The Secret Baby Bond

by Cindy Gerard

  “I had a chip on my shoulder the size of the Sears Tower.” With a tight smile, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  He’d worn a chip, all right, along with the angry pride of a boy who’d been raised by the streets and by the stern but loving hand of his grandmother. It still amazed him that she’d never given up on him. But then again, maybe it wasn’t all that amazing. He didn’t intend to give up on Tara, either.

  “Since my memory returned,” he said, bringing himself back to the present, “it’s been like… How do I explain it? Like a running newsreel. Little pieces of my past shoot by or stop on freeze-frame while I focus on them, put things in perspective.

  “One thing I’ve found out, Tara,” he said, still very aware of her silence. “Your father doesn’t intimidate me anymore.”

  “I noticed,” she said and for the first time, he saw a hint of a smile.

  Encouraged by that small sign, he continued. “I still can’t buy and sell Connelly Corporation. I wanted to once, though,” he added and returned her smile.

  “And now you don’t?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Now I understand how much my blind ambition added to your unhappiness.” His insatiable need to best her father had driven a wedge between them that had pushed her to ask for a divorce.

  “I didn’t see it, Tara.” He raised a hand in conciliation. “I swear to God I didn’t realize how miserable I’d made you—and for that, I’ll always be sorry.”

  “I believe that you’re sorry,” she said evenly. “But it doesn’t change who you are, Michael.”

  He frowned. “You used to love who I am.”

  She looked down at her tightly clasped hands.

  “Tara, what do I need to do to convince you that I’ve changed? That this experience has changed me? That money is no longer my primary focus? That even though I still can’t best your father, I honestly no longer feel the need to?”

  He could have told her then that he could shop in the same stores as Grant Connelly now, dine in the same restaurants, rub elbows at the same clubs. That he had money now. The fact was, he was rich—thanks to the Santiagos and the staggering growth of the business he’d helped them build during the past two years.

  He could have told her, but he held back. He didn’t want her believing him because money had erased his motive. He wanted her believing him because she understood that it wasn’t the money that had changed him. And it wasn’t the money that mattered now. It was Tara. It was getting her back.

  “Remember the first time we quit dancing around each other with long looks and flirty smiles and actually talked to each other?” he asked, abruptly changing tack, taking them both back to a time when all that mattered was how much they loved each other.

  Violet eyes met his with hesitation and a stubborn attempt to remain distant, untouched and silent.

  “Freshman study hall, second week of school,” he said, filling in the silence and painting a picture he knew she carried with her, just as he did.

  “We’d been working up to it for over a week.”

  She looked away and he pressed on.

  “You were the princess. I was the pauper. You were a good girl with a yen to go bad and I knew exactly what you saw when you looked at me. I was your ticket for a walk on the wild side.”

  That statement earned him her full attention.

  “I fell in love with you then, Tara. Knowing that you were so far out of my league that I couldn’t even afford the cheap seats, I still fell in love with you. I’m still in love with you.”

  She closed her eyes, looked past him to the window. “Michael…I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. And I’m so very glad that you’re alive.”

  His heart thumped him hard, and refused to level. “But?”

  “But love wasn’t enough then.” She wet her lips, still wouldn’t look at him. “It’s not enough now. I’m sorry, but I’m going through with the divorce.”

  Four

  Michael clenched his jaw, shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and tried to make her think about what she was saying.

  She loved him. Him. And he refused to believe she would follow through with the divorce. Just like he refused to believe that her relationship with Parker could ever compare to what they’d had, what they could still have.

  “Love wasn’t enough,” he said, throwing her words back in her face, “but what you have with Parker is?”

  She rose, her motions stiff and unnatural as she walked to the window, touched her fingers to the glass.

  “What I have with John is what I need.”

  “And what is that? What exactly is it that you have with him?”

  He could see her reflection in the glass, could read the emotion she tried unsuccessfully to guard from him.

  “Security. Respect. Stability.”

  “You could get that from a bank,” he said, and watched her shoulders stiffen.

  “I don’t…I don’t wish to discuss my relationship with John.”

  “Do you love him?” He had to hear it from her.

  “I…I care for John.”

  “Do you love him?” he repeated.

  She closed her eyes and had nothing to say about that.

  “You don’t. Because you still love me,” he insisted.

  When she didn’t deny it, he moved to stand behind her. He was so close he could smell the floral and meadow fragrance of her hair. So close he could see the thrum of her pulse fluttering beneath her jaw.

  If he raised his hand, he could touch her cheek, curve his fingers in a caress along the slim line of her throat. He ached to touch her there. To be asked to touch her there.

  When she didn’t ask, he did it anyway.

  “There’s a flower in the rain forest.” A slight tremble eddied through her as he skimmed the back of his fingers over her jawline. “Don’t ask me the name. I don’t know. But it fascinated me. The petals are unbelievably soft, a shimmering, nearly liquid translucence. The color is incredible—ivory flowing to peach. You make me think of it. It makes me think of you.”

  “Michael, don’t.”

  “You’re trembling.” His voice was gruff and low as he turned her to face him.

  He cupped her shoulders in his hands and forced her to look at him. Watching her eyes, he trailed his index finger along the pulse point just above her collarbone.

  “Your heart is racing.”

  He ran his hand along her arm, laced his fingers with hers. “So is mine.”

  Lifting their clasped hands to his chest, he pressed her palm against his heart. “Feel what you do to me. Tara—”

  “Don’t,” she interrupted miserably. Her eyes, alive with sexual heat, searched his before she broke away, frantic to put a foot then two more between them.

  “You want me to tell you I didn’t miss you? That I didn’t miss what we had in bed? Well, I did. Every moment. Every day. Every night. I still do.”

  Her confession would have heartened him if every word hadn’t been heavily laced with shame and anger over what she obviously considered a weakness.

  And yet, she missed him. That was what he chose to hang on to.

  “We don’t have to miss each other any longer.”

  “Sex wasn’t the answer to our problems.” She held up a hand, stopping him cold when he would have moved closer. “It still isn’t.”

  “It was never just sex between us.”

  “You’re right. It was more. It was anger and resentment and disillusion.”

  “Tara—”

  “No. Let me say this. We were young. We both fell in love with ideas and ideals and images of what we thought we were. Who we thought we were.”

  “I’ve always known who you were.”

  “And I’ve always known that I was never what you needed.”

  “You were always what I needed,” he insisted, moving toward her again. “Always. You still are.”

  “No, Michael. What you needed was to be someone. It’s what you lived for,
to the exclusion of all else. In the end I felt the most excluded of all.”

  “I know.” He shoved a hand through his hair, felt the deadly accuracy of her accusation like a gut punch. “I know that now.”

  “What do you know? What exactly do you know? Do you know that I’d lost you long before you disappeared in Ecuador? Do you know that I tried everything I could think of to make you understand how much I missed being an important part of your life? How much I wanted you back?”

  Blind ambition. That was what he’d been about back then. That was what had brought her to this. What had brought them to this.

  “Tara, I didn’t realize what was happening to us.”

  “So you said. But now you know. Now that you’ve come back from the dead.”

  There was fire now. In her eyes. In the heat of her slim, sleek body as she moved with agitated grace.

  “That’s great, Michael. That’s wonderful. But how long will it be before the rush of returning wears down? How long before you’ll gear up again, retool, refocus and set your mind to the next conquest?”

  “Tara, you have to believe me when I tell you I’m not the same man you were ready to divorce two years ago.”

  She smiled sadly. “I’m not the woman you left behind, either.”

  He regarded her for a long, searching moment and for the first time admitted that he was not at all sure of what he was seeing. “And do you like this new woman?”

  A strangled laugh burst out. The soft sound bounced off the glass walls of the room like the ghost of the woman she had once been.

  “Like her? Like her, Michael? I don’t even know who she is.” She crossed her arms over her midriff, cupped her elbows in her palms. “I’m not sure I ever did. The only thing I know for certain is that I can’t survive you again.”

  “Survive me? Tara, for God’s sake, this isn’t an endurance test.”

  “Isn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  He narrowed his eyes, felt the involuntary flex of the muscle in his jaw. “It’ll be different this time. I’ll be different. Except for one thing. I love you. That won’t change. And you love me, not Parker.”

  “I think there’s an old Tina Turner song that sums it up nicely.” Again, that sad, cynical smile. “What’s love got to do with it?”

  She met his eyes squarely for the first time. “What’s love ever had to do with it?”

  Michael knew in that moment how much of a fight he was going to have to wage if he was going to get her back.

  Brett was right. She wasn’t the same woman. This woman had decided there was no such thing as happily ever after, nothing but foolishness in the notion of a forever kind of love. This woman had conditioned herself to resist feeling or reacting or relying on her heart to call the shots for her. This woman no longer believed in the man she’d wanted him to be.

  Her fight is gone, except when it comes to Brandon, Brett had said. Brandon she would love and protect with everything that was in her. The next words out of her mouth confirmed it and gave Michael back a small measure of relief.

  “I won’t keep you from Brandon.” She looked at him then. “He needs his daddy.”

  “And I need his mother.” The words burst out, unedited, unqualified. No pride. He had no pride left.

  And she had no intention of acknowledging it. Eyes distant, voice steady, she told him how it would be.

  “Again, I’m sorry, Michael. I…I am so glad you’re alive. So very, very glad. But I can’t be your wife anymore.”

  “But you’ll be Parker’s,” he ground out. Anger and frustration, fueled by a total and complete loss as to how to reach her, made him reckless. He made no attempt to hide his contempt.

  This time when she looked away, he wasn’t having any of it. And he wasn’t having any more of this cold, dispassionate woman he didn’t know and wasn’t sure he liked. He wanted Tara back. The old Tara. And right or wrong, he was going to take a wild stab at finding her.

  He snagged her arm, pulled her flush against him. Desire shot through his blood, hot, potent, demanding. And when he felt the sizzle of it arc between them, he knew she wasn’t as resistant as she would have them both believe.

  “Can he give you this?” Too full of anger, too far gone on need to do anything but take what he’d been missing for two long years, he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.

  Instant heat, spontaneous arousal. He dragged it all in through the touch of his hands on her body, through the warmth of her mouth against his. The taste of her, the feel of her against him—he grasped it like a last breath, like a first breath, like a life-giving breath that was both hers and his and was essential to sustaining them both.

  She surrendered against him on a sound that was part protest, pure hunger and absolute need. This he remembered. The melting heat, the instant yearning. The essence of her had been a part of him even when he hadn’t known who he was or that she was the woman he longed for.

  “Tara.” Breathless, he lifted his head, met violet eyes glazed with desire, and dove back for more. He took more until her mouth wasn’t enough for either of them.

  On a ragged breath, he dragged her harder against him. With his hands in her hair, he tipped her head back and lost himself in the misty longing in her eyes.

  “Take me somewhere. Anywhere. I need to be alone with you.”

  Her expression was dazed, her breath came in short, shallow pants as she searched his eyes until the sound of footsteps behind him brought her back to her senses. She darted a glance over his shoulder, paled and braced her hands on his chest as if to push him away. He held her fast.

  “Tara?”

  Michael stiffened at the unfamiliar voice that was infused with propriety.

  He watched her face as her eyes chilled.

  “John.” It was more breath than word, more embarrassment than acknowledgment.

  This time when she pushed shakily out of his arms Michael let her go. He turned slowly, sized up the man in one long, assessing look. Early fifties, polished, moneyed. Cold as a fish.

  He turned back to Tara. This is what you want? his eyes asked. He’s what you want?

  “Everything all right in here?”

  Michael worked his jaw, watched his wife, then turned and extended his hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met. Michael Paige,” he said coldly, “Tara’s husband.”

  “John Parker.” Parker ignored both Michael’s hand and his statement. “And that would be my fiancée you’re mauling.”

  “Interesting choice of words.” Michael managed a tight smile. “Considering she’s still my wife.”

  “Don’t.” Tara moved to stand between them. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  “It’s all right, darling.” Parker regarded Tara with a reassuring smile. “I have no intention of causing a scene that would distress you. I’m sure Mr. Paige agrees that there’s every reason to be civil.”

  “Mr. Paige,” Michael said pointedly, “was having a very civil word with Mrs. Paige until you interrupted.”

  Parker expelled a long-suffering sigh. “Your father was concerned about you, my dear.”

  Because she was upset, and because he didn’t want to turn this into a pissing contest with the head skunk, Michael chose to ignore the slight.

  He turned back to Tara, folded her cold, cold hands in his.

  “This isn’t over. We’re not over,” he said softly, then placed a long, soft kiss on her brow. “I’m going to see Brandon, okay?”

  Before she could react, he turned, wrapped a companionable arm over Parker’s shoulders and steered him smoothly and forcefully toward the door.

  “Ever been to Ecuador, Parker?” he asked conversationally. “Amazing country. Very advanced in many ways, startlingly primitive in others. For instance, let me tell you a little story about how the natives in the Ecuadorian jungles deal with poachers…”

  “Have they sent up those page proofs yet, Chloe?” Tara asked absently as she reached into her desk drawer, grabbed
a Hi-Liter and marked a section of text she planned to edit.

  “I think so. Just a sec. I’ll check.”

  Tara didn’t look up from her desk as her assistant, Chloe Chandler, just out of college, full of vitality and confidence, flew out of her office. It took all of her concentration just to keep her mind on the work in front of her after Michael’s unsettling visit to Lake Shore Manor this morning.

  “Here they are.” Chloe breezed back into the office with a beaming smile in her voice. Her blue eyes sparkled as she shoved a fall of honey-gold hair behind her ear and set the pages in front of Tara.

  “And they look great. You’re gonna love how the bedroom shots turned out.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem.” Chloe turned to leave Tara’s office then stopped short with a breathless, “Whoa. Sorry…I didn’t hear you come in. Can I, um, help you?”

  “I believe I’ve found what I’m looking for, thanks.”

  Tara froze. She didn’t have to look up to know what, or in this case, who, had Chloe so rattled. She’d recognize that voice anywhere. Any time. In her sleep. In her daydreams. And now, it seemed, in her office.

  She looked up into Michael’s smiling eyes then glanced quickly at the normally articulate and never speechless Chloe, who seemed to have gone into a trance. She appeared rooted to the floor. Her face was flushed, one hand fluttered at her throat. Her eyes were all for Michael.

  “Hi.” He was all smiles, oblivious to Chloe’s reaction. “This a bad time?”

  A bad time? She had a feeling she was always going to have a bad time when Michael made an appearance.

  “No. No, not really.” She made a great show of aligning a stack of material with the hope of appearing unaffected.

  “Great. Thought maybe I could take you to lunch.”

  She blinked. “Lunch?”

  “Yeah, lunch. You know, that little meal between breakfast and dinner?” He winked at Chloe and she nearly melted into the carpet.

  “Even—” He paused, looked back at the title plate on her door. “Even consulting editors need to break for lunch, right? Aren’t I right, Ms…. I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Um,” Chloe turned a brilliant shade of red then got a hold of herself. “Chloe. Chloe Chandler. I was…I was just leaving.”