Read Online Best for the Baby by Ann Evans - Free Book Online Page B

all along the valley, and the soft glow of lights from dozens of cabins and cottages winked like low-lying stars against the ridges of Dogwood Mountain.
    He swung into the driveway at Heron Cove. As expected, the cottage was nothing more than a dark lump, surrounded by even darker trees and shrubbery badly in need of trimming. He sat quietly for a moment, glad the trip was over. His ankle ached from the long hours of driving.
    Grabbing his suitcase, he limped up the porch steps. To the right he saw the two-seater swing that his father had hung there years ago. His parents had loved sitting out here on cool summer nights, drinking iced tea or coffee, swatting at an occasional mosquito.
    After his father’s death, his mother had asked Zack to take it down. She couldn’t bear to think of it hanging there, as empty as her heart now felt. Maybe that was one of the things he should take care of on this visit.
    As he let himself into the cottage, the moonlightrevealed that the glass panel beside the door had been replaced. Alaina’s break-in might never have happened.
    Fleetingly, he wondered where she was at this moment, if she was safe and happy, looking forward to a life with Jeffrey and the baby. How long before Zack saw her again? Months? Years? If she was determined to avoid her family and their loving interference, she might never return to Miami. That was fine with him, but he’d hate to see Maggie and her folks so estranged.
    He had no sooner entered the hallway and lowered his suitcase than he noticed that a light had been left on. At the far end of the central hallway, an eerie, flickering glow came from the living room.
    A night-light, perhaps? Then he heard the muffled sound of conversation. Laughter. And a woman’s soft voice, rising and falling. Nothing he could make out. When Alaina had left, had she forgotten to turn off the television?
    He stopped in the doorway of the living room, surprised.
    Alaina sat a few feet away on the floor, cross-legged, her back to him. She appeared completely absorbed in the program, and didn’t seem to realize she was no longer alone.
    The television was on, but it wasn’t a sitcom babbling into the room. She’d evidently popped one of his father’s videos into the VCR to watch home movies. The tapes might be considered antiques by now, but back when Zack had been a teenager, Tom Davidson had carried his camera everywhere, capturing even the most mundane of family adventures.
    He recognized this footage. The night of LakeHarmony’s Fourth of July celebration. It was the year he and Alaina had turned sixteen, and the day they had their first real argument.
    They’d been having such a wonderful summer. The usual fun—just the four of them—although Zack was already in love with Alaina and couldn’t have cared less about spending time with his sister, Sandy, and Maggie. Over the years, he and Alaina had grown so close. They were well-suited for one another. Like two halves of the same person. It had never crossed his mind that Alaina might not feel the same way.
    But that July, she was enchanted with the idea of exploring her budding womanhood. Even though Zack had thought it was a foregone conclusion she would go with him to the town dance, she’d informed him that he had dragged his feet too long. She’d already agreed to be Whit Russell’s date. She’d chided Zack for assuming too much about their relationship, taking her for granted.
    Stunned and hurt, he took refuge in insults. “Whit Russell is a liar and a cheat,” he told her. “How can you be so stupid?”
    “At least he doesn’t have an ego the size of Mount Rushmore,” she’d snapped back at him. “He’s always been nice to me, and he actually listens to what I have to say. He’s cute. And he says he’s a good dancer.”
    “A good dancer? If that’s all that’s important to you, then you deserve each other.”
    The argument got worse from there, but neither of them gave an inch, of course. They