Their New-Found Family. Rebecca Winters

a mile away from her mother’s.”

      Natalie’s chin trembled. “You’re just saying these things because you don’t think he’s going to want a relationship with me, huh.”

      Rachel pulled the car up in front of their townhouse and turned off the engine. Eyeing her daughter she said, “I’m your mom and love you more than life itself. I’m trying to be as honest with you as I can.

      “The truth is, I don’t know what he’ll think when he finds out he has a child. My greatest concern is to keep you from being hurt, but it isn’t possible to shield you from everything.”

      Her daughter’s pained expression was the last thing she saw before Natalie opened the passenger door. She grabbed her things from the back seat and ran inside the house.

      After locking the car, Rachel followed, but her heart was so heavy she felt like her body weighed a thousand pounds.

      The second she stepped in the living room, the house phone rang. She almost jumped out of her skin before hurrying into the kitchen to get it.

      Natalie had beaten her to it. Her brows furrowed before she put her hand over the mouthpiece.

      “It’s Steve,” she whispered. “He’s worried because you weren’t at work and haven’t been answering your cell phone. Please call him back on it. I want to keep our phone free in case my father calls.”

      Rachel took the phone from her and apologized to Steve for not calling him earlier. She told him something important had come up and she would call him back in a little while on her cell phone.

      Not two seconds after Rachel had replaced the receiver, it rang again. She picked up immediately, thinking maybe he’d tried to tell her something vital and she’d cut him off too soon.

      “Steve?”

      “Afraid not. Bonsoir, Rachel.”

      Her breath caught. “Tris—I—I wasn’t expecting you to phone for another couple of hours at least.”

      Natalie was right there and knew her father was on the other end of the phone. Rachel could tell her daughter was so excited and nervous at the same time, she was practically dancing on the spot.

      “I’m parked across the street. I take it that was my daughter Natalie I saw run in your house just now. She’d be the right age. From a distance she has the look of my mother.”

      A moan escaped Rachel’s throat. Evidently he’d had a conversation with his nephew since phoning her. “Yes.”

      There was a palpable silence. “Does she know who I am?” his voice grated.

      “Yes.”

      After she heard his sharp intake of breath he said, “Does your husband know I’m her father?”

      Rachel trembled. “I-I’m not married yet.”

      After a tension-filled pause, “Alain thought you were. So what are you saying? Are you engaged to this Steve? Living with him?”

      No. Not even close.

      She wheeled away from Natalie’s probing glance. It was uncanny how much he sounded so much like the old, decisive Tris who was a natural born leader and refused to let anything get in the way of what he wanted.

      “No.”

      “Then you and Natalie are alone right now?”

      “Yes, but—”

      “I’m coming in.”

      He clicked off before she could beg him not to.

      Tris was angry.

      It was a deep, profound anger. The kind that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to forgive her for her silence all these years.

      Frightened in a brand-new way, Rachel put the phone back on the hook.

      Natalie pulled on her arm. “When am I going to see him?”

      Help.

      “Right now. He’s walking up to the front door.”

      Just then the doorbell rang.

      “Oh my gosh— He knows who I am, huh.”

      “Yes.”

      “Can I answer it? Please?”

      Her daughter’s beautiful dark brown eyes, so much like Tris’s, shone with a luster she’d never seen before.

      “Go ahead,” she said through wooden lips.

      Ever since Rachel had learned about Alain’s phone call, she’d had the presentiment that their lives would be thrown into chaos, never to be the same again.

      With one unexpected turn of events, her carefully orchestrated life with Natalie had been caught up in a whirlwind by forces she’d couldn’t combat or control.

      She had no choice but to be carried to another place. Until it blew itself out, no one could predict the amount of destruction it would wreak.

      Tracing her daughter’s footsteps, Rachel reached the end of the hall leading into the living room. She hung back as Natalie opened the front door, so she could still witness what was happening.

      When she saw the tall, spectacular looking man standing on the threshold, the sight of him reduced her limbs to water.

      It was Tris. But over the last twelve years, the good-looking nineteen-year-old heartthrob she’d fallen in love with had changed into the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life.

      His hair was more black than brown. He wore it shorter than he’d done in his early college days. Natalie had inherited his coloring and height.

      He had a straight nose which he’d also bequeathed to their daughter. But where her chin was softly rounded like Rachel’s, he possessed a firm jaw and a cleft in his she’d always loved to touch and kiss.

      Unlike the jeans and polo shirts he’d worn on the ship, he was dressed in an expensive looking gray suit. The combination of his silk tie with its various shades of charcoal, silver and gray toned with his white shirt, dazzled Rachel’s eyes.

      At a glance his whole demeanor proclaimed him the successful, wealthy hotelier of the prominent Monbrisson family.

      As Rachel took in everything from the distance, she watched father and daughter studying each other with the same searching intensity. Since opening the door, Natalie had been speechless. With good reason.

      No father in Concord or anywhere else had his powerful physique or striking masculine features. He spoke first.

      “I always wanted a daughter. You’re so beautiful, Natalie, I can hardly find the words.” His low voice sounded husky.

      “I always wanted my dad,” she answered in a tear-filled voice.

      “Then how about a hug.”

      Rachel’s eyes blurred as she watched him crush their daughter in his strong arms. He picked her up and rocked her, causing her dark ponytail to swing back and forth. The contrast between his elegance and the T-shirt and shorts she’d worn to hockey practice made the picture even more poignant.

      Natalie’s quiet sobs of joy were interspersed by endearments he spoke to her in French, forcing Rachel to look away.

      Though she couldn’t help but be thankful Tris was showing Natalie the unqualified acceptance she craved from a father, another part of Rachel’s soul was horrified to realize that she’d kept them apart all these years.

      Just the way Tris communed with his daughter as they quietly picked out the similarities in each other, Rachel realized he would never accept her reasons for failing to look him up in Montreux.

      Not telling him he was going to be a father after she’d returned home and gone to the doctor was the most terrible mistake she’d ever made in her