Tara Quinn - Sheltered in His Arms

“She let him support her for almost eight years before she told him Alex belonged to her boyfriend, who was in prison.”

“Mom said that Ben’s being awarded full and permanent custody of her, though.”

“Her real father beat—” Glancing down at the head bobbing between them, Cassie broke off. “He wasn’t a very good father.”

“I gather Ben is.”

“Obviously you haven’t met him yet,” Cassie said, “or you’d know he was.”

Sam nodded again. “You’re right, I haven’t met him, but Mom’s pushing for a get-together.”

“Ben’s a great guy. Looks a bit like you.” In fact he resembled Sam enough that Cassie had had a hard time liking the man when she’d first met him. But he was Zack’s closest friend. Nowadays Cassie not only liked and respected him, she admired the hell out of him. Ben Sanders was a real man in the true sense of the word.

Too bad Sam didn’t share those particular genes…. Cassie stopped her reaction even as it took shape. She wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t going to grow old and hard with bitterness, entertaining nasty thoughts. She was okay now. Happy with her life. Surrounded by friends and family who loved her.

“Just seems odd, after a lifetime of being the only Montford heir, to find out that I’m not.”

“It’s not like your inheritance meant a whole lot to you the past ten years.” Damn her tongue. She turned the corner, Sam and Mariah staying in step beside her.

“It doesn’t mean squat to me.”

He’d certainly said so with great frequency. But until he’d left, turning his back on the money, the position, the town, she’d never really thought he believed it. She’d always thought the complaints were just a habit left over from when he was a kid, railing against expectations.

Everyone did that. Complained about what their parents expected of them. It was a normal part of growing up.

“Then what’s the problem with sharing it?” she asked him now, thinking how little Sam appeared to need the Montford fortune, and how much Ben and his new family did.

“He can have it all,” Sam said without bitterness, as though he still meant the words completely. “It just feels odd to have been one thing your entire life, only to find that it’s not what you are at all.”

Cassie nodded, glancing down as Mariah’s arm brushed against her leg. The child, moving silently between them, didn’t seem to notice.

Relieved when they reached her block, Cassie firmly turned her thoughts once again to cabbage rolls. They’d smelled so good when they were baking on Saturday night.

“This is it,” she said, stopping at the bottom of her driveway. If he expected her to ask him in, he was mistaken.

Sam hesitated, looking at the house she’d bought a few years before, in one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Shelter Valley.

“Nice place.”

“I like it.”

“It’s big.”

“Yeah.” She did most of her pet therapy work from an office here at home. And used the rest of the rooms to indulge her amateur interest in interior decorating.

Cassie was beginning to think Sam’s daughter couldn’t hear. The child didn’t even turn toward the house they were discussing. Cassie had heard the adage about children being seen and not heard, but this was too much.

Besides, she’d never figured Sam for that kind of parent.

A familiar pain tore through her at the thought of Sam as a father. She had to stay away from this man, dammit! He could destroy every bit of her hard-won composure, and his very presence threatened the contentment she’d so carefully pieced together.

The child, however, shouldn’t suffer for her father’s sins. Her silence tugged at Cassie. Bending down, face level with the striking little girl, Cassie smiled. “It was nice to see you again, Mariah.”

Mariah didn’t respond. And Sam gave no explanation. Surely if the child was deaf, Sam would have said. And how could she ask, in case the little girl could hear and know they were talking about her?

“Have you had any of your grandma’s cookies yet?” she tried again.

Neither a nod nor a shake of the head. Mariah’s gaze seemed intent on the T-shirt tucked into Sam’s shorts. Her fingers were clutching it. Hard.

Meeting Cassie’s questioning gaze, Sam just shook his head.

“Well, if you haven’t, you’ve got a treat in store,” Cassie continued, simply because she didn’t know what else to do. “They’re the best.”

“I told her.”

Of course. He would have. He’d grown up with them.

They both had.

“Well, good night,” Cassie said awkwardly.

“’Night.”

She didn’t look back as she walked to her door, let herself in and locked it behind her.

But she knew Sam stood there watching her.

MARIAH DIDN’T WANT to go back to that house. Sam was driving up the hill, so she knew they were going back there. She didn’t want to. She didn’t belong there.

Sam’s house was for happy kids who didn’t know bad stuff. And grandmas were for happy kids, too. Mariah wasn’t like that anymore. She’d cried, made too much noise when the bad men came. That was why they’d killed her mommy.

Sam’s mouth was all tight, except when he seemed to remember that Mariah was looking at him. Then he smiled a good Sam smile.

She used to think Sam’s smiles made her feel happy. Now she didn’t care whether he smiled or not. Smiles couldn’t really do anything. They couldn’t stop bad stuff. They couldn’t save you from the horrible men.

Sam didn’t have to smile. He just had to stay breathing. Mostly that was what she watched. To make sure he was always breathing.

Mommy had been still holding Mariah’s hand but she hadn’t been breathing—and the men had made Mariah let go of her. That was when they said Mommy wasn’t coming back. But Mommy hadn’t gone anywhere, she’d been right there with Mariah the whole time—so how could she come back, anyway?

Daddy had gone away with them after they hit him so many times and made his face bleed. When Mariah cried out for him, they yelled back at her and told her to shut up. If she made a sound, they were going to hurt Mommy. They said Daddy wasn’t ever coming back, either. Sam said he’d stopped breathing, too. She hadn’t known that about breathing before.

Daddy was put into a hole in the ground—

“You hungry, honey?”

Sam smiled at her now. Mariah didn’t get hungry anymore. She just got tired from watching Sam’s breathing.

Breathing stopped, and then some men shoved you into a hole in the ground. But first, sometimes, they cut you and made you bleed so much that a Band-Aid didn’t work.

They scared you and did other things Mariah couldn’t think about.

So she just thought about breathing. If she stopped breathing, they’d shove her in a hole, too.

SAM’S PENCIL SLID EASILY around the page, making a mark here, another there, until the familiar figures began to take shape. After so many years of drawing this cartoon strip, he was seeing it differently tonight. He was on overload with the past four days of memory and stimulation.

Borough Bantam. Sam’s imaginary world was filled with non-human life, of the animal variety, mostly—each creature representative to Sam of the people he’d known all his life in Shelter Valley. There was the king—a grizzly bear—his father. His mother, the queen, a gentle brown bear. Will Parsons was a lion. His wife, Becca, Sam’s readers knew as a book-reading lioness. There was Nancy Garland, a girl they’d known in high school; she was a gopher. Sam’s parents had told him she was still in town, hostessing at the Valley Diner. Jim Weber, owner of Weber’s Department Store, was a penguin. Hank Harmon was the big friendly skunk everyone in the Borough loved, in spite of his smell. Chuck Taylor was a leopard. And on and on…

Cassie was the gazelle. Graceful. Lovely. And unattainable.

He still hadn’t found a moment away from Mariah—a chance to see Cassie alone. Although the more he thought about the whole damn mess, the more he wondered whether it would make a difference to her whether or not Mariah was his biological daughter. She was still his daughter. He had a child to raise, while Cassie did not.

And yet he couldn’t understand why Cassie had made that choice—to remain unmarried and childless. Nor could he stomach the irrational fear that he was at least partially to blame.

Mariah was finally asleep; Sam had put her in the bed across from the desk at which he sat. His parents had given him a guest suite, as it had two beds and plenty of room for him and Mariah.

Sam hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before Mariah hankered after the princess room down the hall. Its lacy white canopy, yellow walls, and pictures of tea parties were enough to tempt any little girl. Weren’t they? As a teenager, Cassie had always loved his mother’s fanciful guest room. The couple of times her family had been out of town and she’d stayed with them, she’d chosen that room. It had been updated since he left town—with new paint, different pictures, some fancy ladies’ hats on a rack—but his impression was the same. He still felt like a clumsy oaf in ten-pound mountain boots whenever he walked in the door.

Characters appeared on the page in front of Sam, seemingly of their own accord. The pencil moved swiftly, filling in thought bubbles almost faster then he could think them….

The castle was in chaos. There was a stranger in their midst, a wild stallion. He claimed to know them. The king and queen had offered their usual warm-hearted welcome. Always trusting. Seeing good in the visitor although his heart might harbor unclean things.

The half-witted magistrate, so full of his own importance, didn’t know that Borough Bantam had been invaded yet. Sam grinned as the rotund little worm slithered around his circle, certain that he was circling the world. That he controlled the entire globe. His bubble was easiest of all to fill. I am. I am. I am.

It was rumored that the newcomer—the stallion—posed a threat to the magistrate. The worm— Sam’s version of Shelter Valley’s mayor, Junior Smith.

Ten years older than Sam, Junior had just become mayor when Sam’s father retired. That was the year before Sam left town. James Montford had suffered a bout of Crohn’s Disease and needed to lower his stress level; as a result he’d stepped down from the mayoralty. That was when Sam really started to feel the pressure to run for mayor. The fact that he would win was a foregone conclusion. The office of mayor was of course an elected position, but politics in Shelter Valley had more to do with tradition than democracy. The town’s mayor had almost always been a Montford—although, occasionally, a member of the less-reputable Smith branch of the family held office.

The newcomer sat off by himself, watching the confusion, detached. He couldn’t care less about the worm. He was waiting. Though he didn’t know for what. The plan would be made known to him in due time. He just had to be patient.

Sighing, Sam scribbled the finishing touch, the signature of Bantam’s creator, S.N.C., and dropped his pencil. Then he tore off the piece of drawing paper, folding it carefully and sealing it in an envelope for mailing in the morning—on time to meet his deadline. He methodically put all evidence of the work he’d been doing in the battered satchel, which he placed back on the closet shelf. Patience was the lesson of the week—for the comic strip’s new character and for him.

Sam needed to find a truckload of it somewhere.