style="font-size:15px;"> She took a breath, trying to think of Sammy without pain. She’d let him down so badly.
“He’s doing all right,” she said carefully. “All this has been hard enough on him, without finding out—” She stopped, started again. “I should have told him the truth about you long ago. I was wrong.”
She waited for him to say she should have told him, too, but he didn’t. She could almost imagine she saw sympathy in his eyes.
“Do you think he understands why you didn’t?”
“I don’t know.” Sammy’s small face appeared in her mind’s eye. “As much as an seven-year-old can, I guess. He forgives, even if he doesn’t understand.”
He studied her face for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “You wanted…” His tone made it a question.
She looked at him blankly, realizing that she’d been staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Or as if she’d never see him again.
He lifted an eyebrow, something that might have been amusement flickering in his face. “You have a proposition for me, remember?”
“Oh. Yes.”
He had to be deliberately attempting to make her nervous. There was no other reason for him to be standing so close, taking up all the air in the room.
Concentrate. This idea will work, won’t it? Please, Lord.
“You said this afternoon that you want to be a part of Sammy’s life.” It frightened her just to say the words. “You must realize that you have to get to know Sammy before that can happen.”
She expected him to bring up again the fact that it was her fault he didn’t know Sammy, but he nodded. “I realize that. I don’t want to rush him. But I’m not going to disappear.”
She clasped her hands together, trying to find a core of strength inside. “This can’t be a halfway thing, Tyler. I won’t let Sammy be hurt by it.”
“I’m not looking to hurt the boy.” He sounded impatient. “So what is this idea of yours?”
Now or never. She had to say it.
“You stay here, on the island, for one month.” She swept on before he could interrupt. “You can move into the inn, so you’ll see Sammy every day. Then—” She breathed a silent prayer. “Then we can make arrangements together for you to be a real parent to him.”
“Stay here?” He made Caldwell Island sound like the outermost reaches of the earth, and his firm mouth tightened even more. “I can’t do that. I have a business to run.”
That was what she’d thought he’d say, but even so, the words made her heart clench. Tyler would see how impossible this was, that was the important thing.
“I’m not trying to be unreasonable.” She nodded toward the computer. “You can stay connected, go back to Baltimore for a day or two if you have to. Surely even the CEO gets some vacation time.”
“I can’t run a business that way, especially not now.” His dismissal was quick. “Sammy can come to Baltimore to get to know me.”
Fear flared and had to be extinguished. “Sammy isn’t a package, to be sent back and forth when you have time for him. If you want to be his father, you have to realize that. You getting acquainted with him needs to happen here, where he feels safe.”
His eyes narrowed. “Suppose I just start legal action. You can’t keep me from my son.”
The thought of facing a phalanx of ruthless Winchester lawyers made her quake, but she held her voice steady. “And have our private quarrel splashed all over the papers? I don’t think you’d like that. And I don’t think a family court judge would look favorably on a father who won’t take a few weeks to get acquainted with his son.”
Something that might have been surprise flickered in his eyes. “You’ve grown up, Miranda.”
“I’ve had to.”
“What you ask is impossible. You must know that.”
It wouldn’t have been impossible for the man he’d been at twenty-one, but she couldn’t say that, and maybe it wasn’t even true. Maybe she hadn’t really known the man she’d married.
She had to say the hard thing and end this now, before it damaged Sammy. Tyler’s sense of duty to the child he’d fathered had brought him here, but his sense of duty to the company would take him away again.
“If you can’t get away from your business for something this important, maybe you’re not meant to be a father.”
Tyler didn’t answer. He couldn’t. She had known all along how this would turn out, but still pain clenched her very soul. She turned away.
He grasped her arm, pulling her around to face him. At his touch, her treacherous heart faltered. She forced herself to look at him, her gaze tangling with his. Her breath caught in her throat, and for an instant she thought his eyes darkened.
“I know a challenge when I hear one, Miranda.” His voice lowered to a baritone rumble. “I’ve managed too many business deals not to know when someone’s making an offer they think I won’t accept.”
“I don’t—”
His grip tightened. His intense gaze was implacable. “Get a room ready for me. I’m moving in tomorrow.”
This was certainly a far cry from the elegance of the Dalton Resort Hotel. Tyler tossed his suitcase onto the patchwork quilt that adorned the four-poster bed in the room to which Miranda had shown him. He glanced around, wondering if he’d made a hasty decision the previous night. Did he really propose to run Winchester Industries from this small room on an island in the middle of nowhere?
He strode to the east window and snapped up the shade, letting sunlight stream across wide, uneven floorboards dotted with oval hooked rugs. Someone had put a milk-glass vase filled with dried flowers on the battered, rice-carved bureau, and the faint aroma seemed a ghost of last summer’s flowers.
Well, there was a phone jack, at least. With that, something to use for a desk and enough electrical outlets, he ought to be able to make this work if he wanted to.
Maybe that was the question. Did he want to do this? He frowned at what seemed to be a kitchen garden. The small patch of lawn, crisscrossed with clotheslines, couldn’t be intended for the use of guests. Beyond it was some sort of shed, then the pale green-gold of the marsh grasses. A white heron stood, knee-deep, waiting motionless for something.
Tyler assessed his options, trying to weigh them as if this were any business deal that had come up unexpectedly. In a business deal, the first step would be to research what was being offered. He grimaced. Miranda wasn’t exactly offering him anything. As for research—well, he didn’t need a DNA test to confirm what he knew in his bones. Sammy was his son.
He could stay. That meant subjecting himself to the uncertain welcome of Miranda’s family and trying to figure out how to be a father under Miranda’s no doubt critical gaze. Then, assuming he could gain Sammy’s
