CHAPTER 6

"I'll walk out with you."

"Okay," Meghan agreed much too easily when Lucas made that suggestion late Monday evening.

After the family dinner, giving Tiara her bath while Lucas answered a business call, and sitting in again on the reading of Goodnight Moon before putting Tiara to bed, it had amounted to almost a fourteen hour workday for Meghan. She should have been ready for some time to herself.

Instead, having Lucas come with her out the back door gave her a whole new surge of energy.

"So, how was your first full day on the job? Are you ready to run for the hill yet?" he asked as they strolled across the yard.

"Not yet," she answered with a laugh that didn't give away how much she'd liked every minute she'd spent alone with Tiara, and then every minute on top of that that included him.

"I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow,' he said then. "After Tiara's nap, Hadley, Tia and I are supposed to go meet Theresa Grayson- I don't know if you know what's going on with that..."

Since her sister,Kate, was marrying Ry Grayson- Theresa's grandson - on Friday night and Meghan was Maid of Honour, she actually did know what Lucas was alluding to.

And she didn't have any reason to play dumb, so she said "I do know about Theresa Grayson. I know that fifty plus years ago when she was Seventeen, her parents were killed and she was taken in by Hector Tyson and his wife.That Hector- who is Northbridge's cocurmudgeon along with my grandfather - seduced her and got her pregnant and then arranged for the baby to be secretly adopted. I know that Theresa has a lot of mental and emotional problems and came back here desperate to reconcile with the daughter she'd given up,that her grandkids have been working diligently to do that for her-"

"And that they found out that Theresa's child was actually I and Hadley's mother," Lucas interjected.

"Which makes Theresa your grandmother," Meghan concluded.

"And tomorrow is the first time we come face-to-face."

They'd reached the steps that ran alongside the garage up to the apartment, but Lucas did not seem inclined to go the rest of the way because he leaned his T-shirted back against the garage's outer wall, hooked his thumbs into his jeans pocket and raised a booted foot to the bottom step.

It was a lovely summer's night and Meghan didn't mind standing outside talking to him so she stopped there,too, facing him and resting her own back against the stair rail.

But even if it had been twenty degrees below zero,she wouldn't have been in any hurry to say goodnight.

"Are you nervous about meeting Theresa?" she asked, part of her attention on what they were talking about and another part of it looking at the play of light and shadow on the sharply drawn lines of his features.

"It's a strange position to be in,but no, I'm not nervous about it. Except maybe when it comes to Tia." he said. "Hadley and I have been warned that things with Theresa could go in a lot of different directions - she could refuse to see us at the last minute or cry all the way through it or be disoriented or just quiet. We don't know what to expect."

"Kate introduced me to her and I know Theresa's diagnosis. Multiple diagnoses, actually. Yes,she has a lot of problems, but you won't find a raving crazy woman - if that's what you're afraid of. I'd say that if she can get up the courage to actually meet you and Hadley, the worst you'll see is tears because she's very emotional. But she also may just be happy to meet you and not appear any different than anyone else."

"I'm actually less worried about her than I am about Tia." Lucas confided.

His pale eyes were iridescent in the light cast from the four lamps that were hung at the same angle that the stairs ran along the garage wall. And even in the dimness, Meghan thought those eyes excuded a warmth she could almost feel. Except that she told herself she was probably only imagining that....

"Tia could love Theresa or hate her on sight," he was saying when Meghan forced her focus back on that. "And she could behave or misbehave accordingly. I don't want her to set off someone who- from what I've heard - is pretty easily upset. I'd like it if you could just come with us so if Tia acts up,you can take her outside."

"Sure, absolutely," she said , agreeing enthusiastically - and resisting the urge to spout technical terminologies "Certainly, Tiara dosen't need a psychologist there,you just need someone who can remove her if she puts up a fuss like any three-year old might around new people in a strange situation."

"Exactly," Lucas confirmed.

"You said this is the first time you'll be meeting Theresa, but what about her other grandchildren? That would make Wyatt, Marti and Ry your cousins - have you met them yet?"

"Yeah, the triplets," he answered. "They all came out last week to fill us in on things," Logan continued. "It was a pretty big shock to Hadley and me to find out that we're related. That our mum had been adopted."

"You had no idea?" Meghan asked.

"Not a clue. Neither did our mother, apparently. We've talked to our other grandmother - Mom's adopted mother...."

"My sister Kate told me it was Anne and Shamus Wimmer who adopted the baby."

"Right, Gramps passed away a few years ago, but Gran is still alive and lives in Florida. When we first found out about this whole thing,we called her. It took some persuading but she finally told us the truth. They never let anyone know they'd adopted. Apparently, Gran even pretended she was pregnant at the same time Theresa was and then made a birth announcement as if she'd had the baby. And they never told a single soul anything different - including the rest of their families and my mother."

"Who passed away too, if I'm remembering right?"

"When Hadley was almost three and I was five. She was pregnant with what would have been our baby brother and there were complications. They both died." Lucas confirmed. " But mum died never knowing anything about being adopted."

"Or suspecting anything?"

"I'm sure she didn't.To my grandparents, she was a gift- they doted on and adored her. Which is more than I can say for Hadley and I being raised by a stepmother. But then, I guess adopted kids are more wanted than step kids."

"That was what you and Hadley ended up as- step kids...." Meghan said to prompt him to go on. Because,not only did she want to have the facts straight, but since he'd added that, it was obviously on his mind and she thought he might want to talk about it.

She must have been right because he didn't hesitate to go on.

"My father remarried six months after+ Hadley was two and a half, I had just turned five. He said kids needed a mother and he couldn't take care of us on his own. And almost nine months to the day after that wedding,the second batch of Macaulays started to arrive- the real family, according to my stepmother."

Lucas said with an edge of bitterness to his tone. "She never let anyone forget that Hadley and I weren't her kids,and she didn't hide the resentment that she'd been stuck raising another woman's children."

"That's awful," Meghan said simply.

After a moment,Lucas collected himself, smiling a half smile and said, "What were we talking about that got us into this?"

But looking at the curve of his mouth when it formed that smile stalled Meghan's memory and made her think something else.

It made her think about kissing him.

The thoughts were out of the blue, uninvited and unwelcome, but there they were anyway - she was wondering what it might be like for him to kiss her. Wondering and wanting him to- just a little...

Meghan forced herself to veer away from that,to actually answer his question. "I believe we were talking about me going with you guys tomorrow when you meet Theresa so I can wrangle Tiara if need be," she finally said, relieved that she'd been able to pull it together enough to make the recollection.

"Ah, that's right. So,you don't mind?"

"I'm happy to," she assured.

"Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Sure."

"Tia said she wore a cape of yours today and she wants one of her own....."

The thong panties!

Meghan hadn't heard Tiara say that but just knowing what the little girl was referring to made her cheeks heat. She hoped it wasn't visible in the porch light. She also had no idea how she was going to explain the cape without abject embarrassment.

Lie. That was all she could think to do.

"It was just a towel I tied around her shoulders. I'm sure she'll forget about it by tomorrow." At least, Meghan hoped to high heaven she did.

She hoped too, that the faint frown that tugged at Lucas's brows again didn't mean that Tiara had described the cape in enough detail for him to know it couldn't have been merely a towel.

But rather than give him the opportunity to question her more about it, she took the first two steps down toward her apartment to indicate that it was time for this to end.

Lucas apparently got the hint because he said, "I should let you get going." He pushed off the garage wall to stand straight.

Between her raised height on the steps and his movement forward, for a moment,they were so near that her breasts were just a whisper from meeting his chest. So near that it would have taken next to nothing for him to kiss her just the way she was sort of wishing he would...

He pivoted in a hurry,though and that ended that.

"See you in the morning," Lucas said then, as if nothing had happened. Because with the exception of invading each other's private space a little, nothing had

"See you in the morning," Meghan repeated, her voice quiet.

But as she began to climb the remaining stairs, she knew she was going to be seeing him much, much sooner than the next morning. She was actually still seeing him as she went into her apartment. Seeing him in her mind's eye.

And even though it was something that had been happening over and over again since she'd met the man, this was a new, more vivid, more real image of him. An image that not only included how great looking he was, but how fabulous he smelled, and how powerful a presence that muscular body was up close,and how he seemed to give off a kind of heat that had made a melt a little inside...

An image that she knew was also now going to include how much taller he was when they were nearly chest-to-chest, and how much he would have to bend, how much she would have to rise in order for their mouths to meet...

I'm supposed to be fighting these kind of thoughts, she reminded herself as she closed the door behind her.

And there in the dark studio apartment that Lucas had built, fight them she did.

Only they were more stronger than she was...