“I married you because I love you. I do love you, Leif, so much.”
“Then together,” he whispered softly, “I know that we’ll do fine with our son.”
She was afraid. So very afraid to talk to her own son.
“He’s in the second room,” Liz told her after hearing the complete story of what happened. “Go see him.”
“Liz—I can’t!” Tracy protested in panic. “He hates me! You heard him.”
“Go talk to him, Tracy. He’s your son! Your little boy! You go in there and tell him what’s what!”
Liz gave her a shove. Tracy walked hesitantly to the door. She knocked on it.
“Go away!”
She almost did just that; then she asked herself just what kind of a coward she was. So she twisted the knob and went in. Blake was lying on his bed. He turned around to look at her, then swung his back to her face once again.
“Blake, I need to talk to you.”
“I hate you. I don’t want to talk to you.”
She took a deep breath and walked over to the bed and sat at its edge. His little body stiffened.
“Blake—”
“You’re not my mother! I don’t care what they said! I remember her! She loved me! She was beautiful!”
“Celia was beautiful, Blake. Kind and gentle and very wonderful. No one wants to take her away from you. She did love you. So much.”
He spun around, staring at her with his cheeks tear-stained, his blond hair a tousle—and his eyes as dark and stormy as his father’s.
“They called you a ‘bastard.’ And they said that I was your ‘bastard,’ and that’s bad—I know it! And it isn’t true! Tell me that it isn’t true!”
She lowered her head for a minute, then looked up at him, shaking her head. “Blake, if I start at the beginning, will you listen to me?”
“You’re too big for me to throw out of my room!” he told her grudgingly.
Tracy inhaled and sought for words.
“Blake, in the eyes of the world, I suppose, I am Jesse’s bastard. But please don’t use that word—people really shouldn’t. Blake, Jesse and my mother fell in love. But they were kept apart. I believe that they cared very, very deeply when they—when they made me. I loved Jesse, Jesse loved me.”
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t know if he was still crying or not. She inhaled another deep, deep breath.
“Blake, I met your father many years ago. And after I came to know him, I thought that the sun rose in his face. In my life, Blake, I never cared for anyone more. But I— I was too young. And my parents took me away.”
How, how did she explain this to a six-year-old? Her heart cried out.
“Blake—you are my son.”
“No!” he screamed, then he spun around with a gasp and a worse accusation on his lips. “You didn’t want me! You didn’t love me! You gave me away! That’s why I used to be ‘adopted.’ ”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, Blake, no! Oh, Blake, listen to me! Sometimes people who aren’t really bad do some things that are! You were taken away from me.” She tried to smile. “I—I didn’t even know when I met you that you were my son. Oh, Blake, this is so much to understand. I’m an adult and I’m having trouble with it all! Please…”
He stared at her, but he didn’t take the hand that she had outstretched to him.
“So you are a bastard—and I’m one, too,” he said distantly.
“Blake, I asked you not to use that word, please!” Tracy murmured.
“It’s true. You just said so.”
“No—it’s not. Not at all.”
Tracy and Blake both started at the interruption. It was Leif, standing silently in the doorway. He walked over to the bed, looked at Tracy and saw the lost appeal in her eyes, and sat. He squeezed her hand, then took the protesting Blake into his arms.
“Blake, listen to me, son. Listen to me, well. I loved Celia, and she was your mother. No one will ever take that away. She wanted you very badly. But before I married Celia, I knew Tracy and I loved her, too, son. You were born out of that. Two people who loved one another deeply and who both love you now more than anything else in the world.”
Blake looked at his father. He didn’t protest. He just sobbed softly and buried his little head against Leif’s broad chest.
Leif bent his head down to whisper. “Please, Blake. Please tell Tracy that you don’t hate her.”
Tracy waited, her heart aching. Waited and waited…
And at last Blake turned to her. He stared at her with his massive gray eyes for several wrenching moments.
“I—I don’t really hate you. It’s just that they are suddenly saying that you’re my mother and—”
“Blake, please!” She reached for his hand a little feverishly; this time, he accepted it. “Blake, you knew that I was going to be your stepmother, and that was going to be okay. If we can start out by trying to be friends, maybe the rest will—will work out.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time. Leif prompted him.
“Blake?”
He nodded slowly. Leif smiled at him. “Son, I promise you, we’re going to have a wonderful life together. Tracy loves you, too, you know that.”
“Do I have to call you ‘mother’?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not until you want to.”
“I might never,” he warned her.
“Well, we’ll wait and see, okay.”
“Maybe I will,” he conceded.
“Give me a big hug,” Leif said to him. “It’s getting late. You need some sleep.”
Obediently—and with a love that Tracy envied—Blake hugged his father and kissed his cheek. Then he looked at Tracy again. “Does that mean that I’m kind of related to Jamie, too?”
“He’s your uncle,” Tracy said.
“I like that,” Blake mused, and Tracy smiled, lowering her eyes. The little things might win him in the end. It would be difficult; she had to move slowly. But Leif was right; she loved him. And sometimes love did win out.
“Want to give Tracy a little kiss on the cheek?” Leif suggested. “Just so that she really doesn’t think you hate her anymore.”
He hesitated. Then he gave her a bird’s peck on the cheek. She smiled, then she and Leif rose together to leave him. They got as far as the door. Then a flurry of movement followed them; Tracy discovered herself almost knocked over by a force at her knees.
“I really don’t hate you,” Blake told her. “I wanted to hurt you at first, but I—I don’t really want to anymore.”
She knelt down beside him, near tears of joy when he wrapped his arms around her and gave her a fierce hug.
“Thank you, Blake,” she murmured.
He nodded, quickly released her, and raced back to his bed.
“Good night, son,” Leif said, and he led Tracy from the room.
Another door closed somewhere in the suite. Tracy realized that her sister-in-law had gone to bed, discreetly leaving her and Leif alone in the salon.
Leif led her over to the window. A breeze was blowing the drapes about, far below them horns still honked on a busy street.
He stood behind her, holding her close to his body, lightly brushing her nape with a kiss and then holding her closer once again. Far above them, the moon was high in the sky.
“No more ‘liar’s’ moon,” Leif commented softly. “The new is coming.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Tracy, I’m sorry.”
She winced. “I am, too. All those years Ted raised me. I can’t believe that he wanted to kill me.”
He didn’t reply. He stroked her shoulders soothingly.
“Your mother is stronger than you think, Tracy. She will pull out of this. But I was thinking—maybe you’d like to send for the baby to come and live with us.”
She spun around, her eyes bright. “Oh, Leif, could we? I mean, when mother is well, of course, she should have Anthony back. Maybe they should both be with us for a while
. That is, if—”
He smiled at her, kissing her fingers. “Tracy, I’m not the one who can’t forgive and forget. When we can, we’ll bring Audrey home. And Anthony.”
She turned into his arms. “Oh, Leif, I do love you!”
“Tracy Johnston, I do love you with all my heart.”
She sighed softly and buried her head against his chest. “It’s so easy now. So very easy. I love you. I love you. To feel, to say—”
He lifted her chin, smiling crookedly, lazily—rakishly. “To show, Tracy? I didn’t mind you in your son’s bed, but I did spend a rather lonely night.”
“To show,” she whispered in return, and lacing her fingers with his, she kissed him with all her love and need and passion.
And the breeze blew gently around them while the fading moon beamed down a gentle blessing.
EPILOGUE
She came to him in darkness, in the coolness of the night, beneath the glowing cast of the moon.
He could almost reach out and touch her. Smell the sweet aroma of her perfume, feel the curve of her breast, the whisper of her caress.
He saw her smile. Standing in the doorway, framed by the glow of the moon. A full moon tonight. Huge and silver and shimmering. Casting its benign eye upon love and lovers, come full season at last. A love that had endured and conquered endless sins.
That moon, that ancient moon. It played so beautifully against her—against her silhouette. She paused there in the doorway and slowly bent to cast her heels away. He saw the grace of her feline stretch, the supple shape of her legs, and heard the soft thud of her shoes as they fell.
She came into the room then, slow again, elegant in her walk, easy, luxurious, unhurried. So confident, so sensual. She came that way to the center of the room, where that full moon could fall upon her from the bay window that opened to the garden, to the night breeze. She reached for the string of her gown at her nape, releasing it, shaking back the lustrous waves of her hair as she did so.
The gown fell to become a pool at her feet. Beneath it, she was naked. No slip, no teddy, no frothing lace, no stockings. Just bare and elegant beneath the moon glow… a glow falling upon her breasts, the fullness of their shape, the firmness, the beauty against the slender curves of her body. Skin like satin, taut and sleek, so breathtaking. Everything… everything about her so perfect. The slope of her shoulders, the line of her back, the flare of her hip.
Her eyes were indigo. Sparkling, reflecting, catching the moonbeams, so deep and dark, so touched by brilliance. He knew, because he came to her, scarcely able to breathe. Touched her shoulders and felt her trembling.
Touched her, his love, his wife.
The very essence of him—his wife.
They smiled to one another beneath that moon, smiled with deep understanding, unspoken knowledge.
No love could be deeper.
He took her into his arms, kissed her—and it was, as always, just like that first kiss. Deep and shattering, evocative. Her hair brushed his chest in silk, her touch made him quake.
She raised her hand, spreading her fingers. He raised his own. They hesitated, touched, entwined together.
From the open window the breeze blew in, the fresh scent of roses. Clean and sweet and wonderful.
They walked to the bed, curled upon it, loved upon it. Touch for touch, kiss for kiss. Sweet remembrance, soaring new heights. The wonder, the awe, the beauty.
And all that came after. A time to hold, a time to cherish. To be blissfully aware of all that was theirs, for time had taught them loss and pain, and yet time had taught them, too, that love could well prevail.
Leif lay awake after she slept. Staring at the window, to the drapes fluttering there. To the moon, full and new and high in the sky. He stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead, and thought what a heaven they had here. In their rooms.
Oh, not in the house. The house was full. Jamie was back from his latest tour of Europe, occupying half of the west wing with all his equipment. Anthony had been with them for some time, and Katie had thrilled again to the patter of toddling footsteps and greasy handmarks all over the place again.
Audrey was here, too, now. Looking too slim, but smiling easily, and as beautiful as ever. Leif had invited Arthur down for the weekend.
In the darkness he smiled, for Audrey was not alone. After so, so many years, it seemed that she and Tiger were becoming very special friends. He hoped so. Tiger—the old bachelor—needed to settle down. And Audrey deserved some happiness.
Then, of course, there was Liz.
Leif frowned absently, hoping that he wasn’t interfering with others’ lives. But it had seemed that Liz and Sam spent more and more time talking together. That Liz smiled more like a girl when Sam was at the door.
Maybe it was nothing—but maybe…
He smiled to himself a little sheepishly in the darkness. He was just so damned happy. He wanted everyone else to be happy, too. To know what it was like to feel this wonderful emotion of loving—and being cherished in return.
He closed his eyes again. A full house. Jamie, Blake, Anthony—and Jessica.
In a few minutes, he knew, like clockwork, Tracy would stir. Leif still couldn’t fathom it—she simply had some kind of inner mechanism that warned her when the baby would awake.
Jessica was nearly four months old. And she was stunning. Blue, blue—endlessly blue—eyes, and a mop of strawberry blond curls. And when Tracy wasn’t out playing with the boys, she was with Jessica, and Leif never said a word because Tracy would look at him and he would know. She had never been able to share in Blake when he was a baby. This time was very precious to her.
And, of course, he was endlessly proud of her, too. She had that very special beauty that belonged to Audrey and Tracy. She charmed, she captivated, she would never grow old.
And she would never be hurt the way that Tracy had been hurt, Leif vowed. She and Blake would be chastised and loved, held under a strict thumb—sometimes given their way. There would be problems, there would be joys. But above it all was that very, very special quality.
They were a family. Committed, caring.
Blessed.
It had been a long hard road.
But they had come home.
Beside him, Tracy stirred. He smiled above her and kissed her. In silent agreement, they donned their robes and tiptoed down the hall.
First to Blake’s room. He always got a kiss first, even though he was sleeping. Tracy was determined that he would never think that there was any favoritism going on.
Then they joined hands again to go for the baby in her canopied crib.
But just before Tracy plucked her from her snug nest of blankets, she turned to Leif with no words but a radiant smile. She kissed him quickly, and he knew that she was thinking the same thing.
We have come home, my love.
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