Always Look Twice by Geralyn Dawson Read Free Book Online

thoughts of his child—his own sweet baby girl, Margaret Mary, who had died before he’d ever had the chance to meet her.
    Mark slumped into a wrought-iron bench in the garden area of the hotel grounds and stared out at the blue Pacific. She would be eighteen years old now, probably headed off to college. She would have been beautiful like Carrie, her mother, smart as a whip, and full of dreams and aspirations.
    Instead, little Maggie was dead, killed in a car wreck along with her mother before she’d turned a month old. Because of Branch Callahan. Because Mark’s interfering, thinks-he’s-God father decided to take the baby away from Carrie while Mark was deployed during Desert Storm.
    And Mark had spent the past eighteen years hating his father and running from relationships because of it. It hurt too much.
    ‘‘Hey, handsome.’’ Torie took a seat beside him, and clasped his hand. ‘‘Fancy meeting you here.’’
    Mark slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. ‘‘Are you the designated interrogator?’’
    ‘‘Yes, but don’t worry. I left my thumbscrews in Maddie’s diaper bag.’’ She pulled his glasses off and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘‘We love you, Mark, and we’re worried about you. What’s going on?’’
    He stared out at the ocean where the sunset painted the sky in hues of orange, crimson, and gold. Then he shrugged. ‘‘It’s no big deal. Really.’’
    Torie hooked one arm of his sunglasses over the neck of his T-shirt and said, ‘‘Marriage is a big deal. Really.’’
    ‘‘Well, this is no real marriage.’’
    ‘‘Tell me about it.’’
    He closed his eyes and surrendered, giving her a brief, censored account of the events in Las Vegas. When he finished, she stared at him, her eyes glittering with shock. ‘‘Let me get this straight. Did you get married because you were drunk?’’
    ‘‘I wasn’t drinking that night.’’
    ‘‘Okay, then. Had you been secretly been in love with her for years?’’
    ‘‘No!’’ The very idea of that made him shift nervously in his seat. ‘‘It was just a spur-of-the-moment deal for both of us.’’
    No way would he tell Torie that Annabelle had a thing against premarital sex, and that, in combination with the make-out session in the closet and close proximity to a wedding chapel, had led to a marriage license signed with both their names.
    ‘‘So, what . . . you just left Vegas and went about your separate lives pretending it didn’t happen?’’
    ‘‘Not exactly. We got together every so often for a while. It worked for us.’’ He closed his eyes and recalled those stolen days. The thrill of anticipation. The excitement of watching her arrive—he’d always made a point to get there first. The laughter they’d shared. The sex. God, the sex.
    For a little while with Annabelle, he’d let down his guard. He’d begun to think that maybe, just maybe . . .
    Of course, that sort of thinking bit him in the ass. ‘‘Until it stopped working.’’
    ‘‘Why did it stop working?’’
    He shoved to his feet and stuck his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. ‘‘I need to walk. You want to walk?’’
    ‘‘Sure.’’ Torie rose and strolled beside him on the path that wound through the hotel gardens.
    She remained quiet, her question hanging on the air between them, while Mark attempted to put his thoughts into words. He liked that about Torie. He loved both his sisters-in-law deeply, but he and Torie clicked. Maybe her photographer’s eye allowed her to see him, to understand him, in a way that even his twin didn’t. Because he honored that connection, he chose to answer her honestly. ‘‘Annabelle decided she had that clock thing going on.’’
    ‘‘Clock thing?’’
    ‘‘Kids. She wanted kids.’’
    ‘‘Ah. The biological-clock thing.’’
    Mark nodded, knowing he wouldn’t need to say more. Torie would get it. She knew about Carrie and the baby and the car wreck. Though Matt and Luke had