The Child She Always Wanted

Somehow she managed to leave the Grocery Mart without answering Velma’s last question. “Why are you back in Maine?”

People would know soon enough. Even when Hubbard Bay’s population blossomed with tourists, locals kept close tabs on their own. Why she’d returned would be at the top of tomorrow morning’s gossip. Rachel didn’t care. She refastened Heather’s car seat. This baby was all that mattered.

She slid behind the steering wheel, then dug in the grocery bag for a candy bar. Before she began driving down Main Street, she’d devoured half the candy. Like so many other streets in town, this one led to the harbor and the piers for the lobster boats, the ferry landing, and the docks for the yachts, sailboats and tour boats.

Nearing the harbor, she rolled down the van window. The smell of the ocean, the sound of a foghorn, the squawk of gulls filled the air. From the crowded parking lot near the pier, Rachel spotted the Sea Siren and negotiated a parking space. The sky above the Atlantic carried a gray cast and the promise of a June storm. Summer tourists in windbreakers and funny-looking hats milled around the deck of the boat, chatting and laughing.

She sensed she didn’t have a lot of time. Rushing, she unfastened Heather, and with her in her arms, Rachel hurried from the van and across the parking lot to the pier.

In her path a grizzled-looking fisherman dressed in a yellow slicker was carting a bushel of crabs from his boat. Without slowing her pace, Rachel sidestepped him and half ran, half walked along the planks to avoid jarring Heather too much. The sooner she made contact with Kane Riley, the better.

Then she saw him. He looked different, she decided in that instant. More sinewy, with muscled arms and long, sturdy-looking legs. Taller. A man of the sea, with his deep tan. The boy she remembered and had ogled had changed. Handsome features had strengthened. High cheekbones carved into his face with its strong, square jaw. A touch long, shaggy, his dark hair ruffled beneath the wind. “Kane?” She stopped on the pier, waited for him to look up. Straight, dark brows lowered over piercing, smoky-gray eyes as he studied her for a moment—a long moment. She’d forgotten how deciphering those gray eyes were. Feeling weighed and measured, she almost squirmed. “Do you remember me? Rachel Quinn,” she yelled to him. “I need to talk to you.”

He cast off the bow line. “Don’t have time.”

“I’ve traveled more than twelve hundred miles to talk to you.” He tossed the stern line onto the dock. “It’s really important. Vital,” she mumbled to herself as he strode toward the wheelhouse.

Rachel abandoned any notion of trying to shout over the chugging of the engine. Perfect timing, she berated herself. With Heather cuddled close and nowhere to go, she watched the boat, filled with passengers, motor out of the slip. The bow rose, rode a small swell, then lowered. She took a deep breath, drawing in the smell of fish and seaweed. If she’d arrived earlier, she’d have had a chance with him, could have made her announcement.

Well, she hadn’t. She ambled back to her van. So she’d have to handle this situation differently. She knew where he lived. He’d inherited Charlie Greer’s home, the same house that had at one time belonged to her family. She’d lived there until her teens.

The street his house was on led to the top of a cliff. The cottage was perched at the end of the street, and on a clear day it had a spectacular view of the sea. Odd that fate had brought her back here, that Kane, the one person she needed to see, owned it now.

The white clapboard house with blue trim was weathered from the wind and in need of paint. Wooden steps led to a wide wooden porch. The home, with its steep gable roof, had a full attic, high ceilings, a brick fireplace and plenty of creaky floorboards and groaning doors. A fish-shaped weathervane on the roof spun to point north. Rachel recalled her mother had loved the house, loved being so near the water.

She parked at the curb, facing a sky darkening with a storm. Within an hour, it rolled in from the north. Through the closed windows of her van, the wind howled. In the pewter-colored sky, lightning cracked, splaying fingers toward the choppy-looking water. Waves crashed against the rocky coastline even before rain began pounding.

She shifted on the seat behind the steering wheel, ate a second candy bar and downed a can of soda. Despite the junk food snack, her stomach growled. Heather slept, unaware of the storm. Rachel assumed that Kane had docked hours ago. So where was he?

He wondered what she wanted. Kane had no problem putting a name to her face. He hadn’t seen Rachel Quinn in more than a decade, but she’d been the girl he’d gone to sleep thinking about, the girl he’d never asked out, a red-haired beauty with shoulder-length hair, a girl with looks that had promised in time to rock some man’s world. Just the sight of her had been a bright light to him during some of the most dismal of days.

Slim, long-legged, about five-five, she wore her hair shorter now, chin length. It swung with the movement of her head. She’d changed a lot, he reflected as he recalled the baby in her arms.

He could only guess why she’d wanted to talk to him. Either she was the sentimental type who’d needed to see the family homestead, or she wanted to find his kid sister. They used to be good friends.

He shrugged and finished his dinner, a meat loaf smothered with brown gravy. A quiet thing, Rachel had always waited outside the house for Marnie. He figured she was afraid of the old man. Ian Riley had been drowning his sorrow in booze nightly and was more often drunk than sober.

Kane cursed himself for not giving her a few minutes earlier. He figured he owed her. Big-time. Sweet, she’d offered his sister friendship when shunning Marnie had been the in thing to do. Kids could be cruel. He hadn’t cared that he wore sneakers with holes, but their poorness had proved harder for Marnie. At thirteen, she’d agonized over the thrift-store clothes, over the taunts. His sister’s saviors had been Lori Wolken, some other girl and Rachel Quinn.

Looking up, he stared at the window and the rain pounding against it while a waitress poured more coffee in his cup. He’d driven to Bangor earlier. He was in a foul mood, mostly because of the rain. If a downpour lasted for days, he’d lose money.

Living nearby was a certain brunette with no interest in anything but good times, which suited him fine. He kept his life free of complications, of connections with others. He always would.

As nightfall closed in on the town, Rachel grumbled under her breath. This was dumb. While she was sitting in a car, waiting for Kane, her legs cramping, he might be hunched over a warm meal somewhere. Expecting Heather’s cry any minute, she yanked the giant denim diaper bag from the floor to the seat and hunted for a bottle of formula that she’d made up in a gas station rest room earlier.

When lightning flashed again, she glanced at the cottage’s wide porch. She should have known this wouldn’t be easy. Nothing had been going right since she’d left Texas. She’d never believed in omens or superstitions. She’d always been far too practical, too level-headed for mystical ponderings. But she’d had a flat tire in South Carolina, the alternator had quit outside of Washington, D.C., and the water pump had begun to leak at Maine’s state line.

Weary, she slouched on the seat, wanted to close her eyes. She might have, but a beam of headlights sliced through the curtain of rain. Rachel squinted through the van windows and the downpour. An old-model black truck maneuvered into the driveway beside the house.

In seconds the truck door opened. Shoulders hunched against the rain, a man raced to the house in several long strides. Wearing a seaman’s cap, a yellow slicker, jeans and work boots, he might be anyone. That sounded like a logical reason to her for stalling. In truth, uncertainty plagued her, kept her in the van. Coming here to see him was what she’d promised to do, but was she doing the right thing?

A light went on at the back of the cottage. It was the kitchen. She’d dried dishes often enough at the old porcelain sink. Mentally she geared up for the next moments, considered what she’d say. This situation was too important for her to mess up. But she was no more prepared now than she’d been hours, even days, before, and her empty stomach knotted.

Nerves had kept her from eating more than the candy bars. She could have excused uneasiness to old feelings and memories of when he used to make her teenage heart palpitate. Unbeknown to him, Kane Riley had been the first love of her life. In retrospect, Rachel concluded that she’d fantasized about him because he’d been forbidden fruit, the bad boy. But she wasn’t fifteen anymore, innocent and naive; she was experienced, had had a lover. Whatever nervousness was besieging her had more to do with concern for a baby than puppy love.

As she slid out of the van, the wind whipped at her, tossed down her hood. She yanked it up again, then stretched into the back seat to unbuckle Heather from her car seat. She wrapped her snugly in a heavy blanket and nestled her against her chest and beneath the opened rain slicker.

Almost punishingly the rain whipped at the side of her face before she reached the steps. They creaked beneath her feet; memories flooded her. As a child, she used to chase up the stairs after her brother. As a teen, she’d come down those stairs with the gangly sixteen-year-old star of the school basketball team.

On the porch now, she dabbed a hand at her wet face before she knocked on the door. In a matter of minutes she would fulfill a plan that had started in Texas almost two weeks ago. Optimism, along with tenacity, ranked as her best traits, but she was filled with doubt.

Tempted to turn on her heels and scurry back to the van, she rapped again. An instant later, the door swung open. Kane still intimidated her with a look, she realized, feeling more nervous than she wanted to be. “Hi,” she said with exaggerated brightness.

Deep-set eyes traveled down to her soaked and mud-spotted sneakers, then came back to her face. “What do you want?”

Rachel had used the moment to inch closer to the screen door, to breathe again. “It’s been ages.” She gave him her best smile. “I don’t know if you remember me. I was friends with Marnie,” she said, hoping the mention of his sister would stir his smile. “We—my family used to live here—in this house.” When he said nothing, she went on, “Charlie Greer sold it to my parents. Before we moved to Texas, Charlie bought it back.” As another chill gave her goose bumps, she contemplated what was the best way to get Heather into the warm house. “Do you remember me?”

He bore a five-o’clock shadow. It darkened his jaw, emphasized the shiny blackness of his hair, those pale-gray eyes. “I remember you.” No friendliness entered those eyes, even when they slanted toward the pink bundle cradled in her arms. Had he trained himself to keep his face so expressionless, his emotions so unreadable? “If you’re looking for my sister, I can’t help you.”

“This is kind of complicated. May we come in?” Rachel had been so anxious to see him that she’d never considered he might not be receptive to her. Had he always been so unfriendly? Years ago, blinded by infatuation, she’d never noticed anything except his muscles, those gray eyes and the sensation that quivered within her whenever he’d been near. “I really need to talk to you.”

“About what?” Despite the question, he opened the screen door.

Edgy, Rachel gripped the straps of the diaper bag that she’d slung over her shoulder before leaving the van and scooted past him into the house. Behind her, she heard the click of the front door closing. Tension crept up again as she faced him. She couldn’t blurt out words. Now because he acted so displeased with their intrusion, she felt stymied how to proceed. She could hardly thrust Heather at him with her news. This baby is yours. Take her.

With Heather’s squeak, Rachel mentally returned to a more immediate concern. “I’m sorry, but I’ll need to change and feed her, or in a minute she’ll demonstrate her lung power.”

He pointed to his left. “You can take her in there.”

She knew what room he meant. It used to be her bedroom. An enormous room, she’d shared it with her younger sister, Gillian. She paused at the doorway. Her posters of rock stars, the collection of stuffed animals, the lovely, ruffled shams, the laced curtain and the patchwork quilt were gone. The room contained a bed with a bare mattress, a small chest of drawers and a rocking chair.

Bending over the bed, she unwrapped the pink blanket, then the pale-aqua lightweight one from Heather. “This was my room, mine and my sister’s,” she said, aware he’d followed and was standing in the doorway. It felt so strange to be in the room she’d called her own as a child. She’d never insisted on privacy from Gillian. She’d liked being in a room with her sister, especially on stormy days and nights. Rachel had hated to be alone. Her sister, daring and bolder even at a young age, had loved to sit with her nose pressed to the window and watch the sky explode with lightning.

“Are you almost done?” he asked, as if she’d said nothing.

It was best Heather was too young to understand any of this. Rachel removed the soiled diaper, then fastened a clean one. “Yes, I’m done,” she replied while she maneuvered Heather’s tiny feet into the fleece, peach-colored sleeper and zipped it. She dumped the soiled diaper into a plastic bag that she’d removed from the diaper bag and wiped her hands with a moist towelette.

Only once had he glanced at Heather. She remembered his father had been like this, curt and remote. An angry, morose man, he’d made Marnie cry with his harsh words. What if Kane had become his father? Would Marnie have wanted Heather to be with a man like that?

Kane eyed the baby in her arms, had already noted no wedding band. A baby and no husband. He’d never figured this kind of future for Rachel Quinn, then he’d never really known her. “There’s coffee if you want a cup,” he said, and walked out. He viewed her last few moments as a stall tactic. Whatever her problem was, she was struggling to spit it out. What bothered him most was why she was involving him.

“The coffee smells wonderful.”

He looked back over his shoulder, made eye contact with her. He wondered where she’d left the baby. With a hand he motioned toward the coffee brewer. “There.” He had no intention of waiting on her, making her feel welcomed. He caught a whiff of some light and lemony fragrance as she passed by to reach the coffeepot.

“That room is the one that I—”

“Grew up in,” he finished for her. Turning, he braced his backside against the kitchen counter. “I know.”