EXPECTANT BRIDE-TO-BE Read online

  "He whisked me away to his cabin in the mountains, sure that I was his fiancée, Jessica, whom he hardly knew. She had been missing for several weeks and Ryan had hired a private investigator to find her. The poor man found me, instead. By the time Ryan took me back to the Walker mansion in Willow Springs and discovered that I wasn't Stuart's heiress granddaughter, and thus not his intended fiancée, we had fallen in love."

  Pausing, Sarah looked down at the engagement ring she wore on her left hand and smiled radiantly.

  "Jessica was still missing, of course, and Deidre was beside herself with worry. Finding her became our top priority, and though she didn't make it easy for us, we finally did, didn't we?"

  Sarah shot Jessica a wry smile, and Jessica nodded ruefully.

  "Yes, you certainly did." Jessica looked at Abby, her blue eyes sparkling mischievously. "Ryan is a wonderful man, mind you. He just wasn't the man for me. So, mature woman that I am, when Deidre insisted that I marry him to please Stuart, I decided to run away from home.

  "I ended up in Thunder Lake, Nevada with barely two nickels to rub together. Mother had canceled my credit cards and locked up my bank accounts so I had to find a job fast. After a majorly disastrous stint as a waitress, I hired on as nanny for the town sheriff's two little girls.

  "Long story short, I fell in love with Sam Dawson and his daughters, Casey and Annie, and fortunately, they fell in love with me, too. Before we could make it official, though, Sarah showed up in Thunder Lake. I returned to Willow Springs with her. That's when we found out from Deidre that she had traced Larissa to Promise, but unfortunately, she had died in an automobile accident in December.

  "That sad news was tempered somewhat by Sam's arrival in Willow Springs. He proposed to me, and of course, I accepted." Jessica, too, gazed at the lovely ring she wore before adding, "Sarah and I decided a double wedding was in order, but first we wanted to make a personal trip to Promise—secretly so as not to upset Deidre. We both agreed that we really needed to find out as much as we could about our birth mother before we could go on with our lives."

  "We left Willow Springs yesterday morning," Sarah explained. "We told everyone we were going to San Francisco to do some shopping, but we headed down here, instead. The drive took us much longer than we expected because we ran into some bad weather. We didn't get to Promise until late, so we found a motel and settled in for the night."

  "We called the house in Willow Springs, too," Jessica added. "We thought we'd better tell everyone where we really were. Poor Deidre … she sounded like she was on the verge of hysterics. Fortunately, Grandfather was there to calm her down. I knew there was a good chance we would hurt her feelings by coming here. I never thought she would start shrieking at me like a maniac, though."

  "Has anything we've said rung any bells for you?" Sarah asked hopefully.

  "Not really," Abby admitted. "To be perfectly frank, I'm more bewildered than ever. Larissa had her faults, but she never, ever, gave me cause to doubt that she loved me. And knowing her as I did, I'm sure she loved both of you just as much.

  "She always seemed to be searching for something. She was so restless and so unhappy. Now I know why. Secretly, she must have been searching for you, deep in her heart, and as long as she couldn't find you, she could never be truly happy."

  "Do you really think that was true, Abby?" Jessica asked, tears welling in her eyes. "Do you think Larissa wanted Sarah and me as much as she wanted you? You're the one she kept, after all…"

  "Only because she must not have thought she had any choice," Abby insisted. "Her parents, Hank and Judith, were far from wealthy. Asking them to take in one baby was probably as much as she thought she had a right to do. Although they would have welcomed all of us, she wouldn't have wanted to burden them. And she could have thought that we would all have a better life if she and her parents didn't have to bear the full financial responsibility for three tiny babies."

  "We wanted to believe that she really did have our best interests at heart when she gave us away," Sarah said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

  "She was that kind of person," Abby stated unequivocally. "What puzzles me, though, is why she didn't ask Deidre to adopt both of you. Even if you were ill, Sarah, surely Deidre would have been willing to provide the medical care you needed.

  "Since Larissa was willing to entrust her with the care of one of her babies, why not let her have both of you? Even though Larissa couldn't keep all of us, at least she would have known that the two of you were together. That sounds more like something she would have done, rather than abandon Sarah at a hospital.

  "A hospital so far from Las Vegas and Promise, too…" Abby added musingly. "I wonder what she was doing in Bellville, Nevada, of all places, with two newborn babies, one of them seriously ill?"

  "Maybe she had decided she wanted to keep all of us, after all," Jessica suggested, her expression brightening noticeably. "Maybe she was trying to catch up with Deidre to get me back."

  "Or maybe she wanted Stuart to know he had three granddaughters," Sarah said. "Larissa could have thought, and rightly so, that he would be able to help her financially."

  "Larissa may have been trying to get Jessica back, but I don't think she was trying to contact Stuart. She wouldn't have been able to because she never knew our father's real name," Abby explained. "I remember once overhearing her tell my grandmother that she had tried to find him after she realized she was pregnant and no one by the name he'd given her lived anywhere in Nevada."

  "And there's a good chance Deidre didn't use the Walker name when she arranged to adopt me," Jessica added. "She told us that she knew Larissa was our father's mistress, but she said very little about her actual dealings with her. Just that she offered to adopt me and Larissa agreed."

  "I don't suppose Larissa kept a journal of any kind," Sarah interjected sensibly. "Even copies of papers related to the adoption might give us a clue as to where to go next."

  "I can't remember Larissa ever writing in a journal, but that doesn't mean she never did," Abby replied. "And I haven't had a chance to go through her personal papers yet. We could find something among them that might be helpful. If nothing turns up, we can also talk to Hank and Judith. They are definitely going to want to meet you—no matter what."

  Feeling like she wanted to pinch herself to make sure all that had happened in the past hour or so was real, Abby stood and gestured toward the hallway that led to her mother's bedroom.

  "I had planned to go through her things today. You're welcome to give me a hand if you want. With three of us looking for clues about our birth, we shouldn't miss anything."

  "Are you sure you feel up to it right now?" Sarah asked solicitously. "We've dumped an awful lot on you all at once."

  "The sooner the mystery is solved, the better … for all of us," Abby assured her as she led the way down the narrow hallway. "The bathroom is here, just in case you need it. There's raspberry iced tea in the refrigerator, too, in case you're ready for a cold drink"

  "Maybe in a little while," Jessica said, revealing an eagerness to get started on the search that her sisters obviously shared.

  At Abby's suggestion, the three of them went through all the drawers in the dresser, the chest and the nightstands, looking for a journal of any sort. Sarah and Jessica seemed a bit hesitant at first to handle their birth mother's things. Though they soon relaxed, some of their initial reverence lingered.

  When they found nothing, Abby asked Jessica to take down the cardboard file box that held Larissa's personal papers from the closet shelf. Sitting in a circle on Larissa's bed, they spread out the contents, sorting through old bank statements, bills and receipts, and the various cards either Abby, her grandparents or one of Larissa's more thoughtful male friends had given her over the years.

  Again, they found nothing helpful except for a copy of Abby's birth certificate. Abby hadn't really studied it closely for years. Eyeing it now, she remembered the first time she had looked at it. She had been
waiting in line to apply for her first driver's license.

  Almost seventeen at the time, she'd been older than most of her classmates when they had first gotten behind the wheel, but she'd had to save up to pay for her car insurance before Hank would teach her to drive.

  Standing there, she had focused on the line where her father's name should have been written, her face burning a bright red as she stared at the single boldly typed word—unknown. Only her desperate desire to be able to get around town on her own in Hank's old truck had overcome her excruciating embarrassment at having to hand over the certificate to the clerk on duty.

  Since then, she had made it a point never to actually peruse the document when, for whatever reason, she had to produce it.

  Today, however, Abby studied it closely, line by line, along with Sarah and Jessica. And there she noticed for the first time that she hadn't been born in a hospital as she had always assumed.

  She, and more than likely, her sisters, too, had been born at an address that could be a clinic, perhaps even a residence, somewhere in the Las Vegas area. And she hadn't been delivered by a doctor, as she'd also always assumed, but by a midwife named Henrietta Winslow.

  "That's odd," Jessica murmured. "According to my birth certificate, I was born at Desert Valley Memorial Hospital in Las Vegas and I was delivered by a Dr. Robert Smith. The line for my birth mother's name has unknown typed in, and Lawrence Walker is listed as my father."

  "And all I have are some papers from the hospital in Bellville stating the day and time when I was abandoned there, and the papers finalizing my adoption by Alice and Edward Daniels," Sarah said.

  "There is no way we could have been born in separate places," Jessica stated pragmatically. "And how could my birth mother be unknown when Deidre knew enough about her to track her down twenty-seven years ago? I would lay odds that my birth certificate is a total fabrication except for my father's name. I can only begin to guess why. I'm sure Deidre must have been up to something. But what, exactly, Mother dearest?" she added with a hint of bitterness.

  "What about my certificate, then?" Abby asked. "Do you think it's legitimate?"

  "Probably so," Sarah said. "But there's only one way to find out for sure. We're going to have to track down the midwife, Henrietta Winslow, and ask her."

  "If the Winslow woman delivered Abby, then she delivered all of us," Jessica pointed out. "Which means she might just be able to tell us what really happened that day."

  "It's been a long time," Abby reminded them. "Mrs. Winslow could have moved out of state since then. She might even have passed away. And even if we are able to find her, there's a good chance she won't remember the exact circumstances of one delivery when she'd probably attended hundreds over the years."

  "We have to at least try to find her, though," Sarah insisted. "Granted, Winslow is a fairly common name, but surely there is some sort of statewide listing of midwives. We know she was practicing in the Las Vegas area when we were born—"

  The chiming of the doorbell cut off Sarah's eager words. Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, Abby saw that it was almost one o'clock, and she knew immediately who was at the front door.

  "Help has arrived." Smiling at her sisters, Abby eased off the bed, her birth certificate in hand. As they eyed her questioningly, she gestured for them to come with her. "It's Jack," she explained, leading the way down the hall. "If anyone can find a midwife for us, it's him. He's a doctor. And my fiancé," she added shyly.

  And he was about to get the surprise of his life, she thought to herself, hardly able to wait to see the look on his face when he realized there were three of her.

  Well, sort of…

  * * *

  Chapter 21

  « ^ »

  The morning had gone by blessedly fast for Jack. There were several children in need of a physical for the various camps they would be attending during the coming summer months. Three patients were having problems with seasonal allergies, and one thirteen-year-old boy whose mother was sure his chest, back and face were covered with bug bites after a night of sleeping out in a tent in the backyard turned out to have a late case of chicken pox.

  Focused as he had been on his work, Jack had still kept an eager eye on the clock, counting down the hours remaining before he could be with Abby again. He had thought about calling her to make sure she had seen his note, but he wouldn't have been able to talk to her nearly long enough. He would have ended up missing her more than ever, and that, in turn, would have been woefully distracting.

  When noon had finally rolled around, and the last few people in the clinic's waiting room had been seen to, Jack finished dictating his notes, put the file folders on the secretary's desk, hung up his lab coat, and headed out the door with a wave of his hand to Edna.

  He arrived at Abby's mother's house a few minutes later to find a car he didn't recognize parked at the curb out front. Probably someone interested in buying the house, he thought, disappointed that he and Abby would have to wait to pick up where they had left off that morning.

  Standing on the little porch, waiting for Abby to answer the door, Jack hoped the people wouldn't be much longer. He had schooled himself to be patient most of the morning, but now he wanted nothing more than to have his fiancée all to himself so he could tell her—

  The door swung open on a whoosh of air and Abby stood there, gazing up at him, a brilliant smile lighting up her face. As he smiled back, Jack realized that she was absolutely glowing with an inner excitement he had never seen her express before.

  With her hair clipped back loosely enough to allow errant tendrils to frame her face, she looked utterly soft and feminine. But her eyes fairly sparkled and two bright spots of color rode high on her cheekbones, warning him that she could very well have some sort of mischief afoot.

  "Hey…" he said for want of anything better as he reached out to touch her cheek.

  "Hey, yourself." Without the slightest hesitation, she closed the distance between them and gave him a hug.

  A rather perfunctory hug, though, considering how they had spent the night. Warm enough, and welcoming, but much too matter-of-fact and over much too soon for Jack's taste.

  He had assumed, mistakenly it seemed, that he had been the one responsible for the radiance she exuded. But something else, or someone else, he thought, remembering the car parked at the curb, had done it.

  Suffering an unaccustomed pang of jealousy, Jack let Abby take him by the hand and pull him into the house.

  "You will never believe what happened this morning," she said, pausing to close the door. "In the space of a few hours, my whole life has been turned upside down."

  In a good way, Jack assumed, considering the lilt in her voice. But by whom? Again, he experienced a moment's ill will toward the person or persons responsible for supplanting him in Abby's affections. Though that was probably going a bit overboard.

  She seemed so sure he would share in her exhilaration. Certainly that would eliminate the possibility of it being another man—

  Just a few steps into the living room, Jack halted in mid-stride as his gaze settled on the two women standing together by the sofa, identically tentative smiles curving their lips. Stunned, he drew a sharp breath, hardly able to believe his eyes.

  How could two women who looked almost exactly like Abby be standing there so complacently? It had to be impossible, and yet, there they were—with the same auburn hair and bright blue eyes, the same height and the same build.

  "What in the world…?" he muttered, barely resisting the urge to give his head a good shake in the hope of clearing his vision.

  "That is exactly what I wondered when I opened the door this morning and saw them standing on the porch," Abby said, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze as she drew him farther into the living room.

  Too confounded to put the half dozen questions he had into words, Jack looked down at Abby, willing her to explain.

  "Come and meet my sisters." She gestured first to the woman
with the shorter, curlier auburn hair, then to the one with the longer, wavy hair. "Sarah Daniels and Jessica Walker." Smiling, she looked up at him again. "And this is my fiancé, Jack Randall."

  "Hi, Jack," Sarah said.

  "Yes, hello," Jessica added.

  Both offered their hands for him to shake, which he somehow managed to do as he nodded to one, then the other. He hated to admit it, but he was more confused than ever.

  "Sisters…?" he asked, glancing at Abby again. Not just sisters, but identical triplets, he realized. "But how—?"

  "It's a long story," Abby replied. "Maybe we had better sit down."

  She motioned for Sarah and Jessica to take the sofa, then drew Jack over to the chair and ottoman. At her direction, he took the chair while she perched on the ottoman close by.

  "We're not exactly sure how, but it seems we were separated right after we were born. Sarah and Jessica only found out about each other a few weeks ago, and they didn't know about me until today.

  "They came to Promise to learn whatever they could about Larissa. They knew she was their birth mother, but they had been told she was dead by Jessica's adoptive mother, and they were curious about her.

  "We've spent the morning trying to figure out what happened all those years ago. How we were separated the way we were, and why."

  As Jack listened in astonished silence, the three women repeated the information they had exchanged prior to his arrival. Sarah explained how she had been mistaken for Jessica, and Jessica explained how she and Sarah had thought they were twins, only to discover that they were actually triplets.

  By the time they finished their recitation, Jack was just as puzzled as they obviously were about Larissa Summers' actions. That Jessica, alone, had been raised as part of their birth father's family also seemed odd to him.

  He had heard of the Nevada real estate mogul, Stuart Walker. Surely, a man of his wealth and prestige would have welcomed not only his three infant granddaughters into his home, but their birth mother, too, under the circumstances. He thought it was equally strange that while Deidre Walker had been able to track down Larissa so she could adopt Lawrence Walker's child, she also claimed to have had no knowledge of Sarah, or by extension, Abby, either. And when Sarah and Jessica had professed to have an interest in meeting their birth mother, Deidre had known, as well, that she was dead.