Caitlin's Choice (19 page)

“Hello, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Andrew,” he corrected. He handed her the box from the floor. “I believe this is for you.”

Sissy shyly took the box, then abandoned her calm as she tore at the brown paper. “It’s my dress, isn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

Mother and daughter sat together and picked through the paper. The lid discarded, Sissy lifted the top half of the dress for inspection. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Yes,” Mary agreed. “You’ll have to write your sister a thank-you note.”

“I knew Maggie would do it I just knew it!” Sissy gushed.

Andrew bit back an acid retort. Maggie was right when she said her sister was tactless and selfish. “Yes, Caitlin did quite a job on the dress.”

Dead silence. They both stared at him in numbed shock.

“You know Caitlin?” Sissy finally asked.

“Yes.”

Mary sighed. “Well, of course he must. You probably met at your brother’s wedding.”

Close enough, he thought. Just the mention of Caitlin made the family nervous. Sissy’s gaze darted back and forth between her mother and Andrew. The long silence dragged.

“Sissy, make some coffee for our guest.”

Good! A stall tactic. He needed to remain in the house until William Adams returned. “That sounds great.”

“Have you seen Margaret’s daughter? She hasn’t sent a picture yet,” Mary said.

“Allison’s a little beauty, like her mother.” Not as perfect as Tyler, he thought, though not without paternal prejudice.

“She talks about her new house all the time. Says it’s right there on the Long Island Sound.”

“Yes. The house is wonderful.” Andrew wasn’t sure how much small talk he could take. Why didn’t she ask about the daughter she hadn’t seen in ten years? Didn’t she have the slightest interest in Caitlin?

By the time the coffee was served, two men came walking through the front door. Caitlin’s father and brother, he surmised by their ages. He stood again to greet them.

“This is Andrew Sinclair. His brother is married to Margaret,” Mary babbled quickly. Apparently the entire family shared a distrust of strangers.

“My husband William and our son, Sean.”

Andrew offered his hand. “A pleasure.”

William smiled. “Margaret has mentioned you. You own the company her husband works for.”

“Erik is a junior partner, actually.”

William removed his jacket and hung it on a peg on the wall. “Please sit.”

Andrew was forced to endure ten more minutes of small talk before he found an opening to get to his point.

Mary’s eyes widened hopefully. “Do you have a picture of Allison?”

He had come armed with photographs, including one they might not want to see. He removed the snapshots from his wallet and handed the top one to William.

“That’s Maggie with the baby, taken on the steps of her house.”

They passed around the picture, clearly impressed by how well their daughter had done.

“And the other?” Sissy asked.

Andrew handed it to William. “That’s Caitlin with her son, Tyler.”

Dead silence again. William’s face remained blank, but he swallowed hard.
“I didn’t know she was married,” he muttered.

Andrew was tired of dancing around the subject. “She’s not.  Look, Mr. Adams, would it be possible to have a word alone with you?”

Mary stood up. “Come on Sissy, Sean. Let them talk.”

Andrew was finally alone with William. The man still hadn’t taken his eyes from the picture.

“Mr. Adams, I don’t know any other way to do this, so let me come right to the point. I know what happened ten years ago.”

William looked up, visibly shaken. “She told you?”

“No. She has no idea I know. What I can’t understand is how you could think she was involved. She’s your daughter. Don’t you know her at all?”

“Mr. Sinclair, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” William grumbled indignantly.

Andrew reached inside his briefcase and pulled out the file, handing it to William. “I know she wasn’t involved, and I think I can prove it.”

William’s eyes darkened. He waved an angry hand and refused the folder. “You don’t need to prove my daughter’s innocence to me. I’ve always known it.”

“Then, why—”

“You know nothing about life here. There are people who have hated each other for generations and they can’t remember why. It doesn’t matter that Caitlin was never charged. Some families lost their life’s savings, and that is something they will never forget.”

“But it had nothing to do with Caitlin.”

“They don’t care. They had to blame someone rather than admit a stranger had made fools of them by exposing their greed. If she came back here, I don’t think I could protect her. She’d just disappear up in that mountain someday, and the whole town would swear she went back to New York.”

Andrew felt an eerie chill run though him. What kind of people were they? “Simon Reed is serving time in jail for a similar crime.”

“We’re not so backward here that we don’t get the news. When he was caught, they hired some fancy lawyer from Wheeling to try to get the money back, but after eight years, there was no way.”

“Then this whole thing is about money?” Andrew muttered incredulously.

“Does that shock you? Money does strange things to people. It makes them greedy and violent. In the big cities, they kill a man in the street for ten dollars.”

Andrew lowered his head. Money did do strange things to people. He need only look at his own family for proof. It had killed his brother, turned his mother into a vicious shrew and his sister into a troubled young woman heading toward alcoholism.

He gazed at the broken man before him. “If you did this to protect your daughter, why did you never tell her? Why did you let her punish herself for ten years?”

William frowned. “How well do you know my daughter?”

“I think I know her pretty well.”

“Then you would know that if I told her the truth, nothing would stop her from coming home to visit her family, regardless of the consequences. Caitlin has always been headstrong. A few years back when my wife was ill, half the town expected Caitlin to come home to see her mama. They had people lookin’ for her. Is that what I should subject her to?” William’s voice cracked and he turned away.

Andrew gave him a few seconds to compose himself before continuing. “So what you’re saying is that it will never be safe for her to return?”

“Not unless those people get their money back. That’s the only way they’d acknowledge her innocence. I have four other children. I couldn’t pay it back in two lifetimes. And Caitlin wouldn’t if she could. It would be the same as admitting guilt.”

“If the money were reimbursed, that would be the end of it?”

William regarded him with a mix of skepticism and hope. “You’d pay that money back for Caitlin?” 

Andrew shook his head. “No. Not for Caitlin. That would be the same as saying I thought she was guilty.”

“Then why?”

“For my son. I think he has the right and the need to know his grandparents, and I find it a small price to pay.”

“Your son? Oh, you mean . . .” William glanced at the picture in his hand.

“Yes. Tyler is my son, too.” Andrew expected an angry reaction. In William’s shoes, he’d be furious. But with all that had passed, William was quietly accepting. It didn’t need to be said that after ten years of silence he had no right to judge his daughter’s life.

“The money will be paid back, but I don’t ever want Caitlin to know where it came from. Or anyone else. I’ll have that lawyer in Wheeling send checks as restitution in the Simon Reed case. No one needs to know we had this conversation. In fact, I was never here.”

William blinked and exhaled deeply. Apparently Caitlin’s father missed her as much as she missed him. “Caitlin is very lucky to have someone like you.”

Andrew broke out in a wry grin. “I doubt she would agree with you, sir. As you said, she can be headstrong and stubborn.”

“Oh, yes. When she gets something in her mind, she’s like a mule with a burr in his saddle.” Andrew and William shared a laugh over that one. That was Caitlin to a T.

* * * *

Caitlin had insisted on cooking dinner to give Maggie a break. She flipped through a cookbook until she found just what she was looking for. After assembling all the ingredients, she left the pot to simmer on the stove and stepped out onto the deck to enjoy the late afternoon sun.

The two days that Andrew had been gone seemed like an eternity. Perhaps if he had left under better circumstances, she wouldn’t have had him in her thoughts all the time. Who was she kidding? Under any circumstances, he was in her thoughts.

She leaned against the rail and turned her face upward. The steady rumble of the ocean lulled her into a state of calm. Eyes closed, she surrendered herself to the smell and feel of the sea air.

An image of Andrew flashed through her mind. His familiar scent lingered as if he were standing right next to her. She ran her tongue across her bottom lip.

“Hungry?” Andrew asked.

She gasped and opened her eyes wide. How had he approached without a sound? Her heart raced, first from fright, then with excitement at the sight of him. Dressed in khaki pants and a short-sleeved safari shirt, he was a vision that far surpassed her imagination.

“What are you doing here?”

“Not even a kiss for the father of your child?”

She let out an exaggerated sigh.
“I suppose I could manage that.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.

His lips were warm and inviting—then he pulled back.
“Whoa, what were you eating? Tabasco sauce?”

Caitlin giggled and slipped out of his arms.

“Sorry. I’m cooking something spicy. I guess that means you don’t want a kiss after all.”

“Maybe later, when you cool off.”

“When I cool off, I won’t want to kiss you.”

“I’ll make you want to,” he said with that unshakable arrogance of his.

That he was right was beside the point. “Tyler missed you.”

Andrew arched an eyebrow. “Did he tell you that?”

“Of course.”

He rested his hands on her waist and settled her firmly between his legs as he leaned against the railing. His erection pressed against her stomach, shot a ripple of excitement through her. “And did his mother miss me?”

It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep from showing him just how much she missed him, right there on the deck. “She didn’t say.”

“No, I don’t imagine she would. As a matter of fact, I bet she would rather—now what was that quaint expression—oh, yes; she would rather pick the fleas off a mad dog than admit she missed me.”

“How did your meeting go?” she asked to change the subject.

For a split second, an odd tension washed over his features, then disappeared behind his seductive grin. “Better than I’d hoped for.”

“So Tyler won’t have to go visit you in debtors’ prison or anything like that?”

“No. Ty is going to have a wonderful life.”

“Been staying up late to watch those old movies again?”

For an answer he kissed her again, hard. He urged her backward until they fell together into a lounge chair. Caitlin struggled against him, twisting to free herself from the awkward position before Maggie or Erik joined them.

“Stop fighting me,” Andrew muttered in her ear. She knew he was referring to more than their playful encounter. But fighting him was the only way she would emerge from her current situation with her sanity. How could she have been so stupid as to fall in love with him all over again? 

“That’s better.” He apparently took her silence as surrender. She didn’t correct him. “Where is everybody?”

“Maggie took the kids for a ride in the car to put them to sleep. They were cranky little monsters. Erik’s on the phone with your mother.”

“He’ll be tied up for hours.”

As if on cue, Erik joined them, slumping into a chair with a grunt. “That was the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had with Mother.”

“What’s wrong? Is her credit card over limit again?” Andrew sniped.

“No. She was rattling on about Leslie. Evidently Leslie called the house in a very high-strung state. Sally got the call, and you know how she takes down messages.”

Andrew’s calm deserted him and he went rigid. “I don’t care about Leslie’s problems.”

“This is scary, Drew. She said something about living at Zenith, the most exhausting day of her life, and a Frenchman who treated her horribly and was going to give her proof. Is she in trouble?”

Andrew groaned. “How would I know? She’s probably drunk again.”

“What about you, Caitlin?” Erik shot a pointed gaze in her direction. “Can you shed any light on this riddle?”

“Me?” she squeaked out
. “How would I know?”

“The message was for you, not mother.”