When Love Is True. Joan Kilby
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Chloe hurried down the hall to open the front door. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 4
Evan presented her with a dozen red roses wrapped in gold paper and gave her his trademark brilliant smile. “Is that any way to greet your long-lost love?”
She cradled the blooming flowers in the crook of her arm. Primly, she said, “You’re not my love now.”
He laughed and kissed her quickly on the mouth. A whiff of his aftershave, leather and sandalwood, caught her unaware and transported her back to the past. To a brief but intense history of tumbled beds and Sunday brunch in fine hotels, to violin concertos and kisses in the rain.
Flustered, she backed away. “I’d better put these in water.” Seeing Evan sling his canvas-and-leather satchel down inside the door, she added in alarm, “You can’t stay here.”
“I know that.” His lighthearted Aussie drawl always made it sound to Chloe as if he were on the verge of laughter. “Your lumberjack would chop me up for kindling.”
“Don’t call him that,” Chloe said. “Daniel’s a good man.”
Her heart beating rapidly, she walked briskly back to the kitchen. She could feel Evan’s gaze on her bare legs and his powerful presence in her house. Daniel’s house. Dropping the bouquet in the sink, she faced him. “Didn’t you get my last letter?”
Evan’s light blue eyes burned into hers. “The one where you told me not to write anymore?” A sound from the high chair made him glance past her shoulder. His deeply tanned skin paled. “Is this your daughter?”
“Brianna.” Chloe found a tall, square vase in the cupboard and filled it with water. “She’s—”
“Fourteen months old last week,” Evan said. Chloe stepped aside and he walked toward the little girl who was smearing strawberry yogurt around her tray. “G’day, Brianna,” he said softly. “How’s it going?”
Brianna lifted a round trusting face and displayed her yogurt-covered fingers for his inspection. Evan studied her intently, then turned to Chloe. “She looks just like you.” He paused. “I can’t see anything of me or Daniel in her.”
Chloe busied herself arranging the roses. “Naturally, she’s like Daniel.”
“So you’ve had a DNA test?”
He sounded disappointed. Did he really wish Brianna was his? Fear clutched at Chloe. What if he contested the issue of paternity and sued for custody? Daniel would be devastated and Brianna would be traumatized. “Y-yes, yes, we have,” she faltered, not looking at him. “She’s definitely Daniel’s child.”
Evan tipped up her chin and searched her face. “Liar.”
Chloe blushed and pulled away. “All right, we haven’t, but this is her home and Daniel is her father.”
“Do you really imagine I’d try to take her away from a stable, secure family?” Evan shook his head. “What would I do with a toddler, anyway? A refugee camp is no place for a child. At least not for fortunate kids like Brianna who have a home.”
“Have you finished your stint in Sudan?” Chloe rinsed a cloth in warm water and wiped Brianna’s hands. Relief flooded through her. He wasn’t going to upset the fragile balance she’d finally achieved in her life, in her marriage. Anyway, she wouldn’t let him. “I thought you were there for two years.”
“They let me off a month early for good behavior.” Chloe’s eyebrows rose and he admitted the truth. “I got a recurrence of malaria, a bad bout. I went to Paris to recuperate but the City of Lights isn’t much fun when you’re sick and on your own. So then I decided to head home, stopping on my way to visit my brother in Victoria.”
“How is Jack?” she said.
“I haven’t seen him yet. I came here straight from the airport.” Evan moved closer and stroked his knuckles lightly down her arm. “Did you really not want my letters? Or did the lumberjack force you to put me off?”
“Don’t call him that!” Chloe shivered at Evan’s touch. Unsettled, she slipped sideways out of his reach. “Daniel doesn’t even know about our correspondence. I made the decision to stop writing myself. In fact, I burned all your letters the day we moved here.”
He winced. “That was cruel.”
“You know we can’t continue to have a relationship.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, anchoring her fingers in the waistband of her skirt. “How did you find me at this address?”
“Your husband runs a business out of his house and he’s listed in the Yellow Pages. It didn’t require Sherlock Holmes to track you down.” He glanced around at the warm maple cabinets and the granite countertop. “It’s nice. Daniel’s a good builder, I’ll give him that.”
“I was just going to have some lunch,” she said, softening her tone a little. She went to the cupboard and took out a can of tuna. “Will you join me?”
“Yes, but put away the canned fish.” He brought his satchel into the kitchen and proceeded to pull out a portable feast. “Remember how we used to talk about going to Paris?” he asked Chloe, placing a luscious circle of brie and shrink-wrapped pâté on the counter. “Since we didn’t get there together, I’m bringing Paris to you. Pain de campagne,” he went on, handing her a heavy round loaf. “Olives. Italian, not French, but still…Dried muscatel grapes and—” with a flourish he produced a foil-capped bottle “—real Champagne.”
Chloe burst into delighted laughter. “Evan, you are the limit! But this is just what I needed today.” She got Brianna out of her high chair and set her on the floor with some toys. Then she cleared the newspapers and flyers off the dining table. She started to bring out the everyday plates, then changed her mind and got a stool to reach into the top cupboard for the set of good china her grandmother had given her as a wedding present. Real champagne all the way from France deserved crystal flutes.
“Do you have an ice bucket for the wine?” Evan asked.
“I have a plastic bucket in the laundry room.”
For some reason this struck them both as hilarious. Suddenly a party atmosphere had taken over, as they unwrapped the food and poured the wine together. Conversation and laughter bubbled along with the champagne. Chloe ate ravenously and drank with abandon, as if this might be her last meal. She hadn’t felt so alive in months. Maybe not since Evan left, a tiny voice whispered. She brushed the thought aside and let him refill her champagne glass. His tales of adventure ranged from Sudan to Istanbul to the glittering restaurants and theaters of Paris.
Chloe took in his chiseled features and golden hair. His thin V-necked cashmere sweater looked sophisticated and sexy over designer blue jeans. She watched his long fingers restlessly toy with the cutlery. Fingers that had brought her unparalleled pleasure had also saved lives and comforted the sick.
“What was it like in the refugee camp?” she asked. “It must have been awful.”
Shadows filled his eyes, hinting at never-to-be-forgotten scenes of horror. “It’s like nothing you can imagine. Hell on earth. Patients arrive in a continuous stream, and the suffering is beyond imagining—limbs hacked off, women raped almost to the point of death, mutilated children, disease, starvation…We do what we can, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, but there’s no respite.
“Horrible as that is, I could cope with it. But it’s what I couldn’t do that tormented me, the hundreds of people I had to turn away because the clinic simply didn’t have the resources to treat them all.” He tilted his glass to his lips, but he’d already drained it dry. “Have you got anything else to drink?”
“I’ll go see.” Chloe got up, staggered a little and laughed. “I’m not used to drinking in the afternoon.” She