Come to Me. Linda Winstead Jones
the hell should I know?” Lizzie turned and headed for the kitchen, angry that stinging tears had filled her eyes. “I haven’t seen her in two years, haven’t spoken to her since I called to tell her Dad had died. We don’t have what you would call a healthy mother-daughter relationship.” Too much information, too fast. “Can I get you some coffee? Maybe some soup?”
“No, thanks,” Sam said, but he followed her into the kitchen.
Sam walked to the kitchen table, where an almost-empty bowl of soup sat. “I interrupted your dinner.”
“I was finished,” Lizzie said, fiddling with the coffeepot so she wouldn’t have to face him and reveal her tears. He knew she was still fighting her emotions because she didn’t tell him what kind of coffee she was making, which mug she would choose and why, what kind of coffee she’d had that morning, and so on and so on.
He reached out and lifted the thin metal picture frame which lay facedown on the table, righting it to reveal the image of his old partner, his old friend. Lizzie must be really upset with Charlie to put his picture down this way. Sam figured now was probably not the time to tell Lizzie that he’d known about Jenna’s existence for years.
That wasn’t what Lizzie wanted to hear, not just yet. Hell, not ever.
Lizzie was so much like her father. Charlie had said almost exactly the same words, years ago. If there’s the smallest chance the child might be mine, I can’t turn my back on her. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Monica Yates had had other plans.
“I’m making decaf,” Lizzie said, her voice noticeably more steady than before. She’d chased away the tears, buried her emotion deep. “Since you’re still here and I don’t want to be rude and drink in front of you, would you like a cup?”
“Sure,” he said absently, righting Charlie’s picture. It wasn’t fitting for the man to be facedown on his own kitchen table.
For a moment Lizzie watched while the coffeemaker sputtered and spewed, and then she turned to face Sam, dry-eyed and chin held high. While he hadn’t been watching, the young girl he remembered had turned into a beautiful woman. The years hadn’t entirely erased the quirks and the awkwardness, but those traits had been softened. She’d bloomed. She’d matured. If she wasn’t Charlie’s little girl and if they’d met under different circumstances… Who was he kidding? Lizzie Porter was seriously off-limits. She was a client, and that was the beginning and the end.
“If you’re going to continue to try to change my mind, then walk away now and I’ll hire someone else,” she said, stubborn as she’d been as a teenager. “I’ve wasted enough time. I’m not going to waste another minute arguing with you or anyone else.”
He couldn’t allow her to hire another investigator. Half the P.I.s in town were hacks who were unqualified, dishonest or both. Besides, in the current position he had some control over what she learned, when and how. Sam was torn between what Charlie had obviously wanted and what Lizzie wanted—needed—to know. She was going to find out the truth, sooner or later, and like it or not, the news would come from him. Before he broke the news to her he wanted to know exactly what sort of situation Jenna was in. Charlie’s secrets, Lizzie’s pain, Jenna’s needs. He was going to have to weigh them all. “That won’t be necessary.”
“When will you get started?”
“First thing tomorrow morning.”
“I suppose you’ll do a search on the Internet first. I tried, but I have no patience and it was so slow, and there was nothing on a Monica Yates that I thought might be the Monica I was looking for, and besides, I assume you have access to files and sites that I can’t touch with a ten-foot pole.” She gave him a smile that was slightly strained. “I wonder if Jenna lives very far away or if she’s still in Alabama. For all I know she’s on the other side of the world. It doesn’t matter. I want to see her.”
“Leave the details to me.” Sam didn’t think now was the time to tell Lizzie that her newly discovered sister lived not fifteen minutes from this very house.
Lizzie snatched her bowl of soup from the table, dumped the remains of her sad supper into the garbage disposal, rinsed the bowl and stuck it in the dishwasher. She didn’t lean on people; it wasn’t her way. So why was she tempted to fall into Sam’s strong arms and melt into him? Why did she want to make him part of her world?
Old fantasies died hard, apparently.
He remained silent while she finished cleaning up and then poured two cups of coffee. She remembered that Sam took his black, or at least he had years ago. She liked lots of sugar and cream in her coffee. When she placed the two cups at the kitchen table, where Sam sat as if he belonged there, she sighed, sat and said, “You’re right.”
“Right about what?” He grasped his mug but didn’t take a sip of the steaming coffee.
“I don’t want to turn Jenna’s life upside down. I don’t want to hurt her.” She saw the all-too-evident relief on his face, a face that had played a part in all her teenage fantasies—until he’d lost his mind and married a massively chested airhead. “That doesn’t mean I want you to drop the case.”
He didn’t look quite so relieved anymore.
“I want to see her. From a distance, if that’s all I can get. Maybe we can find a way for me to meet Jenna without telling her who I am, if she’s happy and well cared for.”
Sam seemed slightly reluctant, still, but he nodded in agreement before lifting the mug to his lips to take a sip of the decaf. Maybe he’d finish his coffee quickly and leave, since he’d failed in his mission to convince her to give up finding her sister. Maybe he wouldn’t finish it at all, but would take that one sip and then find a reason to leave. It was easy for people to do, she had learned, finding a reason to leave.
He put his mug on the table, looked her in the eye and asked, “So, how have you been, really?”
This was different than the conversation they’d had in his office. This was her home, her father’s home, and there was something intimate about sitting at the kitchen table. “Good,” she answered.
A slow grin spread across Sam’s face, transforming it, making Lizzie’s heart do strange things she hadn’t expected after all this time. “Since I’ve known you, and we’re talking a long time, you have never answered any question with a single word. Never. Good? That’s it?”
Something inside Lizzie uncoiled as she lost herself in that grin. A moment later she was telling Sam everything, from her stint at school in Mobile to the founding of her own business, to the funeral he’d missed, to clearing out her dad’s stuff and finding the stack of old letters from Monica Yates. He listened. His eyes never glazed over. He didn’t look at his watch, not even when she lost her train of thought and rambled a bit. The fading light through the kitchen window marked the passage of time; he refilled their coffee cups and brought sugar and cream to the table for her. It was comfortable and natural, as if the years had fallen away.
Only she wasn’t fourteen, there was no clinging, empty-headed wife hanging on his arm, and her father wasn’t here with them.
When she asked, he told her the latest news on his family—an oft-married mother who lived in Sarasota, Florida with husband number four, a workaholic brother who lived in Atlanta, a married sister with four kids who lived in Arizona. Sam’s father had passed away before she’d met him, before he’d joined the Birmingham police force. His family wasn’t physically close, but it sounded as if they e-mailed and spoke on the phone fairly often, and there were occasional reunions. She envied him his family.
After she’d basically filled him in on the past six years of her life and he’d skimmed over his, she asked him the question that had been plaguing her since she’d walked into his office and found him annoyingly handsome and appealing. “So, no girlfriend?”
He was surprised by her question, or perhaps by the blunt way in which the question was