Their Child? Read online

  “It was…I wasn’t thinking straight. I got home and I looked at Lena and I felt so low, so bad, like I’d done something so awful, behind her back.”

  “Because you had.”

  She pulled her shoulders back. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.”

  “And the next night—that guy everyone thinks you met. What about him?”

  She said, in a whisper, through her clutching throat, “There was no guy.”

  He grunted again. A sound of purest disgust. “No guy.”

  She coughed to make her throat open up. “That’s right. Only you. I…well, I always wanted you, when we were kids. I would see you in town and at school and I would hope and pray that you would notice me. But you didn’t. It was Lena you noticed, Lena who got to be your girl. I accepted that—or I thought I had. And then Lena broke up with you and she didn’t want to go to prom with you and—”

  He waved a hand. “Back to that other guy. The one who didn’t exist.”

  She made herself nod. “Okay. What about him?”

  “You didn’t hesitate, did you, to let people think what was easiest for you? The whole damn town jumped to conclusions about how you ended up pregnant—and you let them. You let everyone think some stranger was Brody’s father.”

  “Oh, Tucker, my dad was yelling all the time, making threats. He said he was going to find out who got me pregnant and—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I have more questions.”

  Her mouth tasted of sawdust. The long gash at her temple felt like someone was sticking needles in it.

  Too bad, she thought.

  She knew it was only right, that she sit there. That she take whatever he felt he had to dish out. It wasn’t much, wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was the very least she could do.

  And it was a first step. She had to believe that. For him to be so angry, he had to care. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be facing her down now. If he didn’t care, he would have just informed her of what he planned to do about Brody and left it at that.

  “Your husband,” he said. “What lies did you tell him about my son?”

  “I didn’t tell my husband lies. Henry knew the truth. I told him everything, before we were married.”

  “And what? He told you not to worry, that it was just fine with him that Brody’s father had no idea he existed?”

  She stopped him on that one. “No. Brody does know, that he had a…a natural father, that Henry was his stepdad.”

  He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “And just what does Brody think happened to his natural father?”

  “I told him it didn’t work out, between his father and me. That his father went away before he knew that he had made Brody. That someday, when the time was right, we’d find his dad somehow.”

  “When did you tell him all this?”

  “Years ago. He was three. It was right before I married Henry.”

  “And since then?”

  “He doesn’t ask. Oh, Tucker. You have to see. He’s had a…happy life. He loved Henry and he accepted him, as his dad. I always knew that someday he’d have questions, that someday he’d need to know you.”

  “Someday…”

  “You have to understand…”

  “But I don’t, Lori. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it. You’re telling me that your husband knowingly stole my son from me.”

  “He didn’t. He never could. It’s only…well, Henry was sterile. And he’d always wanted children. He said that you were long gone and he thought it was for the best if we just let things go along the way that they were. I’m ashamed to say it, but, by then, that was just what I wanted to hear. We got married. Henry treated Brody like a son. We were…happy, the three of us.”

  “Happy.” He made it sound like a dirty word.

  “Yes.”

  “And you gave up all attempts to get a hold of me?”

  “Yes. That’s right. It was all wrong, what we did, Henry and me. And he knew it in his heart. It was his last wish, before he died, that I track you down and tell you the truth.”

  “So what you’re saying is that whenever you finally did get around to telling me—if you ever did—it would have been for your dead husband’s sake.”

  “I didn’t say that. I never said that.”

  “And your husband’s been dead, what? Over a year? And I’ve been right here, in the Junction, just about the whole damn time.”

  She refused to let her gaze shift away. She looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t expect you to understand. I loved my husband. He had come into my life at a time when I was barely holding on, feeling…so bad about myself, about what a mess I’d made of my life. I was disconnected from my family, working overtime to take care of me and Brody, trying to be a good mother to him. Henry…showed me how to live. Really, I grew up, took charge of my own life, while I was married to Henry. I wasn’t much good for a while there after I lost him. I couldn’t…deal with anything beyond getting by, day to day. I knew—even before Henry died—that I would tell you. But after I lost him, I needed time to face up to the job.”

  “More excuses. More lies.” A cold smile curved the corners of Tucker’s mouth. “It’s time to get straight about this, Lori. You were never going to tell me. Not really. Were you?”

  Outrage had her heart slamming against her breastbone. She quelled that outrage, ordered her damn heart to slow down. From the way she’d behaved, what else was he to think, but that she would have always found some reason to keep the truth from him?

  She spoke flatly. “I was going to tell you Monday. I made that appointment to do it. I would have done it then.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She pressed her lips together, holding in the hot denials that rose to her lips. What good would denials do? He didn’t believe her and she had no right to imagine that he should.

  He said, “Why Monday? Why did you think you had to wait? Why not any one of those times you saw me after you got into town? Why not that night you came out here with Brody, that night we talked for hours about everything but the one thing that mattered most. Why not then?”

  “It wouldn’t have been right, not with Brody there. And I had planned from the first to wait until after the wedding. I wanted Lena to have her big day. If the story got out, I was afraid it might ruin things for her.”

  He shook his head. “Excuses,” he said. “That’s all you’ve got for me, isn’t it?”

  “No. That’s not so. There are no excuses and I know there aren’t. But you asked. So I answered you. I came here, back to town, for two reasons. My sister’s wedding—and you. I planned to stay an extra week after the wedding was over. That week was so I’d have plenty of time to see you, to tell you what you had a right to know. I had it all worked out. Once the wedding was over, I’d get in touch with you, meet you someplace private and tell you that you had a son. I assumed I’d have zero contact with you until it was time to say what needed saying. How was I to know I’d run into you the minute I drove into town. How was I to know I’d keep running into you? How was I to know that I…” She faltered.

  He prodded, “That you, what?”

  Her cheeks burned with a sudden, hot blush. “Look. It doesn’t matter.”

  He wouldn’t let it be. “What? How were you to know what?”

  “It doesn’t—”

  “What?”

  She shut her eyes. It didn’t help. When she opened them again, he was still there. Waiting, his square jaw set and his brown eyes hard as agates. She told him, very quietly, “How was I to know that I would find myself falling for you all over again? That one look at you and I’d feel like I felt back in high school, that I’d be mooning around, longing for a glance from you, a gentle word. A sweet, tender kiss.”

  She looked away, toward the tall windows that flanked a glass door and a deep back porch. It was beautiful out there, so green and lush. She wished she could leap up, fling open the door, race down the porch steps and run across that lo
ng slope of thick lawn—run and run and never stop. She faced him again, her heart squeezing tight inside her chest. It hurt—a thousand times worse than the needles poking into her brow—to look at him. So big and handsome, with his sexy full mouth, that sun-kissed brown hair and those gorgeous dark eyes—eyes that seemed to bore through her, a mouth set against her.

  “I didn’t like it,” she said flatly. “I didn’t like being so strongly attracted to you after all these years. That’s the honest, unvarnished truth, whether you’re able to believe me or not. I didn’t expect it and it confused me, terribly, to find myself still wanting you after all this time. I thought I had grown out of you. But since I’ve been back in town, I’m a mixed-up teenager all over again. I’ve made the same bad choices I made back when. I messed things up royally, the same way I did when we were kids.”

  “So that’s what I am to you. A bad choice?”

  “That’s not what I said. You’re twisting my words.”

  “You amaze me. You are one piece of work. You’re attracted to me. And that’s why you kept my son from me all over again. And somehow, you’ve got the idea that your telling me this will get you off the hook now?”

  “I didn’t say I thought it would get me off the hook. I never said that.” She had to actively resist the need to bring her hand to her forehead, to press the bandage that covered the now-throbbing gash.

  “Good,” he said, “Because you’re not off the hook, Lori. Not for this. You never will be.”

  She folded her hands in her lap—good and tight—and looked down at them, hard. “Gotcha.” She faced him. “So how about this? We tell Brody right away that you’re his father. Then we can—”

  “No.”

  Had she heard wrong? “Wait a minute. You don’t want to tell him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But he—”

  “You said it yourself. He thinks of that husband of yours as his father. He’s mentioned him to me. More than once. It’s ‘my dad,’ this and ‘Dad used to’ that. Whatever I think of the man who knowingly tried to steal my son from me, I’m not going to—”

  It was too much. “Tucker. Stop. I understand that you’re angry—beyond angry, even. And I know that you have every right to be. But Henry was a good father to Brody. A damn good father. You’ve said yourself what a great kid Brody is. A great kid doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  And her mouth almost dropped open. “You…agree with me?”

  “Yeah.” He agreed. She could hardly believe it. It was a first, for this particular conversation. “Brody’s a hell of a kid and that husband of yours did a bang-up job with him. I want to give Brody time to accept me in his life, to get used to the idea that I’m going to be around from now on.”

  In spite of all the hard things he’d said to her, at that moment, she felt so sad for him. He really didn’t know his son at all.

  And whose fault was that?

  Hers. The fault was all hers.

  “Tucker,” she said carefully. “Give Brody a little credit. He’s really so smart and…down to earth. He’s already gotten to know you. He thinks you’re terrific. You can tell him, now. He can take it.”

  “No.” He gave her a look, dead-on and imperious. Never before had he reminded her of Ol’ Tuck. But at that moment, he did. He said in a tone both flat and final, “It’s too soon.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “Think what you want. It’s my decision.” He said it as if it didn’t even occur to him that she might dare to go against him.

  Ol’ Tuck. Definitely. Way too much like Ol’ Tuck.

  And he was right. It was his decision. She wouldn’t go against him, not about this. He had the right to tell Brody in his own way and his own time.

  She suggested, with care, “How can I help you, to get to know your son?”

  He nodded, a regal dip of his head. “Yeah. It’s time we talked specifics.”

  Her heart was racing again. And her palms had gone clammy. She feared the worst. That he’d say he was suing her for custody, that he’d demand she turn Brody over to him.

  If he did that, all that would be left for them was an ugly legal battle, with Brody at the center of it, suffering for her bad choices, her lies—and for his father’s vindictiveness.

  She tamped her fears down and tried to speak calmly. “Yes. All right. I, um, realize you’re going to want to spend some time with him—on a regular basis. I think we can work together to—”

  “When does his school year start?”

  Where was he headed? And why did she have a sinking feeling it wasn’t anywhere that she would want to go? “Late August,” she said. “The twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, I think.”

  He laid it on her. “I want you and Brody to move in here, with me, right away. I want a chance with him, a chance to catch up after all the years I didn’t have with him. A couple of months of him living with me should go a long way toward that. Before he leaves to go back to school, I will have told him that I’m his father.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “I’m not finished.” He gave her a long look. It wasn’t a friendly one. Then he continued, “I need you here, at first, to ease the way. I want him to feel comfortable and I want the visit to seem…natural to him. It won’t seem that way if you don’t stay here, too.”

  She spoke up, though she knew he wouldn’t like what she said. “You could just tell him who you are.”

  “I already told you. Not yet.”

  “Tucker, I don’t like this. I think—”

  “I don’t care what you don’t like, or what you think. I need you here, so my son will feel comfortable about staying with me. And I think you owe it to me—and to him—to be here, for a while, at least. Once Brody knows the truth, once he’s had time to adjust to being with me full-time, you’ll be free to go back to San Antonio. You can return to pick him up a few days before school starts.”

  “And…after that?”

  “After that, I’ll want time with him. Holidays, summers and school vacations, anyway. And we’ll be going to court.”

  She felt vaguely ill. “Court?”

  “He’s my son. I want it legal. I want a document that says he’s a Bravo attached to his birth certificate.”

  “Yes. All right. Of course.”

  He said, “The adoption might present complications.”

  “The adoption?” She didn’t follow at first. Then the light dawned. “Oh. No. Henry never adopted Brody.”

  “Why not?”

  “We decided against it. For the reasons you just gave. When it came down to it, Brody was—and is—your son.”

  “Plus, if I ever did find out you let another man have my son, who the hell knows what kind of trouble I might have made for your happy little family, right?”

  She sucked in a long breath. “That’s right.”

  There was more to it.

  Henry had pushed—hard—for the adoption. He’d insisted it was the best thing, that Tucker never had to know. Lori had said no. In the end, she couldn’t do that. Tucker was Brody’s father and that could never be erased.

  But there was no point in going into all that now. It would have served no real purpose, would have only sounded like more excuses, an attempt to make herself look a little less reprehensible—at the expense of her dead husband.

  Tucker said, “You’ve been calling him Brody Taylor, though, haven’t you? Even though his birth certificate gives him your maiden name?”

  “Yes.”

  “No more. When he goes back to school, he’s going as a Bravo.”

  “Yes. I’ll see to it.”

  “You bet you will.” He looked at her as if he wouldn’t trust her to pass him the salt at the dinner table.

  Her temper flared again. She doused it, suggesting carefully, “And for now, maybe we should just take it one day at a time. Just get through the summer and not worry about all the rest of it until we have to.”
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  He sat forward. “You’re saying you’ll do it. You’ll give me what I want. Tomorrow, you and Brody will move in here, with me.”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes darkened—with triumph and something more…

  Something that brought a tiny, valiant flame of hope rising to flicker within her.

  Was it possible?

  Could he, just maybe, want more from her than her support while he got to know his son? Deep down, did he have some faint intention of trying to make it work between them, after all? Did he want her with him, at his house, at least a little bit for her own sake?

  She wondered—and then she put that tiny hope away. It didn’t matter. Not right then. Right then, her lies and her betrayals stood high as a fortress wall, thick and impossible to scale, between them. He didn’t trust her—with valid reason. He had disconnected from her. And any dreams she might have finally admitted to having about the two of them…

  Well, this didn’t look like a situation where dreams were all that likely to come true.

  What mattered now was that Tucker and Brody should have their time together; her job would be to do all she could to make that happen.

  She said, “We’ll move in tomorrow.”

  “All right, then,” he agreed. “Let’s get through the summer. We’ll worry about the rest of it when fall comes around.”

  Chapter Twelve

  That evening, after Brody was in bed, Lori sat her parents down at the kitchen table and told them that she and Brody would be staying at the Double T for a while.

  “You don’t seem all that happy about it,” her father remarked with a frown.

  “It’s what Tucker wants, to have some time with his son.”

  “And what about you, Lori-girl? What do you want?”

  “Right now, I just want to do my part to make sure they get the time together that they need.”

  Her mother asked, “And you and Tucker?”

  Okay. Maybe she couldn’t quite banish that thin flame of hope that she and the father of her son might find their way to each other, at last. But it was just that: a hope. Nothing more. “Mom, there is no me and Tucker. Not now, anyway.”