With his dark brown hair and blue eyes, the kid was a miniature version of Thad.
Caroline had had his son.
Chapter Two
“Good luck,” Tammy whispered through the open driver’s window after Caroline had buckled Mark into his booster seat in the back.
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. For the good-luck wishes and for picking up her son, so that the little boy wouldn’t overhear the explosion that was certain to come from Thad Kendall.
Despite the cold wind that drove icy snowflakes into her face and chin-length hair, Caroline stood outside, watching Tammy’s minivan drive away. And avoiding Thad.
But he deserved an explanation, which he’d already agreed to wait for until Tammy picked up Mark, so they could talk in private. She drew in a deep breath, the cold air burning her lungs, and turned back to the house. Through the big picture window, she could see Thad pacing the length of her living room—giving a wide berth around the Christmas tree as if it were a vicious dog that might attack if he got too close.
She pulled open the front door and stepped into the room with him. Warmth from the crackling fire immediately melted the snowflakes from her hair and skin so that they ran down her face like tears. Her fingers trembled as she brushed away the moisture. Despite the warmth of the room, she kept her coat on, wrapped tight around her as if she still needed the protection.
Thad didn’t stop pacing. She remembered how he had never stopped moving. How had he ever managed to hold still long enough to take the poignant photos of war and tragedy that had earned him such accolades in his nearly decadelong career?
“So are you going to try to lie to me?” he asked. His voice, colder even than the winter wind, chilled her to the bone.
“Lie to you?” she repeated, the question echoing hollowly off the coffered ceiling.
“Play me for a fool, deny that that little boy is my son,” he said, heat in his voice now as his blue eyes burned with anger.
Still, she shivered. “Mark is definitely your son.”
“Then why did you keep that from me?” he demanded to know with an intensity that might have had Caroline taking a step back if righteous indignation wasn’t pumping through her veins right now.
Except for on the news and in newspapers, she hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. Her anger ignited and she lashed out, “How was I supposed to tell you? When you called me? When you wrote me? Oh, yeah, you didn’t do any of those things!”
He shoved his hand through his hair, tousling the dark brown strands. “We agreed that a clean break would be easier.”
“I agreed.” As she’d fought back her tears and silently called herself all kinds of a fool for falling for him when he’d been clear right from the start that he had to leave again. Why hadn’t she listened to him instead of Tammy and her own stupid heart? “But the clean break was your idea, so I figured you wanted nothing to do with me anymore.”
“Caroline …” He reached out but pulled his hand back before touching her face. “I never led you on. I was straight with you up front.”
And that was why she should have never gone out with him. But the attraction between them had been so strong—as strong as it was now, her skin tingling even though he hadn’t touched her—that she hadn’t been able to resist. And she really had hoped that her friend was right, that if he fell in love with her, he would stay.
But he hadn’t.…
“I know you had to leave,” she said, and she suspected she even knew why—because it was too hard for him to stay in the city where his parents had been so brutally murdered. “But I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have given a message to my brothers Devin or Ash or to my uncle Craig,” he said. “They would have made sure I got it.”
She laughed, but with bitterness not amusement. “I don’t know your brothers or your uncle. I never met your family,” she reminded him, feeling now as she had then, as if she had been some dirty secret of his. Had dating an elementary school teacher been so far beneath the status of one of the illustrious Kendalls of St. Louis that he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his family?
“But you know who they are and how to reach them,” he stubbornly persisted.
Of course she knew; everyone in St. Louis and most of the United States knew who every one of the Kendalls was.
“But your family doesn’t know who I am,” she retorted. “What reason would they have to believe that I was really carrying your child and not just trying to make a claim on the Kendall fortune?”
According to local gossip, several other women had tried to get their hands on some Kendall money albeit through his brothers and not Thad.
“My brothers or uncle would have told me that you’d come to see them—”
“When?” she interrupted. “Are you in regular contact with them? Have you even come home in the past four years?” She waited, almost hoping he hadn’t so she wouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her earlier.
“I would have gotten word,” he insisted, a muscle twitching along his tightly clenched jaw.
“And what would you have done?” she wondered. “Would you have come back home? Would you have given up your nomad lifestyle for diaper duty and two-a.m. feedings?”
“You did that all alone?” He glanced around the living room as if he were looking for her support system.
Her parents had moved to Arizona years ago, coming back to St. Louis for only a few weeks every summer. Except for her friends, she had no one.
She nodded in response, but she didn’t want his sympathy or his guilt. “And I loved every minute of it. Mark was the easiest baby and now he’s the sweetest little boy.”
“I guess I will have to take your word for what kind of baby he was since I’ve missed out on those years,” he said.
He had stopped his restless pacing and stood now in front of the portrait wall of her living room, staring wistfully at all the pictures of their son. In addition to the studio portraits she’d had taken every few months, she’d framed collages of snapshots, too. She’d recorded every special moment in his life, and hers, because she’d been there. Thad hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have been even if he’d known. But she’d robbed him of that choice.
Now the guilt was hers. She should have tried to talk to his family so that one of them might have gotten word to him. It hadn’t been fair of her to just assume that he wouldn’t have wanted any involvement in his son’s life just because he hadn’t wanted any involvement in hers.
“But I don’t intend to miss out on anything else, Caroline,” Thad said, his voice low and deep as if he were issuing a threat. “I am going to be part of his life.”
“For how long?” she asked. “Just long enough to break his heart when you leave again?” Just like he had broken hers.
THAD’S
