The First Move Page 6

  “Healthy Food.”

  “Mom, do you have a minute?”

  “Renia, I didn’t expect you to call.” The joy in her mom’s voice knocked Renia from embarrassment to guilt, then anger. If her mom had been this happy to talk with her eighteen years ago, neither of them would be in the current situation.

  Would finding her daughter bring them closer together or further apart?

  “I need a name, if you have it.”

  “Okay.”

  “The lawyer who handled the adoption.”

  “Did she call?” Her mom’s voice was muffled, like she was cupping her hand around the phone and her mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so happy for you. What did she say?”

  “I hung up on her.”

  “Oh, Renuśka.”

  “I know, I know. No impulse control.” She cracked open her mouth and loosened her jaw. An entire adulthood spend controlling every stray emotion to rid herself of a high school reputation she was ashamed of and it was her own mother who still clung to the image of bad Renia. No, she couldn’t blame her mom. She had just tried to seduce Miles in her studio to take her mind off her problems. Maybe she was still the same frightened girl, just older and with better clothes. “Do you have the name?”

  “I didn’t mean...” Her mom’s sigh tensed Renia’s jaw again. She didn’t bother to loosen it this time. “Patricia Cooper. The lawyer’s name is Patricia Cooper. Her office is in Cincinnati and I think she’s still practicing.”

  “Thank you.”

  Renia was hanging up the phone when her mom’s voice called through the receiver, “Wait, is there more?”

  The phone hovered between her ear and the base for several seconds before she lifted it up and spoke, “More what?”

  “More about your daughter. She’s my granddaughter and, right now, my only grandchild.”

  “No.” Renia kept her voice flat and unemotional. “She called. I said I wasn’t her mom and hung up on her.”

  “I’m so sorry.” There was a long pause when neither of them spoke. “I want you to find peace with your daughter, like I want you to find peace with me.”

  “Not now, Mom.” Renia gripped the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and squeezed. Her headache didn’t go away. “I need to find my daughter first.”

  “You promised we would talk.”

  “Not now, Mom.”

  “Keep me updated. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Renia hung up the phone and used both hands to massage her head. Milek women all had the same brown eyes and brown hair. Perhaps they also passed on the same tendency to abandon their daughters, then grasp after them when the relationship was too damaged to repair.

  “Did you get the lawyer’s name?”

  She looked up at him. Miles’s spoken question was innocuous, but his eyes asked more. She addressed her answer to the desk. “Patricia Cooper. My mom thinks she’s still practicing.”

  He tapped on the keyboard and moved the mouse while they sat in silence. “Yep. Here’s her office number.” He set the number on the desk. “Problems with your mom?”

  “This time of year is always a struggle for us.”

  “Forgiveness problems?”

  She glared at him. “Who the hell are you to ask me that question?”

  He shrugged. “The guy whose pants you tried to unbutton?”

  “We won’t be doing that again.” Emotional distress was a terrible reason to initiate sex. Maybe she should have learned that lesson earlier, but she wasn’t that old a dog. She could still learn new tricks.

  His only response was to chuckle, which pissed her off so much she snatched the lawyer’s phone number from the desk, knocking several pens and a photo album to the floor in her haste. He just laughed and returned to the computer, leaving her to pick up her own mess.

  Patricia Cooper wasn’t available, so Renia left a message and sat again at her table. “What now?”

  “Now we wait for information. The lawyer will call back and you’ll learn something.”

  He leaned back in her desk chair, looking comfortable and secure suddenly intermingled in her life. Why shouldn’t he? He knew her biggest secret and she’d tried to stick her hands down his pants. All she needed to do was invite him to dig through her purse and poke around in her medicine cabinet and he’d know her more intimately than any man she’d ever dated.

  “Are you okay? No more dazed stares at the phone?”

  The elephant sitting on her chest hadn’t stood up yet, but the beast had shifted some of his weight forward and was at least thinking about getting out of her life forever. Miles’s presence had moved the elephant, even without sex.

  “We have a plan and I have confidence. I’ll find her.” The confidence in her voice overrode the fear in her heart. What happened after she found her daughter, she chose not to think about.

  “My invitation for dinner and dancing is still open.”

  “I don’t know....” Could she get out of saying yes after he’d been so nice to her? Could she say yes and face a night looking at him over a small table? They both knew she’d been ready to turn him down for a date. The rejection had been unsaid, but it had been hanging in the air above them before her phone rang, just waiting to strike.

  They both also knew she’d tried to stick her hands down his pants.

  “Let me take you out and distract you. Until the lawyer calls or you get a hit online, you won’t be able to do anything to find your daughter. This way you don’t have to sit at home and taunt yourself with your mistakes.”

  Even if she didn’t go out to dinner with him, she wouldn’t go home, at least not right away. She’d take her camera to the lakefront and take photographs of birds until the light got poor. The chirping chatter of the birds would prevent her from feeling alone and the cardinals wouldn’t ask her about her past. When it got too late to watch the birds, she’d go running. If she were careful, she could vary her pace enough to never slip into the meditative state of just putting one foot in front of the other.

  Whatever Miles was trying to do for her, or with her, wouldn’t work. If she couldn’t fall right to sleep after a long run and dinner, spending the night with Miles wouldn’t take her mind off her problems, either. Intimacy carried too many opportunities for judgment, so she wouldn’t enter into a serious relationship with him. He had a daughter, so he wasn’t looking for a fling with a stranger.

  “Thank you for the offer....” He’d been so nice to her, she didn’t want to be rude. “But she might call back, and—”

  “Great!” He clasped her cheeks in his hands and smacked her on the lips before she could duck out of the way. What the hell was he doing?

  Miles continued talking before she could recover long enough to turn him down. “I promise not to be insulted when you answer your cell phone during dinner. I’ll pick you up at seven. We’ll have dinner, and a little salsa dancing. You don’t even have to change. The skirt you’re wearing will be fine for dancing.”

  She hadn’t agreed and... “Are you telling me what I should wear?”

  “Of course not. Wear a potato sack if you want, but I think your skirt looks nice and I hope to watch it swing around your legs while we’re dancing. Write down your address.”

  Dazed, and feeling a little railroaded, Renia wrote her address on a slip of paper and handed it over.

  “Your cell number, too.”


  She robotically pulled her arm back into her body, leaned over and wrote her phone numbers, cell and home, on the paper, then handed it back.

  “I’ll see you at seven, then,” he said with a wave as he headed out the door, the paper fluttering in his hand above his head.

  “Don’t I get—” her studio door slammed shut “—your contact information, too?” she asked to his retreating steps.

  How was she supposed to call him and cancel if she didn’t have his phone number?

  * * *

  AT SIX FIFTY-EIGHT Renia sat on her couch and considered her options. Ignoring the phone call from the lobby was a possibility. A little cowardly, and she doubted he’d let the rejection stand without comment, but it would be easy. Ignoring her promise to herself not to get her new couch dirty, she rested her sweaty head on the arm and put her feet up. She’d never actually said yes to the date. If she let him up to her apartment, he might take one look at her and realize steamrolling a woman into a date was a terrible strategy. Then he would leave her alone and she could go about her night as she always did, with Lean Cuisine and a good book.

  Her phone rang. Decision time.

  She was waiting by the front door, ready to open it before he knocked. He stood in the hallway, his hand raised, and he looked like every dream for her future she’d tried to avoid.

  His trim suit was a light gray and the shirt teased from gray to lavender depending on his movement. The formalness of his clothing couldn’t quite cover his laughing eyes and generous smile. The eagerness on his face made her think he would smile at her past and welcome her into his life with open arms, while the lean line of his body meant the loss of her control and privacy would at least be a pleasurable experience.

  Her clothing, on the other hand... He tried, but didn’t manage to completely hide his surprise at her glistening body, hair pulled back in a tight, damp ponytail and dripping running clothes.

  “Well, our reservations aren’t until eight-thirty, so you have time to shower and change if you want. Or,” he said with an easy shrug, “you could go to dinner as you are. I don’t think the restaurant has a dress code.”

  “You’re still determined to take me out.”

  Miles shouldered his way into her apartment and shut the door. “Rey, if you want to turn me down and spend the night by yourself thinking about the many sins you imagine are in your past, tell me to go and I’ll go.”

  She wished he would be mad, or judgmental, or irritated. His sympathetic eyes didn’t leave any room for her to be hurt. Even she wasn’t willing to be mad at someone for being understanding.

  “You still want to take me to dinner?”

  He sighed. “Why else would I be standing here?”

  She didn’t have a good answer. “Fine. I’ll shower and change.” She turned, leaving him standing alone by the door. “If you sit on the couch, avoid the wet spot.”

  * * *

  MILES PATTED THE couch until he found the spot soaked with her sweat—how far had Rey run?—and sat on a different cushion. He’d made late reservations because he’d been pretty certain she would cancel on him, and he wanted to give the restaurant plenty of notice to fill the empty table. Her attempt to scare him off had been a tactic he hadn’t expected and he wasn’t sure his ego was up for all the knocks she was giving it.

  When the water in the shower started, he stood and began to investigate her apartment. Her plain white walls were covered with photographs of birds. Some black-and-white, some color, the photographs ranged in size from four-by-six snapshots to poster-sized portraits, all professionally matted and framed. Each photograph seemed to capture more than just the personality of the species, but also the personality of that particular bird. The plain brown wrens, their photographs grouped together, pulsed with energy, and the exotic Hyde Park parakeet with a twig in its beak dared the viewer to tell him he wasn’t a mid-westerner.

  He continued his tour around her living and dining room. For a photographer who specialized in child photography and did weddings and portraits, he’d expected more pictures of her family and friends. Instead, the photographs of birds lining her apartment walls confirmed what he’d seen in her eyes at the wedding. Beautiful, mysterious Renia Milek was lonely.

  The only thing he knew about adoption was that it was expensive and every once in a while a battle over a birth mother changing her mind would make news.

  Life without Sarah was unimaginable to him. Cathy’s pregnancy had been completely unplanned, but shouldn’t have been unexpected. They had been two stupid teenagers choosing to believe she couldn’t get pregnant the first time, instead of using a condom like they both knew they should. Not once when his teenaged, sex-addled brain had been trying to get Cathy’s clothes off had he thought of children or marriage. And he’d ended up with both.

  One divorce, one child and several moves later, he wouldn’t go back and change the night of awkward sex that had created Sarah to be Walter Payton in Super Bowl XX. The first time Sarah had smiled at him with her toothless baby grin, he’d known there couldn’t have been another decision.

  Not that he’d had much of a decision to make. When the pregnancy test turned positive, not having Sarah had never been a question. Hell, there hadn’t been any questions—he’d been surrounded by people telling him the answers. Cathy’s father had said, “You got my girl pregnant, so you do right by her,” and he had—to the best of his ability.

  He married Cathy and joined the army, providing his wife and child with a paycheck, housing and health insurance at the sacrifice of his acceptance letter to Carnegie Mellon. The army had given him an education while he was enlisted, it just hadn’t been the education he’d planned for and dreamed of.

  But he and Cathy had both been eighteen when she got pregnant. Rey had given birth to her daughter at sixteen and those two years were the difference between being an adult and a child. Hell, she had been fifteen—younger than Sarah—when she got pregnant.

  A hair dryer started.

  Miles stopped staring at the birds and walked over to Rey’s big picture window to look out at the city before his mind could follow the thought of Sarah getting pregnant one day. No father wanted to think about his daughter getting pregnant. Or having sex.

  He shuddered and forced his mind back to Rey.

  A shotgun marriage wasn’t a good option for a fifteen-year-old, but Rey hadn’t even had a father to try forcing one. As much as he couldn’t imagine life without Sarah, if Cathy had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen, no one would have suggested that they get married.

  The thoughts were whirling in his head like a dog chasing his tail. He followed them around and around and around. Unless he stopped, he’d either get dizzy and barf or he’d collapse from exhaustion. If he were going to collapse from exhaustion because of Rey, he’d rather they were together in bed. And that wasn’t going to happen.

  She may be going out dancing with him tonight, but they weren’t going to end the evening with sex. She was looking for an excuse to never talk to him again and being able to say “this was just a one-night stand” would work fine for her. He wanted more, as much as Rey could give.

  She had a nice view of the city. Her window looked over the back of a shorter apartment building and south to Chicago’s rising skyline. It was the kind of view that made you want to dream big and reach for greatness.

  He turned at the sound of Rey’s bedroom door opening, and the only thing he wanted to reach for was her.

&nb
sp; “You look amazing.”

  Her dress was a pale rose color that wrapped around her body and seemed to be tied on with a fabric belt around her waist. If he gave that belt a tug, would her entire dress fall off? Not that he would try it, but he sure wanted to think about the possibility. Even without a quick tug rendering her naked, the front of her dress dipped invitingly down her breasts. Several thin gold chains lead his imagination past her neckline to wonder what kind of bra she was wearing. Her dark hair floated around her shoulders. It was the first time he’d seen her hair down and he wished he’d been there when she’d let it out of the ponytail.

  “Thank you.” Her smile started small, barely a lifting of her lips, before bursting wide and showing her pleasure. Whatever baggage Rey came with, and he was pretty certain she came with an airplane full, he wanted to be a part of her life, issues and all, just so she’d smile at him like that again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MILES PULLED UP to the valet in front of Nacional 27 and escorted Renia into the restaurant. The atmosphere pulsed with excitement and she was surprised to see a dance floor in the middle of all the tables. Snippets of people burned into her brain, the photographs she could take and the prints that would result. Tableaux vivants setting the tone for the rest of the evening.

  The group of women sitting at the bar, one leaning back in laughter, the turquoise of her dress shining next to the bronze of her skin, and her friend, who leaned forward to flirt with the bartender, her cocktail glass tipped toward the man in invitation. She would put the glass in the bottom right of the photograph, leading the eye of the viewer to the flirtatious bartender.

  The older woman sitting at a table with one eye on the dance floor and another on her date, her date avoiding looking at the dance floor altogether. She’d let the dance floor be the star of that photograph, blazing like the woman saw it, but also a little scary—as the man saw it.