Beach Baby. Joan Kilby

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СКАЧАТЬ “uncle,” that is.

      “Come in.” He stepped back, noticing now that her hair needed washing and her clothes looked as though she’d slept in them. With a glance at the toddler, he added, “Who’s this?”

      “My daughter, Beebee,” Amy said.

      Reid did his best to hide his shock. The last time he’d talked to Amy she’d been excited about getting the lead role in her high-school play. Now she was a mom and this was no dress rehearsal. But she was too young!

      Despite his misgivings he was drawn irresistibly to stroke the child’s downy cheek. “Hi there, sweetheart.”

      Amy tightened her grip with an anxious glance at her daughter. “She makes strange.”

      Maybe, yet at Reid’s touch the little girl’s face crinkled into a dimpled smile. She chuckled softly as she gazed up at him from beneath curly dark brown lashes. Reid smiled back. “You’re a little charmer, aren’t you?”

      “Well, what do you know?” Amy said with a wondering grin. “She likes you.”

      “Of course she does.” And Reid couldn’t help being tickled at finding himself a grandfather to such a cutie. “When did she come along?”

      “Nearly twelve months ago.” Amy’s smile faded as she assessed Reid. “Didn’t Jim and Elaine tell you?”

      Jim and Elaine? Since when had she stopped calling her parents Mom and Dad?

      “Elaine didn’t send her usual chatty letter with the Christmas card this year.” He’d wondered about that but assumed she’d been too busy. Reid knew what that was like. Since Carol had passed away he often didn’t get around to cards until it was so late he was embarrassed to send them. He picked up Amy’s duffel bag. “Come in.”

      Amy glanced around the foyer at the brilliant white walls, dark chocolate floorboards and tall vase of blue and purple hydrangeas next to a slim mahogany table. “You have a nice place.”

      “Thanks.” Carol had had good taste; he, on the other hand, lived inside his head and barely noticed his surroundings. “Do your parents know where you are?”

      Amy tossed her head. “If you mean Jim and Elaine, they’re not my parents.”

      Jim and Elaine not her parents? Had they finally told her she was adopted? Reid had warned them that someday Amy would discover the truth. It looked as if that day had come at last.

      The nervous energy that had carried Amy this far suddenly seemed to evaporate. “Do you think I could sit down?” she said. “I walked from the bus stop at the shopping center and Beebee’s getting too big to carry.”

      “You should have called me. I’d have picked you up.” Reid led the way past the formal living room he rarely used to the family room adjoining the kitchen. A wall of windows overlooked the bay and French doors led onto a small lawn separated from the beach by a retaining wall. “I’ll get you both a cold drink. Then you’d better start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

      Tara appeared at the top of the stairs, her violin hanging loosely at her side. At fifteen, she was tall and graceful with a pale oval face and long chestnut-brown hair. “Who’s here?”

      “You remember Amy, the daughter of our friends in Halifax?” Reid said. “And this is her little girl, Beebee.”

      “Hi, Tara.” Amy smiled warmly. “Long time no see.”

      “Hi.” Tara’s gaze flicked to Beebee, surprise and curiosity evident in the slight lift of her dark eyebrows. Well she might wonder—Amy was barely nineteen.

      “Go ahead and finish practicing,” Reid told Tara. “Amy needs to recuperate from her trip.”

      Reid brought a pitcher of orange juice and a plate of muffins into the sun-filled room facing the beach and set them on the glass coffee table in front of the wicker couch. He waited while Amy and Beebee drank thirstily, then asked, “Was it Beebee’s arrival that caused the rift between you and the Hockings?”

      “They blew their stack when I got pregnant,” Amy admitted. “Then during the birth I had complications requiring a blood transfusion. Neither of them were a match. That’s when I found out I wasn’t their biological daughter.” She sat forward on the couch, her fingers curled tightly into her palms. “I confronted them and they admitted I was adopted.”

      Reid would never forget the day Nina gave Amy up in a private adoption. He’d been heartbroken. And furious with Nina for giving away their child without his knowledge or consent. Later, after they’d said irretrievable words that had broken them apart forever, he’d also been furious at himself for not being with her sooner, when she’d needed him.

      “It’s true,” Amy said, taking his silence for disbelief. “All those years they let me believe I was their child.”

      “You’re still their daughter,” he said. “They raised you as their own, loved and cared for you.”

      “My whole life has been a lie. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive them.” Amy picked up her muffin then set it down again, untasted. “It wasn’t just that they’d lied, although that was bad enough. When I got pregnant they tried to pressure me to marry Ian—Beebee’s father. They said they were too old to raise her and I was too young to do it on my own.” Her voice tightened and became fierce. “I’m not too young to be a mother.”

      In Reid’s eyes she was still a little girl, but he remembered being nineteen, headstrong and so certain he was as mature as any adult. “No,” he said, quietly. “You’re not too young.”

      “I knew you’d understand.” Amy blotted her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’ve known me all my life. Did you know I was adopted?”

      Reid hesitated. The Hockings had allowed him contact with his daughter on the condition that he never tell Amy he was her biological father or that she was adopted. Even now they must not have told her the whole truth or she would never have come to him.

      Luckily for him, Beebee chose that moment to wriggle off her mother’s lap and drop to the floor. Within seconds the toddler was pushing at the French doors.

      “Come back, Beebs.” Amy ran after her daughter and swung her into her arms. “She’s a miniature Houdini. She can open practically any door,” Amy said almost proudly. “You have to watch her all the time.”

      “She’s certainly fast on her feet,” Reid said, seizing the opportunity to steer the subject away from himself. “How old did you say she was?”

      “Eleven months and one week,” Amy told him. “She was walking at nine months and saying her first words at ten.”

      “What about Ian?” Reid asked, trying to recall what Elaine had told him about Amy’s unassuming young boyfriend. “Is he in the picture?”

      “No,” Amy said decisively. She sat back down with Beebee on her lap and curled her arms protectively around her child. “We were living together up until I got on the bus to come out here. Now I don’t want anything more to do with him. He’s a murderer.”

      Reid’s eyebrows rose and he bit his lip to suppress СКАЧАТЬ