Unforeseen Danger (40 page)

“I’d like to introduce you to your granddaughter, Natasha Hawthorne.”

She watched his melancholy expression turn to one of delight as he beheld the tiny face so like his own.

It felt awkward, but she had to know.
 
“What about my mother?” she asked.
 
“Do you know where she is?”

“The store,” Ryan said absently, still staring at the picture.
 
“Picking up a few things for the cookout.”

Selena looked at Jake, dumbfounded.
 
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that they might still be together.

Ryan glanced at her and did a double take as he noted her surprise.
 
His grin widened.
 

“You didn’t know?
 
I knew from the first time I laid eyes on Rachel that she was the one.
 
I was fourteen years old and it was our first day of high school.
 
She sat in front of me in 2
^nd
period English.
 
I spent half a year staring at the back of her head and daydreaming about asking her out before I finally got up the nerve.
 
She just looked at me, cool as could be, and told me it was about time.
 
I didn’t stand a chance.”
 
He chuckled.
 
“We got married just as soon as we graduated.”
 

He paused, and pain flickered in his green eyes.
 
“She took things really hard.
 
Even though we love each other, there’s always been an empty place, where you and your sister belong.
 
I finally talked her into having another baby after we’d been married ten years.”
 

Pointing at a picture on the wall, he said, “You have a brother, Scott.
 
He’s at football camp this week.
 
Even though she loves him dearly, she didn’t want to have more kids knowing we already had two out there someplace.
 
I’m the optimist of the bunch, and I always believed that somehow, if I didn’t give up, I’d see you again.
 
I don’t think your mother ever dared get her hopes up that high.
 
Frankly, I’m a little afraid of how she’ll react—”

Almost on cue, they heard the back door slam shut, and a woman’s voice call out, “Ryan?”
 

He jumped up, and shot Selena and Jake an apologetic look.

“Let me tell her,” he whispered, and backed out of the room.
 

As Selena clutched Jake’s hand in a death grip, she heard her say, “Hi, babe.
 
What are you doing in here, and what’s with those guys out there?
 
They just gawked at me when I pulled up, and nobody said a word until Ed finally told me to come find you.”
 
A note of alarm sounded in her voice.
 
“Is something wrong?
 
Is it Scott?”

“No, honey.
 
Everything’s finally right,” they heard him say.
 
“Rachel, one of the girls is here.”

They heard her gasp, and Selena wrung Jake’s hand.

“What did you say?”

She could hear the joy in his voice as he said, “Honey, our daughter’s home.”

Suddenly, they appeared in the doorway.
 
Rachel leaned heavily on Ryan.
 
She was alarmingly pale, looking as dazed and confused as a survivor of a plane crash, but she was a startlingly beautiful woman.
 

As much as Jake had thought the girls resembled their father a moment ago, he could now see the imprint of their mother.
 
They shared the same heart-shaped face and full mouth, the same determined jut of a chin, and the same slender frame.

Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, Rachel Grant stared at her daughter in stunned silence.

Selena stood awkwardly to her feet.
 
 “Are you okay?”

Rachel’s voice was strangled.
 
 “My baby…you’re really here!”
 

Selena held open her arms, and Rachel hugged her, clinging to her like a drowning woman clung to a life preserver.

For the next several hours, they laughed and cried and 
reveled
 in each other.
 
 Selena told her about Nat, and Nikki.
 
 As saddened as they were by the news of Nikki’s death, there was also an underlying sense of hope in the air as four people learned to let go of the past and embrace the future.
 
 As she looked at the joyful faces of her parents, and felt the reassuring grip of Jake’s hand in hers, Selena Hawthorne realized she now knew the secrets of the woman in the mirror.
 

She finally knew exactly who she was.