The Real Father. Kathleen O'Brien

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      An answering squeal told her Liza was just around the next turn. She turned up the speed, and she was already stretching out her hand for the capture when she heard a sudden thump, and a small, high shriek of fear.

      “Liza!” She took the corner with her heart knocking at her throat. Liza…

      She froze in her tracks, which, she realized with numb horror, was actually quite fortunate, because if she had kept running she would have collided with the man who stood there, holding a shocked Liza in his arms. Just as Liza had obviously collided with him.

      She looked at Liza first, caring only if her daughter was safe. Then she looked at the man.

      A small, breathless voice in her mind whispered the name on a sudden leap of joy.

      Beau.

      Her dreams had seen him just like this. The vivid-green eyes, the dark, proud arch of eyebrow. The squared chin, the shining thickness of waving blond hair. The long, capable fingers. She felt a sudden, familiar lurch of pure physical desire.

      But finally, probably in no more than the space of a heartbeat, common sense clamped down on the wishful madness.

      Of course it wasn’t Beau. Beau was dead. It would never be Beau again.

      It was Jackson.

      Her gaze clearing, she began to see the details. Like Beau, Jackson had always been devastatingly handsome. It was his birthright. Forrest males were always glamorous far beyond normal men.

      And today he was, if anything, even more attractive than he had been at twenty-two. His athletic body was still lean and rangy—a runner’s body. While Beau had been the football hero, Jackson had been the high school track star. Quite natural, the gossips had suggested. He got plenty of practice running from sheriff’s deputies and outraged fathers.

      He smiled now, watching her study him. The grin was as deeply dimpled and rakish as ever, but it was subtly different. It was as if the years had erased just a little of the defiance that had once been his hallmark.

      “Hi, Molly,” he said, using that voice that was so like Beau’s—and yet so different. He bent down to Liza. “Are you okay? That was some crash. You must have been going about a hundred miles an hour.”

      Liza grinned up at him. Molly winced at the sight of that familiar, dimpled grin. “Yes. I’m a fast runner,” she said proudly. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

      He massaged his ribs dramatically. “I think I’ll live.” He straightened and met Molly’s gaze over the little girl’s head. “It’s been a long time, Molly. How are you?”

      Her throat felt strangely dry. It seemed to take away her powers of speech to look at him like this. It was like looking at a ghost. A ghost who made her tingle, remembering things that hadn’t ever happened—at least not with him.

      “Liza,” she said, touching her daughter’s hair softly. “Would you go out to the car, please, and get my purse?”

      Liza looked confused. “What do you need your purse fo—”

      “I’d really appreciate it,” Molly interjected, her voice still soft.

      Liza got the message. She looked from Jackson to her mother once, curiously, but without anxiety. She smiled. “Okay.”

      Molly watched her disappear back through the maze, and then, clearing her throat, she turned to Jackson.

      “I was so sorry,” she said. “So terribly sorry about Beau.” She knew that wasn’t the best way to begin, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She hadn’t expected to find Jackson at Everspring. Lavinia had hinted that, as Jackson’s main address these days was New York—where he’d moved as soon as he’d been released from the hospital—he probably wouldn’t be in town during her own stay here. She wondered now whether Lavinia had deliberately misstated the case.

      Whatever the reason, she had no speeches ready. Still, why was this so hard? It was just Jackson, the boy she’d played with since she was a child, the boy whose shoulders she had soaked in tears whenever Beau’s careless ways had broken her heart.

      “I can’t appreciate the magnitude of your loss, of course, but I—” She took a deep breath, hating the stilted expressions that seemed to spout unbidden from her lips. “I loved him, too, Jackson. I loved him desperately.”

      He nodded. “I know you did.” His eyes took on some of the old sardonic quality. “And blindly, too, if I remember correctly. But hey—” he cocked that disarming smile at her, and suddenly the mockery was gone again “—didn’t everyone?”

      The sound of Liza’s favorite nursery rhyme jingle broke into Molly’s response, the little girl’s high, clear notes making their way like birdsong through the boxwood wall.

      Jackson looked toward the sound, then slowly turned his gaze back to Molly. “I don’t have to ask if she’s your daughter, do I?” He smiled. “She’s exactly like you at that age.”

      Molly took a deep breath. She knew the similarity was dramatic. Molly had been lanky, too, always outgrowing her clothes just like Liza. And both of them had identical wispy blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, and fair cheeks that pinked at the slightest breeze.

      “Do you think so?” As Molly tried to think of what else to say, Liza’s song changed to a show tune, her young voice swaggering with a pretty good approximation of early Madonna. Molly couldn’t help smiling, meeting Jackson’s raised eyebrow. What an amazing kid she had. Where did she learn these things?

      “As you can hear, though, the similarities are all on the surface,” Molly said over the noise. “Liza’s nobody’s clone. I never could carry a tune. And she’s got tons more gumption than I ever dreamed of.”

      Jackson tilted his head and let his gaze settle on Molly’s face. “Maybe,” he said, answering her smile with one of his own. “But, you know, M, I sometimes thought you might have underestimated yourself in that department.”

      “Are you kidding?” Molly shook her head incredulously. It felt surprisingly nice to hear Jackson’s old nickname for her. “I was a mess. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

      Jackson shrugged. “I think you’re still selling yourself a little short. After all, your daughter must have inherited all that confidence and charisma from somewhere.”

      She stared at him, realizing, suddenly, just like that, the moment of truth had come. This was where she should say, quite casually, “No, actually, she inherited that from her father.” Jackson obviously was expecting that, waiting for it, as if he had planned it.

      Perhaps he had. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been running through a conversational maze, and now she had hit the dead end, the unanswerable question that rose up between them as insurmountable as a thick, thorny hedge.

      The big question. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one no one ever quite spoke out loud.

      The question Jackson had nonetheless been leading her deftly toward since the first moment he set eyes on Liza.

      If these lucky genes had not come from Molly, then where?

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