Jenna Mills - This Time For Keeps

“I didn’t know that she died until two weeks ago.”

“I called your parents.” Had called him first, from the hospital moments after Dr. Harrison had given her the horrible news. Instinctively she’d reached for her phone and called Russell, held her breath while the phone rang.

Froze when she got his voice mail.

She’d stood there in the starkly lit Emergency Room in the hour before dawn, listening. To his voice. His warm, casual message. But the beep had brought everything back into cruel, sharp focus, and she’d ended the call and swallowed hard, annoyed that after all this time, despite the divorce papers she’d had drawn up the month before, he’d been the first one she’d thought of.

Because Ainsley was his sister, she’d realized. Meg had loved her dearly, but in the end, it was Russell’s blood that flowed through Ainsley’s veins.

And Charlotte’s.

He stood there now, a tall man with a body that promised strength, even as an unmistakable mist clouded his eyes.

“I was on assignment,” he said in a voice so stripped down Meg had to concentrate to hear him. “My parents decided to wait until I was back before telling me.”

She couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “Because they didn’t want to inconvenience you? She was their child. She deserved…” The words trailed off as the memories edged closer. The knock at the door. The race to the hospital. Ainsley on the bed, the tubes and machines, the punishing sense of urgency as everyone seemed to move in slow motion.

“I would have come, Meggie. If I’d known, I would have been here.”

A fresh wave of grief surged up from that deep, dark place, burning her throat anew. For Ainsley, she told herself. Not because of the sound of her name in her husband’s voice. No one else had ever called her Meggie.

No one else had ever made her name sound like a caress.

And for that, she hated him.

“No one was here,” she said, still stung by how wrong it had been. “No one from your family. None of her friends.” Not even Charlotte’s father. Only Meg and Julia and Lori, a handful of locals. “She deserved better than that.”

Russell’s jaw tightened. “I’m glad she had you,” he said. “That’s why she stayed, you know.”

After he left.

“I wasn’t family.”

Russell frowned. “Meggie…you know that’s not true.”

She looked away, toward the honeybees buzzing around her ankles. Meg had always wanted a sister. She had two cousins in town, but it wasn’t the same. Julia and Faith had lived in a big two-story house in a nice subdivision and took exotic vacations…with both their parents.

Meg had never even known her father.

Then Ainsley had come to town shortly after Meg and Russell married, a troubled teenager with a rebellious streak as long as a hot summer day, and a heart as tender as a dewdrop. After Russell left—

Meg looked back up, felt something inside her shift. His smile was soft and warm, gentle. Sad. The lines of his face had relaxed, even the perpetual five o’clock shadow looked softer. But it was his eyes that got her, the crinkling at the corners, the warmth of the green, the glow of discovery and vulnerability.

Meg’s hold on Charlotte tightened. She glanced down to find the baby awake, her big eyes trained curiously on the uncle she’d never met.

“Well, hello there, poppet,” he murmured in the dialect of his childhood, and Charlotte’s little mouth lifted into a delighted smile.

Meg wanted to wake up.

But knew that this was no dream.

“There’s my girl,” she said, shifting Charlotte so that she rode Meg’s hip. “What a good little nap you had.”

Russell kept staring, as if the baby might vanish if he so much as took his eyes off her. “She’s—”

“Wonderful,” Meg finished for him. A bittersweet gift she’d never expected. “She’s got so much of Ainsley in her.” And Russell. His eyes. His smile.

His infectious laugh.

At first being around Charlotte had hurt. But there’d been no one else to step in. Ainsley had never tried to track down her daughter’s father, saying only that he couldn’t be with them.

“Then she must not be sleeping much,” Russell said, and before she could stop herself, Meg laughed.

She didn’t want to laugh.

“Fits and starts,” she said. Insomnia had been Ainsley’s middle name. Rumor had it she’d had her days and nights mixed up from the time she was born. “But we’re working on it.”

“Ainsley always said—” Russell broke off, lifting a hand to feather a finger along the underside of Charlotte’s foot.

She giggled.

“Always said what?” Meg asked.

“That she wanted to be a mum.”

Meg closed her eyes. That was true. Piercings, tattoos, wild streak and all, even at nineteen, Ainsley had been a great mother. It just takes love, she’d said. Just…love.

“And so did you.”

The quiet words did cruel, cruel things to Meg’s heart. She opened her eyes and stepped back. Away. Couldn’t imagine anything she wanted less than to be standing in a field of bluebonnets making polite small talk with the husband she had not seen in two years.

“Your mother’s been calling.” And now Russell stood before her, a stranger in a painfully familiar body. The eyes…the mouth. The thick copper hair. As always, his shirt was open at the throat, revealing a hint of the dark springy hair she’d once loved to finger. Just to the right, she knew there would be a scar. “Is that why you’re here?”

The change was immediate. His flirty little Charlotte-inspired smile congealed into something harder—and much less readable. His gaze turned serious, and on a visceral level, Meg started to scream.

No.

She’d always known this day could come. Ainsley had left a will, but wills could be challenged. Technically, she was the outsider. If the Montgomery family was to challenge her for custody, she had a horrible feeling she knew what the outcome would be.

“Actually, it is,” Russell said, and as if a switch had been flicked, the lilt left his voice. “My parents wanted me to come and—”

Meg shifted to get a better grip on a suddenly squirmy baby.

“—settle Ainsley’s affairs.”

The breeze kept whispering. The bees kept buzzing. A few cars sped along the narrow highway. But Meg held herself very still. “Settle her affairs?” Her voice was barely more than a rasp.

Russell’s eyes met hers. Once, in what seemed like another lifetime, she’d known his every look, touch. Words had been a formality they’d rarely needed.

She’d never imagined how quickly silence could turn to poison.

Or how badly it could punish.

After he’d left, at first the days had been so much better. But the nights…

The nights had been another story.

And now they were reduced to awkward formalities. There was a searching in his gaze, the photojournalist hard at work, studying, analyzing. Seeking. And in response, she tucked all those nasty, tattered remnants away, unwilling to give him a story to work with. Two years was a long time. A lot had happened. Not all of it would please a judge.

The last thing she needed was award-winning journalist Russell Montgomery on a fact-finding mission.

His eyes narrowed, as if he was squinting against a bright glare. “Her house,” he said as Charlotte started to thwack her hand against Meg’s chest. “Her belongings.”

Caution prevented relief from stirring. “Everything’s still there. I…” Had been to the house the day Ainsley died only long enough to gather a few essentials for the baby. The next day, Lori’s husband, Trey, had brought over the crib and glider, the rest of Charlotte’s toys and clothes.