Long-Lost Mom

His shoulders had widened greatly, now physically a match for the weight of the burdens he’d always carried. He shifted back and forth on long muscular legs as he paced courtside, his arms constantly in motion as he directed the team.

Nope, he certainly wasn’t a kid any longer, but a fully mature, incredibly sexy man.

“Down court!” he yelled now in the smooth tone she remembered so well. He leaped into the air and whooped with abandon when Sara passed off the ball to another girl, who pivoted and made a basket.

The stands, full of parents and siblings, erupted as the game ended.

Pride nearly overwhelmed Jenna. She’d had no idea she could feel such a thrill, such joy, from watching a game she didn’t even understand. But it was her daughter down there. Her daughter.

On the court every girl on the team threw herself at the coach. Stone tossed back his head and laughed, hugging each of them back.

There’d been a time in Jenna’s life when seeing Stone smile and laugh like that had caused every productive thought to fly right out of her head, and she discovered with little surprise that hadn’t changed.

Watching Stone live as she’d only been able to dream about suddenly felt like a knife to her chest. She nearly staggered with the pain of it, with the gut-wrenching regret.

How had this happened? How had she allowed so much time to go by without a word? And what would happen now that she’d come back?

Knowing she deserved nothing, not even a fraction of the warmth she was experiencing now, didn’t help. With that dismal thought, the gates of her mind opened and flooded her with unwanted memories of her past.

Her absent father.

The mother she could never please, so she’d finally stopped trying. Instead Jenna had depended on her wild behavior to get attention.

Her perfect sister, the one Jenna’s mother constantly wished was her only child.

Everything had always seemed to be Jenna’s fault back then, even when she’d been merely a victim of circumstances. And a victim she’d been. Yet she’d been blamed and, unable to accept it, had rebelled.

She’d been wild, even before then. Hopelessly, pathetically out of control. Moody. It was all she knew how to do, for she could never get her mother to care unless she was furious about something Jenna had done. Without the bad-girl image Jenna had cultivated, she had no identity. No worth.

She’d been on the fast road to nowhere when Stone Cameron had come into her life. The star athlete and town darling, he was by far the most popular kid in school. Everyone adored him. He came from the rich side of the tracks and lived in one of the biggest and prettiest houses Jenna had ever seen. His parents and brother loved him.

His life had seemed perfect.

She’d hated him for that alone.

He’d found her in a tall tree along the beach one night when she been her most vulnerable, shaking after a particularly nasty fight with her mother—a fight in which Jenna’s mother had refused to believe that the man she was seeing had touched Jenna. A man not only cheating on his wife to sleep with Jenna’s mother, but a man who was a highly respected member of their community.

Scared and alone, Jenna had hidden in the only place she could think of. Without hesitation Stone had climbed up the long branches, sat next to her and smiled. In return, Jenna had called him names and had tried to push him out of the tree.

He refused to fall—or give up.

It’d been the start of the first meaningful friendship in Jenna’s life. Stone cared for her, more than anyone. He was the first to encourage her to stop doing stupid reckless things that would only get her hurt. He worried, he’d told her, and that knowledge had warmed Jenna’s heart and soul for the first time in her life.

But the man who’d victimized her had turned the scandal around, claiming Jenna had seduced him. In the face of the town’s disgust, Jenna folded. Despite Stone’s love and support, she let herself be destroyed.

Sitting there now, wallowing in the memories, agonizing over them, Jenna was gripped by panic.

Could Stone ever forgive her?

She looked down at the basketball court and found Stone’s glittering eyes on her, eyes that had perhaps seen too much to ever be surprised by anything again.

She’d done that, given the most open loving boy she’d ever met that slight cynical edge.

Ashamed, without stopping to think, Jenna grabbed her purse, ran outside the gym, jumped into her car and escaped, feeling no braver than when she was seventeen.

* * *

Over the next couple of days, Jenna gained some badly needed perspective. She could do this, she coached herself. She could, she would.

Again she went to one of Sara’s games, and again held her breath the entire time, completely immersed in how it felt to watch her daughter run, laugh, live.

At the end of the game, which Sara’s team won, Jenna looked down from the stands—and her heart simply stopped.

Staring at her from the side of the court was Stone, holding a basketball in one hand and his daughter’s hand in the other.

As the crowd thinned around them, neither of them moved, held there by an invisible string of unspoken questions. Stone was obviously drawn to Jenna, although he could have no idea why—or that she was a nightmare from his past about to resurface. She cringed at that thought and felt more than saw Stone’s gaze narrow in a mixture of concern and curiosity.

Still, he held the connection, and Jenna wished she would see a flash of recognition in his eyes. She knew now she wouldn’t, not with ten years, plastic surgery and dubious maturity on her side. Well, nothing had ever come easily to her, and it seemed this wouldn’t, either.

If she wanted Stone to know the truth, she was going to have to tell him.

Her goal hadn’t changed; she still wanted to atone for the things she’d done, such as deserting her own daughter. But if she told Stone who she was now, she knew he would turn from her, his eyes icy and distant.

But as Cindy Beatty, a complete stranger to Stone and the town she knew would never welcome her back, she could do anything.

Stone continued to maintain eye contact. Jenna couldn’t have torn her gaze away to save her life, leaving her no doubt that their always instant sizzling attraction still lived. It had unnerved her then, just as it did now, for though they’d always been drawn to each other, even as kids, she had never understood what Stone saw in her.

Connected to him this way, by just his gaze, caused an awareness to unfurl from deep within her. And she knew by his slight frown, by the very power of what shimmered between them, that it was the same for him. Only he could have no idea that this...thing between them was not new, that it had been there since the very beginning.

He remained unsmiling, that wide, sexy mouth serious. She felt panic rise.

You’re not seventeen anymore, she told herself firmly, even as her feet shuffled, prepared to run, as was their lifelong habit. You’re twenty-seven and here to right your wrongs. Turn your life around. Do it!

Far below, Sara’s lips moved and Stone nodded in response, but he did not break eye contact with Jenna.

Jenna smiled feebly. It was all she could manage, but Stone’s intense stare didn’t waver. Neither did Sara’s.

Tell them, an inner voice urged. Just go down there and tell them who you are.

Of their own accord, her legs took her down the stands she’d climbed up an hour and a half earlier—when she’d been driven by a need to see her daughter and hadn’t known how else to go about it other than to watch her from afar. And when she’d read the banner listing the names of the all-city fifth-grade champs, she’d been surprised to find Sara Cameron listed. After seeing that, fire-breathing dragons couldn’t have kept Jenna from the games.

“Hello,” Stone said when she got within hearing distance. That warm lazy baritone made her shudder with memories. For years she’d dreamed about that deep silky voice of his, and hearing it now brought her vividly back in time. Shockingly another memory surfaced.

Stone, making love to her the way he spoke, as if he had all the time in the world.

Jenna blushed wildly. Where had that come from? There was more to Stone than the way he’d once touched her, far more. He’d have fits if he knew her thoughts, for he wasn’t smiling now, not the way he had when the game had ended favorably or when Sara had flung herself into his arms for a hug. Jenna had to clear her throat twice before she croaked out a hello in return.

“I saw you at the game the other day,” he said in that voice like dark honey. “You ran off before I could talk to you. It’s...Cindy, isn’t it?”