REESE SHIFTED POSITION SLIGHTLY, edging herself just behind Carla’s left leg. She felt the child’s uneasiness as if it were a palpable thing—which told her exactly what Reese thought of the older people in the snazzy car.
Grandparents, huh?
Carla’s gaze slid back to the woman still glaring daggers at Jackson. Oh, yeah, she looked like the “have a chocolate chip cookie; come and climb on Grandma’s lap” type. God. The look on that woman’s face was enough to freeze your blood. Any kid would have backed up. Hell, it was all Carla could do not to cross herself.
“Well, Jackson?” the woman snapped, sparing Carla another quick look. “Nothing to say for yourself?”
“Hello, Phyllis. This is a surprise.”
And not a pleasant one, Carla thought. His voice sounded tight, and she heard the anger in its undertones. But she was pretty sure the older woman hadn’t. Or if she had, she obviously didn’t care. Carla had the immediate urge to turn around, go back to her mother’s house, and apologize for every crappy thing she’d ever said or thought about her.
The older woman turned to the man behind the steering wheel, hidden in the shadowy interior of the car. “Now do you see why I insisted we come, Walter?” she demanded.
“Why did you come?” Jackson asked, and the woman looked directly at Carla before answering.
“That is family business, which I believe I prefer to discuss in private. And certainly not on a public street.”
Christ. Carla half-expected the woman to lunge out of her car, screech at the sky, and call down her flying monkeys.
If possible, the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Jackson went absolutely rigid. His features looked as if they’d been carved in stone, except for a telltale muscle twitch in his jaw.
“Fine.” He waved one hand. “The first driveway on the right. We’ll be right there.”
“Reese can ride with us.” She moved to open the car door, but Jackson was too quick for her. He laid one hand on the door and kept it closed.
“We’ll be there in a minute.” Clearly he wasn’t going to budge on this one, and apparently even the woman in the car realized it.
“Oh, very well.” The window hummed back up and the car took off.
Once they were gone, Carla gave Reese’s hand a quick squeeze, then turned the girl over to her father. Mindful of the fact that the child was standing right there, she said only, “Wow, feel the warmth.”
He gave a quick look at the daughter now clinging to his thigh. “Yeah, the Barringtons are real charmers.”
“Reese’s grandparents?”
He nodded. “My late wife’s parents.”
“They seem…” she let the sentence trail off, since her mother had always told her if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
“Lethal?” he finished for her, with a quick look over his shoulder at the black car parked in his driveway. “They are.”
Worry creased his features and Carla had the urge to reach out and touch him. To reassure him that everything would be all right. Which was ridiculous, since she didn’t know that anything was wrong. And if it was, she had no idea what it was and how to fix it. Still, the impulse was there, and that was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
A car horn beeped.
They looked and saw the woman standing beside the car, watching them. Even from a distance, Carla felt the icy stare directed right at her. And she could almost understand it. Their daughter, Reese’s mother, was dead. And when they come to visit, they find their former son-in-law kissing someone else.
Not much of a kiss in the grand scheme of things, Carla told herself, but given time, it might have been. It had sure gotten off to a good start. But she and Jackson wouldn’t be picking up where they’d left off. Not with the sentinel standing in the driveway watching their every move.
“I guess you’d better go.”
“Yeah.” He looked at the driveway again before turning back to Carla. “Look, I’m sorry she was rude to you.”
She shook her head and that wonderful hair of hers fell in wild curls around her face, making Jackson want to reach out and thread his fingers through them. To see for himself if they were as soft as they looked. And then he wanted to kiss her again. Deeper, longer. He wanted to feel her warmth snake through him until it filled him, easing away all the dark, cold corners inside.
The car horn beeped again and this time it served as a reminder to Jackson that he didn’t deserve to lose those cold, dark places. Hell, he’d earned every one of them. Diane might have paid the price, but he was carrying the scars.
“Hey, no biggie,” Carla said with a shrug.
“Yeah, it was.” Phyllis could be as smug and vicious with him as she wanted to be. She had her reasons and he couldn’t blame her for them. But she’d had no right to turn those glacier eyes on Carla.
“I’ll survive.” She smiled at him. “But I won’t be giving back the ruby slippers. And that goes for my little dog, too.”
The reference hit him instantly. The Wizard of Oz. The wicked witch. Appropriate. And Carla’d only seen the woman for a couple of minutes. Apparently, though, she was an excellent judge of character. He laughed shortly, then glanced at the star-swept sky overhead. “Never a falling house around when you need one.”
Abbey leaned in to Carla’s left leg and the heavy, solid weight felt comforting. Almost as if the golden knew Carla was having a couple of lousy minutes and was trying to help. But she wasn’t the one who really needed the assistance, she told herself. Heck, she didn’t have to go over to that quiet house and face those people. It was Jackson and Reese she felt sorry for.
Well, mostly the little girl. After all, Jackson had willingly married into that family and she had to guess he’d met Diane’s parents before he’d married her. But Reese … poor thing, she still held a fistful of her daddy’s slacks and was trying to be as invisible as she could be. Heck, Carla even felt a momentary flash of sympathy for Diane, the child’s late mother. Being raised by that cold fish of a woman couldn’t have been a picnic.
But she couldn’t offer comfort to a dead woman, so instead, she gave it to Reese. Going down on one knee, Carla hooked one arm around Abbey’s neck and avoided a sloppy doggy kiss while she looked directly into Reese’s eyes. “I know you have to go and see your grandparents now,” she said, and inwardly winced when the girl nearly cringed. “But tomorrow, how about you come over and help me take the puppies to the vet for their shots?”
Instantly Reese’s eyes went wide with excitement. She nodded hard and even let go of her father long enough to reach out and hug Carla. Stunned, she didn’t even react for a minute. The child was usually so reserved, so locked up tight, that this spontaneous hug was completely out of the blue. But as those little arms went around her neck, Carla felt them snake around her heart just as tightly.
Such a tiny thing to be so alone, she thought, enjoying the feel of the little girl’s face buried in the curve of her neck. But she wasn’t really alone, was she? She had a father who clearly adored her. And grandparents, such as they were.
Sighing to herself, Carla hugged Reese back, then eased away and stood up. Looking from the child to the man beside her, Carla realized that in spite of her best efforts, she was being drawn into Jackson and Reese’s life. It had happened so slowly, in such tiny stages, that she hadn’t really noticed until just now. And she didn’t know how to back out again. Or even if she wanted to.
Oh, yeah. This is good.
“Come on, honey,” Jackson said softly, taking his daughter’s hand in his. “Let’s go.” Then he looked at Carla for a long, slow minute and she felt her toes curl. “I, uh—”
“See you tomorrow,” she said abruptly, cutting him off just in case he was going to say something stupid like, Sorry about kissing you. Heck, she was going to dream about that kiss tonight, and having him apologize would only ruin what could be a great little fantasy.
“Right,” he said. “Tomorrow.” Then he turned and he and Reese headed for the house where the wicked witch still stood like the gatekeeper to hell.
* * *
“You should have called,” Jackson said as he and his in-laws entered the quiet house. He hit the wall switch beside the door and three lamps in the living room flashed into life.
“So you could tell us not to come?” Phyllis countered as she walked past him, leaving a trail of White Shoulders in her wake. She stroked her bejeweled fingers across the entry table, then rubbed them together in distaste at the dust she’d picked up. “I think not. Walter?”
Her husband followed her into the living room without even glancing at Jackson. No great surprise there, he thought, rubbing his mouth in an attempt to hold back words that would only make things worse. Walter Barrington had never made a secret of the fact that he considered Jackson some kind of bad seed upstart. Even his signing the prenuptial agreement the man’s lawyers had insisted on hadn’t convinced Walter that Jackson wasn’t after Diane’s money.
And it frosted the old man’s ass to have to deal with Jackson, rather than simply dismissing him as a social-climbing upstart.
Jackson hadn’t wanted the damn money, of course. What he’d wanted from Diane was something more ethereal than that. He’d made his own fortune, with no help from Walter Barrington or anyone else. No. It wasn’t money that had drawn him to Diane. She’d had something else that Jackson had always craved.
Roots.
She’d once told him that she could trace her family back to the fifteenth century. He still remembered how awed he’d been at the statement. For a man who’d never even seen a photo of his parents, that kind of family history was staggering. And a part of him had wanted to share in it. Sure, there’d been more to it than that. Diane had been beautiful. And sophisticated. Everything he’d convinced himself he needed in a wife.
He’d never said anything about love. For that matter, neither had she. Theirs was a marriage made on Wall Street. Two portfolios becoming one. A true merger in the most clinical sense.
But then Reese had come along and everything changed.
At least, for him.
Walter glanced around the room with a dismissive snort. Shorter than his wife, Walter carried himself like a king and expected people to treat him as such. The whole Short Man syndrome thing had probably been coined after a psychiatrist had bumped into Walter. What the man lacked in height he more than made up for in arrogance.
Jackson still suspected that Walter was more pissed than grieved over the loss of his only child. Because by dying, Diane had done something he couldn’t control. And that just didn’t happen in Walter Barrington’s universe.
Phyllis sat down gingerly on the edge of the sofa, as if she expected to pick up grime on her sleek lavender Chanel suit.
“Who was that woman?”
“A friend,” he said, and knew there was so much more to Carla than just that. How much more, he didn’t know, but either way, it was none of Phyllis Barrington’s business.
One dark eyebrow lifted and her red-lined lips curved into something that on someone else might have been called a smile. “Do you always kiss your friends on the street? In front of your child?”
“Yeah,” he said tightly. “Always.”
That fiction of a smile disappeared. “Come here, Reese.”
The little girl didn’t leave Jackson’s side.
“Has she gone deaf as well as mute, now?”
“No,” Jackson snapped, resting one hand on the back of his child’s head. “She can hear just fine.”
“If that’s true,” the woman said, lowering her gaze to fix on Reese, “then please come here when Grandmother asks.”
With a last look at her father, Reese did as she was told, and it tore at Jackson just to watch her slump-shouldered pace.
“Stand up straight,” Phyllis said as she watched the same thing and came away with a completely different reaction. “A lady does not slouch.”
Reese did what was expected of her and stopped directly in front of her grandmother.
“Your hair is a mess.” Impatient fingers twitched at a stray hair and flicked it off the girl’s forehead. “Walter, look at her.”
Walter never took his gaze off Jackson.
“Why are you here?” Jackson asked, meeting the older man’s gaze with a steady look.
“That’s perfectly obvious, I should think,” Phyllis said as she brushed at the front of Reese’s overalls with the flat of her hand.
A headache thrummed behind his eyes, but irritation quickly outpaced it. “If you were worried about Reese, you could have called.”
“That’s hardly satisfactory,” she muttered, clucking her tongue over the Scooby-Doo tennis shoes. “Walter, we must buy this child some decent shoes.”
“She likes those shoes,” Jackson told her.
Reese threw him a grateful look and Jackson forced a smile for her.
“What she likes isn’t always best for her, now, is it?”
“What is this about?” Jackson demanded, sure they hadn’t flown two thousand miles to discuss Reese’s footwear.
Before answering, Phyllis looked at her granddaughter and said, “Go to your room, Reese. Grownups have to talk for a while.”
Don’t piss them off, Jackson reminded himself when he wanted to shout at the woman that Reese was his child and to kindly not order her around. It took a second or two, but he managed to tamp that anger down, and when he looked at Reese, he was almost calm.
“It’s okay, honey. Go ahead.”
She nodded and mimed sticking her hand into a bag.
He smiled wearily and nodded. “Yes, you can have two cookies.”
She scuttled out of the room before he could change his mind, and she’d hardly rounded the corner to the kitchen before Walter grumbled, “She’s like a damn monkey, gesturing like that.”
Jackson took a half-step toward the other man before he could stop himself. Hands fisted at his sides, he ground out, “She’s communicating. The only way she can right now.”
“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Walter countered. “Phyllis, tell him.”
“Tell me what?” He swiveled his head to look at the woman who’d stood up to tower over her husband.
“That Dr. Monohan has found room for Reese earlier than we’d planned.”
Panic reared up inside him and Jackson had to fight it back down before he could speak. “We didn’t plan anything. You did.”
“Someone has to think of the child’s best interests,” Walter said.
“I’m her father,” Jackson reminded him. “I know what’s in her best interests.”
“Really?” Phyllis tugged at the hem of her short jacket, making sure the fabric fell precisely into line. “And that would include dressing her like some homeless person?”
“She’s dressed like a child.”
“She mimes like some damned carnival act,” Walter grumbled.
“That won’t be forever,” Jackson snapped.
“Then how long?” Phyllis demanded. “Just how long are we supposed to stand by and watch our only grandchild drift into mental instability?”
“She’s not crazy !” Jackson shouted before he could stop himself. “She’s just a kid. Trying to deal with something no kid should have to worry about.”
“You have to nip these things in the bud,” Walter said before Phyllis could open her mouth again. And Jackson was just as glad. He’d as soon yell at another man than at a woman, thanks. “Stop this nonsense now, before it gets so out of hand, she’ll be like that trained gorilla, only talking in hand signs.”
The urge to defend and protect roared to life so ferociously it nearly choked him. Jackson had to struggle to draw air into heaving lungs. Damn them for coming here and ruining the only sanctuary he and Reese had been able to find in the last year. Here, in this place, he and his daughter had begun to reach for each other. Here she’d laughed for the first time. Here she’d found people who simply accepted her … they weren’t constantly trying to analyze her or look for incipient madness. They offered her love, friendship, and she’d begun to respond to it.
And he’d be damned if he’d let these two ruin his daughter as they’d ruined their own.
“I think you should leave,” he said tightly.
“You’re actually trying to throw me out?” Walter asked, clearly amused.
“Bodily, if I have to,” Jackson assured him, and was pleased when he noted the man’s gaze narrow thoughtfully.
“I won’t stand for it,” Phyllis said, ignoring her husband and coming to within an arm’s reach of Jackson. “I lost my daughter because of you. And I will certainly not lose Reese.”
“Diane’s death was an accident.”
“Perhaps. But what you’re doing to Reese is not.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re ignoring her silent call for help.”
“I’m reaching her,” he argued, staring down into eyes so pale, they looked like the ghosts of eyes that used to have life in them.
“Oh, yes,” she said snidely. “We saw what great strides you’ve made.”
“She laughed the other day,” he told them, and waited for their reaction. Phyllis’s eyes went wide, but Walter paid no attention whatsoever. “That’s right. Laughed. Out loud. For the first time in nearly a year.”
“Then we have to move quickly,” the woman said, and opened the black leather bag that hung from her right wrist. Delving into it, she came back up with a slip of paper and clutched it tightly. “This is Dr. Monohan’s private number. He can be reached day or night. I’ll call him now. Tell him of the breakthrough and let him know we’ll be on the first flight back to Chicago.”
She moved for the phone, but Jackson’s voice stopped her midstride. “No.”
“No?” Phyllis slowly turned to face him, astonishment clearly etched on her features. “Why on earth not?”
“Because we’re not going to Chicago. You two are.”
“But Reese—”
“Is making progress,” he finished for her. “Just as she’ll continue to do, here.”
“You don’t know that,” Walter said.
“I believe it.”
The other man snorted.
“You’re doing this to spite us, aren’t you?” Phyllis asked.
“Believe it or not,” Jackson told her, throwing his hands wide and letting them slap back against his sides again, “not everything is about you. I have to do what I think is best for my daughter.” Pulling in a long, deep breath, he let it out again before saying, “We agreed that I would have the summer with Reese to try to reach her without Fair Haven Clinic.”
“But she laughed,” Phyllis reminded him, and Jackson thought for a moment that he saw genuine concern in the woman’s eyes. And for that reason, he softened his voice when he spoke up again.
“Exactly. That’s why we’re staying. If she can laugh, she can talk. If she can talk, she can come all the way back.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Phyllis prompted.
Oh, he didn’t want to think about that. Because if she didn’t, he would lose her. To Fair Haven. To doctors and tests and locked rooms with visitation rights. He knew it. He could fight the Barringtons—and he would. But he’d also lose. Going up against one of Chicago’s most prominent families was a losing proposition from the beginning. The Barringtons had already brought pressure to bear. They knew too many influential people to be stonewalled by him. They could call in favors from judges and have Reese taken from him in a heartbeat.
If Reese were her former cheery self, her grandparents would have continued to hate him, but they would have been content to leave the day-to-day child care to him as long as they had optimum visiting rights. But her withdrawal had not only scared them, it had also embarrassed them. A Barrington—even a six-year-old one—never showed weakness. And if they had to take custody of the child to have her “cured,” then that’s what they would do.
“If she doesn’t,” he said quietly, “we give Fair Haven a try.”
The two older people looked at each other for a long minute before Phyllis nodded. Slipping the piece of paper back into her purse, she snapped the bag shut and said, “Fine, then. We’ll expect you back in Chicago by the first of September.”
They headed for the door, but Phyllis stopped short. “We’re staying at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, but we’ll be leaving for home tomorrow morning.”
Unbelievable. They’d flown halfway across the country to come and give him crap for an hour. But then, he reasoned, when you had your own jet, you pretty much treated the open skies as your own private freeway.
Walter stood with the door open, checking his watch.
Phyllis kept talking. “Tell Reese we said good-bye.”
Since he’d won this round and they were leaving, Jackson felt magnanimous. “Why don’t you say goodbye for yourself?”
Phyllis looked as if she wanted to, but Walter snapped, “Let’s go. You can call her from home. Not like she’s going to speak to you.”
The woman inhaled sharply, nodded, and said, “Good-bye, Jackson.”
When they left, he leaned against the closed door for a long minute, just enjoying the fact that they were gone. But the threat they’d brought with them hovered in the air like some bad-smelling cloud.
It was the end of June. He had only two months left to find his daughter. And suddenly two months didn’t seem like nearly enough time. Fury pulsed inside him. He didn’t like feeling helpless. Didn’t stand for it usually. There was always something he could do. Some trick he could pull in court. Some smooth move that would throw the opposition off their stride and give him the edge he needed.
Until now.
In this situation, he was as lost as Reese. He didn’t have a clue how to get through to her. He was doing everything he could. Wasn’t he? Or had he missed something? Reese’s face blossomed in his mind and his heart ached at the thought of losing her. He couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, someway, he had to pull off a miracle.
Shoving one hand through his hair, he walked through the entryway into the living room and didn’t stop until he was in front of the wide front window. Staring out at the darkness, he watched the black sedan pull from the drive and barrel off down the road. Then his gaze shifted to Carla’s place and focused on the one light shining in the window, like a candle left burning for some lost wanderer. He stared at it and wished it was meant for him.