Their Secret Child Read online

  Fate, he thought, scanning the interior. Not only had the bough missed the glass, it missed the electrical box behind the room's inside door.

  "Skip!" Addie's voice pierced his focus.

  "Over here." He climbed through a slippery crisscross of branches.

  Wearing a yellow slicker he recognized as Becky's, she walked toward him, awe and worry flitting across her features.

  Let me hold you, he wanted to say. Let me protect you the way I didn't before.

  She pushed a wet lock of hair from her cheek. "I can't believe this." Gaze riveted on the house, she handed over his slicker.

  "It's not as bad as it looks, Addie. As soon as the storm ends, I can fix the hole, no problem." He tugged the slicker over his wet shirt.

  "You?" Rain struck her face, spiked her lashes.

  "I've been known to do a little construction work in my day."

  "When?" Her eyes were skeptical, and he sensed she wasn't questioning if he could do the work, but that he had bothered to learn.

  "When I retired from the NFL, a buddy and I renovated his cottage on Bainbridge. He showed me a few ropes."

  "And now you can fix storm-damaged houses."

  He understood her doubt. He hadn't been there when it counted.

  "Addie, if you'd rather pay a licensed guy, okay. I figured I'd save you some money."

  She brought her hands to her cheeks, blew a breath. "I don't know what to think anymore. I have to get this hole covered before more damage is done with the rain." She headed for the honey shed.

  He walked beside her. The dampness rooted an ache in his shoulder he hadn't felt in a while. "I have a tarp back at the house if you need it."

  She glanced his way when he rolled his shoulder in an effort to alleviate the spasm. She said. "You should go home, get a heating pad on that spot. This weather can't be doing it any good."

  "Thanks, but I'll survive." She wanted him gone. Well, that wasn't happening. "Michaela going to be okay?"

  "Once we get to my mother's house, she'll be fine." The wind caught her slicker, flapped it against her lower back. "Grandma will get her making cookies. Nothing like a chocolate-chip cookie to fix a bad-hair day."

  Except, this wasn't a bad-hair day. This was a fifteen-car pileup. "You can stay with us for the night." The words were out of his mouth before he could consider their impact. Addie, sleeping in his house.

  Her eyes softened for a moment. "Thanks, Skip, but you and Becky have already done enough."

  He let the topic drop; her mind wasn't on convenience, but on how she would salvage her house.

  Behind the honey shed they found two four-foot squares of weathered plywood that had been leaning against the building several seasons.

  "Do you have an ax?" Skip asked. The plywood wasn't enough and the tree branches had to be removed.

  In the shed, she retrieved an ax and a handsaw, held them up with the first smile she'd shown since she opened her door twenty minutes before.

  "Perfect." He took in her rain-wet mouth. The drizzle patted their heads, faces and shoulders. He raised his eyes to hers and for a moment nothing past or present mattered.

  Wrenching her gaze away. Addie strode for the house.

  Skip watched her go. What was the matter with him?

  Lust. The word hit his solar plexus. Well, hell. Could he deny the twitch between his legs? He wanted her. Right, dumb-ass. That'll really endear her to you now that her house is a disaster.

  Lifting the plywood onto his head, hands gripping each side, he followed her through the rain.

  They worked for an hour, sawing branches, chopping off thinner limbs, clearing the ragged hole in the wall, hauling away debris. Addie found a ratty blue tarp, left over from her dad's bee operation, in a bottom drawer in the shed and they stretched the material across the hole.

  They were positioning the plywood in place around the tarp when her thumb caught on a bent nail.

  "Ouch!"

  "What is it?" Skip dropped the ax and was at her side in two strides.

  She had the thumb in her mouth.

  "Let me see." Gently, he pulled the injured digit from between her lips. His eyes held hers. Addie.

  Then rationale prevailed and he looked down at her injury. The nail had ripped the skin along the outside of her right thumb. "You need antiseptic. Do you have some in the house?"

  "It's nothing." She tried to pull her hand away.

  "It's bleeding like a gusher," he countered, hanging on. "Come on. Let's get you bandaged up."

  Her hand cradled in his, he led her around to the back door. Inside, he flicked the lights. Nothing. "Looks as if you're without power." He toed off his sneakers. "Stay here and I'll check the electrical box."

  He went through the house as if he'd been here a thousand times, when he'd never entered the dwelling in all the years he'd lived on the island. Addie's grandfather had lived here for forty years, though her mother had lived in Burnt Bend. That house he knew.

  And all of it, Becky's history.

  The breakers hadn 't clicked off; a line was down somewhere. He returned to the kitchen, where she stood at the sink and ran cold water over her thumb. "Got a candle we can light?"

  She tapped a toe against a low cupboard. "In there."

  Crouching, his shoulder brushing her thigh. Skip retrieved two hurricane candles; in a top cupboard, the matches. The room's warmth thawed his shoulder and he felt the sting of change. Shaking his arm to loosen the stiffness, he set the lit candles on the counter.

  In a utility drawer he found antiseptic ointment, gauze and a box of bandages. "How's it feeling?" he asked over her shoulder, and smelled the rain in her hair, on her skin.

  "Bleeding's stopped."

  "Good." Gently, he washed her hand, then prepared the gauze and bandages. "You should get a couple stitches," he said, examining the slash on her skin as he drew a line of ointment onto the gauze.

  "It'll heal fine without. Besides, I don't have time."

  Skip lifted his head. The candlelight was in her eyes. "It'll leave a scar." He hated the thought of anything marring her skin.

  "That's the least of my worries. Anyway, it's not as if I don't have a bunch of scars already."

  Yes, he could see that. Here and there her hands were nicked from the work she'd done over the years with her bees and living on this property. Her work ethic—her willingness to get her hands dirty, so to speak—sent a jolt down to his gut. She was nothing like the women he'd dated, not here on the island as a teenager, not on the mainland as an adult. And for damn sure not as a quarterback in the NFL. All her life. Addie had been in a league of her own, one outside the crowd.

  That uniqueness attracted him again, right here in her darkened kitchen with a storm howling around the house and flooding the windows.

  With utmost care, he set the gauze around her thumb and secured it with two bandages.

  "Thanks," she said when he finished.

  "You're welcome." He cupped her wounded hand. "I'm glad I could help." A long moment passed and still he kept her hand in his. He felt the pulse in her wrist where his thumb rested. Her skin was warm and surprisingly soft for someone who toiled with heavy hive boxes and maintained several hundred thousand insects. Oh. yeah, he'd done a lot of Internet searching over the past two weeks. Beekeeping was not an easy job.

  The flickering candles washed her cheeks and lips in rosy-gold and his gaze settled on the latter. Addie, he thought.

  "Skip."

  Her voice brought his eyes back to hers and he saw that neither had she been impervious to the long-buried emotions between them.

  Swallowing hard, he began. "I never meant to—"

  She shook her head. "Don't. Don't bring up the past. Don't apologize or whatever else you're thinking or regretting. It's too late." She drew away, her hand slipping free. "We need to get back to the kids. Go put on your shoes before I blow out the candles."

  He did. And then she plunged the kitchen into darkness with a single b
reath.

  Walking beside Skip through the driving rain to the Prius parked in front of her house, Addie tried hard not to think of him looking at her in the kitchen's warm candlelight.

  Romantic fool, she thought stamping around puddles. In the warm candlelight. Where is your head? You know what the man is like.

  Bowing her head against the wind, she lengthened her stride. She would call her mother to come for her and Michaela, get Charmaine to take them to Kat's B and B. There she planned to stay until she determined what to do about the damages, who to call.

  Rain leaked down her collar and chilled her flesh. She should have been more prepared, watched the forecast on the news. If she weren't stuck for a vehicle, she'd be heading for her hives right now. making sure her bees were safe and sheltered.

  A hard gust caught Addie full on, causing her to stumble sideways. Her hair swirled around her head and whipped into her eyes.

  "Hang on," Skip called against the roaring wind. "We're almost there."

  Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he tugged her to his side and bent his head to hers, shielding her as much as possible with his body as he guided her into the passenger seat. Seconds later, he was behind the wheel, the storm raging beyond the windows.

  "We'll get you some dry clothes right away," he said, starting the car. Across the darkness, he offered a smile. "Becky's should fit."

  Teeth chattering, Addie was too cold to argue.

  Turning the car down the lane. Skip flicked the heating vents on high. In the glow of the headlights, the rain struck the earth in waves.

  "It's supposed to last until sometime tomorrow morning," he said, crossing the main road into his driveway. "Your bees going to be okay?"

  "They should be." She'd anchored the hives with bricks and stones and set them near tree groves in preparation for weather like this. "I'll need to check them first thing, though."

  He pulled to the front of the house, and they dashed up the porch steps, into his house, where they stood dripping on the entrance mat.

  Michaela, her dark hair dry and curling past her tiny shoulders, came around a corner, Becky on her heels. "Mommy!"

  "Hi. baby." Addie shrugged out of the slicker, stepped from her wet shoes.

  "Get Ms. Malloy some towels, Bean," Skip said. He draped their slickers over the newel posts of the stairs leading to the second floor, heedless of the water streaming onto the expensive oak wood. "And she'll need some clothes, too," he called after his daughter.

  "Are we s-s-s-staying here, Mom?" Michaela asked, darting a look at Skip.

  "No, sweets." She brushed the little girl's hair around her ears. "Mom's calling Gram for a ride and then we'll stay at Aunty Kat's."

  "Why can't we stay here?" Michaela wanted to know.

  "I'll drive you to your mother's." Skip wiped his hands down whiskered cheeks. "Ah, thanks, Bean." He took the fluffy green towels the girl brought, and handed one to Addie.

  "Michaela can stay with us, Ms. Malloy," Becky said.

  Addie tugged her cell from her belt. "Thank you, but you and your dad have already helped." She hit speed dial.

  Her mother answered on the second ring. "Where are you?" Charmaine asked.

  "We're at Skip Dalton's."

  "Skip Dalton's?"

  "The power is out at our place. But not here."

  "It's like that all over. Part of the town has power, part doesn't. I have it, but Lee doesn't. She's staying at Kat's B and B for the night."

  "Mom," Addie interrupted. "Can you come get us? A tree came down on the truck and put a hole in the side of the house."

  "Oh, my God! Why didn't you say? Michaela?"

  "She's fine. We're both fine."

  "Addie, you'll have to stay there. Clover Road is blocked. They're saying trees are down two miles out of town and on the south end. And you know that means they won't get to them until tomorrow at the earliest. Will he let you stay in that big house of his?"

  She sighed. "We'll work something out." Even if I have to sleep in the honey shed. "Talk to you tomorrow."

  "Give my girl a kiss from her Gram. And Addie? I'll be thinking of you."

  Thinking about her and Skip. Her mother never had been subtle when it came to her daughters' business. "Later, Mom." She snapped the cell phone closed.

  Skip said, "Road's blocked."

  Not a question, a fact he had discerned from her side of the phone call.

  "We'll be okay." She motioned to Michaela. "Honeykins, get your coat. We're going home."

  "Girls." Skip spoke to his daughter. "Can you give us a minute?"

  "Come on, Mick." Becky took Michaela's hand. "Let's make some hot chocolate."

  After they left for the kitchen. Skip turned to Addie. "You gave me some ultimatums over there." He nodded toward her place. "Now I'm giving you one. Don't let your emotions make things harder for your daughter. We have the room. Take advantage of it."

  "And you know what my daughter wants."

  "No. But I understand your feelings about the past."

  "You know nothing of my feelings."

  "Then," he said softly, "maybe it's time to get to know each other again."

  Get to know him? How many years had she wished for another chance? Face it, Addie. You could never hate him no matter how hard you tried to convince yourself otherwise.

  Suddenly she was exhausted—of the pretense, of the terrible yearning, the loneliness, the heartbreak.

  "All right," she said. "A truce. For now."

  He released a long, slow breath. "You won't be sorry, I promise."

  "No promises, Skip. The last time you gave them, my life changed."

  She walked past him toward the kitchen, where the girls giggled.

  Chapter Six

  Skip followed Addie to where Becky brewed milk for the hot chocolate. Michaela sat on a stool at the island, swinging her little feet, a happy grin on her face. She'd been chattering about school, but the moment he stepped into view, her mouth clamped shut and wariness stole into her eyes. To no one in particular, he said, "Ms. Malloy and Michaela are staying the night."

  "Yay!" Becky turned from the stove and gave Michaela a high five.

  Skip glanced at Addie. At least the girls know a good thing, he wanted to say. Instead, he went to the refrigerator, dug out cut meats, lettuce, tomatoes and mustard. "You girls have something to eat?"

  "We had the leftover pizza," Becky told him. She poured steaming milk into two mugs and stirred. "Can we watch a video, Dad? Michaela hasn't seen Ratatouille yet."

  Addie nodded and he agreed. "Why not," he said.

  "Come on, Mick."

  Child in tow, Becky left the kitchen.

  A silence dropped. Skip set the ingredients on the counter while Addie, arms folded against her middle, wandered around the room, sizing it up, he suspected. For a moment, he watched. Would she notice the lack of trophies and photos from his former years? That those absences spelled a new life for him here, on Firewood Island?

  He could see she was uncomfortable in his home—and with him. He wished he could change that.

  Then she surprised him. "Becky's a lovely girl."

  "Yeah." Arranging the food on the counter, he smiled. "She is that."

  "Is she close to her mother?" Addie fluttered a hand. "Sorry, that was inappropriate. Forget I asked."

  "No, it's okay." He laid out six slices of flax bread on one of two cutting boards. "I'd rather you heard it from me." He lifted his gaze. "Her mother's dead."

  Dark as winter rain her eyes stayed on his. "I'm sorry. For you both."

  She wandered closer. "When did she die?"

  "Four years ago." He wanted to change the topic, but was at loss as how to detour without raising suspicion.

  "Was it illness or an accident?" she asked softly, and he heard the compassion in her voice. For him or for Becky?

  Get it out, be done with it. "She was killed."

  And suddenly he was uncomfortable where the conversation could lead. He w
asn't ready to disclose Becky's history. Not yet. The time needed to be right. And when is that? a niggling voice asked as he rinsed the tomatoes under the tap, set them on the cutting board. There is no right time to tell someone their child's adopted mother was killed with violence.

  Realizing Addie hadn't spoken for a minute he looked to where she stood. Her eyes were devastated. "Skip, I don't know what to say." She glanced toward the hallway where the girls had disappeared, where sounds of the TV murmured from the den.

  "There's nothing to say. It happened, it's done and Becky's moving on." He sliced the tomatoes, but the air thickened with her unspoken questions: What about you? Are you moving on? Glancing toward the doorway, he said. "I'd rather not talk about it right now—for obvious reasons."

  Mostly, he didn't want to expound on the situation involving Jesse Farmer, or that for the past four years the man had sat behind the bars of Walla Walla's state penitentiary.

  Skip clenched a tomato between his fingers so hard it broke apart, scattering juice and seeds and pulp across the cutting board. "Goddammit," he muttered, recognizing what he'd done, what he'd said. Addie would not understand that it was the criminal and not the tomato he cursed.

  Hell. She must think him a ham-fisted dolt.

  "Sorry, I've never been good at slicing tomatoes." The tiny fib landed on the pile of his omissions. For her sake, for the sake of their daughter.

  Unless you tell her now.

  Sweat popped from his skin. Soon, and the word, the time gap. had him breathing easier.

  Addie came around the island. "Can I help?"

  Her question caught him off guard; for a second he wasn't sure if she meant with Becky's circumstances or with the sandwich-making.

  "Sure," he said, dumping the tomato mess down the garbage disposal unit. He rinsed the board, returned it to the island, handed her the knife and another tomato.

  Standing side-by-side, he noticed that her hair had dried into a thick, tumbling mass. He'd always thought her hair beautiful, the way its tawny color captured the light like tiny segments of sunshine. As a teenager she'd called the color dishwater-blond. He'd disagreed then, and he disagreed now.