Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

About The Author

Dear Reader

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Copyright

Carver’s Head Was Spinning.

Standing at his front door was a beautiful woman who said she was a social worker. And clutching her by the hand was a twelve-year-old girl who looked jarringly familiar.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Maddy Garrett,” she replied matter of factly. “This is Rachel Stillman.”

“Rachel…Stillman?”

“Daughter of Abigail Stillman,” she said, as if that would explain everything.

“I don’t know anyone named Abigail Stillman.”

The bright smile Maddy had been wearing fell. “Hasn’t anyone contacted you about this?” she asked.

“About what?” Carver mumbled.

“About the child Abigail Stillman has—er—left behind. According to the birth certificate, you’re the girl’s father.”

“Ex-excuse me?” he stammered. “I’m what?”

“Congratulations, Mr. Venner,” Maddy said dryly. “It’s a girl.”

FROM HERE TO PATERNITY: These three men weren’t expecting to become parents—and fatherhood isn’t the only thing the stork delivered!

Dear Reader,

Can you believe that for the next three months we’ll be celebrating the publication of the 1000th Silhouette Desire? That’s quite a milestone! The festivities begin this month with six books by some of your longtime favorites and exciting new names in romance.

We’ll continue into next month, May, with the actual publication of Book #1000—by Diana Palmer—and then we’ll keep the fun going into June. There’s just so much going on that I can’t put it all into one letter. You’ll just have to keep reading!

This month we have an absolutely terrific lineup, beginning with Saddle Up, a MAN OF THE MONTH by Mary Lynn Baxter. There’s also The Groom, I Presume?— the latest in Annette Broadrick’s DAUGHTERS OF TEXAS miniseries. Father of the Brat launches the new FROM HERE TO PATERNITY miniseries by Elizabeth Bevarly, and Forgotten Vows by Modean Moon is the first of three books about what happens on THE WEDDING NIGHT. Lass Small brings us her very own delightful sense of humor in A Stranger in Texas. And our DEBUT AUTHOR this month is Anne Eames with Two Weddings and a Bride.

And next month, as promised, Book #1000, a MAN OF THE MONTH, Man of Ice by Diana Palmer!

Lucia Macro,

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Father Of The Brat
Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With much love, for Dorothy and Harold Stucker

(aka Aunt Dot and Uncle Washie).

You’re the best second set of parents a kid could have.

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirtyfive-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach bum. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model fortytwo-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with maternity as well—she and her husband recently welcomed their firstborn baby, a son.

Dear Reader,

When I first discovered I was going to be included in Celebration 1000, I experienced an immediate flashback to college, when I was living in my parents’ basement, reading my very first Silhouette Desire. I had received it after responding to a Silhouette ad in Cosmopolitan magazine (I was very cosmopolitan in college, you see), and after reading the last page of the novel, I thought, “Wow, where have these books been all my life?”

I was in my final year of earning a B.A. in English, Yet nothing I had studied came close to leaving me with the sense of contentment that I received from that single red book.

I started reading every Desire I could get my hands on. And eventually, because I had always wanted to be a novelist, romance was what came out when I sat down to write my first book. It amazes me still to realize that I’m now responsible for creating the kind of books that provided me with so much for so long—romance, adventure, escape…and those wonderful happy endings that even a degree in English couldn’t stop making me crave.

I’m so delighted to be included in Celebration 1000. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what it means to be keeping literary company with the novelists I’ve always admired, to be and writing for a publisher and a line of books I’ve always loved—-to be a part of the festivities surrounding the publication of the 1000th Desire… Somehow, it fills me with a sense of completion and satisfaction that I haven’t found anywhere else.

For years, Silhouette Desire has brought me unrivaled reading pleasure. Now the folks at Silhouette provide me with unrivaled writing pleasure, too. And I can only hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoy writing them.

Very best wishes,

Elizabeth Bevarly

One

Carver Venner was beat. In the last seventy-two hours, he’d logged over eight thousand miles on his frequent flyer account, had been slapped in the face, kicked in the shins, bitten by an angry cat and shocked by an electric fence. He’d been shot at—twice—and called a filthy, stinking capitalist, an imperialist dog and a lousy tipper. He’d survived a taxi ride in a town that had few—if any—traffic laws, had eaten food he’d been hard-pressed to identify—which in itself was probably a blessing—and had somehow stumbled onto a literal den of thieves. He had a stubbed toe and a throbbing hangnail, and he could scarcely remember the last time he’d slept.

Man, the life of a journalist hadn’t turned out to be anything at all like he’d thought it would be when he’d enrolled at Columbia University twenty years ago.

How he’d managed to make it back to his South Philadelphia apartment in one piece was some vague memory he knew he was going to have to write up tomorrow. For now, though, he dropped his battered, ragged duffel bag in the middle of his bedroom floor and fell backward onto his bed with a sigh. Almost as an afterthought, he sat up to skim off his faded green polo, then found himself too exhausted to bother with the blue jeans and hiking boots he’d also been wearing since yesterday morning. Instead, he dropped onto his back again.

Sleep, he thought. Finally, finally, he could get some real sleep. He ran a restless hand over the three-day stubble of beard on his face, shoved his overly long, dark brown hair from his forehead and closed his eyes. He was just about to lose himself in the welcome relief of slumber when someone—someone who obviously had a death wish—launched into a ceaseless pounding on his front door.

“Dammit,” he muttered without moving. Maybe whoever the someone was would go away, and then he wouldn’t have to kill them after all.

But whoever it was keeping him from sleep did indeed seem to have suicidal tendencies, because the knocking just increased more loudly.

Carver sighed again, jackknifed up from his bed and staggered out to his living room. He flattened one big hand against the front door and curled the other over the knob, then stood with his chin dropped to his chest and one final hope that his visitor had gone away. But the rapping started again, even more annoying than it had been before, so he jerked the door open hard.

“What?” he barked. “What is it?”

A woman stood in the hall with her curled fingers poised at shoulder level. She was about to knock again, something that would have landed her fist in the middle of Carver’s naked chest, but she stopped herself just shy of completing the action and dropped her hand quickly back to her side. In the other hand, she carried a battered leather satchel not unlike the kind elementary schoolchildren had carried way back when Carver was young enough to have been one of them himself.

She was a good foot shorter than he, her black hair liberally threaded with silver and cropped shorter than his own. She wore round, tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses that made her brown eyes appear huge, and a shapeless olive drab trench coat over a white, baggy, man-styled shirt and brown, even baggier, man-styled trousers. Her only concession to her femininity was a filigreed antique brooch pinned at her collar and matching earrings that dangled from her ears.

She was in no way the kind of woman with whom Carver normally associated. But somehow she looked very familiar.

“Carver Venner?” she asked in a no-nonsense voice of efficiency that immediately grated on his nerves.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m with the Child Welfare Office. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

Okay, he was tired, Carver thought as he studied the woman harder, still trying to place where he might have met her. But there was no way he was so tired that he had forgotten about the presence of a child in his life.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“Your daughter,” she clarified, aiding him not at all. “I’m here to assist the two of you—to help you get acquainted and settled in.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to wake himself from what was one of the most bizarre dreams he’d ever had. Unfortunately, when he opened his eyes again, he was still standing in front of his open door, and the oddly familiar woman was still staring at him.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

Her eyes widened for a moment in what he could only liken to panic, something that just compounded his confusion. Without replying, she lifted her satchel and flipped it open, shoved her hand inside and withdrew a pristine, white business card.

M. H. Garrett, L.C.S.W., it read in bold black type. Caseworker, Child Welfare Office of Pennsylvania. It was decorated with the official state seal and seemed to be legitimate.

M. H. Garrett, he repeated to himself. Nope, not a name that rang any bells. “What’s the M.H. stand for?”

“Mostly Harmless,” she told him without missing a beat.

He glanced up at the woman again only to find her staring back at him in silence, daring him to press the issue. Dammit, even her prissy voice was familiar. He was sure he knew her from somewhere, he just couldn’t remember where. It was about to drive him crazier than he already felt when he recalled that she had just accused him of having a daughter.

He smiled wryly. “I think somebody got their wires crossed somewhere, Ms. Garrett. I don’t have a daughter. In fact, I’ve never even been married, so it doesn’t seem likely that there’s a little Venner kid out there running around somewhere.”

M. H. Garrett, Caseworker, narrowed her eyes at Carver and stuck her hand back into her satchel, this time pulling out a very thick, very well used binder. She flipped through it easily until she found whatever she had been looking for, scanned a few pages, then looked up at Carver again.

“Rachel Stillman,” she said, as if those two words would explain everything.

Carver shook his head. “Sorry, never heard of her.”

Mostly Harmless Garrett eyed him warily. “She’s your daughter, Mr. Venner.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Yes, she is.”

He chuckled, feeling more and more bizarre with every passing moment. “Oh, come on. She doesn’t even have the same last name as me. Boy, you folks at Welfare really are overworked.” He relented when he saw her lips thin into a tight line. “I assure you, Ms. Garrett, that I do not have a daughter named Rachel anything. Somebody at your office has sent you on a wild-goose chase.”

The caseworker glanced down at her notebook again. “Abigail Stillman,” she said this time.

Carver was about to tell her that he didn’t have a daughter named Abigail Stillman, either, when he remembered that he did in fact know someone by that name. Or rather, he used to know someone by that name. Another journalist he’d met in Guatemala about ten or twelve years ago. The two of them had shared a very hot, very heavy, very brief affair. One week, he recalled now, unable to halt the lascivious smile that curled his lips. And what a week it had been.

“Okay, I do know an Abby Stillman,” he told M. H. Garrett, still smiling at his heated memories. “But I haven’t heard from her in years. Have you seen her recently? How is she?”

“She’s dead.”

His smile fell, and something raw and hot knotted in his stomach. “She’s what?”

“She’s dead, Mr. Venner. A car accident. Drunk driver. She was killed instantly.” The caseworker shifted from one foot to the other a little uncomfortably. “Uh, hasn’t anyone contacted you about this?”

Still feeling as if someone had just kicked him in the groin, Carver mumbled, “About what?”

M. H. Garrett pressed her free hand against her forehead and rubbed hard. “About Abigail Stillman. About the child she left behind—a twelve-year-old girl named Rachel.” She dropped her hand back to her side and studied him for a moment before continuing. “According to the girl’s birth certificate…um…you’re her father.”

Carver’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Ex…excuse me?” he stammered. “I’m what?”

M. H. Garrett bit her lip and tried—without much success—to smile. “Congratulations, Mr. Venner,” she said, clearly striving for a levity she didn’t feel. “It’s a girl.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Carver objected, holding up his hand as if he could stop her announcement. “That’s impossible. I couldn’t…I mean, Abby didn’t…and I sure as hell…” His voice trailed off and he stared at the woman in the hall. “This can’t be happening,” he finally concluded.

“Maybe I better come in and try to sort things out,” the social worker offered. “Someone was supposed to have contacted you by now, but obviously no one has. I’m sure you have some questions, and maybe—”

“Questions?” he sputtered. “Questions? You’re damned right I have some questions. Not to mention a few choice words.”

The woman stiffened immediately and pointed a finger at him. Somehow, even before she started wagging it at him, Carver was certain that that was precisely what she was going to do.

“Look, don’t take this out on me,” she said with a vigorous shake of her finger. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

He nodded slowly and tried to calm himself. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that this is a little…uh… surprising, to say the least. There’s obviously been some mistake. There’s no way I could be this girl’s father.”

M. H. Garrett eyed him thoughtfully for a moment before asking, “So you and Abigail Stillman never…?”

“Never what?”

The caseworker looked uncomfortable again. “Never… um, you know.”

“Know what?”

“Never had…relations?”

“Relations?”

The woman sighed fitfully, and he could swear she was blushing. “Of a, um, of a sexual nature?”

Finally Carver understood. “Oh, sure, we…uh…we had relations. Quite a few times if memory serves, but—”

“I see.” M. H. Garrett frowned her disapproval.

Carver didn’t like her tone of voice one bit. “No, you don’t see,” he insisted. “I’m not this kid’s father.”

The caseworker sighed heavily and tilted her head forward, toward the inside of his apartment. “Maybe I should come in and try to get all this straightened out. I can’t imagine why no one at Welfare has contacted you before now, especially with the child arriving tomorrow, but maybe—”

“Tomorrow?” he repeated. “This kid’s coming to Philadelphia tomorrow? But I’m not her father.”

“—but maybe we can get it all straightened out without too much trouble,” the woman finished as if Carver had never spoken.

He wanted to slam the door in her face, wanted to go back to bed for some much needed sleep and forget that this surreal encounter had ever occurred. Unfortunately, M. H. Garrett’s expression assured him she wasn’t going anywhere until this thing was settled. Reluctantly, he moved aside for her to enter. As she passed him, he caught a whiff of her perfume, a rich, floral fragrance that seemed an unlikely choice for her. He liked it, though, and was pretty sure it was gardenia. His sister, Sylvie, wore a similar scent.

Impulsively, he reached for his shirt pocket, where he kept his cigarettes, and when his fingers encountered only flesh and hair, he suddenly remembered that he was only half dressed. Feeling inexplicably embarrassed by the realization, Carver began a hasty retreat to his bedroom.

“Uh, let me just go put on a shirt,” he said, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder in the direction he was already headed. “I’ll only be a minute.”

When M. H. Garrett seemed to be relieved by his decision, he got the strangest impression that it wasn’t so much because she was offended by his lack of clothing as it was because she was fascinated by it.

Lack of sleep, he remembered, could give a person the craziest sensations.

He returned to the living room inhaling deeply on a much needed cigarette and buttoning up a well-worn, plaid flannel shirt that he didn’t bother to tuck in. The woman from the Child Welfare Office had discarded her trench coat on the coatrack by the door and sat in the middle of his couch with a number of official-looking documents spread out on his coffee table. Carver’s furnishings were sparse at bestsecond and third-hand castoffs he’d picked up at garage sales and flea markets. His things were inexpensive, functional and no-frills. And somehow, the woman sitting among them fit right in.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked her as he headed into the adjoining kitchen. Although he felt as if a good, stiff shot of whiskey was probably more appropriate for the bomb she had just dropped, coffee was what he was craving most. “Coffee? Tea? Soda?”

“Whatever you’re having will be fine,” she said.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

While the coffeemaker wheezed and dripped laconically, Carver returned to the living room to find the infuriatingly familiar Ms. Garrett reading over a file. He wished he could remember where he knew her from, couldn’t quell the certainty that the two of them shared some kind of significant history. But her name was in no way recognizable, and she wasn’t at all the kind of woman he normally dated. He’d never had any cause to work with the Child Welfare Office, and couldn’t imagine anyplace else he might have met her. Maybe she was a friend of one of his sisters, he thought. Though even that seemed unlikely. She just appeared to be too straitlaced to be someone who would run around with Livy or Sylvie.

He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray after using it to light a second. “I’m sorry,” he said as he expelled an errant stream of smoke from his lungs, “but I just can’t shake the feeling that I know you from somewhere.”

The woman glanced up quickly at his statement, and he could almost swear she looked panicky again. Her reaction made no sense, but he couldn’t dissuade himself of the feeling that he’d put her on edge somehow. Then she frowned, waving her hand in front of her face to dispel the cigarette smoke he had inadvertently sent her way, and he understood her agitation. Mumbling an apology, he stubbed out the second cigarette, as well.

“And where might we have met, Mr. Venner?” she asked as she watched him perform the action. He could almost feel her disapproval of what was only one of his many bad habits, and he wondered why he cared.

“See, now that’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” he told her as he took his seat in a chair opposite the couch. “Can you help me out?”

She smiled briefly and looked back down at her pile of information. “No, sorry, I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Somehow, he suspected the latter was true.

Her head snapped up again, and she glared at him. That glare, more than anything else she had done since he’d opened his front door, made Carver even more certain that he did in fact know her. Unfortunately, a lot of women had glared at him in his time. For some reason, this woman just seemed to be better at it than most.

“I have a copy of Rachel Stillman’s birth certificate along with some other documents,” she said, ignoring his question. “From the state of California. They clearly indicate that you are the girl’s father.”

Carver frowned. “Let me see those.” He took the collection of papers she extended toward him. They, too, appeared to be legitimate documents, complete with raised seals and indecipherable signatures. The birth certificate stated quite clearly in black and white that a female child named Rachel Carver Stillman had been born into this world a little over twelve years ago, that she had weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces and had been twenty-one and a half inches long. It also indicated that her mother’s name was Abigail Renée Stillman. And that her father’s name was Carver Venner.

“Nevertheless,” Carver said, “this doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves that you’re the child’s father.”

“No, it proves that Abby Stillman filled out a form and said that I’m the child’s father. Hell, it could have been any number of men. Abby was a great girl and a lot of fun to be around, but she wasn’t exactly a one-man woman. I wasn’t the only guy she ever dated.”

“But you are the one she said is the father of her child.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” he repeated.

Mostly Harmless Garrett, who was proving to be anything but studied him some more. He was starting to feel like some kind of lab specimen the way she kept staring at him like that. Her eyes were so dark, he could scarcely tell where the brown of her irises ended and the black of her pupils began. Those eyes, like the rest of her, haunted him.

“Nevertheless,” she said, taking the birth certificate back from him, “you’re the one who’s responsible for the girl, now that her mother is dead.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Carver countered. “She’s not my daughter.”

“What year did you meet Abigail Stillman?” the caseworker asked in an obvious effort to try a different route.

Carver thought for a moment. “Let’s see now…I was down in Guatemala working on a story for Mother Jones about how American businesses were taking advantage of the local labor. Abby, if I recall, was covering the local elections for UPI. That would have been…” He ticked off the years on both hands, then started over, touching three more fingers. “Almost exactly thirteen years ago.”

“So the timing would be about right.”

He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t, because you said this kid is twelve, right?”

M. H. Garrett nodded. “Twelve years and three months. Add to that nine months of gestation, and her date of conception would be…almost exactly thirteen years ago.”

Carver didn’t like that line of reasoning one bit. And it still didn’t prove a damned thing. Abby Stillman had been a real party girl. She hadn’t exactly been promiscuous, but she had liked men. A lot. And there had been plenty of men in Guatemala besides him back then. Any one of them could be this Rachel kid’s father. His name on an official document didn’t mean anything, and he told the caseworker so.

Unfortunately, M. H. Garrett and the state of Pennsylvania saw things a little differently. “Sorry,” she told him, “but as long as you’re listed as Rachel Stillman’s father on her birth certificate, the law says you’re responsible for her now that her mother is dead. Unless you go to court and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the girl is not your daughter.”

“Then I’ll go to court and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“Fine. In the meantime, just make sure you show up at the airport tomorrow morning at eleven-thirty, a half hour before Rachel’s plane arrives. You and I are both going to be there to meet her.”

That said, M. H. Garrett, Caseworker, scooped up her impressive array of documents and stuffed them back into her satchel, snapping the briefcase shut with all the aplomb and confidence of Clarence Darrow. Then she stood and collected her trench coat from the rack by the door and shrugged back into it.

“USAir flight number 422,” she said as she turned up her collar. “Arrives at 12:04 p.m. Be there, Mr. Venner, or risk the wrath of the Child Welfare Office.”

He chuckled, a derisive sound completely lacking in mirth. “Oh, and I’m supposed to be terrified of a bunch of overextended social workers who don’t even have the time or organization to tell me I’ve become a father.”

At his assertion, M. H. Garrett slouched a little, looking even more tired than Carver felt. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re supposed to be terrified of us. Maybe we’re overextended, disorganized and pressed for time, but at least we care about our kids. And maybe we don’t always get the job done right, but we do our best.”

She reached behind herself for the doorknob and pulled the door open, but her gaze never left his. “I’ve been assigned to your case, Mr. Venner, and I’m going to do my best to make sure that you and your daughter get situated properly. If you need counseling, I’ll arrange it. If you need financial assistance, I’ll see what I can do. If you need help getting her enrolled in school, I’ll take care of it.”

“And if I need the services of a lawyer to prove this is all just a scam?” he asked pointedly.

“Then you’re on your own. Although I do have legal counsel at my disposal, I’ll only notify them if you don’t show up at the airport tomorrow or if you conveniently decide to leave town. Like I said, I’ll do what I can for you and the girl. Because as far as I’m concerned, and as far as the law is concerned, Rachel Stillman is your daughter.”

He was about to object again when he decided it would probably be fruitless to do so. He knew a good lawyer, one who’d pulled his butt out of a sling on more than one occasion. This Rachel Stillman thing would be a piece of cake for her. Before the kid’s plane hit the runway, Carver would be off the hook.

He watched M. H. Garrett’s back as she descended the stairs, still rattling his brain trying to remember where he knew her from. He even stepped out into the hallway to lean over the banister, and continued to observe her until her dark head disappeared into the stairwell completely.

Only when she was safely out of sight did it finally strike Carver in a burst of memory where he had met her. And once he remembered, he immediately recalled what the M.H. stood for. It didn’t stand for Mostly Harmless. It stood for Madelaine Helena. He also recalled that although Maddy was a lot of things, as far as he was concerned, harmless wasn’t one of them.

Madelaine Garrett settled herself wearily into the driver’s seat of her aged sedan and sighed. She told herself she should be worrying about the outcome of the Stillman case. Or about the outcome of any number of cases assigned to her docket. She told herself she should be studying the ragged city map in her glove compartment to locate the address of the next family she had to visit that day. She told herself she should even be thinking about what she was going to do for lunch, since she hadn’t consumed anything but coffee for more than seven hours. Instead, only one thought meandered through her brain.

Carver Venner hadn’t remembered her. He hadn’t recognized her at all.

Uncertain whether she was happy or sad about the realization, she angled the rearview mirror down toward herself and studied her reflection. Had she really changed that much since she had last seen him? Her face was still oval shaped, and her fair skin was still almost too pale. Her eyes were still brown and her hair was still black, albeit significantly touched with gray and considerably shorter than the waist-length tresses she had sported twenty years ago. The glasses she wore now weren’t so very different from those she had worn throughout high school, but these days they were considered fashionable instead of geeky.

Although she had been a little on the pudgy side as a teenager, she reminded herself. And she had shed all her surplus weight and more while going through her divorce five years ago. She was quite a bit thinner now than she had been as an adolescent—really too thin, she knew—something that made her eyes seem larger and her lips fuller than they had been before, something that more clearly defined what had turned out to be surprisingly stark cheekbones. Maybe that was why Carver hadn’t recognized her, she thought.

Or maybe he hadn’t recognized her, she pondered further, because she simply wasn’t anything at all like the kid he’d known at Strickler High School. Maddy leaned her head back against the seat and inhaled an unsteady breath. Boy, would Carver laugh hysterically if he only knew how right he’d been about so many things.

She turned the key in the ignition and waited for a moment while her little car sputtered to life. It groaned and grated and finally choked itself into gear, and Maddy drove forward with no particular destination in mind.

She had thirty-two cases assigned to her at the moment, not one of which showed any promise of turning out well. When the Rachel Stillman file had landed on her desk, she had at first embraced high hopes for it. Only when she’d realized the man she would be informing of Rachel’s existence was Carver Venner had she tried to get someone else to take the case. She’d pleaded with Vivian and Mohammed to pay back favors they owed her, and had even tried to bribe Eric. But, like she, everyone else at Welfare was overburdened with casework as it was. As usual, no one had the time.

Maddy caught sight of a fast-food chain up ahead and flipped on her right turn signal to make a quick stop at the drive-thru. When she exited with a greasy cheeseburger and fries and diet soda in hand, however, she suddenly lost her appetite. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually been hungry. Funny, at one time food had been her greatest comforter. Nowadays, even the most decadent confection in the world couldn’t ease the feelings of hopelessness that wanted to drag her down.

She pulled into the parking lot of a downtown Philly church and reached into the glove compartment for her map. Another new case, she thought as she flipped through her binder looking for the name of the family in question. Another lost cause.

She suddenly felt overwhelmed, a feeling she had to battle every minute of the day lately. It was all Carver’s fault, she thought. Seeing him again had made her ache for a time in her life when things had been so much simpler, so much happier.

“God, Maddy,” she scolded herself as she finally located the file she’d been seeking. Immediately she ignored it and stared blindly out the window at the passing traffic instead. “If you’re thinking of high school as a simpler, happier time, you’re definitely getting maudlin in your old age. Not to mention delusional.”

Her years at Strickler High School had been neither particularly simple, nor especially happy. The only child of parents who had adored her to the point of sheltering her from everything that might make her unhappy, Maddy Saunders had been the nerdy kid who wore the wrong clothes, listened to the wrong music and read way too many books. She’d been the brainy girl with big glasses, the only one in Chemistry who’d thought logarithms were a piece of cake, the only one in English who’d thought Lysistrata was hilarious.

She’d always been the nice kid. The other students, when they’d bothered to think of her at all, had referred to her as “Goody.” As in “Goody Two-shoes,” as in “Good God, she’s so naive.” The nickname hadn’t bothered Maddy, though. She’d considered it a compliment. Because back then, it had been true. She’d been a good girl with a good mind, good manners and a good heart. And twenty years ago, she’d also been something else she wasn’t anymore and would never be again—an optimist. She had always been certain that the world was, in essence, a good place, a place where she could make a difference.

Boy, what a laugh that was, she thought now. Had she ever been that innocent? That naive? That stupid? Everyone else at Strickler High had seemed to think so. Especially Carver Venner. But Carver had differed from the other kids in one respect: where the others had pretty much overlooked and dismissed her, he’d seemed to single her out on a regular basis. He’d teased her relentlessly, infuriated her daily, and generally made a mockery of her decency.

And then there was that episode during the senior play, that kiss behind the cave scenery during Act One of Macbeth. Even if it had been brief and passionless, and even if he had only meant it as something else to make her crazy, Carver’s kiss had been the first one Maddy had ever received from a boy. As maddening as Carver Venner had been, she’d never been able to forget him because of that.

And now, dammit, he had to come barreling back into her life. When she least expected it, when she was ill-equipped to handle it.

She closed her eyes and remembered again the way he had looked when he’d thrown open his front door. Half naked, with his dark hair falling over his forehead and his unshaven jaw set in exasperation, he’d looked like some brooding gothic hero. So incredibly masculine. An odd thrill of excitement had wound through Maddy unlike anything she’d ever felt. He’d been a wiry kid back in high school, she remembered. Now he was solid rock.

The moment she’d seen him, she’d been nearly overcome by an inexplicable urge to lean against him and feel his arms around her. For some reason she still couldn’t figure out, she had wanted to bury her face in his neck and inhale great gulps of him. She’d wanted him to make her feel as strong as he looked. Instead, she hadn’t even let him know who she was. Because that would have been a foolish thing to do. That would have made him remember too many things, too.

After her divorce, Maddy had only kept her married name because it would have been too inconvenient and timeconsuming to change it back to Saunders. She’d never thought she would have a reason to be thankful she’d kept Dennis Garrett’s name, especially since she hadn’t been able to keep Dennis. But because she was no longer Maddy Saunders—neither literally not figuratively—there was absolutely no reason for Carver Venner to find out who he was actually dealing with. Her time with him and his daughter would be minimal, then she could slip discreetly out of their lives without a backward glance never to see Carver again.

How very like him to have fathered a child without even knowing it, she thought.

Pushing the memory of Carver away, Madelaine Garrett blew an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, found the street she’d been looking for on the map and lurched her little car back into gear. She didn’t have to think about him any more today, she told herself. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

And suddenly, for no good reason she could name—and for the first time in years—Madelaine Garrett was actually looking forward to the following day.

Two

Carver arrived at the airport even earlier than he’d been instructed, but not because he was excited about seeing this kid that the state of Pennsylvania insisted was his daughter. Simply put, he was quite certain she wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine why Abby Stillman would have tagged him for paternity, but he was convinced there was no way he could be responsible for some kid who’d been running around L.A. for twelve years. The idea that he had been a father for that long—or for any amount of time—without even knowing it was simply too troubling for Carver to consider.

Unfortunately for him, however, according to his lawyer, he was indeed going to have to prove his conviction in a court of law. Still, she’d told him it shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do—a simple DNA test would give the needed evidence. It was only a matter of time before this whole mess was cleared up.

In the meantime, however, Carver had to play by the rules of the Child Welfare Office. Yet even his legal obligation wasn’t the real reason he had come to the airport today. No, if he was perfectly honest with himself, he knew the real reason he’d come, the reason he’d even arrived early, was because he was curious about the social worker assigned to his case. The more he’d thought about her since her departure the day before, the more convinced he had become that M. H. Garrett was in fact Maddy Saunders, a girl he’d known way back in high school, when the world was a warmer, happier place.

A girl, he recalled now, who had always driven him nuts.

Maddy Saunders had been the most infuriating human being Carver Venner had ever met, a Pollyanna of obscene proportions. She had been convinced that the world was full of goodness and light and that the media just made things seem bad to make more money. She had been certain that the people who ran the country had nothing but good intentions and only the welfare of the American people at heart. She had thought it was only a matter of time before inflation was whipped, violent crime was crushed, and poverty was overcome. Her self-professed role model had been Mary Poppins.

She had, quite frankly, made Carver sick.

As if roused by his musings, the woman in question came walking down the terminal toward him, her beige tailored skirt skimming just below her knees, her cream-colored shirt nearly obscured by her massive trench coat. She took her time approaching him, as if reluctant to get too close, her battered satchel banging against her calf all the way.

Funny, Carver thought as he contemplated the wellturned legs below the skirt, he’d never noticed before what great gams Maddy Saunders had.

She seemed to slow her pace when she looked up and saw him, something that convinced him even more completely that he’d been right about her identity. As soon as she was close enough for her to hear him, he dipped his head once in her direction and greeted her simply, “Maddy.”

She blushed as if she were a four-year-old child caught in her first lie. “So, you, uh, you remember me after all.”

He smiled wryly. “You’re not exactly someone I could easily forget.”

His statement didn’t require a comment, and she didn’t seem any too willing to offer one. Instead she only stood there looking at him in that unnerving way she had the day before. Little by little, the silence between them stretched and became more disconcerting. And little by little, Carver began to feel the same edginess Maddy Saunders had always roused in him.

“Boy, you sure whacked your hair,” he finally said, unable to keep himself from reaching out to tuck a short strand behind her ear. Immediately after completing the action, he dropped his hand back to his side, surprised and unsettled at how easily the gesture had come. Twenty years seemed to dissolve into nothing, and he was suddenly right back at Strickler High, sneaking up on Maddy to tug on the long, black braid that had always beckoned to him.

“I had it cut short a long time ago,” she told him as she lifted her own hand to put the strand of hair back where it had been before he touched her. He decided he must have imagined the way her fingers seemed to shake almost imperceptibly as she did so. “It was getting to be too much trouble to take care of. I didn’t have the time.”

He nodded, letting his gaze wander over the rest of her. “You’ve dropped a lot of weight, too.”

She sighed, as if giving in to what would be an inevitable line of questioning. “Yes. I have.”

“You’re too skinny.”

“I know.”

He frowned at her unwillingness to communicate—her unwillingness to spar with him—when that was what the two of them had excelled at in high school. Then he remembered that he’d always had a talent for saying something that would rile her into a state of agitated verbosity. He smiled. “And your name is Garrett now. Finally found some poor bastard to marry you, huh?”

She nodded, then hesitated only a moment before adding, “And divorce me.”

Carver’s smile fell. “Oh. Sorry. Or…or should I say congratulations?”

She stared him square in the eye as she said, “He left me six years ago for a grad student who was his teaching assistant. I couldn’t have been more surprised than I was when I came home one night to find him packing his bag. It just seemed like such a cliché, you know? Sometimes I still have trouble believing it happened.”

Carver nodded slowly and bit his lip. Yeah, he’d always known the right thing to say around Maddy, all right. And she’d always been able to make him feel like a total jerk. “I assume, then, that he taught college?”

Maddy almost smiled at his lame attempt to change the subject and cover his gaffe. Almost. “He still does,” she said. “Don’t worry. I didn’t set fire to him while he was sleeping or anything. Dennis is a physics professor at Villanova.”

Carver shoved his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans and tried to think of something to say. For some reason, he suddenly felt very awkward. Not that he hadn’t always felt that way around Maddy, but this was a different kind of awkward. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“Figures you’d marry a brain,” he finally said.

Maddy did smile at that. A small smile, granted, but it wasn’t bad. “Figures you’d never marry at all,” she replied.

This time Carver was the one to sigh. “Yeah, well, there never seemed to be time, you know? Or the right woman.”

Maddy nodded, but said nothing.

“So you’re not Maddy Saunders anymore,” he said.

“Not in any way, shape or form,” she assured him. Before he could press her to elaborate, she rushed on, “Rachel’s plane is going to be about an hour late getting in. You want to go grab some lunch while we wait?”

“Sure. Why not?”

They found their way to a small café and ordered sandwiches and coffee, then passed the time indulged in idle, meaningless chitchat. Hadn’t it been great going to college after having been so stifled by high school? Wasn’t it amazing how little they’d known back then about what it took to be a grown-up? How could anyone survive in this economy when interest rates kept going sky-high?

“Why did your husband take a powder?”

The words were out of Carver’s mouth before he’d even fully formed the question in his brain. He was appalled by his nosiness and lack of discretion. Then again, he reminded himself, he was an investigative reporter. His nosiness and lack of discretion had landed him some pretty great stories, not to mention that Pulitzer. Unfortunately, judging by the expression on Maddy’s face, he wasn’t about to win any awards for those characteristics today.

She stared at him from over the rim of her mug, her dark eyes revealing nothing of what she might be thinking. She took her time to sip her coffee, then carefully replaced the mug back on the table. Finally she replied, “Why do you ask? I would think you above all people would understand why Maddy Saunders would drive a man away. God knows you spent enough time making me feel like a misfit in high school.”

“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have asked,” he apologized. “It’s really none of my business. I don’t know what made me say that.” After a moment, he added, “And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel bad when we were at Strickler. I was a dumb kid back then. I never thought about anyone but myself.”

She picked carelessly through the remains of her sandwich, most of which, he noted, had been untouched. “You weren’t any worse than any of the others,” she said softly. “Hell, at least you took the time to notice me.”

Carver had never heard Maddy swear in his life. She’d always been way too nice to do something like curse. There were so many things about her that had changed over the years, he marveled. Not only did she look like a completely different person, but she acted differently, too. Maddy Saunders, though very nice, had never been the quiet, reserved type. Now just getting her to talk was becoming a challenge. He could scarcely believe she was the same person he’d known so long ago.

If she noticed his lack of a response, she didn’t let on. And in spite of it not being any of his business, she didn’t seem unwilling to share the facts of her past with him. She shrugged, sipped her coffee again, and said, “The fact is that Dennis left me for what he considered a very good reason. He wanted kids. I didn’t. So he found someone else who did. He and his new wife are expecting their second child in January.”

“Maddy, you don’t have to—”

“It’s no big deal, really.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I say so.”

Carver hesitated only a moment before pressing his luck. “It’s just that I always remember you saying you wanted to have about ten kids when you got married because the world needed more people like you in it, and—”

“It’s no big deal,” she repeated, enunciating each word thoroughly, as if he were a child incapable of understanding otherwise.

“Okay, it’s no big deal,” he relented, still wondering about the source of his sudden, unusually intense, curiosity about Maddy.

“Fine. Now that we’ve got that all cleared up…” She glanced down at her watch and quickly swallowed the last of her coffee. “We should be going,” she said pointedly, reaching out to collect the bill.

“I’ve got that.” Carver intercepted, snatching up the scrap of paper before she had a chance to grab it.

“It’s no trouble,” she assured him. “I’m on an expense account.”

“But it’s supposedly my kid we’re going to meet.”

“Carver…”

It was the first time she’d called him by his given name, and hearing Maddy say it again after so many years, in exactly the same, exasperated way she had in high school whenever he was giving her a hard time about something, made him smile. “I’ve got it,” he said again. “My treat.”

She smiled, too, and shook her head. “Being around you has never been a treat.”

His smile broadened. “Oh, come on, Maddy, admit it. You had a huge crush on me back in high school.”

He thought he saw a soft pink stain creep into her cheeks at his allegation, but he wasn’t sure.

“That’s ridiculous,” she assured him. “Why would I want to have anything to do with an overbearing, cynical, sarcastic egomaniac like you? Besides, you were always too thin.”

He patted his belly. “Yeah, I can’t believe I only weighed 150 when I graduated from high school. Age has added about thirty pounds to this carcass.”

And all of it exquisitely arranged and proportioned, Maddy thought as Carver turned to make his way toward the cashier. Funny, she’d never noticed what a nice tush he had. She felt her face flame and covered her cheeks with her cool hands before he could see her reaction and sense the waywardness of her thoughts.

Good heavens, what had come over her? Clearly she’d gone too long without any kind of male companionship, she told herself. That could be the only reason for why she was so thoroughly turned on by Carver Venner.

She hadn’t been with anyone since her husband, but even before Dennis had expressed his desire to be rid of Maddy, their sexual relationship had been on a steady downhill slide. She supposed, looking back, that there had been plenty of warning signs to let her know what was coming. Dennis had been staying at work later and later, and going in earlier and earlier. He’d usually been too tired to make love, and had always had something else to do on the weekends besides spend time with her. And if she was perfectly honest, she had to admit that she hadn’t missed him all that much when he was gone.

They’d stopped talking about anything of significance, their conversations simply stilted exchanges of daily experiences and observations. Her own job had become extremely demanding by then, and she hadn’t really had the time to think much about where her personal life was headed.

Still, when her husband had announced his intention to leave, Maddy had been floored. What had been the real shocker, though, was his reason for wanting out. Before they’d married, they’d talked extensively about the subject of children. Dennis had known exactly what he was getting into with her. Back then, he’d assured her that remaining childless wouldn’t be a problem. He wanted Maddy, not kids. Bottom line.

But suddenly, finding himself childless in his mid-thirties was a realization he couldn’t tolerate. He wanted kids, right away, and Maddy wouldn’t provide him with any. So he’d found someone who would. A nice, ripe, enthusiastic twenty-three-year-old who was more than ready to settle down and start a family.

So Maddy had said sayonara and wished him well. What else could she have done? The divorce had been as amicable as the two of them could make it under the circumstances. In a lot of ways, she supposed she was still a little numb from the experience. Maybe that was why she hadn’t dated anyone since her separation from her husband. Or maybe it was because no one had seemed much interested. Or maybe it was because she just didn’t have the time.

Watching Carver Venner as he paid for their lunch and exited the café, however, she realized it wasn’t because she didn’t have those kinds of feelings anymore. The way that man filled out a pair of jeans…As she continued to study him, he turned to look at her, waiting for her to catch up. He pushed up the sleeves of his charcoal sweater to reveal truly phenomenal forearms, then hooked his hands over intriguingly trim hips.

If Carver Venner had indeed gained thirty pounds since graduation, she thought, it was all solid muscle. The belly he had patted only moments ago was as flat as a steam iron. She wondered if the flesh covering it was as hot.

Bad move, Maddy, she told herself. The last thing she needed to be doing was wondering what Carver Venner looked like naked. Maddy Saunders had certainly never done that. Well, not for any length of time anyway. And none too accurately, either, since the high-school Maddy had never seen a naked man outside the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, since married life had provided her with some working knowledge of the male anatomy, she could now imagine all too well what kind of equipment Carver was carrying. Boy, could she imagine.

“According to the arrival screen, the plane’s on the runway,” he said as she exited the café behind him. He looked anxious and agitated and not a little uncertain.

“Something’s been bothering me about this thing,” he added when she rejoined him. “Beyond the obvious, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

He began to walk slowly toward the terminal, and Maddy easily fell into step beside him. “How come there’s no one contesting this arrangement?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how come there are no outraged grandparents who are insisting that Rachel should come to live with them? I remember Abby saying she had a sister, so why isn’t Rachel’s aunt demanding custody? Why is everyone sending the kid off to live with a total stranger, even if the total stranger is perceived to be the kid’s father—which I’m not,” he added hastily.

This was always the toughest part to explain, Maddy thought. How did one make people like Carver—people who came from loving families—understand that a lot of kids didn’t grow up in the same kind of environment?

“Rachel does have a grandmother,” she began. “And she has an aunt and uncle. But the grandmother is an alcoholic who’s incapable of raising a child. And the aunt and uncle are financially strapped at the moment. Not to mention the fact that none of them, nor any of Rachel’s other relatives, has expressed an interest in taking her in.”

Carver glanced away, at some point over Maddy’s left shoulder. “In other words, nobody wants her.”

She nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

He said nothing in response to her assertion. Instead, he shook a cigarette from a pack that appeared out of nowhere, tucked it between his lips and lit it with a less than steady hand.

“I’ll go with you to the terminal,” Maddy told him. “But I’ll hang back and give you a few minutes alone with your daughter. There will be time for the three of us to talk later.”

“She’s not my daughter,” Carver insisted, inhaling deeply on the cigarette again.

“I guess we’ll have to let the courts decide that.”

“Regardless of what the courts decide, Maddy, Rachel Stillman is not my daughter.”

“Whatever you say, Carver.”

“She’s not my daughter,” he repeated adamantly. “She’s not.”

She was his daughter.

As soon as Carver saw the girl walk into the terminal, he knew without question that she was she was the fruit of his loins. Her dark brown hair and pale blue eyes, her lanky build and accelerated height, her square face, thin nose and full lips…

Had Carver Venner been born a girl, he would have looked exactly like Rachel Stillman when he was twelve years old. And he probably would have dressed like her, too, he thought. Except that his clothes would have fit. Everything Rachel wore—from her plaid flannel shirt and Pearl Jam T-shirt to her tattered army fatigues—were about four sizes too big for her. Even her boots looked as if she’d pilfered them from a six-foot-plus construction worker.

Her hair hung down around her shoulders with two strands in front wrapped in some kind of multicolored thread, and when she tucked the uncombed tresses behind her ears, he saw that one was pierced approximately a half dozen times, the other even more. Seemingly hundreds of bracelets made of everything from rubber to straw circled her forearms, and a long pendant—a peace symbol almost identical to one he’d worn when he was her age—swung between what would someday be breasts.

She approached him without ever slowing or altering her stride—as if she knew as immediately as he that they were related—eyed him warily, sighed dramatically, cracked her gum a couple of times and said, “I’m not calling you Daddy.”

Nonplussed, Carver fired back, “Who asked you to?”

Rachel shrugged, as if she couldn’t care less about anything, nodded toward the cigarette burning between his fingers and asked, “Got another smoke?”

He glanced down at his hand, then back at the girl. “What, for you?”

She nodded.

“Are you nuts?”

This time she shook her head.

He sucked hard on the cigarette, and amid a billowing expulsion of smoke asked, “Don’t you know these things will kill you?”

She eyed him blandly. “Doesn’t seem to worry you too much.”

“Yeah, well…” Carver looked down at the cigarette, reluctantly tossed it to the floor and ground it out with the toe of his hiking boot. He frowned. “Well, maybe it should worry you.”

She made a face, one Carver was certain was endemic of twelve-year-olds everywhere. “Nothing worries me. I’m a kid. Haven’t you heard? We’re immortal.”

Oh, yeah, Carver thought. She was his offspring, all right. Sarcastic, cocky and smart-mouthed as all get out. He suddenly regretted a lot of things he’d said to his own parents when he was a boy.

Without even realizing he needed to sit down, he slumped into a nearby chair. He dropped his head into his hands, raked his fingers through his hair and tried not to panic. A daughter. God. Who knew?

“Mom told me I could get my nose pierced back in L.A., but she, you know, checked out on me before she could sign the permission slip. So, what do you say? You got a problem with it?”

Carver looked up again to find that his daughter—his daughter—had taken the seat next to his. She studied him with a steady, to-the-point gaze, apparently completely unburdened of any grief one might have expected her to feel for the loss of the woman who had raised her.

“Checked out on you?” he repeated incredulously. “Your mother is dead, and that’s all you have to say about it?”

Rachel rolled her eyes and toddled her head around in the way kids do when they don’t want to be bothered with adults who are clearly idiots. “She wasn’t exactly June Cleaver, all right? It’s hard to miss someone who wasn’t, you know, there to begin with.”

Carver stared hard at the girl, trying with all his might to be sympathetic. But he could no more remember what it was like to be twelve years old than he could imagine a mother who wasn’t around. Ruth Venner had always been there for her kids, no matter what kind of demand they were making. She had been June Cleaver, right down to the pearl necklace. And although, thanks to his job, Carver knew a lot more about the world than most people, he still had trouble dealing with the whole neglected kids thing.

“She traveled a lot?” he asked. “Who took care of you?”

Rachel rolled her eyes again, and Carver thought that if she didn’t cut it out, they were going to roll to the back of her head and get stuck for good, and then where would she be?

“It’s not that Mom wasn’t around,” she said. “It’s that she just wasn’t there. You know?”

For some reason, Carver understood exactly what she meant, and he nodded.

“I mean, they told you how she died, right?” Rachel asked.

He nodded again. “Drunk driver.”

“Did they tell you she was the drunk driver?”

Carver looked up into clear, matter-of-fact eyes, eyes that held not a clue as to what their owner might be feeling. “No, they didn’t tell me that.”

“Yeah, well, so now you know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, the phrase all that came to mind.

“Look, don’t get me wrong,” Rachel told him, her gaze dropping to study the toe of her boot. “She wasn’t a bad mom. She just wasn’t like most moms. She loved me and all that, but I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she was the one who was supposed to be responsible.” She shrugged philosophically. “I learned to look after myself.”

Carver hesitated only a moment before asking, “Do you miss her?”

Rachel shrugged again—a gesture Carver was already beginning to realize meant that she was stalling until she figured out what to say—and stared at her feet some more. “Yeah. I guess so. She was pretty tight. All my friends liked her all right.”

“How about you?”

“I liked her, too.”

Carver sighed and tilted his head back to study the ceiling. “Yeah, so did I. I’m sorry she’s gone.”

The two of them sat in silence for some moments, until Rachel finally broke it by asking, “So, are you really my dad?”

Carver turned his head to look at her, to see if there was anything of Abby in her at all. He was shocked to realize he couldn’t even remember what the mother of his daughter looked like. But there was a sprinkling of freckles over Rachel’s nose, and her eyelashes were impossibly long. He supposed she’d gotten those features from her mother. Everything else about her screamed Carver Venner.

“Looks that way,” he said after a moment.

“Mom told me you’re a journalist, too.”

He cocked his head to one side thoughtfully. “What else did your mom tell you about me?”

“Not much. Just that she met you in Guatemala, that you wrote for some left-wing magazine, that you were a great kisser, and that she didn’t see any reason why you had to know I was around. She never told me your last name or where you lived.”

He expelled a single, humorless chuckle, wondering if Rachel might have tried to look for him if she’d known who and where he was. All he said in reply though, was, “I guess she covered all the important stuff then.”

Rachel dropped her gaze to her feet again, tugging on a loose thread that pulled a small hole in her fatigues. “After she died, I found her stash of some of the articles you wrote. You work for that magazine, Left Bank, right? The one that’s getting sued by the GOP for defamation and slander?”

Carver’s brows arched in surprise at they casual way she tossed out the question, as if she understood perfectly what the lawsuit involved. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Politics were a pretty big deal to my mom. She thought the Republican party was made up of a bunch of fascists who wanted to turn the world around and go back to the way it was in 1951.”

Carver smiled to hear such a young kid spout such adult rhetoric. “Well, it is, isn’t it?”

Rachel smiled, too. “I don’t know. They seem harmless enough to me. Stalling the crime bill that way was a pretty crummy thing to do, though. The gangs in L.A. are incredible. A bunch of pin-striped old guys wouldn’t last a minute in some of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in.”

She was way too grown up for a twelve-year-old, Carver thought. She shouldn’t even know about things like crime bills and gangs. She should be worrying more about how to get a playing card to make just the right clicking noise when inserted into the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Even during the turbulent sixties, he and other kids like him had managed to hold on to some of their innocence. Nowadays, it seemed, kids had to cash in their innocence early in order to survive.

“You do a lot of stories about foreign countries for the magazine,” Rachel continued, stirring Carver from his reverie. “Human rights and stuff.”

“I cover a lot of ground, I guess, yeah.”

“So that means you’re gone a lot of the time.”

He nodded. “I’m out of the country a good part of the year. And there are times when I have to do a lot of domestic traveling to research and back up my stories.”

Rachel nodded, too. “That’s okay. I can look after myself.”

“So you’ve said.”

She tilted her head and lifted her chin defiantly, but she still didn’t look at Carver. “Well, it’s true.”

“I believe it.”

He wanted to say more, but had no idea how to address a twelve-year-old girl he had just discovered was his daughter. Fortunately, Maddy chose that moment to join them, and cleared her throat discreetly to announce her arrival. Carver smiled his gratitude, then realized she couldn’t possibly understand how much she’d just helped him out.

“Uh, Maddy,” he said, standing awkwardly. He gestured toward the girl who remained seated. “This is Rachel. My daughter.”

Maddy arched her brows inquisitively, but didn’t ask what had convinced him to change his mind so quickly and irrevocably. Then she looked down at Rachel, and he could see by her expression that she noted the dramatic resemblance between father and daughter as well as he. She looked back up at Carver and smiled, then turned her attention back to the girl.

“Nice to meet you, Rachel,” she said, extending her hand.

Rachel stood, looked at Maddy’s hand for a moment as if she didn’t understand the gesture being offered, then brushed her own palm against Maddy’s. “Hi,” she said a little breathlessly. “Are you my new stepmom?”

Maddy bit back the furious denial she felt coming, and tried to tamp down the odd sensation of delight that threatened to spiral out of control at hearing the suggestion. “Uh, no,” she said. “I’m Maddy Garrett. I work for the Child Welfare Office of Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, the social worker,” Rachel said with a knowing nod.

Yeah, the social worker, Maddy thought, squelching a wistful sigh. She supposed that was all she would ever be to anyone. Still, that was something. There were a lot of people out there who needed her, kids who wouldn’t stand a chance without her. Unfortunately, thanks to the society and bureaucracy that went along with her work, there were a lot more who fell through the cracks, too, a lot more who were let down.

“Yes, I’m the social worker,” Maddy told Rachel, trying to inject a little more fortitude into her voice than she felt. “I’ll be helping you and your father out for a little while, to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.”

She glanced at Carver, and her heart turned over at the look on his face. He was staring at his daughter as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. He looked confused, tired, shocked…and…and kind of proud, she realized. Something in his demeanor told her he wasn’t quite as unhappy about this situation as he’d first let on.

“Looks like the two of you are off to a pretty good start,” she said.

Rachel turned to look at her father. “So how about the nose piercing thing?” she asked. “You never said for sure.”

Maddy, too, turned to Carver, hoping for clarification.

“Rachel wants to get her nose pierced,” he explained. “Her mother gave her permission before she died.”

“Oh, I see,” Maddy replied, although she couldn’t see at all why anyone would want to do something like that to herself.

“So, can I?” Rachel asked again.

Carver turned to his daughter, trying not to buckle under what would be his first parental decision. “No,” he finally said. “Sorry, kiddo, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. Maybe when you’re eighteen.”

“No?” Rachel said as she jumped up from her chair and glared at him.

Even if she was only twelve years old, she was already taller than Maddy, and Carver suddenly felt about as awkward around his daughter as he had around his adolescent nemesis. Rachel’s demeanor changed dramatically in a matter of seconds, from a nonchalant preteen to a raging tower of indignation. It was amazing, he thought, the energy that was wreaked by unstable hormones.

“No?” she repeated, her voice rising about ten decibels in that one syllable. “What do you mean, ‘No,’?”

Although he was taken aback by the suddenness of her attack, Carver was able to maintain a stoic control. He’d dealt with scary kids before, he reminded himself. Back when he’d spent a week at a New Jersey youth detention center for a story he’d done on juvenile offenders. The trick was to stay calm and never let them know how terrified you were of them, no matter how badly you wanted to bolt.

So Carver turned to look Rachel right in the eye, settled his hands on his hips and calmly repeated, “I mean, ‘No. You can’t do it.’”

Rachel gaped at him as if he had just slapped her. “I can’t do it?” she asked.

He sighed heavily. “That’s what I said. You can’t do it. Hasn’t anyone ever said no to you before?”

Instead of answering his question, Rachel ran an impatient hand through her hair and glared even harder. “Oh, man, I should have known what a bastard you were going to be.”

This time Carver was the one to gape. His voice and posture were deceptively calm as he asked, “What was that?”

“I said you’re a class-A bastard,” Rachel was quick to reply.

Carver blinked once, turned to Maddy for support, then saw that she was as surprised as he by the turn of events. He scrubbed a hand over his face, reminded himself that Rachel was just a kid—a kid who’d recently lost her mother— and tried to remain calm.

“Look,” he said, “why don’t we just forget you said that and start over. We can go home, get situated—”

“Go home?” Rachel cried. “Home is L.A. I’m not going anywhere with you, you sonofa—”

“Hey!”

Carver’s tone of voice was sufficient to stifle the girl’s outburst, but she continued to glare daggers at him as she crossed her hands over her chest. She tilted her head back, thrust her chin out and frowned.

“One more blowup like that,” he said, “and I’ll…”

He’d what? he wondered. What did he know about parental ultimatums except for what he’d learned being on the receiving end of them for most of his youthful years? And a quarter century had passed since he was Rachel’s age. The world was a completely different place. Kids were different, ultimatums were different. And what the hell did he know about either of them?

“I’m going back to L.A.,” Rachel said as he pondered his quandary.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, trying to ward off what promised to be a major headache. “No, you’re not,” he told her. “You can’t.”

“The hell I can’t. Just watch me. The first opportunity I get, I’m outta here. You’re bogus, dude. Just because you had a quickie with my mom doesn’t mean anything. I don’t care how much you look like me. You’re not my father. And I don’t have to do a damned thing you say.”

Carver looked at his daughter again, realizing then that there was a lot more of him in her than met the eye. “Oh, boy,” he said under his breath. Then, turning to his other female companion, he added more clearly, “Ever the optimist, aren’t you, Maddy? Well, something tells me this isn’t going to be quite as easy as you thought.”

Three

Carver stood outside his bathroom door wearing nothing but a pair of battered blue jeans and rapped loudly for the sixth time. He sighed as he halfheartedly performed the gesture, knowing what the response to his summons would be before Rachel even uttered it.

“Just a minute!” she called out from the other side.

“You’ve been saying ‘Just a minute’ for more than half an hour,” he called back. “What the he…” He sighed fitfully. “What on earth are you doing in there?”

“Just a minute!”

Carver spun around on his heel and went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. The clock on the stove reminded him that he should have left for work fifteen minutes ago if he was going to arrive when he normally did, and he hadn’t even had a shower yet. Rachel had commandeered his bathroom just as he was reaching for the doorknob himself, shouldering him out of the way with enough force to shove him back against the hallway wall. And she hadn’t come out once. He’d heard water run briefly, but had detected not a sound since it shut off. He couldn’t imagine what a twelve-year-old girl would need with forty-five minutes in the bathroom. She was only doing it, he was certain, to annoy him.

Annoying him had seemed to be Rachel’s favorite pastime since her arrival the day before. On the drive to his apartment, she’d prohibited any opportunity for conversation by snapping on the radio and fiddling incessantly with the dial. When she had finally found a station she deemed appropriate, she had turned the volume up so loudly, it had almost blown out his speakers. And today’s music was nothing but garbage, something Carver had taken great pleasure in pointing out to Rachel. Naturally, she had taken exception to his pronouncement, and had assured him he couldn’t relate because he was too old.

“Kids,” he muttered under his breath as he topped off his coffee.

Upon their arrival at his apartment, Rachel had taken one look at the spare room, had told Carver he had got to be kidding, then demanded a couple hundred dollars to do the place up right. She’d unpacked by removing piles of wadded-up clothing from her suitcase and heaving them haphazardly into drawers and onto the closet floor, and had assured him she never did her own laundry. And when he’d pressed her about that taking care of herself business, she’d only shrugged in that maddeningly nonchalant way he was quickly coming to hate.

“Damn kids,” he mumbled as he sipped his coffee.

Then, last night, just as Carver was settled into bed and on the verge of sleep, she’d cranked up the stereo in the living room until the whole apartment building shook. Within seconds, his phone had been ringing off the hook, virtually every neighbor within a four-block radius calling to complain about the noise. And when he’d gone out to confront his daughter about her nocturnal activities, he’d found her sprawled on the couch with the music blaring, watching television with the sound turned down, a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray beside her. She had been eating pizza— the piece Carver had been saving for breakfast the following morning—and washing it down with a beer she’d evidently also swiped from the fridge.

And when Carver had demanded to know what the he…what on earth she thought she was doing, she’d swallowed a mouthful of beer, inhaled deeply on the cigarette and turned the music up louder. Then she’d told him it was what she always did to unwind in the evening.

“Damn unreasonable kids,” he grumbled into his coffee.

He was about to make another assault on his bathroom when someone knocked at his front door. There was something familiar about that rapping, he thought as he went to answer it. And something a little ominous, too. Reluctantly, he opened the door and found, not much to his surprise, Maddy Garrett standing on the other side. She’d returned to her masculine form of dressing today, and wore a rumpled gray flannel suit with an equally rumpled white shirt, and scuffed, flat-heeled shoes.

It bothered Carver to see Maddy rumpled and scuffed. She’d been neither in high school. Back then her clothes— although more than a little unstylish and stuffy—had always been as starched and pressed as she was herself. Maddy Saunders wouldn’t have been caught dead being rumpled. Maddy Garrett, however, evidently had no such qualms.

“Morning,” she said as she brushed past him without waiting for an invitation. Once again, she sounded and looked weary and run-down. “IIow’s it going with Rachel?”

Carver uttered a derisive laugh as he closed the door behind her and hoped he didn’t sound too hysterical. “Well, aside from her having some pretty awful personal habits, and aside from her indulging in a remarkably bad diet, and aside from the fact that she’s noisy, obnoxious, loudmouthed, self-centered…”

“Gee, she sounds a lot like her old man,” Maddy interjected with a smile.

Carver ignored her jab. “And aside from her having made it impossible for me to answer the call of nature in socially acceptable surroundings,” he added, “everything’s been just hunky-dory.”

As if to illustrate just how perfectly she and Carver were getting along, Rachel chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, dressed almost exactly as she had been the day before. She crossed to the kitchen and came out with a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette, then slouched into a chair and picked up the TV remote. Without bothering to ask Carver if he was following the story on CNN, she switched the channel to MTV and, as always, pumped up the volume way too loud.

“Rachel,” Carver said, his voice laced with exhaustion, “put out the cigarette.”

Rachel continued to watch TV, completely ignoring the two adults.

“Rachel,” he repeated.

“What?”

“Put out the cigarette.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s bad for you.”

“So?”

“So you shouldn’t smoke.”

“You do.”

“I’m an adult. I’m allowed.”

“Mom never minded it.”

“Well, I do.”

Instead of following Carver’s command, Rachel lifted the cigarette to her lips and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs for a good ten seconds before expelling it in a series of perfect, wispy white O’s.

Carver sighed wearily. “Okay, let’s try another one. Rachel, turn down the TV.”

Once again, Rachel acted as if Carver and Maddy were nowhere in the room.

“Rachel,” he tried again.

“What?”

“Turn down the TV.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s too loud.”

“So?”

“So the neighbors will complain.”

“Who cares what other people think?”

“You will, when the police show up at the door.”

“Mom never minded it.”

“Well, I do.”

Rachel picked up the remote control and aimed it at the television, but instead of urging the volume lower, she pushed it up even louder.

Maddy watched the girl with a practiced eye, seeing in Rachel a typical twelve-year-old girl who was crying out for attention, discipline and affection. Obviously she hadn’t received enough of any of those things in her previous way of life. Still, Rachel was actually one of the lucky ones, Maddy thought further. Maybe she hadn’t gotten everything she’d needed from her mother, but from what Maddy could tell, she hadn’t been physically or emotionally mistreated. A lot of kids would love to be in Rachel’s position. At least there was some hope for her and her father to build a solid, lasting, loving relationship. It wasn’t going to be easy, Maddy knew, but with her help, Rachel and Carver were probably going to be just fine. Eventually.

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