For the Sake of Their Son

by Catherine Mann

  She knew every inch of him, down to a scar on his elbow he’d told everyone he got from falling off his bike but he’d really gotten from the buckle on his father’s belt during a beating. They shared so much history, and now they shared a child.

  Standing, she pulled her gaze from him and focused on his old boarding school friends behind him, brooding Conrad Hughes and charmer Malcolm Douglas. Of course they’d dragged him here. These days both of them had sunk so deep into a pool of marital bliss, they seemed to think everyone else wanted to plunge in headfirst. No doubt they’d brought Elliot here with just that in mind.

  Not a freakin’ chance.

  She wasn’t even interested in dipping her toes into those waters and certainly not with Elliot, the biggest playboy in the free world.

  “Gentlemen, do you think you could uncuff him, then leave so he and I can talk civilly?”

  Conrad—a casino owner—fished out a key from his pocket and held it up. “Can do.” He looked at Elliot. “I trust you’re not going to do anything stupid like try to start a fight over our little prank here.”

  Prank? This was her life and they were playing with it. Anger sparked in her veins.

  Elliot pulled a tight smile. “Of course not. I’m outnumbered. Now just undo the handcuffs. My arms are too numb to hit either of you anyway.”

  Malcolm plucked the keys from Conrad and opened the cuffs. Elliot massaged his wrists for a moment, still silent, then stretched his arms over his head.

  Did he have to keep getting hotter every year? Especially not fair when she hadn’t even had time to shower since yesterday thanks to her son’s erratic sleeping schedule.

  Moistening her dry mouth, Lucy Ann searched for a way to dispel the awkward air. “Malcolm, Conrad, I realize you meant well with this, but perhaps it’s time for you both to leave. Elliot and I clearly have some things to discuss.”

  Eli burped. Lucy Ann rolled her eyes and cradled her son in the crook of her arm, too aware of the weight of Elliot’s stare.

  Malcolm thumped Elliot on the back. “You can thank us later.”

  Conrad leveled a somber steady look her way. “Call if you need anything. I mean that.”

  Without another word, both men disappeared back into the wooded perimeter as quickly as they’d arrived. For the first time in eleven months, she was alone with Elliot.

  Well, not totally alone. She clutched Eli closer until he squirmed.

  Elliot stuffed his hands in his pockets, still keeping his distance. “How long have you been staying with your aunt?”

  “Since I left Monte Carlo.” She’d been here the whole time, if he’d only bothered to look. Where else would she go? She had money saved up, but staying here made the most sense economically.

  “How are you supporting yourself?”

  “That’s not your business.” She lifted her chin. He had the ability to find out anything he wanted to know about her if he’d just looked, thanks to his Interpol connections.

  Apparently, he hadn’t even bothered to try. And that’s what hurt the most. All these months, she’d thought he would check up on her. He would have seen she was pregnant. He would have wondered.

  He would have come.

  “Not my business?” He stalked a step closer, only a hint of anger showing in his carefully guarded eyes. “Really? I think we both know why it is so very much my business.”

  “I have plenty saved up from my years working for you.” He’d insisted on paying her an outlandish salary to be his personal assistant. “And I’m doing virtual work to subsidize my income. I build and maintain websites. I make enough to get by.” Her patience ran out with this small talk, the avoidance of discussing the baby sleeping in her arms. “You’ve had months to ask these questions and chose to remain silent. If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s me.”

  “You didn’t call either, and you have a much more compelling reason to communicate.” He nodded toward Eli. “He is mine.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “I know you. I see the truth in your eyes,” he said simply.

  She couldn’t argue with that. She swallowed once, twice, to clear her throat and gather her nerve. “His name is Eli. And yes, he’s your son, two months old.”

  Elliot pulled his hands from his pockets. “I want to hold him.”

  Her stomach leaped into her throat. She’d envisioned this moment so many times, but living in it? She never could have imagined how deeply the emotions would rattle her. She passed over Eli to his father, watching Elliot’s face. For once, she couldn’t read him at all. So strange, considering how they’d once been so in sync they could finish each other’s sentences, read a thought from a glance across a room.

  Now, he was like a stranger.

  Face a blank slate, Elliot held their son in broad, capable hands, palmed the baby’s bottom and head as he studied the tiny cherub features. Eli still wore his blue footed sleeper from bedtime, his blond hair glistening as the sun sent dappled rays through the branches. The moment looked like a fairy tale, but felt so far from that her heart broke over how this should have, could have been.

  Finally, Elliot looked up at her, his blasé mask sliding away to reveal eyes filled with ragged pain. His throat moved in a slow gulp of emotion. “Why did you keep this—Eli—from me?”

  Guilt and frustration gnawed at her. She’d tried to contact him but knew she hadn’t tried hard enough. Her pride... Damn it all. Her excuses all sounded weak now, even to her own ears.

  “You were engaged to someone else. I didn’t want to interfere in that.”

  “You never intended to tell me at all?” His voice went hoarse with disbelief, his eyes shooting back down to his son sleeping against his chest so contentedly as if he’d been there all along.

  “Of course I planned to explain—after you were married.” She dried her damp palms on her sundress. “I refused to be responsible for breaking up your great love match.”

  Okay, she couldn’t keep the cynicism out of that last part, but he deserved it for his rebound relationship.

  “My engagement to Gianna ended months ago. Why didn’t you contact me?”

  He had a point there. She ached to run, but he had her son. And as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she’d missed Elliot. They’d been so much a part of each other’s lives for so long. The past months apart had been like a kind of withdrawal.

  “Half the time I couldn’t find you and the other half, your new personal secretary couldn’t figure out where you were.” And hadn’t that pissed her off something fierce? Then worried her, because she knew about his sporadic missions for Interpol, and she also knew his reckless spirit.

  “You can’t have tried very hard, Lucy Ann. All you had to do was speak with any of my friends.” His eyes narrowed. “Or did you? Is that why they brought me here today, because you reached out to them?”

  She’d considered doing just that many times, only to balk at the last second. She wouldn’t be manipulative. She’d planned to tell him face-to-face. And soon.

  “I wish I could say yes, but I’m afraid not. One of them must have been checking up on me even if you never saw the need.”

  Oops. Where had that bitter jab come from?

  He cocked an eyebrow. “This is about Eli. Not about the two of us.”

  “There is no ‘two of us’ anymore.” She touched her son’s head lightly, aching to take him back in her arms. “You ended that when you ran away scared after we had a reckless night of sex.”

  “I do not run away.”

  “Excuse me if your almighty ego is bruised.” She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling as though they were in fifth grade again, arguing over whether the basketball was in or out of bounds.

  Elliot sighed, looking around at the empty clearing. The limo’s engine roared to
life, then faded as it drove away without him. He turned back to Lucy Ann. “This isn’t accomplishing anything. We need to talk reasonably about our child’s future.”

  “I agree.” Of course they had to talk, but right now her heart was in her throat. She could barely think straight. She scooped her baby from his arms. “We’ll talk tomorrow when we’re both less rattled.”

  “How do I know you won’t just disappear with my son?” He let go of Eli with obvious reluctance.

  His son.

  Already his voice echoed with possessiveness.

  She clasped her son closer, breathing in the powder-fresh familiarity of him, the soft skin of his cheek pressed against her neck reassuringly. She could and she would manage her feelings for Elliot. Nothing and no one could be allowed to interfere with her child’s future.

  “I’ve been here all this time, Elliot. You just never chose to look.” A bitter pill to swallow. She gestured up the empty dirt road. “Even now, you didn’t choose. Your friends dumped you here on my doorstep.”

  Elliot walked a slow circle around her, his hand snagging the rope holding the swing until he stopped beside her. He had a way of moving with such fluidity, every step controlled, a strange contradiction in a man who always lived on the edge. Always flirting with chaos.

  Her skin tingled to life with the memory of his touch, the wind teasing her with a hint of aftershave and musk.

  She cleared her throat. “Elliot, I really think you should—”

  “Lucy Ann,” he interrupted, “in case it’s escaped your notice, my friends left me here. Alone. No car.” He leaned in closer, his hand still holding the rope for balance, so close she could almost feel the rasp of his five o’clock shadow. “So regardless of whether or not we talk, for now, you’re stuck with me.”

  Two

  Elliot held himself completely still, a feat of supreme control given the frustration racing through his veins. That Lucy Ann had hidden her pregnancy—his son—from him all this time threatened to send him to his knees. Somehow during this past year he’d never let go of the notion that everything would simply return to the way things had been before with them. Their friendship had carried him through the worst times of his life.

  Now he knew there was no going back. Things between them had changed irrevocably.

  They had a child together, a boy just inches away. Elliot clenched his hand around the rope. He needed to bide his time and proceed with caution. His lifelong friend had a million great qualities—but she was also stubborn as hell. A wrong step during this surprise meeting could have her digging in her heels.

  He had to control his frustration, tamp down the anger over all that she’d hidden from him. Staying levelheaded saved his life on more than one occasion on the racetrack. But never had the stakes been more important than now. No matter how robbed he felt, he couldn’t let that show.

  Life had taught him well how to hide his darker emotions.

  So he waited, watching her face for some sign. The breeze lifted a strand of her hair, whipping it over his cheek. His pulse thumped harder.

  “Well, Lucy Ann? What now?”

  Her pupils widened in her golden-brown eyes, betraying her answering awareness a second before she bolted up from the swing. Elliot lurched forward as the swing freed. He released the rope and found his footing.

  Lucy Ann glanced over her shoulder as she made her way to the graveled path. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Where’s your aunt?” He followed her, rocks crunching under his feet.

  “At work.” Lucy Ann walked up the steps leading to the prefab log cabin’s long front porch. Time had worn the redwood look down to a rusty hue. “She still waits tables at the Pizza Shack.”

  “You used to send her money.” He’d stumbled across the bank transaction by accident. Or maybe his accountant had made a point of letting him discover the transfers since Lucy Ann left so little for herself.

  “Well, come to find out, Aunt Carla never used it,” Lucy Ann said wryly, pushing the door open into the living room. The decor hadn’t changed, the same brown plaid sofa with the same saggy middle, the same dusty Hummel figurines packed in a corner cabinet. He’d forgotten how Carla scoured yard sales religiously for the things, unable to afford them new.

  They’d hidden here more than once as kids, then as teenagers, plotting a way to escape their home lives. He eyed the son he’d barely met but who already filled his every plan going forward. “Your aunt’s prideful, just like you.”

  “I accepted a job from you.” She settled Eli into a portable crib by the couch.

  “You worked your butt off and got your degree in computer technology.” He admired the way she never took the easy way out. How she’d found a career for herself.

  So why had she avoided talking to him? Surely not from any fear of confrontation. Her hair swung forward as she leaned into the baby crib, her dress clinging to her hips. His gaze hitched on the new curves.

  Lucy Ann spun away from the crib and faced him again. “Are we going to keep making small talk or are you going to call a cab? I could drive you back into town.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Her eyebrows pinched together. “I thought we agreed to talk tomorrow.”

  “You decided. I never agreed.” He dropped to sit on the sofa arm. If he sat in the middle, no telling how deep that sag would sink.

  “You led me to believe...” She looked around as if searching for answers, but the Hummels stayed silent. “Damn it. You just wanted to get in the house.”

  Guilty as charged. “This really is the best place to discuss the future. Anywhere else and I’ll have to be on the lookout for fans. We’re in NASCAR country, you know. Not Formula One, but kissing cousins.” He held up his hands. “Besides, my jackass buddies stranded me without my wallet.”

  She gasped. “You’re joking.”

  “I wish.” They must have taken it from his pocket while he was knocked out. He tamped down another surge of anger over being manipulated. If he’d just had some warning...

  “Why did they do this to you—to both of us?” She sat on the other arm of the sofa, the worn width between them.

  “Probably because they know how stubborn we are.” He watched her face, trying to read the truth in the delicate lines, but he saw only exhaustion and dark circles. “Would you have ever told me about the baby?”

  “You’ve asked me that already and I’ve answered. Of course I would have told you—” she shrugged “―eventually.”

  Finally he asked the question that had been plaguing him most. “How can I be sure?”

  Shaking her head, she shrugged again. “You can’t. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  A wry smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “Trust has never been easy for either of us.” But now that he was here and saw the truth, his decision was simple. “I want you and Eli to come with me, just for a few weeks while we make plans for the future.”

  “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Ah, come on, Lucy Ann. Think about my request before you react.”

  “Okay. Thinking...” She tapped her temple, tapping, tapping. Her hand fell to her lap. “Still no.”

  God, her humor and spunk had lifted him out of hell so many times. He’d missed her since she’d stormed out of his life....

  But he’d also missed out on a lot more in not knowing about his son.

  “I can never regain those first two months of Eli’s life.” A bitter pill he wasn’t sure how to swallow down. “I need a chance to make up for that.”

  She shook her head slowly. “You can’t be serious about taking a baby on the road.”

  “I’m dead serious.” He wasn’t leaving here without them. He couldn’t just toss money down and go.

  “Let me spell it
out for you then. Elliot, this is the middle of your racing season.” She spoke slowly, as she’d done when they were kids and she’d tutored him in multiplication tables. “You’ll be traveling, working, running with a party crowd. I’ve seen it year after year, enough to know that’s no environment for a baby.”

  And damn it, she was every bit as astute now as she’d been then. He lined up an argument, a way to bypass her concerns. “You saw my life when there wasn’t a baby around—no kids around, actually. It can be different. I can be different, like other guys who bring their families on the circuit with them.” He shifted to sit beside her. “I have a damn compelling reason to make changes in my life. This is the chance to show you that.”

  Twisting the skirt of her dress in nervous fingers, she studied him with her golden-brown gaze for so long he thought he’d won.

  Then resolve hardened her eyes again. “Expecting someone to change only sets us both up for disappointment.”

  “Then you’ll get to say ‘I told you so.’ You told me often enough in the past.” He rested a hand on top of hers to still the nervous fidgeting, squeezing lightly. “The best that happens is I’m right and this works. We find a plan to be good parents to Eli even when we’re jet-setting around the world. Remember how much fun we used to have together? I miss you, Lucy Ann.”

  He thumbed the inside of her wrist, measuring the speed of her pulse, the softness of her skin. He’d done everything he could to put her out of his mind, but with no luck. He’d been unfair to Gianna, leading her to think he was free. So many regrets. He was tired of them. “Lucy Ann...”

  She yanked her hand free. “Stop it, Elliot. I’ve watched you seduce a lot of women over the years. Your games don’t work with me. So don’t even try the slick moves.”

  “You wound me.” He clamped a hand over his heart in an attempt at melodrama to cover his disappointment.