The Real Father

“Mom, Tommy and Mr. Forrest are going fishing. They invited me along. Is that okay?”

Molly couldn’t miss the glow on her daughter’s face. She hadn’t ever been fishing before—and Liza was an adventurer at heart. She loved nothing better than trying something new.

“What about homework?”

“Just math. I can do it after dinner.” Liza pressed her hands together imploringly. “Mom, please?”

How could anyone resist that smile? And yet, Molly felt herself hesitating—her mind scanning for excuses. The thought of her daughter spending all afternoon with Jackson made her nervous. Suppose he started asking Liza questions? Molly hadn’t prepared Liza—though she’d been perfectly willing to lie herself, her conscience had balked at the idea of rehearsing her daughter in perjury. Liza knew only that her father had died before he’d been able to marry her mother. Molly had promised to tell her all about him when she was a little older. But that information might be enough….

Jackson was no fool.

The Real Father

Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Laura Shin,

who always makes my work so much better.

And who always makes it so much fun.

Dear Reader,

When I was a little girl of three or four, the family lore goes, I climbed comfortably onto my father’s lap and snuggled there for several minutes. But then, chattering happily, I chanced to look up. Openmouthed, I looked again. It wasn’t my father at all. It was my uncle, my father’s identical twin.

Even today, everyone laughs at the memory of my panicked, poleaxed little face. With one violent shove, I wriggled down and fled—not because I didn’t love my uncle, who was a gentle, darling man, but because I had been so thoroughly deceived.

Later I learned that I was just one of many such victims, both innocent and deliberate. Confusion followed wherever they went: “I saw you at dinner the other night,” a wounded friend would complain. “Why didn’t you say hello?” The tales of their early years were legendary—including nights when, midevening, the young men would trade dates, their lady friends never aware of the switch.

And the most amazing case of all… One day, when they were little boys, my uncle Matt ran down the hall and slammed into a full-length mirror. His mother, comforting him, was moved to ask, “But Matt, dear, why on earth did you do that?” To which my uncle replied, “I thought it was Mike, and he ought to get out of the way.”

I felt less foolish when I heard that one. After all, if even they couldn’t tell the difference, how could I?

Perhaps, since I’d been brought up on such wild—and possibly a tiny bit embellished—stories, it was inevitable that someday I would want to explore the plot and character possibilities of twinship.

Jackson and Beau Forrest, the twins at the heart of The Real Father, are purely fictional creations. However, the trials they endure are not, thank goodness, based on any real events in the lives of my father and his brother.

But in building Jackson’s personality—in understanding his guilt, his grief and the intensity of his loss—I did draw on what I had witnessed at home: the love that was more than love, the connection so profound, it approached the mystical, the communication that ran along lines buried much deeper than words.

My father and uncle had the luxury of growing old together. Jackson and Beau did not. As I tried to comprehend what such a loss would mean to an identical twin, as I asked myself how such an emptiness could ever be filled, I realized that it would take more than the perfect heroine.

It would take at least two.

And that’s how I found Molly and Liza Lorring. A landscape architect and her daughter—or the Most Royal Queen and Beauteous Princess of the Planet Cuspian…depending on who you ask. Between them, they’re quite equal to the task of slaying any dragons that might be plaguing a hero.

I hope you enjoy their story.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

HE COULDN’T DECIDE whether to pass out or punch something.

Jackson Forrest hung on to the dresser with the heels of both hands, using its mahogany bulk to keep him standing erect until he made up his mind. He didn’t look into the mirror. The first glimpse of his reflection had shown him two bleary-eyed silhouettes weaving sickeningly in and out of each other, and he’d lowered his head quickly. Right now he couldn’t bear the sight of himself once, much less twice.

Instead he stared at the ring, which lay on the dresser like an accusation, winking aggressively in the lamplight. The Forrest ring. Eighteen-karat gold forged into a pattern of interlocking leaves—the metal so soft and precious, the design so intricate that it was hard to imagine the thing surviving even one owner. Yet it had been worn by every first-born Forrest male since the Civil War.

His brother’s ring.

“Damn you.” He spoke aloud. His voice was husky and slurred. “What a snake you are, Forrest….”

His voice trailed off. Who was he talking to? Beau? Or himself? He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink—it limited his vocabulary. But maybe there wasn’t a word in the entire English language that could sum up the disgust he felt for the both of them tonight.

Clenching his teeth against the stale memory of Michelob, he raised his head. “Jeez,” he muttered to the haunted man that stared back at him. “You are one pitiful son of a bitch.”

The ring winked its golden eye again, and a new wave of nausea rolled over him.

How could he stand it? How could he live with what he’d done? With a slurred curse he swept his hand across the dresser top, sending everything spinning to the floor. Coins, cuff links, keys—they all fell in a discordant metallic jangle along with the ring.

As the noise echoed hollowly through the large, high-ceilinged room, the door opened. Somehow Jackson managed to look up without losing his balance. It was Beau. At the sight of his brother, one lucid fact finally pierced Jackson’s mental fog. He didn’t want to punch something. He wanted to punch somebody.

He wanted to punch Beau.

And he wanted Beau to hit him back. He wanted a fierce, primitive battering that would draw blood or tears or both. He wanted to hurt and be hurt. To punish and be punished. As if that alone could cleanse him now.

But Beau wasn’t interested in Jackson’s fury. He wasn’t even aware of it. He didn’t notice the mess on the floor. He was, as usual, entirely focused on his own emotional state.

Which clearly wasn’t any happier than Jackson’s. Beau slammed the door shut behind him, cursing with a vivid vocabulary that put Jackson’s earlier drunken mumbling to shame. His blond hair was tousled, hanging down over his forehead as if he’d pulled his fingers through it a hundred times. Under the tangled fringe, his green eyes were hard and angry, and the golden tan of his face had darkened to the unmistakable deep bronze of rage.

He looked nothing like the sunny angel he was known far and wide to be. Nothing like the coddled darling, the sweetheart of awestruck little girls in pinafores, sex-crazed cheerleaders in pom-poms, lonely old ladies in blue hair—and everything in between.

He looked almost ugly. And he looked mean. For a piercing instant of self-serving spite, Jackson wished that Molly could see Beau now, like this, with his true nature stamped on every feature.

But he mustn’t think about Molly. He needed to clear his head. He needed to find out what had made Beaumont Forrest, his beloved twin brother, the elder by fifteen minutes and the favorite by a country mile, so furious that he forgot to be charming.

What if he had found out—?

But no. Jackson rubbed his eyes, trying to adjust his vision, which was still offering him double images. Beau couldn’t have found out anything, not this soon. That was just Jackson’s guilty conscience working overtime. Might as well get used to it. He had the sick feeling that he was going to be living with a guilty conscience for the rest of his life.

Beau shoved Jackson aside and began yanking open the dresser drawers.

“Where the hell are my keys?” Beau tossed clothes roughly as he dug through stacks of neatly folded T-shirts and jeans, turning pockets inside out. “I know I put them in this goddamn room somewhere.”

“God, Beau. Chill.” Denied the support of the dresser, Jackson sat on the edge of Beau’s four-poster bed, hunching over, hands dangling between his knees. “What’s got you in such a lather?” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Something go wrong? Did your bimbo du jour fail to show up for the fun?”

Beau didn’t even turn around. “Shut up, Jack,” he growled, slamming one drawer and wrenching open the next. “I’m not in the mood for any of your crap right now.”

Jackson’s inner radar began to pulse. Being an identical twin meant that you heard things no one else could hear, felt things no one else could sense. Something was wrong. Really wrong. This wasn’t just another of Beau’s sulks. This was trouble.

“What’s the matter, Beau?” He stood, ignoring the dizzying nausea as best he could. “Is it Molly?”

“To hell with Molly.” Beau shoved the drawer shut violently and kicked at the dresser in frustration. He spun around and turned his savage gaze on his brother. “Damn you, Jackson. If you’ve got the keys to my car, you’d better cough them up pronto.”

He was losing control. Jackson could feel the blood pounding in Beau’s throat, at his temples, behind his eyes—just as if it were happening to him. He took two steps forward, reaching for the edge of the dresser. “They’re on the floor—”

With an ugly oath, Beau lunged toward the fallen keys.

“Where are you going?” Jackson’s nerves were tingling with a nameless dread. He suddenly wished he had hidden the keys. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m getting out of here, that’s what. If that tramp thinks she’s going to ruin my life, she’s got another think coming.”

Jackson tried to shake the Michelob from his brain. “Who? Molly?”

Beau’s face was frightening. “Molly? Hell, Jack. Get real. Who gives a damn about that frigid little bitch?” He moved toward the door.

Jackson followed on legs that seemed to be made from something numb and wobbling. “Beau, wait. Why don’t you let me drive?”

Beau didn’t even bother to answer. And Jackson knew it was a ridiculous suggestion. Beau might be deranged with fury, but Jackson was so drunk he probably couldn’t get the car out of the front drive without climbing an oak tree. Still, every instinct was screaming for him to stop his brother. He lurched down the stairs, keeping Beau’s retreating back just barely in sight.

When he reached the low-slung red sports car that sat waiting in the moonlit drive, Beau had already ground the engine to snarling life. There was no time to waste. Jackson vaulted over the convertible’s closed door and dropped onto the black leather seat. For a long, tense moment, he met his twin’s furious gaze with an unyielding stare. Beau could breathe fire if he wanted to. Jackson wasn’t getting out.

Finally Beau looked away. He jammed the car into reverse, gears screaming, and backed out of the drive at a mad, blind tear. At the front gate, he swung the wheel, sending the car into a sliding spin that somehow ended up facing the road.

After that there was only hissing wind, blue moonlight and the silent madness of breakneck speed. Neither of them spoke a word as the little car tore through the empty streets of downtown Demery. Stop signs, stoplights, sharp curves—nothing slowed Beau’s fury. Jackson watched quaint storefronts and stately homes streak by like bleeding paint on an Impressionist canvas. He wondered how much fuel was in the tank, hoping that Beau would run out of gas before he ran out of luck.

They nicked a curb, jolting every bone in Jackson’s body. If Jackson had hoped that the potent cocktail of sheer danger and mute fear would drain the rage from his brother’s heart, he’d been deluding himself. Beau seemed to grow more inflamed with every wild mile. The streets grew narrower, less carefully cultivated. They weren’t far now from Annie Cheatwood’s house. The dread in Jackson’s body began to take a clear and terrible shape.

“Beau,” he called over roar of the engine. “Beau, knock it off. You’re going to kill us both.”

But Beau didn’t hear him. Or wouldn’t hear him. Eyes narrowed against the wind, he steered the car grimly, his foot never lifting from the accelerator. Jackson watched him, strangely hypnotized, and he thought he saw Beau’s lips form a word.

“Bitch,” he seemed to say. And then over and over, “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

Jackson turned his gaze back to the road just a fraction of a second too late. With a cold horror he saw the statue flying toward them, like something out of a bad dream, a fifteen-foot marble monster suddenly coming alive and hurtling toward the little car.

“Beau!” Jackson grabbed the wheel and shoved it desperately to the left, though he knew it was hopeless. Nothing could stop the insane advance of the statue, the figure of a Civil War general that stood in dignified sentry in the center of Milton Square, a sweet, civilized plot of land at the edge of town.

Beau was clawing at the wheel, too, finally aware of their danger. But even the combined strength of their young, athletic bodies could not wrench the car free of the relentless, magnetic pull of the statue.

Metal exploded against marble. Bone crushed against chrome. Steel ripped through leather and flesh.

And for Beau and Jackson Forrest, twenty-two years old, the world went black and ended.

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT A DELIGHTFUL little girl your daughter is, Ms. Lorring.”

Janice Kilgore, vice principal at Radway School, was beaming. Even her dense network of freckles seemed to glow. “She’s so easy with the other children. She fits in beautifully here, don’t you think?”

Molly nodded, not wanting to spoil Miss Kilgore’s pleasure by pointing out that Liza usually fit in comfortably wherever she went. The other woman naturally preferred to believe it was some magic chemistry provided by her exclusive private school. It would help to justify the exorbitant tuition she was going to have to discuss with Molly later on.

Besides, Miss Kilgore’s enthusiasm was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that Liza came recommended by Miss Lavinia Forrest of Everspring Plantation. In Demery, South Carolina, population fifteen thousand, the Forrests reigned supreme. Forrest children, including Miss Lavinia, had attended Radway for three generations.

Still, Liza’s bright, uninhibited smile was quite a recommendation all its own.

Molly looked across Radway’s large, well-equipped playground now, drawing comfort from the sight of her daughter. Liza’s smile had brought sunshine into some of the darkest days of Molly’s life.

Liza hadn’t noticed her mother and Miss Kilgore standing at the fringe of the playground. She was busy hoisting a smaller child onto a swing. Both little girls giggled as Liza lowered the safety bar, gave the child a push and then stood back, her wispy blond hair flying in the February wind, her cheeks as red as her winter coat.

The coat was getting too short, Molly noticed absently. Liza’s legs seemed to stretch by inches every day. It was impossible to keep her in clothes that fit. Her lurching growth spurts seemed to promise that she would be dramatically tall and slim.

Just like her father.

“What a cutie,” Miss Kilgore said, sighing. “You must be very proud of her.”

Molly didn’t answer right away, struggling to subdue the absurd tightness that had overtaken her vocal cords at the sight of Liza’s long, coltish legs.

The answer was easy, if only she’d been able to control her voice enough to speak it. Yes, Molly was proud. These past nine years—first struggling as a frightened teenage mother to bring up her newborn daughter alone, then going to school at night, and finally piecing together a career and a business as a landscape architect—had been almost unimaginably difficult.

Some nights she’d been so lonely she’d talked to the walls. Some days she’d been so tired she wanted to cry. But she hadn’t wept. She had endured it, all of it. She had fought the odds, and she had won.

And Liza made it all worthwhile. Her little girl was smart, sweet, amazingly courageous. She was everything Molly had hoped she’d be. Everything Molly herself had not been—not at nine, not at nineteen, not ever. Not even now, at almost twenty-nine. For Molly, the daughter of a resentful, alcoholic father, being brave was still very much a decision, not an instinct.

So how could Molly help being proud? She had taken her one small talent, a gift for growing things, and she had turned it into a career so successful that she and her daughter wanted for nothing.

Well, nothing but a new coat. She blew Liza a kiss and made a mental note to buy her the most beautiful red coat in all of South Carolina.

“She’s a fantastic kid,” Molly said finally, turning back to Miss Kilgore. To heck with false modesty. She let her joy in her daughter break through in a wide smile. “I consider myself very, very lucky.”

“You are. Believe me, they’re not all like that.” Miss Kilgore seemed to have been born with a smile on her face, and she directed her dimpled grin toward Molly. “Would you like to see the rest of the school? The music rooms? The science lab? The swimming pool?” She held out her hands, palms up in refreshing candor. “How can I impress you, Ms. Lorring? I have to admit, I’d love to see Liza at Radway.”

“Call me Molly. And I’m already impressed.”

“Fantastic. I’m Jan. Tommy Cheatwood! Stop that! Put Peggy down this instant!”

Molly was momentarily bewildered, until she realized that Janice Kilgore’s practiced gaze had been scanning the playground even as she wooed and flattered her new candidate. An impish, gap-toothed boy in the corner was holding on to a small, squealing girl’s ankles, guiding her around like a human wheelbarrow.

For one intense moment his blond hair and green eyes, his irreverent grin, his animal pleasure in his mischief, reminded her forcibly of the Forrest twins. Well, Jackson Forrest, perhaps. Beau had never looked quite that cocky and defiant.

At the sound of his teacher’s voice, Tommy looked over, grimaced, and let go, plopping Peggy into the sand without ceremony. His face sobered, and the fleeting impression disappeared. Molly breathed again.

Jan rolled her eyes and turned back to Molly. “So you’re impressed. Good. Now before one of my beloved monsters does something to turn you off, shall we just move right along to the ceremonial signing of the contract?”

Molly shook her head. “It’s a little early for that,” she said, smiling.

Jan sighed, her cheerful face coming as close to somber as her snub nose and freckles would allow. “Already heard about the tuition, have you? I know it’s a heart stopper, but we’re not offering just snob appeal here, Molly. We can give Liza the education she deserves. Even tossing aside the sales pitch, we really are the best.”

“I believe you.” And she did. Molly had been born here in Demery. She’d grown up here. There weren’t many social, political, economic or even academic nuances that she didn’t grasp. Jan wasn’t exaggerating: If you lived in Demery, Radway School was the best.

But that was the catch. If you lived in Demery. At the moment, Molly and Liza lived in Atlanta. Even if she accepted the Everspring restoration job, she would be here only a couple of months.

“It’s not the tuition,” Molly explained. “My plans are really still up in the air. I haven’t even committed yet to taking the job.”

Janice looked confused. “But when Miss Forrest called, she said…she seemed to think it was all settled.”

“I know.” Molly could well imagine how Lavinia Forrest would have made it sound. Lavinia wanted Molly to do the landscape renovations at Everspring Plantation, and Lavinia was so accustomed to getting what she wanted that she probably considered the whole thing a done deal.

And truthfully, the contract was so lucrative, the benefits so generous, that only a fool would have wasted a single second before leaping up to sign on the dotted line.

Maybe that’s what she was, Molly thought. A fool. But she wouldn’t be rushed into this decision. Once, ten years ago, she had allowed herself to be pressured into doing something foolish, something she knew in her heart was wrong. The consequences had been staggering, life altering.

The consequence had been motherhood.

On the day she had learned she was pregnant, while she sat on that cold, metal examination table with her tears barely dried on her cheeks, she had made a promise to herself. She had vowed that no one would ever again force her to act against her own judgment.

Beginning in that frightened moment, with grim, blind determination she had taken control of her life and Liza’s. She wasn’t about to turn over the reins now.

Lavinia would have to wait. There was something Molly had to do before she could commit to this project. Something she had to know about herself—and about exactly how far she had come in the past ten years.

Had she come far enough that it was now safe to come full circle? To come home?

“I’m meeting Lavinia in a few minutes,” Molly explained, wishing in spite of herself that she could take that disappointment from Janice Kilgore’s face. “I think she said you wouldn’t mind letting Liza stay with your class, just for an hour or so?”

Jan’s grin broke through. “You know I’d love it. Look at her with the little ones. Why, it’s as good as having another teacher’s aide.” She chuckled. “A great deal better than our last one, who liked to sneak off and smoke cigars in the closet.”

Molly picked her way across the winter-brown field of laughing, twirling, seesawing children to kiss Liza goodbye. As she breathed in the fresh, soapy scent of her daughter, enveloping her in a long bear hug, she assured the little girl that she’d be back very soon. As usual, Liza nodded with untroubled acceptance, quite content to be left in her new surroundings.

As Molly headed toward her waiting rental car, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Liza was fine. Her confidence was a gift, and Molly didn’t want to undermine it by communicating insecurity. It was just that Molly’s own childhood had been quite different. She had dreaded new places and strange people, sensing that the world was unpredictable. She had always felt just one slippery step from some nameless disaster.

Living with a family like hers could do that to a person.

Molly knew that Liza sometimes longed for a daddy—and the knowledge often filled her with a sense of failure. But then she reminded herself of the truth she’d learned so long ago, listening to the sound of her father’s drunken rages: No father was a thousand times better than a bad one.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Molly stood in a churchyard, tightly gripping a velvety cluster of deep-purple pansies. The cemetery was only five miles east of Radway School by car. Emotionally it might as well have been in another world.