if she had any idea how few of his female acquaintances would ever have made such a statement to him? It occurred to him that he’d never had a woman refuse a wardrobe.
He scowled. “You could pay me back, if you have to.”
She smiled. “Thanks. But I’ll buy my own clothes.”
His black eyes narrowed on her face. “You were always independent,” he recalled.
“I’ve had to be. I’ve been basically on my own for a long time,” she said matter-of-factly. “Since I was a kid, really, and my father—I mean, Mother’s first husband—threw us out. Mother didn’t want the responsibility for me by herself and Kane Kirby didn’t want me at all.”
“If your father didn’t think you were his, why didn’t he have a DNA profile run?” he asked with a watchful look.
She drew away from him. “There was no such thing fifteen years ago.”
“You could insist that he have it done now, couldn’t you?” He gave her an odd look. “Have you spoken to him?”
“He phoned me recently. But I didn’t call him back,” she said unwillingly. She’d seen her mother’s first husband once or twice, during his rare visits to his Jacobsville home. He’d actually phoned her apartment a few weeks ago and left a strange, tentative message asking her to call him back. She never had. His rejection of her still hurt. She didn’t see him often. He lived mostly in Miami these days.
“Why not talk to him and suggest the DNA test?” he persisted.
She looked up at him with tired, sad eyes. “Because it would probably prove what my mother said, that I’m not related to him at all.” She smiled faintly. “I don’t know whose child I am. And it really doesn’t matter anymore. Please, just…leave it alone.”
He sighed with irritation, as if he knew more than he was telling her. She wondered why he was so interested in her relationship with the man who was supposed to be her own father.
He saw that curiosity in her eyes, and he closed up. He could see years of torment in that sad little face. It infuriated him. “Your mother should be horsewhipped for what she did to you,” he said flatly.
She folded her arms across her chest, remembering the loneliness of her young life reluctantly. New homes, new faces, new terrors. She turned back to the porthole. “I used to wish I had someplace to belong,” she confessed. “I was always the outsider, in any home where I lived. Until my mother married your father,” she added, smiling. “I thought he’d be like all the others, that he’d either ignore me or be too familiar, but he just sort of belonged to me, from the very beginning. He really cared about me. He hugged me, coming and going.” She drew in a soft breath. “You can’t imagine what it feels like, to have someone hug you, when you’ve hardly been touched in your whole life except in bad ways. He was forever teasing me, bringing me presents. He became my family. He even made up for my mother. I couldn’t help loving him.” She turned, surprised to see an odd look of self-contempt on Micah’s strong face. “I guess you resented us…”
“I resented your mother, Callie,” he interrupted, feeling icy-cold inside. “What I felt for you was a lot more complicated than that.”
She gave him a surprised little smile. “But, I’m still my mother’s daughter, right? Don’t they say, look at the mother and you’ll see the daughter in twenty years or so?”
His face hardened. “You’ll never be like her. Not in your worst nightmares.”
She sighed. “I wish I could be sure of that.”
He felt like hitting something. “Do you know where she is?”
“Somewhere in Europe with her new husband, I suppose,” she said indifferently. “Dad’s lawyer heard from her year before last. She wanted a copy of the final divorce decree, because she was getting married again, to some British nobleman, the lawyer said.”
He remembered his own mother, a gentle little brown-eyed woman with a ready smile and open arms. She’d died when he was ten, and from that day on, he and his father had been best friends. Until Anna showed up, with her introverted, nervous teenage daughter. The difference between Anna and his own mother was incredible. Anna was selfish, vain, greedy…he could have laid all seven deadly sins at her feet with ease. But Callie was nothing like her, except, perhaps, her exact opposite.
“You’re the sort of woman who would love a big family,” he murmured thoughtfully.
She laughed. “What do I know about families?” she responded. “I’d be terrified of bringing an innocent child into this sort of world, knowing what I know about the uncertainties of life.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Children. He’d never thought about them. But he could picture Callie with a baby in her arms, and it seemed perfectly natural. She’d had some bad breaks, but she’d love her own child. It was sad that she didn’t want kids.
“Anyway, marriage is dead last on my list of things to do,” she added, uncomfortable because he wasn’t saying anything.
“That makes two of us,” he murmured. It was the sort of thing he always said, but it didn’t feel as comfortable suddenly as it used to. He wondered why.
She turned away from the porthole. “How long will it take us to get to your place?” she asked.
He shrugged. “About twenty more minutes, at this speed,” he said, smiling. “I think you’ll like it. It’s old, and rambling, and it has a history. According to the legend, a local pirate owned it back in the eighteenth century. He kidnapped a highborn Spanish lady and married her out of hand. They had six children together and lived a long and happy life, or so the legend goes.” He studied her curiously. “Isn’t there Spanish in your ancestry somewhere?”
Her face closed up. “Don’t ask me. My mother always said she descended from what they call ‘black Irish,’ from when the Spanish armada was shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland. I know her hair was jet-black when she was younger, and she has an olive complexion. But I don’t really know her well enough to say whether or not it was the truth.”
He bit off a comment on her mother’s penchant for lying. “Your complexion isn’t olive,” he remarked quietly. “It’s creamy. Soft.”
He embarrassed her. She averted her eyes. “I’m just ordinary.”
He shook his head. His eyes narrowed on her pretty bow of a mouth. “You always were unique, Callie.” He hesitated. “Callie. What’s it short for?” he asked, suddenly curious.
She drew in a slow breath. “Colleen,” she replied reluctantly. “But nobody ever calls me that. It’s been Callie since I was old enough to talk.”
“Colleen what?”
“Colleen Mary,” she replied.
He smiled. “Yes. That suits you.”
He was acting very strangely. In fact, he had been ever since he rescued her. She wondered if he was still trying to take her mind off Lopez. If he was, it wasn’t working. The nightmarish memories were too fresh to forget.
She looked at him worriedly. “Lopez
