Rachel managed a smile past the huge lump in her throat. “Which means you’re beautiful, too.”
“Yeah.” But it was Emily’s turn to look away now. “But I know who I really look like….”
When she trailed off with no clear intent to finish, Rachel sighed. Not a coward, she reminded herself. Never a coward. “Like your dad.”
They stared at each other awkwardly while Rachel’s heart sank. No, she wasn’t a coward, and hadn’t been in a long time, but bringing up the subject of Ben Asher with Emily was usually trouble.
He was the one person Rachel and Emily never agreed on.
How could they? Her daughter saw him as a hero, larger than life. A man who put others’ needs before his own. A man who brought justice to people who couldn’t get it for themselves.
He was that, Rachel admitted to herself, and more. So much more.
SHE’D CHANGED SCHOOLS again, halfway through senior year this time. On her first day, a boy sauntered into her English Lit class late. With a slow, lazy smile and even lazier gait, he strode down the center aisle with a devil-may-care attitude that had wild whispers falling in his path.
“Did you know he’s from The Tracks?” one cheerleader hissed to another, just behind Rachel. “Lives in a foster home with eight other kids.”
“He’s still hot,” came a hushed reply.
“Hot, yeah. But dirt poor.”
“Such a waste.”
Rachel couldn’t help but notice no one else in the classroom gave him the time of day. Given his laid-back air and languid stroll, he could care less. He wore Levi’s with a hole over one knee, a dark T-shirt with a frayed hem and ripped sleeve and had an ancient Canon camera slung over his shoulder. His hair was wavy and long, past his collar at the back, the front tumbling over his forehead. He tossed it back with a lift of his head.
His gaze focused in on Rachel.
She wasn’t used to that. She was invisible. It’s what happened when you were always the new kid, and she was good at it. But he saw her, with eyes that were sparkling and full of trouble. He took the one empty seat in the classroom.
Right next to her.
“Hey,” he said with a slow, devastating smile.
She looked behind her to see who he was talking to, and he laughed.
She felt like she’d been hit with an electrical current.
“Got an extra pencil?” he asked.
A little overwhelmed by his sheer presence, by the fact he was even looking at her, she handed him her pencil. Boys didn’t look at her often, mostly because she never made eye contact and never bothered making friends. Why should she when she’d only be moving again soon enough?
“Got some paper?”
She’d given him a few sheets, and an eraser, too. And by the end of that first hour he’d convinced her to share her notes, and help him study for the next test. She’d tried to explain she wasn’t the girl to get to know if he wanted to be popular, but he laughed.
“Popular?” He scratched his jaw and shrugged his bony shoulders. “Not my thing.” His eyes roamed her face, seeming to see more than anyone else ever saw. “But you…you, I’d like to get to know.”
And he’d done just that, gotten to know her, in a way no one else ever had.
Not then, and not since.
“MOM?” Em’s worried gaze ran over Rachel’s face. “Stick with me now, you’re freaking me out.”
Right. Stick to the present, much better than the past. They were talking about Ben. Ben, who took the most amazing photographs of the underprivileged and displayed them boldly in print for the more privileged population to squirm over. His thought-provoking articles that accompanied those pictures usually won him awards, and instigated a surge of charitable donations to better circumstances all over the world—and appease their guilty consciences. She knew this because she’d followed his career over the years for no reason other than morbid curiosity.
But he was just a man. A man who’d shown her more passion and emotion and life than anyone before or after. And though it had been thirteen long years, she still resented it with her entire being. Resented him.
“Look, forget it, okay? Forget Dad for now.” Emily chewed on her fingernail and strove for casual. “So…what was for lunch? Puke-colored Jell-O again?”
Rachel took a deep breath, heart aching. “Emily, honey…you are like him. Just like him. In so many ways.”
Emily blinked twice, slow as an owl, and Rachel couldn’t blame her. Rachel often hadn’t been willing to talk about Ben. Not a great parental decision, she could admit now. “Yes, you look just like him. You know that. And since he’s drop-dead beautiful, you are, too. So beautiful, Emily.”
Emily looked stunned at the turn of the conversation, which made Rachel doubly glad she’d had it. “So…” She cleared her throat. “You and Mel hired someone for us? You going to be okay with that?”
Emily’s glow faded and she stared at Rachel’s hand, which she gently clasped in her own smaller one, nails polished with chipped purple glitter and chewed to the quick. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about me so much.”
“It’s a mom thing. Am I going to like her?”
“Oh, man, would you look at the time?” Emily pulled her hand free and bounced up. “Gotta go. Homework.”
“Nice avoidance technique. Who is she, Em, Attila the Hun?”
“You’re funny, Mom. You should write a comic strip.”
“Emily Anne, what are you up to?”
Innocent eyes glanced back, solemn and full of intelligence. “What makes you think I’m up to something?”
“Intuition,” Rachel said dryly.
“Hey, I’m just getting you where you want to be, Mom. Home.”
CHAPTER THREE
DESPITE HIS desperate need to get to South Village immediately, it still took Ben nearly a week. Two days to get out of the jungle. Another two waiting for a seat on a small plane to get to an international airport. And then nearly two days more of connections and travel.
Finally, Ben landed in Los Angeles and nearly choked on the smog. It wasn’t even noon and the temperature had already hit ninety-five degrees, a sweltering, shimmering heat that made the air so thick that breathing was optional, and unadvised.
Granted, he’d suffered far worse, with much more humidity, for long months at a time. But somehow, spring in Southern California seemed more hell-like than anything he could remember.
Okay, so it was more than the weather. It was the fact he’d come back to his inauspicious beginnings after all these years, a place he tried not to think about, much less visit. He’d left here at seventeen, scrawny, too poor to even pay attention, and sporting a broken heart. He’d done his damnedest to stay far, far away.
For the most part, he’d managed, convincing Rachel’s sister Melanie to bring his daughter to wherever he happened to be. To further her education, he’d said in his defense of dragging a young girl to all four corners of the earth. Dirty corners at that.
Melanie had bought the excuse. So apparently had Rachel, and Emily had been delighted with her annual travels with her father.
As a bonus, he hadn’t had to face this place in a good long time. But he was here now, courtesy of his own terror over a madman who may or may not know about his daughter, about Rachel.
Ben had contacted