Another Woman's Son (Harlequin Romance) (8 page)

They were gone before he could unclench his fists. Lucky he’d stayed behind. By now, he’d have been grilling Amelia for dates and times.

He went back inside and cleaned up the breakfast things. After he finished, he took a last look at the sink and the chrome and reflective granite. He’d never made the kitchen shine to Faith’s satisfaction.

He threw the dish towel on the counter and turned his back on the room. A few minutes later, he was on his way to Isabel’s house. She looked surprised to see him when she answered her door.

“Where’s Tony?”

“Your parents took him to the Smithsonian. I’m here to do whatever you need.”
And also shadow you until I know whether guilt over keeping your parents in the dark is getting to you.

Her expression begged him to be honest.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The usual. I don’t entirely trust you.” She stopped with a smile more cynical than he’d ever seen. “Don’t look hurt. You know you have ulterior motives for hanging around me.”

“And they would be?”

“You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Even if I didn’t love you and Tony, I’d owe you because I didn’t warn you after Will told me about him and Faith.” She searched him, head to toe, with a look. “I can’t figure out what I have that you want. Something you can’t tell me about.”

She might just as well have banged his soul with a hammer. Guilt made him wish he was a better man.

“Aren’t you holding any grudges, Isabel?”

“Against you? For what?” Her soft smile held sorrow. “Are you still angry with me?”

“No.” At least he could be honest about that. “But I’m not over what happened.”

“Every time I look at Tony, I’m torn. I should have done something to help you three months ago. Then I wonder if my parents need to know about Will.”

“Why?” His heart threatened to stop. And then it seemed to pound so fast he could barely hear over the blood rushing through his veins. “What possible good could knowing do them?”

Isabel locked the door. “I can’t see them trying to take him from you, but I wonder how Tony will accept the news if he finds out when he’s older. How would you feel if your father and your aunt lied about who you were all your life?”

“He’s my son. He’s never belonged to any other man.”

“You’re right about that.” She looked angry now. “What kind of man would refuse to acknowledge him?”

Suddenly, he couldn’t talk about Tony. He felt the cold grasp of panic when he thought too hard about Faith and Will and their plans.

“Are you still going back to Middleburg after you sell the house?” he asked.

Concern shadowed her eyes, but she let him change the subject. “I need a job, but hiding out in Middleburg doesn’t seem like such a smart idea after all. This house isn’t right, either, but I’ve loved living in this area.”

“The sale price should give you a start anyplace.” He should hope she’d go far away and leave him in greater peace with his son. Instead, he tried to imagine life without Isabel at the end of a short drive, and he didn’t care for his sense of loss.

She led him to the living room, half denuded of knickknacks and paintings. The hall echoed without the runner she’d rolled into a wool cylinder. “You sure you want to help?”

“That’s why I came.”

Her qualms hit him full force. Without facing the truth, they weren’t really talking, but it was easier to ignore the argument that could split them up forever.

“All that stuff in the corner gets boxed up for Leah. The new boxes should arrive any minute.”

He noted a smaller pile of objects on a side table. Framed photos. Will’s diplomas. “What’s all this?” He’d be happy to set the stack on fire.

Her reluctance warned him. “They’re for Tony.” She apologized with a shrug. “Someday, if you think he should have them.”

“If I tell him Will was his real father?”

“His birth father. You might change your mind by the time Tony’s old enough to know.” She waved at the diplomas as if she didn’t care about them at all. “Or if you’d honestly prefer it, we can destroy them,” she said. “Or send them to Leah. You don’t have to decide now.”

“You haven’t had a child—you can’t know how I feel when I contemplate losing him.”

Isabel’s broken smile reminded him how much she’d wanted a baby of her own. With an index finger, she pushed the top frame farther into the center of the table.

“I threw them in the trash when I started cleaning his office this morning.” Lifting her face, she looked naked and young and vulnerable. “Throwing them away made me feel better.

“I’m glad.” He pulled her close, and she put her arms around him. Her body, alive, warm, responsive to his affection, gave him comfort though he’d reached for her to ease her suffering.

“But I only felt better for a second,” she said, and then laughed, mocking herself. “Maybe more than a few seconds. I thought, what if Ben tells Tony who Will really was to him? Tony will want information.”

“I’ll never tell him.”

“Secrets don’t seem to stay kept,” she said. “Or you and I wouldn’t be dumbfounded that Faith and Will had an eighteen-month-old son.”

“We wanted to believe in them. That’s half the battle.”

“You know what the worst thing is?” She pushed away from him. “Sometimes, when I first wake up and remember everything’s changed, I almost—almost—wish I could still believe. Nobody else on earth would have any claim to Tony. You and I might not be perfectly happy, but we’d be muddling along, trying to make the best of our marriages.”

He hated to think of Isabel settling for a husband who’d wasted her life the way Will had. “I’ve been irritated because you seem impervious to what happened.”

“I’m determined to win. Faith and Will are not going to change me for the worse.”

Ben almost said, “But I might.” Forcing her to lie. Putting his own desperate need above her feelings.

“Can I say one more thing?” Sunlight, through a sheer, pale curtain, lightened her hair.

He nodded, because he couldn’t speak over sudden awareness that seemed to suffocate him. His palms burned. He saw himself touching her hair, smoothing the lines from her worried frown.

“You don’t know yourself as well as I know you,” Isabel said. “You’re man enough to wait until Tony’s older before you get rid of Will’s things. You can decide what to do with them after you give up the idea of revenge.”

“I have changed.” He was trying to tell her who he’d become—he’d hurt even her if his life with Tony depended on it.

“Not that much. You’ll love someone else someday, and you’ll make room for her in your life and Tony’s.”

“I’m never going to change my mind about Tony, Isabel. Give up any hopes you have about that.”

She shook her head, and light followed the strands of her hair. When she looked at him with such confidence, he almost believed in the future she saw. “We’ll both love someone eventually and we’ll trust them because that’s who you and I are.”

His head went back as if she’d slapped him. “Not a chance,” came out of his mouth.

Isabel waved both hands dismissively, as if he were talking nonsense. Her wedding rings twinkled on her fingers. She noticed them at the same moment.

She turned her hand over and stared at the rings. Then she pulled them off and opened a drawer on a fragile table beside the couch. She dropped the jewelry in and slammed it shut.

“I’m going to love again. I want children of my own, and I intend to be happy. I’ll make myself trust a man if it kills me.”

“How do you plan to do all that?”

“I deserve real love and so do you.”

“What we deserve and what we get are obviously two different things. Why don’t you know that?”

“Don’t put any more pictures of Will and Faith in my head.” She pressed her fists to her temples, and her sweater outlined her breasts in loving curves. Its hem skimmed the top of her jeans, revealing a hint of hip bone.

His body grew heavy. He turned his back on her. He had no right to think of Isabel like that.

“I’m sorry, Ben.” She went on, unaware he’d lost the ability to form words. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.” If he tried to explain, she’d consider him as twisted as Will and Faith. He’d held her—kissed her—maybe a thousand times without ever wanting more. What made today different?

The doorbell rang. He almost leaped across the couch and the console table behind it. “I’ll get that.”

A man from a packing store had brought more boxes and wrapping paper. Ben helped him carry everything inside.

By the time they were alone again, he’d regained his sense of right and wrong. They worked, shared a delivered pizza, and then worked a few hours longer with no more drama.

Ben tried not to think of the morning’s strange revelations. He was a man. Men wanted women. It didn’t have to go further than that.

Isabel finally gave up for the day after they’d culled any object Leah had ever given her from every room in the house. He helped her box them, grateful for the physical exertion. Then he called the delivery service to schedule a morning pickup.

“This will cost a fortune,” he said as they surveyed the boxes they’d stacked in the entry.

“Worth every penny.”

“I could drive you up with them.”

“I’m in no mood to see Leah, and this will keep her in Philadelphia while she inventories it to make sure I haven’t held anything back.” That sounded about right for Leah.

“Legally, this stuff belongs to you.”

“Not in my eyes or hers. She made up some story about forcing me to put up with her because I wouldn’t believe she wanted to stay in touch.” Isa
bel patted the top of the nearest box. “I believe a mixture of her words and deeds. She might think I’m her last physical connection with Will, but she wants her family possessions back, too.”

“And you think this woman makes a good grandmother for Tony?”

Isabel smoothed tape on the box and looked uncomfortable. “There’s a higher morality, you know. When I put myself in Leah’s place, I don’t know that we have a right to keep her last blood relative away from her.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “She can be a little crazy and vindictive. I know she wasn’t a picture-perfect mom for Will, but she loved him—maybe the best she could—and Tony is part of him, whether you and I like it or not.”

Being reminded of Will’s actual role in Tony’s birth made him imagine Will and Faith together. When he added the fear of losing his son, he couldn’t stand it.

But Isabel had nothing to do with Will and Faith’s lies. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I keep trying to make you admit I’m right because I want to feel safe.”

“I believe we’re doing the right thing, but I’m not sure we should be doing it.”

He took her hand. “I need to know you’re on my side—that we’d both risk anything for Tony.”

She shook her head. Her hair brushed her shoulders, releasing a scent uniquely Isabel, woman and a hint of perfume no chemist had ever formulated.
“Mom and Dad are my family, too, Ben. And Leah has been my mother-in-law. I’m doing what you asked, but I have doubts.”

“I don’t care about morality. I want my son safe and happy, and I won’t give him up.”

“The truth is hanging over his head. It could come out because of an illness, if his blood type is incompatible with yours. It could come out if my mother finds a note between Will and Faith where they talk about Tony.”

He shuddered. Time for him to search his own home, top to bottom. “Even if you’re right, I won’t admit that I was not Tony’s father.”

“I guess that’s it.” Obviously troubled, she turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll get my things, and we can lock up. Put on your coat.”

“I have to stop on the way home for groceries and diapers.”

He pushed his arms into his coat sleeves, but in his head, he walked down that long hall at Isabel’s side. He and his son had spent so much of their lives with her.

He kept telling himself Tony was enough for him. He could lie to the Deavers and Leah about Tony’s birth father till doomsday. Hell, he’d lie to the courts if it came to that.

But he couldn’t lie to himself. Someday, Isabel would be forced to choose sides, and he didn’t want to lose her.

I
N FRONT OF HER
, Ben’s car peeled away from the curb and started to fishtail. Fear grabbed her by the stomach and gave a shake, but then the ice lost its grip and he straightened out.

She bested an almost physical need to call and warn him not to scare her with his driving when Faith and Will had died that way. She’d scolded him enough for one night.

He had her all confused. She’d felt like such a fool when she’d discovered Faith’s and Will’s lies, and yet she couldn’t imagine how Tony would feel losing Ben, on top of his mother and uncle’s death.

Isabel parked in front of Ben’s garage and got out, her muscles sore from packing and the tension of worrying and arguing with Ben.

As soon as she shut her car door, she heard Tony shrieking with joy in the backyard. Just the sound of his voice changed everything. His happiness warmed her even in new falling snow. She headed for the gate, drawn by his careening-down-the-slide laugh.

Her father stood guard from behind the slide. Too far away. She hurried toward her nephew.

“Dad, we always help him with the ladder,” she said.

“Sorry, honey.” Grief still gave him a tendency to look stunned. “I didn’t think.”

Isabel loved her father, who was wounded but carrying on as best he could.

“Iz-bell!”

“Tony!” She opened her arms and he flew at her. She caught him in midair and then swung him until they faced his grandfather.

Tony wriggled down and then bolted for the slide. George leaned over to help this time, but Tony pushed his hands away as he climbed.

“He knows how,” George said.

“Yes, he’s much better.” She stayed on the lookout, not as sanguine as her dad about his physical prowess. “But he’s still small.”

“You haven’t seen him for the past three months,” her father said. “I’m not sure your mom and I have, either.”

“None of us could know what would happen, Dad.”

“I talked to Faith a few times. She thought you were angry with her.”

Nice cover, Faith.
“She sided with Will in our problems.” That was as close as she could get to the truth. If she said any more, her father might tumble into the whole mystery.

“Why would Faith let you down like that? You were always close. Boys didn’t come between you. Other friends never split you up.”

Tony ran around the slide, shouting as he clambered up again. Tears, unexpected and hot, stung Isabel’s eyes. Love had changed her sister. “Don’t worry, Dad. Faith and I disagreed. Let’s drop it there.”

“I’d rather know what you both kept from me.”

Who knew her first challenge would come so simply? “It was private, Dad, like my problems with Will.” She dared not look at him. “I’m covered in dirt and need a shower. Do you want me to take Tony inside?”

“No.” He disapproved of her desire for privacy. If only he knew the agony of the past three months. Thank God she’d never have to admit that, either.

She squeezed his arm, afraid to get close enough for him to hold her. She had to go inside before she out-and-out lied to her own dad.

“Iz-bell.” Tony ran to her.

She hugged him against her legs but then pointed him toward her father. “Grandpa says you can slide with him.”

Tony looked at his grandpa, who smiled. But George was so sad his smile seemed scary even to Isabel.

“Dad, really, it’s nothing. Faith and I were friends as well as sisters. You know how it is with divorce. Sometimes friends choose sides.”

“She wouldn’t side against her own sister.” His tone asked,
What did you do?

He didn’t ask out loud, and she couldn’t explain, not without tarnishing her sister’s reputation, or saying the one thing that would blow Tony and Ben’s life to bits.

“It was trivial, Dad.” She’d done it now, an outright falsehood. Tony whimpered, apparently catching her anxiety. “It’s all right.” She guided him toward her dad.

He tore away from her and ran back to the ladder and started to climb again. Frowning, her father went back to his station behind his grandson. “Why do you suppose he doesn’t know your mother and me? I mean, we had a good time at the museums today, but when he got tired he started asking for the four of you.”

“We were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. Tony hasn’t seen you as often as he saw me.”

“It makes me feel funny,” her father said. “I want him to love me as much as his mother did.”

“He just has to get used to you.” Which he would eventually do, if he lived with her mom and dad.

T
RIVIAL
. It almost made her cry as she scurried through the house, afraid of stumbling across another human. She’d actually managed to call Faith’s infidelity with Will trivial. Where had she found the words? She longed to turn to her parents for comfort,
but she couldn’t without hurting their memories of her sister.

Upstairs, Isabel shucked off her clothes and climbed into the shower. She braced her hands against the tile and let water beat on her face and her head.

Here, she could cry without feeling weak, without troubling anyone else, without making anyone ask her what had gone wrong between her sister and her.

She’d never felt so alone, and she saw no relief in sight, with Ben ready to break all contact if she admitted what she knew about his son. And yet what could assuage her parents’ sorrow for their older daughter more than the news that they alone had more right to him than their son-in-law?

She couldn’t do it—couldn’t betray Ben—couldn’t ruin Tony’s life. Not even for her parents.

After her shower the noises and scents of supper cooking drifted to her while she dressed. Her mom must have tried pot roast.

Isabel had worked hard. She was hungry enough to eat a good meal, but she’d never needed more time alone. She wasn’t used to guarding every word she said.

A knock on her door startled her. “Come in,” she said, bundling her dirty clothes into the basket Faith had so thoughtfully provided in her guest bath.

“What’s up?”

Ben.

“This is getting to be a habit. Did you tell my parents you were coming up here?”

“Your mom sent me to bring you down before her pot roast dries out.”

She laughed with relief at her mother acting normal. “Let me comb my hair. Has Dad brought Tony in?”

“They’re sharing a hot chocolate.” He shut the door. “Your father said to leave you alone. He seemed to think you were upset.”

She eased a comb through her hair. “He asked me about Faith.” The comb caught on a wet tangle, giving her an excuse to concentrate on it rather than Ben. “I had to lie.”

“About?”

“Faith told him I was angry with her. Do you believe that? I was angry with her?”

“I believe. She and Will got used to covering their tracks. Nothing would have stopped them by the end.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to be like that.”

“I’m afraid you couldn’t be.” He shook his head. Naturally, it would be easier for him if she was at home with lying. “I wonder if they really loved each other.”

“The way they couldn’t love you and me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe when it’s real, you’ll do anything to be with the other person.”

“They weren’t even faithful to each other.” She as
sumed Faith had still slept with Ben, though she’d chop off her own tongue before she’d ask. “Why not just beat ourselves with baseball bats? I’ve had it with Faith and Will. I don’t want to talk about them.” She slammed the comb on the bathroom counter and turned, shaking back her hair. “To tell you the truth, I’m just pissed because I still wonder what’s wrong with me.”

Ben looked her up and down. He’d better not be finding flaws, too. “Wrong with you?” he asked, his voice strangely hoarse.

“My own husband didn’t want me.” Her anger disintegrated, and she nearly cried again.

“Forget him.” Ben took her in his arms. He pressed his lips to her hair, and instantly everything felt different.

Ben surrounded her with safety. His scent made her dizzy. She stared at his skin, smooth but masculine, his strong throat, pale from the winter sun, pulsing with life’s blood. Pulsing too fast.

“Ben?” She tipped her head back to look into his face, but he tried to twist his head away. “Ben?”

Holding her hand against his cheek, she made him look at her. His mouth, strong and straight and so true, was not for her.

“Why should I forget about Will?”

“Isabel, stop.” He tried to push her away, but she held on. She’d backed away from Will at the first sign of rejection. He’d trained her well for living with a
man who loved elsewhere. But maybe some man could want her? The question whispered in her mind. Was she really so unlovable?

“Kiss me, Ben.” She put her need into words. “We can’t hurt anyone.”

“We hurt each other every day. And there’s Tony.”

She watched his pulse jerk a few seconds more. He grabbed her wrists and tried to push her away. She didn’t struggle, but he must have seen her distress.

“I won’t play second string to Will anymore.” He rubbed his knuckles on his cheek where she’d touched him. “Especially not for you.”

“What did Faith have that I lack?” The words, out loud—how had she asked them out loud?—mortified her. She turned her back on Ben. Once again she’d thrown herself at a man who couldn’t want her. “My God. I’m sorry. You loved her. She was your son’s mother—and my sister. I’m sorry.”

He turned her. She closed her eyes, too ashamed to look at him, but his arms went around her, roughly, as if he couldn’t help himself. When she looked, he was leaning down.

With urgency she’d never known, Isabel met his mouth. She opened to him, baring her pain and loneliness. His husky groan made her legs tremble. She basked in the heat that fed on itself, a living fire.

He flattened his palms on each side of her head and twisted her face so that he could kiss her again
and again and again until she was dizzy and moaning into his mouth, pliant, aching, willing to break any vow, destroy any promise for more of him.

This fire could destroy Ben and her and a friendship she’d cherished for more than a decade.

She grasped his wrists and stopped him. He stumbled back. Books talked about women who looked as if they’d been kissed. Ben looked kissed. Desire tightened his face, tempting her.

“I don’t know when I started wanting to do that.” His voice belonged to a stranger. She’d never heard sexual need in Ben’s tone—because he’d belonged to her sister. “Isabel, do you want me to apologize?”

“No.” She linked her fingers with his, terribly aware of the door at her back and her parents downstairs with his son. “You’re not Will’s second anything. I wanted
you
—not because of him.”

His breathing remained harsh. “That’s what I was trying to show you, that needing to touch you had nothing to do with Faith.”

The enormity of what they’d just done shook them both. “You were still married to Faith before she died. It’s too soon to know what you want.”

“Our sex life had been sporadic for years. She probably felt she was being unfaithful to Will.”

She knew all about living in that kind of wasteland. She hurt for him, but she had to protect herself, too. Neither of them was young enough or healthy
enough to pretend this meant more than it did. She felt herself blushing. “We might both be desperate for a little satisfaction.”

His smile stopped her, all male, laughing at her, but his need still disturbing. “So much for not letting Will stop you from trusting.”

“I don’t trust rebound attraction. I’m not asking you never to touch me again, but I have to know you’re holding me, not getting back at Faith.”

Pain flared across his face, but then he kissed her again, a blessing, mouth to mouth. A promise of pleasure and peace.

Strange. She’d never wanted peace in a man’s arms.

“Isabel,” he said as he lifted his head.

“We need distance and time to think.” She staggered, but the direction she took, away from Ben, was wise.

From three feet away, his body exerted a hold on her. His shoulders, tense, his legs parted as if he were on guard. With his troubled, turbulent expression, he looked like a man who wanted a woman. He wanted her. “Do I sound confused?”

She shook her head, unhappy and yet alive. Blood-pumping, heart-thumping, restless-and-desperate-for-Ben’s-touch alive. “I know your secrets and you know mine. I’m relieved I still feel desire for anyone, and knowing you need me, too, is a gift.” She tried to smile. “But you have to be confused.”

“You’re used to living with Will.” He turned and
left. But he didn’t go downstairs. The door to his room closed softly.

Isabel wrapped her arms around her bedpost. He couldn’t face her parents yet, either.

B
EN WAITED
outside the bathroom where his son was splashing, fit to flood the house. After dinner, Ben had gone outside to shovel the driveway and work Isabel out of his system. Coming upstairs after he’d finished, he’d recognized the sounds of Tony bathing, but he wasn’t sure who was helping his son.

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, trying to feel normal again. How did a man force himself to feel normal?

He shoved the door open. Across alternating squares of black-and-white tile, Amelia looked up from the side of the wide, round tub. Tony scooped up bubbles in a foam dump truck and offered them.

Laughing came easy after all. “Isn’t that water getting cold yet?” All big smiles and no worries, he knelt beside Amelia on the towel beside the tub.

“We’ve warmed it a couple of times,” she said. “Is Isabel all right?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.” He squeezed out his son’s favorite airplane sponge to fly it around the boy’s head. “Did you think something was wrong at dinner?”

“I thought you had something on your mind, too.”

“I know how she feels. We’ve both lost a spouse.”

“What happened between her and Will?”

Before he could answer, Tony squirted them both with the sponge. Ben poured a bucket of water over his son’s shoulder and Tony crowed with joy.

“You won’t tell me?”

“Even if I knew—” he suddenly shared Isabel’s reluctance for lying to her mom “—it’s none of my business. You should ask Isabel.”