For the Sake of Their Son

by Catherine Mann

  “Lucy Ann?” Elliot called in a groggy voice. He reached out for her. “Come back to bed.”

  She pulled on her red wraparound dress and tied it quickly before gathering her underwear. “I need to go to Eli. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Her bra and panties in her hand, she raced from his room and tried to convince herself she wasn’t making an even bigger mess of her life by running like a coward.

  * * *

  “Welcome to Monte Carlo, Eli,” Elliot said to his son, carrying the baby in the crook of his arm, walking the floor with his cranky child while everyone else slept. He’d heard Eli squawk and managed to scoop him up before Lucy Ann woke.

  But then she was sprawled out on her bed, looking dead to the world after their trip to Monte Carlo—with a colicky kid.

  The day had been so busy with travel, he hadn’t had a chance to speak to Lucy Ann alone. But then she hadn’t gone out of her way to make that possible, either. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she was hiding from him.

  Only there was no reason for her to do so. The sex last night had been awesome. They hadn’t argued. Hell, he didn’t know what was wrong, but her silence today couldn’t be missed.

  Compounding matters, Eli had become progressively irritable as the day passed. By the time his private plane had landed in Monte Carlo, Elliot was ready to call a doctor. Lucy Ann and the nanny had both reassured him that Eli was simply suffering from gas and exhaustion over having his routine disrupted.

  Of course that only proved Lucy Ann’s point that a child shouldn’t be living on the road, but damn it all, Elliot wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Especially not after last night. He and Lucy Ann were so close to connecting again.

  He’d hoped Monte Carlo would go a long way toward scoring points in his campaign. He owned a place here. A home with friends who lived in the area. Sure it was a condominium and his friend owned a casino. But his friend was a dad already. And the flat was spacious, with a large garden terrace. He would have to add some kind of safety feature to the railing before Eli became mobile. He scanned the bachelor pad with new eyes and he saw a million details in a different light. Rather than fat leather sofas and heavy wooden antiques, he saw sharp edges and climbing hazards.

  “What do you think, Eli?” he asked his son, staring down into the tiny features all scrunched up and angry. “Are you feeling any better? I’m thinking it may be time for you to eat, but I hate to wake your mama. What do you say I get you one of those bottles with expressed milk?”

  Eli blinked back up at him with wide eyes, his fists and feet pumping.

  He’d always thought babies all looked the same, like tiny old men. Except now he knew he could pick out Eli from dozens of other babies in a heartbeat.

  How strange to see parts of himself and Lucy Ann mixed together in that tiny face. Yet the longer he looked, the more that mixture became just Eli. The kid had only been in his life for a week. Yet now there didn’t seem to be a pre-Eli time. Any thoughts prior to seeing him were now colored by the presence of him. As if he had somehow already existed on some plane just waiting to make an appearance.

  Eli’s face scrunched up tighter in that sign he was about to scream bloody murder. Elliot tucked his son against his shoulder and patted his back while walking to the fridge to get one of the bottles he’d seen Lucy Ann store there.

  He pulled it out, started to give it to his son...then remembered something about cold bottles not being good. He hadn’t paid a lot of attention when his friends took care of baby stuff, but something must have permeated his brain. Enough so that he tugged his cell phone from his pocket and thumbed speed dial for his buddy Conrad Hughes. He always stayed up late. Conrad had said once that life as a casino magnate had permanently adjusted his internal clock.

  The phone rang only once. “This is Hughes. Speak to me, Elliot.”

  “I need advice.”

  “Sure, financial? Work? Name it.”

  “Um, babies.” He stared at the baby and the bottle on the marble slab counter. Life had definitely changed. “Maybe you should put Jayne on the line.”

  “I’m insulted,” Conrad joked, casino bells and music drifting over the airwaves. “Ask your question. Besides, Jayne’s asleep. Worn out from the kiddo.”

  “The nanny’s sick and Lucy Ann really needs to sleep in.” He swayed from side to side. “She’s been trying to keep up with her work, the baby, the traveling.”

  “And your question?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Sleep deprivation’s kicking in, I think,” he admitted, not that he would say a word to Lucy Ann after the way she was freaking out over him having a wreck.

  “Happens to the best of us, brother. You were just the last man to fall.”

  “Back to my question. When I give the baby a bottle of this breast milk from the refrigerator, do I heat it in the microwave? And I swear if you laugh, I’m going to kick your ass later.”

  “I’m only laughing on the inside. Never out loud.” Conrad didn’t have to laugh. Amusement drenched his words.

  “I can live with that.” As long as he got the advice.

  “Run warm water over the bottle. No microwave. Do not heat it in water on the stove,” Conrad rattled off like a pro. “If he doesn’t eat it all, pour it out. You can’t save and reuse it. Oh, and shake it up.”

  “You’re too good at this,” Elliot couldn’t resist saying as he turned on the faucet.

  “Practice.”

  “This has to be the strangest conversation of my life.” He played his fingers through the water to test the temperature and found it was warming quickly. He tucked the bottled milk underneath the spewing faucet with one hand, still holding his son to his shoulder with the other.

  “It’ll be commonplace before you know it.”

  Would it? “I hope so.”

  The sound of casino bells softened, as if Conrad had gone into another room. “What about you and Lucy Ann?”

  Elliot weighed his answer carefully before saying simply, “We’re together.”

  “Together-together?” Conrad asked.

  Elliot glanced through the living area at the closed bedroom door and the baby in his arms. “I’m working on it.”

  “You’ve fallen for her.” His friend made it more of a statement than a question.

  So why couldn’t he bring himself to simply agree? “Lucy Ann and I have been best friends all our lives. We have chemistry.”

  Best friends. His brothers all called themselves best friends, but now he realized he’d never quite paired up with a best bud the way they all had. He was a part of the group. But Lucy Ann was his best friend, always had been.

  “You’d better come up with a smoother answer than that if you ever get around to proposing to her. Women expect more than ‘you’re a great friend and we’re super together in the sack.’”

  Proposing? The word marriage hadn’t crossed his mind, and he realized now that it should have. He should have led with that from the start. He should have been an honorable, stand-up kind of guy and offered her a ring rather than a month-long sex fest.

  “I’m not that much of an idiot.”

  He hoped.

  “So you are thinking about proposing.”

  He was now. The notion fit neatly in his brain, like the missing piece to a puzzle he’d been trying to complete since Lucy Ann left a year ago.

  “I want my son to have a family, and I want Lucy Ann to be happy.” He turned off the water and felt the bottle. Seemed warm. He shook it as instructed. “I’m just not sure I know how to make that happen. Not many long-term role models for happily ever after on my family tree.”

  “Marriage is work, no question.” Conrad whistled softly on a long exhale. “I screwed up my own pretty bad once, so maybe I’m not the right guy to ask for
advice.”

  Conrad and Jayne had been separated for three years before reuniting.

  “But you fixed your marriage. So you’re probably the best person to ask.” Elliot was getting into this whole mentor notion. Why hadn’t he thought to seek out some help before? He took his son and the bottle back into the living room of his bachelor pad, now strewn with baby gear. “How do you make it right when you’ve messed up this bad? When you’ve let so much time pass?”

  “Grovel,” Conrad said simply.

  “That’s it?” Elliot asked incredulously, dropping into his favorite recliner. He settled his son in the crook of his arm and tucked the bottle in his mouth. “That’s your advice? Grovel?”

  “It’s not just a word. You owe her for being a jackass this past year. Like I said before. Relationships are work, man. Hard work. Tougher than any Interpol assignment old headmaster Colonel Salvatore could ever give us. But the payoff is huge if you can get it right.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Hey, I gotta go. Text just came in. Kid’s awake and Jayne doesn’t believe in nighttime nannies. So we’re in the walking dead stage of parenthood right now.” He didn’t sound at all unhappy about it. “Don’t forget. Shake the milk and burp the kid if you want to keep your suit clean.”

  Shake. Burp. Grovel. “I won’t forget.”

  * * *

  Lucy Ann blinked at the morning sun piercing the slight part in her curtains. She’d slept in this room in Elliot’s posh Monte Carlo digs more times than she could remember. He’d even had her choose her own decor since they spent a lot of off-season time here, too.

  She’d chosen an über-feminine French toile in pinks and raspberries, complete with an ornate white bed— Renaissance antiques. And the best of the best mattresses. She stretched, luxuriating in the well-rested feeling, undoubtedly a by-product of the awesome bed and even more incredible sex. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d woken up refreshed rather than dragging, exhausted. Certainly not since Eli had been born—

  Blinking, she took in the morning sun, then gasped. “Eli!”

  She jumped from the bed and raced over to the portable crib Elliot had ordered set up in advance. Had her baby slept through the night? She looked in the crib and found it empty. Her heart lurched up to her throat.

  Her bare feet slipping on the hardwood floor, she raced out to the living room and stopped short. Elliot sat in his favorite recliner, holding their son. He looked so at ease with the baby cradled in the crook of his arm. An empty bottle sat on the table beside them.

  Elliot toyed with his son’s foot. “I have plans for you, little man. There are so many books to read. Gulliver’s Travels and Lord of the Rings were favorites of mine as a kid. And we’ll play with Matchbox cars when you’re older. Or maybe you’ll like trains or airplanes? Your choice.”

  Relaxing, Lucy Ann sagged against the door frame in relief. “You’re gender stereotyping our child.”

  Glancing up, Elliot smiled at her, so handsome with a five o’clock shadow peppering his jaw and baby spit-up dotting his shoulder it was all she could do not to kiss him.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, his eyes sliding over her silky nightshirt with an appreciation that all but mentally pulled the gown right off her. “Eli can be a chef or whatever he wants, as long as he’s happy.”

  “Glad to hear you say that.” She padded barefoot across the room and sat on the massive tapestry ottoman between the sofa and chairs. “I can’t believe I slept in so late this morning.”

  “Eli and I managed just fine. And if I ran into problems, I had plenty of backup.”

  “I concede you chose well with the nanny.” She wasn’t used to taking help with Eli, but she could get addicted to this kind of assistance quickly. “Mrs. Clayworth’s amazing and a great help without being intrusive.”

  “You’re not upset that I didn’t wake you?”

  She swept her tangled hair back over her shoulders. “I can’t think any mother of an infant would be upset over an extra two hours of sleep.”

  “Glad you’re happy, Sleeping Beauty.” His heated gaze slid over the satin clinging to her breasts.

  “Ah, your fairy-tale romancing theme.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You catch on fast. If you were to stay with me for the whole racing season, we could play Aladdin and his lamp.”

  His talk of the future made her...uncomfortable. She was just getting used to the shift in their relationship, adding a sexual level on a day-to-day basis. So she ignored the part about staying longer and focused on the fairy tale. “You’ve been fantasizing about me as a belly dancer?”

  “Now that you mention it...”

  “Lucky for us both, I’m rested and ready.” She curled her toes into the hand-knotted silk Persian rug that would one day be littered with toys. “You’re going to be a wonderful father.”

  As the words fell from her mouth she knew them to be true, not a doubt in her mind. And somehow she’d slid into talking about the future anyway.

  “Well, I sure as hell learned a lot from my father about how not to be a dad.” His gaze fell away from her and back to their child. “And the things I didn’t learn, I intend to find out, even if that means taking a class or reading every parenting book on the shelves since I never had much of a role model.”

  Clearly, he was worried about this. She leaned forward to touch his knee. “Does that mean I’m doomed to be a crummy mother?”

  “Of course not.” He covered her hand with his. “Okay, I see your point. And thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “For what it’s worth, I do think you’ve had a very good role model.” She linked fingers with him. “The colonel. Your old headmaster has been there for you, the way my aunt has for me. Doing the best they could within a flawed system that sent them broken children to fix.”

  “I don’t like to think of myself as broken.” His jaw clenched.

  “It’s okay, you know―” she rubbed his knee “―to be sad or angry about the past.”

  “It’s a lot easier to just speed around the track, even smash into walls, rather than rage at the world.” His throat moved with a long swallow.

  “I’m not so sure I like that coping mechanism. I would be so sad if anything happened to you.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the year? She had to admit, though, she’d been worrying more about him lately, fearing the distractions she brought to his life, also fearing he might have beat the odds one time too many.

  He squeezed her hand, his eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them. “I would quit racing. For you.”

  “And I would never ask you to do that. Not for me.”

  “So you would ask for Eli?”

  She churned his question around in her mind, unable to come up with an answer that didn’t involve a lengthy discussion of the future.

  “I think this is entirely too serious a conversation before I’ve had breakfast.”

  Scooping up her son from Elliot’s arms, she made tracks for the kitchen, unable to deny the truth. Even though she stayed in the condo, she was running from him now every bit as much as she’d run eleven months ago.

  Ten

  Steering through the narrow streets of Monte Carlo, Elliot drove his new Mercedes S65 AMG along the cliff road leading to the Hughes mansion. His Maserati wouldn’t hold a baby seat, so he’d needed a sedan that combined space and safety with his love of finely tuned automobiles. He felt downright domesticated driving Lucy Ann and their son to a lunch with friends. She was meeting with Jayne Hughes and Jayne’s baby girl while he went over to the track.

  Last time he’d traveled this winding road, he’d been driving Jayne and Conrad to the hospital—Conrad had been too much of a mess to climb behind the wheel of his SUV. Jayne had been in labor. She’d delivered their ba
by girl seventeen minutes after they’d arrived at the hospital.

  How strange to think he knew more about his friend’s first kid coming into the world than he knew about the birth of his own son.

  His fingers clenched around the steering wheel as they wound up a cliff-side road overlooking the sea. “Tell me about the day Eli was born.”

  “Are you asking me because you’re angry or because you want to know?”

  A good question. It wouldn’t help to say both probably came into play, so he opted for, “I will always regret that I wasn’t there when he came into this world, that I missed out on those first days of his life. But I understand that if we’re going to move forward here, I can’t let that eat at me. We both are going to have to give a little here. So the answer to your question is, I want to know because I’m curious about all things relating to Eli.”

  She touched his knee lightly. “Thank you for being honest.”

  “That’s the only way we’re going to get through this, don’t you think?”

  He glanced over at her quickly, taking in the beautiful lines of her face with the sunlight streaming through the window.

  Why had it taken him so long to notice?

  “Okay...” She inhaled a shaky breath. “I had an appointment the week of my due date. I really expected to go longer since so many first-time moms go overdue. But the doctor was concerned about Eli’s heart rate. He did an ultrasound and saw the placenta was separating from the uterine wall— Am I getting too gross for you here?”

  “Keep talking,” he commanded, hating that he hadn’t been there to make things easier, less frightening for her. If he hadn’t been so pigheaded, he would have been there to protect her. Assure her.

  “The doctor scheduled me for an immediate cesarean section. I didn’t even get to go home for my toothbrush,” she joked in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  He wasn’t laughing. “That had to be scary for you. I wish I could have been with you. We helped each other through a lot of tough times over the years.”