Even though she was expecting the knock at the door, Erin jumped when the sharp, decisive sound reverberated through the ancient wood. She forced her legs to move, forced her hand to lift the latch and to swing the door wide. Even though she knew it had to be him, actually seeing him again was a shock. One that sent her heart plummeting to her stomach. She fought to hold on to her self-control, to show him he didn’t affect her anymore.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Good evening to you, too,” Sam said looking steadily into her eyes.
She felt that familiar pull deep in her body, that traitorous draw of attraction that had been so instant, so instinctive, so very, very real. She clamped down on it, immediately. Attraction aside, they shared nothing anymore. Not even the child she’d borne and cherished with every beat of her battered heart.
Her eyes roamed his face, noting the depth of the lines that showed when he was tired or in pain. He was still dressed in a business suit that looked slightly the worse for wear and the length of his journey was evident in his eyes. She tried not to care.
“I’m not taking guests,” she said coldly. “You’ll have to find somewhere else to stay.”
She started to close the door but Sam put his hand up, arresting its progress.
“I’m not here to stay. Please,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“We’ve ‘talked’ all we need to, through our lawyers.”
“No, we haven’t. Let me in, Erin. If you don’t, I’ll just stay out here and keep knocking until you do.”
The implacable look in his eyes confirmed his intentions. Without saying anything, Erin stepped aside and watched as Sam limped into the kitchen. The place where he’d ripped her world apart only three weeks ago. His limp was more pronounced than usual. She told herself she wasn’t concerned for his comfort, even as the words offering him a chair spilled from her mouth.
He lowered himself into a seat, stretching out his injured leg and rubbing it absently. “Is Riley in bed already?”
“Of course.” She crossed her arms across her stomach, waiting for the words she dreaded hearing.
“That’s a shame. I was hoping I could see him.”
“Then perhaps you should have made an appointment through your lawyer.”
She couldn’t help it, the anger just boiled and boiled inside of her. She held on to it, knowing it was the only thing that was going to get her through this meeting, let alone the next few days, weeks and months. Silence stretched out between them. It seemed they were at a stalemate. Sam looked at her and sighed ever so quietly. She turned away, unable to bear his scrutiny. More anxious now than she’d been before for the calming herbal brew, she busied herself at the kitchen counter.
“I was just making myself a cup of herbal tea. Can I get you anything?” she offered reluctantly.
A look of surprise passed his face. “Sure, a coffee would be great, thanks.”
“Decaf or full strength?”
“Better make it full strength.”
She moved to the coffeemaker and went through the motions, even as the one big question she really wanted to ask him buzzed around in her head like a particularly angry bee. What the hell was he doing here?
Once she’d made his coffee, exactly the way he liked it, she took it and her tea to the table. She should invite him to sit more comfortably in her sitting room or the library, she thought, but then her anger reasserted itself. It wasn’t as if he was an invited guest, after all. Let him sit on a hard wooden kitchen chair.
She sat opposite him, not willing to speak until he spoke first. He took a long draw of his coffee then sighed.
“That’s good, thanks.”
The silence between them deepened. Erin went to pick up her mug but noticed her hand was shaking. Determined not to show any sign of weakness in front of Sam, she let her hand drop to her lap once more, her fingers now curled into a fist of frustration.
“Why won’t you accept the money?” Sam asked bluntly after taking another sip of his coffee. “I know you need it.”
“It’s not about money.”
“What is it then, pride? You can’t afford to be proud about this, Erin. I know you’re going to lose the roof over your head. Rejecting the settlement is the last thing you need right now.”
“What do you care? You’ll have what you want.”
A look of compassion shone briefly in his eyes before going again so swiftly she began to even wonder if she’d seen it at all.
“You deserve to be compensated. Please, let me do this for you, Erin.”
She shook her head. “Compensated? Did I really hear you say that? How dare you. Do you really think you can put a price on your baby’s head, Sam? Is that what this is all about?”
“No, of course not!” he protested.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s about taking care of you, looking after your best interests.”
“That’s a pile of crap and you know it. If you had wanted to take care of me you would have been honest with me from the outset. When you arrived here you would have identified yourself instead of making me—”
She cut off before she could lay herself open to even more hurt. There was no way she was going to bare her heart to him, to expose the feelings he’d ridden roughshod over.
“Making you what?” he prompted, leaning forward slightly in his seat.
“No,” she shook her head vehemently. “This isn’t about me. It’s not even about Riley. It’s about you trying to ease your guilt—first your guilt about the accident and now the guilt you feel for taking the one thing left to me that has any meaning at all.”
She could see she’d struck a blow as his lips firmed into a straight line and his eyes darkened ominously.
“Okay, so if I admit I feel guilty, will you accept the money?”
She laughed, a sharp bitter sound that hung on the air like acrid smoke from a fire.
“I don’t believe this. Do all people like you, people with money, think that if you throw enough of it at a problem that it will solve everything? Sam, don’t you understand, this offer of yours is an insult.”
“What, it’s not enough?”
She could hear the beginning of anger in his voice and she welcomed it. It was better than the emotionless, rational man who’d sat at her table the past few minutes.
“It could never be enough.”
“Why? Because you can’t buy a baby? Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
“You tell me. It sure as hell looks like it. People think they can do it all the time, don’t they?” she fired back. “But that’s got nothing to do with this, with us. You will have Riley. I signed your papers giving up my rights as his mother.”
She closed her eyes and fought for some semblance of control. “Do you have any idea of what that did to me? To just give him away? I didn’t enter that pregnancy as a surrogate. I entered it believing the child I carried belonged to me and my husband. Every step of that pregnancy he was ours. Every single step. Riley couldn’t be more my son if he was my own flesh and blood. I had to do what was best for him. He deserves, more than anyone, a real parent who loves him and who will do the best for him, always. God help you if you ever fail him.”
“I won’t fail him. If I thought I would, I would never have worked so hard to get him. I’ve learned my lesson and I’ve been lucky to be given a second chance. There is no way on this earth I am going to jeopardize that.” He sho
ved a hand through his hair. “Look, I know you love Riley. I want you to have access to him.” Sam’s voice was annoyingly reasonable—placating, almost.
“Access!” She virtually spat the word at him. “I don’t want access. I wanted to be his mother, to be a full-time part of his life, not just some woman who comes to visit him the occasional weekend. Seeing him only briefly and then having to walk away, time and time again—do you have any idea of how hard that will be for me? How cruel?”
“Are you telling me you don’t want to see him?”
“It’s what’s best, for both of us. What happens if you marry again, when your new wife becomes Riley’s mother? Having me around will just confuse things for him.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Just leave it, Sam.” Erin shook her head emphatically. “I’m not changing my mind.”
“I still want you to have the money. It’s important to me and before you jam it down my throat again, it’s not to assuage my guilt. Nothing will ever lessen my responsibility for what I did, for the choices I made that day. No amount of money could ever repay you for what you’ve been through. That’s why, more than ever, I want you to have it. Name a figure, any figure. It’s yours.”
Erin shook her head again. He’d never understand.
Sam continued, oblivious to the deepening sorrow in her eyes. The sorrow now consuming the anger that had fired her up only seconds ago. The sorrow that now leeched all the fight out of her.
“Erin, I want you to have the money so you can make a new home, and maybe have another baby. So if you want to, you can have IVF again and not have to rely on a lottery to do so. This way—”
Wham! And just like that, the anger was back. Buoying her up from the pit she’d been descending to.
“This way, what?” She slammed her hand on the table. “This way you think I can just have another child and that how I feel about Riley, about feeling him grow inside me, about giving birth to him, about caring for him, loving him—that it will all just go away? That I’ll forget because of something new?”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” He was raising his voice now, too.
“Keep your filthy money,” she sneered. “I don’t want any of it.”
“But don’t you see? Another baby would help.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Besides, it’s impossible.”
“Erin, I know it’s not as if you’ve lost a puppy and I’m offering to buy you a new one. I’m not that insensitive. You’re a great mother. You deserve this. Let me help you.”
Her voice, when she finally managed to speak, was nothing more than a broken whisper. She stared down at her hands knotted together in her lap and squeezed her fingers together tight, as if by doing so she could make some of the pain that surrounded her heart in an unrelenting grip, go away.
“You can’t help me.”
“Why not? Because you won’t let me? I’m sorry, but if your anger with me is what’s holding you back then that’s just not good enough. Give me one good reason, Erin. One good reason why I can’t help you.”
She raised her face and made herself meet his eyes. She took a deep breath and expelled it softly.
“Because I can’t have any more children. That’s why.”
Sixteen
Sam sat there, stunned. She couldn’t have any more children? Why hadn’t that been included in any of the information he’d been given about her? He’d thought he knew it all.
“I’d like you to go now,” she said, her voice still husky.
“I’m not going until you tell me everything, Erin. Why can’t you have any more children?”
“If I tell you, will you go then?”
Her pain was stark on her face, the wounds she still bore clear in her eyes. He nodded.
“I was overdue and they had to induce me for labor. My doctor had wanted to perform a C-section but I was adamant. We’d had to do everything with artificial help all the way—I wanted to deliver my baby naturally.” She cupped her hands around her mug and lifted it to her mouth, taking a long drink of the brew. When she put the mug down she stared at it, as if it was easier to stare at the tea than at him. “Anyway, my labor progressed rather rapidly once they induced me and because of the intensity I accepted pain relief. I’d been given the all-clear to push when I felt it. There was a pain so intense it trumped the epidural. I knew something was very wrong. I told the nurse. Before I knew it, they were wheeling me into an operating room. By then, I was beginning to lose it. I don’t remember a whole lot after that except waking up to be told that Riley had been born and was in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“Apparently the pain was caused by my uterus tearing open. When that happened, Riley was deprived of oxygen. Thankfully, they acted fast and he resuscitated without any problems. It could have been a lot worse for him. He was lucky. After four nights in intensive care, he was all clear.”
“And you,” Sam asked, suddenly desperate to know what had happened to Erin next.
“Me, well, I wasn’t so lucky. The uterine rupture had caused too much damage. I had to have a full hysterectomy.” She drew in another deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “So, there you have it. No more babies.”
She pushed herself up from the table and walked toward the kitchen door. Her body sagged with the toll it had obviously taken to recount her story. He watched as she opened the door and held it wide.
“You can go now.”
He wanted to argue that they weren’t finished yet, but he’d already said he would go when she answered his question. He had to honor what he’d promised even though every instinct urged him to stay. The emotional cost of tonight’s visit had been high. He wanted, desperately, to make it right for her, but there was nothing he could do and the helplessness of that truth settled in his gut like a heavy weight.
But she couldn’t stop him returning, and he would be back. First thing in the morning.
The motel he checked into was nowhere near as comfortable as Connell Lodge, but for the money he didn’t expect much. He found a twenty-four-hour convenience store not too far away, where he bought a few toiletries and a budget pack of briefs. He wasn’t too sure if the motel provided an overnight laundry service and even if they did he wasn’t too sure he’d get his stuff back in time. Nothing was going to delay him tomorrow.
After a quick call to leave a message for Julia, telling his assistant he might be a few days, he went to bed. The night passed slowly as he struggled to find sleep. What Erin had shared with him tonight made her decision to cease her fight to keep Riley even more difficult to come to terms with. He struggled to assimilate that information with what he’d learned from the private investigator.
In treating her as he had, in believing the very worst, and at face value, he’d made a terrible mistake. This all should have turned out so differently. Until he’d discovered that envelope in her office, he’d begun to hope they could possibly spend the rest of their lives together. He could understand why she’d clung so hard to the life she’d fought to create. Was it possible to turn back the clock?
He doubted it. He’d hurt her, and hurt her badly. Why on earth would she trust him again? Based on how he’d treated her, if he were in the same position, he certainly wouldn’t. He fought to find a solution, one that would work for all of them. By the time dawn broke through the flimsy bedroom curtains, he was no closer to an answer. All he could do was apologize for what he’d put her through, and then trust she w
as willing to work from there.
As he negotiated the road down to Connell Cove again he hoped against hope that he could convince her, because somewhere in the lonely hours just gone he’d realized a truth that he hadn’t wanted to consider before.
He still loved Erin Connell. No matter her past. No matter how she’d tried to hide the truth about her late husband not being Riley’s father. He loved her. It was as simple as that. All he had to do was convince her.
* * *
“What now?” Erin said as she opened the door to him again, Riley in her arms.
The instant the little boy saw Sam he opened his arms and babbled a stream of happy baby-speak. Sam’s heart swelled with delight—a sensation he welcomed back into his life. Riley wanted him. It was the most incredible feeling in the world. Hard on its heels came an even deeper understanding of what it would be like for Erin, giving Riley up.
Leaving here as he had a few weeks ago had been tough, not knowing how long it would be before he saw Riley again, but the light at the end of the tunnel had been that he’d known he would. That eventually Riley would be his. Now, the thought of walking away and never seeing his son again was enough to pitch his stomach and make him want to fight back and fight hard. How much worse was it for Erin?
Had his threats to her that awful night he’d confronted Erin driven all the fight out of her? Was that why she was no longer fighting for her baby? She’d struck him as the kind of woman who’d be near feral in protecting her child. She’d been prepared to lie to everyone to keep Riley and keep their home. Exactly when had that stopped being so important to her?
“May I?” he asked Erin, waiting for what felt like an eon before she gave a small nod and passed Riley to him.
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