My Secret Valentine

She could see the resemblances to Katy that she’d conveniently persuaded herself weren’t there.

She thought of all the things she’d promised herself she would say to him if she ever saw him again. Every sentiment, every accusation, could be condensed into two harsh words—Damn you—but she didn’t say them. She didn’t say anything at all.

He shifted in a manner that should have screamed He’s nervous! Of course, it didn’t. It just seemed natural. Calm. “I wondered if you were going to speak to me.”

“Actually, no. Speaking to you makes it harder to keep up the illusion that I’d never met you.”

“And you like pretending you never met me.”

She smiled coolly. “I’d like it better if I really had never met you, but this is the next best thing.”

A faint hint of bitterness came into his eyes, and his mouth formed a thin line. After a moment, he flatly said, “I’m sorry about Golda.”

“Everyone here is sorry about Golda.” But in some tender place inside, she was touched by his acknowledgment that losing Golda was a bigger loss to her than him. After all, she’d seen the old lady every day. He’d stayed away for six years.

Because of her? Or because he hadn’t cared any more about his aunt than he had about Fiona?

He shifted again, and this time he did look… Not nervous. Uncomfortable. As if he wasn’t at all accustomed to the position he found himself in—the grieving nephew, the polite ex-lover. “I understand your being here has nothing to do with me, but…thank you anyway.”

“You’re right. Nothing in my life has anything to do with you.” Hoping her hand wouldn’t tremble, she gestured toward the center of the church. “You should probably get back over there. There are people waiting who actually want to talk to you.”

With a solemn nod, he turned and walked away, leaving her feeling… Edgy. Guilty. Ashamed. She wasn’t a rude person, and had never been cruel a day in her life. She could blame it on Justin. She hadn’t been a lot of things until she’d met him—easy, foolish, careless, dreamy, gullible, broken-hearted, pregnant. She hadn’t been so strong until she’d loved him and lost him. She needed that strength now to get through the next thirty hours.

She needed it desperately.

Justin turned onto the three hundred block of Aspen Street and slowed to well below the speed limit. The houses on the block were moderately sized, reasonably priced and in good shape considering they were nearly double his age. Golda’s was in the middle of the block on the left side of the street. Fiona’s was one closer.

It looked the same as it had six years ago. It wore a fresh coat of white paint on the siding, dark green on the shutters and door. The same car she’d driven then was parked in the driveway in front of the two-car garage, and what appeared to be the same lace curtains hung at her bedroom windows on the second floor.

But there were a few differences. A bike with training wheels was parked at the bottom of the steps. A kid-size basketball goal stood in the driveway next to the car. A red wagon on the porch held a soccer ball and a basketball among other toys. A remote-control Jeep lay upside down near the curb.

Maybe the toys belonged to her nieces and nephews, he reasoned, or maybe she’d been baby-sitting a friend’s children. But the cold, hard place that formed deep in his gut said otherwise. Fiona had a child.

Which meant she also had a husband.

He wondered how long she had waited for him before moving on. A few months? Six, maybe eight? And then she’d replaced him, gotten married and started the family she’d promised him. She was another man’s wife, raising another man’s child. Damn her.

And damn him. He’d promised he would come back, but he never had. He hadn’t written, hadn’t called, had ignored her calls. Plain and simple, he’d been afraid. All the intense emotions she roused in him had seemed perfectly normal when he was with her, but with distance had come doubt.

His parents had seen to it that he’d grown up with little belief in love and no faith at all in marriage. Their own marriage had been a mistake, and so had the ten or so they’d made since their divorce from each other. They’d acted on impulse every damn time, completing the meeting, lust, so-called love and marriage in record time, only to wake up with strangers they neither knew nor liked. Within a year, often less, the divorce was in the works and they were looking for the next person willing to make a fool of them.

He’d watched it happen time and again, often from the same household, usually from a distance, and he’d sworn it would never happen to him. If he ever married, it would be to someone he’d known a long time, someone he considered a friend, someone who didn’t believe in fairy tales of love and romance any more than he did. And if the marriage ended, he wouldn’t be so emotionally vested in it that it disrupted his life. He would deal with it like a mature adult and move on. He’d been so confident, so determined.

And yet the first time he’d mentioned marriage to Fiona, he’d known her all of seventy-two hours. After only three days, he’d been willing to tie the knot with a woman he hardly knew merely because she made him feel things he’d never felt before. He’d been not only willing but eager to follow in his parents’ footsteps, and that had scared the hell out of him.

So he’d cut her out of his life. Refused her calls at work. Let the machine pick them up at home. Ignored her quiet pleas. With eighteen hundred miles separating them, he’d convinced himself that Fiona had just been a fling, that the affair had been about sex and not love, that nothing so hot and intense could last. It hadn’t been difficult. He came from a long line of emotionally-stunted bastards. He’d had excellent role models.

Just past Fiona’s house, he pulled into Golda’s driveway and shut off the engine. He’d intended to spend the night at a motel, but his timing wasn’t the greatest. There was no room at the inns, and so the wayward nephew was left with no choice but to stay at Golda’s. Next to Fiona.

The lawyer had given him the key at the funeral—just in case. Taking his bag from the trunk as well as his briefcase, he let himself into the quiet, old house.

The parlor opened off the foyer and was filled with mementos of Golda’s life. He walked around the perimeter of the room, touching nothing, gazing at countless photographs of himself, from first grade through graduation, both prep school and college. His mother had missed one, and his father had missed both, but Golda had been there both days.

There were other photographs, mostly of people he didn’t know, as well as some childish drawings that had been framed and hung as if they deserved it. He assumed they were the work of the pretty little dark-haired girl whose photos on display numbered second only to his own, and wondered who she was.

A framed portrait on the piano answered that question. It was the same girl snuggled on her mother’s lap while they read a children’s book. She looked sleepy, contented, and her mother… Fiona looked happier, more beautiful and more in love than he’d ever had the fortune to see her.

Angrily he turned away from the picture. He didn’t care. Their affair never could have been more than it was, and it had ended six years ago. She felt nothing but contempt for him, and he…he felt nothing. He was just tired from the flight, worn-out by the guilt, depressed by the funeral and the graveside service. He needed sleep, then food, then more sleep, and he needed to get the hell out of Grand Springs, which he would do tomorrow immediately following the meeting with Golda’s lawyer. Once he was back in D.C. and at work, he would be all right.

He carried his garment bag upstairs, chose the guest room where he hadn’t once made love to Fiona, stripped off his clothes and crawled into bed. Sleep came easily, but it wasn’t restful. Too many memories, too many dreams.

When he gave up and got up, it was nearly eight o’clock, the sky was dark, and his stomach was rumbling. He dressed in jeans and a sweater, grabbed his coat and headed for the car. He got so far as unlocking the door before some impulse he didn’t understand and couldn’t resist drew him away, across the yard next door and up the steps. It was incredibly stupid, he told himself as he crossed the six feet to the door. She’d made it clear at the church this afternoon that she wanted nothing further to do with him. He had nothing to say to her. Her husband certainly wouldn’t appreciate him stopping by.

But none of that stopped him from ringing the doorbell or waiting impatiently in the thin glow of the porch light.

Through the curtained side lights that flanked the door, he saw a shadow approach the door. The long moment’s hesitation that followed told him it was Fiona, debating whether to answer the door or leave him standing there like the idiot he was. If asked to guess, he would have put his money on the latter, but he would have been wrong.

She opened the door only halfway and blocked it with her socked foot. Hugging her arms to her chest, she fixed a slightly hostile, mostly blank look on him and waited for him to speak.

“Hi.” Brilliant opening. Worthy of a door slammed in his face. “I was wondering…” About a lot of things, but the growl deep in his stomach gave him a topic to discuss with her. “Where can I get a decent burger around here?”

She looked suspicious of his question, but answered as if it were legitimate. “We have the usual fast food places. The diner downtown might still be open. Randolph’s definitely is, though I don’t know if they have hamburgers on the menu. The Squaw Creek Lodge restaurant, but it’s a bit of a drive.”

“Which one’s your favorite?”

“We like McDonald’s Happy Meals,” she replied with a hint of sarcasm, then grudgingly went on. “The Saloon. It’s a bar downtown that serves greasy burgers with fried onions and a side of heartburn. They’re the best around.”

“Any chance I could persuade you to keep me company while I eat?”

Her eyes darkened, and her mouth thinned into a prissy straight line. “No. None.”

Of course not. What man would want to stay home and baby-sit while his wife went out to the local watering hole with her ex-lover? “I…I just thought maybe we could talk.”

“What could we possibly have to talk about?”

He shrugged awkwardly. “Golda.”

For a moment, she stood motionless. Then she pushed the door up, not quite closing it. Justin wasn’t sure whether she’d changed her mind or was dismissing him, until she returned, wearing shoes and carrying a thick blanket. She slipped outside, closed the door, wrapped the blanket around her, then sat down on the top step.

He stayed where he was a moment. It was twenty degrees, and neither of them was dressed to spend any amount of time outside. Her warm house was a few steps away, and Golda’s was thirty feet away. There was no reason for them to freeze outside.

Except that she obviously didn’t want him inside her house, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be alone with her.

He sat at the opposite end of the same step and rubbed his hands together before sliding them into his coat pockets. As the silence between them extended, he reminded himself that he was supposed to talk about Golda, but he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say—not now, not with Fiona still obviously hostile.

Gazing at the house across the street, brightly lit in the night, he finally asked, “How have you been?”

Fiona slowly turned her head to look at him. He felt it. “You’re a little late asking, aren’t you?” The voice he remembered in his dreams as sweet, warm, tender, was as cold as the frigid air that surrounded them. “You said you wanted to talk about Golda. Do it or leave.”

Now it was her turn to stare across the street while he looked at her. The past six years had left him looking six years older and ten years wearier, but they’d simply left Fiona more beautiful. She’d always been pretty, with her red hair, hazel eyes, freckled nose, fair skin and exceedingly kissable mouth, but now she was lovelier, softer, more desirable, in a womanly sort of way. Was it motherhood that had brought about the change?

Or the man she’d married?

He couldn’t ask. He had no right. She had the dubious honor of being part of the single most important relationship in his entire life. He’d seduced her, and been seduced by her. He’d wanted to marry her, to spend the next fifty years at her side. He’d even imagined himself in love with her—him, a Reed, when everyone knew that Reeds were capable of many emotions, but love was not one of them.

And he had no right to ask her anything. What was wrong with this picture?

Golda, his conscience reminded him when Fiona shifted impatiently on the step. Turning so the railing was at his back, he went straight to the heart of what troubled him most about his aunt. “Did she ever forgive me?”

Chapter 2

Underneath the heavy comforter, Fiona was trembling, but it had nothing to do with the cold. Ask me if I’ll ever forgive you, she wanted to demand. Not in this lifetime. But she wasn’t Golda. She’d loved him in an entirely different way, and while he’d betrayed her, he’d merely neglected Golda. He’d broken Fiona’s heart and cheated his daughter of a father, but he’d deprived Golda of nothing more than a few visits.

Not that he cared if Fiona and Katy ever forgave him. He hadn’t even asked about her, hadn’t shown any interest at all in her existence. For all practical purposes, for him, she didn’t exist.

Someday, if there was any justice in life, he would come to regret the way he’d treated Katy. Someday it would be her turn to walk away from him, to abandon him and make him feel unwanted and unloved.

Fiona hoped she was around to see it.

“What is it you’d wanted her to forgive you for?” she asked. For failing to come and see the woman who’d put her life on hold from time to time to make his a little easier? For putting his own needs ahead of an old woman who loved him dearly and would forgive him anything?

Or for refusing to acknowledge his daughter? Not many people outside her family knew he was Katy’s father, but Golda had known from the instant she’d heard about Fiona’s pregnancy. She’d welcomed her grandniece, and Fiona, too, with all the love and acceptance Justin had refused to offer. She’d made them feel as if they’d mattered.

To him they never had. He’d had his fun—livened up a dull vacation with a steamy affair—and he’d never given a damn how much pain he’d caused. But Golda had.

“I—I didn’t see her as often as I should have. I didn’t write, didn’t call…”

“Oh, gee, so it’s a habit,” she said sarcastically. “And here I thought I’d been singled out for shabby treatment. But you weren’t being cruel. You were just being you.”

It was difficult to tell with so little light, but she thought he might have winced. “Fiona—”

Holding onto the comforter, she stood up and gazed down at him. “She kept pictures of you all over the house. She told everybody how proud she was of her nephew, the ATF agent. She said you were the only Reed besides her that had ever amounted to anything.” She drew a deep breath and unwillingly softened her voice. “She loved the cards you sent, and the flowers on her birthday, and the roses on Mother’s Day. She loved the phone calls, and the postcards, and the little gifts, and every minute of every visit. She loved you.”

After a moment, she went to the door. She turned back to say… What could she say? Clenching her jaw tightly, she went inside, locked the door, then leaned against it for a few deep breaths.

There. Two encounters down. There would be only one more—the reading of the will in Mr. Markham’s office the next day—and Justin would return to Washington. She would never see him again.

The thought should make her happy. It did make her happy. So damned happy she had tears in her eyes.

After a while, she risked a peek out the window just as Justin got into his rental car. He was off to the Saloon, no doubt, where he’d get his burger and probably find a pretty little thing to keep him company while he ate. He might even take her back to Golda’s house, the way he’d once taken Fiona there.

And she didn’t care if he did. He was no longer a part of her life.

He was just a part of her daughter, who was her life.

Draping the comforter over the banister, she climbed the stairs to Katy’s room. Her daughter’s crib had been an antique, handed down through generations of the first family to settle in the Grand Springs area, and her cradle at the shop had come to America from Britain nearly two centuries ago, but her bed these days was a tree house. It filled half her room with one platform in the branches for a bed, another for a reading spot and a third one for a play area. The fat fake trunk had shelves inside to hold toys and books, stuffed squirrels and birds sat on the branches, and the felt leaves formed a canopy that reached up to the blue-sky-studded-with-fluffy-white-clouds ceiling.

It was an extravagance, built by Fiona’s father and decorated by her mother, and it had made Katy the envy of the kindergarten class at Jack and Jill’s Day Care. Fiona had thought it was much too indulgent, but she’d given in. After all, the kids at Jack and Jill’s had teased Katy one time too many about not having a father. Fathers were a dime a dozen—all the teasing kids had them—but there was only one fabulous tree-house bed in all of Colorado, and Katy had it.

Fiona reached through the railing to smooth her daughter’s dark hair from her face. The night-light—a string of white Christmas lights woven through the branches—cast a soft glow on her chubby cheeks, her long lashes, her full mouth. Asleep in an old T-shirt of Fiona’s that slipped off one shoulder and twisted around her sturdy little body, she looked sweet, angelic, so utterly perfect that Fiona’s heart ached.

Whatever sins Justin had committed, whatever lies he’d told, he’d given her the most precious gift she ever could have wished for. She might hate him. She might pray to never see him again. But she owed him her life. She should remember that the next time she talked to him.

In her bed, Katy rolled onto her side and her eyes fluttered open. “Is it time to get up?” Her voice was sleepy, baby soft, and never failed to brighten Fiona’s heart.

“No, babe, not yet. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” In an instant, her eyes closed and she was snoring softly.

Fiona gave her hand a kiss, then wrapped her arm around her favorite teddy bear. Then, with a weary sigh, she returned downstairs, wishing it wasn’t too early for her to go to bed, too. The sooner morning came, the sooner the appointment with Mr. Markham would come, and Justin would leave.

She really wanted Justin to leave.

After picking up the few toys Katy had left on the living room floor and rinsing their supper dishes to stack in the dishwasher, she couldn’t find anything else to do. The nervous energy that had kept her busy at the shop had done the same here at home. Everything was cleaned, polished, vacuumed and laundered within an inch of its life. She fixed a cup of hot cocoa, grabbed the comforter from the stair railing and settled in the living room with all the lights off and the television on, and with a nice view of Golda’s house. Not that she was keeping tabs on Justin, of course.

Though she did notice when he pulled into the driveway about the time she finished her cocoa.

And that he was alone in the car.

And that he hadn’t been gone long enough for anything besides a burger at the Saloon.

He got out of the car, stretched as if he were stiff, then, for a time, simply stood there, gazing first at Golda’s house, then at hers. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the cold, he looked…forlorn.

Sympathy she hadn’t let herself feel for him earlier welled inside her. Maybe Golda hadn’t been a regular part of his life, but she’d been the only person in his entire family to care about him. He’d never had brothers or sisters and apparently hadn’t mattered much to either parent. It was Golda who’d loved him, encouraged him, advised him and was there for him, and now she was gone. He was alone.

Except for Katy, the daughter he’d wanted no part of, just as his own parents had wanted no part of him. It was bad enough that he could ignore her so thoroughly, doubly bad that he could do so when he knew from experience how much it hurt.

Fiona’s sympathy died a quick death, and she resolutely turned away from the window and back to the television. He was alone, but that was his choice.

Let him live with it.

Still on East Coast time, Justin was up early Saturday morning. He finished his usual run before the sun came up, and was showered, dressed and eating breakfast by seven. His appointment with the lawyer wasn’t until eleven, and then he was heading for Denver. Much better to hang around the airport with nothing to do than to stay in Fiona’s territory.

He couldn’t help but notice when he left on his run that her car was still the only one in the driveway. Maybe her husband parked in the garage—not very gentlemanly of him, Golda would have said with a sniff—or they were a one-car family. Maybe he was out of town on business.

Why hadn’t Golda told him she’d gotten married and had a child? he wondered, then immediately answered. Because the one time she’d brought Fiona into the conversation, he’d been defensive and rude. She’d offered her opinion—You owe her an explanation—and he’d responded that it was none of her business. He’d given her two choices—she could talk about Fiona or she could talk to him. She’d chosen him and never mentioned Fiona again.

But it wouldn’t have hurt her to mention something as significant as getting married.

Scowling because he felt like a petulant child, he carried his cereal bowl and spoon to the sink and washed them, then stood there with his coffee, staring out the window. Golda’s yard, always her pride and joy, looked as good as was possible in the middle of winter. The grass was cut short, the flower beds mulched, the rosebushes protected from the cold. Fiona’s backyard had once been as neat, but now there was a swing set firmly planted in the grass, along with toys scattered around.

And a kid.

She was so bundled against the cold that her arms stood out from her sides and her walk was nothing so much as a lumber. Halfway across the yard, she looked back at the house, then yanked off the knitted cap that covered her dark hair. It landed on the grass at her feet. A moment later, the bright yellow mittens followed, and soon the blue parka was on the ground, too. A pair of sweatpants hit next. Wearing jeans, a shirt and a heavy sweater, she skipped to the back third of the yard, where a fleet of toys, a dump truck and bulldozer among them, waited.

From this distance it was impossible to tell whether she resembled her mother at all, though the hair color had definitely come from her father. It would be a shame to have a daughter with Fiona who looked nothing like her. Beauty like that should be passed down through the generations.

Absently rubbing an ache in his chest that had come from nowhere, he watched the girl fill the bulldozer scoop with dirt, empty it into the dump truck, then return for more. After the third load, he was about to turn away when a sharp report broke the quiet and the girl crumpled to the ground.

Apprehension tightening his chest, Justin set his coffee cup down, paying no attention when it slid into the sink, and started for the back door. When he opened the door to the sound of childish screams, he leaped over the steps to the ground and vaulted the chain-link fence into Fiona’s yard.

The girl was curled in a tight ball, wailing for all she was worth. Justin glanced at the hole she’d been digging, caught a glimpse of a green box inside and drops of bright red on the yellowed grass. As he crouched beside her, from the house behind them came a panicked cry.

“Katy? Oh, my God, Katy!”