Ty from his playpen. She bent down and scooped him and kissed his little head. She hugged him close and closed her eyes, pretending that the next few minutes weren’t going to completely change their world. But there was no denying it.
As they returned to the back porch, Ty became talkative. “Hi, man,” Ty said, from her shoulder.
“Cam, this is Ty.”
Cam looked at Ty and then back at her. And then back at Ty again. She saw in his face … he knew there was something familiar about Ty.
“Hi, Ty.”
Cam turned to face them both and held out his hand. Ty reached for it and tugged on his finger and then squirmed to get down. He could walk and crawl and really liked being independent.
She bent over to set him down, and he immediately toddled over to Cam. He held on to Cam’s leg and looked up at him.
Cam ruffled her son’s hair. “I don’t know if it is because the last baby I was this close to was Nate, but he reminds me a little of my brother.”
Becca felt as if her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. This would be the perfect moment to tell him why. “Well, it’s funny you should say that—”
But his phone started ringing, and he pulled the BlackBerry out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen and then back at her.
“I have to take this. Do you mind?”
She shook her head and walked over to scoop up her son. She felt odd. She’d almost told him the most important bit of news he could hope to get and then business—work—had interrupted. Maybe that was a sign, she thought.
“I’ll go get changed and be back in a minute,” she said, walking away.
She had to remind herself that when she’d considered calling Cam and telling him that they were going to have a child, she’d decided not to because he just didn’t seem like the type of man to want a family.
Their relationship had just been something to get them through the hot Miami nights. She knew that she was partially to blame for that. On some level, it had been exactly what she’d needed from him during that time. He hadn’t been ready for anything else, and she knew that because she’d bared her soul to him and he’d told her to hit the road.
There were moments when she still wasn’t sure she believed she was a mom. She still didn’t believe that her life had taken this unexpected turn and she was where she was today.
But she did want a new start. A part of her did want a partner to share the rest of her life with. And she and Cam did have sexual chemistry in their favor. One thing that Becca had figured out about herself over the last two years was that she missed sex and having a man in her life.
She entered her bedroom and set Ty on the floor while she quickly changed into some nice caramel-colored trousers and a light blue sweater. She put her hair up in a chignon after she washed her face and applied her makeup. Looking in the mirror, she thought she seemed normal enough, but inside she was a mess.
She sat down in the large padded armchair in the corner of her room. It had been her mother’s, and sitting there often made Becca feel closer to her.
“What am I going to do?” she asked out loud.
“Mama?”
She glanced over at Ty, who was walking slowly toward her, then decided crawling would be faster and dropped to all fours. “Yes, baby?”
“Where man go?”
She bent over and picked him up, holding him on her lap. “He’s still out there making us breakfast.”
Becca tried to talk in full sentences to Ty even though she wasn’t sure he always understood things. She kissed his soft forehead and felt such joy, love and comfort just from holding him. She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.
Her own mother had kept her father’s identity from Becca until Becca was eleven. But her father hadn’t been a very successful man, and it hadn’t been easy for Becca to locate him. In fact, she’d searched more than once for him but never found a trace.
And that had left an emptiness inside of her. Something no amount of soul-searching or club-joining could fill.
There had been other kids of divorced parents at her school, but she’d been the only one who hadn’t known her father. Heck, she never even knew his real name.
She didn’t want that for Ty. Not when she had an opportunity to give him a father—his real father. She’d have to do it, she thought.
She stood up and walked out the door with a purpose. Cam Stern was going to learn the truth about Ty today, and then she’d deal with the consequences because she wanted her son to have everything that she’d never had.
She wanted him to go to good schools and have new bikes and nice friends. But she also wanted him to have a father. To have a man who’d play catch with him and talk to him. And teach him to drive to someday. And she wasn’t going to find a better man than the one who had unknowingly sired him.
Cam was still on the phone when she came out of the bedroom but looked up at her when he saw them. He smiled and then wrapped up his conversation. And despite her determination to tell Cam the truth, her determination to ensure that Ty had a relationship with his father, she faltered. Because she knew that Cam would never again look at her the way he did right now once she told him the truth.
Cam finished up his call. There was no way that Ty wasn’t his child. He looked just like Nate and had the same cowlick that Cam himself had. But how was that possible? He wasn’t a man who left things like that to chance.
Becca came back into the room holding the baby, and Cam waited to see how she would proceed. He was angry that she’d kept his son from him, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.
“I’m so glad our paths were brought back together. I felt like we had unfinished business after the way things ended,” Becca said. “In fact I have something important to talk to you about.”
“That sounds very cryptic.”
“I hope that once I tell you … there’s no easy way for me to say what I have to, Cam. I want you to know that the last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you.”
“I repeat—that sounds very cryptic,” he said. He glanced again at the boy.
“Oh, man, there is no easy way to say this.”
“Just do it,” he said.
“Yes. Um … sit down,” she said.
As soon as he sat down, she popped up and paced away from him.
She shoved her fingers into her hair and pulled. “You’re his father, Cam. I got pregnant when we were together.”
“What?” he asked.
“You are Ty’s father,” she said. There—it was out in the open, and now they could discuss it like two mature adults.
“I
