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Chapter Two

Carol was blessed with two extremely smart children. Unfortunately, this meant that they were smart enough to come up with extremely good points when they were in the mood to argue with her about something. They were only four years old but acted years older.

"It's Friday. Why the heck are you sending us to bed so dang early on a Friday?" Jake asked, his arms crossing over his chest.

"Back home you let us stay up till forever," Lily chirped in, mocking her brother's stance.

She eyed them. "There is no back home. This is home and you know that I have a lot of stuff to get done. I haven't gotten any work done all week. Money doesn't grow on trees."

"Are you sendin' us to bed because you're still sad?" Lily asked, pale blue eyes meeting hers intently.

Carol felt a stab of guilt and then shook her head. "I'm not sad, honey. I'm just behind on things and I need to get it finished."

"How about a compromise?" Jake asked suddenly.

Carol fought back a laugh. "Where did you pick up the word compromise?"

Jake threw his hands up. "I learned it from Avery. Learned other words too but I know better than to use those. How bout we go to bed but we don't have to go to sleep? That way, we'll be out of your hair. We can watch movies or somethin'."

Her hands went to her hips as she eyed them. Both of them looked up at her, their eyes pleading. Finally she blew out a breath and turned them both around, pushing them gently down the hallway. "Okay, that sounds like a good compromise."

After they were both finally settled in their rooms she made her way to the kitchen and prepared a huge cup of coffee. She took the coffee with her back down the hall, ignoring the framed photos of the desert that she had enlarged, to the room she had turned into an office. She rolled her eyes as she turned on the lamp on the desk. This room was all Avery's idea.

Carol thought it was silly to have an office in her line of work. Sure, she had things to do on the computer from time to time but all in all, her work was still pretty raw. She didn't like filtering and making changes. If a photographer was good enough it was easy for them to capture even the most glaring flaws in a beautiful light. And she was good enough. Altering things just felt like cheating to her. But sometimes the editors demanded small changes and it wasn't her job to argue. She picked her battles carefully.

She sat down and instead of opening her laptop she grabbed her phone and then her eyes went up to the wall across from her desk, landing on the book that featured a lot of her work, including the spread that had launched her entire career.

She reached for her computer but then her phone went off, startling her and distracting her from the void she was about to lose herself in. "Hello?" She answered, trying to put as much happiness into her voice as possible.

Avery sighed heavily in her ear. "You're brooding."

Carol shook her head and settled further into the desk chair. "I am not brooding. I was about to go over those edits before turning them in. You know I hate editing."

"While brooding. Is all not going well? You know, you can always go back to Desert Palms. Take the house off the market, pack up those dreadful little beasts of yours and haul ass back to the west coast."

She grinned. "Those beasts were asking about you today. When will you be coming back to the states?"

"Now actually. I'll be there bright and early. I have gifts."

Carol rolled her eyes. "What could you have possibly gotten them now? They have everything."

Another prolonged sigh from Avery. "You mustn't keep trying to restrain me and my charitable ways. As an only child those poor children are the closest thing I will ever have to a niece and nephew. I refuse to let you turn them into hillbilly simpletons. Besides, I also have something for you."

"I don't need clothes," Carol said before taking a long sip from her mug. "Stop trying to restrain my sense of fashion."

"You are a mother and a star, you shouldn't still be wearing clothes that look like they were dug out of an old hippie's trunk. You have no sense of fashion. I hired a private investigator."

Carol stiffened, sitting up in the chair, her hands suddenly shaking slightly. "Avery, I told you, I've told you a thousand times that I won't do that."

"I'm done, Carol," Avery said, her voice uncharacteristically serious. "You moved back for a reason. You looked for a week and then you gave up. If it was just about you then I would be the best friend and I would mind my own business. But it isn't just about you. The kids need to know him. You need some damn closure. All the years I've known you, this is the first time I've seen you be a coward."

Carol felt anger chase away some of her fear. She sat up, sitting the mug down hard on the desk. "You don't understand," she snapped.

"I understand that you've not even bothered meeting anyone else. You have shot down everyone that I've tried to set you up with and you do it because even after five years, you're still in love with this man. And now that you are close, you are too scared to keep looking. You're scared of what you're going to find."

"If he has someone else..."

"That will be horrible for you. It really would, but it wouldn't change the fact that he is a father. If he truly is the man you say he is he deserves to know them and they him. Keeping him from them out of fear isn't fair to anyone. Not even yourself."

She was quiet for a long time. Avery was right. But that didn't mean that she wasn't terrified. She could find him and then learn that he wanted nothing to do with her. It had been years. Five very long years. She thought about how much her life had changed in those years. It was impossible to guess how his own life had turned out.

He was the love of her life and he probably always would be but that didn't mean that he felt the same after all this time. What if he didn't want this? What if he had never wanted kids? Would he think she had gotten pregnant on purpose? Would he accuse her of trying to pass another man's children off as his? He wouldn't know that he was the only man she had ever been with. Or worse, what if he already had children with someone else? What would this do to his life if he had a wife and a family and she came tearing in, disrupting everything?

No, he wouldn't be able to deny the kids. One look at Jake and he would know. There was nothing of herself in that boy. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes he was Daryl. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the facial expressions, the sure way he carried himself. Even his hands were the exact shape as his fathers. And Lily, although she did look much more like Carol than her bother did, still favored Daryl a lot. Her lips and the curve of her brow were the same as Daryl's. No, he wouldn't do that. He would never be that kind of man no matter how much time had passed and no matter how his life had turned out.

"Carol?"

"Okay," she said, trying to speak through the lump in her throat. "Okay. Monday we'll start looking again."

"No matter what happens, you're going to persevere like you always have. And I'm assuming you will be persevering wearing faded bell bottoms, a peasant blouse and bare feet," she added and Carol could almost see her rolling her eyes.

She smiled despite the ache in her chest and the worry causing her stomach to turn. "Thank you Avery."

"Any time, love. See you bright and early."

Now it was Carol rolling her eyes. "Like you've gotten up before noon in years."

Avery gave a delicate snort and then ended the call without another word.

~H~

Merle wasn't surprised that Daryl went straight to bed after he got out of the shower. It was the way things were between them. He had never been the same after coming back from his month long stint out west. Merle knew that he had done some damage but at the time he hadn't realized how much.

But there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that now. Life went on. If Daryl was too goddamn pigheaded to get over it then that was his own damn fault. Now he was, once again, stuck sitting up by himself watching the goddamn news.

He wasn't paying much attention to it since he was about halfway through a twelve pack of beer. That was, until the anchor woman's overly chipper words caught his attention.

"In other news, world renowned fashion photographer Carol Reynolds has finally come home to settle down with her two children. Reynolds got her big break when she published this controversial photo spread that took the world of photography by storm..."

Merle took a long pull from the bottle when several photographs popped up on the screen, black 'censor' boxes covering up some obvious naughty bits. He wasn't an expert but the photos actually had him doing a double take. When another photo popped up on the screen his eyes went wide... this one was zoomed in a little bit though. The face of the man in the photo was obscured by his shaggy hair but the angle showed off a decent portion of his back since he was bracing himself on his right arm. There was a distinct tattoo there that looked exactly like the one his brother had.

Was he... was he looking at a picture of his baby brother fucking someone?"

The next picture that popped up showed another view of the tattoo and Merle found himself spewing beer all over the coffee table. In this one the man was working his way down the woman's stomach, her hand tangled in his hair... Nah... No way.

"... been a mystery who the couple in the photo's could be and Reynolds hasn't even given a hint. It's rumored that the woman is Reynolds herself and the man... well... we may never know who that lucky Devil is."

Merle wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and stared at the screen. Now they were talking about the weather but he still stared. He thought back to a few years ago when he had brought two women home. They were hot and more than willing to do some pretty nasty shit. Daryl had come stomping down the hall since Merle and the women had been making a lot of noise with their drunken antics.

One of the women basically tried to tackle the poor unsuspecting bastard. After the shock wore off and the woman actually tried to kiss him a look of cold fury had came across his face and he shoved the woman off of him so hard that she tripped over a chair and landed hard on the floor. Red faced and enraged Daryl glared at her and then Merle and then turned on his heel, slamming his bedroom door so hard it sounded like a gun shot.

Another girl at the grocery store, a real wholesome one, had flirted with him mercilessly and that too didn't end well. He had finally stopped going to that store, never showing the slightest interest in the poor girl.

"Can't be," he grumbled, shaking his head. Daryl wasn't the type that would do something like that. It was all a coincidence.