The Secret Heir

by Gina Wilkins

  Jackson suspected she was repeating the doctor’s words as much to reassure herself as him. “Tyler will be fine, Laurel. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

  She swallowed visibly and nodded. Her fingers clenched so tightly in her lap that he heard a knuckle pop. “He’s so little,” she whispered, her sapphire-blue eyes filling with tears. “And they’re going to cut him open…”

  Acting on instinct, Jackson drew her somewhat roughly to her feet and into his arms. She stood stiffly there for a moment, and he began to wonder if she would push him away. But then she collapsed against him, her body wracked with shudders as she clung to the front of his shirt. She wasn’t crying, exactly, he noted as he gathered her closer and rested his cheek against her soft hair, but her breath caught in ragged gasps that told him she was holding back sobs with an effort.

  His protective-male instincts kicked into full force again. He wanted to promise her anything, do whatever it took to make their son well and ease Laurel’s pain. If he could trade places with Tyler, he would do so in a heartbeat. If money would solve the problem, he would get it somehow, even if it meant working longer than the twelve- to sixteen-hour days he already put in.

  It tormented him that there was absolutely nothing he could do. His child’s well-being was in other people’s hands now. He hated that.

  The conference-room door opened and an attractive woman in her early fifties rushed in, followed closely by a stocky, worried-looking older man.

  “Jackson!” Donna Reiss clutched his arm as Laurel moved abruptly away. “The receptionist told us you were in here. What’s wrong with Tyler?”

  Glancing quickly at Laurel, who had composed her face again into an inscrutable mask, Jackson knew their momentary bonding was over. Her thoughts were hidden from him now, as they so often were. Laurel didn’t seem to need him just then, so he turned, instead, to the person who did.

  Taking his mother’s trembling hands, he squeezed comfortingly. “I’ll try to explain what the doctor told us.”

  She clung to him, gazing up at him with both love and fear in her eyes. In contrast to Laurel, Donna always wore her emotions where everyone could see them. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s going to need open-heart surgery, but the doctor seemed confident the condition is correctable.”

  “Open-heart surgery?” Donna repeated weakly. “Oh, no.”

  Feeling her sway a bit, Jackson helped her into a chair. “Dad, do you want to sit down?”

  Carl Reiss shook his gray head and moved to stand behind his wife. Like Jackson, Carl preferred to be on his feet, ready to do whatever he was called upon to do.

  “Tell us what’s going on, Jay,” he said simply, using the nickname he always called his son. And then he glanced at Laurel. “Maybe you should sit, Laurel. You look awfully pale.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She crossed her arms more tightly over her chest and stood against one wall, as far away physically from the others as possible. And even farther away emotionally, Jackson thought.

  Looking stricken anew, Donna turned in her chair to face her daughter-in-law. “Laurel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you. It’s just that I was so worried. But you must be frantic. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” The words were exactly the same she had used to answer Carl, but, as always, her tone was just a shade cooler when she spoke to her mother-in-law.

  Donna directed her attention back to Jackson. “Tell me everything.”

  He told her as much as he could remember, from the frantic call he had received from Laurel that morning through the talk with Dr. Rutledge. “They’re running a few more tests now,” he concluded. “We’ll be notified as soon as we can see him.”

  One hand at her throat, Donna shook her head in disbelief. “Thank goodness Beverly is a former nurse’s aide who recognized the signs that something was wrong! If it hadn’t been for her, we might not have had any warning until it was too late.”

  Laurel moved abruptly toward the door. “Excuse me. I need to…freshen up. Find me if they come for us,” she added to Jackson on her way out.

  Knowing she wouldn’t want him to, he didn’t try to follow her.

  Closed into the dubious privacy of a ladies’ room stall, Laurel finally let herself cry. She couldn’t handle this, she thought. Anything else but this.

  Maybe if she had been a better mother. More attentive. A perfect stay-at-home mom, like Donna Reiss had been. Then Laurel, rather than Tyler’s nanny, would have been the one who had made note of the light-blue tinge around the boy’s lips after he’d been running, or the slightly ragged edge to his breathing at times.

  Despite all the times she had played with him, tickled him, run with him, Laurel had never seen the warning signs. It had taken a nurse’s-aide-turned-nanny to realize that something was very wrong.

  Laurel felt like such a failure as a mother—something she had feared since the day she had been told, to her shock, that she was pregnant. Still barely used to the idea of being a wife, she had almost panicked at the prospect of parenthood. What did she know about being a mother when she had never really had one herself?

  For three years she had done the best she could at motherhood. She had read all the books, devoted herself to the role with an intensity that had overshadowed almost everything else in her life. Two years ago, after coming to the conclusion that she was hovering on the edge of clinical depression and would be a better mother if she felt a bit more personally fulfilled, she had returned to her job as a social worker. But even then she had tried to keep her hours reasonable, she reminded herself defensively. Certainly more reasonable than Jackson, who was rarely home.

  Laurel had interviewed dozens of potential nannies, selecting the woman she had considered the best, even though Jackson had grumbled about the cost. It had taken the lion’s share of Laurel’s salary just to pay for child care, but despite Jackson’s suspicions, she didn’t really work for the money. She just needed to feel as if she was doing something worthwhile. Something that made her feel valuable and competent.

  She should have been content with being a full-time wife and mother, she thought now. But, unlike her job, which inspired confidence in her abilities, those other roles left her feeling clueless. As Jackson’s oh-so-perfect mother had just pointed out, it had taken a nanny even to realize that Tyler was seriously ill.

  Was everyone judging her for not being the one to notice? Or was she the only one who found that so hard to forgive?

  Knowing she had to emerge from the restroom eventually, she splashed cold water on her face, composing her expression as much as possible. The door opened before she touched the handle, and two older women walked in, both nodding greetings to Laurel as they passed.

  She found her husband and his parents in the waiting room. Donna and Jackson sat on a vinyl-covered bench, Donna’s head resting on her son’s shoulder. Carl roamed restlessly from a stand of magazines to a saltwater aquarium, which held his attention for only a short while.

  Laurel had never gotten to know her father-in-law very well. Almost ten years older than his wife, sixty-one-year-old Carl Reiss was a good-natured but quiet mechanic. His skin was weathered, his sandy-turned-gray hair thinning, and his brown eyes had a perpetual squint, as though from hours of peering into the sun.

  Though very much like his father in mannerisms, Jackson was physically more like his mother. Both Jackson and Donna were blond—though Donna’s color was artificially maintained now—and they had the same dark-blue eyes. Laurel had been told that Donna had once been drop-dead gorgeous, and even at fifty-two, she was still slim and striking. Jackson had definitely inherited his good looks from his mother.

  Tyler was a blond, blue-eyed, miniature replica of his own father. But from whom had he received his tiny defective heart? Laurel couldn’t help wondering with a catch in her throat.

  Jackson stood when he saw Laurel approach. “You okay?”

  She didn’t bother lying to hi
m again. “No word yet about when we can go to Tyler?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  She turned toward the desk. “This is ridiculous. I want to see my baby.”

  Jackson moved after her, and for a moment she thought he was going to try to stop her. Instead, he took her arm and walked with her to the reception desk. “We’d like to see our son,” he said to the efficient-looking woman sitting there.

  “I’m sure you’ll be called as soon as they’re ready for you, Mr. Reiss.”

  “We’re going in now,” he said, moving toward the doors. “You can either call an escort, or we’ll go find Tyler ourselves.”

  “Um, just a moment.” The woman hastily picked up the receiver of the telephone on her desk. Moments later a stern-faced nurse appeared to escort them back.

  Jackson Reiss had always had a way of getting what he wanted, Laurel thought with a touch of wistfulness.

  Unfortunately, this seemed like the first time in almost four years that she and he had wanted the same thing.

  Two

  Tyler burst into tears the moment he saw his parents, and held out his little arms to Laurel. She scooped him up, snuggling her face into his neck. “See?” she said, her voice bright and bracing. “I told you Mommy and Daddy would be close by.”

  “Wanna go home.”

  “I know, baby.” She shifted him more snugly onto her hip. His legs, bare beneath the thin, child-sized hospital gown, wrapped around her with a grip that let her know he wouldn’t release her again without a struggle. “We have to stay here now, but Mommy’s going to be right here with you, okay?”

  “Wanna go home,” Tyler repeated, his lip quivering as he looked to his father for reinforcement.

  Jackson reached out to ruffle Tyler’s fine, white-blond hair. “We’ll take you home as soon as the doctor says it’s okay, buddy.”

  A chocolate-skinned nurse with a riot of black curls around her appealing face hovered nearby. She nodded toward a deeply cushioned chair on one side of the private hospital room. “That chair converts into a single bed. One of you is welcome to spend the night here with Tyler.”

  A wooden rocker sat on the other side of the standard hospital bed on which Tyler had been sitting when Laurel and Jackson entered. Picking up the stuffed penguin Tyler had dropped on the bed, Laurel sat in the rocker with Tyler nestled in her lap. Leaving Jackson to talk with the nurse, she concentrated on cheering up her son.

  “You and I are going to spend the night here, Tyler. Mommy will sleep right here beside your bed.”

  Tyler sniffed. “Angus, too?”

  “Of course Angus, too.” She patted the stuffed penguin’s somewhat grubby head. “And look, we have a TV and a stack of cartoon movies. There are some of your favorites here. We’ll watch one together, okay?”

  Tyler nodded tentatively. Her promise that she would stay with him had reassured him somewhat, even if he was still clearly bewildered by what was going on.

  Barely three, he was still too young to understand that even though he felt fine, there was something wrong with him that required medical intervention. To him, it must seem that one moment he had been playing with his toys and the next he’d been in the hospital being poked and prodded by strangers.

  That was pretty much the way it felt to Laurel, too.

  On the suggestion of Beverly Schrader, their nanny, Laurel had taken the morning off on this nice Thursday in early April to take Tyler for a medical checkup. Though she had tried to convince herself that Beverly was overreacting, she had mentioned to the pediatrician the symptoms Beverly had noted. The pediatrician had taken Beverly’s observations seriously enough to run a few tests—and the next thing she’d known, Laurel had been sitting in the Portland General Hospital waiting room while Tyler was rushed to specialists.

  She had tracked Jackson down on a construction job he was supervising. He had dropped everything and hurried to join her. And suddenly they were facing open-heart surgery.

  It had all happened so fast that Laurel’s head seemed to be spinning. No wonder little Tyler was confused.

  She heard Jackson asking a string of questions of the patiently helpful nurse, but she didn’t try to monitor that conversation. She figured Jackson would tell her later what she needed to know. For now she focused on her child.

  “I’ll be back at five with your dinner, Tyler,” said the nurse, whose nametag identified her as Ramona. “Do you like spaghetti and applesauce?”

  Tyler nodded, then added, “Like ice cream, too.”

  Ramona flashed a smile. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

  Left alone, Laurel and Jackson studied each other over Tyler’s head. More at home in the chaos of a construction site, Jackson looked restless and uncomfortable in the sterile and studiously cheery setting of a hospital pediatric room.

  “I should probably go get my parents,” he said, glancing toward the door.

  Laurel’s arms tightened spasmodically around her son and words of protest rose instinctively in her throat, but she swallowed them and nodded. Jackson had every right to want his parents with him, just as they had a right to be close to their grandchild. She was being selfish to want to keep Tyler all to herself until this whole ordeal was over.

  It was just that once the close-knit Reiss family was together, Laurel always felt like the outsider. Changing her surname to theirs hadn’t made her one of them.

  It wasn’t that they had ever treated her badly. They had been nothing but politely gracious to her, just as they were to everyone outside the family. She knew much of the problem was hers. Since she hadn’t been raised in a family like this, she had never quite known how to behave with them, resulting in her being a bit guarded around them.

  Though adept at making small talk and swapping repartee with others, she’d turned stilted in the presence of Jackson’s parents. Jackson, for one, had certainly noticed. He had accused her almost from the beginning of not liking his parents, and the more he had pushed her, the more defensive she had become. Especially when it came to his paragon of a mother.

  Laurel had fifteen minutes alone with her son, and she savored every one of them. Though his vocabulary was limited, he managed to tell her about the people who had looked at him and done so many things to him. Laurel and Tyler had actually been separated for just over an hour, but it had seemed much longer to both of them. Tyler admitted he had rather liked nurse Ramona, but he was glad to be with his mommy again.

  Snuggled into her arms, he stuck his left thumb into his mouth and allowed himself to relax, his eyelids getting heavy. Laurel rested her cheek on his silky blond hair and closed her own eyes, desperately wishing—

  “There’s my sweet baby.” Donna Reiss rushed into the room on a wave of floral perfume and grandmotherly concern. She knelt beside the rocking chair and rested a trembling hand on Tyler’s arm. “Gammy’s here, darling, and so is Gampy. We’re all going to take very good care of you.”

  “Gammy,” Tyler murmured with a sleepy smile. But it was Laurel’s heart he nestled closer to as he drifted into a restless nap.

  It was almost eight o’clock that evening when Jackson convinced Laurel to leave the hospital room for a short break. Reminding her that she had missed lunch, he persuaded her to join him in the hospital cafeteria for a quick dinner. Tyler was sleeping, and Donna and Carl said they would stay with him until Laurel returned. They had already eaten, Carl having almost dragged Donna out of Tyler’s room for forty-five minutes earlier.

  Laurel had tried to talk Jackson into joining his parents then, but he had refused to eat until she did. Though she wasn’t hungry, and she hated to leave her son even for that brief time, Laurel finally conceded because she knew Jackson needed the break.

  The serving line closed at eight, so there weren’t many diners left, and not much food, either. Laurel ordered a bowl of soup, Jackson a sandwich.

  They carried their trays to a small table next to a glass wall that looked out over a beautifully landscaped courtyard
bathed in soft lighting. Because she knew he would insist, Laurel forced herself to take a few bites of the soup.

  “How is it?” he asked, looking up from his food.

  “Rather cold,” she replied with a shrug. “But it tastes fine.” At least, she assumed it did. For all the attention she had paid to the soup, it could have tasted like wet sawdust.

  Jackson finished his sandwich while she made a pretense of eating, both of them lost in their own thoughts. And then he pushed his plate aside, leaving the chips and pickle untouched. “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”

  Laurel set down her spoon. “Neither am I.”

  “You barely touched your soup. You’ll need to eat to keep your strength up. We’ve got a tough time ahead.”

  “I’ll eat. I’m just not hungry now.”

  He nodded and looked down at his hands, which were gripped together on the table in front of him. “This has all come up so fast that we’ve hardly had time to think about details. We’ll have to talk about what we’re doing for the next few days.”

  “I’ll be staying here with Tyler, of course. I’ll take an indefinite leave of absence from work. It’s a bad time for the agency, with all the rumors and investigations going on there, but they’ll have to manage somehow without me.”

  Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure they can?”

  Because her work had been such a sore subject between them for so long, Laurel immediately went on the defensive. “Regardless of what you so often imply, I have always put Tyler’s needs ahead of my job.”

  He held up a hand, his expression suddenly weary. “I’m not trying to start anything. I know Children’s Connection depends on you, that’s all.”

  “Yes, they do, but Tyler needs me more. I’ll call Morgan first thing in the morning to arrange for my leave.”

  He nodded. “I’ll need to check in on the job site a few times during the next few days, but I won’t have to spend much time there.”

  Laurel bit her tongue, but her expression must have revealed more than she had intended. This time it was Jackson whose defenses went up. “I’ll be here as much as I need to be, but I can’t afford to lose my job now. I’m the one who carries Tyler’s health insurance, remember? Your job isn’t going to pay the medical bills, especially with you taking a leave of absence.”