and ten years wearier, but they’d simply left Fiona more beautiful. She’d always been pretty, with her red hair, hazel eyes, freckled nose, fair skin and exceedingly kissable mouth, but now she was lovelier, softer, more desirable, in a womanly sort of way. Was it motherhood that had brought about the change?
Or the man she’d married?
He couldn’t ask. He had no right. She had the dubious honor of being part of the single most important relationship in his entire life. He’d seduced her, and been seduced by her. He’d wanted to marry her, to spend the next fifty years at her side. He’d even imagined himself in love with her—him, a Reed, when everyone knew that Reeds were capable of many emotions, but love was not one of them.
And he had no right to ask her anything. What was wrong with this picture?
Golda, his conscience reminded him when Fiona shifted impatiently on the step. Turning so the railing was at his back, he went straight to the heart of what troubled him most about his aunt. “Did she ever forgive me?”
Chapter 2
Underneath the heavy comforter, Fiona was trembling, but it had nothing to do with the cold. Ask me if I’ll ever forgive you, she wanted to demand. Not in this lifetime. But she wasn’t Golda. She’d loved him in an entirely different way, and while he’d betrayed her, he’d merely neglected Golda. He’d broken Fiona’s heart and cheated his daughter of a father, but he’d deprived Golda of nothing more than a few visits.
Not that he cared if Fiona and Katy ever forgave him. He hadn’t even asked about her, hadn’t shown any interest at all in her existence. For all practical purposes, for him, she didn’t exist.
Someday, if there was any justice in life, he would come to regret the way he’d treated Katy. Someday it would be her turn to walk away from him, to abandon him and make him feel unwanted and unloved.
Fiona hoped she was around to see it.
“What is it you’d wanted her to forgive you for?” she asked. For failing to come and see the woman who’d put her life on hold from time to time to make his a little easier? For putting his own needs ahead of an old woman who loved him dearly and would forgive him anything?
Or for refusing to acknowledge his daughter? Not many people outside her family knew he was Katy’s father, but Golda had known from the instant she’d heard about Fiona’s pregnancy. She’d welcomed her grandniece, and Fiona, too, with all the love and acceptance Justin had refused to offer. She’d made them feel as if they’d mattered.
To him they never had. He’d had his fun—livened up a dull vacation with a steamy affair—and he’d never given a damn how much pain he’d caused. But Golda had.
“I—I didn’t see her as often as I should have. I didn’t write, didn’t call…”
“Oh, gee, so it’s a habit,” she said sarcastically. “And here I thought I’d been singled out for shabby treatment. But you weren’t being cruel. You were just being you.”
It was difficult to tell with so little light, but she thought he might have winced. “Fiona—”
Holding onto the comforter, she stood up and gazed down at him. “She kept pictures of you all over the house. She told everybody how proud she was of her nephew, the ATF agent. She said you were the only Reed besides her that had ever amounted to anything.” She drew a deep breath and unwillingly softened her voice. “She loved the cards you sent, and the flowers on her birthday, and the roses on Mother’s Day. She loved the phone calls, and the postcards, and the little gifts, and every minute of every visit. She loved you.”
After a moment, she went to the door. She turned back to say… What could she say? Clenching her jaw tightly, she went inside, locked the door, then leaned against it for a few deep breaths.
There. Two encounters down. There would be only one more—the reading of the will in Mr. Markham’s office the next day—and Justin would return to Washington. She would never see him again.
The thought should make her happy. It did make her happy. So damned happy she had tears in her eyes.
After a while, she risked a peek out the window just as Justin got into his rental car. He was off to the Saloon, no doubt, where he’d get his burger and probably find a pretty little thing to keep him company while he ate. He might even take her back to Golda’s house, the way he’d once taken Fiona there.
And she didn’t care if he did. He was no longer a part of her life.
He was just a part of her daughter, who was her life.
Draping the comforter over the banister, she climbed the stairs to Katy’s room. Her daughter’s crib had been an antique, handed down through generations of the first family to settle in the Grand Springs area, and her cradle at the shop had come to America from Britain nearly two centuries ago, but her bed these days was a tree house. It filled half her room with one platform in the branches for a bed, another for a reading spot and a third one for a play area. The fat fake trunk had shelves inside to hold toys and books, stuffed squirrels and birds sat on the branches, and the felt leaves formed a canopy that reached up to the blue-sky-studded-with-fluffy-white-clouds ceiling.
It was an extravagance, built by Fiona’s father and decorated by her mother, and it had made Katy the envy of the kindergarten class at Jack and Jill’s Day Care. Fiona had thought it was much too indulgent, but she’d given in. After all, the kids at Jack and Jill’s had teased Katy one time too many about not having a father. Fathers were a dime a dozen—all the teasing kids had them—but there was only one fabulous tree-house bed in all of Colorado, and Katy had it.
Fiona reached through the railing to smooth her daughter’s dark hair from her face. The night-light—a string of white Christmas lights woven through the branches—cast a soft glow on her chubby cheeks, her long lashes, her full mouth. Asleep in an old T-shirt of Fiona’s that slipped off one shoulder and twisted around her sturdy little body, she looked sweet, angelic, so utterly perfect that Fiona’s heart ached.
Whatever sins Justin had committed, whatever lies he’d told, he’d given her the most precious gift she ever could have wished for. She might hate him. She might pray to never see him again. But she owed him her life. She should remember that the next time she talked to him.
In her bed, Katy rolled onto her side and her eyes fluttered open. “Is it time to get up?” Her voice was sleepy, baby soft, and never failed to brighten Fiona’s heart.
“No, babe, not yet. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” In an instant, her eyes closed and she was snoring softly.
Fiona gave her hand a kiss, then wrapped her arm around her favorite teddy bear. Then, with a weary sigh, she returned downstairs, wishing it wasn’t too early for her to go to bed, too. The sooner morning came, the sooner the appointment with Mr. Markham would come, and Justin would leave.
She really wanted Justin to leave.
After picking up the few toys Katy had left on the living room floor and rinsing their supper dishes to stack in the dishwasher, she couldn’t find anything else to do. The nervous energy that had kept her busy at the shop had done the same here at home. Everything was cleaned, polished, vacuumed and laundered within an inch of its life. She fixed a cup of hot cocoa, grabbed the comforter from the stair railing and settled in the living room with
