Hidden Legacy (19 page)

He smiled with his daughter, cried with his daughter, napped with his daughter, explored cupboards filled with Tupperware with her, tasted spring dirt with her, picked summer daisies with her, climbed onto coffee tables, chairs, and counters with her. He shared her thrill on that first carousel ride at the county fair, the surprise of a wanted Christmas tricycle, the joy of a full basket after an Easter egg hunt. He felt her pride at the castle of Legos she’d built, the weight of her on his lap as they shared a story book, the mischievousness of her dressed as a dinosaur for Halloween. He held her hand on the first day of school. Was that only eight months ago?

This was more than a collection of albums, he thought as he closed the last cover. This was home. It was love. Heart filled with a strange new ache he didn’t quite know how to label, he turned to Juliana.

She was gone.

His chest rang hollow. He had so much he needed to tell her. So much more he needed to know.

He wanted what she’d had for all those years. He couldn’t give up the treasure he’d just found. The idea of losing either of them again brought bone-numbing fear.

Silently he cursed Juliana for keeping her secret, for stealing part of his life. He blasted himself for letting his pride keep him from seeking Juliana out after she’d dumped him, depriving himself in the process. Then perversely he thanked the Phantom for bringing Juliana and Briana back into his life.

The Phantom. He prowled on, loose and free. Lucas’s failure to catch him gnawed at his self-confidence. He wouldn’t let a jewel thief steal his future away.

“I’ll get you,” Lucas promised as he picked up the albums and headed toward the shelf unit. “You won’t get another chance to hurt us.”

Chapter 10

Emotionally and physically drained, Juliana lay between the sheets of her bed. She wanted the oblivion of sleep, but could not find it. So she stared at the full moon through the open curtains, hoping it would hypnotize her. A cold breeze ruffled the curtains’ hem, making the moon’s light waltz on the maple floor.

She listened intently as she’d done so many nights before for the noises coming from her daughter’s room. Not hearing the rustle of Briana’s sleep movements, but instead the steady turn of pages where she’d recorded each step of Briana’s life and exposed her feelings for her daughter, felt strange. Stranger still was the sound of the emotion-filled voice of the man she’d loved as he laughed and cried his way through his daughter’s life.

She closed her eyes and willed herself not to think. Regrets would get her nowhere. Tomorrow she would start putting Lucas’s replica together. And once he’d caught the Phantom, she would piece her life back together. She’d done it before; she could do it again.

Her bedroom door opened. Lucas’s silhouette detached from the gray light of the hall and came toward her. In the murky light his shadow seemed to fill the room. Her heart sped in gnawing anticipation. She crushed the top sheet nearer to her chest.

He knelt beside her bed. The heat of him invaded her, causing a flash of unwanted physical response. He crooked a finger and slid it gently down her cheek. She instinctively turned toward the gentleness of his touch.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice strangely choked. “For sharing Briana with me.”

Unable to speak, she nodded.

“Why couldn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” he asked. There was no rancor, no accusation in the question, only a neediness she found she could not deny him.

“I was scared. I thought you wouldn’t want her.”

His face crumpled with hurt. “What made you think that?”

“You were working on the library thefts. It was the day you captured the thief. That morning I found out I was pregnant. I tried to reach you, but you weren’t available. My brother Jonah called and asked me to come over. I figured it would be a way to pass the time waiting for you to come back. So I went.”

“Something happened there. I sensed old hurts between the two of you.”

“The doctor had told me something I didn’t want to hear. Jonah and I argued.”

She rolled onto her back, snapping her gaze away from Lucas’s too compelling eyes. Pain, a squadron of it, trooped through her already weary body, trampling her emotions.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“Have you ever heard of hyperstormic atrophy?”

He shook his head.

She searched her mind for the explanation the doctor had given her all those years ago. “I’m not really sure how it works, but apparently there’s a mutant gene that has a timer of some sort on it, and when a man reaches the age of forty, it activates and makes the body self-destruct from the inside out.” She choked on the tightness in her throat. “My father died of it when I was twelve. It was a horrible, cruel death.” She breathed long and hard. She had no tears left. “He was a wonderful, loving man. He… I…”

Lucas fingered the knobby bone of her wrist. An acute longing stretched the length of her.

“You have this disease, too,” Lucas said.

Hop, skip, conclude. This time he’d gotten it wrong. She shook her head against the pillow. “No, it’s passed on the X chromosome. Females are carriers, but can’t manifest the disease. I didn’t know if I was carrying a boy or a girl.”

He remained silent, letting her fill the void in her own time. She looked up at him once more. The collar of his polo shirt shook with the steady rhythm of his pulse. She put a hand against it, staying the movement, then regretted her impulse when the beat thrummed against her fingers in an entrancing invitation. She snapped her hand away, stuffing it beneath the sheet. “Do you remember when we played the what-if game?”

He shook his head.

“What if you knew a child you conceived would be born with a defective gene that could cause him a horrible, painful death? Do you remember how you answered?”

He said nothing, but horror suddenly tainted his gaze.

“You said you weren’t sure. That the kindest thing for all concerned would probably be to abort.”

He swallowed hard. “Jewel—”

“I couldn’t,” she whispered, lowering her gaze. She concentrated on her hands, on fingering the satin trim of her sheet.

He hitched her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “Don’t you know that I would have done whatever you wanted?”

“I didn’t dare to find out. I couldn’t—”

“Get rid of the baby, so you got rid of the clod who fathered her.”

He was hurt. She couldn’t blame him. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then help me understand. I’ve lived six years with this mystery. I’ve missed all of my daughter’s life.”

She winced. “Once she was born, I was going to tell you.”

“Because it would have been too late for me to ask you to abort by then.”

“Yes.” Then because she owed him the truth, she continued. “When I couldn’t reach you the first time, I didn’t try again.”

“Why not?”

“I’d seen how involved you got in your job. How dangerous it was. I….”

“Very few FBI agents have been killed on duty.”

“You became your job, Lucas. It was
you
.”

“And you thought there wasn’t room for anything else.”

She shrugged. “What I wanted, what I needed—”

“But you took the chance to show you differently away from me. I could accept anything from you, Juliana, except for you shutting me out of your life.”

“I loved you, Lucas. I loved you so much it hurt. I didn’t want to die a little death every time you left for an assignment, wondering if you’d ever be back. If you died. I would have died, too.” Just like her mother had. She understood with blinding clarity what she hadn’t sixteen years ago. Her mother hadn’t abandoned her. She’d died of grief. “Where would that leave Briana?”

“Hurt like you were when your mother died.”

She tried to turn away from him, but got caught in the sheets. He rolled her toward him, then held her in his arms. “She’s not you, Jewel. The truth is that you want to keep everything just so. That way you can’t get hurt. The thing is, you can’t control people. You can’t control how they feel. Do you really want Briana to learn to stuff her feelings inside and pretend everything is okay just to fit in with your vision of the world?”

She was choking on tears with no moisture left to spring forth. “I want her to have what I had, what I lost.”

“Then give us a chance.”

She wanted to touch him, to kiss him. She wanted all the happiness she’d once found in his arms. She wanted the possibility of a happy ending. But she couldn’t take that simple step of opening her heart to him again. Fear, uncertainty gripped her, squeezing air high into her lungs. Once this case was over, once he’d caught his Phantom, he’d move on. Oh, maybe not right away. But the lure of the hunt would be too great to resist for long.

Briana would know her father, but she wouldn’t lose her mother in the process.

“I love you,” Lucas whispered tenderly into her ear, rippling regret from her heart to her soul. “I never stopped loving you.”

Then he kissed her, slowly, deeply, melting her just as easily as he had six years ago. And worse than her immediate, liquid response was the taste of his promise. One she didn’t dare believe. A man like him couldn’t grow roots.

As he released her, shivers of unmet need waffled through her, making her yearn for his touch once more, for his kiss, for so much more. But putting any weight on these biological responses would only buy her heartache.

“I’m not leaving this time,” he said.

Deliberately, she pretended to misunderstand. “You can sleep in Briana’s room, if you like.”

“I’ll catch the Phantom.” As he stood, he nodded and stuck his hands in his jeans pocket. “I’ll be here for you and Briana.”

Her heart thumped in her chest.

“I’ve missed six years of my daughter’s life. I don’t want to miss another.”

Hope spread thick and warm through her. The door shut quietly behind him. She turned her back to the moon, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

More than anything, she wanted to believe.

* * *

A groggy Lucas joined her in the kitchen the next morning. He winced at the empty coffee maker, but Juliana didn’t give him a chance to start a pot. She scooped her purse from the counter, grabbed a denim jacket, and propelled him toward the door. Briana wasn’t here, but she could show Lucas how they spent their time together.

“It’s Sunday,” she said. “We always go out for breakfast.”

“Always?”

“Tradition.”

Although fog greeted them as they stepped outside, she felt lighter and more resolved than she had in a long time. It was as if the misty cover had taken on part of her load and spread it through the countryside. She would do what she’d done since her mother had died; she would shut away the past and concentrate on the future, on making the world safe for Briana, and getting on with her life. Lucas was but a passing blip. Knowing that ahead of time, she could deal with him. She headed toward the town green and the odd collection of shops that surrounded it.

“I called Briana,” she said.

“How was she?” he asked, brightening at the mention of his daughter. A softness she hadn’t noticed before gentled his features. A little bit of pride?

“She has a busy day ahead of her—a horseback ride with her Uncle Jonah this morning, a brownie-baking session with Caitlynn, and an afternoon exploration of the village.”

Like the mist swirling through the trees, Juliana’s feelings whirled up, then down at the remembrance of Briana’s enthusiasm. She missed her little girl so much, yet Briana seemed undisconcerted by their separation.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, reading her mood too easily.

“I know.” She forced a smile and shared the memories that sprang to her mind. “Briana’s always been an adventurous girl. On the first day of kindergarten when most kids clung to their mothers and cried to go home, Briana took one look at the child-sized tables and chairs, the bins of toys, the mountain of paper and crayons, and rushed to enjoy them all. She looked back at me over her shoulder and said, ‘Bye, Mommy Mine, see you later.’”

“And you cried.”