A Mother's Wish / Mother To Be: A Mother's Wish

“He never even asks about his birth mother, Flo—”

“An’ you don’ exactly encourage him, do you?”

“Why would I do that when everything’s fine the way it is?”

Slamming the sponge down by the faucet, the housekeeper spun around, grabbing a dish towel to dry her hands. “Fine?” She barked out a laugh. “After a year, Robbie still mopes aroun’, keeping to himself…that sure don’ sound like fine to me. Dios mío—when was the las’ time there was any real laughter in this house? I’ll tell you when,” she said, tears pooling in her dark eyes. “Not since Miss June was alive. If you call that fine, I call you loco.”

Aidan’s mouth pulled tight. True, Robson and he rarely talked anymore. Even tonight, Aidan’s awkward attempts to draw his son into some sort of conversation had been a bust, like always, his offer to help the lad with his homework rejected out of hand. No, things were far from fine. But…

“She had her chance, Flo. We were more than willing to keep her in the loop, and she backed out of the deal. And whose side are you on, anyway?”

Flo crossed her arms over a bosom so flat it was nearly concave. “Robbie’s my baby, too, I don’ want to see him hurt any more than you do. An’ I’m not saying I totally trust this girl—”

“You think she’d try to make contact behind my back?” Aidan said over the jolt to his heart.

“At this point,” Flo said, frowning, “no. I don’ think so. She knows forcing the issue’s not gonna get her what she wants. No, it’s Robbie I’m worried about.”

“Robbie?”

“When you get back from Garcia’s, he comes in here, starts asking me if I knew there was some lady staying in the Old House, how come nobody ever stayed there before now.” When she paused, Aidan caught the ambivalence in her eyes, that she was just as conflicted as he was. “If I knew who she was. I tell him no, but I can see the wheels turning,” she said, pointing to her head, then crossing her arms. “An’ once those wheels get started…” Her sentence ended in a shrug. “You know what they say—el gato satisfecho no le preocupa ratón.”

Aidan was by no means fluent in Spanish, but after ten years of living in a town where the population was seventyfive percent Hispanic, even he got that one: The satisfied cat ignores the mouse.

“Except Winnie’s leaving in the morning,” Aidan said, “so the point’s moot.”

“You think if she disappears, so will his questions?” When Aidan grimaced a second time, Flo added, “Maybe you should ask yourself…what would Miss June do? What would she wan’ you to do?”

A few minutes later, tall boy in hand, Aidan stood outside on the second story deck looking down toward the Old House, slivers of window light barely visible through the trees. And in that house, a woman with the courage to ask for something even she’d acknowledged she had no right to ask. As much as her plea had annoyed him, it had also threatened some part of himself he’d thought he’d secured good and tight months ago.

One hip propped against the railing, Aidan took a swig of his beer, replaying that whole cat-and-mouse thing in his head. Except people weren’t cats. In fact, that was the trouble with humans—the more they knew, the more they wanted to know. Winnie Porter had already demonstrated that, hadn’t she?

Aidan pushed out a groan into the rapidly cooling air. Winnie’s coming here was definitely an aggravation he did not need. However…what would June do? Where would her sympathies lie?

Stupid question, he thought on an airless laugh. As thrilled as his wife had been about adopting Robson, hadn’t she been the one to worry about how Winnie was dealing with it, if she had anybody to talk to who understood what she was going through? Then when Winnie cut off communication, he’d thought surely Winnie herself couldn’t be taking it any harder than June.

His mouth curved. In so many ways, June had been as tough as they came, taking on causes nobody else would touch, having no qualms about stirring up trouble if she thought stirring was warranted. But her heart was soft as cotton. She was more than a loving person, it was as though love was her purpose in life. Not the kind of love blind to human failings, but the kind that sees through those failings to the core of a person. His wife had no patience with stupidity, but deep down she believed in the basic goodness of mankind.

Aidan’s lungs filled with the sweetly acrid air, that pungent blend of moldering leaves and fireplace smoke that would always remind him of his wife. For her, not spring, but autumn had always been about new beginnings. She saw in the blaze of color that swept the mountains not death, but beauty. Comfort. Joy.

And right now, he felt her presence so strongly he could barely breathe.

June had never specifically spelled out her wishes regarding Robbie and his birth mother, but if she were here…

But she’s not, Aidan thought bitterly. And the situation was very different than if she had been. His first duty was to protect Robbie, at all costs. He didn’t owe Winnie Porter a damn thing.

Oh, for godssake, babe, the breeze seemed to whisper, don’t be such a tight-ass!

Aidan jerked so hard he nearly lost his balance. But a moment later Winnie’s voice replaced his wife’s, a voice every bit as strong and determined—even in pleading—as June’s had been, along with a pair of smoky blue eyes unafraid to meet his dead-on. Of course, the woman was bleedin’ crazy…

And sometimes crazy’s just courageous in disguise.

June again. His nostrils flaring as he sucked in a deep breath, Aidan squeezed shut his eyes, remembering how June had said, after they’d met Winnie, how much alike she thought she and Winnie were.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Aidan said aloud, then shook his head, thinking, And who’s crazy now? Only to violently shiver when the wind shoved at his back, insistent as a pair of hands, pushing him upright. Even more alarming was the way it seemed to be whistling, Talk to her Just that, over and over, until he thought he’d go mad. Madder than he suspected he already was, at least.

The wind—and the whistling, and the words—stopped when he went back inside. Thank God for small favors, Aidan thought as he tossed his bottle in the garbage, then went upstairs to say good-night to his son. Except Robbie was already asleep, a tangle of bedclothes and long arms and legs, Spider-Man and Transformers at war. Aidan straightened out boy and bedding as best he could, then eased himself onto the edge of Robbie’s bed to brush one permanently oil-paint-stained hand over his son’s shaggy hair. And underneath the hair, a face that spoke the truth far more in sleep than it ever did when the lad was awake, his expression as tangled as his bedding.

“We’re a right mess, you and I,” Aidan said softly, the emptiness inside about to stretch him to bursting. Things were supposed to get easier, “they” said, after a year. Certainly, Aidan had hoped they’d be more adjusted to their new reality better than they apparently were.

Then he thought of the look in Winnie’s eyes and realized that some realities are harder to adjust to than others, whether you’re “supposed” to or not.

Aidan’s loss was permanent, irreversible, the hopelessness of it an odd sort of comfort, he supposed. But for a nine-year-old child…

For a woman who, nine years ago, had quite possibly felt backed into a corner…

Releasing a long, silent sigh, Aidan rose from the bed and left his son’s room, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he went.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Winnie awoke with a yelp when an ice-cold doggy nose torpedoed underneath the comforter to make contact with her warm back. Instantly awake—and cranky—Winnie flipped over to glare at the beast whose toothy grin was a blur in the wriggling excitement that was Annabelle.

It’s morning? We go play? Find things to herd?

“Forget it,” Winnie grumbled. Between feeling like she’d hosted a rowdy keg party in her brain all night and an unfamiliar bed, she was lucky if she’d logged in three hours the entire night. Morning, whatever. And it was coollld out there on the other side of the comforter—

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, remembering that Aidan had invited her to breakfast. That she’d said yes. That loneliness and butter-soft Irish accents were a really, really bad combination. That—

That somewhere in the distance, a rooster was crowing.

“Crap, what time is it?” she asked the world at large, grabbing her watch off the nightstand, then sinking back into the mattress, groaning. Lord, show me a sign, she’d prayed the night before, mainly because Elektra was a big believer in the suckers and Winnie was up the creek, whether I should go or stay. Whether her wanting to get to know Robbie was a right idea, or a relapse into the stubbornness that had ruled so many decisions for so many years. Then Aidan had called, not a minute afterward, and she’d thought, Wow. Fast service.

“I can’t do this,” she now said to the dog, even though she had no earthly idea what this was. Annabelle stopped wriggling long enough to cock her head at her mistress, after which she heaved a great doggy sigh, laid her snout on top of the mattress and commiserated with Winnie with what she probably thought was her best soulful look. Except Annabelle, not being a hound, didn’t do soulful very well. Annabelle was all about perky and playful. Like a cheerleader.

Sure enough, after, oh, ten seconds of sympathy, the dog moonwalked backward, bowed with her butt in the air and yarped. Her version of Get your fat bee-hind out of bed. Now.

With a sigh of her own, Winnie dragged said bee-hind out of bed, the comforter wrapped around her shoulders and trailing after her like a poufy coronation cape as she let the dog out, then clumsily put on coffee, because facing the world—and Aidan—without fresh caffeine in her system wasn’t gonna happen.

Her cell rang. Winnie stared at it, shimmying on the counter like a rattlesnake, a thought that made her shudder mightily. With any luck, it would be Aidan, canceling. Except then she realized, yeah, well, if she wanted to get closer to Robbie, going through Aidan was her only option.

And according to Elektra, once you accepted a sign, you were pretty much stuck with it.

“Good,” Aidan said the moment Winnie put her phone to her ear. Now she heard the crowing in stereo. “You’re awake.”

“Up, yes,” she said, yawning. “Awake, not so much.” Annabelle whined at the back door; Winnie shuffled over to let her in.

“I thought I said breakfast was at eight-t’irty?”

And early morning Irish attitude was just what she needed. “It’s eight…” She squinted at her watch. “Ten. So no problem.’