Revealed: His Secret Child

by Sandra Hyatt

  In the old days she’d consulted him over the puzzle if she came across a difficult clue. Today she was silent, chewing the end of her pen, as she mulled over answers.

  In ten minutes she’d completed the puzzle. He’d liked that about her, that she was sharp, and determined, and independent.

  Too independent apparently. So independent she thought she didn’t need him.

  He was a PR expert, he knew all about making the best of a bad situation, of turning what might look like a disaster to a person’s advantage.

  He followed her glance to the clock. “Yeah, I think we can go now.”

  She smiled her relief and practically leaped from the bed, darting to the bathroom. Only for a moment did he let himself visualize the body he once knew so well, beneath the stream of the shower.

  Max was stowing their bags in his car as Gillian stood talking with Laura in the marbled entry foyer hung with family portraits. She didn’t understand why someone who was part of such a loving and close family would so assiduously avoid that kind of closeness for himself.

  Unless it was just her he avoided it with.

  Ethan sat happily on Laura’s hip, studying with eyes and fingers the dangling necklace hanging at her throat.

  Their time with his family this morning had been less awkward than Gillian had expected. But only a little. Laura and Stephen did their best to make her feel welcome but beneath their natural warmth she could see the questions and doubts in their eyes. She didn’t blame them. Thankfully, Ethan provided a distraction that they all appreciated. She and Max had made their excuses and got ready to leave as soon as was polite.

  Soon she’d be in the sanctuary of her own home. Back in her own territory. She held tight to the prospect. After the whirlwind of the past twenty-four hours, she only had to get through one and a half more before she’d have some space to collect her thoughts.

  Laura looked about her then called, “Stephen. They’re going.” When Stephen failed to materialize, Laura touched a hand to Gillian’s arm and said, “I’ll be back in a minute, I’ll just go find him.” Carrying Ethan away as though she’d done it countless times before, she left Gillian alone.

  She breathed in the blessed silence, her first few moments alone since she’d gotten into the car with Max yesterday. Home. Soon. She had no idea how things would go from here. But the worst was over. She’d married him. Even saying the fateful words for better or for worse. So, he had what he’d wanted, his name on a marriage certificate beside hers. Ethan had parents who were married. And for what it was worth, and for however long Max’s interest lasted, she would be glad of it, would make the most of it.

  Gillian crossed to the large family photo hanging amidst a cluster of individual portraits. She’d glimpsed the photos when she first came in yesterday but had had other things on her mind than stopping to inspect them.

  The photo showed a young family beneath a spreading autumnal oak. The shot wasn’t formally posed, far from it, almost none of the laughing and numerous family members were looking directly at the camera. Almost too numerous. She studied the picture then counted the children, trying to identify each of them.

  At the sound of footsteps on the tiled floor she glanced over her shoulder to see Max watching her, his expression remote, his arms folded across his chest. “The bags are in the car. Where’s Ethan?”

  “Your mom has him.” She looked back at the photo.

  Six children, not the five she knew about. Two of the boys, with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, identical except for their shirts. Two young Maxes. She was guessing around ten years old. And she was guessing one of them was the mysterious Dylan Carter had mentioned last night. A band tightened around her chest. A deep estrangement or death were the only explanations she could come up with for the fact that Max hadn’t so much as mentioned him. And of those two, given the warmth of his family, death seemed the most likely. But when? How?

  She turned back to Max, questions teeming in her mind. Now both his and his mother’s reactions on learning Ethan’s birthday made sense. But she read in his narrowed eyes and the arms folded across his chest, a warning to ask none of them. “I’ll go find the others,” was all he said as he left.

  He’d had a twin.

  And he wasn’t going to say anything about it to her.

  They pulled into her driveway, ending the silence of the trip. A silence filled with unspoken questions. She hadn’t asked about his twin and he certainly hadn’t raised the subject. Would he ever? Did she have any right to ask or to know? She couldn’t come close to imagining how catastrophic losing a twin brother must have been for him. But the questions about Max and his twin were in some ways just a mental diversion from the more pressing question of what now.

  Max cut the engine but left his hands resting on the steering wheel. Too silent.

  She looked at her house, her haven. Now she would get some respite from the previous day’s—and night’s—upheaval. Space. Freedom. Finally. For however long she could make it last.

  There would be time to figure out next steps, to transition into their new arrangement. His urgency had abated from the time she’d married him.

  Max helped her and Ethan inside and carried their bags upstairs. Gillian crouched in front of Ethan to remove the T-shirt he’d managed to spill water down the front of.

  Gone. Soon Max would be gone. She held on to that thought as she blew a raspberry on her laughing son’s tummy. Laughing in her turn. Soon she’d have the space to make sense of where her life was now at. So much had happened yesterday. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  Max came lightly back down the stairs, his stride carrying him to the front door. Gillian held her breath. Ethan escaped her grasp and trotted to the living room, eager to play with his trains. Max paused with his hand on the handle. “I’ll get my things and be back in an hour.”

  Seven

  “Back here?” Gillian repeated, straightening from her crouch. “With what things?”

  “I don’t have much. Just my clothes and a few books. I lent my apartment back east to a friend and have been living at the Beach and Tennis Club.”

  “Your clothes.” She sounded like a dim-witted echo, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to accept what he was saying. “But…you’re not…you don’t think…?”

  He frowned, opening the door to let in bright rays of winter sunshine. “We’re married. So that my son can have two parents. So there won’t be messy, part-time custody issues. Naturally we’re going to live together. What did you think?”

  Her mind and her heart raced. She certainly hadn’t thought that. She deliberately hadn’t thought anything at all. Shutting out the possibilities and probabilities. Because if she had allowed herself to think about it she would have known. A simple addition of two and two to get a solid four. Max and his determination. The way he wanted to order his world, and the people in it, to his liking.

  But the prospect was too unnerving. Max in permanent close proximity. Where she could watch him, touch him, share things with him. Maybe want things from him. All bad.

  “And here,” he continued, oblivious to, or perhaps just unconcerned by, her spiraling agitation, “is far more suitable for a child than the Tennis Club. You have to see that. Ultimately, I’ll buy another house for us or have one built. In fact, I noticed a for-sale sign on a beachfront property—”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “No?”

  “We can’t move. It would be too disruptive for Ethan. He’s not even used to you yet.”

  “Fair enough.” He looked around her simple home. A home that she knew was nothing like the mansions and luxury apartments that made up his world. But he seemed unperturbed by the differences.

  And maybe she should be grateful for that fact. Maybe. But right now she couldn’t find that emotion in her. She tried to formulate a quick and convincing argument that would stop Max from moving in, or at least put him off.

  But words failed her. He watch
ed her for several seconds and when still she didn’t speak, said, “Good, that’s settled then.” And left.

  Clutching Ethan’s damp T-shirt to her chest, Gillian leaned against the nearest wall.

  Disruptive?

  For Ethan?

  She pushed off from the wall. She had limits, but things had happened so fast the past two days that she hadn’t had time to draw a line and hold to it.

  That time had come.

  She’d let him live here if that was what he thought he wanted. She’d even try to make the adjustment easy for him. For Ethan’s sake. But if he thought anything else about this marriage—sex—was going to be real, he was very much mistaken. Or at least she wanted him to be.

  He’d crushed her hopes and dreams once already. She wasn’t going to let herself even have hopes and dreams again where he was concerned. That kind of relationship was both too much and not enough for where she was at now.

  Already last night, in the darkness, she had wanted him. But she’d been caught unprepared. A weak moment. It wouldn’t happen again. She couldn’t let it.

  True to his word he was back in an hour. He carried one suitcase and one bulging garment bag, holding the Italian tailor-made suits that always looked so good on him.

  She opened the front door ready to set the ground rules.

  “I’ll need a key.” He got in the first words.

  He set his bags down and Gillian picked her keys out of the bowl on the nearby table and worked her key off the key ring. “Here. Now you can walk in and out of my home, my life, at will.” She hadn’t meant to let her bitterness, her fear show.

  She turned but he stilled her with a hand on her arm, his grip firm, his blue gaze intense. “You’re right about the walking in part. But not the walking out.”

  “You walked away from me before.”

  “Yes, but I’m not here for you, I’m here for Ethan.”

  Which she knew. And still the words felt like a blow. Putting her in her place. She’d do well to always remember that. She didn’t matter to him.

  “I don’t walk away from my responsibilities.”

  “He’s not just a responsibility. He’s a little boy.”

  “He’s my little boy.”

  “Our,” she corrected him. If there were things she needed to remember there were also things she couldn’t let him forget.

  He dropped his hand from her arm.

  “And before you know it,” she said, “before you’ve had time to decide whether this is truly what you want, he’ll love you with all his heart. You’ll hurt him, scar him if you leave.” Like he’d hurt her. “He’ll grow up blaming himself, thinking there’s something wrong with him.”

  His eyes narrowed on her and a sudden yawning silence stretched. Finally, he spoke. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.” Too astute, too perceptive he always was. Always cutting to the unseen heart of the matter.

  “Who walked away from you?”

  Gillian swallowed. Was she that transparent?

  “We never talked about your parents.”

  “Just like we never talked about yours.”

  “But you’ve met mine now. You told Mom you didn’t know your father.” His voice was gentle, coaxing.

  Hide it or get it out in the open? Hiding it only gave it power it didn’t deserve. “My mother is wonderful. My father, on the other hand, couldn’t decide whether he really wanted to be in our life. He came and went for months at a time, till finally when I was four he went and never came back.” She was a grown woman but she could still feel her younger self’s pain and confusion and blame. The feeling of inadequacy was something she’d had to battle hard. She would do anything to make sure Ethan never felt that.

  Max regarded her awhile longer. A sympathy she didn’t want softened his gaze. “I’m sorry.” He touched his fingertips to her jaw. “And for what it’s worth, it was his loss.” The hand dropped away and the sympathy left his eyes. “But unlike your father, I have decided. I want in. And I’m not going, not today, not tomorrow, not until Ethan himself leaves home. I’m doing the right thing here.”

  It was everything she wanted to hear but didn’t dare trust. “I know. Aren’t you honorable. What if you find a way to decide that leaving is the honorable thing to do?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not leaving. What’s it going to take for you to believe that?”

  “Weeks’ and weeks’ worth of disrupted sleep because he’s sick or teething. You not reacting when milk gets spilled in the keyboard of the laptop you left open and out. You having to cancel social engagements because you can’t find a sitter, having to give up Saturday golf because it takes up too much of your weekend. And all with no end in sight. Trading in your coupe for a car that’s actually suitable for a child.”

  “I can do all of that, Gillian. I want to do all of that.” He was so calm, so reasonable, making a mockery of her anxiety and her fears.

  “We’ll see.”

  “You doubt me?”

  “Yes.” He had no idea what he was getting into.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Time will prove you wrong.”

  “It’ll prove one of us wrong.” She turned away from the steely determination in his eyes. “I only hope it’s me. I’ll show you the house.”

  “Gillian.” He caught up to her on the lowest step and circled her wrist with his fingers.

  Slowly, she turned to him.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Three years ago. I was trying to save you hurt.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” she lied. “We both knew what we had and didn’t have.” He released her wrist and she led the way to the bedrooms upstairs, Max close on her heels. “My room.” She pointed to the first—firmly closed—door. She knew she’d need some kind of sanctuary in her home—her room was it.

  Max lifted an eyebrow and a light glinted in his blue eyes. “Is it locked, too? Are there weapons on the other side of it? The key to your chastity belt, perhaps?” Her lips twitched in response. He’d always been able to do that, make her see the funny side of a situation even when she was trying to be serious.

  She’d liked him once precisely because he was honorable and he could make her laugh. And it hadn’t hurt that the physical chemistry between them had been combustible. Such that it seemed a single glance from him would have had the power to laser through any chastity belt.

  “Ethan’s room.” She pressed on, relaxing a little but still determined to show him that she was the one calling the shots here. She’d left that door open. Ethan’s bed, with its dinosaur bedspread, and his bookcase and shelves of toys were visible. “There’s only one bathroom up here. I’m not quite sure how that’s going to work.”

  “We’ll find a way. I’ll fit around your schedule.”

  “How very accommodating of you.”

  Undaunted, he smiled at her sarcasm. Clearly, now that he’d gotten what he wanted, he was determined not to let her goad him. And if that was the case Gillian knew better than to fight it.

  “Do you own this place or rent it?”

  “I own it. I inherited it from my grandmother.” The house was what had initially brought her to Vista del Mar. She couldn’t have afforded a place this big and this close to the beach otherwise. But it was the job and the community she’d found here that kept her here. She even had Mrs. McDonald next door, who enjoyed babysitting Ethan whenever Gillian needed it, a substitute, she claimed, for her own grandchildren on the east coast.

  “It has good bones.”

  “Long-term I’d like to renovate. But it’s not a priority.”

  “Kristan would love to get her hands on it.”

  He’d mentioned that Kristan did up old houses for a living. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask more when she stopped herself. She had enough on her hands for the moment dealing with Max without bringing in extra family members.

  Gillian pushed open the third door. “Your room.” It shared a wall with hers. She stepped into the
guest room dominated by a broad bed covered with a rich blue bedspread. With its heavy dresser and antique wall clock it was, she realized, a masculine room. As though it was waiting for Max to come and occupy it. The thought appalled her.

  He followed her in and set his bag on the floor and laid his garment bag on the bed. He pulled open the doors of the wardrobe.

  “I did my best to empty it in the time you were gone.” She spoke to his back. “But that stuff on the shelves, old textbooks and boxes of paperwork, will take longer to sort through.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got time.” He pointed at his bags. “Besides, that’s all I have.” He crossed to the desk. She knew he saw and recognized the dictionary and thesaurus he’d once given her. To have removed them now would have been to admit that he still had some kind of power over her, that she gave consequence to his opinion. The books were useful, so she’d left them out.

  “Where do you work if you’re working from home?”

  She nodded at the desk. “There, usually.” The room had doubled as an office and a guest room. “I can work at the kitchen table easily enough.”

  “You have internet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wireless?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll sort it out.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse the offer. She disliked the contrary impulse, but she didn’t want him thinking he could waltz in and reorganize her life. Although, that was, she admitted, pretty much what he’d done. What she’d let him do. It was too late to dig her toes in now, particularly over something that could only be of benefit to her. “Wireless would be good,” she conceded.

  A grin softened his face as though he knew something of her dilemmas. He crossed to the bed, testing it with a bounce. “Feels comfortable.” He glanced at the vertical slats of the headboard. His grin faltered and he turned to her frowning. “Is this…?”