Her Foreign Affair Read Free

dinners are always perfect, and thirty minutes late doesn’t count. Mom, come meet our guests.”
    Ah yes. The mysterious Drew, a grad student from overseas Birdie had met the previous week after tripping over his big feet in a coffee shop. Not only Drew, but his father, as well, visiting the states on business, timed for Drew’s first big American holiday. The widowed father. A match to her widowed mother status.
    Great. It was bad enough her father also asked to bring a guest, a single man of a certain age. In other words, old enough for Randi. But now her daughter had joined the game? Lately, it seemed as if an invisible milestone had passed, one declaring her mourning period complete, and, apparently, someone had declared open season on finding dates for her. Funny, her heart hadn’t reached the same conclusion yet.
    Well, let these possible future dates get a good look at the new woman. The one thinking about thinking of dating again.
    Since Birdie generally preferred jeans, Randi raised an eyebrow at the dress her daughter wore. Navy flats were more in keeping with her personality, though Birdie showed off a pair of still nicely tanned legs. Randi was about to comment, but Birdie beat her to it.
    “Wow.” Birdie stopped and stared for moment. “Great look,” she whispered, then took Randi’s arm and dragged her into the foyer where two tall men stood. So the extra hour of shaving, shining, plucking, and painting had been worth it? Despite the steamy glow she certainly sported at the moment, and no time to powder it away.
    Not wanting to acknowledge the matchmaking attempt of her daughter—the man was a foreigner for crying out loud and wouldn’t be around long enough to get to know—she wiped her hands on her apron, then extended one to the younger of the two. Dark blond, he had deep blue eyes and a smile every bit as cheery as Birdie’s. As Randi gripped his hand, hers warmed with dreaded perspiration. She made her shake firm and brief, dropping his hand almost immediately.
    “Mom, this is Drew. Drew, my mother Rand—”
    “Jean?”
    “—ee Ferguson,” Birdie stumbled to a stop.
    Drew hadn’t interrupted. No, it was the man behind him. The boy’s father. The one Randi didn’t want to look at. The resonance of his voice, the rich British accent that made the plain name she’d used for one semester sound exotic, it was an illusion, an echo from the past, a hallucination induced from too little sleep.
    Reluctantly, Randi let her gaze slide past Drew’s startled eyes and collide with those of the older man one step back, looking more stunned than startled. More amazed than surprised.
    “Not Jean Dailey?” he asked, head tilted a fraction as his gaze bore into her.
    There was only one thought in her mind as her heart thudded to a momentary stop, and her blood froze into crystals. It can’t be .
    This must be a delusion leftover from last night’s dreams. The ones brought on by the romance novel she’d found in a box last week. The one sitting on her bedside table still exuding the soft scent of the rose pressed between the pages of the love scene. He’d been invading her thoughts too much lately. He couldn’t really be here, in her foyer. This scene was purely a figment of a mind set to wandering by plain old loneliness.
    Randi grasped Birdie’s arm, holding her as much to stay standing as to keep Birdie from moving to the side of the younger man. There was no way God would play this cruel a joke on her after so many years. Yet, as she stared into those blue, blue eyes, the years peeled away.
    “Jean is my mother’s middle name,” Birdie supplied helpfully, despite her apparent confusion, breaking the silence that had held for nearly a full minute. Words abandoned Randi, leaving her throat too tight, too dry for speech. “Her full name is Randi Jean Dailey Ferguson.”
    Hell, no point in trying to hide her true identity now, as if that had ever been a remote possibility. Not only did Birdie