the door, snatched the baby off the little mattress and popped her into Sarah’s arms. “Feed her, honey.”
“She isn’t hungry, just mad that she has a crazy dad.”
“She can’t suspect that at two months old.”
“She already knows it at only seven weeks.”
“This isn’t funny. Please quiet her, Sare!”
With a gentle Madonna smile, Sarah tossed a hank of gold hair over her shoulder, opened her shirt and bra, and settled the baby in a suckling position at her breast. “Why are we acting like secret agents, and stupid ones at that?”
Derek’s eyes darted nervously in the shadows. “Because Ethan’s gotta be here about Kelsey.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Oh no? The news about her coming home got out today. And since Amy Joy arrived, nobody generally bugs us this late anymore.”
“Is that all you have to go on?”
“My instincts tell me I’m right.”
Sarah wasn’t about to argue with his instincts. Born on the wrong side of the tracks to an abusive father and an overworked mother, Derek had been on the loose early, often one step ahead of the law due to the homemade rattletrap motorcycle he’d ridden without a license. For all intents and purposes, Derek was now a new man. Except for that lingering sense of smell that never failed to pick up trouble.
Derek’s features hardened. “He’s just gotta be here on behalf of a very hot Lewis, to get hard answers for the old coot.”
“About who to blame for Kelsey’s return?” she surmised.
“Bingo. He’s stopped ringing the bell….” He opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. Then shut himself back in again with a soft oath. “He’s still out there. Waiting.”
“Ethan is too obliging to that old tyrant,” Sarah complained.
“Sure he is. But when it comes down to it, we can’t afford to anger Lewis either. He holds the title to my garage and has funneled so many regular customers my way.” Derek raked a hand through his shaggy black hair. “I can’t wait to own that place free and clear.”
It would be awhile yet, Sarah knew, even with her teaching kindergarten. “Maybe we should’ve waited to start a family.”
“No, honey, no. We waited long enough. Too long.”
A faint rap now replaced the ringing bell. She sighed, hoisting the baby onto her shoulder to pat out a burp. “I’m not sure we’re gaining anything by hiding like this.”
“We’re gaining time. Time for Lewis to settle down. Time for us to figure a logical reason for luring Kelsey back.” Derek dropped to one knee beside the rocker. Despite his miffed tone, there was no mistaking the adoring look he bestowed on his girls.
“I suppose I may have acted rashly, sending Kelsey that flyer without even telling you.”
He widened his eyes. “May have?”
“We do discuss important things first as a rule. But I can’t—won’t try to excuse this away with logic. I simply love her. She’s the best friend I ever had—ever could have. Too much time has already been wasted while we miss out on all the dreams we had together as children. If only I could go back and change the day she left on that Greyhound.”
“And do what?” Derek asked gently.
She rubbed her husband’s stubbled cheek, inhaling the smell of motor oil that always clung to him before a shower. There was no answer, of course. Any healing course of action had been up to the adults. Instead they’d chosen to railroad an eighteen-year-old girl.
“All that matters now is that I want her back. I need her back.”
“It’s only a class reunion, hon.”
“Maybe.”
“Sarah…” Derek sounded almost afraid then.
“She might stay. With some encouragement.”
He touched his baby’s downy head. “Please don’t expect too much. People change.”
“Funny, I was thinking how some things never change. How people hold grudges, never give second chances.”
“Sums up our man Cutler, all right. But please, don’t rile him too much.”
“He is being unreasonable.”
“He did lose his kid, Sarah.” He squeezed their baby’s tiny foot. “Something we’ve come to understand so much better in the past seven weeks.”
“Ah, there goes Ethan,” Sarah said suddenly, gazing out the side window just as the taillights of the squad car winked red on the street.
Derek took the sleeping baby and set her back in the crib. Then he put loving hands on his wife. “Come to bed with me.”
Her mouth curved. “You know Doc says we should wait another week before we have sex, because of all my stitches.”
He lifted her in his arms anyway, his voice growing husky. “I just want to hold you for a while. In the moonlight…”
Sarah understood. Sometimes, the town’s insecure ex-bad boy needed a reminder that she was totally his.
Spooned into him on the broad mattress, she was not surprised when his soft snores told her he’d drifted off. He’d been working extra hours at the garage lately with his lone employee, Richard, in an effort to be the big breadwinner, to give her the stay-at-home-mom option next autumn. It was silly, really. She had no qualms about leaving Amy Joy with her mother, Isabel, for a few hours each day while she went to work. Derek’s problem was that he’d watched his own mother drive herself into a frazzle in order to make ends meet. Their situation was nothing like that. She loved her job. It was the perfect part-time career, half days with summers off.
The conflict of interest with Lewis Cutler over Kelsey, however, was a far more troubling issue. It was bound to affect Ethan and Derek, who both enjoyed being close to the powerful man, but who also had connections to Kelsey.
It had all started for Ethan much earlier, invited through the Cutler front door as a toddler by Brad. Such an arrangement had been unthinkable for Derek back then, as his mother, Linda, had actually been a domestic at the class-conscious mansion. Derek hadn’t made the Cutler connection until years later on the high school’s prom night. Too poor to attend the prom himself, and not yet in Sarah’s romantic sights, Derek had spent the evening roaring round the countryside on his motorcycle. He’d happened upon Brad’s smashed Jetta, surveyed the casualties and raced over to the estate to alert Lewis. Even then he’d circled to the back door of the mansion.
Because of Derek, Lewis had managed a last word with his dying son. Suddenly, the class rebel, long taunted by the likes of Brad and so many others, had been in Lewis’s good graces. Lewis had shed a new positive light on Derek along Harvester Avenue, had referred to him as a spirited and scrappy lad who, Lewis
