The doctor had talked about him doing physical therapy on his leg, but Gary was thinking he’d find out what he had to do and carry it out on his own

He did most things on his own. He didn’t feel any need for a cheerleader.

Besides, he’d been considering a trip. What better time? While convalescing, he’d discovered he was curious about these sisters it seemed he had. One who was apparently heartbroken because he hadn’t been excited about some kind of reunion, and the other who’d wanted to chew a strip off him because he wanted to be left alone.

Funny thing, since he’d gotten first the call from the P.I. and then the one from the sister, he’d found he did remember them. Or at least he thought he did. His memories from before he went to live with the Lindstroms in Bakersfield had a hazy, dreamlike quality.

He wasn’t 100 percent sure which people were the family he’d lost and which were foster families. But chasing memories that refused to be caught was getting old.

So he figured he’d take a ride across country to Washington state, maybe stay a couple of weeks, talk to this Carrie and Suzanne a few times, hear the real story.

Then decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life…

Dear Reader,

Once in a while, a character just takes over a story. We writers like to think we’re in control, so it’s a little disconcerting to have a hero or heroine become someone we didn’t plan for at all. This is one of those books.

I knew Gary Lindstrom had had a terrible childhood. (After all, I planned it that way!) What I’d forgotten was that he’d had three happy years in a loving family before his parents died. That part of him reawakens when he falls in love as an adult and does battle with the cynicism and deep distrust of fellow humans he thinks is his basic nature.

This wasn’t an easy book to write. I kept complaining to everyone who would listen that I had no plot. I began to wish for a car chase or a gun battle! The more subtle, internal change is always a greater challenge. But by the time I finished Lost Cause, I realized it had become a favorite of my own books. Gary came to life for me in a way fictional characters rarely do. In many ways, he told his own story, and I found myself hurting for his loneliness and touched by the man he proved to be.

I’m eager to hear from readers and to talk to some of you at book signings.

Janice Kay Johnson

Lost Cause
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

A SINGLE MOMENT, an unbidden thought, is all it takes to change a man’s life. Or at least motivate him to change it.

Gary Lindstrom became conscious and, without even opening his eyes, knew he was in the hospital. The smell, the quality of the air, the beep beep of a monitor were familiar.

His leg hurt like hell, he had the mother of all headaches, and when he flexed experimentally, every muscle in his body screamed.

He opened his eyes a slit, confirmed by the sight of the white bedding, a larger than expected mound over his legs and the curtain pulled around the bed that, yep, he was indeed in the hospital, and closed them again.

Damn it. The last thing he remembered was… Oh, crap, yeah. He’d been riding the winding canyon road, nothing but the night around him, occasional cars passing in the other direction. He’d taken each curve faster than the one before, until oncoming headlights had momentarily blinded him and he’d gone wide enough to catch some gravel under the tires. He’d felt the bike skidding, the spurt of fear and adrenaline as the guardrail rushed toward him. He recalled knowing he’d lost it, his leg scraping pavement. Then…nothing.

Footsteps, then the rattle of the curtain rings, coaxed his eyes open again. A young Hispanic nurse smiled at him.

“Mr. Lindstrom. You’re awake. How are you feeling?” She checked the bag hanging on the IV pole beside the bed.

“Hurt.” His voice came out rusty. “Accident?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember? You were very fortunate that you wore a helmet.”

“Leg?” he croaked.

“You had a nasty fracture.” She patted him. “No more questions. I’ll have the doctor come in and talk to you.”

Five minutes later, the doctor, an older man, arrived to recite a laundry list of bruises and contusions as well as cracked ribs, a leg fractured in three places, and a concussion.

“My bike?”

“From what I hear, a mangled mess.”

Regret speared Gary. Damn it, he’d worked hard to restore the 1950 FLE model Panhead. He’d intended to sell it when something else came along that interested him. He supposed insurance would cover the more than $20,000 he was out, but the accident wouldn’t be good for his rates.

“You’re not a pretty sight,” the doctor added, scanning Gary’s face with interest. “But you’d be a dead man if you hadn’t worn a helmet.”

Funny thing. He almost hadn’t. He’d slung his leg over his Harley, picked up the helmet, hesitated, then shrugged and put it on. He wore it most of the time, but he’d been in the mood to toss it aside.

Lucky I didn’t, Gary thought, as the doctor left the room. Or maybe not.

Shock punched through the pain.

Goddamn. Had he been trying to kill himself?

He closed his eyes and saw again the road, unwinding before the narrow beam of his headlight. As always, he’d exulted in the power of the Harley between his legs, but it alone hadn’t been enough. He’d sought out this road, perhaps because it was carved from the face of a cliff. Sometimes, he just plain needed to be reckless, to toy with oblivion. Tonight had been one of those times.

Or had it been last night? He realized he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. Hours? Days? With indifference, he dismissed his speculation and returned to his main preoccupation.

Speeding down the canyon road, he’d felt the pull of the darkness beyond the white strip of guardrail. He’d known it before; who didn’t have those fleeting thoughts: What would it feel like if I sailed off the road? Maybe fantasies like that were a brief surfacing of the subconscious awareness of danger.

But tonight… Tonight, it had been stronger than that. He’d wanted danger. Maybe he’d wanted to die.

Bleakly, he examined the possibility. Could you be suicidal without realizing it?

Yeah, he decided; you could. But he didn’t think he’d gone that far. Flirting with death was one thing, marrying her another. He didn’t feel ready to cash it in. But he also had a little trouble pinpointing what appeal living held.

Maybe his attitude wasn’t so good. He’d been calling his despair cynicism. Loneliness was his choice.

A choice that meant darkness, the seductress, called to him. Or was it ignoring him, and he was the one sidling closer?

Either way, lying in that hospital bed, he saw he did have a choice now. Let himself keep sidling, or figure out how other people made themselves happy and try some of it on for size.

He shifted in bed and had to go still until the pain eased back on the throttle. One leg hadn’t shifted at all, weighted down as it was with plaster.

Okay, he thought, with a flicker of humor: he wouldn’t be trying anything on for size for a while.

But once the cast was cut off and he could throw away the crutches he predicted in his future, he had to find a way to give his life some meaning, or another time he would toss aside that helmet.

The nurse came in and showed him how to give himself minishots of morphine, then went. Gary punched the button and felt a wave of relief that clouded his mind and made his eyes heavy.

As he drifted, he heard himself saying, Was that my name? Chauvin?

That’s right, someone said. Lucien Chauvin.

He’d always known that he’d once been Lucien, not Gary. When he was younger, he hadn’t understood how that could be or who the people he remembered were, but later he was told about the adoption.

Your sister, Suzanne Chauvin, hired me to find you, the other man said.

He heard himself again. This sister looking for me? Too little, too late. Don’t need her, don’t want a sister.

As the comfort of sleep rolled over him, Gary’s last sensation was surprise.

He’d lied.

THE VOICE ON THE PHONE was light and pleasant. “Ms. Chauvin, I’m calling from The Complete Family Adoption Agency. My name is Rebecca Wilson, and I’ve been given your file. I’d like to set up a home visit.”

Suzanne’s heartbeat did a hop, skip and jump. “Wow, that was fast!”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Not a one! I was just afraid months would go by. I’d love to have you come over.” But she’d need time to clean house first.

They settled on a day almost three weeks away. Plenty of time to organize every closet and cupboard the social worker wouldn’t look into anyway. Suzanne wasn’t that bad a housekeeper, but she wanted the house to shine when Rebecca Wilson came. If she didn’t impress her, the agency wouldn’t give her a child. She had to impress her! She just had to.

She’d start today. The sun had peeped out after a rainy week, so she would rake up the soggy, fallen leaves and then consider loading her temperamental lawn mower into the trunk of her car and taking it to the shop. Once again it had refused to start Sunday when she’d tried. Maybe, if she were really lucky, she’d get it back soon enough to mow one more time before the ground got too wet—and before the home visit.

Bursting with energy and ambition, she changed into scroungy gardening clothes and pulled up the garage door. She’d get the automatic opener replaced this week, just in case she had reason to open the door when Rebecca Wilson was here. She wouldn’t want to look as if she couldn’t afford to maintain her house, let alone take care of a child.

She stole a glance toward her neighbor’s before stepping outside with her rake and a box of plastic garbage sacks. She tried to work outdoors when Tom Stefanic wasn’t in his yard. Not that he wasn’t perfectly pleasant when they exchanged their occasional neighborly greetings, but, darn it, his lawn was smooth enough to be the 18th hole of the U.S. Open, his flower beds were edged with military precision, his driveway power-sprayed weekly. No moss grew on his roof, the leaves barely dared drop from his trees. In fact… She studied the two flowering cherries along the street in front of his house with suspicion. Neither bore a single leaf, even though her trees were still festooned with slimy dead leaves hanging like dirty, wet socks. She knew he had a blower. Did it vacuum, too? Would he have vacuumed his trees? she wondered incredulously.

But his garage door was shut, and she heard no sound from the backyard. Maybe he was gone today. Determined to put him out of her mind and pretend the contrast between their respective properties wasn’t painful, Suzanne breathed in a lungful of damp, earthy-smelling air.

She loved autumn almost as much as spring. The leaves had been spectacular, until the heavy rains the last couple of weeks had finished them off. There was something satisfying about tucking in flower beds, so to speak—trimming the dead stems of the perennials, pulling out last weeds, mulching. Partly she looked forward to a break from outside work, and partly she enjoyed anticipating the new growth that would poke from the dark earth in just a few months.

Would she have a child by then? A little boy or girl to crouch beside her as she worked? Or one old enough to actually help, even to mow?

She still wasn’t all that fixed on how old a child she preferred. Suzanne thought she’d like to adopt a girl, just because it might be easier as a single mom, but she hadn’t ruled out a boy if the agency had one who needed a home. Her sister, Carrie, had just married a man who had a six-year-old, and Suzanne would adopt Michael’s clone in a second if she could.

She worried that the agency would look with more favor on her if she’d made up her mind about what she wanted, but then sometimes she convinced herself she was more likely to be given a child sooner if she wasn’t too demanding about specifics. After all, if she were having a child the normal way, she couldn’t be, could she? When you got pregnant, you didn’t know if you would have a boy or girl, a towhead or a brunette, a child with a placid nature or one who couldn’t sit still. And you didn’t care; you just wanted a baby to love.

She’d turned thirty-two this summer, and she was beginning to think she would never have children. Of course she could have gone the route of finding donor sperm, but she didn’t feel that compelling a need to actually be pregnant. In fact, she liked the idea of adopting.

Carrie was right. Adopting a child who needed her would be Suzanne’s way of atoning for not being able to hold on to her baby sister and little brother when they were taken away after their parents’ deaths. What she couldn’t do for them, she could do for someone else.

Raking wet leaves, she smiled thinking about Carrie. She was so lucky to have found her. Okay, to have been able to afford to hire a P.I. to find her. And to have discovered that Carrie was living so near, right in Seattle! Not twenty miles from Suzanne’s home in Edmonds. They might have met by accident.

Wouldn’t that have been amazing, she marveled, not for the first time. They looked enough alike to have recognized each other if they’d come face to face.

Well, she would have known who Carrie was in a heartbeat. Carrie, who hadn’t been told by her adoptive parents that she was adopted, might have been more confused.

But they hadn’t met that way. Suzanne had gone seeking her, and found her just this past spring. With very few glitches, it seemed as if they’d known each other all their lives. Carrie had planned to live with Suzanne this year, while she went back to the University of Washington to get her teaching certificate. But in the end, she and Mark Kincaid, the P.I. who’d found her, had decided to marry in August, so she never had moved in.

Suzanne was rather sorry. She’d imagined them having the year together to make up for all the ones they’d missed, with her growing up with Uncle Miles and Aunt Marie and Carrie with her adoptive parents. But at least they weren’t far apart. They talked almost every day, and did the kind of things together that sisters did, like shopping and visiting art fairs. And Suzanne was glad that Carrie was marrying Mark.

As she did almost every day, Suzanne spared a thought for her little brother, although of course he wouldn’t be so little anymore. He was twenty-nine now. She hadn’t seen him since he was three years old. After Aunt Marie and Uncle Miles decided they could keep only one of the three orphaned children, a social worker had come to the house and taken Carrie—then Linette—and Lucien away. Carrie had been asleep, but Lucien… Standing in the middle of her front yard, Suzanne shuddered at the memory. Lucien had sobbed. Every time she thought of him, she saw his tear-wet face, framed in the car window as it pulled away from the curb.

And she remembered with guilt her own gratitude that she wasn’t being taken away.

When she hired him, Mark had found Lucien, too, but her brother didn’t want any contact with his sisters. Carrie had tried calling him, but he’d told her rather rudely that their overture was too little, too late.

Suzanne was trying to resign herself to the fact that she would never see him again, never be able to give him the photo album she’d prepared with pictures of their parents and of them growing up, never be able to explain how sorry she was that she couldn’t, somehow, have kept them all together, even though she’d been only six herself when their parents had died.

Suzanne knew that guilt was illogical; even if her mother had always said that, as the big sister, Suzanne should take care of her little sister and brother, she’d been far, far too young to influence even her own fate. But she couldn’t quite quell the nagging guilt anyway.

Shaking off the familiar depression, she began raking, working steadily until she’d bundled the soggy heaps into plastic bags and set them at the curb for pickup. Then she settled on a knee pad to pull weeds and toss them into a bucket she moved along with her. Finally, wishing she hadn’t put off the most hateful task till last, she dumped the weeds into her garbage can and set the bucket in her garage. Oh, boy. Time to tackle the problem of heaving the blasted mower into her trunk.

No, she could procrastinate for a second more—she’d left her trowel behind.

She was just crossing the lawn, tool in hand, when she heard the familiar sound of her neighbor’s pickup coming down the street and a hum that presaged the rising of his garage door. She turned her head to see his huge black pickup pulling into his driveway. Maybe, if she hurried, he wouldn’t notice her out here.

But she didn’t reach the cover of the garage in time.

The pickup door slammed and a moment later Tom approached across the narrow strip of lawn between their houses. Maybe a few years older than her, he was powerfully built but had a face that most would call homely. All she saw was the buzz-cut hair to match his lawn, the neat polo shirt and crisply creased slacks. Suzanne never, ever, met his eyes. Not quite. She’d discovered you could talk to someone and avoid their gaze without being obvious.

“Hi,” he said. “Putting in a day of work out here, I see.”

“I finally got the leaves raked up.”

“And you’re lucky. Today’s dry enough to mow.”

Suzanne sighed. He was the last person to whom she wanted to admit defeat. “No such luck. My nemesis won’t start. I was just going to load it up to take into the shop. For the third time this year.”

He was nice enough not to acknowledge the grimness in her tone. He rubbed his jaw. “One more mow should do it. Maybe two.”

“Yes.” Although he would probably manicure his all winter long, whenever the weather permitted.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you can wait until Saturday, I’ll do it. That way you won’t have to worry about fixing your machine or replacing it until spring.”

She gaped at him. He was offering to mow her lawn? In the silence that stretched just a little too long, pride and desperation arm wrestled. Pride thumped to the table.

“I can’t let you… If you’d let me borrow your mower…”

He cleared his throat. “You seem to have trouble keeping engines running.”

In other words, he didn’t trust her with his gleaming, buff machine. She didn’t even blame him.

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing better to do.” When she bit her lip, he added, “Really. Happy to.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Thank you. I really want the yard to look nice.”

“Something special coming up?”

This was far and away the most personal conversation they’d had in five years of being next-door neighbors. She hesitated, but wasn’t sure why. He’d notice sooner or later if a little girl or boy was riding a bike down the sidewalk and going in and out of her house holding her hand.

“I’m trying to adopt.”

She felt him stare at her.

“A child,” she elaborated. “Not a baby. Maybe a six- or eight-year-old. The social worker from the agency is coming to do a home study. That’s why I need the house to look its best.”

“You don’t expect to remarry?”

Too personal. She took a step back. Way, wa-ay, too personal, given what he knew about her.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She inched back some more. “I can’t predict the future. But I hope you won’t mind having a child next door.”

She half expected him to say, Not if you keep the kid on your side of the property line.

Instead he shook his head. “Of course not.” He started to turn away, pausing. “I’ll be over Saturday to mow. The backyard, too?”

“If you don’t mind,” Suzanne said meekly.

“Not at all. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” He nodded and walked away, disappearing into his garage. A moment later, the door rolled down.

Bemused and grateful—and she did hate the grateful part—Suzanne put away her trowel and closed her own garage door.

GARY WATCHED the saw buzz through the dirty plaster of his cast. The leg that emerged was fish-belly white except for the angry red rash that had caused godawful itching. He leaned over and ran a hand down his shin.

“Well, it’s still there.”

The nurse or technician or whatever he was glanced up with a grin. “Seeing your toes didn’t convince you? What about the itch?”

“Could have been a phantom itch.” Gary flexed his foot and grimaced at the weakness in muscles he’d taken for granted. “Damn, I’m glad to get rid of that.”

“I haven’t seen a patient yet mourn the loss of a cast. Except for the teenagers who want to take it home because all their friends wrote on it.”

They both looked at Gary’s cast. Nobody had written on it.

“You’re welcome to chuck mine in the Dumpster.” He bent to put on the sock and boot he’d brought and then stood up, the slit leg of his jeans flapping. “Thanks,” he said with a nod, and walked out, trying not to limp.

Well, that had been a long three months. He’d been able to ride his bike, but he’d felt clumsy with the crutches, and the walking cast hadn’t been much better. At least the bruises that had decorated his body and face had finished blooming as colorfully as the desert after a rare cloudburst and finally faded from puce to yellow to skin color. His leather pants and jacket had protected him from being skinned alive, although they’d had to cut those off him and throw them away, another loss. Heck, he could even take a deep breath now without wanting to puke.

The doctor had talked about him going to physical therapy for several months, but Gary was thinking he’d find out what he had to do and carry it out on his own. He did most things on his own. He didn’t feel any need for a cheerleader.

Besides, he’d been considering a trip. What better time? While convalescing, he’d discovered he was curious about these sisters it seemed he had. One who was apparently going to be heartbroken because he hadn’t been real excited about some kind of reunion, and the other who’d wanted to chew a strip off him because he was being selfish enough to tell them to leave him alone.

Funny thing, since he’d gotten first the call from the P.I. and then the one from the sister—Carrie, he thought her name was—he’d found he did remember them. Or at least he thought he did. His memories from before he went to live with the Lindstroms in Bakersfield had a hazy, dreamlike quality.

He supposed he’d lived in a foster home, too; maybe a couple, for all he knew. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure which people were the family he’d lost and which were foster families. But sometimes he saw this woman, pretty and dark-haired, smiling as she bent to swoop him up. There’d been a girl, too, dark-haired and skinny. And a baby. He had this memory of crying in terror when someone tried to get him to go to bed in a room by himself. He wanted to stay with… He didn’t know. The baby sister? Well, that made sense. From what the P.I. and this Carrie had said, the two of them had been taken away and then adopted out, and the big sister got to stay with family.

And he was supposed to worry about hurting her. Gary grunted and shook his head.

But he guessed the fact that she’d gotten the breaks wasn’t her fault. And chasing memories that refused to be caught was getting old.

So he figured he’d take a ride cross-country to Washington state, maybe stay a couple of weeks, talk to this Carrie and…Suzanne? yeah, Suzanne, a few times, hear the real story.

Then figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life that would keep him from flying over the guardrail the next time, into the welcoming darkness.

CHAPTER TWO

REBECCA WILSON LOOKED forward to this home visit. She’d scheduled it almost three weeks ago, so she had reread the file this morning. Once again, she liked what it said about Suzanne Chauvin, especially her open attitude about what age or gender or race of child she’d take. So many people acted as if they were shopping for a garment of a particular color and style.

“We’d consider a girl up to two and a half,” they’d say. Two and three-quarters would apparently be too old. “We’d like fair skin. Nobody in our family can even tan! Blond would be great. And blue eyes.”

She could tell that they were really envisioning a baby. Their ideal. Which left her wondering: Would they be disappointed by a healthy, happy two-year-old with brown hair, hazel eyes and a golden tint to her skin?

Oh, well. Rebecca understood the desire to adopt a child who looked as if she could be yours. Nonetheless, she was grateful for the occasional parents-to-be who just wanted a kid to love and didn’t care if people could tell their children were adopted.

She glanced again at the map of Edmonds in the Thomas Guide that lay open on the seat beside her. If she turned up ahead…

Edmonds was so pretty. Climbing a hillside rising from Puget Sound were neighborhoods of a mix of older and new homes, many on lots terraced by stone or cement retaining walls. Even several of the more modest houses had peekaboo views of the Sound, blue and choppy today, the green-and-white Washington State ferries that arrived and departed every forty-five minutes, and the Olympic Mountains on the other side, already white-capped in mid-October. Rebecca wished she could afford to live here, rather than in her small condo in Lynnwood within earshot of I-5 and night-and-day traffic.

But social work of any kind didn’t pay that well, even though she had a master’s degree. It would help if she’d stayed put rather than changing jobs, but after three years of dealing with an overwhelming caseload of abused and neglected children and their horrifically dysfunctional families, she hadn’t been able to handle the stress anymore. What she’d done there had been so important, she felt guilty for quitting.

She kept telling herself this job was a break. A vacation. She’d be ready again someday to rescue children from the parents they loved desperately despite the blows and the filthy homes and the nights huddled alone because Mommy hadn’t come home. But not yet.

She turned onto the street and looked eagerly ahead. Halfway down the block…yes, it was the gray rambler with white trim, dwarfed by the two-story next door. The house was friendly-looking, Rebecca decided immediately, before laughing at herself. Way to jump to conclusions!

As she approached from one direction, she noticed a gleaming black-and-chrome motorcycle coming from the other way, the powerful roar out of place on this quiet street. The rider was going slowly, just as she’d been, as if also scanning house numbers. When she pulled to the curb, he did the same, swerving onto her side of the street and stopping with the front tire of his bike only a few feet from her front bumper.

She turned off the engine and checked in the rearview mirror to be sure her makeup was intact and her shoulder-length, copper-red hair was smooth. As she reached for her briefcase, she saw him set the kickstand and swing his leg over the back of the bike. He pulled the helmet from his head and hung it over the handle bar. Although he wasn’t obvious about it, she had the feeling he was watching her, which made her nervous. Without standing next to him, she couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think he was a huge man. Still, there was something…tough about him. His dark, straight hair was shaggy, his blue jeans and black leather jacket well worn, his gaze narrow-eyed and…well, she couldn’t tell whether he was wary, hostile or just naturally unfriendly looking.

Was he Suzanne Chauvin’s boyfriend? She’d denied having a serious relationship in the questionnaires she’d filled out.

Rebecca hesitated, then got out. For Pete’s sake, it was broad daylight! And just because a man rode a Harley-Davidson—at least, she thought that’s what it was—didn’t mean he was a Bandido or Hells Angel.

Nonetheless, she circled the back of her car so that she wasn’t too near him on the sidewalk. She gave a vague, pleasant nod in his direction, then started toward the driveway.

His voice followed her. “Are you Suzanne?” He sounded doubtful.

“Me?” She turned, startled. “No. Is that who you’re looking for?”

“Yeah.” He nodded toward the house. “This is the address I have for her.”

“It is her address.” Should she have told him that? “If you don’t know what she looks like, I guess you’re not an old friend.”

A nerve jumped in his cheek. “She’s my sister.”

She gaped. “Your…what? But…”

“I don’t know what she looks like. Yeah.” His mouth twisted. “Long story. Do you know her?”

“Not yet. I’m here to interview her.” None of his business, she reminded herself. He didn’t know what his own sister looked like. Sure. “Well.” Out of her element, she said, “Shall we go to the door together?”

He didn’t move. “No, go ahead. She’s not expecting me.”

O-kay. She gave another nod his way and continued up the driveway. To her annoyance, she was too conscious of his gaze to assess the house or yard as she walked, or to organize her thoughts.

She rang the bell, and the door opened so quickly, Suzanne had to have been hovering nervously in the entryway. She looked just like the photo in the file, pretty and petite with warm brown eyes and thick, glossy dark hair bundled on the crown of her head with a scrunchy.

Smiling, Suzanne said, “Hi, you’re Ms. Wilson?”

“Rebecca, please.” They shook hands. “What a nice neighborhood! And I see you have a bit of a view.”

Suzanne laughed. “That’s a generous way of describing the fact that if you stand at the very edge of the porch and crane your neck you can see a sliver of blue.” Her gaze went past Rebecca. “I wonder who that is.”

Rebecca looked over her shoulder. “The guy with the bike? He says…” Wow, she felt silly even saying this. “He says he’s your brother.”

She could never have expected the reaction she got. A tiny whimper escaped the woman who’d greeted her with such friendly poise and Suzanne gripped the door frame, face suddenly pale. “My…brother?” she whispered.

“Well, he said you’re his sister, but he doesn’t know what you look like. I didn’t take him seriously….”

As if she didn’t hear her, Suzanne brushed past Rebecca and hurried down the steps and then the driveway.

The man, who’d been half sitting on his bike, legs casually crossed, rose to his feet.

“Lucien?” Rebecca heard Suzanne say, voice high-pitched, shocked.

“So I’m told. Gary now.”

Rebecca watched, openmouthed, as Suzanne Chauvin threw her arms around the dark stranger. Even from this distance, she could see that he was startled and didn’t know what to do. After a moment, he awkwardly lifted his arms from his sides and patted her back as she apparently sobbed on his chest.

The scene was so bizarre, Rebecca didn’t quite know what to do. Leave and politely deny the application? Wait to hear an explanation? She was fairly new at this, but she’d never had an applicant so completely lose interest in her arrival for a home study. Anyone who wanted to adopt knew that this visit was make-or-break.

Finally, sniffling, Suzanne stepped back. She and the man spoke for a moment, the words indistinguishable to Rebecca. Then she gasped and turned toward Rebecca. She said something else to him, and finally they both came up the driveway to where Rebecca waited on the porch.

Tendrils of dark hair had pulled from the knot on Suzanne’s head, and her face was blotchy and wet. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “You must think I’m crazy!”

The thought had crossed Rebecca’s mind, but she murmured, “No, no.”

“I said in my application that my parents died when I was young and my siblings and I got split up. Lucien…” She glanced quickly at the man next to her. “Gary was adopted out. I haven’t seen him since he was three years old.”

“No wonder you didn’t recognize each other! How on earth did you find her?” Rebecca asked him.

His mouth tilted in what might have been a smile. “She found me.”

“Months ago,” his sister filled in. “But he said he wasn’t interested in a reunion, so I tried to resign myself to never seeing him again. And then…and then…”

“He showed up out of the blue.” Rebecca’s eyes met his, completely unrevealing. Why had he changed his mind? Why decide to just drop out of the sky like this?

“Yes.” Suzanne dashed at her tears. “Oh, gracious! I so wanted to impress you, and then I fall apart like this!”

“Getting a little emotional is certainly understandable, under the circumstances.” So why wasn’t he getting emotional? she wondered. “Suzanne, meeting your brother for the first time in…”

“Twenty-six years.” New tears filled her eyes.

“…twenty-six years should take precedence,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you and I reschedule?”

“Oh, I can’t inconvenience you like that!” Suzanne Chauvin was trying to hide her alarm, but failing.

Rebecca understood that convenience wasn’t what they were talking about. Suzanne feared she’d just blown her big opportunity.

Rebecca smiled. “No, I really mean it. You’ll be torn two ways if you and I try to sit down to talk. I can easily come back next week. Maybe even later this week. Let me check my schedule. We can talk tomorrow. Okay?”

Suzanne smiled shakily and then gave her what appeared to be an impulsive hug. “Bless you. This is…” her gaze strayed to the impassive man standing beside her, “so amazing.”

“Well.” Rebecca smiled at him, too. What the heck. “Nice to meet you, Mr….?”

“Lindstrom.” He held out a large hand. “Ms….?”

“Wilson,” she replied, as she clasped his hand.

They shook. “Pleasure,” he murmured.

“I’ll call,” Rebecca promised, and left without ever going in the house.

As she drove away, she reflected on what the odds were that her appointment would coincide with the arrival of a long-lost brother.

She briefly wondered if the scene could have been staged, but remembered the shock and blaze of joy on Suzanne Chauvin’s face and dismissed the possibility. Besides, what would have been the point?

No, it was just one of those things.

A minor irritant, like the red light flashing at a railroad crossing when she was in a hurry.

Rebecca smiled. Hey, an optimist would say it was serendipity!

THE REDHEAD REMINDED Gary unpleasantly of his ex-wife. She was prettier than Holly Lynn, and also—judging from her freckles—a genuine redhead, which Holly Lynn wasn’t, as he’d discovered the first time he undressed her. No, it wasn’t the hair that brought back thoughts of his little-lamented ex, but rather the judgmental, holier-than-thou air both wore as if it were Chanel No. 5.

He wondered why she was interviewing Suzanne. Was she a pollster? Loan officer? Journalist? He leaned toward the loan officer explanation, because Suzanne had seemed damned anxious not to offend her.

Ah, well. What difference did it make what the redhead did for a living? Although… He turned and watched her circle her car. She did have spectacular legs, he decided with appreciation.

The woman beside him—his sister—said, “Come in, Lucien. Gary. Oh, I can’t believe you’re here!”

She’d taken him aback with that sobbing embrace. He didn’t think any woman had ever cried on his shoulder before. Certainly not Holly Lynn, who’d departed hissing and spitting but dry-eyed.

He nodded and stepped into the small living room ahead of her. “I hope this wasn’t a bad time.”

“Not if she meant it about rescheduling. And I think she did. Don’t you?”

What the hell did he know about it?

“Sure,” he said with a shrug.

She shut the door and they stood there for a minute, appraising each other.

He saw a dark-haired, dark-eyed, attractive woman whose face gave him a weird, uncomfortable sense of familiarity. It wasn’t that he was seeing his own face. No, while they did bear a superficial resemblance, their coloring similar, he didn’t think it was that.

That wisp of memory, the dark-haired, laughing woman, slipped in and out of his consciousness and he felt a jolt. There it was. She was that woman. Except of course she couldn’t be.

“Do you look like our mother?” he asked abruptly.

Tears brimmed in her eyes again and she nodded. “And you could be Daddy. It’s…extraordinary. Seeing you like this. You have his nose, the shape of his face, his eyes….”

The observation felt like a rough-hewed shim wedged in somewhere, the potential for slivers both making him wary and irritating him. Last he knew, his nose and eyes were his, not someone else’s.

But he knew his discomfort was irrational. Why was he here if not to figure out where he came from and whether he wanted to have any ties at all to these two women who were close blood relatives? So, okay, now he knew he looked like his father.

Check.

“I’m being a terrible hostess,” she exclaimed. “Can I get you something to drink? Why don’t you come back to the kitchen? We can talk there.”

What he’d have preferred was a beer, but he accepted a glass of lemonade and followed her to the kitchen table, sitting and looking at her some more.

“Your sister…our sister,” he corrected himself. “Does she look like you?”

“Yes, amazingly so. Except Carrie is obviously younger. She was the baby, you know.”

He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t remember much. There was a woman. Uh, and a skinny dark-haired girl.”

“Me.”

Wow. Yeah, he guessed it had been her.

“And the baby.”

“Carrie.”

“She and I went to a foster home together. Right?”

“Right. It was awful.” Remembered grief filled her eyes. “You were sobbing, your face pressed to the car window….”

God. No wonder he’d never been all that eager to recall his oldest memories. That one…well, a twisting in his gut told him it was filed somewhere in his head. Just like her face, he recognized her description of that scene.

“So, you were the lucky one, huh?” he said with what he knew to be insolence.

Her expression shadowed again, but he wasn’t so sure it was his tone that caused it. “I suppose so. Uncle Miles and Aunt Marie… Mom’s sister and her husband,” she explained. “They already had two kids, and didn’t see how they could take in three more. Since I was six and had the best sense of what was happening, they felt…obligated.”

The tiny pause was telling, and Gary had his first hint that maybe she hadn’t been so lucky after all. Or maybe she just had a sob story prepared so he couldn’t cry her a river.

“I think they truly believed you would both be adopted quickly,” she continued. “You were so young. I hoped all those years that you’d been able to stay together. I was upset when I found out you were adopted separately. And that you didn’t get a home for over a year after our parents died.”

“So that part was true?” His voice came out rough, as if it needed oiling. He didn’t like thinking about any of this.

“Your adoptive parents told you that much?”

He nodded. “They said my mom and dad were killed in a car accident.”

“It was so sudden. They’d gone to a play, and we were home with a babysitter. I remember a police officer coming to the door.” She seemed to look right through him. “The doorbell woke me and I thought, Why would Mommy and Daddy ring instead of coming in? So I got out of bed and went to the window. I can still see the police car in the driveway, lights flashing. Red and blue and white, hurting my eyes. I think maybe I knew.” She fell silent.

Questions crowded his tongue, but he found he was hesitant to ask any of them. He didn’t like being the supplicant, and that was a little what he felt like right now. Please, please, please, tell me about my mommy and daddy. The questions tangled together, too, until he didn’t know how to lay them out singly. How did you ask what kind of people those parents were? Whether they loved their children? Whether he’d be a different man if they’d lived?

“I have pictures,” Suzanne said, as if reading his thoughts. “But first… What changed your mind? Why now? Why not then?”

“I never wondered much about my real parents.” Not true—once he hit ten or twelve, he quit wondering. Gary shrugged. “If I didn’t remember them or you, what would meeting you mean?” Seeing her expression, he elaborated, “I grew up the way I grew up. Nothing will change that.”

He could tell from her face that he hadn’t improved on his first bald statement.

“We’re family,” she said, as if the fact was so obvious he was a simpleton for not having seen it from the first. “We share blood. Genes. Not to mention early experiences and memories.”

“You have more of both of those than I do.”

“I know,” she agreed. “And I hope you’ll let me share what I do remember with you.”

Fair enough. That’s why he’d come, wasn’t it? It was like, say, getting the provenance on something you were buying. Nice to know where it had been and how it had been treated.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Came straight here.” He shrugged. “There must be a hotel here in town.”

“Would you like to stay with me?” She bit her lip. “You don’t have to. I don’t want to put pressure on you if you’d like some space, but… I’d love to have you.”

Yeah, he wanted space, but he found himself strangely reluctant to hurt her by refusing. What the hell? he told himself. A few days, a week. Why not?

“You sure it wouldn’t put you out?” Gary asked.

Pleasure brightened her face. “I have a guest room. Oh, this is wonderful! I can hardly wait to call Carrie! Shall I?” She half rose. “Or would you rather I wait?”

“Can we take this a little slow?” he asked.

“Oh.” She sank back to her chair. “Of course.”

She sounded so damned disappointed, he felt like a crud.

Even so… Two of them, both weeping and wanting to clutch at him. Both gazing at him with a look so needy, he shifted in his chair at the very idea.

“So why did you change your mind?” this sister asked suddenly. “You never said.”

“You know your…uh, Carrie called me.”

She nodded.

“I kept thinking about her voice….” Her scorn. “Her talking about how much it would mean to you to meet me.”

Her face softened. “She said that?”

“She said it would be a kindness if I were to call.”

Once again, he’d apparently stumbled, because her expression became warier. “So that’s what you’re doing? A kindness?”

He was almost embarrassed to realize he rarely cared enough about what other people thought or felt to do a kindness.

“No,” he admitted. “I suppose…I was curious.”

“Oh.” She relaxed.

“Also, I had an accident.” While she exclaimed in horror, he told her the facts without mentioning the pull the abyss had exerted on him. “Just got the cast off my leg two weeks ago.”

She was shocked that he’d been able to ride cross-country so soon and fluttered some more. Once again, Gary was mildly surprised at his tolerance. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt people’s feelings, but he didn’t usually put himself out a great deal to prevent doing so. Maybe there was something to this blood and genes thing.

Or maybe a near-death experience softened a man up.

“Are you married?” she asked finally. “Do you have kids?”

“Divorced. No kids.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Not lately.”

“What do you do? I mean, for a living.”

He hesitated. Would it affect in some way how she felt about him? How worthy she found him?

“I’ve been working in coffee.”

Instead of reacting to the modesty of his job description, she laughed. “You mean, our Northwest mania for fancy coffee has spread to the Southwest?”

“Big time.” Coffee was damn profitable in New Mexico these days. Hot or iced, flavored or dark and bitter.

Her smile became kind. “Well, I’m sure if you’d like to get a job locally, you won’t have any trouble.”

“I won’t be staying that long.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I’m sorry. I hoped…”

“I own the coffee shop,” he explained. “And the roasters.”

“I don’t know what made me think you’d come to stay anyway. Of course you have a life! I’m just so glad you’re visiting. New Mexico isn’t that far away.”

Not that far away? he thought in mild alarm. Was she imagining holidays with the whole family gathered around the table, holding hands and saying grace? The image made him queasy.

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you married?”

Echoing him, she said succinctly, “Divorced. No kids.”

“Job?”

Pride filled her voice. “I just opened my own business, too. We must be an entrepreneurial family. I opened a yarn shop three months ago, right here in town. Knit One, Drop In.”

“Yarn shop?”

“Knitting. I sell supplies, give classes. Business is taking off really well.”

Knitting. He hadn’t known that anyone younger than eighty did it.

“I sell my own work, too,” she continued. “And I’ve had a bunch of patterns published. I’m hoping for a book of patterns one of these days.”

“Do they sell well?”

“Hugely,” she assured him. “The thing is, they don’t go out of print the way the average novel does. They sell and sell and sell. For years. I’ve made thousands just on a single pattern.”

Who’d have thought?

“You have employees?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “Not really. I’m working long hours. I open, eat lunch and run to the bathroom during lulls, close, then do the books.”

He remembered those days. You didn’t make it with a small business if you weren’t prepared to put in twelve-hour-plus days and maybe go months on end without taking a day off.

“A couple of my customers are experienced knitters who live locally and enjoy working a few hours here and there, so I have women to call if I’m sick or need time to get to the bank. Today, one of them is filling in because of my appointment.”

“With Ms. Wilson?” He put the faintest of emphasis on Ms.

“Yes. I’m trying to adopt a child. Today was my home visit.”

He’d been rocking back in the chair. Now all four feet clunked down. “She’s a social worker?” Lawyers and politicians were commonly despised. He saved his loathing for the group of managing, high-minded people who were determined to tell everyone how to live. “Home visit?” His mouth curled. “You mean, she was here to decide whether you were good enough to be a parent?”

“Don’t you think an agency should be sure they’re placing children in homes where they’ll be loved and well taken care of?”

His laugh wasn’t pleasant even to his ears. “And you think they can tell from one visit? Lie halfway decently, you can fool ’em. Haven’t you read about all the kids raped by their adoptive daddies or hurt by the woman who was so sweet when the social worker interviewed her?”

Suzanne’s eyes had gone wide. “You weren’t…” she whispered.

“Raped?” He made himself lean back and ostensibly relax. “No.”

“Or…or…?”

“Hurt?” He shrugged. “Harold used his belt or his fists sometimes, sure. He didn’t put my hand on a hot stove, if that’s what you mean.”

Damned if her eyes didn’t start brimming with tears again. “Oh, Lucien! I would have done anything… Anything…”

Abruptly, his throat closed and he couldn’t breathe. He lunged to his feet.

“Listen, I’ve got some things to do. I’ll, ah, be back later. If that’s okay.”

She rose, too, staring at him as if he’d gone loco. He didn’t care. He had to get out of here, away from her affection, from her sympathy, from her tears. He was feeling smothered.

“Of course it is.” She hurried around the counter into the kitchen and fumbled in a drawer, coming back with a key held in her outstretched hand. “Here. In case I’m not home. The first bedroom on the left is yours.”

“I…thanks.” He lurched toward the living room, his leg almost giving out on him. “I’ll just be an hour or two.” Or three or four.

With more dignity than he’d expected, she said to his back, “I told you if you needed space that was okay. While you’re here, consider this your home. You don’t need permission to come and go.”

At the front door, his hand on the knob, he paused with his head bent and his back still to her. “I’m sorry.”

Voice gentle, she said, “Don’t be. You’ve given me a gift today. You never, ever, have anything to be sorry for.”

After a moment, he nodded and blundered out, wishing that was true but knowing it wouldn’t be. He hadn’t yet had a relationship with another human being that hadn’t meant being sorry most of the time.

He doubted shared genes were going to change that.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT IN THE HELL had happened to him back there?

Gary rested his elbows on his knees and stared out at a body of water that smelled like ocean but seemed to lack waves. He’d hoped there was a beach and had ridden downhill until he found the ferry landing and—sure enough—a public beach, mostly empty if he ignored the dock fifty yards to his left and the idling cars and people leaning on the railing.

If he looked straight out, he could almost imagine he was all alone. The hoarse cries of seagulls suited his mood, and he liked the smell of salt and drying seaweed and rotting fish carried by the cool, strong breeze. Once he thought he saw a dark head crown the choppy water. A seal or sea lion. He didn’t know one from the other.

Feet crunched on gravel but passed behind him without the owner feeling compelled to initiate cheery greetings, for which he was grateful. Not much given to self-examination, Gary knew he needed to make an exception.

He valued his ability to stay in control of himself, his emotions, his destiny, above all else. Holly Lynn had accused him of being a cold son of a bitch, which had irritated him no end. Why did she marry him if she wanted all that crap? He hadn’t changed because he put a ring on her finger. He felt; he just didn’t like to lay himself open.

Gary envisioned emotions as oil spewing from a well, thick and black. It would shoot skyward and splatter the landscape with gummy blobs if you didn’t cap it. If he’d learned one lesson growing up in the Lindstrom house, it was to cap every sickening gush of rage and fear.

But today… Damn it, he’d panicked! A man who was better at being reckless than cautious, he’d run like a scared bunny rabbit.

And he didn’t even know why.

He’d been doing okay, talking about the parents who’d died without making adequate arrangements for their children, getting a sense of a sister who was unlike any other woman he’d ever known, telling her a little about himself. After the way he’d acted, what was she thinking to give him a key to her house?

It wasn’t even the subject of social workers, although he did detest them, or Harold’s belt, that had gotten to him. Brooding, Gary realized it was her reaction. She’d wanted to go back in time and leap between him and his adoptive father. Her instinct had been to defend him.

Why? He was genuinely baffled.

He was also freaked. This woman he didn’t know felt something for him he didn’t understand. Something no one else had ever felt. Not even his adoptive mother, who had at least pretended to love him but deferred to her husband’s harsh brand of discipline.

So, okay. The way things happened, he could see some emotions getting frozen in time. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a little kid, and she was the big sister. Maybe she still thought she needed to protect him.

What he didn’t get was why her trying had sucked all the air out of the room and made him feel… He drew a blank. He didn’t even know what he’d felt. Thinking about feelings wasn’t something he did much. Capping them, sure. Conducting analysis on them…not so much.

All he knew was, she’d scared the crap out of him.

He wanted to head back to Santa Fe. Leave her a phone message saying, You’re a nice woman, but I’m not the little boy you remember. Nothing to do with you, but I just don’t see this reunion going anywhere.

Two reasons he knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. One was the curiosity she’d aroused, and the other was his memory of that pang of regret because he hadn’t died.

A week, he reminded himself. Maybe two weeks. Look at the pictures, get to know the sisters, then promise to exchange Christmas cards. Everybody would be satisfied, including him.

Inhaling a deep breath of sea air, he nodded. Yeah, a week. He could do that.

That moment of…whatever it had been—it was natural. Normal. His version of his sister’s tears.

Giving a grunt of amusement, he thought, What d’you know, Holly Lynn. I do get emotional.

NO ENORMOUS BLACK-AND-CHROME motorcycle sat in front of her house or in her driveway.

Suzanne got out of her car and looked at the blank windows of the house. Had she imagined that her brother had been here at all?

“Hey,” her neighbor said behind her. “How’d it go?”

She hadn’t heard his truck or a door, but there he stood, just on his side of the property line. Today he wore a gray suit, white shirt and dark tie. Lowering her gaze, she saw that his black shoes gleamed. Of course.

“It?”

His brows rose. “Wasn’t that woman from the adoption agency coming today?”

Of course that’s what he was talking about! He didn’t know about her brother.

“We…had to reschedule,” she said. “I had an unexpected visitor. You may, um, see him around. He’ll be staying here for a couple of weeks.”

She hoped.

Her neighbor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your ex-husband?” he asked, with noticeable reserve.

Her cheeks heated at the very introduction of a topic they had never discussed, and never would if she had anything to do with it.

“My brother.”

The brows went higher. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“I haven’t seen him in a long time. Years.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I’m glad that you mentioned he’s here. In case I see a stranger going in and out.”

“Thank you again for mowing the lawn,” she said to his back as he started toward his house.

“Any time.”

He’d gone in his front door before Suzanne shook herself and went up the walk to her own door. When she let herself in, the house felt like always: empty.

Gary hadn’t returned.

She peeked in the guest room to see if he’d come and gone, perhaps leaving a bag here. But it looked just as she’d left it.

What if he didn’t return? Had she somehow scared him away? She didn’t know how, except maybe for the tears she’d shed on his chest. His stiffness had told her he wasn’t used to comforting women in the midst of emotional storms.

But he hadn’t left then. So why the panic later?

She wandered restlessly, unable to settle down to knitting or even television. She’d been so eager to see Gary again, she hadn’t even taken the day’s receipts by the bank—she’d just thrown the money in a bag and brought it home.

It was getting easier to think of him as Gary instead of Lucien. Lucien still was and probably always would be the little boy of her memory, skinny, quick, full of energy and intense highs and lows.

Her mother would try to put him down for a nap and, by the time he was a year old, invariably fail. “Just a short nap,” she’d beg, and he’d giggle or scream, depending on his mood. Suzanne had thought it was funny, only now as an adult understanding her mother’s exhaustion and frustration. How brave she’d been to have another baby so soon! Or perhaps she just hadn’t used birth control because of her faith. Suzanne didn’t think of her parents as devout, but they had considered themselves Catholic and gone to church now and again.

If they’d lived, would they have kept having babies? Maybe she’d have been the oldest of eight, or ten. If so, she would have spent her youth diapering and babysitting instead of mourning and rebelling.

She would have to ask Aunt Marie sometime. She might know if her sister took birth control pills or considered them a sin. If nothing else, she’d undoubtedly cleaned out the medicine cabinet along with the rest of the house when it was to be sold.

Suzanne checked her voice mail, but there was no message.

The phone in her hand, she hesitated. Gary hadn’t wanted her to call Carrie right then, but there was no reason not to now, was there?

Her mind made up, she dialed.

A boy answered. “Hello, Kincaid residence,” he said by rote.

“Hey, Michael. It’s Aunt Suzanne.” As always, she marveled at being an aunt. Okay, not by blood, but what difference did that make? Michael was one of the world’s great kids. She asked about his day and they talked for a minute before she asked, “Is your mom home?”

“Yeah! Mommy!” he yelled.

Suzanne winced.

A moment later, her sister came on. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Suzanne said.

“How did it go?” Carrie asked eagerly.

There was that “it” again. No surprise that Carrie thought she was going to get a report on the dreaded, but eagerly awaited, home visit. “It was postponed,” Suzanne said.

“Oh, no! What an awful thing to do to you! Now you’ll have to keep worrying, and clean again, and—”

“It wasn’t them, Carrie,” Suzanne interrupted. “She came.”

“Then…then what happened?” her sister asked in puzzlement.

“When I answered the door, I noticed this guy sitting on his motorcycle out front. I commented, and Rebecca—the adoption counselor—said, ‘That guy says he’s your brother.’”

A quick rush of breath told her Carrie guessed.

“Lucien?” she whispered.

“It was him.” Her voice caught. “I started to cry and flung myself into his arms. Rebecca said she’d call me to reschedule.”

“He really came? Just like that? No warning? No…” Amazement was morphing into indignation.

“Who needs warning? He came, Carrie.” Wonder spread in Suzanne’s chest, a warm glow. “I hugged him. We talked.”

On a note of alarm, Carrie asked, “Why are you saying that in the past tense? He’s still there, isn’t he?”

“He said he was going to stay for a few days. I gave him a key to the house. But I had to go back to work, of course, and he isn’t here. I hope…” She swallowed. “I think I overwhelmed him.”

“What’s he like? Is he nicer than he sounded on the phone that time I called him?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s cautious. He rides a big, black motorcycle, and he told me he had a bad accident a few months back when he lost control on a mountain curve. He just got out of a cast last week. His hair is longish, and he’s sinfully handsome even if he is our brother…”

“You mean, since he’s our brother.”

Suzanne laughed. “Right. He has to be, doesn’t he?”

In her mercurial way, Carrie shifted gears. “Why didn’t you call me then?”

“I assumed you’d be in class. Also…he wanted to take it slow. I think the idea of two of us scared him.”

“I can see that. Wow. He sounded so…indifferent. To the point of cruelty. I thought if he ever made contact it would be years from now.”

“I know!” Suzanne heard an engine and hurried to the front of the house, only to be disappointed by a glimpse of the back of a souped-up pickup she recognized as belonging to a teenager in the next block. “He seems genuinely curious, Carrie. But also… I don’t know. I got the feeling he wishes he wasn’t.”

Her sister was silent for a moment. “Boy, do I understand that.”

They’d become so close, Suzanne sometimes almost forgot that Carrie had been less than thrilled to find out she was adopted, and had taken weeks before she was willing to talk to Suzanne. So it made sense that she, more than Suzanne, truly understood that their brother, too, felt conflicted.

“Why hasn’t he come back?” her sister asked in frustration. Carrie was more impulsive, less patient than Suzanne.

“I don’t know. I told him if he needed space not to worry, so I can’t exactly call the cops and ask them to put out an APB.”

“Suzanne…you’re sure this guy is Lucien?”

“You mean, versus some con man trying to take me for everything I’m worth?” It felt good to laugh. “I’m sure. He looks so much like Daddy, it…shook me.”

“Do you want Mark and me to come up this evening?”

Suzanne hesitated. “You, maybe,” she finally said, slowly. “Can you come?”

“The minute Mark gets home to be with Michael. He’s due any minute. Do you want me to call when I’m going out the door?”

“No, I’ll just expect you when I see you.” She paused. “Thank you, Carrie.”

“Are you kidding? I can hardly wait to meet him!”

After they’d said goodbye, Suzanne took the phone back to the kitchen, then peeked out the front window again before deciding she didn’t want Gary to catch her waiting there like some parent annoyed because he’d violated curfew. She would just…get on with her evening, she resolved. Pretend her long-lost brother hadn’t popped into her life before fleeing out of it again. Pretend she wasn’t waiting for the sound of a key in the lock with as much anxiety as that terrified parent.

Or the big sister she’d always been.

GARY EASED HIS BIKE down the street and to the curb in front of Suzanne Chauvin’s house. Dusk had come and gone, and now he was a little embarrassed that he hadn’t come back sooner. He hadn’t wanted to assume she’d feed him, so he’d grabbed a bite out, but he found himself worrying that Suzanne had plunged into an orgy of cooking, like women did, and was in there gazing sadly at too much food gone cold.

A strange car was in the driveway, a bright blue Miata, which meant his sister had company. Gary was pretty sure he knew who it was.

His anxiety had heightened the closer he got to Suzanne’s house, but he’d made up his mind to see this thing through, so he grabbed his bag and walked up to the door. There he hesitated, then rang the bell.

Suzanne came to let him in and exclaimed, “You don’t need to ring! Pretend you live here.”

“Thanks.” He stepped in with a wary glance. “You have company?”

“Carrie’s in the kitchen.” She gave him an apprehensive look. “I hope you don’t mind that I called her.”

What could he say? “No, that’s fine.”

“Why don’t you go put your bag in your room, and then come meet her. Have you eaten?”

“Yeah. I hope you hadn’t planned dinner,” he said awkwardly.

She flapped a hand. “Don’t worry. I know all of this feels strange.”

Strange? That was one way of putting it, he decided, depositing his bag on the bed in the guest room, then starting back to the kitchen.

At first glance, the two women sitting at the table looked so much alike he couldn’t have guessed which was Suzanne if he hadn’t just seen her and known what she was wearing. Two dark heads were bent toward each other, two fine-boned hands fingered wineglasses. Dinner plates were pushed to one side. From the smell, he guessed they’d had spaghetti.

He must have made a sound, because both heads lifted in unison and he found himself being inspected critically by his little sister Carrie.

Yeah, he could tell them apart after all. Her hair was curly, he saw, but more important was the challenge in her brown eyes, the tilt to her chin. Little Carrie was feistier than her sister, less inclined to trust. And to weep, thank God.

“Carrie,” he said, trying out the sound of her name.

She stood. “That’s me.”

Her gaze seemed to take in the scuffs on his boots, the deliberately relaxed way he held his hands at his sides to hide his tension, the set of his shoulders, the length of his hair. He doubted she missed a thing.

“So, you decided it wasn’t too late, after all.”

He recognized her reference to the phone call she’d made to try to persuade him to make contact with Suzanne. Far as he’d been concerned, the overture had come too late to mean jack.

But it would seem he’d been wrong.

“Getting chewed out makes a man think.”

If he’d expected her to blush, he’d miscalculated.

“Good,” she said with satisfaction.

“So you’re the baby.”

She planted one fist on her hip. “If by that you mean your baby sister, yes, I am.”

“Linette.” He sampled the taste of that name, too.

“Lucien,” she fired back.

“Let’s go with Gary.”

His leg ached today, but he tried to disguise his limp as he crossed the kitchen.

“Wine?” Suzanne asked, lifting the bottle. An empty wineglass sat at the third place set at the table.

He nodded. “Thanks.”

All seated, the three looked at each other. Damn, he thought, with a feeling of unreality.

As if she’d read his mind, Suzanne said, “We haven’t been together like this in twenty-six years. And then, you were in a booster seat and Carrie in a high chair.”

“Probably rubbing peas in my hair,” his little sister agreed, unruffled.

He had absolutely no idea what he would have been doing. Flicking whole peas at his bossy big sister? Hanging on her every word? Kicking his heels in boredom? Funny thing, not to know what you were like as a small child. Seemed like a natural memory to retain, a part of your sense of self.

“You’d have been squirming,” Suzanne told him, her gaze perceptive. “Nowadays, a doctor would probably have labeled you as hyperactive. You couldn’t sit still to save your life.”

“I’m still not much good at sitting,” he admitted.

“You’re doing just fine right now,” Carrie said.

“You haven’t bored me yet.”

“Well, don’t I feel special to hear that.”

A laugh in her voice, Suzanne said, “Listen to you two, squabbling as if you’d been doing it all your life.”

With shock, Gary realized she was right. And it wasn’t as if he’d ever had any practice. She’d just been a baby the last time he saw her. She wouldn’t have even said her first word yet. And he hadn’t had an adopted brother or sister.

“I’m just testing you.” His little sister grinned, then held out a hand. “Truce?”

“Truce.” He shook.

Sipping wine, they asked questions about his life, which he gave sketchy answers to. They seemed to notice how much he wasn’t saying, but didn’t comment, which he appreciated. He told them briefly about Holly Lynn, a city health department official of all damn things.

“I guess I’m not made for marriage.”

“Carrie seems to be the only one of us who is,” Suzanne commented.

His little sister’s face softened. “I wasn’t so sure I was, either, until I met Mark. You’ve talked to him,” she said to Gary. “The P.I.? Did Suzanne tell you I married him? He’s a good guy.”

“He seemed decent when he called.”

If she was underwhelmed by this accolade, she ignored that, too. “Mark has a son, Michael. He’s six, in first grade this year. He’s accepted me wholeheartedly, for which I feel blessed.”

“His mother?”

“Died when he was two. He barely remembers her.” She paused a beat. “Mark and his wife adopted him.”

A lot of that going around.

“Tell us about your adoptive parents,” Suzanne suggested. “Mark said you grew up in the central valley in California?”

“Outside Bakersfield. Harold is a farmer. I was driving a tractor by the time I was ten.”

“Really?” She looked appalled.

He shrugged. “Farming families need their kids. He and…” Mom. He’d almost said Mom. “…Judith couldn’t have their own little worker, so they went out to find one.”

Both sisters stared at him. “You think they adopted you just to provide labor for the farm?”

Voice devoid of emotion, Gary said, “Harold told me he wanted to get an older boy. He was indulging his wife to bring home one as young as I was.”

“That’s awful!” Carrie breathed.

He shrugged again. “Some people take home a kitten so they can cuddle it and have something to coo at. Some just want a mouser.”

“And you were the mouser. Oh, God.” Suzanne pressed a hand to her breast, her eyes huge.

He hoped like hell she didn’t start to cry again.

“My adoptive mother was nice enough, until she got fed up with Harold and just upped and left one day. It wasn’t so bad.” Until then. A part of him had died that day.

“I thought adoption agencies were supposed to be picky! How could they have let those people take you?” Carrie demanded.

“Maybe Suzanne should ask Ms. Wilson,” he suggested. “My guess is, she’d use a bunch of statistics to claim that most adoptive homes are happy.”

“I would give anything…” Suzanne began.

He shifted in alarm. There she went again, ready to fling her body onto the tracks to stop the train.

Too bad the train had derailed twenty-six years ago.

“It’s over and done,” he said flatly. “That’s what I tried to tell you when your P.I. contacted me.”

“We can’t change the past,” Suzanne argued, “but we can make the future better. We can be a family again.”

Since he had only a distant acquaintance with the whole concept, he wasn’t all that sure what she had in mind, except he guessed holiday get-togethers figured in it somewhere. He’d probably better find out just what she did envision, before he found himself sucked in.

When he didn’t comment, she said, “Do you want to see pictures now?”

He gave a clipped nod, less than sure he really did.

She fetched a big photo album bound in green leather and wordlessly set it in front of him at the table. Then she sat again and both sisters gazed expectantly at him.

Throat constricted, he opened it.

On the first page was a wedding photo. God almighty, Gary thought in shock. He could have been the groom. Dark, lean, a dent in the cheek because the man was smiling at his bride. She looked like Suzanne and Carrie, startlingly so. Pretty, brunette, delicate to the point of being ethereal.

His mother. His father.

People who might have loved him.

Very softly, his big sister said, “Do you see why I burst into tears at the sight of you?”

He lifted his gaze but didn’t really see her. “Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse.

More wedding photos followed, some including another young woman who resembled the bride as well as an older woman who must be…his grandmother?

Silent, staring with a hungriness he didn’t want either of his sisters to see, Gary kept turning pages. He saw the young couple with a Volkswagen Beetle, then a tiny house, run-down in the first photo but painted and edged with a white picket fence in later ones. The woman acquired a radiance along with an enlarging belly, and then suddenly a shrivelled, frowning infant appeared. He had to look up after seeing that picture, as if to measure it against the beautiful woman who sat at the table, the one who’d been that infant.

He could see it better as she became a laughing toddler and a stick-thin girl with pigtails tied with red bows. Gary tensed when he saw that the woman was pregnant again, but still felt unprepared when he turned a page to reveal a photo of another newborn baby, this one wrapped in a pastel blue blanket.

That was him. He stared for the longest time, then shifted his gaze to the cluster of photos on the next page, all showing the baby at the center of attention. The woman held him against her shoulder and had her head turned. She looked at him with so much love, it tingled in the air. The pigtailed girl making a horrible face at him in one photo, cradling him in another for a staged picture. The man—his father, giving him a bottle, smiling down at him.

In a daze, he turned the page again and saw himself sitting up, eating in a high chair, crawling, in virtually every picture guarded by his big sister. He was walking when they apparently moved into another run-down place, but a bigger one. It was decorated in colors that reminded him of the famous Painted Ladies in San Francisco, Victorian houses that flaunted their lacy trim and gaudy hues. A garden bloomed in a yard that had been bare in the first picture. He was running around, soaring on a swing set, crouching in a sandbox frowning with intense concentration at something out of sight.

The mother was pregnant again, and he tensed at how close the story was to over.

This newborn looked like the others, red-faced and raisinlike, but he and Suzanne seemed to find her fascinating nonetheless. A studio portrait appeared in there, the three kids dressed up like dolls and posed, with him sitting next to his baby sister and Suzanne hovering protectively over both.

His third birthday choked him up. His face held such wonder as he stared at a birthday cake with three lit candles.

On the next to last page, Gary—Lucien—rode a fire-engine-red tricycle down the sidewalk toward his father, who seemed to be saying something to him.

Hand not quite steady, Gary turned the final, stiff page to see mother and kids around a dining room table that looked a hell of a lot like the one he sat at now. The father must have been taking the picture. Baby Linette appeared to be banging a spoon on the tray of her high chair, Suzanne to be talking, him to be stuffing a cookie in his mouth, their mother smiling lovingly at them.

The End, he realized. As if he were unmoved, he closed the cover, but kept his hand splayed over it. It seemed as if through his fingertips he felt the life within, so much he didn’t remember but had ached for since he was little.

“It’s yours,” Suzanne said. “I made one for Carrie, one for you. There are other pictures we can look at some day, but I made copies of the best ones.”

He swore and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Thank you.”

Carrie’s smile was painfully like their mother’s in some of the photos, gentle and caring. “Feel wrung out?”

Startled, he said, “How…?” then knew. She’d looked at an album just like this—her album—not that long ago. He met her eyes and saw in them a complete understanding of everything he felt. Nobody had ever, in all his life, seen inside him the way she did at that moment. It was the weirdest damn feeling.

“We looked…close,” he said, glancing down again at the closed book.

“We were,” Suzanne said. “Mom and Dad would have hated more than anything in the world to think of us all split up, not even knowing each other anymore. I hope they can see us now, together again.”

“I hope so, too,” Carrie murmured.

Gary wasn’t so sure he liked the idea of these parents he didn’t remember gazing down on them with saintly smiles. If they could see them now, what about the rest of the time? Had they seen him, locked by his adoptive father in the old outhouse for punishment, spending the night bloodying his fists trying to beat his way out? Had they seen him screwing women and leaving before first light? The idea both angered him and encroached on a sense of privacy that was important to him.

“When you’re ready, I’ll show you a packet of love letters that Dad wrote Mom,” Suzanne told him. “And Mom kept baby books for each of us with the dates of milestones. You know. First smile. Rolled over. Crawled. For you and me, first word. They even have locks of our hair from our first haircuts.”

The panic that felt like claustrophobia had been nudging at him, but now it swelled to fill his chest again. He took a hasty swallow of wine. Shouldn’t he be happy to know that he’d been loved as a little boy? Why did the knowledge fill him with resentment and something too much like the fear he’d felt when he lost it on that curve?

“If you want to go settle in…” Suzanne suggested.

He shot to his feet. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” He meant to leave the album on the table for now, to show himself if not them that it didn’t mean that much to him, but he couldn’t do it. “Thanks for, uh, doing this.” He gripped it, white-knuckle tight.

Carrie rose, too. “I’d better get going. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you in a day or two.” She held out her hand.

He shifted the album to his other hand so he could shake.

“Big brother,” she said, with a saucy grin, then kissed Suzanne on the cheek. “Wow. This is amazing.”

“Amazing,” Suzanne echoed.

Okay. Yeah. He guessed it was. Suzanne hadn’t been that old in the last photo, and yet she’d held tight to a memory of them all together.

He envied her that memory, but was glad he hadn’t kept it to taunt him all those years.

He escaped to the bedroom while the sisters said goodbye and made plans for what to do with him while they had him. In the quiet after he shut the door, he set the album atop the dresser, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, his gut churning.

Give him a choice between another day like this and a dive from his Harley at seventy miles an hour, he’d take the dive. Without a second thought.

CHAPTER FOUR

REBECCA WAS SAILING down I-5 when her car died. Just like that, with the car still going sixty miles an hour, the power steering and brakes were gone.

Swearing, she wrestled with the wheel to steer onto the shoulder while she stamped on the brake pedal. She hated to think what a dead car in one lane would do to traffic. The wheel moved as if the column had rusted fifty years ago, but it did turn. The car slowed and finally came to a stop on the shoulder.

Whispering her thanks for small mercies, she sat shaking, adrenaline coursing through her body. It was several minutes before she felt steady enough to turn the key and try to start the engine again.

Absolutely nothing happened. It didn’t even make an effort. Did that mean her starter was out? But then why would the engine have died? Something electrical, she supposed. All she knew about cars was how to drive one and how to fill it with gas.

Great. Wonderful. She was stuck on the shoulder of the freeway halfway between Lynnwood and Edmonds, traffic whizzing by. Thank God for cell phones. Hers had sunk to the bottom of her purse, but she found it and called information, asking for a nearby towing company.

“Fifteen, twenty minutes,” the dispatcher promised.

Now she’d have to cancel the home visit at the Coopers. Rebecca opened her briefcase and pulled out their file. The phone number was in here…. She found it and pushed the keys. Before she completed the number, the roar of a motorcycle brought her head up.

A huge Harley-type bike was easing to a stop behind her car. Her adrenaline surged again. As she hit the lock button on her door, images of rape and murder flashed through her mind. Forget the fact that it was broad daylight and they were in plain sight of busy freeway traffic. She wouldn’t even crack the window, she’d just give her head an emphatic shake no.

The driver, in jeans, boots and a black leather jacket, set the stand and took off his helmet, revealing long dark hair and a face she recognized. She’d met him, she knew she had.

Her mind raced as she peered in the rearview mirror. Where did she know him from?

Suzanne Chauvin’s. That was it. He was the long-lost brother. The one whose mouth had curled ever so slightly when he said, “Ms. Wilson.”

Why had he stopped? Did Good Samaritans come in the form of bikers in black leather?

He swung his leg over the seat, hung the helmet on the handlebar and strolled toward her passenger door. A semi thundered by in the outside lane, whipping his hair, but he didn’t even glance sideways.

When he reached the car, she hesitated, then unlocked it. He opened the door and bent to look in. “Ms. Wilson.”

Damn, he was handsome. Chocolate-brown eyes and a narrow face with spectacular cheekbones might have made him movie-star sexy, but a mouth that didn’t seem to be made for smiling erased any hope of charm.

“Mr. Lindstrom.” Now, why had his name popped into her head so easily? she wondered with surprise. Usually, she had an awful time remembering names.

“Flat tire?”

She shook her head.

“I was driving and my car just…died.”

His heavy brows rose. “Power steering?”

She nodded and realized she still felt shaky.

“Have you tried to start it again?”

“Yes, but it won’t even turn over.”

“Then it’s not likely to be anything I can take care of here.”

“I’ve called for a tow truck. I’m just waiting for it.”

His gaze flicked to her plum-colored blazer and skirt. “Working?”

“Yes, I had a home visit scheduled.” She lifted her cell phone. “I was about to call and cancel.”

“Where do they live?”

“Mountlake Terrace.” She could see the exit up ahead. So close.

“I could give you a lift,” Gary Lindstrom suggested.

She was embarrassed by the knowledge that her eyes had widened. “On your motorcycle?”

The very corner of his mouth lifted in the sketchiest smile she’d ever seen. “You can wear the helmet.”

“The tow truck…”

“Call them back. Tell them you’re leaving your key.”

She did hate to cancel. She knew how eager couples were at this stage, how long they’d yearned for a child, how much time they probably spent getting their house to a point of perfection whether they’d deny it or not. Still, to arrive, windblown, on the back of a Harley-Davidson, her arms wrapped around the waist of a perfect stranger who happened to be dark, sexy and a little scary…

Oh, heck. It was a fantasy come true.

“If you mean it,” she capitulated. “I can call a taxi to take me home…”

“I mean it.”

While he waited, she phoned and arranged to leave her key under the driver’s side floor mat. There wasn’t anything in the car to steal, and unless they could throw it over one shoulder and carry it, no one would be taking her Tercel today.

A moment later, carrying her purse and briefcase, she followed him to his motorcycle.

“You don’t have to give me the helmet.”

Even though his mouth had only that faint crook, his eyes narrowed in amusement. “You’re prepared to risk life and limb?”

“It’s not very far to Mountlake Terrace.”

“Wear the helmet anyway. You’ll feel safer.” He unhooked it from the handlebar, brushed her hair back from her face and settled the helmet on her head. She clutched her briefcase to her bosom and stood like a child being dressed as he matter-of-factly fastened the chin strap and then stepped back. “You may have to hike your skirt a little to get on.”

A dignified, professional woman wouldn’t be nodding obediently and letting him stow her briefcase in a leather bag that was strapped to the motorcycle carriage. He climbed on and watched as she lifted her snug skirt, first a little, then more. Cheeks hot, she finally freed her leg enough to get on with all the grace of a newborn colt trying to stand for the first time.

“Hold on,” he said, and started the engine with a roar that made her jump.

Her first grip at his waist was tentative, but as the motorcycle started to move, she grabbed hold tight while still trying to keep some distance between them. By the time he reached freeway speed, she was plastered to his back, her cheek pressed to him and her arms locked around him.

She’d no sooner dared open her eyes than the bike headed onto the exit and began to slow.

At a red light, she loosened her grip and pulled back.

“Doing okay?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Fine,” Rebecca said, as if she rode one of these every day instead of never. Her mother would have a heart attack if she could see her.

“Good. Hold on,” he warned, as the light changed.

She grabbed tight again as he accelerated. For a moment they proceeded sedately, but then he swerved and shot through a gap that seemed frighteningly small to her to pass the car in front of them.

“Where are we going?” he shouted.

She yelled directions at the back of his head, and he nodded. Half a dozen turns, and he drove slowly down a winding street lined with modest but well-cared-for houses. Lawns were neat, and jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows and dried cornstalks decorated doorsteps. The Coopers didn’t make a great deal of money, she knew; the husband drove a bus for Snohomish County Transit and the wife was a hairdresser. Neither was especially articulate, but she’d liked their answers on the questionnaire in the file. They sounded like good people.

Fortunately, she’d memorized the street address, and he pulled to a stop on the gravel strip in front of a white-painted rail fence. He turned the engine off.

“Safe and sound.”

She felt the rumble of his words in her hands, locked around him. She let go and straightened. “Thank you. This was really nice of you….”

He turned, eyes narrowed and the skin crinkled at the corners in what she thought was a smile of sorts. “Want me to give you a lift back to the office or home, too?”

In the act of lifting the helmet off, she stared at him. “You’d wait for me?”

“Come back,” he corrected. “I have a cell phone. You can call.”

“I can get a taxi.”

His voice was sexy, too, husky and tempting. “But they’re not nearly as much fun.”

No. They weren’t.

“You’re serious?”

“I don’t have anything better to do,” he pointed out. “I can’t do much for Suzanne at her knitting shop.”

A tiny giggle rose in her throat at the image of him sitting with a circle of ladies, demonstrating the purl stitch. “No, I guess you can’t.”

“So, what do you say?” One brow rose. Of course he was the kind of man who actually could lift one eyebrow.

“If you mean it,” she said weakly.

He took the helmet from her. “Got something to write with? I’ll give you my number.”

“Oh. Okay.” Horribly conscious of him watching, she scrambled off the bike and then tugged down the hem of her skirt before she pulled her briefcase and purse from the leather bag. When she found a pad of paper, he scribbled the number in dark, slashing lines. “I usually spend at least a couple of hours,” she warned.

“No problem.” His mouth crooked. “You might want to brush your hair.”

Her hand went to her head in instant reaction, and he grinned, then put the helmet on his own head and started the motorcycle, raised a hand as if to say, See ya, and took off with a small spurt of gravel.

She was left gaping after him, stunned by that smile. She’d been wrong. Oh, so wrong. His smile was devastating. Cocky and yet also somehow sweet.

Which was a very strange word to use about a man who looked as tough and self-sufficient as he did.

Shaking her head, Rebecca walked to the front door and rang.

The Coopers were as nice as she’d anticipated, accepting with apparent equanimity her explanation of a car breakdown and a chance ride to explain windblown hair. Beth Cooper showed Rebecca to the bathroom where she discovered her skirt had swiveled so that the zipper was to one side instead of in back where it belonged. She turned it, smoothed wrinkles without much success and brushed her hair, then returned to the living room.

Beth smiled. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“I would love coffee,” she agreed, with more fervency than was probably appropriate.

Her hostess laughed and went to get it, leaving Rebecca to chat with Ronald Cooper.

In the next couple of hours, she coaxed them to talk about their own childhoods, their parents and the family gatherings that Beth admitted had begun to depress her these last five years as they struggled to get pregnant and her two sisters had three kids each.

“Mary Ellen once said just thinking about getting pregnant is dangerous for her.”

Her husband rumbled.

“She didn’t mean to be tactless,” Beth said hastily. “But it stung. Because I’m the one with the problem.”

Ronald laid his hand over hers.

Rebecca knew from their file that Beth couldn’t carry a baby to term, so in vitro fertilization wasn’t an answer for them. “Did you consider finding a surrogate mother?” she asked. “Perhaps one of your sisters?”

“They haven’t offered,” Beth said.

Her husband said firmly, “I don’t care that much about having a son who is mine. You know? We just want a child.”

“Do you have a preference as to gender?” When they didn’t answer immediately, she amended, “A girl or a boy?”

Their heads shook in unison. Neither cared. Yes, they’d consider a child of mixed race, although they guessed their druthers were for a Caucasian baby just so he or she didn’t stand out at those family gatherings and so people weren’t always thinking, Oh, she must be adopted, when they saw the Coopers together.

The agency’s policy was to, whenever possible, place babies with parents of their dominant race. It took unusually committed parents to provide a child of another race some sense of identity with his biological roots. In the 1970s, many black children had been placed with white parents, but in the decades since, there had been a shift in attitude. In any case, too few babies of any race were available for adoption to satisfy the hunger of childless couples. Many, frustrated, chose to go overseas.

Beth’s parents had been sterner than Ronald’s, but the couple agreed on how they wanted to raise their children.

“We’ve spent years shaking our heads and saying we wouldn’t say that or do that, so confident we’d be having kids when we were ready,” Beth confessed. “There’s never been any doubt that someday we’d have a family. We’ve saved so I can stay home for a few years, until they’re school age, for example. We talked about using that money for a foreign adoption, but then I’d have to go back to work and put the baby in day care, and we just never wanted that. Not if we could help it.”

They showed her around their small trilevel, including the bedroom upstairs right across the hall from theirs that would be the nursery. It was a big, sunny room, the walls painted yellow, a twin bed, child’s table and chairs and toy chest the only furnishings.

“Our nieces and nephews spend the night sometimes,” Beth said. “We enjoy having them.”

Rebecca guessed the pleasure was bittersweet, a chance to sample what was denied to them, but she smiled in agreement.

“We haven’t really decorated,” Beth continued. “In case we never—” She stopped, pressed her lips together. “This could be a sewing room.”

Rebecca talked to them about the birth mother’s role in choosing the placement for her child, and the profile birth parents would be shown of the couples like the Coopers who were waiting. She warned them of how long the wait might be before they were likely to be offered a baby. Faces shining, they assured her they’d wait ten years if they had to.

“Does this mean you’re approving us?” Ronald asked, voice gruff.

She smiled at them both. “I think you’ll make wonderful parents. I have no hesitation in recommending that you go on our list.”

She was moved to see that Ronald’s eyes got as damp as his wife’s before he harrumphed and wiped at them. It made her wish she could call them tomorrow and announce that a newborn was ready to go home to them. Unlike some older couples, though, they had time; they’d started trying to get pregnant when Beth was twenty-four or -five, so now she was thirty-three and her husband only two years older.

Rebecca used her cell phone to dial the number Gary had given her. He answered with an abrupt, “Lindstrom.”

“Hi, this is Rebecca Wilson. Um, if you’re still willing—”

“Five minutes.”

Dead air told her he was gone. Well! So much for her prepared speech about how it was fine if he’d gotten busy doing something else, getting a taxi was no problem, etc., etc.

Next she called the auto repair shop where she had asked that her car be towed.

“Can’t get to it until tomorrow,” she was told. “Check with us, say, eleven o’clock?”

Yes, fine, she could do that.

Obviously, she needed to rent a car. She had an appointment in Seattle tomorrow morning and had promised to go to dinner at her mother’s house in Woodinville that evening. Instead of having Gary take her back to the agency, maybe she’d have him deliver her to a car rental office.

She borrowed the Coopers’ phone book to look for the handiest location, finding one not a mile from her agency. By that time, the distinctive throaty roar of a motorcycle outside gave notice that her ride had arrived.

The Coopers thanked her profusely and waved goodbye from the doorstep as she left.

When she reached the street, her cynical Good Samaritan nodded toward them. “Are they still trying to convince you that they’re great people? Or did you make them happy today?”

“They can’t just be friendly?” She took the helmet from him, both relieved and a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to put it on again for her.

“It would be normal to go back in the house now. Don’t you think?”

She turned and gave a reassuring wave at the couple, who waved back. Yeah, okay, it would be normal for them to go back in the house. Instead, they stood side by side, holding hands, smiling at her.

“I gave them hope.” She settled the helmet on her head and fumbled with the strap.

He lifted a tanned, calloused hand and fastened it for her. “They’re going to get a kid?”

“They may have to wait for a couple of years, but probably.”

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