“Dad?”
I heard his footfalls in the hallway, and as he appeared in the living room, he smiled, his eyes crinkling in the corners. Where looking at Pax was like looking at another version of me, looking at my father was like looking at an older version.
“Hey, son.”
“You’ve been trying to call?” I asked, seeing no need for small talk.
“Yeah. Why don’t we sit down?” He motioned to a brown leather chair while he sat down on the matching couch across from it.
I sat on the edge of the overstuffed cushion, leaning forward with my forearms propped on my thighs.
“I wanted to check on you, see how you were doing after the fiasco on your birthday.”
I rubbed my palms together. “I’m fine, Dad. It actually explained a lot. Like why Mom was always cold-hearted toward me. Hell, I always wondered what I’d done to her. Now I know it wasn’t me.” I looked him in the eyes. “It was you.”
He slowly nodded, obviously expecting ugly truths to be told. “I take full responsibility.”
“Do you?” I asked. “You take responsibility for the fact that I was raised by a mother who hated me?”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
I stood abruptly, emotions boiling over. “She sure as hell didn’t love me.” I walked over to the fireplace, my back to my father as I gripped the edge of the mantel and leaned against it. I thought of the small boy who had longed for his mother’s love but never received it. She had never raised a hand to me, but the deep freeze that filled her heart where I was concerned had been a bitter reality. “No child should feel that unloved,” I said softly, “not by someone claiming to be his mother.
“And what about you? All I wanted was for the two of us to go fishing or pass ball. But you always did it with Pax, and I was left waiting.” I could feel the anger of a child who was forced to sit on the sidelines while he watched his father favor another son. Damn, no wonder I had pulled half the shit I did when I was younger. Any attention was better than being ignored. By the time I was in high school, I was indifferent.
I spun around and faced him. “Was that too much to ask?”
“You’re right,” my father confessed. “And I’m sorry. It was an awkward situation created by me. Your mother—Cheryl and I were having problems. We split for a while, and I met Amanda, your birth mother. She was kind and sweet, and I was drawn to her. I used to take her yellow carnations. They were her favorite flower. She said the yellow reminded her of the sun, its warmth.”
“Did she know you were married?” I thundered.
I knew the answer before my dad spoke. He cast his eyes downward, the corners of his mouth drawn down. “No, not until after she became pregnant.”
I clenched my jaw.
“I screwed up,” he said, “and it affected everyone around me. I have to live with the guilt of knowing that I did that.”
“And I had to live with parents who didn’t give a damn about me,” I whispered between clenched teeth.
“That’s not true. When Amanda died, I wanted you to live with me. Cheryl and I had reconciled, and she quickly agreed to raise you. I don’t think she knew how hard it would be.”
“Because I was a constant reminder of your infidelity,” I bit out caustically.
My father’s lips thinned, and he nodded. “I should have done things differently where you were concerned. I can see that now. At the time, I was afraid that any favoritism I showed you might be construed by Cheryl that I preferred your mother, that I preferred you.”
“Well, congratulations,” I said. “You were pretty damn successful in proving that I wasn’t your preference.”
He blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, Cade. I do love you. I love you just as much as Pax and Evan.”
I had longed to hear those words for so long, both the child and the man. I thought I was indifferent, but to hear his validation….
I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand, trying to reign in the emotions that threatened to overtake me. The corners of my mouth turned down as my lips started to quiver, and I pursed them in an effort to hide my lack of control.
“Please forgive me, son.” His voice cracked with emotion, and I lowered my hand and looked at him. Tears streamed down his face, and I could never remember seeing my father cry. Not ever. It broke something inside me, a hard shell that I had erected to save myself from the suffering that seeped into my soul. He held his arms out to me, and the tears that I had been struggling to hold back broke free, filling my eyes and spilling onto my cheeks.
I was larger than him, broader, taller. I was no longer a little boy, but no matter how many times I had told myself otherwise, I wanted his love. I stepped into his arms, wrapping my own around him as he clung to me.
“I love you, son,” he whispered.
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Chapter 26
Brilliant
Seren
Waiting was torturous. Arms and legs spread across the rack under tremendous strain kind of torturous.
Waiting on an answer from Cade always was.
I didn’t know what kind of hold he had over me, but I couldn’t think of anything else when he had been left with a choice where our relationship was concerned. I knew he loved me, but I also knew that he desperately wanted children. And since I loved him, I couldn’t marry him until he knew the hard ugly truth about my chances of conception.
I knew that having endometriosis didn’t necessarily mean that I couldn’t have children, but if I had married him and kept it a secret, without making sure he understood what it could mean, and then been unable to conceive, I would have been eaten with guilt. And my biggest fear was that he would grow to hate me for not telling him.
I couldn’t live with that.
Better to have everything out in the open now than for there to be any more deception between us.
It had been three days since our last discussion. I told him to take time to think about it, and I had meant it. But damn, the waiting was so difficult.
I unloaded the dryer. After carrying my laundry basket downstairs, I sat on my bed and began folding, wishing I would hear from him.
My phone dinged with a text.
Cade: I’ll pick you up at nine. Pack an overnight bag. We need to talk.
Me: Okay.
It read like a demand not a request. I read it over and over again, wondering if there were any clues to his decision. Since he had worded it so bluntly, I wondered if he was aggravated or mad. Could he be upset because I had let him think all this time that I was perfectly healthy, talking about having children when I knew my chances of conceiving a houseful were slim to none. Did he really want a houseful? And exactly how many was that, anyway?
I chewed on my lower lip, anxiety running rampant.
Children were probably one of the most important considerations of any marriage. If one partner wanted them and one didn’t, it could lead to problems. And if both people wanted them, but there was trouble conceiving….
I shuddered, willing myself not to think about it.
***
He hadn’t given me any indication of how I should dress, and I was too afraid to ask questions. I just wanted to wait it out, so I opted for jeans and a fitted shirt. When he knocked on the door to my basement apartment, my heart began thumping mercilessly in my chest. Nausea eddied in my stomach, and I swallowed, hoping to suppress the feeling.
I took a deep breath and released it before I opened the door. When I first caught sight of him, happiness flooded me. I had missed him terribly. The thought of losing him altogether frightened me because in the last few months, Cade had quickly become one of my best friends. On some levels, he had even surpassed Lexi, and that was saying a lot because I loved Lexi like a sister.
His hair was styled as usual, in an intentionally slightly disheveled look. His face was stoic, his dark green eyes watching me, his sculpted lips neither smiling nor frowning. His rugged good looks and angular jawline m
ade me long to reach out and touch his face, but I didn’t.
I stood motionless as he stuffed his hands in his front pockets. His crisp white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms, molded beautifully to his chiseled physique as it contrasted against his dark blue jeans.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” My heart still thumped.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” I picked up the small suitcase that waited by the door.
He took it from me and set it in the back of his truck while I climbed in the passenger side.
Once he slid in behind the steering wheel, he cranked the ignition. “I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to get back with you. I was going to talk to you last night, but tonight worked out a little better.”
“It’s no problem. I wanted you to take your time. It’s a lot to think about.”
He nodded as he reached over and placed his hand on top of mine, his warmth immediately giving me comfort. “It is, and I’ve had a lot to consider. I don’t want to talk about it yet, though.” He briefly glanced in my direction and then shifted his line of vision back toward the road. “I want to wait and discuss it when I can look at you. I want you to see my face as we talk, and I want to see yours.”
“Okay,” I said, almost whispering. It was difficult to talk when I felt as if I were holding my breath.
We were virtually silent during the drive. I had no idea where we were going or how long it would take to get there, and I didn’t want to ask any questions. Instead, I waited impatiently.
When he turned down a dirt road, I couldn’t hide my surprise. It had become evident that we weren’t going to his apartment, but I thought perhaps he was driving to a hotel.
But that wasn’t the case, either.
Maybe he was making a pit stop.
The truck jostled us as he drove over once-muddy ruts that had now dried. In the distance, I could see the moon glisten off a lake, and as we got closer, the headlights beamed through tall grass that gave way to a freshly mown patch on the lake’s edge. A large white tent had been erected in the center of the mown grass, and I turned to look at him in surprise as he parked the truck.
“We’re going camping?”
“I wanted us to have complete privacy.”
Shocked, I turned back toward the lake, noting that I could see no evidence of another human being. This lake was obviously privately owned. There was no development around it.
He cut off the engine, and except for the soft glow of the moon, everything went dark. I waited for him to circle around the back of the truck to get my suitcase, and then he opened the door for me and helped me out.
I couldn’t see inside the huge canvas tent in the center of the mown area, but as we walked around the front of it, Cade motioned to a smaller tent. “There’s a portable toilet in there. We have the means to shower, too, if necessary, but it won’t be quite like taking a shower at home. I figured it would be good enough until morning.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but he reached down and turned on a lantern, illuminating a huge outdoor loveseat boasting a thick cushion and a fire pit. Not the folding aluminum chairs I had imagined. A thick, soft blanket was tossed over the back of it.
“Have a seat.”
I sat on the love seat while he started the fire. It didn’t take long for the logs to engulf in flames, creating a toasty warmth in the crisp spring air.
As he stirred around the campsite, I listened to the sounds of nature: singing crickets, croaking frogs, and the gentle sound of the water as it lapped against the bank.
A howl rent the air, and startled, my eyes widened. “What was that?”
Cade laughed softly as he turned the lantern off, the main source of light now coming from the fire. “Probably a coyote. Don’t worry,” he said, lowering himself on the couch beside me, “he won’t come anywhere near us.”
The fire crackled, and I found it soothing while I waited for Cade to start talking. He shifted his body toward me, sitting somewhat sideways, and I did the same. My breath froze in my lungs as fear welled in my chest. He had gone to great pains to set up this evening. Was it because he accepted me as I was or because he wanted to give me a lovely farewell, one last night to remember what we had?
He took my hands in his, and I focused on his face, blocking out everything around me. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last few days.”
I swallowed, trying to keep calm.
“Flanagan, I want you to know I love you.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I love you, too.”
He reached out and touched my face, his fingertips skimming my cheek. “A lot has happened during the last few months. I feel like I’ve been lost at sea a little bit. Every time a wave knocks me in one direction, and I think I see a path back to land, another wave comes and knocks me in another direction, and I have to adjust course again as I desperately try to figure out where I’m supposed to be going.”
Had my confession caused him to adjust course again? He had wanted to marry me. Now did he think that wasn’t an option?
“But one thing has been constant.”
“What’s that?” I whispered, afraid to know the answer.
“You,” he answered. “You’re the star in the sky that I keep looking toward to guide me. It’s you, Flanagan. I keep thinking that everything had changed when we were in Ireland, but to be honest, I think it changed even before then. Once you came back to Creekview, I was always looking for you at Whiskey Nights, hoping you were there. Maybe I didn’t realize it then or maybe I was deceiving myself because I was trying to keep things platonic, but you were the one person that I wanted to be around more than any other.”
He squeezed my hands. “There is nothing I want in this world more than my own children….”
“I understand,” I whispered, devastation coursing through me as my lips trembled. It was the worst-case scenario, and even though I had tried to prepare myself for it, nothing could have prepared me for the emptiness that I felt knowing Cade would never be mine.
“You didn’t let me finish,” he said softly, a lazy grin on his face. “There is nothing I want more in this world than my own children…except you.”
And with those words, my anxiety drained away, replaced by the sweet feeling of relief.
“Flanagan, I don’t know what the future holds for us. All I know is that I can’t see a future without you in it. I never could. I know you wanted me to take time to think, but honestly, my mind was already made up about you. There was only one thing that I truly needed to consider. When I found out that Cheryl wasn’t my mother, I realized that I spent a lot of time when I was a kid thinking there was something wrong with me, that I didn’t deserve my parents’ love as much as Pax and Evan, when in reality, it was my parents. I wanted to make sure that I couldn’t do that, that if we wound up adopting or having both biological and adopted children that there was no way that I could ever be like my own father and the woman who raised me, that I wouldn’t do something to make a child feel like he wasn’t loved as much as his sibling.”
“Cade, you’ll make a great father,” I assured him. “I never doubted it for one minute.”
“But I did,” he said softly, clinging to my hands. “After everything I’ve discovered recently, I had to do some soul-searching. I had to be confident that I would be a good father, whether the child was ours biologically or adopted. And Flanagan, I realized that I didn’t have to worry about repeating what had been done to me. I think the fact that I never felt as loved as Pax or Evan will actually make me a better father.”
He released my hands and stood. I watched him silently as he switched the lantern back on and pulled something out of a backpack that rested at the end of the loveseat.
I smiled. “You brought a stuffed animal?”
He shot me a grin. “I have it on good authority that you love little pink dogs.”
Kneeling on one knee in front of me while he grasped the stuffed puppy, he reached for my hand. “Let’s try this again,” he said. “I love you, Flanagan. I want you to be my star forever. I want to be the father of your children, however those children may come to us, biologically, adoption…the stork. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as they are our children, you and me.”
He untied a satin ribbon from the puppy’s neck and held the diamond ring up. “I had it inscribed,” he said, angling the ring so he could see the inside of the band. “My star forever,” he read it in a whisper-soft voice, making it sound like a promise. He reached up and caressed my cheek. “So what do you say, Flanagan? Will you marry me?”
I squeezed his hand, nodding vigorously. “Yes,” I whispered, testing my voice as I blinked back tears. “Yes!”
His handsome face broke into a grin as I held my hand out, so that he could slide the engagement ring on my finger. The pear-shaped diamond was bordered with smaller accent diamonds, and they reflected the firelight. The ornate design included swirls of diamonds along the band, and I thought perhaps it was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.
“It may be difficult to see them right now in this dim light,” he said, guiding the ring onto my finger, “but two blue princess-cut sapphires are set into the ring’s bezel, one on each side. I already thought the ring was beautiful, but when I realized it included sapphires, I knew it was the perfect one for you.” Having pushed the ring into place, his eyes met mine. “The sapphires remind me of your eyes, and the fact that they were princess cut made me think of you at Blarney Castle.”
My lips trembled with emotion. “I love it.”
He stood and lifted me into his arms, and I wrapped my legs around his waist while he pressed a kiss to my lips. I opened to him, allowing him to deepen the kiss.
“Damn, I love you so much,” he whispered, cupping my buttocks. “You have no idea what you do to me. I want to make love to you right now.”
He lowered me to my feet and pulled me over to the tent. When he tied the flaps back, I gasped. The interior of the tent looked like luxurious hotel accommodations. A plush king bed adorned with a white comforter and several pillows was flanked by nightstands with lamps and multiple candles. Cade released my hand as he stepped onto the hardwood platform and lit candle after candle until the interior of the tent glowed with soft light.
Deceived Page 25
