Kieran pushed up from his chair and wandered toward Michael. He swept a lock of dark hair from her son’s flushed face. “When are you taking him to see your friend the psychiatrist?”
“Probably tomorrow.” She folded her arms, bunching her fists against her body. “Do you want to come along?”
He took a turn around the room, settling in front of the mantel. He studied each framed photo of him and his brother as if imprinting it on his memory. Reaching out, he traced his parents’ faces with the tip of his finger.
“You remember Colin, don’t you?”
He nodded. “He was with me on the assignment when we were captured. And then he escaped.”
“He can’t forgive himself for that. The fact that he left you behind tore at him.”
“I don’t blame him for escaping.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tight-fitting jeans. “I know he would’ve tried to come back for me with reinforcements, but my captors moved me. The army told me that much.”
“How did you get away, Kieran?” She gripped her hands in front of her, twisting her fingers into knots. Did she really want to know? Did she want to hear how he’d suffered?
He shrugged. “I escaped.”
Had he read the ambivalence in her face? If she was going to help him, reclaim him as her own and Michael’s father, she needed to step up to the plate. “You don’t remember what happened to your eye?”
“Nope.”
“Can you see out of it?”
“Not clearly.”
“Can I have a look at it?”
“Nope.”
She clenched her teeth. Stubborn man. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath through her nose, her nostrils flaring. “Did the army doctors look at it?”
“They did.” He slipped his index finger beneath the string that held the black patch to his head. “They issued me this after cleaning the wound and running some tests.”
“Did the tests show anything? Any sensitivity to light?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”
“You just checked yourself out of the hospital and took off?”
“It’s my life.”
“They’ll be coming for you.”
“Let ’em try.”
She blew out an exasperated breath. Had talking to Kieran always been like talking to a wall of steel? She squared her shoulders. “If you want my help, you’re going to have to open up a little more.”
“I think you’re the one who needs to open up.”
Her belly flip-flopped and she shot a glance at Michael still sleeping on the love seat. Had Kieran figured it out?
“I’m an open book. What do you want to know about your life?”
“We knew each other in high school.”
Hadn’t they already gone over this? Her pounding heart shifted into a lower gear and she could breathe again. “Yes, but we didn’t date until later. Like I said before, we’d both come back to Coral Cove—I was going into nursing school and you’d just finished at the language institute and had enlisted with the Green Berets.”
“But that wasn’t my first mission, the one where I was captured.”
“No. We were together through a few of your missions.”
As they chatted, Kieran’s body seemed to relax, one muscle group at a time, until he sank into a chair, his back to the window and the darkening sky. His lean frame, thinner than she’d remembered, slumped against the cushions of the chair.
“Do you recall more now that you’re here in Coral Cove? In this house?” With me?
He steepled his fingers and peered at her over the top of the juncture. “I do. The memories come slowly. That’s why I made my way back here after I escaped…from the hospital. I wanted to remember slowly, gradually.”
“I want to help you remember.”
Kieran seemed to sink farther into the chair, the dusk creeping over his shoulder, masking his face.
“You have your own problems right now. You don’t need me to burden you with more.”
His return had already constituted a problem for her. Something close to anger percolated in her belly. Then she pressed a hand against her stomach. She never in a million years thought she’d consider the return of Kieran—her fiancé, her love, the father of her child—a problem.
She eyed the dark man across from her, his face still, unreadable. If he wouldn’t stay for her help, for her, would he stay for his son?
Flinging her hands in front of her, she tried to dissipate the heavy air between them. “It wouldn’t be a burden, Kieran. You’re halfway to remembering almost everything…halfway to knowing everything about your life.”
“I can’t pick up where we left off.”
His words twisted the knife in her heart, the knife he’d plunged there when he didn’t recognize her on the beach. At this point, would he even want to know he’s a father?
“I’m not expecting us to pick up where we left off, Kieran. It’s been over four years. You’ve changed. I’ve changed.”
“You’ve moved on with your life. You thought I was dead.”
She nodded, afraid to blink and dislodge the tears burning behind her lids. In truth, she hadn’t moved on with her life. She lived and breathed Kieran every day through his son. She hadn’t slept with another man in the entire time after Kieran’s disappearance. She could hardly drag herself out on a date.
“We all thought you were dead. I—I’m relieved and so happy that you survived.”
His lips twisted. “Did I?”
“You’re alive.”
“I am.” He shifted in the chair as if to remind himself. “And you have your whole life ahead of you with your son. Are you married? Divorced?”
Uh-oh.
“No.”
Kieran’s hands curled around the arms of the chair. “You never married Michael’s father?”
“No.”
His body stiffened, the relaxed slouch replaced by planes and angles. “Where is he, Michael’s father?”
“Don’t you know, Kieran?”
