The Housekeeper's Daughter (6 page)

“What the hell?” he exclaimed.

“I'm sorry. I didn't hear you,” Maya said, huddling deeper into a dark wool shawl that all but obliterated her.

The cold place inside him warmed slightly. He dropped down to the step beside her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I just came out for a breath of air and to be alone—” She stopped as if this confession might be construed as a weakness on her part.

“I was feeling the same. I needed some thinking time.”

She started to rise. “I'll leave you to it.”

He caught her arm. “Don't go. I have something I want to ask.”

Her beautiful dark eyes turned toward him, suspicion in their depths. Once she had looked at him in total trust. Eight months ago. It seemed a lifetime.

“You've known my family all your life—”

“Yes?” she said when he stopped.

“Have you noticed anything different about my mother during that time? Do you think she's changed?”

She stared first at him, then out at the swirling mist covering the sea. “Everyone changes with time.”

He made an impatient sound. “Yes, but not dras
tically. Values stay generally the same. And disposition. Have her moods, her way of behaving, changed a lot?”

“Have they to you?”

He considered the past. “Yes. When I was a kid, we used to ride and play games and picnic on the beach. Later…things were different here. But I was away at college and was never really home except for brief periods after that.”

Maya nodded. “I do remember her as warmer, friendlier. Lana and I weren't allowed to intrude on your family and with the age differences between us kids, we didn't play much together.”

“Except for the baseball games when we rounded up everyone we could find to make up two teams,” he reminded her. “You were a good player. For a girl.”

He felt somewhat better when she flashed him a brief smile, then gazed back at the sea. “As an employee, I see Ms. Meredith differently than you would as a child of the family. Rank and privilege and all that,” she said lightly.

“Right. Cinderella and Prince Charming.” He couldn't help the sarcasm. She got to him faster than any female he'd ever met.

A blush tinged her smooth cheeks.

“Is that what you think of our family, that we're a bunch of snobs?”

“Of course not. Your father is a wonderful person. He's never made anyone feel less than a friend.”

“But the same can't be said of my mother?”

She was silent.

“And me? How do you see me?” he demanded, his voice going husky as he was consumed by a need to know.

He touched her hair, which was damp with the mist, its waves deep and enticing. Hunger sprang to life, driving out all but the need to bury himself in her and forget the current perplexities in his world. Except she was part of them. He withdrew his hand reluctantly.

Twisting, she faced him, her eyes level with his. “You're a man used to going his own way. Alone.”

“A person can get tired of being alone,” he said, surprising himself as much as her. Reaching out, he ran his fingertips along her cheek, then under her chin and tilted her face up a bit. Her lips were naturally pink and luscious. Kissable.

“Maya,” he murmured.

Some of the need and confusion he felt after the revealing morning must have shown in his eyes.

“Please don't,” she whispered.

But he couldn't help himself. He slipped his hand into her hair and behind her head and pulled her forward as he leaned toward her. Heat flooded through him, melting the cold, achy place. With the heat came the need, the fierce but scary need that he couldn't afford to feel. A man with no future couldn't afford tender feelings.

“Don't need you? Don't want you?” he questioned. “It would be easier to cut off my right arm. I keep remembering last summer and the way it was. I want it like that again.”

She shook her head, her face closed against him.

With fingers that trembled, he turned her toward him. Her eyes were misty with tears. She closed them and held very still, as if she were trapped there, somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea.

And he was the devil.

“Ah, God,” he said and realized it really was a prayer. He just didn't know for what. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You didn't. It—it was only my own foolish dreams that did that.”

She tried to turn away again, but he wouldn't, couldn't, let her. There were things to be said between them. There was the child's future to think of.

“I've made a will,” he said. “You and the child are my heirs. I've saved some money since I got out of college and there's a trust fund from my parents for each of us kids.”

That got her attention. She turned on him angrily. “I don't want your money! How dare— That you would even think— As if money could—” She collected herself with a visible effort. “I don't need your money. I can take care of myself and the baby.”

She looked so fierce, so insulted, so damn beautiful, he couldn't stop what happened next. He kissed her.

As if he were dying and she was the breath of life. As if he couldn't get enough of her. As if he would never let her go.

When she struggled to rise, he rose with her, continuing the wild, foolish kiss that his heart demanded.

Curving his body around her rounded tummy, he felt their child kick vigorously, whether in delight or
protest, he didn't know. A surge of pride rolled into the passion he couldn't suppress. She stood stiffly in his arms. He eased the kiss but couldn't quite give it up yet.

Suddenly, she softened and with a little moan, laid her hands on his chest, to touch him, he realized. She wasn't pushing him away. Triumph blazed in him.

Folding her in his arms, he savored the smoothness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth. Eight months of dreams narrowed to this single moment of bliss.

He ran his hands up and down her back and into the thick waves of her hair. The tactile sense of her, the taste and scent, the bliss of her being, her existence, fed that inner place where need dwelt. He slanted his mouth this way and that upon her lips.

Maya fought against responding, but it was useless. This was Drake. He was part of her life, of her dreams and expectations of the future. She sensed the powerful hunger in his lean, hard frame. More than that, she knew there were feelings between them. They had shared too much to be indifferent. But was need enough?

She sighed when he moved down her throat, pulling her shawl aside to place random kisses on her neck. Putting her arms around him, she rubbed his shoulders and into his hair, soothing something raw and hurting in him almost the way she would have had he been one of the youngest Colton boys.

However, her body reacted far differently. Drake was a man, and she responded as a woman to him. She wanted the passion and the fire. She'd missed his arms and the strength of his body surrounding hers in
heady desire. She'd missed the hot, hot hunger that blazed to life at the slightest touch between them.

Resting against the railing, she let the kiss take her to that place of dreams and hopes. If only love could be enough, she thought sadly, and realized it wasn't. Only Drake could overcome the strange darkness she sensed within him. Only he could take that one giant step forward into the sunshine of life. He had to want a future in order for there to be one.

Tears crowded behind her closed eyes. She wanted so much for him…for them and their little girl.

“Marry me,” he whispered, raising his head and staring into her eyes as if he would control her with his will.

She shook her head. “I can't.”

“Why? Dammit, why?”

“You have to want it, too.”

“I do.”

“You don't. Not really.”

He gripped her shoulders, but his touch remained gentle. “If not for us, then for
her,
” he said, grabbing whatever argument he could, fair or not. He ran his hands over her abdomen.

She looked at him in mute despair, shredding his heart into confusion and anger and lots of other things.

“You want me,” he reminded her, slipping his hands inside the shawl and touching her breasts, taking their weight and measuring their fullness in his palms.

Maya couldn't lie. “Yes, but sometimes a person wants too much.”

“Such as?” he asked almost absently, as if his entire attention was focused on her body and its changes as he explored her new contours.

“I don't know,” she admitted with a tiny gasp as her nipples contracted swiftly, painfully.

The familiar heat flamed in her. The delicious softening of her body and her will followed.

Drake felt no flash of triumph as she yielded to the passion between them. The feelings were too deep for that, going beyond anything he'd ever experienced with any woman. That was what had put him on the run last June, sending him scurrying off on the dangerous mission in relief. Thinking, planning, acting—those things had kept the turbulent emotions at bay. For a while.

“You make me vulnerable,” he accused. “I can't afford that. It's not good for my job.”

“Or your life. Need puts a person at risk.”

He experienced the jab of truth in her words. On some level, she seemed to know him better than he knew himself. “Yes. A man has to think carefully and plan ahead.”

Maya caressed his cheeks. “But the feelings are there, Drake, whether you acknowledge them or not. You have to learn to live with them.”

He frowned. Confusion darted through his eyes. She smiled with a sadness that went soul deep. Although she wasn't exactly sure what she meant, she knew Drake had to come to terms with his inner self before he could take on a wife and child. She didn't even know how she had come by this knowledge, but it was there, inside her, all the same.

Slowly he let her go, his expression grim and now closed to her. “Go,” he said hoarsely. “Go before I take you to the alcove whether you want to come or not.”

“I know you better than that, and you don't know yourself at all if you think you might force me.”

“I could make you want to go willingly,” he said in blunt honesty.

She shook her head. “If I come to you, it will be by my will, none other. You wouldn't accept less.”

“I'd accept whatever you would give.”

“Go find your soul, Drake. Then come to me and share your heart.” She managed a smile.

Touching his mouth gently, she told him silently of her love, which had never died, she now knew, then she turned and walked up the steps and across the lawn to her lonely room. If she were going to make a future for the baby, she had to study.

“U
h, you going to town this morning?” Drake asked the housekeeper as she bustled out of the house, struggling to pull on a jacket. She'd gone to town for groceries every Thursday morning for as long as he could remember.

She stopped and smiled at him, the usual affection in her eyes. Drake felt immediately better.

“Yes,” she said. “I have to get groceries for this crew. They insist on eating several times a day.”

Drake managed a chuckle and held the jacket for her. “Okay if I ride along?”

Her dark eyes raked over his face, but she nodded without asking about the vintage pickup he'd bought and restored to gleaming perfection years ago. He walked to the ranch wagon and climbed in when she did.

“Maya will be along in a moment,” Inez informed him. “She had errands, too, and volunteered to help with the groceries.”

His heart leaped about, banging off the walls of his chest until he got it under control again. Glancing to the side, he saw Maya emerge from the main house, then hesitate when her eyes met his. He sensed her reluctance even as she walked forward. He jumped out of the station wagon and held the door.

“Your chariot awaits,” he said, not very originally but suddenly his mind couldn't get a grasp on words.

She nodded curtly and slid inside. He did the same.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, forced to scoot over so he could get in.

“Drake needs a ride to town,” Inez explained. She put the car in gear and started off.

“Here's your seat belt,” Drake said and helped Maya into the contraption, careful to place it below the swell of her abdomen. He repressed an urge to caress her there and fastened his own seat belt instead.

Inez chatted on the way to Prosperino, but Maya sat in stubborn silence, a disapproving frown on her face. Drake responded to the housekeeper's remarks, his entire left side burning from Maya's nearness.

Last night, after she'd gone to her room and closed the door, he'd roamed the house, unable to settle for thinking about her remarks out on the cliff stairs.

Find his soul? How? Where did a person begin looking?

He thought of the darkness deep within. Was that where his soul resided? If so, it was a place he didn't
want to disturb. It brought nothing but memories and pain.

Haunted by her advice and rejection, he'd fled his room at midnight and drove to town.

After a couple of beers—okay, maybe three or four—at the local bar, he'd run into Thaddeus Law at the door. The lawman had insisted on taking him home, thinking he'd had one too many.

It occurred to Drake that Maya knew of the incident and that was why every glance was filled with disapproval.

“I was in town last night for an hour or so,” he said, watching for a reaction. “I needed to get away and…think about things.”

“I heard,” Inez told him when her daughter failed to acknowledge his statement. “Heather said Thaddeus brought you home. That's how I knew you'd be wanting to pick up the truck this morning.”

Maya had already heard Heather, Thaddeus Law's bride and Joe Colton's personal assistant, teasing Drake about his big night out on the town while she set the table for breakfast that morning. What he did was his business, she'd reminded herself, ignoring the jab of worry.

“I stumbled coming out the door, so ol' Thaddeus decided I'd had one too many,” Drake said on a note of exasperation and amusement. “He was determined, and it was easier to go along with him than fight.”

“Thaddeus is a naturally protective man,” Inez said. “Since he married Heather he's been even more concerned with solving the mysteries involving the Colton family.” She paused. “Especially Emily's
whereabouts. I have to admit to worrying about her, a child off on her own like that.”

Maya felt the quick tightening of Drake's muscles, then the deliberate way he relaxed as he agreed with her mother about the detective's attitude and the concern over Emily. She stole a glance at him.

His gaze met hers, but absently, as if he were lost in thought. He didn't seem too worried about his sister, which wasn't like him. Drake was also a protective person, and Emily was only twenty. She'd left the ranch with only the clothes on her back and not much else.

“You know something,” she said on a sudden hunch.

“I know Emily is okay. I talked to Rand yesterday.”

Maya gasped. “Has she been in contact with Rand?”

Drake didn't answer right away. Maya felt the hurt of his distrust in sharing information with her and her mother for an instant before he decided to tell them the truth.

“She called him,” Drake admitted. “Rand asked Austin McGrath to check into things.”

“Then…then you believe Emily's story about the two Merediths?” Inez asked, her manner also hesitant.

“Do you?” he challenged.

Maya glanced from one to the other, aware that both knew more than she did about the strange events on the ranch during the past few months. She'd been
caught up in her own troubles, not to mention the shock of being pregnant.

Her mother thought carefully before answering. “A person can change over time, I suppose, but…” She didn't continue, but looked troubled by her musings.

“But Mother changed too much,” he concluded.

“Perhaps, but who knows another's heart?”

Maya considered the implications of his questions and Emily's belief she'd seen two Merediths for a brief spell after the car accident years ago. Finally she said, “This person…she would have to be a twin to successfully take another's place for so long, wouldn't she? I mean, how could she fool everyone, including her own husband and children, without a close connection?”

“There was a twin. That's the news Thaddeus brought us yesterday. Mother admits to having one, but she has a letter that also claims the twin died long ago.”

The shock of this information reverberated through Maya. Ms. Meredith had actually had a twin? It was mind-boggling, to say the least. “No one knew about her?”

“No.”

“That must make things even more confusing,” Inez said, her manner one of sympathy.

Maya wasn't sure what she felt. She couldn't imagine a husband not recognizing his wife or children somehow not knowing their mother wasn't the true one.

“It's damn strange,” Drake conceded. His gaze
flicked to her again. “Another mystery to be solved, it seems.”

Maya bit back a retort about there being no mystery between them. That he could think for a minute the baby might not be his after their time together was an insult beyond forgiving. It spoke to her of his reluctance to accept any part of her and the child. He didn't want it to be his.

She breathed carefully, deeply, until the hurt of that fact receded. Laying a hand on her tummy, she assured the baby that
she
wanted her. Drake laid his hand over hers, startling her.

His gaze held a haunted quality, as if he asked her forgiveness. She looked away.

They arrived in town and went in different directions. Maya did her shopping, then met her mother at the grocery to help her carry the ranch staples out. Drake was there, already helping, his manner easy as he chatted with the housekeeper.

She had to admit he had never acted as if her parents were less than wonderful and an equal to the Coltons in every way. There was some comfort in that. And in the fact that he hadn't been inebriated the previous night. She would never put up with a man with vile habits.

Not that she would have to put up with anything from him. It would never come to marriage between them. He would have to go back to his dangerous career soon, then he could forget her and the baby, knowing he'd come home and offered to do the honorable thing.

Ignoring the dark mood, she sighed and pressed her
hands to her back. If she got through this month and the one after, then she would get her life on track and…all would be well.

She fought the harsh sting of tears that threatened to overcome her. One thing she would be glad to get rid of was this ridiculous urge to cry at the least little thing.

“Ride with me,” Drake requested, materializing beside her while she stood lost in her thoughts.

“I have to get back. I've got a test coming up.”

“We'll go straight to the ranch,” he promised.

Before she could think of a good excuse, her mother got in the ranch wagon and drove off, leaving them standing in the parking lot. “It seems I have no choice,” she said.

“Don't be angry with your mother. I told her I would bring you. I want to talk—”

“I have nothing to say.” She gathered her ragged composure around her, forming a wall to ward off any softer feelings that would overcome her better judgment.

“Then you can listen.”

Looking grim as death, he took her arm and led her to the truck. There, he helped her inside by lifting her with hands at her waist, his touch as gentle as possible. Again the need to weep overcame her. She stared straight ahead while he drove out of town.

“I talked to your father,” he said after a mile of silence. “I gave him a copy of my will so it will be handy if anything happens to me.”

The idea caused such a pang in her heart she had
to wrap her arms across her chest to contain the hurt. “Nothing will,” she said hoarsely. “You're careful.”

He laughed without humor. “I wasn't very careful with you,” he reminded her.

She had no retort for that.

“Maya, I know the baby is mine,” he said quite gently.

“How? I was dating someone else when you came home last summer. There may have been a whole parade of men through my life, for all you know.”

“Maybe, but you were a virgin the first time we made love.”

“You can't know that for sure.”

“I know inexperience when I see it. You hadn't the foggiest notion of how to proceed.”

Her face flamed at the knowing look in the glance he gave her before turning his eyes back to the road. She had put that knowledge there and nothing she could do would dispel it.

He turned in at the ranch drive and slowed almost to a crawl before going off the road and parking among the bay trees and willow shrubs beside the seasonal creek.

“You were trembling,” he continued, turning to her and laying an arm on the back of the seat. “So was I.”

She flashed him a quelling look which did nothing to shut him up. She hated remembering how gullible she'd been.

“I'd never made love before—”

“Oh, right,” she scoffed, ignoring the note of wonder and longing in his tone that jarred right to the
center of her being. She wouldn't be so foolish as to fall under his spell again.

“I'd had sex,” he said in a harsher tone, “but not…not what we shared.”

Maya clenched her hands together. “Don't. You don't have to say that.”

“I think I do,” he murmured. “I hurt you when I asked about the baby. I knew it was mine. I just needed to hear you say it. Men sometimes need assurance, you know.”

She shook her head.

He ignored it. “I'm not surprised we produced a child. What we shared was too strong not to have lasting results. I'm not sorry, either, except for the shame—”

She rounded on him in fury. “Getting pregnant by the son of the house may be one of the oldest clichés in the book, but I'm not ashamed! I may be the housekeeper's daughter, but what I did, I did for—”

“For love,” he finished when she stopped abruptly, appalled at nearly giving herself away so completely.

“It was madness,” she said stubbornly. “Moonlight and madness. That was all.”

His gaze told her he knew better. “I seem to be saying this all wrong, but I wanted you to know I plan to take care of my own. This baby is mine. I intend to see that she never needs for anything.”

The fierce pain that had taken up residence inside her since reading his note of farewell eased somewhat. She nodded stiffly.

“And don't ever bring up the fact that your mother is the housekeeper again,” he added with a warning
frown. “It has never played a part in our relationship. As far as I'm concerned, it never will.”

“I know. I'm sorry I said that. It was hateful.”

He grinned, surprising her. His fingers touched her shoulders and rested there. “Well, we're making progress, it seems. Perhaps we should stop while we're ahead.” Still smiling he started the truck and turned around.

At the house, Maya left Drake and hurried to her room where she flipped on the computer. She felt the weight of her studies and responsibilities as she edited a paper and sent it via the Internet to her teacher at the university in San Francisco. Taking her textbook with her, she went out to the vacant sunroom and read the assigned chapter, then made notes and laid the book down.

Moving the chair to the recliner position, she closed her eyes and fell into a light slumber.

That was where Drake found Maya when he came inside shortly before three. He took a seat in a comfortable padded chair and sipped the fresh coffee Inez had made, his gaze ever drawn to the woman who slept with a slight frown on her face, as if her dreams troubled her.

He knew about dreams. Of late, his were all mixed up with babies and cars that came careening around curves, running over women and children without pause. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had prompted them.

Coward. He grimly acknowledged this fact. It took less courage to face an enemy's gun than it took to face this woman and her demand that he find his soul,
then share his heart. The dark place hammered inside him like a demon demanding its due as he admitted this fact.

Stretching out on the sofa, he wondered what marriage would be like. Coming home to Maya every night. Holding her. Making love. Sharing the tenderness and TLC she bestowed on his younger brothers…