The Gazebo

“I swear I won’t let it change anything between us, baby. You and me. Nothing could change how much I love you.”

“But—”

“I’ll be all right, angel girl,” Deirdre assured her, but she could see disbelief in her daughter’s eyes. Emma knew she was lying. Hiding. But her family—they’d cornered her. What else could Deirdre do?

Plenty. Starting with getting straight answers for the first time in her life. Deirdre hugged Emma fiercely, then stalked out to the van. She backed out of the driveway, glimpsing Emma, shoulders drooping, cheeks wet with tears, one last victim trapped by the house and its secrets.

Damn them—damn them all. Her mother, the Captain, the brother she’d trusted more than God himself. She’d sworn she’d never let the misery of her own childhood touch her little girl. Now Emma was caught in the cross fire.

Deirdre’s fingers clenched the steering wheel, pain, betrayal cutting so deep she couldn’t breathe. No, she vowed. She wouldn’t let them hurt her anymore. Wouldn’t let them hurt her little girl.

She morphed pain into something harder, more familiar, easier to endure. White-hot McDaniel rage.

CHAPTER 2

TOYS SCATTERED THE PLAY yard fronting Cade’s log cabin, his beloved view of the Mississippi obscured by a fence designed to keep his five-year-old twins from tumbling into the river. But as Deirdre strode toward the gate, an escape attempt was well underway. Sturdy, dark-haired Will struggled to balance a tower made of furniture from the playhouse, while Amy perched on top with the grace of a fairy and the tenacity of a pit bull, attempting to unravel the mystery of the childproof latch.

A hot stab of grief shot through Deirdre, their intrepid innocence reminding her poignantly of her own childhood rebellions, how she’d chafed at any boundaries her parents set. It was for your own good. How many times had she heard that refrain? No doubt she was about to hear it again. An excuse for years of secrets and silence.

We were only trying to keep you safe….

But there was no such thing as “safe,” Deirdre thought grimly. Cade might try to convince himself his fence would protect his family, but Will and Amy would grow. The lock would eventually open. And the danger would still be waiting, inevitable as the letter Emmaline McDaniel tucked in her copy of Romeo and Juliet so many years ago.

“Freeze, you two!” Deirdre ordered.

The startled twins tumbled to a heap on the ground. Undaunted, they grinned up at her, sure that she adored them.

“Aunt Dodo!” Will called out. “My best plane flied right over the fence.” He jabbed a finger complete with bright orange bandage toward a rosebush Finn had planted last year. Deirdre’s heart twisted as she retrieved the killer paper airplane so obviously Cade’s work. He’d built Deirdre dozens when she’d been Will and Amy’s age. She could still see her brother’s long fingers folding the sheet of paper so precisely, as if making that plane for her was the most important thing in the world.

“You ever try to stage another jail break and I’ll make sure you never fly again! Got it?” They clambered to their feet and saluted the way the Captain and Emma had taught them—an almost fail-safe trick to get them out of trouble. Deirdre unfastened the gate and edged past the stack of child-size table and chairs.

“We never would’a tried to ’scape,” Amy explained as Deirdre returned the plane to its miniature pilot. “But they’re having big trouble screwing in there.”

“Screwing?” Considering the fact that Finn’s pregnant stomach was roughly the shape of her VW Beetle, the logistics of the R-rated definition boggled the mind.

“The crib,” Will explained. “Daddy’s been trying to put it together all morning and he keeps screwing it wrong.”

Her brother, Mr. Magic Hands, who made his living restoring antique airplanes, was stumbling over putting together something as simple as a crib? Deirdre refastened the gate and started toward the French doors that stood open to the breezes.

“Want me to show you where they are?” Will offered.

“She’ll be able to find ’em all by herself,” Amy said. “Just follow the bad words.”

The kid was right as usual. Deirdre could hear Cade and the Captain arguing in the freshly painted nursery long before she could see them. Finn, garbed in overalls and one of Cade’s T-shirts, was doing her best to smooth ruffled feathers. But her smile didn’t hide the lines of strain crinkling around her eyes and digging deep around her mouth.

She looked exhausted, this pregnancy taking far more out of her than when she’d carried the twins—or maybe it was the hopeless task of trying to keep the peace with so many McDaniels under one roof.

“The baby isn’t coming for three more months,” Finn soothed. “There’s no reason why we have to put the crib together today.”

“The twins were six weeks early,” Cade said, and Deirdre caught a glimpse of his face. He had the expression of a man walking barefoot across hot coals. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“If your husband would quit being stubborn and give me the goddamn screwdriver—” the Captain grumbled.

“Yelling at each other isn’t going to help,” Finn said. “I don’t blame either one of you for being distracted. But Deirdre’s stronger than you think.”

Deirdre ached at her best friend’s vote of confidence. Finn had had faith in her from the moment they’d met, when Deirdre had been a heartbeat away from surrendering the only thing in her life that really mattered.

Her daughter…

Deirdre hated the thought of Finn being caught in the middle of the impending storm, but she’d married into the McDaniel family with her eyes wide-open. What else could she expect?

“Besides,” Finn said, “Emma’s with her.”

The memory of Emma’s stricken face slammed into Deirdre like a fist to the solar plexus, shattering any consideration Finn’s condition warranted. Anger flared anew. “As a matter of fact, Emma was with me,” Deirdre snarled, charging into the room. “Thank you all so much for that little treat.”

“Deirdre!” Finn wheeled toward her, Irish green eyes asking more than Deirdre could ever give her.

“Thank God you’re here, girl!” the Captain grumbled. “You put this damned thing together! Your brother can’t tell a nut from a bolt today! I can’t figure out what the hell’s wrong with him.”

“That’s easy enough to explain. Nothing like a guilty conscience to screw up your concentration, is there, big brother? You sent Emma to the house.”

“That’s right. I told the kid where you were.” Cade tossed his screwdriver to the thick blue carpet and levered himself to his feet, his chin jutting at a belligerent angle that accented the faint scar he’d gotten hauling their father out of a fight years ago. “Go ahead and string me up. You wouldn’t let me come with you, and I didn’t think you should be alone.”

“I didn’t hold your hand when you were sorting through that box with your old comic books in it. Why shouldn’t I be alone to look through my own stuff?”

“You know damned well why.” Cade raked his dark hair back from his forehead and glared down at her with eyes as blue and blazing with defiance as her own. “That chest might as well have been stuffed with dynamite the way you blew up whenever you went near it.”

“And to think that was before I knew what was inside. You should have dug a little deeper when you went pawing through it the other day, Cade.”

“What do you mean when I pawed through it? The chest is yours. I never even opened it.”

“So you drove the Captain over for one last attempt at search and destroy?”

The Captain scowled. “If I could climb the stairs to that second floor, missy, I’d be in my own house where I belong instead of dragging my sorry self around here, getting in the goddamn way.”

“Captain, we’re glad to have you—” Finn started, but Deirdre plunged on.

“I found what you were looking for, Cade,” Deirdre said, her gaze locking with his. “It was there all the time.”

He gritted his teeth, struggling for patience, an expression painfully familiar. And yet there was something brittle about him, his blue eyes burning, intense. “How could I be looking for it when I don’t even know what it is?”

Deirdre drew the letter out of her pocket, betrayal burning through her anew. “Don’t even try to lie your way out of this, either one of you.” Deirdre brandished the envelope at her brother and father. “All this time you knew—”

“Knew what?” the Captain asked, looking bewildered. “There was nothing but frills and nonsense in that cedar chest. Get hold of yourself right now, girl, and act like a McDaniel.”

Deirdre gave a harsh laugh. “I wonder how many millions of times I heard that one? ‘Act like a McDaniel, Deirdre. McDaniels don’t cry. McDaniels never quit. McDaniels don’t run away.’ I stunk at being a McDaniel, didn’t I? I just never knew the reason why. But you did. You and Mom and…Cade.” Her voice broke. She hated herself for showing weakness, reached deep inside to quell her tears. “This is a letter Mom wrote when I fell off that stupid plane.”

“Sonofabitch!” Cade paled. He grabbed the letter.