Frowning impatiently, Ryland replaced the receiver. He was going to have to leave Tara a note. He had no alternative, not if he was going to make that flight. But what could he say in it that would make any sense?

Shrugging, he went in search of paper and pen, then scribbled down quickly his number in the States opposite the time he had written in the top left-hand corner of the sheet of paper.

Call from Dad. He wants me back home. Don't know why yet. Will ring asap. Love and kisses. Miss you, miss me, too.

"Garth, I feel that I just don't deserve this... to be this happy," Claudia confessed wonderingly.

She had just stepped out of the shower, shaking her head protestingly when Garth took the towel from her and started to pat her dry.

They had spent almost three whole days together, days when, by mutual consent, they had abdicated their normal responsibilities, including letting the answering machine take all their messages, so they could talk and be together. Dizzy with conversation and love, they had finally fallen asleep in one another's arms at night. And during the day both of them had separately and together wept over all the wasted years and wasted emotions.

"Why didn't we talk to one another like this before?" Claudia had asked Garth woefully at one point, her eyes full of tears after she had listened to him telling her how distraught and disbelieving he had been when she had insisted that she wanted a divorce.

"It isn't the talking that's important. It's the listening," Garth had suggested.

"Maybe neither of us had the maturity to do that then.

Perhaps neither of us understood exactly what we were throwing away. "

"I certainly didn't," Claudia acknowledged, adding in a whisper, "Oh, Garth, I've missed you so much ... how much I'm only just beginning to realise. I feel like... like a river that's now suddenly restored and replenished after running dry. I don't deserve you... I don't deserve this, and I'm so afraid that... How do you think Tara is going to react?" she asked him painfully, adding, "Listen to me, I'm the one who's the trained counsellor and I know--' " It's always different when it's your own emotions that are involved," Garth broke in to comfort her, cupping her face in his hands as he told her with soft honesty, " It will take time, possibly more time than either of us wants, but I'm sure that eventually she'll be able to understand why we acted as we did, to know that--' "I lied to her because I was afraid of losing her," Claudia interrupted him bleakly.

"You didn't lie," Garth corrected her gently.

"By omission I did. I withheld the truth from her, and Garth, I'm ashamed to say it, but a part of me still wants to go on doing just that." As he looked steadily into her eyes, she shook her head, smiled shakily back at him.

"Oh, it's all right. I'm not looking for a last-minute reprieve. I couldn't not tell her. Not now. I feel as though these days we've spent together have been like... like a journey through the past and that I've brought back with me memories, images, a new awareness that can't just be neatly parcelled away and forgotten. Not this time."

She closed her eyes.

"I keep trying to imagine how I would feel in Tara's shoes. How I would have felt if my parents had turned to me and told me that I wasn't their ... that my mother wasn't..." She had to bite her lip to stop herself from crying.

"Oh, Garth, I'm so very, very afraid. Not just for myself, it isn't just a selfish fear. I'm afraid for Tara, afraid of what my selfishness could do to her. How it might damage her. When I took her from... from that place, I promised both her and Katriona that I would always love her and protect her."

"And you have done," Garth assured her warmly.

Claudia shook her head.

"No. No, I haven't. I have loved her, yes, but for my own needs. And out of my own needs, I've left her open to that very kind of pain and betrayal. Me, who should know just how much that hurts. Oh, Garth..."

"Stop torturing yourself," Garth told her firmly as he wrapped the towel around her and took her in his arms, cradling her against his own body and gently comforting her.

"It's not going to be easy but have faith, Clo. Have faith in Tara even if you can't have faith in anything or anyone else."

"Oh, Garth..."

"She'll be here soon," he reminded her as he bent his head to kiss her. It was the firm, loving, tender kiss of a man for the woman to whom he has chosen to commit himself and his life, Claudia recognised as she returned it, giving her own female commitment to him.

INo. No, I don't believe you. It's . it's not true. It can't be true," Tara protested wildly, shaking her head from side to side in denial of what she had just been told, panic and fear and pain sharpening her voice, lending it a pleading and almost begging quality that tore at Claudia's heart.

Fighting to suppress her own tears, she looked helplessly past Tara to "Darling, it is true," Garth affirmed, 'but it doesn't make any difference to us. to how we. You are still our daughter and--' "Your daughter maybe," Tara pronounced, ashen-faced, 'but not. "

As Claudia made to reach out to her, she stepped back, her whole body rigid with rejection and distrust.

"No. Don't. Don't touch me," she cried out heatedly.

"I can't bear it.

I just can't. How could you do such a thing? " she whispered in anguish.

"You... who's always stressed to me the importance of trust, of being honest. I feel I don't know you. What kind of person are you?

I don't know you at all. You're not--' Tara," Garth interceded curtly, and immediately Tara stopped herself from saying what she had been about to say.

Who were they, these people, these strangers, who claimed to love her and yet who had deliberately and remorselessly deceived her, kept from her truths that she and she alone had the right to know?

They would tell her the facts. Garth and Claudia had decided. Later she would need. want. to ask them questions, but at first they would simply give her the facts. Facts. A cold, hard little word that embraced a whole world of pain and emotion. Facts. How could facts translate into what they were all feeling, what they were all experiencing? How could facts relate to twenty-three years of living, sharing, loving? How could it suddenly turn those years, that loving, into nothing?

"Why have you never told me? Why have you waited until now? If you had loved me, you would have told me. If you had loved me--' " I did love you, do love you," Claudia protested passionately, desperate to hold her in her arms, to heal and protect her as she had done so many, many times in the years of her growing up.

"No," Tara shot back swiftly with all the mental agility and cruelty that Claudia remembered so vividly from Katriona.

"What you loved was the idea of having a child ... any child. That's what you loved. If you had loved me, you would've said something, not waited."

Tara, I know I should have told you, but please try to understand. I was afraid. "

"You were afraid?" Tara gasped and then laughed bitterly.

"And as for me understanding you, can you understand how I feel? What it feels like to suddenly be told that the people, the person you thought closest to you, the mother you thought was yours, is really just a stranger. A stranger who picked you up and took you home, leaving your own mother to die in a--' " Tara! " Garth thundered.

Claudia protested in a sick whisper, "Tara, that simply isn't true.

I--'.

"Isn't? You said just now that my mother, my real mother," she emphasised, 'told you to take me. Presumably, she was still alive when she said that, and since you did just that, she must have been alive when you left. "

Claudia bowed her head.

"Your mother," Garth interrupted, stressing the word 'mother' as he looked at Claudia, 'was with Katriona when she died. Your mother arranged for her to have a proper burial. Your mother, for all the years of our marriage and I suspect even now, has always visited your. -. Katriona's grave three times a year, once on her birthday, once on the anniversary of her death and once on the anniversary of your birth. "

There was an infinitesimal pause during which Claudia brought herself to look pleadingly into Tara's eyes and just for a second, a millisecond of time, she thought she saw a softening, a small breach in the angry defence she had thrown up against her, but then it was gone and the wall was back in place as Tara derided bitterly, "Oh, generous indeed. Where ;'s she buried, or aren't I allowed to know?"

Wounded, Claudia closed her eyes, remembering-It had taken a good deal of persuasion for her to get official permission for Katriona to be buried in the small village graveyard of the place where she had grown up, close to the graves of her parents, but she had managed to do it.

She had planted rosemary there for remembrance and harebells to flower in the spring as wild and beautiful as Katriona had once been.

Understandingly, Garth watched his daughter. Her reaction was entirely natural and to be expected. He and Claudia had talked about the very real possibility that in her shock and pain she would initially reject them both.

"I know I should have told you before," Claudia admitted in a low voice.

"You... Garth wanted me to, but I..." She swallowed, then looked directly at Tara.

"You're right, Tara. I was being selfish. I was afraid of losing you," she told her simply, 'especially after I found out. after your father and I divorced. You were, after all, his child and--' "You were afraid that if you told me the truth, I'd have wanted to live with him and not you," Tara suggested. His child! She gave Garth a bitter look of dislike.

"Your child maybe, but I was hardly fathered deliberately or with love, was I, " Father"?"

"How you were fathered is irrelevant to this discussion," Garth told her, adding crisply, "A person would have to be naive, Tara, to believe that every child is conceived deliberately and in mutual love."

"It's not irrelevant to me Tara informed him stonily, but Garth ignored the look she was giving him.

"What is surely more important," he offered firmly, 'is that you were a much loved. a much wanted child. "

"By whom?" Tara demanded, her mouth twisting bitterly.

"Not by you, I'll bet. Did she tell you she was carrying me? Did she?"

"Claudia wanted you," Garth overrode her.

"She loved you for yourself long before she knew I was your father. She loved you for yourself, Tara. Think... ask yourself how many people can say that? How many people know that they were loved and wanted, not because of the parental genes they may or may not have inherited, not because of any parental expectations for them, but simply for themselves."

'm spite of my genetic make-up rather than because of it, you mean," Tara sneered.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced," she announced, gesturing disdainfully towards Claudia, 'she wanted a baby to replace the one she'd lost, the one she knew she'd never have. I conveniently happened to be there. She loved me because she had to love me. because she had no choice. It was either me or nothing. " Claudia gasped.

"Tara, that isn't true. I loved you the moment I saw you. There was a special bond between us." She bit her lip. How could she tell this angry, contemptuous young woman who stood looking at her, hating her, rejecting her, just how special the bond was that formed between them virtually at first sight. How could she explain to her that the moment they had looked at one another, there had been love between them? It was a fact--another one of them--something so much a part of her that she couldn't express or explain it. She had just known when she looked at the infant Tara that she loved her and she had seen in this baby's eyes so full of natural wisdom that Tara had loved her, too. But she knew that it was pointless trying to explain that to Tara now, that Tara simply didn't want to listen. to hear. to know. Tell me again about my mother, my real mother," Tara challenged them fiercely, ignoring Claudia's attempts to deny her accusation and to tell her about the deep emotional bond she felt had been forged between them the very first time that Claudia had held her in her arms.

"We've already explained to you that Katriona, your mother, was one of your mother's clients," Garth told her quietly.

"One of your clients," Tara mimicked, turning towards Claudia. The look of scorn on her face made Claudia react instinctively and take a step closer to her, but immediately Tara stepped back from her, stiffening her body, rejecting her.

Helplessly, Claudia exchanged looks with Garth. They had wondered how much they should tell her about her mother's history.

"She will have to know the truth," Garth had advocated gently.

"But not all at once," Claudia had pleaded with him.

"Let's wait and see how she reacts," Garth had advised.

"How much she herself wants to know."

Claudia had closed her eyes, trembling as he held her.

Tara was, by nature, courageous and deter mined. She would not shirk from demanding to know all the facts.

Tara, Katriona was. " Garth began.

But Claudia shook her head, interrupting him to say huskily, "No.. I'll tell her. After all, I knew her better ... better than you."

And slowly she started to describe Katriona to her daughter, dwelling generously on all the things about her that she herself had felt drawn to her intelligence, her independence, her keen sense of humour.

"You say she left home and came to London. Why?" Tara interrupted

Claudia baldly.

"It ... it was something that many young people did then," Claudia explained hesitantly.

"London was the place to be. Katriona was just not the sort of person who... A small, enclosed community was too claustrophobic for her. She.. / Floundering badly, Claudia turned helplessly to Garth. It was one thing agreeing that they had to be totally honest with Tara in answering what ever questions she might ask about Katriona. Actually doing so was another.

Taking a deep breath, Claudia plunged on. "So far as we could discover, Katriona came to London having had a. a disagreement with her father. She--' "She ran away from home, is that what you're saying?" Tara asked her sharply. Claudia swallowed hard, and as she noticed that slight, betraying gesture, Tara's eyes suddenly rilled with fresh, angry tears.

"Oh God," she gulped in a furious, tortured voice.

"I suppose I can guess the rest, can I? How old was she? Seventeen,

eighteen... younger?" she flung out, shaking her head and waiting forClaudia to reply before continuing fiercely."You don't need to tell me any more.I can guess the rest. It's all so predictable and pathetic, isn't it?

So--' "Katriona was never pathetic," Claudia interrupted her firmly.

"She--' " She what? You've said she was one of your clients. Why? Or

can I guess. Was it drugs? ""She had a drug problem, yes," Claudia agreed quietly."But--' " A drug habit she financed by what? Prostitution? " Tara guessed, firing the question at Claudia.

Claudia's expression gave her away.

"Oh, you don't have to say anything," Tara told Claudia tersely.

"I.

can see from your face that I'm right. So my mother was a drug addict

and a prostitute. And what was my father? " she demanded with bitter contempt as she looked from Claudia to Garth.

"One of her clients?"

"No!"

The denial exploded from both Garth and Claudia at the same time.