The Secret Father (The Calvert Cousins 1) Read online

  “I should have seen you with her. Not seeing you together was a mistake.”

  “I didn’t tell her,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She sagged against her chair, clearly deep in thought about how much fathering a wounded man could do. He couldn’t keep assuring her of his reliable mental health. He’d start to sound crazy. A sudden thought brought Olivia upright again. “What if Lily or Helene find out about Evan through the papers?”

  “They won’t. Helene doesn’t read them, and I never saw her watch the news.”

  “What if someone else tells her?”

  “Leland—her husband—is a reasonable guy. He’ll figure out the facts and hold Helene back until I get in touch. He won’t let her say something hurtful to Lily.”

  “You trust her new husband more than you trust her?”

  “We didn’t know each other when we got married.” How well had he known Olivia?

  She turned away, leading him to believe she’d experienced broken trust. With a painful start, he realized he’d taught her that lesson. She’d trusted him.

  “I didn’t mean to leave you,” he said.

  “Your amnesia makes it no easier for me. I tell myself over and over that you won’t just abandon Evan, but if you’re not good to him, I’ll—”

  Ahhh. He understood rage. Though she sputtered to a halt, her vehemence drew him closer.

  The vulnerable curve of her lips fascinated him. He’d made love to her and yet he had no memory of her mouth’s firm, tempting texture. She knew secrets about him, about them together that he might never remember.

  Her mouth twisted into a smile, and he dragged his gaze back to hers. “Can’t think of a threat?” he asked. When she looked serious, he regretted teasing her.

  “I won’t need a threat if you hurt my son.”

  “Our son.”

  Her expression, stony, determined, and not in the least wary of him, was all too familiar. She like Helene did when she was about to announce he’d broken her rules and to hell with the ones in the custody agreement. He knocked back the rest of his water. They finished their wait in a troubled state of truce. It was almost a relief when the attendant began to call their flight.

  He stayed behind Olivia as they handed over their boarding passes and entered the jetway’s gaping maw. His feet grew heavier, but he forced himself to keep walking.

  Inside the narrow passage, his heart thudded in his ears. He felt as if he might plod right through the flimsy flooring. At last, the door of the aircraft came into view, along with a few precious inches of daylight around the gate’s edges. He could see himself pushing through the plastic material and jumping to the ground. A broken leg or two would be worth escape.

  The flight attendant eyed him with concern, but passed him through. To first-class. Which he couldn’t afford.

  He hung back when Olivia offered him the choice of aisle or window, with no idea he had a problem. Behind him, the rest of the first-class crowd began muttering at their unaccustomed delay.

  “I can’t pay for this.” He grasped exactly how different their worlds were. How different they’d look to Evan.

  “Fortunately, I can, so it’s not a problem for either of us.” She passed him her briefcase. “Could you put this…”

  Before he answered, another attendant took her case. “May I take your jacket, sir?” she asked.

  Olivia settled into the window seat. As if the cost of the ticket was no big deal. He’d bet on it being at least three of his car payments. He shrugged off his jacket and surrendered it. As he sat and latched on to the seat belt with sweating hands, Olivia nodded his way.

  “You’re doing me a favor. Forget about the cost.”

  “Being my son’s father isn’t a favor. I’m in this for good—you’d better get used to it.”

  “I meant for now, coming with me when you don’t really know who I am. I probably would have asked for a DNA test.”

  The idea startled him. “I didn’t think of it. The pictures… I can’t deny his face.” He rubbed his hands down the thighs of his jeans.

  She smiled and he had the feeling he’d passed some test. Little did she know. She had no experience sharing custody. They both faced plenty of tests to come.

  “I have videotapes we’ve been making since the day he was born, and a library full of photo albums.”

  “I’d like to make copies.” As he spoke the plane rocked. He turned to the aisle, gripping the armrests to hide his shaking hands.

  “Sure.” Olivia looked him up and down. “Are you all right?”

  Grunting an affirmative, he managed to ease breath in and out at regular intervals. His humiliation was complete when the kid in front of him sat up on his knees to peer at Zach.

  “You sick, mister? I always use that bag down there.” He slithered over the back of the seat to reach for the one in front of Zach. “You’ll be okay.”

  The kid’s mom snatched him down so hard he seemed to disappear. Zach glanced at Olivia, whose close scrutiny made him feel weak.

  He waved off an offer of wine and sensed Olivia doing the same. The floor rumbled beneath them as the engines powered up and then down. Flaps opened and closed as the pilots went through their preflight checks. Zach’s mouth dried like a desert in a drought.

  He studied the stuff sticking out of the seat pocket. He might have to grab one of those bags.

  At the first hint of movement he closed his eyes. When the jet jerked backward, his sweating palms slid off the armrests. A hand closed over his. He opened his eyes, biting back a shout.

  It was Olivia, of course. She pulled his hand into her lap and deliberately threaded their fingers together. Her touch was more warmth and comfort than he’d known in six years. More than he had a right to know, considering.

  “You don’t have to pretend.” Her low, liquid voice intoxicated more quickly than strong wine. “I know about being scared. When I heard you’d died, I tried to pretend I was strong, but I was terrified my dad would fire me and throw me out. He’s terribly proud of our name, and I knew he’d be ashamed of me. I’d always lived a spoiled, easy kind of life, but food and clothing and car seats and immunizations felt beyond my reach. Can you imagine Evan or Lily going to bed hungry because you’d been foolish?”

  “Why are you telling me this?” She’d hardly been an adult herself when he’d left her pregnant and alone. Not having known didn’t seem to ease his guilt any more than it made her feel better.

  “I told you because we don’t trust each other yet.” Each word came out under strain. “I can’t forget you disappeared, and you’ve had a bad time I can’t imagine and a bad marriage that makes you think a woman can’t share a child with his father. I just learned something about you that you’d rather I hadn’t, and I thought if I gave you something equally personal, we could skip a few steps learning about each other.” She squeezed his hand with a shrug that didn’t quite look casual. “And I know how it feels to believe every breath is the last one you’re going to squeeze past the boulder on your chest.”

  He leaned toward her without turning his head. He didn’t want her to see the terror in his eyes. “Even if your father came through for you, what you faced makes my flying phobia trivial.”

  A scent, half floral, half spicy, drew his gaze as he breathed in. Her smile, astoundingly sensual, confused him entirely about what he was doing here.

  She shook her head. “I’d be afraid, too, if I’d crashed the way you did—if I felt the guilt you still feel. I won’t tell anyone. Ever.” She grinned, sharing a heaping measure of her self-confidence. “And I’d just as soon you didn’t tell my father what I said. He and I get along better when he thinks I am as strong as I pretended to be.”

  “I wish I remembered you.”

  Her eyes blinked in slow motion. Her shrug implied she might have gone further than she’d meant to.

  “And I’m glad Evan had you,” he added.

  This time she closed her eyes and averted her face. The mome
nt had turned into something neither of them intended. They’d built a connection.

  She didn’t let go. He tightened his hand, finding compassion in the fingers wrapped around his.

  AFTER THEY WERE in the air, Zach eased his hand away in a silent, “Thanks, but I don’t need any more help.”

  Just as well. His too-familiar touch had taken her back to the brief months with him that now belonged to her alone.

  Her impulse to comfort him had created an intimacy that spelled danger. She’d be crazy to let herself forget how difficult getting over him had been. She was too mature to assume they might feel something for each other because they both wanted the best care for Evan. Caution reminded her she’d only heard his side of his disagreement with Helene over Lily.

  She turned her head on the seat back to sneak a look at him. With his eyes focused on a point somewhere in his own thoughts, he was ignoring the magazine he held.

  “Will you ever remember the past?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But that day in the bank—” narrowing his gaze, he seemed to decide to trust her “—I don’t know if I remembered or responded—but I saw that guy’s gun, and I knew how to disarm him and break down the weapon.”

  “Like pictures in your head?” Before he could answer, the boy in front of them cleared his throat. He’d squeezed his face into the space between his seat and his mom’s.

  “I have one of those bags,” he said. “If you can’t find yours or his.”

  “Thanks.” She grinned. He made her count the hours till she’d be with her own son again. She glanced at Zach, who was also smiling. “We seem to be fine.”

  “My mom picks up an extra one for me before we—” The boy glanced at the seat next to him. “I’m not bugging her, Mom. She wants to talk to me.” He listened for a moment and then looked back. “She says you don’t.”

  Laughter rumbled low in Zach’s chest. Olivia couldn’t bear to look at him. She remembered that sound—how it had felt against her face when she’d lain across him, her cheek pressed to his skin. Sharp, sweet memory confounded her. She’d adored Zach with the innocence of first love. Maybe no one loved that way twice in a lifetime. She’d never felt anything half as intense again.

  The boy popped up and this time, foisted an airsick bag on Zach. “Here you go. You won’t get in trouble if you get sick in this.”

  His mother yanked the child down again, with a “Sorry” into the air.

  “Is Evan like him?” Zach’s voice startled her, moving wisps of her hair against her ear.

  She tried hard not to shiver. “Sometimes. He might be shy with you at first. He’s really polite.”

  Concern slashed a frown across his forehead. “You make it sound like he’s too polite.”

  Zach didn’t seem to sense the physical effect his closeness had on her, which was the way she hoped to keep it. “He spends a lot of time with adults.” With her, her father, and with the bodyguard who drove Evan to school after he dropped her off at work. “I wish his life was more like other little boys’.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I should have mentioned the precautions before. My father’s a little overprotective. I refused his bodyguards when I was in college,” she said. Zach sat forward, clearly worried. She tried to explain, but it sounded weird to normal people. “When I was a baby, he received kidnapping threats and he tried to protect me. After Evan was born, the crazy stuff started again—you know, crank letters that said people like me thought I could go around having bastards and buy off the decent folk who knew I was a slut. Anyway, I took the letters about Evan seriously. He’s always been around strangers who were paid to save his life. They get to be friends, but they also change jobs, so Evan deals with new people a lot.”

  “Poor kid.”

  His sympathy put her on the defensive. “I wish my son didn’t have to live like that but you didn’t see or hear the threats.”

  He lifted a hand in appeal. “I’m not criticizing you. I’m just trying to learn about Evan.” For once, he opened his eyes and bared his feelings. “Does he get attached to these guys?”

  “They haven’t all been guys. His nanny when he was a baby could probably take you out if you brought him home late or you got something wrong when you helped him with his homework.”

  His mouth tilted at the corners, creasing new lines from his mouth to his nose. He’d been young and almost too beautiful before. Now he was a man.

  “Bring the nanny on.” He mocked himself, looking self-conscious as he had when she’d held his hand on takeoff.

  Just as well he seemed clueless about her doubts. “Tell me about your ex-wife.” She needed to know about Helene for Evan’s sake, but she was also testing her feelings as she might prod at a tender wound. It smarted a little, but it wasn’t fatal.

  “We got married for the wrong reasons. It didn’t work. We don’t get along well, and she’d rather I broke contact with Lily.”

  “Why? I still don’t get that.”

  “Because you have all the money you’ll ever want. She doesn’t.” He turned a hard gaze her way. “I told you the truth before, and I’m not trying to offend you, but Helene will only see Evan when he’s with me when I’m picking up Lily or dropping her off. I don’t see why you need to know about her.”

  She didn’t intimidate easily. “I want you to be a safe man for my son to know—and eventually to love, and I don’t understand why Helene would choose money over a husband—over her child’s father.”

  “She didn’t just choose money. She traded up for the lifestyle.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “To me either.” Impatience glittered in his eyes. “But we’ve already covered this ground.”

  “I still need to talk about the changes I’m forcing on Evan. Like it or not, Helene is a big change for us.”

  “I love my daughter more than anything else in my life, and I’m prepared to love Evan as much. I’ll protect him.” His voice, almost a threat, certainly a deadly earnest promise, rode up and down her nerve endings. “But Helene isn’t a monster. She wouldn’t hurt him on purpose. She just has her own priorities. She grew up in poverty, and she believes the material advantages she gained through her new marriage offer Lily a better life than I can give her. It makes sense to her. That’s what I have to deal with.”

  “It’s no way to treat her child’s father.”

  “I hope you really mean that.”

  His heartfelt plea annoyed her. She pressed her hand to his sleeve, startled to find her fingertips tingling on bare, hair-roughened skin. “What if we both agree neither of us will lie?”

  His gaze measured her. “Deal,” he said.

  They shared silence for the rest of the flight. It didn’t feel companionable, but neither was it hostile. As the aircraft began to drift downward, Zach tensed, clasping his hands in a white-knuckled grip in his own lap. Olivia kept her comfort to herself this time. As the wheels scraped the runway, he relaxed, but even Olivia was relieved when they finally taxied to a halt.

  “As soon as we pick up our bags, I’ll bring my car around,” she said.

  “You’ll bring it?” He took her briefcase and his jacket from the flight attendant. “Thanks,” he said and then turned back to Olivia. “I have a memory problem, and I’m gutless about flying, but I’m not an invalid. If you need proof from a physical…”

  “I may have one of your physicals in my file.” She shouldered her case strap. Why let him get away with all the sarcasm? “Courtesy of Brian, my very thorough assistant who thinks there’d be fewer thieves in the world if you trained the police forces to deal with them.” She looked up sharply. “You’re not going to teach Evan any of that stuff, are you? He’ll get expelled if he beats up a classmate.”

  “You don’t have to worry.” Zach looked embarrassed. “If the guy had shot me, I’d have left Lily, and now Evan, fatherless. The consequences never occurred to me.”

  “Makes you wonder why they taught you
to disarm someone with that much violence.” She eased in front of him moving first into the aisle. “Almost as if you wouldn’t ever need to worry about asking questions later.”

  When he looked down, his height made her feel smaller, more feminine. Not too many men stood tall enough to even look her in the eye. And not one other man had made her feel vulnerable since the day she’d read Zach was supposed to be dead.

  “You sound like a reporter when you ask about my training.” He followed at her elbow, close enough to converse. “You’re not secretly planning a story?”

  “You haven’t noticed how paranoid I can be about Evan?” She grimaced. “Do you honestly think I want my son and you all over my magazine? That I want the other news outlets and the online upstarts to interview Evan about his long-lost daddy who just happens to kick bank-robbing butt for a living?”

  Zach laughed with a quick downward glance that made her feel overdressed in khaki gabardine and her black broadcloth blazer. “The word ‘butt’ sounds odd coming from you.” At her annoyed frown, he laughed again. His rich laughter had always been a sinful treat, but memories of naked play and sweet, sweet affection to the music of his voice unnerved her. He’d been generous with his laughter and his loving.

  “It’s not that funny.” She pulled away to reclaim her own space, but not far enough to provoke more discord between them. “We’d better move.”

  She hurried up the jetway, anxious to get home to Evan, but also reluctant to feel foolish in front of Zach. By the time she reached the gate, she’d begun to regain her poise, but suddenly their situation took a turn for the dire. Amid the throng waiting for her fellow passengers, one man stood out.

  Almost as tall as Zach, elbow-to-elbow with his own two bodyguards, James Kendall craned his dark brown head to catch a glimpse of her. He didn’t seem to notice the stares everyone else directed at his famous face.

  “Dad.” Her father must have read her lips. He offered her a regal nod.