Family (17 page)

“And what… you noticed a resemblance?”

“Not exactly.” The story began to spill out, and for the next half hour Dayne tried to remember every detail. He told her about the photo on Luke’s desk, how strangely familiar it had seemed, and how for the first time in years he’d considered the fact that he’d been adopted.

“I kept a photo of my biological mother in a storage unit.”

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The stars were poking through the dark sky now, but the moon was full enough that they still had light around them. He faced the surf, and the feelings returned, the way they’d been when he first compared the photographs of Elizabeth. “It was the same woman in both pictures, and I knew immediately that Luke was my brother. I hired a private investigator, and in no time I had the details. Including the saddest one of all.”

A dawning came over Katy’s face. “Ashley’s mother.”

“Right.” He sat up straighter and drew a slow breath. “Elizabeth Baxter was dying. I had to hurry to Bloomington if I was going to have the chance to ever meet her.”

Katy slid a little closer to him, caught up in the story.

He explained that he’d arrived at the hospital in time to see the entire Baxter family walking through the parking lot. “There they were-the sort of family I’d longed for all my life. A father and brother and sisters, nieces and nephews. I didn’t know if they knew about me, but I was ready to meet them, anyway. I opened the door of my rental car, and that’s when I heard it.” He let his gaze shift to the crashing surf. “The click of cameras.”

A groan came from Katy, and she let her head fall on his shoulder. “Dayne . .

.no.”

“Yes.” He stroked her hair and waited. His throat was thick, the memory sad and vivid.

She lifted her head. “You stayed in your car?”

“I had to.” He sniffed hard through his nose, ordering his emotions to even out.

“This life-” he gave a sarcastic chuckle- “hiding from the paparazzi, working like a CIA agent just to find a night alone.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t expose the Baxters to this. Every tabloid in the country would have a field day with them.” He drew his hand across the night sky. “Think of the headline: ‘Dayne Matthews’ Biological Family Found in Bloomington!’”

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The reality of the situation was setting in for Katy. She sighed. “Oh, Dayne, I’m so sorry.”

“The Baxters are great people, but they’ve got secrets like anyone else. My investigator found out a lot, and if he could find it, the paparazzi would too.”

“So what happened that day at the hospital?”

Sorrow tightened its hold on Dayne’s heart once more. “I watched them walk past and drive away. I had no choice. When they were gone, I went in to see Elizabeth.”

“So you found her?” Hope sang in Katy’s tone. “I couldn’t imagine you going all the way there and missing that.”

“It was amazing.” He let the time fall away, and he was there again; walking into Elizabeth’s hospital room and meeting her for the first and only time. “She told me she loved me and that she never wanted to give me up.”

Tears shone in Katy’s eyes. “It’s so sad, that someone would’ve forced her to let go of you.”

“I know.” Dayne’s voice was quieter, barely audible over the sound of the surf.

But the story spilled out, every detail, all the things he and Elizabeth had discussed. “She told me I needed to find God, that faith was the most important thing I could ever have.” He smiled. “She said she’d been praying for me my whole life.”

“Wow.” Katy rubbed her hands over her bare arms. “That gives me chills.”

The beach was still completely empty. Dayne lifted his chin and savored how good it felt, sitting here next to Katy, alone without fear of cameramen. If only the night could last forever.

They were quiet for a few minutes, and Dayne slipped his arm around her shoulders. “I guess Elizabeth tried to tell John about meeting me, but he thought she was delusional from the cancer drugs. After she died he decided to find me as a way of fulfilling her dying wish.”

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“Sounds like one of your movies.” There was awe in Katy’s voice. “I mean, who could imagine this?”

“I know.”

“Wait!” She pulled back and studied him. “That’s why you were in Bloomington.

The first time I saw you at the theater that night. You told me you were doing research.”

“I was.” A grin tugged at the corners of his lips. “Just not for a movie.”

She pressed her palm to her forehead. “It’s all coming together. I can’t believe it.”

He took her hand. “There’s a little more.” The story was almost finished. He told her about John’s efforts to reach him and how his agent had spoken for him, telling John that Dayne wasn’t interested, and how John made one final attempt to contact him by writing to him at the studio. “I thank God all the time that John’s letter finally reached me.”

“So where did you meet?”

“At a park in Bloomington. I was in and out of town on the same day.”

Again she looked like her mind was spinning. “So what now?”

This was the hard part. “John and I have been talking. He thinks my siblings would want to know me, even if it means being subject to attention from the press.”

“I just thought of something.”

He stifled a chuckle. The story really was amazing. It took more than once through to understand all the implications. “What?”

Katy stared at him. “You gave Ashley a ride home that night. From the theater.”

“Right. The whole time I knew she was my sister.”

“Dayne …” She closed her eyes for a moment. “That’s horrible. I mean, being so close and not being able to say anything.”

“Now you know a little of what I’ve been going through.” He stood and dusted the sand off his shorts. “It’s getting cool. Let’s walk back.”

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She stood and they took their time walking up the beach. He put his arm around her waist, and she did the same to him. Their steps fell together in a rhythm that made him feel almost a part of her.

“You need to meet them.” Katy sounded hopeful, as if the possibilities were just dawning on her. “They’re a wonderful family.”

“I know.” His eyes were watery, more from the images in his heart than from the cool breeze in his face. “But sometimes I still think I’d be better to let it go. I’ve gone this long without being part of the Baxters, and they’ve gone this long not knowing about me. Who does it really help if we make the situation public? Once the Baxters lose their privacy, there’s no way they’ll get it back.

Everything they do from that point on will be subject to scrutiny.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way, and after a few minutes they were in front of the beach house.

Dayne stopped, the sand damp beneath his feet, and faced her. “I had to tell you, Katy.” He touched her face, her cheekbone. “I don’t want any secrets between us.”

The shy look was back. “Thank you. For trusting me.”

He’d been so busy with his story, he’d avoided the obvious. How badly he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, tell her how he was feeling and beg her never to leave. “So-” he smiled-“that’s why Luke looks like me.”

“Yeah.” There was still wonderment in her expression. “It all finally makes sense.” She looked out to sea, then back at him. “You know what I was thinking while we were walking?”

“What?” He could smell her perfume. Mixed with the sea air and her closeness it cracked his resolve. His feelings for her filled him, and he drew her a little closer.

But she was distracted, caught up in some sort of realization. Her face told him that much. “If the Baxters hadn’t been forced to give you away, you would’ve grown up in Bloomington.” She looked deep into his eyes to the most private part of him.

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“Maybe we would’ve met at the theater, and you would’ve been a regular guy, an insurance salesman or a banker.”

“Who painted sets on the weekend for Christian Kids Theater.”

“Exactly.” A sudden sadness hung between them. “Maybe by now …”

“We would’ve met and fallen in love.” He linked his hands around her waist. “And maybe we’d be married with a houseful of babies.”

“Instead of hiding on a beach, stealing a few hours alone.” She let her forehead fall against his chest. “It’s almost more than I can imagine.”

He understood her feelings. He’d let his mind go the same direction dozens of times since realizing the truth about his birth family. What if he’d been raised a Baxter? What if he’d spent his life growing up in Bloomington, running around in the same circles as his brother and sisters, meeting Katy Hart the way any normal guy might’ve met her?

After a while he crooked his finger and put it beneath her chin. His intention was to tell her how he felt about her, that it didn’t matter if they’d met on these terms, and that somehow they’d find a way around his fame so they could have whatever they might’ve had if things had been different. But the moment his eyes met hers, he was unable to keep from acting on the desires that were all but consuming him. “Katy …”

She seemed to know what was coming. Her hand came up alongside his face, and in a pull that was stronger than anything Dayne had ever known, their lips came together. The kiss was sweet and sad and strong enough to set him on fire.

As an actor, Dayne had kissed dozens of women, creating for the big screen an image of love or lust that was intended to enrapture the audience. But kissing Katy was so different. Every other kiss he’d ever done seemed mechanical and make-believe

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compared with the feelings he had here, now, his toes in the sand and Katy Hart in his arms.

She eased back first, her breathing quick and uneven. “Dayne … I need to get back to the hotel.”

His heart thudded inside his chest, and her words seemed to take a moment to reach his brain. But then he nodded. “I know.” He started to pull away, but he couldn’t. Never mind that the day before he hadn’t wanted to kiss her. They might not have another chance like this for days or weeks. Months even. The following week he was set to start filming his next picture.

Their next kiss was longer, and the intensity of their emotions was there for both of them, drawing them in, capturing them, and threatening to take over the moment. Dayne’s heart felt ready to burst, not because of lust and physical desire-though he felt that too-but because he loved Katy and he wasn’t sure how to tell her, wasn’t sure what promises he could make that would survive outside the pretend place they’d found tonight on the beach.

She took a step back and then walked a few paces toward the water. She looked up, shook her head, and stared at the sand by her feet. In the moonlight Dayne could see that she was trembling.

He went to her and touched her shoulder. “Don’t walk away. Not now.”

There were tears in her eyes when she turned to him. “You scare me. I can’t . .

.” She looked back at the shoreline. “Where can it ever go?”

Katy’s words hurt, cut him deep. “I thought the other night on the roof…

we’re so much closer than we were before, Katy.” He moved around her, blocking her view so she had to look at him. “Our worlds aren’t that different now, are they?”

But the answer was in his heart as quickly as it was in her eyes. “You can’t just leave your life here. Even if we share the same faith.” She hugged herself.

Her teeth started to chatter, and she

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clenched her jaw. When she had more control she looked at him again. “You have Hollywood and your movies, and I have Bloomington.” She lifted one shoulder.

“How’s that ever supposed to work?”

“People have long-distance relationships all the time.” His heart was racing, a quiet desperation replacing the desire from just moments ago. “I can’t let you walk away, Katy. I won’t.”

“I don’t know.” She raised her hands as if she were out of answers. “I can sit by you on the beach and pretend you’re my friend. But when-” her voice was louder than before, and two tears spilled onto her cheeks-“when you kiss me, it makes me know somehow that we’re just playing games. We could never have something real, Dayne. Not unless you change your identity.”

He felt a calm come over him. She was panicking. He had to hold things together, help her see there was a way out. There had to be. The paparazzi had frightened her this week, and he had to make her believe again. He took gentle hold of her shoulders and lost himself in her anxious eyes. “Then I’ll change it.”

“Dayne …”

“I will, Katy. Whatever it takes to convince you.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her again, a sweet kiss that didn’t ask more from her than she could give. “You’re forgetting one thing.”

“What?” She was still shaking.

He ran his hands along her arms until he felt her breathe out, felt the calm return. “I asked God to show us a way.” He kissed her forehead this time. “He brought us here, didn’t He?”

Her heart was beating so hard he could feel it. “Yes.” She leaned into him. “I want to think so, yes.”

“Well, then … even though it looks impossible, He’ll make a way for us to be together. You have to believe that.”

She looked at him, to the places inside him that belonged only to her. “I’m so afraid.”

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“I know.” He touched his finger to her lips. “Let’s get you back. We don’t have to figure everything out tonight.”

They went up the beach and into the house, and she gathered her things. For a single instant he considered asking her to stay. She could have one of the back bedrooms, and he would promise her that nothing would happen between them.

But Bob Asher had told him something that came to him now: “Moral failure begins with the smallest compromise.”

So instead of even making the suggestion, Dayne drove Katy back to the hotel. Along the way they made a plan that she would take a cab to the beach house in the morning. They could spend the day lying in the sun and sorting through whatever possibilities might exist for them.

He parked by the front lobby door, and again they were able to escape the paparazzi. He loved her; he had no doubt. And before she stepped out of the car, he wanted to tell her so. But the timing was off, and she was in a hurry, the magic from earlier tonight gone.