of course, she had.
But he’d never disappeared from her world. His presence went far deeper than blinds and furniture. She felt his presence every time she looked into Patrick’s blue eyes or kissed that tiny cleft chin.
Patrick.
Panic rose in her throat like bile. Choking it back, she followed Dex into the glassed-in porch they used to sit in together watching thunderstorms come in off the lake. He gestured to a wicker chair. She took her place among the cushions.
He lowered himself into a chair facing her. “We’re sitting. What is it?”
She tangled her fingers together in her lap and took a deep breath. There were so many things that had been said between them. And even more things that had not been said. Before she told him about Patrick, she had to give him some idea why she hadn’t told him about his son. She had to make him understand. “I tried calling you. Several times. After my father was killed. You refused my calls. And you didn’t call back when I left messages on your machine.”
Dex’s brows snapped low over his eyes. “I didn’t want to talk to you, Alyson. I don’t want to rehash the past. I hope that’s not why you came here tonight.”
“You turned your back on me, Dex. And my only crime was that I loved my father.”
He stood and paced the length of the sunporch. He stopped, his back to her, his shoulders obviously tight under his crisp white dress shirt. Slowly he turned to look at her with hard eyes. “Your father was a criminal. The worst kind of criminal. He used his title of district attorney to sell justice. He perverted the entire system. And you defended him.”
“He was my father. I didn’t believe he could do something like that.”
“You didn’t want to believe it. You didn’t want to believe me.”
She swallowed into a dry throat. “That’s why I called. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I was wrong about my father. That I was sorry I didn’t believe you when you first told me what you suspected. But that’s not the only thing I wanted to tell you.”
“What are you saying? Why are you here, Alyson?”
“I wanted to tell you I was pregnant.” She rubbed clammy hands over her jeans and willed herself to look at Dex, to meet his gaze. “I gave birth to our son seven months ago.”
Dex didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe. “I have a son.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“Yes.”
He folded himself into a chair. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed a hand over his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You wouldn’t take my calls, remember?”
“You could have come to see me. You could have made me listen.”
She could have. She’d known it then, and she knew it now. If she’d really wanted to tell Dex, she wouldn’t have let anything stop her. “I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid you would take him away from me.”
A muscle tensed along his jawline. “Why the hell would you think that?”
She shot him an incredulous look. What she’d done had been wrong, cowardly. But she’d had reason. “Because you hated me, Dex. You were so hard and uncaring and judgmental. You shut me out of your life and wouldn’t give me a second chance. And after what my father did, there isn’t a judge in Dane County who wouldn’t be biased against me in a custody fight, wrong or not.”
“So you thought I would use your father’s sins to convince the court you were an unfit mother?”
“I couldn’t take the chance.”
His face flushed with anger. Cords of muscle stood out along his neck. “First you believed I was lying about your father, then you believed I would rob my son of a mother. What kind of a rotten SOB do you think I am?”
“I don’t— I didn’t— I was afraid.”
“You should have trusted me to do the right thing. You should have damn well told me.”
She sat still and let his anger buffet her. He was right, she’d known it in her heart all along. She should have told him. Despite her fear. Despite the risk. “I’m here now. I’m telling you now.”
“Why are you here now, Alyson? Why did you pick tonight of all nights to tell me I have a son?”
“Because…” She forced the words through the thickness in her throat, through the fear tightening her lips. “Because he’s gone.”
Chapter Three
“Gone?” Dex’s heart stuttered in his chest. He shot up from his chair, muscles tensed to fight. “What the hell do you mean?”
Alyson took in a shaky breath as if trying to hold back tears. “I went into Patrick’s room to check on him, and Smythe grabbed me. He pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth over my face. When I woke up, Patrick was gone. Smythe took him.”
“Smythe? Are you sure?” Dex had been living and breathing Andrew Clarke Smythe in the months since the DNA match had been made. But to now learn he had a son, and that Andrew Clarke Smythe had kidnapped him, was too surreal to absorb.
“Smythe called me. Somehow he knew you were Patrick’s father. He took our baby to get back at you for convicting him two years ago.”
Rage, pure and hot, surged through Dex’s blood. Smythe had kidnapped his son. His son. If the son of a bitch wanted to make things personal, he’d succeeded. And he’d soon wish he hadn’t. If Dex had anything to say about it, the scum would be strung up before daybreak. Crossing to the door in three strides, he left Alyson huddled on the porch. His footsteps thundered down the hall, echoing on the hardwood floor like the beat of war drums. Reaching the library, he circled his desk and reached for the cordless phone perched on the credenza.
“Wait.”
Finger poised over the number pad, he looked up into Alyson’s emerald eyes.
“Smythe told me if we got the police involved, I would never see Patrick again.” Her voice broke. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t let them wind down her cheeks. “If you call the police, he’ll find out. He said he has sources. He could have someone watching us right now.”
She was probably right about Smythe’s sources. Heir to Smythe Pharmaceuticals, the poor little rich boy had endless money at his disposal. And money could corrupt even the purest police department. Or district attorney’s office. Dex had seen it happen.
Expelling a long breath, he set the cordless phone on the desk and studied her face in the library’s bright light. Fine lines framed her mouth and eyes. Shadows lurked in the hollows under her cheekbones, making her normally smooth face appear almost gaunt. He’d seen these signs of stress many times in his work. Hell, he’d grown up surrounded by desperation. “So what else did Smythe say?”
“I
