Kathleen O'Brien - A Daughter's Trust / For the Love of Family

Rick was beginning to understand why Sue lived alone. And hoped it wasn’t a condition she wanted to maintain forever.

“By the time I met Joe, I was fourteen. We went to the same high school—just like my parents. I’d realized by that point that I was either going to spend my life fighting to get breathing space from my parents, go insane or keep secrets from them. He was my secret. I realize now that part of the secrecy was my way of keeping my distance, even with Joe.”

“You guys had no idea you were related.”

“Nope.”

Rick didn’t think he had a right to ask the obvious question. A boy. A girl. Close. Hormones.

“He asked me to go steady when we were seniors.”

Rick laid his head back against the cushions, focused on the lights twinkling with abandon in the vast world before him.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

SUE HAD BEEN WANDERING around her house, touching things—a cold metal frame on the mantel, a picture of Grandma, the soft baby blankets on the edge of a bassinet. She rinsed the dishes in the kitchen. And picked up the toys left on the floor from her parents’ playtime with the kids.

She ended up in her bathroom, the baby monitor on the counter so she could hear if anyone needed her, and closed the door. Lighting a couple of candles, she switched off the lights, turned on the water in the garden tub, poured in bubble bath and started to undress.

All with her cell phone planted firmly at her ear.

“Joe and I went steady that whole year,” she told Rick, remembering. Speaking of things she’d never told anyone before. Not even Grandma. Because she could. Because she had a feeling he’d understand. Because, as he’d said, he was risk free.

Her blouse fell to the floor. Doing things with one hand was no problem for a woman used to living with a baby on her hip as an almost permanent fixture. The hooks on her bra were as easily mastered.

“Did you sleep with him?”

Why the question seemed appropriate, as if Rick Kraynick had a right to such intimacies, Sue couldn’t say. She unbuttoned her jeans, stepped out of them.

“Almost.” She told him the truth. “But no.”

After sliding her panties down her hips, legs and feet, Sue stepped into the soothingly hot water.

“So you think you sensed some kind of familial connection?” Rick’s voice sounded low. Sleepy. But not the least bit as if he was falling asleep.

“Maybe. I’d like to think so. I hurt him horribly.” She told Rick one of her secrets. She’d hurt too many people.

And wasn’t about to add another to her list.

No matter how much real estate Rick was taking up in her thoughts. Incredible, after only meeting this man twice.

“Was he at the reading of the will, too? This Joe?”

“Yeah. I was standing next to him when we found out we were cousins. He’s my boss now. I do bookkeeping for him from home. But we haven’t been close since high school. He’s all locked up inside. I’d hoped that finding out we were family would bring us closer again, but it doesn’t seem to have.”

“Give him time.”

Time. Everything took time. What happened when time wasn’t enough? She ran water down her neck, scooping it in her hand to splash over her breasts.

“Are you in the tub?”

Sue stared at her bare toes, sticking up from the bubbles and said nothing.

“I thought I heard the water running.”

Her nipples, also showing through the bubbles, were hard. What in the hell was she doing? And why?

“Would it offend you terribly if I said I wish I was there with you?”

It should. Instead, he was turning her on. She’d thought of little else but him since the first time she’d seen him. And these days, people thought nothing of going straight to sex. People, maybe. Not Sue.

“Are you saying it?”

“Are you offended?”

“I’m trying to be.”

“Don’t try so hard.”

“Rick…”

“I know. It’s complicated.”

This was the oddest…whatever it was…she’d ever encountered. “I’mnot offended.” But she was scared to death. What was happening to her? Who was this man who’d turned her inside out just by appearing in her life?

“Tell me if there are bubbles in that water with you. And let me imagine what you look like right now. Let me imagine, just for tonight, that I’m there with you…”

SUE DIDN’T ANSWER HER phone Sunday morning any of the three times Rick called. She didn’t answer it Sunday afternoon, either. Nor did she respond to the messages he left.

Her parents were gone. She’d said they were flying out early.

So maybe she’d gone to church.

And then out to lunch. And to a family get-together or to the park or out with friends he didn’t know about. Maybe there was a foster family group that met once a month.

Or…

By seven o’clock he’d run out of excuses for her. As conscientious as Sue was, she wouldn’t have those babies out all day, missing nap times, and then into the night, as well.

Which meant one of two things. Either she was avoiding him or something was wrong.

He couldn’t believe, after the incredible phone call they’d shared the night before, that she’d just avoid him. They’d started something. Sue wasn’t the type to tease.

A too-familiar fear tightened his chest. He’d rationalized that last time with Hannah, too. Made excuses when his six-year-old hadn’t called him immediately when she got out of class, as was their agreement.

Rick tucked his shirttail into his jeans, grabbed his wallet and keys and headed for the door.

Traffic was light—not many people out in the dark on a Sunday night in March—and he was out of town driving south in a matter of minutes. Made it to Sue’s before eight.

When he saw the lights on, he briefly considered driving on past.

He had to knock three times before she pulled open the door. She was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved, red-and-white-striped pullover, her feet bare. As though she’d been home awhile.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked, still on edge with the heightened sense of awareness that tragedy struck without warning.

“Yes.” Since her gaze was focused somewhere around his chin, he couldn’t tell if she was angry, offended or secretly glad to see him. Rick took it as a good sign that she hadn’t shut the door in his face.

“I called.”

“I know.”

He nodded. Stood there with his hands in his pockets. And thought of her voice, soft and seductive. The sound of water trickling over naked skin…

“Last night was a mistake.”

So she had been avoiding him. “Why?”

In the doorway, a barrier between him and her home, Sue said, “I…with Carrie…it’s not right.”

At least she hadn’t said she wasn’t interested in him.

“I’m not going to be used,” she added.

Eyes narrowed, Rick hardly felt the fifty-degree chill. “Regarding Carrie, you mean.”

“It fits, doesn’t it? I fall for you. I give you what you want—your niece.”

“When did you come up with this theory? Before or after you shared your bath with me?”

“After.”

Her doubts were understandable. He blamed her for them, anyway.

“How about, I meet my niece’s foster mother. She’s different from any woman I’ve ever met. I want to get to know her. And the more I do, the more she’s in my thoughts all day long—”

“Can you honestly tell me those thoughts don’t include the fact that I can help you get Carrie?”

“My interest in you doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“But you still hope I’ll help.”

“Of course I do.”

“Like I said, last night was a mistake.” She started to close the door.