“How do you do? Hello, Peter.”
He gave her a shy, droolly smile set off by four small teeth, then buried his face in his mother’s neck. The baby was adorable, and Emma felt a pang of envy. He had curly dark hair, a button nose, and beautiful eyes with sooty black lashes. His eyes were an unusual shade of blue, so deep they were nearly violet.
Something uncomfortable prickled at the back of her neck.
The woman took a seat at the umbrella table and shifted the baby onto her knees. “I thought Kenny might be here, but I should have known he’d do his best to avoid us.”
“He’s, uh, playing golf this morning.” Emma sat next to her. “How old is Peter?”
“Nine months, and he’s still nursing. He’s a bruiser. Twenty-two pounds and thirty inches at his last checkup.” She automatically pushed Emma’s empty iced tea glass out of the baby’s reach. “Kenny’s been in town since yesterday, but he hasn’t made the slightest attempt to come to the house, and I can’t forgive him for that. Ignoring his own flesh and blood.”
Emma’s stomach wrenched. His own flesh and blood. She took in the little boy’s dark hair and violet eyes. Kenny must have looked exactly the same. She felt dizzy. His baby.
Even as she thought it, she struggled for another explanation, but those bright violet eyes were so unusual that the resemblance couldn’t be coincidental, and this woman would hardly be so upset if she were a distant relative. The possibility that Kenny had fathered a child, then walked away, made her feel sick.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I didn’t quite get your name.”
“Hello, Shelby.”
She turned to see Kenny approaching. He wore a pair of coral swim trunks and had a yellow towel draped around his neck.
At the sound of Kenny’s voice, the baby’s legs stiffened, then began to pump with excitement. Ignoring Shelby, Kenny tossed aside his towel, then scooped up the little boy and brought him to his face. “Hey, buddy, how you doin’? I was coming to see you this afternoon.”
The woman gave a short snort.
Saliva bubbles dripped from Peter’s bottom lip as he grabbed Kenny’s hair and kicked his chubby bare feet.
They looked so much alike that Emma could only stare. At the same time, the sick feeling in her stomach wasn’t going away. How could he have deserted such a beautiful child? Then again, why should she be surprised? This was a man who always seemed to take the easy way out.
“You want to swim, Petie boy?” Kenny asked.
“Don’t get his overalls wet,” Shelby said. “I just bought them at Baby Gap yesterday.”
Kenny unfastened the straps and slipped off the overalls. “I think we’ll keep that cloth diaper on, just in case you forget to act like a gentleman.” He dropped the overalls on the table and tucked the baby in the crook of his arm as he looked down at Emma. “You want to come in with us?”
Her neck felt so stiff she could barely manage to shake her head.
“Come on, Petie. It’s just us guys, then.”
As Kenny carried the baby into the water, Emma tried to think what she could say to Shelby. She heard a faint sniffle.
“Damn him.”
She looked across the table and saw Shelby’s eyes fill with tears as she watched Kenny and the baby in the water.
Emma’s heart went out to her. The diamond jewelry and expensive clothing showed that Kenny had been generous with his financial support, but that meant nothing if he’d abandoned his responsibility. She was filled with a crushing, irrational sense of disappointment. Despite every signpost along the way, she’d expected better of him.
Emma reached across the table and laid a sympathetic hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry.”
The woman sniffed and gave a self-conscious laugh. “I guess I shouldn’t take it so hard. I must still have a little postpartum depression, what with not losing all my weight and all. But when I look at the two of them together . . .” Her face twisted and a big tear ran down her cheek. “He won’t take responsibility! And Peter is his own flesh and blood.”
Emma could feel her heart hardening against him. Logically, she knew her reaction was extreme—they’d only been acquainted for a few days—but emotionally she couldn’t help it. “He’s despicable,” she said, speaking to herself as much as Shelby.
Shelby looked a bit startled by Emma’s reaction, then gratified. “I guess it takes an outsider to see things clearly. Everyone in Wynette just shrugs it off. They say, well, that’s just the way Kenny is, and then they start telling stories about how he threw a stone through somebody’s window or stood up his prom date. Since he wins golf tournaments now, he doesn’t have to follow the same rules of decency as everyone else.” Once again, her eyes filled with tears. “I just love that little baby so much and—” She fumbled in the pocket of her tunic top for a tissue. “I’m sorry, Lady Emma. I don’t usually get like this, and I really wanted to make a good impression on you. But it’s nice to have some sympathy for a change.” She stood, blew her nose, then picked up Kenny’s discarded towel and walked to the edge of the pool. “Bring him here, Kenny. We have to go.”
“We just got in. He’s having a good time. Aren’t you, Petie boy?”
The baby gave a squeak of delight and slapped the water with his hands.
“He needs his nap, and I want him now!”
Kenny frowned and brought the baby to the edge of the pool. “Jeez, Shelby. What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re what’s wrong with me! Come here, Petie.” She leaned down and snatched the baby from Kenny, then wrapped him in the towel Kenny had brought from the house. As she walked over to pick up the overalls and her purse, she gave Emma a wobbly smile and something Emma was very much afraid might be a small curtsy. “Thank you, Lady Emma. This has meant a lot to me.”
Emma nodded, and Shelby walked away without so much as a glance at Kenny.
Emma heard a faint splash and turned to see that Kenny had dived under the water. Long moments later, he emerged at the far end of the pool and begin to swim laps. One after the other. Slow, lazy laps. The laps of a man with nothing better to do. No honest work. No responsibilities. No children he’d abandoned.
He flipped to his back, poked along, and as she watched, her anger singed away at all the soft, forgiving places inside her. She’d dedicated her life to being a champion for children, and this man represented everything she detested. Her stomach coiled in self-disgust as she remembered how close she’d come to letting herself be seduced by him.
He emerged from the pool, looked for his towel, then apparently remembered Shelby had left with it wrapped around his illegitimate son, so he sluiced the water from his skin with his palms. As she watched those long, languid strokes, nausea propelled her to her feet. Dimly, she understood that this wasn’t her fight, but she couldn’t reason away the avalanche of angry emotion that was churning inside her. Anger and the awful, suffocating disappointment that he wasn’t who she thought. It pushed her forward, toward the side of the pool.
He looked up at her. Smiled his lazy smile.
She didn’t plan to do it. Didn’t even feel it coming. But the next thing she knew, her arm was swinging through the air, and her hand had connected with his jaw.
From some distant, red-hazed place, she watched his head jerk and saw beads of water fly. A stain spread across his jaw where she’d hit him. Her stomach cramped.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He cursed, then stared at her with eyes that had gone as deep and dark as a bruise.
Her legs felt as if they’d turned to water. She should never have struck him. Never. This wasn’t her concern, and she’d had no right to appoint herself his executioner.
His eyes blazed. “I’d throw you in that pool right now, except you’ve got your suit on, so what would be the point?”
His anger recharged her. “You’re despicable.”
A muscle jumped in his injured jaw, and at his side, his fist clenched. “Aw, hell . . .” Without warning,
he scooped her up and threw her out into the deep end of the pool.
She came up, sputtering and furious, only to see him stalking toward the house, walking away from her as he’d walked away from that beautiful baby. “What kind of man are you?” she cried. “What kind of man abandons his own child!”
He froze in his tracks. Slowly turned. “What did you say?”
Her hat floated up next to her. She snatched it as she treaded water. “Being a man means more than planting sperm and then writing a big check. It means—”
“Planting sp—”
Her anger rekindled. She plunged through the water toward the side of the pool, the weight of her sodden cover-up making her movements awkward. She lost her hat as she reached the ladder, but she was on a mission now, and she didn’t care. “He’s a beautiful baby! How could you—”
“You’re an idiot!”
He stood in the center of the back lawn with the sun striking flash fires in his wet hair. His legs were braced, beads of water gleamed on his skin, and he looked as if he were getting ready to murder her. “That beautiful baby boy is my brother!”
Everything inside her went still. His brother? Oh, my . . . She was an idiot. “Kenny!”
But he was already stalking away.
She hauled herself from the water and regarded his retreating back with dismay. What had happened to her? She’d never been a person who rushed to judgment. At St. Gert’s she listened to every side of a dispute before taking action, but she hadn’t been willing to do that with him. She owed him an apology, and she could only hope he’d have the good grace to accept it.
Motivated by a combination of cowardice and dread, she showered and changed first. Then, hoping he’d had a chance to cool down, she set out to look for him only to discover that he’d left the house. Shadow was missing from the paddock, and she glimpsed a man on horseback riding away from the ranch.
Patrick came up from the darkroom and invited her to go into town with him while he shopped for groceries. She accepted the invitation, thinking she might find some sort of gift for Kenny by way of apology. But by the time they’d reached the town limits, she’d realized that no bottle of men’s cologne or expensive book would make up for the insult.
When they returned to the house, Shadow was once again in the paddock, but there was still no sign of Kenny. “He’s probably in the exercise room,” Patrick said when she asked.
“He exercises?”
“After a fashion.”
She followed Patrick’s directions to a room at the far end of the second floor. The door was partially ajar. As she pushed it open, she realized her palms were clammy, and she wiped them on her shorts.
Kenny was working out on some sort of rowing machine, or at least moving it back and forth a bit. He looked up as she walked in and scowled at her. “What do you want?”
“I want to apologize.”
“It won’t do you any good.” He slowly unfolded from the rowing machine and nudged a cordless phone out of the way with his foot.
“Kenny, I’m sorry. Really.”
He ignored her, dropping to the carpeted floor instead and beginning a set of push-ups. His form was excellent—she’d give him that—but he didn’t seem to be putting much effort into it.
“I had no right sticking my nose into something that was none of my business.”
He kept his eyes on the floor as he continued his push-ups. “That’s what you’re apologizing for? Sticking your nose into my business?”
“And slapping you.” She advanced farther into the room. “Oh, Kenny, I’m so sorry about that. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. Never!”
He said nothing, merely continued with his lazy push-ups, taking his time, just as he’d swum his laps. She thought she detected a faint whiff of male heat coming from his body, or at least male warmth, but she didn’t see any sweat.
The sight of his body in nothing but a pair of navy athletic shorts was distracting her, and she brought her attention back. “I don’t know what came over me. I got so upset, so disappointed in you. It was like some sort of temporary madness.”
He set his jaw and didn’t look up at her. “It’s not the slap I can’t forgive.”
“But—”
“Just get out of here, will you? I don’t even want to look at you right now.”
She tried to think of something she could say to make it all up, but there was nothing. “All right. Yes. I understand.” She backed toward the door, feeling ashamed and miserable. “I really am sorry.”
His push-ups grew a bit more rapid. “You’re sorry for the wrong thing, but you don’t even understand that. Now get the hell out of here! And if you want to call up Francesca and tell her I just cussed you out, you go right ahead.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” She turned toward the door, then turned back, needing to know. “If you can forgive me for hitting you, then tell me, what is it you can’t forgive?”
“I don’t believe you have to ask.” The push-ups continued. Muscles bunching without any apparent effort. Not a drop of sweat.
“Apparently I do.”
“How about the fact that a woman I consider my friend thinks I’m the type of slimeball who’d abandon his kid?”
“We only met three days ago,” she couldn’t help but point out. “I don’t really know you that well.”
He shot her a sideways look that managed to combine outrage and incredulity. “You damn well know me well enough to understand that much about me!” His breathing had picked up, but she got the feeling it was from anger, not the exercise.
“But Kenny, your stepmother is so young. She can’t even be thirty. It never occurred to me—”
“I don’t want to hear any more! I mean it, Emma, get out of here. I promised Shelby I’d bring you to the house tonight for dinner, so I’m going to do it, but believe me, I don’t want to. As far as I’m concerned, our friendship is over.”
Until that moment she hadn’t actually known they had a friendship, but now that she realized she’d lost it, she felt strangely bereft.
Chapter 10
Kenny was scrupulously polite that evening as he drove to his family’s home, but he didn’t tease her, try to manipulate her, or even criticize. Clearly she had offended his sense of honor. But how could she have known that honor was important to a man who, only three nights earlier, had led her to believe he was a gigolo?
As they pulled through a set of ornate gates into the Traveler estate, she wished she hadn’t agreed to accompany him tonight, but she was frustrated. She had apologized, and there was nothing more she could do.
As she focused on her surroundings, she realized his family home was actually an estate with a long drive winding through carefully landscaped grounds. A Moorish-looking structure came into view, built of rose-colored stucco with a crenellated rooftop. They drew nearer, and she saw that the house had several wings, along with arched windows and a tiled roof. An enormous mosaic fountain near the entrance made it look as if the entire place had come out of the Arabian nights instead of the Texas Hill Country.
“My mother wanted something out of the ordinary,” Kenny said politely as he parked the car. She waited for a wisecrack about sultans or harems, but he said nothing else.
As she got out the car, the evening chill penetrated the bright yellow rayon crepe dress she’d chosen to wear that evening. It was splashed with crimson poppies and had three-quarter sleeves to cover her tattoo. Beddington would have approved of her outfit, she thought glumly, but she simply couldn’t stomach the idea of offending Kenny’s family by showing up in her trendier apparel. Besides, the duke’s watchdog could hardly follow her into a private setting. Her spirits dipped lower as she realized she hadn’t done anything all day to ruin her reputation.
They walked toward carved double doors banded in hammered brass. The house was impressive and exotic, but not very homey, and she couldn’t help but compare it with Kenny’s comfortable ranch. What had it been like for him to grow up
here as his mother’s little sultan and his father’s disappointment?
He held the door open for her, and she stepped into a tiled hallway that was decorated like an English country house, although not nearly as worn around the edges. In contrast to the foyer’s Moorish architecture, a highly polished Hepplewhite table held a pair of Dresden figurines while an old English landscape painting covered much of the side wall. The juxtaposition was a bit disconcerting but not unattractive.
Torie came down the stairs. She was dressed in a chartreuse tank dress with a black T-shirt. “Welcome to Marrakesh-on-Avon, Lady Emma.” She gave Kenny a swift kiss on the cheek. “Hey, bubba. The Munsters are waiting for us on the terrace. We’re dining al fresco.”
“Lucky us.”
She followed Kenny and Torie through a high-ceilinged living room decorated in eighteenth century furniture and chintz, along with an array of silver-framed photographs and hunting prints. A pair of Moorish doors with mosaic inlays opened onto a pleasantly shaded terrace paved in a herringbone pattern of pink brick edged with navy and rose tiles. Banquettes with curving arms had been built into the stucco walls and were cushioned with colorful paisley pillows. A large tiled table with a brass lantern at its center had been set for dinner. At one end of the terrace a very American-looking play yard held a dark-haired baby who grabbed the mesh sides and began squealing and pumping his legs as he saw Kenny.
“Hey, there, son!”
Emma didn’t need an introduction to identify the man who shot to his feet as Kenny’s father. He was a burlier version of his son, still handsome, but with coarser features and thick hair grizzled with gray. His too-hearty greeting and overly eager smile signaled a man who was unsure of himself. As he stepped forward to embrace his son, Emma sensed Kenny’s nearly invisible withdrawal. Although he permitted the embrace, he gave nothing back.
Emma saw right then that Kenny had not forgiven his father for the years of childhood neglect. She also sensed that his father very much wanted that forgiveness.
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