when he looked at Lucy over the dinner table. “I noticed you’re a gardener. I gather that’s where your inspiration came from.”
“Yes,” she said ruefully. “Only, the cats are really Rosie and Maggie. Every animal I’ve ever had ends up with a name that ends in an ie sound.”
Jon thought about it. He’d grown up with Moby. His mother had a fluffy, yappy little excuse for a dog whose name was Renoir, but who had come to be called, of all things, Really. It was a joke at first—yes, he’s really Renoir—but it stuck. Jon grinned every time he heard his mother stick her head out in the backyard and shout, “Really! Come to Mommy!”
“Maybe there’s something to that,” he had to admit.
“We convert children’s names that way, too. Jimmy, Stevie, Katie, Susie.”
“Becky,” Sierra said softly.
Her flash of sadness came and went so quickly, he’d have missed it if he hadn’t been looking.
Lucy smiled at her. “I like to think that softened ending is affectionate. Think how often it sticks. It did for me.” She reached for her wineglass.
“Were you ever Johnny?” Sierra asked him.
Lucy sputtered and had to slap a napkin to her mouth.
Jon pretended to glower. “You’re laughing at me.”
“No…yes. Oh, heavens. You just don’t look like a Johnny.”
He loved the way merriment danced in her eyes and puckered her cheeks. It sure beat the chilly stare of suspicion she also did well.
“No, I was never a Johnny. I think you have to be cuddly to deserve having your name softened. Me, I was born long and skinny, and only got longer and skinnier.”
“Me, too!” Sierra exclaimed, her face bright. She wrinkled her nose, looking down at herself. “I think I’ve quit growing.” Her tone said she wasn’t betting on it.
Lucy smiled at her. “You probably have. Girls usually reach their full height long before your age. It’s boys who still keep growing into their twenties.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jon began constructing another taco from the selection of ingredients laid out in the middle of the table. He chose the shredded chicken and heaped on the salsa Lucy made herself. It seared the mouth and opened the sinuses. He’d seen the challenge on her face when she first offered it to him. He had been damn careful not to react when he took his first bite. On his third taco now, he’d developed a taste for it. “I added another couple of inches in college. Mostly I got broader, though. I was a rack of bones until then.” He smiled at Sierra. “Remind me to show you some pictures. Forget it,” he said ruefully. “You won’t have to remind me. Mom will whip out the family albums the minute you walk in the door.”
“She really wants to meet me?” Her voice was wistful.
“She really wants to.”
His mother had reacted exactly as he’d predicted. She was stunned to think she had grandchildren she would never meet. He thought she would have been angrier yet if she hadn’t known why he had scrabbled to raise money any way he could back in those days. She felt guilty that she hadn’t been able to persuade his father to treat him more decently. Jon didn’t like knowing that his mom lived with more regrets than he had. In this case, though, guilt served a purpose; she’d forgiven him faster than he deserved.
“She expects me to bring you to Sunday dinner, if you’re free.” He transferred his gaze to Lucy. “She’d like to meet you, too.”
“My feelings won’t be hurt if you only take Sierra,” she said. “I’m not family.”
She was so composed, he was willing to bet it was a facade. She’d wanted him to accept Sierra as his daughter, there was no question of that. But he couldn’t help wondering if her feelings weren’t a little hurt, too, that Sierra had set out to find her biological family. It would be one thing if Sierra had been assigned to her, a licensed foster parent. But he’d learned that she’d taken the teenager in out of affection.
The teenager. No, he told himself, my daughter. Get used to thinking it. My daughter.
Aware of Sierra watching them both, he said quietly, “You’re family.”
Lucy stared at him for a moment that stretched. He forgot about Sierra. He lost himself in those warm brown eyes that seemed to darken with emotion, and lighten and shimmer with laughter. Right now they were the color of Belgian chocolate, rich, dark and somehow stunned. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she’d started to say something and forgotten what it was.
She blinked. “I suppose I am.” Her mouth curved into a heartbreakingly sad smile, although he doubted she knew it was. Very softly, she finished, “I’m family as long as Sierra needs me.”
Now he felt like a heel. Would every wish of Sierra’s he fulfilled hurt Lucy? Damn, he hoped not.
“Will you come Sunday?” Sierra begged. “Please? I’d…really like it if you would, Lucy.”
This smile was more natural. “If you’d be more comfortable, of course I will.”
“Is the store closed on Sunday?” Jon asked.
“Sundays and Mondays,” she confirmed. “Although I have to go in to take care of the cats.”
He asked questions, and found out that she had two part-time employees, one of whom was Sierra. Lucy had been a licensed vet tech. She told some stories from her years working in veterinary clinics. He had the impression her last boss, at least, had been an ass. Sierra was wide-eyed not at the tales of eccentric owners or animals run amok, but at the notion the clinic hadn’t been computerized.
“A wall of file folders?” she said, as if Lucy had been describing a holdover from the Edwardian age. Maybe even Jurassic. “How did you ever find anything?”
Lucy chuckled. “Easily. As long as it wasn’t misfiled. And I might point out that a misfiled folder is still more easily recovered than a computer file with a locator name misspelled.”
“That’s not true!” Sierra launched into a passionate explanation of search functions. Jon and Lucy listened with amusement.
At the end of her lecture, Jon said only, “The world did run precomputer, you know. America was settled, railroads spread, manufacturing changed society, wars were conducted. Nobody knew what they were missing.”
Sierra sputtered a little, but tongue in cheek.
Lucy rescued her. “Sweetie, why don’t you bring out your dessert? I’ll start clearing the table.”
The teenager jumped up. “Okay.”
“Can I help?” Jon asked, starting to rise.
“Don’t be silly,” Lucy said comfortably. “This isn’t a three-person kitchen.” She had picked up a couple of the serving bowls and almost bumped Sierra when she turned. Over her shoulder she made a face at Jon. “It’s not even a two-person kitchen.”
No, it
