“Just a li’l bigger,” the boy directed. When the snowball grew to the size of a beach ball, he stopped and tried to lift it.
Thad lifted it instead, setting it atop the other two balls they’d formed into the base of the snowman. The lopsided snowman was actually a snow lady, and he and Mark had already made a snow boy. “There. It’s done.”
Mark shook his head. “We gotta make his face.” He reached in his pocket for the things that Caroline had given him after she’d bundled him into a snowsuit, boots, mittens, scarf and hat.
She was a great mom, just as he’d known she would be. That was another reason he’d forced himself to leave her four years ago. She’d deserved more than he was capable of giving. Because of his real job, he’d never intended to be a husband or a father. He hadn’t wanted to leave a family behind like Len Michaels had.
But he had left behind a son … without ever realizing he’d become a father.
“Here,” Mark said, shoving a carrot into Thad’s cold hand. “You’re gonna have to put it on ‘cuz I’m not big enough.”
Thad handed back the carrot and then, his hands shaking slightly, he slid them around his son and lifted him onto his shoulders. “You’re big enough now.”
A giggle slipped from Mark’s lips. “I’m too big now.” He wrapped one arm around Thad’s neck and leaned forward to reach their snowman. His tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration, he carefully arranged the carrot and a collection of colored stones to make the snowman’s face, which he must have been comparing to Thad’s because he kept looking back and forth between them.
“Mommy says these rocks are the same color as my eyes,” he remarked. He turned toward Thad. “They’re the same color as yours, too.”
“You look like me when I was a little boy,” Thad said.
After discovering he had a son, he’d found some of the old photo albums his aunt Angela kept in the library, and he’d flipped through the pictures of himself and his family. He hadn’t looked through the albums in years because he hadn’t wanted to see old pictures of his parents. Surprisingly there hadn’t been as many in the albums as he’d thought there would have been. The photos had mostly been of just him and his brothers and some of Natalie.
He lifted Mark from his shoulders and then crouched down to the boy’s level. “Do you know why you look like me?”
The child gave a solemn nod. “‘Cuz you’re my dad.”
Thad sucked in a breath of surprise. “You know?” Kissing Caroline had distracted him so much that he hadn’t known whether the boy actually knew who he was yet or not. Mark hadn’t said anything to Thad but to wonder what he’d been doing to his mother and then to ask him to make a snowman with him.
“When I came home from Aunt Tammy and Uncle Steve’s, Mommy told me who you are,” he said, as if it had been no big deal for his father to finally show up after three years.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Thad said. He had a million for Mark. He wanted to learn everything about the little boy, everything that he had missed.
Mark shook his head, though, and returned his attention to the cluster of snowmen. “Look!” he exclaimed with pride. “There’s a snow mommy and a snow kid and now a snow daddy.”
“Wow,” Thad said, trying to sound suitably impressed. This meant a lot to his son.
“We have a snow family,” Mark said with a bright smile of satisfaction, as if a family was something he’d wanted for a while.
Thad stood back to admire the family, but then the sound of an idling engine drew his gaze to the street beyond the picket fence. Had the white SUV followed him again?
He suspected it had been in the parking garage the day before when he’d felt someone watching him. Then he’d thought he glimpsed it near the estate, as well. But he’d made sure he wasn’t followed here, taking a circuitous route again.
And really he was probably overreacting. There were a million white SUVs. He hadn’t noted the plate, so he couldn’t be certain if the one he’d seen near the estate was the same one or even the same make and year as the one from the parking garage.
But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he’d felt in the parking garage, the sense of foreboding that someone was watching him with an intense hatred. He glanced toward the house and confirmed that he was being watched.
Caroline stood at the living-room window, staring intently at him. He doubted she was reliving that kiss as he had and wishing they hadn’t been interrupted. He suspected instead that she was watching to make sure that he hadn’t already screwed up with Mark.
She was right to worry about his parenting skills. The only parenting he’d ever really known had been when Uncle Craig and Aunt Angela became his and his brothers’ and sister’s guardians. But that had been a long time ago.
Where he’d been the past several years had had nothing to do with family and everything to do with survival. His own and all those he’d been able to save. He had to go back to finish his assignment and make sure Michaels’s killers were brought to justice. But what kind of father could he be to Mark if he wasn’t even around?
Something struck the back of his head and exploded in shards of ice that ran down his neck and inside his collar. Thad whirled around so quickly that Mark shrieked and ran from him. He’d stayed alive for years in the most dangerous places in the world but had taken one in the head from his own kid.
He grabbed up a handful of snow and gave chase.
CAROLINE GIGGLED, echoing her son’s laughter that she could hear even through the double panes of glass. He’d nailed his father with that snowball. Thad threw a couple at him, careful to miss wide while stepping squarely in front of the ones that Mark threw back at him.
He had no hat, no gloves, not even a scarf, but he didn’t seem to care about the cold. The only thing he seemed preoccupied with was the street, as he kept glancing back at it.
Was he expecting someone or was it just a habit for him to constantly survey his surroundings? He hadn’t seen that snowball coming.
Just like she hadn’t seen his kiss coming. Or maybe she had but she’d wanted it too much to push him away. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them, she wouldn’t have stopped Thad. Being back in his arms, kissing him, had felt too good—too right. She touched her lips, which tingled yet from the contact with his. She could taste him, too, from when he’d slid his tongue between her lips deep into her mouth.
But she’d meant what she’d told him. Not about being over him—that had been a lie that he’d easily disproved. But about not wanting a relationship with him.
He was her son’s father, and that was all he would ever be to her. Not her lover. Not her boyfriend. Not even her friend.
Because she couldn’t trust him. But she wouldn’t have been able to beat him, either, if she’d fought to keep him away from Mark. Now, seeing them chase each other around the yard, she was glad that she hadn’t tried. She’d worked hard the past three years to be both mother and father to her son, but the little boy needed more than she had been able to give him.
He
