by Diana Palmer
“What’s wrong?” she asked without preamble, approaching him in concern. Having shuttled Colin’s plate to the sink, Chase now leaned heavily on the counter, looking very much as though he was in pain.
He glanced around.
“In the bathroom, cleaning up,” Nettie said, responding in unconscious shorthand to the question in Chase’s eyes. “There was syrup on his clothes, so I told him to change. It should take awhile.” Without giving it any thought, she placed a comforting hand on his back. “What’s going on?”
Chase shook his head, keeping his palms braced on the sink as if he required the support to remain upright. “That was my lawyer on the phone.” His voice was low and unsteady. “When I went to Florida to get Colin, there were no other known relatives. Now—” He stopped, turning to scan the kitchen, needing to make sure once again that Colin was not within earshot. “Julia’s parents have been located.”
“Julia was Colin’s mother?”
Chase nodded. “Her parents live in England. Julia was estranged from them. Her choice, apparently, not theirs. They say she wrote them a letter a couple months before she was killed, indicating that she wanted to reconcile and…” Chase shook his head, obviously shell-shocked by the pieces of information he’d been given. “They want Colin. They want custody.”
Chase faced her. He looked like a man who’d been sucker punched—disoriented, hurt and angry all at once.
Nettie felt a rush of blood to her head. “But how can they ask such a thing? Don’t they know he’s with you?”
Chase emitted a harsh laugh. “The news left them unimpressed. Given the fact that I didn’t even know about Colin for the first seven years of his life, they have grave doubts their grandson’s well-being will be served under my care.”
Clearly parroting his lawyer, Chase’s words filled Nettie with indignation. How unfair! How…how dare they? They hadn’t even seen Chase with Colin; they didn’t know how much he loved his son already.
A fierce desire to protect this man, this come-lately father who didn’t know enough to take the syrup bottle off the table after it had been poured, who’d had no idea how to fry bacon, and who was often clearly uncertain how to talk to his son…but who so desperately wanted to try…rose inside Nettie with the strength of a thousand armed troops.
“Where have they been?” she demanded. “How well do they know Colin? Have they ever met him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then they can’t possibly have all the power here. I can’t imagine they’d even get to court.”
“I don’t know,” Chase repeated. “My lawyer wants me to call him back as soon as possible.”
They heard Colin running from his room upstairs. Nettie saw additional concern cross Chase’s face and hastened to reassure him. “I’ll take him with me. Lilah’s at home. Between the two of us, we’ll keep him occupied until you can get there.” Moving in close, she rubbed his chest and shoulder.
Capturing her hand, Chase pressed a kiss into the palm. His eyes communicated his gratitude.
When Colin clattered into the kitchen, Nettie gave Chase a moment to compose himself. She forced a bright smile that relaxed into something more genuine when she saw Colin’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…And I’m Small Stuff T-shirt. “Hey, kiddo. How’d you like to come over to my place and help me draw a picture for my next book?”
Colin proved to be a bit more careful with paint than he was with a syrup bottle, but not much. Nettie hoped his T-shirt was not new, given that yellow ochre, jade and crimson decorated its surface in a variety of blops, smudges and stripes.
Leaving the paint-happy boy ensconced in her studio, Nettie went downstairs, where Lilah waited for her in the living room. Lounging in the wingback chair, bare pedicured feet propped on the coffee table, the inherently glamorous blonde held a tall glass of lemonade in her hand. There was another waiting on the end table for Nettie.
“Thanks.” Nettie grabbed the icy tumbler and plopped onto the couch. “I must be out of shape. Keeping up with a sevenyear-old has me worn out already and it’s barely noon.” She pressed the glass against her cheek.
“Is that what wore you out?” Lilah wriggled her toes. “And here I thought lack of sleep was the culprit.” Innuendo curled her lips as she sipped her lemonade.
“Yeah, you’re funny,” Nettie applauded dryly. “Did Sara say anything when I wasn’t here this morning?”
“She doesn’t know. I closed your bedroom door as soon as I realized you were gone.” Lilah wagged a shaming finger. “Then I told her you had a headache and had decided to sleep in.”
Expelling a sigh of relief, Nettie toasted her sister in thanks. “I don’t feel like dodging the Sara Owens third degree today.”
“I don’t blame you. She used to grill me if I came home five minutes after curfew when we were in high school. And she’s only two years older! Drove me crazy.” Lilah shook her head. “So, Nettie-Belle, tell me one thing—What are his intentions?” Slyly, she grinned. “’Cause I know where you were and who you were with.”
Setting her lemonade on the side table, Nettie covered her face with her hands, pounded her feet on the floor as if she were running in place and squealed. “Oh, Lilah! It was so, so…not me!” She lowered her hands and met her sister’s affectionate smile. “I think I seduced him,” she whispered.
Lilah hooted with laughter. Nettie giggled, too. “We made breakfast together this morning and it wasn’t awkward at all. It was…”
“What?”
Right. It…just…felt…right. But she didn’t want to say that. No, didn’t even want to think it. It was too much, too soon, too scary. Adages popped into mind.
What goes up must come down…
Every back has a front…
The bigger they are, the harder they fall…
The more right something feels, the more wrong it can go…Okay, so that last one was hers, but the point remained the same: Keep your expectations simple. Keep plans to a minimum. So, instead of saying this morning had felt “right” or “wonderful” or, heaven forbid, “perfect,” Nettie murmured, “Nice. Yeah, it was nice.” An understatement, to be sure.
“And now you have Colin here.” Lilah watched her sister with loving eyes. “How does that feel, Nettie-Belle?”
“Not as hard as I thought it would be.” The truth came as more of a surprise to Nettie than to her sister. “I thought I’d be sad, that it would be too painful to have a child here. Or that I’d feel guilty, like I was somehow betraying…” She took a breath. “Tucker. And Brian.” Smiling through a pang of sadness that hit her dully in the center of her chest, she shook her head. “Silly.”
“No,” Lilah said softly. “Not at all. So, tell me. Why did you bring Colin here by yourself? Where’s Chase?”
Briefly, Nettie explained what she knew about the phone call and Chase’s need to converse with his lawyer without Colin around to overhear.
Lilah pursed her lips. “So he might find himself in the middle of a custody battle?”
“I don’t know.” Frowning, Nettie shook her head. “I can’t imagine it going that far. When you watch Chase and Colin together, it’s so easy to see they’re building a relationship. Who would stand in the way of that?”
“Plenty of people, Nettie-Belle. Plenty of people.” Lilah’s expression flowed from interest to concern. “Oh, sweetie, you know I want you to get out into the world and live again. But I thought you’d go for the pleasure and shelve the pain for awhile.”
“I am.” When Lilah looked doubtful, Nettie persisted, “Truly. First of all, Chase is not going to lose that child. I know it. But he does have to deal with this, see his lawyer, rearrange his life to include a little boy.” She smoothed her palms over the jeans she’d donned upon arriving home. “Any time now he’s going to knock on that door and tell me he’s booked their flight home to New York.” With an admirably level gaze, she maintained, “I’m ready for that. I was ready for it before he got the phone
call this morning. That’s why I was able to stay with him last night.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that. I wonder if he’d like the sound of that.”
Amazingly, Nettie found she was able to laugh and that fact encouraged her. She was going to be okay when Chase said good-bye. She really was. “He’s going to like the sound of that just fine. Believe me. He’s got more than enough on his plate as it is. He doesn’t need a woman clinging to his arm.”
“Mm.”
Lilah looked like she had more to say, but Colin chose that moment to holler from upstairs. “Nettie!” He clambered down the staircase, skidding to a breathless stop when he saw her in the living room.
There was even more paint on him now.
“What is it?” She rose immediately.
“Um, you know that thing you put the picture on? That folding thing?”
“The easel? Yes.”
“Well, um, it sorta fell over, sorta.”
“It did?” Relieved there was no real emergency, she asked, “What happened to the canvas?”
“Is that the picture?”
Nettie nodded.
Colin looked worried. “It landed on the ground.”
While Lilah covered a smile, Nettie had a moment of gratitude for watercolors.
“Okay. Let’s go upstairs and see if we can salvage the picture.”
As it turned out, repairing the painting didn’t take as much effort as cleaning Colin up for the second time that day. While Nettie tossed his T-shirt into the washing machine, Lilah took a phone call from Chase. He asked her to pass along the message that he had travel arrangements to make but would be over shortly.
Given the message, Nettie found her body responding almost before her mind. With a fluttering heart she realized, This is it. This is goodbye.
He’s going to tell me they have to leave for New York immediately. Before we make spaghetti. They’ll start their life together as a family, and I…
Swallowing heavily, she told herself to buck up. This was simple. She would begin again, too. That’s what people did every day, anyway, wasn’t it? Especially after losing someone. You woke up, you made the choice to begin again. Every day.
On a deep breath, Nettie looked at Colin as he gobbled more of her homemade cookies and peppered her with questions like, “How come when you put the green in the red it turns brown?”
It had been a fun morning. And that, Nettie told herself, was enough.
Chase arrived while Colin’s T-shirt was still tumbling in the dryer. Appearing weary but calm, he greeted Nettie by drawing her into his arms for a long hug. Pulling back, he turned the embrace into a soul-satisfying kiss.
“I needed that,” he growled low in her ear. His warm breath sent showers of goose bumps racing down her neck and arms.
He told Lilah he was making travel plans, Nettie reminded herself as soon as she could form a coherent thought.
“Colin’s with Lilah,” she said. Pull out of his arms now…atta girl…turn away…keep talking…“They’re in the backyard, collecting earth in buckets.” She began edging toward the kitchen. “Want some coffee? I just a made a pot.”
“Sure.” He followed her. “Dare I ask what they’re planning to do with this ‘earth’?”
“Lilah told him she thought they could make a million dollars by making North Dakota mud packs for rich women in Beverly Hills.”
“I see. So my son shows a precocious entrepreneurial spirit?”
“Mm, mostly I think he liked the idea of digging in dirt.”
“Ah.” Chase watched her while she poured the coffee, set out milk and sugar and pulled cookies from a ceramic jar in the shape of a merry pig. When she handed him the plate of snacks, he grinned, first at it and then at her.
“What?” Her forehead creased. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no. I was just trying to remember the last time a woman handed me a plate of cookies.”
“And?”
“And I can’t remember.”
Nettie made a face. “Wonderful. In an ocean of exotic memories, someday you’ll look back and think of me as Betty Crocker.”
“You bet,” he agreed. Plucking a cookie from the plate, he took a bite, gave her a wink and let his gaze wander slowly down her body. “Covered in chocolate, frilly little apron, naked underneath…”
Nettie snapped a dishtowel in his direction, but his reply pleased her enormously. “Shame on you! C’mon, let’s go into the living room. I want to know what your lawyer said.” Very good! Her inner coach commended her efforts to remember what was about to transpire here. Stay on track…simply ignore that nasty woosh of longing to rip his clothes off…or yours…
Steeling herself to appear poised, sophisticated and serene throughout his account of the call even—no, especially—when he got to the part about heading back to New York, Nettie perched on the edge of the couch and waited for him to begin.
Chase leaned back against the cushions, took a sip of the very strong coffee and sat a moment, simply collecting his thoughts. “What a day.” Setting his mug on the table, he opened an arm in Nettie’s direction. “Hey, come here.” He tilted his head and motioned for her to snuggle against him.
Danger…danger…Do not go there. She stared hungrily at the side of his torso and the warm, perfectly shaped alcove of his underarm.
We-e-e-ll, would it hurt, really, to scoot in for just a moment? There’s no harm, she reasoned, in being comfortable while he says goodbye.
She scooched over on the sofa, but remained committed—absolutely—to holding her body in a rigid, unyielding line so there would be no mistake about what was going on here: She might be getting physically close, but she was distancing herself emotionally.
Chase folded his arm around her. He brought his other arm up to gather her into what might have been interpreted—by somebody else—as a circle of love and protection.
“There,” he murmured, his muscles softening as he sighed manfully. “I’ve been wanting to do this all day.”
“Me—” Catching herself in the nick of time, Nettie mumbled, “Um, so what did your lawyer say?”
Chase released another sigh, this one rough and weary. “He said things I’d like to forget about until Colin is eighteen. Unfortunately burying my head in the sand is not an option if I want to keep my son.”
“And you do.”
He reared back to look at her. “I like the way you say that. Like it’s a given. My lawyer put it somewhat differently. He said, ‘Be sure that raising this boy is what you want, because if this goes to court, you’re in for the fight of your life.’”
“But why? I still can’t fathom how Colin’s grandparents can threaten your custody.”
“Because of me. Because of things I’ve done. And said.” He settled back against the couch again, and Nettie felt the resonance of his voice as she leaned against his chest. He spoke slowly, carefully. “I’ve never felt any particular pride in the way I’ve lived my life up to now. But I can’t say I’ve had any discomfort with it, either. I guess I’ve lived like your classic bachelor. The only rules I followed were mine.”
“Well, you were a bachelor. You are.”
Chase gave a wry grunt. “Maybe I should rephrase it more accurately. I lived like a bachelor who’s been on the cover of Star magazine. There are plenty of opportunities for socializing when you’re regarded as a celebrity.”
“I know.” Toying with the hairs on the back of his wrist, Nettie confessed, “I got on the Internet one night and looked you up. You’ve dated way too many models.” She gave a couple of hairs a firm tweak. “Weren’t you afraid of becoming a cliché?”
She posed the question facetiously, but Chase groaned. “Yes,” he said emphatically. “Hell yes, I’ve dated way too many women, period.” He tightened his hold on her. “Are you losing respect for me?”
“Mm, gettin’ there.” She rubbed the hairs she’d pulled. Then more seriously she added, “If the women were willing, who c
an fault you?” Nettie was thinking of herself, no question. To a rag magazine like Star she supposed she’d be considered just another one of Chase Reynolds’s women. The thought poked a finger of jealousy right in her sternum. Jealousy and possessiveness. She didn’t even want to explore that and was relieved when Chase claimed her attention.
“A court can fault me,” he answered her question and Nettie heard the frown in his voice. “Grandparents can fault me. Social services—”
“Now wait a minute. Aren’t you being overly harsh? You didn’t even suspect you were a father until a few weeks ago.”
There was a pause. “Before you let me off the hook, there’s more you need to know. I never wanted kids, Nettie.” Rather than shifting to see her better, Chase stayed where he was and Nettie understood it was easier for him to get this out without looking at her. “That’s an understatement. Any lawyer with the competence of Daffy Duck will be able to wallpaper the courthouse with evidence of my position on commitment. And for awhile there, I was pretty vocal about being opposed to fatherhood.”
“All right, I understand your concern. Maybe I can even understand Colin’s grandparents’ concern—because they don’t know you. But judges are mandated to be impartial. A couple of gossipy articles from your past can’t mean that much.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed. “But one really stupid comment I made a few weeks ago could do us in.”
Chase sounded sick with remorse. This time Nettie wriggled out of his arms to face him. He looked at her, but his eyes held a faraway, unhappy expression. She waited.
Scraping a hand through his hair, he shook his head, then swore beneath his breath, damning himself.
“Julia’s boyfriend in Florida was the first person to contact me about Colin. When he told me Julia had a son who was seven and that I was the father, I said—” Chase closed his eyes, wincing at the memory. “I said, ‘Bullshit. The kid isn’t mine.’”
When he reopened his eyes, he looked like a condemned man so filled with guilt he would refuse his own pardon. Nettie’s heart reached out to him. Whatever had made him reject the idea of fatherhood so vehemently, clearly a lot had changed in a few weeks. “Are you afraid Julia’s boyfriend will be a witness for her parents?”
