A Camden's Baby Secret (3 page)

“Greta, where did you go?” the nurse called from upstairs. “Come back and see—I found something we can tie in your doll's hair like you wanted.”

“I'll be right back!” Greta promised Livi, before charging out of the room again.

As she did, Maeve said, “She's attached to Kinsey. Follows her like a shadow. But what will happen when I'm better and don't need a nurse anymore? Then an old lady will be the only woman Greta has paying any kind of close attention to her. What she needs is a younger one, somebody who can give her what Mandy would have. And she seems to have taken to you, Livi...”

GiGi had suggested something similar—that Greta would need a woman in her life. And that had been something Livi had thought she might be able to do, even if it was long distance. She could make frequent trips to Northbridge, she'd decided. And maybe Greta could occasionally come to Denver on long weekends or vacations from school, to give her guardian a break.

Only, now that Livi knew
who
Greta's guardian was, she couldn't say she was eager for any contact that might put her in the position she was in right now.

So she said, “I'd be happy to spend time with her, to act as a big sister. But I live in Denver. Seth might know of a woman here—between the two of us I'm sure we could find someone for her.”

“Denver is where we're all headin',” John Sr. said under his breath, not sounding happy about it.

“That's where Callan lives,” Maeve explained. “And he wants to look after us now that our John Jr. can't. We aren't doing so well on our own anymore.”

Then I don't have an out?
Livi was near panic at the idea of having to face Callan on a regular basis.

“I don't know about having her around Greta,” Callan said, sounding frustrated at having his stance ignored. “She's come at us out of the blue. How do we know she doesn't have something up her sleeve, the way her family did with Greta's grandfather?”

“It isn't like you don't have some things to answer for in your own past,” John Sr. grumbled to Callan. “And that was all you, not some long-gone relatives. Didn't keep Mandy and our John from lettin' you be around Greta.”

Callan looked thunderous, which Maeve must have noticed, because she rushed to speak next. “I have good instincts about people and Livi seems like a nice person who's just wanting to make things right. Everybody makes mistakes. It's what they do to correct them that matters.”

There was an underlying message in that, aimed at both John Sr. and Callan, but Livi had no idea what that message was. It kept both men quiet, though, while Maeve seemed to take the reins.

“I think it could be really good for Greta to have you be her big sister, Livi,” the elderly lady said then. “To have a young woman's guidance so I don't have to worry that I'm not up-to-date enough for her. Today, meeting you, is the happiest I've seen her since we lost her momma and daddy. So if you're willing to take that little girl under your wing to atone for the past, I think we'd be lucky to have you.”

It appeared that both men knew better than to argue with her.

But with resignation in his almost-black eyes, Callan said to Livi, “Greta is my responsibility now and I'll be watching to make sure you're on the up-and-up with this.”

He'd be
watching
? Did that mean that he was going to make sure he was around whenever she was with Greta?

Oh, great, that's all I need.

But what could Livi say? That he was the glaring reminder of her worst mistake and she didn't want to face him over and over again?

GiGi had given her the task of performing restitution to Greta. It was her job to make sure Greta was well taken care of, that the little girl's needs were met—no matter what. Livi had to see it through. She didn't have a choice.

Maybe this is my punishment for Hawaii
, she thought.

But without any way to back out now, she took a deep, bracing breath, plastered a smile on her face and said, “We just want to do something for Greta's good.”

Regardless how difficult it might prove to be for Livi.

Because despite the way this had started out today, she was now afraid it was going to be very, very difficult...

* * *

“I'll go in and say hello to John, pay him directly.”

“Yeah, sure,” Callan said to the man whose truck he'd just loaded with hay bales.

There had been an edge of distrust in Gordon Bassett's voice, but Callan ignored it. Disdain and distrust for him in Northbridge was an old song Callan knew well. And apparently that was never going to change. It was the price he paid for being the kid from the other side of the tracks. A kid who had earned the reputation as a troublemaker.

But Callan had too many other things to think about at the moment to care about that. Actually, he wasn't even looking at the man he'd known all his life. He was watching the woman he now knew as Livi
Camden
drive away. And wondering what the hell was going on lately. Life was throwing him one curve ball after another.

Beginning in the middle of the night he'd spent with her.

If she'd told him her last name when they'd met at that beach bar in Hawaii, he might have left her sitting alone to watch the sea turtles and the sunset by herself.

Oh, who was he kidding? Even knowing what kind of people she came from, he probably would have stuck around.

She'd been too damn gorgeous sitting there in the fading sunlight with her long, bittersweet-chocolate-colored hair draping over her sexy bare shoulders. When she'd looked up at him with eyes that were a darker and more beautiful cobalt blue than the clear sky in the distance, eyes set in the face of an angel, he wouldn't have pulled away no matter what. Not with the mood he'd been in, having just accomplished a buyout he'd been working on for a year. He'd wanted to kick back and celebrate a little at day's end—so yeah, he'd have probably stuck around even if he had known she was a Camden.

He just wouldn't have ever told Mandy about it.

But the Livi of Hawaii
was
a Camden.

And now their paths had crossed again.

Two curve balls for the price of one...

He watched Livi's car get farther and farther away. He'd had every intention of going out to that car with her when she left so he could talk to her alone about Hawaii.

But then Bassett had showed up for his hay and Callan had had no choice but to head out to load the truck.

Now she was gone and he felt like an even bigger heel than he'd felt in the last two months whenever the thought of Hawaii came to mind.

As big a heel as she no doubt thought he was.

Not that they'd made any plans. Any promises. It had even been Livi who had dodged talk of what she'd called their “real lives.”

But still, to take off without a word, without even thinking about her...

To be honest, in that moment he hadn't been thinking about anything but that middle-of-the-night phone call.

That lousy, freaking call that had caused his phone to vibrate enough to wake him without waking Livi, so he could take it into the living room of his suite and not disturb her.

That lousy, freaking call that had literally knocked the breath out of him, leaving him dazed and operating on autopilot, struggling to deal with the news that his two closest friends—Mandy and John Jr.—had been involved in a horrible car accident. That J.J. was barely holding on to life. That Mandy was already dead.

Callan had thrown on the clothes Livi had helped him discard hours before. Once he was dressed—taking nothing with him other than his wallet and cell phone—he'd rushed out of that suite, calling his pilot to arrange an emergency flight for his private jet, to get him to Montana immediately.

Calling the concierge to explain the situation and get the man to see to packing his bags, checking him out and sending the bags to him later.

Calling his assistant to get to Montana ahead of him and begin dealing with the nightmare.

By the time Callan was on his way to the airport, and finally remembered the woman he'd left in his bed, it was already too late.

He'd called his hotel room from the plane—no answer. He'd talked again to the concierge, who had gone to the suite while he was still on the line.

But Livi was gone, and there was no way for Callan to contact her when all he knew was her first name.

They'd gone from the beach to his suite, so he had no idea what room had been hers, no way of trying to get a belated message to her. No way of ever letting her know what had happened, and that he'd hoped and expected their time together to end much differently.

At the very least, it wouldn't have ended with him disappearing into thin air.

He felt rotten for how he'd treated Livi, even if he did have a reason for it. Under other circumstances, if they'd met again, he would have apologized, explained, maybe tried to make it up to her somehow.

But under these circumstances?

Nothing about these circumstances was normal.

She
was
a Camden. He knew how Mandy had felt about the Camdens—any generation of them. She would never have trusted them. And she would never have let any one of them near Greta.

And why
had
Livi come around?

Callan couldn't say that he trusted a Camden's motives, either. Not after what he knew they'd done to Mandy's dad.

Did Livi Camden have something up her sleeve?

She was the first Camden to make any contact since they'd got what they wanted all those years ago. It was something Mandy had always added when she'd told the story—that they'd never so much as said they were sorry, not even when her dad died...

And that was what they did to supposed
friends
.

Now Callan was being pressured to let one of them near Greta?

But just how hard-line could he be with her, after the way he'd abandoned her in Hawaii, even if there had been a good reason? Not to mention just how hard-line could he be going up against the Tellers, who had taken an instant liking to Livi and seemed willing and eager to have her mentor their granddaughter?

The Tellers, who he owed.

The Tellers, who he'd promised John Jr. on his deathbed he would take care of.

That promise was already hard enough to keep, given the way John Sr. refused to trust him. If Callan went against the man in this, it would just make the tensions between them that much worse.

It didn't seem like this was where to draw a line at all, except for Mandy's feelings about the Camdens...

Could he really let Livi into her daughter's life?

It felt wrong.

But apparently only to him.

By now, Livi Camden's car was out of sight. And with the weight of everything bearing down on him, Callan bent over, hands to knees, and stared at the dirt under his feet.

He'd had one hell of a lot to figure out even before he'd walked into the Tellers' farmhouse and found Livi-from-Hawaii sitting there.

Shortly, he'd be handing the farm over to the people he'd hired to look after it and taking the Tellers and Greta to Denver with him, and he had no idea what was going to happen then. Especially when it came to Greta. Raising a kid was so much more involved than anything he'd ever done before. He had to be her
father
. Her family along with the Tellers.

But what did he know about being part of a family? About having a family?

Nothing. Flat-out nothing.

At least nothing good, nothing he wanted to repeat.

And now it was on him to be that, to provide that for Greta.

“I need some help here, guys,” he muttered to the memory of Mandy and John Jr.

More help than what his geriatric charges could give, he thought.

And the Tellers liked Livi.

Greta liked Livi.

Plus Maeve was probably right—Greta was going to need the influence and advice of a woman younger than eighty.

He didn't have a wife anymore—he'd already blown that. There was no one else on the docket to fill that bill and take over that duty.

And Livi Camden was applying for the job.

So he guessed that rather than buck the Tellers, rather than deny Greta something she should have and clearly wanted, he supposed he had to give in on this.

Sorry, Mandy
, he said mentally to his lost friend.
But I swear I'll stick as close as I can every minute she's with Greta, to keep an eagle eye on her. No matter what, I won't let another Camden hurt somebody you care about.

Even if it meant he had to take a hard line with Livi down the road, if he discovered she did have some kind of Camden ulterior motive.

Even if it meant he had to be a son of a bitch to her a second time.

He really hoped it didn't come to that. Not with the first woman he'd had the slightest inclination to approach since his divorce.

The woman he'd had on his mind a surprising amount during the last two months.

The woman who had—at first sight this afternoon—made his pulse kick up a notch. And not just out of guilt for how things had been left in Hawaii, but simply from setting eyes on her again.

He had to keep in perspective that that one night in Hawaii was nothing
but
one night. In Hawaii.

Because incredible blue eyes that made his pulse race or not, he couldn't deal with any more than he already was.

Chapter Three

T
he Camden ranch house was still empty when Livi got back after meeting Greta and the Tellers.

And Callan.

Callan from Hawaii.

She'd driven home in the same dull sense of disbelief that she'd been in since setting eyes on him again. She was glad her cousin Seth wasn't back yet because she needed some time for what had happened to sink in.

She dropped her purse in the foyer, took a sharp right to the living room and sank into one of the oversize leather easy chairs, slumping so low her head rested on the back cushion.

Her mind was spinning.

Callan.

The stranger on the beach in Hawaii was from Denver.

With connections in Northbridge. Just like her.

And now they'd met again...

Was the universe toying with her or was she going to wake up and realize she was dreaming this whole thing?

She knew it was just wishful thinking that this was all some kind of nightmare that would fade away as soon as she woke up.

But still she pinched her eyes closed for a minute and then opened them wide.

No, she definitely wasn't dreaming.

And she wasn't nauseous.

That thought almost made her cry.

Because if the nausea was coming from stress, this was the time for it. She should have been miserably sick to her stomach, since the tension she was feeling was through the roof.

But she wasn't feeling queasy.

With the exception of the cooking smells at last week's Sunday dinner at GiGi's house, she was sick only in the mornings.

Morning sickness.

Her mind wasn't even letting her skirt around it now, as if seeing Callan again made everything more real. Even her memories of Hawaii...

That day had been the ninth anniversary of her wedding to Patrick. The fourth without him. It was still a bad day every year. A day she had to struggle through.

The first year she'd immersed herself in everything she'd had of Patrick's, everything that kept him alive for her. She'd set out every picture she had of him, worn one of his shirts, padded around in his bedroom slippers. She'd gone through everything and anything that reminded her of him. She'd wallowed in all she'd lost and her own misery.

That had been a terrible day.

So the next year she'd tried plunging herself into work, going into the office at six that morning, staying until the cleaning crew showed up that night, pretending it was just business as usual.

But the cleaners had found her sobbing at her desk, because work hadn't made anything better, either.

Last year she'd tried enlisting her family to distract her. And they had. They'd whisked her off to the mountains to go boating and water-skiing on Dillon Lake.

But all she'd been able to think about, to talk about, had been Patrick—how much Patrick had loved days like that with her family, how much he'd loved the water and how often he'd talked about retiring seaside somewhere, how much he'd loved barbecuing...

And by the end of the boating and barbecuing and s'mores, she'd still been a mess.

So this year, in Hawaii, she'd decided to deal with her anniversary by disengaging. By skipping the conference, not scheduling any meetings, any breakfasts, lunches or dinners. By not doing anything.

“Pamper yourself,” her sister and Jani had urged, worried about her being so far away and alone on that day.

Taking their recommendation, Livi had slept until she couldn't sleep any more—until after noon, something she never did.

Then she'd gone to the hotel's luxury spa, where she'd had a massage in near silence, not inviting or welcoming any conversation from the masseuse, trying to keep her mind blank.

Afterward the massage therapist had advised her to sit in the sauna, to sweat out the toxins.
You'll feel like a new woman
, she had said.

Livi rarely used the sauna because she wasn't fond of heat like that, but on that day of all days she wanted to feel like a new woman, because feeling like the old one wasn't good. So she'd sat in the sauna, thinking only about how hot it was, about sweating away the old Livi and emerging a new one.

Which she'd actually sort of felt she'd accomplished by the time she'd finished. She'd been so calm and relaxed and...well, just different than she usually felt. Especially on her anniversary.

Different enough to decide to go with the flow of that feeling by moving on to the hotel's salon.

She hadn't had a haircut since Patrick's death. Four years without so much as a trim.

Patrick had liked her hair long and she just hadn't been able to have any of it cut.

But that day she'd actually felt like it. Nothing short, no huge change, nothing Patrick would have even noticed, just a little something...

Which was what she'd done—had a scant two inches cut off the length. But she'd also had the sides feathered, and then agreed to the highlights the stylist suggested.

It was funny how a small change could catapult her even further into feeling like a whole new woman.

And while she was at it, why not go all the way? The makeup artist had had a cancelation and offered Livi his services. Why not have her face done, too?

For Lindie's wedding, Livi had declined the opportunity for that and stuck with her usual subdued blush and mascara. But on that day in Hawaii she'd let the makeup artist go ahead with whatever he wanted to do—nothing dramatic, but different shades of the colors she liked, and slightly more of everything.

And while he'd worked, she'd also let the manicurist do a skin-softening waxing—feet and hands—for which she'd taken off her wedding rings.

By then she'd been all in with the idea of a New Livi for just one day, so she'd had her nails painted bright red and stenciled with white flowery designs—something more showy than she'd ever done before.

She honestly had felt like someone different when she'd left the salon, and she'd decided that maybe doing things she never did was the answer to getting through the anniversary. Certainly it had been helping to keep the sadness away more than anything had before.

And she'd definitely wanted to keep that going.

So she'd left her rings in her purse and splurged in the hotel's dress shop, changing into a halter sundress that exposed so much shoulder that it forced her to include her bra with the bag of clothes she'd had sent to her room.

She'd never been to a bar alone and she
had
chosen the table farthest out on the beach, away from the bar itself and the guests mingling around it, but it was still something the Old Livi would never have done.

And the New Livi had ordered a drink. And then a second one. Because, after all, the sun was low in the sky by then and she'd felt floaty and really, really nice. Really, really as if she were someone else. And that someone else wanted another drink...

It was that someone else who had looked up to find the oh-so-good-looking guy saying hello to her halfway through her second drink. That someone else who had said yes when he'd asked if he could sit with her. That someone else from then on.

Maybe it had been the liquor, but she'd found Callan as easy to talk to as Patrick had always been, and after a while she'd realized that she was having a good time with him. That she was feeling a connection—in the most superficial way, of course—with Callan. A connection she hadn't felt with any man she wasn't related to since Patrick.

And it helped that the only similarity between Callan and her Patrick was that she'd found them both easy to talk to. In every other way, Callan was
very different.

Patrick hadn't been too tall—only five-eight. Patrick had not had an athlete's body—he'd been slight, weighing only twenty pounds more than she did.

Patrick's fair hair had been thin, his hairline receding, and he'd had unremarkable, boy-next-door good looks, with his ruddy cheeks and nondescript hazel eyes hidden behind the glasses he'd needed to wear.

It had been Patrick's winning personality that had gained him friends and jobs. And her.

So sitting at that beachside table—and, yes, hitting it off—with a tall, imposing guy with great hair and great eyes and great features, and a body that was not only athletic and hard, but also muscular and broad-shouldered and so, so masculine, had not been something Livi Camden-Walsh was experienced at.

And she most definitely wasn't experienced at not only chatting and laughing with the stranger, but flirting with him, too...

Yes, she'd been flirting with him.

And she'd never flirted with anyone but Patrick in her life.

But her Hawaiian alter ego had actually been good at it. Again, maybe because of the booze.

They'd sat there until late. Until the hula dancing was done. Until the live music ended. Until there were no more than a few people at the bar. She and Callan had sat there drinking and talking about nothing that meant anything.

Finally, Livi noticed that the moon was high, and decided it must be late and she should call it a night.

No, not yet—how about a walk on the beach?
he'd said.

Any other time, any other man and she wouldn't have let him postpone her exit.

But that night, her Hawaiian alter ego had taken Callan's hand when he'd held it out to her to help her from her chair.

Then they'd walked on the beach side by side in the moonlight, laughing and flirting. And the farther up the beach they'd gone, the more removed she'd felt from everything but the beauty of that tropical paradise and that man who continued to bring her out of herself.

She was so much out-of-herself and so completely inhabiting her Hawaiian alter ego that when she stumbled and Callan caught her arm to keep her from falling, she hadn't minded.

And when that hand had stayed on her arm, when she'd looked up into that handsome face to make a joke about her clumsiness, she remembered well that he'd been looking down at her with a thoughtful smile and eyes that seemed too gentle for someone so big and manly.

She'd been lost in what she'd seen in those eyes, and when he'd kissed her, it wasn't as if he was kissing Livi Camden-Walsh, it was as if he was kissing someone else. And she was just getting to enjoy it.

And she
had
enjoyed it. He had a way about him, a technique, that was so...well, just so good that it drew her even further out of herself, forgetting about everything but that kissing that washed her mind of all other thoughts and carried her away.

She wasn't even surprised when she found herself kissing him back with just as much heat.

And from that moment on—until she woke up alone in his bed hours and hours later—she really, truly didn't feel that she was Livi Camden-Walsh. She was totally that someone else she'd set out to be after the sauna. That someone who got to forget herself and escape how much it hurt every time she thought about Patrick being gone.

That someone who had been sinking into a sated slumber when Callan had told her that the condom had broken
just a little
, so she hadn't worried about it...

She wished that that had woken her fully, bringing her back to herself...but it hadn't. She'd fallen asleep as that new person who didn't worry, didn't fuss, didn't grieve.

But she'd woken up as herself at four in the morning, horrified and ashamed.

At first she'd worried about how she was going to face Callan. Wherever he was—the bathroom maybe? As she'd dressed, she'd thought about the conversation she needed to have with him. She would explain that she hadn't been herself, that normally she was the last person to ever even consider having a vacation fling. And then she'd say that it would be best if they just went their separate ways. When she'd finished perfecting the words in her head, she'd walked over to tap on the bathroom door...but it had swung open under her touch, revealing that there was no one inside.

It was then that she'd started to realize that the whole place was too silent for anyone else to be in it.

She'd paused to actually look around, and discovered that Callan was gone.

It was four in the morning and he was gone. There was no note, no explanation. She tried to come up with excuses for him. Maybe he'd gone out for a cigarette, or to get some ice. But his teeth were too white for him to be a smoker, and the ice bucket was still on the bar. Nothing was open in the hotel at that hour, so he couldn't have gone to one of the restaurants or bars.

Still, she'd waited five minutes for him to get back from wherever he'd gone. Then ten. Then half an hour. By the time an hour had ticked by, she couldn't bear to wait any longer.

Livi had no experience with any of this, but she had friends who had talked about guys sneaking out once the deed was done, and she'd suddenly felt certain that that had to be what had gone on with Callan. She'd pictured him slinking out so as not to wake her and hiding somewhere. In the room of a friend, maybe? They hadn't talked about anything personal, so she had no idea if he was at the hotel alone or with other people. People he could take refuge with until she was gone.

All she'd wanted to do was get out of there, get to her own room, shower and call the airline to change her ticket so she could go home a day early.

Home, where she could write off that night to pure and utter insanity, and resolve never to think about it again.

As she'd left his suite she'd dug in her tiny purse for her wedding rings and put them back on with a vengeance. She'd just been grateful that what she'd done had happened far away from her loved ones, who would never need to know.

She'd also been grateful that she'd never have to see that guy again or be reminded of him in any way.

And she'd sworn to herself that she would never, ever, ever even wish to forget herself like that again.

Sitting in the big leather chair in the ranch's living room now, she groaned.