with a straight head, even though questions about Paige’s paternity rose like bile in his throat.
Victoria had stepped around the center island. Was she trying to avoid him?
Determined not to bungle anything, Owen turned his attention to Victoria. “Can you tell me what was taken?”
Victoria looked across at the safe as though envisioning what had been inside less than half an hour before. “A red bank bag—the First Bank of Fitzgerald Bay. It contained all my receipts for the last three days.”
“How much?”
“This weekend was the best I’ve done since—” she swallowed “—since Olivia was found. Almost three thousand dollars. Only about five hundred of that was by credit card. The rest was cash or checks.”
Owen studied her face as she stared at the open safe, either transfixed by its emptiness or else stubbornly refusing to look at him. The top button of her white chef’s blouse was open, and he could see a vein throbbing madly, indicating she was frightened. Of the robber? Or of him?
The date on the calendar taunted him, and in spite of the year clearly printed at the top, Owen’s thoughts rushed a decade back in time. His life had been turned upside down in an instant. His cousin had been killed by Victoria’s father in a car accident, and Victoria had left town without contacting him, though they’d been seriously dating at the time. He’d tried to reach her, to let her know he didn’t blame her for what her father had done, but she’d left before he’d been able to find her, and soon the rumors had started flying.
Victoria wasn’t the only person to leave town abruptly after graduation. Hank Monroe had left, too, and the rumor was that Hank and Victoria had run away together. Owen had wanted to deny it, but then Hank’s father, a respected judge, had told him to his face that it was true. Victoria had only been using him to make Hank jealous. She’d gotten her man. She had no more use for Owen.
For ten years, Owen had tried to convince himself that he was over Victoria, that the only feeling he felt toward her was anger. She’d used him and left him without so much as a goodbye. And now, if the nine months between April and January and Paige’s Fitzgerald-blue eyes were any indication, she’d stolen something even more precious than his heart. She’d taken his daughter.
Victoria couldn’t look at Owen. Had he guessed the truth? She forced herself to keep talking about what had been stolen from the safe. “That might sound like a lot of money, but most weekends I don’t make a fraction of that much, and midweek business is slower still. By the time I pay my employees and cover my costs for food and heating …” As she thought about her expenses, Victoria found herself feeling overwhelmed. She’d needed that income.
But God had seen her through plenty of tough times before, raising her daughter alone on one income. God had provided her with a flexible pastry chef position in New York City, and through that had taught her what she needed to know to run the Sugar Plum. Victoria believed God used everything in her life—even the difficult times—as ingredients for the recipe He had planned for her life.
But what good could God possibly bring from the broken safe and missing funds?
She shook her head. “I needed that money.”
“I’m sorry.” Owen’s words carried emotion, not the formal just-the-facts-ma’am voice he’d been using thus far.
For a second, Victoria was tempted to meet his eyes, to feel that human connection he offered in the sympathy in his voice. But she’d been head over heels in love with Owen when they were in high school. In the six months she’d been back in town, she had yet to spend any time around him. She’d seen him, of course, coming and going from the police station across the street, and her heart had always done a mad dance at the sight of him.
Because she dreaded telling him the truth? Or because she still had feelings for him, even after all these years? Until she was certain those feelings were gone for good, she didn’t want any traitorous emotions sneaking up on her—not with the confession she still needed to make. After all, Owen had every reason to hate her. It had broken her heart to leave him the first time around. She wasn’t eager to find out how upset he might be when he knew the whole story.
She felt fear rising in her heart and, hoping for a distraction, she turned to look at the ruined mess of cookies on the floor. The few that weren’t broken were a lost cause, anyway, never mind that she kept the floor spotless.
Owen must have seen where she was looking. “And the cookies?”
“Ten dozen. They sell for a dollar fifty each, or three for four dollars. It’s less than two hundred dollars lost revenue—”
“But your time …” Owen tapped his pencil against his notepad. “The bank bag I can understand. That’s a lot of money. It makes sense to steal that. But the cookies—what would anyone have to gain by breaking your cookies?”
Victoria looked at the crumbled mess as though she might find the answer there. The sight of the broken cookies, each one a heartfelt labor of love—some of her customers even called them works of art. Why would anyone destroy something so innocent?
“Do you have any enemies?”
“No.” Victoria cringed at his question. The closest thing she had to an enemy was Owen himself. How would he feel when he learned she’d hidden his daughter from him all these years? He would hate her. And yet, she knew she had to tell him. Her heart beat hard inside her, and she could feel a recreant blush rising up to her ears.
“Are you sure?”
It was an invitation to tell the truth, to be released from the secret that had burdened her ever since the day almost ten years before when she’d learned she was pregnant and wondered whether she should tell him. But her father had crashed his pickup into the car driven by Owen’s cousin two days before that. Patrick Fitzgerald had been killed instantly. Victoria had run away to New York to stay with her father’s sister. It had taken her almost ten years to work up the courage to return to town. She didn’t have the nerve to admit the shameful thing she’d done by hiding Paige from Owen all these years.
“Not anyone who could have done this.”
Owen stared at Victoria’s face. Why wouldn’t she look at him? His heart burned inside him with ferocious fire. Was the blue-eyed little girl who’d gone upstairs his daughter?
“Victoria?”
She looked up about as far as his chin. He wished she would lift her brown eyes a little higher so he could try to read the truth there. But then, he could see the truth in the color of her daughter’s eyes. Victoria’s eyes were brown, but Paige had blue eyes—Fitzgerald blue eyes, just like his.
“Hank Monroe has brown eyes. You have brown eyes, but Paige …”
Victoria’s chin quivered. “I came to Fitzgerald Bay to tell you the truth.”
Owen felt his stomach plummet. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? “You’ve been in town six months, and you haven’t spoken to me. Hank Monroe’s been going around claiming Paige is his. Were you aware of Hank’s claims?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve never denied them?” Owen had always scoffed at the suggestion that he’d inherited an Irish temper, but something
