some kind, there are those who have never experienced the joys of family. Tess Wheaton is such a person. Raised by a loving guardian, Tess has always considered family as something other people had. What she knows about family has been shaped by books, movies and friends. Still, she has succeeded in establishing a promising career as a business executive and considers her longtime guardian, Mavis, her surrogate family. Until the day two youngsters turn up on her doorstep, claiming to be her half siblings. Suddenly Tess is thrust into the tumultuous center of a family shattered by tragedy. Is she up to the challenge? Or more to the point, does she really want to accept the challenge?

With a little help from three people who refuse to give up on her—social worker Alec Malone and half siblings Nick and Molly—Tess learns not only what family is all about, but that she can no longer go on without belonging to one.

Enjoy your families!

Janice Carter

The Second Family

Janice Carter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my mother, Lois Gene Carter, with much love.

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 SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS DEAD.

The thick vellum paper Tess was holding shook and the scrawl of black, fine-tipped pen blurred. Her eyes, hooded in disbelief, flicked across the paper—top to bottom, left to right and back again. Her brain, sluggish with doubt, refused to register more than a fragment of writing at a time.

Regret to inform you…fatal car crash…March 28…as your father’s lawyer…please contact…

Tess skimmed the letter once more and this time, the pieces slotted together in perfect, horrifying sequence. She crumpled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it into the wastebasket in the corner of her office. A slam dunk, though she couldn’t have cared less. Powered by shock, Tess grabbed her briefcase, slung her handbag over her shoulder, plucked her trench coat from the hook behind the door and strode out the door of her new executive office.

“Tess! Are you leaving for the day?” Carrie called from her receptionist desk in the small antechamber.

But Tess didn’t dare stop. Stopping would mean explaining, and Tess didn’t trust herself to do that. Instead, she half turned and snapped, “Something’s come up, Carrie. Cancel all appointments. Take messages. See you tomorrow.” She didn’t slow down until the elevator doors closed behind her. Alone, she sagged against the rear wall and took several deep breaths.

Her mind, fired by adrenaline, whizzed through its mental Rolodex of options, strategies and last resorts to come up with a name. Mavis McNaught—her guardian angel. Tess dug into her purse for her cell phone and punched in Mavis’s number. The elevator reached the ground floor just as Mavis picked up on the other end.

Tess made herself take another slow breath before speaking. Mavis would never understand what Tess was saying if her voice came out as thin and wobbly. Besides, it wouldn’t do for Balfour International’s new Vice President of Marketing to be seen having a meltdown in the company lobby. She ducked into a corner behind a potted hibiscus tree.

“Mavis?” she said after the third hello. “It’s me—Tess. No, no, something’s wrong with the phone. Listen. I…uh just got this strange letter from some lawyer in Colorado and I need to see you. Yes, yes. I know it’s only three o’clock. You’re not busy, are you? Good. I’m coming right over and I’ll explain everything as soon as I get there.” She closed her eyes. Inhaled again. The filmy landscape of the lobby cleared, but the ceramic tiled floor seemed, suddenly, to shift beneath her.

Tess clicked off her phone, patted her flyaway curly hair into place and headed out to the street. A sea of faces, some familiar and others simply curious, swam up to her on the way, their disembodied voices fading in and out of Tess’s auditory range as she stood on the pavement, flailing her arms for a taxi. A yellow cab zigzagged from across the street. Tess yanked open the door and flung herself inside.

“25 Fairview. On the west side,” she said as the cab pulled away from the curb.

Only then did Tess allow herself a moment to take it all in, slumping against the seat, briefcase sprawled beside her. The content of the letter spun through her mind over and over until she finally accepted its awful truth.

The father who’d walked out of her life twenty-five years before was dead.

“MORE?” asked Mavis, reaching for the teapot. Her ample frame bumped against the edge of the table as she sat down across from Tess. She brushed a wisp of gray hair off her cheek and poured herself another cup.

Tess shook her head. What she really wanted was a scotch and soda, neither of which was available at Mavis McNaught’s.

“So where’s this letter, then?” asked Mavis, her broad forehead wrinkling in a frown.

“I threw it in the trash can on my way out.”

“You’ll need that letter,” Mavis pointed out.

“I got the gist of it anyway. Some lawyer in Boulder, Colorado, informing me that Richard Wheaton was killed in a car accident on March 28.” She looked across the table at Mavis and added, “He also wrote he was surprised to learn that Richard had a daughter in Chicago and would I please call him right away.”

“And that shouldn’t surprise you, given the circumstances,” Mavis said gently. “Now what?” she asked, fixing her serenely impassive gaze on Tess.

Tess shrugged, averting her face from Mavis’s penetrating, pale-blue eyes. Her one-time guardian could read her like a book. “Nothing, I guess. What’s there to do? He died a month ago. The funeral’s long past.” She paused. “Not that I’d have gone anyway.”

“Perhaps you’ve inherited something and that’s why this lawyer wants you to contact him.”

Tess snorted. “What could my father possibly have left me? He never gave me a thing after he left Mom and me. He probably died a penniless drifter.”

“Don’t be speaking ill of the dead,” Mavis clucked.

Tess rolled her eyes. “Then I’ll have to shut up for I can’t think of anything good to say about him.”

“Have we gone back in time? Is this the eighties all over? Are you a teenager once more?”

A trace of a smile belied the reprimand in Mavis’s voice, but Tess flushed anyway. No one else on earth could pull in the reins on Tess Wheaton quite like Mavis McNaught. The woman had been her foster parent since she was ten years old and knew her better than any person alive. She had been the only family Tess had known after her father’s disappearance and her mother’s death a few years later.

“If you’ve made no plans—at least, not for the immediate future—I’ll pop a casserole out of the freezer for dinner.” Mavis set her palms on the kitchen table to raise herself from the chair.

Tess saw her wince as she took a first step. “Did you take your pills today?”

“Of course, love. Twice a day every day. It’s the damp.”

But Tess noticed her smile was more strained now. “Go back to the doctor and tell him they’re not working. If you like, I can get my own doctor to refer you to another specialist.”

Mavis hobbled to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. “The doctor’s fine. There’s just little else they can do. Osteoarthritis and old age go together.” She pulled a foil-wrapped casserole dish out and set it on the counter next to the stove. “And losing forty pounds or so would help, if I can bring myself to stay away from the goodies.”

Tess ducked her head so Mavis couldn’t see her smile. They both knew her love of sweets wasn’t going to change after all these years. “Why don’t you come with me sometime to my club? For a swim?”

Mavis wagged an index finger at her. “Now don’t you be teasing an old woman. Come and preheat the oven for me. My glasses are in the TV room and I can’t make out the numbers.”

Tess pushed her chair back and walked over to where Mavis was standing. “Why don’t you use the microwave I gave you?”

“I do use it, love, but it doesn’t get the topping all crusty brown, the way you and I like it.”

Tess laughed. “True enough.” She set the oven temperature, then turned to Mavis. “Still, you ought to be using it as something more than a bread box.”

“It makes a dandy bread box. And once in a while, when I’m following my diet, I use it for microwave popcorn.”

“I bet that’s once or twice a year,” cracked Tess. She caught Mavis’s eye and laughed with her. Impulsively, she bent down and flung her arms around the older woman. Coming here had been the perfect move, Tess thought. Mavis McNaught’s kitchen. Her refuge.

When they drew apart, Mavis said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and have a wee lie down? If you like, you can stay the night. I know there’s at least one of your nighties still in the drawer in your room.”

And because Mavis had been watching out for her since she was ten years old and always knew best, Tess headed upstairs to her old bedroom. It was just the way she’d left it after graduating from university and its familiarity was as comforting as Mavis’s embrace. On this day of all days she craved the mindless solace of routine, so Tess kicked off her heels and lay down on the worn patchwork quilt covering the narrow bed. She shifted, adjusting from habit to the mattress lumps, and closed her eyes. But sleep didn’t come.

What came instead was a flood of memory. Her first night in this room. She was ten and her mother, Hannah, had been taken to a hospital psychiatric ward after being picked up wandering Chicago streets in her nightgown. The incident had been the first breakdown, but not the last. When child care workers and police asked Tess if there was anyone she could stay with, the person who’d come immediately to mind had been Mavis McNaught.

Mavis’s parents had been neighbors of Tess’s family and Mavis had befriended Hannah and Tess over the course of her weekly visits. After Richard Wheaton left home, Mavis had kept in touch, in spite of living in another part of the city. She was the only person, other than her mother, whom Tess had really known as family after her father walked out. The middle-aged spinster hadn’t blinked an eye at the officer’s request. She marched out to the police cruiser, wrapped her arms around Tess and led her into the home where she stayed for the next eleven years.

Hannah came to live in Mavis’s house in the beginning, too. But her erratic use of medication and frequent breakdowns took their toll on the makeshift family. In the end, Tess figured, her mother didn’t so much die from pneumonia as from depression. Tess was fourteen when Mavis became her legal guardian, providing the first stable home she’d known in years.

Replaying the past, Tess came to the conclusion she always reached. Her mother’s downward spiral began little more than a year after Richard Wheaton left. That day was still etched in her memory.

They’d been arguing again. Nothing unusual about that, but this time felt different to eight-year-old Tess. She crouched behind her father’s favorite chair and watched her mother pace back and forth, puffing on one cigarette after another. Tess hated to see her mother smoke and so did her father. That was one of the things they often quarreled about. The other was money.

Today Tess didn’t have to cover her ears. There wasn’t any shouting. Instead, their occasionally raised voices fell into low mumbles. They even sat, her mother perched on the couch. Her father, hunched forward in his chair, as if about to spring from it. Tess could have reached out to touch him if she’d dared.

After a silence Tess thought would never end, she heard her mother say the words that would haunt her in the years ahead, “Then leave.”

And when Richard rose from the chair, his answer booming around the small living room, “I will,” Tess had run out from behind his chair. Flinging her arms around his legs, she’d cried, “Don’t go, Daddy. Don’t leave.”

Hands—she didn’t know whose—pulled her away. She threw herself on the carpet, sobbing. Her mother slipped upstairs. It seemed like hours later when Tess heard footsteps in the hall. She sat up and saw her father standing hesitantly at the front door. As if he didn’t know what to do next, she thought.

A canvas duffel bag hung from his shoulder. He was holding his wooden box of paints in one hand and a large paper-wrapped frame in the other. One of his paintings.

“Daddy—?”

He stared at her a long time before saying in a husky voice, “Don’t forget me, Tess. I won’t forget you.” He opened the door and walked out.

Tess jumped up and ran to the open door. Her father was climbing into a taxi.

“Daddy!” she called again.

He turned around and paused, a look of indecision in his face.

Tess’s heart raced. He was changing his mind. He was coming back.

But then he stiffened, waved a last goodbye and got into the taxi. Behind Tess, Hannah Wheaton snarled, “Let him go, Tess. He doesn’t want us anymore…and we don’t want him.”

She closed the door as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

Over the next few years Tess often wondered what might have happened if her mother hadn’t suddenly appeared behind her that day. Would her father have come back inside and tried to patch things up, as he’d done so many times before? Or would he have swept Tess up into his arms and taken her with him?

That was the fantasy that carried her through into adolescence, until she reached the painful conclusion that her mother had been right after all. Richard Wheaton hadn’t wanted them anymore.

Tess rolled over onto her side and sighed. She hadn’t relived that scene for many years. It had lost much of its power over her now, no longer producing the flow of tears it once could.

So. Her father was dead. She knew she ought to be able to summon even a tiny bit of grief, but could not. Her memory of him was now relegated to that last day. Her love for him disappeared sometime in the years after his leaving. She was glad she’d impulsively thrown away the lawyer’s letter. The sooner she got over this latest memory surge, the better. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift through the years until sleep, at last, came.

“COFFEE?”

“Great,” said Tess, “but let me make it. Yours is always too weak.” She pushed her chair back from the kitchen table and went to the counter.

Mavis shook her head. “I don’t know how you can get to sleep at night after drinking that stuff.”

“I usually go to bed so late nothing can keep me awake.”

“You’re working too hard, love. That’s why you fell asleep. An hour’s nap has done you some good, but it doesn’t make up for a real break. Tell me about this holiday cruise you’ve booked.”

Tess finished measuring out the coffee, poured water into the machine and turned it on before responding. She’d known Mavis would get around to asking about the cruise eventually, but wished the question hadn’t arisen that night.

“It’s kind of up in the air right now,” she said.

Mavis raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re flying instead?”

Tess laughed. “Good one, Mavis.”

“Seriously, don’t tell me you’re not taking that holiday. You’ve been talking about it for months.”

Tess turned away. But not in the last few weeks I haven’t. She took her time, getting milk from the fridge, mugs from the cupboard. Anything to postpone the inevitable. She didn’t look Mavis in the eye until she sat down in her chair again. When she did, the expression in her guardian’s face told her she wasn’t going to be able to hide the truth any longer.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Tess began.

“About the cruise?”

Tess got up and poured the coffee, then carefully sat down again. She wondered if an evasive strategy would work with Mavis. “There’s so much work at the office right now. A big merger coming up. It’s all hush-hush so I can’t give you any details but…”

“Tess, love, I’m not going to be calling up my stockbroker in the morning. So get on with it.”

Her blue eyes zoomed in on Tess. Scratch the evasive strategy. Tess laughed. “I can’t keep anything from you, Mavis.”

“And why would you want to?” Mavis’s voice assumed a tone of mock hurt. Then, reading Tess’s mind, she added, “I know you want me to stop pestering you—and I will—but I’m curious. I thought you and Douglas had made all the arrangements.”

“We had,” Tess said, her voice low. She stared down into her coffee.

“And?”

There was no putting her off, Tess thought. She sighed and set her coffee mug down on the table. “I haven’t seen him for almost two weeks.”

The eyebrow arched again, but Mavis said nothing.

“The last time I saw him we had an argument and I’m afraid…well, I guess I said some pretty blunt things.”

Mavis nodded thoughtfully. “Then what happened?”

Did the woman ever give up? “Nothing. He hasn’t called.”

“So the cruise—?”

“I canceled my half.” Tess picked some fluff off her skirt, avoiding Mavis’s face. When she glanced up, Mavis was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I had cancellation insurance,” Tess murmured. “I got back most of my money.”

“That’s not the point, dear. You need a holiday. You’ve been working ten- and twelve-hour days, six days a week, I’m sure, for the last six months.”

“Comes with the promotion, Mavis. I explained that when they made me Vice President of Marketing.”

“But Douglas? The lad dotes on you.”

Tess glanced down again, this time to hide a grin. Douglas Reed—the company’s wheeling and dealing head lawyer—was no lad. Probably never had been, Tess thought, even when he was a kid. And the doting part certainly had applied a year ago, but not recently.

How could she explain to Mavis what had happened when Tess scarcely knew herself? Douglas Reed’s aggressive, confident courting style had been exhilarating and flattering in the beginning. But over the past few months, Tess had suspected his feelings for her had more to do with image than true love. She knew from comments he’d made that dating an executive from Balfour International was important to his own career plans. His hints about a future together envisioned a team on a meteoric ascent—a couple who would earn a fortune between them and who’d devote their lives solely to one another. And, of course, their careers.

Not that Tess didn’t want to have a great career. She’d worked hard, putting herself through university and then going on to acquire an MBA. Success was crucial for her. She just didn’t want someone else planning her future for her.

And of course, there was the other thing. The part she couldn’t reveal to Mavis. When Douglas took her into his arms, she felt little more than a moment’s warmth. Worse still, after the first two or three times, their lovemaking had become an exercise of habit. There was no buzz, no sparkle, no whisper of magic—all the ingredients of a truly romantic relationship. Deep down inside, Tess craved the fantasy she’d imagined since she was a teenager—that someone, somewhere, was going to whisk her away.

She sighed. It hadn’t happened yet. Probably never would. And, Tess was sure, it definitely would not happen with Douglas Reed.

“Tess? Are you still with me, girl?” Mavis was leaning forward in her chair. “And what’s that sigh all about?”

Tess felt her face heat up. “Nothing. It’s just that things haven’t been great between us for a while and…well, I thought we should give each other some space.”

“In my day we’d call that breaking up,” Mavis commented. “Well, so be it. You know best what kind of man you want to settle down with.”

Tess bit down on her lower lip. She knew the remark stemmed from love for her, but Mavis simply couldn’t accept that Tess’s aim in life was not merely to marry and produce a family. Some day, perhaps. But not anytime soon.

After a long moment, Mavis asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about your father?”

Tess stared down into her coffee mug. When she finally raised her head to Mavis, her reply was brisk. “No. There’s not much to say, anyway. I’ll dig that lawyer’s letter out of the wastebasket tomorrow or wait for him to call me back.”

Mavis heaved a loud sigh, suggesting she knew when to give up. “I have a feeling you want to change the subject.”

Tess didn’t answer. She drank the last of her coffee and stood up. “I should go home tonight, Mavis. I’ve got to be at work early for a meeting and if I stay here—”

Mavis nodded. “I know, love. The distance adds more time to your day. Anyway, tomorrow’s my Friday to visit Sophie and I plan to leave first thing in the morning.”

“How is she doing?” Tess asked.

Mavis shrugged. “Well as can be expected, I guess. She likes the food there, anyway.” Mavis visited her sister once a month, spending the weekend at the retirement home outside Chicago where Sophie had been living for the past year. “I’m sorry to hear about the cruise. I hope you’ll still go ahead and take the holiday time, though.” Her eyes fixed on Tess. “Think about it. You need it more than you realize, believe me.”

Tess mumbled a reply, though she thought this time Mavis didn’t know best.

TESS LEFT the conference room and made a sharp right turn when she spotted Douglas exiting an office farther down the hall. They seldom bumped into one another in the eight floors of skyscraper space that the company rented in the John Hancock Center. Since their acrimonious parting two weeks before, Tess had made a point of avoiding the floor where his office was located.

Today was not a good time for a first encounter, she decided. Not after yesterday’s stunning news. A face-to-face meeting when she was feeling vulnerable might end up with her agreeing to go on the cruise with him after all.