MacKenzie's Promise Read online

  “This is different.” Her voice faltered. “I’m afraid.”

  “You weren’t afraid to confront me, even though you thought I was the next worst thing to the devil. You aren’t afraid to go after Thayer.”

  “I would be, if I didn’t have you to help me. I trust you, Mac.”

  “No, you don’t. You just pay lip service to the idea. But at bottom, you don’t really trust any man—maybe not any woman, either. If you did, you’d hear what I’m trying to tell you now. You’d give Martin the benefit of the doubt. And you’d respect your mother’s belief that death is the only thing that stands in the way of repairing a relationship with enough good left in it to be worth the effort.”

  “All I hear you saying, though not in so many words, is that I’m wrong and everyone else is right. And maybe you’re not as far off the mark as I’d like to think, because it certainly seems that I made a mistake about you.”

  “And why is that?” he sneered. “Because I dared to disagree with you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice breaking. “Because I thought you cared about me. You kissed me as if you did. You made me think you wanted me. But I can see now that none of it meant a thing to you. It was just a way of trying to coerce me into seeing things from your point of view.”

  “In other words, you don’t trust me. Point proven. Case closed. Good night.” He dismissed her with another shrug, hauled his bag off the bed, and headed down the hall to the study.

  She hated him. She really did. He was arrogant, opinionated, and ill-informed. And still she wanted him! If he’d charged back into the room and swept her into his arms, she’d have gone willingly.

  Chagrined to find herself on the brink of tears, and wanting only to hide in her own room until she’d regained some semblance of control, not just of the childish urge to cry, but also of the conflicting emotions he aroused in her, she spun around.

  Her father stood framed in the open French door, blocking her escape. “You seem upset, Linda. Is there anything I can do?”

  “You’ve done enough already,” she said vehemently. “Everything was going smoothly until you showed up. Now it’s all turned sour.”

  “Let me try to put it right again.”

  “And how do you propose to do that, Martin?” she asked, hardening her heart against the shadow of pain which filled his eyes at her use of his name.

  “I just want to help. To lend my support.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve had to manage without your help or support for nearly fifteen years.”

  “I know.” He lifted his shoulders helplessly. “Guilt’s a funny thing, Linda. It can swallow up a man in so much shame that he can’t face those he hurt. Worse, it drives him to punish himself by making the people he loves the most, despise him.”

  “And your point is?”

  “I’m trying to make amends. Your mother’s prepared to give me another chance. Is there no way you can do the same, and let me help you through this terrible time?”

  “I’m no longer a child. In case you’ve lost track, I’ll be twenty-nine next April.”

  “That doesn’t make you too old to need a father.”

  “Okay, then let me put it this way: I don’t need you for a father.”

  He sighed and inspected his feet, his hands; the walls of the room, and the portrait hanging there, commissioned one Christmas, of her and June with their mother. A family of three women, and no man in sight. And finally, when there was nothing else left, he looked at her again, his face etched with sorrow. “What’s it going to take for you to forgive me, Linda? To turn to me again?”

  “There’s nothing. You weren’t there when I needed you. I learned to do without you a long time ago.”

  “And that’s it? There’s nothing else you’d like to say?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You don’t want to tell me what a jerk I’ve been?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then let me say it for you. I’m a loser. A fool. I screwed up the best thing that ever happened to me and I deserve all the scorn you can heap on my head. The world would be a better place without me in it. If I had a decent bone in my body, I’d go find a deep hole and bury my miserable self in it. I don’t deserve a second chance and I forfeited any right I might once have had to care that my only grandchild is missing.” He paused and looked at her again. “Have I missed anything?”

  “That just about covers it,” she said, furious to hear her voice cracking with tears.

  He nodded and stepped aside, making space for her to leave the room without having to touch him as she brushed by. “Good. Feel better?”

  “Yes,” she choked.

  “Too bad I don’t,” her mother said, rolling her wheelchair out of the shadow of dusk and stopping next to him. “Linda, when you insult your father, you insult me, too. I loved him enough to bear his children, Angela is as much his grandchild as she is mine, and I welcome his offer of support at a time when we need to pull together as a family. I’m shocked and grieved that you can’t recognize the courage it took for him to come here today, admit to his mistakes, and ask to be allowed to carry his share of our trouble. Ours, Linda—mine and yours.”

  Beleaguered on all sides, she said, “I don’t understand how you can be so forgiving, Mom!”

  “Perhaps because it’s never occurred to you that there might be another side to the story, which you’ve never heard.”

  “Are you trying to tell me it was your fault he left us?”

  “I’m telling you that it takes two to make a relationship work, and two to break it. No one but the parties involved ever really understands the dynamics that bring a man and a woman together. But I’ll tell you this: if you ever fall in love—really in love—you’d better adopt a less rigid attitude than you’re prepared to show to your father, because there’s a lot of forgiving required to bring harmony to a marriage, and until you’ve been there and tried it, you’re in no position to criticize how others go about achieving it.”

  She brushed her hands together and tapped her former husband’s arm. “I think that just about covers it. Come along, Martin. I want to show you the pictures of the girls at their graduation. Linda looked a lot happier then than she does now, but hopefully that’ll change, once she’s had a chance to think about what I’ve said.”

  Mac decided against joining Jessie and Martin for a nightcap, as she’d suggested. They had a lot to talk about and sort out, and hardly needed him hanging around to witness it. So he stretched out on the sofa bed in the study, and watched TV for a while. Then, as darkness fell and the house sank into that quiet period prior to its inhabitants falling asleep, he turned on the lamp and helped himself to a paperback from the bookshelf covering one wall of the study.

  But he found his attention wandering and eventually tossed the novel aside and faced up to what was really bothering him. How the hell had he managed to become so embroiled in the lives of strangers? More to the point, how had he let a snippy little wench like Linda get under his skin?

  He knew better. Knew that, in giving in to his attraction to her, he compromised the objectivity he needed to bring the case to a successful conclusion. But against his better judgment and definitely against his inclinations, he found himself thinking about her and regretting that he’d spoken to her so harshly. Wondering if she was able to sleep, or if, like him, she was remembering how it had felt when he’d kissed her.

  Restlessly he switched off the lamp and paced to the window. The garden lay in darkness but, a mile or two out to sea, a cruise ship ablaze with lights sailed by on its way to Alaska. In fact, when he leaned out of the window, he could hear the faint sound of music carrying over the water.

  And much nearer, the equally faint sound of someone crying.

  He scanned the patio, straining to see, and caught a glimpse of pale movement on the bench under the grapevine. He knew it wasn’t Jessie. He’d heard the hum of her wheelchair as she passed by his door on the way to he
r bedroom, fifteen minutes earlier. And he hardly thought it was Martin.

  A smart man, especially one who’d decided, less than thirty seconds before, that he’d do well to keep his distance from Linda Carr, would have crawled into bed, pulled the covers over his head, and refused to let that sad little whimper cause him to lose a moment’s sleep. But then, a smart man would have thought twice before shooting his mouth off about the way she was handling her father’s sudden reappearance on the scene.

  You can’t afford to take every cause and make it your own, the chief detective had cautioned him, when he’d first joined the plainclothes’ division. Your job is to uphold the law and apprehend the criminal. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t leave room for a little compassion every now and then.

  Pity he hadn’t remembered that sooner. It might have spared her her present misery—and him the obligation to try to alleviate it. “Just keep things short and simple, Sullivan,” he cautioned himself, swinging one leg over the low windowsill and dropping silently to the smooth flag-stones outside. “Just stuff a tissue in her hand, tell her to dry up, and forget any ideas about lending her a shoulder to cry on.”

  But there was something else his chief had told him. You’re lousy at taking advice, Sullivan, and even worse at following orders. If there’s no trouble brewing out there, I can always count on you to make some. Talk about being a beggar for punishment!

  And he forgot about that, too. Because she barely had time to recognize who it was looming over her in the dark before he lowered himself to the bench beside her, and took her in his arms.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE’D booked them into executive class on the flight to San Francisco, and she was grateful. The wide console between their seats allowed for no nudging of elbows or knees; no intimate brushing of thigh against thigh, or shoulder against shoulder. Nothing which would betray the electrifying effect he had on her. If he wanted to touch her, he had to make a point of reaching across the distance separating them to do so.

  Not that he showed any such inclination. Other passengers looking at them or listening to their conversation would have assumed they were merely colleagues planning strategy for an upcoming business conference—which, she supposed, hindsight showed wasn’t so far off the mark as it might seem.

  “I’m hoping to set up a meeting with the Wagners tomorrow,” he said, settling comfortably into his seat as the Air Canada jet banked over the Gulf Islands and started its journey south. “I can’t see doing it any sooner. We were over forty-five minutes late leaving Vancouver, which puts us close to the dinner hour by the time we land at SFO, pick up our car rental, drive into the city and check into our hotel.”

  “Oh,” she said, trying to look and sound intelligent, which was no mean feat considering her thoughts were in total chaos. “I see what you mean.”

  Intelligent? She turned to the window and rolled her eyes in self-disparagement. Stilted and stupid was closer to the mark!

  “At least we know they’re in town and not planning to leave anytime soon.”

  She spun back to face him so abruptly that her neck gave a protesting crack. “We do? How?”

  “I phoned their house from the hospital yesterday, after I’d spoken to June.”

  “But you said you didn’t want to talk to them long-distance. You said—”

  “I didn’t mention why I was calling. I just wanted to establish they were in residence. No point in wasting time and money going down there if nobody’s home, is there?”

  “How did they sound? Do you think they’ll cooperate with us?”

  “I didn’t actually speak to them in person. Jackson answered the call and announced rather grandly that sir and madam would be at home tomorrow if I had legitimate business with them and cared to make an appointment.”

  “Who’s Jackson?”

  “I guess he’s the butler or manservant, or whatever you call people like him these days. Very British and proper. We might have a bit of trouble getting past him. He didn’t sound the type to let just anyone in the front door. But Jessie gave me a copy of the baby’s birth certificate, which names Thayer as the father, and that should prove we’re not just a couple of slick salespeople trying to fleece a genteel old couple out of their life savings.”

  “It never even occurred to me that we’d need proof we’re connected to Angela, but I should have known you’d think about it. You think of everything.”

  “It’s part of my job to cover all the angles, Linda. That’s what you’re paying me for. And you’ve already got enough on your mind, without worrying about details like that.” He surveyed her intently. “Although I must say, you seem to be holding up pretty well, all things considered.”

  “Do I?” She turned her face to the window and closed her eyes, shutting him out before he saw past her precarious facade of indifference. But how did a woman ignore a man who, less than twenty-four hours earlier, had taken her to the brink of total sexual surrender, who’d seemed to desire her as much as she desired him, but who, at the last minute, had suffered an attack of scruples which left them both in a state of disheveled frustration?

  It hadn’t started out like that. The way he’d come swooping down on her where she huddled on the patio had frightened her into letting out a little squeak of alarm. It had taken her a moment to realize whose arms had wrapped around her, and whose shoulder she was leaning against, and whose voice was whispering in her ear, “Ah, darlin’, is it what I said earlier that’s the cause of all this carrying-on?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself!” she’d sniffed, trying to push him away. “You’re not important enough to warrant your own crying binge!”

  It hadn’t been a complete lie because she’d found herself overwhelmed by everything and everyone that day. And it had been better than wailing, Nobody likes me! You’re all lined up against me, and it’s not fair when all I’m trying to do is put things right again!—and thereby handing him reason to believe that while she might look like an adult on the outside, she was endowed with the mental age of a three-year-old.

  “Then what?” he’d crooned, pinning her arms against his chest as she squirmed to get away. “Is it your father?”

  Of course, her father! And her mother, too. Jessie’s reproof and disappointment had hurt, no question about it. She and her mother had always been such a firmly united team, one she’d thought nothing could destroy.

  Yet within hours of his coming on the scene again, Martin Carr had managed to swing popular opinion in his favor, and she’d been shocked at how easily he’d caused a rift between them. In her heart, though, she’d known the spat with her mother would pass. Nothing could really undermine a relationship founded on such a solid basis of trust and affection.

  Nor had it. They’d made up first thing that morning.

  Her relationship with Mac, however, rested on much shakier ground and was much harder to define. He should have been nothing but the expert she’d hired to find the baby, but in the space of only a few days, he’d assumed a more pivotal role. The single thread of their connection had split into several strands and woven together around a core of feelings for him which she could ill afford to indulge.

  Angela was who mattered. Hers was the face which should be crowding her mind every time she closed her eyes. And yet, even knowing that within twenty-four hours, she might discover the baby’s whereabouts, might soon hold her in her arms again, Linda’s thoughts persisted in returning to last night.

  He’d plunked himself down next to her and thrown one arm around her shoulder. “Stop fighting me,” he’d ordered, his voice dark and velvety as the warm summer night. “Regardless of how royally we tick each other off on occasions, we’re still a team.”

  “I suppose you call all your women darlin’!” she blurted on an overwrought hiccup, vividly conscious that he wore only a pair of dark briefs. “I heard you, after dinner, on the phone. See you soon, darlin’. You take care now. And that’s not all. You said I was a pain in the butt, as
well!”

  “Yeah.” Laughter laced his voice. “And ain’t it the truth!”

  He shouldn’t have laughed at her. And she shouldn’t have tried to smack him in the mouth for it. Feeling so fragile inside that she feared she might splinter into a thousand pieces did not justify violence.

  Not that she’d succeeded in her intent. He was much too fast for her, catching her hand and pinning it behind her back with lightning speed. “Not nice, cookie,” he’d drawled, something sleekly dangerous layering his voice and smothering the laughter. “And not very smart, either. You ought to know better than to take on a man trained in the lethal art of stopping an opponent—dead, if need be.”

  “Well, don’t blame me! It’s your fault.”

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “You make me say and do crazy things. You belittle me to your other darlins’!”

  Another wave of hilarity had overtaken him. She’d felt his chest heave with it, his breath shudder. And she could hardly blame him. She sounded completely deranged!

  “I think my sixty-year-old mother would be very flattered to know she’s still got what it takes to make a twenty-eight-year-old foam at the mouth with jealousy.”

  “I am not foaming!”

  “No, of course you’re not,” he chortled. “You’re fulminating. Again!”

  His merriment had been contagious. Realizing how ridiculous she was being, she relaxed in his arms. A smile twitched her lips. A bubble of laughter rose in her throat, gurgled out of her mouth, and the next minute they’d both been choking as they tried to stifle their gales of mirth.

  On a whim, she’d reached out, plucked a handful of grapes from the vine growing beside the bench and pelted him with the fruit. Some missed their mark; others he caught and hurled back at her with telling accuracy.