Owen's Best Intentions (Smoky Mountains, Tn. #2) Read online

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I’m not being dramatic,” he said, but then he shrugged, as if her opinion didn’t matter enough for him to explain. “When you pack, add some of Ben’s toys, so he’ll have familiar things around him and his favorite books. Whatever will make him comfortable while he’s with me.”

  “This is crazy, Owen. No way will I send my son off with a stranger.” She didn’t trust Owen any more now than she had four years ago.

  “I won’t be a stranger for long,” he said.

  “You’re not taking him, Owen. I’ll fight you on this. Besides, he and I haven’t spent a night apart since he was born.”

  “Then pack your stuff, too.” He paced out of the kitchen, across the living room to the bay window that looked out on her snow-drifted backyard. “If you come along, that solves the problem.”

  “If you really care about him, you’d just leave him alone. Ben is a happy child. We have a life here.”

  “You have a life you stole from me.” His voice sliced through the air.

  Lilah squeezed the towel in her hands. “You said yourself you’re still drinking. You have to stay away from Ben. He’d be afraid of you if he saw you the way you used to get.”

  He turned back to her, and his pain was hers for a single moment. She froze, but she felt as if she were vibrating. She couldn’t control her body’s reaction to seeing Owen again.

  She didn’t want to remember how much she’d cared for him. Loved him. She couldn’t let him back in.

  “I will not frighten my own child,” he said, his voice low, controlled. “Stop dreaming up excuses to keep Ben and me apart.”

  “I don’t need excuses. My mother loved me. She was responsible. She only looked away for a few seconds, and see what happened? I was kidnapped by a stranger.” Lilah never talked about the past. She’d dealt with it and moved on, but he needed to know exactly why she’d rejected him as Ben’s father. “I will never turn my back on Ben, especially to leave him with an alcoholic like you.”

  Owen barely glanced at her. “Give me a break, and stop comparing me to my father and a kidnapper.”

  A switch had turned on when she found out she was pregnant. All the years of healing had disappeared the second she’d read that positive pregnancy test. She’d become a little girl again, running for her life. How easily that man had lured her with his story of a lost kitten that needed her help. “I vowed what happened to me would never happen to my child.”

  “Our child. So, you let your own paranoia keep your son from his father? What kind of mother does that?”

  “You told me you wouldn’t stop drinking, and I told you I couldn’t live with that. I wasn’t going to let Ben grow up the way you did, Owen.”

  “I won’t drink around Ben.” Owen straightened with a pride she’d never seen in him before, not even when he was the star attraction at his exhibitions in her family’s galleries. “I will be a good father to my son.”

  “Ben doesn’t know you’re his father.”

  “My name is on the birth certificate.”

  She clenched her fists to keep from going for his throat. “How did you get your hands on his birth certificate?”

  “After I saw Ben’s photo on that gift tag, I took a chance and requested a copy of my son’s birth certificate. I found the announcement your parents put in the paper, and that gave me all the information I needed. I started looking for you.”

  “You’ve been stalking us?” She knew she was being ridiculous, but she was angry with herself. She’d left him a string of clues. Made it too easy for him to find them.

  “Ask yourself what you would have done in the same situation. I didn’t stalk you, Lilah.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Making sure my son knows he has a father.”

  “You’re sober now, but you look as if you’ve been on a bender.”

  “You didn’t bother to tell me the real reason I should have made sobriety stick four years ago And what about your own issues? I’m not the one who abandoned college after college because everyone I saw looked threatening. And I didn’t move out of my apartment overnight because I thought a woman in my building was following me. Turns out she commuted the same way you did. We both have problems, Lilah, but we’re both Ben’s parents.”

  Her skin seemed to be on fire. She knew her face had turned bright red, but she wasn’t so embarrassed about the truth that she couldn’t fight back. “You told me you liked to drink, that you chose to drink.”

  He ignored the accusation. “So once again you packed up and walked away from yet another place, without warning, without notice, without reason. Just because of your fear.”

  “Ben was my reason.”

  “Go to Bliss with Ben and me, or I’ll go to the courts and fight for custody on the grounds you’re not a fit mother.”

  This was not the Owen she’d known. “You wouldn’t bring up my past and use it against me.”

  “I’m asking again, how cruel would you be if I’d stolen Ben from you?”

  The papers, the reporters. She’d been five years old, swarmed by curious faces and camera flashes and questions that only put her back into the bad place.

  If Owen took revenge, it would be hard to keep her past a secret. It would be all over social media, complete with photos and old newspaper articles. There’d be commentary on blogs. She felt sick. She’d tried with all her might to keep Ben safe from the notoriety of her past.

  She moved closer to him. “You can’t. You won’t. You may not know him, but you must instinctively care about Ben, or you wouldn’t have come here. Making him an object for people to gawk at would hurt him.”

  “So, now you’re using him to keep me in check?”

  She’d still do anything to protect her son.

  “Go ahead and push me,” Owen said, with no hint of the gentleness that had once drawn her to him despite the drinking.

  And he’d helped her at first. Pushed her to overcome her fears. But over time she’d grown to loathe his drinking, and hers. Daring anything to prove she wasn’t afraid quickly lost its appeal as she’d pulled and pushed Owen into a taxi or through her apartment door, or dragged him out of a fight in a bar.

  But at least when he was under the influence, Owen had never hurt anyone except himself.

  “Show some compassion,” she said.

  “Like you did?”

  She wanted to yell. His warm breath fanned her face. She reassessed her chances of getting Ben out of the house and making a run for it.

  But that would be a ridiculously reckless decision. Whatever she had to do to keep Owen from taking Ben, she would. He could threaten her all he wanted, but she would make him see things her way. What was best for Ben would be best for all of them. “Let’s calm down for a minute.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Lilah, and I’ve been played by bigger and better cons than you.”

  They shared one trait, a survivor’s sensitivity to undercurrents.

  “We both care about Ben,” she said, “and you don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you about him.” That was true. If he’d been a different person, she would have told him. “I made a bargain with myself. If you showed up, I’d be honest.”

  “I showed up today.” He stepped away from her. “We need to make plans.”

  Panic tightened her throat. “How can you be serious?”

  “At least in Bliss I can make sure you’ll have a harder time taking him away again.”

  “You want him to stay in that little cabin of yours?”

  “Plenty big enough for one man and one small boy.”

  And no woman. She didn’t figure into his plan. “What are you talking about? You don’t think I’m letting him live with you.”

  “I’m not playin
g with you. I am desperate, and I don’t trust you. You can take a room at my mom’s inn, but Ben stays with me until we create a legally binding custody agreement. See him whenever you want, but until we have an understanding, I won’t believe you’d suddenly consider I have rights at all.”

  She went to the sink, her mind racing. “You think legal papers will stop me?”

  “Yes.” Owen came around the counter, too. Stopping inches away, he touched her face with the back of his hand. Gently, to get and keep her attention. “Because you don’t want Ben’s name or pictures in headlines.”

  “You don’t care about Ben. You’re angry at me.” She wished that were true. How else could she believe that this man she’d once loved would take away her son? She was the one who’d kept Ben safe all his life. She made the decisions about how he was raised.

  “I only care about Ben. He deserves to be with his father. Your judgment is flawed, and Ben deserves better. If you’d stopped to think first, if you’d been honest with yourself, you would have known I’d love him. I’d never hurt him. I am not my father.”

  “You have no idea what it takes to be a parent. You’ve only had yourself to think about. Wait until the work starts, staying up all night when Ben’s sick, listening to the stories about other kids at school who hurt his feelings, worrying about the countless things that might go wrong.”

  “What could be more wrong than never knowing my son?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  OWEN SWALLOWED, THE HEAT of anger drying his mouth. Now that she understood his intentions, he’d back off. “You’re right about one thing. We both need to calm down.” He could hardly suggest Ben needed his father but not his mother. “I might consider coming here for a while if I weren’t in the middle of a work project. I can’t get away from Tennessee.”

  “You never wanted to leave those mountains, but you should for Ben’s sake if you want to spend time with him.”

  His temper snapped, but he wasn’t his father. He seriously wanted revenge, but four years had given him time to realize he’d been honest and yet made a choice that had driven Lilah to break up with him. He didn’t for a second believe that excused her decision to keep his son from him, but he also didn’t need to hurt a woman.

  He just didn’t intend to let her make all the decisions from now on. “This time we do things my way.”

  Her laughter was like brittle cracking glass. “This time,” she said in a mocking tone. “Unlike when you first started selling your furniture and sculpture to my gallery, and you insisted on working under an assumed name.”

  “You should understand I wanted privacy.” Crowds of people made him want a drink. Happiness could increase the thirst that never let up. Anger, loss, like the loss of his son’s babyhood, made it a dull, insistent urge that gripped him. “You don’t want anyone asking you about Little Lost Lilah.”

  She eased a deep breath between her lips. He had to make her believe he’d expose her past. She was a caged animal, pacing around the small kitchen, but she wouldn’t run away with Ben again if she thought he’d use everything in his power to find them.

  When she reached the coffeemaker, she picked up the pot. “Do you want a cup?”

  Was she giving in? “Please.”

  “I don’t remember how you take it.” She poured the coffee into a mug and then got sugar from a cabinet. “There’s cream in the fridge.”

  He went to the large, stainless-steel refrigerator, playing for time and space. Inside, he reached between organic peanut butter and several jars of homemade jam to get the cream. The Lilah he’d known was barely on speaking terms with her stove. “Did you make these?”

  She stepped in front of him, her scent a distracting delight to his senses. He closed his eyes and backed away, making sure to look normal by the time she turned around.

  “I’ve done everything I could to keep my son healthy,” she said.

  He ignored the unspoken “including keeping you out of his life” and shut the refrigerator door. “I never picked you as a home canner.”

  “Thanks. And while we’re discussing my abilities, you obviously haven’t considered that I run the gallery I opened up here. I can’t leave my job.”

  “You don’t have any staff? You did in New York. At least you talked about them. I think I remember you talking about them.”

  “I’m surprised you remember anything.” She caught her breath. “Sorry, that was ugly. We both drank too much. I worried about Ben at first because I didn’t stop drinking until I knew I was pregnant.”

  “You could always take it or leave it,” he said. “I did notice that you looked after me those nights we went out.”

  “No. I was reckless. If you dared me—if someone implied I was afraid to do something, I most often took the dare.”

  Even though he was angry at what she’d done to him and Ben, he couldn’t pretend she’d matched him vice for vice. “It wasn’t all drinking,” he said, his tone dry. “Sometimes we watched movies.”

  Her head came up. She looked into his eyes as if she were searching for a softness he couldn’t feel for her. “Think about what you’re asking, Owen. Ben has never met your family. He doesn’t know you.”

  Because she’d turned her back on him. “Maybe I would have kept drinking even if I’d known you were pregnant, but you didn’t give me the chance to try for Ben’s sake.” Even to him, that sounded weak—but maybe, with Ben as motivation, he might have found the strength to ignore the urge that never left him. “Come to Tennessee with us, or Ben and I will go alone.”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t know you. He’d be afraid.”

  “Not if you come with him.”

  She shrugged, and her hair splashed across her back like a silky, blond wave that made him want to feel its softness against his fingers again. She called herself reckless when they were together, but she’d been laughing and loving, and she’d shown him the city’s hidden treasures. Small parks and museums where no one looked at him with doubt that a drunk from the remotest mountains of Tennessee could appreciate art or beauty. Restaurants where the chefs made them Lilah’s favorite meals, which they’d shared with love, confiding the secrets they could only trust with each other.

  Deep inside, a part of him wanted to believe the woman he’d known back then was still a real part of this Lilah, who seemed to think the only way Ben could be safe was apart from his father. “I’ll go with you.” She didn’t explain. He didn’t push his luck by asking what changed her mind.

  “Fine. I believe you can work from Bliss. I’ll introduce you to some of the other local artisans. There are plenty of antiques stores in the mountains, and many artists produce the primitive pieces you like.”

  “Why are you so accepting of all this?”

  Her suspicions about him only matched his own toward her. “For Ben. So that he knows he can count on both his parents to put him first.” He added a parting jab. “And work keeps you happy.”

  “Ben makes me happy.” She yanked her hair into a coil and wrapped one of those elastic things women used around it. “I’m not sure I trust you.”

  “You have to.”

  She exhaled, and he saw the first sign of guilt in the gaze she averted. “I’d be out of my mind if you kept him from me.”

  Anger ground through him. “Then you understand?”

  She shook her head, and he remembered her young face in the faded headlines of newspapers she’d kept as reminders of her own strength. The same stubborn refusal to give in to her fear. The same determination not to let the experience break her.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked. “None of this had to happen.”

  “For the same reason I don’t believe in you now. Alcoholics want to change. Surviving depends on change, but you will always be an alcoholic.”

  “I�
�m trying to want other things more.” But he couldn’t deny that vodka, cold as ice, would have eased him through this day.

  She looked rattled, and he learned at once to admit nothing more about his own flaws.

  “Give me time,” Lilah said. “A week to speak to my family and prepare Ben. My assistant will need information about the books and deliveries. I’ll need to give her instructions before I can leave her with the shop.”

  “I can’t wait around here for a week.”

  “I’m not asking you to, and I won’t take Ben away. There was always a chance you’d find us. I’m not trying to keep him from you. You’re the one who’s trying to take him from me.”

  “You kept him all these years.”

  “But I didn’t hide. That’s proof I won’t take Ben from you now.”

  “We tell him now, before I go back to Tennessee. If you’re lying about coming, or if you run, I’ll find you, no matter where you go or how hard you try to hide.”

  He sounded like his father. If you leave me, I’ll find you. No one will hide you well enough. No one can keep you away from me. That was what Odell Gage had said. So many times, Owen’s mother had believed.

  So had he and his brothers and sister.

  “I know I can’t keep you apart any longer,” Lilah said.

  “Before I go back to Tennessee, we’ll tell him who I am,” Owen said again.

  She seemed to think it over, as if she had the right. “What if you change your mind?”

  Incredible.

  “Look at me.” He didn’t try to hide anything. “I’m stunned to find I’m anyone’s father, and I want revenge for what you did, but most of all, I want to do the right thing for Ben.” He needed to rebuild his reputation, so he could make a decent living, but he didn’t want to lose any more time with his son. It had to be this way. “I won’t change my mind. I want to know my son.”

  “O-kay,” she said, with doubtful emphasis on both syllables.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Owen bought a booster seat for Ben. Afterward, he stopped at the first fire station on his way to Lilah’s. A uniformed man came out as Owen parked in the wide driveway.