mouth curved. She’d sensed his presence even before Connor had reached the bottom of the stairs.
Funny how someone who had been such a huge part of her life once had vanished from her mind for those long, lonely months she’d spent groping for her lost memory. Lacy would have sworn that nothing would have been able to erase Connor O’Hara from her thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t as indelibly imprinted there as she’d once believed. She hadn’t even recognized him when he’d first come into the diner.
As she looked back now, that astounded her, amnesia or no amnesia. So much of her heart had been and still was tangled up with Connor.
It always would be, she thought, now that she had Chase.
Spooning some more cereal past her son’s very messy lips, she smiled. This felt so right. She blessed all the books on early child rearing she’d devoured once she knew of her condition. At least there would be no awkwardness with her son the way there was with his father.
She glanced over her shoulder at Connor. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. Was that because of her? Or was it just because of everything that had happened last night?
She told herself not to nurse any false hopes. She’d been that route before and been sorely disappointed. “You’re not exactly invisible, you know. Why didn’t you just come into the kitchen? There’s certainly room enough.”
There was room enough in the kitchen for a minor convention. Megan—his mother, he amended—liked it that way, he’d heard. Enough room for everyone in the family to gather and bring a friend if they felt like it. Megan considered the kitchen the heart of the house. As if such things were possible, he thought, dismissing the notion as foolish.
Connor shrugged. “You seemed busy with Chase, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Letting Chase feed himself a finger of toast, she turned to look at Connor squarely. God, but she did love this man, no matter what. She knew she always would. But that was her problem, not his.
“You’re not,” she told him briskly, then softened. He did look like thirty miles of bad road, but even so, he was as handsome as they came. “He’s yours as well as mine. He wouldn’t be here right now if not for you—twice over,” she added, her mouth curving in a whimsical smile.
Last night had been a team effort. There was no way he could have gotten Chase away safely if not for Jake, Michael and Garrett.
“I didn’t do that much. The others— Oh.” The full impact of her words finally hit him. She meant fathering Chase. “Yes, well…”
His voice trailed off, led away by fragments of memory that drifted in then faded again, incomplete. He paused, grappling with questions, with things that needed clearing up.
The time, he decided, was probably never going to be more right than now. If he didn’t ask, the opportunity would only drift further and further away from him.
He moved so that he was beside her and could see her face when she spoke.
Connor shoved his hands into his jeans. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She raised her eyes to look at him. “About Chase. Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant when you found out, and that the baby you were carrying was mine?” Against his will, he remembered the single night they’d shared. How soft, how delicate she’d felt in his arms. Like a dream that had descended to earth for the duration of dusk to dawn.
Her hand tightening on the spoon, Lacy unconsciously raised her chin. She pretended to be completely engrossed in feeding Chase, coaxing another spoonful of food between his lips. “I didn’t want you to think I wanted anything from you.”
“I could have helped you with the bills—”
Her face clouded. Didn’t he understand what she was saying? It wasn’t his money she’d wanted or needed. It was his love. And that she couldn’t have, so the rest never mattered.
“I didn’t want that.”
He pulled a chair around, straddling it so that he faced her. She wasn’t making any sense. “Yet you left the baby on the steps of the hospital because you couldn’t take care of him.”
She flinched at the accusation in his voice. It was something she’d berated herself for a hundred times over.
“I’ll never forgive myself for that.” Her voice was solemn, hollow. “But it was one unpardonable moment of weakness, because Janelle was after me and I was afraid she’d hurt the baby.” She bit her lip. She’d been desperate, with nowhere to turn, her back to the wall. “Still, there was no excuse for doing it that way.”
Frustrated, he dragged his hand through his hair. That wasn’t the point. The torment in her eyes sparked his guilt. Damn it, it wasn’t his intention to make her blame herself. “I didn’t mean—God knows you paid for that.”
“Not enough.” Lacy blinked back tears that had suddenly risen to her eyes. She could have lost Chase forever. She looked at the face of her son. The wide, happy grin was smeared with custard-colored cereal. With the edge of his bib, she wiped the stains away. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to him—if I can.”
Damn it, why wasn’t this coming out right? He wasn’t trying to accuse her of anything, just trying to get to the bottom of her reasoning, or what passed for it. “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”
But she shook her head, refusing to accept absolution. “If something had happened to him, I couldn’t be hard enough to make up for that—”
He sighed. They were veering off track. “Lacy— I had a right to know.”
Her eyes met his for a moment before she began feeding Chase again.
“Yes, you did,” she replied quietly. “I know that now and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I didn’t want to spring a baby on you, not after what you’d told me. If you recall, at the time you said things like we weren’t right for each other and that I deserved someone who could give me a family. Something you made quite clear you weren’t willing to do. That’s why I believed that letter Janelle gave me, claiming you wrote it. The one that gave me the brush-off.”
“This isn’t about Janelle. She duped both of us, not to mention the family and she’s going to be made to pay for everything she’s done. I wouldn’t have left you a note, but in a way…”
“In a way?” She prodded him, feeling the heat of anger rising within her.
This wasn’t coming out right. Talking wasn’t his long suit. He was just thinking of Lacy. “Forty-five’s a little old to start all over again.”
Age was just a number to her. Other factors meant so much more. “Only if you want it to be. Twenty-five’s old if the circumstances arrange themselves that way.”
She was trying not to let her temper get the best of her, but it was becoming very hard not to give in. Connor had deliberately turned his back on something wonderful because of a number.
“The trick is not to let it be. The real trick is to want something so much that age or any other obstacle has nothing to do with it and isn’t allowed to get in your way.” She shrugged, telling herself it didn’t matter. Knowing
