Her Little Secret

“I came straight from the airport.”

Cassie continued, “What are you doing here?” She forbade herself a glance towards the car. Van would have to know sometime, but please God, not now. Not yet.

“The house was a – we have to talk, Cass.”

“What are you talking about?” She reached past him for the door handle. Just then, the back door of her rental car opened, and a small voice called, “Mummy.”

She turned and ran across the grass to snatch her daughter into her arms, holding on so tight Hope tried to wriggle free.

Van had followed, shock draining his face of colour.

Cassie shook her head, begging him not to say anything that might hurt Hope. Naturally, he wondered if she belonged to him. Despite five years and the certainty he hadn’t wanted her or their marriage, Cassie feared answering his unspoken question.

At last he dragged his gaze away from Hope, moving his head as if his muscles were locked.

Cassie relented. “No. Not yours.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna Adams wrote her first romance in wet sand with a stick. The Atlantic Ocean washed that one away, so these days she uses more modern tools to write the kind of stories she loves best – romance that involves everyone in the family, and often the whole community. Love between two people is like the proverbial stone in a lake. The ripples of their feelings spread, bringing all kinds of conflict and help from the people who care most about them.

Anna is in the middle of one of those stories, with her own hero of twenty-seven years. From Iceland to Hawaii, and points in between, they’ve shared their lives with children and family and friends who’ve become family.

Her Little Secret

ANNA ADAMS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Robert and Alice, and the love between you that still makes the lives around you richer.

And to Uncle Cecil and Aunt Mary, Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Bertha. Your strength was mine. Your love kept me floating. Your kindness heals my heart. Thank you will never be enough, but if love counts – well, I sure do love you all, my “other parents.”

CHAPTER ONE

THUNDER CREPT across the sky, building strength to rattle Van Haddon’s house. Rain and wind slapped at him so hard he hunched over as he climbed the wooden porch steps at the end of yet another business trip.

He used to love his job. For the past eleven months, he’d traveled at the drop of a hat, met with any financial client who seemed likely to sign on with him and all but begged for new business.

Getting into his house wasn’t easy. He found the lock, despite the darkness of a storm-induced blackout, but another crack of thunder broke over his head. He jerked his hand, and the key came back out.

Faintly, he heard the telephone’s insistent ring.

Van wiped rain off his face and tried again to get inside. Lightning flashed on the lock. He twisted the key and then kicked the front door open, shoving his carry-on out of the way as he grabbed the phone off a hall table. “Hello?”

“Van, Tom Drake here.” The other man didn’t have to add that he was the sheriff. Everyone who lived in the small town of Honesty, Virginia, knew who the sheriff was.

Van shouldered the door shut. “What’s up, Tom?” He kept his tone carefully neutral. After two days of explaining a portfolio to a possible client who’d decided not to invest with him, he’d been grateful for the powerful December winds that had given the plane a boost all the way from San Diego. But as soon as he’d landed, all hell had broken loose. The storm had boiled over, and he couldn’t forget last spring’s disastrous lightning strike that had burned down his sister’s fishing lodge.

“Something wrong with Beth or her family?”

“Beth and Eli are fine. In fact, I even think her new husband’s home this week. I’m calling about Leo Warne.”

Static broke up the words between syllables, but at Leo’s name, Van let go of the strap on his laptop bag. It slid down his arm. He caught it and set the bag on the floor, shrugging out of his soaked coat at the same time.

“Leo?” He’d been Van’s mentor, then his father-in-law and finally a walking wake-up call to his conscience.

“He’s out here on the Mecklin Road Bridge. And I do mean out here. Half-dressed in a ratty shirt and boxers, cowering against the guardrail, scared out of his wits. He won’t let us help him.”

“Help him what?” Van loosened his tie and undid his top collar button. Five years ago, his ex-wife, Cassie, had left town, warning both her father and Van not to contact her again. Leo had soon suggested Van stay away from him, too.

They’d last seen each other a year ago in the canned vegetable aisle at Elljay’s Market. One glance and they’d gone their separate ways.

Only family could be so cruel.

“I’m having no luck talking him into an ambulance,” Tom said. “He’s asking for his wife. He called me a liar when I said she was dead.”

“I don’t understand.” Victoria had died while being treated for pneumonia when Cassie was fifteen.

“It’s his mind, his memory. Something’s wrong. He hasn’t asked for Cassie, but he finally remembered you. I tried to make him see you’d want us to help him, but he won’t move unless you come.”

“Me?” Shock spotlighted the small things around him. Mail that had piled up. A picture of his nephew on a skateboard in midair. An unfolded, overdue bill for the credit card he used for travel expenses.

But he couldn’t see Leo—always in charge, dressed to the extremes of elegance—scared and nearly naked on a bridge in a storm that could literally kill him.

At seventy-three, Leo had retired as president of Honesty Bank & Trust soon after Cassie had left. Ashamed of what had happened to her, he’d disappeared from the town’s life.

Van couldn’t explain anyone else’s reasons, but he had let Leo go because he’d hated the other man’s shame.

“Hell.” He couldn’t go on resenting Leo when he needed help. Van checked his pockets for his cell phone. “I’m on my way.”

“Hurry. I’m afraid he’ll jump.”

Thunder jolted the house. A keening scream—unbearable and hardly recognizable as Leo’s voice—seemed to form inside Van’s head. “Take my cell number in case you need it.” He gave it to Tom and then hung up.

Without a coat, without locking the door, with nothing except fear that Leo had gone insane, Van ran back into the storm.

He jumped into the car, switched on the engine and jammed the gas pedal. All the way down the driveway, the trees bent low, their branches open hands grasping at his roof. He skidded onto the main road.

How could he talk Leo off that bridge?

A truck crossed into his lane. Swearing, Van swerved around it.

Someone had to tell Cassie.

Someone.

Who was he kidding? He’d have to tell Cassie. Never mind that she’d long since stopped caring enough to even hate him.

The attack had done that to them. Attack. That was one way to put it—a way that let him face himself. He’d been away on business. She’d been home alone, and she’d left the bathroom window open, no more than half an inch, to air out the steam.

Half an inch.

He hit the steering wheel with his fist. Half an inch of air had changed Cassie forever, had forced a space like thousands of miles between them.

He’d tried to reach her, but she’d shut him out, lumping him with her father, who’d avoided her after that night. After she’d gone, Van had wanted to resent her, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He’d owed her more than just love.

Blue lights slashed the sky. Van slowed as he neared the bridge. Clouds ambushed the moon and swallowed its reflection. Blinking red bulbs beneath the bridge flashed a warning to shipping on the river. Behind Van, an 18-wheeler drew close enough to illuminate the men milling in front of the emergency vehicles.

Van parked behind a fire-and-rescue truck. As he parted the crowd with his hands, rain poured down his face, and lightning made him flinch.

“Leo?” He searched for the other man, yelling his name. Why hadn’t someone in this thicket of blue-and-yellow-coated rescue workers scooped Leo up and run him to the hospital?

At last Van saw Tom. Four paramedics flanked the sheriff, two on each side. They all turned. Trey Lockwood, a longtime family friend, lifted his hand toward Van. Behind Trey, about thirty feet onto the bridge, Van glimpsed Leo’s grizzled, frightened face above bony knees tucked close against his chest.

Sick to his stomach, Van shoved past the other men, but Tom took his arm. “Every time we try to get near him he backs out of reach, or we’d have grabbed him. He could stand up and jump at any moment.”

“I’ll get him.” If he had to dive into that dark water in Leo’s wake, he wasn’t about to tell Cassie he’d let her father die.

“He may not know you.” Tom had to yell over the weather and the noise of men and idling engines.

Van shook his head. “Does it matter? If we don’t get him off this bridge, he’ll die, anyway.”

“Somebody get this man a coat,” Tom said.

If he waited for a jacket, he might just end up wearing it to a funeral. “Leo.” Edging closer, he left the knot of rescuers behind. His hands shook. He tried to look as if he were offering help, but he’d just as happily jerk the other man to safety.

“Go away.” Leo turned his face toward the concrete guard rail.

“I can’t.” He’d been doing that for five years, and he was lucky Leo hadn’t died. “We’re still family. We were friends before Cassie and I even looked at each other.”

“She loved you from day one.”

She’d stopped easily enough. Van reached for the bridge railing, distracting Leo because it was easy to make the sick man follow his hand. Rain and wind gusted around them. Water rushed past the bridge supports below, but the voices behind them had quieted.

“Cassie’s my little girl. Victoria will take care of her.”

Van reached for the back of his collar as if something had slithered down his spine. It was one thing to hear Leo was sick, but another to see it.

So he lied. Anything to get his friend off this bridge. “Let me take you to them.”

“I remember.” Leo’s hoarse voice suggested a sore throat and congestion. He pressed his fists into his eyes.

“Let me help.”

“I don’t want to remember.”

“Just remember me long enough to trust me.”

Leo lifted eyes that refused to focus. “You look funny. Not like you used to.”

Five years of loneliness changed any man. “I’m older.”

“Older?” His voice trailed off as if he didn’t understand the word. He leaned harder against the bridge. “Bring me Victoria.” Her name, something familiar, comforted him. “You can’t help.”

“I can’t get Victoria.”

“I’m not the one who’s crazy here.” Bracing his hand on the concrete, drawing himself up on one knee, Leo resurrected a semblance of his old dignity. “She’s not dead.”

He pointed at a paramedic on Tom’s left. “Like he said. Wouldn’t I know?” With a bone-shaking cough, he sank back to the pavement, his legs folding like matchsticks.

Van hurried at least five feet closer.

“Victoria…” Leo’s gasp was desperate. “She’d never leave.” He jabbed the air in front of Van, his bent finger shaking. “You find her. Now.”

“You’re freezing and sick, and this rain is making you worse.”

“Get away from me.” He waved a wasted arm.

“You taught me my job. You probably taught me how to be a man. You would have been my best friend all my life.” Only vaguely aware of the men behind them, he didn’t care what they thought. “You were like my father once. Let me walk you off this bridge.”

“I’m not sick.” The bones in his scrawny throat moved up and down. “You’ll drag me straight to the hospital, and people die there. I’ve seen it.” He frowned in confusion.

He had to mean Victoria, but maybe the memory was too painful to face. “Aren’t you hungry?” Van prayed Leo’s weight loss came from forgetting about meal-times, rather than a serious illness. “Let’s get something to eat, a hot drink. We’ll talk all night, the way we used to.”

Leo shook his head. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Van took a chance and moved in, slipping a hand beneath the other man’s arm. God, his bones. “Come with me. We’ll find you a coat and some food.”

Awareness slowly lit Leo’s dull expression. His chin dipped to his chest. “Don’t tell Cassie. She doesn’t speak to me.” He lowered his voice. Van had to bend all the way down to hear. “Not in years.”

Van patted his arm, the way he would a child’s. “She doesn’t talk to me, either, but I’ll call her tonight. I’ll make her listen.”

“She hates me.”

“You’re wrong about that. She’ll tell you.” He couldn’t meet Leo’s eyes. Who knew how Cassie felt about either of them? “Come sit in my car.”

“I don’t have to sit in one of those trucks? I hate those lights. They get inside my head.” He pressed his hands to his wet hair, trying to squeeze out the strobing flashes.

Van looked to the paramedics, who were inching closer, coiled to spring. No one offered advice. Could Leo be reacting to medication? Was that wishful thinking? If only he’d been around enough to know.

“The lights bother me, too, but my car’s pretty dark. See if you feel better there.”

Leo got halfway to his feet, but as Van was on the verge of shouting with relief, the older man collapsed against him. “Don’t let me die in that hospital.”

Van tried again to help him stand. “What happened to Victoria was a fluke. You know most people get help in a hospital. And you need help.” He refused to let Leo brush his hands away.

“They’ll kill me. I know.”

“I’ll go with you.” Van made a production of wiping his nose. “I’m not feeling too great, either.”

Leo squinted through the rain soaking his face. “Are you sick, too?”

“I think so.” He’d rarely felt more torn up. He’d given Cassie the divorce she’d demanded and gone meekly away as she’d asked. He’d lost track of her father, and he couldn’t find his old friend in this shell of a man. “How about if we both go with these guys?” He pointed at the EMTs. “They’ll check us out on the way.”

He coughed, feeling ludicrous, but Leo let him help him all the way up. “I’m freezing,” Van said.

“I might be a little cold, too.”

They shuffled, arms around each other, toward the ambulance. The paramedics closed in on Leo, seized his arms and began moving him at rapid speed. He searched over his shoulder for Van, desperation naked on his face.

Van wiped his eyes and then checked to make sure no one else had noticed. He and Leo had been close since he’d first marched into the bank to ask for an internship. He trotted to catch up. “Can I ride along?” he asked the nearest EMT, who turned out to be Trey.

“Sure, if it’ll ease Mr. Warne’s mind.”

“You need to check him, too,” Leo said.

The other guy looked at Van, who shook his head slightly.

The ambulance distracted Leo. He climbed onto it, slowly taking in the noise and machines. One of his rescuers eased him onto a stretcher. Immediately, the driver got in the front, and Trey and another EMT started treating Leo.

Van sat out of the way on the opposite side of the ambulance. Trey and his partner contacted the hospital, started an IV, and reported Leo’s symptoms and vitals.

From between the two men, Leo’s hand suddenly jutted out, splayed like a frightened child’s. Van caught it and folded the gnarled, trembling fingers into his palm.

IN THE KIND HEART woman’s shelter in Tecumseh, Washington, Cassie Warne was carrying a tray of cookies and milk to her office to share with her daughter when a man crashed through the locked double doors behind her in a hail of splinters and broken wood.

Cassie turned, transfixed by chunks of the door clattering at her feet. At first she thought the man was brandishing a baseball bat, but it was a metal battering ram.

He snarled a name Cassie couldn’t hear. She didn’t ask him to repeat it. Women and children going about the business of getting settled for the night, froze. The man searched them for the one he wanted, and Cassie’s instinct took over.

She never let herself dwell on that night five years ago. It had happened, like her mother’s death, and her broken arm on her eleventh birthday. It was only a fact, but it had changed her.

She needed no one and no one would ever hurt her or anyone who depended on her.

The tray slipped from her hands. The plate and glasses smashed. Vaguely aware of glass shards on the floor among the bits of broken wood, she felt time jerk to a start again.

Cassie threw herself at the man, praying her four-year-old daughter would stay in the office, out of sight.

Silently, she swung the edge of her foot into the man’s belly. Though her own stomach heaved, she never looked away from his eyes. She’d seen rage like that—uninhibited, unstinting fury in a face looming over her one night when Van had been in D.C. or Milwaukee or Fresno. Somewhere other than their tiny apartment bedroom.

With a cartoon “oof,” the man backed away, doubling over. His battering ram fell to the floor and scattered the wood and glass.

Please, she thought, let him stop now. Don’t make me do anything else.

He straightened with a feral snarl.

Crying because she didn’t want to do it, Cassie pointed her elbow into his throat. Her martial arts instructors had taught her to yell, supposedly to strike fear into an attacker and bolster her strength. She needed nothing but the will to hurt another human being. Still she felt sick as the man began to choke.

And damn him. He kept coming.

She was crying as the heel of her palm rammed his nose into his skull. Blood on her hands gagged her as he dropped, unconscious.

She hovered, ready, trembling from head to toe.

“Mommy?”

“Hope.”

Cassie turned, gathering herself as if she’d also been broken into pieces. She rubbed her arm across her eyes and her mouth, trying to erase any trace of the violence that had adrenaline bubbling in her veins.

Gripping the office door, Hope pointed at Cassie’s shirt. A scream poured out of her throat.

Cassie looked down. The blood snapped her straight back to reality.

“I’m okay.” She tore the shirt off. “I’m all right, baby.”

Hope rushed her. Cassie knelt and scooped her daughter into her arms. “The police,” she said to the nearest woman. She threw her shirt far away. In her bra and jeans, she was wearing more than some of the clients who’d shown up at their doors.

She cuddled Hope, keeping her as safe as she could from scary things. “We’re all okay, baby.” To herself, she sounded calm while her heartbeat shook her whole body. In a few minutes, Hope’s crying faded to a whimper.

“Wanna go home, Mommy. Bad, bad man.” As she pointed at him with a four-year-old’s contempt, sirens sounded.

“Put this on.” Liza, one of Cassie’s partners, dropped a faded Tecumseh PD T-shirt over Cassie’s shoulder. Another woman must have worn it into the shelter. Cassie pulled it over her head, and Hope helped her yank it down.

“You hurt that bad man, Mommy.”

“I know.” She seriously wanted to bury her head. “It was scary.”

“I’m glad you hurt him.”

She didn’t know what to say. Normally, it’s not nice to hit people would do, but the man had come bent on hurting someone in the shelter. She couldn’t let that happen.

Cassie cradled Hope’s chin. Violence had changed Cassie’s life forever, and she’d tried to make sure the past wasn’t part of her present with Hope. “I don’t like hurting anyone, baby, but that man wanted to be mean to someone here.” Of their own volition, her thoughts returned to that other bad man, and she hated the fear that whispered through her in a warning.

Unconditional love looked out of Hope’s blue eyes.

“I won’t ever scare you if I can help it,” Cassie said. Her daughter meant everything to her.

“You didn’t look like my mommy.”

Cassie hugged her tight. Someday she’d teach Hope the self-defense she’d made every shelter employee learn, but she didn’t want her daughter to think of her as a woman who beat people up.

She went blank when she tried to think what else she should have done.

Two policemen, guns drawn, barged through the splintered doorway and stopped in front of the unconscious man.

Only then did Cassie realize one woman had picked up his battering ram and another stood over him with a raised chair.

More concerned about the guns, she turned Hope’s face into her chest.

“Danger’s over.” Liza pointed at his revolver. “You can put that away. We don’t like the children to see them.”

The police both holstered their weapons. “What happened?” asked the one she’d spoken to.

“He busted in with this.” She eased the battering ram out of the woman’s hand. “And my friend stopped him from getting any further.”

“Which friend?” the second cop asked.

Cassie stood, lifting Hope onto her hip. “He said someone’s name, but I didn’t catch it.” She searched the suspicious glances of the women and children around them. “Anyone know him?”

“I do,” the second cop said. “He’s a fireman. I can’t remember his name, but we worked together last year when the county put on that disaster training.”

No one else claimed him.

The downed man began to stir and the first policeman cuffed him. He nodded at Cassie. “He wasn’t looking for you?”

Shaking her head, she hugged Hope closer. “I work here.”

“She’s a partner,” Liza said. “I’m Liza Crane. This is Cassie Warne. We have another partner, Kim Fontaine, but she works day hours.”

So did Cassie, but Hope had been out of school for a teacher in-service day. For the first time in Hope’s short preschool career, Cassie had forgotten to arrange for backup day care.

Between them, the police officers dragged the man to his feet. Catching sight of Cassie, he lunged.

“Bitch.”

She backed up, turning Hope away from him.

“Bad man.” Her daughter burrowed her face into Cassie’s shirt.

WITH A TRACE of leftover nerves-on-alert, Cassie hurried Hope into their town house four hours later. She locked the door and shut out the world. Her haven of over-stuffed chairs and verdant plants and overflowing bookshelves let her breathe again.

She sought the familiar. Prints from museums she’d visited when she could only stare at walls and pray not to scream. Framed pieces of Hope’s artwork, going all the way from scrawls and handprints to the big faces with stringy hands and feet she favored lately.

“No bad men here.” Hope slid from Cassie’s arms and ran to her room, all order restored in her world.

Cassie breathed easier. The event had only scared Hope for a little while. It hadn’t changed her life.

Setting the dead bolt on the front door, Cassie activated the alarm system. “Are you hungry?”

“Can we have eggs and cheese? All stirred up together?”

“Perfect.” Comfort food.

Cassie went to the kitchen. Hope skipped in while she was pulling the mixing bowl out of a cabinet.

“Wait for me, Mommy. You know I’m ’posed to help.”

“It wouldn’t taste the same without you.”

Cassie broke eggs into a bowl. Hope whisked them all over the kitchen counter and the sink, and Cassie mixed up chocolate milk. They toasted each other while a golden pat of butter sizzled in the iron skillet Cassie had taken from her childhood home.

“That man doesn’t know where we live?”

Cassie shook her head. “And the police won’t let him out, anyway.”