A Mother's Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Or an attorney. He had the gift of the gab, and the broad, innocent smile calculated to get him his way.

  “Can I drive it?”

  Standing with her hands on his shoulders, Rebecca moved involuntarily but didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to, not with the narrow-eyed way she was pinning Daniel with her stare.

  “I’m afraid not. You’re way too small right now. But I’ll tell you what.” Daniel smiled back at the boy. “I can lift you up to the seat, and I’ll show you what the levers and pedals do.”

  “Really?” The boy’s eyes were wide with awe.

  Daniel swung first Malcolm up, then himself. He explained that he couldn’t start the engine because he didn’t have the key with him, then gave simple instructions for operating the dozer. His son listened, asked questions and said, “Boy, I wish Chace could see me now. His dad drives a truck, and he’s always bragging. But this is way better!”

  Waiting patiently on the bare ground, Rebecca stifled a laugh. Daniel just grinned and ruffled the kid’s hair, surprised at how easily the casual gesture came to him. “Glad I can give you bragging rights.”

  He jumped down, dirt puffing around his feet, and reached up for Malcolm, who was already asking, “What’s ‘rights’? Does that just mean something to brag about?”

  “Something better to brag about,” his mother said, her eyes still laughing even though her mouth was solemn enough.

  Malcolm’s feet had barely touched the ground when he said, “I don’t see any houses. Mom says there’s gonna be houses here.”

  The tour was every bit the success Rebecca had predicted. The four-year-old loved climbing up on the now-dry foundation of the first house and walking around inside. He insisted on Daniel showing them where the bathrooms and kitchen would be.

  “And it’s gonna have windows, right? And kids’ bedrooms?”

  Daniel explained that many of these houses would be owned by couples who didn’t have children at home. “Mostly,” he explained, “people whose kids have already grown up. And maybe some who are busy with their jobs and don’t have any yet.”

  “Like Mom was, before me.”

  Daniel was careful not to look at Rebecca. “Uh…right. Like your Mom was.”

  Malcolm skipped a couple of steps, then turned back to Daniel. “Do you think these houses would be big enough for people with one kid? Like me?”

  Daniel shrugged. Who needed a home office? “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

  “Or maybe two? Sometimes,” Malcolm confided, “I wish I had a brother or maybe a sister. My friend Josh has a new baby sister. She cries a lot, but you can tell she really likes him. Sometimes she’ll quit crying just ’cuz he talks to her. I might like it if Mom’s tummy would get big like Josh’s mommy’s did, and then she’d have another baby.”

  Daniel couldn’t help it. His gaze went to Rebecca, leaning against the rough concrete of the foundation, and to her slender waist. He had a vivid, erotic memory of rubbing his cheek against her taut stomach, tickling her belly button with his tongue before moving his mouth lower, to the silky vee of brown hair. God help him, he imagined that belly swollen with child. His child. And this time, when he laid his cheek against her stomach, he might feel a mysterious ripple. Life created by them.

  He had a hard-on, just like that. Worse, his chest felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise. He would have given anything to see her pregnant with his son.

  He would give anything to see her pregnant again, with another child. His child.

  He should have turned away, but he couldn’t make himself. He lifted his gaze from her stomach to her face and saw that she was watching him, not Malcolm. He would have sworn she’d been remembering, just as he was. Maybe imagining, too. It didn’t help to see the turbulence in her brown eyes, the flush on her cheeks.

  Gripping Daniel’s hand, Malcolm was jumping, counting on this new friend to keep him steady. He kept talking, too, but Daniel didn’t hear a word he said. He was unable to look away from Malcolm’s mother, the one woman he’d never been able to forget. He wanted, with a grinding hunger, to see her naked, to find out what marks motherhood had left on her body, to cover that body with his, to claim her.

  Rebecca finally bent her head until a curtain of thick brown hair hid her face. Daniel gritted his teeth and turned away, stunned to have been hit so hard by desire. Desire awakened by the idea of impregnating her. And he knew damn well that she’d seen on his face exactly what he was thinking.

  Not the way to convince her that she could relax around him, trust him with her son. She’d made plain that she thought he was a son of a bitch, not someone she wanted influencing Malcolm. He might have blown all the progress he’d made, Daniel thought.

  Assuming that progress had been real, given how low in general her regard for men was.

  He couldn’t remember ever feeling as violent toward anyone as he did toward her father, who by failing to keep his pants zipped had set in motion a miserable childhood for both his daughters. Daniel was glad she had no contact with her father, glad he wouldn’t eventually have to be civil at some unintended meeting.

  But, damn, it did piss him off to know she saw him as no better than the SOB.

  His brows drew together as he let Malcolm tug him toward the concrete slab that would be the two-car garage. Ironic, wasn’t it, that his own biological father was another man who hadn’t been able to keep his pants zipped. He, at least, had claimed to love Jo Fraser, as well as his own wife, or so Sarah Carson had believed. Sarah had been able to forgive her husband and hold on to their marriage, but Daniel wondered if she’d have changed her tune if she had known he hadn’t severed ties with Jo, that in fact he’d fathered yet another child with her seventeen years later.

  Goddamn it, Mom, why didn’t you talk to us? Why didn’t you tell us what you felt, what you thought? Why you loved him enough to give up all chance at a normal life? Enough to give up one of your children?

  What would it be like to live in sunny confidence that other people meant well? He and Rebecca, damaged at an early age, would never be lucky enough to find out. Anyway, it made sense that Rebecca wanted to believe he was no better than her own father. How else could she justify her decision to keep his son from him?

  Reluctantly, Daniel was coming to believe she really had been frightened, not selfish. Nature made mothers of any species fierce when protecting their young. Right now, it must be killing her to sit, looking at rough concrete as though she cared about the texture, when in reality every fiber of her being was focused on her son, and on monitoring how careful Daniel was with him.

  She owes it to me.

  He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore. She’d been as screwed up by her parents’ form of love as he’d been by the lack of love. Considering her fears, she’d raised an amazing kid.

  Would he be doing them both a favor to walk away? It wasn’t as if he had the slightest idea how to be a father.

  The thought was agonizing enough to draw a hoarse sound from him.

  Was that what Robert Carson had decided, when he found out Jo was pregnant again? Had he believed his son would be better off without him? Had Jo told him another man was courting her, wanted to marry her?

  Daniel looked down at the boy’s freckled face, so like his own at that age, and felt his resolve harden.

  Guess what, Dad? I wasn’t better off without you. Neither was Adam. You screwed up big-time.

  No, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. His son would know his father. Somehow, eventually, Daniel would convince Rebecca that he wouldn’t hurt Malcolm. Which might be a tough sell, when he was beginning to wonder how much he’d hurt her.

  Or was he flattering himself to believe she’d cared enough about him to be open to hurt?

  “SUE CALLED TODAY,” JOE SAID over dinner at his house. “She’s pregnant.”

  Pip, smiling, had obviously heard the news. “I’m so glad for her and Rick.”

  Sue Bookman had been a friend of Joe’s back in the
ir high school days. Joe had admitted once to being in love with her. Daniel suspected they were both relieved they hadn’t had sex, now that they’d found out they were first cousins. He pictured her face from Christmas, when she had told him she’d like to know him better. Pretty, in a straightforward way that didn’t depend much on makeup. And she had the unusual combination of blond hair and deep brown eyes. Joe had assured him the blond part was natural.

  “Given that she’s the one who fosters all the babies,” Daniel said, “at least she’s not stumbling blindly into parenthood.”

  Pip laughed. “Unlike me.” Her soft gaze found her husband. “Fortunately, I can depend on Joe’s expertise.”

  Daniel took a bite while they exchanged a sappy look. He wanted to be cynical about it, but couldn’t help hoping theirs was the love match it appeared. Joe wanted a wife and kids and a home. The failure of his first marriage had hit him hard.

  “We have an announcement of our own,” Joe said, reaching across the table to take his wife’s hand.

  Daniel raised his brows.

  Pip’s face glowed. “I had an ultrasound. We’re having a boy.”

  Joe’s voice deepened as he said, “We’re going to name him Adam.”

  Daniel looked from their faces to their linked hands. His vision seemed to have blurred and he’d developed a lump in his throat. It was a long moment before he trusted himself to speak clearly. “Naming him after Adam…That’s, uh, a really nice thing to do.”

  “I wish Dad could have known—” Joe’s throat must have clogged, too, the way he stopped so suddenly.

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Daniel said, inarticulate but knowing he was understood. He stood and circled the table to squeeze Joe’s shoulder and kiss Pip on the cheek.

  Kaitlin might have wrinkled her nose and said they were being gooey. Daniel suspected she would be, too, when she heard the news. She had loved her Grandpa Adam.

  Daniel resumed his seat and Joe said, “You’ve met Sue’s fiancé a couple of times. Rick seems like a great guy. He had a daughter before who died, so having another child of his own has got to mean even more to him than usual. Sue was crying when she called me.”

  Pip, perhaps involuntarily, laid both hands over her stomach as if to protect the child.

  Shocked, Daniel wondered what it would be like to have your child die. He was staggered by the horror when he pictured losing Malcolm, and he hadn’t raised him from birth. He could only imagine how utterly Rebecca would be destroyed. And protecting your family was innate for most men. To not be able to save your own child…God.

  The conversation had moved on while he brooded. Pip was grumbling because Sue apparently wasn’t having any morning sickness. “Everyone should have to suffer,” she declared, but with an impishness that told him she didn’t really mean it.

  Daniel had found himself sneaking peeks at her all evening. Her pregnancy wasn’t blatant yet, but there was a gentle curve and her hands occasionally fluttered down to protect that small bulge. Pregnant women used to make him uncomfortable, for reasons he still hadn’t quite identified. Since he found out Rebecca had carried his child, he’d become weirdly fascinated. Could Malcolm really have been so tiny, he was barely a bulge in Rebecca’s stomach? Had she, too, laid her hands on the minute movements inside her while her eyes grew dreamy? Damn it, he was jealous of Joe, able to casually touch his pregnant wife. And now this Rick, who would be there from the beginning as Sue bore their baby.

  The men helped Pip clear the table but, at her insistence, left her loading the dishwasher and sat down again with mugs of coffee.

  “Since I’m not supposed to have any,” she had said, inhaling the aroma of the cup she’d just poured for her husband. Apparently caffeine in any significant amount wasn’t recommended for pregnant women.

  Stirring cream into his, Daniel belatedly heard the question Joe had just asked him.

  “Have I considered marrying her?” His teeth ground together and he set down his cup so hard the coffee splashed. “What the hell do you think?”

  His big, dark-haired nephew watched him, narrow-eyed over his own cup. “It does make sense.”

  Flailing more against himself than Joe, Daniel said, “As much sense as your first marriage.”

  “You wouldn’t have married Rebecca if she’d told you back then that she was pregnant?”

  Daniel scowled, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. I would have married her back then. And we’d probably be long divorced with all the bitter feelings that brings.”

  “At least I tried to do the right thing.”

  “Compared to what I’m doing?” Daniel asked in a dangerously polite voice.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  Joe shrugged. “I’m just asking. That’s all.”

  “If Rebecca had wanted to marry me, she would have stuck around back then. Maybe thought to mention that we were having a baby together. Instead, she went out of her way to make sure I didn’t find out. I can pretty well guarantee that marrying me is not on her mind.”

  “But has it crossed your mind?”

  “You know it has!” Daniel started to push back his chair, then changed his mind and sank back down. “I’ve thought about every option. But, damn it, Joe! You seem to be cut out for family. I’m not.”

  “Are you so sure? You sound like you’re enjoying Malcolm.”

  Daniel took a swallow of coffee in hopes it would sooth the burning sensation in his chest. “I’m…trying. But I feel so damned clumsy. Being a parent…that’s one of those things you learn from your own parents. Mine called in absent.”

  “Mine weren’t anything to brag about.”

  “You had Mom. For whatever reason, she did better by you than she did for me.”

  He’d believed then that it was because Joe was Adam’s son. Even when she was disappointed in her oldest boy, Jo Carson had loved him and continued to have faith in him. She’d believed in Daniel, too, but the softness wasn’t there for him, only starch and determination. As an adult, he’d come to realize how many forces had been at work. His birth had propelled her to make decisions she must have known were wrong. The disintegration of her marriage, the later need to penny-pinch, to squeeze in overtime when she could—it had all affected her ability to be the kind of mother she’d been twenty years earlier. Or ten years later, when her grandson needed her.

  “Maybe she did,” Joe said, “but I think you’re wrong to see yourself as some kind of emotional cripple. No, you shouldn’t marry Rebecca for Malcolm’s sake and for no other reason.” He paused. “You sure you aren’t in love with her?”

  Daniel wanted to issue an immediate denial, but he kept remembering how conflicted he had been, both driving her away and wanting to be with her. For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder whose feelings had really scared him. Hers? Or his own?

  “What a bizarre triangle they had,” Daniel said, maybe to change the subject, maybe not.

  “You mean, the Carsons and Grandma?” Accepting the jump, probably even understanding the reason for it, Joe propped his elbows on the table. “No kidding. To agree to raise your husband’s baby by another woman…” He shook his head. “She must have really loved him.”

  “You could look at it more cynically,” Daniel suggested. “Life was harder for a divorced woman in those days. She took on the baby, she won. He was all hers. She didn’t have to worry about joining the work force, raising Sam on her own. How Jenny’s mother coped wasn’t her problem.”

  “Maybe that was part of it,” Joe conceded. “But from what Jenny says, Sarah adopted her wholeheartedly. She never felt resented or unwanted.”

  “She was a cute kid.”

  “She was a reminder of the other woman Robert loved.”

  Daniel couldn’t argue with that. Finding Rebecca and Malcolm had taught him how intimately sharing a child bound a man and woman. It was tempting to see Robert Carson as a real son of a bitch—but according to Jo
e, neither Sam, Jenny or their daughters Belle and Sue had described him that way. Chances were, Carson had thought of Jo every time he looked at his daughter. If he’d genuinely loved her, that must have been hell.

  Was it Jenny’s presence in his life, the reminder of what he’d shared with her mother, that had worn him down, so that eventually he went to see Jo?

  “What was she thinking, making the same mistake again?” Daniel asked.

  “You mean, when she conceived you?” At Daniel’s tight nod, Joe gazed unseeing at the buffet that held Jo Fraser’s best china. “I made the same mistake again.”

  Pip was running water in the kitchen and wouldn’t be able to hear them. “Not with the same woman.”

  Joe shook himself. “God, no.”

  “But then, you didn’t love Nadia.”

  “No. I thought I could make myself, but…no.”

  What had Robert and Jo said to each other that night? Let’s make love just once, for old time’s sake? They hadn’t had the excuse of youth anymore. When they conceived Daniel, Jo Fraser was thirty-nine years old and Robert Carson a couple of years older yet.

  Old enough to know better.

  Maybe that was explanation enough. He was in his forties, loved his wife, but they’d probably had their ups and downs after so many years together, and during all those years he’d lived with regrets. How could he ever forget Jo, seeing her in their daughter’s face every single day?

  And Jo was facing forty years old herself. Had she been afraid that she’d lost any chance of finding real, lasting love? She had a few pictures of her first husband, but in them he was only a boy. No, her powerful, adult love had been given to the married man who vowed to see that she was all right after her husband’s death. The man who’d fathered her two kids. Living as near to each other as they did, maybe shopping at the same grocery store or pharmacy, chances were good that she saw him occasionally, along with the daughter she’d given up. And then, after Joe was born, she saw him again in her grandson’s face.

  It was surely understandable if, for one night, in the grip of powerful memories, they relived what might have been.