by Lois Richer
“Which is exactly the scene you always wanted,” Gabe muttered, peering at her. “Your ideal was always this happy home scenario, wasn’t it? I can still hear you talking about how wonderful families were. I thought it was just a line.”
And I can still feel how much you didn’t want that. Blair searched for some underlying meaning to his words, but could find nothing to show he was goading her.
“Yes, well, we all have to grow up sometime. That isn’t going to happen for me. I’ve got Mac, Willie, Albert and Daniel to look after. I’ve learned to deal with my reality. The truth is, raising a child takes a lot out of you. I’m not sure I could handle any more of them.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if there were two of us parenting? I could take over sometimes when you needed a break. Or vice versa. We could share our son.”
It felt funny to hear him call Daniel that. And yet, Gabe was his father. He owed Daniel.
“We don’t have to be married for you to be involved in his life,” she offered, turning her back as she clicked off the switch controlling the wax warmer and began boxing already completed sets of candles. Surely she couldn’t mess that up. “If you’re so determined to stay here, fine. Build your house. Live in it. You can see Daniel, be around for him. But his home will always be with me.”
“Why are you so dead set against marriage? Once you would have jumped at the chance.” He stood opposite her, his hands mimicking her movements as he, too, boxed candles.
“I’m not against marriage, when it happens for the right reasons. You’re mixing those reasons up just like you’re mixing these orders up. You don’t know the formula.” She quickly redid the boxes he’d finished.
She wouldn’t give in to the anger, wouldn’t talk about the burn of distrust inside that still, after all these years, ate away at her. Let him think what he liked, she wasn’t going to drag herself through it all again. She’d learned her lesson, learned it well.
Forgive and forget, Mac said. Very well. It had cost her dearly, but she’d forgiven Gabe. She had! But Blair Delaney wasn’t so stupid that she would ever forget the shame or the sense of betrayal he’d left her with. Not ever.
Gabe stood, staring at her with an odd questioning look.
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
“The formula for marriage?” A twisted smile tugged at his mouth. “You always did bring chemistry into everything.”
His wink reminded her of the past they’d once shared. A past she didn’t want to remember. She shook it off like a nasty pest and focused on his next words.
“What reason could be more right than providing a home for a child?” His voice remained calmly reasonable.
Blair sighed, then turned and walked toward her office. She wasn’t going to get anything done as long as he was here. At least she could sit down for a moment, even if she couldn’t relax.
One glance told her that Gabe had followed. He folded himself onto one of her small, ratty chairs and tilted back, his eyes intent on her.
“I know women grow up with this fairy-tale idea about weddings and marriage. Fine, you can have all the white lace and orange blossoms you want. I’ll even hire a white charger if that will help. But the bottom line is that I intend to be a father to my son, Blair.”
Blair studied him with narrowed eyes, her fingers knotting in her lap, where he couldn’t see them.
“It would only be a temporary father,” she argued angrily. “As soon as somebody from your office calls, you’ll go trailing back. And Daniel will be left behind, wondering why you don’t call him or take him to his soccer games. I’m not allowing that.” She held his gaze, daring him to say what she saw glinting in the depths of his eyes.
“The thing is, you can’t stop it, Blair. I am going to have my son.”
His mouth clamped in that implacable line she remembered so well. The emphasis was unmistakable. Blair could see the tiny white lines radiating from his lips and knew he meant business. Oh, God, please make this stop!
He leaned over and wrapped his fingers around hers, holding her hand carefully in his. Blair felt herself drawn by his eyes. Something glinted there, some shred of desolate rejection that she knew involved his past.
“I just want to spend some time with him, Blair. Is that so wrong?” His voice softened, cajoled. “You’ve had almost six years with him. I haven’t had six minutes.”
There was no condemnation in his eyes, but Blair felt guilty anyway. She’d deprived Gabe of seeing Daniel’s first smile, his first step, of hearing his first word. Little joys that parents should have shared. He’d been robbed of them.
“I don’t want to take him away, Blair. Please believe that I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to put the past behind us and make something good for the future. Something for Daniel.”
She tugged, and he let go of her hand, but stayed leaning across her desk, his face serious.
“Please? I don’t want people gossiping about his parents, or the fact that we aren’t married. I don’t want him teased, mocked, ostracized. You said it yourself, it’s a small town.” He looked triumphant at having found this bit of wisdom to use against her. “Surely you wouldn’t do that to an innocent child?”
Blair refused to trust in those softly spoken words. She’d trusted his honest intentions once before, and he’d disappointed her deeply. She wouldn’t go that route again. Instead she cut to the truth of the matter.
“You’re not in love with me, Gabe. You never were.” She stated the facts baldly, ensuring that he knew she’d accepted the truth about their relationship.
“Wasn’t I?” He shook his head, his eyes hooded, shading his thoughts. “I don’t know what love is. I was infatuated with you, that’s for sure. For a while you made me believe things I’d never thought possible, sort of like a Tinkerbell in disguise.” He grimaced at those words and tried again.
“I mean, well, I guess I felt more alive when you came into my life. I haven’t felt that in a long time, Blair.”
It was an honest admission that she hadn’t expected. But she couldn’t allow it to sway her. Not now, not with Daniel to think about.
“That’s nice of you to say, Gabe. But I don’t want to base my son’s future, my future, on something you might have felt a long time ago. It wouldn’t be practical.”
He leaned back, his mouth tipped in a frown as he studied her. “When did you become so practical?”
She smiled, letting the sarcasm tinge her words. “A little over six years ago,” she murmured, then felt ashamed as a flush covered his cheekbones. “I’ve had to be practical. Otherwise my family and I wouldn’t have survived.”
Gabe jumped to his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets and strode across the room and back. He stopped right beside her.
“Look, I know I messed up. I was a jerk, an idiot, a creep. You can call me whatever you want and feel totally justified. But I didn’t know about Daniel! Now that I do, I want to try to make things right.”
Blair sighed, more weary than she’d been in months.
“You couldn’t just jet back to L.A., back to your company and your life there? You couldn’t just forget about him?” She breathed out the wish with a hope and a prayer, knowing as she did that it was futile.
Silence reigned. She glanced up curiously and found him staring at her, his jaw clenched, his eyes roiling with anger.
“Could you do that? I’m not my father, Blair. I’m not going to ignore my son, dump him in his room and forget him there. I know firsthand what that kind of life is like.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Gabriel Sloan had never shared his past with her, never allowed her to see into his childish hurts and disappointments. Oh, she’d had a few hints here and there, had known his adolescence had been less than perfect.
But this sounded like abandonment. Was that why he was so anxious to build a relationship with Daniel?
“I can’t see how it would work.” She fiddled with th
e pens jammed into the tin-can penholder Daniel had given her last Christmas. “I have to take care of my grandfather and my great-aunt. I can’t just leave them to fend for themselves. They’re old, they need me. Albert, too.”
“So we’ll include them.” Gabriel’s simple statement shocked her into silence. “It could work, I know it could. We’ll make the house bigger, include a place for them in our family. I’ve never had a grandfather or any aunts.”
“Gabriel, you’ve always lived alone. You don’t know what it’s like to have people around you all the time.” Blair almost laughed at the idea of it. “Daniel isn’t going to go away just because you’re thinking up a new computer gizmo. He’s a child. When he wants attention, he wants it now.”
A thousand problems filled her mind, and yet she didn’t voice them. She couldn’t. Not when she saw the shimmer of hope that transformed his face into boyish eagerness.
“I’m not involved with any project. I hire people for that. Polytech almost runs itself now. Besides, that guy, Albert, is working on this neat idea. I checked it out yesterday. It sounds crazy, but I have a hunch….” Gabe’s thumb rubbed his chin, his mind consumed with a new problem.
Blair smiled, remembering the habit from the old days. How many times had he taken her for dinner and started talking about his work, only to end up scratching diagrams on napkins and completely forgetting his surroundings?
“Gabe?” He turned from his perusal out her window, his eyes far away. “This is exactly what I mean. Just when you’re in the middle of something, Daniel will come and ask you to play. Or Mac will need help with something. Or Willie will burst into your room and relay some insight that sends everything else out of your brain. This isn’t your L.A. condo. You won’t be able to get into your jet and take off to some spa in the valley whenever you want. Parenthood is a full-time occupation.”
He smiled, a huge, ear-splitting grin that begged her to share his exhilaration. “I know I’ll have to make some adjustments.” He rubbed his palms together as if he could hardly wait. “But I’ll get used to it.”
Blair scrambled for another route to dissuade him, frantically searching her brain. It was obvious Gabe was considering the idea of a family. She’d never have guessed that, and the knowledge made her question what other facets she’d missed in this complicated man.
“What would you expect from me? I mean, I’ve never been married, but I know I don’t want to do it more than once. I couldn’t do that to Daniel.” She risked a glimpse at his face. “After all, we’re not in love or anything. It wouldn’t be the usual marriage.”
Blair rearranged the items on the top of her desk again, her mind veering from the question she most wanted to ask.
“Blair?” He stood beside the desk, his hand stretched toward her. “Stop babbling and come here.”
Blair looked at the floor, at her scuffed boots, at the messy desk, at her ragged fingernails. She looked everywhere she could until, finally, she looked at him. Then she slipped her hand into his and allowed him to draw her near him. Gabe’s other hand clasped hers as he looked deeply into her eyes.
“It’s not just Daniel I want,” he murmured, his voice rippling over her taut nerves. “I think…I want all of it.” He swallowed hard, his chest bulging as he took a deep breath.
“All of what?” She couldn’t believe she was hearing this.
“I’d like the chance to find out what being a family means. I’m thirty-five, Blair. I know for sure what I don’t want, and I think I know what I want. I’m willing—no, excited about making us into a family, including your grandfather, your aunt, even Albert. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. I never had that, and I’d like to experience it. I’d like to prove that I’m not the selfish, egocentric swine my father was.”
“But—” His fingers brushed over her lips, and Blair immediately ceased speaking. This was important. She had to hear what he was about to say. His voice was faint, hesitant.
“You have to understand something. I don’t need anyone, Blair. I can go on with my life the way it was, and I’ll be just fine. I could give you money, support you and Daniel, and you’d probably do a bang-up job of raising him.” He made a sad little face. “But I don’t want to do that. It would be like walking away, wimping out when I know I owe you both more than that.”
He shifted, raked a hand through his shorn hair. Clearly the words made him nervous.
“I don’t understand this family thing you’ve got going here. It’s not part of my experience. You say I’ve missed out, that I don’t understand. I’d like to. I’d like to be the kind of man your grandfather is. I’d like to have Daniel look at me the way he looks at Mac—as if the sun rises and sets on his shoulders.” His hands gripped hers.
“It’s hard to explain, but I’d like to give the boy the things a father should, even though I don’t know what those are. I want to be there to see him grow up and explore his world.” His fingers tightened. “I’m not stupid. I can learn how to be a father. Maybe Mac will even help me. Just don’t shut me out, Blair.”
She hesitated, her mind swirling with doubts. “I don’t know.” He was obviously sincere, she could see that. But for how long?
“Please, Blair, give me a chance. Just say you’ll think about getting married. I can wait, as long as you’ll let me stay and get to know him. We can sort all the rest out as we go along. I promise I won’t rush you, I won’t push you, I won’t abandon you. I just want to share Daniel with you.”
Stymied by his admission of need when he’d just insisted he didn’t need anyone, Blair sought for something to say. It was tempting, so tempting. To be able to share Willie’s medical bills with someone who could shoulder them, to have some of the burden of her money woes lifted, to know Daniel wouldn’t be short-changed because of her childish mistake—it was all there for the taking.
Maybe it could work. Maybe she could have someone to talk to, to share the problems with. Maybe Gabe could be the man she needed, the father Daniel wanted. Maybe she just had to ask.
And that was the problem. Blair didn’t ask for help. Not anymore. She was the one in charge, the person other people depended on. She couldn’t relax that guard.
What was it he’d said? Share it with you. He’d sounded so forlorn, as if he’d never been able to share with anyone. And yet Gabe had been a member of the church, always chaired, hosted and funded a horde of projects, even spoken occasionally to the men’s groups.
He’s always stood alone among the crowd. The truth smacked her between the eyes. Was Gabe lonely?
“Well, Blair? Are you willing to do what we should have done years ago? Will you marry me?”
As she studied his resolute face, Blair tried to remember the cold, brusque businessman. She tried to recall his harsh words and the unflagging demands on his employees. But all she could see was a needy little boy who wanted a family around him—a man who wanted somebody to care for him, maybe even somebody to care about.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I have to think about this. And you should, too. It’s a big step and it’s irrevocable. At least for me.”
As she said the words, she wondered if she’d done the right thing to let him hope. Daniel did need a father, but he needed a permanent one. Gabe wasn’t permanent. Maybe, once he’d spent an evening or two with Daniel, he’d realize how demanding a child could be. Maybe he’d want to go back to his self-sufficient life. Blair shivered. Why did that thought bother her?
She wasn’t prepared when Gabe leaned down and kissed her, his lips tender against her mouth.
“Please?”
She kissed him back. Partly because it was expected, but partly because she wanted to remind herself to be on guard. As the flood of emotion hurled through her body, she drew back and gazed into his eyes. She couldn’t need him—not again.
“One step at a time,” she cautioned. “We take it very slowly. And we don’t mention one word about marriage to my grandfather or to anyone else. You nee
d to get to know Daniel. His needs come first.”
He threw back his head and laughed, his eyes sparkling like a glacial mountain stream tumbling joyfully over the rocks to freedom. Would fatherhood free Gabe? Or would it chain him to her for the rest of their lives?
“When?” he demanded. “When and how do I start being a father?”
Blair just stood there, her mind frozen as a picture of Gabe and Daniel together got caught in her brain.
“Right away,” he decided, hugging her close, then setting her free. “After school today. After all, it will soon be summer. He’ll have lots of free time then.” He stopped, considered, then glanced at her sideways. “I want Daniel to have my name, Blair.”
Blair gulped. “Uh, shouldn’t we sit down and organize things first? I mean, you’ve got your house to build and I have my job. Eventually we’ll have to tell the family so they can help. And Daniel.” She closed her eyes, knowing how ecstatic Daniel would be to finally have a father. “I need to prepare Daniel.”
Suddenly she realized what she was giving up. Daniel would no longer be solely under her authority. She wouldn’t have the final say in his life anymore. She couldn’t. If Gabe was to be an integral part of her son’s life, Daniel had to learn to run to Gabe for some things, to depend on his father, to need him. Which was another reason to hold off this rushed marriage. The Gabe she remembered wasn’t exactly dependable.
“Blair? You’re not backing out? You’re not going to change your mind, are you?” His eyes shone like emeralds. He studied her, concern glinting from their depths. “You will share him with me?”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t change my mind. I’m just thinking. Let’s ease into it one thing at a time. Then we’ll talk about marriage somewhere down the road.”
