This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5)(83)

He cocked his head, all pretense of indifference gone.

"They hated letting you play football. They were so terrified that you'd get hurt. But I held them to their promise, and they never tried to stop you." She could no longer meet his eyes. "All I had to do was give them one thing in exchange…"

She heard him move closer, and she looked up to see him step into a narrow shaft of sunlight.

"What was that?"

She could hear in his voice that he already knew. "I had to agree never to see you."

She couldn't look at him, and she bit her lip. "Open adoption didn't exist then, or if it did, I didn't know about it. They explained to me how easily confused children can get, and I believed them. They agreed to tell you who your birth mother was as soon as you were old enough to understand, and they sent me a hundred pictures over the years, but I could never visit you. As long as Maida and John were alive, you were to have just one mother."

"You broke your promise once." His lips barely moved. "When I was sixteen."

"It was an accident." She wandered toward a boulder protruding from the sandy soil. "When you started playing high school football, I realized I finally had a chance to see you without breaking my promise. I started flying into Grand Rapids on Fridays to watch the games. I'd strip off my makeup and wrap this old scarf around my head, put on nondescript clothes so no one would recognize me. Then I'd sit in the visitors' stands. I had this little pair of opera glasses I'd train on you for the whole game. I lived for the times you'd take off your helmet. You'll never know how much I grew to hate that thing."

The day was warm, but she felt chilled, and she rubbed her arms. "Everything went fine until you were a junior. It was the last game of the season, and I knew it would be nearly a year before I could see you again. I convinced myself there wouldn't be any harm in driving by the house."

"I was mowing the grass in the front yard."

She nodded. "It was one of those Indian summer days, and you were sweaty, just like you are now. I was so busy looking at you that I didn't see your neighbor's car parked on the street."

"You scraped the side."

"And you came running over to help." She hugged herself. "When you realized who I was, you looked at me like you hated me."

"I couldn't believe it was you."

"Maida never confronted me about it, so I knew you hadn't told them." She tried to read his expression, but he wasn't giving anything away. He nudged aside a fallen branch with the toe of his running shoe.

"She died a year ago. Why did you wait until now to tell me all this?"

She stared at him and shook her head. "How many times did I call and try to talk to you? You refused, Kevin. Every time."

He gazed at her. "They should have told me they wouldn't let you see me."

"Did you ever ask them about it?"

He shrugged, and she knew he hadn't.

"I think John might have said something, but Maida would never have allowed it. We talked about it over the phone. You have to remember that she was older than all your friends' mothers, and she knew she wasn't one of those fun moms every kid wants. It made her insecure. Besides, you were a headstrong kid. Do you really think you'd have shrugged it off and gone about your business if you'd known how much I wanted to see you?"

"I'd have been on the first bus to L.A.," he said flatly.

"And that would have broken her heart."

She waited, hoping he'd come nearer. She fantasized that he'd let her put her arms around him and all the lost years would vanish. Instead, he bent to pick up one of the pinecones lying on the ground.

"We had a TV in the basement. I went down there every week to watch your show. I always turned the volume low, but they knew what I was doing. They never said a word about it."

"I don't suppose they would have."

He rubbed his thumb over the scales. His hostility was gone, but not his tension, and she knew the reunion she'd dreamed of wasn't going to happen.

"So what am I supposed to do about all this now?"

The fact that he had to ask the question showed that he wasn't ready to give her anything. She couldn't touch him, couldn't tell him she'd loved him from the moment of his birth and had never stopped. Instead, she only said, "I guess that'll be up to you."

He nodded slowly, then dropped the pinecone. "Now that you've told me, are you going to leave?"

Neither his expression nor his tone gave her a cue how he wanted her to respond, and she wouldn't ask. "I'm going to finish planting the annuals I bought. A few more days."

It was a lame excuse, but he nodded and turned toward the path. "I need to take a shower."

He hadn't ordered her to leave. He hadn't told her this had come too late. She decided it was enough for now.



Kevin found Molly perched in her favorite spot, the glider on the back porch of the cottage, a notebook on her thighs. It hurt too much to think about Lilly's earthshaking revelations, so he stood in the doorway gazing at Molly instead. She must not have heard him come in because she didn't look up. On the other hand, he'd been acting like such a jerk there was a good chance she was ignoring him, but how was he supposed to behave when Molly kept hatching up all these zany adventures without a clue how being near her affected him?