by Janet Dailey
Wisps of hair were curling damply against the sides of her face and along her neck. Her skin was glowing with a fine sheen of perspiration after the blocks she’d walked looking for Randy. The brevity of her white shorts showed the shapely length of her tanned legs and the slim curve of her hips. The loden green tank top did more than expose her golden-brown shoulders. The knit material clung to her skin, outlining the points of her breasts that had hardened under his regard.
Instead of being proud that her figure hadn’t sagged and lost its firmness after childbirth, Dawn was self-conscious of her definitely female shape. It wasn’t as if she had dressed this way in an attempt to lure Slater’s interest. She hadn’t even known Randy was with him. Yet, after his accusation this afternoon that she wanted him back, her scantily clad appearance might be interpreted as an attempt to arouse his prurient interest.
“I hope you weren’t worried about me, Mom,” Randy said anxiously.
Dawn didn’t respond to that directly because she knew she had been unjustly angry. It hadn’t been a ploy to gain her attention that had kept him from coming home, but the excitement of finally meeting his natural father and being with him that had made Randy forget the time.
“I knew you didn’t have lights or reflectors on your bike,” she said as an excuse for her concern. “I didn’t want you riding it after dark.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” He shifted uncomfortably, shrugging his shoulders as he glanced down at his feet.
Through the entire conversation, Slater had remained silent. Now he turned slightly at an angle that brought him near to Dawn and facing Randy.
“The sun is on its way down. You’d better get your bike and start for your grandparents’ house,” he advised Randy in a calm, even voice.
His attention was focused entirely on Randy so there was no warning as his fingers clamped themselves around her wrist. Her pulse skittered wildly under the firm grip of his hand. She stiffened in raw tension, but didn’t pull away. She understood the silent message conveyed by his detaining hand. Randy was to leave, but she was to remain. She felt hot and cold all at the same time, dreading the conversation that was to come yet hoping at last he would listen to her.
“I told them not to wait supper for you,” she said to Randy, fighting to keep the nervousness out of her voice. “So when you get home, you’ll have to fix yourself something to eat. Don’t let your grandmother do it for you either.”
He had started to take a step, then stopped, reading between the lines of her remarks. “Aren’t you coming, Mom?” Randy frowned.
“I’ll be home a little later on,” she said. “You just be sure to go straight home.”
“I will,” he promised, but he looked at her a little uncertainly before finally trotting away.
For long, charged seconds, she watched the point where Randy had disappeared into the crowd on the pier until she finally saw him exiting the dock. All the while, she was conscious of the clamp of Slater’s strong fingers keeping her at his side.
When she was satisfied Randy intended to obey her directions, she let her glance slide to Slater’s profile etched against a purpling sky. He, too, was observing Randy’s departure. The questions she had wanted to ask when she’d first seen them together came rushing back.
“Why—?” Dawn stopped and chose another. “How did Randy find—”
“He saw my car parked in the driveway of the Van de Veere house. He was waiting for me when I drove back to the office,” Slater answered her question before she had a chance to finish it. “He’d already looked the address up in the phone book.”
“But how did he know—” She was frowning.
“He overheard you making the appointment with my secretary to meet me there.” Again, he accurately guessed what she had been about to ask.
“So he had been listening,” Dawn murmured to herself, remembering her uncertainty at the time. Instead of relaxing his hold on her wrist, he tightened it and started forward, forcing her to come with him. “You’re hurting me,” she protested and twisted her arm, trying to force him to loosen his grip rather than actually attempting to break it.
The pressure eased slightly, letting the blood flow again. “We’re going to my office—where we can talk in private,” Slater announced in a voice that was deadly flat.
There was no opportunity to voice her agreement with his desire for a less public place to hold their discussion. He obviously took it for granted. Dawn quickened her steps to keep pace with his longer strides as he led the way through the crowd of evening revelers.
It was a relatively short distance from Mallory Pier to his office. When they reached it, he released her wrist to unlock the door. In a show of her own free will, Dawn barely gave him a chance to open the door before she was brushing past him to walk inside so he would know this was a conversation she sought, and not one that was being forced on her.
She paused inside the small reception area, unsure which door opened into his private office. Slater extended a hand, indicating the one directly in front of her. She walked to it and went inside. Her curious glance inspected the room, Key West in flavor with its trophy-sized marlin mounted and hanging on a wall. There was an airy openness to the room with its whitewashed walls and unshuttered windows. She noted, too, the framed plaques and awards scattered around that attested to his success and contributions to the community.
The top of his desk was cleared, except for a stack of telephone messages in the center of it. Slater ignored them and walked to a rattan table that concealed a small, counter-high refrigerator. He removed a container of ice cubes and dropped two into a glass, then splashed some bourbon over the top of them. Turning, he glanced at Dawn, a raised eyebrow inquiring whether she wanted a drink.
“No, thank you,” she refused and remained standing when Slater showed no intention of taking a seat.
He downed half the bourbon in one swallow, then studied the rest. The continued silence produced a heightening tension that became harder to break the longer it lasted. Dawn didn’t feel it was her place to speak first. He had refused to listen to her when she had tried to tell him about Randy this afternoon. Pride insisted he had to ask for the explanation this time.
Slater gave her a long, measuring look. “Don’t you think you’re a bit old to go running around in public like that?” he criticized.
Stung, Dawn retorted, “Since when is a woman old at thirty?” But she reached up to unconsciously loosen the string binding her hair in its ponytail and combed it free with her fingers.
He watched the action, especially the way the upward reach of her arm stretched the knit fabric of the tanktop across her breasts and their button-hard nipples. The sight disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
“I wasn’t referring to your hairstyle,” Slater murmured dryly. “There’s something innocent about a teenager running around braless. An older woman ends up looking cheap and easy.”
“That’s one man’s opinion.” Dawn refused to be drawn into a debate over the issue. His opinion of her was so low he’d find fault with her no matter how conservatively she was dressed. “I doubt if you’d approve of anything I wore. This afternoon you were critical because I wasn’t dressed in black.”
“You can’t claim to look like a widow mourning the death of her husband—not in that outfit with all your assets on display,” he snapped in disgust.
“I thought we were here to discuss Randy,” she fired back. “If all you want to talk about is the way I dress, then I don’t see any point in continuing this conversation.” She turned on her heel, knowing he wouldn’t let her leave.
“Dammit! You know it’s Randy.” The admission was reluctantly pulled from him.
Slowly Dawn turned back to face him. This time his gaze swung away from the steadiness of hers. “He is your son,” she reaffirmed what Slater hadn’t been willing to listen to earlier in the day.
“Did you put him up to it?” Slater swirled the bourbon in his glass.
�
�Up to what?” she frowned.
“Did you put him up to waiting for me here at the office after we talked today?” Slater elaborated on his question, eyeing her in a sidelong look.
“No, I did not.” Her denial was forceful and indignant. “It was all Randy’s idea. I knew nothing about it, and if I had, I would have prevented it.”
“Why?” His head came up as he demanded an explanation of her statement.
“Because I didn’t want him to meet you until we had come to some kind of understanding,” Dawn stated, protective of her child.
“An understanding about what?” Slater challenged. “The identity of his father? Granted, I thought you were lying to me this afternoon, but I am capable of accepting the evidence of my own eyes. There isn’t much doubt that he’s my son. Even Jeeter saw the resemblance.”
She was momentarily distracted by the familiarity of the name before she remembered the crusty fishing guide, Jeeter Jones. Then her thoughts focused back on the issue at hand.
“Until this afternoon, it never occurred to me that you might deny the possibility you had fathered my child,” Dawn admitted. “I never thought there would be any question about that.” She paused to draw a breath, glancing down at her hands. “But I knew how much you despised me. It doesn’t matter how you feel about me, but I’m not going to let you try to get back at me by hurting Randy. I won’t let you take out your anger on him.”
A silent rage trembled through him before Slater finally exploded. “For eleven years, you keep the existence of our son a secret from me! My son! You’ve kept him from me all this time—and you stand there and justify it by saying you are afraid I’ll hurt him?! My own child?!”
His outrage put her fears to rest, even making them appear foolish in retrospect, but they had been very real to her for a long time.
“I didn’t know how you’d react when you found out,” she admitted. “And I didn’t want to take any chances of Randy being hurt.” She felt almost weak with relief. “It could have been easy for you to use him as a weapon against me.”
Slater was slowly bringing his temper under control. He bolted down the rest of his drink and turned to refill the glass, a whiteness continuing to show along the taut line of his mouth. “If you weren’t the mother of my son, I think I could kill you for even suggesting I’d do that,” he muttered thickly.
But his threat struck a responsive chord in her own feelings and reassured as opposed to frightening her. This strong love for their son was a primitive bond they shared in common. It suddenly became easier to talk.
“I suppose he asked you a lot of questions today,” Dawn surmised.
“No. Mostly Randy just talked . . . about himself, school, things he liked to do . . . and I just listened.” He stared at his drink, but didn’t taste it. “How long has he known that Simpson wasn’t his father?” It was close to being a loaded question.
“Since I felt he was old enough to understand. He was around five years old at the time. I explained only as much as I thought he could comprehend, then waited for him to come to me with questions when they occurred to him. So actually, his knowledge of you was gained over a period of years.”
“He’s known about me all this time. And you’re only now bothering to inform me about his existence. Didn’t I have the right to know before this?” he accused harshly.
“Yes, you did.” But it had taken her a long time to arrive at that conclusion.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Slater demanded. “For eleven years, another man raised my son. There’s eleven years out of his life that I’ll never have!” He was growing angry at the injustice of it. “I thought there wasn’t any more you could take from me. But you took my son!”
“If I had known I was pregnant with our child, I never would have married Simpson,” Dawn countered to deflect some of his anger. “But I didn’t know it. And when I discovered I was pregnant, I thought it was my husband’s baby. And I was glad, because I was finally giving something back to him after all I had taken.”
“So you passed him off as Simpson’s child,” he accused.
“I believed he was.” She remembered how happy she had been when the doctor had confirmed her suspicions only a couple of months after the wedding. She had been so eager to tell Simpson the news, knowing that he had given up any hope of having an heir and guessing how much he secretly hoped for one whenever he played with his nieces or nephews. She recalled, also, how confused she had been when he had failed to express delight at her news.
“How long before you realized he wasn’t?” Slater wanted to know.
“Almost right away,” Dawn admitted with poignant recollection. “Simpson told me.” Her mouth twisted with the irony of it. “A week after I told him the happy tidings, he came back to tell me his.”
“Which was?”
Chapter Five
“Simpson couldn’t have children.” Her voice was low with the remembered shock of that moment. “Some childhood fever had left him sterile. It was a small detail he hadn’t considered important enough to tell me before the wedding. When I informed him we were expecting a baby, he didn’t tell me about his sterility until he had reconfirmed it with his doctor in case some miracle had happened.”
“Why didn’t you get an annulment?” Slater challenged and watched with narrowed and critical eyes.
“And do what?” Dawn asked, because it had occurred to her at the time. “Come back here to you? Pregnant and divorced? After what I’d done to you, you might not have wanted me back. You might not have believed it was your child I was carrying. Even if you had, how would you have taken care of us? You didn’t have a steady job, and all you owned was a broken-down old boat and the clothes on your back.”
“And you didn’t have any faith in my ability to take care of you,” he declared grimly, tipping his head back to toss down the second drink. “If I had been Simpson and discovered my loving wife was going to have another’s man’s child, I would have thrown you out.”
“Thank heaven you weren’t Simpson,” Dawn murmured with a trace of resentment for his callous attitude. “He had more than enough grounds for divorce, but he was willing to forgive and forget.”
Only later had she learned that there never had been a divorce in the Lord family, and Simpson had been a great one for upholding the family tradition. Still, even if he had felt honor-bound to continue their marriage, it didn’t alter the love and understanding he had shown her, and the kindness he had shown her son. She couldn’t have asked more from a man than Simpson had given her.
“So you stayed with him.” A humorless sound like a laugh lifted the corners of his mouth, widening it into a derisive smile. “Why not? He was filthy rich. That’s why you married him—to get your hands on his money.” He lifted his glass in a mock salute. “I never did congratulate you on your success.”
Dawn ignored the latter, failing again to correct his impression that she had been left a wealthy widow. “That’s why I married him,” she admitted. “But his money had very little to do with the reason I stayed with him, beyond assuring my child would be well cared for. After Simpson explained that he couldn’t be the father of the child I was carrying, I had to tell him about you. He already knew. I think he even knew why I married him but it didn’t matter. You can imagine how I felt.”
“No, I can’t imagine how you felt.” Slater shook his head, his voice running low with contempt. He deliberately refused to understand or even concede she was capable of remorse.
Nothing would be gained by responding to his caustic retort. Dawn felt more could be accomplished by trying to make him understand the reasons behind some of her actions.
“I remember Simpson telling me that, in a way, he was glad he couldn’t produce children because he wasn’t obligated to make an advantageous business marriage to consolidate wealth since it would require an heir. He was free to marry the girl he loved, which was me.” She bowed her head slightly as she spoke. “He loved me enough to accept anoth
er man’s child into his home. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, Slater, but by then, I was tired of hurting people. After hurting so many, I couldn’t hurt Simpson more than I already had. I couldn’t give him my love, because you had it, but I decided that I could give him happiness. So, yes, I stayed with him—out of a mixture of gratitude and guilt—and I worked at being a good wife to bring him some of the happiness he deserved.”
“And you gave him my son,” Slater shot the accusation at her, ignoring all else she had told him. “I suppose Simpson passed Randy off as his own.”
“No. For Randy’s sake, he let him take the family surname, but Simpson never legally adopted him. And it’s your name that is listed as father on his birth certificate,” Dawn explained. “Simpson played the role of Dutch uncle to Randy, but he never usurped your position as his father. He was adamant about that.”
Her answer brought a moment’s silence. When Slater finally spoke, it was with considerably less heat and bitterness. “I guess I owe him something for that.” He set his empty glass on the rattan table and squared around to face her. “Which brings us back to Randy, and what’s to be done now.”
“Not having a father never bothered Randy too much while Simpson was alive.” She threaded her fingers together, spreading them and studying the straight patterns they made. “He needs a father. He needs you.” She looked at him, folding her fingers together in a prayerful attitude that asked for a truce between them.
His gray eyes glittered in a cold, calculating study of her. “I can’t help wondering why you waited until after Simpson was dead before you suddenly decided that Randy needed a father. It can’t be that you were waiting until he died. The man’s been dead for more than two months.”
“Do you think I should have flown out here the day after his funeral?” Dawn bristled at his veiled attack. “There was a small matter of putting affairs in order, not to mention the shock of losing someone I had grown to care about.”
“Of course.” But it was a response that mocked her explanation. Slater wandered idly toward her, that cool, assessing gaze of his continuing to study her. “At first I had the crazy idea that you’d come back for a much more personal reason. I suppose it shows the size of my ego that I thought you were here to see if we couldn’t get back together again. The second time you were going to marry for love—that’s what you told me the morning you left. And I wanted to believe that you still cherished some love for me.” His voice was growing harder and colder.