Deadly Ties (21 page)

* * * *

Gavin walked back to the bedroom whistling. He thought about his afternoon appointments, the last of which was at three. If Bray and the kids were going to be later than lunch, he’d just have to let them know that Ryan needed to stay the afternoon with them, or his parents. He’d work something out. He hadn’t been sure what, but he hadn’t wanted Taylor to worry about it all this morning. So, Ryan could spend the morning with Bray and maybe lunch with him, then with his parents or whoever was keeping Tori this afternoon while he saw patients and made any rounds he needed to. He’d be done by four. Then he and Ryan could do whatever until Taylor got there. A chuckle danced in the quiet air. Taylor was something he needed in the mornings. He hadn’t forgotten any of his thoughts on their relationship from the night before.

Walking into the bathroom, he turned on the water in the shower.

Taylor flustered was a sight to behold. She was always so calm, so gentle, that when she was anything but, it was surprising to say the least. Her cheeks would flush and that slight frown would pull between her brows. Not to mention it threw her off and let him get his way.

This was something to remember. Maybe she wasn’t as against a relationship with him as he thought. No, that wasn’t it. Not a relationship with him, a commitment. That’s what he wanted.

Commitment
. Gavin swiped the water off his face while the hot spray hit his body.

Commitment
?

Well, if she was his that only stood to reason. Didn’t it?

The ringing phone had him turning the water off, grabbing a towel and hurrying to grab it.

“Yeah?” he asked, knotting the towel at his waist.

“Good morning, darling.”

Gavin smiled. “Morning, Mom.”

“Have you and Taylor eaten breakfast yet?”

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Gavin licked the side of his mouth and rubbed his forehead. Subtle, very subtle. Clearing his throat, he said, “No, Mom, I haven’t. Taylor had to go to work.” And she hadn’t eaten breakfast either. He’d make certain she ate dinner.

“How was she this morning? Ryan was chattering away about another reel he wants to learn and Tori has decided she too wants to learn the violin.”

Gavin knew his mother didn’t really care about the latter part of her dissertation, it was the beginning question that held all the information. “She was fine. In a hurry because she was running late.”

“Hmmm.… I’m sure she was.”

Before he could think of a reply to that, she continued, “Well, get on over here and have brunch with us. Aiden and Jess are here with the twins, as is Quinlan. Brayden and Christian and the kids already left for some music performance at the Smithsonian.”

So that was where they had gone.

Sighing he agreed, “Fine, I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed.”

His mother’s light laughter echoed in his ear before she hung up the phone.

* * * *

“Kaitie lass, what are you smiling at?” Jock knew that look. “What exactly was the wager again, dear?” Without a care, she picked up a strawberry and popped it into her mouth. A mouth he’d just kissed the entire night before and one that could still work magic on him.

“You know as well as I do.”

“What wager?” asked his sons.

He waved them off. “Nothing.” He wasn’t about to tell them that his wife, their mother, and he, their father, had a bet on one of their offspring. Jock had made the comment that Taylor and Gavin would both be coming to brunch from the same suite. Kaitlyn had said that wouldn’t happen.

“Both of them, wasn’t it?”

Jock didn’t say anything.

Her one dimpled smile still made his lips twitch, his stomach tighten. One brow rose above her clear green eyes. “Well, dear. You owe me an entire week of gardening.”

Hell.

“I was thinking of planting lots of petunias and several other things. We also need to take out the Oleander bushes. Ryan told me they’re poisonous, and he’s right.”

He’d just planted the damn things for her not two weeks ago.

“In fact,” she said, waving her fork at him, “I think we need to go by that large nursery on the way home and pick everything out. Don’t you agree?”

He hated her damn flowers, well, planting them anyway. And she knew it. The woman kept telling him it did him good, kept his blood pressure down or some such. The kids were looking from him to their mother to each other. Jock felt no compulsion to explain their conversation or their wager.

Narrowing his gaze on her he nodded, but couldn’t help adding, “My turn will come.”

The twinkle in her green eyes made him wonder if she didn’t want him to win. Would he

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ever figure her out?

If his son wasn’t coming with Taylor then where the hell was the girl? Surely he hadn’t been that off? If he had his guess he knew they spent the night together, so why in the hell had he lost the wager?

Picking up a cube of cheese he looked again at his wife who was talking to Aiden and caught the laughter dancing just beneath the surface.

One day, one day before he died, he would understand her.

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Taylor finished filing the last report, and looked at the legal papers sitting beside the phone.

She’d just received them today, thanks to a perky clerk. Anger boiled in her. The ass.

Her phone rang and she picked it up.

“Taylor Reese.”

“Oh good, I caught you.”

Taylor closed her eyes and leaned back. Think of the devil and he’s likely to call. Just what she needed. “Charles. What do you want?”

“Did you get the papers?”

“Papers? I assume you mean the legal notice that you are no longer responsible for child support, having terminated your rights as Ryan’s father?” Amazingly she kept her voice even and calm as though discussing the weather.

He sighed. She could picture him, blond hair perfectly groomed, his suit pressed with no creases--lest it mar his gym toned five-foot-ten-inch frame--sitting behind his dark wood desk, with his elbows on the blotter.

“Taylor don’t do this, it’s not like your not successful enough to not to have a job.”

Backhanded compliments weren’t anything new in dealing with Charles.

Taylor picked up a pen and tapped it.

“Fine. I got the papers. Why the phone call?”

“To explain.”

He meant lecture.

“I should probably tell you this in person, and Rhonda agrees, but this wasn’t a good time for me to travel and I knew you should know.”

Something swirled in the pit of her stomach, tightening her already tense muscles.

“I don’t think there is anything about the two of you that could possibly concern me.” She tapped the pen harder.

“Your manners were always so gentle.”

“And making you proud was always at the top of my list, dear.” She smiled the last at him in a smirk. Looking at her watch, she told him, “I’ve got to get out of here. I have friends dropping by the house soon before we go out to eat, and I don’t want them waiting at my house.

Plus Ryan frets when I’m late.”

Her gaze landed on the damn papers sitting beside her framed picture of a smiling Ryan and she wondered how this would effect Ryan emotionally. He’d lived his whole life with people not caring or giving a damn. In the last few weeks, her son had blossomed and had become more outgoing with the exception of the break in. She knew Gavin helped with that, and didn’t want to see regression for any reason, especially not because of Charles.

“Yes, Ryan, how is he?” His voice held only polite interest.

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Taylor ignored the question. “Charles, time is running short, so if you just called to make certain your papers arrived. They did.”

“You were always different when irritated.” She could all but see his hazel eyes narrow on that one. “But that’s neither here nor there. I called to tell you that Rhonda is pregnant.”

The words fell heavily between them. Thank God she was sitting down. If she hadn’t been, she would have made a fool of herself. Was he joking? No, the serious tone was one she knew all too well, and Charles never joked.

Several moments passed, the only sound, the cars on the street and the tick of the clock.

Taylor brushed a strand of hair away from her face. She stopped tapping the pen. “How far along is she?”

“Almost four months.”

The math was quick. Four months went back to March. Their divorce had been final at the end of February, and a week later, the first part of March, he’d flown to Mexico and married Rhonda.

“Perfect timing, huh?” Taylor pinched the bridge of her nose. Anger rose up in her, at him for not caring to wait until the damn ink was dry, at herself for caring at all, at Fate for what she couldn’t do.

All the nights she cried herself to sleep, the depression at not being able to have children, the need and urge to bear a child so strong it felt like it was clawing from her insides, all that reared its head again to sink its talons deep within her heart.

“I guess she could give you what I couldn’t?” Why the hell had she said that?

A breath huffed through the line. Clearing his throat, he said, “I have something to tell you and I’d appreciate it if you listened to me, let me finish before you say anything.”

There was more? What? Twins?

Taking a deep breath, she leaned up on her desk, cradling the phone between her jaw and shoulder. Why did she feel defeated? Like crying? It was stupid, she had Ryan, but the old wound opened anew, bleeding within her for what she hadn’t been able to do. “What?”

“I did something when I was younger, a dumb foolish thing because I thought at twenty-one I knew it all.” He paused. “I had a vasectomy.”

It took several moments for his words to sink in, for their meaning to come clear.

“Excuse me?” She had not heard him right.

“Rhonda wanted to tell you all along, but I told her you wouldn’t understand, but now I am telling you so that maybe you’ll comprehend why I terminated my parental rights to Ryan.”

The insult wasn’t lost on her, but she kept her mouth shut momentarily, wanting to know what other bombshells he was about to drop.

“I was a child reared in foster and state homes. No family, no anything. I came from nothing. I decided I didn’t want children, didn’t want to pass that on to them, whatever had made the people whom created me to not care enough, to just leave and never look back. I didn’t want to pass that on.” His words were some she’d never expected to hear from him, the pain of a little lost boy. Well rehearsed in any case. “So, I had a vasectomy. I didn’t want kids. Then I was worried about my career and never thought of it. Till you.”

He’d never told her. No matter how lost, or what his reasons were, it was all a lie.

Everything. Lies.

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“At first I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how, then I was afraid if I did I would lose you. So I didn’t.”

Taylor couldn’t stand it; she pulled the mouth piece away and took a deep breath.

“I told myself so many times that you deserved to know, but I just couldn’t tell you.”

“Why?” she finally asked. “Don’t you think I had a right to know?”

All those tear filled nights, all the self-blame and recriminations, all the worries and tensions--all for naught. And all because of him, his lies, his silence. He’d stood by and watched, had known what it did to her when she hadn’t conceived, month after month, year after year.

This was unbelievable. Taylor rubbed her hands over her face. All the lies.

“I don’t know, Taylor. The years started to pass and we grew apart and I saw how different we were, and then I didn’t want to tell you.”

Her hands were shaking and she had the distinct feeling she was about to lose it and cry.

Damned if she would.

Licking her lips she said. “Well, if Rhonda is pregnant, then you obviously had the problem fixed. When did all this happen?” How in the hell had she missed it all?

His sigh was heavy. “About the time Rhonda and I started to seeing each other.”

Almost two years ago. My God was she so stupid, so incredibly blind?

“It was around the time you started Ryan’s case and wanted him to come live with us.”

They had stopped sleeping together months before that momentous time. She’d written it off to the fact she couldn’t give him a child and the strain was too much on them.

“Rhonda and I had been seeing each other already for several months, which you knew about.”She knew the history, but only because he’d confessed the time frame when she’d caught him. However, she knew he didn’t expect her to say anything. And she couldn’t think of a blessed thing even if she had wanted to.

“You and I were already having problems, and I wanted out. But then Ryan came along.

You and I hadn’t slept together in months. I knew where I wanted the future to go, so I found a doctor and had the reversal procedure done. You got custody, we got divorced and Rhonda and I got married.”

Disbelief slowed her thoughts; shock kept her tongue stilled. Then she blinked.

“Well isn’t that a tidy freaking little package. And now she’s pregnant and y’all are just one big happy, soon-to-be-family.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

“I hate you. Do you have any idea….” Tears clogged her throat. “All the times.…” Taylor stopped. “Thank you for calling me. At least I know it was never me. And only my coward, bastard of a husband that didn’t have the balls to tell the truth.”

She slammed the phone down, dropped her head in her hands and cried.