must have hit his chest. Then he tilted his head to grin at Owen, who laughed. A husky laugh that made Lilah shiver. She remembered it far too well, and she could already tell Ben was going to have the same laugh when he grew up.
“Go to your room and play, then, but don’t turn on the water until I come up.”
“Okay, Mommy.” He slid off the stool again, but offered his hand to Owen. “See you later, Mommy’s friend.”
“You can call me Owen.”
“Own.”
Ben turned and ran for the stairs, growling car engine sounds as he climbed.
Owen seemed to topple forward onto his elbow, which was braced on the counter.
“My son,” he said. “And such a sweet kid. So friendly. He doesn’t even know me.”
He didn’t move for several seconds. Lilah’s worry spiked. He was either trying to hide his feelings, or planning revenge.
When he looked up, redness rimmed his eyes. “Get this through your head. I am never leaving him.”
WEREN’T THOSE THE WORDS she’d hoped to hear? Just after he promised, “I’ll never drink again.” She would have told him about her pregnancy, and in her dreams he would have promised, “I won’t put our child at risk.”
She’d stopped dreaming when he’d admitted with heartbreaking honesty that he couldn’t stop drinking. After that, there had been no room for Owen Gage in her life. He’d missed his chance with their son, and she’d heard from her brother, Tim, that Owen still had problems with alcohol. Wanting to do the right thing and actually managing it were miles apart for Owen.
“Lilah.” He made no effort now to hide his anger.
Startled, she jumped. Almost deafened by the silence after Owen barked her name, she didn’t answer. Ben’s voice came down the stairs as he talked to his trains or his army of action figures, who were hampered by the fact that he’d broken so many of their body parts.
In the sink, the faucet dripped with annoying regularity. Lilah’s own breathing sounded like someone hissing.
She had to run. Hide her son. Why hadn’t she done that four years ago—made herself and her baby invisible to the one man on earth who could destroy her life?
“How did you find us?”
He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a large gift tag the size of a postcard. He passed it across, and Lilah read the Christmas-red text that wrapped around a photo of her and her parents and her brother. And Ben. They were sprawled or standing or slouched on the porch of the beach house at Fire Island.
“From our family to yours,” the gift tag read. And her family had told Owen about his son.
She knew immediately what had happened. Her parents had arranged to send an alcoholic a bottle of good wine with this gift tag around its neck.
“I knew the second I saw the photo,” Owen said. “But I got out an old picture of myself to compare Ben and me at the same age. You understand I’m not leaving him with you, right?”
“You don’t have custody.” She had kept his son from him. If he didn’t have a reputation as an alcoholic, he might have a leg to stand on. “You can’t come up here and walk off with my son. First, I won’t let you, and, second, you don’t know him.”
“What can you do?”
“Ask anyone who knows you to testify in court that you couldn’t possibly be a good parent because you’re an alcoholic.”
“That won’t work. I’ve changed.”
“You mean you’ve changed again?” she asked. “I talk to Tim. He knows you’ve tried to quit drinking, and you can’t stop. All I have to do is ask your family and friends what you’re like at home. No court would consider me the less fit choice.”
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “Why did you do it? You weren’t a heartless woman. You robbed our son of his father. For four years.”
She avoided that knowledge as often as she could. She’d made the best choice for Ben. “You told me you were afraid you were like your father. You told me he beat you and your brothers and sister. If you were like him, you had no place around my child.”
He stared at her, his lips thin, his gaze practically expressionless. She wrestled silently with panic. What did he plan to do next? Lilah’s best gift was thinking on her feet. She’d done it even when she was five, just a little older than Ben, and escaped her kidnapper.
She had the same sense of being threatened now.
And all the while, water splatted rhythmically on the steel bottom of the sink.
“I understand you’re angry, but I don’t know what you mean by saying you’re never leaving Ben again.”
“My son.” He lowered his voice, coming to stand right next to her. He was too tall, too intense, his frustration whipping up bad energy between them. “Ben is my boy, whom you’ve hidden from me. You didn’t dump me because I drank. That was an excuse to give you control. You didn’t stop drinking because you suddenly wanted to be healthier. You quit because you were pregnant with Ben, and if you’d told me about our baby, I would have quit, too.” He thought she was the bad guy? “You left because you decided I wasn’t worthy of making a life with him.”
“Tell me I was wrong. You still drink. The damage is all over you. You’re twenty-eight, but you look years older. You think you can bully me with a raised voice and anger.” She turned her back to him, putting the counter between them.
“You’ve had him for four years. Four years, and every day you passed up the chance to tell me the truth.”
“I asked you to quit drinking. You said you liked it too much. You’d told me about your father. How could I take the chance that you’d be like him?”
“How could you refuse to let Ben know me or me know him?”
His eyes were troubled. He was angry, but deep inside those haunted eyes, she saw remnants of the man she’d known. When he was hurt, he fought back, instead of admitting he was in pain.
“I gave you as much of a chance as I could,” she said. “I never told my family you were Ben’s father. I never asked them to keep Ben a secret, and I didn’t ask them to help me hide from you.” Big mistake. “I wasn’t naive.” She shook her head. “Maybe I thought that if you wanted to find me, it would be some kind of proof that I mattered to you. That Ben could matter to you. But after a few months passed with no call from you, I knew you weren’t interested.”
He shook his head. Slightly, as if the effort hurt. “After you told me I was a lush you couldn’t trust? How was I supposed to guess you were pregnant?”
“I had Ben to think of.”
“And
