He stepped over to the cot and looked down. The dangerous fever broken, Mitchell slept, but he seemed restless. His hair was still damp from the unnatural amounts of perspiration he’d lost. For the first time since Joe had known him, Mitchell’s hair lay flat on his head.
As Joe watched, the little boy opened his eyes. They were clear, though it took him a few moments to focus. When he did, the first thing he must have seen was Joe’s face, creased with worry and concern.
Mitchell smiled, a slow, tremulous smile—a smile lit with all the uninhibited emotion of a child not yet two.
He reached out his tiny, starfish-like hand to Joe and Joe held it, engulfing it with his own man-sized hand and squeezing it gently.
“Daddy,” Mitchell murmured in a small, broken voice warm with unabashed love, then said again, a little louder, “Daddy.”
Joe felt his heart spasm painfully with some powerful, unnamed emotion at the child’s innocent words. Surely he knew Peter was his father? Yet he didn’t think Mitchell was delirious. These words were meant for Joe. Words he must have heard other kids saying to their fathers.
He realized how much this little boy had grown to mean to him. For the first time he could ever remember, Joe’s eyes filled with tears. He had to clear his throat before he spoke. “I...I’m not your Daddy, Mitch. Just...just Joe. I can’t be your Daddy...”
Allison came back to the ward to check with Joe how he wanted his coffee. When she heard Mitchell’s voice, her first impulse was to rush to the cot. But she stopped just inside the doorway, her heart wrenched by her son’s innocent utterance. Only to hear Joe’s words. I’m not your Daddy, Mitch. Just Joe. I can’t be your Daddy.
She put her hand to her mouth to stifle her gasp. Then rushed out of the room, unable to bear hearing any more.
In the empty hospital corridor, she stared sightlessly at the coffee vending machine. She felt overwhelmed with sadness—sadness and a painful feeling of inevitability. Joe had never left her in doubt that he didn’t want a stepchild. But she had started hoping he might change his mind. Tonight he couldn’t have been more loving towards Mitchell, more devoted to his care.
Mitchell had adored Joe from the start. To him, Peter was just an image in a photograph. To Mitchell, Joe was a daddy.
Was it too much to ask that Joe would grow to love Mitchell, would welcome the fact that she and Mitchell came as a package deal?
She’d grown to see that behind his sexy, devil-may-care exterior, Joe was decent and good. She didn’t know how she could have got through this terrifying night without him. The old term “tower of strength” had real meaning.
But how could she love someone who could not accept her child? The words she’d overheard reverberated in her heart. I can’t be your Daddy.
If Joe could not genuinely love Mitchell as a father should, there could be no future for them.
Her adoptive mother had probably thought her father would grow to love his adopted daughter in time. But he hadn’t. And Joe had never even pretended he wanted to take on Mitchell.
Hot tears spilled onto her cheeks. She’d have to stay in the corridor until she got herself together. She couldn’t let Joe see her like this.
She wanted Joe more than she could ever have imagined wanting a man. She’d been powerless to stop the desire that had flamed between them. She hadn’t expected to fall in love; it had happened with surprising speed.
Right now she wanted Joe as her man. But there was Mitchell. He was her heart and her soul. She’d carried him inside her for nine months and, although now they were physically separate, he would always be part of her. Inextricably linked. Every part of her demanded she do what was right for him. For his sake, she would have to end things with Joe, though it broke her heart to even think about it. She put her hands to her face and stifled the sobs that threatened to overwhelm her.
Joe jerked his head up from where he was leaning over Mitchell’s cot. He thought he’d heard a noise. He listened.
There was nothing.
No one.
He turned back to the little boy, still holding onto his hand. “I can’t be your Daddy because I’m not married to your Mommy,” he explained.
Mitchell murmured something unintelligible that might have been “Okay”.
With his other hand, Joe smoothed back the damp hair from Mitchell’s forehead and tenderly stroked the smooth cheeks.
How could his own child, “flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood”, be more precious to him than this one had become?
A sudden thought chilled him. If anything had had happened to Mitchell, the little boy would never have known how important he’d become to his beloved nanny.
Mitchell smiled again, flashing his small collection of baby teeth. His eyes closed, the ginger lashes resting on his cheeks. Joe felt Mitchell’s little hand relax. Then Mitchell sighed, a small, perfect sigh of contentment.
Joe’s heart turned over at the precious sound of it. To think he was the cause of that sigh. It was an honor. A privilege.
Now he could put a name to that feeling in his heart.
It was love.
Love for this child. Love for this child’s mother. Love that encompassed both of them.
He loved Mitchell because he was Allison’s child, as well as for his own bright little personality. He loved the mother all the more because of the love she had for her child.
Allison and Mitchell were a joint package. Now he understood exactly what it was Allison had been trying to explain. Love one, love the other. Lose one, lose the other. And he couldn’t bear to lose either of them. This had happened quickly—in just two weeks—but he’d never felt surer of anything.
He gently stroked the little boy’s cheek. He noted the change in breathing as Mitchell slid into a deep sleep.
“Little guy,” he murmured, “I’m not your daddy though I sure want to be. But, you see, I can’t be your daddy without some help from your mommy. I’ll just have to talk her into it.”
He took one hand away from Mitchell’s cheek, and gently disengaged the other from his little hand. His grip was surprisingly powerful.
Joe pulled the sheet up over Mitchell’s chest. “Sleep tight, son,” he whispered, as he stood back from the hospital cot.
Allison knew what she had to do. She looked a mess. What had started out as sexy disheveled was now red-rimmed eyes and tangled, knotty hair. But she was past caring. What did it matter any more how she appeared to Joe?
She walked into the ward with the coffees. Joe was sitting quietly besides Mitchell’s cot, watching him. Allison’s heart contracted with bitterness and regret. Why couldn’t Joe love her son?
She handed Joe his coffee with a hand that was not quite steady. In response, he gave her a warm, tender look that momentarily shook her resolve. He was such a wonderful man. Not just sexy but compassionate and caring. He’d really come through for her tonight.
But it could never work.
She cleared her throat. “Joe,” she said.
He looked up at her. “Mitchell’s fine,” he said. “He woke up but he’s asleep again. Poor little guy needs the rest.”
Allison felt tears start again. Joe made it sound like he cared for Mitchell, and he might, but he would never feel for him as a father should.
There was no point in further delay. She hardened her heart and her expression. “Joe,” she said again, “we can’t go on. I...I want to end our relationship. Now.”
The blood drained from Joe’s face, leaving it white behind the shadow of his beard. Her heart contracted painfully and she looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
She longed to fling herself into his arms and beg Joe to love Mitchell, to love her. But she steeled herself to stop. He’d told Mitchell he couldn’t be his daddy.
She tried to don the composure she put on like a coat when she had to manage boardroom deals, but it was strangely elusive. Love wasn’t as easy to manage as a corporate deal. “It’s just not going to work out for us.”
Her voice wasn’t as steady as she’d hoped.
The color flooded back into Joe’s face and he jumped up from the chair. “What the hell’s going on here, Allison? One minute you’re on and the next you’re not.”
Allison flushed. She knew he was thinking about her passionate response on the beach, how only a short time ago she had told him she was looking forward to making love with him again.
But how could she possibly explain the complexity of her feelings so he would understand? He’d never had to endure the pain of being unwanted. His family wanted him. All she wanted was the same for her son. No matter the cost to herself.
Joe took a stride toward her. He gripped her by the shoulders so she was forced to look upward. “I don’t get you,” he said. “What gives?”
She shook her head. “I just want to finish it. There’s no point in—”
At that moment the doctor returned to the ward. Allison stepped back from Joe, shaking his hands from her shoulders. She found herself rubbing the palm of her left hand with her right thumb so hard it hurt, something she always did when she was particularly stressed.
The doctor examined Mitchell and took his temperature again, then smiled at Allison. “Mitchell’s temperature is quite normal now,” she said. “You can take him home to his own bed—and you to yours.”
The doctor walked away and Joe was left with Allison and Mitchell. Allison’s hair was a tangled mess and her eyes were smudged with makeup. She looked like she’d been crying. Why? But her mouth was set in a tight, stubborn line and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
What was her problem? A wave of frustration rushed through him. One minute she was hot and passionate, the next icy and pushing him away from her. Did a relationship with Allison mean never knowing where he stood? No matter how he loved her, could he live his life like that?
She spoke again in a tight, clipped voice. “Thanks for being here, Joe. I’ll be all right to take Mitchell home now.”
Joe stared at her. She was dismissing him the way she’d dismissed Katie. What would the boss lady do next? Phone for a cab? Pack him off home like a good little nanny?
He’d had enough.
Joe reached into his pocket and pulled Allison’s car keys from his pocket. He tossed them to her. Startled, she missed the catch and fumbled for them on the floor. He bent down to pick them up for her. She reached for the keys at the same time as he did and their hands grazed. She snatched hers back, as if she didn’t want to be contaminated by his touch. His heart hardened.
“You want to break up? That’s fine by me. I’m out of here,” he said. He turned on his heel and marched out of the hospital ward. He didn’t look back.
Allison watched him go. Joe, she called in her heart, Joe! She wanted desperately to run after him and call him back to beg him to stay with her, to stay with her forever.
But what was the point? Continuing a relationship with Joe would only lead to more heartbreak. Heartbreak for herself and, more importantly, heartbreak and pain for Mitchell.
Allison picked Mitchell up from the cot and hugged him close. She nestled into Joe’s jacket, breathing in the warm, familiar smell of him.
She loved Joe. She hadn’t known him long, but she knew she loved him as surely as if she’d known him for years. This was a forever kind of love.
But she couldn’t have him. Pain seared through her heart as she truly recognized the depth and breath of her loss, and she sobbed out his name.
CHAPTER TEN
Late morning sunshine slanting through Mitchell’s undrawn curtains shone on Allison’s face. She woke up, stiff and uncomfortable, in the small folding bed she’d dragged into her son’s room so she could sleep beside his cot.
Something else had woken her up too. A loud, insistent banging on her front door.
Joe!
Sudden joy flooded her heart. He’d come to see her. Despite all her resolves of the night before, her heart sang at the thought of being with him. It had been like that from the start—her fighting her attraction to him, but unable to resist when she saw him.
She’d been so tired and emotional last night. Surely he must care about Mitchell—and about her. Maybe she’d made a tremendous mistake.
She didn’t bother to pull on her dressing gown. Her nightie revealed less than the dress she’d worn the night before. Even if it didn’t, she wouldn’t have covered herself before him. Not any more.
Mitchell still slept, out to the count with exhaustion. In bare feet, Allison ran down the stairs and flung open the door. Only to gasp in disbelief.
It wasn’t Joe standing in the doorway almost dwarfed by the enormous stuffed elephant he was carrying.
It was her ex-husband, Peter.
Peter stood there, tall and lean, dressed in neatly pressed chinos and an ice-blue polo shirt the same shade as his eyes. Reeling with shock, all Allison could do was stare at him, her mind blank. She was unable to comprehend that her ex-husband was standing there on her doorstep, when he had never before come to this house.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Peter asked, already stepping over the threshold, the large plush toy held awkwardly in front of him like a shield. He looked past her and into the house. “Have you got company?”
“No,” said Allison, annoyed at his presumption he could march into her home with such ease, but too confounded by his presence to express it.
She felt vulnerable in her nightdress and she crossed her arms across her chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my son. And his mother. If that’s okay with you, of course.”
With his ginger hair and sharp, restless face it wasn’t the first time that her ex-husband had reminded Allison of a fox. An attractive, intelligent fox. It was his intellect that had attracted her when they’d first started working together.
Allison closed the door and followed Peter into her living room, still trying to seek an explanation in her befuddled brain as to why he was here. She shivered. Peter wasn’t a person given to impulse.
She’d left a cardigan draped over a chair. She put it on, buttoning it all the way up.
Peter looked around the room, his eyes narrowed, as if calculating its worth. “Nice place,” he said. He came to rest under the pretty watercolor in its gilt frame that had pride of place on the wall. “You must have paid top dollar for this.”
Anger pulsed through her. “I bought it at a garage sale for next to nothing, if you must know.”
He peered closely at it. “It looks valuable to me. But then you always were resourceful.”
“I’ve had to be with all the debts you’ve left me,” she said.
If it weren’t for her intense desire for Mitchell to know his father, she would have asked Peter to leave. Right then.
Then Peter laughed, and his face was transformed from foxy calculation to the easy charm that had won her over in the first place, and had blinded her to his manipulative and controlling nature.
“Aah, Allison, you’re not still holding that against me, are you?”
“You’re damn right I am.”
“C’mon,” he cajoled her. “You know gambling is an illness. I couldn’t help it.”
She gritted her teeth. “Peter, we’ve gone over all this before. You lied to me and cheated me.”
Peter’s face sobered and he looked disconcertingly humble. “I know all that, and you’re right. But I’ve changed, Allison, that’s why I’m here. I’ve joined Gamblers Anonymous. Those bad times are behind me now.”
Allison was too shaken by his words to say anything.
“I’ve made some terrible mistakes. I know that now. And I want to make things up to you. To you and to our son.”
Never before had Allison heard Peter admit he was wrong. She shivered again. Something was odd.
“Give me a chance. Surely even the worst criminal is given a chance when he wants to reform.” His tone was pleading and yet there was a note to his voice that didn’t ring true.
But the ex
pression in his pale blue eyes, fringed with almost colorless lashes, seemed genuine enough. She remembered how nice Peter could be. She’d loved him once.
“How did you know Mitchell was sick?”
“Sick? I didn’t know he was sick.” There was a panicky edge to his voice that puzzled her.
“Isn’t that why you’ve come? Isn’t that why you brought this?” She indicated the outsize elephant.
She hadn’t yet had a chance to phone Peter’s parents and tell them about the trip to hospital. So he couldn’t have found out from them.
“I bought the toy at the gas station on the way over. I saw it there and thought the boy might like it. I didn’t know he was sick. How serious is it?”
“Not serious. A high fever brought on a convulsion. But he’s okay now. The doctor said he’d be right back to normal.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
The tension in Peter’s voice surprised Allison. Was it concern for Mitchell? Maybe, just maybe, her ex-husband was genuine. Perhaps he had changed; people did when they went to groups like Gambler’s Anonymous and AA.
Could it be that her prayers were at last being answered? Maybe Mitchell’s father was finally taking notice of his son. This was what she had longed for since she’d found out she was pregnant.
So why wasn’t she turning cartwheels of joy about it? Why was she still suspicious of his motives?
Peter put the toy elephant on the sofa. “Allison, don’t you believe me? Seeing you last night looking so spectacular made me realise everything that I’d lost.”
Alarmed, Allison moved so the couch was between them.
Peter continued. “I decided to come here to see if I could get you to change your mind about me.”
“Change my mind? I don’t understand. I’ve always wanted you to be involved with Mitchell.”
Peter’s pale eyebrows lifted. “Not just Mitchell. I mean you. Us.”
Something About Joe Page 14