Jill Shalvis: Long-Lost Mom

She’d gotten that tidbit from the detective she’d hired, and her heart had nearly broken. For it had been her fault that he’d had to work so hard back then.

Her fault. Her fault. Her fault .

The words repeated like a mantra through her head, mixing with the crashing waves.

Why hadn’t she told him the truth just now? Why had she reverted to the young girl of her past and taken the easy way out, using the name she’d adopted for herself-Cindy Beatty?

She could have told him about the car accident that had changed her life. Yes, she’d nearly died- should have died. Instead, she’d been given a new lease on life. A chance to right her wrongs, of which there were an unfortunate many. And oh, yes, thanks to plowing face first through her windshield and then having three cosmetic surgeries to repair the damage, she had a new face with which to do it.

Jenna had waited until today, her twenty-seventh birthday, to make the final move, to come back to San Paso Bay, midway up the California coast and get what she’d always dreamed of.

Forgiveness. And her daughter.

A new birthday, a new beginning.

She hoped.

But sitting on the rock that had once been hers and Stone’s safe haven, all she could think of was how it’d been one of the last times she’d seen Stone. The way he looked without the restriction of any clothes covering that surprisingly savage strength. What she would give to feel him pressed against her, to have his hard arms encircle her body and tighten around her until…

She was crazy thinking like this. Crazy. Drawing a shaky breath, Jenna cleared her head and forced her thoughts in a different direction.

She had to right some of her wrongs, and as hard as it would be, she had to tell everyone who she was.

Or did she?

Confused and surprisingly hurt, she stared at the stairs up which Stone had disappeared.

The detective she’d hired had done his job. She knew all the paper facts about Stone and his daughter- her daughter knew where they lived, what he did for a living, what he drove, and still it wasn’t enough. She yearned for more. She yearned to see her child.

For that, Jenna needed forgiveness. And Stone-she needed him, too. He’d looked so good. So big and powerful and darkly beautiful. So… hers. Only he would never be hers again. She’d seen to that ten years ago, when she’d run from both of them like the frightened seventeen-year-old she’d been. The ache in her heart was so sharp it almost doubled her over.

So did the shock of him not recognizing her-an additionally painful and deflating blow.

Well, what had she expected? A jagged windshield tearing off her face hadn’t helped any. Neither had the reconstructive surgeries or the way her hair had returned darker after being shaved in pre-op. And no one would recognize her voice, which was now throatier-even sexier-thanks to her voice box also being damaged in the accident. But most of all she blamed the ten years that had passed so quickly since she’d left the small town nestled on the California coast.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered. Stone, in spite of his inner toughness and sometimes blunt nature, was a gentleman at heart. No matter how much rage and resentment he’d built up against her-and she was certain there was plenty-his sense of decency and honor would prevail. He had a will of iron and a stubborn streak to go along with it, but regardless, Stone was honest to a fault.

Unlike her.

At the thought, the tears she’d been barely holding back began to fall.

Late that afternoon Stone flipped up the page on the calendar and drew a ragged breath as he reminded himself what he already knew.

Jenna’s birthday.

She’d be… He pretended to count. As though he’d forgotten it’d been ten years since he’d last laid eyes on her.

She’d be twenty-seven now. And he wondered, as he often did, what she was doing. She wasn’t living in a small town enjoying the quaint lifestyle, that was for certain. Jenna had never been one for restrictions of any kind, and San Paso Bay, a typical small town, certainly posed them. Stone found the place refreshing and real compared with the bigger cities of the world, but he knew Jenna would be doing something entirely different.

Such as hang gliding off the Angeles Crest. Or sky diving in the Mojave Desert. Maybe even mountain climbing in Tibet. Wait-this was the nineties. She was probably bungee jumping off the Golden Gate bridge or extreme skiing in the Canadian Rockies.

In the quiet of his shop Stone felt his anger swell up once again and grab him by the throat.

He turned abruptly from the calendar.

This date always got him, left him feeling as though he’d just taken a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Always left him drowning in a sea of furious emotion that time never seemed to ease. But it was just this one day, he told himself. All the other days of the year he was perfectly fine.

Yet he went to the beach- their beach-on this day every year at dawn. Just as they had together… The pencil he held snapped. He couldn’t keep doing this.

Look what had happened to him this morning with that woman. Hours later, and he was still thinking about the mysterious Cindy Beatty.

Purposely Stone drew a deep breath and let his surroundings calm him. Toy Station, his pride and joy, never failed him. Some said he wasted his talent as an architect designing and building educational toys for gifted children, which he insisted on making by hand for classrooms all over the globe. Others rumored he’d been disinherited by his rich family and therefore had to spend every day working his fingers to the bone.

It was true, all of it. But Stone loved his life. Loved his work.

And loved…

Sara rushed into Toy Station with a wide grin on her face.

Sara. Just the sight of her completed his thought. He loved his daughter.

“Didja get it?” She bounced from one foot to the other like a Ping-Pong ball. “Didja? Didja?”

“Get what?”

“Daddyyyyy!”

Smiling, he handed her the one-hour-photo envelope.

“Cool!” She tore open the envelope, then flipped through each shot, giggling at some, making faces at others. “Come look. I’m getting good.”

Stone glanced down at the mostly blurred and very unbalanced shots, some with suspicious-looking smudges that might have been a finger on the lens, and nodded seriously. “Very,” he said encouragingly.

“Look, there’s Sally pretending my teddy is her daddy. She doesn’t see him since he remarried, so I told her it was okay to pretend, just like I do about Mommy.”

Stone held his tongue, but it was difficult because anger nearly choked him. He had no patience for people who turned away from family. To him, family was everything. Family took care of their own, or rather, they should. It was that simple. Maybe he was just old-fashioned, but it was the way he felt, and he knew nothing would ever change that.

Unfortunately, he also knew that things rarely happened as they should. “Bring Sally over here, Sara. We’ll be her family anytime she needs us. Okay?”

Her smile lit his heart. “’Kay.”

“So what was your hurry to have the pictures developed?”

She didn’t answer, but pulled out the last photograph with a frown. “Oh, Daddy . I can’t believe you took this one.” She moaned theatrically, as only a ten-year-old can do.

Stone glanced at the photo causing the distress and laughed. “This is my proof,” he teased, tugging on a loose curl the color of coal. “ You helped me paint your bedroom. You picked out those horrid colors.” He shook his head. “Chartreuse, of all things.”

Sara snickered.