My Secret Valentine

Because of her? Or because he hadn’t cared any more about his aunt than he had about Fiona?

He shifted again, and this time he did look… Not nervous. Uncomfortable. As if he wasn’t at all accustomed to the position he found himself in—the grieving nephew, the polite ex-lover. “I understand your being here has nothing to do with me, but…thank you anyway.”

“You’re right. Nothing in my life has anything to do with you.” Hoping her hand wouldn’t tremble, she gestured toward the center of the church. “You should probably get back over there. There are people waiting who actually want to talk to you.”

With a solemn nod, he turned and walked away, leaving her feeling… Edgy. Guilty. Ashamed. She wasn’t a rude person, and had never been cruel a day in her life. She could blame it on Justin. She hadn’t been a lot of things until she’d met him—easy, foolish, careless, dreamy, gullible, broken-hearted, pregnant. She hadn’t been so strong until she’d loved him and lost him. She needed that strength now to get through the next thirty hours.

She needed it desperately.

Justin turned onto the three hundred block of Aspen Street and slowed to well below the speed limit. The houses on the block were moderately sized, reasonably priced and in good shape considering they were nearly double his age. Golda’s was in the middle of the block on the left side of the street. Fiona’s was one closer.

It looked the same as it had six years ago. It wore a fresh coat of white paint on the siding, dark green on the shutters and door. The same car she’d driven then was parked in the driveway in front of the two-car garage, and what appeared to be the same lace curtains hung at her bedroom windows on the second floor.

But there were a few differences. A bike with training wheels was parked at the bottom of the steps. A kid-size basketball goal stood in the driveway next to the car. A red wagon on the porch held a soccer ball and a basketball among other toys. A remote-control Jeep lay upside down near the curb.

Maybe the toys belonged to her nieces and nephews, he reasoned, or maybe she’d been baby-sitting a friend’s children. But the cold, hard place that formed deep in his gut said otherwise. Fiona had a child.

Which meant she also had a husband.

He wondered how long she had waited for him before moving on. A few months? Six, maybe eight? And then she’d replaced him, gotten married and started the family she’d promised him. She was another man’s wife, raising another man’s child. Damn her.

And damn him. He’d promised he would come back, but he never had. He hadn’t written, hadn’t called, had ignored her calls. Plain and simple, he’d been afraid. All the intense emotions she roused in him had seemed perfectly normal when he was with her, but with distance had come doubt.

His parents had seen to it that he’d grown up with little belief in love and no faith at all in marriage. Their own marriage had been a mistake, and so had the ten or so they’d made since their divorce from each other. They’d acted on impulse every damn time, completing the meeting, lust, so-called love and marriage in record time, only to wake up with strangers they neither knew nor liked. Within a year, often less, the divorce was in the works and they were looking for the next person willing to make a fool of them.

He’d watched it happen time and again, often from the same household, usually from a distance, and he’d sworn it would never happen to him. If he ever married, it would be to someone he’d known a long time, someone he considered a friend, someone who didn’t believe in fairy tales of love and romance any more than he did. And if the marriage ended, he wouldn’t be so emotionally vested in it that it disrupted his life. He would deal with it like a mature adult and move on. He’d been so confident, so determined.

And yet the first time he’d mentioned marriage to Fiona, he’d known her all of seventy-two hours. After only three days, he’d been willing to tie the knot with a woman he hardly knew merely because she made him feel things he’d never felt before. He’d been not only willing but eager to follow in his parents’ footsteps, and that had scared the hell out of him.

So he’d cut her out of his life. Refused her calls at work. Let the machine pick them up at home. Ignored her quiet pleas. With eighteen hundred miles separating them, he’d convinced himself that Fiona had just been a fling, that the affair had been about sex and not love, that nothing so hot and intense could last. It hadn’t been difficult. He came from a long line of emotionally-stunted bastards. He’d had excellent role models.

Just past Fiona’s house, he pulled into Golda’s driveway and shut off the engine. He’d intended to spend the night at a motel, but his timing wasn’t the greatest. There was no room at the inns, and so the wayward nephew was left with no choice but to stay at Golda’s. Next to Fiona.

The lawyer had given him the key at the funeral—just in case. Taking his bag from the trunk as well as his briefcase, he let himself into the quiet, old house.

The parlor opened off the foyer and was filled with mementos of Golda’s life. He walked around the perimeter of the room, touching nothing, gazing at countless photographs of himself, from first grade through graduation, both prep school and college. His mother had missed one, and his father had missed both, but Golda had been there both days.

There were other photographs, mostly of people he didn’t know, as well as some childish drawings that had been framed and hung as if they deserved it. He assumed they were the work of the pretty little dark-haired girl whose photos on display numbered second only to his own, and wondered who she was.

A framed portrait on the piano answered that question. It was the same girl snuggled on her mother’s lap while they read a children’s book. She looked sleepy, contented, and her mother… Fiona looked happier, more beautiful and more in love than he’d ever had the fortune to see her.

Angrily he turned away from the picture. He didn’t care. Their affair never could have been more than it was, and it had ended six years ago. She felt nothing but contempt for him, and he…he felt nothing. He was just tired from the flight, worn-out by the guilt, depressed by the funeral and the graveside service. He needed sleep, then food, then more sleep, and he needed to get the hell out of Grand Springs, which he would do tomorrow immediately following the meeting with Golda’s lawyer. Once he was back in D.C. and at work, he would be all right.

He carried his garment bag upstairs, chose the guest room where he hadn’t once made love to Fiona, stripped off his clothes and crawled into bed. Sleep came easily, but it wasn’t restful. Too many memories, too many dreams.

When he gave up and got up, it was nearly eight o’clock, the sky was dark, and his stomach was rumbling. He dressed in jeans and a sweater, grabbed his coat and headed for the car. He got so far as unlocking the door before some impulse he didn’t understand and couldn’t resist drew him away, across the yard next door and up the steps. It was incredibly stupid, he told himself as he crossed the six feet to the door. She’d made it clear at the church this afternoon that she wanted nothing further to do with him. He had nothing to say to her. Her husband certainly wouldn’t appreciate him stopping by.

But none of that stopped him from ringing the doorbell or waiting impatiently in the thin glow of the porch light.

Through the curtained side lights that flanked the door, he saw a shadow approach the door. The long moment’s hesitation that followed told him it was Fiona, debating whether to answer the door or leave him standing there like the idiot he was. If asked to guess, he would have put his money on the latter, but he would have been wrong.

She opened the door only halfway and blocked it with her socked foot. Hugging her arms to her chest, she fixed a slightly hostile, mostly blank look on him and waited for him to speak.

“Hi.” Brilliant opening. Worthy of a door slammed in his face. “I was wondering…” About a lot of things, but the growl deep in his stomach gave him a topic to discuss with her. “Where can I get a decent burger around here?”

She looked suspicious of his question, but answered as if it were legitimate. “We have the usual fast food places. The diner downtown might still be open. Randolph’s definitely is, though I don’t know if they have hamburgers on the menu. The Squaw Creek Lodge restaurant, but it’s a bit of a drive.”

“Which one’s your favorite?”

“We like McDonald’s Happy Meals,” she replied with a hint of sarcasm, then grudgingly went on. “The Saloon. It’s a bar downtown that serves greasy burgers with fried onions and a side of heartburn. They’re the best around.”

“Any chance I could persuade you to keep me company while I eat?”

Her eyes darkened, and her mouth thinned into a prissy straight line. “No. None.”

Of course not. What man would want to stay home and baby-sit while his wife went out to the local watering hole with her ex-lover? “I…I just thought maybe we could talk.”

“What could we possibly have to talk about?”

He shrugged awkwardly. “Golda.”

For a moment, she stood motionless. Then she pushed the door up, not quite closing it. Justin wasn’t sure whether she’d changed her mind or was dismissing him, until she returned, wearing shoes and carrying a thick blanket. She slipped outside, closed the door, wrapped the blanket around her, then sat down on the top step.

He stayed where he was a moment. It was twenty degrees, and neither of them was dressed to spend any amount of time outside. Her warm house was a few steps away, and Golda’s was thirty feet away. There was no reason for them to freeze outside.

Except that she obviously didn’t want him inside her house, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be alone with her.

He sat at the opposite end of the same step and rubbed his hands together before sliding them into his coat pockets. As the silence between them extended, he reminded himself that he was supposed to talk about Golda, but he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say—not now, not with Fiona still obviously hostile.

Gazing at the house across the street, brightly lit in the night, he finally asked, “How have you been?”

Fiona slowly turned her head to look at him. He felt it. “You’re a little late asking, aren’t you?” The voice he remembered in his dreams as sweet, warm, tender, was as cold as the frigid air that surrounded them. “You said you wanted to talk about Golda. Do it or leave.”

Now it was her turn to stare across the street while he looked at her. The past six years had left him looking six years older and ten years wearier, but they’d simply left Fiona more beautiful. She’d always been pretty, with her red hair, hazel eyes, freckled nose, fair skin and exceedingly kissable mouth, but now she was lovelier, softer, more desirable, in a womanly sort of way. Was it motherhood that had brought about the change?

Or the man she’d married?

He couldn’t ask. He had no right. She had the dubious honor of being part of the single most important relationship in his entire life. He’d seduced her, and been seduced by her. He’d wanted to marry her, to spend the next fifty years at her side. He’d even imagined himself in love with her—him, a Reed, when everyone knew that Reeds were capable of many emotions, but love was not one of them.

And he had no right to ask her anything. What was wrong with this picture?

Golda, his conscience reminded him when Fiona shifted impatiently on the step. Turning so the railing was at his back, he went straight to the heart of what troubled him most about his aunt. “Did she ever forgive me?”

Chapter 2

Underneath the heavy comforter, Fiona was trembling, but it had nothing to do with the cold. Ask me if I’ll ever forgive you, she wanted to demand. Not in this lifetime. But she wasn’t Golda. She’d loved him in an entirely different way, and while he’d betrayed her, he’d merely neglected Golda. He’d broken Fiona’s heart and cheated his daughter of a father, but he’d deprived Golda of nothing more than a few visits.

Not that he cared if Fiona and Katy ever forgave him. He hadn’t even asked about her, hadn’t shown any interest at all in her existence. For all practical purposes, for him, she didn’t exist.