yes,” she said, rising to her feet. She gave a quick laugh. “He certainly did.”
“And so will you, if you’re half the woman I think you are. You’ll marry me, take the Cameron name, raise your baby as a Cameron—”
“And what about you?” She stared at Ted in bewilderment. “Assuming I were to agree to such an insane thing—which I won’t—but if I did, what would happen to your life? I—I’d never live with you as a wife should. Never, no matter how—”
“I know that. And I wouldn’t expect it.” Ted cleared his throat. “I’m going to…I’m going to trust you with something. Something you should know.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve—I’ve never been interested in women. Not the way a man should be.”
The truth took a long moment to sink in. When it finally did, Faith stared at him, speechless.
“Nobody knows,” he’d said quickly, “not even Cole. And nobody ever will, not in Liberty. I’ll be an exemplary husband. And, I promise you, I’ll love Cole’s child as if it were my own. Just don’t make this baby pay for what you feel toward my brother.”
“I hate your brother,” she’d said, and despite everything, the enormity of the lie had clutched at her heart.
“But you don’t hate your baby.” Ted had flashed the gentle smile she’d come to know so well over the ensuing years. “You’ll be doing me a favor, letting me enjoy a child I’d never otherwise have. No, don’t say anything. At least agree to think it over.”
She’d thought it over, trying to concentrate on the logic of it instead of on the pain of her broken heart. Then, one morning her mother found her retching into the toilet. She whispered the question Faith had feared for weeks, and Faith nodded her assent.
“Your father mustn’t know,” her mother had said, trembling. “You’ll have to do something, Faith, but not in this town. You’ll have to do it far away from here.”
A day later, she’d phoned Ted and accepted his proposition.
They’d been married at Town Hall while her mother stood by sniffling into a fistful of tissues. Ted put a thin platinum band on her finger, kissed her cheek and moved her into his house. He sent Cole a letter telling him about the marriage, but Cole never replied. And Isaiah never said a word to her, right up until his death.
Neither did anyone else in town, but she saw their knowing smiles. When she began to show, their smiles grew more obvious. She knew people were counting the months and assuming she’d managed to snare a Cameron in the oldest way possible.
“Don’t mind those busybodies,” Ted would say when she’d come home from the market or the library with her face red and her temper high. “Just go on with your life.”
She had. And, once Peter was born, her days were filled with the sweet joy of caring for him. He was the love of her life, the one good thing Cole had given her, and when Ted suggested finding Cole to tell him he had a son, Faith’s “no” was adamant. Cole hadn’t wanted her; why would he want to know he had a son?
“I don’t ever want him to know about Peter,” she’d said. “Promise me that, Ted.”
Ted had promised, though reluctantly. “It’s wrong,” he’d say. “A man has the right to know he’s a father.”
Now, turning onto Main Street and pulling into the lot behind Sam Jergen’s law office, Faith thought again, as she had so often in the past, that fathering a child was easy. Raising one was the hard part although the truth was, Ted hadn’t been all that involved in raising Peter. He had his own life but he’d always been good to her and to her son. Thanks to that goodness, she could look forward to a fresh start for the two of them.
Damn. There was a car, a shiny black Jaguar, parked under the only shade tree. It gave her a jolt to see it, considering the memories swirling through her head. When Cole daydreamed about their future, he used to say that someday he’d trade his Harley for a Jaguar…
She shut off the engine.
Why was she wasting time thinking about Cole this morning? The past was dead. The future was all that mattered.
The day was heating up. She could feel the asphalt give under her shoes as she walked across the parking lot. A merciful blast of frigid air enveloped her as she stepped inside the marble foyer of the old building. Five to nine, said the big clock on the wall. She was right on time.
The cool air evaporated as she made her way up the steps to the third floor and down the corridor to Sam Jergen’s office. Faith could feel her hair curling, her blouse wilting. She paused outside the office, wiped her hand down her skirt, tugged at her jacket, patted her hair…
“Just stop it,” she said under her breath, and she opened the door and stepped inside.
The empty reception area was hot, almost airless. Faith glanced at her watch. It was precisely nine o’clock. Where was the iron-jawed secretary who normally sat at the desk?
“Hello?” she said, after a couple of minutes crept past.
There was no reply. Faith sat down on the sofa, put her purse in her lap and folded her hands over it. She looked at her watch again, frowned and got to her feet.
“Hello?” she said again, in a louder voice.
A sound drifted down the short corridor that led to the inner offices. Laughter? Yes, that was what it was, a peal of feminine laughter. Faith looked around, huffed out a breath and started down the hall.
She could hear voices now, though she couldn’t make out the words. A man and a woman were talking. The woman was Jergen’s secretary. Faith had spoken with her enough times lately to know that. But the man wasn’t Sam Jergen. He was younger, and his voice was deeper, huskier, maybe even a little sexy…
Goose bumps prickled her arms under the silk blouse. She jerked to a stop. Something in the way the man sounded was familiar.
The woman laughed again, and so did the man. Faith began to tremble. She turned on her heel, started back down the corridor. Obviously, she’d made a mistake. Come on the wrong day, maybe, or at the wrong time…
“Mrs. Cameron?”
Whatever, she’d go home, call and ask when she was supposed to have shown up for this meeting…
“Mrs. Cameron?”
Faith stumbled to a halt. She was breathing hard and her pulse was racing, which was silly.
“Yes?” she said brightly, and turned toward the secretary. “I’m awfully sorry to have bothered you. I’m afraid I’ve showed up at the wrong—” The other woman was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Actually, I—I just remembered something I have to—to—”
Faith fell silent. The open door to Jergen’s private office was just ahead. She could see a man standing near the windows. He was tall, well over six feet; his hair was a sun-streaked brown, perhaps a little longer than it should have been, and curled just over his collar. He was wearing a pale gray suit that surely had been tailored to his wide-shouldered, leanly muscled frame. His feet were slightly spread and his hands were in his trouser pockets.
His stance was casual but something about it suggested that he knew he owned the world.
Faith’s heartbeat slowed to a sluggish crawl. She forced her eyes from the man to Jergen’s secretary.
“Why don’t I come back later?” she said in a breathless voice that didn’t sound a bit like her own. “Say, at ten? Or this afternoon? I mean, I thought I had a nine o’clock appointment but obviously—”
“You do. Mr. Jergen had to step out for a minute. He asked you to wait for him in his office.”
“No! I can wait in the reception area—”
The woman took