DEVIN WASN’T GOING TO quit school and run back to L.A. with his tail between his legs. Much as he wanted to. His old life was about taking the easy way out; his new one was about finishing things he’d started. Even when they were hard.
He just hadn’t expected anything to be this hard.
He’d hit enough terrible lows in his life to know he would survive another, but this was a first for love. A broken heart packed its own wallop, and telling himself the librarian wasn’t worth this much suffering didn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference.
Fortunately, he had good reason to be away for a few days immediately following his breakup with Rachel. Zander might have agreed to play nice, but he’d renege if left to his own devices. Devin refused to let him out of his sight until they’d made their agreement legal.
That meant accompanying him to Sydney, where his brother had commitments. Devin had expected to be back in New Zealand by Tuesday, but quibbles over the fine print kept him in Australia until Wednesday night. Although he accepted the face-saving reprieve with relief, he knew he couldn’t put off the real world forever.
And he was increasingly anxious to make contact with Mark. The kid hadn’t returned any of his phone calls-hardly surprising given Devin’s boorish behavior at the spa. Behavior he’d regretted as soon as his anger subsided.
He’d wanted to hurt Rachel, but Devin hated acting like an asshole to any woman in front of Mark. Let alone the woman he’d soon discover was his birth mother. Still, Devin was surprised when he returned to class on Thursday to learn Mark hadn’t been at school this week, either.
His ego-always his strength and weakness-didn’t allow him to hesitate as he entered the library. But to his immense relief Trixie told him Rachel had taken a leave of absence. Devin quashed his immediate concern for her well-being. Whether she was or wasn’t okay didn’t matter anymore. He decided it was probably another way to postpone telling Mark the truth. “So where’s the kid?”
Trixie’s dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. “You mean you haven’t heard from him? He’s not returning my messages, either, but I figured he was punishing me. He said he was going home for a few days.”
She filled him in on Mark’s reaction to Rachel’s confession and his subsequent diatribe to Trixie about “disloyalty.”
So that was why Mark wasn’t returning his calls. Devin scowled, a look Trixie interpreted correctly, because she said, “He’ll get over it. It’s not as if Rachel blamed you or me…he just-”
“Feels like he hasn’t got a friend in the world.” What a goddamn mess.
“Don’t say that. Look, let’s call him at home right now.” Through directory assistance, Trixie got Mark’s parents’ number in Cambridge, then phoned and asked for him. Her kohl-darkened eyes widened. “Okay,” she said, “well, thanks anyway. Yes, I’d appreciate the number.”
Devin started to get a bad feeling. “He’s not there?” he said when she hung up.
“No, and they didn’t even seem to be expecting him because they told me to call him in Auckland. He canceled their visit tomorrow, too. Said he had to study for a test?”
“He’s probably holed up in his apartment to study,” he reassured her. There was no test. “Is that the phone number?” He rang it and got the answering machine, which gave Mark’s cousin’s cell phone number. She answered from Dubai and told him she hadn’t been home for a week. Devin kept his voice casual as he asked, “What’s the street address?”
When he hung up, Trixie said anxiously, “You don’t think he’d-”
“No Goth overreactions,” Devin interrupted, hiding his own increasing uneasiness. “My classes are finished for the day. I’ll call in on the way home.”
Her forehead creased in a frown. “I wish I could come, but with Rachel away we’re already short-staffed.”
“I’ll give him your love.”
That won him a smile. “Don’t you dare. But phone me, won’t you?” She scribbled down her number.
As soon as he was out of sight, Devin dropped the laconic stroll and whistled for a cab. Fifteen minutes later he was at the modest apartment block, hammering on Mark’s ground floor door and telling himself he was every kind of idiot for worrying. No one answered. A neighbor at the next apartment poked her head out her door, pulling it back like a turtle when she caught sight of Devin.
“Ma’am,” he called, “can you help me? I’m looking for Mark White. Have you seen him over the past couple days?”
Her head slowly reappeared and she scanned him from top to toe with her rheumy eyes. “Are you a drug dealer or an undercover cop?”
The right answer came instinctively. “A friend of his mother’s.”
“Hmm.” She came out, leaning on a cane. “I don’t normally see him much but I haven’t heard him for a few days…he plays the sound system loud when his cousin’s not there.”
Shading his eyes against the daylight, Devin peered through a chink in the curtains, and saw a light on in the lounge. “Is there any way of getting in here short of breaking the door down?”
“I have a key. Suzy, his cousin, gets me to water the plants when she’s away. Mark has good intentions but he’s liable to forget.”
Five minutes later, when she turned the key in the lock, he stopped her from reaching for the handle. “Let me go in first.”
“You’re expecting something bad, son?”
“I hope not.” Devin opened the door and stepped inside.
The place smelled shut up. Flies buzzed on the remains of cereal in an empty bowl. The milk had gone sour. Devin started to sweat. This isn’t the same, he told himself. Get a grip.
When he was twenty, he’d lost his best friend, the band’s drummer. Devin had found Jeff sprawled across his bed, the TV blaring, the paraphernalia of heroin beside him. He’d been dead for two days.
Forcing himself to walk, Devin moved from room to room until he’d checked through the whole apartment. Empty. His relief was so great he had to sit down. But it was short-lived. Where the hell was Mark?
“YOU DIDN’T PHONE on Sunday.” There was accusation in her mother’s voice.
She immediately felt guilty, even though there’d been nothing to stop Maureen ringing her. “I’m calling now,” she said.
“Four days later.”
“Mom, please…” Rachel massaged her temple. Why had she thought she might find comfort here? “This is obviously a bad time. I’ll phone again when-”
“He came to see me.” There was a strange satisfaction in her mother’s voice.
Rachel tried to remember what they’d been talking about last week, but the world had spun on its axis too many times since then. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall-”
“Your boy…Mark.”
Rachel’s grip tightened on the phone. “No.”
“He wanted to know why he was adopted.”
She went rigid. “Mom, what did you tell him?”
“The truth, of course. That your father and I wanted to keep him, but that you rejected-”
Rachel cut the connection and punched in Mark’s cell phone number with trembling fingers. Trixie had told her he wasn’t answering calls, but at least she could leave a message. “Mark, it’s Rachel. I know you’ve been to see my mother. There are two sides to every story. Please call me.”
She hung up. Briefly, she considered calling his parents’ home, but dismissed the idea. Whether he’d told them about her or not, this was a private matter between her and Mark. And Rachel wouldn’t force her way into his life without an invitation. Her son had to have some place of refuge.
Desperate to do something, she sat down at the dining room table and started writing a letter. If she posted it today, he’d get it tomorrow.
She’d only written three lines when the phone rang. Caller ID showed it was her mother. Rachel didn’t trust herself to pick up. Even if she could rip through Maureen’s fantasy that their life with Gerard Robinson had been normal-and right now she was angry enough to try-it would serve no purpose.
Her mother would never love her, and Rachel would only be stripping an old lady of a defense mechanism that had probably kept her sane.
“He sets high standards, darling, and gets so disappointed when we don’t follow them.”
“Getting drunk occasionally doesn’t make your father an alcoholic. He works hard and needs to vent.”
“Oh, I always bruise easily. Goodness, I’m so clumsy.”
And when the injuries were too obvious to laugh off: “Darling, I’m not feeling well, I’m staying in bed for a couple of days. You look after your father.”
Her father. The town councilor, the church elder, the treasurer of the Rotary Club, the manager of a bank…the great bloke. And in public, he always was.
The answering machine picked up.
“Rachel, I’m disappointed in you, but not surprised,” said her mother. “If you’d listened to Gerard and me none of this would be necessary.” She hung up with a disapproving click.
Almost immediately, the phone rang again, the library’s number. Trixie had promised to ring if she heard from Mark. Rachel snatched up the phone. But the news only ratcheted her tension.
“What’s the address?”
“Yeah, that’s why I phoned…” As soon as the call ended, Rachel ran to get her car keys. To hell with a hands-off policy.
The front door of her son’s apartment was open. Without giving herself time for second thoughts she tapped on it. “Mark?” Stepping inside, Rachel stalled.
Devin was checking through discarded papers on the dining room table. Instinctively, she took a couple of steps toward him.
“Trixie said you were coming.” He didn’t glance up from what he was doing. “Mark’s not here, Rachel. He hasn’t been here for a few days.”
Pressure tightened like a vise around her lungs, making it difficult to breathe. “Not here…then where?”
“I don’t know.” He gestured in frustration. “No one does, which is why I’m searching this place for clues.”
“He went to see my mother in Hamilton on Monday.” She started speaking faster and faster. “She told him that she and Dad didn’t want to give him up for adoption. If no one’s seen him since then-”
“He came back.” Devin picked up the newspaper spread across the dining table in front of him. “This is Tuesday morning’s paper. Wednesday’s and Thursday’s were still on the doormat along with his mail. It looks like some clothes are missing from his closet and there’s no sign of his guitar. If he’s taken that, he’s still okay.”
She absorbed the news and tried to think. “Is there anyone else he’d confide in, someone else he’d go to?”
“In Auckland, there was only Trixie and me.” His tone held no accusation, no hint of rebuke, though they both knew she was to blame for this. His boots echoed on the linoleum as Devin entered the kitchenette. “I’m hoping he left a note for his cousin somewhere.”
The internal vise wound tighter. “Why don’t you just tell me it’s my fault?”
“Because it won’t help find him.”
He was right. Rachel got a grip on herself. “Did you check his cousin’s bedroom?”
“Only scanned it. Take a closer look while I search in here.”
About to head in the direction he indicated, Rachel hesitated. “If I’d listened to you, or at least left you out of it, Mark would have had someone to turn to. I’m…sorry, Devin. For everything. You always had our best interests at heart.”
“Apology accepted.” Devin’s expression was opaque; he’d completely withdrawn from her. Rachel shivered.
She searched Suzy’s room but didn’t find anything on the dresser or the bedside tables. About to leave, she glimpsed the corner of a white envelope poking out from under one of many pillows and bolsters piled on the double bed.
The envelope was addressed to his parents. A Post-it note attached to it read “Suz, please post this to Mom and Dad. Rent’s paid until the 25th. You shouldn’t have trouble finding another flatmate. Mark.”
She must have made a sound because suddenly Devin was with her. Sitting her on the bed, he took the note from her nerveless fingers and read it. Then without hesitation, he ripped open the envelope and scanned the contents.
Rachel cleared her throat. “What does it say?”
“‘Dear Mom and Dad, I guess I should have told you I was looking for my birth mother. Well, I found her.’ There are a couple of lines scribbled out hard…he obviously doesn’t want anyone deciphering them.” Devin held the letter up to the light from the window and she saw that his hand, with its dragon tongue flicking across his knuckles, shook. Maybe it was the same tremor of exhaustion as hers. But Rachel didn’t have time to wonder why he hadn’t been sleeping. “I can only make out one word.” He stopped, a hard question in his eyes as he looked at her. “‘Rejected.’”
“My mother told him I didn’t want…” She shook her head, unable to finish. Tears were a luxury she wasn’t entitled to.
Something like sympathy flashed in Devin’s eyes, then he returned to the letter. “‘I know you’re going to be disappointed but I really need some time by myself to figure out…’ He’s crossed out ‘who I am’ and replaced it with ‘stuff.’” Devin frowned. “ I will call, I promise, hopefully even before Suz comes back from Dubai and you get this letter. Don’t worry, I have a job lined up already. Love, Mark.’ His cousin isn’t due back for another three days,” Devin explained, “so he’s not expecting his parents to get this until next week.”
Devin frowned as a preposterous idea came to him. He pulled his cell out of his pocket. Zander had left a couple of messages in the night, which he hadn’t had a chance to return. Trying not to get his hopes up-surely Mark wasn’t that credulous-he rang his brother, turning to the window because he couldn’t bear to look at Rachel suffering. Didn’t want to be moved by it.
“Thank God,” said Zander by way of greeting. “When I arrived home yesterday I found Mark on my doorstep. Apparently I told him I’d give him a job. I would cut him loose but he’s like a goddamn puppy that’s been kicked too many times.”
“Don’t! The last thing he needs is more rejection,” Devin declared. Behind him, he heard Rachel gasp. “Keep him busy until I get there and don’t, whatever you do, tell him I called.” Devin snapped his cell shut and turned, trying to ignore the dark shadows under Rachel’s eyes. She’d brought this on herself. “He’s safe.”
Still sitting on the bed, she dropped her head in her hands. Her long dark hair, normally glossy and thick, hung limp. “Thank God…oh, thank God.”
Devin couldn’t doubt the sincerity of her affection for her son. Grudgingly, he added, “He’s with Zander in L.A.”
She lifted her face, startled. “Why would he go there?”
Devin filled her in on Zander’s throwaway invitation to Mark. “I’m going to get him.”
Her throat convulsed as she stood up. “I know you hate me but-”
“Yes,” he interrupted. Rachel flinched. Did she really think he could switch her off so easily? Irritated, he finished his sentence. “You can come, too.”
But I haven’t forgiven you.
RACHEL HADN’T THOUGHT about getting to L.A. beyond packing a bag and grabbing her passport. Devin had said he’d organize the flights, which she’d assumed meant traveling on a commercial jet. So it was a shock when he told her to drive her car past the international departure terminal at Auckland Airport in favor of a smaller terminal where a narrow-bodied Boeing Business Jet was being readied for takeoff, against the backdrop of a blazing West Coast sunset.
“Is that yours?” she said stupidly, pulling into the private parking lot. They’d taken her hatchback because it had a backseat, necessary for Mark. Devin had conceded when she’d made that argument. She hoped he wasn’t humoring her.
“Yes, but more often than not it’s subleased to other customers. Because of the short notice, we’re sharing it today, but I’ve commandeered the bedroom for you-you need sleep.” She stepped into the customs and immigration building, instinctively raising a hand to shade her gritty eyes from the bright lights and well aware she looked terrible.
Self-consciously, Rachel fumbled in her handbag and held out a wad. She’d withdrawn fourteen hundred dollars from her savings account to pay for her flight. “Obviously, it’s nowhere near enough but…”
He looked at it curiously, then at her. “You’ll use me to get to your son but you’re coy about accepting a lift?”
“I didn’t use you-” She broke off because the customs official was coming toward them. The flight, including a refueling stop in Hawaii, would be sixteen hours. Plenty of time to set the record straight.
After the formalities, Devin shepherded her aboard the aircraft. Already dazed, she found the luxurious interior only disoriented her more. While Devin went into the cockpit to talk to the captain, an attendant-Kristy-ushered Rachel past the camel-colored leather couches and armchairs, the four-seater dining room table and lavish bathroom to a smaller, private lounge, where she settled her in one of the armchairs. “I’m so sorry you’re sharing the flight,” she apologized.
Despite her gnawing anxiety for Mark, Rachel smiled. “That’s fine,” she assured her.
“Let me stow that for you.” Kristy took Rachel’s overnight bag and placed it in a lacquered maple cupboard. “Anything to eat or drink?”
“No, I’m not-”
“When did you last eat?” asked Devin from the doorway. When Rachel hesitated, he turned to the attendant. “Feed her, please, Kristy.” He glanced back at Rachel. “I’m assuming you don’t want to join the others?”
She shook her head. Small talk was the last thing she wanted.
“Then I’ll check on you later.” He disappeared again, obviously unwilling to spend any time with her.
Kristy looked at Rachel, the question evident in her eyes. What did you do? Then, recollecting herself, she smiled, indicated the bedroom and en suite, and said she’d be back with a snack. Left alone, Rachel stared out the porthole at the last traces of smeared gold and pink streaks on the horizon.
She didn’t see Devin again until halfway through the flight. By that time her thoughts were driving her mad.
He stopped at the door when he saw her. “I thought you’d be in bed.”
“Don’t stay away on my account.”
Devin glanced over his shoulder as a burst of laughter came from the main cabin, then shrugged and stepped in, holding a briefcase. “I have work to do that needs quiet.”
Rachel attempted a weak joke. “If you need help with your homework…” She’d meant schoolwork and realized too late that the comment could be read as sexual. It fell into an awful silence.
Grim-faced, Devin sat and opened his briefcase. “It’s copyright paperwork on some of my early songs.” Briefly, he filled her in on the reason for Zander’s visit-to rub salt into the wound, Rachel suspected.
“I knew Zander had invited you to rejoin the band. I thought you were avoiding telling me because you were embarrassed about…” She stopped, picked up her cold coffee and sipped it, for something to break the sudden tension in the cabin.
“Embarrassed because I’d said I was falling in love with you and didn’t mean it? No, my embarrassment came later.”
“I should have trusted you.” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “you should have. But it wouldn’t have solved our basic problem. I was never more than a novelty toy to you, someone to play with while you waited for Mr. Right.”
He’d made that accusation before. This time it wounded the part of her she’d vowed never to expose again-her heart.
“You’re so wrong,” she said, but he’d already stood.
“I’m going back to the other cabin.”
“No!” Her anger came out of nowhere, explosively loud in the small space and catching them both by surprise. “I shouldn’t have let Mark walk away without an explanation and I’m damned if you will. Sit down.”
He folded his arms. “Make me.”
She launched herself out of the seat and kissed him, not lightly, not tentatively, but passionately, with everything she felt for him-all the love, all the aching regret. His lips tightened under hers. His hands closed around her upper arms like steel traps as he put her away from him.
Humiliated, she returned to her seat on the couch, but Devin made no move to leave.
“Steve-Mark’s father-talked me into smoking a joint the night I got pregnant.” Rachel couldn’t look at Devin, picking up a cushion and running her palm over the silky fabric. “I was crazy about him at this stage and he’d been teasing me about not drinking. He said it would make me happy. And oh, boy, it did. Happy and irresponsible.” She choked on a laugh, looked up. “When I smelled it on Mark…well, it was easier to blame you than admit I’d failed to protect him.”
Devin’s eyes were grave. “It was more than that, Rachel. You wanted to believe the worst of me.”
“No, that’s-”
“All the qualities that made me a danger to Mark-the wildness, the bad boy history-made me safe to you. Because I’d never ask you to marry me or have children with me, never make you confront the things you’d have to if I was the right kind of guy. Like why you’re so damn scared of anything approaching real intimacy. When I told you I loved you I broke the contract.”
“No guy is the right guy,” she cried. “I always chose men I couldn’t love. You were supposed to be another one. If anyone broke faith, it was you.”
“So you love me but you don’t want to. Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
She had to make him understand.
“Just because I did the right thing in giving Mark up for adoption doesn’t mean there aren’t scars.” She hugged herself, but it didn’t help. “At seventeen, you think of self-sacrifice as something worthy, something good and ennobling that will carry you through the loss. You don’t know that the scab will still fall off on his birthdays, that you’ll still ache every time you hold a baby and smell that sweet, soft baby skin. At seventeen I made the sacrifice and at thirty-four I’m still paying. You’re just the latest price.”
“Rachel.” Devin sat down beside her and reached for her hands; she pulled them away.
“I know what you want. You want all of me and I can’t…love you like that. Giving up my baby changed me… I can’t love anybody that much again, can’t risk that kind of loss. It hurt too much. It still hurts.” She swallowed, forced herself to meet his gaze. “My only regret is that I hurt you.”
For the rest of her life she’d remember the compassion in his eyes. “I’m a big boy. I can survive a few rounds in the ring with the Heartbreak Kid.”
A laugh escaped her, then a sob. Ignoring her protests, he sat beside her and put his arms around her.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered against his shoulder, “not even for you.”
“It’s okay.” There was nothing but comfort in his hold. “You don’t need to explain. It’s going to be all right.”
She lifted her face. Devin had never seen such agony. “Is it? Now Mark’s making me doubt the only thing I thought I got right.”
Tears slid down her pale face, silent sobs shook her body. Rachel put her hands over her mouth, trying to stop.
Devin stroked her hair. “Let it go.”
Shaking her head, she stood and stumbled to the adjacent bedroom, shutting the door. He followed her. She lay face down on the bed, her shoulders heaving with the effort of self-control.
He locked the door, then lay down beside her and gathered her into his arms. Rachel pushed him away, trying to curl in on herself and disappear. He pulled her arms free and put them around his waist, pushed down her bent knees and entwined their legs. He wrapped himself around her, trying to cover as much of her as he could with his body. “Let go.”
Rachel stopped fighting and burrowed into him, her nails digging into his back as she cried, jagged heartrending sobs that seemed as if they’d been held in check for seventeen years.
At last the weeping abated, her grip on him loosened and her body slowly relaxed against his, until Devin felt as if he held something ethereal, she lay so lightly in his arms. Exhausted, Rachel slept.
Releasing her, he swung his feet off the bed and stood up. Moving stiffly, his muscles still tight from absorbing her tension, he took off her shoes and pulled the covers over her inert form. She slept like the dead. Then he sat on the bed, pushed damp tendrils of hair away from her face and stared at her, his emotions mixed and powerful.
He still had the ability to minimize the damage she’d done to him, to protect himself with emotional distance.
In her sleep, Rachel sighed deeply.
Devin laid his palm against her cheek. Had anyone really loved this woman? It didn’t seem so. And yet she’d still had the courage to defy her parents and do what she thought was right by her unborn baby, even at the cost of her relationship with them. She’d been alone in the world from the age of seventeen.
His life had been charmed by comparison, his losses self-indulgent. He’d been a kid in the world, too, and stumbled; but she hadn’t. Not his Rachel.
Because she was his, no matter what she said. All his trials had been preparation, strengthening him to become a man capable of loving a woman who so deserved to be loved-and who might always hold something back.
He loved her anyway.