The Soldier's Forever Family

by Gina Wilkins

  She raised her eyes to meet his again, and his expression now made her cheeks warm. Had she looked at his mouth longer than she’d realized? He smiled, shrugged, then turned back to Simon to share a few more facts about sea turtles the boy hadn’t learned on the expedition earlier, to Simon’s delight.

  The server brought their check and set it down automatically in front of Adam. Because she’d come up with this plan, Joanna reached for it, but Adam gave her a look that made her draw her hand back.

  “Least I can do,” he muttered, and pulled out his wallet.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Adam,’” Simon said to Joanna in a stage whisper, giving her a nudge under the table.

  “Thank you, Mr. Adam,” she parroted with a forced smile, making her son laugh and Adam chuckle.

  The sprawling fun center was a kids’ fantasy complete with colorful rides, flashing lights and cheerful music. The rides included a small Ferris wheel, bumper boats in a concrete “lagoon,” a merry-go-round and whirling ladybug cars. Four go-cart tracks twisted around the central arcade building, each designated for different ages and skill levels of drivers. Simon’s eyes were wide as he gazed around, trying to take it all in at once.

  “What do you want to do first, Skipper?”

  Gazing up at Adam, Simon spread his arms. “All of it.”

  Chuckling, Adam put one hand on Simon’s shoulder and one on Joanna’s back. “We’d better get started, then.”

  Joanna felt the warmth of his hand through her thin cotton dress. The fabric might as well not have been there, considering the way she responded to his innocuous touch. During the years they’d been apart, she’d thought of him, of course, as Simon’s biological father. But she’d almost forgotten how strongly she’d reacted to him during those heady days they’d had together. Reminding herself that they were now surrounded by children—including her own—she tried to push the hormones and erotic memories aside.

  For the next hour, they played with Simon, making sure he had a wonderful time. And Joanna enjoyed herself, too, though her awareness of Adam simmered beneath the surface all evening, fueled by fleeting touches and lingering glances. Anyone watching them would assume they were a family—mom, dad, son. They would be right, of course, though she doubted any of them could imagine the circumstances. She knew Adam was equally aware of the impression they gave. True to his word, Adam took Simon for rides in the go-carts. Both snugly strapped in, they sped around curves and up and down inclines, to the boy’s squealing delight. Afterward Adam stood with her on the sidelines and called out suggestions when Simon drove the kiddie carts. The boy basked in his attention.

  She propped her elbows on the low fence beside Adam, watching as Simon maneuvered the small blue car with an expression of intense concentration. “He’s having a wonderful time. He’s pretty good at driving that thing, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. Ten years or so, he’ll be wanting a real one.”

  She groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’re doing a hell of a job with him.”

  The off-handed compliment shouldn’t have pleased her as much as it did. “You’re good with him, too,” she said a bit hesitantly. “He likes you.”

  Adam kept his eye on the boy in the blue car. “Yeah. His new buddy, Mr. Adam.”

  She moistened her lips before asking quietly, “Would you rather he called you Dad?”

  She couldn’t actually hear him swallow over the roars, buzzes, beeps and shrieks surrounding them, but she sensed her question had made him uncomfortable. She wished she understood better why he was so intimidated. Was it the daunting responsibility inherent in fatherhood—or the difficulty in walking away from it once accepted? Whichever, he pretended like he hadn’t heard her. Flushed and windblown, his cowlick sticking straight up, Simon ran up to them after his ride ended. “That was fun. I drove good, didn’t I?”

  “You were the best driver on the track,” Adam assured him.

  The way Simon’s face lit up in response to the compliment cooled Joanna’s irritation a bit. “Really?”

  “No doubt.”

  “Adam? Adam Scott?” The man’s voice was barely audible over the noise around them.

  They all turned to see an older man with a shock of silver hair and black-rimmed glasses above a prominent nose. His neon-yellow T-shirt was emblazoned in orange with the name of the fun center beneath a drawing of a bright red go-cart. “I thought that was you, Adam. Good to see you again.”

  Adam shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too, Leon. Looks like business is going well.”

  “It is that time of year. How are things out at Wind Shadow?”

  “Busy as always.”

  Leon looked then at Joanna and Simon, giving them a broad smile that revealed a flash of gold crown. “I didn’t know you were married, Adam. Your boy looks just like you. Spitting image. Good looking kid.”

  An awkward silence fell over Adam and Joanna. Simon might have been the only one who didn’t notice. He laughed. “Mr. Adam isn’t my father. He’s our new friend.”

  “Ah. My mistake.” Leon looked quickly from Adam to Joanna when no one contradicted Simon.

  Adam filled in the gaps. “Leon, this is Joanna Zielinski and her son, Simon. They’re visiting our resort from Georgia.”

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Simon. Having a good time on your vacation?”

  “I like your place,” Simon gushed. “We’ve been having fun.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Reaching into his deep pocket, Leon drew out a handful of game tokens for the arcade. “Here, win yourself some tickets. Maybe you’ll get a good prize.”

  Clutching the tokens in both hands, Simon gasped in pleasure. “Thank you, Mr. Leon!”

  The older man patted his head. “You’re welcome. Have a good time. Come back and see us again.”

  Fortunately Simon was so excited about the free game tokens that he didn’t mention Leon’s comment about how much Simon looked like Adam. Still, the encounter had brought home to Joanna—and probably to Adam—that the more time she and Simon spent with him, the more likely it became that the bright little boy would figure out the truth on his own. And that was something neither of them wanted—especially, apparently, Adam.

  * * *

  WORN OUT FROM his busy day, Simon was sound asleep in his booster seat by the time Joanna parked at the resort. She unbuckled him, and Adam reached around her to pick him up. “I’ll carry him.”

  She moved out of the way, letting him take the boy out of the car. She noticed that Adam shifted Simon quickly to his left side, grimacing just a bit when he put the weight on his right arm.

  “Do your injuries still bother you?” she asked him, hoping he wouldn’t mind the question.

  He seemed annoyed with himself for letting the discomfort show, but he answered honestly. “There’s still some weakness in the right arm. Can’t really lift it higher than my ear. It doesn’t bother me too badly. I can still use it for most of what I need to do.”

  Reminded again of what he’d endured, she bit her lip as she led the way to her suite. She didn’t even want to think about how he’d sustained those injuries. All those months of her pregnancy, she’d pictured him being a carefree bachelor who maybe thought of her occasionally. If only she’d known he was in a war zone, then in a hospital...well, she didn’t know what she’d have done differently.

  She unlocked the door and held it open while Adam carried Simon in. Simon didn’t even stir, his limbs loose, his sweet face flushed with sleep. Nor did he rouse when Adam asked, “Where do you want him?”

  She motioned toward the bedroom where Simon slept. “Just carry him in there. I’ll get him into his pajamas.”

  Adam lowered the boy gently to the bed, then stepped back. “I’ll wait for you on the balcony.”

&nb
sp; She should have known he wouldn’t slip quietly out now. “I won’t be long.”

  He nodded and turned to leave the room.

  She joined him on the balcony fifteen minutes later. He leaned against the rail, gazing out over the resort as she had done the evening before. He hadn’t turned on the lights, so he stood in deep shadow. Her heart fluttered foolishly at the sight of him there, all dark and brooding and tousled from an evening of playing with their son.

  She moistened her lips. “He’s out cold. He pretty much sleepwalked through changing into pajamas and brushing his teeth.”

  “Ran out of fuel, huh? Wish I had half the energy he’s got when he’s awake.”

  Laughing softly, she said, “No kidding. Think how much we’d get done in a day.”

  “You, uh, don’t think he read anything into Leon’s comment, do you? About looking like me, I mean.”

  She stopped smiling. “I don’t think so. Too much else was going on at the time. And then Leon gave him the free tokens, and that tickled him so much he forgot about it.”

  “He does look a lot like me, doesn’t he?”

  “As Leon said—your spitting image,” Joanna murmured.

  “Did you remember?”

  She was confused for a moment, but then understood what he was asking. “Did I remember what you looked like? Yes, of course. For one thing, I had a living reminder.”

  He let a few moments pass, then spoke again without turning to look at her. “What was it like for you? Going back home to find yourself pregnant, I mean.”

  “It was...” She hesitated, trying to sum up the past six years in one word. She finally settled on, “...challenging.”

  After mulling over that response, he asked, “Did it affect your career? Make things difficult for you in that respect?”

  She shrugged. “There were some adjustments in my career, of course. I had to arrange maternity leave, and after I went back to working full-time, I had to plan for sick days and school meetings and programs. I was only able to take ten weeks for maternity leave, but I was fortunate enough to find Rose, Simon’s nanny, who is a treasure. She took care of him full-time while I worked until he was three, when I enrolled him in a preschool because I could already tell he needed more intellectual stimulation. Now she watches him after school and on school breaks when I have work obligations. He considers her his second grandmother.”

  “He’ll miss her when you move.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she nodded. “And vice versa. They’re crazy about each other. I promised to keep in touch and send pictures, and I assured her we’d come see her every time we visit the family.”

  “So...family. How did they feel about your pregnancy? Your father, the surgeon? How did he react?”

  So he remembered Simon’s spontaneous chattering during that dinner with Trevor. “My parents are...very traditional.” To say the least. “They’re only in their late fifties, but both come from conservative Catholic backgrounds. They might have expected something like this from my younger sister, who’s always been a rebel and a rule-breaker, but I think I shocked them. To be honest, they weren’t happy with me at all, and being so career-focused themselves, they worried that I’d put mine in jeopardy. It took them a few months to adjust, but they came around. They didn’t disown me or anything that drastic, but they have a way of making their disappointment known.”

  Even in the near darkness, she could see Adam’s frown crease his face, which was still in profile to her. “How do they treat Simon?”

  “They aren’t demonstrative people, but they love Simon in their own way, and he knows they do. My sister adores him. He’s very close to his aunt, Maddie, and as I mentioned to you before, she and I have grown much closer since all of this happened.”

  Maddie had confessed late one night during Joanna’s pregnancy that their parents’ disapproval of Joanna’s behavior had made her feel more connected to the older sister who had always seemed such an impossibly flawless model to follow. Joanna hadn’t realized until then how pressured Maddie had felt all her life to be more like her dutiful sister. Now that she looked back on their childhoods, she didn’t blame Maddie for rebelling against those expectations, or even for resenting the sibling who’d made her life more difficult. Joanna was fond and proud of the strong, independent woman Maddie had become.

  Adam brought her back to the present. “You said your mother is a school administrator?”

  He never seemed to forget anything she said, even in passing. “Yes, she’s the principal of a Catholic high school in Atlanta.”

  “Another PhD?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your sister? What does she do?”

  “She’s an attorney.”

  “Of course.”

  Raising her left eyebrow, Joanna added, “A public defender.”

  “Huh. I doubt your father likes that.”

  She smiled. “I wouldn’t say that’s why she chose that particular job...but I’m not saying it wasn’t part of the reason, either.”

  “So, a doctor, a school administrator, a lawyer and a psychologist. Come from a family of underachievers, do you?”

  She didn’t quite know how to respond to the odd note in his tone, so she merely smiled again.

  He kept up the low-key inquisition. “What else changed for you after Simon? Did your friends stand by you? I guess your dating life took a hit. You, uh, haven’t married or anything along the way, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t married. I’ve dated, of course, but not a lot, and never seriously. I didn’t want to risk disrupting Simon’s life unless I knew there was a future in it. And, well, that’s just never happened.”

  Adam continued to gaze out at the landscape, though she knew he listened intently. Leaning against the railing, she imitated his posture. Though she wasn’t looking at Adam now, she was so focused on him that she was only dimly aware of the beauty of the moonlight glinting on the ocean waters ahead of them.

  “What about you?” she asked, trying to speak casually. “Never married? Come close?”

  His reply was equally offhanded. “No to both. Never really thought of myself as the marrying kind.”

  She wasn’t sure why the statement gave her a jolt. It wasn’t as if she expected anything from him for herself; the decisions facing them were all about Simon’s best interests.

  “It sounds as if you’ve handled this all very well,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I’m sure I’ve made my share of mistakes, but I’ve done the best I could. I have no complaints. No regrets. Simon has brought me nothing but joy, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”

  Perhaps it was the vehemence of her tone that made him finally turn to look at her. She kept her gaze steady, letting him see that she had meant every single word.

  After a moment, he nodded. In a gesture that was familiar to her by now, he reached up to the back of his neck. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what you went through after I left you.”

  She moistened her lips, tasting salt and the faint memory of his kisses. “Yes, well, I’m sorry you had to go to war. And that you were so badly injured. Something tells me you were much more alone than I was.”

  He didn’t contradict her. Neither did he look particularly regretful about it. Was he a man who preferred being alone, not held down by family ties? If so, what effect would that have on his relationship, if any, with his son?

  “Why did you go with us this evening, Adam?” she asked, wanting to at least try to understand what he was thinking. “If you aren’t even sure you want to acknowledge your relationship to Simon, why did you want to spend those hours with him?”

  He scowled, drawing back slightly as though in self-defense. “He caught me off guard. I didn’t know how to say no without hurting his feelings.”

&nb
sp; “You could have made up an excuse.”

  His frown deepening, Adam shook his head. “I’m not going to lie to him.”

  Only by omission, she added silently, but decided it wasn’t the right time to challenge him. Probably the deception bothered her more than Adam because she knew Simon so much better. It was only natural that she felt protective.

  Adam made a muffled sound as though he’d somehow sensed her thought, or perhaps shared it. “Trevor said I was trying on fatherhood for size tonight. I told him it wasn’t like that.”

  She bit her lip for a moment, then asked quietly, “But was he wrong?”

  He shifted awkwardly. “I guess I just wanted to get to know Simon a little. He’s a special kid, JoJo. You’ve done a great job with him.”

  There was no reason for the praise to bring tears to her eyes, but still she found herself blinking rapidly and clearing her throat before she could speak. “Thank you.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me, of course. I suspected when I met you that you were the type.”

  She felt her eyebrows rise. “The type?”

  He shrugged. “You know. Home. Family. Stability. I knew from a few things you let slip that our weekend together was out of character for you. We weren’t looking for anything more than a bit of fun for a few days, but I figured even then that you’d want more from someone someday. I didn’t mean to screw that up for you.”

  She shuffled her feet, uncomfortable with his comments. “Like I said, I wouldn’t trade Simon for anything. I’m not so sure I’m all that domestic, anyway. I think of myself more as a working single mother.”

  “Who’s going to take care of Simon when you’re working in Seattle?”

  She supposed the slight note of concern she heard in his voice was understandable. She spoke reassuringly. “He’ll start first grade in the fall, and when he’s not in school, I’ll hire a nanny. I’ve already gotten a few recommendations from associates I’ll be working with there. You needn’t worry. My responsibilities to Simon will always take priority over my career or any other part of my life.”