“And you let him.”

“Maybe I could have stopped him,” Amanda said with a long, long sigh. “I don’t know. Every day for the next week there were flowers in my room, and the pretty, useless things he loved to give. He found ways to be with me. If I had a ten-minute break, there he would be. Still it took me days before I understood I was being courted. I was terrified. Here was this lovely man who was being nothing but kind, and he didn’t know I had another man’s child in me. I told him, all of it, certain it would end there, and sorry for that because he was the first friend I’d had since I’d left Kate in New York. He listened, in that way he had, without interruption, without questions, without condemnations. When I was finished, and weeping again, he took my hand. ‘You’d better marry me, Mandy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you and the baby.’ ”

The tears had escaped, ran down Shannon’s cheeks as she turned back. They were running down her mother’s cheeks as well, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be swayed by them. Her world was no longer tilted; it had crashed.

“As simple as that? How could it have been so simple?”

“He loved me. It was humbling when I realized he truly loved me. I refused him, of course. What else could I do? I thought he was being foolishly gallant, or just foolish altogether. But he persisted. Even when I got angry and told him to leave me alone, he persisted.” A smile began to curve her lips as she remembered it. “It was as if I were the rock and he the wave that patiently, endlessly sweeps over it until all resistance is worn away. He brought me baby things. Can you image a man courting a woman by bringing her gifts for her unborn child? One day he came to my room, told me we were going to get the license now and to get my purse. I did it. I just did it. And found myself married two days later.”

She looked over sharply, anticipating the question before it was asked. “I won’t lie to you and tell you I loved him then. I did care. It was impossible not to care for a man like that. And I was grateful. His parents were upset, naturally enough, but he claimed he would bring them around. Being Colin, I think he would have, but they were killed on their drive home. So it was just the two of us, and you. I promised myself I would be a good wife to him, make him a home, accept him in bed. I vowed not to think of Tommy again, but that was impossible. It took me years to understand there was no sin, no shame in remembering the first man I’d loved, no disloyalty to my husband.”

“Not my father,” Shannon said through lips of ice. “He was your husband, but he wasn’t my father.”

“Oh, but he was.” For the first time there was a hint of temper in Amanda’s voice. “Don’t ever say different.”

Bitterness edged her voice. “You’ve just told me different, haven’t you?”

“He loved you while you were still in my womb, took both of us as his without hesitation or false pride.” Amanda spoke as quickly as her pain would allow. “I tell you it shamed me, pining for a man I could never have, while one as fine as was ever made was beside me. The day you were born, and I saw him holding you in those big clumsy hands, that look of wonder and pride on his face, the love in his eyes as he cradled you against him as gently as if you were made of glass, I fell in love with him. I loved him as much as any woman ever loved any man from that day till this. And he was your father, as Tommy wanted to be and couldn’t. If either of us had a regret, it was that we couldn’t have more children to spread the happiness we shared in you.”

“You just want me to accept this?” Clinging to anger was less agonizing than clinging to grief. Shannon stared. The woman in bed was a stranger now, just as she was a stranger to herself. “To go on as if it changes nothing.”

“I want you to give yourself time to accept, and understand. And I want you to believe that we loved you, all of us.”

Her world was shattered at her feet, every memory she had, every belief she’d fostered in jagged shards. “Accept? That you slept with a married man and got pregnant, then married the first man who asked you to save yourself. To accept the lies you told me all my life, the deceit.”

“You’ve a right to your anger.” Amanda bit back the pain, physical, emotional.

“Anger? Do you think what I’m feeling is as pale as anger? God, how could you do this?” She whirled away, horror and bitterness biting at her heels. “How could you have kept this from me all these years, let me believe I was someone I wasn’t?”

“Who you are hasn’t changed,” Amanda said desperately. “Colin and I did what we thought was right for you. We were never sure how or when to tell you. We—”

“You discussed it?” Swamped by her own churning emotions, Shannon spun back to the frail woman on the bed. There was a horrible, shocking urge in her to snatch that shrunken body up, shake it. “Is today the day we tell Shannon she was a little mistake made on the west coast of Ireland? Or should it be tomorrow?”

“Not a mistake, never a mistake. A miracle. Damn it, Shannon—” She broke off, gasping as the pain lanced through her, stealing her breath, tearing like claws. Her vision grayed. She felt a hand lift her head, a pill being slipped between her lips, and heard the voice of her daughter, soothing now.

“Sip some water. A little more. That’s it. Now lie back, close your eyes.”

“Shannon.” The hand was there to take hers when she reached out.

“I’m here, right here. The pain’ll be gone in a minute. It’ll be gone, and you’ll sleep.”

It was already ebbing, and the fatigue was rolling in like fog. Not enough time, was all Amanda could think. Why is there never enough time?

“Don’t hate me,” she murmured as she slipped under the fog. “Please, don’t hate me.”

Shannon sat, weighed down by her own grief long after her mother slept.

She didn’t wake again.

Chapter Two

An ocean away from where one of Tom Concannon’s daughters dealt with the pain of death, others celebrated the joys of new life.

Brianna Concannon Thane cradled her daughter in her arms, studying the gorgeous blue eyes with their impossibly long lashes. The tiny fingers with their perfect tiny nails, the rosebud of a mouth that no one in heaven or on earth could tell her hadn’t curved into a smile.