Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dear Reader

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

Epilogue

Copyright

“‘Until you marry my mother’?”

April asked Jared incredulously. “That’s what our son said?”

“His very words.” Jared paced the cedar deck. “Look, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m all for getting along—for Tyler’s sake,” he felt compelled to add.

“Of course. Tyler needs to understand that… marriage is out of the question.”

Somehow, hearing what he had already surmised didn’t cheer Jared as much as it should. Though she was right, of course. There was no way. There couldn’t be. “Right.”

“We need to show Tyler how it is between us.”

“Uh-huh.” Though outwardly attentive, and conceding that what she said made perfect sense, Jared once again found himself listening with only half a mind. The other half, and all of his body, kept straying into forbidden territory.

He watched April’s lips move as she spoke and all he could think of was how much he wanted to kiss her.

Dear Reader,

Love is always in the air at Silhouette Romance. But this month, it might take a while for the characters of May’s stunning lineup to figure that out! Here’s what some of them have to say:

“I’ve just found out the birth mother of my son is back in town. What’s a protective single dad to do?”—FABULOUS FATHER Jared O’Neal in Anne Peters’s My Baby, Your Son

“What was I thinking, inviting a perfect—albeit beautiful—stranger to stay at my house?”—member of THE SINGLE DADDY CLUB, Reece Newton, from Beauty and the Bachelor Dad by Donna Clayton

“I’ve got one last chance to keep my ranch but it means agreeing to marry a man I hardly know!”—Rose Murdock from The Rancher’s Bride by Stella Bagwell, part of her TWINS ON THE DOORSTEP miniseries

“Would you believe my little white lie of a fiancé just showed up—and he’s better than I ever imagined!” —Ellen Rhoades, one of our SURPRISE BRIDES in Myrna Mackenzie’s The Secret Groom

“I will not allow my search for a bride to be waylaid by that attractive, but totally unsuitable, redhead again!”—sexy rancher Rafe McMasters in Cowboy Seeks Perfect Wife by Linda Lewis

“We know Sabrina would be the perfect mom for us—we just have to convince Dad to marry her!”—the precocious twins from Gayle Kaye’s Daddyhood

Happy Reading!

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

My Baby, Your Son
Anne Peters

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANNE PETERS

shares her Pacific Northwest home with her husband, Manfred, and their aged dog, Adrienne. Anne treasures her family and friends, her private times, her creativity and, last but by no means least, her readers.

Dear Reader,

I wasn’t even twenty-one the first time I held Tyler. It had only been seven months since April told me she was pregnant, seven months since I panicked and she’d left, seven months to get used to the idea of fatherhood. But I hadn’t thought about it because though I knew I had fathered a child, I could pretend it hadn’t really happened because April was gone. I didn’t see the baby grow inside of her, didn’t feel his first kick, didn’t bond with him the way other expectant fathers get a chance to do.

All of which made the reality of fatherhood, of actually holding in my arms the life I’d helped to create, more overwhelming and powerful than I have words to describe. I was thrilled, I was awed, I was scared. And, just like that, I grew up.

He, not I, became my reason for being. His happiness, not mine, came first Selflessness, I learned, is part of fatherhood. But so is jealousy, I came to find out when April reappeared on the scene. And fear, fear of loss.

It took me a while to realize that fatherhood combined with motherhood results in parenthood. And that since parenthood is the natural order of things, there can be no losses, only wins.

Fatherhood—I guess it made a man out of me.

Regards,

Jared O’Neal

Prologue

New York City

“Excuse me, Miz Bingham…”

“Yes?” With a sigh, April turned her attention from the stunning view of Central Park in June to the shriveled- potato features of Spuds Miller, her twin brother Marcus’s portly factotum. “Is the limo here?”

“No, ma’am.” The old man extended a bulky manila envelope. “This just came for you by messenger.”

“Oh?” April accepted the package without enthusiasm. One of the drawbacks of being a renowned concert pianist was being inundated with a barrage of musical scores from struggling composers and wannabes. Usually, though, there were people around to intercept them. “Where’s my mother?”

“Miz Rhinegold and Mr. Marcus are in the den, having one of their…uh, discussions.”

“I see.” April grimaced. “And here I thought we’d for once be able to make an uneventful getaway.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

With an inward smile at the old man’s pointedly non- committal attitude, April glanced down at the envelope. “‘Harper and Tymes, Attorneys At Law,’” she read, and asked Spuds with a frown, “Isn’t that the firm that handled Aunt Marje’s will?”

“I believe so, yes.” Much more than a servant, Spuds Miller was up on everything that concerned the Bingham family, but believed in keeping a low profile. “A Mr. Cur- tis, I believe.”

“Exactly.” Puzzled, April tore open the envelope. Let- ting it drift to the floor, she stared at the leather-bound volume in her hands. The initials M.B.S. were stenciled on the front in faded gold.

“Marjorie Bingham Smythe.” A small catch roughened her voice. “Oh, Spuds, I can’t count the times I’ve watched my aunt write in this journal.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Spuds bent to retrieve the discarded en- velope, peered inside and extracted a folded sheet of vel- lum. “It appears there’s a letter to go with it.”

“Thank you.” One-handedly, April shook it open. In an undertone she read, “Darling April, by the time this reaches you, I’ll be dead and buried. Cliff House and the rest of my estate will have been settled, divided equally between Marcus and you. I’ve kept aside this diary for your eyes only….”

April’s voice faltered. In silence she rapidly scanned the few lines that followed and looked up. “I need to sit down.”

She groped for the nearest chair. Spuds rushed to pull it close. “Shall I—”

“No,” April interrupted with an emphatic shake of the head. “Just leave me. Please, I—”

“Of course.” Ever discreet, Spuds was already on his way. “Not to worry.”

Her gaze once again on the letter, April made no reply. From its pages, she read with eyes gone gritty and with the blood pounding in her ears, you will learn that a terrible secret has been kept from you, a secret I find I cannot bear to take with me to the grave. Darling April, your baby, your son, is alive….

Chapter One

Capstan, WA. One week later…

April hadn’t meant to stop at the school. She was on her way to Cliff House, which was to be her home for the next several months, at least. But driving by the school yard she’d noticed the Little League baseball game in progress and something had urged her to pull over and watch.

Nostalgia? Yes, but something else, too. Something less definable but more compelling. Something that had her threading her fingers through the chain-link fence and straining to see.

Just to the left of her, a scattering of spectating friends and family dotted the bleachers behind the backstop. Shouts of encouragement and advice for the batter blended with the twhack of the ball connecting with the catcher’s mitt and the umpire’s gravel-voiced call. “Steeerike!”

It was all so familiar, so very much like those other ball games during those other summers a decade and more ago, that April half expected to see her brother Mark in the dugout and Jared O’Neal winding up for the pitch. Why, even the blue-and-white uniforms of the Capstan Gulls hadn’t changed.

“Strike two!”

As jeers and cheers from the bleachers followed the um- pire’s cry, April stared transfixed at the young Capstan pitcher going through his spiel. Posturing and posing, look- ing this way and that before tucking his knee against his chest, he wound up for the next killer pitch. Watching, April experienced a sense of déjà vu so acute, she blinked to dispel the illusion that it was young Jared up there on the mound. The way the boy stood, moved, the way he tugged on the bill of his cap and cocked his head just that little bit…

Oh, God. Realization struck like a slap, making her body actually jerk away from the fence before her knees turned to mush and her fingers clung more tightly to the cutting cold wire for support. It was him, she thought wildly. It was Tyler. Her son. And Jared’s.

As if to confirm it, a raucous shout drew her attention to the left and she saw Jared O’Neal surge to his feet on the bleacher at the far side of the backstop. Cupping his mouth, he yelled something else to the boy, something April was too unnerved to try to decipher. Riveted, she watched him bend to the smiling woman next to him who had remained seated. He made some kind of comment and the woman nodded, smiling agreement.

Jared O’Neal. Betrayer of her love. Co-conspirator in the theft of her child. Still, seeing him unexpectedly like this, tanned and virile in frayed cutoffs and faded T-shirt with a Seattle Mariners’ cap covering most of his dark, wavy hair, April’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. He was grinning that crooked little grin that tugged one corner of his mouth up and the other down.

That grin, that she noticed with another painful tug on the heartstrings, was matched by an identical one from the boy on the field. Their son. Her baby…

The image blurred. April closed her eyes and willed back the tears. Pouring over Marje Bingham’s diary these past few days, she had done more crying than she’d known she had tears for.

The enormity of the crime that had been committed against her—for there could be no other way to describe it—had all but annihilated her emotionally. She had yet to deal with the ramifications, had yet to confront her mother and demand…what? To have the clock turned back? And herself made whole again?

It was the knowledge that it was too late, that something precious was irretrievably lost, that had had her crying all those tears until she was sick. But in the course of that grief she had come to realize that, for now, concerns of the pres- ent and the future—namely, getting her son back into her life—had to take precedence over those grievances of the past.

She had confided in no one but her attorney the real reason she would be staying at Cliff House. Let Grace think it was merely for the purpose of the good long rest Dr. Shimon had prescribed. Not even Marcus knew, for he would have felt compelled to come and take charge. And she was done with that, done with depending on anyone but herself. Done being a pawn of those who, for all their protests that they meant well and knew what was best for her, had run her life for far too long. Her mother. Her pub- lic. Her handlers. Her muse.

The time had come to take charge.

But, oh…April pressed her forehead to the backs of her hands still clutching the fence and let out a shivery breath. Here and now, confronted by the man and the boy in the flesh, she was forced to acknowledge that taking charge was not going to be as uncomplicated and straightforward as she had imagined.

For one thing, she hadn’t counted on the twist of pain and, worse, that tug of attraction she felt at her first sight of Jared O’Neal after nearly ten years. With everything that stood between them, all the hurt and the betrayal, she had convinced herself she hated him. Or, at the least, felt in- difference. Why, before reading the diary, she had barely even thought of him in years. Yet now….

Now she knew that they had a son. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Tyler. Eagerly, hungrily, April’s eyes sought him out once again. He was standing next to another boy who was stockier, shorter. He was off the field. Her heart swelled at the beauty of him. Her child. She caressed him with her gaze. How fine he looked. How perfect.

As perfect as his father had seemed to her once upon a time. And yet, not really so much like Jared at all. Except perhaps in his mannerisms, his posture and his…attitude.

April smiled to herself with a surge of something she thrilled to realize was maternal pride. That boy had attitude, all right. Out there on that playing field he was cocksure and all male, just like his father had been as a boy.

How incredible to think that this fine boy was something she and Jared had created. Together. And how much stranger still to have shared the ultimate intimacy with a man and to now realize that she had never really known him at all.

Disturbed by her curious thoughts and feelings, April redirected her attention to Jared once again. She saw that he was still on his feet, conversing now with a man on his right who looked familiar. Another face from the past— Conan O’Neal, Jared’s older brother. Jared was using his hands to make a point and April remembered that this had always been his way. She was struck by how large he seemed. Had he always been this tall? This…imposing?

Surely not. Though he’d always been athletic and well- muscled, maturity had filled him out. Life and the elements had carved lines into a face that was still handsome. More handsome than it used to be, if she were honest. Sunglasses shaded his eyes.

Wishing she were wearing hers, too, April knew the ex- act moment he became aware of her scrutiny. He stopped talking and abruptly swung his head in her direction. They stared at each other for what seemed to April like forever but was probably no more than a second or two.

April’s fingers grew numb, so tightly were they clutching the fence. Her heart beat so hard, she shook. Her breath became trapped in her chest as she watched an expression of outraged disbelief replace the shock of recognition on Jared’s face before, with a jerk, he turned away.

April stayed frozen for another heartbeat or two. And then, with an involuntary gasp of dismay, she spun away and blindly strode back to her car.

Jared O’Neal felt blood roaring in his ears, hazing his eyes. He couldn’t recall ever having been this shaken. April Bingham? Here?

Unwilling to accept what his eyes had seen, he gave his head a hard shake. And then he spun around to look for her once more. She was gone. If she had even been there in the first place.

“You all right?”

“Huh?” Jared blinked at his brother as if he’d forgotten the other man was there.

“You act like you’ve seen a ghost,” Conan said, follow- ing suit when Jared rather abruptly sat down.

“Maybe I did.” Propping his elbows on his knees, Jared blew into his nested fists as he struggled to put a lid on emotions that roiled and bubbled like lava in a volcano, ready to erupt. Get a grip, man, his mind cautioned, as fear and anger and—God help him—a lingering surge of heat threatened to completely unravel him. It couldn’t have been her. And even if it was, didn’t you always know she’d show up here one of these days? It doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t know anything….

“Jared?”

“Yeah.” Jared slanted his brother a glance. He managed a semblance of a grin. “I’m probably crazy, but I thought I saw—Nah.”

He shook his head. He wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t even breathe her name. He took a deep breath, slapped his hands on his knees and sat upright. “Forget it. The heat must be getting to me or something.”

He turned to Addie Mansfield, sitting on his left. “Got any more sodas in that cooler of yours?”

“Sure.”

Inwardly wincing at her eager rush to dig out a can of pop and hand it to him, Jared forced another quick smile. “Thanks, Ad.”

Watching her hand another cold can to his brother, he almost wished he could fall in love with her. Addie was a good woman, a good mother to her boy, and with that mane of flaxen hair framing her wholesome girl-next-door face she wasn’t too hard on the eyes, either. In fact, she looked a whole lot like Regina.

And nothing at all like…April Bingham.

Suddenly the cola tasted like bile. He set it down on the floor boards so hard, it sloshed all over his runners. “Damn,” he muttered fiercely.

Only to hear his brother say, “Kid’s a pitcher, not a hitter.”

“What?” Jared stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Tyler.” Conan gestured impatiently toward the game. “So he struck out. That’s no reason for you to sit here cussing.”

“Oh, for—” Thoroughly exasperated, with himself most of all, Jared choked back the rest of the expletive and forced himself to watch the game. Or, at least, to look as if he were watching it. They were in the ninth inning. The Gulls were at bat. Tyler was back in the dugout…

And what the hell would April Bingham be doing back in town?

The question intruded on his honest desire to concentrate on the game because, when it came right down to it, Jared knew he hadn’t seen a ghost. It had been April, all right, over there by the fence. Ten years hadn’t really changed her much. She still wore that hair of hers—shades of ash streaked with gold—falling in waves from a middle part to halfway down her back.

And anyway, over the years he’d caught her on TV a few times. Concert specials with the likes of Pavarotti and other opera greats. The kind that took place in cities like London and Paris and Rome.

So what in blue blazes would the kind of star she had become want in a backwater like Capstan? To take stock of her recent inheritance? Behind the dark shades, Jared squeezed his eyes shut. Grinding his back teeth, he thought, Fat chance. The woman’s presence spelled trouble, pure and simple. He could feel it in his gut.

The feeling stayed with him through sundaes and banana splits with the team at the Dairy Queen. And it lingered during the subsequent drive home with his nine-sometimes- going-on-thirty-year-old son who seemed to have a weighty problem of his own to deal with, if his fidgeting was any- thing to go by.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?” Taking his eyes off the road a moment, and dragging his dark thoughts away from the subject of April Bingham, Jared sliced an inquiring glance toward his son.

“Tommy’s mom is real nice, isn’t she?”

“Real nice,” Jared concurred, wondering what was up. He didn’t have long to wait to find out.

“Any chance you’d wanna marry her?”

“Addie?” What the hell? Jared tossed his son another look. This one from beneath raised eyebrows. “Any, er, special reason you feel that I should?”

“Well…” Tyler, sprawled in a position only someone of his young years could assume, squinted into the sun. “Tommy’n me’ve been talkin’…”

“S’that so?”

“Mom’s been dead almost a year…”

“That’s true.” If only thoughts about Regina’s fatal car accident still haunted every waking hour of his days.

“An’ Tommy says his mom really likes you.”

“I like her, too.” Jared kept his eyes on the road and his face straight. The conversation and his son’s unsubtle efforts at matchmaking might seem amusing to him, but this was obviously something very close to Tyler’s heart. The question was how to make it clear to the boy— gently—that as far as he was concerned, he and Addie Mansfield were just good friends. Being single parents— and not by choice in either of their cases—they had a lot to talk about, a lot of notes to compare. And he really did like her.

But who knew better than he that, in the long run—or even in the short—friendship and affection were poor sub- stitutes for what his younger brother Sean called the “Big L”?

“It’d be kinda neat, havin’ a brother,” Tyler said wist- fully.

“I can see how you’d feel that way.” Being the middle child of a mixed bunch of six, Jared certainly could sym- pathize. “Having brothers and sisters is a lot o’ fun. Most of the time. On the other hand—”

“Tommy’d really like a brother, too,” Tyler interrupted Jared’s attempt at rationalization through platitudes. “An’ he says his dad wouldn’t mind if you married his mom on account of he divorced her to go farmin’.”

“Farming?” Jared frowned. Last he’d heard, Thomas Mansfield, Sr., was a traveling salesman out of Seattle. “You sure?”

“Yup.” Tyler’s nod was emphatic. “Miz Mansfield even said. She said, ‘That man’s always lookin’ for greener pas- tures.’”

“Oh. I see…” Jared cleared his throat. He briefly de- bated setting Tyler straight on those “greener pastures,” but decided to leave well enough alone. “You guys sure’ve been talking, haven’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Trouble is—” Jared cleared his throat once again “—people don’t just up and marry somebody just because their kids think it would be a good idea. I mean, I like Tommy’s mom a whole lot, but—”

“Tommy says she really likes you, too.”

Jared acknowledged the interjection with a smile and a nod, but continued to make his point as though Tyler hadn’t interrupted. “Like I said, it takes a heck of a lot more than liking each other for two people to get married.”

“Oh,” Tyler said dejectedly. “You mean like you gotta be in love, right?”

“That’s right.” Jared affectionately rubbed his son’s bristly short fair hair. “How’d you get so smart, anyway?”

But Tyler wasn’t to be diverted. He ducked away from his father’s hand, angling around in the seat and facing Jared with arms folded across his chest and his chin stuck out. “I know that Mom wasn’t my real mom.”

“So?” Puzzled as to where this unexpected turn of the conversation was leading, and unaccountably wary, too, Jared sent his son a frowning glance. “That’s never been a secret in our family, so what’s your point?”

Tyler returned the frown in spades. “I heard Grammy and Auntie Colleen talkin’ in the kitchen a while ago and Grammy said how sad it was that you weren’t ever really in love with Mom. So how come now you say people oughta be?”

“What?” The shock of what he’d just heard from his son made Jared almost put the truck into the ditch. What in the hell had his mother been thinking of, making a state- ment like that? Even though it was true, he damned well didn’t appreciate having his private life bandied about by a couple of gossip hens like his mother and sister. Within earshot of his son, yet.

Struggling to control the swerving pickup, he eased it to a stop on the shoulder. He rammed the gear into Park, draped an arm across the steering wheel and turned to his son. “Now listen, Tyler…”

“No, Dad,” Tyler shocked him by obstinately interrupt- ing. “I wanna know why can’t you just be with Miz Mans- field like you were with Mom?”

“Because it’s not that simple.” And one marriage with- out passion is enough in any man’s lifetime.

Engaging in a weighty exchange of glances with his tru- culent offspring, Jared wondered how he could ever have imagined he’d be able to raise this boy to manhood without ending up in a corker of a discussion like this at one time or another.

But…damn it. Jared wiped a hand across his mouth, then kept it there as he continued to contemplate his son and thought of how he never would have dreamed of tackling one or the other of his parents on issues like love, or sex, or any of the other off-the-cuff debates he suspected he and Tyler would engage in over the years.

Jared supposed it was because there’d been no need somehow when he was growing up. Things were as they were, as they always had been. Mom was Mom. Dad was Dad. Both of them had always been solid as the earth, and had been expected to be. Period.

Tyler’s young life on the other hand, for all Jared had done his damnedest to maintain a stable environment, had lately been a series of uncertainties and change. Inevitably, they had shaped the boy’s perceptions, made him wary. And while he, Jared, would do his utmost to shield him from further upheaval….

“Were you in love with my real mom, Dad?”

“Huh?” Involved in his own dark ruminations, Tyler’s softly voiced question completely blindsided Jared. He was still fumbling to regain his emotional equilibrium and for- mulate a response when Tyler’s next words knocked the pins out from under him again.

“I got a picture of her.”

Though Tyler whispered the words, had he yelled them at the top of his lungs, Jared could not have heard them more clearly. Nor been more staggered.

“Of my real mother, I mean,” Tyler added. “Mom gave it to me before she died. An’ she told me it’d be okay if I looked at it. An’ I do now, sometimes.”

Big and somber, Tyler’s brown eyes—so like April’s, Jared grudgingly conceded—met his own thoughtfully nar- rowed ones. “She’s real pretty.”

“Yes, she is.” What had Regina been thinking of, giving Tyler that photo? Which photo? Jared couldn’t remember keeping one around for her to find, never mind pass on to his son. “What kind of picture is it?”

“A real nice one. From outa a magazine.”

“Oh.” Jared was perplexed. Regina had obviously clipped the picture—she had known about April, of course. But what he couldn’t figure out was why she would have wanted Tyler to have it. For all intents and purposes she had always been Tyler’s mother.

“She’s never coming back here, is she?” Tyler said.

“Who, Mom?” Jared’s mind was still on Regina. “Re- member we talked about that. I thought you understood—”

“No,” Tyler interrupted with querulous impatience. “I don’t mean that. I mean the other one, the real one. The one in the picture….”

“Oh.” Jared heaved a sigh, thinking, That one is out here now, but you’ll never see her if I can help it.

“Well, son, it’s like this.” He stalled, furiously wracking his brain for an answer that resembled the truth but wouldn’t devastate his son. “And maybe Mom already told you—”

“That she’s famous,” Tyler interrupted glumly. “Yeah, I know.” His motions listless, he plucked at a loose thread on his shirt. His voice, usually so full of swagger and chal- lenge, grew small enough to break his father’s heart “Didn’t she wanna be my mom, Dad?”

“Yes, of course, she did.” Damn April Bingham to hell for causing all this grief. “It’s just that, well, she plays the piano way better than most anybody else and so people all over the world want to hear her play and that takes up all of her time. See, that’s what being famous is.”

“Is it better’n being a mom, Dad. Do you think?”

“No.” Almost violently, Jared reached across the seat and hauled the boy into his arms. “No way,” he said fiercely, willing conviction into his voice even as he damned the woman who had chosen fame over mother- hood.

And who’d better not have come back here to try to make up for lost time.

“Never,” he said, clenching his teeth to keep from giv- ing voice to the wave of protective tenderness and love that flooded him because he knew it would embarrass this tough little guy. But he hugged him hard. After all, in spite of his sometime swaggering ways, Tyler was just a grieving little boy who, less than a year ago, had lost the only mother he had ever known. And his grandfather, too.

“Being a mom or a dad is the very best thing in the world to be,” Jared declared in a voice rough with emotion. “And don’t you let anybody tell you different. You hear?”

“Okay.” The word was little more than a soggy snuffle.

Jared rubbed his chin on his son’s cropped head. “And about Tommy’s mom…” he murmured. “She’s a great friend and that’s exactly the way I’d like to keep things. Besides…” He tightened his embrace around the wiry little body, relishing the closeness while poignantly aware that soon adolescent pride wouldn’t allow him to hold his son like this anymore. “Aren’t we okay, you’n me and Grammy? Huh? Don’t we have lots of good times, the three of us?”

“I g-guess so.”

“Damn straight,” Jared enthused in a voice that even to him sounded just a shade too hearty. “And things can only get better.”

Two days later Jared wanted to eat those words. He and Tyler had spent one of those days—Sunday—in Portland visiting Regina’s mother as well as seeing to a few things at their house, which as yet was unsold. Which was no wonder since Jared had not yet been able to bring himself to put it on the market. In fact, everything in it had been left exactly as it was when he, Regina and Tyler had made their home there.

Walking through it, watching Tyler rejoice in rediscov- ering this or that treasured toy, Jared fleetingly debated if the most effective way to avoid April Bingham might not be to move back there. But he just as quickly nixed the notion for two reasons. One, the house was like a monu- ment to the bittersweet sterility of his marriage to Regina. And two, it had never been his way to run from a problem.

Or at least, it was not anymore—courtesy of the painful lesson he had learned ten years ago.

His busy Monday had been punctuated by bouts of anx- iety. In fact, it got to the point where he’d been on the verge of dropping everything and tearing over to Cliff House to demand…what? That April Bingham explain her reasons for coming to her own house?

Ridiculous. You’re getting paranoid, Jared, m’boy. Lu- dicrous, to be obsessing over a problem that, for all he knew, existed only in his mind! The woman had a house here. She was on vacation.

And still he didn’t believe it.

So now it was Tuesday, and somewhere in the course of his morning rounds to the neighboring farms he had man- aged to convince himself that April would have contacted him by now if she was going to. In this somewhat improved state of mind, he stopped at the post office, which was actually no more than a large cubicle partitioned off from Mulrooney’s Supermarket.

He was collecting his mail, or trying to. Jean Ivers, Cap- stan’s aged postmistress and gossip queen, was making it difficult Little got by old Jean, who had made it her business to eyeball every piece of mail, coming or going, for as long as Jared could remember.

“Your Popular Mechanics came today,” she was saying as she handed Jared the magazine. “And you might want to take a look at this here big white envelope right off.”

“It’s from a lawyer,” she added after an expectant pause during which Jared said nothing as he turned the envelope over. “Out of New York City.”

“So I see.” Jared pocketed the letter, ignoring Jean’s visible disappointment with a flash of amusement that was quickly replaced by a rekindled feeling of unease. What the hell could a New York City lawyer want from a small-fry country veterinarian like himself?

Whatever it was, Jared’s gut told him he wasn’t going to like it.

He was not about to share his apprehensions with Jean Ivers, however. “How’s old Mouser handling that thyroid medication I prescribed?” he asked, directing a pointed glance at the huge tabby snoozing on a shelf by the back wall. “Any side effects?”

“None I can tell.” Jean flipped through the rest of Jar- ed’s mail, clearly dissatisfied with his evasiveness but, as he immediately found out, not so easily put off.

“We’ve got us a celebrity in town,” she said with a speculative glance from above her half-moon glasses. She handed him a couple more pieces of mail like a miser dol- ing out alms to the poor. “I’d say these are bills.”

“Looks like.” Jared pocketed them, too.

“April Bingham’s the celebrity,” Jean went on. “She gets mail from New York, too.”

“S’that so?” No way was Jared going to give the old bag the satisfaction of appearing intrigued. “Well, it’s a big place.” He pushed away from the counter, one hand outstretched. “I’d best take the rest of my mail now.”

Jean reluctantly handed it to him. “She got herself a letter from that same attorney.” she said. “Ain’t that pe- culiar?”

Her words arrested Jared’s movement. A letter from the same attorney?

“You two wouldn’t happen to be in business together or somethin’, would you?”

“Come again?” Jared’s brows snapped together. What was the woman talking about?

“Well, it coulda been,” she said defensively. “I mean, the two o’ you were pretty thick there, a while back,” she noted pointedly.

“Good grief, Jean,” Jared snapped, mentally wishing all the gossips in the world to the moon. “We were kids then. And anyway, you’re thinking of Colleen. She and April—”

“Oh, no, sonny boy! None o’ that.” Jean waggled a finger. “It wasn’t just your sister the gal was friends with, though I do recall them being like two peas in a pod. No, I’m thinking of that one summer in partic’lar. An’ I recall the entire town gettin’ such a charge out of watchin’ you and that Bingham girl spoonin’ and carrying on…”

She sighed, an expression of indulgent reminiscence re- aligning the network of wrinkles on her face. “Ever’body thought the two of you were so cute.”

Cute. Given what he and April had felt for each other at the time, Jared shuddered at the description.

Jean sobered. “‘Course she never came back after that.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

“Until now.” Jean’s shrewd eyes narrowed on Jared who was grinding his back teeth in frustration.

“Guess she had bigger fish to fry,” Jean commented while studying Jared with that speculative gleam he knew all too well, and detested. Times like this he wished he had stayed in Portland, that he hadn’t come back to Capstan after the accident, though he knew it had been the best solution all around.

“Guess she did. So.” Jared slapped his palm on the counter. “Gotta go.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Ivers.”

Jared froze.

“Speak o’ the devil,” Jean said sotto voce.

Jared ignored that. He stood rigid with tension and grit- ted his teeth as, preceded by a subtle scent that brought on an immediate rush of memories, he sensed and smelled April Bingham’s approach. Her voice, more husky than he remembered, held a tentative note that hinted at uncertainty. It reminded him of how shy she used to be. How easily hurt and sensitive….

Yeah, but not so sensitive she couldn’t dole out a whole lot of pain to a whole lot of people.

Damn her to hell.

Drawing up every ounce of self-control, Jared forced himself to calmly turn and face her. She stood about a foot away, looking sleek as an ocelot in something as mundane as jeans and a shirt. And for all her hesitant manner, she met and held his gaze with her head held high.

“Hello, Jared,” she said.

Chapter Two

April was proud of the steadiness of her voice. Inside, she was aquiver with nerves. These past two days at Cliff House had been as much heaven as hell. Heaven was find- ing it as warmly familiar as a cozy old blanket. Hell, the fact that Marje was no longer there to make it home.

Heaven had been the nostalgia, the memories of glorious summers that seemed so much more real and immediate here, now. Hell were those selfsame memories for they in- cluded—no, prominently featured, Jared O’Neal.

Thinking of him had invariably started her agonizing once again about how to approach him about Tyler. Should she go with her feelings, those of outrage and hurt at his betrayal, and coldly demand an accounting? How could you not have let me know that our child is alive? And living with you? Should she corner him, pin him down? Insist he give her an answer, demand access to her child?

Or should she go with the advice of her attorney, which was to keep past grievances out of it and negotiate?

Her legal position, short of a messy lawsuit, was shaky. Her signature was on the document giving the child up for adoption. Jared O’Neal was the name she had declared as the child’s father on the birth certificate. He had every right to the boy, whereas she….

“I have every right, too,” she had exclaimed. “I didn’t know….”

“Which is why in this instance ignorance just might be an excuse under the law,” her attorney had mused. “If it should come to a suit But be warned, the cost in terms of publicity and emotional trauma will be high for all con- cerned.”

By this morning, April had made up her mind to ap- proach Jared with an olive branch in hand. After all, he had always been a reasonable, a most compassionate, person.

Now, however, confronted by the mask of ice that was Jared O’Neal’s face, and raked by a gaze that was clearly intended to freeze her out, April wanted nothing so much as to turn tail and run, to let her lawyer have at him.

But through years of performing before an audience, pre- ceded by a lifetime of the strictest discipline, she had per- fected the ability to appear poised and serene in even the worst of circumstances.

And so she managed to maintain a pleasant smile as the postmistress said, “We were just talkin’ about you, Miz Bingham. Weren’t we, Jared?”

Jared’s reply was a noncommittal mutter. He still hadn’t returned April’s greeting.

When April realized that he had no intentions of ac- knowledging her presence at all, the stab of hurt this caused both angered and surprised her. She would have thought her defenses stronger than that. She had worked so hard to shore them up. As an entertainer, having her work con- stantly scrutinized and torn apart by fans and critics alike came with the territory. She’d had to develop an elephant’s hide or perish as an artist.

So why would the rudeness of this one man cause her even a moment’s discomfort?

The answer was as obvious as it was immutable—the man was the father of her child. That made him, if no longer special, at least different from every other man in that he had once possessed her heart and body. They had been in love.

Or, at least, she had been—if indeed that fairy-tale state existed. In those glorious days that long-ago summer, sev- enteen years old and incredibly naive, she had believed it did.

But now, at twenty-eight, she knew better than to put her faith in fairy tales. First Jared O’Neal and, later, Montgom- ery Cedars, had shattered her girlish illusions.

Still, she had hoped that the bond between Jared and herself, tenuous though the events of the past might have made it, would enable them to deal with each other civilly. At least where Tyler was concerned.

And so, maybe the twinge of pain Jared’s barely veiled contempt was causing her was merely disappointment at having that hope dashed. Not that she would let him see he still had the power to wound her.

“I’m glad to run into you here,” she told him, keeping her tone civil, though it took some effort. “I was going to call you later today.”

“Really?” His tone was one of complete disinterest. “A sick pet?”

“No, of course not. I—”

“In that case, you’ll excuse me.” Brushing past her, Jar- ed strode out the door without a backward glance.

Stunned, April almost let him get away with it. But then she recalled the promise she had made to herself, the prom- ise to take charge. “Jared!”

Leaving the postmistress looking intrigued, April hurried after him. She caught him out on the sidewalk. “Jared.”

He neither turned nor stopped walking.

April half ran to come abreast of him. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“There’s not a word you can say that I want to hear.”

“Oh, really?” April snapped, his scorn blasting the last of her good intentions to smithereens. Gritting her teeth and blessing her long legs, she grimly matched his stride. “How does the word ‘conspiracy’ strike you?”

No response.

“Or maybe the term ‘kidnapping’ would be more appli- cable.”

That stopped him in his tracks.

April stalked past him, then spun around. Folding her arms across her chest, she met his glare without waver. “I will have you charged with either or both,” she said. “If you force me to.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Maybe.” She angled her chin in a gesture of challenge.

Jared ground his back teeth.

Neither blinked as they stared coldly into each other’s eyes. April was damned if she was going to give him even a glimpse of her shattered nerves because she knew she’d be lost if she did. He would emotionally flatten her like a steamroller for the simple reason that he could. After all, she was the vulnerable one in the showdown to come. She wanted what he already had.

“Kidnapping what?” he finally demanded, as though he didn’t already know the answer, ludicrous though it was. “Or who?”

“Tyler.” The name came out of April’s constricted throat in a croaky whisper. Angry with herself for the innate cowardice that even now made her want to retreat from this confrontation, April cleared her throat. “I want Tyler.”

“Tyler is nothing to you,” Jared growled, doing his ut- most to control a burgeoning rage he knew was caused by fear as much as anything else. “Nothing.”

“He is my son.”

“Your son?” The harshly whispered pronoun was laced with such bitterness and suppressed rage, April instinctively shrank back.

But not far enough. Jared gripped her arm. Jerking her out of the path of other pedestrians, many of whom were eyeing them with avid curiosity, he all but dragged her into the relative privacy of a recessed store entrance. There, his formidable bulk shielded April from inquisitive glances. She doubted, however, that he’d arranged it that way out of chivalry. He was clearly livid.

“Now you listen to me,” he snarled, impaling her with his eyes. “That boy is mine. Only mine.” His face was as close as a lover’s, but there was nothing in the least lov- erlike in his expression. “You gave away any claim you had when you got rid of him like so much excess bag- gage.”

“No!” With a strength fueled by desperation, April yanked her arm out of Jared’s grip and raised her hands beseechingly. “Jared, for heaven’s sake. You know I never did that. My mother—”

“Ah, yes,” Jared interjected with a grimace of distaste. “Your mother.”

“Did what she thought was best,” April defended out of habit. Certainly not out of conviction. “But believe me, I knew nothing about any of it.”

“Yeah, right.” Jared averted his face so he wouldn’t have to look at her to see the distress that could almost make him believe she was telling the truth. Almost. “Poor April, always the innocent victim.”

“No!”

“Damn straight, no!” Jerking his face back toward her, Jared spoke through clenched teeth. “As in no way. No way do I believe you, and no way are you getting your hands on my son. He is not a thing you can keep or reject like the ring you tossed back in my face.”

“The ring?” April stared at him, bewildered. He could only mean his fraternity ring. She’d been on cloud nine the day he had given it to her as a token of his love. And she had sunk into the depths of despair the day it had disap- peared.

Which had been the same day she had confessed to her mother that she was pregnant. Her last day at Cliff House. Because the very next morning, her mother had put her on a plane to London. Marjorie had written in her journal that day.

I think Grace is overreacting. And my little April is so distressed that I telephoned Joshua in London and pleaded with him to intervene on his daughter’s behalf. I am heartbroken but not really surprised that, as usual, my brother shirked his responsibilities and refused…

Reading it all these years later, April had cried. Her fa- ther was dead and could answer no questions, but she had often wondered why he’d been so seemingly content to give her mother free reign.

Perhaps if he’d taken a stand, she would not now be in this untenable situation with Jared O’Neal.

“What are you talking about?” Biting her lip, April blinked back the moisture that had risen into her eyes. In his present frame of mind, Jared would probably see her tears as a sign of weakness and guilt. “I never tossed that ring—”

“Of course you didn’t. That would have taken courage.” Jared’s jaw flexed, remembering. “No, you had your mother do it for you.”

“You’re wrong.” April felt as though she were in a quagmire of misunderstandings and trickery, and sinking fast. What was he talking about? When would her mother have done this? Why? Grace had sworn to her that she hadn’t seen the ring.

And she had also sworn, as she’d hustled the heartbroken and hysterical April to the airport, that she hadn’t seen Jar- ed. More lies?

Oh, Mother. April’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight of so much treachery, so much manipulation. “Jared…”

“Spare me.” Jared didn’t want to hear her excuses, her lies. “I don’t give a damn, about you or the ring. Though just for the record, it’s in my desk drawer. Come by and check it out. Or, better still, I’ll mail it to you since I can’t stand the sight of it.”

Or of you. Though he didn’t say it, it was there in his face for April to see. She shivered. “Then why do you keep it?”

“To remind myself never to get into a situation like that again.”

“Did it work?” April was surprised to hear herself ask. She fully expected Jared to snarl some scathing reply.

But he didn’t. He contemplated her in brooding silence for several long seconds during which April could hear every one of her heartbeats as loud as a drum. Such a ter- rible pain clouded his eyes that April couldn’t help but be touched by it. She reached out to him with her hand, un- formulated words of regret, perhaps even apology, on her lips.

But before she could either touch him or speak, Jared pivoted and walked away.

It struck her anew then, the enormity of all she had lost. And she ached. She grieved. She mourned the loss of in- nocence—her own as well as Jared’s—that inevitably was the legacy of betrayal.

“Oh, Jared,” she murmured, and her throat burned like acid from her unshed tears. To hide her emotions, she turned to stare without focus at the window display in front of which she found herself. It consisted of tools of some sort. Nothing April would have recognized even had she tried. Or cared.

There is so much I didn’t know, she thought wearily. And such a lot that Jared knew nothing of. Why couldn’t he have been reasonable? Why couldn’t he at least have given her a chance?

She closed her eyes and tried to gather strength. The confrontation had drained her, left her raw. It was exactly the kind of thing she had been told by her doctor to avoid.

Rest, rest, and still more rest was what he had prescribed after her collapse on the concert stage in the middle of her most recent tour. Exhaustion had been cited as the cause. April had been ordered to take a minimum of three months off.

It had caused a rescheduling nightmare, this breakdown of hers. Her mother had had to pull strings, call in all sorts of favors, to arrange for this inconvenient—Grace’s word— hiatus.

“We’ll lose a fortune in ticket sales,” she had fumed, pacing the floor of the Paris hotel suite. Though April was sitting right there on the brocaded settee, it was Dr. Shi- mons and Marcus Bingham she was addressing. “Not to mention the damage to April’s reputation should it get out that she’s a temperamental diva, an unreliable performer. Really, April, are you sure?”

“Positive,” the doctor had said in April’s stead.

To which Marcus, who had rushed to Paris from Beijing when he’d heard of his sister’s collapse, had added, “If you’d stop being April’s manager long enough to be her mother, Mother, maybe you’d have recognized the state of her exhaustion and this so-called calamity could have been avoided. Though personally I think it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to her.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she’s a human being, Mother, not a robot. When was the last time you allowed her more than a one- week break?”

“When she asked for it,” Grace had snapped. “Which she is too much of a professional to do very often. April knows she is getting on—”

“Oh, yeah—she’s in her dotage.”

“And that younger talent is constantly nipping at her heels. She can’t afford to rest on her laurels.”

“Not that you’d let her….”

Even now, thousands of miles away and standing in front of a hardware store, April shivered at the harshness of the exchange between mother and son. Mark was one of the few people whom Grace couldn’t intimidate, bully or de- feat, but their arguments always made April cringe. Espe- cially when, as was often the case, she was the cause or subject of it.

Mark was her twin; but he was also her best, her only, friend. Grace—which she insisted Mark and April call her—was her mother, her manager, but more than that, her taskmaster. Relentless, unceasing, she had always de- manded everything April had it in her to give. And then just a little bit more.

Only Mark ever dared to try to interfere with Grace’s ruthless ambition. Only Mark seemed to recognize the price for it April had paid all her life. But even he had never been able to slow Grace down. Though not for lack of trying.

Dear, grouchy Marcus. Older than she by several minutes, he took his role as older brother very seriously. During her summers at Cliff House, where he had lived with their Aunt Marjorie all year round, Mark had always defended her against the teasing and taunts of some of the rougher kids in town. Kids who called the shy, bookish girl from New York who didn’t even know how to swim or play catch, dumb. Or stuck-up.

But never when Mark was around. Or Jared. Or even….

“Colleen?” Startled because it seemed as though her thoughts had conjured her up, April stared into the face of the woman stepping out of the store.

“Hello, April.” Hostility laced the voice and turned the otherwise unchanged face of her girlhood friend into that of a stranger. “I saw you out here with my brother. Haven’t you done enough?”

“W-what?” April stammered, shocked by the unex- pected attack.

“You heard me.” Obviously distraught, Colleen pressed a hand to her throat. A diamond-studded wedding band winked in the sun. “Why have you come back? What do you want?”

For a moment April couldn’t speak. Even you, she thought, and somehow the pain of Colleen’s rejection sliced even deeper than Jared’s had done. Perhaps because in the olden days, in Colleen’s eyes at least, April had been able to do no wrong.

“Do you have children, Colleen?” It hurt to speak.

And the non sequitur obviously took the other woman aback. “Why…yes, I…” She gestured distractedly toward the door behind her. “Ralph and I have a daughter.”

“Ah.” April nodded, her gaze briefly shifting to the sign above the door. Simpson Hardware. Of course. April re- membered then—Ralph Simpson. He and Colleen had dated that last summer, that same fateful summer when she and Jared…

“How old is she?”

“Five.”

“Do you love her?”

“Well, of course. What a question. But…look. April—” Clearly agitated, Colleen came a step closer. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Anger was a welcome change from the hurt. “What am I doing, Colleen, that you yourself—as a mother—wouldn’t do in my shoes?”

“Well, for one thing…” Colleen’s eyes, so much like her brother’s in their brilliant indigo blue color, sparked now with indignation and resentment. “I would never have given up my child in the first place.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Defeated, suddenly, and un- bearably weary, April thought, What’s the use? Still, before turning to go, she added quietly, “ But then, knowingly, I wouldn’t have, either.”

“Confound it, Conan, that’s not what I called you to hear.”

Raking a hand through his hair and letting it rest on the back of his neck, Jared paced the narrow confines of his father’s den like one of the restless cats in his boarding kennel.

From the other end of the line, the eldest O’Neal off- spring was sounding equally incensed. “Then get yourself another lawyer and bankrupt yourself,” he shouted. “Not to mention devastate your son. My advice stands.” Click.

Jared winced as Conan abruptly broke the connection. Perching on the edge of the desk, he let out a sigh of ex- asperation. Damned hothead! Cradling the cordless phone in his hands, he scowled down at it.

“What?” his mother prompted. Knitting, she sat by the open window through which a desultory breeze was trying valiantly to cool the room. The day had been uncommonly hot.

Jared didn’t look up from his dark contemplation of the phone. “He hung up on me.”

“That’s not what Mom’s asking.” Colleen, carrying a tray of glasses in one hand and a frosted pitcher of lem- onade in the other, walked into the room. “We want to know what he said you should do about April and that letter from New York.”

“Why? So you can gossip about it with all of your friends?”

“What?” Colleen exchanged a bewildered glance with her mother and demanded, “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” Jared gestured impatiently with his hand as he belatedly realized this was hardly the time to vent his ire about the conversation between the two woman that Tyler had overheard. It would only make this miserable day more hellish still. “I’m just mad, that’s all.”

“So tell us why. What did Conan say that’s got you so bent out of shape?”

“He says, ‘Go along with it.’ Says, ‘Don’t try to fight it.’ Or her!”

Frustrated, Jared waved away the glass of lemonade Col- leen held out. Too restless to sit, he once again paced. “Can you beat that? After giving away her kid, after nine years of nothing, the woman waltzes back into our lives with the intention of staking a claim and, according to some fancy New York lawyer, it would behoove me to let her get away with it if I don’t want to find myself hauled into court.”

Gripping the window frame, he stared out into the night

“With which Conan agrees,” Maeve stated rather than asked. She put aside her knitting and caught her son’s free hand. “Jared.” Gently, she uncurled the fist he had formed. “Would it be so bad?”

“Yes.” Vehement, Jared bent and gripped his mother’s shoulders. His eyes bored into hers. “Mom, you were there.”

“Yes, I was.”

“He was tiny.”

“Not much more than a handful,” Maeve quietly agreed. She returned Jared’s burning gaze with one that was loving and true.

Because his eyes threatened to fill, Jared closed them. He hung his head. His hands spasmodically squeezed his mother’s shoulders. “He was only hours old when they gave him to you, remember? Completely helpless. Needy. Damn it, Mom—” With a strangled sound of anguish, Jar- ed straightened and turned away. His fingers speared into his hair and stayed there as he tilted his head toward the ceiling.

“How could she do it?” he asked raggedly. “Tyler needed her. He could have died. How could she just…give away her own child?”

“She says she didn’t,” Colleen hesitantly put in. “When I challenged her on it today, she told me she didn’t do it willingly.”

She winced when Jared rounded on her with a snarl. “So unwillingly makes it all right?”

“Well, it certainly puts a different light on things.”

“If it’s true.” Jared leveled a finger at his sister. “And since when are you back to being her champion?”

“I’m not That is…” Averting her eyes from Jared’s accusing ones, Colleen sought support from their mother. “I guess I want to believe her, Mom. She seemed so gen- uinely…broken up. I felt—”

“Sorry for her?” Jared smacked his palm against the windowsill with a snort of disgust. “You always were a bleeding heart, sis, where April Bingham was concerned.”

“And you weren’t?” It was Maeve who asked that ques- tion, shocking Jared into swinging around to stare at her.

Erect and still formidable, Maeve stared back. “All those years when that poor little girl would come to us seeking refuge from that harridan of a mother, who was it went out of his way to comfort and amuse her when Colleen was not around?”

Maeve leveled a finger at his chest “You, Jared. You always had time for her, always understood her. Shielded her. Coddled her. There was nothing, you said, you wouldn’t do for her. And she for you.”

“Mother—”

“No, Jared,” Maeve cut short her son’s attempt to in- terrupt. “You’re my son and I love you. I stood by you and so did your father, God rest him, throughout that whole mess. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were not blameless in all that transpired. You were twenty years old. You knew what an innocent April was, for all she was seventeen. You also knew she worshiped the ground you walked on and would give you anything you asked, in- cluding…”

Too straitlaced to speak of sex, even to her grown chil- dren, Maeve faltered. With a wave of the hand, she settled for, “Well, you know what I mean. She loved you, Jared.”

“I loved her, too,” Jared flared. “And kindly remember I’m not the villain in this piece.”

“But you’re sure that April is?” Maeve had come to stand beside him at the window.

Behind them, Colleen noisily blew her nose. “You should have told her you’d marry her.”

“Oh, sure.” Jared’s short laugh was bitter. “I tried that, remember? And got tossed out on my ear.”

“You should have told her right away. And you’ll recall it wasn’t April who sent you packing.”

“Oh, no.” It was galling to realize the memory still hurt. “As always, she let her mother handle that little unpleas- antness.”

“Jared.” Taking Jared’s callused hand in her own work- toughened one, Maeve gazed down at her son with sorrow- ing reproof. “You know as well as I do that no one lets Grace Rhinegold do anything, least of all April. Grace just does, and let nobody dare try and stop her.”

She waited for Jared to meet her eyes. “It was Grace who handed me the baby, son, in that posh and private London clinic. I never told you this because you never wanted to hear the details, and anyway I thought, What was the point?”

“So why are you telling me now, Ma?” Jared didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. After all these years of blaming April, despising April, was he now ex- pected to forgive and forget?

Angry, suddenly, he shook off his mother’s hands, rounding on her and Colleen. “Why are the two of you all of a sudden working so hard to convince me that she is the victim here instead of me?”

“We’re not,” Colleen exclaimed defensively. She wiped at her cheeks. “It’s just that—”

“It’s just that there’s more to consider here than your hurt feelings or April’s,” Maeve interrupted with some im- patience. “As far as I’m concerned, Tyler’s well-being is the only thing that matters.”

“Which is exactly my point!” Jared leveled a rigid fin- ger at his mother. “What do you think it’s going to do to Tyler when after a month, two months, or three, the famous Ms. Bingham gets tired of languishing in our backwater town and bored with playing Mom, and hightails it back to the bright lights? Huh?”

He grimly forestalled the defense he saw Maeve draw breath to offer. “Which she will.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“She will.” Convinced of it, Jared stared hard at his mother in an effort to convince her, too. He noted with a pang that his father’s death had scarred his mother’s face, just as the simultaneous death of Regina had irrevocably scarred his own soul. Though not for the same reason.

“She will,” he repeated, but quietly this time. Loving his mother for all she was and all she had done for him— and for Tyler—Jared bent and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Ma, but I’d stake my life on that.”

“But, son,” Maeve’s hand kept him from straightening. “Don’t you see? If you fight her, it’s not your life that you’re putting at stake. It’s Tyler’s.”

They looked at each for a long time, mother and son, as the truth of Maeve’s words wrestled with the bitterness in Jared’s soul. And when, with an oath, Jared finally straight- ened and turned away, Maeve gestured to Colleen and qui- etly led the way out of the room.

Chapter Three

April was lying down with an ice pack on her head when the phone rang. Even though she had set the volume control at the lowest setting, the whirring sound reverberated through her head with all the force of one of Mozart’s cres- cendos. Not since the collapse that led up to this prescribed rest period had she suffered a migraine of this magnitude. She had felt it coming on in the aftermath of her encounter with Jared O’Neal and Colleen Simpson. The stress, her overwrought state, all were like poison to her constitution. Only the hope that the call might be about Tyler motivated her to pick up the phone. Indeed, it was the only reason she had not unplugged it.

Gagging back nausea, she kept her head as still as pos- sible as she groped for the handset on the low table next to her with her eyes closed. “‘Lo?”

“Hello, er…April?”

Jared. April tensed. Pain lacerated her skull. It seared both of her eyes like a hot poker and drove an involuntary groan from her lips.

“What’s the matter?” Something like alarm sharpened Jared’s tone. It assaulted April’s ears and head like a ham- mer blow. “April?”

“Please,” she croaked. “Not so loud.”

“Are you sick?” Jared asked in a more moderate tone that—incongruously to April—held an unmistakable note of concern.

“M-migraine,” April whispered hoarsely. “But never mind that T-Tyler?”

“Yes.” Jared cleared his throat. “He’s, uh…. Well, he’s the reason I’m calling. But look, it can wait until—”

“No…” Heedless of her head, dizzy with pain, April rose up on one elbow as though that would lend force to her whispered plea. “Please. Is it all right? Are you going to let me see him? Talk to him? When?”

“Well, it can’t be right away.”

Not right away? Gasping, her disappointment an even more devastating pain than the one in her head, April col- lapsed back against the pillows.

“You see, he’s gone camping with my sister Leslie’s family for a couple of days.” There was a pause that gave April time to realize—and appreciate—the fact that Jared was trying to establish some sort of rapport. His next words bore that out.

“You remember Leslie,” he said with a strained, self- conscious little chuckle. “She’s the one who was always practicing the clarinet in the hayloft and spooking the cows.”

“Yes…” April also recalled that Leslie was two years older than Jared, the second oldest, after Conan, of the six O’Neal offspring.

“They’ll be back Wednesday or Thursday.”

Two more days, maybe three. It seemed like such a long time. Though she knew it was foolish—she had waited this long, what did a couple more days matter?—April felt tears of disappointment sting the backs of her eyes.

She refused to let them fall, even when Jared added to the devastating letdown by saying, “And I’ll also need some time to talk to him. I need to prepare him. I mean, he knows you exist, but we can’t just spring your imminent entrance into his life on him out of the blue.”

“I understand.” The suppressed tears constricted her voice. “You’ll, um…you’ll let me know?”

“Right.”

“Thank you,” April whispered, but Jared had already severed the connection.

With a tremulous sigh, April let the phone slip out of her hand. She lay perfectly still, letting the fact that Jared had decided not to fight her soothe her like a balm.

Not till a pool of water had collected in each of her ears did she realize that holding back the tears hadn’t worked.

At his end, Jared, too, was distraught. It had been a dif- ficult phone call to make on all levels. He put down the phone and, with his elbows propped on his father’s desk, cradled his head in his hands, thinking, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to do this.

He didn’t want to trust April. Didn’t want to risk Tyler getting hurt. But most of all he didn’t want to get sucked in once again by April Bingham and her problems. He didn’t want to care.

“Damn.” Pinching the narrow spot between his eyes, he bowed his head and sucked in a number of ragged breaths.

So she still got those headaches. Was he to blame for this one?

Jared dug his nails into his scalp, remembering the first time he had seen her with one. He had been looking for her to ask her to go swimming. Her aunt had come to the door.

“I don’t know, Jared,” Marje had said in that elegant British way of hers. “April is terribly upset.”

“What happened?”

“Her mother rang. From England. She announced her imminent arrival—she’ll be here two days from now—and I’m afraid April isn’t taking it well. She was so enjoying her holiday, poor lamb.”

And now it’ll be back to the salt mines, Jared had thought. “Where is she?”

“April? She fled upstairs to her room, white as a sheet.”

“Can I see her? Please?”

Marje had considered this for a moment before tossing up her hand. “Sure. Why not. If anyone can cheer her, it’ll be you.”

As Jared bounded up the stairs, she had called after him, “Mind, you leave the bedroom door open!”

Jared knocked on the door, then right away pushed it open and stuck in his head. “April?”

No answer. A quick scan of the room revealed that it was empty. Puzzled—maybe she’d gone to the bath- room?—he’d hovered in the doorway, and that’s when he heard it. A keening sort of whimper. And it came from the direction of the closet.

Two strides took him there. He wrenched open the door. There was April. Curled into a tight little ball with her arms wrapped around her head, rocking, moaning.

“April. Honey…” Dropping to his knees, Jared reached for her.

“No…” She shrank away, curling more tightly into her- self. “The d-door…the light…oh, please….”

Jared had crawled into the closet with her, closed the door, and held her. Held her….

But who was holding her now? Who had held her all the times in between until the pain went away?

Damn you, April Bingham. Jared leapt to his feet and charged out of his father’s den as though pursued by a stampede of cattle. I don’t want this, you hear me? Not again. Never again.

He ran to the stable and, hands shaking, saddled his horse. Only one thing could get his emotions and priorities back where they belonged—a long, hard ride through the surf.

But it didn’t help this time. April Bingham stayed with him as though he were holding her in the saddle in front of him the way he had so often done in the past.

And when, hours later, he cantered past the stairs that led from the beach up to Cliff House and saw April stand- ing up on the cliff, silhouetted against the purpling sky, he knew his emotional troubles had only begun.

“He is cooperating,” April said to her attorney who had called to follow up on the letter to Jared he had copied her on. “Or, at least, that’s more or less what he indicated to me two days ago.”

“More or less?” Greg Hoskins queried. “What does that mean?”

“Well…” April quickly related details of her phone con- versation with Jared, ending with, “I haven’t seen or talked to him since.”

“Any chance he’s intending to renege?”

“No.”

“You sound pretty sure for a woman who’s been be- trayed the way you have.”

“Oh, I am sure,” April said. “And anyway, I’ve since found out that Jared wasn’t…I mean, he apparently didn’t know. Well, I’m just sure,” she said again when it occurred to her that Jared’s ignorance of the fact that she had not been responsible for Tyler’s release for adoption was irrel- evant with regard to her attorney.

“Does this newfound confidence in Dr. O’Neal mean you no longer deem it necessary to investigate him?”

“Well, no…. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Ms. Bingham. Wouldn’t want any unpleasant surprises at some future date, would we?”

“No.” Disturbed, April gnawed on her thumbnail. “Jar- ed would not be pleased if he found out we were doing this.”

“Perhaps not,” the attorney allowed. “However, there’s no reason to think that he would. Find out, I mean. These things are handled with discretion and confidentiality, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“Hmm.” April bit down on her nail too hard and, vexed with herself, jerked her hand away. She had half a mind to cancel the investigation after all. She had still been reeling from all she’d found out and girding herself for battle, so to speak, when she had authorized it initially. Discover the opponent’s weaknesses and capitalize on them, had been the rationale. The way things stood now, however…

She sighed. “Well, if you’re sure it won’t cause prob- lems?”

“Positive.”

The word went around and around in April’s head like a circling vulture for quite some time that afternoon. Maybe she should have called the thing off.

Still fretting about it as she left the post office later that afternoon—a substitute had been in for Jean Ivers, thank God—and feeling another headache coming on, she finally told herself—Enough.

If Jared had nothing to hide, he would never know she’d had him checked out. And in the unlikely event something objectionable should turn up, then, well—

Childish shouts and laughter abruptly snagged April’s attention.

“Hey, Charlie, watch this!”

“Heck, that’s nothin’, man!”

Turning her head toward the sound, she realized she was at the school yard where the Gulls played baseball. Sure enough, several uniformed youngsters were already on the field, tossing balls, swinging bats, warming up for a game or practice.

A leap of excitement quickened April’s pulse. Eagerly, wondering if Tyler would by chance be one of the kids, she looked around more closely. And there—her heart skipped a beat—there he was.

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