Donovan's Child Read online

  Abilene sighed. Really, the question didn’t strike her as all that rude and tactless, given that it was coming from Zoe. After all, Dax had once sworn that kids and married life were not for him. Zoe had taken him at his word.

  And that had created no end of problems between them, as Zoe had come to discover she did want children. Very much.

  They’d worked it out and ended up together. And they were expecting their first, a boy, in May. So the big question of having babies—or not having them—was front and center in Zoe’s mind.

  “Ab, you still with me?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Well?”

  Abilene gave in and told her what she wanted to know. “The accident only affected his legs. So yes, as far as I know, he can. And yes, I do want kids. And next you’ll be asking me if I really think I can deal long-term with a guy who uses a wheelchair.”

  Zoe made a humphing sound. “No way. I know you. You can deal with anything you set that big brain of yours on accomplishing. If you were a wimp or a quitter or prone to being overwhelmed, yeah, I might ask. But you? Uh-uh—and will you get him to come to SA, please? I want to meet him.”

  “I’m working on that. So far, as I think I mentioned, it’s not going all that well.”

  Zoe laughed. “You’ll make him see the light. I have total faith in you.”

  “Tell that to Donovan.”

  “I will, you can count on it—I mean, after I get to know him a little, once you get him to come to SA.”

  “He says he won’t.”

  “You’ll talk him into it. And keep me posted?”

  “Will do,” Abilene promised. She asked how Zoe was feeling.

  “I feel great. You should see me. I actually look pregnant now. It’s about time, I guess, almost six months along. And he’s started kicking. I think he plans to be a football star.” She sounded so happy.

  But why wouldn’t she be? She had a husband she adored, a baby on the way. And she also worked with Dax, at his magazine, Great Escapes. She loved her job. Zoe, the one who could never settle down and stick with anything, had finally found the life that suited her perfectly.

  The conversation wound down after that. Zoe said goodbye.

  As Abilene got ready for bed, she found herself thinking of Donovan’s son again—the son he had never so much as mentioned to her. She’d spent nearly a month working closely with him. She’d made tender, hot love with him last night—and still he hadn’t said one word about the lost Elias.

  Plus, there was the argument earlier, at the dinner table. She hated that she couldn’t get through to him, make him see what he really did need to do. But more than that, she hated that his ultimate solution to a heated disagreement had been to simply wheel away.

  She’d told Zoe that this thing with Donovan felt serious to her. And it did. But maybe to Donovan, it just didn’t.

  It hurt, to consider that he really might not care all that much about what was going on between them. It hurt her heart—and her foolish pride.

  In the bedroom, after she’d put on her comfy sweats and brushed her teeth, she considered getting under the covers. But no way would she sleep.

  She got some paper and a pencil and did some sketching—just kind of doodling, fooling around with ideas for houses and various other structures she might someday actually get a chance to build. When that got old, she put on some sneakers and went to the kitchen, where she dished up a slice of Anton’s blackberry cheesecake. She carried the dessert into the dark studio, turned on all the lights, sat down at her desk and powered up the computer.

  For a while, between bites of the creamy treat, she worked on the text of her proposal for the Foundation people. It was descriptive writing, designed to promote the project, to impress the client—in this case, to convince the Foundation that she knew what she was doing, with or without a master architect to guide her.

  It didn’t go well. Her mind kept wandering, as it had back in her rooms, to thoughts of Donovan. It seemed she couldn’t escape him.

  So she switched to the drafting board and her pet project, the one she always turned to when she was troubled or in need of distraction. She had hundreds of drawings of this particular structure already, of varying exterior views, of every room seen from every angle. It was her Hill Country dream house, the one she fantasized about building someday, for the husband and children she didn’t have yet.

  Sometimes she drew it as a rambling craftsman-style structure; sometimes it had a log cabin exterior. The floorplan kept changing, too, over time. Currently, her dream house was forty-seven hundred square feet—two thousand nine hundred downstairs, and eighteen hundred up. It had a vaulted great room with a floor-to-ceiling natural stone fireplace at one end and a formal dining room at the other. The built-in media center and carved double doors separated the great room from the home office, which had the same wide-plank floors and extensive built-ins. The kitchen, with walk-in pantry, center island and snack-bar counter, opened to a sky-lit second kitchen—an outdoor kitchen—with its own cooktop and oven and corner fireplace.

  She was rethinking the purpose of a small interior section between the four-car garage and the outdoor kitchen, when Donovan said, “You’re working late.”

  Her hopeless heart lifted. She glanced up to see him sitting in the doorway at the far end of the room—the door nearest his own desk. “Not working, just…daydreaming, really. Daydreaming on paper.”

  He rolled the chair, first back a few inches, and then forward, stopping in the center of the doorway, pretty much right where he had started. As if he hesitated to enter his own studio. “I went to your rooms first.” It was a confession. “And then I tried the kitchen. When you weren’t in either place, I figured maybe here…”

  “Ah,” she said, a warm glow flowing all through her at the thought that he had come to find her, that he did care about her, at least a little. And yet still, she wasn’t going to prompt him. If he had something to say to her, he was going to have to get the words out all by himself.

  Finally, he did. “I’m sorry, Abilene. I didn’t want to hear what you had to say at dinner. And when you wouldn’t give up and quit talking about it, I wheeled out on you. That was a crappy thing for me to do.”

  It was a step. A rather large one, actually. “Your apology is accepted.” She turned her attention to her dream house again.

  “May I see?”

  She didn’t look up. “Sure.”

  He entered the studio and wheeled down the length of it, rolling around the outer edge of her drafting table and stopping at her side. “A house…”

  “My dream house,” she said. “Someday I’ll build it. Ideally, in the Hill Country.”

  He took a few seconds to look over the drawings she’d done that night. “Not bad.”

  She stuck out an elbow and poked him in the ribs. “Kissing up much?”

  “I never kiss up when we’re discussing architecture—what’s this?” He bent closer. “A dog shower and grooming station?”

  “I just thought of that. It’s off the garage. Very convenient.”

  “Do you have a dog?”

  “I intend to. Big dogs. Several—well, at least two. And a couple of cats, as well.”

  “Where’s the cat grooming station?” He leaned her way—just enough that she felt his arm brush hers. She caught a hint of his scent, clean and earthy at once, a scent that stirred her, made her think of the night before, of what they’d done in his chair—and later, on the tangled sheets of her bed.

  She looked at him then and saw that he was watching her, his gaze intent. All at once, the air between them felt electric, charged with promise. She said, with a slight huskiness creeping in, “Cats don’t need one. They groom themselves.”

  He leaned a little closer. “I do like your dream house.”

  She only nodded. And it came to her that from now on, whenever she imagined her dream house, it would be with him in it.

  And that was just beyond depressi
ng. If it didn’t work out with him—and it most likely wouldn’t—she would have to dream up some other house to build for the man who could love her, and the children they would have together.

  Really, she was carrying this whole thing between them too far—and too fast.

  His eyes had changed. They were suddenly sad. And a million miles away. “It looks like a great place to raise your children.”

  “Well, yes. That’s the dream….”

  He caught her hand, brushed his lips against her knuckles. She felt that light kiss so deeply, in the core of herself.

  Oh, I am going down, she thought.

  Going down and fading fast. Just the touch of his lips against her skin and she was done for, finished, gone.

  How could she have let this happen?

  He was so not the man she’d imagined herself falling for. She’d always known that the man for her would be openhearted. And trusting. Someone kind and not cruel. Someone who would tell her all his secrets, someone who could love her without holding his deepest heart away from her.

  Someone as different from the man beside her as day was from night.

  And then, in a torn voice, he said, “I had…a child, Abilene. A little boy who died. His name was Elias.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Abilene sat very still in her chair, her hand held in his.

  He was ready, at last—ready to tell her about Elias. It hardly seemed possible, that this precious moment had finally come.

  She forgot all about that other man, her ideal man. The one who loved her unconditionally, the one who never spoke harshly, who was always understanding.

  Right now, there was only Donovan. He filled up her heart, banished her doubts.

  It meant so much, proved so much. About how far they had come, with each other, toward each other.

  Donovan said, “Elias was four when his mother, Julie, died.”

  She let out a low cry. “Oh, Donovan. His mom died, too?”

  He gazed at her steadily. “That’s right.”

  She asked, softly, “You were married then, you and… Julie?”

  He shook his head. “We were together, for a while. But it didn’t last long.”

  It seemed important, then, to tell him what she already knew. “That day I went to lunch with Luisa…?”

  He made a knowing sound. “She told you about Elias.” At her nod, he added, “I was afraid she might.”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. It wasn’t a gossip session, I promise you. Luisa respects your privacy and your feelings.”

  “I know she does.”

  “She mentioned Elias, but only because she assumed that I already knew about him. When she found out I didn’t, she wouldn’t say much more. She said I should ask you.”

  “But you didn’t.” Donovan spoke gently, a simple statement of fact.

  Abilene admitted, “I’ve been waiting, for you to tell me yourself, when you were ready. It seemed somehow wrong, for me to be the one to bring it up.”

  He almost smiled. “You rarely hesitate to say what’s on your mind.”

  “True. And I did want to ask you about him, about Elias. About what he was like, and yes, how you lost him. But somehow, it never felt like the right time. I didn’t want to ambush you with something like that. And I knew it had to be a really rough subject for you.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes were more gray than blue right then, a ghostly gray. And his face, too, seemed worn. Haggard. “It is a rough subject.”

  “Luisa did say there used to be pictures of Elias, in the music room and the front room.”

  “I had all his pictures moved to my own rooms, months ago, when I got back from the first series of surgeries after the fall. So no one would ask me about him—which was seriously faulty reasoning, if you think about it.” His voice took on a derisive edge. He was mocking himself.

  She understood. “Who was around to ask you?”

  “Exactly. By then, I allowed no one inside this house but Ben and Anton and Olga. And I’d already told them in no uncertain terms that they were never again to mention Elias. And they didn’t. It was part of their job description, not to push me, never to challenge me, not to mention my son. I had everything under control, I thought.” The shadows in his eyes lightened a little as he gazed at her, and a hint of a smile came and went. “And then you came along….”

  She squeezed his hand. “Tell me about Julie. Tell me…the rest.”

  “Julie…” His almost-smile appeared again, like the edge of the sun from behind a dark cloud. “She was a good woman. Straight ahead, you know? Honest. After it was over between us, when she found out she was pregnant, she told me right away. I asked her to marry me. She said no, that we didn’t love each other that way and marriage between us wouldn’t last. But she did want the baby. I had money by then. And Julie was an artist, a struggling one. She was barely getting by. So I agreed to pay enough child support that she wouldn’t have to work and she could be a full-time mom.”

  “That was good of you.”

  He chuckled. “No. It was convenient for me. And it worked for Julie, too. She was devoted to Elias and happy to be able to be with him, to raise him without the constant pressure of having to make ends meet. Everybody won—Elias, Julie. And me. I had no interest in being a real dad. Not until Julie died out of nowhere, of a stroke, of all things. She had no family. What could I do?”

  “You took your son to live with you.”

  “I didn’t see a choice in the matter, and that’s the hard truth.”

  “So it was a big change for you.”

  “I dreaded it, to be honest, having a kid around. I worked all over the world. And when I wasn’t working, there were mountains I wanted to climb. If Julie’s parents had still been alive, I would have turned Elias over to them in a heartbeat. Or to my mother. But as you know, she was gone, too.”

  Abilene searched his face. “You’re being way too hard on yourself, you know that?”

  “No. I’m just telling you the way it was. The way I was. That first year, after we lost Julie, that was rough. Elias suffered, missing his mom. But he was a sunny-natured guy at heart. A miracle of a kid, really. From the first, clutching that beat-up Elmo doll he carried everywhere with him, he was following me around. He was looking up at me with those trusting eyes, asking me questions.” Donovan smiled, but his own eyes were suspiciously moist. He shook his head. “Elias never stopped with the questions. And as the months went by, I found I was only too happy to come up with the answers he needed, only too happy to be a real dad. He was so curious. And as he got over the loss of his mom, he didn’t have to carry his stuffed Elmo around everywhere. He became…fearless. I loved that about him. I took him with me, when I was working. I hired a tutor. And a nanny, to go with us. We lived in San Francisco and Austin. And then in Lake Tahoe….” Donovan drew in a slow, shaky breath.

  Abilene waited. She sensed the worst was coming.

  And it was. “That was where it happened, in Lake Tahoe.” Donovan let go of her fingers then. He sank back into his wheelchair and gripped the wheels in either hand. “I had rented a vacation cabin there. The driveway was impossibly steep—and remember how I mentioned that Elias was fearless?”

  “I remember.”

  “Six years old, and he loved nothing so much as to ride his Big Wheel down the steepest hill he could find—the driveway. And then he graduated to his first two-wheeler. That really freaked the nanny out, but I watched him and he was a natural athlete, lightning reflexes, great balance. I told her to back off, that Elias knew what he was doing, that he had sense as well as good reflexes—plus, she always made him wear his helmet. He would be fine. At first, she thought I was crazy. But then, after she watched him go flying down that hill a few times, she agreed with me. He was having a ball and he was perfectly safe.”

  A chill ran along the surface of her skin. “But he wasn’t?”

  Donovan shut his eyes, tight, as if he saw the worst all over again, and only wanted t
o block out the memory, erase it from his sight. “Elias rode that new two-wheeler down the driveway countless times without a scratch. And then there was the last time. The bike hit a rock—or so the medical examiner determined later. It was one of those freak things, out of nowhere. Must have caught him off-guard. Elias fell. He never wanted to wear his helmet. That time, apparently, he had it on to appease the nanny, but left the clasp undone. The helmet flew off. He hit his head. I found him at the bottom of the driveway. Just lying there. His eyes were open. He was gone, I knew it. But he seemed to be staring up at the pines, at the blue sky overhead….”

  “Oh, Donovan.” The words were useless, but she couldn’t help it. She said them anyway. “I’m so sorry….”

  After a moment, he looked at her. His face was so pale, suddenly. Pale as a man lying in his own coffin. As if he was the one who had died.

  And maybe, in essence, he had.

  “I didn’t protect him,” Donovan said. “He died because I loved his fearlessness. I ate it up, that he was such a bold little guy, that nothing got him down. I…didn’t watch out for him.”

  She ached to argue, to insist that you can’t possibly watch a child every moment of every day, that terrible things can happen, with no one to blame. But she had no doubt he’d heard all that before. And if Elias had been her child, such consolations, however true, wouldn’t help in the least.

  A father needed to protect his children. And if he failed at that, for whatever reason, nothing anyone could say would make the guilt and pain go away.

  “The children’s center?” she asked in a whisper.

  He swallowed. Hard. “Yeah. The idea for the center was a lot about Elias. My son was gone, but I hoped that maybe, if I could help someone else’s child to have a better start in life, it would mean something, somehow. It would make up, at least a little, for the life Elias was never going to have.”

  “Oh, Donovan, yes. It’s a good thing, what you’re doing, an important thing. The center will mean a lot to children who need it.” The words were totally inadequate, but she offered them anyway, in a vain attempt to draw him back to her, to the world of the living.