Another Woman's Son (Harlequin Romance) Page 3

  “You think it was your fault,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean. I’d like to forget either one of them ever existed, but I keep remembering the good times, too. Will was like my brother.” It was his turn to look away. “And Faith gave me my son.”

  She hadn’t meant to open a discussion about auld lang syne. “I don’t want to talk about them.” She shook back her hair. “Look, my mother is Tony’s grandma. She’s the one who should help you take care of Tony.”

  “They’ve been around for three days and he’s just starting to get used to them. He asks for his mom and you and Will. I don’t know if it’s because he only wants the three of you, or if he’s actually scared of strangers right now.”

  “Strangers? I’ve never known you to be so dramatic, Ben. Tony’s spent a lot of time with my parents.”

  “Apparently not as much as we thought.” Unfamiliar arrogance frosted his tone.

  “I haven’t seen him for three months. He might not know me anymore.” She eased away from Ben, aware she was about to infuriate him. “And how can I look at him without searching for some sign of Will?”

  He didn’t lose his temper. “Try to do what I do. Don’t let yourself look for Will in Tony. Signs of him might drive you crazy.” He rubbed his face. A five-o’clock shadow had begun to appear, right on time.

  “I’m afraid.” She stared at the nursery door. “I need to start my own life.” She rubbed her hands together, cold and hot all at the same time. “What if I don’t love him anymore because of Will and Faith?”

  “I’m furious with you, Isabel, and even I don’t think you’d blame an innocent child for Will’s adultery.”

  And Faith’s. Her sister’s part in this filthy soap opera hurt almost more than Will’s. Men could fall out of love with their wives. But then the wife was supposed to be able to parade her grievances past her sister for sympathy.

  Ben took both her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “You and I are all that’s left of the only family Tony’s ever known.”

  “What do you mean you’re furious with me? You don’t act upset. Are you pretending?”

  He let go too quickly. “I’m putting my son ahead of my feelings.”

  “But you have a plan.” She saw him as she never had before. With that strange flat look in his eyes, his body strained to breaking point. “You let my parents drive you to the funerals. Would you have dragged them back here if I hadn’t shown up?”

  “You honestly think I’m planning something?” He looked embarrassed. “I’m not Will,” he said, borrowing her earlier approach.

  “I can’t tell what’s real.”

  He pressed both her hands to his chest. The weave of his wool suit against her palms made her feel again. She heard the low whisper of heat in the vents, noticed the faint lighting that softened the walls and lit her way—to Tony’s room, or to the front door and freedom.

  “I’m real. Tony’s real,” Ben said. “And you’re his aunt.”

  “I can’t do what you want.” She wasn’t being selfish. She was looking for salvation. “I want to know how people live when they’re not surrounded by family and so-called best friends.” Faith and Will would always pervade any moment she spent with her family—including Ben and Tony. She had to put what had happened behind her. “I’ll send presents at Christmas and birthdays.” Despite her best effort not to cry, the tears started again.

  Ben mistook them for weakness. “You can’t turn your back on Tony. He needs us.”

  “He needs you. And my mom and dad.” Too many pictures went through her mind. Will, cuddling Tony, giving him piggyback rides. Resting his chin on the child’s head while he’d smiled at her, always hiding the worst secret a man could keep from his wife.

  Dying inside, she tried to push Ben away, but he took her hands again, and they stumbled inside his bedroom door. A whiff of Faith’s perfume hit Isabel. Probably a memory.

  “Anyone in my family would do for you,” she said.

  “Because they’re Tony’s blood relations? That’s the kind of thinking that makes me believe you’ll get over being angry with Will and Faith and then tell your mother and father about Tony.”

  “If I couldn’t play God with you, how would I with them?”

  “I’m your friend. They gave birth to you. They have nothing to do with the life you’ve led here. I’m a reminder.”

  She left him and opened the door to Tony’s room. He followed. “Look at him,” she said. “Why would I want to take him away from you?”

  Ben crossed to his son’s bedside. He pulled a blanket up to Tony’s waist and tucked a ragged toy kitten beside him.

  Tony’s curly brown hair had grown longer. His sweet, plump hand curled in his sleep. Her feet moved of their own volition. She tripped on a stuffed hippo she’d never seen before. It squeaked and she glanced at the sleeping boy who owned her heart.

  He was her flesh and blood, too. The thought—her need for him—frightened her. Just what Ben feared most.

  Her nephew burrowed into his overstuffed comforter with a soft, sad sigh. “Mommy.” He pulled his arms together in an empty hug.

  She gritted her teeth and wiped her face. Tony’s name screamed in her head. If she was ever good at being a mom, it would be because Tony had taught her to love like one.

  Ben was right. How could her mother resist wanting to raise Faith’s child? Having Tony so close would be like having part of Faith back.

  Across the crib, Ben made a sound. The fear on his face frightened her.

  “What?” she whispered, but she knew he’d read her thoughts again.

  “Let’s go.” He pressed one hand to his son’s back. “He needs to sleep, and I have to take Patty home.”

  He urged her out, but she hung back, gazing at her nephew. She’d do anything to protect him, and one thing she knew for sure. No good could come of tearing him away from his father. He belonged with Ben.

  All their lives had changed, but Tony was a child. Only unconditional love and reassurance could keep him safe. She’d promised to take care of him.

  “Let me shut the door.” Ben nudged her out of the way and closed it, cutting off her view of Tony.

  “What about Will’s mom?” She spoke without meaning to. Her parents were dangerous enough, but Leah Barker wouldn’t be able to stop herself from going after Tony if she discovered the truth.

  “You’d tell her?” Ben obviously thought she’d lost her mind.

  “Never.” After her husband’s early death from heart disease, Leah had raised Will as if he were her trophy. She wanted everything, but nothing ever filled her up. Nothing would ever be enough. “She’d take you to court if she even suspected Will was Tony’s—” Isabel broke off, unwilling to utter the word.

  Leah Barker had collapsed the second Isabel had phoned her. Leah had been the worst kind of permissive, overprotective, overfond mother, raising a son who’d never questioned his sense of entitlement.

  “We can’t let her find out.” Ben spoke her thoughts exactly. Sudden relief relaxed his mouth and seemed to travel through his body on a shudder. “So you can’t tell your mother and father.” He tugged her toward the stairs. “My God, I don’t understand the Barkers.”

  “I was one of them,” she said. The name had filled her with pride on her wedding day. Leah had promised to be as much a mother as her own. Talk about a promise that couldn’t be kept. But Will had chosen her to be his wife. With her parents, she’d always come second to Faith. She’d loved her sister and tried not to mind, but much of her new-wedded bliss had been built on gratitude to Will for putting her first.

  What a fool she’d been.

  Abandonment wrapped Isabel like a fine layer of the falling snow. She shivered, cold all the way to her soul.

  Ben opened the sides of his jacket and pulled her into his warmth. Isabel held still, unwilling to make herself vulnerable.

  “It’s okay, Isabel. You can trust me.”

  Longing to believe, she pressed h
er face against Ben’s shirt, reveling in his heat, in the comfort of her best friend’s arms.

  “You understand why we have to keep this secret?”

  “When you talk like that, I can’t trust you.” She’d faced too much truth in the past three months.

  Ben’s heart thumped against her ear. “I can’t help it. I haven’t felt safe since I read that note.”

  Would she ever feel safe? “Do you trust me, Ben?”

  “I saw what you looked like when you realized what you’d give up if you kept my secret. I can’t trust you.”

  “Too bad for you if everyone can see straight through me.” She didn’t like her own bitterness.

  “Would Amelia be able to put Tony first?” Ben tucked her head against him, and she suspected he didn’t want to see her emotions. “Or would she tell herself Tony could learn to be happy with her and George? He might even forget me.”

  “Forget you?” Even to her, that image of the future was unbearable. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

  Ben kissed the top of her head, his gratitude more real than either of their marriages had been. “Thank you, Isabel.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m sure lying is wrong. Look how it’s already destroyed us.”

  FINALLY IN BED in the guest room, Isabel tossed and turned under crisp sheets and a down comforter. In darkness relieved only by an outside streetlight, she tried to shut off the accusations racing around her mind. There was no one left to accuse. Ben couldn’t have kept Faith at home any more than she had Will.

  Pounding her pillow, she lifted her head to stare at the clock—2:17.

  Second, third and hundredth thoughts pulled her upright. She still wondered why Ben really wanted her to stay. She couldn’t live with him and Tony forever.

  He’d brought her bag upstairs before he’d taken the sitter home. After he’d left she’d returned to the baby’s side, her heart melting into her shoes. Even knowing Will had been his birth father, she still loved Tony.

  Why hadn’t Will divorced her? She’d have given up rights to the business—any stake in his blessed bank account—to avoid a sentence in the hell he’d left behind.

  Isabel jerked the bedding aside and turned on the lamp. Her sneakers lay on their sides by the closet. She stepped into them without bothering to tie the laces. Then she pulled a sweatshirt over her pajamas and opened the door.

  Silence blanketed the dark hall. Ben and Tony needed sleep. After waiting a few seconds to make sure she hadn’t disturbed them, she hurried down the curving stairs, snatched her coat out of the closet and then reached for the front door, her only thought, escape.

  She glanced down at her clothing. The knife her husband and sister had slipped into her back was no one else’s business. Wandering the neighborhood in her jammies would expose her and Ben, maybe even her parents, to ridicule and questions.

  She turned, instead, toward the kitchen. When she opened the back door, the cold sucked the breath out of her lungs, but it felt better than smothering in her sister’s home. If she didn’t get fresh air, she’d need CPR.

  Isabel stepped onto the deck and sank in snow that crept around the edges of her shoes. It felt good. She was alive if the cold could hurt.

  But it really hurt. Damn. Suddenly she was also swearing at Will and Faith. And then at Ben for convincing her to stay.

  Snowflakes wet her cheeks. She ran down the deck stairs and trekked through drifts to the gazebo where she and her sister had shared coffee, tea, secrets and each important milestone in Tony’s life.

  Last winter Faith had danced with her son in his first snow. He’d laughed as bits of ice bounced off his soft skin, and Faith had kissed each wet spot. Isabel gritted her teeth. Tony had lost a loving mother.

  Faith’s happiness that day had pricked at all Isabel’s doubts. She’d trusted her sister enough to confide her worst fear—that Will might have found another woman.

  Isabel hunched into her coat on the swing Will and Ben had hung from the ceiling. Her breath painted the air in front of her face. She exhaled again and watched the mist widen and then dissipate.

  Faith had said she was being foolish. Her less-than-comforting response had hurt, but Faith had been right. No woman could have been more foolish or gullible.

  “You’ll freeze.”

  She jumped. “I didn’t hear you, Ben.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’d take a lot more than a guy in the dark to scare me tonight.” She pulled one knee to her chest. “I’m spoiling for a fight.”

  “Yeah.” He sat beside her, jostling the swing. “I’d like to punch someone, too.” He’d positioned spotlights around the yard, and their dim light colored his face pale blue.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out with a note,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d ever have found the courage to tell you, but I’m sorry you had to read about it.”

  “I knew something was wrong, but I never guessed anything about Will.” He shrugged and the whole swing rocked. “I was lucky. Faith left the note in her makeup drawer. Amelia and George might have found it. They arrived the night of the accident.” He pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “Fortunately, I answered the phone when the mortician called about bringing her stuff.”

  “Good God.”

  “It was pretty awful.” His silence echoed with pain. “Why did you wait so long to come?”

  She stared into the dark, not wanting to answer, but how could he think worse of her? “I considered not coming at all.”

  “Really?”

  She had shocked him.

  “But Mom and Dad would have guessed something had come between Faith and me.”

  “And you wouldn’t hurt them.” He stopped the swing with his feet.

  “You needn’t sound suspicious.”

  “I’ll be glad when your mother and father come over tomorrow and you don’t tell them immediately.”

  “You hope that’s the way it goes?” His doubts almost made her laugh. “You have to be kidding. If I wasn’t able to tell you—when you were living the lie that changed me into a cynic—how could I tell my mom? She might feel better, but Tony would lose the last stable figure he’s known.”

  “His father.”

  “His father, Ben. I agree with you.”

  The silence told her he doubted her. Just about the time she was getting angry, he nudged her elbow with his. “What are you going to do about the house?”

  She pushed the swing back. “I don’t think Will filed for divorce, and I was too busy finding a job. If the place still belongs to me, I’ll sell it.” She glanced his way. “Meanwhile, you have to decide if you want Will’s half of our assets for Tony.”

  “Not a chance. I don’t want anything from that bastard.”

  Cold crept through her coat and her pajamas. “What if Tony needs the money when he’s older? We’re not talking a simple piggy bank. This is a lot of capital.”

  “Give it to Leah. If the truth comes out, she can decide whether she should help her grandson.”

  “I’m serious about not trusting Leah. I could turn over everything Will and I owned together and she’d still look for any crumbs I might have forgotten. She married into a mainline Philadelphia family, and she’ll protect her name with her last breath. The more money to bolster her position, the better. You can’t trust her finer qualities, Ben. You definitely shouldn’t make Tony beholden to her.”

  “I won’t touch a penny Will ever made—especially not for my son. I provide for Tony.”

  Isabel opened her mouth to suggest he wait until he wasn’t so angry, but it was pointless. She didn’t need his permission to ask her lawyer about creating a trust fund for Tony. “After I get out from under all this, I’m heading back to Middleburg. I love the horses and the trees and the farms. I’m not important enough to matter. No one looks at me with pity. No one expects me to be Mrs. Will Barker.”

  “We’ll talk about your plans after you sell the house.”

&
nbsp; His domineering note struck a nerve. Will had always tried to steer their lives toward the image he wanted.

  “You’re upset.” She tried to start out gently. “And I’ve made it worse by talking about Will, but trying to push me around won’t change anything for you.”

  The swing went forward and back. The metal chains sang a high-pitched, mournful tune until Ben stopped their motion.

  “Don’t talk about leaving now.” He pushed the swing again, hard. “Please.”

  That “please” obviously cost him. She softened. “I won’t.” But was she falling into old habits? Trying to please a man whose gruff tone threatened to withhold affection? She gripped her armrest. “As long as you realize I’m no longer Will’s amenable little wife. I was afraid he’d leave me, I guess, but I’d rather be left than play those kinds of games.”

  He turned to her. A stranger behind Ben’s face who gave nothing away. Where was her old friend, loving, lovable, demonstrative Ben? “Thank you,” he said.

  She was right to doubt him. He wanted her here for some reason. She didn’t understand, and she assumed it was going to hurt someday, but he might be correct about Tony needing familiar faces.

  Ice crept between her collar and her neck. She shivered. From the snow? Or from doubts about Ben?

  She turned toward the house, drawn to the faint glow of a night-light Faith had always left on in Tony’s room.

  Face it. In Ben’s shoes she’d lie to keep Tony, and she’d keep on until someone caught her.

  “I’d better go in,” he said. “I don’t like leaving him alone.” Standing, he held out his hand. “You should come, too. If you fall asleep out here, we’ll find you in an ice block in the morning.”

  She tried to laugh. “Ben, what if we came clean? We could work out visitation for everyone.”

  “Are you out of your mind? Didn’t you hear what I said?”