Like that one that came across my desk last week full of glowing praise for Hannah’s Hope and the gala?”
That was precisely what he’d been thinking of. Only he could hardly admit that now.
“As if it wasn’t obvious from the—” A sound—something soft hitting the floor upstairs—stopped her midsentence and wiped all trace of amusement from her face. She glanced at her watch. “Your time’s up, Max. I’ve heard you out. I’ll think about what you said. Really, I will.” She was suddenly reasonable, her tone conciliatory. “I promise.” She stood and walked to the door, opening it. “Just go.”
Max rose slowly. Something had thrown her off her stride, put that fear back into the eyes that were now fixed on him as she waited for him to move. Willed him to move? Watching her, he walked toward her. She turned and headed out of the room. By the time he caught up to her she was standing at the front door, holding it wide to reveal the morning sunshine.
He paused.
She opened the door wider still.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Gillian.”
“Yes it does.” Her words were clipped. “I do my job as I see fit.”
“I wasn’t talking about your job. I was speaking … personally. We were rivals once and still managed—”
“I learned my lesson and now I keep my personal and my professional lives separate. So, please, just go. Now.” She reached for him, her fingers closing around his arm, as though to urge him through the doorway.
Max stayed where he was, her desperation making him curious. Something wasn’t right here. Did she have a man back there, someone she didn’t want him to see?
Another soft thump and he looked deeper into the house to where it had come from.
“Max,” she hissed his name and tugged his arm. “Not now.” Panic tightened her voice.
Max gave it up and took a step. He wasn’t going to care. Either about what she was trying to hide or about unsettling her by lingering or about how that simple touch, her hand on his arm, had resonated through him.
“Mommy,” a happy singsong voice called. She let go of his arm and her hand fell to her side.
“Mommy?” he asked, unable to keep the shock from his voice. She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. The pieces dropped into place—the hatchback, her softer curves, her haste to get rid of him—it suddenly made sense. She might not be married but she certainly hadn’t wasted any time in replacing him in her bed, in finding someone to give her the child she’d talked about. “When did that happen?” Max was no expert on children, he had no idea how old the child might be. Anywhere less than three but old enough to talk. So, not a baby.
“Go. Please,” she repeated, but this time the authority had gone from her command. A bleak resignation filled her eyes. “I need to talk to you. But not now. Not here.”
“Sure.” Definitely time to go if there was a child here. He barely knew how to be in the room with his own nieces. And he was still processing the fact that Gillian had had a child.
“Mommy.”
One glance. That was all he’d allow himself to satisfy his curiosity. Max turned back to see a little, curly-headed boy, clutching a faded blue blanket, standing at the foot of the stairs.
“I’m hungwy.”
A little boy, who was the spitting image of Max and his brother in the picture his parents still had on their hallway wall, taken when he was two.
Shock swamped him. He, not Gillian, was the one who’d been skating on thin ice. And he’d just fallen through into a paralyzing new world.
Max looked from the boy to Gillian. Her skin, always pale, had faded to ashen, her knuckles as she gripped the door handle were white.
“Mommy?” He echoed the child’s word, not taking his eyes from her. “Mommy?” And for a second he wished that he, too, had the door handle to hold on to, to steady himself. The boy was Gillian’s. The boy who looked like Max. He didn’t need to do the math to know the child was his.
“Okay, honey,” Gillian said, her voice soft, “go on into the kitchen. I’ll come get you some cereal.” The boy looked steadily at her and Max for the longest time then trotted through a doorway.
The depth of her deceit stunned him.
And to think he’d attributed her defensiveness to conscience over the piece she’d written. That wrong didn’t even register on the same scale as the deception she’d practiced on him for the past three and a half years.
“I don’t suppose we can talk about this later?” Her eyes didn’t quite meet his, and her throat moved as she swallowed. She knew there was no way he was leaving now.
He took hold of the door and swung it shut.
The fury was back in full force as he followed her to the kitchen. Overlaying a deep and utter shock. Shock that he couldn’t process and fury that he couldn’t give vent to now, not with a child here.
A boy.
His son.
Two
Gillian’s stomach churned. What was going to happen now? She knew only one thing. She knew it the instant Max recognized himself in Ethan.
The carefully protected bubble of her life was about to be blown apart. She followed Ethan through to the kitchen. Every slow deliberate step of Max’s Italian-loafer-clad feet sounded like an ax fall behind her.
But underneath her anxiety she recognized a flicker of relief. The relief a condemned man might feel on his way to execution. If nothing else, the agony of anticipating the inevitable was over.
She’d known Max was head of PR for Cameron Enterprises. She’d known, therefore, that her articles had the potential to bring her into contact with him. And that perhaps the time had come to tell him about Ethan.
But not in her own home. She’d never thought that. Not where he could see her son. Not without her first doing the impossible and preparing Max for the news.
In the center of the kitchen she stopped as Ethan climbed onto his booster seat at the table. So much about her kitchen and its cozy dining area advertised the fact that a child lived here. Which was why she hadn’t brought Max to this room in the first place.
Her half-drunk coffee sat on the opposite side of the table from Ethan. The same newspaper that had brought Max to her door lay folded to reveal the crossword, reminding her that a mere ten minutes ago her biggest problem had been finding an eleven-letter word for incident.
Her day had stretched out, relaxed and pleasant, before her.
She needed to move, to be doing something. Keeping her back to Max and Ethan, she poured a bowl of cereal. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she sliced banana into the bowl and added milk, but there was only so long she could drag the preparation out. Eventually, she had to turn from the counter and face the music. Or in this case the absolute
