don’t you forget it,” his wife warned.
* * *
Solitude was overrated.
Three days of it and Jack felt like he was suffocating. Quiet. Too much damn quiet. He kept seeing Rita’s ghost in the penthouse. He heard her laugh. He caught her scent in the guest room she’d used and ached for her in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible.
It was worse somehow, knowing that she was in Utah. Jack hadn’t really believed Cass when she told him that Rita had left the damn state. So he’d driven to Seal Beach, walked past the bakery and got a chill when he saw the closed sign on the door.
He’d driven her off and she’d actually left. He should be happy. Instead, he felt...hollowed out. Like a shell of the man he used to be. At that thought, he imagined what Rita would say to it and he could almost hear her. Whose fault is that, Jack? Who keeps running away from life?
Shaking his head free of irritating thoughts and reminders of all he’d lost, Jack turned his attention back to the stack of papers waiting for his signature. He’d been spending more time than usual in the office because it beat the hell out of being alone in the penthouse with too many memories.
“I’ll get over it. Hell,” he murmured, scrawling his name along the bottom of a contract, “she’ll get over it.”
“Mr. Buchanan?” Linda stood just inside the open door to his office.
“What is it?”
“Marketing reports The Sea Queen is now sold-out.”
“Good. Great.” The cruise liner would be a huge success, one more feather in the Buchanan family cap and Jack couldn’t have cared less. “Is there anything else?”
“Just one thing.” Linda stepped back, a smirk on her face and Rita sailed past her into the room.
The door closed behind her, but Jack hardly noticed. All he could see was her. That amazing hair of hers was a tumble of dark curls. Her eyes were sizzling. She wore black slacks, a lime-green shirt that clung to the mound of her belly and a white linen jacket over the shirt. Black sandals were on her feet and her toenails were a bright purple.
He’d never seen anything more gorgeous in his life.
Standing up behind his desk, he curbed the urge to go to her and grab hold of her. He’d done the right thing and he wasn’t going to backtrack now. “Rita. I thought you were in Utah.”
She tipped her head to one side and gave him a cool glare. “Hoping I’d stay so far away you’d never have to think about me again?”
“No.” There was nothing on this earth that could keep him from thinking about her. “I just—”
“I didn’t come to chat, Jack,” she said, cutting him off as she dug into the oversize black tote slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a large manila envelope and handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“It’s an ultrasound picture of your daughter.”
His eyes widened, his jaw dropped and his fingers tightened on the envelope. “I thought you didn’t want to know what the baby is.”
“Turns out,” she said, “surprises aren’t as much fun as I used to think they were.”
Okay, he knew that was a dig for the way he’d ended things between them. And fine, she was due a fair share of hits. He could take it. Then what she’d said suddenly hit him.
“A daughter?”
“Yes,” she said, and clutched her fingers around the handle of her bag. “It’s a girl. And I wanted you to know.”
“Thanks for that...”
“I didn’t do it to be nice, Jack,” she said, interrupting him. “I came here to tell you that I’m not running away. I’m not you. I don’t hide.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Call it whatever you want to,” she said, voice tight. “It amounts to the same thing.”
Sunlight spilled into the office through the wide windows, lying in long, golden rectangles across the floor. Rita stood in one of those slices of light and it was as if she were glowing from the inside. Even the ends of her hair shone, and the sunlight was reflected in her whiskey eyes, making them look as if they were on fire.
“You’re upset, I know,” he started.
“Damn right I’m upset, Jack.” She stopped, took a long breath and steadied herself. “But I didn’t come here to get into another futile argument, either.”
Still holding the envelope he wanted very badly to open, he asked, “Why are you here, then?”
“To tell you that I’m staying. Our daughter will be raised by me, in the apartment over the bakery. I’ll tell her all about you, but you’re not going to be a part of our lives, Jack.”
“You can’t keep her from me.”
“Watch me,” Rita countered. “You don’t want her or me. You just want to do what you think is the ‘right’ thing. Well, I don’t care about that. My daughter’s going to grow up loved. Happy. And if her father isn’t willing to give up his self-pity party long enough to be grateful to be alive, then he just won’t be a part of our lives.”
“Self-pity?” He repeated the words because they’d slapped him hard enough to make an impact. Was that who he was? Who he’d become? Was she right? “That’s what you think?”
“Jack,” she sighed out his name. “If you ever manage to work your way out of that cocoon you’ve wrapped yourself in long enough to realize you love me, let me know. Until then? Goodbye, Jack.”
He looked up as Rita turned around, stormed across the room and out the door, slamming it behind her.
* * *
Jack fell asleep that night, still holding the ultrasound picture he couldn’t get out of his head. A daughter. A little girl. Torn between desire and caution, he wasn’t sure which move to make. And then the dream came.
It was hot. So hot every breath seared his lungs. He squinted into the too-bright sunlight and signaled to his men for quiet as they approached the village.
Shots were fired. Explosions rocked all around them, making his ears ring. Someone screamed and another shot fired and Jack was down. Pain burst in a hot ball in the center of his chest. Air caught in his lungs, refusing to move in or out. Jack stared up at a brassy sky, the sun beating down mercilessly and he knew he was dying.
But this wasn’t how it happened. The dream was wrong.
Then Kevin was there, leaning over him. Jack looked up at his friend. “I’m hit. I’m hit bad.”
“Yeah, dude. It doesn’t look good.”
“But
