47
Nothing about this was making sense. “Birdie, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be scared. Be excited.” Birdie pulled the town car under the portico.
Russell opened the front door, and Carson Lennex and Max stepped out, Carson in slacks and a sweater, Max in his trademark dark suit and blue tie.
Carson walked around the front of the car, opened the door for Birdie and helped her out.
Even in his sixties, even with bruising and burns, he was straight and tall and movie-star handsome.
Birdie was not yet thirty, dark-skinned, bony, with bandages on four knuckles and swelling that unevenly reshaped her face.
Yet as they stood together, they smiled at each other, and they looked so sweet.
Max stood, legs braced, hand crossed behind his back, waiting outside the hotel door. He looked good. Strong. Stable. Stern. He came to the car, opened the passenger door, offered his hand.
She looked at his hand and flashed back to that moment on his porch in Pennsylvania. The shape of the palm, broad and square, the length of the fingers, long and blunt, the nimble thumb, the sweeping lines, the scar under the index finger. She put her hand in his and used his support to climb out. “Hi there.” Wow. Eloquent.
He looked into her face without smiling and without speaking.
She had wondered, with a rapidly beating heart, whether he’d take one look at her and sweep her off her feet in a massive reaffirmation of their passion.
She guessed not.
Really. Not.
She looked past him into the lobby.
People were standing around. Front desk staff, mostly, as they should be, but…why were the spa employees there? Why were the chefs lingering close? Temo and his sister and Adrian lurked by the concierge desk, too.
“What’s going on?” Kellen looked right at Max. “What’s wrong?”
Like Birdie, he tried to speak, then sighed. “Nothing’s wrong. But…let’s go in and up to Annie’s office.”
A brief moment of alarm made her ask, “Is it Annie? Did she…?”
“She’s fine, I swear.”
Russell rushed to hold the door for them.
What kind of surprise did the resort hold for her? Not a party welcoming her home, that was for sure. Because no matter what Birdie or Max said, some momentous thing had occurred, and it wasn’t a laughing matter.
Max put his hand at the small of her back and guided her inside.
She was pleased to see she was a little wrong about the party. A giant gold banner read “Welcome back, Kellen!”
But this wasn’t a cheering throng, not by any means. Sheri Jean, Frances, Destiny, Xander, Daisy, Ellen, the housekeepers, the guests: when they met her eyes, they smiled, but they watched her in silence. The atmosphere was claustrophobic with interest. Yes, they definitely knew about her and Max.
Kellen and Max climbed the stairs to Annie’s office. She glanced back at him; he kept taking a breath like he wanted to say something, then letting it out. And if he was happy to see her, he hid it well.
In the office, Annie and Leo waited in the seating area beside the fireplace; they were holding hands and looking anxious. Hammett rested beside them, his head on his paws, watching the scene with as much interest as the people below. “You’re looking one thousand percent better,” Annie called. “Welcome back!”
At last somebody had said it. “Thank you!”
An older woman, handsome and imperious, sat beside Annie in an easy chair, and a little girl, about six or seven, leaned against the arm. As Kellen walked in, the girl stared and smiled a smile that showed two missing front teeth. The child started hopping, first one foot, then the other. It was all too obvious she wanted to run toward them, but the older lady kept her tethered with a hand on her wrist.
Max sighed as he viewed the little gathering. “Could Kellen and I have a few moments alone with Rae? Mama? Annie and Leo?”
“Leo and I wanted Kellen to know she had support from us.” Annie turned her wheelchair and started for the door. “And we do support you, dear, no matter what you decide.”
The woman Max called mama stood, also. “She does not need support, Annie. No one here is against her.”
Kellen felt like the elephant in the room. But she was so sure she recognized the little girl, she couldn’t speak.
Had the child been a guest at the resort?
No, Kellen didn’t have a profile in her brain.
Leo and Hammett followed Annie, and Leo in a low, masculine conspiratorial voice said to Max, “It was her idea.”
Max nodded.
His mother leaned down and spoke to the little girl. To Rae.
Rae stopped hopping and stood very still, arms stiff at her sides, but she beamed at Kellen and Kellen had to smile back.
Max’s mother walked toward him but asked repressively, “Are you sure, Maximilian?”
“We need time to get matters cleared up,” Max said.
What things? Kellen wanted to ask. What did they need to clear up? Who was the child?
Max pushed his relatives out of the room and shut the door behind them.
The profile Kellen was attempting to produce kept getting scrambled by that smile, that excitement, that blond hair, those dimples. “Who is she?” she asked Max.
“You don’t know?” His voice sounded as if it was coming up from a deep well.
“I swear I’ve never seen her before.” Kellen chuckled. “Except, well…she’s the spitting image of my cousin at that age.”
“Yes,” he said, which was a very odd answer.
“Funny that her name is Rae. That was my cousin’s middle name. What a coincidence that that little girl—” Kellen’s mind, her heart, her words, all stammered to a halt, yet her steps irrepressibly carried her toward the child. She couldn’t stop herself. She was on a collision course with fate, and with the year she couldn’t remember.
Max kept pace with Kellen and said quietly, “When you were shot, you were pregnant.”
The child couldn’t stand it any longer. She ran at Kellen full tilt, wrapped her arms around her hips and looked up at her. “Did you know that you’re my mama?”