Long-Lost Mom Read online

  “Thanks,” he said dryly. “I think.” He wasn’t much of a cook, never had been. For the most part they’d done okay, especially on the one night a week Mrs. Potts left dinner to heat.

  And on the other nights, pizza usually worked. Thank God he could afford the luxuries of a cleaning lady and takeout. The memories of earlier years, when he hadn’t been able to, were now just a distant nightmare, one that made him shudder if he spent too much time thinking about it. In those days, before he’d purchased the house, just paying the rent had been a struggle.

  How many nights had he stood in their tiny apartment kitchen, a place so small he couldn’t turn around without banging his elbows, and swore the air blue as he’d tried to make a dinner they could both afford and bear to eat?

  More than he cared to remember.

  As if she’d read his mind, Sara grinned around a mouthful and said, “You’ve really improved, you know. You hardly ever burn water anymore.”

  “Eat, smarty-pants.” He winked at her, earning yet another laugh.

  She had his number, this one.

  Her hair was in its usual state—wild—even though they’d both attempted to tame it after her shower. But for the life of him, he hadn’t managed in all these years to get the hang of the science of detangling, even using gallons of conditioner.

  “Hey, slow down a bit.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping from a mug of steaming black coffee as she continued to shovel in the porridge. “You’ve still got a minute before the bus.”

  “A minute ago—” she paused to poke in another mouthful “—you told me to eat.” She blinked huge eyes at him. “Which is why I didn’t brush my teeth, Daddy. I’m saving time.”

  “Tell that to the dentist when your teeth rot.” He leaned close and stroked her hair, smiling. “But thanks for trying to cut corners. Maybe you could find a better way to do that, like actually getting up when the alarm goes off?”

  She snickered and downed a glass of orange juice. “Can I have some more toast? I’m storing energy for my math test.”

  “Which you’re ready for, right?”

  “Right.” Grinning, she leaped up and hugged him. “I’m studying real hard. I want to grow up to be as smart as you are.”

  He halted in the act of searching the refrigerator for more bread, stunned by the impact of her overwhelming love and faith. For the past few days he’d managed to cope with the death of his brother, the threat of Sara’s uncertain future, the rebuke of his family and his unexpected attraction to Cindy. He’d done it by damming up all emotion, but Sara was making that difficult.

  “You will,” he said around the huge lump in his throat. His hug was as fierce as hers. “You can do anything you want to do.”

  “I want to stay with you,” she said simply, smiling at him warmly. “Forever.”

  She was killing him here, with those beautiful solemn eyes. Blinking hard, he said with mock protest, “But you’ll eat me out of house and home.”

  She giggled and continued to tug at his heartstrings by looking at him as if he were her entire world.

  And he was, he reminded himself harshly—a situation that had to change. He would see to it somehow.

  He was buttering her toast when she delivered another unwitting blow.

  “Why can’t we go to Uncle Richard’s funeral, Daddy? I want to go and give him a flower.”

  Stone looked at his daughter, at the concern and worry and honest curiosity in her gaze, and wanted to strangle his parents. “We can’t go because...” Because not only had they not been invited, they’d been uninvited.

  That was the ugly reality.

  To hell with that, Stone decided, standing there trying to reconcile the fact that he would never see his brother again. That their last words had been spoken years ago, and despite all Stone’s attempts to renew contact, Richard had never allowed it.

  It hurt. It hurt a lot, and would forever dampen his childhood memories.

  But despite his pain, Sara had a right to at least have a glimpse of the only living family she had left.

  “You know what?” He set down the piece of toast in front of her. “We are going to go.”

  “I’ll hold your hand when you get sad, okay?” She squeezed his hand now. “And you can tell me stories about him. About when you were my age and he let your frog go and it leaped onto Grandma’s table when she had company and you got grounded.”

  He’d done his best to regale Sara with tales of his youth so that she would have some sense of where she’d come from. It seemed he’d done an okay job of it. “Sounds like a plan,” he told her, holding out her sweatshirt. “Hurry now, honey. The bus will be here any sec.”

  “When I come to your office after school, is she going to be there?”

  Stone stilled, then forced himself to smile. “She has a name, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Sara stared at the floor.

  Resigning himself to the fact that they were going to be late again, Stone hunkered down before his daughter and tugged at her hair until she met his gaze. “What’s up with this?”

  He got The Shrug. The one most ten-year-olds have perfected.

  “Sara, when Cindy first came to town, you liked her. You even invited her to eat pizza with us, remember?”

  Sara sniffed disdainfully. It was so perfectly like Jenna Stone’s heart stuttered.

  Jenna.

  It hurt suddenly to think of her. It hurt more than usual.

  He knew why. Oh, he’d been smug, so certain he couldn’t get hurt again. He’d been that way for years. Until yesterday.

  Without meaning to, he’d threatened his security, that wall around his heart. Worse, by doing so, he’d handed a woman the power to bring him back to his knees.

  He could only hope she’d be kind.

  “What’s the matter with Cindy?” he asked Sara.

  “She likes you.”

  The reply, soft-spoken and heartfelt, hit hard. In all these years, with all the women he’d seen casually and some not so casually, his daughter had never once said anything like this. “I’ve spent time with women before. And I’m pretty sure a fair number of them even liked me.”

  Sara’s lips quirked, but her eyes remained serious. “None of them really really liked you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You know what I mean, Daddy.”

  And he did, although it gave his stomach a little trouble to think about. To realize what he felt for Cindy was serious, the most serious he’d felt in ten years.

  Maybe even more serious than what he’d felt for Jenna.

  She’d been so long ago and he’d been so young. He didn’t know if he could count on what he’d once thought of as love.

  “And if you really really like her back, then you’ll forget about Mommy.”

  “Honey...” How to tell her that her mom was gone? Truly gone, no matter how hard and long he’d looked for her? “You can’t compare Cindy to your mom.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  He stared at her, and she stared back unblinking.

  The bus honked.

  “Dump her, Daddy. You can do better. She doesn’t even like sausage on her pizza.”

  With that piece of wisdom, she kissed his cheek and ran out the door.

  Kristen popped her head into Jenna’s new office. Jenna’s first reaction was fear that Stone would see her sister. But Kristen offered a smile that warmed Jenna’s heart, leaving her unable to purposely hurt her feelings by asking Kristen to leave.

  “You busy?” she asked.

  “Not enough,” Jenna admitted, stretching her shoulders and gesturing her inside. “Want a job?”

  Her sister came the rest of the way in and checked out the office, which was still being set up. Stepping carefully over an empty box, she plopped down into a plush chair. “What do you have?”

  “A head-chef job, two full-charge bookkeeping positions and a dental tech.”

  “Can’t cook, wouldn’t work an adding ma