by Hill, Teresa
And that settled that, Rebecca decided as she stood up and dusted off her pants. Tucker was going to get a chance to see his son.
Chapter 3
It had been only twenty-four hours since Tucker called, and Rebecca was tired. Drained, actually. She expected little, if any, rest tonight. Tomorrow would be even worse.
Because tomorrow, Tucker was coming to see his son.
Sammy was too excited to sleep.
Rebecca was too terrified.
She'd just turned out the light and closed the door to her little boy's room, for the final time tonight, she hoped.
On her way to the couch, where she planned to collapse and brood about what lay ahead of her, her cell phone rang.
Brian, she saw as she picked up the phone. They'd already had one fight via telephone earlier this evening. She wasn't up to another. She had mere hours left in which to prepare herself to face her ex-husband. She didn't need to listen to Brian tell her what a mistake she was making by allowing the meeting to take place.
She was thinking of taking the coward's way out and letting it go to voicemail when the doorbell rang, saving her, at least for a moment, from the phone.
Probably her mother, she thought, who had been sending her ex-husband photos of their son twice a year for the past four and a half years, Rebecca had found out last night.
It felt like such a betrayal, and Rebecca was still as hurt as she was furious. Her mother had always liked Tucker. Her father, too. Tucker was so self-assured, so powerful, so charming, much more likely to have been the kind of child her parents would produce than she was.
She'd have thought his girlfriend and his walking away from her and their son would be enough to make her parents hate him, too, but instead, it had just made them sad and worried. They had wanted to help take care of Rebecca even more than they had before. Their kindness and support for her and Sammy knew no bounds, but she was still going to be mad at her mother for a little while for sending the photos.
You couldn't make a man want to have a relationship with his son, she'd argued, and yet, the man had called, finally, after all these years, her mother had said last night on the phone.
Rebecca pulled the door open, and a blast of humid night air came with it. The heat, relentless in its assault on the city in June, ran over her like a steamroller, but it was nothing compared to the impact of the man standing before her.
Tucker Malloy, twelve hours ahead of schedule.
And she wasn't ready.
Oh, God, she wasn't.
She might never have been ready to face him again, but she wished she'd at least had some time to prepare herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again and found him still standing there in front of her.
He waited, still and silent, as she stared at him and wondered why the very sight of him had the power to take her world and tilt it alarmingly on its axis, to leave her literally unsteady on her own two feet.
Rebecca had meant to be so cool to him, so unaffected. She'd planned on being dignified and coldly polite. Instead, she was clutching the door, the only solid thing within reach that didn't seem to be swaying.
She'd made a grave error in thinking that the sight of him after all these years would mean nothing to her. Old wounds came thundering to the surface, anger that had been suppressed too long, hurts that had never been tended.
Cold politeness was more than she could manage at the moment.
Her eyes locked on Tucker's. His locked on hers. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.
In the background, her home phone rang. In some corner of her mind, Rebecca acknowledged the sound momentarily, then went back to trying to figure out the man standing before her.
It was so like him to do this to her, she thought absently. He'd thrown her off balance from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and here he was doing it still.
And it wasn't fair, not fair at all, she protested as she stood there, clinging to the heavy oak door, and let her eyes slowly roam over him. He was every bit as gorgeous as always.
"Rebecca?"
She blinked, twice, and damned if he wasn't still there. A little older, a little colder, perhaps, but essentially the same man she'd loved and lost all those years ago.
"Yes?" There, she'd done it. She'd managed to speak.
"Your phone's ringing."
So it was.
In a curious daze, she took it all in, his trim but powerful body, his impeccably cut, tailor-made suit. Tucker would still be wearing a killer suit at this hour. The sun bleached his sandy-colored hair nearly blond in the summer, and it was still thick and casually perfect. His eyes were deep brown, with dark, curling lashes, such a contrast to his hair. He had dimples. How many grown men had dimples? And his smile. He had one that could light up a city block, but he hadn't turned it on tonight. She should probably be grateful for small favors, but she couldn't quite summon up that particular emotion right now.
He just stood there in the doorway. Was he locked in the same spell that held her?
So she had a little time, time to wonder about the worry lines that marred the corners of his beautiful eyes and the laugh lines that were missing from the corners of his mouth.
Tucker had always known how to laugh, how to make her laugh, too. Those were the first things she'd loved about him.
And then all the laughter had disappeared. She wondered sometimes, when the joyous days seemed so far away, if they had ever existed at all.
The pain in her chest slowly receded. The vise that had gripped her lungs finally relinquished its hold, and she had to fight not to panic and gasp for air.
She still hung on to the door for support.
"Rebecca?" He broke the silence again. "Your phone's ringing."
She turned and went to pick it up, meaning to disconnect the call, but somehow hit the wrong button. She heard Brian's voice, then attempted to hang up again, and somehow hit the speaker button instead.
"Rebecca? Are you there? I tried your cell, and you didn't answer. It's nearly ten, and I can't believe you're not home."
She couldn't move at first, trapped between Brian's voice and Tucker standing in the doorway.
"Look," Brian continued, "I'm sorry about that fight we had, but I can't just stand by and watch you let that man back into your life."
And then she knew what was coming, knew what he was going to say. She fumbled with the phone. It was new, and none of the buttons were in the same place as they had been on her old phone.
"It's been six years, Rebecca. He walked away from you, and he never looked back. He walked straight from your bed to Cheryl Atkinson's, and he—"
She found the base of the cordless phone and yanked until the cord connecting it to the phone jack came loose, finally breaking the connection. She didn't care how out of control it made her look. Rebecca had to stop his voice.
She'd never had it out with Tucker after that day she walked into his office and found him in that woman's arms. What was there to say after that? Her husband's actions had spoken for themselves. By the time she'd finally made it home that night, he'd collected his things and left. He moved in with Cheryl that night, she'd heard, and stayed there until a few weeks later, when he'd left town.
As she'd seen it then, Tucker hadn't needed to know how deeply he'd hurt her, and she doubted she could have explained it to him even if she'd tried. The kind of pain he'd caused her couldn't be put into words.
It was the kind of pain that was so strong at first it left her curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth, weeping when she wasn't screaming about the unfairness of it all. Her face still burned at the memory, at the strength of the humiliation she'd felt.
Once she'd silenced Brian, she turned back to Tucker. He was standing just inside the doorway, watching her, waiting, probably expecting her to fall apart. She'd fallen apart so often in the course of their brief marriage.
And in that instant, as it all came roaring back to her, she hated him again.
Full-blown, unadulterated hate, the kind she'd felt for him in those first few weeks after she'd found him with that woman. It had hurt like nothing she'd ever known, and she had no intention of going through anything like that again.
She lifted her chin and looked him square in the eye. "What do you want, Tucker?"
* * *
What did he want?
At the moment, it was a damned good question.
He turned, took his time about closing the door and securing the lock, then faced her again.
He'd come here thinking he knew exactly what he wanted, what he needed—his son. And now the sight of Rebecca, so proud and so hurt, had him thinking all over again about how very much he'd lost.
Tucker didn't stop to question what drove him to her or to think about how she'd react. He walked across the room and stopped so close to her that he could see the gold flecks in her dark green eyes. She had the most incredible eyes.
Rebecca gave a start, swayed back away from him, and that worried him even more.
He steadied her with one hand on her arm. He meant to do no more than that, but he couldn't help feeling the warmth of her flesh through the cool, deep green silk robe. "Are you all right?"
She trembled beneath his touch for just a moment, before she snatched her arm away.
"That is not your concern."
It shouldn't be, at least not to the man she believed him to be, not to the man he used to be.
But he was different now. She'd probably laugh in his face if he even tried to explain that to her, but he was a different man. He truly didn't want to hurt her any more than he already had, but it seemed he'd done that just by walking back into her life.
It also seemed clear that he wasn't the only one who hadn't managed to put the past to rest.
"Tucker?" she said impatiently.
"Yes?"
"What do you want?"
He paused to reconsider the impact of just the sight of her for the first time in six long years, wondered if he should try to explain it to her, if she'd ever be able to understand or if she'd even care.
God, he was such a fool, he realized as he stood there sweating at the thought of what was ahead of him.
For some reason, he'd believed the hard part was actually making the decision to see Sammy, and that everything would get easier from there.
It was the right thing to do. He'd felt that from the moment he'd hung up the phone with Rebecca the night before.
Tucker had spent the past six years tearing his life apart, piece by piece. He'd changed everything—his career, his home, his friends, the women who came and went through his life. The changes had helped, but they still hadn't made everything right.
Nothing felt right.
There was an emptiness inside him, a vast space deep in his heart, a black, black hole.
He was going to fill it. He had to, because he didn't see how he could live any longer feeling this way.
It had to be Sammy. He had to be the key, the missing piece. Tucker wondered if his son felt it, too, wondered if Sammy had a big, empty space in his little heart, as well.
Tucker hoped Sammy didn't, because he hated to think the boy had suffered like this. But at the same time, Tucker hoped Sammy felt the same way, because he wanted desperately to find a place in his son's heart that was Tucker's. If Sammy would let him.
He hadn't thought of Rebecca as a part of it. He couldn't.
"I need to see Sammy," he told the woman he'd always think of as his wife.
"I know." She looked puzzled. "Tomorrow."
"No, I need to see him tonight," he said, wondering just how much of this he'd have to explain.
"He's asleep, Tucker."
"I'm counting on that," he admitted.
Rebecca stared at him, wondering if she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Tucker was one smooth operator. Cool, confident, outgoing, good-looking, a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it.
Yet he was hesitating now.
Moments ago, he had been fidgeting with his tie, and a moment before that, he'd buttoned his sleek, double-breasted suit one minute, then unbuttoned it the next.
"But if Sammy's asleep..." she began.
"Then it won't matter whether I see him or not," Tucker insisted.
She noticed his hands then—in the pockets, out of the pockets, one in a fist at his side, then another against the wall, the fingers drumming.
Nerves? It had to be. It wasn't any wonder, though, that it had taken her so long to recognize it in him, because she'd never seen the man nervous before.
And then a terrible thought came to her. "You're not telling me that you just came out here to get one look at him? That you plan to walk in there and take a peek at him tonight, then disappear tomorrow?"
"No." He flung the word at her through clenched teeth, closed his eyes while he took a deep breath. When he looked at her again, she could have sworn she'd hurt him just by suggesting such a thing.
"Then why?"
"For God's sake, Rebecca, it's been six years since I've seen him."
"And another few hours are going to make that much difference to you?"
"Yes."
She was startled by the vehemence behind the word.
He was pacing, clearly frustrated by the small amount of space in her living room in which to walk. When he spoke again, it was much more softly.
"Yes, it matters," he said.
She didn't understand, but she showed him the way upstairs to Sammy's bedroom. She opened the door to the darkened room and walked in, expecting him to follow, but he didn't.
He stood stock still, just outside the doorway.
She waited until he didn't look as if he were about to keel over. His eyes darted over to the bed, to the boy sprawled across it on top of the covers, then quickly looked back down at the floor.
And then she realized—he was scared.
If she was reading him right, he was really scared.
It seemed to take forever before he made his way inside the room. Suddenly Rebecca realized her heart must be beating just as fast as his, and she'd bet that he had this same choking feeling constricting his throat.
She watched him as he stood there by the bed, the man so like the little boy, the boy who reminded her so much of the man.
Tucker didn't say a word. He finally reached out to touch Sammy, but his hand hung there in the air for a moment, as if he was afraid of doing that.
Finally, he stroked Sammy's hair once, then again, then picked up one of the boy's hands, which Tucker measured against one of his own.
He swayed slightly back and forth as he stood beside the bed, tension radiating from him as he continued to stare at the sleeping boy.
She watched Sammy, too, and wondered what tomorrow would bring.
Please, she prayed, let this be the right thing.
Before she could even finish running through her list of worries, Tucker brushed past her and walked out of the room and down the stairs. She had to scramble to keep up with him, and he was out the door and halfway down the walkway before she realized he intended to leave without saying another word.
"Tucker?"
"I'll see you tomorrow."
The words carried over his shoulder and back to her. He didn't look at her. He just walked briskly to a dark gray sedan parked across the street.
Relieved that he was going, yet surprised at the turmoil she'd witnessed in him, Rebecca stood in the doorway, clutching her robe to her. She stepped back, intending to close the door. If she had moved a split second faster, she would have missed it.
The car wasn't far from a streetlight, and she could make out his silhouette in the car. She saw him bash his fist down hard against the steering wheel, and pound it again and again. She flinched for the pain it must be causing him.
But Tucker didn't seem to feel it. He kept pounding. Finally, though, he leaned forward, folded his arms across the steering wheel and laid his head across his arms.
Ther
e had been a time when she would have sworn he couldn't feel anything at all, but she had to admit the man felt something very strongly tonight.
She was stunned.
It appeared Tucker knew exactly what he'd missed by being away from Sammy all these years.
Rebecca found tears falling freely down her face, as she suspected they were falling down his.
She slid down to sit on the front step and cried like she hadn't in years, cried for her, for him, for Sammy and for all the days gone by.
* * *
Long moments later, Rebecca dried her cheeks on the back of her hand, still sitting on the step, lost somewhere in the distant past as she thought of him and things she hadn't let herself remember in years.
She thought of the good times, the sweetness of their early days together. She couldn't help it. Just the sight of him brought back so much. She made the mistake of closing her eyes for a moment, and in her mind, she saw him. Not the uncharacteristically emotional man she'd seen tonight, but the one who'd caught her eye so long ago. His image was as clear as it had been the day she first laid eyes on him.
She'd been in the garden, sipping sherry, bored to tears as one of her father's colleagues talked about torts, wondering what she was going to do with her life. Nothing new about either of those things. She expected to be bored at dinners for her father's lawyer friends. She'd still been in college, still waiting for that one moment when everything would fall into place, when she'd see the path she was meant to take and find a purpose for herself, which, as yet, had proven elusive.
Then she'd glanced across the garden, across the tops of the deep red and the cream-colored roses in full bloom, to the patio.
The boring lawyer droned on, but the sound of his voice faded away. The buzz of the party died down as well, and there was nothing but Tucker.
He'd turned at that instant and caught her eye as she glanced over the roses. The sun had glinted off his golden hair, and then he'd smiled.
She'd stood there, her gaze locked on his, her thoughts rushing ahead. And in that instant, all things seemed possible for them.
Tucker had been simply stunning. He was one of those truly beautiful men, the slyly wicked smile, the laughing eyes and the sunlit hair. A pretty boy, her mother had remarked later that night. No, Rebecca thought, he wasn't a pretty boy, because he was so unmistakably a man.
