Still the One (5 page)

Katie turned and stared as the girl flounced out of the café.
My daughter. That’s my daughter.
The thought reverberated in her head as the door closed behind Gracie.

The daughter who had been in her prayers every day for the last seventeen years, the daughter she thought about every time
she passed a young girl on the street, the daughter she’d mourned and missed like a lost piece of her soul. Katie rose from
her chair to go after her, her pulse thudding in her ears.

Zack laid a hand on her wrist. His palm seemed wired with electrodes.

“Let her be,” he said gently. “She needs to cool down.”

“But…” He had no idea how Katie had yearned to see her child, how she’d ached to hold her, how she’d wondered if she’d ever
get to meet her. Now that she had, she couldn’t just let her walk away. “I need to go talk to her.” She pulled her hand out
from under his.

Zack gently took it again. “Later. Give her a little space.”

A little space? She hadn’t seen Grace since the nurse had taken her from her arms in the delivery room. Seventeen years was
more than enough space.

“She’ll be a lot more receptive in a few minutes,” Zack said.

How the hell did he know so much about Grace? Irritation tumbled into the twisted stream of emotion roaring through her veins.

“Sit back down, Kate.” His fingers caressed the back of her hand, sending disturbing prickles up her skin. “We need to talk.”

Katie sank back into the chair, her stomach feeling like she was riding a roller coaster. Oh, they needed to talk, all right.
Irritation flared into outrage. She welcomed its heat, welcomed the way it burned some clarity through the fog of shock.

She looked over to see Cindy watching her, her eyes rapt. The men at the counter were watching, too, the bills of their caps
pointed toward them, looking for all the world like a gaggle of big-eared geese. Katie twisted around to view the rest of
the café. Nellie and the gray-haired ladies were craned forward, primed to catch every word.

Katie turned back to Zack. “Not here,” she said tersely.

“Okay.” He pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet, placed it on the table, then picked up Katie’s umbrella. “In my car,
then.”

Katie headed to the door, her back stiff, her legs wobbly, her thoughts flailing about like a kite tail in the wind.

“Good-bye, y’all!” Cindy called gaily. “Have a nice day.”

Katie couldn’t even muster the wherewithal to respond as Zack opened the door. The warm, humid air enshrouded her. He opened
the umbrella and held it over her head, then took her arm and led her across the street to a black Volvo parked at the curb.
Something about his touch left her feeling raw and unsettled. He opened the car door, holding the umbrella over her as she
ducked and slid into the passenger seat. He rounded the car, closed the umbrella, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Water
dripped from his hair as he slammed the door. He’d made sure she was dry, but he hadn’t used the umbrella himself.

He should have been so concerned with her protection seventeen years ago. The thought shot through her, hot as a flaming arrow—and
then, just as quickly, another thought followed: If he had, the beautiful, vibrant young girl she’d just met wouldn’t be here.

Katie’s stomach got that loop-de-loop roller-coaster feeling again. Questions raced up and down hills and valleys of her mind
so fast they blurred together. The words coming out of her mouth were the same weird litany of questions she’d recited when
she’d first met Gracie. “Where… how… when…”

Zack drew a deep breath, swiped a raindrop off his forehead, and decided to start with the easiest question. “I met her about
two weeks ago. I was participating in a Monte Carlo–themed charity benefit in Dallas, and she just showed up.”

Katie’s eyes were dark in her pale face, like coals in snow. “How did she find you?”

“She googled me and found an article in the
Dallas Morning News
. The charity was auctioning off the opportunity to play poker with me, so my name was in the prepublicity.” It never ceased
to amaze him that people would pony up three thousand dollars for the privilege of playing a hand of poker with him, but he
got requests from charities all the time. He’d agreed to do the one in Dallas because an old friend had asked him to.

“What do you mean, ‘She just showed up’?”

“She ran away from her aunt’s, bought a Greyhound bus ticket, and rode twenty-seven hours to Dallas. A woman she met on the
bus gave her a ride to the Four Seasons Hotel.”

“And she just walked up and said, ‘Hello, I’m your daughter’?”

“More or less.”

Gracie being Gracie, of course, she’d done it in a far more dramatic fashion. He’d been playing a boring game of Texas Hold’em
with three rank amateurs—and holding a straight flush, jack high—when a scuffle had drawn his attention. He’d looked up to
see a scruffy young girl straddling the burgundy velvet rope that cordoned off the poker section of the casino-decorated ballroom.

A thick-waisted matron in pink chiffon held the edge of her shirt, trying to restrain her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I need to talk to Zack Ferguson,” he’d heard the girl say, brushing the old woman’s hand off her clothes. The girl looked
straight at him, a determined expression on her heart-shaped face. Something about her looked oddly familiar, but then Zack
was used to seeing familiar faces in the crowds around him. Thanks to televised poker, the popularity of his poker-playing
CDs, and the fact he used to date movie stars, Zack was accustomed to fans and groupies. They usually weren’t this young,
though. The girl looked barely old enough to have cut her twelve-year molars.

“He’s in the middle of a game,” the older woman said, “and he’s our special guest. You can’t bother him.”

Gracie continued to climb over the red velvet rope, a crocheted purse dangling in front of her. The pink-clad woman grabbed
her arm.

Gracie wrested away from her grip. “Get your hands off me, you pervert!”

The woman’s mouth formed a shocked “O.” Zack grinned. The evening had just gotten a lot more interesting.

The matron’s face reddened like a boiled lobster’s. “Who are you, and what are you doing here? This is a private event.”

The girl’s chin tilted up to a combative angle. Something about the set of it gave him a strange sense of déjà vu. “Yeah,
well, I’m a private citizen.”

“You clearly don’t belong here.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re too young, and you’re not even dressed.”

Gracie looked down at her baggy top and jeans in mock horror. “Don’t tell me I’m wearing my invisible clothes again.”

Zack laughed. The woman’s face grew even redder. “Do you have a ticket?”

“I got one for jaywalking once.”

If the woman were a cartoon character, steam would have blown out her ears. “I’m going to get Security.” She whipped around
and stormed off.

The girl wasted no time scrambling over the rope and heading straight to Zack. He set his cards facedown on the table as she
approached.

She stopped in front of him, clutching that monstrous bag in front of her stomach. “You’re Zack Ferguson, right?”

“Right.”

A gold stud glinted in her nose as she stuck out her hand. “Well, I’m Gracie Whitstone, and I’m your daughter.”

Katie’s lips, so similar to Gracie’s, pressed into an angry line now as he finished relating the story. “You met her two weeks
ago, and you didn’t call me?”

A nerve twitched in Zack’s jaw. “That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think? Nine months of pregnancy
and seventeen intervening years, and you couldn’t let me know you’d had my child?”

Katie’s chin tilted up in exactly the same way Gracie’s had. No wonder Gracie had looked so familiar. “How was I supposed
to do that?
You
disappeared.” The heat in her eyes practically scorched him. She turned and stared out the windshield. “Besides, I did try
to contact you.”

“You did?”

She nodded. “When I found out I was pregnant, I went to your cousin. He just blew me off. He said you’d gotten bored in Chartreuse
and decided to go back to Chicago—that you didn’t want anything to do with a small-town skank like me. He refused to give
me your address or your phone number.” The rain drummed down harder. “I tried to find you on my own. I called every Ferguson
in Chicago.”

Self-loathing, bitter as bile, balled in his throat. “We didn’t live in Chicago proper. We lived in Berwyn—a suburb about
ten miles out.”

“It would have been nice to know that.” Her brown eyes flashed. “Do you have any idea how much long-distance cost back then?”

Hell. Could he possibly feel any worse? “Kate—I’m sorry. For leaving, and for…”

For losing control. He prided himself on his self-discipline, but he’d completely lost it that night. The hell of it was,
he’d known better. All summer long, he’d been fighting his attraction to her, but he liked her too much to do what he should
have done, which was just leave her the hell alone.

He’d told himself that taking her for a nighttime sail in his uncle’s boat would be harmless. After all, he sometimes saw
her at night—he often drove her home from work—and they’d sailed together a few afternoons when they’d both been off work.
They would just be combining two things they’d already done. He was sure he handle it.

Yeah, right. It had been like sitting in a pool of lighter fluid and playing with matches.

It was a gorgeous summer evening, clear and bright. The sky was heavy with stars, like a fruit-laden branch bending toward
the earth. Katie wore cutoffs and a blue T-shirt that the wind molded against her body, outlining her breasts in a way that
made it hard for him to breathe. The breeze was soft but steady, and they were a couple of miles from shore in no time at
all.

She stretched out on the deck and gazed up. “Look at that sky!”

Zack dropped anchor, then stretched out on the deck beside her. The varnished wood was warm against his shirtless back. The
boat rocked beneath them. He was careful not to touch her, but his hand was milimeters from hers, and he swore that her body
heat jumped the space between them.

“The light from those stars is millions of years old by the time it reaches the earth,” she said. “They might not even still
be there.”

“That’s kind of a sad thought.”

“Yeah. Makes you want to seize the day, doesn’t it? Carpe diem and all that.”

The movie
Dead Poets Society
had come out the preceding year. “Yeah. What part would you want to seize?”

She turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes held everything he was feeling—all the tenderness, all the yearning, all the
emotion, all the need. “You,” she whispered. “I’d seize you.”

“Kate…” He meant to say her name in a cautionary way, but it came out as more of a groan.

She raised up on her elbows and leaned over him, her eyes brighter than any of the stars behind her. His last conscious thought
was that he shouldn’t kiss her, but when she lowered her lips to his, God help him, he kissed her back—and then he was kissing
every inch of her, and doing all the things he’d dreamed about all summer, and she was doing them to him, and they were adrift
on a sea of fire.

He realized he’d closed his eyes. He opened them and glanced over at her. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’m totally to blame.”

She glanced away. “No, you’re not.”

“What?”

“Well, you’re to blame for not contacting me afterward, but I don’t blame you for what happened between us.” She knotted her
hands in her lap and stared down at them. “I mean,
I
kissed
you
.”

“I sure didn’t put up a fight.” The wind blew an oak leaf against the windshield, plastering it to the wet glass. “I’d been
dying to kiss you all summer.”

“So why didn’t you?”

He glanced at her, and the air inside the car suddenly seemed charged with enough electricity to generate a lightning strike.
He broke eye contact and studied the oak leaf. “Because you’d told me how you believed in love and all that white knight,
Prince Charming stuff. I was afraid that if we started something, you’d think I was the love of your life.”

“I already did.”

“Yeah, well, that’s exactly why I didn’t make a move. Until that night, I mean.”

He heard her inhale and blow out a deep breath. A silver SUV sloshed by, slinging water against his car. He saw a “Baby on
Board” triangle in the back window. “How long was it before you found out you were pregnant?”

“About a month later. I was two weeks late, so I bought a test. I told my mother, and…” Her throat moved as she swallowed.
“She wanted me to end the pregnancy. I couldn’t. But I couldn’t stay here and face things, either. It was already bad enough,
just being my mother’s daughter.”

She told him how hard it was—how she’d been ostracized and taunted and lied about at school. How she didn’t have any friends,
because no one wanted their child associating with the daughter of the town trollop. How everyone thought she was just like
her mother. Being pregnant under those circumstances would have been a nightmare.