on the end of the sofa and frowned as he stared at her. Several silent moments passed until the very air in the room was oppressive, making it difficult for Emily to catch her breath.
“One question,” Mark said finally. “Just one simple little question, Emily.” He paused. “Why? Why did you keep the fact that I have a son a secret from me? Why did you feel you had the right to do that?”
Because I loved you more than I loved myself, Emily thought wildly. Because I was so young and terrified when I discovered I was pregnant, needed you with me so much, but I was so afraid you’d give up your dreams to do the proper thing, marry me, help me with our baby, then come to hate me for destroying everything you’d worked so hard for and would never have because of me.
“I believed it was the best thing to do for everyone involved,” she said quietly. “What we had together was over and…”
“Oh, now wait a minute,” Mark said, raising one hand. “You pulled that routine at your grandmother’s this afternoon. You made it sound as though we had mutually agreed to break things off between us. That isn’t true and you know it, Emily.
“That’s what your family has thought all these years, right? That we broke up before I left? That’s what you told them so they wouldn’t come charging after me in MacAllister fashion and bring me back here to marry you. Right?”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “My father was ready to drag you back kicking and screaming if he had to, but I told him…I told him that we didn’t…we didn’t love each other anymore, that what we had shared was over.”
“You lied to them,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”
“No, it wasn’t a lie, not entirely. I wrote you the letter, Mark. I told you that since you had gone, I’d realized that I was much too young to really know what love was. The distance between us had made me come out of the clouds and face the fact that…that it was best to just end things between us and…
“So, okay, I told my parents that you felt the same way but…you can’t possibly understand everything I was going through, Mark. You just can’t.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of you eventually hating me, Mark, can’t you see that? Emily’s mind rushed on. You were all I had and I loved you so much. I felt so special and important, beautiful and loved when I was with you. To have you hate me? No, I couldn’t stand the mere image of it in my mind.
I was never as self-assured as Jessica, didn’t have her confidence, her ability to win friends simply by being herself. And I didn’t have the courage to rebel, be a unique individual like Trip…Alice. I was just Emily, lost in the shuffle, always smiling, never making waves, just wanting to please everyone so I would be accepted and then? Oh, God, then there was you and you loved me. Me! I…
“If I hadn’t come to Ventura now,” Mark said, jolting Emily back to the moment at hand, “I’d have never known that I have a son, would I? Damn you, Emily MacAllister, you had no right to keep his existence a secret from me.”
“I…”
“Well, guess what, lady,” Mark went on, “the ball just came into my court. I fully intend to tell my son that I’m his father. I may have missed out on the first thirteen years of his life, but that is ending as of now.”
Emily’s eyes widened, and she felt the color drain from her face.
“Oh, Mark, please, you can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t just suddenly announce that you’re… It’s too much for a twelve-year-old boy to handle, to deal with and Mark, Trevor believes that I loved his father, that he was a wonderful young man and we were going to get married, but then…he…was…he was killed in an automobile accident.”
A strange buzzing noise roared in Mark’s ears as though he’d suddenly stepped into the midst of a swarm of bees. He shook his head slightly to quiet the sound, only to hear the wild beating of his heart.
He was dead? he thought incredulously. Emily had simply erased him from this world with a few carefully chosen words? Yep, Trevor, your dad was a super guy but, hey, he croaked in a car wreck. Tough luck, kid, you’re joining the rank and file of the multitudes being raised by a single mom because your daddy is dead, dead, dead.
My God, Mark thought, dragging both hands down his face, not only had Emily never felt about him as he had about her, she had been capable of wiping him off the face of the earth. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of her heart where he had never really been.
“Incredible,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Just when did you drop this bombshell on my son?”
Emily sighed. “Trevor has always had a great many father figures because of the size of the MacAllister family. It wasn’t until he started school that he questioned why he only had uncles instead of having a daddy, too.”
“So I died, so to speak,” Mark said tightly, “when Trevor was about five years old.”
“Yes. I informed everyone in the family that that was what I had told him and they agreed, although reluctantly, to go along with it. I also told them that I would never divulge your name to Trevor, would tell him just to envision a special angel in heaven whenever he wanted to think about his father. Trevor, I’m thankful to say, has never brought up the subject again.”
“How convenient for you.”
Mark ran one hand over the crown of his head. It was a gesture that was so familiar to Emily, so endearing, a telling sign that Mark was upset, stressed, and one that Trevor executed whenever he was emotionally disturbed about something.
“You never loved me at all, did you?” Mark said, narrowing his eyes. “Jessica was the homecoming queen, the cheerleader, the president of the student council and on and on. Trip was in her own little world of rebellion that set her apart from the ever-famous MacAllister triplets. You were caught in the middle, always trying to please everybody, attempting to…hell, I don’t know…find your place, or space, or something.
“Then here I was, arriving in our junior year in high school. Poor funny-looking Mark Maxwell, whose mother had split when he was a little boy and who was being raised by an alcoholic father who finally wiped himself out by driving into a tree when he was drunk as a skunk.
“You found a purpose, a cause. You’d take pity on the weird new kid, be his girlfriend, which would give you a status you’d never had before. Plus you were romantically involved with a guy, which was great because neither Jessica nor Trip were going steady with anyone. And, hey, wow, you would even lose your virginity before your sisters did. Score points for Emily.”
“Oh, Mark, don’t, please,” Emily said, feeling the sting of unshed tears burning her eyes. “I did love you—as much as any seventeen-year-old can understand love. Don’t make what we shared ugly, tacky, something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t like that.”
“No?” he said. “You sure were capable of turning that love off like a faucet after I left here. Then I was killed and became an angel five years later? Oh, yeah, that’s really strong evidence that you loved me. What a joke. You used me, Emily, to feel special, to make it possible to have something your sisters didn’t. You really outdid yourself, didn’t you? I mean, hey, you even had a baby out of wedlock. Neither Jessica nor Trip would top that one.”
“Don’t,” Emily whispered, tears filling
