Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7)

by Tracey Alvarez

  Then hands grabbed her around the waist from behind, and Carter’s excited voice trumpeted into her ear. “Hi, Auntie Bree!”

  Bree jumped, and Carter let go with a giggle. She glanced down at her son, his grinning face turned up to hers, his grey eyes sparkling.

  “Carter,” she said. “I nearly died of fright.”

  He laughed, delighted to have scared her. “Harley sent me a text from the parking lot, so I knew I could sneak up on you.”

  “Harley texted you?”

  Carter shrugged and pulled a yeah, and? frown. “He texts me all the time. About art and school and Samurai Dawn and stuff.”

  And then, because Harley forging a voluntary connection with him was obviously no huge deal, he latched onto Bree’s wrist and towed her after him. “C’mon, Harley,” he called over his shoulder, “Dad’s got some seats saved.”

  Bree allowed Carter to tug her along to where Paul sat sprawled beside two empty deck chairs.

  “Haere mai.” Paul grinned up at them. “See Carter found you all right. He’s been banging on about you coming all week.”

  “That’s because we’re going to win.” Carter took the water bottle Paul offered him and drank deep.

  “Not if you don’t join your team before the game starts,” said Paul. “Go on now. You can talk to your fan club later.”

  He offered up a fist to bump, and Carter knocked his smaller one against it. Then without hesitation, Carter turned with his fist extended to Harley.

  Harley tapped the boy’s fist. “Knock ‘em dead, kid.”

  Bree’s heart slammed erratically into her ribs with the familiar ache of how much her son looked like his father. With a flash of thumbs up, Carter streaked away to join the cluster of other boys dressed in their school colors of silver and blue.

  “Take a seat,” said Paul.

  Bree sank into the end deck chair, the muscles in her legs trembling and loose. Harley sat next to Paul, and within a few minutes, the two of them were in deep discussion about the Black Caps—New Zealand’s national cricket team—and their wins and losses in the last five years.

  Bree tuned them out, watching as Carter and his team mates spread themselves out on the field. The opposing team was up to bat first. Cricket was not an action-packed game, especially when the player you were there to watch did a lot of waiting around to catch a ball, should it be struck in his direction. Bree had plenty of time to relax and just breathe.

  Though relaxing wasn’t so easy, since she was super-aware of the man next to her. The gruff deepness of his voice, the throaty laugh as he genuinely seemed to enjoy talking with her brother-in-law, the jolt of shock as Harley surged to his feet, whooping after Carter dived to the side and caught out the batter.

  “Did you see that?” Harley turned to her with a huge grin. “My boy’s a bloody legend.”

  He whirled back to Paul, already dissecting the catch in blow-by-blow detail, completely unaware, it seemed, of his involuntary claim on Carter. It didn’t slip past Bree. In fact, that “relaxing and breathing” thing? Not working out well. She gripped the plastic water bottle Harley had passed over a few minutes earlier, struggling to fight back stupid hormonal tears.

  My boy, he’d said.

  Did Harley really consider Carter his, or was it a mere slip of the tongue? And what did that mean for the child growing inside her?

  Maybe it was possible that…no.

  It was wonderful Harley had formed some sort of relationship with Carter, but theirs was a “safe” relationship. They both knew he wouldn’t try to usurp Paul as the boy’s dad. They both knew being a hands-on father to a newborn, to raise that newborn into a toddler then to a pre-schooler, boisterous kid, teenager, and finally an adult, was completely different and a process he wanted no part of.

  An hour later, the coaches called a break for the kids, and Carter sprinted over to them. After a round of congratulatory high-fives, Carter tugged on his dad’s arm. “Where’s Pops? He said he was coming—he always comes to the big games.”

  “Pops is running late because he stopped to drop off some chops for the barbecue tonight to your mum. He texted five minutes ago, saying he’s looking for a parking spot.” Paul rose to his feet and craned his neck. “There he is, just coming in the gate.”

  “I’ll go get him and bring him over.” Carter took off, dodging nimbly around the shifting crowds of people.

  Paul sat again, stretching out his flip-flop-covered feet.

  After a couple of beats, Harley said, “Your father never misses Carter’s games?” Curiosity lightened his voice, as if Harley couldn’t imagine a father being that dependable.

  “Pretty much,” Paul said. “Wasn’t that great at showing for important events when I was a kid, but with his grandson, he’s turned over a new leaf since he and Ma moved back to Christchurch three years ago. Birthdays, school plays, taking him places during the school holidays—he’s a pretty decent grandad even if he was a bit of a flaky father. Once he forgot to pick up me and my three brothers from school when he…”

  Bree turned away from the rest of Paul’s story, which she’d heard before, and scanned through the crowds, trying to spot the blue-and-silver flash of Carter’s shirt. He came into view, holding the hand of Paul’s dad, who wore a Black Caps bucket hat perched jauntily on his head.

  Bree had met the man briefly at a family Christmas barbecue two years ago, but she’d spent most of the afternoon talking to his lovely wife, Miriama. Still, the man gave a cheery wave as he and Carter drew closer. Bree stood in preparation of the polite public ritual of handshakes—and, in Paul’s dad’s case since he’d been exposed long enough to the warmth of Maori culture, a hug and kiss on the cheek for her.

  Bree smiled—the smile freezing in place for a moment when oh, damn—her mind blanked at Paul’s dad’s first name. Paul and Amy always referred to him as “Dad” or “Pops”. Was it Colin? Greg? She knew his surname was different than that of Paul and his siblings, as he’d only married their mother a couple of years after their youngest child was born.

  Craig. That was it. Craig Fitzpatrick.

  Paul’s dad walked close enough for her to register two other things: First, sunglasses didn’t cover his eyes this time as they had at the barbecue. And secondly, he’d stopped abruptly a short distance from their chairs, his gaze darting past Bree, the cords of his neck in rigid lines.

  Apparently unaware of anything amiss, Carter grinned as if this was the best, family-get-together, ever.

  “Surprise, Pops! I made Dad keep Bree and Harley coming today a secret, too.” The boy straightened and put on his I’ve got manners posh voice, “Pops, this is my other dad, Harley. Harley, this is my pops, but you can call him Craig.”

  “Fuck.” Deep and ragged, Harley’s voice came from directly behind her. The menace in that single word—uttered at a low enough volume that Carter didn’t pick up on it—prickled down her spine like a scorpion swarm.

  “Hello, Harley.” Craig extended his hand.

  A sound that was almost a growl reverberated from her side, and his big body bumped hers. Bree twisted, instinctively digging her fingers into his rock-solid forearm. Veins popped up under Harley’s skin as his hands clenched into fists.

  What on earth was going on?

  She dragged her gaze from Craig’s bulging-eyed stare to Harley’s lip pulling back over clenched teeth. His chin dipped, dark glasses angling down to Carter’s smiling face, before he drew back his wide shoulders and gently shook off Bree’s hand.

  “Craig.” Harley stepped forward and gave the older man’s hand a short shake, dropping it as though it were dripping in venom.

  Across the field came a whistle blast.

  “Gotta go,” Carter yelled. “You guys watch me bat!”

  Then he was gone, leaving Harley and Craig to size each other up like dogs poised for a death match. Or maybe that was only Harley, since Craig’s shoulders slumped along with the rest of his posture. Her brother-in-law, no strange
r to the blustering of conflict between men, sized up the situation and eased between them.

  “What’s going on?” Paul asked. “You two know each other?”

  Harley continued to glare at Craig for a moment longer, before sliding his wraparound shades up onto his head. A muscle spasmed in his jaw. “This your father, Paul?”

  Paul’s brow creased into a deep V, and his gaze flickered back and forth between the two men. “Yeah.”

  Harley shoved his fists into his shorts’ pockets. “Turns out, he’s mine, too.”

  ***

  The expression “his blood froze” had a basis in truth. Harley’s heart slugged it out with his rib cage while his blood, his very fucking marrow formed ice crystals that spiked into his bones.

  Craig Fitzpatrick was Harley and Ford’s father.

  Craig Fitzpatrick had also fathered four kids with his first girlfriend, and Paul was the eldest of them.

  Harley had once taken a February trip to Niagara Falls with a Canadian artist buddy, to see the mighty waterfall locked in winter’s icy embrace. They’d cruised Ontario’s Fallsview Boulevard afterward, and when a curtain of icicles broke and smashed to the ground in an alley next to one of the bars, Harley had nearly shit himself—to the amusement of his friend, used to the ruthless Northern winters. The sound—the ball-shrivelling crack then tinkling-glass-crunch when the ice slammed into the street below—Harley now felt the same frigid impact shatter through him.

  Out on the field, Carter walked alongside his team mates with his coach. He spotted Harley looking in his direction and waved. Harley lifted a hand in acknowledgment, his entire arm lead-lined.

  And Craig Fitzpatrick also was “Pops” to Harley’s son.

  Harley pinched his mouth shut—if he allowed it to open, he’d order the sonofabitch away from his kid before he screwed up Carter’s childhood the way he’d screwed up Harley’s and Ford’s.

  “Well, sheeeit.” Paul did the glancing-back-and-forth thing again. “You wanna explain what the hell is going on, Dad?”

  Craig slipped off his Black Caps bucket hat and scratched his head.

  Guess Harley should be grateful his old man still had a thick thatch of hair, even though it was now almost completely grey. Nice to know when everything else about this situation was fucked up, that hereditary baldness wasn’t in his future.

  “He’s telling the truth,” said Craig. “He’s my son. Him and his brother, Ford.”

  “The truth being you knocked up his mum.” Paul’s gaze could’ve sharpened a set of steak knives.

  His half-brother’s gaze. Jesus. This had been one fucker of a year for unexpected family members turning up.

  “Then deserted her and her twins when they were a few months old?” Paul asked.

  “Yes.”

  Harley kept it zipped. Wouldn’t be held responsible for the shit spewing forth if his lips relaxed even a little bit. He didn’t dare look at Bree, because one glance at the sympathy and concern he knew would be all over her face and he’d lose it. Big time.

  Paul hissed through his teeth and folded his beefy arms. “So after abandoning your twin sons, you crawled back to Mum, and as we got older, you never once thought to tell us we had two more brothers?”

  “I was ashamed of the way I conducted myself,” Craig said, and then addressed Harley. “And I know it doesn’t mean much, but I didn’t know until we met up in that bar that your uncle and aunt took you to raise when you were five.”

  “You would’ve known if you’d checked up on them,” Paul said. “You just cut them off cold, didn’t you?”

  “The longer I kept silent about my other family, the harder it was to say anything. I figured let sleeping dogs lie. I took the easy way out; I know it. Then when I found out you and Amy planned to whangai Carter, and Amy let slip the father’s name…” Craig shook his head, his mouth forming a tight line. “I couldn’t admit Harley was my son, because if he ever found out I’d be Carter’s grandfather, he wouldn’t have agreed to let you and Amy raise the baby. He wouldn’t have believed I’d changed.”

  Correct on both counts. Harley’s jaw felt wired shut, an ache spreading from his clenched back teeth to his frontal lobe, which throbbed in time with it. The shouts and thwack of a cricket ball connecting with a bat faded into the distance.

  “But after I met you when you were nineteen,” Craig continued. “I took a hard look at my life and owned up to the shit father I’d been. You managed to knock some sense into me that night. Someone needed to.”

  Like one of those icicle sheets, something broke loose and smashed inside Harley.

  “It fucking shouldn’t have been me. I’ve had to live with hitting you for ten years. Do you have any idea how that felt? Hating you so much that I lost control? And the little kid seated next to us looking at me as if I were a monster—do you know how that made me feel after everything my mother did to me? Like I was a fucked-up combination of the shittiest parts of you and Pania.” Harley stepped forward then jerked to a halt as Bree’s arms wrapped around his chest, her breasts smooshed into his back as she clung tight.

  Bree. God. How could she stand to touch him after the poison festering inside him had finally leaked out?

  He’d never forgotten that kid at the Christchurch bar and grill. The boy was about two years old, probably too old to be in a highchair, but Harley’s nineteen-year-old-self had no freaking idea, anyway. The kid’s mother had left the table, and the father had been yapping into his phone while the boy placidly stuffed French fries into his mouth. The dad’s phone call evidently more important than the toddler, he too had left the table and moved to a position by the windows, plugging a finger into his ear. In the aftermath of knocking Craig on his ass, the only sounds were Craig’s wheezy gasps and the clink of cutlery as people at the tables around them stopped eating to stare. Harley had dragged his gaze off the blood under his father’s nose to the toddler’s tear-filled eyes and his quivering lip. The kid’s wail hacked through the silence as he arched away from Harley, the boy frantically glancing around for his daddy.

  Harley had fled, the image of the terrified baby and Craig’s bloody nose carved into him, brutal and deep. He must have a fundamental defect like his mother. Short-fused and abusive, waiting for a trigger to be pulled and an innocent to be caught in the crossfire.

  “I’m sorry.” Craig’s face crumpled.

  Suddenly he was just a greying, fifty-something-year-old man, who’d screwed up a decade ago and couldn’t even begin to know how to even the score.

  Harley, at least, knew there was no way to time travel, no way to buff away those scars, and no point in letting bitterness fester inside. Lesson one learned at his mother’s graveside. He hadn’t passed the final exam on Letting That Shit Go, but he’d made progress. Still had some miles to cover with Craig, but the initial urge to knock the older man on his ass for a second time vanished as fast as it’d arrived.

  “Don’t apologize.” He covered Bree’s hand with his own, and some of the tension drained away as she snuggled closer, her face tucked into his shoulder. If Harley made an abrupt move toward his father, he risked hurting her—and she’d known he’d never do that. “I hit you, not the other way around.”

  “You had just cause to be furious with me.” Craig straightened his spine. “I chose my words carelessly, treated you without the respect you deserved. It’s no reflection on you that you lost your temper. And from the way Carter talks about you, and the regard Paul holds you in after only meeting you once, I’ll tell you, Harley, if there’s anything of me and Pania in you, then it’s only the good stuff.”

  “The old man’s right; you’re solid. Thirteen years patrolling the street has given me a Spidey-sense about violence in people. I don’t get any tingles from you. Plus”—Paul dipped a chin at Harley’s stomach, indicating Bree’s arms still wrapped around him—“no way would you have this woman clinging to you like a spider monkey if you did.”

  Bree released her grip, sliding her
curvy body around until she was flush up against his front, making it really hard to concentrate as her breasts grazed his chest. Big blue eyes stared up at him, shiny with tears. Her palm cupped his jaw, angling his face so her eyes were the only thing filling his vision.

  “You’ve thought, all these years, that you could be like your mother? Is that what you thought?”

  Harley could only stare down at her, watch as a tear slipped over her lashes and tracked down to settle in the corner of her mouth, her lower lip flushed pink from where she’d been biting it.

  “Yes.” The word was dragged, heels digging in, from the rawness of his gut. “The statistics show kids of abusers grow—”

  “Fuck the statistics.” A scrape of her fingernails as her grip tightened on his jaw. “Fuck them. You’re not a statistic, and you’re more than a product of your genes. Denise and Rob raised you and Ford into good men, and you’d rather rip off your hand than raise it to a child, any child—but especially your own.” She gave his chin a little shake, the tears in her eyes replaced by a ferocity that was all Bree. “I know that about you, Harley. I know it right down to the tiny beating heart that’s growing under mine.”

  Warmth spread through him as her words soaked in, drowning him in her staunch assurance that he was a better man than he’d believed. Bree’s faith dissolved his strength to kitten weakness—as if he should be the one clinging to her. His hands, which had settled on her hips, tightened, dragging her even closer. To hell with the bystanders. If he didn’t hold on, he’d be the one collapsing on his ass.

  “I have a wicked temper…” It sounded like a pathetic excuse now, even to him.

  Bree’s eyes narrowed. “So do I. Don’t make me take you down a peg or two.” She dragged the pad of her thumb over his mouth, her gaze softening again. “Your temper was never the problem. The problem was the anger fuelling it, and that anger is all through your early work. You were working through your issues with oils, and you’re winning. I think that’s why after Pania died, your muse headed off into a different direction, because all that anger you carried for so long lost its power.”