is dead?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“And Anthony?”
“He was killed instantly.”
Through the tears that sprang to her eyes, Kira saw moisture gathering in those of the man across from her, too. But still she couldn’t help the accusing tone when she said, “And you didn’t let us know?”
A flash of anger dried his eyes and when he answered her it was barely contained in his own voice. “Marla lived a few hours after the accident and one of the few things she said to me during the time she was conscious was that she didn’t want me to call her father. That she didn’t want him here. Even if she didn’t make it. I respected her wishes.” And it was clear that he’d had no desire himself to bring Tom Wentworth into the picture.
“But I would have wanted to know,” Kira said quietly as she lost the battle to hold back her own tears and they began to trail down her face.
Cutty Grant got up and limped out of the room, returning with a box of tissues that he held out for her.
Kira accepted one, thanking him perfunctorily and wiping her eyes as she struggled with the complex emotions running through her.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, setting the tissue box on the coffee table and sitting down once more. “If it’s any consolation, not seeing you again after we eloped was the one thing Marla regretted.”
It wasn’t much consolation. It didn’t take away all the years of missing Marla. Of wondering where she was. Of wishing she would call or write. Of longing to see her again, to be sisters again. It didn’t take away all the time since Kira had grown up and been out on her own when she’d wanted so badly to have Marla in her life and not had any way of knowing where she was.
“I tried to find her,” Kira said through her tears, not really understanding why it was suddenly important to her that he know. “My parents said they didn’t have any idea where she was—”
“That was a lie.”
Kira had suspected as much but she couldn’t force them to tell her.
She didn’t say that to Cutty, though. She just continued. “I went to three private investigators but I couldn’t afford their fees. I even tried different things on the Internet. But no matter what I did, I came up empty.” As empty as she’d felt so much of the time after Marla had left. “I know we weren’t related by blood, but she was still my sister. We shared a room from the time I was three years old. And, I don’t know, I guess rather than being rivals or fighting with each other, we sort of banded together…” Kira’s voice trailed off before she said too much.
But Cutty picked up the ball where she’d dropped it and said, “Does your father know you’re here now?”
Kira finally managed to stop the flow of tears and dabbed at her face with the tissue. “He and my mom were killed a year ago in a freak accident. They were coming home from a day in the mountains when there was a rock slide onto the road. They were hit by a boulder that came right down on the car. They both died instantly.”
“I’m sorry,” he said once more. “Your mother was a nice enough woman.”
That was true. It was just that nice hadn’t had any potency against the strong will of the man she’d married. The man who had adopted her three-year-old daughter.
But that seemed beside the point now. Kira had come here hoping to find the sister she’d so desperately wanted to reconnect with. Hoping to find family. And it suddenly struck her that the only chance of that might be in Cutty Grant’s twins.
“The article said you have eighteen-month-old daughters,” she said then.
“Upstairs asleep as we speak,” he confirmed, a brighter note edging his voice at the mere mention of them.
“Marla’s babies?”
“Yes. They were barely three weeks old when the accident happened.”
“My nieces,” Kira said, trying it on for size because blood or no blood, if they were Marla’s babies, Kira felt a connection to them.
“I guess so,” Cutty conceded.
“I’d like to meet them. Get to know them. Would you let me?” she said impulsively and without any idea how she might go about that.
Cutty’s frown from earlier reappeared and he didn’t jump at the idea. Instead he said, “Like I said, they’re asleep.”
“I know. But…”
And that was when, completely out of the blue, the mess in the room caught her attention again and an idea popped into her head.
“What if I took the place of that woman you were talking to on the phone a few minutes ago?” she said before the notion had even had a chance to ferment.
“Betty? What if you took Betty’s place?” He sounded confused and leery at the same time.
“You said she took care of the twins and helped around the house, and without her—and with you needing to stay off your ankle—you’re obviously in a bind. So what if I did it? I’d like to help and that way I could get to know the babies. Bond with them.”
The more Kira considered this, the better it sounded to her.
But from the look on Cutty’s face it wasn’t having the same effect on him.
“Don’t you have a job or a husband or a boyfriend or something you need to get back to?”
“No, I don’t. In May I finished my Ph.D. in microbiology. I’m going to start teaching at the University of Colorado for the fall semester, but that doesn’t begin until the last week in August. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with myself until then but that means I’m free.”
“No husband or boyfriend, either?” he asked, and Kira couldn’t tell if he was looking for an out for himself or satisfying his own curiosity.
“No, no husband or boyfriend. I have one really close friend—Kit—but she can get along without me. Plus she’ll bring in my mail and water my plants for me, so it won’t be any problem for me to stay.”
“You really want to spend your summer vacation picking up after us? Changing diapers?” Cutty asked skeptically.
“I really do,” she said, hating that she sounded as desperate as she felt. “I admit that I don’t have any experience with kids,” she confessed because it seemed only fair to let him know what he was getting into. “But when it comes to cleaning—”
“You’re Tom Wentworth’s daughter,” Cutty supplied. “I don’t know, I like things casual.”
“Casual is good. I can be casual.” Although she wasn’t quite sure what casual housekeeping and child care meant.
But still he didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked downright dubious and as if he was on the verge of saying thanks, but no thanks.
