Free Liar's Moon by Heather Graham Page A

so being, he hadn’t felt the need to conform to conscience or consideration. No one love could mean anything—because love was something captured by the moment, taken, discarded, abused. She didn’t want any of it! She didn’t want the publicity—she didn’t want the tabloids digging into the circumstances of her birth, or her life, or—her affair with Leif.
    And, she realized, it was all going to happen now. Because Jamie was out there telling everyone that she was Tracy Kuger, his sister, Jesse Kuger’s daughter.
    She slammed into something hard suddenly and realized that it was Leif’s back. She was very close to tears and ready to light into him vehemently for what he had forced her to do. She wanted to plummet her fists against his back in sheer rage and frustration, and she was so upset she might well have done it.
    Except that his back wasn’t there anymore. He’d let out a little cry and stepped into the wings, and it seemed that a little tornado was racing toward him—catapulting suddenly and winding up in his arms.
    “Daddy! Daddy! You were neat!”
    “Was I, Blake? Well, if you thought so, it was worth it!”
    The anger drained from Tracy; she stepped backward, feeling as if she had stepped into a frozen void. It was as if she watched a movie, a performance, a play—some action that evolved before her with no connection to her. Leif had the little boy up in his arms; the child had his arms wrapped around Leif’s neck and Leif wore the most tender smile Tracy had ever seen curve his lip. The boy’s large gray eyes, as deep as his father’s, sparkled hints of silver with eager love and total affection.
    “When did you get here? Where is Aunt Liz?”
    “Right there—talking to Tiger.”
    Blake Johnston suddenly looked past his father and saw Tracy. She saw his blunt and curious, innocent child’s stare, and for an instant the pain that assailed her was incredible, as if she’d received a physical blow against the chest. He was just about the same age as… the same age…
    As her child would have been—their child—had it lived.
    In that moment, in that bitter realization, she knew that half the hostility she had harbored against Leif all the years had been borne of that simple fact. None of the events that had taken place between them had been his fault.
    But after she had been taken away, he had gone right back to Celia. Gone right back to her and married her. And produced, nine months later, a beautiful little boy.
    While Tracy had been virtually held prisoner by her grandfather. Hounded to have an abortion. Told over and over again that she had never meant a thing to Leif— hadn’t he proven it? He had gone on to marry Celia.
    She’d refused. Absolutely refused. Even when she had seen Leif’s wedding pictures plastered across every morning paper, she had fought for the child. She was a “mistake” herself—she wasn’t about to let her infant perish for being nothing but a victim of her own vindictiveness.
    In the end, it hadn’t mattered. Arthur Kingsley had paid for all the medical care one could buy in Switzerland —and her child had died anyway.
    But here was Leif’s other son. A first-grader, now, surely. Bright and solid and beautiful and staring at her.
    He clapped his hands together suddenly. “Tracy! You were great, too!”
    She felt so brittle that if she smiled her face would crack like a china plate. Mechanically, she smiled back anyway.
    “You’re Jamie’s sister?” Blake asked. “I didn’t know that!”
    Leif chuckled softly. “Of course! If she’s Jesse’s daughter, son, she’s Jamie’s sister.”
    “Oh. I guess. I didn’t know.”
    “Well, you’re only six years old!” Leif said lightly. “You’re not supposed to know everything yet.”
    “Do you know everything?”
    Leif chuckled. “No, Blake. We never get to know everything. But we do get to know more and more.”
    He turned around at last. “It seems Blake knows you.” He paused,