Authors: Darlene Gardner
Tags: #American Light Romantic Fiction, #Romance: Modern, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Romance - Contemporary, #Fiction, #Fiction - Romance, #Love stories, #Adoptees, #Pennsylvania, #Birthparents
The Secret Sin (16 page)
A lump of emotion formed in Annie’s throat while she watched the joyous scene between two of the people she loved most in the world.
T
HE DRIVE
back to Indigo Springs passed in a blur for Annie, with Lindsey asking countless questions about their family trees.
Lindsey already knew that Annie was an only child and Ryan had one unmarried sister, but she was eager to hear about grandparents and cousins.
Other than agreeing that Ryan and Annie would drive her back to Pittsburgh, none of them mentioned the future.
It stretched ahead of them like the great unknown, making Annie’s anxiety grow with each passing mile. Back at the train station she’d realized she loved Ryan, but she very much feared she’d killed whatever love he might have had for her.
Lindsey took hold of both of their hands when they reached the river raft compound, skipping between them like a young child. She didn’t let go until they were inside the house and Annie’s father got up from the sofa where he’d been waiting for them.
“Hi, Grandpa,” Lindsey called, running ahead of them to catapult herself into his arms while Hobo danced around them.
Her father had made this possible, Annie thought as
she watched him clutch his only granddaughter to him. If she hadn’t forgiven him before, she did now.
“How about you and me take your mutt for a walk?” her father remarked to Lindsey after greeting Ryan. He winked at Annie. She didn’t know how, but he must have realized how much she and Ryan had to discuss.
And then, suddenly, Annie and Ryan were alone.
“Why don’t we wait for them on the porch?” Annie suggested. They sat in side-by-side rockers that overlooked the rippling river, protected from the still-bright sun by the overhang.
Lindsey called it a granny porch. Annie wouldn’t mind growing old, she thought, if Ryan was by her side.
“We need to talk about how to handle tomorrow,” Ryan said when her father, Lindsey and Hobo disappeared on the trail at the far end of the property.
His comment jarred Annie back to reality. He was right. She needed to focus on tomorrow and their daughter, not some flight of the imagination of a future with Ryan. She’d already ruined that.
“Only Helene knew that my father was more than just a family friend,” she said. “It’ll be a shock for Lindsey’s father and stepmother to find out we’re her birth parents. There’s no getting around that.”
“That’s true,” Ryan said. “But Lindsey isn’t a baby. She’ll have a lot of say in what happens next.”
“She’ll want us to be part of her life,” Annie said. “That was obvious from how she reacted this morning.”
“We’ll make sure her father and stepmother know our split was amicable,” he said. “We’ll convince them we
don’t want to interfere. We just want to see Lindsey from time to time. Have her visit Indigo Springs.”
Split…Amicable.
He’d used two of the words most commonly associated with divorce. Pain stabbed at Annie, seeming to center in her heart. Just days ago she’d tumbled back into love with him, and now they were at this sad place.
What’s more, it was her fault.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.
He cocked his head. “Sorry for what?”
“Those things I said when you asked about my port-wine stain. You were right. I was afraid being with you would mean being a mother to Lindsey, and I didn’t think I could do that.”
“Why not?” he asked, his eyes intent on hers.
“I thought I might be as bad at it as my mother was. After all, I gave Lindsey up, just like she gave me up.” Annie took a deep breath. Now that Lindsey had forgiven her sin, she found she could forgive herself. She could even understand it. “When Lindsey went missing, I realized I was nothing like her. My mother never cared enough to be part of my life. I knew that if we were lucky enough to find Lindsey, I’d do anything to stay in her life. It’s what I want more than almost anything.”
“
Almost
anything?” he asked, fastening on the qualifier. “What is it you want more than that?”
She wet her lips, wondering if she’d have the courage to tell him. “For you to forgive me for the ugly things I said.”
“Done.” He got up from his rocking chair, stood in
front of hers and pulled her to her feet. While holding her hands, he looked into her eyes. “I could forgive you anything, Annie. I love you.”
“You still love me?” She could barely make herself believe it, but his familiar blue eyes were smiling, like his lips.
“I started to fall in love with you fourteen years ago,” he said. “Did you really think I’d get over it in a couple of days?”
“Well, yes,” she admitted.
He placed one of her hands over his heart, which was racing just like hers.
“Feel what you do to my heart, Annie,” he said, “because you’re in there to stay.”
Her gasp was both a cry of relief and joy. She lifted her lips, expecting his mouth to cover them. His kiss, soft and warm, landed on her port wine stain instead.
“One more thing,” he said when he lifted his head. “I love you, Annie Sublinski, just the way you are.”
He smiled. This time, when he kissed her, it was on the lips.
Six months later
P
OWDERY
white snow stretched as far as the eye could see, coating the evergreens and sloping trails where skiers zigzagged down the mountainside.
Sitting in a ski lift with Ryan on one side of her and Lindsey on the other, Annie watched her warm breath turn visible in the cold winter air when she laughed.
“You’ll have to let go of my arm to get off the ski lift, Lindsey,” Annie told her daughter.
“I don’t think I can,” Lindsey muttered. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into leaving the beginner hill.”
“Because Annie’s working here as a crackerjack ski instructor and she says you’re ready.” Ryan leaned slightly forward and directed his comment at Lindsey, then grinned at Annie.
Staying in Indigo Springs to help her father run the river rafters was only one of the decisions Annie had made since last summer. Because the business was seasonal, she’d had to find a job to keep her occupied during the winter months.
The ski resort where her father worked as director of ski operations in the river rafters’ off season fitted the bill perfectly. Her schedule was flexible enough to write the occasional freelance story for
Outdoor Women
and to spend plenty of time with Ryan, who was now a full partner at Whitmore Family Practice.
The only drawback was the gobs of ointment she needed to slather on her cheek where her port-wine stain had been to protect the skin from the winter sun.
“I’m not ready.” Lindsey held herself perfectly still, her legs in her pink ski pants and new boots the only parts of her body that moved as they swayed slightly in the winter breeze. “I should have stayed home with Sierra.”
By
home,
she meant the grandiose Whitmore house in downtown Indigo Springs. The house where Annie still lived with her father had only two bedrooms so they’d decided it made more sense for Lindsey to stay with Ryan on her frequent visits.
“You’ll be fine,” Annie said.
“Do we have to get off at the top of the mountain?” Lindsey asked as the disembarkation spot got closer. “Can’t we just stay on the lift and go back to the bottom?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Annie said. “We have to get off.”
That fact didn’t seem to get through to Lindsey. “But if I break my leg, my other dad might not let me move to Indigo Springs this summer.”
It turned out that Lindsey’s adoptive father really did love her, enough that he’d surrendered to her pleas to
live primarily with Annie and Ryan. She’d start high school at Indigo Springs High, but the Thompsons weren’t giving her up entirely. The plan was for Lindsey to spend one weekend a month, alternating holidays and two weeks of every summer in Pittsburgh.
“Then we’ll make sure you don’t break a leg,” Ryan said.
“It’d be a shame if our maid of honor needed crutches to walk down the aisle,” Annie said, then turned to Ryan. “Can you believe our wedding is only two days away?”
“If it were up to me, we’d already be married,” he said.
“It takes time to plan a big wedding.” Lindsey put her anxiety on the back burner to give him an eye roll. “How many times do I have to tell you that, Ryan?”
Annie laughed. “Listen to her, Ryan. She’s the one who got us back together after all.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Lindsey said.
Annie looked around their daughter to smile at Ryan. She would have leaned over and kissed him if it hadn’t been almost time to get off the ski lift.
“Oh, no!” Lindsey cried. “I can’t remember what to do!”
“Point your poles forward and lift the tips of your skis,” Annie said as the horizontal bar automatically lifted. “Stand up after the chair passes over the top of the mound. And let go of my arm.”
Lindsey complied but not without a girlish squeal. She did as Annie had instructed, managing to stay upright as all three of them successfully got off the lift.
“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Annie asked. “Keep listening to me and we’ll make a skier out of you yet.”
Lindsey sniffed. The cold had turned her cheeks pink to match the insets in her sleek black ski jacket.
“If I do this,” she said, gazing down the mountain, “both of you have to come with me when your wedding photographer takes my modeling pictures.”
“Fine with me,” Annie said.
“Me, too,” Ryan said, exchanging a conspiratorial wink with Annie.
Lindsey trudged ahead of them, walking awkwardly on her skis.
“So I’m just supposed to let the gravity take me, right?” Lindsey asked. “Why don’t you go before me…Whoa! I can’t stop!”
She stayed upright, positioning herself at an angle as Annie had taught her, moving over snow turned even whiter by the glare of the sun.
Annie slanted a proud grin at the man she loved, then the two of them followed their daughter down the mountain and into the bright future.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3836-1
THE SECRET SIN
Copyright © 2009 by Darlene Hrobak Gardner.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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