With a start he realized his hand had gone to his throat, searching for the fake rabbit’s foot he used to wear when he was a kid. Good God. He hadn’t thought about that in years.
She cleared her throat. “Yes. Right.”
Sure. That was why he was here.
“I... Look, of course you’ll want to choose your own lawyer, but I thought it might be easier if I pulled together some names for you. A starting point, since I know who is most convenient.”
He ran a finger down the list, lingering over the names she’d starred, buying time. “It’s not like either of us is fighting this.” At least, not legally. “I don’t see why we need to pay two lawyers when we’re in agreement already.”
“Conflict of interest. Legal ethics.”
“Lawyers have ethics?”
Her head snapped up. For the first time since he walked in, she smiled.
“Crazy as it might seem, it’s true.”
She had what appeared to be a death grip on her pen. If it had been a pencil, he would have expected it to snap in half by now. He wanted to walk across the room, place his hand over hers and give it a squeeze. Remind her that they were in this together, the way they had been all along.
Well, as much as possible.
But the rules were clear. No physical contact. Maybe someday they could reach the point when a squeeze of a hand or a tap on the shoulder would be seen as no more than a gesture of support, but right now, there was too much else floating between them to risk it.
“We’ve done the hardest part already,” she said softly. “Figuring out support and custody. I mean, we’ll each need the legal eagles to give it their pricey approval, but as long as we’re in agreement, it should be smooth sailing.” She hesitated. “Unless, of course, you want to make any changes.”
“No. I’m good. Kate, we both know that there won’t be any every-other-weekend thing with us. Jamie’s life will be here, with you.”
She pulled the pen in close to her chest. It was almost like she was guarding it. Or cradling it?
Her actions perplexed him. Shouldn’t she be happy about this? He knew all too well how it felt to be traded from home to home. That wasn’t what he wanted for Jamie. He had no intention of swooping in like the Big Bad Wolf and disrupting their lives.
And yet Kate maintained her death grip on the pen.
“Is that a problem?”
She said nothing. Which worried him more than anything she could have said, because he had never known Kate to be at a loss for words.
“Hmm? Oh, no. No. I just thought... I mean, I want him here with me. Obviously. But I don’t want him to miss out.” She took a deep breath. “It’s fine.”
Boone might not be a family man, but that didn’t mean he was clueless when it came to family dynamics. On the contrary. He had learned fast and early how to read a situation and know when someone was telling the truth and when they were lying through their teeth—or through a smile. He didn’t always know what to do about it, but he could tell when there was a problem.
And right now, every instinct he had was telling him Kate was most certainly not fine.
I don’t want him to miss out.
“Kate.” Again, he stopped himself from reaching for her hand. “If we want any chance of making this work, we have to be honest. Even when we think the other person won’t like what we have to say.” He spread his palms wide open. “Cards on the table, okay?”
She stared at his hands. Silently. Like she was weighing her options. Which surprised him, because it all seemed pretty straightforward to him.
Then she said in a rush, “I want him to know that you want him.”
Her words sent him rocking back in his chair. Or was it the way she’d said it—low and desperate, like she wasn’t sure she had the right to ask but needed to anyway?
Did she think he didn’t love his son?
“Kate.” The hell with restrictions. He left the chair to kneel in front of her, tipping her chin up with one finger, steeling himself against the flood of remembered pleasure at the brief brush of skin on skin. “Kate, I know that what I feel for Jamie doesn’t come close to what you have with him, and it never will. I’m okay with that. But don’t ever doubt for a minute... I mean, it’s true I don’t know a lot about babies, and I’m still terrified I’ll do something wrong and hurt him.”
Some of the worry in her face was pushed aside by a slight smile. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I already figured that out.”
Ah. There was the Kate he knew.
He let his hand drop back down to his side. “We got caught by surprise. Things are more complicated than either of us expected. But complicated can still be amazing.”
“And wanted?”
“Wanted. And very much loved.”
This time, when she ducked her head, he was pretty sure it was to hold back the flash of moisture he saw in her eyes.
“I want to know Jamie.” If he had to spell it out, he would. “I want to talk to him as much as he would like, and come here to hang out with him every year, and maybe, soon, start having him spend some time in Peru. With you, of course,” he said when her head snapped up. “But I’m okay with leaving the details of when we take each step kind of fluid.”
“Fluid.” She said the word slowly, as if trying it on for size. After a moment, she nodded. “Okay. I see what you mean. As long as we both agree on what the next step should be, I’m good with leaving the timing loose.”
Down on the floor, Jamie grabbed a squeaky toy and smashed it on the blanket.
“Rock on, dude.” Boone cocked his head toward the baby but spoke to Kate. “Maybe he’ll be a drummer.”
“Oh, no. No wishing drums on him when you’ll be on another continent.” She reached behind her, grabbed a paper and squinted at it. “Okay, since His Highness is still happy down there, let’s talk about some things we haven’t covered yet. Like guardians.” She frowned before looking at him. “Right now, I have Allie listed. It made the most sense, since she’s here and he knows her. But do you want to leave it that way? Or if something were to happen to me...”
Boone’s mind went blank. He couldn’t help it. The thought of Kate not being alive drove all capacity for thought from his mind.
“Would you want to...” She carried on, totally oblivious that parts of him had frozen at the thought of her dying. “I mean, I think it would be easier on Jamie if he were to stay with people and places he knows, but you’re his father. It would be up to you.”
Oh, God. She expected him to answer.
The floor was hard against his knee as he pushed back upright. The chair was solid beneath him as he sat down once more, the wood of the armrests smooth and slightly warm against his palms as he gripped them.
He could handle this. If she had the guts to sit there and calmly talk about what would happen if she were to die, then surely he could manage something coherent.
“I...uh...I haven’t thought about that.” Start with the facts. Buy himself time. “I, uh, need to think about it, but my feeling is, yeah. Having Allie take over would undoubtedly be easiest on Jamie. As long as she’s okay with me still being in the picture.”
Kate smirked. “There’s a reason I asked her and not my mother, and let me give you a hint—it had nothing to do with age.”
Damn, it felt good to laugh. The tightness in his chest eased and lightness filled him.
“But while we’re on the subject,” she said, “we probably should think about what we would like to do when and if either of us remarries.”
“That’s not going to happen.” The words were out of his mouth before he processed them. He wasn’t even sure who he was talking about. Him, definitely. But her?
Though judging from the way she was watching him, as if he had suddenly sprouted alien antennae, he had a feeling that maybe he should have wai
ted to speak.
“Kate, come on. We both know I’m not going to...that is, if not for Jamie...”
Oh, God. She was clutching the pen.
When she looked up again, her face was set in a resolve he’d seen only a couple of times before. When she’d told him that no matter what, she was keeping their baby. When she told Maggie that no matter what, they were getting married.
When she had taken him to the airport for his flight back to Peru. And why hadn’t he put that together until just now?
“I know that you don’t see yourself as a family man, Boone, and that’s...well, it is what it is. It’s part of you. But as we both know, things happen.”
She had a point. Maybe he should look into getting a vasectomy while he was here.
“But I’m not you. I want to have more kids. I would like to have them with someone I can build a life with.”
She wants to be with someone else.
Once, when he was helping build the expansion on the project’s office, the guy carrying the other end of a board had slipped and Boone had taken a solid chunk of wood to the torso. Kate’s words made him feel like he was doubled over in the yard once again, struggling to breathe through a chest that had forgotten how to move.
“I...guess that’s another thing I hadn’t thought about.”
Maybe because it was impossible for him to think about her being with someone else and still see straight.
And then he had to know. “Is there someone?”
“What, do you mean, like, am I taking applications?” She started at him blankly before bursting into laughter.
“No. No, Kate, I’m not...”
Her laughter faded into a bemused smile. “I’ve been kind of busy, you know?”
Yeah. He knew.
“Sorry.” He attempted a smile. “You caught me by surprise.”
“Obviously.” Her gaze slid sideways, though he doubted she was really seeing Jamie chewing on the alpaca. “I mean, it would be one thing if you thought that maybe, someday...”
His breath caught in his throat. She shook her head.
“But you’re there, and I’m here. And if it turns out this is the only life Jamie ever knows, then that’ll be his normal and it will be wonderful.” She stretched her foot out again to straighten the corner of the blanket. “I only remember a little from the years when it was just me and Mom, living here with Nana and Poppy, but I know it was good. Then she married Neil, and then Allie came along, and things just felt so different. Like we’d found something we never knew was missing.” Her voice dropped. “Someday, I would like to have that for Jamie.”
“And for you?”
He shouldn’t have asked. He had no right. Yes, she was his wife, but that was only a matter of time. She would always be the mother of his son, but that didn’t give him any say over who was in her life, or her heart, or her bed.
Jamie. Keep it focused on Jamie.
“As long as this future potential...person...is good to Jamie, I don’t see how I would have any input.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, really. But I want you to think about it. If someone else was in our lives, day in, day out, he would become the father figure. You would still be Daddy, but things would be...different.”
Different. Yeah, that was one way to describe it.
He was pretty sure he was okay with things being different. Change was good. But he was also pretty sure that Kate would prefer the version she had laid out.
That, he wasn’t so certain he could handle.
But he also knew that he had no choice.
CHAPTER FIVE
KATE HAD PLANNED to spend the morning prepping the bedroom beside Boone’s. She sent him off with lists, directions and a hand-drawn map. Then she carried Jamie and her supplies up the stairs and down the hall, steadfastly resisting the temptation to peek in Boone’s room. Nope. Not looking. Even though the door was wide-open and the ladder-back chair was right there and his jacket was tossed over it and...
Okay. So she peeked for a second. But she didn’t stick her head into the room and inhale, no matter how much she wanted to.
Just as she finished getting Jamie settled and her equipment set up, Kate heard a car outside. Huh. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and Boone hadn’t been gone long enough to get through his list.
“Think Daddy forgot something?” she asked Jamie, but he was too busy trying to pull off his socks to answer. She peeked out the window and spied not her own little red Mazda but a sporty hatchback painted with the familiar logo of Allie’s restaurant, Bits and Pizzas.
“Woo-hoo, Jamie! Aunt Allie is here!” Kate put her mouth to the window she’d cracked open just enough to let in a hint of spring warmth. “Come on in! We’re upstairs!”
Soon enough, Allie was in the room, cuddling Jamie and offering explanations.
“I saw Boone walking around downtown while I was running errands. So I thought, well, this might be my only chance. You know.” Allie winked. “To find out how well that whole separate bedrooms thing is working.”
Heaven save her from her sister. “Very well, thank you. Now keep your nephew happy. I have wallpaper to scrape.”
“I thought you were a fan of the paint-over-it school.”
“Sometimes you have to. But this room has only two layers, and it’s been coming off pretty easy so far.”
“Plus it’s great exercise. Especially if you have to, oh—” Allie batted her eyes rapidly. “—work off some frustration.”
Kate leveled the scraper in Allie’s direction. “Don’t you give me the innocent puppy-dog look. You’re not getting a rise out of me.”
“Ah, but the question is, are you getting one out of Boone?”
Kate sagged against the wall, her energy spent. “Al...”
Thank goodness, the message seemed to sink in. “Sorry. None of my business. I’ll shut up now.”
“You don’t have to shut up. Just—”
“Don’t harass you about your love life. Got it. Cash wants me to move in with him.”
Whoa.
“He wants what?” Kate shook her head, trying to clear the onslaught of questions. “Um, did he forget that you guys have only been together together for a couple of months?”
“No. He knows, and not just because it’s the first thing I said when he came out with this.” Allie’s ponytail swung out behind her as she whirled Jamie in slow circles. “But my lease is up at the end of May, and my landlady is pushing me to sign up for another two years. She said if I do it, she won’t raise the rent at all and she’ll let me get a cat, even though I’m not supposed to have pets, because she hates hunting for new tenants and she wants me to stay, basically forever.”
“Oh, that’s not fair. I mean, it is, but—”
“I know.” Allie giggled along with Jamie as they dipped and turned. “I love living there. It’s a great apartment, walking distance to work, with parking, which doesn’t matter most of the time but hello, when tourist season rolls around I start singing glory hallelujah. Also, all the stained glass? And the funky stairs? It’s like I’m back at Mom’s place, but without the upkeep.”
“Or Mom.”
“You nailed it. But...”
“But Cash?”
“But Cash.” She sighed and shifted Jamie to her shoulder. “I love him, Katie, okay? No second thoughts about that. I can’t believe how wonderful life is with him. And when I think about how close I came to missing out on this, I get the shakes. I want to be with him. In so many ways it would make sense to jump in right now and say, sure, why wait when we both know this is where we’re headed? But on the other hand...”
Kate was pretty sure she knew exactly what was bothering Allie, but the words needed to come straight from the source. So she shoved her scraper under a particularly stubborn piece of wallpaper and forced herself to wait
.
“It’s a big step. A major step. And the past few months have been such a whirlwind that I don’t... I need time to catch my breath. Luke and I... That all happened so fast. In less than a year I’ve gone from having two guys as best friends to having one tell me he loved me, to getting engaged, to planning the wedding, to having the Mounties crash the wedding—”
“Because they always have to get their man.”
A hint of a smile. “Right. And then, boom. Now I’m with my other best friend. Very happily so, I remind you, without any of the doubts I kept telling myself were just wedding jitters. But I... No one else knows this, okay? And you can’t tell anyone because it sounds so stupid and ridiculous, but the thing is, I figured out I loved Cash that night.”
“Which night?” Kate pushed the scraper and hit a ridge. “Not the night of your wedding?”
“The night of my nonwedding. Yes.” Allie grimaced. “It makes me sound like such a flake.”
“Yeah, not gonna lie, I can see why you want to keep that one close to your chest.”
“I know, right? It’s bad enough that people have already figured out I’m with Cash now. You wouldn’t believe some of the comments I get at work. And I know that will all fade. And it’s not like I really care about what people say, because it’s nobody else’s business. On the other hand, I think I’m entitled to some adjustment time.”
“You just don’t know if you want two years’ worth.”
“Exactly.”
Out of nowhere, a totally unexpected sense of jealousy surged through Kate. What must it be like to be so wanted, so loved, that a man would be ready to turn his entire life around after just a few short months?
Stop it, Kate. Allie needs you. You’re fine.
“Could you sublet?”
“It’s not allowed now. And yeah, if I needed to I could probably buy my way out of the lease, or whatever, but I’m still paying off the wedding that didn’t happen.”
And probably trying to save for one that would take place, Kate suspected. But there was no way she was going to say that at this point.
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