A Father's Promise (Intimate Moments)

by Evanick, Marcia

  Thomas nodded twice before turning and walking out into the sunlight.

  Ellis was moved by the touching scene, but not as much as Sydney had been. He watched her face as tears streamed down her cheeks. But she didn’t sniffle or make a sound as she escorted her father to the car. Instead, her straight white teeth sank into her lower lip.

  He stood silently by as he opened the door and Thomas got into the front seat of the Mercedes. Sydney hastily wiped at her tears as soon as her father was settled. She stood back as he reached for the door to the rear seat. But instead of opening the door, he stood there and waited until she raised her questioning gaze to him.

  Soft green eyes brimming with emotion stared up at him. He felt as if someone had placed his heart within a vise. He had no words of comfort for her. The tears she was shedding were partly in joy, not sorrow. Tears would do her good. But the one thing he couldn’t stand was to see her anguish as she gnawed her lovely mouth.

  Without saying a word, he reached out with the tip of his finger and slowly smoothed the rough indentations on her lower lip. Heat sparked in his fingertips. He watched as her eyes widened and her breath seemed to hitch in the back of her throat. She felt it too. Whatever was happening between them wasn’t one-sided.

  It was all he needed to know for now. He was a patient man. He knew how to wait for what he wanted. He wanted Sydney, and he wanted her bad.

  With a touch as light as a summer breeze, he stroked her moist lip one last time and promised himself that the next time he reached for he mouth, it would be with his own.

  Chapter 5

  Sydney looked at the pictures of Trevor spread out across the kitchen table and grinned. Ellis carried a complete chronological photo record of his son in his wallet. The pictures started when Trevor was one day old and as bald as a cue ball and ended at an endearing photo of him with Mickey Mouse taken last month at Walt Disney World. She could follow his growth from his first tooth, to his first steps, to his first bike ride without the help of training wheels.

  With each new photo she felt the strings attached to her heart yank a little tighter. Trevor was absolutely adorable and to think this big-brown-eyed boy had a potentially fatal disease was unimaginable. But it was true. All she had to see was the anguish in Ellis’s eyes to know it was true.

  She glanced across the table to Ellis. “He’s adorable.”

  It was eleven o’clock and her father had already retired for the evening. Between the morning appointment at the medical lab and then the visit to the police station, Thomas had done more today than he had in the past six months. Her father had looked tired, but it had been a healthy kind of tired. Despite her concerns about Ellis’s presence in their lives she was thankful to him for shaking some life back into her father even though she wholeheartedly disapproved of his method.

  Ellis smiled. “Thanks.” One of his long fingers tapped the picture taken at Walt Disney World. It was a full color portrait of Trevor, his brown hair falling over his forehead, laughter in his eyes, and a space between his two front teeth. “He has his mother’s coloring.”

  She didn’t need a degree in genetics to figure that one out. “He has your chin and nose though.” She could see a lot of Ellis in the small boy. Trevor Carlisle will be a heartbreaker when he grows up. If he grows up. She could feel the moisture start to build around her eyes. “He doesn’t look sick.”

  Ellis stiffened and started to gather up the pictures. He meticulously made sure they were in chronological order before inserting them back into his wallet. “When he got sick, pulling out a camera was the last thing I thought about.” Ellis stood up and slipped the wallet into the back pocket of his jeans before sitting back down. “I don’t know of any parent who would want to carry around a picture of their child when they had been sick.”

  She could tell by his tone of voice that she had just offended Ellis. “I didn’t mean I expected to see pictures of Trevor lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines or anything, Ellis. It’s just that...I don’t know.” She nervously toyed with the silver cross hanging around her neck, a gift from her mother and father.

  “I’m out of my league here, Ellis. I know more about begonias than I do kids.” She wanted him to know she hadn’t meant any disrespect. “When you offered to show me Trevor’s picture, I guess I was expecting to see a critically ill child, because that’s how I’ve been thinking of him. I didn’t expect to see this laughing little boy on the back of a pony or exploring Walt Disney World.”

  The stiffness in Ellis’s back lessened. “You don’t have to apologize, Sydney. I understand.” His fingers started to crush the pleated border of the place mat sitting in front of him. “To too many people who knew Trevor, he stopped being a little boy and became an illness. To those who just met him, they learned of his illness first and almost never got to see beyond that”

  “But...”

  “I know, Sydney. You haven’t had a chance to meet Trevor, so I’m not criticizing you. It’s only natural that you would think of Trevor as some sickly child, not as a little boy who wants a pony, macaroni and cheese for dinner every night of the week and a bedtime story before he goes to sleep.”

  There was so much pain behind his words. So much love. So much fear. “You love him very much, don’t you?” She already knew the answer to that question, but she wanted Ellis to talk about Trevor some more. He needed to talk about his son, not about his son’s illness. She knew Trevor’s mother wasn’t in the picture any longer. She also knew Ellis’s mother had passed away and that he had no brothers or sisters. It made her wonder whom Ellis talked to when his fears became monsters in the night. Her heart was telling her no one. Ellis and Trevor were alone in the world.

  Ellis gave her a funny little look as if to say her question didn’t deserve an answer. “The night he was born the doctors placed him all scrunched up, blotchy and bawling into my arms and suddenly my world was whole. He stopped crying the moment I held him and stared up at me with these big, really dark blue eyes.” Ellis shook his head in wonder as if it had just happened yesterday. “I thought his eyes were going to stay that color, but they didn’t. In a few weeks they were brown. A deep rich brown so full of life and promise that at times I swore he knew the answers to all the questions in the universe.”

  She smiled at the picture he had painted. She could almost see him standing there in hospital-green scrubs with his chest all puffed out with pride and wonder, holding his little son in his big capable arms. “Name one of your favorite things about Trevor. What’s the one thing he does so well?”

  “His hugs.” Ellis’s voice cracked with emotion, “No one can hug like Trev.”

  She pictured little-boy’s arms wrapped around Ellis’s neck and squeezing as tight as they could. Darn, the tears were forming again. She hadn’t expected that answer. She thought Ellis would have said knowing his ABC’s, or tying his shoes, or coloring inside the lines. She hadn’t been expecting him to say hugs.

  Hugs were intimate. No two people hugged the same. Hugs between a father and his son were special. Shared hugs between Ellis and his son were probably more special than most. “You miss him terribly, don’t you?”

  “More than I would miss my next breath.” Ellis didn’t seem embarrassed by his honest yet sentimental answer.

  “Did you call him earlier?” When they returned from their trip to town, she had left Ellis with her father and had headed over to the nursery to get some work done. She had managed to put in six hours today and the pile of paperwork she had carried home with her had been only half as big as yesterday’s.

  “Twice. I told him to expect a package tomorrow morning and that I’ll be bringing home a surprise with me.”

  “You didn’t tell him about the family of orangutans that had taken over your back seat?” Had Trevor been her son, she honestly didn’t think she could keep them a secret.

  “No, it would be too cruel to tell him I bought him the monkeys and then tell him he can’t play with them un
til I get home. This way he knows it’s a surprise and half the fun will be anticipating and guessing what I’m bringing home.” Ellis relaxed and slouched back into the chair. “He probably drove Rita crazy all evening guessing what it might be.”

  “Rita?” Maybe Ellis and Trevor weren’t as alone as she thought.

  “My housekeeper and Trevor’s surrogate mother. I hired her when Ginny and Trevor came home from the hospital. Ginny wasn’t feeling up to handling a newborn so I employed Rita until such time that she was. Ginny left and Rita stayed on to take care of Trevor and the house.”

  She remembered him mentioning a Mrs. McCall before.

  “Rita keeps my home life running smoothly,” he went on, “so I can concentrate on the business end of my life.”

  “You mentioned that you were in transportation.” Ellis hadn’t mentioned too much about what he did for a living. “Something to do with trucking, right?”

  “I put myself through college by driving an eighteen-wheeler all summer and during the holidays. When I graduated, I bought my own rig.”

  “You’re a truck driver?” She had never met a truck driver who drove a Mercedes, wore expensive Italian shoes or carried around his own top-of-the-line laptop computer.

  “Was a truck driver. I don’t drive any longer. Within five years of buying my first rig, I purchased a small fleet of trucks, hired on my own drivers and started my own trucking company, O.I.B.L.”

  “One If By Land?” My Lord, Ellis owned O.I.B.L.! A person would have to live under a rock sixty miles away from any interstate not to have heard or seen any of the distinctive-looking trucks with a portrait on the side of Paul Revere holding a lantern. “I see your trucks all the time. Heck, we even have some deliveries made by them at the nursery.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ellis Carlisle was rich! He was beyond rich, he was stinking filthy rich. Now the laptop and the luxury Mercedes made a lot more sense. Ellis could buy the town of Coalsburg seven times over without feeling the pinch and yet, with all his money, he might not be able to save his own son. It would have been ironic if it wasn’t so sad. “I’m sure you can answer the question that always pops into my mind whenever I see one of your trucks.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Is there a Two If By Sea?”

  “T.I.B.S. was deep in the developmental stage when Trevor was diagnosed with leukemia. I put everything on hold and concentrated all my energy on my son’s health.” Ellis stood up, walked over to the sink and stared out into the night. “Getting my son well is more important to me than some new business venture.”

  The tension in his shoulders told her there was a lot more to the story than he was telling. How does one just “put on hold” something as global as a shipping fleet? “I think you made the right decision.” She had to wonder if anyone ever told him that. Ellis was a businessman, and a damn good one, going by the achievements he had made over the past ten years. Everyone in business probably told him he was crazy to possibly lose such a venture.

  Ellis chuckled softly and turned around to look at her. “I know I did.”

  She liked his warm rough laugh. It made her feel all soft and light inside. It made her believe that everything would work out and Trevor would find his match. It made her want to believe in happily-ever-afters. Something she hadn’t believed in for a very long time, if ever. “What happens if there’s a match?”

  “If Thomas is a match and he is willing to be the donor, he would have to stay overnight in the hospital. His bone marrow would be taken from his hip and he’d be sore or tender there for a couple of days. That’s it.” Ellis paced in front of the sink. “I would handle all his medical expenses and make sure he’s as comfortable as possible.”

  “I know my father’s role would be minimal. I was more concerned about Trevor and what he’d be going through.”

  “Trevor will have to be admitted into the hospital two weeks before the transplant. He would be given large doses of chemotherapy, maybe some total body radiation, to destroy his own bone marrow and blood cells as well as the cancer cells. Once he was ‘conditioned,’ he would be given your father’s purified marrow intravenously. That part will take about two hours, but it will take two to three weeks before his marrow finds its way to the proper place in the interior of Trevor’s major bones and starts producing new and normal blood cells. If everything is fine, Trevor can go home about seven weeks after the transplant. He’ll be closely followed. Six months after the transplant he will be able to start school, but it usually takes up to a year for total convalescence.”

  Sydney felt her heart lurch with each word he spoke. “He’ll be in the hospital for over two months?”

  “Two months is a small price to pay for living, Sydney.”

  She knew that, but still, Trevor was only five years old. “What happens if there isn’t a match?” She needed to know it all.

  “If your father doesn’t match and a match can’t be found before Trevor comes out of remission, then there is no hope.”

  She had thought the description of the actual transplant was terrifying. It was nothing compared to the words there is no hope. She stood up and walked over to Ellis and placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m praying for Trevor and for you that my father will be a match. Even if it means he won’t be my father any longer, he would be yours.”

  “That’s where you are wrong. Thomas St. Claire will always be your father, not mine.” Ellis reached out and gently cupped her cheek. She felt the heat of his palm against her cool skin. “One thing I have learned over the past five years of being a dad is that it takes more than genetics to be a father, it takes love. Thomas St. Claire loves you, Sydney, that’s plain enough even for this stranger to see.”

  “But if you’re his son...” The tip of his finger pressed against her moving lips and stopped her next words from coming.

  “I will never be his son.” The pad of his index finger slowly and sensually stroked her lower lip, just as he had done this morning while standing next to his car on Main Street. “I don’t want your father, Sydney. I don’t want a father at all. All I want is a donor and a chance for my son.”

  She felt the heat coil low in her stomach and wind its way to the core of her being. She wanted Ellis. It was that plain and that simple. That basic. Need, unlike anything she had ever experienced, surged its way upward. “Then we both want the same thing.” She was talking about a lot more than just Trevor. Ellis’s lightest touch made her want. Made her need.

  Ellis’s finger stopped its torturous journey across her mouth and a spark of heat blazed in his gaze. His gray eyes turned molten with need and his breathing grew uneven. His voice contained jagged edges of desire that sliced their way down her spine. “Do we, Sydney? Do we both want the same thing?”

  She knew they were no longer discussing Trevor. They were talking about this heat that had flared up unsuspectingly between them. Heat that shouldn’t have been there. Her gaze lowered to his mouth. Oh yes, they both wanted the same thing. She had had two lovers in her life. Neither had ever inspired this instantaneous... lust.

  Was that what she was feeling, lust? Or was there something more? How could there be more?

  She slowly reached out and placed her hand upon his chest. The rapid beating of his heart came through the soft cotton of his shirt and vibrated against her palm. She could feel his warmth seep into her fingers and spread up her arm. Her gaze lowered to where her fingers pressed against his chest before shooting back up to his face. Ellis was going to kiss her, she could see it in his eyes. She wanted that kiss. “Yes, I do believe we want the same thing.”

  With a rough growl, Ellis pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth with his own.

  Sydney welcomed his kiss but was unprepared for the overwhelming desire that assaulted her body. Firm lips seduced her mouth into deepening the kiss and she went willingly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself closer. Her tongue met and danced with his as her world tilted
to the left and then slowly righted itself to a more perfect position than it had ever been before.

  Ellis tasted like coffee, cherry pie and need. Or maybe she was tasting herself. She had had the same late-night snack, and she was definitely feeling the need.

  His hair was soft beneath her searching fingers and his mouth hard and demanding where it meshed with hers. Ellis kissed like a man who was used to getting what he wanted. By the way he was kissing the breath right out of her, she would have to say Ellis wanted her. Probably as much as she wanted him.

  The edge of the counter dug into the small of her back, forcing her to arch her hips forward. The low groan that rumbled up his chest told her she was pressing against a very sensitive part of his anatomy. A part of his body that was reacting to the kiss. The hard column of his arousal bulged behind his zipper.

  Where he was turning hard and wanting, she was turning soft and accepting. Opposites that were meant to be joined since the beginning of time.

  With a ragged groan Ellis cupped her hips and put a few needed inches between them. He broke the kiss and stared down into her face. His eyes churned with so many emotions she couldn’t name them all. There were glimpses of surprise and hunger beneath the burning need. She wanted to answer that need. She was ready to answer that need.

  Ellis took in an uneven breath and lightly touched her mouth with the tip of his finger. “We either stop now, Sydney, or we won’t be stopping until we’re both naked, satisfied and totally exhausted.”

  She almost smiled. Did he think he was scaring her off? Naked, satisfied and totally exhausted sounded like paradise to her. Last year, last month or even last week she would have been totally appalled had someone told her she would be contemplating going to bed with a man she had met three days before. It sounded silly to say she wasn’t that kind of girl, when she was just discovering everyone was that kind of girl when the right man came along. Her instincts were telling her Ellis was the right man.