Another Woman's Son (Harlequin Romance) Page 9

  ISABEL OUTFOXED him. While he was making Tony’s cereal, he heard a faint sound that turned out to be the front door opening and then closing.

  He dialed her cell phone number. She didn’t answer. That stung.

  He stirred warm milk into the cereal until it formed the pastelike consistency Tony liked. His hand shook.

  “Dad-dee!” Tony’s morning bellow.

  “Coming, son.” He ran up the stairs to fly his boy out of the crib. They ate breakfast and finished dressing as the Deavers rang the bell. With Tony perched on one arm, Ben opened the door. George reached for his grandson. Amelia tucked an orange scarf into her beige overcoat. The first time she hadn’t worn black.

  “Hey.” He let Tony go to George.

  “Hello, my bunny.” Amelia kissed the baby’s nose. “Shall we see some of those rocks you like so much?”

  “Rocks,” Tony said with a couple of extra r’s. He opened his hand and closed it, reaching for the stairs. “Iz-bell?”

  “Where is Isabel today?” Amelia glanced over Ben’s shoulder. “Still asleep?”

  “I think she already left to work on the house.” Ben stood aside to let them in. Amelia came inside. George looked surprised. “In fact,” Ben said, “I thought I’d help her while you all are downtown. We could make some good progress today.”

  “Sounds like a great idea,” Amelia said. “Tony loves the Natural History museum. By the time we see all of it and have lunch on the Mall, he’ll be ready for a long nap.”

  “Lunch outside in this cold?” With the door open, the wind blew at him with a knife’s edge.

  “Calm down, Ben. We won’t risk our little guy. If it’s too cold we’ll eat inside one of the museums.” George opened the closet door with Tony on his shoulder. “Where’s your coat, buddy?”

  Tony wriggled around to question Ben. “Iz-bell?” He pointed at the stairs again. “Iz-bell,” he said, his small voice raising.

  “Not here right now,” Ben said. “She’ll come back tonight.”

  “Help me with his coat, Amelia.” While she helped George, Ben ran upstairs and packed a bag with extra diapers and juice boxes. He tried to give the Deavers money for Tony’s lunch, but they looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. They’d probably fed him a time or two in the days before Ben had become so paranoid about anyone else doing anything for his son.

  Distracted because he couldn’t get Isabel and the letter out of his head, he put Tony’s car seat in the back of George’s car. Tony peered over George’s shoulder as the older man tried to buckle him in.

  “Let me do that, George.”

  “We’re fine,” George said. He tickled his grandson and Tony giggled, relaxing in his seat. Ben gripped the door frame, trying to ignore second thoughts about sending his child off with the two people who were most likely to try to take him.

  He struggled with his own instincts. Keeping his son away from the Deavers would make them ask why. His laughing son caught and held Ben’s gaze. He’d been a loving father. He’d changed diapers and walked him when he was sick, and he’d sung his half of the nightly lullabies.

  He’d tried to work out his problems with Faith, thinking a loving husband was a good example to set. He couldn’t cut Tony’s grandparents out of his life. A boy needed all the love due to him.

  Ben walked Amelia to the front passenger seat. She took his hand.

  “You don’t think something in Will’s letter upset Isabel?”

  He went blank. “I do,” he finally said, though his first impulse was to lie again so she wouldn’t worry or ask herself what the letter contained. How the hell did a man keep up with lie after lie? “It was probably the letter itself. She only left Will three months ago. That’s hardly time to get over a bad cold, much less a seven-year marriage.”

  Amelia rested her hand on the car door. “She didn’t tell you anything?”

  Nothing she’d want him to share. “Trust her, Amelia. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.” God, he hoped not. He released the door. “You have my cell phone number?”

  Amelia teared up. “Faith used to ask me that every time she left Tony with me.”

  He opened his mouth to ask when Faith had left Tony with Amelia. As far as he knew, she’d only gone to visit her mother to make sure Tony had family time.

  Amelia might mean that Faith had left Tony with her while she’d gone out with friends or something equally innocent. He couldn’t ask without looking foolish—maybe even suspicious—but he searched his memory for times when Faith and Will had both been out of town. If he could live the past three years over again, he’d start by opening his eyes.

  “Time to roll, honey,” George said, across the roof.

  Amelia smiled at her husband and then hugged Ben before she climbed into her seat. “We’ll take good care of Tony.”

  They were gone before he could unclench his fists. Lucky he’d stayed behind. By now, he’d have been grilling Amelia for dates and times.

  He went back inside and cleaned up the breakfast things. After he finished, he took a last look at the sink and the chrome and reflective granite. He’d never made the kitchen shine to Faith’s satisfaction.

  He threw the dish towel on the counter and turned his back on the room. A few minutes later, he was on his way to Isabel’s house. She looked surprised to see him when she answered her door.

  “Where’s Tony?”

  “Your parents took him to the Smithsonian. I’m here to do whatever you need.” And also shadow you until I know whether guilt over keeping your parents in the dark is getting to you.

  Her expression begged him to be honest.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “The usual. I don’t entirely trust you.” She stopped with a smile more cynical than he’d ever seen. “Don’t look hurt. You know you have ulterior motives for hanging around me.”

  “And they would be?”

  “You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Even if I didn’t love you and Tony, I’d owe you because I didn’t warn you after Will told me about him and Faith.” She searched him, head to toe, with a look. “I can’t figure out what I have that you want. Something you can’t tell me about.”

  She might just as well have banged his soul with a hammer. Guilt made him wish he was a better man.

  “Aren’t you holding any grudges, Isabel?”

  “Against you? For what?” Her soft smile held sorrow. “Are you still angry with me?”

  “No.” At least he could be honest about that. “But I’m not over what happened.”

  “Every time I look at Tony, I’m torn. I should have done something to help you three months ago. Then I wonder if my parents need to know about Will.”

  “Why?” His heart threatened to stop. And then it seemed to pound so fast he could barely hear over the blood rushing through his veins. “What possible good could knowing do them?”

  Isabel locked the door. “I can’t see them trying to take him from you, but I wonder how Tony will accept the news if he finds out when he’s older. How would you feel if your father and your aunt lied about who you were all your life?”

  “He’s my son. He’s never belonged to any other man.”

  “You’re right about that.” She looked angry now. “What kind of man would refuse to acknowledge him?”

  Suddenly, he couldn’t talk about Tony. He felt the cold grasp of panic when he thought too hard about Faith and Will and their plans.

  “Are you still going back to Middleburg after you sell the house?” he asked.

  Concern shadowed her eyes, but she let him change the subject. “I need a job, but hiding out in Middleburg doesn’t seem like such a smart idea after all. This house isn’t right, either, but I’ve loved living in this area.”

  “The sale price should give you a start anyplace.” He should hope she’d go far away and leave him in greater peace with his son. Instead, he tried to imagine life without Isabel at the end of a short drive, and he didn’t care for his sense of loss.


  She led him to the living room, half denuded of knickknacks and paintings. The hall echoed without the runner she’d rolled into a wool cylinder. “You sure you want to help?”

  “That’s why I came.”

  Her qualms hit him full force. Without facing the truth, they weren’t really talking, but it was easier to ignore the argument that could split them up forever.

  “All that stuff in the corner gets boxed up for Leah. The new boxes should arrive any minute.”

  He noted a smaller pile of objects on a side table. Framed photos. Will’s diplomas. “What’s all this?” He’d be happy to set the stack on fire.

  Her reluctance warned him. “They’re for Tony.” She apologized with a shrug. “Someday, if you think he should have them.”

  “If I tell him Will was his real father?”

  “His birth father. You might change your mind by the time Tony’s old enough to know.” She waved at the diplomas as if she didn’t care about them at all. “Or if you’d honestly prefer it, we can destroy them,” she said. “Or send them to Leah. You don’t have to decide now.”

  “You haven’t had a child—you can’t know how I feel when I contemplate losing him.”

  Isabel’s broken smile reminded him how much she’d wanted a baby of her own. With an index finger, she pushed the top frame farther into the center of the table.

  “I threw them in the trash when I started cleaning his office this morning.” Lifting her face, she looked naked and young and vulnerable. “Throwing them away made me feel better.

  “I’m glad.” He pulled her close, and she put her arms around him. Her body, alive, warm, responsive to his affection, gave him comfort though he’d reached for her to ease her suffering.

  “But I only felt better for a second,” she said, and then laughed, mocking herself. “Maybe more than a few seconds. I thought, what if Ben tells Tony who Will really was to him? Tony will want information.”

  “I’ll never tell him.”

  “Secrets don’t seem to stay kept,” she said. “Or you and I wouldn’t be dumbfounded that Faith and Will had an eighteen-month-old son.”

  “We wanted to believe in them. That’s half the battle.”

  “You know what the worst thing is?” She pushed away from him. “Sometimes, when I first wake up and remember everything’s changed, I almost—almost—wish I could still believe. Nobody else on earth would have any claim to Tony. You and I might not be perfectly happy, but we’d be muddling along, trying to make the best of our marriages.”

  He hated to think of Isabel settling for a husband who’d wasted her life the way Will had. “I’ve been irritated because you seem impervious to what happened.”

  “I’m determined to win. Faith and Will are not going to change me for the worse.”

  Ben almost said, “But I might.” Forcing her to lie. Putting his own desperate need above her feelings.

  “Can I say one more thing?” Sunlight, through a sheer, pale curtain, lightened her hair.

  He nodded, because he couldn’t speak over sudden awareness that seemed to suffocate him. His palms burned. He saw himself touching her hair, smoothing the lines from her worried frown.

  “You don’t know yourself as well as I know you,” Isabel said. “You’re man enough to wait until Tony’s older before you get rid of Will’s things. You can decide what to do with them after you give up the idea of revenge.”

  “I have changed.” He was trying to tell her who he’d become—he’d hurt even her if his life with Tony depended on it.

  “Not that much. You’ll love someone else someday, and you’ll make room for her in your life and Tony’s.”

  “I’m never going to change my mind about Tony, Isabel. Give up any hopes you have about that.”

  She shook her head, and light followed the strands of her hair. When she looked at him with such confidence, he almost believed in the future she saw. “We’ll both love someone eventually and we’ll trust them because that’s who you and I are.”

  His head went back as if she’d slapped him. “Not a chance,” came out of his mouth.

  Isabel waved both hands dismissively, as if he were talking nonsense. Her wedding rings twinkled on her fingers. She noticed them at the same moment.

  She turned her hand over and stared at the rings. Then she pulled them off and opened a drawer on a fragile table beside the couch. She dropped the jewelry in and slammed it shut.

  “I’m going to love again. I want children of my own, and I intend to be happy. I’ll make myself trust a man if it kills me.”

  “How do you plan to do all that?”

  “I deserve real love and so do you.”

  “What we deserve and what we get are obviously two different things. Why don’t you know that?”

  “Don’t put any more pictures of Will and Faith in my head.” She pressed her fists to her temples, and her sweater outlined her breasts in loving curves. Its hem skimmed the top of her jeans, revealing a hint of hip bone.

  His body grew heavy. He turned his back on her. He had no right to think of Isabel like that.

  “I’m sorry, Ben.” She went on, unaware he’d lost the ability to form words. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.” If he tried to explain, she’d consider him as twisted as Will and Faith. He’d held her—kissed her—maybe a thousand times without ever wanting more. What made today different?

  The doorbell rang. He almost leaped across the couch and the console table behind it. “I’ll get that.”

  A man from a packing store had brought more boxes and wrapping paper. Ben helped him carry everything inside.

  By the time they were alone again, he’d regained his sense of right and wrong. They worked, shared a delivered pizza, and then worked a few hours longer with no more drama.

  Ben tried not to think of the morning’s strange revelations. He was a man. Men wanted women. It didn’t have to go further than that.

  Isabel finally gave up for the day after they’d culled any object Leah had ever given her from every room in the house. He helped her box them, grateful for the physical exertion. Then he called the delivery service to schedule a morning pickup.

  “This will cost a fortune,” he said as they surveyed the boxes they’d stacked in the entry.

  “Worth every penny.”

  “I could drive you up with them.”

  “I’m in no mood to see Leah, and this will keep her in Philadelphia while she inventories it to make sure I haven’t held anything back.” That sounded about right for Leah.

  “Legally, this stuff belongs to you.”

  “Not in my eyes or hers. She made up some story about forcing me to put up with her because I wouldn’t believe she wanted to stay in touch.” Isabel patted the top of the nearest box. “I believe a mixture of her words and deeds. She might think I’m her last physical connection with Will, but she wants her family possessions back, too.”

  “And you think this woman makes a good grandmother for Tony?”

  Isabel smoothed tape on the box and looked uncomfortable. “There’s a higher morality, you know. When I put myself in Leah’s place, I don’t know that we have a right to keep her last blood relative away from her.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “She can be a little crazy and vindictive. I know she wasn’t a picture-perfect mom for Will, but she loved him—maybe the best she could—and Tony is part of him, whether you and I like it or not.”

  Being reminded of Will’s actual role in Tony’s birth made him imagine Will and Faith together. When he added the fear of losing his son, he couldn’t stand it.

  But Isabel had nothing to do with Will and Faith’s lies. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I keep trying to make you admit I’m right because I want to feel safe.”

  “I believe we’re doing the right thing, but I’m not sure we should be doing it.”

  He took her hand. “I need to know you’re on my side—t
hat we’d both risk anything for Tony.”

  She shook her head. Her hair brushed her shoulders, releasing a scent uniquely Isabel, woman and a hint of perfume no chemist had ever formulated. “Mom and Dad are my family, too, Ben. And Leah has been my mother-in-law. I’m doing what you asked, but I have doubts.”

  “I don’t care about morality. I want my son safe and happy, and I won’t give him up.”

  “The truth is hanging over his head. It could come out because of an illness, if his blood type is incompatible with yours. It could come out if my mother finds a note between Will and Faith where they talk about Tony.”

  He shuddered. Time for him to search his own home, top to bottom. “Even if you’re right, I won’t admit that I was not Tony’s father.”

  “I guess that’s it.” Obviously troubled, she turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll get my things, and we can lock up. Put on your coat.”

  “I have to stop on the way home for groceries and diapers.”

  He pushed his arms into his coat sleeves, but in his head, he walked down that long hall at Isabel’s side. He and his son had spent so much of their lives with her.

  He kept telling himself Tony was enough for him. He could lie to the Deavers and Leah about Tony’s birth father till doomsday. Hell, he’d lie to the courts if it came to that.

  But he couldn’t lie to himself. Someday, Isabel would be forced to choose sides, and he didn’t want to lose her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN FRONT OF HER, Ben’s car peeled away from the curb and started to fishtail. Fear grabbed her by the stomach and gave a shake, but then the ice lost its grip and he straightened out.

  She bested an almost physical need to call and warn him not to scare her with his driving when Faith and Will had died that way. She’d scolded him enough for one night.

  He had her all confused. She’d felt like such a fool when she’d discovered Faith’s and Will’s lies, and yet she couldn’t imagine how Tony would feel losing Ben, on top of his mother and uncle’s death.