But she couldn’t regret it. She couldn’t even regret marrying Cal. At least they’d had some sort of love. They’d tried.
Alex had refused to even try. Not then. Not now. He still wanted a marriage on his terms, a marriage without love. And children had still been a deal breaker. He’d made that clear.
So now she met his accusation squarely and told him the honest truth. “Yes, I knew,” she agreed. “But mostly I knew you didn’t want children. I did what I had to do. I did the best that I could for my son.”
“Really? And you and dear Cal have such a spectacular marriage.” His tone mocked her, infuriated her.
Daisy had to fight her own inclination to look away. Even so she felt her face heat. “Cal is a great father.”
“And I wouldn’t have been?” His challenge was loud and clear. Mostly loud.
“Not if you didn’t love him! And be quiet. You’ll wake him up.”
Alex’s teeth came together with a snap. She could hear his harsh breathing, but he didn’t claim he would love Charlie. How could he? He’d already hardened his heart.
“Why would I think you’d be a good father to a child you didn’t want?” she said. “Cal was. Cal was there when he was born—”
“Because you damned well didn’t tell me!”
“Cal loves him,” she finished quietly.
“And I’ve never had a chance to!”
“You didn’t want one. You’d already made your choice. And when I found out I was pregnant, I had to make choices, too. I chose to do what I thought was best for Charlie. He needed love. He needed parents. A family. You didn’t want that. You said, ‘No entanglements, no hostages of fortune.’”
He had actually used those terms, and when she repeated them now, she saw him wince. “You said love hurt too much. You wanted nothing to do with it.”
They glared at each other. Daisy wrapped her arms across her chest and stared unblinkingly at him. She knew what he had said, and Alex would be lying if he denied it now.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t say anything at all. His jaw worked. His eyes reflected his inner turmoil. Seconds passed. Daisy could hear Murphy’s toenails clicking down the hallway as he came out from the kitchen to look at them inquiringly.
Alex didn’t notice. He was cracking his knuckles, then kneading the muscles at the back of his neck. He paced the room like an agitated animal trapped in a cage. Finally he flung himself down on the sofa and rubbed his hair until it stuck up all over his head. He dragged his palms down his face and stared at her bleakly over the top of them. “Hell.”
In a word, yes.
It was a hell she was already familiar with. The confusion, the anguish, the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t choices she had faced when she’d discovered she was pregnant. She remembered the hollowness she’d felt at Alex’s flat-out rejection of any sort of relationship. In the face of her hopes and dreams and—let’s face it—fantasies, he had been crystal clear.
She hadn’t even wanted to imagine what he would have said if she’d turned up on his doorstep and announced she was expecting his child. The very thought had made her blood run cold. Even now she shivered inside the thick robe she was wearing. Tucking her hands inside the opposite sleeves, she chaffed her arms briskly, trying to warm them.
Alex just sat there. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move, except for the rise and fall of his chest. His expression was grim as he stared across the room. He wasn’t looking at her now.
She wondered what he was seeing in his mind’s eye. His dying brother? His unknown son? The parents who had rejected him and each other? His life, as carefully designed as any building he’d ever planned, going down the drain?
She couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to.
Murphy stood between them, looking from one to the other as if wondering what they were doing in his living room in the middle of the night. Finally, accepting it as dogs always did, he curled up on his bed in front of the fireplace and put his head between his paws.
Alex looked up and met her gaze. “I want my son.”
“Want your …?” Daisy stared at him, breathless, as if he had punched her in the gut. “What does that mean? You can’t take him!” she blurted, anguished. “You don’t have any right!”
“I didn’t say I was going to take him.” Icy green eyes collided with hers. “But I’m not walking away, either.”
Daisy swallowed, tried to think, to fathom what Alex’s “not walking away” meant. For Charlie. For her. She didn’t have a clue.
She only knew what she must not let happen. “You’re not hurting him,” she said fiercely. “I won’t let you.”
Alex rubbed a hand over his hair. His brows drew down. “Why the hell would I want to hurt him?”
Daisy had started to pace, but she stopped and turned to face him. “I didn’t say you would intend to. But it could happen. He’s only four, Alex. He won’t understand. Besides, he has a father.”
Alex’s jaw tightened. “Cal.” He spat her ex-husband’s name. “Did you marry him because of Charlie?”
Daisy ran her tongue over her lips as she tried to decide how to answer it, how to be honest and fair to both Alex and to Cal.
“Did you?” Alex persisted when she didn’t reply.
She sat down in the armchair across from the sofa where he was leaning toward her, his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced. “Yes,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t as simple as that. I didn’t go find the nearest eligible man and ask him to marry me.”
“No?” He mocked her.
Daisy tried not to bristle. “No,” she said firmly. “Cal asked me.”
“And you jumped at it.”
In fact she’d been shocked. It had never occurred to her. They’d been friends. Nothing more. “I thought about it. He insisted we could make it work.”
“Sounds passionate,” Alex drawled.
“Cal and I had been friends for a long time. He said love wasn’t just a matter of passion. It was a matter of choice. I thought he was right. He wasn’t. But—” she met his mockery defiantly “—I love Cal.”
“You thought you loved me.”
“I did,” Daisy agreed. “But that was before I found out you didn’t give a damn.”
Alex stiffened as if she’d slapped him, then surged to his feet and loomed over her. “So you fell out of love with me and in love with What’s His Face in, what? Six weeks? Less?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No? So, what was it like?”
She knew he didn’t really want to hear the answer. He was angry and he just wanted to put her on the defensive, pick a fight.
But Daisy wasn’t buying into that. “Sit down,” she said, and pointed at the sofa when he didn’t move. “Sit down and I’ll tell you what it was like,” she repeated sharply.
His gaze narrowed on her, but when she kept pointing, he dropped onto the sofa, still staring at her unblinkingly.
When he had settled again, Daisy tucked her feet under her and tried to find words that would make him understand.
“I was hurt when you didn’t feel what I did that weekend,” she began.
Alex started to interrupt, but she held up a hand to stop him. “I know you think I shouldn’t have been. You think I presumed too much, And—” she took a steadying breath “—you were right. I presumed far too much. But I was young and foolish, and nothing like that had ever happened to me before.”
Alex’s mouth was a thin line, but he was listening at least.
Daisy twisted the tie of her bathrobe between her fingers, staring at it before lifting her gaze again. She shrugged and told him helplessly, “I fell in love with you. It was a mistake, I admit that.” She laced her fingers in her lap and dropped her gaze to stare at them. If she looked at him, she’d realize that she was actually saying these things—and she didn’t want to be saying any of them.
She wanted her life back—the way it had been before she had gone to the dinner with him tonight, the
way it had been before everything she’d worked so hard to build and hold together for the past five years had all come apart at the seams.
“When you walked out, I was humiliated,” she said. “I felt like an idiot. Sick.”
Alex’s jaw bunched. She knew he wanted to argue. He shifted uncomfortably. Daisy didn’t care. She was uncomfortable, too. They could suffer through this together.
“Weeks went by,” she continued. “Two, three, four—and instead of being able to put it behind me, I just felt sicker. And sicker. I started throwing up every morning. And that,” she said, lifting her eyes to look at him squarely now, “was when I realized that it wasn’t the memory of my idiocy that was making me sick. It was being pregnant.”
He flinched, then let out a slow breath.
“I didn’t even think about trying to find you,” she said levelly. “You’d made it quite clear you weren’t interested in any sort of involvement at all.”
“You could’ve —”
“No,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t.” She hesitated, then just told him the truth. “I was afraid you might want me to get an abortion.”
He stared at her, shocked. “How could you think—?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she demanded. “You didn’t want to care! I was afraid you’d say, ‘Get rid of it before anyone cares.’ Well, I cared. Even then I cared!” She could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Exactly,” Daisy said, understanding the desperation that made him say it. “I did a lot of praying. You can believe that. I was scared. I didn’t know how I was going to cope. I could keep working for Finn while I was pregnant, but after the baby came, I thought I might have to go back to Colorado and stay with my mother till I could work something out. And then—” she breathed deeply “—Cal proposed.”
“Your savior. He was just standing around, waiting in the wings, for exactly that moment?” Alex demanded bitterly. “Ready to take some other man’s woman?” Alex ground out. “His pregnant woman?”
“I was not your woman! And he was my friend. He is my friend.”
“And yet you couldn’t stay married to him,” Alex said derisively.
Her jaw tightened. “It didn’t work out.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“Why not?”
“That’s not your business.”
Alex scowled blackly. “He married you, then dumped you? It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.”
“He didn’t dump me! And it made sense,” Daisy insisted. “We hoped it would work. We wanted it to work. Cal’s a good man,” she said, looking over at the photo on the mantel. She stared at it for a long moment, then turned her gaze and met Alex’s, smiling a little sadly. “He’s been a good father.”
“But not Charlie’s only father!” Alex insisted.
“He knows he has a biological father. Well, as much as any four-year-old understands that. He knows he has two fathers. I figured I could explain you more to him as he got older.”
“I’ll explain myself to him now.”
“No,” Daisy said. “Not until I know how you feel.”
“You know damn well how I feel. I want my son!”
Their gazes locked, dueled. And in the silence of battle, the stairs creaked.
“Mommy?”
Daisy’s head jerked up to see Charlie peering over the bannister halfway down them. Alex stared up at him, too. Dear God, had he heard?
Daisy hurried up the stairs and scooped him up into her arms. “What is it, sweetie?”
“My arm hurts,” he whimpered, and tucked his head between her jaw and her shoulder. He clung to her, but his gaze was fixed on Alex who was slowly coming to his feet.
Daisy shifted so that her body blocked his view. “I know.” She kissed his hair and cuddled him close. “I wish it didn’t. I’ll take you back upstairs and sing to you. Okay?”
Charlie nodded. “Can Alex come, too?”
“Alex was just leaving.” But she turned and carried Charlie down the stairs. “We’ll just say good-night and see him out the front door.” She smiled into Alex’s suddenly narrowed gaze. “That will be nice, won’t it?” she said to her son.
Solemnly Charlie nodded. He looked at Alex.
Alex looked back with an intensity that made Daisy quiver.
Then Charlie lifted his head off her shoulder. “Night, Alex.”
Daisy held her breath as, slowly, Alex shrugged into his suit jacket and crossed the room, stopping mere inches from them. He didn’t look at her. He had eyes only for Charlie. To Daisy he looked dark, forbidding and positively scary.
But then he lifted a hand to touch Charlie’s cheek and his expression softened, a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Good night, son.”
CHAPTER TEN
IT was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Daisy half expected to find Alex standing on the stoop when she got up. But a peek out the curtains as soon as she got up proved that no one was there.
He didn’t call, either, though she jumped every time the phone rang.
Charlie, pushing his scrambled eggs around his plate, wanted to know what the matter was with her. “You’re all jumpy,” he remarked when a sound on the sidewalk made her flinch.
“Nothing’s the matter.” Daisy turned away, busying herself putting the dishes in the dishwasher. “Izzy said she and the boys were coming by.”
Izzy’s had been the first phone call she’d got this morning.
“How is he?” her friend had demanded even before Daisy had dragged herself out of bed.
“Still asleep,” Daisy reported. In fact he was asleep on the other side of her bed. She’d got him back to sleep after Alex had finally left, but he’d awakened and come into her room again at five-thirty. Barely able to pry her eyes open, Daisy had taken the easy way out and let him clamber into bed with her. Fortunately he’d gone straight back to sleep, and when Izzy had rung at eight, he was still dead to the world.
“Sorry. We’ve been up for hours thinking about him.”
“He’s going to be fine,” Daisy assured her. At least his arm was. How his life was going to change now that Alex was going to be part of it, she didn’t know. But at least Alex had been kind last night. He’d actually behaved—toward Charlie—very well. Maybe, given that, he would be fine. And kids were resilient.
It was her own resilience Daisy was worried about.
How was she going to deal with Alexandros Antonides in her life?
She didn’t want to think about it. So when Izzy asked if they could come and see Charlie in the afternoon, Daisy said yes without hesitation. The distraction would do them both good.
By midafternoon with no Rip and no Crash, Charlie was getting restless. Daisy had watched a Disney DVD with him, then read him a couple of dozen picture books. She tried unsuccessfully to talk him into a nap.
“I’m too big for naps,” he told her. “An’ I’m not tired.”
No, just cranky. She had a photo shoot to finish editing before tomorrow afternoon. So she brought her laptop down to the living room and worked on it there while Charlie played with his cars and his Legos on the floor.
“Maybe that Alex will come back,” he said hopefully, looking up from his cars.
“Mmm.” Daisy didn’t encourage that line of thinking. A man who had been as adamant as Alex had been about not wanting children might have had a brief change of heart when faced with a little boy who looked very much like his beloved deceased brother.
But having a son was a huge responsibility. And it wasn’t one that you could just pick up and put down as the whim struck you. Alex wasn’t a fool. He had to realize that. It was possible that Alex had gone home in the early hours of the morning, thought about the implications of having a son, and come to the conclusion that he’d made the right decision five years ago. Whatever he decided, Daisy was determined that she wouldn’t let him upset Charlie’s life to suit himself.
S
he didn’t have time to think about it more because finally the doorbell rang.
“They’re here!” Charlie scrambled up from the floor and raced to open the door.
Daisy unlocked the door, and Charlie tugged it open.
Rip MacCauley took one look at Charlie’s cast and said, “Oh, wow. Your cast is blue? That’s cool.”
The first smile of the day flickered across Charlie’s face.
“You think?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rip said, coming in and taking off his jacket. “I only ever had a white one.”
“Mine was purple when I broke my ankle,” Crash announced. “Here. This is for you.” He thrust a package wrapped in newspaper comics into Charlie’s hand.
“A little something to keep him busy,” Izzy told Daisy as the boys headed instinctively for the cars and the Legos on the floor and she followed Daisy into the kitchen. “Rip and Crash have been really worried. They seem to think they’re indestructible, but when Charlie got hurt, they were, like, ‘Oh, no! What if he dies?’ They felt very responsible. As well they should, Finn says.”
“Finn being such a pattern card of model behavior.” Daisy grinned.
Izzy laughed. “That’s what I said.” She perched on a bar stool while Daisy made them coffee. “I was amazed when Finn got home so quickly last night. Why didn’t you let him stay for a bit and help you with Charlie?”
“No point. We were fine.” And she was very glad he hadn’t been there to witness the meeting of Alex and his son.
“I’m sorry we interrupted your evening. How was the Plaza? Tell all.” Izzy leaned forward eagerly.
It took Daisy a moment to even begin to remember the details, so much had happened in the meantime. “It was … fine,” she said vaguely. “The Plaza is elegant, of course. The dinner was wonderful,” she added dutifully, because “fine” wasn’t going to satisfy Izzy.
“And the dress?”
“It was fantastic.”
“Knocked his socks off?” Izzy’s eyes were bright.
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