Home Again

But the ugliness came anyway.

When Alexander Hillyard found out that his perfect daughter was pregnant, he went crazy. He locked her in her room and barred the windows with thick, black iron rails. No amount of tears or pleading words swayed him. He decreed that she would have an abortion, and they would never speak of her indiscretion again. He would not allow this to ruin her future.

She waited in that cold, impeccably decorated room for days, huddled alongside the window, staring out, waiting for Angel to come for her.

Finally she saw him, a slim shadow standing at the perimeter of the property. She launched herself at the window, clawing it with her fingers, crying out his name. But he didn’t hear her.

She watched him walk up the brick walkway, then disappear into the house. She huddled at her locked door, listening desperately for footsteps.

Footsteps that never came.

Fifteen minutes later—the longest quarter of an hour of her life—he left the house. She scrambled back to the window and pressed her face to the glass. At the gate he turned around, his eyes searching the front of the house.

Their gazes met, and slowly, so slowly, he shook his head, then he turned and walked away. She thought she’d seen tears on his cheeks, but it could have been the rain, she’d never been sure.

Even after he left, she clung to a fraying thread of hope that he would be back. A thread that broke cleanly the next night.

She heard a rumbling sound outside and she raced to the window, shoving the Alençon lace curtains aside. He was at the side of the road, staring up at her window, sitting on a brand-new, chrome-plated Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

And that was when she knew: he’d taken money from her father.

This time she was certain that he was crying, but she didn’t care. He gave her a wan, tired wave, and then he drove away.

It was the last time she’d seen Angel DeMarco—until he showed up in ICU, needing her to save his life.

She knew Angel had thought she’d had an abortion. Her father had wasted no time in telling the daddy-to-be that there would be no baby.

So what had made her risk it all now, opening the Pandora’s box that had been shut for so long?

She didn’t know the man lying in that bed down the hall, didn’t honestly know a thing about him. But she knew his roots, knew where be came from and the kind of person he’d once been. The kind who roared away from responsibility on a brand-new Harley-Davidson.

People didn’t change, not at their core. She had no doubt that the wild, hell-raising, rebellious seventeen-year-old boy was still alive and kicking in that broken thirty-four-year-old body.

One look. One smile. That’s all he’d have to give Lina and she’d melt, just as Madelaine had done so many years ago.

She shuddered. Closing her eyes for a split second, she imagined Lina running away from the cold, perfect mother who never did anything right, running into the sunlight warmth of Angel’s smile. Never looking back, never coming home.

But the time for such fear was past. Madelaine was tired of lying and hiding and pretending, tired of watching her precious daughter slide into an abyss. Madelaine knew—had always known—she had a rope, and she couldn’t go on standing on the sidelines, being a bystander to her own life. She was tired of being afraid.

Angel might break Lina’s heart, might hurt her daughter irreparably, but maybe he wouldn’t. That was the hope that had filled her a while ago. Maybe he wouldn’t.

Maybe the past wasn’t what she’d always thought it to be, an immutable spreadsheet of facts and figures and moments found and lost. Maybe it was more amorphous, more forgiving. Maybe Lina and Angel could draw the best out of each other, save each other in this time when both of them were floundering and felt so alone.

She had to believe it.

He was running late—as usual.

Francis plunged his foot down on the accelerator, waiting several seconds for the action to kick in. The tired car stuttered and lurched forward, its engine humming loudly, rattling the cup of coffee wedged between his thighs.

The twisting gravel road arced to the left, then to the right and back to the left again, snaking through a forest of old-growth timber.

He drove up the mountain, twisting and turning, emerging every now and then onto the sweeping vista of the river valley below. Finally, at just over an hour late, he saw the resort’s hand-carved sign. He turned in to the tree-lined drive and eased his pressure on the accelerator.

Multnomah Lodge sat like a wood-hewn tiara in a grove of towering evergreens. The sweeping circular drive curled into the front door, drawing guests in a friendly embrace toward the entrance. Lights glowed through mullioned windows cut into the log exterior. The last autumn flowers, chrysanthemums, hardy roses, Shasta daisies, lined the stone walkways.

He maneuvered his battered old Volkswagen up to the curb. The doorman rushed out and waited at attention.

Francis killed the engine, wincing as it sputtered and coughed. Yanking hard on the cold metal handle, he pushed the whining door open and got out. He retrieved his garment bag from the trunk and slung it over his shoulder, then gave the valet the keys and headed inside.