The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) Read Free Page A

deal.
    And truthfully, the contract was so lucrative, the benefits so generous, that only a fool would have wasted a single second before leaping up to sign on the dotted line.
    Maybe that’s what she was, Molly thought. A fool. But she wouldn’t be rushed into this decision. Once, ten years ago, she had allowed herself to be pressured into doing something foolish, somethingshe knew in her heart was wrong. The consequences had been staggering, life altering.
    The consequence had been motherhood.
    On the day she had learned she was pregnant, while she sat on that cold, metal examination table with her tears barely dried on her cheeks, she had made a promise to herself. She had vowed that no one would ever again force her to act against her own judgment.
    Beginning in that frightened moment, with grim, blind determination she had taken control of her life and Liza’s. She wasn’t about to turn over the reins now.
    Lavinia would have to wait. There was something Molly had to do before she could commit to this project. Something she had to know about herself—and about exactly how far she had come in the past ten years.
    Had she come far enough that it was now safe to come full circle? To come home?
    â€œI’m meeting Lavinia in a few minutes,” Molly explained, wishing in spite of herself that she could take that disappointment from Janice Kilgore’s face. “I think she said you wouldn’t mind letting Liza stay with your class, just for an hour or so?”
    Jan’s grin broke through. “You know I’d love it. Look at her with the little ones. Why, it’s as good as having another teacher’s aide.” She chuckled. “A great deal better than our last one, who liked to sneak off and smoke cigars in the closet.”
    Molly picked her way across the winter-brown field of laughing, twirling, seesawing children tokiss Liza goodbye. As she breathed in the fresh, soapy scent of her daughter, enveloping her in a long bear hug, she assured the little girl that she’d be back very soon. As usual, Liza nodded with untroubled acceptance, quite content to be left in her new surroundings.
    As Molly headed toward her waiting rental car, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Liza was fine. Her confidence was a gift, and Molly didn’t want to undermine it by communicating insecurity. It was just that Molly’s own childhood had been quite different. She had dreaded new places and strange people, sensing that the world was unpredictable. She had always felt just one slippery step from some nameless disaster.
    Living with a family like hers could do that to a person.
    Molly knew that Liza sometimes longed for a daddy—and the knowledge often filled her with a sense of failure. But then she reminded herself of the truth she’d learned so long ago, listening to the sound of her father’s drunken rages: No father was a thousand times better than a bad one.
    Â 
    T WENTY MINUTES LATER , Molly stood in a churchyard, tightly gripping a velvety cluster of deep-purple pansies. The cemetery was only five miles east of Radway School by car. Emotionally it might as well have been in another world.
    Where Radway had rung with the laughter of a hundred children and teemed with young, vigorous life, this place was almost preternaturally quiet.Black-armed oaks, drooping willows and barely budding dogwood crowded together, blocking all sound from the street. The winter sunshine fought its way through the tangled branches, but at a price. It lay like a broken thing on the grass, a fractured mosaic of white-gold light amid the olive-green shadows.
    Molly hadn’t visited Woodlawn Cemetery in almost ten years, but she had no trouble finding the Forrest plot. It lay deep in the center of the seven acres of gray marble headstones and mildewed angels, deep enough to signify that the Forrest family had been in Demery since its founding.
    Ten generations of Forrests lay