Taking a deep breath, Cecelia blew out a breath and said, “I knew she was pregnant when she left. I didn’t know she’d had a girl.”
“She?”
Cecelia huffed out a breath. “Isabelle.”
He swayed in place. He’d known it. Seeing that necklace on a little girl with his eyes had been impossible to deny. Isabelle. The woman he’d been involved with for almost a year had been pregnant with his daughter and hadn’t bothered to tell him. More than that, though, was the fact that apparently Cecelia had known about his child, too, and kept the secret. Belle had left town. Cecelia had been right here in Royal. Seeing him all the damn time. And never once had she let on that he had a child out there. He couldn’t rage at Belle. Yet. So it was the woman in front of him who got the full blast of what he was feeling. Every time she’d seen him for the last five years, she’d lied to him by not saying anything. She’d known he was a father and never said a damn word. What the hell? And who was Maverick and how did he know?
“You knew and didn’t say anything?” His voice was low and tight.
She tossed a glance over her shoulder toward the table where she’d left her friends, then looked back at him. “No, I didn’t. What would have been the point?”
He glared at her. “The point? My kid would be the point. And the fact that I didn’t even know she existed.”
“Please, Wes. How many times have you said you don’t want kids or a family or anything remotely resembling commitment?”
“Not important.”
“Yeah, it is.” She was getting defensive—he heard it in her voice. “She was pretty sure you wouldn’t be happy about the baby and I agreed. I just told her what you’d said so many times—that you weren’t interested in families or forever.”
Having his own words thrown back at him stung, but worse was the fact that two women he’d been with had conspired to keep his child from him. No, he’d never planned on kids or a wife, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t want to know.
“Then what?” he asked, his voice sounding as if it was scraping along shattered glass. “You wait a few years, find this Maverick and tell him? Help him slam me across social media? For what? Payback?”
Her head snapped back and her eyes went even wider. “I would never do that to you, Wes,” she said, and damned if he didn’t almost believe her. “I wouldn’t hurt you like that.”
“Yeah?” he countered. “Your rep says otherwise.”
She flushed and took a deep breath. “Believe what you want, but it wasn’t me.”
“Fine. Then where is Isabelle?”
“I don’t know. She only said she was going home. A small town in Colorado. Swan…something. I forget. Honestly, we haven’t stayed in touch.” Tentatively, she reached out one hand and laid it on his forearm. “But I’ll help you look for her.”
“You helped enough five years ago,” Wes ground out, and saw her reaction to the harsh tone flash in her eyes.
Too bad. He didn’t have time to worry about insulting a woman who very well might be at the heart of this Maverick business. Sure, she claimed innocence, but he’d be a fool to take her word for it. When he rushed out, he barely noticed the waiter hovering nearby.
Wes’s entire IT department was working on this problem, but he should be researching himself. His own tech skills were more than decent. He could have found Isabelle years ago, if he’d been looking. Yeah, he’d have to sift through a lot of information on the web, but he’d find her.
And when he did, heaven better help her, because hell would be dropping onto her doorstep.
* * *
Isabelle Graystone sat at the kitchen table working with a pad and pen while her daughter enjoyed her post-preschool snack.
“Mommy,” Caroline said, her fingers dancing as she spoke, “can I have more cookies?”
Isabelle looked at the tiny love of her life and smiled. At four years old, Caroline was beautiful, bright, curious and quite the con artist when it came to getting more cookies. That sly smile and shy glance did it every time.
Isabelle’s hands moved in sign language as she said, “Two more and that’s it.”
Caroline grinned and helped herself. Her heels tapped against the rungs of the kitchen chair as she cupped both hands around her glass of milk to take a sip.
Watching her, Isabelle smiled thoughtfully. It wasn’t easy for a child to be different, but Caroline had such a strong personality that wearing hearing aids didn’t bother her in the least. And learning to sign had opened up her conversational skills. Progressive hearing loss would march on, though, Isabelle knew, and one day her daughter would be completely deaf.
So Isabelle was determined to do everything she could to make her little girl’s life as normal as possible. Which might also include a cochlear implant at some point. She wasn’t there yet, but she was considering all of her options. There was simply nothing she wouldn’t do for Caroline.
“After lunch,” Isabelle said, “I have to go into town. See some people about the fund-raiser party I’m planning. Do you want to come with me, or stay here with Edna?”
Chewing enthusiastically, Caroline didn’t speak, just used sign language to say, “I’ll come with you. Can we have ice cream, too?”
Laughing, Isabelle shook her head. “Where are you putting all of this food?”
A shrug and a grin were her only answers. Then the doorbell rang and Isabelle said, “Someone’s at the door. You finish your cookies.”
She walked through the house, hearing the soft click of her own heels against the polished wood floors. There were landscapes hanging on the walls, and watery winter sunlight filtering through the skylight positioned over the hallway. It was an elegant but homey place, in spite of its size. The restored Victorian stood on three acres outside the small town of Swan Hollow, Colorado.
Isabelle had been born and raised there, and when she’d found herself alone and pregnant, she’d come running back to the place that held her heart. She hadn’t regretted it, either. It was good to be in a familiar place, nice knowing that her daughter would have the same memories of growing up in the forest that she did, and then there was the added plus of having her three older brothers nearby. Chance, Eli and Tyler were terrific uncles to Caroline and always there for Isabelle when she needed them—and sometimes when she didn’t. The three of them were still as protective as they’d been when she was just a girl—and though it could get annoying on occasion, she was grateful for them, too.
Shaking her long, blond hair back from her face, she opened the door with a welcoming smile on her face—only to have it freeze up and die. A ball of ice dropped into the pit of her stomach even as her heartbeat jumped into overdrive.
Wes Jackson. The one man she’d never thought to see again. The one man she still dreamed of almost every night. The one man she could never forget.
“Hello, Belle,” he said, his eyes as cold and distant as the moon. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Isabelle felt her heart lurch to a stop then kick to life again in a hard thump. Invite him in? What she wanted to do was step back inside, slam the door and lock it. Too bad she couldn’t seem to move. She did manage to choke out a single word. “Wes?”
“So you do remember me. Good to know.” He moved in closer and Isabelle instinctively took a step back, pulling the half-open door closer, like a shield.
Panic