My Secret Valentine

Someday, if there was any justice in life, he would come to regret the way he’d treated Katy. Someday it would be her turn to walk away from him, to abandon him and make him feel unwanted and unloved.

Fiona hoped she was around to see it.

“What is it you’d wanted her to forgive you for?” she asked. For failing to come and see the woman who’d put her life on hold from time to time to make his a little easier? For putting his own needs ahead of an old woman who loved him dearly and would forgive him anything?

Or for refusing to acknowledge his daughter? Not many people outside her family knew he was Katy’s father, but Golda had known from the instant she’d heard about Fiona’s pregnancy. She’d welcomed her grandniece, and Fiona, too, with all the love and acceptance Justin had refused to offer. She’d made them feel as if they’d mattered.

To him they never had. He’d had his fun—livened up a dull vacation with a steamy affair—and he’d never given a damn how much pain he’d caused. But Golda had.

“I—I didn’t see her as often as I should have. I didn’t write, didn’t call…”

“Oh, gee, so it’s a habit,” she said sarcastically. “And here I thought I’d been singled out for shabby treatment. But you weren’t being cruel. You were just being you.”

It was difficult to tell with so little light, but she thought he might have winced. “Fiona—”

Holding onto the comforter, she stood up and gazed down at him. “She kept pictures of you all over the house. She told everybody how proud she was of her nephew, the ATF agent. She said you were the only Reed besides her that had ever amounted to anything.” She drew a deep breath and unwillingly softened her voice. “She loved the cards you sent, and the flowers on her birthday, and the roses on Mother’s Day. She loved the phone calls, and the postcards, and the little gifts, and every minute of every visit. She loved you.”

After a moment, she went to the door. She turned back to say… What could she say? Clenching her jaw tightly, she went inside, locked the door, then leaned against it for a few deep breaths.

There. Two encounters down. There would be only one more—the reading of the will in Mr. Markham’s office the next day—and Justin would return to Washington. She would never see him again.

The thought should make her happy. It did make her happy. So damned happy she had tears in her eyes.

After a while, she risked a peek out the window just as Justin got into his rental car. He was off to the Saloon, no doubt, where he’d get his burger and probably find a pretty little thing to keep him company while he ate. He might even take her back to Golda’s house, the way he’d once taken Fiona there.

And she didn’t care if he did. He was no longer a part of her life.

He was just a part of her daughter, who was her life.

Draping the comforter over the banister, she climbed the stairs to Katy’s room. Her daughter’s crib had been an antique, handed down through generations of the first family to settle in the Grand Springs area, and her cradle at the shop had come to America from Britain nearly two centuries ago, but her bed these days was a tree house. It filled half her room with one platform in the branches for a bed, another for a reading spot and a third one for a play area. The fat fake trunk had shelves inside to hold toys and books, stuffed squirrels and birds sat on the branches, and the felt leaves formed a canopy that reached up to the blue-sky-studded-with-fluffy-white-clouds ceiling.

It was an extravagance, built by Fiona’s father and decorated by her mother, and it had made Katy the envy of the kindergarten class at Jack and Jill’s Day Care. Fiona had thought it was much too indulgent, but she’d given in. After all, the kids at Jack and Jill’s had teased Katy one time too many about not having a father. Fathers were a dime a dozen—all the teasing kids had them—but there was only one fabulous tree-house bed in all of Colorado, and Katy had it.

Fiona reached through the railing to smooth her daughter’s dark hair from her face. The night-light—a string of white Christmas lights woven through the branches—cast a soft glow on her chubby cheeks, her long lashes, her full mouth. Asleep in an old T-shirt of Fiona’s that slipped off one shoulder and twisted around her sturdy little body, she looked sweet, angelic, so utterly perfect that Fiona’s heart ached.

Whatever sins Justin had committed, whatever lies he’d told, he’d given her the most precious gift she ever could have wished for. She might hate him. She might pray to never see him again. But she owed him her life. She should remember that the next time she talked to him.

In her bed, Katy rolled onto her side and her eyes fluttered open. “Is it time to get up?” Her voice was sleepy, baby soft, and never failed to brighten Fiona’s heart.

“No, babe, not yet. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” In an instant, her eyes closed and she was snoring softly.

Fiona gave her hand a kiss, then wrapped her arm around her favorite teddy bear. Then, with a weary sigh, she returned downstairs, wishing it wasn’t too early for her to go to bed, too. The sooner morning came, the sooner the appointment with Mr. Markham would come, and Justin would leave.

She really wanted Justin to leave.

After picking up the few toys Katy had left on the living room floor and rinsing their supper dishes to stack in the dishwasher, she couldn’t find anything else to do. The nervous energy that had kept her busy at the shop had done the same here at home. Everything was cleaned, polished, vacuumed and laundered within an inch of its life. She fixed a cup of hot cocoa, grabbed the comforter from the stair railing and settled in the living room with all the lights off and the television on, and with a nice view of Golda’s house. Not that she was keeping tabs on Justin, of course.

Though she did notice when he pulled into the driveway about the time she finished her cocoa.

And that he was alone in the car.

And that he hadn’t been gone long enough for anything besides a burger at the Saloon.

He got out of the car, stretched as if he were stiff, then, for a time, simply stood there, gazing first at Golda’s house, then at hers. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the cold, he looked…forlorn.

Sympathy she hadn’t let herself feel for him earlier welled inside her. Maybe Golda hadn’t been a regular part of his life, but she’d been the only person in his entire family to care about him. He’d never had brothers or sisters and apparently hadn’t mattered much to either parent. It was Golda who’d loved him, encouraged him, advised him and was there for him, and now she was gone. He was alone.

Except for Katy, the daughter he’d wanted no part of, just as his own parents had wanted no part of him. It was bad enough that he could ignore her so thoroughly, doubly bad that he could do so when he knew from experience how much it hurt.

Fiona’s sympathy died a quick death, and she resolutely turned away from the window and back to the television. He was alone, but that was his choice.

Let him live with it.

Still on East Coast time, Justin was up early Saturday morning. He finished his usual run before the sun came up, and was showered, dressed and eating breakfast by seven. His appointment with the lawyer wasn’t until eleven, and then he was heading for Denver. Much better to hang around the airport with nothing to do than to stay in Fiona’s territory.

He couldn’t help but notice when he left on his run that her car was still the only one in the driveway. Maybe her husband parked in the garage—not very gentlemanly of him, Golda would have said with a sniff—or they were a one-car family. Maybe he was out of town on business.

Why hadn’t Golda told him she’d gotten married and had a child? he wondered, then immediately answered. Because the one time she’d brought Fiona into the conversation, he’d been defensive and rude. She’d offered her opinion—You owe her an explanation—and he’d responded that it was none of her business. He’d given her two choices—she could talk about Fiona or she could talk to him. She’d chosen him and never mentioned Fiona again.

But it wouldn’t have hurt her to mention something as significant as getting married.

Scowling because he felt like a petulant child, he carried his cereal bowl and spoon to the sink and washed them, then stood there with his coffee, staring out the window. Golda’s yard, always her pride and joy, looked as good as was possible in the middle of winter. The grass was cut short, the flower beds mulched, the rosebushes protected from the cold. Fiona’s backyard had once been as neat, but now there was a swing set firmly planted in the grass, along with toys scattered around.

And a kid.

She was so bundled against the cold that her arms stood out from her sides and her walk was nothing so much as a lumber. Halfway across the yard, she looked back at the house, then yanked off the knitted cap that covered her dark hair. It landed on the grass at her feet. A moment later, the bright yellow mittens followed, and soon the blue parka was on the ground, too. A pair of sweatpants hit next. Wearing jeans, a shirt and a heavy sweater, she skipped to the back third of the yard, where a fleet of toys, a dump truck and bulldozer among them, waited.

From this distance it was impossible to tell whether she resembled her mother at all, though the hair color had definitely come from her father. It would be a shame to have a daughter with Fiona who looked nothing like her. Beauty like that should be passed down through the generations.

Absently rubbing an ache in his chest that had come from nowhere, he watched the girl fill the bulldozer scoop with dirt, empty it into the dump truck, then return for more. After the third load, he was about to turn away when a sharp report broke the quiet and the girl crumpled to the ground.

Apprehension tightening his chest, Justin set his coffee cup down, paying no attention when it slid into the sink, and started for the back door. When he opened the door to the sound of childish screams, he leaped over the steps to the ground and vaulted the chain-link fence into Fiona’s yard.

The girl was curled in a tight ball, wailing for all she was worth. Justin glanced at the hole she’d been digging, caught a glimpse of a green box inside and drops of bright red on the yellowed grass. As he crouched beside her, from the house behind them came a panicked cry.

“Katy? Oh, my God, Katy!”

His heart pounding, he gently touched the girl with a shaking hand and spoke her name. “Katy? Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

At his touch, she launched herself into his arms with enough force to push him off balance. She clung to him, her thin arms wrapped around his neck in a choke hold, her trembling body pressed so tightly to his that he couldn’t have peeled her away without help. Quickly getting to his feet, he headed for Fiona’s back door and met her halfway, coatless, shoeless and damn near hysterical.

“Katy? My God, is she all right? Is she hurt?” she demanded, keeping pace when he didn’t slow down.

“I don’t know. Call 911. Get an ambulance and the police.”

She ran ahead into the kitchen and was stammering on the phone when he got there. He set the girl on the counter, or tried to, but she refused to let go. She held onto him as if he could keep her safe, but it was too late for that.