A raindrop trickled down the shallow cleft in his chin; he could have done with a shave, which added to his general air of unreliability.
Wondering if she was being a complete idiot, Marnie unlocked the passenger door of the Cherokee and pushed the button to unlock all the other doors. A peal of thunder battered its way noisily across the parking lot. As she gave him one last suspicious scrutiny, he yelled, “Aren’t you afraid of lightning storms?”
“No. It’s large, angry men I’m afraid of,” she yelled back. Then she climbed in the Cherokee, putting the keys in her pocket and waiting for him to get in. On the drive to Burnham, when she’d tried to imagine what might happen today, her wildest fantasies couldn’t have come up with this scenario.
As he opened his door, he said, “I thought all women were scared of thunder.”
“That’s a huge generalization. I love thunderstorms, hurricanes and blizzards. Shut the door, you’re letting the rain in.”
He climbed in, slammed the door and turned toward her in his seat, raking her features almost as though he’d never seen a woman before; the smile had vanished. In a voice charged with suppressed emotion, he said, “What’s your name, where are you from and what are you here for?”
“Why do you want to know all that?”
He hesitated perceptibly. “You…remind me of someone.”
As her brain, finally, swung into action, Marnie’s heart began to beat with sick, heavy strokes. There was only one reason why she should resemble someone he knew…wasn’t there? Clenching her fists against her wet dungarees, feeling more afraid than she’d ever been in her life, she took a giant step into the unknown. “Do I remind you of a twelve-year-old girl who lives in this town?” she croaked.
CHAPTER TWO
THE man’s mouth thinned. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions. For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”
“My name’s Marnie Carstairs. I live in Faulkner Beach—fifty miles down the coast.” Although his eyes were as hard as stones, giving as little away, Marnie forced herself to take a second momentous step. “Is your name Calvin Huntingdon?”
In a ferocious whisper, he demanded, “How do you know who I am?”
She sagged back against the seat. He was Calvin Huntingdon. This was the man who’d lived with her child for nearly thirteen years. This was the man her daughter would call father. Her daughter existed. Lived right here in Burnham.
Tears flooded Marnie’s eyes. She fought them back, she who had fought back so much emotion in her thirty years. Swallowing hard, staring at the rain that was streaming down the windshield, she asked her third question in the same tight voice. “Did you adopt a baby girl nearly thirteen years ago? She was born on the twenty-second of June.”
His breath hissed through his teeth. As Marnie’s eyes flickered over his features, she saw that once again he looked thoroughly dangerous. “How did you get my name?” he grated. “Adoption papers can only be accessed by the child, and only then as an adult.”
“Does it matter?” she asked tonelessly. “It was by chance, that’s all. Pure chance.”
“You expect me to believe that? Come off it—what’s the name of the game?”
Through the pain and confusion that was surging through her, Marnie felt the stirrings of anger. She scrubbed at her wet cheeks with the napkins that she still seemed to be clutching, sat up straighter and looked right at him. “There’s something very wrong with this scene. I’m not on trial here!”
With a deadly quietness, he said, “Then why are you here?”
And how could she answer that? When she herself didn’t know the answer. Hadn’t gotten any further in her planning than to drive past the Huntingdons’ house and to ask a few innocent questions of people who’d never link her with a child adopted all those years ago. And finally her mind made the connection that had been glaringly obvious ever since she’d collided with Calvin Huntingdon. “She…she looks like me,” she stumbled. “My daughter…she looks like me.”
Some of the tension eased from her body. A smile spread slowly over her face, a smile of such wonderment and joy that the depths of her irises were as translucent as the sea, and her soft, vulnerable mouth as gently curved as a new moon. Her daughter bore the marks of her true mother; was, in a very real way, her own flesh.
He said harshly, “Very touching. Are you an actress, Marnie Carstairs? Or do you just watch too many soap operas?”
Her jaw dropped. In a burst of antagonism, she snapped, “Do you treat her like this? My daughter? Doubting everything she says? Jeering at all her emotions? Because if so, then you’re not fit to be her father.”
“She’s not your daughter! You gave up that right a long time ago.”
“She’ll always be my daughter,” Marnie cried. “No one on earth can convince me otherwise—and certainly not you.”
“So what about the father?” he lashed. “Where’s he? Or are you saving him up for another day?”
“He’s none of your business.”
“Get real. Why have you turned up in Burnham thirteen years after the fact? What are you after—money? Is that it?”
To her own surprise, Marnie started to laugh. A ragged laugh, but a laugh nevertheless. “Right on—I’m after your money. Give me a million bucks or else I’ll turn up on your doorstep and raise hell.” Her voice rose. “How dare you? You don’t know the first thing about me and you dare accuse me—”
“I know you gave up your child nearly thirteen years ago. It seems to me I know rather a lot about you, Miss Carstairs.”
Marnie had gone too far for discretion. “She duped me, my mother. I thought I was going to marry my cousin Randall and all three of us would live together—me, Randall and the baby. Oh, God, it’s such a long story and I was such a stupid little fool to trust her, but—”
“I’m sure it’s a long story,” he interrupted smoothly. “After all, you’ve had a long time to come up with it, haven’t you? But oddly enough, it’s not a story I want to hear. Just answer me one question. Why did you come here today?”
“You know what?” Marnie retorted with deliberate provocation, flags of temper reddening her cheeks, her breasts heaving under her wet sweater. “I don’t like you, Calvin Huntingdon.”
“You don’t have to like me. And I don’t go by Calvin. The name’s Cal.”
“Oh, sure,” she said rudely. “So we’re on a first-name basis. Isn’t that just ducky?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I’m beginning to realize where my daughter comes by her temper. And her red hair.”
“My hair isn’t red,” Marnie snapped childishly. “It’s auburn. Which is quite different.” The storm of emotion in her breast craving release, she gave him a narrow-eyed scrutiny. “And you just blew it—because you didn’t have the slightest intention of telling me one single thing about her, did you, Mr. Huntingdon?”
“No, I wasn’t going to tell you anything,” he said savagely. “But there’s something about you—you sure know how to get under my skin. So why don’t I go for broke and tell you something else I’ve discovered in the past few minutes? She’ll be beautiful, my daughter. Quite extraordinarily beautiful.”
Marnie wasn’t often struck speechless; she worked, after all, as a librarian in a junior high school where repartee was