watched his face as realization dawned. It was like watching the sunrise. He glanced at her and she nodded once, sniffing back tears before they could glisten in her eyes.
He moved toward the crib like a sleepwalker and stood staring down at the slumbering infant within.
Chapter Four
“He was conceived on our wedding night,” Lara said. “His name is Nathan.”
He had a son?
Just like that? One moment alone in the world, the next moment, a son?
Very slowly, he lowered his hand until the backs of his fingers grazed the baby’s round cheek. How could skin be that soft? The baby tucked one tiny fist close to his chin. A bubble blew at his lips and then he made a sudden face, a frown, and scrunched up his tiny body before relaxing again, hands flung to the side.
His son. Nathan.
“You named him after your father,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
Brady kept his gaze glued to the infant because he didn’t trust himself to look at Lara. Men usually had a few months to prepare themselves for fatherhood. Time to get used to the idea of a baby, to merge the dreamy possibilities of the future with the uncertainties of the past. Time to reckon.
But she’d deprived him of this.
She hadn’t trusted him with the knowledge he was to become a father. She’d gone through pregnancy and birth and the first three months of his child’s life alone rather than trust him.
She’s here now, a small voice whispered in the back of his mind. They’re both here now.
He wasn’t ready to listen. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he turned to face her.
Their eyes locked for a heartbeat before she lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry, Brady,” she said so softly it might have been his imagination. “I was frightened.”
That made it better? Now she not only didn’t trust him and didn’t like him, she was afraid of him?
“Later,” he forced himself to say. He needed time to think.
“I just want you to know I didn’t know I was pregnant when I first went away, and when I found out—”
He held up a hand to still her.
The baby made a little noise and Lara leaned over, her shoulder brushing Brady’s arm. She grabbed her own arm, wincing, and he remembered her injury and how close he’d come to losing her. Good God, if she’d died tonight, would anyone have bothered to tell him about Nathan?
“Will you lift him for me?” she said, glancing up at him. “Or shall I call Myra?”
Brady blinked a time or two. “I can do it.”
“It’s easy, just make sure you support his head,” she said.
And so he lifted his son for the first time, careful to put one hand behind the little guy’s heavy head. The baby kicked and squirmed and Brady held on tight, terrified he’d drop him.
“Relax,” Lara said. “You’re doing fine.”
“What do I do now?”
“Just comfort him, Brady. Hold him closer. Don’t be afraid.”
He pulled Nathan against his chest, one hand all but covering the small boy’s back. He tried making soft noises and bouncing a little. One or the other of these tactics apparently worked because the baby settled down. Brady tipped him away from his chest for a moment, anxious to really look at these few pounds of humanity that had instantly redefined his life.
His throat tightened as he took in every amazing inch of his son’s face. The dark orbs as he opened one eye, then the other. The very small nose, the tip of a tiny tongue. What struck him was the baby’s total dependence. Was he ready for this?
He was still trying to work out his complicated relationship with his own father. What did he know about being a father to an innocent child? How could he teach what he’d never learned?
“Did you hear that?” Lara said, and he opened his eyes abruptly, yanked back from his thoughts.
“Did I hear what?”
“A noise downstairs. Maybe it was Myra.”
“I’ll go take a look,” Brady said.
The door flew open at that moment. The housekeeper, dressed in a voluminous green robe, took one look at them standing by the crib and crossed the room in a half-dozen sturdy steps. “Give me the little lamb,” she crooned. Brady looked at Lara, who nodded. Reluctantly, he handed the child over, amazed at how empty his hands and arms suddenly felt.
“I was downstairs in my room,” Myra said, expertly wrapping Nathan in a blanket. “I heard breaking glass. When I went to look, I found the window in the sitting room with a hole—”
Brady left without hearing the rest, taking the stairs two at a time. Armstrong had known Lara was back in town—did he also know about Nathan? He’d talked about an eye for an eye…
“The sitting room is to the right,” Lara said. She’d followed him down the stairs. There was no color in her face and her eyes were wide. He moved into the formal Victorian sitting room lit only by a glass-shaded table lamp. Shards of glass lay on the table and carpet and a rock with a paper tied around it had tumbled to a stop on the floor in front of the table.
Myra, still holding Nathan, arrived in the doorway as Lara leaned down to pick up the rock. Brady grabbed her hand. He looked around the room until he spied a small lace doily draped over the armrest of a floral love seat. Using a corner of the doily, he picked up the rock and slipped the paper from beneath the rubber band.
“What does it say?” Lara asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
He angled the paper toward the light. A few words had been cut from a magazine and glued in place. “‘Go home before it’s too late,’” he read.
“Mrs. Kirk will have a fit when she hears someone broke her window,” Myra fumed. She held Nathan against her polyester-covered bosom as though protecting him from the hounds of hell. “What is the world coming to? And that note can’t be directed at Lara. It must mean you, Mr. Skye. What trouble have you brought—”
“Get a paper bag big enough for the rock and the note, will you please?” Brady interrupted.
Myra looked from him to Lara. “That’s a good idea,” Lara said, holding out her good arm. Myra very gently placed Nathan in Lara’s embrace before leaving the room. Lara’s eyes glistened in the dim light as she rested her cheek atop Nathan’s fuzzy head.
Brady looked down at his shoes, not trusting his voice. What a sight the two of them made. His wife and his baby son. Her beauty, his innocence, elicited a cavalcade of emotions.
How had things gotten to this point? How had he so thoroughly screwed up?
How
