Michael's Father (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Melinda Curtis

  “What’s next?” Cori directed the question to the two paramedics.

  “We’ve got her stabilized, so we’re taking her to the hospital in Santa Rosa.”

  “I’m going with her,” Cori said, straightening beneath Blake’s arm. She leaned back to look up at him. “Can you watch Michael?”

  “Can we take him home with us?” He wanted to reassure Jen, and the best way to do that was to get her home.

  “You’ll watch him carefully?”

  “Of course.” Just the fact that she had to ask hurt his pride. He was Michael’s father, wasn’t he?

  “Thanks.” She stood on tiptoe and hugged him tightly, pressing all her curves against his chest, almost making up for her doubt.

  He squeezed tighter, not wanting to let her go.

  “I hope he behaves for you.” Cori drew away from Blake.

  His arms fell uselessly to his sides. He wasn’t supposed to feel this way about Cori at a time like this, as if he needed to keep her by him forever. Or maybe that was just further proof of his love for her.

  Cori moved to her mother’s side and took her hand. “I’ll go with you to the hospital, Mama.” She looked up at one of the paramedics. “I have time to change, don’t I?”

  “It’ll be a few minutes,” he said. He was the younger of the two, with red spots on his face. When Cori smiled at him, he blushed.

  The two paramedics went downstairs to get their stretcher, and Cori hurried down the hall.

  “Maria, can you take Jen down to the kitchen and make her that hot chocolate before you go?” Blake asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Maria walked stiffly out into the hall.

  Blake moved to stand next to Sophia. “You’ve given us all a scare this time.”

  She blinked up at him over her yellow oxygen mask.

  “Don’t you do anything foolish now, like give up.”

  Her cheeks lifted as if she were smiling beneath the mask. Sophia’s good spirits almost brought him to his knees, he was so grateful she was still alive.

  “They’re taking you to the hospital again. You’re going to have to show them some of that Messina spirit if you want to come back here.” Cruelly honest words, but he knew Sophia would fight to come home.

  Blake thought he detected a brief nod.

  “That’s my girl.” Blake leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Do me a favor and don’t flash any men this go-round.”

  He could see the corners of her smile this time.

  When the paramedics came back, Blake left them to retrieve Michael. He walked through the open door of the pink room, right into Cori pulling on her blue jeans.

  “Sorry.” He whipped around. Her back was to him, but he had caught sight of her red sheer panties and a slender bare back.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just be a second, once I find my bra.”

  Blake squeezed his eyes shut against the image of her walking around in tight blue jeans and nothing on top. The backless dress was bad enough.

  “I need to get him,” he managed to choke out.

  “Michael. He’s still asleep.” He heard her rustling through clothing. “There.” Snap.

  Blake contained a groan. Family crises were supposed to be a solemn time, yet all he could think about was touching Cori’s bare skin with his mouth. He started to turn toward Michael.

  “Just need a shirt.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if she didn’t realize she was killing him.

  Blake spun back to the hallway, strangulation on his mind—hers. Was she driving him crazy on purpose? “Let me know when you’re dressed, will you?” he grumbled.

  “I’m decent.”

  He didn’t turn right away, but scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to wash away the image of her naked body beneath his. When he did look back, Cori was on her knees next to their son.

  “Michael, wake up, baby. You’re going to have a sleepover at Jennifer’s house.”

  The kid mumbled. It sounded like “I’m too tired,” punctuated by a yawn and a sprawling of limbs.

  “You be good and I’ll see you in the morning.” She kissed his cheek and stood. When she looked up at Blake, he could see tears filling her eyes. Unexpectedly, she rocketed into his arms, knocking him back a step.

  “You’ve always been there for me.” Her words were muffled against his shoulder. “Take care of my baby.”

  She stepped around him, picked up her tennis shoes and was gone. Her footsteps on the hardwood floor slowed to a stop at the end of the hallway. With a sniffle, he heard her walk into Sophia’s bedroom.

  “Ready for a road trip, Mama?”

  Blake looked down upon the boy that he’d unwittingly helped to create. Cori was right about so many things. Could he have been blinded by love back then and turned a deaf ear to what she really needed?

  He wondered who the real Cori Sinclair was. Spoiled socialite. Good mother. Selfish liar. Loving daughter.

  Did it really matter?

  Blake had to face his own truth. Regardless of who she was, he wanted to be the one Cori leaned on. She’d broken his heart twice already. He was willing to risk it a third time.

  BLAKE WOKE UP to Michael screaming for his mommy. Blurry eyes tried to focus on the miniature maelstrom wailing inches from his face.

  “Where’s my mommy? Where’s my mommy?” he kept repeating.

  “It’s okay. She’s coming soon.” Blake tried to reassure the boy, but he was inconsolable.

  Blake sat up in bed and looked at the clock. Six-thirty. He’d gone to sleep around three o’clock. “Come here.” Blake extended his hand with the intent of pulling the boy into his lap. At least then the noise would be directed away from his ears.

  Michael backed away quickly, stumbling on his sleeping bag and falling on his bottom. He cranked the wailing up a notch, and then hit a fever pitch when Blake reached out to help him up. Immediately, Blake sank back onto the bed.

  Jennifer appeared in the doorway wearing the same jeans and T-shirt she’d gone to bed in, hopelessly wrinkled now.

  “What the…?”

  “He’s a little upset,” Blake yelled above the noise. “How about if we call your mom?”

  Michael’s face was red and tear-streaked. He shook his head vehemently. “Where’s my mommy?”

  “Hey, little guy. What’s wrong?” Jen approached the banshee with a soft voice.

  Michael took one look at Jen and slammed into her leg, wrapping his arms around her appendage just the way he did to Cori. He stopped screaming and dropped his voice to a constant moan.

  Blake’s ears were ringing. He pointed to Michael and glared at Jen accusingly. “When did that happen?”

  “We bonded last night.” Jen grinned at Blake.

  Shaking off the unexpected jealousy of seeing Jen comforting his son, Blake reached for the telephone. His sister, who’d been impossible to live with the past six months, had suddenly decided to befriend the boy she called the Master of Disaster? Unbelievable.

  Blake swung his legs over the edge of the bed and onto the child’s blue sleeping bag as he hit redial for the ward at the hospital where Sophia was staying. A few minutes later, Blake learned Sophia’s condition was still stable and that Cori was sleeping in a chair by her bedside.

  “How about pancakes while we wait for your mom?” Blake tried to make his voice sound nonthreatening and optimistic, the optimistic part more for himself than Michael.

  With his back to Blake, the kid shook his head. The moaning volume increased.

  “I don’t know, Mikey. Blake makes some pretty good pancakes. He puts chocolate chips in them.”

  The moaning halted for a heartbeat.

  Aha, a fellow chocoholic. “Yeah, I’m going downstairs to make a big stack of chocolate chip pancakes and a lot of bacon. I’d hate to have to eat all that alone.”

  “Hey, what about me?” Jen protested.

  “And me.” Michael didn’t look at Blake, but it was progress.

  Blake scratched his chin
and grinned at Jen. “I suppose I could share with those that set the table. Do either one of you know how to do that?”

  Michael turned his tear-smudged face toward Blake. “I know how.” Then he hiccuped.

  “You’ll do…Mike. You’ll do just fine.”

  CORI WAITED next to Mama’s hospital bed, rolling and unrolling a piece of paper. Mama looked so small and frail lying there with tubes and wires attached to various points on her body. Now Cori understood what Mama had meant about losing her dignity.

  Movement in the doorway caught her eye.

  “I didn’t expect you to still be here. Who’s with the boy?” her grandfather said, leaning on the doorknob, looking impeccable in a pair of olive khakis and a gray dress shirt.

  “Blake and Jennifer.” She stood, feeling unpresentable in her wrinkled jeans, flat hair and stale makeup. “Would you like to sit down?”

  He nodded and stepped carefully over to the chair. He looked down on Sophia with a detached expression before carefully lowering himself into the seat. “The nurse said she’s stable.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she spoken?”

  “Not yet.” Cori fidgeted with the paper. “I talked with John Sinclair last night.”

  His hand fiddled with his cuff button. “And?”

  “You were right about him. About how he is now.”

  “Meaning, I was wrong about him back then.”

  “I wasn’t old enough to know if you were right or wrong then.” With effort, Cori tamed the irritation in her tone. The last thing she wanted was to start a fight.

  “Sophia agreed with me.”

  Cori knew what her mother thought now, but held her tongue.

  He eyed her expectantly. “I lived up to my end of the bargain.”

  Cori’s stomach clenched. “I can’t deal with your vendetta today.”

  After a moment, her grandfather nodded, surprising her when he added, “I’ve lost my taste for revenge lately.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, until Cori noticed her grandfather was unnaturally still, almost as if he couldn’t bear to move. “When are you going to get a new hip?” Her first secretary had needed that particular surgery, holding off until the last minute when she could barely walk. It’d taken Cori a while to make the connection between her grandfather’s symptoms and her former secretary’s.

  He scowled. “Doctors. What do they know?”

  Mama’s eyelids wrenched open a crack. Cori moved closer and touched her mother’s arm above the IV tube. Her eyes opened wider.

  “You gave us a scare last night.” Cori smiled bravely. “I’m sorry I wasn’t home.”

  Sophia didn’t answer. She looked at Cori and then her eyes moved to Salvatore, then back to Cori and the paper in her hand. Cori unrolled the document and held it up so her mother could see what it was—her instructions not to be revived.

  “Find the doctor,” her grandfather ordered.

  Cori ignored him. “I thought it better if we kept this with you.” Cori took some medical tape and attached it to her mother’s headboard. The look she exchanged with her mother was meant to convey the bonds of love. But her mother’s eyes were dull and lacked awareness. Maybe her grandfather knew best, after all.

  Cori swallowed her fears and tried to appear cheerful. “The doctor came by a while ago and said I could break you out of here if you woke up before lunchtime. What do you say?”

  Mama’s eyes remained empty. She said nothing, letting the hospital white noise fill the tightening space in Cori’s heart. Cori spun on her heel and ran for the doctor.

  “I CAN’T REMEMBER the last time you made pancakes,” Jen said, stuffing another bite into her mouth.

  Blake couldn’t remember, either. He associated the pancake griddle with slow Sunday mornings and afternoons where you slept off the haze of sugar before heading off to the movies or watching a game on television. And he’d about given up on Jen ever enjoying his company again.

  Jen burped, eliciting a giggle from Michael. “We should do this more often.”

  Why hadn’t they? Oh yeah. Miss Hormonal had something against hanging out with him. And, if Blake were honest with himself, he was reluctant to bridge the gap between them because he’d been beaten down so often. It was easier to do nothing, say nothing, than to risk an argument—or worse—a deejay episode like the one he’d experienced last week, hearing the same song over and over again.

  “Have you had enough, Mike?” Blake asked. He’d already made his son a snake pancake and one shaped like an M. That was about as far as his culinary creativity went. When the boy didn’t answer, Blake looked over his shoulder. The kid was sitting sideways in his chair, facing away from Blake.

  “Done,” the boy said with a smile at Jennifer.

  It was a beautiful smile, similar to one of Cori’s. Blake just wished it was directed at him.

  SOPHIA CAME HOME later that afternoon, but the episode had taken its toll on her both physically and emotionally. Blake, Jen and Michael met the ambulance at the front door. Sophia didn’t acknowledge any of them. She was home, but lacked awareness. Jen started to cry when she saw how distant Sophia had become. Blake sent her home with a promise to call later. He didn’t want her last memory of Sophia to be like this.

  Cori stepped out of the ambulance looking as drained as Sophia. Blake moved closer, but before he could so much as touch her shoulder, Michael leapt into her arms and wouldn’t let go. Cori hugged Blake briefly with one arm, eliciting a complaint from Michael as he was squished between them.

  “You okay?” Blake asked.

  Cori blinked back the tears, able to give only a brief nod.

  They were down to bedpans, adult diapers and waterproof mattress pads. Privately, Blake held no hope for Sophia returning to the lucid state she had been in yesterday. Sophia was alive, but nonresponsive.

  As soon as Sophia was settled in her room, a red-eyed Cori retired to the pink room with Michael. That left Blake alone with Sophia, as Mr. Messina wasn’t back yet from the hospital and Luke was still at the winery.

  The silence in the room was oppressive, hanging heavily on Blake’s shoulders. After a time, he filled it.

  “Do you remember that time Jen flung peas across the table at me, except they hit that stuffy wine critic?” Blake asked Sophia. “I thought Mr. Messina was going to explode. Luke and I could barely keep a straight face. You just looked around the room like a queen and commented how fresh the produce was that year, something about it just popping out of the pod.”

  Blake smiled at the ceiling, looking anywhere but at Sophia. He didn’t want to carry this image of Sophia with him, either.

  “Or how about that Christmas Eve when Jen wanted to help you cook dinner and you didn’t tell her you didn’t know how to cook? You canceled your gourmet dinner and tried to do it yourself. You let the turkey sit in the oven after it was done because you didn’t want it to get cold while you finished preparing the rest of dinner, only it just dried up and got hard as a rock.” Blake smiled. “We ended up eating Big Macs for dinner that year.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and looked out the window.

  “And that time you and Jen decided to surprise me for my birthday with a new pair of boots, only you couldn’t read the shoe size in my work boots out back? So, you took them to the store to make sure you had the right size, while you thought I’d be busy with Mr. Messina and the winemakers talking about grape supply. Only, they decided to go out for lunch and I had no shoes.” He managed to laugh past his choked throat. Hell, someone had to keep it light. Sophia was somber as a ghost. Blake finally looked at Sophia. Her open eyes stared dully at the ceiling.

  Blake wiped the tears from his cheeks. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t break apart like this, but he hadn’t realized until she’d been wheeled off the ambulance that he hadn’t ever thanked her for opening her heart to him. He couldn’t leave things unsaid between them, no matter how hard it was to say the words his own mother
and father had never said to him. He’d known they’d loved him. The Austins were just a family that didn’t voice those three words.

  “You made this seem like home for us. I can never thank you enough, except to say we love you…” Putting it in the third person didn’t seem right, so he added, “I love you.”

  “I don’t know how long you knew about Michael, but I want you to know I plan to live up to my responsibilities.” His voice tightened, coming out barely above a whisper. “Not just financially. I want to give him a father’s love.” Blake bowed his head. “I love her, too, even after everything she’s done. But you probably already knew that.” He rubbed his eyes, then rested his head in his hands. “Watch over us from up there, will you? I think we’re going to need it.”

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs, bringing Blake’s head up. Luke shot through the doorway. Late, as always, but with a tentative smile that made up for it. Or, at least, it would have if Sophia weren’t dying.

  “I’m going out for some fresh air.” Blake stood, barely keeping it together. “Call my cell if you need me.”

  PAUSING AT THE DOORWAY to the pink room, Blake listened, but there was only silence. Blake longed to talk with Cori about how she was holding up, Sophia, and his experience with Michael. But it would have to wait until later.

  He walked to the back stairs, slid the pocket door on its silent coasters into the wall and stopped. Cori sat a few steps down, hugging her knees. She quickly averted her eyes, but not before Blake noticed the tears. Close to tears again himself, Blake hesitated. Maybe she needed to be alone.

  “Don’t mind me. I’m just having a moment.” Her words came out unnaturally high-pitched.

  She needed him. Blake settled onto the top step and pulled the door nearly closed behind him, plunging them into semidarkness so that he could just make out her golden curls.

  “Rough night?”

  She shook her head.

  “Rough morning?”

  Cori pulled her lips into a taut line, as if trying not to speak, until finally she expelled a breath. “On top of everything else, I was fired this morning. The funny thing is, it seems so trivial, like it happened to someone else.”