Surrender to Marriage

by Sandra Field

  The boy’s last name was O’Sullivan?

  Jake frowned. The kid was too old to be Devlin’s son, and far too young to be Connor. He must have borrowed someone else’s sweater.

  There were no other O’Sullivans in the cove. Shaine’s father had been the only one, their nearest relatives living on the other side of Newfoundland, in St. John’s.

  Then the boy hauled off his helmet, his sweat-soaked hair flattened to his skull, and turned to the coach, saying something that made the man laugh. The boy had dark hair, dark as Jake’s, and eyes blue as his sweater.

  All the O’Sullivans had red hair, and eyes that were either green like Shaine’s or gray like Padric’s.

  Jake’s hands were ice-cold, and there was a lump of ice lodged in his belly. As if he’d never won the provincial medal in mathematics, his analytical mind fumbled with the arithmetic. He himself had left the cove thirteen years ago, right after making love with Shaine. The boy looked to be about twelve years old.

  No, thought Jake. No.

  The boy couldn’t be his son. Couldn’t be.

  The other branch of the O’Sullivan family must have moved to the cove. That was it. The boy was Shaine’s first cousin.

  If they’d moved, Abe would have told him about it. Abe, Jake remembered sickly, had said a couple of very pointed things about men who stayed away from their home turf for too long, and found a surprise or two when they came back. What else had Abe said? There’s things keep a woman home. Had Shaine stayed in Cranberry Cove because he, Jake, had left her pregnant?

  Was that why she’d looked so terrified when he’d walked into her shop without any warning? If Jake was the father of her son, of course she’d have been terrified. Of course she’d insisted he leave the cove that very day. She hadn’t wanted him finding out her secret.

  She’d never told him he had a son. Not twelve years ago, and not yesterday.

  Jake leaned forward, filling his lungs with cold air and exhaling slowly. Take it easy, he told himself, quit jumping to conclusions. So the kid’s an extremely good hockey player, and he has dark hair and blue eyes. Lots of kids have dark hair and blue eyes. Your imagination’s in over-drive.

  If the boy on the bench was his son, it would explain Padric’s hostility. It would even explain Shaine’s self-imposed celibacy. What chance would she have for affairs if she was living with her young son in a small village where everyone knew everyone else’s business?

  Everything fit.

  He, Jake Reilly, was the father of a twelve-year-old son.

  Jake let the words circle in his brain, trying to bridge the enormous gap between the man who’d walked into the rink thirty minutes ago, and the man who was now sitting on the bench staring down at his hands, which were white-knuckled with strain.

  Shaine had never told him he’d fathered a child. She could have. He hadn’t exactly had a low profile the last few years. It would have taken only a few minutes’ research on the Internet to find out his business address.

  The conclusion was inescapable. She hadn’t wanted him to know.

  His throat was dry, his heart pounding as though he was the one who’d been skating back and forth from one end of the rink to the other. Then, to his utter consternation, as he glanced over at the bench again, the boy looked his way. Blue eyes locked with blue eyes, and held.

  Jake could no more have looked away than he could have flown out the door. The boy’s grin froze in place, his padded shoulders held at an awkward angle, unmoving, as if he were a deer trapped in the beam of the poacher’s light. Then the coach tapped him on the sleeve; when the boy totally disregarded the signal, the coach tossed out an impatient order. The boy wrenched his head away from Jake’s gaze, picked up his helmet and jammed it on his head. It took him several seconds to fasten the strap under his chin.

  Grabbing his stick, he pushed open the gate and swung onto the ice. As soon as his back was turned, Jake got up and walked out of the rink, oblivious to anything but the need to be outside where he could breathe.

  He didn’t even know the boy’s first name. His son’s name.

  His son.

  Jake got in his car and drove straight to the craft shop, his hands clamped tightly to the wheel. He parked outside and strode in the door, the little bell jingling in his ears. The young girl behind the counter said politely, “Good morning.”

  So it was still morning? Jake thought crazily. A morning that seemed to have gone on forever. He’d been chased by a moose, he’d laughed until his sides had hurt and then he’d kissed a beautiful woman until his whole body had been nothing but an explosion of desire.

  That woman was the mother of his son. He said roughly, “I’m looking for Shaine.”

  “She took an early lunch break…she’ll be back around one-thirty.”

  “I know where she lives, I’ll find her there,” Jake said. “Thanks.”

  It took all of five minutes to walk to the yellow-painted house at the edge of the cliffs. But when he knocked on the door, no one answered. He pushed the door open and went inside. The back porch was cluttered with coats, shoes and boots. Two sizes of shoes, smaller women’s shoes that must belong to Shaine, and much larger ones: sneakers and steel-toed boots, scuffed and undeniably masculine. A boy’s jacket was carelessly hung over one of the hooks. In one corner was a heap of old hockey gear and a broken stick.

  If he’d needed proof, he had it. “Shaine?” Jake called, his voice dragged from his throat with a huge effort.

  The silence was that of an empty house. He marched into the kitchen. Someone, recently, had made sandwiches. The kettle was still hot on the stove. But there was no sign of Shaine.

  Attached to the refrigerator door was a photograph of a young boy. Jake walked closer, his eyes glued to the colored image. The boy’s hair was as dark as his own, the eyes as blue and as deep-set. But the shape of the face was somehow Shaine’s; that, and the tilt of his chin.

  Abruptly Jake sat down on the edge of the table. His son was a good-looking boy, humor lurking behind dark lashes, his mouth with a sensitivity that made Jake feel suddenly, overwhelmingly, protective. He knew, as well as any, how life could buffet a man’s gentler feelings, sending them underground. He didn’t want that for his son.

  He still didn’t know the boy’s name.

  He could have gone upstairs to find the right bedroom, and done something as simple as opening one of his son’s schoolbooks. But that could wait. First, he had to find Shaine.

  Shaine would tell him the name of their son. By God, she would.

  The cliff path, he thought. If she had half an hour away from the shop for lunch, and the sun was shining, he’d be willing to bet that’s where he’d find her. It was where she’d always gone when she was troubled as a young girl; he could remember her describing how the far horizon, the jut of Ghost Island and the lazy tumble of surf could soothe away her problems.

  The last two days, he’d have been a problem. For sure.

  He went outside again. Sheets were billowing on the clothesline, white as sails in the wind. Instantly he was catapulted back in time until he was twenty-two again. He’d walked from his house to Shaine’s to see if she wanted to drive into Corner Brook that evening to a movie…

  Shaine was pegging sheets to the line, her body in its blue dress a lissome curve as the wind-filled cotton fought to be free. She hadn’t seen him. Jake stood still in the tall grass, all his senses focused on the young woman at the clothesline. He was in love with her, he thought dazedly. He loved Shaine O’Sullivan with all his heart.

  Then she turned and saw him. He moved forward to help her with the wet, white folds of the sheets; when the last one was snapping in the breeze, he took her face in his hands, looked deep into her eyes and said the words that came newly minted to his tongue. “I love you, Shaine.”

  In her green eyes incredulity was lost in a blaze of joy. She dropped the bag of pegs on the grass and threw her arms around him. “I love you, too—I have for years. Oh, Jak
e, I’m so happy…”

  But she hadn’t really meant it. Or if she had, it hadn’t been the bone-deep, all-encompassing love that had overwhelmed Jake that sunny spring day.

  The long grass rustled its waves of green. Out by Ghost Island a fishing boat idled, the grumble of its motor carrying clearly over the deep blue water. For a moment Jake stood still. Could his property in the Hamptons match this for sheer grandeur? Yet the cove’s undeniable beauty had never been enough to hold him here.

  He started walking away from the cluster of houses, the grass springy underfoot, gulls mewling overhead, white-breasted as the surf. His dearly loved father had drowned off Ghost Island, in the worst storm in twenty years. His mother, heartbroken, had soon afterward left the village to visit relatives in Australia, and had settled there. Two years later, she’d met Henry Sarton, whom she’d eventually married. Jake liked his stepfather, and could see that his mother was happy again. But, to this day, she’d never once returned to the cove where her first husband had lost his life within sight of the land.

  Jake quickened his pace. The spruce trees, stunted by the onshore winds, grew bent to the ground, their boughs densely tangled. Harebells mingled with purple asters and goldenrod in the thick grass, the blossoms brushing against his legs. Crickets chirped, and a fat bumblebee hovered over some late brier roses. Then he saw Shaine.

  She was standing by a cluster of rocks near the edge of the cliff, her red hair like a burst of flame. Briefly Jake stood still, feeling anger gather like a whirlwind in his chest. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, or how she would respond. But he did know one thing. It was past time for the truth to come out.

  He started walking again, rapidly closing the distance between them.

  From the corner of her eye, Shaine caught movement. Her head swung around. Jake was striding toward her along the path, his lean body in faded, snug-fitting jeans and an open-necked shirt both achingly familiar and that of a stranger. He was as graceful as the cougar she’d seen six years ago in the Long Range Mountains; and just as dangerous.

  Hadn’t she sensed that he would stay? If only she hadn’t kissed him this morning with all the pent-up passion of years…what a fool she’d been.

  Her heart lurched in her breast. He was closer now; it didn’t take much discernment to see he was in a towering rage. He knew, she thought sickly. Every line of his body told her he’d found out about Daniel.

  It didn’t matter how. What mattered was how she handled it. Taking a deep breath of clean salt air, she braced herself.

  To Jake, her body language was all too easily read. You’d better be ready, he thought grimly, because nothing in the world is going to stop me from having my say.

  He came to a halt only three feet away from her. She was wearing the same bright dress as the day before, the ocean breeze molding the skirt to her thighs. He said flatly, “I went to the rink. Just for old times’ sake.”

  “So you know,” she whispered, and briefly closed her eyes.

  “I have a son, don’t I? A twelve-year-old son.”

  “That’s right,” she said steadily, looking him full in the face.

  “That’s why you fainted. Why you wanted me to leave yesterday. So I wouldn’t find out.” Jake seized her by the shoulders, aware at some level that she flinched from his grasp. “You didn’t have the guts to tell me. Did you think I wouldn’t care?”

  “You made love with me on the island all those years ago without any protection. But it never occurred to you to get in touch with me afterward,” she said, anger rising like bile in her throat. “So why would I assume you’d care?”

  “You told me at the time you were in the safest part of your cycle. Or have you conveniently forgotten that?”

  “The world’s full of babies conceived that way,” she flashed. “You left here and dropped me as if I didn’t exist.”

  “You didn’t love me. You said you did that day at the clothesline—but you were lying.”

  “If you loved me,” she said in a low voice, “you had a funny way of showing it.”

  His grip tightened. “I don’t even know my son’s name,” he said harshly.

  “Daniel. We never call him Dan. Although his friends do.”

  “Daniel O’Sullivan,” Jake repeated softly. He liked the sound of it on his tongue. “For God’s sake, Shaine,” he burst out, “why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

  The reasons were far too complicated. Nor did he deserve to hear them. “What does it matter? I didn’t.”

  “It matters to me.” His voice raw with suppressed feeling, Jake said, “It was like watching a replay of myself on the rink, he even has some of the same moves. The kid’s a natural. Just like I was.”

  “You left here and you never came back,” she said implacably. “Never even sent me a Christmas card, never cared enough to find out my parents had died.”

  Jake spoke the simple truth. “I was hurting too much to get in touch.”

  Her lashes flickered. Raising her chin, she said, “I brought Daniel up on my own with the help of my three brothers. He’s turned out just fine.”

  “Are you saying he doesn’t need me?”

  “I guess I am, yes.”

  “You sure know how to hurt a guy, don’t you? I’m his father, Shaine. Hasn’t he ever asked who his father was?”

  “Of course he has,” she said shortly.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you’d left the cove before I realized I was pregnant. That you knew nothing about him.”

  “And that’s been enough? He hasn’t even wanted to know my name?”

  “Stop it!” she cried, twisting against his grip. “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until we have this out,” Jake said curtly. “So Daniel doesn’t know who I am.”

  “You don’t belong here anymore! What good would it do him to know your name? I’ve read about you in those glossy financial magazines. You’re a high-flyer, a sophisticated, successful man with houses in New York and Paris, expensive cars, fancy women on your arm and in your bed, too, no doubt. You’re as different from us as night from day.”

  “That’s just surface stuff.”

  “No, it’s not—because you won’t stay here, Jake. Your real life is somewhere else. Big cities, glamorous hotels, high-powered meetings. You’re not going to hang around a rink in Cranberry Cove watching your son play hockey.”

  “My roots are here!”

  “You tore up those roots thirteen years ago. They’re dead now. Once roots are dead, you can’t replant them.”

  “I already have. When I kissed you this morning.”

  “Leave me out of this,” she snapped.

  “How can I?” Insensibly, Jake’s hands gentled on her shoulders. “You’re too thin,” he said. “You work too hard.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for me.”

  She looked as volatile as a cornered raccoon; and about as trustworthy. “What I’m just starting to understand is that your pregnancy and the loss of your parents must have come close together,” he said. “I’m so sorry that you were left alone like that. But you could have gotten in touch with me if you’d tried. You could have traced me.”

  He was right, she probably could have. But at the time there’d been very good reasons why she’d chosen not to. And then the months and years had passed inexorably, all without any word from him, until her decision had hardened into an accustomed way of life. Desperate to deflect him, she said defiantly, “Why would I bother tracing you?”

  “Come on, Shaine, you’re not a stupid woman. You’re the mother of my child—that’s why.”

  “Daniel’s mine,” she said fiercely, tossing her head so that her silky curls glistened.

  A muscle twitched in Jake’s jaw. “Are you going to tell him? Or am I?”

  “Tell him what?”

  He tamped down a rage so strong that it frightened him. “Tell him I’m his father—what else?”r />
  This time Shaine did pull free. Burying her hands in her skirt pockets, fear overcoming any vestige of reason, she said, “Neither one of us is going to tell him anything.”

  “You’d rather he found out from someone at the rink? Someone who doesn’t give a damn about his feelings?”

  “He doesn’t have to know at all!”

  Jake felt as though she’d punched him hard in the gut. “Of course he does.”

  “No, he doesn’t. You didn’t speak to him today, did you? If you had, you’d have found out his name. He doesn’t know who you are and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

  Jake took a physical step away from her, a red fog of rage obscuring his vision. Breathing hard, he grated, “You couldn’t be more wrong. Who do you think you are? Someone who can turn the clock back? Who can pretend I never turned up here, and that I’m still as ignorant of what happened as I’ve been all along? Grow up—life doesn’t work that way. I know about Daniel. And nothing you can do or say will keep me away from him.”

  “So what are you going to do? Hire a pack of high-powered lawyers and take him away from me?” Underneath everything else, wasn’t that what she was most afraid of?

  Once again, Jake thought, she’d gotten past his guard and hit him where he was most vulnerable. “You really hate me,” he said blankly.

  “Look at it my way. I live in the backwoods, and compared to you I’m destitute. Who would I hire to look after my interests? Mine and Daniel’s. Sam Hailey from Deep Cove? Who comes here once a week to deal with parking tickets and the guys who think it’s amusing to shoot holes in the town’s two stop signs?”

  “You must think I’m a real sleaze.”

  “You didn’t make it to the top by being Mr. Nice.”

  “Let’s try and get this discussion back on track,” he said evenly. “I’d never try and take Daniel from you—apart from anything else, I don’t imagine he’d let me. But I want to be part of his life, Shaine. To try and make up for lost time.”

  “What do you know about parenting? He’s not two—he’s twelve. A difficult age at the best of times. How do you think he’s going to react to an unknown father suddenly appearing on the scene?”