Breathless Innocence

by Lisa Jackson

  He’d had time to pull himself together, she realized, and they’d talked several times on the phone—short, one-sided conversations where she’d explained what he would have to do once he came to the city. He’d accepted her instructions with only quick questions and no arguments.

  She opened the door. “Turner,” she said, and hated the breathless quality in her voice. “Come in. Are you finished at the hospital?”

  “For now. There was some sort of delay, then it took longer than they thought. The doctor will call us both when the results are in.” He glanced at the exterior of the house. “Had a little trouble finding this place.”

  “Well, you made it.” His gaze touched hers and her lungs seemed tight. She held the door open for him and he crossed the threshold slowly, his gaze moving up the polished walnut banister, over the gleaming wainscoting and wallpaper, resting for a second on one piece of art or another, before traveling to the Oriental carpets that covered the hardwood floors.

  She’d never been self-conscious of her house before, but under his silent, seemingly condemning stare, the baskets filled with cut flowers and live plants seemed frivolous, the matching overstuffed furniture appeared impractical, the shining brass fixtures ostentatious.

  “Adam’s in his room.”

  “Asleep?”

  “Not yet. I just put him down. I knew you were coming, but it was so late…” Her words trailed off and she licked her lips nervously. Lord, this was awkward. “Come on up.” She led him up another flight of stairs and pushed open the door to Adam’s room. The bedside lamp was still lit. Adam lay under a down comforter, his light brown hair sticking at odd angles. He was breathing loudly, nearly snoring, and Heather guessed he was pretending to be asleep. His red bedspread matched the curtains surrounding his bay window and contrasted to the border of wallpaper that rimmed the top of his walls. A built-in desk and bookcase housed toys, books, blocks and an ant farm. “Adam? Honey, are you awake?” He snored loudly as she crossed the room and touched his shoulder.

  Two bright eyes flew open and he giggled. “I tricked you!”

  “You sure did.” As Heather sat on the edge of the bed, she caught a glimpse of Turner from the corner of her eye. Her heart felt as if it would break. Here they were, a family, at least in biological terms, together for the first time. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Adam shoved himself up from his covers and cocked his head up to see the big man standing behind his mother. “Who’re you?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  For once Turner didn’t have a quick comment. He glanced at Heather, who shook her head ever so slightly, and he extended his hand to Adam’s. “Turner Brooks. I…I knew your mother a long time ago.” Slowly he released his son’s hand.

  Heather’s throat swelled shut. She had to blink back unnecessary tears. “There’s a chance Mr. Brooks—”

  “Turner, for now,” he cut in.

  Heather stiffened. “There’s a chance Turner might be able to help us when you go to the hospital.”

  “I hate the hospital!” Adam said firmly.

  “You and me both.” For the first time, Turner grinned. “They stuck a needle in me this long,” he said, spreading his hands wide.

  “Turner!”

  “They did?” Adam was suitably impressed.

  “Mr. Brooks tends to exaggerate,” she said, though Adam’s eyes gleamed.

  “Only a little bit,” Turner said. He sat on the edge of the bed and the mattress creaked a little. “When you get the okay from the doctor, your mama promised that you can come visit me at my ranch. Would you like that?”

  “A ranch? You got a ranch? With horses and tractors and cows and Indians and—”

  “No Indians,” Turner said. “The rest comes with the place.”

  Adam’s eyebrows drew together and he looked at his mother. “We goin’ on a vacation?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Is Daddy coming?”

  Heather’s heart nearly stopped. She noticed Turner stiffen and a muscle suddenly came to life, working reflexively in his jaw. “No, honey. This time it’ll just be you and me.”

  Adam glanced warily at Turner, as if for the first time suspecting a threat to his mother’s affection. “When?”

  Heather stole a quick look at Turner. “As soon as Dr. Thurmon says it’s okay.”

  “I hate the doctor.”

  Turner ruffled the boy’s fine hair. “The doctor’s a good guy. He’s gonna help us all.”

  Adam yawned.

  “You’d better go to sleep,” Heather suggested. She didn’t know just how much of this tender scene she could take. Turner wasn’t her husband, he’d never met Adam before in his life, and she was beginning to feel maudlin, as if this were some great reunion.

  “I’m not tired,” Adam argued, though he tried vainly to swallow another yawn and his eyelids drooped. “Read me a story.”

  “Honey, it’s late and—”

  “Oh, pleeease!”

  “I’ll tell you a story,” Turner offered, and Heather’s throat turned to cotton. Turner’s campaign to win his son was starting already.

  “It’s late. I don’t think—”

  “It’ll be all right,” Turner said with a quiet authority that caused fear to settle in her heart. He sat on the edge of the bed looking too tall, too ranch-tough, too damned cynical to be thinking of bedtime stories.

  “Tell me about the Indians!”

  “I already told you there aren’t any Indians at the ranch, and besides, I think the term is Native American. So unless you want to get scalped—”

  “Turner!” Heather cut in again.

  “Just joking.”

  “He’s only five, for crying out loud!”

  Turner clucked his tongue and smiled at Adam. “What’s wrong with your mom? No sense of humor?”

  “I have—”

  “Tell me! Tell me!” Adam demanded, bouncing on the bed.

  This was going from bad to worse and quickly. Heather tried to intervene, but Turner grabbed hold of her hand and stared up into her eyes. “It’s all right,” he said calmly, though his voice sounded deeper than she remembered. Her pulse jumped where his fingertips brushed her wrist. “The boy and I need to talk.”

  Her heart tore a little. “But—”

  “But nothing.” The fingers around her hand tightened ever so slightly and she was reminded of the power he had over her. Turner’s gaze slid back to his son. “How about if I told you about the wild horses I’ve ridden?”

  Adam’s eyes rounded. “Wild ones? Really?”

  “Broncos, mustangs, you name it!” Heather heard the ring of pride in his voice.

  “No way,” Adam said, but his face was filled with silent adoration.

  “Yes way.” Turner smiled at his boy and Heather’s insides shredded. When Turner glanced back at her, she received the unspoken message. “I remember one particularly wild bronco named Daredevil. Coal black. Eyes that were nearly red, he was so mean.”

  “Turner, please!” she cut in, shaking her head. “Horses aren’t mean.”

  “You’ve never tried to tame Gargoyle,” he replied with a lopsided grin, then shrugged. “Well, your mom’s right. Most horses aren’t mean, but old Daredevil, he had the worst reputation on the rodeo circuit. No one wanted to ride him. But I didn’t have a choice, when they drew my number in Pendleton that year, I ended up on Daredevil.”

  “Tell me! Tell me!” Adam said, wiggling up to a sitting position, all thoughts of sleep driven from his mind.

  Heather started to protest. “This wasn’t the idea—”

  “Sure it was,” Turner replied, his face etched in stone. “This was all part of the bargain. Remember? I
go through with the tests and you—”

  “Scaring Adam wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “I’m not scared!” Adam protested, his brow furrowing in disgust.

  “Leave us alone, Heather. The boy wants a bedtime story.”

  The small of her back turned to ice at the warning hovering in the air. With a few simple words he could destroy her entire life. All he had to do was tell Adam he was his father. Everything she’d worked so hard for would crumble and she would be the bad guy—the creator of the big lie.

  “Just remember, he’s only five!” Her heart heavy, she walked out of the room with leaden footsteps. A thousand emotions knifed through her. This was only fair, one part of her screamed. Turner deserved to know his boy and Adam had the right to know his father. There was also Turner’s sacrifice to consider. He’d agreed to leave his ranch, come to San Francisco and help her—perhaps save the life of a boy he’d never known existed.

  And yet she was petrified. Afraid that Turner, with his ranch and horses and tales of wild West stories would seduce her son from her. Though Adam had been raised with anything money could buy, he wasn’t always happy and Heather knew she spoiled him rotten. Ever since Adam had been born and Dennis’s reaction to his “son” hadn’t been as enthusiastic as he’d promised, Heather had overcompensated, indulging the boy. And then the first signs of his illness and the horrid diagnosis. She’d been alone then. Dennis had lost his fascination with her.

  “I’m sorry, Heather,” Dennis had apologized, looking weak, his dark eyes frightened. “I just didn’t figure on this…. I don’t know what to do.”

  “He needs you now,” Heather had told him, and Dennis had nodded, but never once picked up the boy he’d claimed to be his son. Almost as if he were afraid he’d catch the disease, Dennis had become more and more absent. They were separated soon after the diagnosis, divorced not long after. Dennis hadn’t even fought her for custody. In fact, he’d given her the house, her car and the gallery just to end it quickly.

  As anxious as he’d been to marry six years before, he’d been even more anxious to divorce. He’d found someone else, someone less complicated, someone without a sick child.

  She heard the scrape of Turner’s boot as he entered the room, and when she turned to face him, she found a new determination in his gaze. “This can’t go on, you know.”

  “What can’t?” she asked, hoping to sound naive, when she knew with a certain dread what was coming. Her hands trembled a little and she motioned him into the living room. Deciding that playing coy with Turner had never been a good idea, she admitted, “You don’t have to explain—I know.” She felt as cold as ice as she stared out the window to the winking lights of the city and the dark, reflective waters of the bay. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she told herself that it would be all right. That as long as Adam was healthy, nothing else mattered. That it was important for the boy to have a father—a man he could look up to, a man who would love him. But still she was frightened. “What do you want, Turner?” she asked again, in a voice that seemed detached from her body. A few cars passed on the street below the window, their headlights causing an uneven illumination in the room.

  “After this is over, I want to be part of his life.”

  “How big a part?” She reached for a lamp switch, but Turner’s hand stayed hers.

  “I want to be his father.”

  “You are—”

  “I mean day-to-day, Heather. Every day.”

  “But that’s impossible,” she said, her throat catching.

  “Not if you move to Gold Creek.”

  She felt as if she’d stopped breathing. Move to Gold Creek? Oh, Lord. She couldn’t speak for a minute, but finally found her tongue. “Are you out of your mind?” She whirled on him and saw that his eyes were dark and serious. “Are you really suggesting that…” Her voice failed her. He wasn’t kidding. The look on his face was deadly serious, and Heather was suddenly very frightened. She’d known he’d demand partial custody, but she’d thought he’d only want a few weeks in the summer—maybe Christmas vacation and those would be hard enough to give up—but this, this insane plan for her to move back to the small town where she’d been raised… It was impossible. “I’d die in Gold Creek.”

  “Adam would be closer to me.”

  “Until a few days ago, you didn’t even know you had a son and now—”

  “Yes, and now I want him. And I’ll do anything, got it? I mean anything to have him close.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she whispered.

  “Oh, but I am, Heather,” he said with a deadly calm that drove a stake of desperation into her heart.

  The room was dark, and now the shadows seemed to envelop them. “You can’t walk into this house and turn my life upside down just because—”

  “—because I found out I have a son. Because for six years we’ve both been living a lie? Because I’ve discovered that my kid, my sick kid, is the most important thing in my life?” His hands were suddenly on her forearms, gripped in the fury that consumed him. “You walked into my barn and turned my life inside out, lady.”

  “You left me!”

  “I never said I’d stay.”

  “Then don’t start interfering now.”

  His eyes slitted and the hands upon her forearms clenched harder. “This isn’t about sex. This isn’t about love. This is about our child. And if you have some lame-brain notion that I’ll do my part as a biological parent, donate whatever it is Adam needs and then just leave you alone until you have another crisis, guess again. I’m here for the duration, Heather, and you’d better get used to that idea.”

  “I—I know,” she said, her throat catching. “But don’t think you can start bossing me around, Turner. You’re not my husband!”

  As soon as she’d said the words, she wished she could call them back.

  Turner’s eyes flashed fire.

  A knot formed in her throat, but she wasn’t going to break down. She had shed her tears for Turner a long time ago and she was through. Wrenching free of his grasp, she turned on the switch to the gas starter in the fireplace and struck a match. Immediately the room was lighter, the gas flames flickering blue and yellow against an oak log. She felt him watching her. Nervous, she asked if he wanted a drink and when he declined, she reached into a liquor cabinet, found an old bottle of bourbon and poured them each a splash in the bottom of two glasses. “You may not need a drink, but I think I do,” she said, handing him one of the glasses.

  “No one needs a drink.”

  “Okay, so I want one.” She sipped the hard liquor, and it burned the back of her throat, scorching all the way to her stomach. With a hiss and crackle, the moss on the oak log caught fire and sent out an orange glow throughout the room.

  Turner sipped his drink, but his face muscles didn’t relax and he looked out of place, a range-hard cowboy caught in a frivolous living room filled with women’s art and furniture. “I think you’d better explain a few things,” he said quietly.

  “Like what?”

  “How about starting at the beginning. Tell me why you married Leonetti. Why you didn’t contact me.”

  She wanted to scream at him, to tell him to leave them both alone, that she didn’t need this emotional torture, but she knew in her heart she was wrong. Adam needed him, and a deep, traitorous part of her needed him, too.

  Unsteady at that realization, Heather sat on the wide windowseat, her knees tucked up beneath her chin, her drink forgotten. She began to tell him everything she could remember. Turner lowered himself to the floor, propped his back against the couch and stretched his legs toward the fire.

  And for the next hour and a half, Heather explained about her realization that she was pregnant, of her calls to Mazie and Zeke at the Lazy K, of Dennis’s a
nger, then acceptance. “Believe it or not, he wasn’t a monster. He was obsessed with me back then, though I really don’t know why, I guess because I was the only girl who’d ever said no to him and because I wasn’t acceptable to his parents. They’d heard the gossip about my family, knew my sister’s reputation was destroyed. Then there was the scandal with my dad when he married a woman younger than either of his daughters. We Tremonts weren’t exactly blue bloods. So Dennis’s folks were distraught to say the least. They were hoping he’d find some nice girl in college whose family was from ‘old money.’” She laughed a little when she remembered the horror that the elder Leonettis had expressed at their son’s choice of wife. “I wasn’t even from ‘new money.’ Dennis’s father offered to buy me out, but Dennis got wind of it and by the end of the week we’d eloped.”

  “How do they feel about Adam?” Turner asked, a possessive flame leaping in his eyes as he swirled his drink and watched the fire play in the amber liquor.

  “Ambivalent, I guess. I would’ve thought they would have been all over the Leonetti heir, but, though they were never unkind to him, Adam just wasn’t all that interesting to either of them. I expected some kind of custodial fight when we were getting divorced, but by then Dennis didn’t want any part of Adam and his folks never once called him. My guess is that Dennis told them the truth—that Adam doesn’t have a drop of Leonetti blood in him.”

  “So Dennis has given up all his parental rights?”

  “He knew that sooner or later, with Adam’s condition, the truth would bear out.”

  “So just because he didn’t sire the kid, suddenly Adam’s not good enough! Son of a bitch, what a great guy!” Turner’s rage twisted his handsome features, making him seem fierce and dangerous. “You really know how to pick ’em, don’t ya?”

  “That I do,” she replied, and the room grew quiet except for the soft hiss of the fire.

  She twirled her drink in her hands, watched the reflections of the flames against the amber liquor. “We aren’t here to discuss Dennis.” She took another sip of bourbon and felt the first tingle of warmth run through her blood. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Adam, but as far as my marriage is concerned, all you need to know is that it’s over and Dennis doesn’t have much interest in my son.”