Strangers in Paradise (28 page)

“I know you do,” she said aloud. She realized that the news had to be a shock. When he'd left, he was the sole Montford descendant, the family's one hope. Now he'd come home to discover that an unknown cousin had shown up.

“You've met him?”

“No.”

Mariah's hair was braided today. Cassie could just picture Carol fussing over the little girl. Her ex-mother-in-law must be about the happiest woman in Shelter Valley these days.

Cassie was genuinely thrilled for Carol. She'd always loved the woman like a second mother.

Her own mother didn't even know Sam was in town. Her parents had left at the end of March for the six-month cruise around the world that they'd been saving half their lives to take. Cassie was glad they were gone. She had no idea how they'd react to Sam's reappearance. Her father, who'd had four daughters and no sons, had taken Sam's defection personally.

He'd also been the one who had to tell Cassie that her baby girl had died.

“What's he like?” Sam asked, slowing his pace now that he was even with her. Mariah walked between them, staring ahead, it seemed, at nothing. “Ben, I mean. My cousin.”

Watching the child, Cassie frowned. “He's very nice,” she said, wondering what was wrong with Sam's daughter. Wondering how to ask. “He came to town last fall, fell in love with his English teacher—who wasn't really a teacher at all, it turned out.” She gave a quick shrug. “It's a long story. They're married now.”

“Mom said he's got a daughter Mariah's age.”

Cassie nodded, wishing her house wasn't still two streets away. She couldn't do this. Walk casually with Sam and the child who'd never be hers, pretending they could be friends. “She's not actually his, biologically. Did your mom tell you that?”

“Yeah.” Sam nodded, his free hand in the pocket of his jean-shorts. His long legs were more muscled than she remembered. “She said he married a girl his senior year in high school who claimed he was the father of her child.”

“She let him support her for almost eight years before she told him Alex belonged to her boyfriend, who was in prison.”

“Mom said that Ben's being awarded full and permanent custody of her, though.”

“Her real father beat—” Glancing down at the head bobbing between them, Cassie broke off. “He wasn't a very good father.”

“I gather Ben is.”

“Obviously you haven't met him yet,” Cassie said, “or you'd
know
he was.”

Sam nodded again. “You're right, I haven't met him, but Mom's pushing for a get-together.”

“Ben's a great guy. Looks a bit like you.” In fact he resembled Sam enough that Cassie had had a hard time liking the man when she'd first met him. But he was Zack's closest friend. Nowadays Cassie not only liked and respected him, she admired the hell out of him. Ben Sanders was a real man in the true sense of the word.

Too bad Sam didn't share those particular genes....
Cassie stopped her reaction even as it took shape. She wasn't going to do this. She wasn't going to grow old and hard with bitterness, entertaining nasty thoughts. She was okay now. Happy with her life. Surrounded by friends and family who loved her.

“Just seems odd, after a lifetime of being the only Montford heir, to find out that I'm not.”

“It's not like your inheritance meant a whole lot to you the past ten years.” Damn her tongue. She turned the corner, Sam and Mariah staying in step beside her.

“It doesn't mean squat to me.”

He'd certainly said so with great frequency. But until he'd left, turning his back on the money, the position, the town, she'd never really thought he believed it. She'd always thought the complaints were just a habit left over from when he was a kid, railing against expectations.

Everyone did that. Complained about what their parents expected of them. It was a normal part of growing up.

“Then what's the problem with sharing it?” she asked him now, thinking how little Sam appeared to need the Montford fortune, and how much Ben and his new family did.

“He can have it all,” Sam said without bitterness, as though he still meant the words completely. “It just feels odd to have been one thing your entire life, only to find that it's not what you are at all.”

Cassie nodded, glancing down as Mariah's arm brushed against her leg. The child, moving silently between them, didn't seem to notice.

Relieved when they reached her block, Cassie firmly turned her thoughts once again to cabbage rolls. They'd smelled so good when they were baking on Saturday night.

“This is it,” she said, stopping at the bottom of her driveway. If he expected her to ask him in, he was mistaken.

Sam hesitated, looking at the house she'd bought a few years before, in one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Shelter Valley.

“Nice place.”

“I like it.”

“It's big.”

“Yeah.” She did most of her pet therapy work from an office here at home. And used the rest of the rooms to indulge her amateur interest in interior decorating.

Cassie was beginning to think Sam's daughter couldn't hear. The child didn't even turn toward the house they were discussing. Cassie had heard the adage about children being seen and not heard, but this was too much.

Besides, she'd never figured Sam for that kind of parent.

A familiar pain tore through her at the thought of Sam as a father. She had to stay away from this man, dammit! He could destroy every bit of her hard-won composure, and his very presence threatened the contentment she'd so carefully pieced together.

The child, however, shouldn't suffer for her father's sins. Her silence tugged at Cassie. Bending down, face level with the striking little girl, Cassie smiled. “It was nice to see you again, Mariah.”

Mariah didn't respond. And Sam gave no explanation. Surely if the child was deaf, Sam would have said. And how could she ask, in case the little girl
could
hear and know they were talking about her?

“Have you had any of your grandma's cookies yet?” she tried again.

Neither a nod nor a shake of the head. Mariah's gaze seemed intent on the T-shirt tucked into Sam's shorts. Her fingers were clutching it. Hard.

Meeting Cassie's questioning gaze, Sam just shook his head.

“Well, if you haven't, you've got a treat in store,” Cassie continued, simply because she didn't know what else to do. “They're the best.”

“I told her.”

Of course. He would have. He'd grown up with them.

They both had.

“Well, good night,” Cassie said awkwardly.

“'Night.”

She didn't look back as she walked to her door, let herself in and locked it behind her.

But she knew Sam stood there watching her.

Chapter 4

M
ariah didn't want to go back to that house. Sam was driving up the hill, so she knew they were going back there. She didn't want to. She didn't belong there.

Sam's house was for happy kids who didn't know bad stuff. And grandmas were for happy kids, too. Mariah wasn't like that anymore. She'd cried, made too much noise when the bad men came. That was why they'd killed her mommy.

Sam's mouth was all tight, except when he seemed to remember that Mariah was looking at him. Then he smiled a good Sam smile.

She used to think Sam's smiles made her feel happy. Now she didn't care whether he smiled or not. Smiles couldn't really do anything. They couldn't stop bad stuff. They couldn't save you from the horrible men.

Sam didn't have to smile. He just had to stay breathing. Mostly that was what she watched. To make sure he was always breathing.

Mommy had been still holding Mariah's hand but she hadn't been breathing—and the men had made Mariah let go of her. That was when they said Mommy wasn't coming back. But Mommy hadn't gone anywhere, she'd been right there with Mariah the whole time—so how could she come back, anyway?

Daddy had gone away with them after they hit him so many times and made his face bleed. When Mariah cried out for him, they yelled back at her and told her to shut up. If she made a sound, they were going to hurt Mommy. They said Daddy wasn't ever coming back, either. Sam said he'd stopped breathing, too. She hadn't known that about breathing before.

Daddy was put into a hole in the ground—

“You hungry, honey?”

Sam smiled at her now. Mariah didn't get hungry anymore. She just got tired from watching Sam's breathing.

Breathing stopped, and then some men shoved you into a hole in the ground. But first, sometimes, they cut you and made you bleed so much that a Band-Aid didn't work.

They scared you and did other things Mariah couldn't think about.

So she just thought about breathing. If she stopped breathing, they'd shove her in a hole, too.

* * *

Sam's pencil slid easily around the page, making a mark here, another there, until the familiar figures began to take shape. After so many years of drawing this cartoon strip, he was seeing it differently tonight. He was on overload with the past four days of memory and stimulation.

Borough Bantam. Sam's imaginary world was filled with non-human life, of the animal variety, mostly—each creature representative to Sam of the people he'd known all his life in Shelter Valley. There was the king—a grizzly bear—his father. His mother, the queen, a gentle brown bear. Will Parsons was a lion. His wife, Becca, Sam's readers knew as a book-reading lioness. There was Nancy Garland, a girl they'd known in high school; she was a gopher. Sam's parents had told him she was still in town, hostessing at the Valley Diner. Jim Weber, owner of Weber's Department Store, was a penguin. Hank Harmon was the big friendly skunk everyone in the Borough loved, in spite of his smell. Chuck Taylor was a leopard. And on and on...

Cassie was the gazelle. Graceful. Lovely. And unattainable.

He still hadn't found a moment away from Mariah—a chance to see Cassie alone. Although the more he thought about the whole damn mess, the more he wondered whether it would make a difference to her whether or not Mariah was his biological daughter. She was still his daughter. He had a child to raise, while Cassie did not.

And yet he couldn't understand why Cassie had made that choice—to remain unmarried and childless. Nor could he stomach the irrational fear that he was at least partially to blame.

Mariah was finally asleep; Sam had put her in the bed across from the desk at which he sat. His parents had given him a guest suite, as it had two beds and plenty of room for him and Mariah.

Sam hoped that it wouldn't be too long before Mariah hankered after the princess room down the hall. Its lacy white canopy, yellow walls, and pictures of tea parties were enough to tempt any little girl. Weren't they? As a teenager, Cassie had always loved his mother's fanciful guest room. The couple of times her family had been out of town and she'd stayed with them, she'd chosen that room. It had been updated since he left town—with new paint, different pictures, some fancy ladies' hats on a rack—but his impression was the same. He still felt like a clumsy oaf in ten-pound mountain boots whenever he walked in the door.

Characters appeared on the page in front of Sam, seemingly of their own accord. The pencil moved swiftly, filling in thought bubbles almost faster then he could think them....

The castle was in chaos. There was a stranger in their midst, a wild stallion. He claimed to know them. The king and queen had offered their usual warm-hearted welcome. Always trusting. Seeing good in the visitor although his heart might harbor unclean things.

The half-witted magistrate, so full of his own importance, didn't know that Borough Bantam had been invaded yet. Sam grinned as the rotund little worm slithered around his circle, certain that he was circling the world. That he controlled the entire globe. His bubble was easiest of all to fill.
I am. I am. I am.

It was rumored that the newcomer—the stallion—posed a threat to the magistrate. The worm—Sam's version of Shelter Valley's mayor, Junior Smith.

Ten years older than Sam, Junior had just become mayor when Sam's father retired. That was the year before Sam left town. James Montford had suffered a bout of Crohn's Disease and needed to lower his stress level; as a result he'd stepped down from the mayoralty. That was when Sam really started to feel the pressure to run for mayor. The fact that he would win was a foregone conclusion. The office of mayor was of course an elected position, but politics in Shelter Valley had more to do with tradition than democracy. The town's mayor had almost always been a Montford—although, occasionally, a member of the less-reputable Smith branch of the family held office.

The newcomer sat off by himself, watching the confusion, detached. He couldn't care less about the worm. He was waiting. Though he didn't know for what. The plan would be made known to him in due time. He just had to be patient.

Sighing, Sam scribbled the finishing touch, the signature of Bantam's creator,
S.N.C.
, and dropped his pencil. Then he tore off the piece of drawing paper, folding it carefully and sealing it in an envelope for mailing in the morning—on time to meet his deadline. He methodically put all evidence of the work he'd been doing in the battered satchel, which he placed back on the closet shelf. Patience was the lesson of the week—for the comic strip's new character
and
for him.

Sam needed to find a truckload of it somewhere.

* * *

On Thursday night, Cassie was getting ready for bed with the eleven o'clock news playing in the background—from the console television in her bedroom, the little portable in her luxurious ensuite bathroom and the nineteen-inch set out in her kitchen—when the doorbell rang.

Assuming the caller was a patient with an emergency, she quickly spit out her toothpaste, wiped her mouth and pulled a pair of jeans on over her nightgown. Grabbing from the hamper the black, short-sleeved cotton shirt she'd worn to work that day, she drew it over her head while she made her way to the front of the house. It never occurred to her to be alarmed, to think anything dangerous might be waiting on her porch. This was Shelter Valley. A lot of people didn't even lock their doors at night.

She opened the door, and when she saw who was standing there with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, her heart started to pound so hard she actually felt sick.

“Why are you here?” she asked. It was too late to go back, to return to the lives they'd once lived. And for her and Sam, there was no going forward.

He shrugged, the dark strands of his hair almost touching the shoulders of his white shirt. His eyes glistened beneath the porch light. “I'm a little lost here, Cass,” he said, giving her a glimpse of the past—a glimpse of who they used to be. Two people who told each other everything.

She couldn't do that anymore, could no longer be that person. Her hold on happiness was too fragile. Too tenuous.

“Perhaps you should go back where you came from, then,” she said, trying not to cry as she rejected the intimacy he was offering.

“I belong here.”

“Since when?”

He looked down at his tennis shoes and then back up at her. “Can I come in?” he asked softly.

“No!” There was nothing for them. No point. She'd built a life for herself inside this house—a house in which there was not one bit of evidence that Sam Montford had ever existed.

“Please, Cass,” he said, his eyes begging her. “You know if we keep standing out here, everyone'll have us married again by morning.”

“Which is why you need to leave. Now.”

“I can't.”

“Sure you can.”

“I find myself needing a friend tonight, Cass. And you're the best friend I ever had in this town.”

Why tonight in particular? Why did he need a friend now?

“Then why don't you go back where you and Mariah came from? You obviously have friends there.” God, she hated what he was doing to her. How she was acting around him. But if she didn't get defensive, she'd crumble into little pieces at his feet.

She'd needed him so badly for so many years. And had broken down when she'd lost him. She'd learned that
breakdown
was not an exaggerated or metaphorical description. It was exactly what had happened. And it had taken a lot of years to rebuild herself, to repair all the damage. She just couldn't afford to allow Sam Montford to enter her life again.

“There's nobody back there. I'm all Mariah's got. Her family was killed six months ago,” he said, and then rushed on as though he knew his time with her was limited. “Mariah saw the whole thing, Cassie, and I'm losing her.”

Sagging against the big oak door, Cassie slowly pulled it back, gesturing Sam inside.

Not for him. Never again for him. But for that sweet child with the haunted eyes.

“Where is she now?” Cassie asked, leading Sam from the homey comfort of her living room in to the library she'd decorated with impeccable formality and never used. She took one of the leather chairs; Sam slouched down in the other.

“She's asleep,” Sam said. “Thankfully, once I get her to give in and go to sleep, she usually stays that way. She used to have a lot of nightmares, but they've decreased in the past month or so. My mother's sitting with her.”

Cassie sat forward, already preparing to kick him out. “Carol knows you're here?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I told her I was going out for some air. She encouraged me to take an hour or two for myself.” That sounded like Carol Montford. Tending to her family made her happy. And she'd had so few opportunities in the past ten years. There'd only been her husband, James, who needed little—and Cassie.

Sam grinned suddenly, shocking her with the intensity of the effect that smile had on her. “She warned me not to drink and drive.”

In the grip of remembered companionship, Cassie said, “As if you ever would.” Sam had always been responsible about stuff like that.

About everything.

Except fidelity.

“Is Mariah deaf?” she blurted out, nervous, needing to get him out of her house.

Eyes clouded, Sam shook his head. “No.” And then, looking around, said, “You don't have a dog?”

Cassie's toes were cold. She pulled her feet up on the chair, covered them with her hands.

“I've been traveling more than I've been home during the past couple of years,” she said. “It wouldn't have been fair to have a pet and then desert it so often, but I did recently acquire a collie puppy. I'm waiting for her to be weaned from her mother before I bring her home.”

Why did it matter that he know this? That he not think her lacking—cold and immune to the animals she'd dedicated her life to assisting?

“I can't believe how fat Muffy is.”

“You need to convince your parents to put her on a diet, Sam. She almost died a few months ago.”

They shared a concerned look. Muffy was special to both of them. They'd picked her out together as a comfort to Sam's mother, who'd been so sad after Sam moved out.

“Her food was cut in half as of yesterday.”

That reminded her of Sam, the old Sam. See a need, take charge, make it better.

Or at least try....

“Why doesn't Mariah speak?” she asked, focusing somewhere just to the right of his chin. There could be no more meeting of the eyes. Sam's looks touched her in ways she could no longer welcome. “Does she talk to you? Is it just strangers she's so shy with?”

Frowning, Sam lifted his hands, then let them drop back to his knees. “She hasn't said a word in six months. To me or anyone.”

“You said her family died. What happened? A car accident?” The tragedy sure explained some of the sadness she saw in Sam's eyes. The sadness reached out to her in ways she wanted to resist.

“They didn't just die—they were murdered by a band of terrorist thugs hijacking the airplane Moira and her husband, Brian, and Mariah were on.” He shook his head. “They were the only family Mariah had, and my closest friends.”

Cassie swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
Mariah's mother had a husband.
“Where were they?”

“It was a small jumper plane leaving Afghanistan. The Glorys were the only Americans on board. The terrorists were part of an extremist group fighting for recognition.”

Cassie remembered with horror the reports she'd seen on the news. “Out of forty people on the plane, only ten survived,” she continued slowly, her heart heavy as she watched the despair on Sam's face. “Six women, three men—and an American child...” Her voice trailed off. Mariah. “At least those terrorists were caught,” she said, the thought bringing little comfort.