A Mother's Claim

by Janice Kay Johnson

  No, she thought drearily, not wanted. Did. And could she really blame him? She’d turned everything he had believed about his family on end. That had to be damaging his sense of self.

  His mother was no longer his mother; his uncle wasn’t his uncle. He wasn’t even really Christian Gregor.

  Dana spotted a bench twenty feet ahead. She made it that far, grateful to sink down and bend forward, squeezing her arms around herself for warmth and protection. Thank goodness no one else was approaching. She doubted she was capable of assuming a facade.

  She was bewildered, with no idea what to do. Was it even possible to get through to him? Did she batter her head against a brick wall? Or hang around in the hopes that she had aroused enough curiosity he’d come to her?

  Her earlier determination and even optimism had evaporated. For the moment, Nolan Gregor had won. Adversary? More like enemy.

  She hurt so much right now she wasn’t sure she was better off than she’d been before Commander Knapp’s call.

  No, that wasn’t true—at least she’d seen Gabriel with her own eyes. She knew her baby was alive, safe, loved. Couldn’t that be enough? For the first time, she let herself wonder whether planning to tear him away from the life he knew was right. Or would it be an entirely selfish act?

  Maybe, if she let him stay, he’d be okay with occasional visits and phone calls. If Nolan would send pictures, copies of report cards—

  The stab of pain was so acute Dana curled forward until her head almost touched her knees.

  Was seeing something you wanted so desperately but couldn’t have better than doing without?

  How awful would those visits be? The awkward phone calls he participated in because he wasn’t given a choice? It could only get worse when the hormones kicked in. And what if she gave in but Craig didn’t? Would that mean he loved their son more than she did? Or that his selfishness was greater than hers? Oh, she could imagine that so easily. Craig and his parents would feel the need to see his lineage carried on through a son. She had read between the lines when he’d let her know his first daughter was born. The disappointment had been there, because he didn’t have the son to replace his firstborn.

  Still curled over, she asked herself whether she was any better.

  Crushing disappointment and hurt had her ready to drive straight to Portland and get on an airplane, go home where she could come to terms with the hard truth—she would never have her son back.

  * * *

  WHEN CHRISTIAN BURST through the door, face wet with tears, Nolan excused himself to the couple who’d come in thinking about buying their own equipment instead of continuing to rent.

  He followed his nephew into the office. “What happened?”

  Christian swiped his face with his forearm. “She said I’d have to live with her and I told her I wouldn’t.”

  Anger set in Nolan’s chest, like fresh concrete hardening. “You have to go live with her. That’s what she said?”

  Skin blotchy, nose running, eyes puffy and still wet, Christian didn’t look any better than he had at Marlee’s funeral. “I asked, and she said yes!”

  “She wanted you to pack up and go with her right away.”

  His face contorted. “She just said yes! But you said I didn’t have to.”

  If he had, Nolan was beginning to think he’d made a promise he might not be able to keep. “I said I’d fight for you.”

  Christian just snuffled.

  Nolan stepped into the doorway so he could see his customers. The man caught his eye and waved reassuringly. “We’re good on our own for a while,” he called, obviously sympathetic.

  Nolan nodded his thanks and half sat on his desk, gazing down at the boy, who looked smaller and younger than he had in a long while.

  “Did you talk at all?”

  Christian lifted his head in outrage. “I told you!”

  “I meant before.”

  “Oh.” He pulled the hem of his T-shirt from beneath the hoodie and blew his nose on it, which made Nolan wince. “She talked. She told me about, you know, her parents and her brother and...and the guy who is supposed to be my father and all his family. Like I care,” he said sulkily.

  “It is kind of interesting, don’t you think?” Nolan asked. “I used to wonder a lot about your dad. What he looked like, what qualities he passed on to you.”

  “Like?”

  “You’re proving to be pretty gifted at math. I can handle the books for the business, but that was never a strength of mine, and I seem to remember your m—” he cleared his throat “—Marlee flunking freshman algebra.”

  “She did?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He might have smiled if there hadn’t been so many painful losses since that long-ago day. “Not sure if she stunk at it or just refused to do the work.”

  “She dropped out, didn’t she?”

  Christian knew the answer, but what he really wanted was the reassuring repetition of family history—good, bad, courageous, silly. “To my parents’ disappointment, she did.” Nolan heard himself say my parents instead of Grandma and Grandpa and hoped Christian hadn’t noticed. “They kept thinking once she was stabilized on medications, she’d go back to school or get her GED, but it never happened.”

  They talked some more, with Christian gradually coming down from the emotional storm and Nolan wondering what had happened to Dana. He’d have expected her to follow Christian back here, if only to give Nolan a piece of her mind.

  He kept seeing her face, luminous with hope one minute, stark white with pain the next. In turn fierce, despairing, wounded and resolute. If she’d gone back to her room at the inn, did she have anyone she could call? She hadn’t worn a ring, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t living with a guy or at least seeing one. It sounded as if she had parents, although that was no guarantee she could talk to them. Nolan knew he’d been lucky that way. Dana would have girlfriends, surely.

  Except she’d seemed so alone. If a man in her life had let her make this trip on her own, he should be shot. Family should be here for her, too. They seemed to be MIA, which enraged Nolan when he should have been glad she was vulnerable to a knockout punch. He didn’t like these mixed feelings. His first and only loyalty was to Christian. How stupid was it to sympathize with the woman who wanted to take away the boy he loved?

  He was frowning at a poster on the wall when Christian said, “Can I go home?”

  Nolan ran his palm over his jaw as he glanced at the clock. He’d be closing in an hour.

  “Yeah,” he decided, “that’s okay. But call me when you get there, lock the door and don’t answer if anyone rings the bell. Okay?”

  The rolled eyes made him smile.

  “You always say that.”

  Nolan scooped him into a hard hug. “I won’t be long.”

  After locking up an hour later, he jogged to his SUV. He unlocked and opened the door but didn’t get in. Shit. What kind of idiot was he, to worry about his adversary? But, damn it, that was what he was doing, and he couldn’t go home without finding out how devastated she was or how determined to fight with all the resources she could summon.

  Which, he reminded himself, were substantial. Oregon state social services didn’t even know about the situation, but Dana could change that with a single phone call. Once she filed for custody, law enforcement might get involved to ensure Nolan didn’t flee with her son. Or someone might decree that until custody was determined, Christian should be placed in foster care.

  Find out, he told himself, then look for a good lawyer.

  In the lobby of the inn, he tried to appear casual when he approached the desk clerk, an occasional customer.

  “Hey, can you tell me what room Dana Stewart is in? I forgot to ask her.”

  Only twenty-five or so, Dylan Adams said, “Third floor, but let
me check.” He glanced at his computer. “Three-fifteen.”

  “Thanks.” Nolan lifted a hand and headed for the stairs before the kid could ask what he wanted from Dana or remember he wasn’t supposed to give out room numbers.

  But he didn’t hear a peep and she sure didn’t open the door. She either wasn’t there or was disinclined to talk to anyone, especially him. Uneasy, he went back down.

  “Did you see her going out?” he asked Dylan.

  “No, sir.”

  If she’d checked out, the computer would have told Dylan. All Nolan could do was thank him and jog back across the lawn to the smaller parking lot beside his own business.

  What if she’d gone to his house to talk to Christian again? he asked himself during the short drive. But Christian knew better than to defy a direct order from Nolan and let anyone in.

  She’d probably gone out for something to eat. Keeping track of guests was not Dylan’s primary function. He must go in the back or use the john once in a while.

  Nolan wished he could convince himself that was what she’d done but had trouble believing it. Dana had been so hopeful. The note in her voice when she’d asked Christian to turn around so she could see his face for the first time in eleven years had gotten to Nolan.

  He had a really bad feeling she was crying her eyes out back in that hotel room.

  He shook his head. Face it: everyone involved could not come out of this happy. And if he had to choose—she’d be the one who ended up disappointed.

  Or was that crushed? Destroyed?

  Nolan groaned. A minute later, he pulled into his own driveway and turned off the engine but didn’t get out. He sat there for a long time, his guts tied in a knot, his chest tight.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WHAT, YOU’RE JUST going to let this son of a bitch win?” Craig snapped.

  Dana’s fingers tightened on her phone. Curled up at one end of the hotel room sofa, she wished she hadn’t felt obligated to call him. “I didn’t say—”

  He cut her off as if she weren’t speaking. “A kid isn’t capable of making this kind of decision. He’ll have to adjust, sure. No way in hell I’m leaving him with some guy who makes his living renting surfboards.”

  Dana didn’t recognize this cutting contempt. Was it age and financial success that had turned him into an arrogant stranger?

  She knew one thing—she needed to keep him away from Gabriel, at least for now.

  “The business Nolan Gregor owns is a lot more sophisticated than you’re implying. Waterfront real estate right on the banks of the Columbia River has to be pricey to start with.” She couldn’t imagine why she was defending her enemy, but she despised Craig’s withering dismissal of anyone whose income fell below—what?—half a million a year? A million? Dana had no idea, only that she was one of those little people, too. “He carries and rents equipment for windsurfing, kayaking and sailing. That’s a big business here.”

  He snorted. “I’ll fly out there and take care of this, since you won’t or can’t.”

  “No.” Her anger lent power to the single word. Now the furthest thing from relaxed, she straightened and put her feet on the floor.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Oh, he was infuriated because she’d defied him. His poor wife, Dana thought.

  “It means I don’t have to listen to you belittling me. It means you can’t ride roughshod over everyone.” He said something, but it was her turn to talk right over him. “You gave up on Gabriel a long time ago. I’m the one who has spent a lifetime searching. I’m the one who actually cares, instead of thinking of him as some kind of prized possession.” Oh, God—she was taking a leaf from her ex-husband’s book, her tone scathing enough to etch metal. With an effort, she moderated it. “I didn’t say I was giving up. I said there’s a better way to handle this than making Gabe hate us.”

  “You’re going to baby him along until he’s fourteen? Fifteen? Ready to graduate from high school? Guess we can count on him expecting me to pay for his college education.”

  Nolan Gregor was a deeply conflicted man who loved her son and yet had had the compassion to risk losing him by posting his DNA online. It was Craig Stewart who was the asshole, she saw with sudden clarity.

  “If you take the legal route and a judge of any decency hears that tone of voice, he or she will rule in favor of the good man Gabe loves.” A female judge, please—give us a woman. “You’ve changed, Craig, and not for the better.”

  As the silence stretched, Dana couldn’t be sure what lay behind it. Had she enraged Craig so much he would go after Gabriel with a fleet of high-paid attorneys, and to hell with her? Or did some remnant remain of the man who had blamed her, yes, but also cried with her, held her?

  “I’ll give you some time,” he said abruptly. “I expect to be kept informed.”

  She swallowed back everything hateful she wanted to say and settled for a too-calm “Of course I will. Goodbye, Craig.” She ended the call without waiting for any addenda. After which she tossed her phone to the coffee table hard enough to make it skid across the glass surface and fall to the carpeted floor.

  Then she moaned and remembered everything she’d said.

  The good man? Was that the one who’d said, “As far as I’m concerned, he’s my son?” Oh, and accused her of being selfish, of putting her needs ahead of her child’s?

  But honesty compelled her to remember the expressions she’d seen cross that craggy face, too, the shades of emotion in his deep voice. He’d been more decent than she probably deserved. The awful thing was, she wouldn’t have wanted Gabriel to be raised by a man who was now perfectly fine about handing him over. Because of Nolan, Gabe—Christian—knew he was loved. Nolan had been a rock for her son.

  And she had no idea how to defeat a man like him without making her son hate her.

  * * *

  CHRISTIAN GAZED BESEECHINGLY across the breakfast table. “So, if she just went away, does that mean she won’t try to take me?” Of course, he’d inhaled his cereal and banana before opening his mouth.

  And why not? In the two days since Dana Stewart had checked out of the inn without leaving any word, Christian had asked the same damn question so many times and in so many ways that Nolan’s head was about to explode.

  “No,” he said, going for blunt this time. He held his nephew’s gaze to make sure he listened. That he really heard. Because Nolan had seen the way the woman looked at Christian. She’d gone home wounded, stymied, but they hadn’t heard the last from her.

  He had done some research. Dana had stayed all these years in the house from which her baby son had been abducted. It had to be too big for her. It had to hold more painful memories than good. But leaving would have meant letting go of some of those memories, and she had refused to do that.

  He had no doubt her marriage had splintered over her absolute refusal to let go of one iota of her pain. Nolan could almost sympathize with the ex-husband, whose wife didn’t have enough left over to love him. Almost being the operative word, because Nolan knew himself well enough to be sure he wouldn’t have moved on any better than she had. He would have held on to the pain and his wife.

  He knew a lot of synonyms for stubborn, because they’d all been thrown at him. Even in a unit of men not inclined to back down—ever—he’d been famous for his pigheadedness...to use one of the kinder descriptions.

  That Dana had kept her ex-husband’s last name because it was also her son’s said it all.

  “I’m expecting to hear from her attorney any day,” he told Christian now. “Maybe Child Protective Services. She’d be within her rights to have my parenting skills and this home evaluated with a microscope. It would be really good for her case if they decide I’ve screwed up in some way or other.”

  “But you haven’t!” Milk sloshed over the rim of Christian’s
bowl when he gave it a shove. Eyes sparking, he thrust out his chin. “I’ll tell them. Everyone will tell them!”

  Touched by the fierce defense even though he knew it was rooted in the boy’s deep-seated fear of being yanked away from everything familiar, Nolan smiled. “Thank you. And you’re right. I don’t think a social worker will find anything to use against me. But having them look...that’s a logical step in Ms. Stewart’s campaign.”

  “If she cares about me, why hasn’t she called or something?”

  Studying the way those thin shoulders had hunched, Nolan felt a burst of rage. This was a kid who’d lived with enough uncertainty. Did she have a clue what she was doing to him?

  But, God help him, his fury was balanced by empathy he’d rather not be feeling. No, that wasn’t true; he didn’t want to be the kind of man who couldn’t see both sides, couldn’t feel for a woman as wounded as Dana Stewart. And he didn’t want the boy he considered his son to grow into that kind of man, either.

  He replaced his coffee cup. “You shut her down pretty hard,” he said, keeping the judgment out of his voice but saying what he needed to. “I know you’re scared. I understand, and I think she does, too. But we have to recognize that she has suffered for a lot of years. She came out here filled with hope, to find out her kid doesn’t want anything to do with her.” He let that sink in, then said, “None of this is her fault, any more than it’s yours or mine.”

  “You’re saying it’s Mom’s.”

  Yeah, he was. But he softened it some. “I don’t know whether she stole you or not. I’d like to think not, but if she got confused enough, it’s possible. Either way, she told plenty of lies.”

  Instead of blowing up, as Nolan had half expected, Christian sat very still and said in a small voice, “You said she really believed I was hers.”

  “I’m sure she did some of the time. When she was on her meds, though...” He shook his head. “Did she really believe in her manufactured reality? I don’t know.”

  Christian’s face crumpled. “She’s my mom.”

  Oh, hell. Nolan shoved back his chair and circled the table to wrap an arm around his nephew. “It’s okay to keep loving her,” he said roughly. “She’ll always be your mom, in some ways.”