“Mom, Tommy and Mr. Forrest are going fishing. They invited me along. Is that okay?”

Molly couldn’t miss the glow on her daughter’s face. She hadn’t ever been fishing before—and Liza was an adventurer at heart. She loved nothing better than trying something new.

“What about homework?”

“Just math. I can do it after dinner.” Liza pressed her hands together imploringly. “Mom, please?”

How could anyone resist that smile? And yet, Molly felt herself hesitating—her mind scanning for excuses. The thought of her daughter spending all afternoon with Jackson made her nervous. Suppose he started asking Liza questions? Molly hadn’t prepared Liza—though she’d been perfectly willing to lie herself, her conscience had balked at the idea of rehearsing her daughter in perjury. Liza knew only that her father had died before he’d been able to marry her mother. Molly had promised to tell her all about him when she was a little older. But that information might be enough….

Jackson was no fool.

The Real Father
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Laura Shin,

who always makes my work so much better.

And who always makes it so much fun.

Dear Reader,

When I was a little girl of three or four, the family lore goes, I climbed comfortably onto my father’s lap and snuggled there for several minutes. But then, chattering happily, I chanced to look up. Openmouthed, I looked again. It wasn’t my father at all. It was my uncle, my father’s identical twin.

Even today, everyone laughs at the memory of my panicked, poleaxed little face. With one violent shove, I wriggled down and fled—not because I didn’t love my uncle, who was a gentle, darling man, but because I had been so thoroughly deceived.

Later I learned that I was just one of many such victims, both innocent and deliberate. Confusion followed wherever they went: “I saw you at dinner the other night,” a wounded friend would complain. “Why didn’t you say hello?” The tales of their early years were legendary—including nights when, midevening, the young men would trade dates, their lady friends never aware of the switch.

And the most amazing case of all… One day, when they were little boys, my uncle Matt ran down the hall and slammed into a full-length mirror. His mother, comforting him, was moved to ask, “But Matt, dear, why on earth did you do that?” To which my uncle replied, “I thought it was Mike, and he ought to get out of the way.”

I felt less foolish when I heard that one. After all, if even they couldn’t tell the difference, how could I?

Perhaps, since I’d been brought up on such wild—and possibly a tiny bit embellished—stories, it was inevitable that someday I would want to explore the plot and character possibilities of twinship.

Jackson and Beau Forrest, the twins at the heart of The Real Father, are purely fictional creations. However, the trials they endure are not, thank goodness, based on any real events in the lives of my father and his brother.

But in building Jackson’s personality—in understanding his guilt, his grief and the intensity of his loss—I did draw on what I had witnessed at home: the love that was more than love, the connection so profound, it approached the mystical, the communication that ran along lines buried much deeper than words.

My father and uncle had the luxury of growing old together. Jackson and Beau did not. As I tried to comprehend what such a loss would mean to an identical twin, as I asked myself how such an emptiness could ever be filled, I realized that it would take more than the perfect heroine.

It would take at least two.

And that’s how I found Molly and Liza Lorring. A landscape architect and her daughter—or the Most Royal Queen and Beauteous Princess of the Planet Cuspian…depending on who you ask. Between them, they’re quite equal to the task of slaying any dragons that might be plaguing a hero.

I hope you enjoy their story.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

HE COULDN’T DECIDE whether to pass out or punch something.

Jackson Forrest hung on to the dresser with the heels of both hands, using its mahogany bulk to keep him standing erect until he made up his mind. He didn’t look into the mirror. The first glimpse of his reflection had shown him two bleary-eyed silhouettes weaving sickeningly in and out of each other, and he’d lowered his head quickly. Right now he couldn’t bear the sight of himself once, much less twice.

Instead he stared at the ring, which lay on the dresser like an accusation, winking aggressively in the lamplight. The Forrest ring. Eighteen-karat gold forged into a pattern of interlocking leaves—the metal so soft and precious, the design so intricate that it was hard to imagine the thing surviving even one owner. Yet it had been worn by every first-born Forrest male since the Civil War.

His brother’s ring.

“Damn you.” He spoke aloud. His voice was husky and slurred. “What a snake you are, Forrest….”

His voice trailed off. Who was he talking to? Beau? Or himself? He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink—it limited his vocabulary. But maybe there wasn’t a word in the entire English language that could sum up the disgust he felt for the both of them tonight.

Clenching his teeth against the stale memory of Michelob, he raised his head. “Jeez,” he muttered to the haunted man that stared back at him. “You are one pitiful son of a bitch.”

The ring winked its golden eye again, and a new wave of nausea rolled over him.

How could he stand it? How could he live with what he’d done? With a slurred curse he swept his hand across the dresser top, sending everything spinning to the floor. Coins, cuff links, keys—they all fell in a discordant metallic jangle along with the ring.

As the noise echoed hollowly through the large, high-ceilinged room, the door opened. Somehow Jackson managed to look up without losing his balance. It was Beau. At the sight of his brother, one lucid fact finally pierced Jackson’s mental fog. He didn’t want to punch something. He wanted to punch somebody.

He wanted to punch Beau.

And he wanted Beau to hit him back. He wanted a fierce, primitive battering that would draw blood or tears or both. He wanted to hurt and be hurt. To punish and be punished. As if that alone could cleanse him now.

But Beau wasn’t interested in Jackson’s fury. He wasn’t even aware of it. He didn’t notice the mess on the floor. He was, as usual, entirely focused on his own emotional state.

Which clearly wasn’t any happier than Jackson’s. Beau slammed the door shut behind him, cursing with a vivid vocabulary that put Jackson’s earlier drunken mumbling to shame. His blond hair was tousled, hanging down over his forehead as if he’d pulled his fingers through it a hundred times. Under the tangled fringe, his green eyes were hard and angry, and the golden tan of his face had darkened to the unmistakable deep bronze of rage.

He looked nothing like the sunny angel he was known far and wide to be. Nothing like the coddled darling, the sweetheart of awestruck little girls in pinafores, sex-crazed cheerleaders in pom-poms, lonely old ladies in blue hair—and everything in between.

He looked almost ugly. And he looked mean. For a piercing instant of self-serving spite, Jackson wished that Molly could see Beau now, like this, with his true nature stamped on every feature.

But he mustn’t think about Molly. He needed to clear his head. He needed to find out what had made Beaumont Forrest, his beloved twin brother, the elder by fifteen minutes and the favorite by a country mile, so furious that he forgot to be charming.

What if he had found out—?

But no. Jackson rubbed his eyes, trying to adjust his vision, which was still offering him double images. Beau couldn’t have found out anything, not this soon. That was just Jackson’s guilty conscience working overtime. Might as well get used to it. He had the sick feeling that he was going to be living with a guilty conscience for the rest of his life.

Beau shoved Jackson aside and began yanking open the dresser drawers.

“Where the hell are my keys?” Beau tossed clothes roughly as he dug through stacks of neatly folded T-shirts and jeans, turning pockets inside out. “I know I put them in this goddamn room somewhere.”

“God, Beau. Chill.” Denied the support of the dresser, Jackson sat on the edge of Beau’s four-poster bed, hunching over, hands dangling between his knees. “What’s got you in such a lather?” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Something go wrong? Did your bimbo du jour fail to show up for the fun?”

Beau didn’t even turn around. “Shut up, Jack,” he growled, slamming one drawer and wrenching open the next. “I’m not in the mood for any of your crap right now.”

Jackson’s inner radar began to pulse. Being an identical twin meant that you heard things no one else could hear, felt things no one else could sense. Something was wrong. Really wrong. This wasn’t just another of Beau’s sulks. This was trouble.

“What’s the matter, Beau?” He stood, ignoring the dizzying nausea as best he could. “Is it Molly?”

“To hell with Molly.” Beau shoved the drawer shut violently and kicked at the dresser in frustration. He spun around and turned his savage gaze on his brother. “Damn you, Jackson. If you’ve got the keys to my car, you’d better cough them up pronto.”

He was losing control. Jackson could feel the blood pounding in Beau’s throat, at his temples, behind his eyes—just as if it were happening to him. He took two steps forward, reaching for the edge of the dresser. “They’re on the floor—”

With an ugly oath, Beau lunged toward the fallen keys.

“Where are you going?” Jackson’s nerves were tingling with a nameless dread. He suddenly wished he had hidden the keys. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m getting out of here, that’s what. If that tramp thinks she’s going to ruin my life, she’s got another think coming.”

Jackson tried to shake the Michelob from his brain. “Who? Molly?”

Beau’s face was frightening. “Molly? Hell, Jack. Get real. Who gives a damn about that frigid little bitch?” He moved toward the door.

Jackson followed on legs that seemed to be made from something numb and wobbling. “Beau, wait. Why don’t you let me drive?”

Beau didn’t even bother to answer. And Jackson knew it was a ridiculous suggestion. Beau might be deranged with fury, but Jackson was so drunk he probably couldn’t get the car out of the front drive without climbing an oak tree. Still, every instinct was screaming for him to stop his brother. He lurched down the stairs, keeping Beau’s retreating back just barely in sight.

When he reached the low-slung red sports car that sat waiting in the moonlit drive, Beau had already ground the engine to snarling life. There was no time to waste. Jackson vaulted over the convertible’s closed door and dropped onto the black leather seat. For a long, tense moment, he met his twin’s furious gaze with an unyielding stare. Beau could breathe fire if he wanted to. Jackson wasn’t getting out.

Finally Beau looked away. He jammed the car into reverse, gears screaming, and backed out of the drive at a mad, blind tear. At the front gate, he swung the wheel, sending the car into a sliding spin that somehow ended up facing the road.

After that there was only hissing wind, blue moonlight and the silent madness of breakneck speed. Neither of them spoke a word as the little car tore through the empty streets of downtown Demery. Stop signs, stoplights, sharp curves—nothing slowed Beau’s fury. Jackson watched quaint storefronts and stately homes streak by like bleeding paint on an Impressionist canvas. He wondered how much fuel was in the tank, hoping that Beau would run out of gas before he ran out of luck.

They nicked a curb, jolting every bone in Jackson’s body. If Jackson had hoped that the potent cocktail of sheer danger and mute fear would drain the rage from his brother’s heart, he’d been deluding himself. Beau seemed to grow more inflamed with every wild mile. The streets grew narrower, less carefully cultivated. They weren’t far now from Annie Cheatwood’s house. The dread in Jackson’s body began to take a clear and terrible shape.

“Beau,” he called over roar of the engine. “Beau, knock it off. You’re going to kill us both.”

But Beau didn’t hear him. Or wouldn’t hear him. Eyes narrowed against the wind, he steered the car grimly, his foot never lifting from the accelerator. Jackson watched him, strangely hypnotized, and he thought he saw Beau’s lips form a word.

“Bitch,” he seemed to say. And then over and over, “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

Jackson turned his gaze back to the road just a fraction of a second too late. With a cold horror he saw the statue flying toward them, like something out of a bad dream, a fifteen-foot marble monster suddenly coming alive and hurtling toward the little car.

“Beau!” Jackson grabbed the wheel and shoved it desperately to the left, though he knew it was hopeless. Nothing could stop the insane advance of the statue, the figure of a Civil War general that stood in dignified sentry in the center of Milton Square, a sweet, civilized plot of land at the edge of town.

Beau was clawing at the wheel, too, finally aware of their danger. But even the combined strength of their young, athletic bodies could not wrench the car free of the relentless, magnetic pull of the statue.

Metal exploded against marble. Bone crushed against chrome. Steel ripped through leather and flesh.

And for Beau and Jackson Forrest, twenty-two years old, the world went black and ended.

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT A DELIGHTFUL little girl your daughter is, Ms. Lorring.”

Janice Kilgore, vice principal at Radway School, was beaming. Even her dense network of freckles seemed to glow. “She’s so easy with the other children. She fits in beautifully here, don’t you think?”

Molly nodded, not wanting to spoil Miss Kilgore’s pleasure by pointing out that Liza usually fit in comfortably wherever she went. The other woman naturally preferred to believe it was some magic chemistry provided by her exclusive private school. It would help to justify the exorbitant tuition she was going to have to discuss with Molly later on.

Besides, Miss Kilgore’s enthusiasm was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that Liza came recommended by Miss Lavinia Forrest of Everspring Plantation. In Demery, South Carolina, population fifteen thousand, the Forrests reigned supreme. Forrest children, including Miss Lavinia, had attended Radway for three generations.

Still, Liza’s bright, uninhibited smile was quite a recommendation all its own.

Molly looked across Radway’s large, well-equipped playground now, drawing comfort from the sight of her daughter. Liza’s smile had brought sunshine into some of the darkest days of Molly’s life.

Liza hadn’t noticed her mother and Miss Kilgore standing at the fringe of the playground. She was busy hoisting a smaller child onto a swing. Both little girls giggled as Liza lowered the safety bar, gave the child a push and then stood back, her wispy blond hair flying in the February wind, her cheeks as red as her winter coat.

The coat was getting too short, Molly noticed absently. Liza’s legs seemed to stretch by inches every day. It was impossible to keep her in clothes that fit. Her lurching growth spurts seemed to promise that she would be dramatically tall and slim.

Just like her father.

“What a cutie,” Miss Kilgore said, sighing. “You must be very proud of her.”

Molly didn’t answer right away, struggling to subdue the absurd tightness that had overtaken her vocal cords at the sight of Liza’s long, coltish legs.

The answer was easy, if only she’d been able to control her voice enough to speak it. Yes, Molly was proud. These past nine years—first struggling as a frightened teenage mother to bring up her newborn daughter alone, then going to school at night, and finally piecing together a career and a business as a landscape architect—had been almost unimaginably difficult.

Some nights she’d been so lonely she’d talked to the walls. Some days she’d been so tired she wanted to cry. But she hadn’t wept. She had endured it, all of it. She had fought the odds, and she had won.

And Liza made it all worthwhile. Her little girl was smart, sweet, amazingly courageous. She was everything Molly had hoped she’d be. Everything Molly herself had not been—not at nine, not at nineteen, not ever. Not even now, at almost twenty-nine. For Molly, the daughter of a resentful, alcoholic father, being brave was still very much a decision, not an instinct.

So how could Molly help being proud? She had taken her one small talent, a gift for growing things, and she had turned it into a career so successful that she and her daughter wanted for nothing.

Well, nothing but a new coat. She blew Liza a kiss and made a mental note to buy her the most beautiful red coat in all of South Carolina.

“She’s a fantastic kid,” Molly said finally, turning back to Miss Kilgore. To heck with false modesty. She let her joy in her daughter break through in a wide smile. “I consider myself very, very lucky.”

“You are. Believe me, they’re not all like that.” Miss Kilgore seemed to have been born with a smile on her face, and she directed her dimpled grin toward Molly. “Would you like to see the rest of the school? The music rooms? The science lab? The swimming pool?” She held out her hands, palms up in refreshing candor. “How can I impress you, Ms. Lorring? I have to admit, I’d love to see Liza at Radway.”

“Call me Molly. And I’m already impressed.”

“Fantastic. I’m Jan. Tommy Cheatwood! Stop that! Put Peggy down this instant!”

Molly was momentarily bewildered, until she realized that Janice Kilgore’s practiced gaze had been scanning the playground even as she wooed and flattered her new candidate. An impish, gap-toothed boy in the corner was holding on to a small, squealing girl’s ankles, guiding her around like a human wheelbarrow.

For one intense moment his blond hair and green eyes, his irreverent grin, his animal pleasure in his mischief, reminded her forcibly of the Forrest twins. Well, Jackson Forrest, perhaps. Beau had never looked quite that cocky and defiant.

At the sound of his teacher’s voice, Tommy looked over, grimaced, and let go, plopping Peggy into the sand without ceremony. His face sobered, and the fleeting impression disappeared. Molly breathed again.

Jan rolled her eyes and turned back to Molly. “So you’re impressed. Good. Now before one of my beloved monsters does something to turn you off, shall we just move right along to the ceremonial signing of the contract?”

Molly shook her head. “It’s a little early for that,” she said, smiling.

Jan sighed, her cheerful face coming as close to somber as her snub nose and freckles would allow. “Already heard about the tuition, have you? I know it’s a heart stopper, but we’re not offering just snob appeal here, Molly. We can give Liza the education she deserves. Even tossing aside the sales pitch, we really are the best.”

“I believe you.” And she did. Molly had been born here in Demery. She’d grown up here. There weren’t many social, political, economic or even academic nuances that she didn’t grasp. Jan wasn’t exaggerating: If you lived in Demery, Radway School was the best.

But that was the catch. If you lived in Demery. At the moment, Molly and Liza lived in Atlanta. Even if she accepted the Everspring restoration job, she would be here only a couple of months.

“It’s not the tuition,” Molly explained. “My plans are really still up in the air. I haven’t even committed yet to taking the job.”

Janice looked confused. “But when Miss Forrest called, she said…she seemed to think it was all settled.”

“I know.” Molly could well imagine how Lavinia Forrest would have made it sound. Lavinia wanted Molly to do the landscape renovations at Everspring Plantation, and Lavinia was so accustomed to getting what she wanted that she probably considered the whole thing a done deal.

And truthfully, the contract was so lucrative, the benefits so generous, that only a fool would have wasted a single second before leaping up to sign on the dotted line.

Maybe that’s what she was, Molly thought. A fool. But she wouldn’t be rushed into this decision. Once, ten years ago, she had allowed herself to be pressured into doing something foolish, something she knew in her heart was wrong. The consequences had been staggering, life altering.

The consequence had been motherhood.

On the day she had learned she was pregnant, while she sat on that cold, metal examination table with her tears barely dried on her cheeks, she had made a promise to herself. She had vowed that no one would ever again force her to act against her own judgment.

Beginning in that frightened moment, with grim, blind determination she had taken control of her life and Liza’s. She wasn’t about to turn over the reins now.

Lavinia would have to wait. There was something Molly had to do before she could commit to this project. Something she had to know about herself—and about exactly how far she had come in the past ten years.

Had she come far enough that it was now safe to come full circle? To come home?

“I’m meeting Lavinia in a few minutes,” Molly explained, wishing in spite of herself that she could take that disappointment from Janice Kilgore’s face. “I think she said you wouldn’t mind letting Liza stay with your class, just for an hour or so?”

Jan’s grin broke through. “You know I’d love it. Look at her with the little ones. Why, it’s as good as having another teacher’s aide.” She chuckled. “A great deal better than our last one, who liked to sneak off and smoke cigars in the closet.”

Molly picked her way across the winter-brown field of laughing, twirling, seesawing children to kiss Liza goodbye. As she breathed in the fresh, soapy scent of her daughter, enveloping her in a long bear hug, she assured the little girl that she’d be back very soon. As usual, Liza nodded with untroubled acceptance, quite content to be left in her new surroundings.

As Molly headed toward her waiting rental car, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Liza was fine. Her confidence was a gift, and Molly didn’t want to undermine it by communicating insecurity. It was just that Molly’s own childhood had been quite different. She had dreaded new places and strange people, sensing that the world was unpredictable. She had always felt just one slippery step from some nameless disaster.

Living with a family like hers could do that to a person.

Molly knew that Liza sometimes longed for a daddy—and the knowledge often filled her with a sense of failure. But then she reminded herself of the truth she’d learned so long ago, listening to the sound of her father’s drunken rages: No father was a thousand times better than a bad one.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Molly stood in a churchyard, tightly gripping a velvety cluster of deep-purple pansies. The cemetery was only five miles east of Radway School by car. Emotionally it might as well have been in another world.

Where Radway had rung with the laughter of a hundred children and teemed with young, vigorous life, this place was almost preternaturally quiet. Black-armed oaks, drooping willows and barely budding dogwood crowded together, blocking all sound from the street. The winter sunshine fought its way through the tangled branches, but at a price. It lay like a broken thing on the grass, a fractured mosaic of white-gold light amid the olive-green shadows.

Molly hadn’t visited Woodlawn Cemetery in almost ten years, but she had no trouble finding the Forrest plot. It lay deep in the center of the seven acres of gray marble headstones and mildewed angels, deep enough to signify that the Forrest family had been in Demery since its founding.

Ten generations of Forrests lay beneath these silent trees. The carvings spoke of brave Confederate soldiers, some only sixteen years old when they were delivered here straight from battle. Headstones told of young mothers who died bearing Forrest infants, who then were brought here, too, lost to influenza or typhoid fever. More-modern graves were less tragic, reflecting long lives and easy passing. The natural ebb and flow of life.

Until she came to one of the newest graves, where someone had recently placed a bouquet of sweet peas. Until she read the headstone. Placed here less than ten years ago, its letters still formed fresh, sharp angles in the sparkling granite.

Beaumont Cameron Forrest. Cherished son, beloved brother.

Twenty-two years old the day he died.

Just twenty-two. For a disoriented moment Molly couldn’t make sense of it. Her handsome Beau, her older, more sophisticated hero…just twenty-two?

She had idolized him ever since she was eight years old, when he had chivalrously paused in his majestic twelve-year-old pursuits to rescue her doll from the creek. And yet Molly now was older than Beau would ever be. His twin brother, Jackson, was older now, too—almost thirty-two. No longer the identical twin.

Molly fought back an unfair flash of resentment that Jackson should have lived, aged, prospered, while Beau…

But this was what death did. It warped perspectives, inverted relationships, rendered obsolete concepts of older, younger, bigger, smaller. It froze you in time, forced others to go on without you.

She squeezed the flowers so tightly she could smell the sharp scent of broken stems. Her legs felt suddenly soft, as if the weight of her body would sink through them, driving her to the ground. She wondered irrationally if the earth would still be damp from all the tears she had cried in this spot ten years ago.

“I thought you might be here.” The dry, husky voice came from a mere three yards behind her, and Molly turned with graceless shock. She had believed she was alone here. She had certainly felt alone.

Lavinia Forrest, Beau’s aunt, stood there, watching. She looked exactly as she had looked ten years ago—the way she’d looked, in fact, for as long as Molly could remember. Tall, lanky, square-jawed. Dressed as always in slacks and jacket of no-nonsense navy blue, her straight white hair bobbed for maximum efficiency. She eyed Molly with her familiar candid scrutiny.

“You’re not crying,” Lavinia said matter-of-factly. “That’s good. No use crying over him, not after all these years.”

Molly smiled, strangely reassured by the older woman’s crusty manner. Though the whole world might tilt and sway, though strong, glorious young men might die too soon, some things, apparently, never changed.

“I was just about to head over to the church to meet you,” Molly said. “Am I late?”

Lavinia shook her head. “No. I finished early. I decided to let the other volunteers arrange the flowers for once. They could use the practice. Never saw so many women with five thumbs on each hand.” She dismissed the volunteer guild with one wave of her own long-fingered, capable, quintessentially Forrest hand. “But what is this sudden formality, little Miss Molly? No hug for an old friend?”

Molly murmured a wordless apology as she held out her arms and let herself be enfolded in Lavinia Forrest’s comforting embrace. Lavinia was unusually tall—it was a Forrest trait—so even though Molly herself was almost five-eight, she felt childlike beside the older woman.

It felt like coming home. Lavinia’s scent was so familiar—a mixture of clean soap and the natural earthy perfumes of a woman who loved to work with flowers. Through the years, Molly had enjoyed more hugs from Lavinia Forrest than she had from her own mother.

This hug was long and warm, and Molly sensed that it was Lavinia’s way of saying that she understood, even shared, Molly’s grief at the sight of Beau’s grave. Though Lavinia had loved her twin nephews equally, Beau had always been her favorite. Of course, Beau, with his sunny disposition and his charming manner, had been everyone’s favorite. Jackson had never gone out of his way to charm anyone.

The whole community had mourned Beau’s death, but Lavinia’s loss had been devastating. She had no husband, no children of her own, and she had lavished her stockpile of affection on the darling nephew who teased and flirted with her as no one else had ever done. Now that Beau was gone, Lavinia had only her flowers to spoil.

Molly knew that Lavinia would never speak openly of her heartache. It wasn’t in her vocabulary. But that was all right. This hug was eloquent, and it was enough.

Finally Lavinia broke away, clearing her throat roughly. “Well, then, that’s that. You’ve seen his grave. It stings a little, but you survived it. Now what do you say let’s get out of this gloomy place?”

Molly hesitated. Then, with a deep, steadying breath, she bent down and placed her bouquet of pansies neatly alongside the sweet peas that already lay at the base of the headstone. Her fingers were gratifyingly steady as she smoothed the ribbons that bound the blossoms together.

Straightening quickly, Molly brushed her hands together and met Lavinia’s uncompromising Forrest-green gaze squarely.

With a smile she took Lavinia’s arm and nudged her toward the path that would lead them back into the sunlight.

“You’re right, Aunt Lavinia. We’d better hurry and get that landscaping contract signed. It will be spring before you know it, and I’ve got about a million flowers to plant.”

JACKSON FORREST LEANED against an oak at the edge of the soccer field, watching as Tommy Cheatwood loped his way down the grass, way ahead of all the other boys, using those long, skinny legs to kick the stuffing out of the little black-and-white ball.

Tommy’s blond hair was standing up in wet spikes of perspiration, and his face was a flushed study in complete concentration. Sixty pounds of talent and intensity. As he reached the other side, he gave the ball one last, whopping thrust, sending it into the net, sailing neatly past the awkwardly flopping goalie.

Damn, the kid was good. Jackson whistled his admiration above the cheers of the watching parents. Hearing the familiar notes, Tommy looked back at him, grinning through the sweat, and the two males exchanged a thumbs-up.

But already Coach Riser was striding toward the boy, his clipboard tucked tightly under his arm. His glowering face didn’t seem to promise a congratulatory pat on the back. Tommy stood ramrod straight, awaiting his fate.

“What the heck was that, Cheatwood?”

Ross Riser’s voice was rough, the muscles in his neck rigid. Tommy stared at his coach, mute with misery.

Jackson found himself tensing, ready to jump between coach and player. What do you think it was? It was the go-ahead goal, you moron. But he didn’t say it. He knew better than to interfere, though every instinct was telling him to get in there and shove Ross Riser out of little Tommy’s face.

He tightened his jaw. Good grief. Had he turned into the typical overbearing, overprotective parent? Riser was just a volunteer coach, and he was doing the best he could. Jackson took a deep breath and waited. Tommy was a tough kid. He could handle it.

Coach Riser squatted in front of the boy, and, though he lowered his voice diplomatically, everyone could tell that Tommy was getting a verbal lashing. Jackson reminded himself of the hundreds of times his own track coach had lectured him with that same exasperated look on his face. But Jackson had been in high school, for God’s sake, not in fourth grade. And he’d been a…well, he’d been what was politely known as “a discipline problem.” Tommy wasn’t.

Besides, it was only a game. Ross Riser needed to lighten the hell up.

Annie Cheatwood, Tommy’s mother, had just arrived at the soccer field, peeling off her orange Low Country Hardware Store apron and tossing it into the back of her beat-up green sedan. Glad of the distraction, Jackson watched her pick her way through the crowd of mothers in tennis togs and diamond earrings, fathers in khaki slacks and golf shirts. Most of them spoke courteously to her as she passed, but the reserve in their faces told a different story.

Jackson knew that, if she hadn’t been a special friend of his, none of them would have offered her so much as a nod. A hardware store clerk who had the nerve to possess a large bustline and a small waist, and didn’t bother to hide either one, was ordinarily invisible to this crowd.

As Annie reached his side, Jackson found himself chuckling out loud at the idea of his being anyone’s social sponsor. He was the ultimate black sheep. These same people wouldn’t have spoken to him, either, if he hadn’t inherited his daddy’s plantation.

Annie looked puzzled, studying him as she folded a piece of Juicy Fruit into her mouth. “What’s so funny?”

He held out his hand, asking for a stick of gum. He didn’t chew gum, didn’t even like it, but he knew that the diamond moms and khaki dads thought chewing gum was vulgar, and the idea suddenly appealed to him.

“Life. People. Soccer. Chewing gum.” He shrugged. “Actually, just about everything seems pretty funny right now.”

She handed the gum over with a sideways smile. “Oh,” she said. “You’re in one of those moods. Great.”

As if he’d been pulled by a magnet, Coach Riser came striding over. His scowl had been replaced by a goofy grin, which Jackson realized was every bit as irritating. Riser had begun dating Annie recently, and he was clearly infatuated.

“Hi, there, you two,” the coach said, directing that lovesick smile toward Annie, but sending a perfunctory smile toward Jackson as if the two of them were good friends. Jackson knew better. Ross Riser didn’t quite know what to make of Jackson’s friendship with Annie, but he definitely didn’t like it. And the whole issue of Tommy confused and alarmed him, though he wasn’t close enough yet to Annie to ask her to explain it.

“Hi, Ross,” Jackson broke in before Annie could speak. “Tell me, coach, what’s your problem with Tommy? Didn’t you want him to score? Don’t you want us to win?”

Riser’s pale skin flushed, and his brown eyes tightened. He eyed Jackson narrowly, as if he feared a subtle threat lurked beneath the innocent words. As if Jackson might be referring to Riser’s one shameful secret, which darkened the air between them like a shadow every time they met.

But Jackson kept his expression bland, and Riser relaxed, obviously deciding that, this time at least, no deeper implications had been intended. “Not like that, I didn’t,” he said. “I’ve told Tommy not to go galloping down the field all alone. He’s a team player, and he needs to wait for his team.”

“Even if they’re half an hour behind him?”

Riser’s voice hardened. “That’s right, Forrest. Even then. You have a problem with that?”

Annie groaned and swatted lightly at Jackson’s arm. “Knock it off, you two. If I’d wanted to get caught in a macho slime-fest, I would have stayed at the hardware store.”

Jackson grinned. “Sorry,” he said, recognizing the truth of her comment. He wasn’t going to get into a wrestling match with Ross Riser over how to handle Tommy. Or over Annie, either, for that matter. Frankly, he didn’t have to.

“Whatever you say, Ross,” he offered with an easy shrug. “You’re the coach.”

Annie patted his cheek. “Good boy,” she said. Then she turned to Ross, whose handsome face had already begun to darken again. “Are we still on for Friday?”

Ross nodded, glancing covertly at Jackson. “You bet we are. I’ll be there at six.” And then, with an awkward lurch of boyish defiance, he leaned over and pecked Annie on the lips before turning and hurrying back toward the field.

Annie and Jackson watched the game in a pregnant silence for a couple of minutes. Finally Annie spoke.

“I know you don’t think I should be seeing him.”

Jackson kept his eyes on Tommy, who was reining himself in and staying with the pack. What a shame. “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t.”

Annie made a small popping sound with her chewing gum, something she never did unless she was angry. “But, doggone it, Jackson, you haven’t got any right to tell me who I can and can’t see.”

Jackson nodded. “That’s right,” he agreed equably. “I don’t.”

Annie growled, obviously losing patience with him. “Listen here, Jackson Forrest. You’d better come on out and tell me what your problem is with Ross, or you’d just better hold your tongue and stay out of it.”

He swiveled, slanting her a laughing glance. “Think back, Annie, darling. Did I say a word against Ross? I think this topic was your idea, not mine.”

She narrowed her eyes, considering. He could tell when she realized he was right—her hazel eyes began to flash. Annie hated being wrong.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to say anything, did you? You know I can read your mind. You don’t like Ross, Jack. I want to know why.”

The chilly February wind had blown pieces of her hair up against her flushed cheeks. Jackson reached out and gently tucked the fine, light-brown strands back behind her ears. “Maybe I don’t think he’s good enough for you and Tommy. Maybe I think you deserve better.”

She looked unconvinced. “Yeah? Why, do you see the King of Siam standing in line to date me?”

“Annie—”

“I’m serious, Jack. I’m not exactly the catch of the century, you know, a single working mom.” She cast a wry gaze over the crowd of upscale parents. “Can you imagine any of these guys inviting me to the country club for dinner?”

“Annie—”

She shook her head, rejecting his assurances of her worth. She’d always hated soft soap and platitudes. “Besides, Jack, I’m just dating him a little, that’s all. It’s not as if I’m going to marry the guy. You don’t have to worry that he’s going to try to step in and be Tommy’s dad or anything.”

Jackson managed not to flinch, although she had hit a bull’s-eye with that one. Canny Annie. She always could cut right through to the truth of things. He turned toward the soccer field, as much to avoid letting her read his expression as to follow the progress of the game.

Tommy was working his way downfield, threatening to score once again. Jackson’s gut twisted a little, watching those bony, knob-kneed legs churn with every ounce of energy in the boy’s body. The kid had so much heart, so much spunk. He needed a dad. He deserved one.

“I’m sorry, Annie,” Jackson said. “You’re right. It’s none of my business.”

A moment’s silence. And then, slowly, her hand slid up and rested against his forearm. When she spoke her voice was softer, less agitated. “Besides you’ve got other things to worry about right now. Isn’t your old girlfriend supposed to show up at Everspring this afternoon? You know, that pretty, prissy girl from high school?”

Jackson frowned. “Beau’s old girlfriend,” he said curtly. Annie knew all this. What was she playing at? “Not mine. Beau’s.”

Annie tucked her hand cozily into the crook of Jackson’s arm. “Right. Whatever,” she said. “If you say so.”

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS A TYPICAL late-winter morning at Everspring Plantation—dull, lifeless, the doldrums season for gardeners. Too late for the red blush of berries, too early for the yellow splash of bulbs. Brown grass slept, still exhausted, under gray skies.

But Molly, standing on the mossy brick steps of the old plantation kitchens staring down toward the banks of the slow-moving river, didn’t see winter. Everywhere she looked, she saw flowers. She saw spring days banked high with azaleas, sprinkled with candy-colored tulips, crocus and lilies. She saw green summer acres bordered with pink phlox, white candytuft, blue columbine and crimson dianthus. She saw fall afternoons lit by chrysanthemums as fiery gold as candles.

And if she closed her eyes very tightly, she could see Beau, too, walking across those flower-filled lawns, coming toward her with the summer wind ruffling his silky blond hair, the sun lighting the intense green of his eyes. And a smile on his lips.

“Mom! Come quick!” Liza’s eager voice broke into Molly’s yearning daydream. “It’s a maze, just like in the puzzle books!”

Opening her eyes, Molly shook away the images, forbidding tears to even think about forming. How absurd of her to give in to maudlin sentimentality the very first moment she set foot on Everspring earth. This was why she had left Demery in the first place, why she hadn’t come back in ten long years. She knew that here at Everspring, where Beau had lived, where she and Beau had loved, the memories would be as overpowering as quicksand.

But she could resist it—and she would. She refused to live in the past, no matter how beautiful its gardens might have been. She was lucky. She had a life, a career, a future….

She had a child.

And she intended to give that child her full attention.

“Mom!” Liza stood at the opening to the thick, six-foot high maze, her fists planted on her boyish hips with exaggerated impatience. “Come look! It’s so cool!”

Molly smiled. “It’s boxwood,” she said. “Little-leaf box, actually. It’s from Japan.” She always used playtime to teach Liza about plants. And at least half the time, Liza listened.

This wasn’t one of those times. Ignoring the botany lesson, Liza grinned as her mother drew closer. Her eyes sparkled with mischief. Suddenly, she reached out and tapped Molly’s arm.

“You’re it!” she cried triumphantly, and then she started lithely into the maze, disappearing immediately behind its leafy walls.

Molly hesitated only a second before taking off after her. Liza’s legs might be younger, but Molly had the advantage of familiarity. She knew every twist and turn, every blind end, and every secret pass-through. At eleven, she had cleverly eluded Jackson, who was always chasing her through the maze with a tree frog, a lizard or a garter snake in his hand.

And at sixteen, she had allowed Beau, sexy, laughing Beau, to catch her.

She heard Liza just ahead, giggling. The sound was infectious. She laughed, too, giving herself over to the pleasant adrenaline rush of the chase, the cool, invigorating feel of wind across her cheeks.

“You can run, dearie,” Molly called out in her best movie-villain voice as she rounded the second left turn, scuffing the boxwood with her shoulder in her haste, “but you can never hide!”

An answering squeal told her Liza was just around the next turn. She turned up the speed, and she was already stretching out her hand for the capture when she heard a sudden thump, and a small, high shriek of fear.

“Liza!” She took the corner with her heart knocking at her throat. Liza…

She froze in her tracks, which, she realized with numb horror, was actually quite fortunate, because if she had kept running she would have collided with the man who stood there, holding a shocked Liza in his arms. Just as Liza had obviously collided with him.

She looked at Liza first, caring only if her daughter was safe. Then she looked at the man.

A small, breathless voice in her mind whispered the name on a sudden leap of joy.

Beau.

Her dreams had seen him just like this. The vivid-green eyes, the dark, proud arch of eyebrow. The squared chin, the shining thickness of waving blond hair. The long, capable fingers. She felt a sudden, familiar lurch of pure physical desire.

But finally, probably in no more than the space of a heartbeat, common sense clamped down on the wishful madness.

Of course it wasn’t Beau. Beau was dead. It would never be Beau again.

It was Jackson.

Her gaze clearing, she began to see the details. Like Beau, Jackson had always been devastatingly handsome. It was his birthright. Forrest males were always glamorous far beyond normal men.

And today he was, if anything, even more attractive than he had been at twenty-two. His athletic body was still lean and rangy—a runner’s body. While Beau had been the football hero, Jackson had been the high school track star. Quite natural, the gossips had suggested. He got plenty of practice running from sheriff’s deputies and outraged fathers.

He smiled now, watching her study him. The grin was as deeply dimpled and rakish as ever, but it was subtly different. It was as if the years had erased just a little of the defiance that had once been his hallmark.

“Hi, Molly,” he said, using that voice that was so like Beau’s—and yet so different. He bent down to Liza. “Are you okay? That was some crash. You must have been going about a hundred miles an hour.”

Liza grinned up at him. Molly winced at the sight of that familiar, dimpled grin. “Yes. I’m a fast runner,” she said proudly. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

He massaged his ribs dramatically. “I think I’ll live.” He straightened and met Molly’s gaze over the little girl’s head. “It’s been a long time, Molly. How are you?”

Her throat felt strangely dry. It seemed to take away her powers of speech to look at him like this. It was like looking at a ghost. A ghost who made her tingle, remembering things that hadn’t ever happened—at least not with him.

“Liza,” she said, touching her daughter’s hair softly. “Would you go out to the car, please, and get my purse?”

Liza looked confused. “What do you need your purse fo—”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Molly interjected, her voice still soft.

Liza got the message. She looked from Jackson to her mother once, curiously, but without anxiety. She smiled. “Okay.”

Molly watched her disappear back through the maze, and then, clearing her throat, she turned to Jackson.

“I was so sorry,” she said. “So terribly sorry about Beau.” She knew that wasn’t the best way to begin, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She hadn’t expected to find Jackson at Everspring. Lavinia had hinted that, as Jackson’s main address these days was New York—where he’d moved as soon as he’d been released from the hospital—he probably wouldn’t be in town during her own stay here. She wondered now whether Lavinia had deliberately misstated the case.

Whatever the reason, she had no speeches ready. Still, why was this so hard? It was just Jackson, the boy she’d played with since she was a child, the boy whose shoulders she had soaked in tears whenever Beau’s careless ways had broken her heart.

“I can’t appreciate the magnitude of your loss, of course, but I—” She took a deep breath, hating the stilted expressions that seemed to spout unbidden from her lips. “I loved him, too, Jackson. I loved him desperately.”

He nodded. “I know you did.” His eyes took on some of the old sardonic quality. “And blindly, too, if I remember correctly. But hey—” he cocked that disarming smile at her, and suddenly the mockery was gone again “—didn’t everyone?”

The sound of Liza’s favorite nursery rhyme jingle broke into Molly’s response, the little girl’s high, clear notes making their way like birdsong through the boxwood wall.

Jackson looked toward the sound, then slowly turned his gaze back to Molly. “I don’t have to ask if she’s your daughter, do I?” He smiled. “She’s exactly like you at that age.”

Molly took a deep breath. She knew the similarity was dramatic. Molly had been lanky, too, always outgrowing her clothes just like Liza. And both of them had identical wispy blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, and fair cheeks that pinked at the slightest breeze.

“Do you think so?” As Molly tried to think of what else to say, Liza’s song changed to a show tune, her young voice swaggering with a pretty good approximation of early Madonna. Molly couldn’t help smiling, meeting Jackson’s raised eyebrow. What an amazing kid she had. Where did she learn these things?

“As you can hear, though, the similarities are all on the surface,” Molly said over the noise. “Liza’s nobody’s clone. I never could carry a tune. And she’s got tons more gumption than I ever dreamed of.”

Jackson tilted his head and let his gaze settle on Molly’s face. “Maybe,” he said, answering her smile with one of his own. “But, you know, M, I sometimes thought you might have underestimated yourself in that department.”

“Are you kidding?” Molly shook her head incredulously. It felt surprisingly nice to hear Jackson’s old nickname for her. “I was a mess. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

Jackson shrugged. “I think you’re still selling yourself a little short. After all, your daughter must have inherited all that confidence and charisma from somewhere.”

She stared at him, realizing, suddenly, just like that, the moment of truth had come. This was where she should say, quite casually, “No, actually, she inherited that from her father.” Jackson obviously was expecting that, waiting for it, as if he had planned it.

Perhaps he had. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been running through a conversational maze, and now she had hit the dead end, the unanswerable question that rose up between them as insurmountable as a thick, thorny hedge.

The big question. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one no one ever quite spoke out loud.

The question Jackson had nonetheless been leading her deftly toward since the first moment he set eyes on Liza.

If these lucky genes had not come from Molly, then where?

Who was Liza’s father?

ORDINARILY LIZA WOULD have been in no hurry to get back to the grown-ups, who talked about the most boring things on earth. Meeting new grown-ups was the worst, because they always wanted to ask her the same dumb questions, like what subject do you like best at school, or how did you get so tall?

But this new grown-up was different. She’d been looking for someone to be King Willowsong for nearly a year now. She’d almost given up. But it was as if the maze had led her to him, as if she had banged into him for a reason. When she had looked up into his awesome green eyes, and seen his hair shining all silvery in the sun, her first thought had been that maybe, finally, she had found a King for Planet Cuspian.

But it would take more than silvery hair and green eyes if he was really going to be King. The true test was much harder. If he was truly the King, he had to be able to recognize that her mother was the Queen.

So she had to hurry. She’d noticed a funny look in his eyes when he had said hello to her mother. It might have been the right look, the look a king should give a queen. But her mother had sent her away before she could be sure.

She was almost at the entrance to the maze when she heard people coming up the walk behind her.

“Hello?”

For a minute Liza wished she could just pretend she hadn’t heard the lady calling out. But that wasn’t nice. The Princess of Cuspian didn’t do things like that. At least not very often.

She turned and saw a woman about her mother’s age, but sexier, like someone on TV, and not quite as soft, with her tight shiny black belt and tight blue pants. Still, somehow Liza knew that the lady wasn’t a Mudbluff. She might smell like too much hair spray, and her lipstick might be the color of a really bad bruise, but she wasn’t a Mudbluff.

Her mom thought it was weird, but Liza always tagged everyone right away using the different species from her imaginary planet. Everyone was either a Willowsong or a Mudbluff. A good guy or a bad guy.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between made-up and real. It was just that tags made life simpler. Mostly, she had discovered, people were Willowsongs, which was kind of a relief, kind of comforting, when you thought about it.

Most of the Mudbluffs she’d seen were in the movies. Well, there was Mrs. Geiger who taught piano and hurt your fingers trying to make them reach the keys—she was a Mudbluff. And once Liza had watched a woman at the grocery store squeezing her kid’s arm until he cried. Definitely a Mudbluff.

But mostly Liza’s world was made up of Willowsongs.

As Liza slowed down to see what the lady wanted, she noticed that a little boy slouched along behind the woman, scuffing his sneakers across the brick walk. Liza looked closely at his blond hair. She knew him. She had seen him at the Radway School when she’d gone to visit a couple of weeks ago.

Tommy, maybe? Yes, she was pretty sure he was Tommy.

Tommy was hard to forget. He’d spent the whole day in trouble with the teacher. At first, Liza had thought Tommy was a Mudbluff for certain. But then she had looked into his eyes, cool eyes the color of rye grass, and she hadn’t been so sure. Those were the tricky ones, the people who did Mudbluffy things, but their eyes were sad, or tired, or scared, and you suddenly could tell they had reasons, big reasons, for the bad things they did.

“Hi,” the woman said as she drew closer. “I’m Annie Cheatwood.” Her blue eyes swept Liza’s face, smiling and frowning at the same time. “I guess you’re Molly’s little girl, aren’t you? Good grief, look at you! Is this déjà vu or what?”

Liza nodded. She knew what the lady meant—her grandmother said that all the time. And she’d seen pictures of her mom as a little girl, so she knew they looked alike. Especially the ones where her mom was smiling. There weren’t very many of those, as if her mother had always been hiding a missing tooth or something.

“Yes,” she said, curious to think that her mother had ever known this lady, who, now that she was up close, smelled of hair spray, Juicy Fruit gum, and, most surprisingly, wood chips.

It was actually kind of a nice smell. Nothing like her mom, but still. Definitely not a Mudbluff. “I’m Liza,” she added politely.

“Well, it’s great to meet you, Liza,” Mrs. Cheatwood said, sounding as if she meant it. “It’s really kind of a kick. This is my son Tommy. I guess you two are probably about the same age.”

Liza looked over at Tommy, who had his hands behind his head, stretching his head back to stare at the sky, thought there wasn’t anything happening up there, not even an airplane. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying “hi.”

“Actually, we’re looking for Jackson,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. “Jackson Forrest. He lives here, but nobody answered the door up at the house. Is he around?”

“Maybe,” Liza said. “My mom just met a man in the maze, but she didn’t say his name.”

“Hot damn, he cornered her in the maze, did he?” Mrs. Cheatwood shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe how funny that was. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘damn.’ That’s what comes from selling lug nuts to guys in dirty shirts all day. Anyhow, was it a tall, gorgeous guy? Blond? Green eyes to die for?”

Tommy groaned. “For crying out loud, Mom.”

Liza flicked a look at him. He’d begun tearing the leaves from a low-hanging oak branch, and he still didn’t acknowledge her presence.

“I guess so,” she said to Mrs. Cheatwood. “He had green eyes. I think they’re still in there.”

“Great. I hate to bust up a party, but I need to see Jackson ASAP. He’s going to help me get this little devil of mine under control.”

“Damn it,” Tommy muttered with feeling. He swatted violently at the denuded branch. “Goddamn it.”

“And maybe he’ll wash that filthy mouth out with soap while he’s at it,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. She stalked toward the maze, assuming without even looking back that her son would follow her.

Which, after a long, tense second in which his hard green gaze locked defiantly with Liza’s, he did.

Liza hung back a moment, but her curiosity overcame her hesitation, and she decided to tag along.

Green eyes, she mused as she followed the woman’s pointy heel marks that dug a string of small circles in the earth, like a connect-the-dots game. That’s what King Willowsong should have.

Green eyes to die for.

AS NOISES CARRIED toward them through the maze, and the irregular pattern of thudding footsteps grew loud enough to announce the imminent arrival of at least three people, Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t even ask herself who it might be. She just closed her eyes and thought that she’d never been so glad to hear anything in her life.

Hurry, she implored mentally. Someone, anyone, to break up this awkward moment.

She still hadn’t answered Jackson’s unspoken question.

But she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She had a lie ready. A good lie. Carefully thought out, embroidered with so many little homespun details that sometimes she half believed them herself. A lie good enough to fool the entire population of Demery, South Carolina, if necessary.

But this wonderful lie, which she’d practiced a thousand times, training it to issue confidently from her lips, had simply refused to be spoken. It had lodged like a chicken bone in her throat, and, while Jackson stood there watching her in growing bemusement, she had been able to manage only a few stupid syllables of stumbling evasion.

“Molly. You can tell me. Who—”

But he didn’t have time to finish. The approaching hubbub separated into individual voices. One adult—a female, clearly irked by something. One disgusted little boy objecting sulkily to everything the woman said. And then Liza’s voice, breaking in politely, instructing the others to take the next left.

“Thank goodness!” A voluptuous brunette emerged from the opening like a diva making her grand entrance.

She pressed the heel of her hand dramatically to her forehead. “I swear, Jackson, if you don’t make this little rascal see reason, I’ll—” She ducked her head to Jackson’s collarbone and went limp against him. “I don’t know what. Toss him into the volcano? Grind him into hamburger meat and have him for dinner?”

Jackson grinned, but over the woman’s bent head he tossed a quick wink to the little boy, who had come sulking in behind her. “Why don’t you just sell him to the Gypsies? Make a few bucks while you’re at it.”

The woman moaned. “They won’t take him.”

Jackson put his hands on the woman’s shoulders and eased her erect again. “Then I guess we’re stuck with him. We’ll have to see what we can do to straighten him out.”

He rotated her slightly. “Annie, say hi to Molly.” He tilted his head. “You remember Annie Cheatwood, don’t you, Molly? She was ahead of you in school—she graduated the same year Beau and I did.”

Reaching out with his right hand, he touched the little boy’s shining blond head. Molly noticed that the child, though still noticeably surly, did not pull away. “And this is her son Tommy, who, though his mother seems to have forgotten it, is a pretty cool kid.”

Molly recognized him immediately. It was the little boy from Radway School. The mischievous blond child who’d been wheeling another student around by the ankles. The one who had reminded her of—

Suddenly Molly’s brain began to blink and spin, like a computer being violently overloaded. So much was going on in the scene before her—so many complicated nuances, so many unspoken implications. She hardly knew where to begin processing it all.

Out of the chaos, one bewildering question pushed to the fore, blinking in a neon urgency.

Could Jackson be this little boy’s father?

Bluntly stated like that, it seemed absurd. Annie’s son, he had said, not “mine.” And somehow, to Molly, it was inconceivable. Could Jackson have a child he refused to acknowledge? A pregnant lover he had refused to marry?

Surely not. But still… Look at the boy. The lanky limbs. The silver-blond hair. Those Forrest green eyes. That straight, high-bridged nose with slightly flared nostrils…

It could be true. That moment on the playground hadn’t been an illusion. In a few years this handsome little boy would definitely possess the arrogant Forrest profile.

“Hi, Molly.” Annie was smiling at her warmly.

“Good to see you. It’s been years. You grew up nice, kid.” Annie poked Jackson in the ribs. “Didn’t she grow up nice, Jack?”

Somehow tearing her gaze from the mysterious child, Molly smiled back. Of course she remembered Annie Cheatwood. Beautiful, sexy, brassy Annie, who had entertained a steady stream of the school’s most popular boys in her ancient yellow sedan. The Yellow Peril, the boys had called it. Molly had been officially horrified but privately awed. She’d never known a girl whose car was infamous enough to earn a nickname of its own.

Annie had lived just down the street from Molly, in that modest neighborhood just on the wrong side of the tracks. Molly’s mother had always looked down on Annie’s family, who didn’t care if crabgrass took over their little square of lawn, who let the paint peel on their walls and slats droop in their shutters. “Thank God we’re not as tacky as the Cheatwoods,” her mother had always said, sniffing with the desperate superiority of the chronically insecure.

Molly hadn’t been friends with Annie, exactly. In high school, four years made a huge difference, and besides, Molly was too diffident, too prissy and far too uptight to interest the dynamic older girl.

But Molly had always admired her and had secretly wished to be more like her. Annie wasn’t ashamed of being poor, and she obviously didn’t agonize over what the neighbors thought. Even as a teenager Annie had believed herself the equal of anyone, somehow aware that human value wasn’t measured by whether a man had spindly crabgrass or lush boxwood hedges in his front yard.

It was an enviable level of wisdom that Molly herself hadn’t found until much later in life.

“Thanks, Annie,” she said. “You’re looking wonderful yourself.” Molly intensified her smile, hoping that Annie might sense a little of that longstanding respect.

Maybe, Molly thought suddenly, it had been Annie who had refused to acknowledge the father of her child—not the other way around. That would be like her. She’d no doubt consider little Tommy just as “legitimate” as a Cheatwood as he could ever have been as a Forrest.

“Sorry to bust in on you guys, but I need Jack’s help with Tommy.” Annie cast a daggered glance toward her son, who simply looked away, feigning boredom. In that pose of deliberately casual defiance, he looked more Forrest than ever.

“This one’s in big trouble. Huge.” Annie turned back to Jackson. “He broke Junior Caldwell’s nose, and now he won’t go over there and say he’s sorry.”

Tommy raised his pointed chin. “I’m not sorry. You want me to lie?”

Annie narrowed her eyes dangerously. “You bet I want you to lie, buster. It’s called good manners. It’s called do it or your sorry behind is grounded for the rest of your sorry life.”

Tommy’s chin didn’t waver, though his voice did, just a little. “I won’t apologize. He deserved it. Junior Caldwell is a big, fat, stinking parasite.”

Jackson made a sound like a muffled laugh, and Annie jabbed her elbow in his ribs. “Straight off this week’s science vocabulary list,” she said, and Molly could hear strangled mirth in her voice, too. “Talk to him, Jack. The Caldwells are raising Cain. They’re trying to get Tommy kicked out of Radway.”

“I don’t care,” Tommy said firmly. “Radway stinks. It’s just a bunch of snobs and mamma’s boys.”

“Some things never change,” Jackson observed cryptically. He slid his arm around Annie’s shoulders. “Okay, cool down. Tommy and I will talk.”

Annie let out a groan of relief. “You’re an angel of mercy, my friend. And maybe, while you’re at it—” she pointed toward her head with two fingers and made a scissoring motion “—this, too?”

Jackson glanced toward Tommy, as if assessing the need. Tommy, who Molly realized was plenty smart enough to know what his mother was talking about, simply stared off into space. Only the unnatural stillness of his body indicated any interest in the outcome.

“Sorry, Annie. Can’t help you there.” Grinning, Jackson chucked two fingers under Annie’s chin.

“You got to learn to pick your battles, sweetie.”

Strangely mesmerized, Molly watched the two of them, still unable to come to grips with what she saw. Jackson and Annie were so comfortable together, so clearly partners in the awesome task of rearing this bright, handsome, willful little boy. Their communication was relaxed, largely nonverbal, and yet amazingly complete.

Molly had to pinch off a trickle of envy. It would have been nice to have someone like that, someone to bring your troubles to, someone who would help you sort out the mountains from the molehills. Molly had always been alone with her worries, sometimes struggling from bedtime until dawn to find the simple perspective Jackson had been able to offer Annie in a matter of minutes.

She felt a small hand creep up toward hers, and she looked down with a smile to find Liza standing close, her expression wistful. Molly’s heart ached, recognizing that wordless longing. Never mind that the threesome in front of them weren’t really a family, the couple not man and wife, the boy’s background murky.

In every way that mattered, they felt like a family.

Molly and Liza were like children pressing their faces against the candy store window. She didn’t know what to say to take that look from her daughter’s eyes.

“I love you, honey,” she said, for want of anything more inspired.

“I know,” Liza answered softly, but she didn’t take her eyes from Jackson even long enough to blink.

CHAPTER THREE

TOMMY SAT NEXT TO Jackson on a big iron bench that overlooked the river. Though they’d been sitting there at least five minutes, Tommy hadn’t said a word. He knew why he’d been brought here. Jackson was going to give him a lecture about how you shouldn’t fight with people at school.

Well, he could just lecture away. Tommy didn’t care. Grown-ups didn’t know about Junior Caldwell, about what a creep he was. He deserved to have his nose broken.

Besides, Jackson didn’t have any business giving Tommy a lecture. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t his uncle, or his brother, or even the principal. He wasn’t anybody. He was just a guy who hung around with his mom. Lots of guys did that.

And they all wanted to impress her by trying to play daddy. Lots of big, fake smiles and head patting. And all that “How’s my little man?” crap. Oh, yeah, everybody wanted to be Tommy’s dad.

Everybody, that is, except his real dad. Wherever he was.

Whoever he was.

If he ever met his real dad, Tommy decided, he’d break his nose, too.

Tommy impatiently kicked at the small rocks that decorated the little picnic area where they sat. It was getting hot out here. Jackson had pretended he needed Tommy’s help moving a bunch of boxes around for that old Miss Forrest. It had been hard work, and it made Tommy mad because he knew it was just an excuse to get him out here and bawl him out.

He stole a look at the man sitting next to him on the bench. So where was the lecture?

Almost as if he had forgotten Tommy was even there, Jackson leaned down and picked up one of the flat white pebbles at their feet. He eyed it carefully, tested its shape and weight, and then tossed it with a perfect flick of his wrist toward the river. It skipped three, four, five whole times before it finally sank.

“Awesome,” Tommy said in spite of his determination not to speak first. He picked up a stone himself and tossed it. Two measly bounces, and it sank with a hollow plop.

Jackson sorted through the stones, picked up two and handed them to Tommy. “Flat is better,” he said matter-of-factly. “And use more wrist.”

By the third stone, Tommy had made it up to four skips, and he was feeling a little less grumpy. Maybe he’d been wrong about the lecture.

“So,” Jackson said as he demonstrated the wrist motion one more time. “This Junior Caldwell kid. He’s pretty big?”

Tommy made a rude noise and tossed his pebble. Four skips. He was finally getting the hang of it. “Heck, no. He looks like a girl. He cried when I hit him. He cried so hard snot was dripping out of his nose.”

Jackson paused midtoss and arched one eyebrow blandly at Tommy. “You hit a kid who looks like a girl?”

Tommy flushed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, he’s a major creep. He was really asking for it.”

“Yeah?” Jackson shook a couple of pebbles in his palm thoughtfully. They made a noise like Monopoly dice. “Well, I guess you had to, then.”

“I guess I did.” It was so darn hot—how could a winter afternoon be so hot? His mother shouldn’t have made him wear this jacket. His face felt red.

Tommy heaved four pebbles, fast and hard, into the river, which was sparkling now under the high, yellow afternoon sun. They all sank immediately. “Darn right I had to.”

Jackson handed him another stone. “Take your time,” he advised. “Don’t try to bully it. You can’t intimidate a rock.” He demonstrated the sideways wrist flick one more time. “It’s subtle. But remember you’re always smarter than the rock, if you’ll just take the time to finesse it.”

Tommy took a deep breath, twitched his wrist a couple of times in practice, and then let the pebble glide easily through his fingers. Five skips! As much as Jackson’s best.

Finesse. He liked that word. And he liked the way it worked.

Too bad you couldn’t finesse a jerk like Junior Caldwell.

“You know what he said?” Tommy cast a quick glance toward Jackson, then looked away. “You know what that moron said?”

Jackson seemed entirely focused on finding the perfect pebble. “No. What?”

Timothy frowned, fighting back the sudden stupid feeling that he might cry. He hated even remembering what Junior had said.

“Somebody at lunch said they saw Coach Riser buying nails in the hardware store where my mom works. So Junior said that was because he’s nailing my mom. And everybody laughed.” He gritted his teeth and drew in a big breath, which hurt, as if his lungs were too tight. He made a fist around his pebble. “You know what that means, Jackson? Nailing somebody?”

“Yeah, I know.” Jackson’s face looked hard.

“Mostly it means your friend Junior Caldwell is a stupid little punk.”

“He’s not my friend,” Tommy said roughly. “I hate him. He’s a spoiled sissy. I spent the night with him one time, and you know what? He’s got twenty-five video games. He’s got his own TV in his room. He sleeps with a stuffed puppy named Bitsy, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.”

“Bitsy?” Jackson’s slow chuckle was appreciative. “Man. That’s really embarrassing.”

“And it gets even worse,” Tommy said, remembering that night at the Caldwell mansion with a sharp, uncomfortable clarity. The whole thing had made him feel rotten somehow, even though it hadn’t been so bad, really. Mr. Caldwell had been kind of nice, even if he did spoil Junior something awful. He played ball with the boys, and he had even watched them play video games for a while. He had particularly admired Tommy’s skill at the Vampire Blaster game.

“Get this. Junior can’t get to sleep unless his dad comes in and reads a bunch of football stats to him like a bedtime story. It’s just plain pathetic.”

Jackson’s eyes were thoughtful, and Tommy wondered for a moment whether he had sounded jealous. He wasn’t jealous, not one bit. Junior Caldwell was a nerd. It was just that Mr. Caldwell’s voice had been really nice, and it felt kind of safe to have a strong man there, reading numbers and names in that comforting voice—especially after that weird vampire video game.

But still, it was sissy stuff. No guy should need a bedtime story to get to sleep.

When Jackson finally spoke, his voice was normal. He didn’t sound as if he felt sorry for Tommy at all, thank goodness. Tommy couldn’t stand for people to feel sorry for him.

“Absolutely pathetic,” he agreed. “The kid is a zero. So what do you say, Tommy? You think you could give your mom a break and maybe tell this zero kid you’re sorry?”

Surprisingly, Tommy suddenly felt as if he maybe could. Though he wasn’t sure why, it had helped to talk about it. The worst of his anger was gone, like when you twist the top off a cola and all the fizz shoots out.

“Oh, okay,” he muttered, skimming his last pebble expertly across the silver sparkles of the river.

“If it’ll make everyone chill about it.”

They stood side by side, counting the skips together. Four, five, six! They high-fived each other, grinning.

As they walked back toward the plantation house, Tommy decided that, in a way, Jackson might make a pretty good father after all. Tommy knew he’d been lectured just now, sort of, but he really didn’t mind.

“But remember,” Tommy said firmly, pausing as they reached the carriage house, where his mother was waiting, “sorry or not, if Junior Caldwell doesn’t shut up about my mom, I’ll finesse his ugly nose all over again.”

“WOW. You sure do travel light,” Annie said as she deposited the last of Molly’s suitcases onto the polished honey-pine floor of the Everspring carriage house. “I couldn’t even get all my makeup in these puny little bags, much less my clothes.” Straddling the arm of the sofa, she leaned back and gave Molly an appraising once-over. “But I guess the good-girl look doesn’t call for all that much makeup, does it?”

Molly laughed. It was impossible to take offense at Annie’s candor, especially after she’d offered to help unload the car and lug the suitcases upstairs to the small guest quarters.

“Not really. And the gardener look doesn’t call for that many clothes, either. I’ve got six pairs of jeans, all with torn, dirt-black knees, and a couple of mud-colored T-shirts.” She surveyed the luggage ruefully. “Most of these are full of Liza’s toys and video games.”

Annie leveraged her legs over the sofa’s arm, no mean feat considering there wasn’t a spare millimeter of fabric in her electric-blue pants, and slid down the padded upholstery to a comfortably reclined position, kicking her shoes off as she went.

“No kidding? Tommy plays video games, too. All the time.” She grimaced, wriggling to get the pillows just right. “When he’s not out breaking other kids’ noses, that is.”

Molly couldn’t help noticing how instinctively Annie made herself at home here. Was that just Annie’s style—or had she spent time in this little secluded suite of rooms before?

Molly had been here before herself—years ago, with Beau. They had wrangled on that very sofa, Beau pressing and Molly retreating, until finally they had ended the dance the same way they so often ended it, with Molly crying as a coldly disgusted Beau drove her home.

As she thought back on it all now, Molly realized how sadly clichéd it had been. The more sophisticated boy growing bored with his too timid younger girlfriend, making demands and issuing threats. The girl weakening, fearful of losing the love of her life…

But at the time it hadn’t seemed like a cliché. It had been confusing and terribly painful. Molly had begged for understanding, for patience. But she had been so afraid. If one night he made good his threat, if he left her, if he found another girl… How could she live without Beau?

Ironic, wasn’t it? She had ended up having to live without him anyhow.

She wondered what it had been like for Annie and Jackson—if her suspicions were correct and the other couple had sneaked up here, too. Very different, she suspected. She imagined sexy whispers and muffled laughter, beer bottles knocking together as boots and underclothes rained across the floor.

Not that it was any of her business.

“Mom!” Liza appeared suddenly in the doorway, clutching a copy of The Wizard of Oz and a lovely doll dressed in a pink satin princess gown. “These were in the little bedroom. There’s a teddy bear, too. Do you think it’s all right if I play with them?’

Molly smiled at her daughter’s eager face. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll bet Aunt Lavinia left them for you. You’ll meet her tomorrow—you’ll like her a lot.”

Liza nodded, obviously hardly hearing anything beyond the “yes.” She turned back toward the bedroom, already murmuring to her new pretend playmate, stroking the doll’s long, silky blond curls and straightening her tiny rhinestone tiara.

“Aunt Lavinia, huh?” Annie sounded amused.

“That’s mighty cozy. I guess that means the Forrests considered you practically one of the family?”

One of the family. Molly tried not to think about how desperately she had once longed for that to be true. Those hopes had died ten years ago, as if they had been riding in that little car with Beau. She felt a tingle of discomfort burn along her cheekbones as she remembered how Beau’s mother had shunned her at the funeral. How the older woman had turned her away from Jackson’s hospital room. He was rarely conscious, Mrs. Forrest had said frigidly. Molly’s condolences would be conveyed. There was no need to come again….

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” She worked at keeping her face neutral. No need to dredge all that up now—though she could see an avid curiosity shining in Annie’s eyes. “Lavinia was always kind to everyone. I started calling her that when we were all very little, and I guess it just stuck.”

“Yeah, Lavinia’s a peach,” Annie agreed. She rested her cheek on her knuckles and sighed. “That other one, though. The mother. She sure was a puffed-up peacock, wasn’t she? Thought the Forrests were too good to breathe the same air as the rest of us plebes.”

Molly smiled. Giselle Forrest had looked something like a peacock, actually, with her jewel-toned designer clothes and her stylishly spiked and highlighted hair.

“She was pretty aloof, wasn’t she? But I think maybe she was just difficult to know.”

“Difficult?” Annie laughed. “Honey, I know the mannequin down at Bloomingdale’s better than I knew that woman. Like her better, too.”

Molly didn’t argue. She had felt that way once. She remembered being amazed, that day at the hospital, that Giselle could look so perfectly groomed, complete with flashing diamonds, sleek nylons and perfectly applied lip liner. Molly herself had been a mess, tearstained and disheveled. For weeks she had found it a struggle even to run a comb through her own hair.

She had hated Giselle that day, both for turning her away and for looking so completely unaffected by Beau’s death.

It wasn’t until years later—when she heard that Giselle Forrest had died of liver disease—that Molly had finally understood how personal, how unique, grief really is. That compulsive poise had been Giselle’s protection. Her exquisitely cut diamond brooch had been nothing but armor placed over a heart as mangled as Molly’s own.

Annie shifted to a sitting position, stretching like a cat. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve always said it beats me how a cold-blooded witch like that could have a decent son like Jack.”

“Or Beau,” Molly added, feeling strangely as if Annie had slighted him.

“Yeah, sure.” Annie shrugged. “Whatever. Heck, it’s a mystery how she had any children at all, if you know what I mean. Deserves its own segment on ‘Tales of the Unexplained,’ don’t you think?”

Liza appeared in the doorway once again. “Excuse me,” she said politely, “Mom, where are my suitcases? I want to play with all my dolls together.”

Molly picked two pieces from the pile of luggage and passed them to her daughter, who eagerly hoisted them both and trotted back toward her own room. Molly envied the little girl her easy ability to adapt wherever she went. A few spangled scarves for costumes, a few hand-drawn pictures for backdrops, a few smiling princess dolls for companionship, and that little bedroom was well on its way to becoming the Planet Cuspian.

Annie was expertly eyeing the diminished stack of luggage, which, now that Liza’s bright-pink pieces were gone, did look a little skimpy, Molly had to admit.

“Even allowing for the minimalist approach to wardrobing,” Annie said dryly, “I’d have to guess you haven’t exactly come home intending to put down roots.” She laughed. “No pun intended.”

“Nope. Just the landscaping kind,” Molly said with a smile, sliding the largest of the suitcases, which held her seed catalogues, garden brochures and drafting supplies, toward the window. She’d probably work over there—the light was perfect, the view of terraced lawns marching down to the river inspirational. “We’ll only be staying a couple of months, just until the renovations are done. Liza and I consider Atlanta home now.”

Molly felt Annie’s gaze on her as she unzipped the bag and began stacking supplies on the large desk. “Got your own landscaping business in Atlanta, I hear,” Annie said. “Doing pretty well there?”

Her voice was almost too bland. Molly looked up, wondering what the other woman was getting at. “I can’t complain,” she answered evenly.

“Yeah, I can see you’re not the complaining type.” Annie sighed. “Still, it would be a heck of a lot easier with a second paycheck in the house, wouldn’t it? What about it, Molly? Ever think you ought to go down to the husband store and pick yourself out a new one?”

Molly bent over the table, arranging her colored pencils in their holder. She let her hair fall across her face. “I haven’t thought about it,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t sound so tight. “We really do just fine.”

“Oh, now. Don’t go all huffy on me.” Annie grinned as she inspected a pink-hued fingernail. She nibbled carefully at a ragged edge. “I’m not trying to pry your tax statement out of you. I’m a single mom myself. I know all about it. Frankly, I’m just wondering why you’ve come back here at all.”

Molly took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. She leaned against the edge of the desk, pencils in hand, and looked at Annie.

“Sorry. It’s simple, really. I’ve been doing mostly business landscaping for the past few years. I’d rather be doing houses, but the domestic market in Atlanta is pretty hard to break into. The same companies have been designing those old estates for generations.” She rubbed the soft pencils against her palm, leaving rainbow-colored smudges on her skin.

“But Everspring could change all that. Scarlett O’Hara herself would be impressed with my résumé after this.”

Annie was nodding. “Makes sense.” She narrowed her eyes. “So you really came just for the job?”

“Of course,” Molly said. “What else would I have come for?”

“Well, I wondered…” Annie seemed unsure how to proceed, and the hesitance sounded unnatural, as if she rarely bothered to plan or polish her utterances. “Oh, hell, I’ll just say it. I wondered if maybe you had come because of Jackson.”

Finally, Molly understood. Of course—how could she have been so dense? Annie was interested in Jackson, and she didn’t want any competition.

Molly almost laughed at the thought. If only Annie knew how wrong she was! If only she knew how difficult it was for Molly to even look at Jackson, who wore Beau’s face, inhabited Beau’s body, so casually—as if he didn’t suspect what it did to her. Jackson, who without meaning to awoke a thousand dreams in Molly’s breast, who with one smile, a ghost’s smile, stirred emotions that should have slept forever.

She shook her head emphatically. “No, Annie,” she assured the other woman. “I didn’t come because of Jackson. I came in spite of him.”

JACKSON TRIED to concentrate on the cards in his hand. He tried to ignore the small square of light that glowed, like backlit amber, in his peripheral vision. The light from one of the carriage house bedrooms. He especially tried not to see the slim silhouette that occasionally moved across the golden curtains.

But he hated canasta. He was terrible at canasta. What had possessed him to tell Lavinia he would play canasta with her tonight?

And for that matter, when had his spicy maiden aunt taken up this monotonous game herself? And why? Hadn’t she always lumped canasta in with bridge as the “pastimes of the half-dead or the half-witted?” Yes, last time he was in town, he distinctly remembered Lavinia and her cronies staying up half the night drinking mint juleps and playing cutthroat poker.

“So,” he said, laying down all his fours and stifling a yawn. “What’s with the canasta, Vinnie? And where’s the brandy? Did a traveling missionary come through town cleaning things up or what?”

She didn’t bother to look up from her cards. “I’ve been reading Great-great-aunt Maybelle’s diaries, and apparently this was her favorite game. I thought I’d better find out what the attraction was.”

Oh. That cleared things up. Lavinia was the family historian, and she took her research very seriously. She could tell you what the Forrest family had served President Zachary Taylor for dinner back in 1850. And she was likely to try out the recipe herself, just to see how it had tasted.

It made for some interesting dinners, especially since Lavinia was the world’s most terrible cook.

“So what is the attraction?” Jackson’s gaze flicked toward the carriage house, but he forced it back to the cards. Which were the good threes—the red or the black? God, he hated this game.

“Don’t you try that sarcastic tone on me, young man,” Lavinia said tartly. “And just because you haven’t got the guts to climb those stairs and talk to her, don’t take your frustration out on me, either.”

Jackson glared at his aunt over the pile of cards between them. “What baloney,” he said. “Just because I’m bored stiff with this moronic game—”

“It’s not just that,” she said, snapping her cards shut irritably. “It’s because for the past two hours you’ve been twitching around this house like a fly in a glue pot. It’s because you showered before dinner. And it’s because you can’t keep your eyes off that window.”

Jackson drummed his fingers on the table. “I showered before dinner,” he said grimly, “because I’d been moving your filthy boxes all afternoon and—”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense,” Lavinia said with a hint of laughter buried beneath the peppery tone. She plopped her cards on the table and began to gather up the deck. “Get out of here, Jackson. If you’re not going to go up there, at least go somewhere. You’re driving me crazy, and I’ve got some reading to do.”

He surrendered his cards with a chuckle. Lavinia had always been able to see through him. “Actually,” he admitted, “I was thinking I might see if they needed something to eat. They can’t have had time to stock the refrigerator yet.”

Lavinia huffed and continued stacking the cards in her mother-of-pearl lacquered box. “They had the same dinner we had,” she said. “I sent food up on a tray hours ago.”

Jackson declined to comment. Somehow he couldn’t see Lavinia’s culinary experiment du jour, spinach-and-chickpea casserole, appealing to a nine-year-old little girl. It had taken a good deal of character for this close to thirty-two-year-old man to swallow down his own portion.

“Still, maybe I’d better check. See if they need anything at all.”

Lavinia smiled at him archly. “Of course. How thoughtful. Maybe you’d better do that, dear.”

Jackson kissed her cheek on the way out. “You are an adorable old termagant, did you know that, Auntie?”

“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I do my best.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER, a large, warm, aromatic box of mushroom pizza balanced on his forearm, Jackson climbed the stairs to the carriage house. The night had turned cold and clear. Stars glinted against the black sky, as sharp as bits of broken glass.

He paused at the door, uncomfortably aware that he was rushing things. She was probably still unpacking—she was undoubtedly tired. He should have given her time to settle in. He should have waited until tomorrow.

But how could he? He had waited so long already.

Still, he wished he could shake this ridiculous sense of guilt. Why should he feel guilty? She wasn’t Beau’s girl anymore. Beau was gone. He’d been gone for ten years—long enough, surely, for his claim on Molly to fall forfeit. Surely the invisible walls behind which Beau had cloistered her had long since crumbled to dust.

Damn it, no more guilt. He exhaled hard, his breath materializing, silver and ghostly, in front of him. He raised his hand and knocked twice. Low, in case Liza was sleeping. But definite. Unashamed.

He heard her light footsteps as she came toward the door, and he ordered his heart to beat in even time.

No more guilt. He was betraying no one. He had every right to be here, to offer pizza, to offer help, to offer friendship.

To offer, in fact, whatever the hell he wanted.

CHAPTER FOUR

“OH, YOU WONDERFUL, wonderful man.” As soon as she opened the door, Molly tilted her head back, closed her eyes and inhaled a long, deep, sensual breath of the pizza-scented night air. Her hair streamed unbound over her shoulders and twinkled in the light, as if she’d stood in a shower of glitter. “I could just kiss you.”

Jackson gripped the pizza box a little more tightly, hoping he wouldn’t end up with tomato sauce all over his shoes. But the sight of her was enough to make his fingers numb.

How could she have become even more beautiful? Ten years ago he would have said it wasn’t possible. But if Molly at eighteen had been a fairy princess, the woman before him was the Gypsy queen. Her coltish, utterly virginal body had softened in all the right places, and each curve seemed to be issuing wordless invitations to his hands.

The pizza box buckled at one corner.

“Well, by all means,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice from squeaking like a kid’s. “Feel free.”

She laughed, a low trickle of warmth that slid across his skin like sunshine. “It’s actually real!” She put one hand on the box and breathed deeply again, as if she couldn’t get enough of the scent. “I thought I smelled pizza, but then I thought, no, I must be dreaming. Like the man in the desert who thinks he sees water.”

Jackson chuckled. “I gather you and I have approximately the same opinion of spinach-and-chickpea casserole.”

“Please don’t tell Lavinia.” She stepped back, opening the door wider to let him enter. “I managed two bites, then I gave the rest to Liza. Believe it or not, she absolutely loved the stuff.”

“Good God, what’s wrong with her?” Jackson grimaced. “I slipped mine under the table. Stewball and I have a pact. I won’t tell Vinnie he sleeps on the Chippendale sofa if he’ll clean my plate for me.”

Molly was already opening the box and peeling apart the gooey slices hungrily. She handed one to Jackson. “Poor Stewball,” she said as she bit into the hot cheese. She moaned with delight. “Mmm. Mushroom. You remembered I love mushroom.”

Jackson busied himself piling melting strands of cheese on top of the crust. Of course he remembered. Molly would probably never believe how little he had forgotten. He remembered how, back when they were kids, she used to sign her name with a smiley-face inside the O. He remembered the opening lines of the sonnet she’d written for senior English. He remembered how her mascara used to smudge around her lower lashes when sad movies or stray dogs—or Beau—made her cry.

And about a million other things. It was a wonder he had ever been able to learn how to build buildings, considering all the Molly trivia that still cluttered his feeble mind.

And yet, tantalizingly, he sensed that there were a million new things to learn about her, too. That womanly quality in her body, for instance. The faint shadows in her face, where pain had left its mark. The deep, satisfied glow in her eyes when she looked at Liza.

The Gypsy queen knew things the fairy princess hadn’t dreamed of.

“And thick crust. Jackson Forrest,” she mumbled, her mouth stuffed with cheese, “I positively love and adore you.”

He grinned. “I’ll bet you say that to all the pizza delivery boys.” He grabbed another slice for each of them, tore off a couple of paper towels from the rack, and made for the sofa. She followed without hesitation, as if she were magnetized to the pizza.

She plopped down beside him, curling her bare legs up under her. She swallowed the last bit of crust, reached for her second slice and dug in greedily.

He stared at her, marveling. Though she wore only a long, grass-stained T-shirt, which had obviously been washed so many times it settled around the curves of her body like a second skin, she was completely uninhibited.

She must not even realize how damned sexy it was to watch her slide that wedge of pizza between her teeth. Or perhaps she just never imagined that good old Jackson would be thinking about such things.

“What?” She blinked at him over the pizza, hesitating midbite. She looked self-consciously down at her hands. “Oh, I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

He looked, too, suddenly, noticing that she had stray smudges from multicolored markers all over her fingers. And, now that they were in a better light, he could see that the gold glittering of her hair was just exactly that—glitter. The sparkling flecks dusted her forearms and the backs of her hands, too.

“What on earth have you been doing?” He rubbed his forefinger along her wrist. “You look as if you stood too close to a preschool explosion.”

She drew herself up with as much hauteur as she could manage in that position, with that silly dab of oil from the cheese shining on her chin. “For your information, I have been in another galaxy,” she said loftily. “I come to you straight from the Planet Cuspian, where I just happen to reign as Queen.”

He looked toward the kitchenette. He knew Lavinia had generously stocked a minibar before Molly’s arrival. “You don’t say. And exactly how many mint juleps does it take to blast you to that particular galaxy?”

She smiled as she popped the last bit of the second piece of pizza into her mouth and wiped her hands on the paper towel.

“None,” she said. “I’ve been decorating Liza’s room. Cuspian is her imaginary planet.” She pulled her hand ruefully through her hair, trying to pick out the glitter. “Unfortunately, it’s a very messy planet.”

Jackson couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and smoothing his fingers across her cheek, brushing away one stray fleck of gold. “Well, if you’re the Queen,” he said, “why don’t you do something about that?”

Her skin was warm and soft, and he felt the gentle rounding of her cheek as her smile deepened. He ought to take his hand away, but he couldn’t. Luckily, she didn’t seem to find anything at all unsettling about having Jackson’s fingers on her skin. They’d been there before, wiping away mud or mosquitos, mayonnaise or makeup or tears.

“It’s a purely ceremonial title,” she explained. “You see, on the Planet Cuspian, all the real power belongs to the Princess.”

“And that would be…”

She grinned. “Exactly. Princess Liza, who even now sleeps under the golden moons of Cuspian, which we transported all the way from Atlanta in a hefty bag.” She shook her fingers playfully, releasing a tiny sparkling rainfall of gold. “The Princess is hopelessly fond of glitter.”

Jackson closed his throat hard, blocking the words he wanted to say. He wanted to ask her to show him—wanted it so much it was a physical thing, like thirst. He wanted to see the golden moons; he wanted to memorize the innocent face that slumbered beneath them. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Molly and her little girl, the child who obviously owned every square inch of her mother’s heart.

But he had to wait. Somehow, he had to be patient.

As a rule, patience didn’t come naturally to him. That had always been the one advantage to being the “bad” brother. Everyone expected Jackson to be outrageous, to say and do whatever he wanted, no matter who didn’t like it. He could think of a hundred people—most of them women—who would laugh out loud at the idea of Jackson troubling himself to resist temptation.

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