The Heart Surgeon's Secret Son

by Janice Lynn

  Ryan had every right to talk with his father, but why hadn’t he told her? Irrational as her thoughts were, she felt betrayed.

  “The week after you left Boston,” Daniel answered, placing his hand on Ryan’s shoulder as their son glanced back and forth between them.

  “How?” she bit out, trying to curb her anger and betrayal for Ryan’s sake.

  “I called Ryan’s cell phone.”

  “How did you get his number?”

  Placing his hands in his jeans pockets, Daniel shrugged. “It’s not difficult to get someone’s cell number if you know who to ask.”

  Had someone at Cardico given him that information?

  She bit her lower lip, trying to decipher what all this meant, why Daniel was standing in her living room, looking as comfortable as could be with Ryan.

  “How long have you been in town?” she asked, full of suspicion.

  “I flew in last Friday.”

  “Last Friday?” Kimberly gulped. Ryan had spent last weekend with Tyler.

  Only he hadn’t. He’d been with Daniel. And every night since.

  Ryan had lied to her.

  She turned betrayed eyes on her son. “You’ve not been to Tyler’s at all this week, have you?”

  Ryan winced, and she struggled to get her emotions under control. She’d put him in this situation, created this monstrosity that left him feeling like he couldn’t be with Daniel without lying to her. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to see Daniel, to spend time with his father. And yet pain sliced through her.

  “Mom, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You having lied to me hurts.” She reminded herself she’d set the motions into play fifteen years ago that had led to this moment, to this sense of shattered trust. “I wouldn’t have stopped you from seeing Daniel.”

  Ryan stepped toward her, then paused. He stared at her, looking uncertain what to say, and she hated the unfamiliar awkwardness between them.

  “I asked Ryan not to tell you that I’d contacted him, Kimberly.”

  She narrowed her gaze at Daniel and focused all her emotions into her fury at him. “You asked my son to lie to me? How dare you?”

  “Our son,” he firmly reminded her.

  “Oh, and teaching him to lie to his mother is your first fatherly duty?” she lashed out. An entire week. No wonder Ryan hadn’t been able to look her in the eye.

  “Ryan.” Daniel turned to the younger version of himself and placed a comforting hand on Ryan’s shoulder again. “Perhaps you should go to your room so your mother and I can talk.”

  Ryan hesitated, and Daniel gave him a pointed look. “Go.”

  Ryan still didn’t budge, his eyes lingering on Kimberly. Knowing the dam within her was readying to burst, she nodded. She didn’t want Ryan to see her tears.

  Neither did she want to say something hurtful in anger. None of this was Ryan’s fault. Even through her hurt and fury she recognized she could only blame herself.

  And Daniel. She blamed him, too. He should have called her, told her he wanted to see Ryan.

  “You’re sure?” Ryan apparently didn’t want to leave her alone with Daniel. His eyes had taken on a defensive look and she knew he was battling with his budding emotions for his father and his sense of loyalty to her. She didn’t want this to be any harder for Ryan than it already was.

  “Daniel’s right. We need to talk, and it would be best for that conversation to be in private.”

  Ryan exchanged a look with Daniel, then nodded at Kimberly. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

  Her heart clenched at the protectiveness in his tone. Whatever had passed between Daniel and himself, Ryan was making it clear that he didn’t want her hurt. Which was all the more reason for him not to witness how deep her pain ran where Daniel was concerned.

  The moment his bedroom door closed, his stereo came on, loud.

  Hating that she was wearing worn cotton pajamas, Kimberly stood up and rounded on Daniel. She couldn’t stand having to look so far up at him.

  “How dare you have my son deceive me?”

  Daniel’s gaze didn’t waver, neither did he have the decency to look ashamed. “We needed time to get to know each other without you in the middle.”

  “Without…” She stopped, his meaning slamming home. He’d come for Ryan. She narrowed her gaze, wondering how such a brilliant man could be so dense. “I wouldn’t have told you about Ryan if I was going to keep him away from you.”

  “Not for the first time, you’re jumping to the wrong conclusion.” Daniel took a step toward her. “He and I needed time to work out our relationship on our own. Without meaning to, you would have impeded that.”

  His words slapped her in the face. He didn’t trust her to not stand in the way of he and Ryan developing a relationship.

  “No,” she denied, but perhaps he was right. She would have worried about Ryan getting hurt. She might have been overly protective and in some way delayed their bonding.

  Daniel stood at the side of the living room, watching her, making her more self-conscious about the faded red pajamas Ryan had given her for Christmas a couple of years back.

  Moments passed, marked only by the clicking of the mantel clock and the music from Ryan’s room.

  Unable to stand the silence and his searching blue gaze, she put her hands on her hips, mostly because she needed to do something with them.

  “If you expect me to say I agree with you sneaking around behind my back…” she glared “…you’re sadly mistaken. You should have told me.”

  “Like you told me?” His accusation stung.

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?” he asked, slowly crossing the room with confident strides. When he stood a foot from her, he stopped and stared down at her. “Tell me, Kimberly, how is it different?”

  “Because I did it for you.”

  He stood too close, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. Lowering her gaze only meant staring at the way he filled out his leather jacket.

  “Did you?”

  She glanced up, all the realizations she’d made since first seeing him in the cardiac lab the morning he’d put in Ellen Mills’s pacemaker hitting her full force.

  “At first.” Kimberly swallowed, feeling weak and on the verge of tears. How could she be so angry and yet want to weep with great sadness at the same time?

  “And then, later, when keeping your secret wasn’t doing it for me?” His eyes searched hers, and when she looked away he lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Tell me.”

  Her flesh burned from the heat of his touch and she hated the power he held over her body. Over her heart.

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of everything,” she cried, no longer restraining the fat, wet teardrops rolling down her cheeks. “Of the fact I’d made a mistake. Of realizing you’d moved on with your life. Of the fact you’d hate me when I told you I’d kept him from you.”

  “I did hate you,” he admitted, confirming what she already knew.

  A sob escaped her lips and she wished he’d let her face go so she could look away, hide her hurt.

  “But then…” his eyes held hers and his thumb caressed her chin “…I forgave you.”

  “You did?” Dare she believe that he might really forgive her? That they could find some sort of peace for Ryan?

  “No matter how much I hurt that I’ve missed out on knowing my son, I hurt more because I let you go through this alone.”

  “You didn’t know I was pregnant.”

  “But I should have.” He took a deep breath, cupped her face. “Tell me, Kimberly. If I’d pushed you, would you have told me the truth that Christmas?”

  “About being pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  Would she have? She’d wanted nothing more than for Daniel to take her in his arms and insist he was never letting her go. What if he had? Would she have broken down and told him everything? Or would guilt at stealing his d
ream have kept her lips sealed?

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “I made it easy for you to believe you were making the right choice. I walked away without fighting for you.”

  In her heart, she had expected Daniel to refuse to let her end their relationship. To demand she tell him what was going on and why she would say such a foolish thing. She’d expected him to see through her lies and know she had felt shattered on the inside and had needed him.

  He hadn’t. He’d been angry, but he’d agreed. No more fuss. No more bother.

  “You left because you had to return to school.” She told him what she’d told herself for fifteen years.

  “I left because leaving was easier than staying to fight for you.”

  She wobbled slightly toward him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I was scared of how much you meant to me, how much I wanted to come home to be with you.” He gave a self-derisive laugh. “I spent my first semester busting my gut, learning everything I could, but you distracted me at every turn.”

  “I was a thousand miles away.”

  “Didn’t matter if you’d been on the other side of the earth, Kimberly. You distracted me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I missed you so much all I could think about was coming home to you at Christmas. When you told me you’d met someone else, I was angry at you. I’d been lying awake at night, dreaming of you, and you’d been out with some other guy.”

  “There wasn’t anyone else, Daniel.”

  “I know that. Now. But I didn’t then and I wanted to hate you for tossing my love aside. I didn’t want you to see how I hurt. And, truth be told, I realized finishing medical school wasn’t going to happen if you were in my life, because knowing you were in Atlanta, waiting for me, just made me want to pack up and come home.”

  Somehow, hearing him confirm all her suspicions didn’t ease her heart the way she’d expected.

  “When I broke up with you, you were glad?”

  “Not glad, but relieved because I felt disloyal to my father’s memory every time I thought about quitting.”

  “Because of what happened to him? His death wasn’t your fault, Daniel.”

  “No, but for twenty-five years I’ve blamed myself, and my mother let me.”

  “Leona? I don’t understand.”

  “She and I had quite a discussion last weekend after I took Ryan to meet her.”

  “Ryan met Leona?” Kimberly swayed. She only kept from sagging onto the sofa behind her because Daniel’s hands grabbed her arms and held her.

  “Yes. She was shocked to see him walk into her house.” The warmth of his hands burned through her pajama top, searing her arms. “But not as shocked as she should have been.”

  Thoughts of Leona meeting Ryan caused Kimberly to wince. Poor Ryan. Though he must have done fine, she wanted to rush the stairs and take him in her arms, demand to know what Leona had said to him, if she’d been cruel or hateful.

  “She told me everything.”

  Once again Kimberly wobbled. “Everything?”

  A sick look crossing his face, Daniel nodded. “She admitted she tried to convince you to have an abortion and she’s struggled with her conscience ever since. She thought you had done so until she read your mother’s obituary.”

  Kimberly tried to digest what Daniel was saying. Leona regretted the things she’d said that afternoon?

  “Daniel, I never considered abortion as an option for our baby.”

  “Thank God,” he said emphatically. “I want to be angry at her for her role in this, just as I’d wanted to hang on to my anger at you.” He brushed his palms down her arms in a slow caress and linked their fingers. “Blaming everyone else is easier than taking the blame myself, but I’d already realized my guilt. No matter what my mother had said or done, if I’d fought for you, Ryan would have grown up with a mother and a father.”

  Daniel was taking the blame?

  Staring at their twined hands and wondering at the meaning of his embrace, Kimberly tried to digest all the things Daniel had said. “Your mother accepted Ryan as your son?”

  “How could she not?” Daniel’s gaze landed on a framed photo of Ryan on the coffee table beside them. “Like you once said, he’s my image.”

  There was no denying Ryan’s genetic heritage.

  “I’d agree to a paternity test, if you want one.”

  “There’s no need.” He shook his head. “I never doubted you, but if I had, from the moment I first spoke with him I knew he was mine.”

  Kimberly’s heart constricted at the possessiveness in Daniel’s voice.

  “When I met him last Friday…” He paused, his voice choked with emotion. “My whole life had been leading up to that moment.”

  Kimberly nodded, recalling how she’d felt the first time she’d held her newborn son in her arms, looked into his face and known he was her greatest accomplishment. She still got that feeling when looking at Ryan.

  “For the record, Mom accepted Ryan as mine from the moment she read the obituary and saw you had a son.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Ryan went to bed—we stayed at her place on Friday night—she pulled out an album full of clippings about Ryan. She said she even got the nerve to go to one of his games this fall. After the game was when she started pushing for me to move home.”

  “Because she wanted to tell you about Ryan?”

  “No, she didn’t have the nerve because she blamed herself for me not knowing about Ryan. She blamed herself for you dumping me and keeping Ryan from me. I’m all she has left and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing me over her mistake, so she kept quiet, hoping I’d move back and somehow discover my son.”

  The weight of what Leona must have gone through crushed any remaining negative feelings Kimberly had toward Daniel’s mother. If only Leona had come to her, she would have welcomed her into Ryan’s life. After all, Ryan hadn’t any other grandparents.

  “She only said what I was already thinking,” Kimberly admitted, dizzy at all the pain that touched their lives because of actions taken so long ago. “I don’t blame her for what happened.”

  “You blame me?”

  “No.” But that wasn’t entirely true, so she backed up. “I do, but mostly I blame us both, Daniel.” Sadness at what might have been but would never be swept through her, leaving her bone-weary and her knees liquid. “We didn’t believe in each other enough to trust our hearts. That’s what ended our relationship.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?” She shrugged, pulling her hands free from Daniel’s because she couldn’t bear touching him. Not when he didn’t love her. “I won’t interfere with you spending time with Ryan. I’ll miss him while he’s with you, but I’ll encourage him to spend his summers in Boston.”

  Daniel’s forehead wrinkled, and he refused to let her pull her hands away. “Why in Boston?”

  Biting her lower lip, she fought the urge to demand he quit torturing her with his tender touch. “Because it’s where you live.”

  He shook his head. “Ryan won’t be spending his summers in Boston.”

  Did he expect Ryan to move with him immediately and to spend his summers in Atlanta? How would she bear being away from him so long?

  “I turned my notice in the day after I spoke with Ryan. I’ve spent the last month tying up loose ends on the CRT and fulfilling my obligations to the university and the hospital.”

  Kimberly’s stomach flip-flopped. “Why?”

  “Because my heart’s in Atlanta.”

  “Ryan?”

  He nodded, lifting her hand to gently stroke across his cheek. “And you.”

  “Me?” Dare she hope?

  He kissed her fingers, closed his eyes, and his throat worked.

  She could dare. Hope surged through her heart.

  “I want to start over, Kimberly. To finish what we started fifteen years ago.”

  “You want to date me?”

 
; “I want to marry you.”

  Daniel waited for Kimberly to say something. Her face had gone pale and her lower lip quivered. Had he rushed things?

  No, fifteen years too many had already passed with them being apart. He didn’t want to waste another second of their lives being apart. After spending a weekend of torment, bouncing between anger, hatred, guilt, and love, he’d known what he wanted.

  Kimberly. His son. A family, as he should have had and fought for when he’d been too young and stupid to do so.

  Her big green eyes stared at him, making him weak-kneed, so he took her hand in his.

  “Marry me, Kimberly. Let’s give Ryan a family.”

  “You want to get married because of Ryan?” Her voice squeaked and her eyes shone brightly, as if more tears might fall at any moment.

  “If that’s the only reason you’ll agree then yes, because of Ryan.” He wanted her in his life. If Ryan was the catalyst, then so be it. With time, he’d win her heart. After all, healing hearts was his specialty and no one mattered more than Kimberly.

  She didn’t say anything, just closed her eyes, and he could feel the tension building in her body as she worked up the words to deny him.

  He couldn’t let that happen. Not without telling her how he felt.

  “But, as much as I know you love Ryan, what I want is for you to marry me because you love me. In Boston, you told me you loved me and would always love me. Has that changed?”

  Her chin lifted. “You said you didn’t want my kind of love.”

  Her eyes glittered and he fought the urge to pull her to him and kiss her into agreement, tell her everything he wanted with his mouth and body. Hadn’t he done that in Boston?

  “Your love is the only love I’ve ever wanted, Kimberly. The only love I’ve ever needed.”

  She trembled, and he clasped her hand more firmly.

  “I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Ryan.”

  “You love me?”

  “I’ve always loved you.”

  “Daniel,” she whispered. She took his face in her hands and searched his eyes.

  He waited for her to say more. She didn’t, just closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his.

  “Does this mean yes?” he asked, hopeful.