us some real embarrassment. But her mother knew what was going on.”
“That would have upset her,” K.C. said. “She was deeply religious. Having you play around with her teenage daughter wasn’t going to endear you to her, especially with the reputation you had in those days for discarding women right and left.”
“I know.” Rourke looked down at the floor. “That one taste of Tat was like finding myself in paradise. I wanted her. Not for just a night. I couldn’t think straight, but my mind was running toward a future, not relief.”
He hesitated. “But her mother didn’t realize that. I can’t really blame her. She knew I was a rake. She probably thought I’d seduce Tat and leave her in tears.”
“That could have happened,” K.C. said.
“Not a chance.” Rourke’s one eye pinned him. “A girl like that, beautiful and kind...” He turned away. He drew in a long breath. “Her mother took me to one side, later. She was crying. She said that she’d seen you one night at your house, upset and sick at heart because a woman you loved was becoming a nun. She said she had a drink with you, and another drink, and then, something happened. She said Tat was the result.”
“She actually told you that Tat was your half sister? Damn the woman!”
Rourke felt the same way, but he was too drained to say it. He stared at his drink. “She told me that. So I turned against Tat, taunted her, pushed her away. I made her into something little better than a prostitute by being cruel to her. And now I learn, eight years too late, that it was all for a lie. That I was protecting her from something that wasn’t even real.”
He fought tears. They played hell with the wounded eye, because it still had some tear ducts. He turned away from the older man, embarrassed.
K.C. bit his lip. He put a rough hand on Rourke’s shoulder and patted it. “I’m sorry.”
Rourke swallowed. He tipped the last of the whiskey into his mouth. “Ya,” he said in a choked tone. “I’m sorry, too. Because there’s no way in hell I can tell her I believed that about her mother. Or that I can undo eight years of torment that I gave her.”
“You’ve had a shock,” K.C. said. “And you really are jet-lagged. It would be a good idea if you just let things lie for a few days.”
“You think?”
“Rourke,” he said hesitantly. “The story she told you was true,” he began.
“What! You just said it wasn’t...!”
K.C. pushed him back down on the sofa. “It was true, but it wasn’t Tat’s mother.” He turned away. “It was your mother.”
There was a terrible stillness in the room.
K.C. moved to the window and stared out at the African darkness with his hands in his pockets.
“I got drunk because Mary Luke Bernadette chose a veil instead of me. I loved her, deathlessly. It’s why I never married. She’s still alive and, God help me, I still love her. She lives near my godchild, her late sister’s only living child. I told you about Kasie, she married into the Callister family in Montana. Mary Luke lives in Billings.”
“I remember,” Rourke said quietly.
He closed his eyes. “Your mother saw what I was doing to myself. She tried to comfort me. She had a few drinks with me and things...happened. She was ashamed, I was ashamed...her husband was the best friend I ever had. How could we tell him what we’d done? So we kept our secret, tormented ourselves with what happened in a minute of insanity. Nine months later, to the day, you were born.”
“You said...you weren’t sure,” Rourke bit off.
“I wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t have the guts to have the test done.” He turned, a tiger, bristling. “Go ahead. Laugh!”
Rourke got up, a little shakily. It had been a shocking night. “Why don’t you have the guts?” he asked.
“Because I want it to be true,” he said through his teeth. He looked at Rourke with pain in his light eyes, terrible pain. “I betrayed my best friend, seduced your mother. I deserve every damned terrible thing that ever happens to me. But more than anything in the world, I want to be your father.”
Rourke felt the wetness in his eyes, but this time he didn’t hide it.
K.C. jerked him into his arms and hugged him, and hugged him. His eyes were wet, too. Rourke clung to him. All the long years, all the companionship, the shared moments. He’d wanted it, too. There wasn’t a man alive who compared to the one holding him. He respected him. But, more, he loved him.
K.C. pulled back abruptly and turned away, shaking his head to get rid of the moisture in his eyes. He shoved his hands back into his slacks.
“Don’t we have a doctor on staff?” Rourke asked after a minute.
“Ya.”
“Then let’s find out for sure,” Rourke said.
K.C. turned after a minute, looking at the face that was his face, the elegant carriage that he knew from his own mirror.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Rourke said. “And so are you.”
K.C. cocked his head and grimaced as he looked at Rourke’s face.
“What?”
“You’re going to have a hell of a bruise,” K.C. said with obvious regret.
Rourke just smiled sheepishly. “No problem. It’s not a bad thing to discover that your old man can still handle himself,” he chuckled.
K.C. glowed.
Rourke spent the night getting drunk. He was out of his mind from his father’s revelations. Tat had loved him. He’d pushed her away, for her own good, but in doing so, he’d damaged her so badly that he’d turned her into little better than a call girl.
He remembered her in Barrera, her blouse soaked in blood that even a washing hadn’t removed, the stitches just above one of her perfect small breasts where that animal, Miguel, had cut her trying to extract information about General Emilio Machado’s invasion of the country.
Rourke had killed Miguel. He’d done it coldly, efficiently. Then he and Carson, a fellow merc in the group that helped Machado liberate Barrera, had carried the body to a river filled with crocodiles and tossed it in. He hadn’t felt a twinge of remorse. The man had tortured Tat. He would probably have raped her if another of Arturo Sapara’s men hadn’t intervened. Tat, with scars like the ones he carried, with memories of torture. He closed his eyes and shuddered. He’d protected her most of her life. But he’d let that happen to her. It was almost beyond bearing.
He got up, nude, and poured himself another whiskey. He almost never drank hard liquor, but it wasn’t every day that a man faced the ruin of his own
