Revealed: His Secret Child (2 page)

“They can look as hard as they want.” Defiance lifted her chin. And he found he was the one doing all the “looking.” Her hair, her skin, her figure, the fire in her green eyes that picked out flecks of amber. He cataloged her features, remembered how he'd liked so much—everything, in fact—about her, but it had been her eyes, the intelligence and passion they hinted at, that captured his attention most.

He wouldn't be distracted by the battle light in them now, although he could admit it stirred reactions in him that he'd had no intention of allowing. But there was no denying she was beautiful, all the more so when the passion for one of her causes was stirred.

Once, he'd had no trouble making passion, of an altogether different kind, stir.

He'd never met anyone quite like her, either before or after their time together. And he so didn't need to be going down that track now. He tapped his fist on the newspaper. That was why he was here. “You're unnecessarily inciting uncertainty, fear and anger. Cameron Enterprises is putting a lot of resources into Hannah's Hope and the upcoming gala, with the aim of giving something back to the community. The charity can do a lot of good for the town, but not if you scare people off it.” He deliberately didn't try to tell her his boss's takeover of Worth Industries would ultimately be good for the community. Or that Rafe was behind the charity for any
reason other than to improve the public image and perception of his business till his plans for the future of the business were finalized.

Rafe could still jump either way with those plans.

“I'd say it
is
necessary to give voice to the opinions in that piece,” she said. “The citizens of Vista del Mar ought to be uncertain. They ought to be angry and afraid. They ought not to trust in the goodness of Rafe Cameron's heart.”

“Seems to me you're letting personal animosity impact professional integrity.” Even if she was right.

For a second, her jaw dropped. “There's nothing personal about this.”

“You're not using this as an opportunity to get back at me?”

Her laughter was short but the amusement real. “You flatter yourself, Max.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. I call it as I see it. If I suggest some questions that the people of Vista del Mar might like to ask your Mr. Cameron then that's just doing my job, regardless of who he employs as his spin doctor.”

“And if our lawyers have some questions they want to ask you and the paper's owners, they'll just be doing their job.”

“I have the complete backing of the paper's owners.”

“Nobody likes to be sued,” he said quietly. “It'll be easy enough to call them off. All you have to do is to stop writing such aggressively provocative pieces. Stick to the truth and the facts.”

She tilted her head, frowning. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. I'm just letting you know what you're getting into. Giving you the facts.”

She shook her head slowly. “Have you forgotten that much about me, Max? Do you really think threatening me, because
that was a threat, not a helpful passing on of information, is going to make me shirk my duties as a voice in this community?”

“I am trying to help you. You need to know how things stand. Rafe Cameron doesn't let people get in the way of what he wants and he doesn't mess around.” He hoped, for her sake, that she believed him.

“Can I quote you on that?”

“No. This is a visit between old…friends.” Any other word was too loaded. “I can, however, get you quotes on and from Rafe himself. An interview if you'd like.”

A smile spread across her face. It seemed, in fact, to brighten the whole room. “Do you mean like the type of information you'll be putting across at your upcoming press conference, or the whitewashed press releases out of your office? Like that one that came across my desk last week full of glowing praise for Hannah's Hope and the gala?”

That was precisely what he'd been thinking of. Only he could hardly admit that now.

“As if it wasn't obvious from the—” A sound—something soft hitting the floor upstairs—stopped her midsentence and wiped all trace of amusement from her face. She glanced at her watch. “Your time's up, Max. I've heard you out. I'll think about what you said. Really, I will.” She was suddenly reasonable, her tone conciliatory. “I promise.” She stood and walked to the door, opening it. “Just go.”

Max rose slowly. Something had thrown her off her stride, put that fear back into the eyes that were now fixed on him as she waited for him to move.
Willed him to move?
Watching her, he walked toward her. She turned and headed out of the room. By the time he caught up to her she was standing at the front door, holding it wide to reveal the morning sunshine.

He paused.

She opened the door wider still.

“It doesn't have to be like this, Gillian.”

“Yes it does.” Her words were clipped. “I do my job as I see fit.”

“I wasn't talking about your job. I was speaking…personally. We were rivals once and still managed—”

“I learned my lesson and now I keep my personal and my professional lives separate. So, please, just go. Now.” She reached for him, her fingers closing around his arm, as though to urge him through the doorway.

Max stayed where he was, her desperation making him curious. Something wasn't right here. Did she have a man back there, someone she didn't want him to see?

Another soft thump and he looked deeper into the house to where it had come from.

“Max,” she hissed his name and tugged his arm. “Not now.” Panic tightened her voice.

Max gave it up and took a step. He wasn't going to care. Either about what she was trying to hide or about unsettling her by lingering or about how that simple touch, her hand on his arm, had resonated through him.

“Mommy,” a happy singsong voice called. She let go of his arm and her hand fell to her side.

“Mommy?” he asked, unable to keep the shock from his voice. She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. The pieces dropped into place—the hatchback, her softer curves, her haste to get rid of him—it suddenly made sense. She might not be married but she certainly hadn't wasted any time in replacing him in her bed, in finding someone to give her the child she'd talked about. “When did that happen?” Max was no expert on children, he had no idea how old the child might be. Anywhere less than three but old enough to talk. So, not a baby.

“Go. Please,” she repeated, but this time the authority had
gone from her command. A bleak resignation filled her eyes. “I need to talk to you. But not now. Not here.”

“Sure.” Definitely time to go if there was a child here. He barely knew how to be in the room with his own nieces. And he was still processing the fact that Gillian had had a child.

“Mommy.”

One glance. That was all he'd allow himself to satisfy his curiosity. Max turned back to see a little, curly-headed boy, clutching a faded blue blanket, standing at the foot of the stairs.

“I'm hungwy.”

A little boy, who was the spitting image of Max and his brother in the picture his parents still had on their hallway wall, taken when he was two.

Shock swamped him. He, not Gillian, was the one who'd been skating on thin ice. And he'd just fallen through into a paralyzing new world.

Max looked from the boy to Gillian. Her skin, always pale, had faded to ashen, her knuckles as she gripped the door handle were white.

“Mommy?” He echoed the child's word, not taking his eyes from her. “Mommy?” And for a second he wished that he, too, had the door handle to hold on to, to steady himself. The boy was Gillian's. The boy who looked like Max. He didn't need to do the math to know the child was his.

“Okay, honey,” Gillian said, her voice soft, “go on into the kitchen. I'll come get you some cereal.” The boy looked steadily at her and Max for the longest time then trotted through a doorway.

The depth of her deceit stunned him.

And to think he'd attributed her defensiveness to conscience over the piece she'd written. That wrong didn't even register on the same scale as the deception she'd practiced on him for the past three and a half years.

“I don't suppose we can talk about this later?” Her eyes didn't quite meet his, and her throat moved as she swallowed. She knew there was no way he was leaving now.

He took hold of the door and swung it shut.

The fury was back in full force as he followed her to the kitchen. Overlaying a deep and utter shock. Shock that he couldn't process and fury that he couldn't give vent to now, not with a child here.

A boy.

His son.

G
illian's stomach churned. What was going to happen now? She knew only one thing. She knew it the instant Max recognized himself in Ethan.

The carefully protected bubble of her life was about to be blown apart. She followed Ethan through to the kitchen. Every slow deliberate step of Max's Italian-loafer-clad feet sounded like an ax fall behind her.

But underneath her anxiety she recognized a flicker of relief. The relief a condemned man might feel on his way to execution. If nothing else, the agony of anticipating the inevitable was over.

She'd known Max was head of PR for Cameron Enterprises. She'd known, therefore, that her articles had the potential to bring her into contact with him. And that perhaps the time had come to tell him about Ethan.

But not in her own home. She'd never thought that. Not where he could see her son. Not without her first doing the impossible and preparing Max for the news.

In the center of the kitchen she stopped as Ethan climbed onto his booster seat at the table. So much about her kitchen and its cozy dining area advertised the fact that a child lived here. Which was why she hadn't brought Max to this room in the first place.

Her half-drunk coffee sat on the opposite side of the table from Ethan. The same newspaper that had brought Max to her door lay folded to reveal the crossword, reminding her that a mere ten minutes ago her biggest problem had been finding an eleven-letter word for
incident.

Her day had stretched out, relaxed and pleasant, before her.

She needed to move, to be doing something. Keeping her back to Max and Ethan, she poured a bowl of cereal. With hands that weren't quite steady, she sliced banana into the bowl and added milk, but there was only so long she could drag the preparation out. Eventually, she had to turn from the counter and face the music. Or in this case the absolute silence.

Max sat in the chair she'd vacated earlier, opposite Ethan. They were staring at each other—from perfectly matched blue eyes—with unabashed curiosity. Ethan could outstare almost anyone. She now realized where that ability had come from.

Gillian set her son's bowl in front of him, milk slopping over the side as she did so. Her hands clenched into fists, her nails dug into her palms. She had to calm down, take control, of herself and of the situation.

Ethan, having looked his fill at the stranger, picked up his spoon and began eating, his breakfast now more important than the man at the table. Gillian found a cloth for the spilled milk.

And Max…watched.

He still hadn't spoken a word and his silence may not be
affecting Ethan, but every second of it ratcheted up the tension in her stomach. “Do you want coffee?”

He shook his head. A single abrupt movement.

She'd known her son looked like his father, but seeing them here together for the first time, the resemblance was even stronger than she'd realized. Seeing them here together was both her greatest wish and her greatest fear.

“What's your name?” Ethan had stopped spooning cereal into his mouth long enough to ask the innocent question.

Max opened his mouth.

“His name's Mr. Preston,” she said before Max could supply anything confusing or startling, because she'd suddenly had the terrifying thought that this man, who'd had no intention of ever being a father, had been about to say “Daddy.”

“Pweston.”

“We'll find something else for you to call me,” Max said, the piercing blue of his arctic gaze firmly on Gillian. He looked back at her son. “What's your name?”

“Ethan. An' I'm gonna be three soon. How old are you?”

Max's eyebrows shot up. Clearly he wasn't used to the directness of a child's questioning. He ought to be, he was pretty good at it himself. A smile lifted the corners of his lips, momentarily smoothing the deep lines that had furrowed his brow. “I'm thirty-two. Nearly thirty-three.” His gaze swung to her. “Which means I was thirty when you were born.”

Not here. Not now. Gillian tried to telegraph the silent message to him. Not in front of Ethan. “His birthday is the same day as yours,” she said quietly. Max jerked back as though she'd hit him.

“Do you wanna see my twain?”

“Yeah,” he said, to all outward appearances calm and back in control, “I'd like that.”

Max stood and father and son left the table, Ethan trotting ahead, Max tossing aside his leather jacket and modifying
his stride to follow. Gillian couldn't bear to follow but knew she had to. She had to be there in case Max said anything to upset or confuse Ethan.

As calmly and as quietly as he'd sat at the table, she could tell he was livid. But that anger was for her. She didn't think he'd let Ethan see it—after all, he was better than any man she'd ever met at controlling his emotions.

With dragging footsteps, she followed. She stood in the doorway and watched as, for twenty minutes, Max lay on his side, propped up on one elbow on her family room floor, his long legs stretched out and his shirtsleeves rolled up, playing trains with his son. The sight was as surreal as if James Bond had waltzed in and done the same thing. With an obedience that had to be alien to him, he pushed engines and carriages around a blue plastic track, taking garbled advice from the expert on the trains' names and what they carried and the appropriate noises to make. The two of them spun stories and orchestrated derailments.

It broke her heart.

She thought she'd done the right thing.

She was so
sure
she'd done the right thing. For everyone. For Max because he didn't want a family, for Ethan because he deserved better than a father who didn't want him and for her because she hadn't wanted to trap, or be trapped with, a man who didn't love her, who didn't open up emotionally, who would always put his career ahead of anything else in his life. Who would ultimately, in the ways that counted, reject her and their son.

She'd thought she could provide all that Ethan needed.

But now? A chasm had opened and uncertainty flooded in.

For the first time since they'd come into the room, Max looked at her. The light, the softness, the pleasure that had been in his eyes, dimmed and hardened. In one swift
movement he stood. “Are you all right here, son, if I go and talk to
Mommy?
”

“Son”? Gillian went cold. It was just an expression. He wasn't the first man to call Ethan “son.” It didn't mean anything. Despite the fact that he was the first man for whom it was truly more than just an expression.

Ethan didn't look up from the train he was pushing toward a tunnel as he said, “Uh-huh.” She hadn't had any daddy questions from him yet. She'd known they'd come one day but she'd hoped that day was a long way off.

A tendril of fear snaked through her. What if there was more to Max's reaction than anger over the secret she'd kept? What if he wanted to claim Ethan? Max, because of his nature and his profession, chose words carefully. And if he'd called Ethan “son”…

He wouldn't. He couldn't.

Two long strides had Max at her side, his fingers gripping her elbow as he spun her and led her back to the kitchen. Three years and he still used the same cologne. Eternity. The one that made her think of him whenever she'd smelled it. The scent reassured her. He was a creature of habit. He didn't change his ways for anyone. He wouldn't want a son. There would be no room in his life.

Her legs unsteady, and needing some kind of barrier in front of her, she sat at the table. She traced a scar in the old wood with her fingernail as he paced her too-small kitchen, tension and anger radiating off him in waves.

He'd always been passionate—about his career, his life and at one point about her. She could still vividly remember their lovemaking. But now that passion was channeled into anger. The fact that he hadn't yet given vent to it gave her a clue as to how powerful it was.

If he decided he wanted visitation rights she'd give him that, but only if he could guarantee that it would be permanent,
that… Gillian threaded her fingers into her hair. Where was she going with this?

He was still pacing and turning. Gillian kept her gaze on the table but she heard his step, felt his presence surrounding, suffocating her. If only he'd say something. Anything. Finally, the footsteps stopped.

“He's my son.”

Anything except that.

The controlled, quietly spoken words, that simple statement of fact, contained a wealth of emotion. But they hadn't been a question so Gillian said nothing.

“How dare you?”

That, however, was most definitely a question. She looked up. He stood with his back to her looking out the window above the counter and she was grateful she didn't have to meet his gaze. “I did what I thought was best.”

He spun back to her. “Best?” He ground the word out, ice in his gaze.

She had to force herself to meet that anger, feel that wintry animosity. “You didn't want children. You broke up with me because I mentioned the word just once.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You were pregnant then?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Do you remember that week we both caught a stomach virus?”

“The one I picked up on a trip to Boston and passed to you?”

“I didn't think I'd been that sick.” She lifted her shoulder. “But it interfered with the pill and I got pregnant.”

“And you didn't—” He turned back to the window. “I'm that boy's—”

“Ethan's.”

He crossed to the table, leaned on his fists, his face close to hers. Her heart thundered but she wouldn't back away from his intimidation.

“I'm Ethan's father.” His voice was lethally calm, but a bluish vein pulsed in his temple. “And you never once thought I had a right to know that.”

She'd thought it a million times but common sense had always prevailed.

“Are you my daddy?”

Gillian's heart plummeted at her son's happy, singsong question. Inquisitive and bright with the hearing of a bat, he never missed a thing.

For an instant, Max's gaze fixed on hers and for the first time there was something other than anger in it. Was he looking for her permission? She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Not now.”

His gaze hardened. “If not now, then when?” Max pulled out the chair next to Gillian, spun it so it faced Ethan, and sat leaning his forearms on his knees, putting himself closer to Ethan's level. “Yes. I'm your daddy,” he said gently.

So much for needing her permission.

She watched her son for his reaction. Ethan frowned, stared at Max for a few seconds, and then smiled. “Come play.”

Max glanced questioningly at Gillian. If he'd expected Ethan to be as stunned by the discovery as he'd been, he was very much mistaken.

She stood. “How about I put your favorite movie on, honey?” Normally, Gillian discouraged the watching of TV. Today was not normal. “The one about trains.”

“Okay.” Ethan headed blithely for the family room.

When she got back, Max was exactly where she'd left him, sitting in the chair, staring at the doorway, forearms resting on splayed knees. “Did you have to tell him that?”

He jerked upright. “I was hardly going to leave it to
you,” he said quietly. “He deserves to know before he turns eighteen.”

“He's never asked.”

“Well, he did and now he knows. And at least now he doesn't have to call me Pweston.” And for just a second a wry smile lifted a corner of his lips and amusement passed between them. Then vanished. “I had a right to know, too, before he came looking for me wanting to know why he'd grown up without his father.”

“You didn't want children.”

“I didn't want to do jury service last year, either, but I did, and I coped and I think I did a good job.”

“Ethan deserves better than a father who's only there because he has to be.”

“It's better than no father at all.”

“Is it? I didn't think so.” She'd had a reluctant, resentful, part-time father for her early years. It had taken her many more years to realize that his attitude and actions and eventual desertion were not a reflection of her worth. Even so, his rejection of her had shaped who she was.

“Clearly. But family is important. Having a mother and a father, that's how it's supposed to be.”

“Only if that mother and father both want to be there. Only if neither of them is resenting the child for its very existence.”

His gaze was cold on her face till finally, after a silence that stretched and hardened like a wall between them, he spoke.

“I had a right to know, and you denied me that right. You denied me two years and ten months of my child's life?”

Gillian said nothing. She'd made the best decision she could with the facts she had at the time. And the fact was that Max had wanted nothing permanent in his life. Not a relationship and certainly not a child. For all the grueling and lonely time over those years, they had also been the best, most satisfying
times of her life. She'd seen her son grow from a baby, his personality developing. It had been a privilege and a delight and she'd denied Max that opportunity. High-flying, career-driven, workaholic Max Preston who wouldn't have time in his life for a child. Who'd said he didn't want children. Ever.

High-flying, career-driven, workaholic Max Preston who'd just spent half an hour on her family-room floor playing trains. She wanted to weep. “If you'd called just once, just once, after we broke up…”

He shook his head. “Don't you dare try to blame me.”

“I'm not. I'm just…” She didn't know what she was. Confused? Anxious?

Max surged from his chair, strode back to the window.

“This changes everything.” He turned back to her. “Pack your bags.”

“What do you mean?”