by Ann Jacobs
When she turned off the main road along the beach onto the street where he lived, she got a sense of déjà vu. There was that neon flamingo above the door of a restaurant where they’d stopped to eat, and an old hotel that had been the backdrop for several period movies. Apparently Gray had come back not only to the Tampa Bay area, but to the same condo where they’d first made love.
Long buried memories flooded Andi’s mind. The reckless abandon they’d shared. The skill with which he’d brought her to mindless ecstasy more times than she’d been able to count. The power she’d felt each time he shuddered in her embrace. She wanted to feel that exhilaration again, so much that anticipation dulled her fear.
* * * * *
Andi got out of her car and went inside the tallest of several towering condos that rose along the expanse of white sand beach. The elevator swayed as she took it to the fourth floor. Or was she the one who was trembling? She had her answer when she stepped out of the elevator and could barely hold her hand steady enough to lift the brass knocker on Gray’s door.
“Who’s there?”
Gray’s deep, distinctive drawl was as familiar if it had been only hours, not years, since she’d last heard him speak. As if she’d known him all her life, not for one weekend.
“Andi Young. May I come in?” Suddenly her tongue felt thick. Ten to one, Gray wouldn’t remember her from Adam.
“I’m not up to having company,” he said after a long, tense pause.
She wasn’t up to facing him, either, but she had to do this now, before her courage faltered. “Please. It’s important.”
“Hold on.” Something clattered to the floor inside. She heard a muffled curse. Finally the door opened.
“Gray.”
Tony hadn’t mentioned him being in a wheelchair. It shocked her to have to look down at him. The Gray she remembered had been too vital, too active for her to imagine him being restricted this way.
When he faced her, she met his solemn gaze. “It’s been a long time.”
He smiled, but that solitary gray-blue eye held no amusement. “A lifetime. Remembering you and the time we spent together here sustained me through a lot, Andi. Thanks.”
That was something. At least she wouldn’t have to fill him in on who she was or how they’d met at that fundraiser and spent the next three days together here, making memories of mind-blowing sex she’d never been able to dispatch.
“What are you doing here now?”
His voice sounded as mellow and sexy as she remembered. It drew her gaze to a face that bore faint resemblance to the one that still figured in her dreams.
God, how he must have suffered! He had to have gone through hell in that prison. Could she tell him about Brett now, turn his world upside down again? Part of her wanted to turn and run, while a stronger voice inside her urged her to stay.
He has a right to know he has a child.
The whitened scar Tony had mentioned disappeared under a black patch that covered Gray’s right eye. Tight lines etched around his mouth bespoke pain Andi had trouble imagining.
But he was still Gray. Just looking at him and hearing the low, sexy cadence of his voice still made her juices start to flow. Andi squelched an urge to touch him and try to ease the suffering she sensed must be his constant companion.
“Why are you here?” he asked again, his visible eye focusing on her face.
She felt exposed. Naked. Her senses reeled. What the hell was she going to do?
Andi had no trouble thinking up what to say to persuade juries that criminals deserved convicting, but now she might as well be mute. How was she going to tell Gray about their child?
Her pulse raced, and she restrained herself from wiping her damp palms against her shorts. When she opened her mouth, no sound came out.
“I asked you a question.”
“I-I know. You asked me why I’m here.”
Needing a few seconds’ respite, she knelt and retrieved the law book Gray apparently had dropped while answering the door.
“Here’s your book,” she said as she set it on his lap.
Gray rolled the chair back a few inches and raked her with a blue-gray gaze.
Standing in the doorway watching Gray stare at her rattled the last threads of her composure. “Could we sit down?”
“I am sitting. I spend close to half my time in this chair.” He laughed, a mirthless sound that came from deep in his chest. Then his expression lightened, and he gestured toward the plaid stadium blanket that covered him from the hips down. “Don’t mind me. I haven’t had a whole lot of practice being civil for the past few years. Come on in. We can talk in the living room.”
Memories crowded Andi as she followed Gray into a room whose floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the Gulf. Except for the clothes they’d left strewn across the carpet where they’d fallen eight years ago, the place looked the same.
She settled at one end of the beige leather sectional sofa where they’d devoured each other the first time, too hot to take the few steps into his bedroom. While she waited for Gray to angle his chair around, she stared at an odd-shaped smoked crystal lamp she recalled commenting on so long ago.
“Strange how some things haven’t changed at all.”
He set the brake on the chair, then shot her a questioning look. “Yes. It is.” The very sameness of the setting brought home to Andi the changes Gray had to face each day. She considered how much courage he must have, to have returned to a place that must evoke recollections bittersweet at best considering his obvious physical limitations.
Her own cowardice at the prospect of revealing their son to him shamed her, because when she looked at him, she saw Brett.
She might as well tell him now. The revelation wasn’t likely to get easier with him staring at her, his curiosity palpable. Andi inhaled deeply, the way she did before beginning a particularly difficult summation to a jury.
“Gray, you made me pregnant that weekend. I tried to contact you when I found out, but your supervisor at the DEA told me you were dead.”
The words rushed from her mouth and tumbled over each other as though now, eight years after the fact, there was still a fierce urgency about them.
“We have a son.”
Chapter Two
“A son?” He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d hit him with a sledgehammer.
It couldn’t be.
Yes, it could. They’d fucked practically nonstop for three days. Gray recalled that last time at her apartment when he’d cuffed her to the bed…and the condom had split. He’d relived those days over and over during the grim years he’d passed in that South American hellhole they called a detention center.
“We have a son?”
She nodded, and the hint of a smile curled those pretty lips that had tasted his balls, encircled his cock…but those memories paled in comparison with the magnitude of what she just said.
Damn it, the DEA had left him to rot in hell for seven goddamn years. They’d let his son do without a father. Gray clenched the arms of the chair. If only he could get his hands around the fat necks of whatever bureaucrats had decided he was more expendable than the project he’d been sent on, he’d be hard-pressed to resist choking the life slowly out of them.
They’d have done the same thing if they’d known about his child. Hell, they’d let a family man with three kids stay “missing” for nearly as long before sending in a rescue team. Too bad it had taken the local law enforcers so long to capture the drug kingpins the DEA had targeted in the first place.
It was his own damn fault. He’d accepted the risks that went with the job.
But now he was home, and he had a son. A seven-year-old son. Gray released the brake on his chair and rolled closer. He reached for Andi’s hand. “Tell me about him.”
When she smiled this time, her tension seemed to dissipate. “His name is Brett.”
Gray mentally sounded out the name Andi had chosen, found he approved. “I like the name. Where is
Brett now?”
“With Tony and Kristine Landry. You’ve met Tony. He’s—”
“The hotshot criminal defense lawyer who’s going to be my boss?”
Andi laughed, the first uninhibited sound he’d heard from her since she arrived. “That describes Tony pretty accurately. He’s the one who told me you’d come back.”
“We met this afternoon.” Gray imagined Landry’s news had been as much a shock to Andi as her announcement he was a father had been to him. “He didn’t say a word about—”
“Tony didn’t know. No one did, until today. Except me. And your mother.”
“Why not?”
“What would have been the use, naming a man everybody thought was dead? Your mother made it clear she wanted nothing to do with my illegitimate offspring.”
Andi sounded flippant, the way he remembered her being when she’d caught his attention so long ago. The bleak look in her eyes, though, silently attested to pain he doubted she’d ever put into words.
Gray visualized the scene that must have taken place. As smart-mouthed as she was smart, Andi would have stood her ground in the face of his mother’s stiff-necked disapproval, a reaction he had no trouble envisioning. His snobbish mother’s comments upon hearing he’d left a stranger unwed but pregnant with his child, he was certain, must have torn, even through Andi’s tough veneer.
If Elizabeth Winston Syzmanski hadn’t died while he was gone, he’d face her down and disown her for denying her only grandchild. And if he could get out of this damn chair without making a major production out of it, he’d take Andi in his arms and try to banish the sadness from her eyes. Since that wasn’t feasible, he tried to make light of the situation. “So you and Landry are buddies?”
“Tony and Brett are great friends. They like doing macho guy things together. Tony’s wife Kristine is my pal. I met her three years ago when she worked with me, before she married Tony. They live on the Bayshore, a few blocks from us.”
He glanced at her left hand, saw no ring. “What about you, Andi. Are you married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t had time to go looking. Seriously, Brett and I get along just fine. We don’t need a man to take care of us.” She withdrew her hand, placed it across her lap as if to punctuate the fierce independence evident in her expression.
“Is there room in Brett’s life for me?” He hated the plaintive sound of his voice.
She smiled at his question, and her misty blue gaze held steady. “Of course. You’re his father. I never meant to keep him all to myself. It just turned out that way. Until now.”
“What’s he like?”
“Smart. Active. His mind moves a mile a minute, or so it seems when I’m trying to get the best of him in an argument.”
“Do you have a picture?”
She dug into her purse, fished out a worn wallet, and handed it to him. “He’s tall for his age, but a little on the slender side.” When she looked at him, her smile broadened. “Brett looks a lot like I imagine you did when you were seven years old.”
Gray nodded. Even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to allege that the grinning boy in the photos was anybody’s child but his own. “Does he know anything about me?”
“As much as I knew to tell him. He thinks you died a hero, trying to make this a safer world.” Andi blinked back tears. “I’ll tell him you’ve come back, as soon as I get home.”
“When can I meet him?”
“Any time. You can spend as much time together as you’d like to.”
As much as he’d like? This child he had yet to meet might be the only one he’d ever have. According to the doctors, he’d screwed up his plumbing somehow. Caused something called retrograde ejaculation. They’d also mentioned some unpleasant sounding procedures he might undergo to father a child in practically the same breath they’d used to tell him how lucky he was because he could still enjoy conventional sex. Gray figured that practically speaking, his ability to procreate had gone the way of his more obvious losses.
Funny. Before he’d spent seven years in hell, he’d never thought much about having a home, a family. He doubted he’d have welcomed the news eight years ago that he was going to be a father. Now he’d give anything to experience the traditional kind of home life he once thought too tame and conventional. But the opportunity for that was gone.
He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. Soon it would be dark, and he didn’t dare try to drive at night.
“Could I come meet him tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Andi stood, stepped to the bank of windows that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico. She stared out at a sunset that looked a lot like the one they’d watched from the beach just before they’d come here and set upon each other like crazed teenagers. He wondered what was coursing through her mind.
Her reddish brown curls were longer now, but they still bounced when she moved. Clingy black material now caressed her compact curves the way he wished he could. Gray imagined her long, smooth legs tangled around his waist, her shorts and top tossed aside.
He recalled her greenish blue eyes, now focused on the water and the setting sun. They’d reflected sadness and empathy when she saw him for the first time today. Not the passion he’d foolishly hoped to see when he heard the muffled sound of her name through the solid wood of his front door.
Slowly, as if deep in thought, she moved away from the window and sat on the opposite end of the sectional. With long painted nails, she tapped out a cadence on the glass-topped cocktail table.
“Where exactly do you live?”
She reached for a pen and pad Gray had left in the middle of the table but said nothing. He met her gaze, gave her what he hoped would pass for a reassuring smile. As if she had to do it before she changed her mind, she scribbled an address and phone number on the paper.
Gray tensed. Why, if the prospect of letting him see his son made Andi uneasy, had she come here? Had she expected to find him whole, eight years older but basically the same man who’d fucked her brains out in another lifetime, while they’d watched the same sun disappear beneath the same watery horizon?
“Why did you tell me about our child now?”
She said nothing but stared out the window toward the water again. When Gray had practically given up hope that she’d reply, she met his gaze. “This afternoon I found out you weren’t dead. That you’d come back. You have rights—”
“Stop.” Gray held up a hand. He didn’t want to hear about legalities. He needed to know—what? “Thank you for coming. I realize you could have kept this to yourself.”
Her expression turned solemn. “I couldn’t have kept quiet and lived with myself. You don’t have to do anything. I don’t expect anything from you. Brett and I have gotten along fine, just the two of us.”
“I want to. It’s just, hell, I don’t know.”
“This has to have come as a shock.”
“Definitely.” Now she probably thought he was trying to slither out of his responsibilities. Why couldn’t he get across what he was feeling? “A good kind of shock, though.”
“You’re certain?”
“Definitely. The best kind.” Except, maybe, her climbing all over him the minute he’d opened her door as though nothing had changed between them. Her hesitant smile made him want to reassure her. “I’m anxious to meet our son. I’m glad you chose to have him—and to tell me about him.”
“I’m glad I had him, too. Even though I never planned to be a single mom, I can’t imagine life without Brett. You’re going to love him.” Once Andi started talking, the words tumbled from her mouth.
He remembered her spirited monologue when they’d first met, when her focus had been on an interesting case she was prosecuting. Now it was on her son.
Their son. Suddenly anxious to diffuse the feelings that threatened to overcome him, Gray picked up the paper, glanced at the address. “This is not too far from where I grew up.”
&nbs
p; She nodded, as if she remembered him mentioning that before. “Do you need directions?”
“I can find it.” Old Hyde Park, not too far from the bridge to Davis Island. Gray imagined a Victorian bungalow with gingerbread shutters. Did Andi’s neighbors have kids for Brett to play with? “What time would be—”
“We’ll be home all day. Come any time it’s convenient.”
He bristled, then made himself smile. The shrink had been right, telling him he’d have to get used to people going out of their way to accommodate him.
At least Andi didn’t cringe when she looked at him, the way some women did. That was something, though he wasn’t certain whether her acceptance of his altered appearance signaled genuine kindness or a good lawyer’s ability to mask reactions she didn’t want him to see.
“How about one o’clock?”
“Make it eleven thirty. We’ll have lunch. I’m glad you came back. That you didn’t die the way they told me. I’m just sorry you’ve had to go through so much.” Andi stood and picked up her oversize handbag. “I’ve got to go now.”
After she left, Gray moved over by the window and watched the sun’s reflection on the water. What would his son be like? How would the boy feel about having a dad after being told all his life that his father was dead?
When he looked down at the bright plaid stadium blanket he’d thrown across his practically useless legs, he wanted to scream. Some fine excuse for a father he’d be.
* * * * *
When Gray pulled up in Andi’s driveway a little before noon the next day, she was waiting on the porch. Her white shorts and the red print shirt she’d tied loosely beneath her breasts sent blood slamming into his cock the way it hadn’t for longer than he cared to remember. Andi Young was one hot package, too sexy for a guy who couldn’t walk by himself, never mind satisfy all a red-blooded woman’s carnal needs.
Anyway, he was here to meet his son. He winced at the sensations he felt when he lifted his legs from the car to the gravel driveway and locked the braces. The metal parts bit into the flesh on his thighs. Ironic, he thought, that he’d been left with the ability to feel pain when he couldn’t make his legs follow his brain’s commands.