Father and Child Reunion Read online

  He wasn’t swayed by her logic. “It’s been six years, Eve. How much longer do you need?”

  Far more than you’re giving me, she thought, catching the adversarial glint in his eyes. She honestly didn’t think he would want anything to do with Molly. But if he did, she needed to know the man he had become, and what sort of influence he would be in her daughter’s life. In her own life. She had so little to go on now.

  Rio didn’t seem to expect an answer. Despite the faint edge in his words, his deep voice remained as cool and matter-of-fact as his expression.

  “Did you know that I tried for weeks to find out where you’d gone, Eve? Weeks,” he repeated, the edge hardening. “But all I could find out was that you’d decided to finish school in California and that you were staying with relatives. Your mother refused to tell me anything else. So I went to the registrar’s office at the college. I thought I could find out where your records had been sent. But they wouldn’t give me a thing, so I tried your mom again. Only that time I asked her if she’d sent you away because of me.”

  “Rio—”

  “She claimed it hadn’t been her idea for you to leave,” he said, cutting her off. “Apparently, you were the one who didn’t want me to know where you were. But she said she’d ask you to call me. Did she ever ask you that, Eve?”

  More than once. They’d even argued about it. “Yes,” she quietly replied.

  That wasn’t the response Rio wanted. He’d wanted Eve to deny that Olivia ever gave her his message. He’d wanted her to tell him that her disappearance had been her mother’s idea all along, and that Olivia really hadn’t been as accepting of him as she’d seemed to be. It would have salved his pride enormously to know that Eve had been coerced into leaving. But all she’d done was confirm that it had, indeed, been her decision to leave without a word of explanation.

  He slipped the recorder into his pocket, then leaned forward to let his clasped hands dangle between his knees. For so many years, none of this had mattered. He’d gone on, done what he’d wanted to do. Forgotten. Or so he’d thought. He’d forgotten nothing. He’d simply buried the feelings of hurt, confusion and anger along with a sense of loss that had stunned him. Seeing her again had been like entering a forbidden burial ground. All manner of ghosts had risen up to haunt him.

  “Just tell me what I’d done that you couldn’t at least talk to me before you took off.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Rio. It wasn’t a matter of who did what to whom. It was the circumstances.”

  “Like the circumstance that you’re white and you decided you didn’t want to be involved with an Indian? Was that it?”

  Eve’s startled “No!” was little more than a gasp as she grabbed his arm to keep him from moving away. Race had never been an issue. Not for her.

  She wasn’t sure Rio believed that. Seeing his dark eyes turn to flint, jarred by the unexpected accusation, she wasn’t sure of anything at the moment. It was incomprehensible that her leaving so long ago would matter to him now. Just as unfathomable was how deeply he’d dug looking for the reason she’d gone. As for his heritage, he’d scarcely mentioned his family at all when they’d been together, and it was never a factor in their relationship.

  The tension in the hard muscles beneath Eve’s hand finally registered. Reaching for him had been instinctive. But touching him had been a mistake.

  His glance fell to her hand, pale and slender against his darker skin. In the space of a heartbeat, it moved to her lips, lingering long enough to seal the air in her lungs before shifting to meet her eyes once more.

  He was a beautiful man. Solid as the earth. As mysterious as the craggy mountains rising all around them. She’d always thought him so. But there was an edge to him now, a kind of raw energy that surrounded him, an invisible force field that made him even more unreachable than he’d once been.

  That thought caused a ball of nerves to knot in her stomach. Or maybe what she felt was the heat of his glance pooling the warmth low in her belly. He was a much harder man than she remembered. So much more cynical.

  And so very…male.

  Totally unnerved, her hand slipped from his arm. As it did, the rising cry of an ambulance siren sliced through the heavy silence. The sound had just started its downward arc when it was joined by an electronic beep.

  Rio swore. With his jaw clenched tightly enough to crush bone, he reached for his phone on his belt and looked at an incoming text message. “I’ve got to go.”

  Eve couldn’t hide her relief at the reprieve. Still, desperate to keep the lines of communication open between them, for Molly’s sake, she started to reach for him again.

  Like a child who’s just remembered the burner was hot, she pulled back and curled her fingers into her palm. “I don’t want us to be like this, Rio. Please. We don’t have to be enemies.”

  Rio was already on his feet, towering over where she remained seated on the bench. With her head tipped back as she looked up at him, she reminded him of a frightened doe with her throat exposed to a predator. She wasn’t even trying to protect herself.

  The phone beeped again, the sound as impatient as he was beginning to feel. “We’ll have to talk later.”

  “Can I call you tomorrow?”

  Her reluctant question caught him as he turned. Not at all sure what to make of her, he told her to suit herself and cut across the grass to where he’d left his Durango parked at the curb.

  The ambulance that had just left the hospital went screaming by as he called the news desk. Thirty seconds later, he pulled onto the tree-lined street and was on his way to the other end of town to cover an accident involving a semi and a motorcycle. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which vehicle had lost. He just wished whatever was going on with Eve was as obvious.

  She clearly didn’t want to talk about why she’d left. Yet she wasn’t making any effort to avoid him, either. That alone made him curious. He hated unanswered questions.

  He was even less enthralled with the unexpected feelings that had crawled out of nowhere.

  He could usually separate his feelings from a situation, act only on those that were necessary. As a child, he’d been taught that judgment was impaired when the mind was not clear. Man must rule emotion, not the other way around. As a reporter, the talent was invaluable. As a man, he found it protective. So all he had to do was clear his mind. Focus. And put the entire encounter with Eve into perspective.

  The task took a block and a half. Following the ambulance through a red light, he told himself he’d be a fool to let injured pride stand in the way of an investigation. Eve was a valuable source. If she’d talked to Olivia as often as she’d indicated, she probably knew more than anyone realized. He could use her to corroborate information and pick her brain about possible suspects. The rest, he would ignore. After all, he had no problem with balancing acts. Having walked the line between rebellion and conformity for as long as he could remember, he was actually pretty good at it by now.

  The ambulance rolled to a stop mid-intersection, blocking the blinking lights of a patrol car. After pulling past a no-parking zone so he wouldn’t be in the way of the paramedics, Rio headed at a trot toward the man who appeared to be the driver of the semi. Even as he mentally winced at the teenager sprawled near the mangled motorcycle, he reminded himself to ask Eve if Olivia had kept any sort of a diary.

  * * *

  The pages of the calendar her mom kept by the phone in her study reminded Eve of her own. Notes, phone numbers and artistic doodles showing a flair for spirals and curves lined the margins. Most of the grids were filled in with birthdays or anniversaries of friends and professional commitments of one sort or another.

  Eve was on the phone, adding a few doodles of her own while making arrangements to cover one of those commitments when three and a half feet of nightgowned and pigtailed little girl came tearing into the comfortable, book-lined room.

  “Mommy,” she whispered loudly, as if whispering didn’t count
as an interruption. “There’s a man at the door. A big one. I didn’t open it,” she added, well versed in the perils of “stranger-danger,” “but I saw him through the window. I waved.”

  Excusing herself to Betty Dodd, the intimidatingly efficient executive chairperson of the Children’s Center, Eve put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Is it Uncle Hal?”

  Molly gave an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know who he is. Want me to ask?”

  Eve had already changed into her nightclothes. Buttoning the long white cotton robe she’d thrown on over her chemise, she told her little girl that she’d take care of it and to go back to her movie, then told the woman who’d asked her to speak in Olivia’s place at a charity luncheon that she’d have to call her back. Eve wasn’t expecting anyone this evening. Especially not at this hour. It was after nine o’clock.

  The robe was fastened from mid-thigh to lace yoke when she hurried through the foyer. Passing the wide archway to the living room, she saw Molly sprawled in front of the television once more, watching Aladdin for the hundred and umpteenth time. Hoping the child would stay put, and pretty certain she would since her favorite part of the DVD was coming up, Eve glanced through the pattern of leaded glass on the door.

  Rio stood in the blue-white glow of the porch light.

  She opened the door but not the ornate metal screen.

  A frown of uncertainty slashed Rio’s chiseled features when his appraising glance slid from her neck to her knees. “You weren’t in bed, were you?”

  “Not yet.” Watching his frown settle between her breasts, she reached for the button at her throat. “I was on the phone.”

  “I know,” he muttered. “Your line’s been busy all evening.”

  She meant to keep him on the porch. Overriding her intention to join him out there, he pulled open the screen the moment she unlatched it. Or maybe, she thought, seeing his mouth pinch when she shivered, it was the fact that she was getting cold that made him decide to step inside.

  His rationale made no difference. Either way, Eve had to back up to avoid getting run over, but she refused to move any farther than the entry table. She wasn’t concerned about how Rio’s presence dominated the space, or even about his purely male interest when his glance strayed again to the sheer lace exposing glimpses of skin above her breasts. He could strip her naked for all she cared at the moment. What left her so unnerved was the fact that he was here, and so was Molly.

  Exercising the only control he’d left her, short of pushing him back out the door, she turned her back to the wide oak staircase so he wouldn’t be facing the living room.

  “This isn’t a good time, Rio. I know we need to talk, but maybe we could do it tomorrow. You can come back in the morning. Or I’ll meet you.”

  “Relax, Eve. This isn’t about us.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, his sigh heavy. “I just want to know if Olivia kept any sort of a diary here.”

  Relaxing was impossible. Not with him standing thirty feet from the daughter he didn’t know he had. Seeing him frown at her crossed arms, she did what she could to accommodate him and let them fall to her sides. “I don’t know that she kept one at all. At least, I haven’t come across one. I’ll look again and let you know.”

  And ask you later why you want it, she added to herself as she started for the door.

  He wasn’t going to be dismissed that easily.

  “What about a personal phone book? The kind that has family friends in it. Is that here, or did the police take it?”

  “It’s here. So is her personal calendar,” she conceded, but she didn’t get a chance to ask if his questions could wait. The chatter of animated voices drifting from the living room had given way to the strains of violins. Right on cue, Molly’s clear, sweet voice joined the cartoon characters on the screen serenading the world from a magic carpet. Dynamite couldn’t blast her away from this part of the show.

  A bubble of panic lodged in Eve’s chest when she saw Rio’s dark head turn to the living room.

  Molly was sitting up now, her back to them as she sang along with her favorite song. The child definitely had his attention, but with Molly glued to the television, all he could see of her was the back of her pink nightgown and two long, dark pigtails.

  “That’s your daughter?” he asked, without taking his eyes from the slender little back.

  Protectiveness joined panic. “Yes. And she doesn’t know anything that would be of any help.”

  His eyebrow arched at the easy way she’d read him. “People tend to underestimate kids. You never know what a child sees.”

  Had it not felt so imperative to put some distance between him and that particular child, Eve might have wondered how someone who’d wanted so little to do with children had come by such an insight. But with her nerves stretched thinner by the second, and unprepared for him to discover exactly who Molly was, creating that distance between father and child was her only interest.

  “Mom’s address book is in the study,” she said, snagging his attention once more. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll get it.”

  With one last glance toward the little girl now holding her arms wide as she belted out an amazingly clear high C, Rio stifled a smile and followed Eve down the hall.

  “How long have you been divorced?” he asked from behind her.

  Her heart gave an unhealthy jerk. “I’m not divorced.”

  That gave him pause. Or maybe, Eve thought, he was just silent because they’d entered the study and he was looking around. At her mother’s collection of law books, perhaps. Or the prints of wildflowers that saved the space from being too masculine. She honestly didn’t know what he was doing when she headed for the antique mahogany desk that bisected the narrow room. Nor did she care. She just wanted him out of there.

  “Are you widowed?” he asked, a little more quietly.

  Just as quietly, she responded with a soft “No.”

  Another moment passed. Eve could have sworn she heard wheels turning.

  “I heard that you didn’t have a husband.”

  With her attention on the drawer she opened, she murmured, “It’s nice to know the local grapevine is so accurate.” She held up the small brown address book, determined to keep his focus on his investigation for now. “What do you want with this?”

  Rio had come to a halt near the hunter green wing chair. His frown matched hers, but she couldn’t tell if it was because he now knew she’d never been married, or because she was holding what he wanted and she didn’t appear willing to give it up.

  “I’m looking for names of people Olivia knew so I can talk to them. Until you came back, I couldn’t get to any of her personal things.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him what made him think he could have access now. But that was her independence asserting itself. She couldn’t afford to irritate him. For a number of reasons.

  “Look,” he began, seeming to realize he’d assumed more than he should. “Your mother routinely confided in you. And you said yourself that you aren’t getting much information out of your brother. If you’ll help me with my investigation, I’ll see that you don’t have to rely on him to keep up with what’s going on, or worry about bothering the detectives. I’ll tell my contact at the department that we have an arrangement, and keep you informed about anything that develops myself.”

  Eve felt the faintest trace of tension ease from her shoulders. She already knew she’d do whatever she could to help find her mother’s killer, and to have access to the investigation through Rio would be a godsend. Not only would she know what was going on, she also would have the chance she needed to get to know him.

  “I need some of the numbers in here,” she said, thinking that he hadn’t changed in at least one respect. He still seemed as driven as ever. She knew he’d been working since at least nine o’clock this morning. Twelve hours later, he was still at it. “The police made a copy of this and her calendar. I’ll make photocopies of them and bring them by your office. Mayb
e I could buy you lunch?”

  She didn’t know if he was interested in her offer. Only that he was either surprised or intrigued by it. His eyebrow had barely arched when his attention was diverted by the little girl whose curiosity about their visitor had kicked in the moment her song was over.

  Chapter Three

  Molly stood in the study doorway, her long pink nightgown falling off one shoulder and puddling on the tops of her bare toes. Ted, her battered, blue teddy bear, dangled from one hand.

  Eve didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she even breathed.

  The address book had lost Rio’s attention. Turning to the door, an easy, wholly unexpected smile stole over his face.

  “Well, hi there,” he said, that same smile entering his deep voice. “Is your show over?”

  “The good part is.” Molly’s eyes, blue like her mother’s, moved up his frame. As small as she was, he must have looked like a mountain to her. “I’m Molly Stuart. Who are you?”

  “Rio Redtree.” Yanking at the knees of his khakis, he crouched down in front of the curious child and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Molly.”

  Molly grinned and, doing what she thought people did when they went through this routine, laid her small hand in his broad palm.

  As long as her mom was around, no person was a stranger. So it wasn’t her daughter’s behavior that gave Eve pause—even when Molly screwed up her nose at his last name and said she didn’t know people could be named after colored trees. It was Rio’s manner that was so unexpected.

  It had been her experience that men, unless they were already familiar with children, tended to treat any human in the three-feet-tall range with either ambivalence, suspicion or a combination of both. Certainly, she’d never suspected Rio would seem so comfortable around a child. Not given how certain he’d been about never wanting any of his own.

  Confusion joined trepidation as Molly, noticing the ring he wore, took his hand in both of hers and turned it over. Rio didn’t seem to mind her interest. Nor did he seem in any particular hurry to get back to what he’d been so interested in just moments ago. As he explained the shapes etched in the heavy silver of the ring, Rio seemed as intent on the child as the child was on him.