“He has a broken arm.”
“A broken arm?” Alex almost laughed with relief at the same time he felt a surge of annoyance. “All this hysteria for a broken arm?”
“I’m not hysterical!” Daisy said indignantly. There was color in her cheeks again.
He couldn’t help grinning. “No? Taking a phone call in the middle of a dance? Rushing out of the hotel? For a broken arm?”
“I apologized,” Daisy said tightly. She hugged her arms across her chest. “You didn’t have to come. I certainly didn’t invite you!”
“I thought he might be dying. You looked devastated. I didn’t want you to have to face it alone.”
Something flickered across her features. She hesitated for a moment, as if she was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Then she nodded. “That was kind of you. Thank you. But it really wasn’t necessary.” She straightened, pulled her arm out of his grasp, and gave him what he supposed was a dismissive smile. “It will be fine. He will be. I just … Maybe I overreacted. Don’t worry. No one’s going to die. Now, please excuse me.” She tried to slip around him.
But Alex was in no mood to be dismissed and he blocked her way. “Who is he, Daisy?”
She didn’t answer. He didn’t think she was going to. But then a nurse poked her head out of the examination room. “Mrs. Connolly, Charlie’s asking for you. Doctor is going to put the cast on now.”
Once more Daisy started to move away, but Alex caught her arm. “He’s asking for you?” he said mockingly. “To what? Hold his hand?”
Her teeth came together. Her eyes flashed. “Maybe. He’s a little boy,” she snapped, her eyes flashing anger. “He’s my son.”
Her son? Daisy had a son?
But before he could do more than reel at her words, Daisy had jerked her arm away, cut around him and stalked back into the examination room. The door shut behind her with a resounding bang.
A dozen people stopped talking and looked around in surprise.
Alex felt as if he’d been punched. Where the hell did she get a son?
Well, of course, he supposed she’d got the boy the time-honored way—she and her ex. But why hadn’t she mentioned him?
Not that it was his business. But still …
Alex glared at all the people who were still murmuring and staring at him as if it were his fault she’d stormed away and slammed the door. He wouldn’t have minded slamming one or two himself. Instead he stalked over to an empty chair by the windows and flung himself down.
He didn’t know how long he waited. Long enough to have plenty of second thoughts. Daisy wasn’t going to be happy to come out and find that he had waited. She’d made that perfectly clear.
And did he really want to meet Daisy’s child?
It was annoying enough to think that she had professed to love him, then turned around and married someone else. To be honest, Alex had felt a certain satisfaction knowing her rebound marriage hadn’t lasted.
That it had resulted in a child was somehow disconcerting.
A child. Charlie.
Alex tried to imagine a little boy who looked like Daisy. Would he have her mischievous grin, a dimple in one cheek, freckles across his nose and a mop of honey-colored hair?
Or would the boy look like her ex-husband? Was the ex holding Charlie’s other hand in the exam room with them now? Alex straightened in the chair, scowling at the thought.
Maybe he was going to be sitting here when all three of them came out of the room together. And wouldn’t that be awkward as hell?
The noise of a crying baby, a croupy cough, a parent and teenager arguing washed right over him. Alex paid no attention. So it would be awkward. So what? He’d walked out on her and their child, hadn’t he?
Alex almost hoped the S.O.B. was here. He’d like to see what was so wonderful that Daisy had ever married him. Scowling, he shifted irritably in the chair, then looked up to see Daisy coming out of the examining room.
On her hip was a little boy with a mop of brownish-blonde hair and one arm in a bright blue cast. He’d expected a two-or three-year-old. But this boy looked bigger. Alex leaned forward, studying him intently. But he couldn’t see much. There were people in the way.
Daisy was listening to the nurse. They were standing just outside the exam room door. The boy was listening, too. Then he turned his head to look out at the waiting room.
Alex’s breath caught. His heart seemed to stutter even as he stared.
Charlie’s jaw was squarer than Daisy’s, his lower lip fuller, his nose a little sharper, his cheekbones higher. His eyes weren’t blue, they were green.
He didn’t really resemble Daisy at all. Even his hair was actually a deeper gold than Daisy’s. But Alex knew exactly who he was. He had known another boy with those eyes, that jaw, whose hair had been exactly that color.
His brother. Vassilios.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR a moment Alex couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Could only stare.
And understand the implication. It hit him like a fist to the gut.
He moved on automatic pilot, putting himself between Daisy and the door. And all the while, he couldn’t take his eyes off the child.
The boy was Vass all over again. Alex’s heart squeezed in his chest. His throat tightened. He couldn’t swallow. He barely had a toehold on his composure when Daisy finished talking to the nurse and turned—and saw him.
She stopped, rooted right where she was.
Their eyes locked and he watched her color fade. Her lips parted and trembled. Her arms tightened around the boy in her arms and she glanced around as if looking for another way out.
Bad luck, Daze, Alex thought grimly. Nowhere to go but through me.
She understood that, for a second later she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and walked straight toward him.
“I told you that you didn’t need to wait.”
Alex felt a muscle in his temple tick. He swallowed, seeking words. There were none. Only a well of pain.
How could you? His eyes asked her. The boy—his son!—was close enough to reach out and touch.
He balled his fingers into fists, every fiber of his being wanted to reach out to the little boy, to take him in his arms and never let him go. But the boy didn’t know, wouldn’t understand. Even Daisy seemed to think he was behaving oddly.
“Are you all right?” she asked when he didn’t reply.
She had no idea. Didn’t realize what he knew. Of course, she wouldn’t. She had no idea Charlie could’ve been Vass’s clone. Alex managed a curt nod. “Fine.” Poleaxed, in truth.
“Good.” She smiled briefly. “It was kind of you to bother,” she said. “But not necessary.”
It was necessary. Alex knew that down to his toes. He just looked at her. For a moment neither of them spoke, neither moved.
“Mommy.”
Daisy shifted at the sound of the small plaintive voice. She hugged the little boy close. “This is Charlie,” she said. “Charlie, this is Mr. Antonides.”
Your father.
God, how he wanted to say the words. He didn’t. He just studied the boy up close. His cheeks were fuller than Vass’s had been. But at that age, maybe his brother had had round cheeks, too. Alex would have been too young to recall. But Charlie had the same freckles across his nose that Vass had had, the same long lashes.
“I got a brok’n arm,” the boy told him in a froggy little voice.
Alex nodded and met his chocolate gaze. “Yeah, I see that you do.”
Daisy shifted under the boy’s weight. “I need to get him home. Thank you. I’m sorry that the evening ended this way.”
I’m not. Alex didn’t say that, either. He dragged his gaze away from the boy long enough to meet hers. It all made sense now—her distance, her coolness, her determination to shut him out.
But he wasn’t out any longer—and he had no intention of ever being out of this child’s life again.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s
get you into a cab.” He stepped back to let Daisy go through the door. It was late, well after midnight, and the snow was still falling. Charlie couldn’t put his arm in his jacket, and Daisy was trying to pull it more closely around his shoulders.
“Let me.” Alex took the boy’s puffy red down jacket and settled it around small bony shoulders. His hands trembled as he brushed them over him, then tucked the jacket close between Charlie’s body and his mother’s. “There you go.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded hoarse.
“Thank you.” Daisy flicked him a quick smile.
There were no taxis right outside. So he strode off to the corner to flag one down. He half expected Daisy to have vanished by the time he got back with it. But sanity must have prevailed. Either that or she was too shattered by the events of the evening to pull a disappearing act.
Alex opened the door to the taxi. “After you. I’ll take him.” He held out his arms.
“I can manage.” She tried to get in with the boy in her arms, but she nearly lost her balance, and Alex scooped him away.
And the moment the boy’s solid body settled in his arms, Alex felt something in him change. Something strong and protective took root, dug in. Instinctively he moved his face closer to the boy’s soft hair, drawing in the scent of antiseptic, bubble-gum shampoo, laundry soap and earthy little boy.
His breath caught, his grip tightened.
“I can take him now.” Daisy’s hollow-eyed gaze locked with Alex’s as she held out her arms to the little boy.
Slowly, carefully—reluctantly—Alex settled him on the seat next to her. Then, not giving her a chance to tell him he didn’t need to come along, he slid into the backseat as well and shut the door.
There was silence except for the taxi’s public service babbling. The car didn’t move.
“You’ll have to tell him where we’re going,” Alex said at last. “I don’t know.”
Daisy hesitated for a split second, then in a low voice gave the cab driver the address. It was the same address as her office.
As the cab lurched forward, he narrowed his gaze at her. Daisy kept hers focused straight ahead. Charlie huddled between them. Alex could feel the little boy’s bony shoulder pressed against his arm. He angled his gaze down to see the top of the boy’s head, the burnished gold of his hair, the sharp little nose and what looked like a stubborn chin. Looking at him, Alex felt his throat tighten with so many emotions he couldn’t name them all.
Charlie.
His son.
Alex turned the notion over in his mind. Tested it. Tasted it. Wrapped his entire being around it. Then he lifted his gaze and looked over the top of Charlie’s head at the woman who hadn’t even bothered to tell him and felt his whole body stiffen with anger.
As if he were aware of something wrong, Charlie stiffened, too. He edged closer under his mother’s arm.
Was he scared? Certainly he sensed something was amiss. Kids could do that, Alex remembered. He certainly had.
He’d read his parents’ body language for years. He had sensed their worry about Vass, even when they’d tried to say everything would be fine. He’d felt their pain, their hurt at his brother’s illness. He’d felt, without needing words, their emotional withdrawal.
He didn’t blame them. His brother had been his idol. His hero. He knew as well as they had that Vass was the best person in the world. And he instinctively felt what they felt: that if they had to lose one of their sons, it should not have been Vass.
Moody, temperamental, fidgety, less-than-perfect Alex was the one who should have died.
Of course no one said so. No one had to. Kids could read body language. They could hear the feelings in the silences—as Charlie could no doubt hear his now.
Consciously Alex relaxed his body and stopped glaring at Daisy. Instead he shifted slightly away so that he could look down at Charlie more easily.
“I’m not Mr. Antonides. I’m Alex,” he said.
The boy flicked a quick glance up at him and dipped his head in acknowledgment.
“Want to shake left hands?” Alex asked.
Charlie’s gaze lifted again to meet his. Alex could feel Daisy’s eyes on him, as well. Wary, suspicious. Charlie hesitated a moment, then nodded and stuck out his left hand. Small fingers gripped his.
And Alex knew that this first mutual touch was momentous, and that the feel of that small warm hand in his was a memory he would carry with him to his grave.
“I broke my arm once, too,” he told the boy, “when I was ten.”
“Did you jump off a bunk bed?”
So that was what Charlie had done. Alex smiled and shook his head. “I was climbing some cliffs. One crumbled and I fell.”
If he had been on the cliffs near their Santorini home, he didn’t think it would have happened. He knew those cliffs like he knew the inside of his bedroom. He and Vass had climbed them their whole lives.
But they hadn’t been in Santorini. They had been at a place they were renting in Athens while Vass was in the hospital for treatments. Alex had hated it there, hated the hospital, hated the house, hated having to play by himself all the time because Vass was too ill to do anything.
And he’d only made things worse when he fell.
“You don’t think!” his mother had raged. “You never think!”
“You should be glad it hurts,” his father had said sternly. “Maybe you will not be so inconsiderate again.”
“I wish I’d been with you,” Vass had whispered when Alex finally got to see him. His brother’s eyes had had dark circles under them. But they had still glittered with urgency and desire.
And Alex had said fervently, “Me, too.”
Now, trying to push aside the painful memory, he smiled at the little boy who was looking up at him with Vass’s eyes. “Did you break yours jumping from a bunk?”
“I was tryin’ to get to the dresser like Rip does.”
“Who’s Rip?” Whoever he was, Alex liked his name.
“One of Finn and Izzy MacCauley’s boys,” Daisy said. “Rip is Charlie’s hero. He tries to do whatever Rip does, in this case, apparently, to get around the house without touching the floor,” she said despairingly.
Alex grinned. “I used to do that, too.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. “You did?”
“It’s something all boys do?” Daisy looked dismayed.
“It’s a challenge,” Alex told her. “Boys like challenges. How old is Rip?”
“Almost twelve,” Daisy said. They were speeding down Central Park West. There was little traffic now and they were hitting the lights. It would be a matter of minutes until they were at Daisy’s office.
“That explains it,” Alex told the little boy. “You’ve just got to get bigger.”
“Mom says I can’t do it again.”
Daisy looked mulish. “I don’t want him killing himself.”
“He won’t,” Alex said. He smiled at Charlie. “You look like a pretty tough guy.”
The boy’s head bobbed. “I am. My dad says so.”
“Your dad?” Alex lifted his gaze to look from Charlie to Daisy. “His dad?” he said to her.
“His dad.” Daisy’s look was even more mulish and her tone even firmer than before. “My ex-husband. Cal.”
Alex’s jaw tightened at the lie. He stared at her.
And just as if she were telling God’s own truth, Daisy stared defiantly back. Their gazes were still locked when the cab turned the corner on Daisy’s street and pulled up midblock in front of her place. He understood it was more than her office now. She damned well lived here, too.
“Here’s where we get out,” Daisy said briskly. She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out money for the cab.
“I’m paying,” Alex said flatly.
Daisy opened her mouth as if to protest, but then shrugged. “Thank you.”
He paid the driver, then opened the door and got out, reaching back in and lifting Charlie carefully up into his a
rms, settling him against his hip. Charlie looped an arm over his shoulder.
Daisy scrambled out and looked disconcerted to see the boy in Alex’s arms and not standing on the sidewalk where she had apparently expected to see him.
Alex nodded toward the building. “After you.”
He wasn’t surprised when Daisy fished a key out of her pocket and, instead of going up the stoop, led the way through a wrought-iron gate and down the steps to the door below. Her movements were jerky as she fumbled the key, but finally unlocked the outer door and pushed it open, then did the same with the lock on the front door, and turned to hold out her arms for her son.
Still carrying Charlie, Alex pushed straight past her into a tiny foyer filled with jackets and boots and roller skates and the smallest bicycle he’d ever seen.
“Yours?” he asked Charlie.
The boy’s head nodded against Alex’s shoulder.
“Can you ride it?”
Another nod, this one firmer than the last.
“Good for you. I had a bike when I was your age.” Alex smiled. Bikes had been his thing—never Vass’s. And already Charlie rode one. So there was that bit of himself in his son. “We’ll have to go riding.”
“He has a broken arm,” Daisy said sharply.
“Not now.” Alex turned and faced her. “There will be time.” He watched that register in her brain before he said to Charlie, “Plenty of time.”
“Alex,” Daisy protested faintly.
He turned his stare back on her until her gaze slid away.
“You got a bike?” Charlie asked, interested.
“Yep. I race bikes.”
Charlie looked fascinated. Daisy looked dismayed. She shook her head, as if resisting everything. Then quickly and deliberately she stripped off her coat and hung it on one of the hooks in the foyer and crossed the room, holding out her arms.
“Give him to me. He needs to get ready for bed. Now.”
Alex wanted to argue. Wanted to defy her, hang on to his son. But for all that he was furious with Daisy, none of it was Charlie’s fault. But his jaw was tight, his whole body felt rigid as he loosed his grip and eased the boy into his mother’s arms. He took special care not to jar Charlie’s arm. And once he’d let go, he smoothed a hand over Charlie’s hair, letting it linger.
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