it then.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She pressed her lips together, holding in the hot denials that rose to her lips. What good would denials do? He didn’t believe her and she had no right to imagine that he should.
He said, “Why Monday? Why did you think you had to wait? Why not any one of those times you saw me after you got into town? Why not that night you came out here with Brody, that night we talked for hours about everything but the one thing that mattered most. Why not then?”
“It wouldn’t have been right, not with Brody there. And I had planned from the first to wait until after the wedding. I wanted Lena to have her big day. If the story got out, I was afraid it might ruin things for her.”
He shook his head. “Excuses,” he said. “That’s all you’ve got for me, isn’t it?”
“No. That’s not so. There are no excuses and I know there aren’t. But you asked. So I answered you. I came here, back to town, for two reasons. My sister’s wedding—and you. I planned to stay an extra week after the wedding was over. That week was so I’d have plenty of time to see you, to tell you what you had a right to know. I had it all worked out. Once the wedding was over, I’d get in touch with you, meet you someplace private and tell you that you had a son. I assumed I’d have zero contact with you until it was time to say what needed saying. How was I to know I’d run into you the minute I drove into town. How was I to know I’d keep running into you? How was I to know that I…” She faltered.
He prodded, “That you, what?”
Her cheeks burned with a sudden, hot blush. “Look. It doesn’t matter.”
He wouldn’t let it be. “What? How were you to know what?”
“It doesn’t—”
“What?”
She shut her eyes. It didn’t help. When she opened them again, he was still there. Waiting, his square jaw set and his brown eyes hard as agates. She told him, very quietly, “How was I to know that I would find myself falling for you all over again? That one look at you and I’d feel like I felt back in high school, that I’d be mooning around, longing for a glance from you, a gentle word. A sweet, tender kiss.”
She looked away, toward the tall windows that flanked a glass door and a deep back porch. It was beautiful out there, so green and lush. She wished she could leap up, fling open the door, race down the porch steps and run across that long slope of thick lawn—run and run and never stop. She faced him again, her heart squeezing tight inside her chest. It hurt—a thousand times worse than the needles poking into her brow—to look at him. So big and handsome, with his sexy full mouth, that sun-kissed brown hair and those gorgeous dark eyes—eyes that seemed to bore through her, a mouth set against her.
“I didn’t like it,” she said flatly. “I didn’t like being so strongly attracted to you after all these years. That’s the honest, unvarnished truth, whether you’re able to believe me or not. I didn’t expect it and it confused me, terribly, to find myself still wanting you after all this time. I thought I had grown out of you. But since I’ve been back in town, I’m a mixed-up teenager all over again. I’ve made the same bad choices I made back when. I messed things up royally, the same way I did when we were kids.”
“So that’s what I am to you. A bad choice?”
“That’s not what I said. You’re twisting my words.”
“You amaze me. You are one piece of work. You’re attracted to me. And that’s why you kept my son from me all over again. And somehow, you’ve got the idea that your telling me this will get you off the hook now?”
“I didn’t say I thought it would get me off the hook. I never said that.” She had to actively resist the need to bring her hand to her forehead, to press the bandage that covered the now-throbbing gash.
“Good,” he said, “Because you’re not off the hook, Lori. Not for this. You never will be.”
She folded her hands in her lap—good and tight—and looked down at them, hard. “Gotcha.” She faced him. “So how about this? We tell Brody right away that you’re his father. Then we can—”
“No.”
Had she heard wrong? “Wait a minute. You don’t want to tell him?”
“Not yet.”
“But he—”
“You said it yourself. He thinks of that husband of yours as his father. He’s mentioned him to me. More than once. It’s ‘my dad,’ this and ‘Dad used to’ that. Whatever I think of the man who knowingly tried to steal my son from me, I’m not going to—”
It was too much. “Tucker. Stop. I understand that you’re angry—beyond angry, even. And I know that you have every right to be. But Henry was a good father to Brody. A damn good father. You’ve said yourself what a great kid Brody is. A great kid doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
“Exactly,” he said.
And her mouth almost dropped open. “You…agree with me?”
“Yeah.” He agreed. She could hardly believe it. It was a first, for this particular conversation. “Brody’s a hell of a kid and that husband of yours did a bang-up job with him. I want to give Brody time to accept me in his life, to get used to the idea that I’m going to be around from now on.”
In spite of all the hard things he’d said to her, at that moment, she felt so sad for him. He really didn’t know his son at all.
And whose fault was that?
Hers. The fault was all hers.
“Tucker,” she said carefully. “Give Brody a little credit. He’s really so smart and…down to earth. He’s already gotten to know you. He thinks you’re terrific. You can tell him, now. He can take it.”
“No.” He gave her a look, dead-on and imperious. Never before had he reminded her of Ol’ Tuck. But at that moment, he did. He said in a tone both flat and final, “It’s too soon.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“Think what you want. It’s my decision.” He said it as if it didn’t even occur to him that she might dare to go against him.
Ol’ Tuck. Definitely. Way too much like Ol’ Tuck.
And he was right. It was his decision. She wouldn’t go against him, not about this. He had the right to tell Brody in his own way and his own time.
She suggested, with care, “How can I help you, to get to know your son?”
He nodded, a regal dip of his head. “Yeah. It’s time we talked specifics.”
Her heart was racing again. And her palms had gone clammy. She feared the worst. That he’d say he was suing her for custody, that he’d demand she turn Brody over to him.
If he did that, all that would be left for them was an ugly legal battle, with Brody at
