Karen Rose - Their Child?

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 long 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?”