Their Child?

Enid reached over and brushed his shoulder—a light and tender touch of wifely reassurance. “Go on, honey. Tell her. She wants to hear it.”

Heck looked up again and met Lori’s eyes. “I guess I kind of went crazy, when you turned up in the family way. I didn’t know how to handle it. I was not prepared. I wanted so much for you—expected so dang much of you—more, I see now, than I ever expected of your sister. I was hopping mad and I scared you to death, with all my shouting, my hard threats and carrying on.” He repeated, “I scared you to death. And then I sent you away. I sent you away—” His voice broke. He looked down again and that time, it was obvious he wasn’t looking at his watch. His thick shoulders shook. “And you never came back. I am sorry. I never should have sent you away.”

Lori reached across the table and clasped her father’s beefy arm. “Daddy,” she said. “I forgive you. And, I did come back. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

He lifted his head then. Tears tracked down his ruddy sun-creased cheeks. He swiped them away with the back of his hand and blustered, “Will you look at me? Bawlin’ like a damn baby. Don’t know what the hell’s gotten into me.”

“I’m here, Daddy,” Lori softly said, once more. “I really am.”

Her father looked straight at her, then. He was smiling through his tears.

Later, around the dinner table, Enid asked about Tucker.

Lori confessed, “I don’t know any more than you do. From his actions, I’d say it’s pretty clear he intends to be a real father to Brody.”

“Brody hasn’t said a word, so I’m guessing he doesn’t know yet…that Tucker’s his dad?”

Lori shook her head. “Tucker wants Brody to have a chance to get to know him first. He wants to break it to him gently. I’m going to try to respect Tucker’s wishes on that. So unless Brody asks you directly, please keep what I said tonight to yourselves for a while.”

Enid said, “Whatever you need from us—but if he does ask?”

“Then tell him to come and talk to me. I don’t want Brody lied to.”

Her father nodded. “We understand.”

Enid said, “And what about you and Tucker? It did seem, until just lately, that you two were…becoming close.”

“Mama, I just don’t know. Right now, between Tucker and me, it doesn’t look too good.”

Thursday afternoon at four-thirty, Tucker sat behind the desk in his study at the Double T, a whiskey on ice in a crystal glass at his elbow and Lori on his mind. He reached for the phone—and it rang.

Impatient to get rid of whoever it was and get on to the phone call to Lori, he pushed the talk button and put it to his ear without checking the display. “Tucker Bravo. What?”

“It’s Lori.”

He wrapped his hand around his drink—and then let go of it. “Beat me to the punch, huh?” It came out sounding lazy and a little bit mean. Just how he felt right then—at least the mean part.

He heard her suck in a breath. Then she rattled off, as if she’d been rehearsing it, “Tucker, I’m fine now. I’m well enough to talk. And we do have to talk. We have to come to some sort of reasonable arrangement about Brody and the future and what we intend to—”

He didn’t need to hear it. “Lori.”

There was a silence down the line. And then, tightly, she asked, “What?”

“Come out here, to the ranch.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. Now. Come to the front door of my wing, the South Wing.”

“I—”

“Yes or no?”

Another silence, then, “Yes. Twenty minutes.” He heard the click. Score two for her: she’d called him. And she’d hung up before he could hang up on her.

The blood pumped hard and fast through his veins. He felt ready for battle. Impatient and exhilarated.

Probably a bad sign.

A woman Lori didn’t recognize answered her knock. The woman led her through the high-ceilinged foyer and into the beautiful, spare-looking South Wing living room, an airy space done in golds and browns, accented with black. That other time, two weeks ago, the room had seemed so relaxing and welcoming.

Not now.

Tucker sat on a coffee-brown sofa. He didn’t get up. “Thank you, Mrs. Haldana,” he said to the stocky, grayhaired woman. He picked up the full glass from the side table at his elbow. It had a watered-down look about it, as if he’d poured it a while ago and then decided not to drink it. “Want something—whiskey? Water? Both?”

“No, thank you.”

“All right, then.” He set the drink down without bringing it to his lips and turned to Mrs. Haldana. “I won’t need you anymore tonight.” The woman nodded and left them. He turned his shuttered gaze on Lori again. “Sit down,” he said.

She almost refused, but then realized he would probably take it as an offensive move. She really, truly did not want to fight with him. So she perched across the glass coffee table from him, on a sofa identical to the one where he sat.

He said, “That eye still looks pretty bad. How are things under the bandage?”

She shrugged. “It burns and itches, alternately, which means it’s healing, so I’m not complaining. I’m feeling better every day. And that’s not what I came here to talk to you about. I…” She drew a complete blank. There was so much to say, she hardly knew where to begin.

He didn’t help her out. He just sat there. Watching. Waiting.

She forged ahead again. “I know, I truly do, that there’s nothing I can say that will excuse my not telling you that you have a son. I was wrong, and I know it. I knew it all along. I…well, I did try, to get a hold of you. When Brody was a baby, I found out where you lived in Austin. I went down there. You were gone by then, though, and the guy who answered the door didn’t know where you went. I wrote letters. More than one. But you went off to Europe and I didn’t know where to send them. I tried the Austin address, hoping it might be forwarded. It came back. So I sent one here, to the Double T, thinking your grandfather would send it on to you. I guess he did. But that letter never reached you, either. It came back to me with French postal marks all over it, unopened, and I—”

His low growl of fury shut her up. He demanded, “What about just gutting it up and getting your butt out here, to the ranch? What about telling my granddaddy that you’d had my baby? Did you try that?”

“No. I—”

“‘No’ about says it all. You didn’t come here and talk to my grandfather—though we both know damn well what Ol’ Tuck was like. If he’d known he had a grandson, Granddaddy would have tracked me down. He’d have gone to the ends of the earth to get me back home and married to the mother of my child.”

Lori knew he was right. She had no excuses, yet somehow she couldn’t stop herself from trying to make him see how it had been for her. “Oh, Tucker, I was so young. And I felt so alone. I was scared of Ol’ Tuck. Everybody was. You know that. And really, I didn’t even know you. That night, the night of the prom, I—”

“Yeah. That night.” He sat so still, a frightening stillness, one that radiated cold rage. “Now you mention it, there was that, too, wasn’t there? That night you took your sister’s place. That night you let me call you Lena, over and over and over again. That night you smiled and sighed and went with me to that motel room. That night you let me take your clothes off you and touch your naked body and lay you down and call you Lena some more, while I was buried inside you. What about that night?”

She had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. “I was wrong. I know it. I should have—”

“Do you think I give a good damn about what you should have done? I’m not there yet. I’m still back with what you did. I’m back with calling you Lena while I was loving you, I’m back to that second time, when I’d used my one condom, when I was so gone on you, I had some crazy idea it didn’t matter, if we made a baby. It didn’t matter because I was staying right here, in town, because we’d be getting married anyway. Oh, yeah. I’m still back with what you did. Still back with the day after that night, when I came to your door and you let Lena answer it and send me away.”

“It was…I wasn’t thinking straight. I got home and I looked at Lena and I felt so low, so bad, like I’d done something so awful, behind her back.”

“Because you had.”

She pulled her shoulders back. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.”

“And the next night—that guy everyone thinks you met. What about him?”

She said, in a whisper, through her clutching throat, “There was no guy.”

He grunted again. A sound of purest disgust. “No guy.”

She coughed to make her throat open up. “That’s right. Only you. I…well, I always wanted you, when we were kids. I would see you in town and at school and I would hope and pray that you would notice me. But you didn’t. It was Lena you noticed, Lena who got to be your girl. I accepted that—or I thought I had. And then Lena broke up with you and she didn’t want to go to prom with you and—”

He waved a hand. “Back to that other guy. The one who didn’t exist.”

She made herself nod. “Okay. What about him?”

“You didn’t hesitate, did you, to let people think what was easiest for you? The whole damn town jumped to conclusions about how you ended up pregnant—and you let them. You let everyone think some stranger was Brody’s father.”

“Oh, Tucker, my dad was yelling all the time, making threats. He said he was going to find out who got me pregnant and—”

“I don’t want to hear it. I have more questions.”

Her mouth tasted of sawdust. The long gash at her temple felt like someone was sticking needles in it.

Too bad, she thought.

She knew it was only right, that she sit there. That she take whatever he felt he had to dish out. It wasn’t much, wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was the very least she could do.

And it was a first step. She had to believe that. For him to be so angry, he had to care. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be facing her down now. If he didn’t care, he would have just informed her of what he planned to do about Brody and left it at that.

“Your husband,” he said. “What lies did you tell him about my son?”

“I didn’t tell my husband lies. Henry knew the truth. I told him everything, before we were married.”

“And what? He told you not to worry, that it was just fine with him that Brody’s father had no idea he existed?”

She stopped him on that one. “No. Brody does know, that he had a…a natural father, that Henry was his stepdad.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “And just what does Brody think happened to his natural father?”

“I told him it didn’t work out, between his father and me. That his father went away before he knew that he had made Brody. That someday, when the time was right, we’d find his dad somehow.”

“When did you tell him all this?”

“Years ago. He was three. It was right before I married Henry.”

“And since then?”

“He doesn’t ask. Oh, Tucker. You have to see. He’s had a…happy life. He loved Henry and he accepted him, as his dad. I always knew that someday he’d have questions, that someday he’d need to know you.”

“Someday…”

“You have to understand…”

“But I don’t, Lori. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it. You’re telling me that your husband knowingly stole my son from me.”

“He didn’t. He never could. It’s only…well, Henry was sterile. And he’d always wanted children. He said that you were long gone and he thought it was for the best if we just let things go along the way that they were. I’m ashamed to say it, but, by then, that was just what I wanted to hear. We got married. Henry treated Brody like a son. We were…happy, the three of us.”

“Happy.” He made it sound like a dirty word.

“Yes.”

“And you gave up all attempts to get a hold of me?”

“Yes. That’s right. It was all wrong, what we did, Henry and me. And he knew it in his heart. It was his last wish, before he died, that I track you down and tell you the truth.”

“So what you’re saying is that whenever you finally did get around to telling me—if you ever did—it would have been for your dead husband’s sake.”

“I didn’t say that. I never said that.”

“And your husband’s been dead, what? Over a year? And I’ve been right here, in the Junction, just about the whole damn time.”

She refused to let her gaze shift away. She looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t expect you to understand. I loved my husband. He had come into my life at a time when I was barely holding on, feeling…so bad about myself, about what a mess I’d made of my life. I was disconnected from my family, working overtime to take care of me and Brody, trying to be a good mother to him. Henry…showed me how to live. Really, I grew up, took charge of my own life, while I was married to Henry. I wasn’t much good for a while there after I lost him. I couldn’t…deal with anything beyond getting by, day to day. I knew—even before Henry died—that I would tell you. But after I lost him, I needed time to face up to the job.”

“More excuses. More lies.” A cold smile curved the corners of Tucker’s mouth. “It’s time to get straight about this, Lori. You were never going to tell me. Not really. Were you?”

Outrage had her heart slamming against her breastbone. She quelled that outrage, ordered her damn heart to slow down. From the way she’d behaved, what else was he to think, but that she would have always found some reason to keep the truth from him?

She spoke flatly. “I was going to tell you Monday. I made that appointment to do it. I would have done it then.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She pressed her lips together, holding in the hot denials that rose to her lips. What good would denials do? He didn’t believe her and she had no right to imagine that he should.

He said, “Why Monday? Why did you think you had to wait? Why not any one of those times you saw me after you got into town? Why not that night you came out here with Brody, that night we talked for hours about everything but the one thing that mattered most. Why not then?”

“It wouldn’t have been right, not with Brody there. And I had planned from the first to wait until after the wedding. I wanted Lena to have her big day. If the story got out, I was afraid it might ruin things for her.”

He shook his head. “Excuses,” he said. “That’s all you’ve got for me, isn’t it?”

“No. That’s not so. There are no excuses and I know there aren’t. But you asked. So I answered you. I came here, back to town, for two reasons. My sister’s wedding—and you. I planned to stay an extra week after the wedding was over. That week was so I’d have plenty of time to see you, to tell you what you had a right to know. I had it all worked out. Once the wedding was over, I’d get in touch with you, meet you someplace private and tell you that you had a son. I assumed I’d have zero contact with you until it was time to say what needed saying. How was I to know I’d run into you the minute I drove into town. How was I to know I’d keep running into you? How was I to know that I…” She faltered.

He prodded, “That you, what?”

Her cheeks burned with a sudden, hot blush. “Look. It doesn’t matter.”

He wouldn’t let it be. “What? How were you to know what?”

“It doesn’t—”

“What?”

She shut her eyes. It didn’t help. When she opened them again, he was still there. Waiting, his square jaw set and his brown eyes hard as agates. She told him, very quietly, “How was I to know that I would find myself falling for you all over again? That one look at you and I’d feel like I felt back in high school, that I’d be mooning around, longing for a glance from you, a gentle word. A sweet, tender kiss.”

She looked away, toward the tall windows that flanked a glass door and a deep back porch. It was beautiful out there, so green and lush. She wished she could leap up, fling open the door, race down the porch steps and run across that long slope of thick lawn—run and run and never stop. She faced him again, her heart squeezing tight inside her chest. It hurt—a thousand times worse than the needles poking into her brow—to look at him. So big and handsome, with his sexy full mouth, that sun-kissed brown hair and those gorgeous dark eyes—eyes that seemed to bore through her, a mouth set against her.

“I didn’t like it,” she said flatly. “I didn’t like being so strongly attracted to you after all these years. That’s the honest, unvarnished truth, whether you’re able to believe me or not. I didn’t expect it and it confused me, terribly, to find myself still wanting you after all this time. I thought I had grown out of you. But since I’ve been back in town, I’m a mixed-up teenager all over again. I’ve made the same bad choices I made back when. I messed things up royally, the same way I did when we were kids.”

“So that’s what I am to you. A bad choice?”

“That’s not what I said. You’re twisting my words.”

“You amaze me. You are one piece of work. You’re attracted to me. And that’s why you kept my son from me all over again. And somehow, you’ve got the idea that your telling me this will get you off the hook now?”

“I didn’t say I thought it would get me off the hook. I never said that.” She had to actively resist the need to bring her hand to her forehead, to press the bandage that covered the now-throbbing gash.

“Good,” he said, “Because you’re not off the hook, Lori. Not for this. You never will be.”

She folded her hands in her lap—good and tight—and looked down at them, hard. “Gotcha.” She faced him. “So how about this? We tell Brody right away that you’re his father. Then we can—”

“No.”

Had she heard wrong? “Wait a minute. You don’t want to tell him?”

“Not yet.”

“But he—”

“You said it yourself. He thinks of that husband of yours as his father. He’s mentioned him to me. More than once. It’s ‘my dad,’ this and ‘Dad used to’ that. Whatever I think of the man who knowingly tried to steal my son from me, I’m not going to—”

It was too much. “Tucker. Stop. I understand that you’re angry—beyond angry, even. And I know that you have every right to be. But Henry was a good father to Brody. A damn good father. You’ve said yourself what a great kid Brody is. A great kid doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”

“Exactly,” he said.

And her mouth almost dropped open. “You…agree with me?”

“Yeah.” He agreed. She could hardly believe it. It was a first, for this particular conversation. “Brody’s a hell of a kid and that husband of yours did a bang-up job with him. I want to give Brody time to accept me in his life, to get used to the idea that I’m going to be around from now on.”

In spite of all the hard things he’d said to her, at that moment, she felt so sad for him. He really didn’t know his son at all.

And whose fault was that?

Hers. The fault was all hers.

“Tucker,” she said carefully. “Give Brody a little credit. He’s really so smart and…down to earth. He’s already gotten to know you. He thinks you’re terrific. You can tell him, now. He can take it.”

“No.” He gave her a look, dead-on and imperious. Never before had he reminded her of Ol’ Tuck. But at that moment, he did. He said in a tone both flat and final, “It’s too soon.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“Think what you want. It’s my decision.” He said it as if it didn’t even occur to him that she might dare to go against him.

Ol’ Tuck. Definitely. Way too much like Ol’ Tuck.

And he was right. It was his decision. She wouldn’t go against him, not about this. He had the right to tell Brody in his own way and his own time.

She suggested, with care, “How can I help you, to get to know your son?”

He nodded, a regal dip of his head. “Yeah. It’s time we talked specifics.”

Her heart was racing again. And her palms had gone clammy. She feared the worst. That he’d say he was suing her for custody, that he’d demand she turn Brody over to him.

If he did that, all that would be left for them was an ugly legal battle, with Brody at the center of it, suffering for her bad choices, her lies—and for his father’s vindictiveness.

She tamped her fears down and tried to speak calmly. “Yes. All right. I, um, realize you’re going to want to spend some time with him—on a regular basis. I think we can work together to—”

“When does his school year start?”

Where was he headed? And why did she have a sinking feeling it wasn’t anywhere that she would want to go? “Late August,” she said. “The twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, I think.”

He laid it on her. “I want you and Brody to move in here, with me, right away. I want a chance with him, a chance to catch up after all the years I didn’t have with him. A couple of months of him living with me should go a long way toward that. Before he leaves to go back to school, I will have told him that I’m his father.”

“But I don’t—”

“I’m not finished.” He gave her a long look. It wasn’t a friendly one. Then he continued, “I need you here, at first, to ease the way. I want him to feel comfortable and I want the visit to seem…natural to him. It won’t seem that way if you don’t stay here, too.”

She spoke up, though she knew he wouldn’t like what she said. “You could just tell him who you are.”

“I already told you. Not yet.”

“Tucker, I don’t like this. I think—”

“I don’t care what you don’t like, or what you think. I need you here, so my son will feel comfortable about staying with me. And I think you owe it to me—and to him—to be here, for a while, at least. Once Brody knows the truth, once he’s had time to adjust to being with me full-time, you’ll be free to go back to San Antonio. You can return to pick him up a few days before school starts.”

“And…after that?”

“After that, I’ll want time with him. Holidays, summers and school vacations, anyway. And we’ll be going to court.”

She felt vaguely ill. “Court?”

“He’s my son. I want it legal. I want a document that says he’s a Bravo attached to his birth certificate.”

“Yes. All right. Of course.”

He said, “The adoption might present complications.”

“The adoption?” She didn’t follow at first. Then the light dawned. “Oh. No. Henry never adopted Brody.”

“Why not?”

“We decided against it. For the reasons you just gave. When it came down to it, Brody was—and is—your son.”

“Plus, if I ever did find out you let another man have my son, who the hell knows what kind of trouble I might have made for your happy little family, right?”

She sucked in a long breath. “That’s right.”

There was more to it.

Henry had pushed—hard—for the adoption. He’d insisted it was the best thing, that Tucker never had to know. Lori had said no. In the end, she couldn’t do that. Tucker was Brody’s father and that could never be erased.

But there was no point in going into all that now. It would have served no real purpose, would have only sounded like more excuses, an attempt to make herself look a little less reprehensible—at the expense of her dead husband.

Tucker said, “You’ve been calling him Brody Taylor, though, haven’t you? Even though his birth certificate gives him your maiden name?”

“Yes.”

“No more. When he goes back to school, he’s going as a Bravo.”

“Yes. I’ll see to it.”

“You bet you will.” He looked at her as if he wouldn’t trust her to pass him the salt at the dinner table.

Her temper flared again. She doused it, suggesting carefully, “And for now, maybe we should just take it one day at a time. Just get through the summer and not worry about all the rest of it until we have to.”

He sat forward. “You’re saying you’ll do it. You’ll give me what I want. Tomorrow, you and Brody will move in here, with me.”

“Yes.”

His eyes darkened—with triumph and something more…

Something that brought a tiny, valiant flame of hope rising to flicker within her.