Faith, Hope and Family

Deborah had been told several times that four-year-old Isabelle was the image of herself at the same age. She’d never known exactly how to respond to the observation, though she acknowledged the family resemblance. Dark-haired, green-eyed Gideon was the only one of Stuart McCloud’s four offspring who hadn’t inherited their father’s bright blue eyes and golden hair. Despite common acceptance that dark hair and eyes tended to be dominant, Deborah had never been surprised that Stuart’s genes had been as forceful and assertive as his personality. Nor did it seem odd to her that Gideon had been the one who was different even from conception.

She stepped toward Caitlin when Lenore moved away to speak to Isabelle. “I’m very sorry about your mother.”

Caitlin squeezed Deborah’s hand. “Thank you. I said goodbye to my mother a long time ago, of course, but I’ll still miss my weekly visits with her at the nursing home, even if I doubt she ever knew I was there.”

“Maybe she was aware you were there, but just couldn’t let you know.”

“Maybe some part of her did know me. It was that possibility that kept me going back every week.”

Nathan slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’ll be back in town in a few days,” he told Deborah. “I hope we’ll be able to spend a little time together before you take off again.”

Family was extremely important to Nathan. Deborah knew that if it were up to him, he would keep everyone nearby where he could personally make sure they were all safe and happy. He would never fully understand Deborah’s need to keep moving, content to live almost anywhere except the town where they had grown up.

Fifteen minutes later, Nathan and Caitlin were on their way. Thinking she would spend most of the day in the study with some correspondence and paperwork she needed to deal with, leaving Lenore and Isabelle to entertain each other, Deborah turned toward her mother. Lenore was checking her watch.

“I’ll need to leave in ten minutes or I’ll be late for my meeting,” she said before Deborah could speak. “Isabelle, dear, I’ll be out for a couple of hours, but you’ll be fine here with Deborah.”

Deborah cleared her throat somewhat loudly. “Um, Mother—”

“There’s no need for you to worry about cooking lunch,” Lenore rushed on, seemingly oblivious to the silent signals her daughter was trying to send her. “I’ll pick up something on the way home.”

“But, Mother—”

“I really must go,” Lenore said firmly, her expression making it clear that she had received Deborah’s signals but wasn’t letting them deter her from her plans. “I’m the chair of this committee, and this is a very important meeting. Since you’re here, anyway, there’s really no reason you can’t keep an eye on your sister for a couple of hours.”

All too aware that Isabelle was watching the exchange with wide eyes and a somber expression, Deborah forced a faint smile. “Okay, sure,” she conceded. “We’ll be fine here during your meeting, won’t we, Isabelle?”

The child nodded. “I’ll be good, Nanna,” she promised.

Lenore lightly patted the little girl’s head. “I know you will, dear. You always are.” And then she pointed a finger at Deborah. “You be good, too.”

Isabelle giggled.

Deborah gave another stiff smile. “I’ll certainly try.”

It seemed very quiet in Lenore’s house after her whirlwind departure. Deborah glanced at the little girl gazing expectantly back at her and wondered what on earth she was supposed to do now.

How had this happened? She’d come here to attend her brother’s wedding and then spend a few days with her mother. She had certainly never planned on this!

“So, um, what do you usually do on Saturdays?” she asked.

Isabelle shrugged. “Different things. We shop or go to movies or to the playground. Sometimes we go to the dog store.”

“The, um, dog store?”

Isabelle nodded, golden curls bobbing. “To buy things for Fluffy-Spike, our dog. He’s a bichon. Mrs. T. is going to feed him until Nate and Caitlin get back home.”

Deborah knew who Mrs. T. was—the indispensable Fayrene Tuckerman, who served as housekeeper, cook and daytime nanny in Nathan’s busy household. But… “Did you say Fluffy-Spike?”

Isabelle giggled again. “I wanted to name him Fluffy and Nate kept calling him Spike because he thought it was a funny name for a little white dog, so now we call him Fluffy-Spike. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

It was the sort of name one would expect for a dog belonging to Nathan, Deborah thought with a shake of her head. Her impulsive and often irrepressible eldest brother had rarely been accused of being predictable. He’d taken his little sister into his home as casually and impetuously as he had the recently adopted dog.

Isabelle had always called her older brother Nate. Lenore had told Deborah that there had been some discussion prior to Nathan’s wedding of Isabelle calling Caitlin and Nathan Mom and Dad, since they would be raising her as their own, but that hadn’t felt right to any of them. They had finally decided there was no reason Isabelle shouldn’t call her brother and sister-in-law by their first names, though she was expected to obey them with the same respect she would have given her own parents.

It would be a casual, laughter-filled household, Deborah predicted. And yet there would be order, thanks to the briskly efficient housekeeper and to Caitlin, who was much more structured and organized than Nathan. Still, Deborah had been rather surprised by how well Nathan had adjusted to parenthood. He definitely indulged Isabelle, but stopped short of outright spoiling her. Deborah had heard him speak firmly to his little sister on a couple of rare occasions when she had needed correcting.

Deborah had no such confidence in her own child-care skills. She didn’t have a clue what to do with the kid for the rest of the morning, for example.

Gossip traveled quickly through Honesty, and Dylan heard most of it courtesy of his aunt Myra, wife of his uncle, Owen Smith, the town’s police chief. Myra could hardly wait to phone Dylan with the news that Nathan and Caitlin McCloud had been called out of town, leaving Lenore and Deborah to watch little Isabelle. Rumor had it that Deborah was baby-sitting that day while Lenore went about her usual busy Saturday schedule.

“I’m surprised Deborah agreed,” Myra added. “She never forgave her father, you know, and most folks said she was pretty mad at her brother for bringing that little girl back here.”

Dylan had no intention of discussing Deborah or her family with his aunt, who was well aware of the history between them. “Was there anything else you needed from me? Because I go back on duty in an hour and I—”

“No, that was all.” Myra sounded disappointed that he hadn’t risen to her gossip bait. “I just thought you would want to know what’s going on with Deborah.”

“It’s really none of my business. I lost interest in the McClouds a long time ago, Aunt Myra.”

It was a bald-faced lie, of course, he mused as he replaced the receiver in its cradle a few moments later. Though he’d made a massive effort to get over her, Deborah was the one McCloud who still interested him very much.

Not that he intended to do anything about it. Only a fool would deliberately stick his hand into the fire a second time.

Chapter Two

“…And my teacher’s name is Ms. Montgomery, and I like her because she’s nice. My best friends this week are Tiffany and Benjamin. Benjamin got lost in the woods at Cooper’s Park for a long time, but Officer Smith found him. Danny made fun of Benjamin for getting lost and made him cry. I don’t like Danny and Bryson because they’re mean to me. They said my daddy was a bad man, but Nate and Gideon told me not to pay any attention to them.”

Her fingers clenched around her coffee mug, Deborah gazed at the child on the other side of the kitchen table with somewhat stunned fascination. Isabelle had spent the last fifteen minutes eating an entire orange without pausing once in a seemingly endless monologue about her life in Honesty. Deborah had a hard time following everything Isabelle said—even though she had long since figured out that the only response required was an occasional nod or murmured “mm-hmm”—but that last comment grabbed her attention.

“Who said what about your father?”

Licking a drop of orange juice from her lips, Isabelle answered easily, “Danny and Bryson, mostly Danny. He doesn’t say it much anymore because Miss Thelma said he had to miss playtime every time he talks about my daddy. Gideon told Miss Thelma to make Danny stop saying bad things about my daddy,” she added.

“Um, Gideon did that?” Deborah hadn’t realized Gideon had ever gotten involved at Isabelle’s school. After all, Nathan was officially Isabelle’s guardian.

Isabelle nodded. “It was when Nate and Caitlin were gone on their honeymoon and Nanna’s sister got hurt so I had to stay with Gideon. I told him Danny said mean things about my daddy and he made me cry, and Gideon got really mad and he went to my school and talked to Miss Thelma and now Danny leaves me alone. Mostly.”

Deborah tried to picture the confrontation between her tactless, blunt-spoken brother and the equally forceful and intimidating owner of Miss Thelma’s Preschool. It must have been quite a showdown, but she wasn’t surprised that Gideon had accomplished his goal.

Realizing that Isabelle was studying her gravely from across the table, she asked, “What is it?”

“Gideon said my daddy wasn’t really a bad man, but some people got mad at him when he married my mommy and moved to California.”

Deborah frowned at her coffee cup, wondering what the child expected her to say. Obviously, Gideon had been trying to soothe Isabelle’s feelings about her late father and he seemed to have done so with more sensitivity than Deborah would have expected from him. After all, Gideon had been estranged from their father for several years before Stuart’s ultimate betrayal of the family. Like Deborah, he’d had no contact with Stuart during the three years before Stuart and his second wife died.

As for herself, Deborah had never talked to anyone about what her father had done to the family or her feelings about his death and she had no intention of starting now, with Isabelle. “You can always believe Gideon,” she said instead. “He says exactly what he thinks.”

“I know.” Isabelle wiped her sticky hands on a paper napkin. “I saw some pictures of you with my daddy when you were little. Nanna showed them to me. She said I looked just like you when you were little. I liked the picture of you sitting on Daddy’s shoulders. You were laughing and you had a red balloon. You know that one?”

The muscles in Deborah’s face felt stiff when she nodded and replied somewhat curtly, “Yes, I know the one you mean.”

She could picture the photograph as clearly as if it were sitting in front of her—herself at five or six, blond hair in pigtails, her expression pure joy as she rode her handsome, golden-haired father’s wide, solid shoulders. He had been a god to her then, and she his little princess. Workaholic that he’d been, those leisurely family fun days had been rare and she had treasured every brief moment.

He had spent so little time with his first family, his days filled with business and the demands of his active political involvement. Yet he hadn’t been too busy to start an affair with a young campaign volunteer even during his run for the governor’s office, and Deborah had heard that he’d been a devoted husband and father to his second family. Rumor had it that the tragic vacation in Mexico had been the first time he and his second wife had spent any time away from their then three-year-old daughter.

Was it any wonder Deborah hadn’t been enthused about having Isabelle become an integral part of her life? She didn’t blame the child for their father’s sins, but she couldn’t help being reminded of them every time she saw a reflection of her own childhood innocence in the little girl’s uncomfortably familiar face.

She glanced at the kitchen clock, wondering how much longer it would be before Lenore returned home. She couldn’t take much more of this salt-in-old-wounds conversation with Isabelle. “Aren’t there any TV cartoons you like on Saturday mornings?” she asked, seizing on the first distraction that popped into her head.

Isabelle shrugged. “We’re usually too busy on Saturdays to watch TV.”

“Oh. Well, since we’re not particularly busy today, why don’t you go see what’s on? Mother should be home soon, and maybe she’ll have something planned for you this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Isabelle stood obligingly. “You want to come watch TV with me?”

“No, thanks. I have some things to do. Just, uh, don’t watch anything inappropriate.”

When Isabelle gave her a puzzled look, Deborah added, “Watch kid shows, okay? Cartoons or ‘Sesame Street’ or something like that.”

As if she knew what kid shows were on TV these days, she thought as Isabelle left the room. None of her friends had children. Isabelle was the only child Deborah actually knew personally and theirs could hardly be described as a close relationship.

She stood to set her coffee cup in the dishwasher and throw away the peel from Isabelle’s orange. She hoped her mother would be home soon.

Fate had not been very kind lately about granting Deborah’s wishes. Lenore was detained by a crisis in her club that kept her busy for hours, leaving Deborah responsible for Isabelle for the entire afternoon.

Faced with trying to entertain the child herself for several hours or to let someone else do the entertaining, Deborah opted for the latter. “Why don’t we eat a quick sandwich for lunch and then catch the Saturday matinee at the movie theater?” she suggested.

She wouldn’t have to try to carry on a conversation with a four-year-old in a movie theater. Even if the film was completely inane, it seemed preferable to an entire afternoon of being studied by Isabelle’s curious blue eyes. A couple of hours in a quiet, dark theater seemed very appealing to her just then; she could use the time to consider her options for her future.

It had been a very long time since she had attended a children’s movie matinee.

A handful of popcorn hit her in the side of the head before the film even started. What seemed to be a full battalion of ear-splittingly noisy preadolescents dashed up and down the aisles, squealing and spilling sodas and snacks. Someone’s cell phone played the “William Tell Overture” in lieu of a ring, and a couple of babies wailed. Deborah shook her head in disbelief, wondering who’d bring either to a movie theater.

Seemingly accustomed to the chaos, Isabelle sat quietly in her seat beside Deborah, sipping orange soda and delicately munching her popcorn. Okay, Deborah thought, so the child was as well-behaved as Lenore boasted. That didn’t mean Deborah wanted to spend any more afternoons baby-sitting.

The audience settled down—though only slightly—when the lights dimmed and the feature began. Just as Deborah resigned herself to watching animated animals singing and dancing for the next couple of hours, a few stragglers entered the theater, taking the empty seats in front of Deborah and Isabelle. The woman directly in front of Deborah was of average size, but the one who planted herself in front of Isabelle was very large and wore her hair in a high-teased bouffant that would have been stylish several decades earlier. Isabelle might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

“I can’t see,” she complained to Deborah, straining upward in her seat.

The rest of the theater was full; apparently, this was the premier of a highly anticipated family feature. “Switch seats with me,” Deborah suggested in a stage whisper. “Maybe you can see better here.”

The swap was accomplished easily enough, but it didn’t make a difference. “I still can’t see,” Isabelle informed her, and this time her tone edged close to a whine. “Can I sit on your lap? Please? Nate lets me when I can’t see.”

The large woman with the big hair threw them a stern look over her shoulder, accompanied by a hiss that let them know she wanted them to be quiet. Deborah bit her lip to hold in a remark that would have accomplished nothing but ill will.

“Stand up,” she instructed Isabelle quietly. “We’ll sit in that chair, since the view is less obstructed there.”

She didn’t bother to whisper the latter words. She was forced to find her small satisfactions where she could, she told herself as she returned to her former seat and helped Isabelle climb onto her knees.

“That’s better,” Isabelle whispered. “Thank you.”

“Glad to oblige,” Deborah muttered. And prepared herself for an uncomfortable couple of hours rather than the peaceful interlude she had envisioned at the start of this outing.

Dylan figured that everyone deserved a small vice or two. His was ice cream. His favorite flavor was butter pecan, but he occasionally indulged a craving for rocky road or strawberry. Most folks who knew him well were aware that he could often be found at the popular ice-cream parlor next to the mall Cineplex when he was on a break from duty.

The mall was predictably crowded on this nice Saturday afternoon in late May. Dylan was lucky to claim a small table in one corner of the ice-cream parlor just as a group of giggly teenagers abandoned it.

He had lived in this area for most of his life and had a highly visible job, so he knew quite a few of the other patrons. He greeted them with nods and waves before diving into his treat—a double scoop of butter pecan.

As he spooned a second bite of ice cream into his mouth, he thought of the only lawbreaker he had apprehended the night before. Deborah McCloud. He hadn’t been prepared for that late-night encounter or for the flood of memories of other, more intimate midnight meetings between them.

Those memories had been haunting him ever since. It had been seven years, damn it. They’d been little more than kids when they broke up; he’d been barely twenty-three and Deborah had just turned twenty. You’d think he’d have put it behind him by now. God knew he had tried.

Yet all it took was one brief encounter with her to have him wanting her again.

He might have come a long way in the past seven years in a lot of respects, but when it came to Deborah McCloud, he was still an idiot.

A girlish shriek somewhere behind him drew his attention away from his ice cream. He turned just in time to catch the little blond rocket who launched herself into his arms.

“Hi, Officer Smith,” she said, hugging him fiercely. “Where have you been?”

He chuckled as he returned the hug, then set the little girl on her feet in front of him. “Princess Isabelle. Aren’t you looking pretty today in your royal purple?”

She patted her hair and preened a bit, showing off the purple knit T-shirt dress she wore with white socks and sneakers. “It’s new,” she confided.

“Very nice. But where’s your tiara?”

She giggled. “I left it at home today.”

“Ah. Traveling incognito this afternoon?”

“In…cog…?” She frowned in confusion. She was very bright for four, but that was a new word for her.

“Incognito,” he repeated clearly. “Sort of means that you aren’t calling attention to yourself.”

“Oh.” She smiled again. “I’m in-cob-neat-o.”

“Close enough.” He’d assumed she was there with Lenore McCloud, since he knew her guardians were out of town. Looking away from the child’s beaming face, he was caught by surprise to find Deborah scowling at him over her little half sister’s golden curls. “Oh. Hello.”

Deborah looked a bit frazzled, he decided, trying to study her objectively. Her dark-blond shoulder-length hair was tousled, and there was a popcorn kernel stuck in a strand at the back. What might have been the beginnings of a tension headache had carved little V-shaped lines between her intriguingly winged dark brows.

It looked as though some dark liquid had splattered one leg of the jeans she wore with a thin, dark, scoop-necked sweater. When she moved to one side of Isabelle, he thought she dragged one foot a little, as though her leg had gone to sleep and was just tingling painfully back to life.

She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

Isabelle gazed upward. “Deborah, do you know Officer Smith?”

“Yes. I wasn’t aware that you knew him so well.”

“He’s one of my best grown-up friends,” Isabelle replied happily. “Adrienne likes him, too, and so does Caitlin. And Gideon and Nate are being nice to him now because I told them to.”

“I see.”

It was obvious to Dylan that Deborah didn’t at all see how he had suddenly become so friendly with her brothers, with whom he had a long history of animosity. Actually, friendly was a bit too warm a word to describe his new truce with her brothers, but he liked both her sisters-in-law. As a matter of fact, he and Gideon’s literary-agent bride, Adrienne, had recently signed a business contract together, something he had no intention of mentioning just then.

As far as Dylan knew, Deborah hadn’t been told that Dylan and her newest sister-in-law were now professional associates. Deborah didn’t even know he had any aspirations other than being a small-town cop, working for his uncle, the police chief. He’d just as soon leave it that way for now.

“Deborah took me to the movie,” Isabelle said, clinging to Dylan’s knee. “A lady with big hair sat in front of me and I couldn’t see, so I had to sit in Deborah’s lap the whole time, and there was a baby who kept crying, and the boy beside us jumped up to cheer when the good guys won and he spilled his soda on Deborah’s leg. It was fun.”

Dylan knew better than to laugh, but it was a close call as he eyed Deborah’s expression. He sincerely doubted that she would have described the experience as fun. “It was very nice of your sister to bring you to the theater,” he said to Isabelle.

“Yes. And she’s going to buy ice-cream cones because I told her Nate always buys ice cream when we come to the movies.”

“Yes, well, we’d better let Officer Smith finish his own ice cream before it melts,” Deborah said, avoiding Dylan’s eyes.

Dylan hadn’t realized quite how much Isabelle resembled Deborah until a very familiar, very stubborn look crossed the little girl’s face. “I want to talk to him.”

“We need to get home soon,” Deborah countered. “Mother will want to see you when she gets home from her meeting.”

“I’m staying with my nanna because Caitlin’s mommy went to heaven, like my mommy and daddy did,” Isabelle informed Dylan.

He spoke gently. “Yes, I heard.”

“Will you come visit me at Nanna’s house?”

Not a good idea, he thought with a glance at Deborah’s forbidding expression. “I’m pretty busy with work right now, Princess Isabelle. But I’ll visit you soon.”

Her lower lip protruded a bit. “Deborah, tell Officer Smith he can come visit us. Maybe he could have dinner with us?”

What might have been consternation darkened Deborah’s blue eyes. “Oh, I…”

Letting her off the hook, Dylan focused on Isabelle when he said, “I have to work tonight, Isabelle. But I promise I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Isabelle didn’t appear at all satisfied, but she finally nodded her head. “Okay.”

Looking relieved now, Deborah reached down to take her little sister’s hand. “Let’s order our ice cream before the line gets too long.”

“’Bye, Officer Smith.”

“’Bye, princess. Nice to see you, as always, Deborah,” he added dryly.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” she returned, her voice chilly enough to refreeze his melting ice cream.

What kind of fool, he wondered as they moved away, carried a seven-year-old torch for a woman who could hardly stand to look at him?

A chance glimpse at the decorative wall mirror across the room gave him his answer.

He was that kind of fool.

Going to the movie had seemed like such a good idea at the time, Deborah mused as she combed her tangled hair, scowling at the popcorn kernel that fell to the floor. How could she have known what an ordeal it would become?