Ten Years Later... Read online

  Ever the practical child, Brianna thought with affection.

  “What I mean is that everything I tried on just wasn’t...pretty enough,” she concluded, finally settling on the right word to describe her dissatisfaction.

  “Clothes aren’t pretty, Mama,” said Carrie, the picture of endearing innocence. “You are,” she insisted definitively.

  The child should be bottled as a tranquilizing agent. “You’re right—clothes aren’t pretty.” In the back of her mind, she wondered if she should be recording this conversation, saving it to replay when her tiny soul-of-logic turned into a sullen, typical teenager experiencing out-of-control angst over having a wardrobe that was too dull, too boring or just plain no longer sufficient for her current needs.

  Brianna took a deep breath, trying her best to center herself. Maybe the solution to her problem was just to let a neutral bystander pick her outfit.

  She glanced down at her daughter. “All right, what would you pick out to wear if you were going out to eat with someone who had once been very special to you but who you haven’t really seen in the last ten years?”

  Rather than dive into the piles of clothing strewn all over her mother’s bed, Carrie turned toward her with a question of her own. “Why didn’t you see the special person? Was he hiding?”

  Maybe. Maybe I was, too, Brianna thought. Hiding from the pain, from the fact that her heart felt as if it had been literally broken in two. Someone you loved was supposed to support you during a crisis, not go on with his own life and ignore what you were going through.

  “He went away to college,” she told Carrie.

  Carrie looked at her with wide, caring eyes. “And you couldn’t go?”

  How was it that this child could always strip everything down to its bare essentials, making the situation appear so simple, so cut-and-dried, even when it didn’t feel that way?

  “Grandpa was in a big accident—before you were born,” she qualified when she saw the question rising in her daughter’s intense blue eyes, “and I had to take care of him.”

  Carrie nodded her head. The little girl was probably merely taking in her words, but it almost felt as if Carrie was giving Brianna her own seal of approval for what she’d done.

  “And he’s all better now,” Carrie noted with no small pleasure. She beamed at the only woman she had ever known to be her mother. “You did a good job taking care of him, Mama.”

  Brianna returned her daughter’s smile, feeling heartened. Everything always seemed better, brighter, more hopeful whenever Carrie was around.

  “I did, didn’t I?” For some unknown reason, Brianna felt better now and was more confident.

  Grateful, she kissed the top of Carrie’s head. There were times when she couldn’t help wondering exactly who was taking care of whom.

  What she did know in her heart was that she would be utterly and completely lost without this unassuming girl.

  “Okay, Carrie, you tell me. Which dress should I wear?”

  This time Carrie did turn her attention to the clothes haphazardly heaped on the bed, a thoughtful expression wrinkling her small brow as she studied the dresses.

  After a moment, Carrie walked around the bed like a half-pint judge at a county fair pie bake-off contest, slowly regarding each “contestant” she viewed before her. Once or twice, she touched an article of clothing until, digging through the tallest mountain, her slender, small fingers closed over a scrap of bright blue fabric.

  Pulling on it, Carrie managed to draw out a simple dress that had been thrown onto the pile without the benefit of having been tried on. Brianna remembered dismissing the garment out of hand as being just too plain.

  Carrie held it up for her now. “This one,” the child pronounced.

  Brianna regarded her daughter’s choice. “That one? You’re sure?”

  Carrie nodded her head enthusiastically. Still, the dress didn’t really spark her imagination, so Brianna reached for another, far more formal, dress.

  “How about...?”

  She never got any further, because Carrie just moved her head from side to side, summarily vetoing the new choice.

  Instead, she deliberately separated the dress she’d selected from the others and now held it up for her review.

  “Try it on, Mama,” she coaxed.

  With a shrug, Brianna slipped the dress on, wiggling into the soft, short skirt and allowing it to glide lovingly over her hips. With short, focused movements, she smoothed down the fabric.

  The moment the dress was on her, Carrie’s smile grew wider. “You look really beautiful, Mama,” she declared with satisfied finality.

  How could she bring herself to argue with that? Brianna wondered fondly.

  “Well, if you really like it that much, then I’ll have to wear it,” she told the little girl. Maybe it wasn’t all that bad.

  Just then, after rapping once sharply on the unlocked door, Brianna’s father peered in.

  “You ready yet?” he asked with just a touch of impatience in his voice.

  She was just freshening up her makeup. “Just about, Dad.”

  Jim MacKenzie shook his head in absolute, mystified wonder.

  “I swear, it took less time for Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling than it does for an ordinary woman to get ready,” he mumbled under his breath—but it was still audible. “Your mother, God rest her soul, was just the same way,” he admitted, allowing a fond note to slip into his voice. “She started getting ready on a Thursday for a party she was attending the following Saturday.”

  “We take a long time because we want to look good,” Carrie piped up.

  Her father did his best not to laugh out loud, while Brianna declared, “What she said,” with complete approval.

  Jim shifted his eyes to look at his daughter. “Well, I guess it would be worth his wait—if this guy were waiting in our living room for you,” he added with a smile.

  Startled, Brianna glanced at her watch, then at her father. She’d lost track of time and it was getting late. “He’s not, is he?”

  “Nope. By my calculation, he’s got about ten more minutes. Unless he believes in being early—” As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Amused, Jim nodded. “Speak of the devil.” With that, Brianna’s father stepped back into the hall. “I’d better go let him in before he thinks you’ve stood him up.”

  Maybe it would be better that way, Brianna thought as the tsunami in her stomach rose to a record-breaking height. For now she kept that to herself.

  Glancing over to where Carrie had been just a second ago dispensing her little-old-lady wisdom, Brianna realized that the girl was no longer there. She had just too much energy.

  “Where’s Carrie?” she asked, turning toward her father.

  As if caught off guard by the question, he looked over toward the corner where he’d last seen her.

  Pointing, he told her, “She was just right here—” And then he sighed. The girl had more moves than three-week-old puppies. “Probably answering the door,” he realized. Carrie was nothing if not a challenge to keep track of. And he knew that with each passing year, it was only going to get worse. He sighed now, as if mentally bracing himself. “Don’t worry, I’ll go get her.”

  “No, we’ll both go get her,” Brianna said, grabbing her shoes in her hand rather than pausing to put them on. Right now, her temper was at the end of a dangerously short fuse. “I told her a hundred times she wasn’t to open the door by herself.”

  She was such a smart little girl in all other ways—why did she insist on disregarding this most important of rules?

  Okay, they lived in a very safe neighborhood, but that didn’t mean that someone who was less than trustworthy couldn’t just come in at will and ruin their lives by abducting Carrie—or worse.

  At that
exact moment, Carrie had reached the front door and was presently yanking it open. The door was not unduly heavy, but neither was it light, and the determined girl had to use both hands to budge the front door from its frame.

  “Hi,” she declared brightly upon achieving success. She was visibly checking out the person standing on the other side of her doorstep.

  Expecting to see someone near his own height, or thereabouts, Sebastian had to lower his eyes before saying, “Hi. Is Brianna around?”

  After appraising him, the little girl nodded. Then, turning her head ever so slightly so that her voice would carry inside the house, Carrie raised her volume and called out, “That guy is here to see you, Mama.”

  Mama?

  The simple, two-syllable word completely knocked the pins right out from under Sebastian.

  When he’d seen her again last night after such a long absence of contact, it really hadn’t occurred to him that Brianna had gotten married, much less that she’d had a child.

  “She’s your mother?” he heard himself asking the child as he struggled to keep his voice steady and lofty sounding.

  Even to his own untrained ear, Sebastian was forced to admit that he hadn’t exactly succeeded.

  “Uh-huh.” Large, luminous blue eyes regarded him. “Are you the guy my mama thinks is special?” she asked.

  The question took him completely aback and more than a little by surprise.

  Special?

  Did Brianna really think he was special, after all this time had passed? Or had the very pretty little girl with the rosebud mouth just gotten her facts rather confused?

  “I really don’t know,” Sebastian replied quite honestly.

  Before he had to face answering any more questions from the pint-size interrogator, he saw Brianna hurrying in, looking equal parts flustered and absolutely gorgeous. And she was headed for the girl.

  “Carrie, what did I tell you about opening the door when you’re alone?” she demanded.

  “Not to,” the little girl replied dutifully. “But I’m not alone,” she protested in the next breath. “You and Grandpa are here.”

  “But we’re not close enough,” Brianna reminded her.

  Carrie cocked her head. “For what, Mama?”

  “We’re not close enough to stop someone if they wanted to grab you and take you along with them.”

  In utterly logical fashion, Carrie glanced up at Sebastian. “You didn’t want to take me with you, did you?” she asked Sebastian.

  “I’m here to take out Brianna—your mom,” he tagged on.

  And why would she have agreed to see him, to go out for dinner, if she was a married woman?

  Unless...

  He looked at Brianna. “Is she yours?” he asked. He already knew the answer to that, or thought he did. He was trying to create a starting point for himself and then go from there.

  Brianna smiled, one arm going around the slender child and pulling her closer.

  “She is that,” she acknowledged both fondly and firmly.

  “Hello, son,” her father said heartily, coming in behind his daughter and addressing the young man he’d known and watched grow ever since he was four years old, as Carrie was now.

  Clasping Sebastian’s hand with both of his, he shook it warmly.

  “Nice seeing you again, sir,” Sebastian replied with equal feeling. “You’re looking really well,” he couldn’t help adding. The man really did seem better now than before Sebastian had left Bedford.

  James MacKenzie looked hardy and healthy and, except for the shafts of silver that were woven through his once dark, thick hair, he didn’t look a day over fifty—even though Sebastian knew that he was.

  “That’s all Brianna’s doing.” Jim more than gladly gave his daughter the credit for saving his life, and for all but bringing him back from the dead. “She makes a great little dictator as well as an incredibly fine nurse,” he said fondly. “And if it weren’t for her, I don’t mind telling you that I’d be pushing up daisies right this minute.”

  “Pushing them from where, Grandpa?” Carrie asked.

  “We’ll talk about that while Sebastian takes your mama out for a nice dinner,” he promised. Not possessing a subtle bone in his body, Jim all but shooed the couple out the door. “You two better be going,” he prodded, “if you want to get a good table. They go fast this time of the evening. And you don’t want them putting you by the kitchen.”

  “We’re going, Dad, we’re going,” Brianna assured him, knowing her father was afraid that she would find a reason at the last minute not to go.

  As much as she wanted to come up with an excuse to bow out of the evening, she had a feeling that it would just be postponing things. This way, she’d endure the evening and then it would all be behind her.

  After that, she thought, Sebastian would be on his way back to Japan or wherever and she could go back to living a quiet, normal life—such as it was.

  “Don’t hurry back,” her father called after them as they left the house. “I’ve got everything under control here.”

  I only wish I did, Brianna couldn’t help thinking as she turned to wave goodbye to her daughter.

  Chapter Six

  Holding the car door open for her, Sebastian automatically looked down at Brianna’s left hand as she slid into the passenger seat and then drew in her legs. He paused before closing the door.

  Confusion mingled with a touch of relief when he saw that her ring finger was conspicuously unadorned. He wasn’t sure exactly what made him look at her other hand, but when he did, he saw a small, tidy-looking diamond ring on the third finger.

  Well, that answered that question, he told himself. Or so he believed.

  “Change your mind?” he heard Brianna asking.

  Caught between two streams of thought, Sebastian looked at her quizzically. He wasn’t sure what she was referring to.

  It hadn’t gotten any clearer by the time he came around to the driver’s side and got in. He glanced at her before buckling up.

  “What?”

  How did she tactfully word this without making it seem as if she was criticizing him? She gave it her best shot.

  “Well, you were just standing there.... I thought that maybe you’d changed your mind about our going out for dinner.”

  Belatedly, he realized that he’d just frozen for a moment while she’d not only gotten into the car, but while she’d fastened her seat belt as well. He’d managed to close her door after a beat and had rounded the car to his side like a man trapped in a dream.

  She’d probably thought he had turned into a village idiot, Sebastian upbraided himself.

  “No, sorry, I guess I just got caught up in a thought.”

  He’d been staring at her and something was obviously either bothering him or distracting him. Either way, she wanted to know what this was all about. Otherwise, the awkward moments would only continue to pile up on one another.

  “Something you’d like to share with the class?” she prodded, tongue in cheek.

  For a second, he thought of just shrugging it off. The idea of saying something inane about needing to call his immediate superior in Japan crossed his mind as well. But any hastily constructed excuse would only be entrenching himself in a lie, and lies had a way of coming back and either biting you or blowing up on you when you least expected it. If nothing else, lies were hell to keep track of and usually became far too complicated to remember.

  He had no desire to be caught in a lie. It was a long way back from that sort of thing.

  “I was just looking at your ring,” he told her, nodding at her right hand as he reached behind himself for the seat belt and buckled up.

  At the mention of the ring, Brianna glanced down at her right hand. The engagement ring that J.T. had slip
ped onto her hand when he’d proposed to her had held such promise for her once. Now what it held was the memory of the man and what had almost been.

  It also served to remind her that, for whatever reason, she just couldn’t seem to get to the “finish line,” couldn’t even get to first base in that mystical land of “happily ever after.”

  Get a grip. He wants to catch up, not watch you sob into your salad.

  Since Sebastian wasn’t following up his statement with either a question or an observation, she felt obligated to say something herself and push the stillborn conversation along a little further.

  “Carrie’s father gave me this ring.”

  “Were you married long?” he asked Brianna out of the blue.

  The question took her aback for a moment and she said the first thing that popped into her head. “No.”

  Which had to mean that her ex was a piece of work, Sebastian concluded, because he knew Brianna. She wouldn’t have just shrugged her shoulders and walked away from her marriage at the first sign of trouble. She was and always had been a fighter. He would bet his soul that she had tried to resolve whatever it was that had ended the union.

  “I hope the divorce wasn’t a drawn-out, nasty affair,” he said with sympathy. “Those can really be hard on a kid, although your daughter does seem as if she’s a very bright, well-adjusted little girl.”

  He was babbling now, Sebastian realized, and couldn’t find the right place to stop without just abruptly shutting his mouth. He chastised himself for ever beginning the awkward topic.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “Forget I said anything. It’s none of my business.”

  The light ahead turned red and he brought his vehicle to a stop. That was when he became aware that Brianna had raised her hand and was waving it like a student.

  “Yes, the girl in the front row,” he responded, calling on her the way he would if this had actually been a classroom scene.

  “I thought I’d rescue you before you wound up going too far in the wrong direction,” Brianna told him.