capable of pulling a low-down, dirty stunt like that? Did she think he would sink to her level? That was what she had done, after all. She had kept his daughter from him. He should have thrown that in her face just to see how she liked it.
Instead, because she was holding his daughter in her arms, he battled with himself until his temper was under control, then said evenly, “If I say I will bring her back to you, then that’s what I will do, Laurie. Have you ever known me to go back on my word?”
Her cheeks flushed. “No,” she conceded. “But the circumstances have never been like this before, either. I guess what I’m saying is that I almost wouldn’t blame you if that’s what you did. Isn’t that exactly what I did to you?”
He was surprised by her admission, reassured somehow that she recognized the irony of the accusation she had leveled at him.
“Yes,” he said mildly. “But the time for casting blame and getting even is over. What we have to do now is figure out the future and what’s best for Amy Lynn.”
She seemed to clutch their daughter a little more tightly. “What’s best for Amy Lynn is not to have her life disrupted. She’s always been with me. What would she think if I just vanished, even for a few days? I don’t want her thinking I abandoned her. I know what that’s like all too well.”
“Let Val stay, too. That would give Amy Lynn a sense of continuity. It might also reassure you that I won’t be able to get away with stealing her right out from under you. Val would have my hide first.”
“I can’t,” she protested. “I need Val with me. There are endless details she needs to see to when I’m on tour. I’d be lost without her.”
It was this intransigence that had kept them apart all these years. “Come on, Laurie. Work with me. Compromise. Val is the queen of long distance. She can make things happen from anywhere. She doesn’t have to be glued to your side.”
He could see from her expression that she was struggling with herself, wanting to do what was right and fair, but terrified of choosing wrong.
“I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “That’s the best I can do.”
“Talk to Val. See what she says,” he urged.
“This isn’t about Val, dammit. It’s about Amy Lynn,” she said as she struggled to hang on to the increasingly restless baby.
Harlan Patrick forced a smile for his whimpering, frustrated daughter, then met Laurie’s gaze evenly. “It’s also about trust, isn’t it? It’s about whether or not you really trust me to keep my word.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I never broke my word,” he reminded her. “You did.”
And then he turned and walked away before he said a whole lot more, before he lashed out with bitter words he might never be able to take back.
* * *
Gently bouncing Amy Lynn in her arms, Laurie stayed where she was and watched Harlan Patrick leave. Funny, she hadn’t realized just how badly it hurt to be left behind, to have the person she loved turn his back on her. Sure, this was only an argument, a faint blip on the canvas of their relationship, but she felt as empty and lost as if he’d gone for good.
Was that how he’d felt when she’d gone? Or had it been a thousand times worse, knowing that she had no intention of coming back again? She realized suddenly that it hadn’t been the same for her. Though she had missed Harlan Patrick desperately, especially in the first months after leaving, she had been excited by the future, challenged just to survive. She had been moving on, while he had stayed behind.
“Everything okay?” a feminine voice asked gently.
Laurie turned from the direction in which Harlan Patrick had gone to find his mother standing quietly behind her.
Melissa Adams was a fiercely protective woman who loved her husband and children with all her heart. She had also been strong enough to stand up to Cody Adams years earlier and refuse to marry him even though she had his child—Sharon Lynn—until she knew for sure that Cody truly loved her. In some ways her circumstances back then were not unlike Laurie’s now. The difference was that Cody was the one who’d left Texas not knowing that he was about to become a father, while Laurie had walked away from Harlan Patrick.