“Lacey, I’m warning you—”
“But his sister had no part in what he did, she didn’t even know until after the car accident that he and Marla had been involved in an affair for several months before it happened. And although you lost your wife—”
“In more ways than one!”
“—Felicity Fairfax didn’t come out of the whole mess unscathed. She lost her brother—or as good as lost him. According to all reports, he’s never going to come out of that coma. And, honey, Felicity and Mandy adored each other. I saw them together, it was beautiful. Won’t you at least consider rehiring her? You wouldn’t even have to see her—at least, not too much, only when you dropped Mandy off as Marla used to, and then pick her up again at night—”
A heart-rending wail coiled its way down the stairs and into the sitting room.
Jordan blew out a sigh. “She’s awake,” he said. “Let’s see what you make of her.”
They went upstairs and into her bedroom, which opened off the landing. The child was still crying.
Jordan felt a sense of panic as he and Lacey crossed to the crib. The situation was escalating out of his control. If this continued, he’d lose his job and then how would he support himself and his daughter? He’d made a helluva lot of money over the years but Marla had spent it as fast as he could earn it—sometimes even faster.
“Poor little mite.” Lacey bent over the crib rail, but Mandy wasn’t aware of her because her eyes were tightly shut. She was lying on her back, her cheeks wet and flushed scarlet as she wailed at the pitch of her voice.
Lacey waited till her niece stopped to catch her breath, and then she said, “Hi, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
Mandy froze, and then gulping back a choking sob, opened her eyes. When she saw Lacey, she started crying again, harder than ever, and rolling over she pressed her face to the pillow, so that her cries were muffled.
Jordan leaned over and lifted her up into his arms. Holding her close, he murmured soft words, and in a while, she stopped crying and just clung to him, shaking and giving an occasional gulping sob, her arms clamped around his neck.
Lacey ran a hand down her niece’s back, lightly. “Sweetie—”
Mandy jerked away from her caress. And tightening her grip around her father’s neck, started to sob again.
“I thought,” Lacey whispered to Jordan, “that you’d have managed to get her to sleep in her bed again by this time. She won’t give up the crib?”
He shook his head. “No way. It’s a lost cause. Look, you may as well go. I shouldn’t have had you come over, wasting your time. There’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do. This is one problem that doesn’t have a solution.”
Lacey opened her mouth to speak. But thought better of it when she saw the forbidding frown that warned her not to bring up Felicity Fairfax’s name again.
“Thanks for coming over,” he said. “I do appreciate it, Lace.”
“You’re welcome, big brother.”
She gave him a hug and walked over to the door. But when she reached it she paused. And just before she disappeared around the corner, she said, in a rush, over her shoulder, “There is a solution to your problem, Jordan, and you know very well what it is!”
Felicity wrapped her lavender and pink floral-patterned china teapot in bubble wrap and tucked it carefully into the packing box. Then straightening, she smiled when she noticed RJ batting a wad of tissue with his paw.
Some people said cats sensed when a move was afoot and became twitchy and unsettled. Not RJ. Felicity had been cleaning out her apartment and packing her belongings ever since she’d recently sold the street-level property and RJ was exactly as he always had been: playful and inquisitive and supreme monarch of all he surveyed.
Felicity moved over to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. “We’ll be leaving here for good, on Monday, RJ. What do you think of that?”
He ignored her.
“We’re going over to Vancouver Island, to stay with Mom until I find a place of my own. I might even be able to afford a little rancher, one with a tree in the garden because I know you love to climb!”
Oblivious to the prospect, RJ leaped up into the air before pouncing down on the scrap of paper as if it were a mouse.
“Moving to the island will be for the best.” Felicity tried to smile, but catching sight of her pale taut features in the chrome surface of the kettle she gave up the attempt. She really had nothing to smile about anyway. But surely, once she was back on the island with her family for support, she would eventually find joy in her life again?
But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she knew in her heart she would never get over losing Mandy.
RJ had grown bored with his paper, and scampering over to Felicity, wound his fluffy silver-white body sinuously around her right ankle.
She dipped down and picked him up. As he clutched her knit top, she stroked him, wondering if she’d ever felt quite so desolate. “It’s not as if I’m likely to ever have a baby of my own, RJ,” she murmured. “I’m twenty-seven, time’s running out, and still no sign of Mr. Right.”
If RJ could have spoken, she mused, he might have reminded her she’d had no fewer than three serious proposals of marriage over the years, but she’d turned them all down.
“Because I wasn’t in love!” she protested. “I enjoyed their company, but not one of them made me feel the way I want to feel…”
RJ purred loudly, as if to ask, “And what way is that?”
“The way it is in romance novels.” Felicity’s voice was dreamy. “I want my heart to ache for him when we’re apart, I want it to sing when we’re together, I want to feel as if I’m on Cloud Nine when he takes me in his arms, I want to feel as if I’m drowning when he looks into my eyes. Wherever he is, that’s where I want to be—”
The shrill ringing of the wall phone made her jump—and RJ leaped from her arms. Stepping around the packing boxes, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
She sensed someone at the other end of the line, but no one spoke.
“Hello?” she repeated. “Who is this?”
Still no reply.
“Who are you trying to—”
At the other end, the phone crashed down.
“Well!” She took the receiver from her ear and stared at it indignantly, “you might at least have said, ‘Sorry, wrong number!”’
Jordan slumped back in his swivel chair and stared grimly at the phone on his desk. He’d been gearing up for days to make the call and when push came to shove, he couldn’t go through with it. He could not, he would not, have anything to do with Denny Fairfax’s sister—
“What
