by Anna Adams
For a moment she couldn’t think. She just jerked back, out of sight.
She wished with all her heart she could magically transport her son and herself somewhere far away.
He was bound to find her someday. She hadn’t tried very hard to hide. She glanced at Ben, who was staring at her as if she’d grown an extra head.
“Mommy?” His voice restored her composure immediately.
“Company.” She tried to sound as if Owen Gage’s showing up at her door was no big deal. “I haven’t seen my friend in a long time. I didn’t expect him.”
Ben put one finger in his mouth and stared at her.
He would take his lead from her. If she panicked, he would be afraid, and she was smart enough to know that Owen would not just go away. Somehow, Ben’s father had discovered he had a son.
Forcing herself to smile at her little boy, she turned and opened the door. A firing squad would have looked less threatening than Owen. She’d wanted to give him a chance to be a good father, but he’d been too in love with the bottle. Still, she couldn’t blame him for the anger that turned his pale blue eyes to ice and thinned his already sharp features.
“What the...” he began, but Lilah stepped aside so that he’d see Ben.
So that the first words Ben heard from him wouldn’t be angry swearing.
Owen sputtered to a shocked halt. His gaze softened, warmed. “I can’t believe it.” He squatted, still outside the door. Snow glistened behind him on the trees, the sidewalk, the pond across the street and the granite-colored roof of his car.
He was leaning toward his son, and his eagerness made her feel uncomfortable. If she could have turned away, she would have, because the moment felt too personal, and his vulnerability hurt her.
“Hi,” Owen said, but then looked up at her, and the anger came back into his eyes.
He didn’t know his own son’s name. “Ben,” she said. “I called him Ben.”
“Hi, Ben.”
Lilah reached back for her boy, trying to find his shoulder with her trembling hand. Owen looked as if he half expected her to scoop up their child and run out the back door. “Ben’s having pancakes,” she said, trying to sound normal. She’d learned to act when she was five years old, and she’d tricked a pedophile, who’d taken her from a grocery-store aisle, into turning his back just long enough for her to escape. “Maybe you’d like to join us?”
“Join you?” Owen’s voice shook slightly. She read him like a book. How could she sound calm?
Five years ago he hadn’t understood why she’d demanded he get sober. He’d told her how much his own father loved alcohol, and she knew their child wouldn’t be safe with him as long as he loved liquor more than he could love a family.
She stared into his eyes, searching for telltale signs that he’d fortified himself to come to Vermont to find Ben. All she saw was shock and anger. Betrayal.
She had betrayed him. But his feelings didn’t matter. Ben mattered.
“We’re just going to have breakfast.”
Owen stood. “I am hungry.”
“Blueberry pancakes.” Ben waved his arm toward the kitchen, eagerly leading his guest. He’d never been shy, but even for Ben, this friendliness was unusual. “Let me show you. They’re purple. I like purple food. Grapes, yogurt with blueberries. Grape popsicles, but Mom won’t let me have those very often. Maybe once in five years.”
“You aren’t even five years old,” Lilah said, aware of the quiver in her voice.
“I remember last year and the last year and the next year.”
Owen laughed. “That’s the way I remember, too.”
They reached the kitchen, and Lilah managed to restrain herself from clutching Ben close to her side. He patted his stool. “You can sit here, big man.”
Owen laughed again. “Big man?”
Ben didn’t like being laughed at. “You’re big?”
Owen, who was taller than most men, nodded. “I guess I am.”
“And you’re a man?”
“Yeah.”
“We can’t say ‘yeah.’ Mommy says it’s the wrong word.”
Owen didn’t even glance her way. “Yes, then. I am a man.”
“Big. Man.” Ben scrambled onto the stool himself. “Maybe I better sit here because I can’t see if I don’t, and you’re big enough to see without a stool.”
Lilah slid the frying pan back on to the burner, but then remembered Owen’s allergy. “My friend Owen is allergic to blueberries. I’ll need to make more batter.”
“Don’t bother.”
She turned to look at him, but he was peering around the room, inspecting. She couldn’t tell if he approved of the cozy space, lined with baskets and painted pie plates and her embarrassing collection of kitten and cat figures. Ben had given each one of them a name.
“Have to eat breakfast,” Ben said, looking anxious. Why should he be concerned about Owen’s eating habits? She refused to believe a father-son tie could be so strong that Ben felt it without knowing about it.
She turned the heat back on beneath his breakfast and whipped up another batch of batter. Ben was halfway through his first stack of small pancakes by the time she set a plate and silverware in front of Owen, who looked from her to Ben as if they were playing a game he didn’t understand.
She served him normal-sized pancakes and made another small stack for Ben, who attacked his plate with gusto.
Owen ate every bite, and when he’d finished, Ben clambered down and took his plate. With supreme four-year-old concentration, he carried the dish to the sink. Then he came back and gave Owen a clumsy pat on the back.
“Good job, buddy,” he said.
Lilah laughed, but she couldn’t hide the nervous hitch in her voice.
“I’ll have two more,” Ben said, holding up three fingers.
“Are you really hungry?” Lilah asked him.
Ben looked down at his belly as if he could gauge how full he was. “I might not eat them,” he said. “Do I have to take a shower now?”
“You could play in your room for a little while if you want.”
He nodded so hard his chin must have hit his chest. Then he tilted his head to grin at Owen, who laughed. A husky laugh that made Lilah shiver. She remembered it far too well, and she could already tell Ben was going to have the same laugh when he grew up.
“Go to your room and play, then, but don’t turn on the water until I come up.”
“Okay, Mommy.” He slid off the stool again, but offered his hand to Owen. “See you later, Mommy’s friend.”
“You can call me Owen.”
“Own.”
Ben turned and ran for the stairs, growling car engine sounds as he climbed.
Owen seemed to topple forward onto his elbow, which was braced on the counter.
“My son,” he said. “And such a sweet kid. So friendly. He doesn’t even know me.”
He didn’t move for several seconds. Lilah’s worry spiked. He was either trying to hide his feelings, or planning revenge.
When he looked up, redness rimmed his eyes. “Get this through your head. I am never leaving him.”
CHAPTER TWO
WEREN’T THOSE THE WORDS she’d hoped to hear? Just after he promised, “I’ll never drink again.” She would have told him about her pregnancy, and in her dreams he would have promised, “I won’t put our child at risk.”
She’d stopped dreaming when he’d admitted with heartbreaking honesty that he couldn’t stop drinking. After that, there had been no room for Owen Gage in her life. He’d missed his chance with their son, and she’d heard from her brother, Tim, that Owen still had problems with alcohol. Wanting to do the right thing and actually managing it were miles apart for Owen.
“Lilah.” He made
no effort now to hide his anger.
Startled, she jumped. Almost deafened by the silence after Owen barked her name, she didn’t answer. Ben’s voice came down the stairs as he talked to his trains or his army of action figures, who were hampered by the fact that he’d broken so many of their body parts.
In the sink, the faucet dripped with annoying regularity. Lilah’s own breathing sounded like someone hissing.
She had to run. Hide her son. Why hadn’t she done that four years ago—made herself and her baby invisible to the one man on earth who could destroy her life?
“How did you find us?”
He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a large gift tag the size of a postcard. He passed it across, and Lilah read the Christmas-red text that wrapped around a photo of her and her parents and her brother. And Ben. They were sprawled or standing or slouched on the porch of the beach house at Fire Island.
“From our family to yours,” the gift tag read. And her family had told Owen about his son.
She knew immediately what had happened. Her parents had arranged to send an alcoholic a bottle of good wine with this gift tag around its neck.
“I knew the second I saw the photo,” Owen said. “But I got out an old picture of myself to compare Ben and me at the same age. You understand I’m not leaving him with you, right?”
“You don’t have custody.” She had kept his son from him. If he didn’t have a reputation as an alcoholic, he might have a leg to stand on. “You can’t come up here and walk off with my son. First, I won’t let you, and, second, you don’t know him.”
“What can you do?”
“Ask anyone who knows you to testify in court that you couldn’t possibly be a good parent because you’re an alcoholic.”
“That won’t work. I’ve changed.”
“You mean you’ve changed again?” she asked. “I talk to Tim. He knows you’ve tried to quit drinking, and you can’t stop. All I have to do is ask your family and friends what you’re like at home. No court would consider me the less fit choice.”
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “Why did you do it? You weren’t a heartless woman. You robbed our son of his father. For four years.”
She avoided that knowledge as often as she could. She’d made the best choice for Ben. “You told me you were afraid you were like your father. You told me he beat you and your brothers and sister. If you were like him, you had no place around my child.”
He stared at her, his lips thin, his gaze practically expressionless. She wrestled silently with panic. What did he plan to do next? Lilah’s best gift was thinking on her feet. She’d done it even when she was five, just a little older than Ben, and escaped her kidnapper.
She had the same sense of being threatened now.
And all the while, water splatted rhythmically on the steel bottom of the sink.
“I understand you’re angry, but I don’t know what you mean by saying you’re never leaving Ben again.”
“My son.” He lowered his voice, coming to stand right next to her. He was too tall, too intense, his frustration whipping up bad energy between them. “Ben is my boy, whom you’ve hidden from me. You didn’t dump me because I drank. That was an excuse to give you control. You didn’t stop drinking because you suddenly wanted to be healthier. You quit because you were pregnant with Ben, and if you’d told me about our baby, I would have quit, too.” He thought she was the bad guy? “You left because you decided I wasn’t worthy of making a life with him.”
“Tell me I was wrong. You still drink. The damage is all over you. You’re twenty-eight, but you look years older. You think you can bully me with a raised voice and anger.” She turned her back to him, putting the counter between them.
“You’ve had him for four years. Four years, and every day you passed up the chance to tell me the truth.”
“I asked you to quit drinking. You said you liked it too much. You’d told me about your father. How could I take the chance that you’d be like him?”
“How could you refuse to let Ben know me or me know him?”
His eyes were troubled. He was angry, but deep inside those haunted eyes, she saw remnants of the man she’d known. When he was hurt, he fought back, instead of admitting he was in pain.
“I gave you as much of a chance as I could,” she said. “I never told my family you were Ben’s father. I never asked them to keep Ben a secret, and I didn’t ask them to help me hide from you.” Big mistake. “I wasn’t naive.” She shook her head. “Maybe I thought that if you wanted to find me, it would be some kind of proof that I mattered to you. That Ben could matter to you. But after a few months passed with no call from you, I knew you weren’t interested.”
He shook his head. Slightly, as if the effort hurt. “After you told me I was a lush you couldn’t trust? How was I supposed to guess you were pregnant?”
“I had Ben to think of.”
“And that’s why you changed?”
“Changed?” She put her hands over her eyes. They burned as if she’d been crying.
“You were paranoid. You assumed the worst would happen, just like you always do. Instead of telling me why you wanted a different relationship, you went from being my—”
“Designated driver. I got you from bar to bar and back to my place every time you came to New York. I couldn’t be that woman anymore when a child depended on me. I had to do the right thing for Ben, and you told me plainly that you couldn’t.”
Owen froze, but his gaze cut her. “You knew everything about me, and all the while you kept your own secrets. You asked me to change because I wasn’t good enough to be a father to my own child.”
He was right that she only let people see the parts of her she wanted them to see. “You won’t believe this, but I didn’t hurt you on purpose.”
He laughed, but he clearly found nothing about her funny. “You thought denying me my son—denying him his father—was the right thing for all of us?”
“I hoped there was a chance you’d understand if you ever found out.” She scooped a dish towel off the counter and folded it, creasing each corner. “You saw my brother just before Thanksgiving. He said you were still drinking. Excessively.”
He chose to ignore the comment about his drinking. “Did you really think I’d find out about Ben and think—well that’s a mistake anyone could make? What’s four years to a father and son?” His despair was a living thing that snaked around her as he pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t even understand the way you think.” He straightened, seeming to reach a decision. “You forget I know how much you hate reporters bringing up the subject of ‘Little Lost Lilah.’ Either give me time with my son, or I’ll deliver that secret of yours to every news station.”
He had her weakness in his hip pocket. The media had loved her story when she was five. Little Lost Lilah. Abducted from her parents in broad daylight but brave and smart enough to run away from her kidnapper. Reporters had hounded her at regular intervals when she’d started high school and gone away to college— checking in on Little Lost Lilah to see if she’d let that man scar her for life. The thing she wanted most for Ben was to save him from the horror of microphones in his face and strident voices asking for his feelings—because his mom was taken by a stranger when she was not much older than he was now.
“How can you suggest you’d set those monsters on me?” Owen had never been cruel.
“Lilah, did you think I’d be grateful? Ask how I could thank you enough for taking four years of being a father to Ben away from me? Because I drank?”
“Because you drink. I thought I was doing what was best for Ben. I don’t believe you’ll hurt him now to get back at me.”
“That’s exactly the kind of man you think I am.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he could see
through the floor to Ben playing above.
Blood rushed in Lilah’s ears, and she considered calling the police. They’d never helped her when she was kidnapped. She’d had to count on herself.
But Owen could prove he was Ben’s father. He’d never given up custody. If he chose to fight for parental rights, he’d win visitation.
On the other hand, if she played along, she’d find a way out of this. There’d come a moment when he’d make a mistake, take a drink. Prove even to himself that she’d been right to protect their son from a man whose worst fear was turning into the monstrous man who’d terrorized his own family.
“Visit Ben here, Owen. Let me keep him in familiar surroundings.”
He seemed to hesitate. Fighting a battle of conscience? His fists came out of the tops of his pockets, and he flexed his fingers, and his jaw tightened. At last, he shook his head. “I can’t. I have a job at home that’s life and death to my career. I have to finish it.”
“Your career? Who cares about a career?” Not the Owen she’d known.
“It matters to my reputation,” he said. “I didn’t stop drinking when you asked me to. You’re right about me, except for one thing. I’m not violent, and I would never harm another human being.” His eyes narrowed until they were chips of ice that cut straight through her. “But I will do everything I can to see my son.”
If she were in his shoes, if he’d kept Ben from her, would she be as angry? Absolutely. But she faced him down. “Do your worst.”
“I will if I have to,” he said, his voice contained, his breathing even. “I’m desperate. You’ve proven I can’t trust you to give me a chance with my son.”
“I could not hand him over to a man who told me he preferred alcohol to me.”
“I said that without knowing all the facts, Lilah. I want a chance with my boy, and he’ll have to come to Tennessee. I wish it could be different, and I don’t want to frighten him. But I’ve made some mistakes, and this job may be my last chance at getting enough work to make a living.”