by Olivia Gates
But with Mauri, he was something she’d never seen a man being toward a child, not even her own loving father.
That almost tangible affinity they shared had disturbed her, worried her from that first day. It shook her to her core to see it growing every day, in Richard’s eyes, in his vibe. Such absolute focus, such a heart-snatching level of emotion.
What shook her as much was seeing him through new eyes. There was far more to him than the lethal seducer who’d taken her heart and body by storm, or the merciless void who’d taken Burton apart, or the ruthless manipulator who’d threatened to tear her life apart when he’d first returned. There were depths and passions in him she doubted even he knew he possessed. And no one seemed more surprised to discover these hidden qualities than Richard himself.
Just today, he’d done something she was certain he’d never contemplated within the range of possibilities.
He’d taken them shopping.
She’d agreed only after he’d promised no splurging. After the fact, she’d kicked herself for not defining splurging. To him, it could be keeping it under a million dollars.
As it had turned out, she shouldn’t have worried.
Thinking they were shopping—rightfully so—with the genie of the lamp, the kids had asked for things they wouldn’t dare ask of their family. She’d bated her breath, hating to have to shoot him down in front of them if he succumbed to their demands. But he’d only given them the most subtle but stern lesson in needless excess and its detriments. After that, they’d let him choose, and he’d picked reasonably priced stuff they’d been delighted with, but would also truly enjoy and benefit from.
Mauri was the one who didn’t ask for anything, excessive or otherwise. He was overwhelmed each time Richard picked something out for him that he revealed he’d intensely wished for. What he’d never asked her for. Mauri never asked for anything, as if he was aware of her burdens and never wanted to add to them, even when she entreated and cajoled him to ask for anything. It forced her to try to predict his desires. Clearly very inaccurately. It upset and stirred her in equal measure that Richard, after such short if intense acquaintance, was the one to read him so accurately.
After the shopping for the kids was concluded, she told Richard he was forbidden from buying the adults anything. He again said she didn’t have a right to dictate terms on the others’ behalf. She grudgingly conceded that his relationship with her family should remain independent of theirs.
Especially since that was now nonexistent.
Ever since he’d come offering his so-called alliance, there’d been no hint of the voracious predator he’d been. Each day, each hour that passed without him bringing up his desire for a continuation of their affair left her partially relieved...but wholly distraught. For she wanted him now, this new him she could admire and respect, far more than she’d ever wanted him before. But it seemed her earlier assumption had been correct. The reality of her being the mother of his son, the domesticity of her life situation, seemed to have doused his passion irreversibly.
Just as she was considering putting herself out of her misery and asking him what his intentions were, she found Rose and her family right in their path.
Rose hadn’t asked her about Richard again. To her relief. And astonishment. Isabella surmised she hadn’t because she feared Isabella knew nothing about his real identity, and didn’t want to cause him trouble since he was hiding it. Following the same rationalization, Rose probably wouldn’t bring up her suspicion again in everyone’s presence.
As Jeffrey and their kids, Janie and Robbie—named after Rose’s mother and brother, Janet and Robert, as Isabella only now realized—rushed to greet them, Rose stood behind, staring at Richard. Richard, after shaking hands with Jeffrey at Isabella’s brief introduction, stared back.
After her mother and sister took the kids and went to the food court, only the four of them remained. Jeffrey’s animated conversation petered out when he realized it was a monologue and finally noticed the turmoil in his wife’s eyes as she stared at the stranger.
Before he could react, Rose threw herself at Richard, clung to him with all her strength.
Isabella’s lungs almost burst. Richard looked as if he’d turned to stone the moment Rose touched him.
Then Rose’s incoherent whimpers started to make sense. “Don’t tell me you’re not Rex...don’t you dare.”
Richard squeezed his eyes shut, bared his teeth as if straining under an unbearable weight.
Rose suddenly pulled back, features shaking out of control, eyes reddened and pouring tears as she grabbed his arms in trembling hands. “You’re my brother. Say it.”
Richard breathed in sharply, emptied his massive chest on a ragged exhalation and nodded. “I’m your brother.”
A sob tore out of Rose’s depths and she flung herself at Richard again. Among the cacophony filling her ears, Isabella heard Jeffrey exclaiming a string of hells and damns.
As Rose wept uncontrollably, mashing her face into her brother’s chest, this time Richard contained her in his great embrace, stroked her gleaming head soothingly, his hands trembling. Isabella remembered to breathe only when she felt the world dimming.
Richard had decided to stop hiding, to let his sister have him back.
A week ago she’d asked him why he’d never done that. He’d said so he wouldn’t taint Rose’s life with his darkness. When she’d said that same fear should apply to her and her family, he’d assured her he’d installed every precaution, would never impact them negatively in any way. When she’d countered he should do the same with Rose and come clean to her and his response had been a silent glance, she’d figured it was only a matter of time before he did.
Suddenly it hit her. This was all his doing. He was the one who’d chosen the mall and decided when to stop shopping and walk around. He must have known Rose and her family were coming, had wanted to set this up to see where it would lead. But it seemed Rose had still surprised him with her unrestrained reaction.
Richard now stepped back from the sister who clutched him as if afraid he’d disappear again if she let him go. What Isabella saw in his eyes almost knocked her off her feet.
Such...tenderness.
She’d seen nothing like that in his eyes before. Not even toward Mauri. With him there was indulgence, interest, and when no one noticed, stark, fierce emotions that left her breathless. He’d certainly never looked at her—before his current careful neutrality—with anything approaching this...sheer beauty. She hadn’t thought him capable of it.
But she’d never inspired such depth and quality of emotion in him.
His voice was a gruff rasp as his gaze moved from Rose to Jeffrey and back. “We have much to talk about. How about we do it over lunch? Isabella wanted to have sushi today.”
Nodding feverishly, looking up at him as if at everything she’d ever wished for had come true, Rose clung to his arm, let him steer her away. Isabella and Jeffrey followed the newly reunited siblings in a trance.
Richard spent the first hour telling the Andersons everything. The next two were consumed with Rose’s nonstop questions and his attempts to answer each before she hit him with the next.
He left out strategic areas. Such as how many monsters he’d eliminated. And how he’d gotten the info to bring Burton down, making it sound as if Isabella had cooperated knowingly, as if there’d been nothing beyond this goal between them. Rose must have been too dazed to remember her earlier observation that Mauri looked like their dead brother to come up with the right conclusion. But Isabella felt it was only a matter of time before she did. Or before Richard told her.
Jeffrey finally shook his head. “So you removed every obstacle from our path in our known history! I thought we were plain lucky, but Rose always said she had her own guardian angel, and me by association. Turns out she was right.”
Richard huffed. “More like a guardian devil.”
Rose’s eyes filled again as she squeezed his hands. “You’
ve always been an angel to me, from the first moment I can remember, till that day you went away. But I always felt you watching over me, and that’s why I never believed in my heart that you were dead. It’s only because you never came forward that I had to tell myself that you were. But I lived feeling I’d one day see you again. That’s why I knew you the moment I saw you. Because I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m glad you did.” Richard’s smile was tight with emotion. “And I’m sorry I made you wait that long.”
She lunged across the table, knocking things over to plant a tear-smeared kiss on his cheek before subsiding. “Never be sorry. I’ll be forever grateful you’re alive, that you found me back then and that you’re here now. I can’t ever ask for more than that.”
“Can I ask you to forgive me for ever doubting you?” Jeffrey hugged his wife to his side lovingly before returning his gaze to Richard. “Rose always talked about her biological family, but mostly about you. Though she had more years with your mother and brother, she remembered you most of all. She always said you were the best at everything, couldn’t believe you could die. She painted this Superman image of you, and what do you know? She was right. I have a bona fide double-oh-seven for a brother-in-law.”
“I bet Rex would put him to shame...uh...” Rose stopped and smiled goofily at Richard, squeezing his hand again as if to make sure he was really sitting across from her. “I don’t know if I can get used to calling you Richard.”
His free hand cupped her cheek, and the look in his eyes almost uprooted Isabella’s heart all over again.
What she’d give to have him look at her that way.
“You have to in front of others.” His gaze suddenly turned deadly serious. “It’s beyond vital I’m never associated with Cobra, The Organization’s operative. Though I wiped every shred of evidence they had on me, changed radically from the bald-shaven, crooked-nosed, scarred boy and man they knew, and no one suspected me in the past ten years, I can’t risk any mistakes that might lead to my exposure. The consequences to everyone I know would be unspeakable.”
At his ominous declarations, what shook her most was finding out he’d been mutilated by his years as his father’s, Burton’s and The Organization’s weapon. She’d only known him after he’d fixed the damages—at least the physical ones—but now she realized more than ever how deep they’d run.
At the couple’s gaping horror, he exhaled. “This is why I didn’t want to burden you with my existence. Maybe it’s advisable that I continue watching over you from afar without entering your lives at all.”
“No!” Rose’s cry was so alarmed, so agonized, it was another blow to Isabella. “I must have you in my life. We’ll do everything you need us to do.” She tugged at her husband, eyes streaming again, imploring. “Won’t we, Jeff?”
Jeffrey nodded at once, eager to allay his wife’s agitation. “It goes without saying, man. Your secret is our secret.” Then he grimaced. “But what are we going to tell the kids?”
“Oh, God...I hadn’t thought of that,” Rose sobbed, the realization bringing on another wave of weeping. “We can’t tell them you’re their uncle!”
Richard engulfed her hands in his, as if to absorb her anguish. “It’s not important what they think I am as long as I become part of their lives.” Richard looked at her, no doubt correlating how the same applied to Mauri. Turning his gaze back to the distraught Rose, his lips crooked in a smile. “Tell them I was your dearest friend when you first got adopted. They’ll end up calling me uncle anyway.”
Just as tremulous relief dried Rose’s tears, Isabella’s mother and Amelia came back with the kids for the second time. Richard suggested they all adjourn to his place for the rest of the evening. Everyone agreed with utmost enthusiasm, Rose and Jeffrey’s kids squealing in delight when Mauri told them he had a pool in his apartment.
As they all headed for their cars, Isabella hung back, looking at Richard. This lone predator who was now suddenly covered in family. And appearing to delight in them as they did in him.
Only she felt like the odd woman out. As she was.
If he no longer wanted her, and it was clear he didn’t, she’d always be left out in the cold.
* * *
Over the next few weeks it seemed as if an extended family had mushroomed around Isabella’s immediate one. Rose’s adoptive family, Richard’s friend Rafael and his wife, Eliana—the recipe fairy, as she’d come to be known in their household—and Isabella’s own siblings. With the latter now living abroad, two in France and one in Holland, they’d all come to visit on her return to the United States and were delighted with her new status quo.
She was the one who suffered more the better things got. Not that she felt alienated by everyone’s focus on Richard. That pleased her, for him, and for everyone else. It was Richard’s distance from her that was killing her inch by inch every day.
Today, as with every Saturday, Richard was coming to take them to spend the day with everyone who could make it. He’d been taking them on outings that only a man of his imagination and influence could come up with and afford. She’d cautioned him he’d been overdoing it, building unrealistic expectations that he’d always be that available, that accommodating.
His answer had shaken her, since it was the very reason she wanted to make every second with Mauri count. He said that Mauri would be seven only once, that soon he wouldn’t think it cool to hang around with him or be as impressed or as easily pleased by him. But he had another reason she didn’t. He had seven years of absence to make up for.
He’d ended the discussion by reassuring her that Mauri understood he might not be able to keep up this level of presence, that he’d managed to clear his calendar to spend this time with them, but that that might not always be the rule.
Then she’d tried to call him out on his extravagance. Though his trips were fun and enriching for all of them, they cost a ton. He’d waved her concern away. He already owned the transportation and commanded most of the personnel and services involved. He’d insisted she sit back and enjoy someone doing things for her for a change.
She would have enjoyed the hell out of it, had it been meant for her. Or even partially for her. But she was incidental to him as Mauri’s mother. And she could no longer take it. If he wanted to be with his son, he should be, without dragging her along.
Decision made to tell him this today, she rushed to hide the signs of her tears when she heard the bell ring. He was already here.
Mauri stampeded down the stairs to open the door to the man he now lived to anticipate.
Tears welling again, she listened to the usual commotion of father and son meeting. This time it was even more enthusiastic, as if it was after a long absence when they’d seen each other forty-eight hours ago. Yesterday was the first time in weeks Richard hadn’t spent the evening with them.
When she brought herself under control, she walked down to excuse herself from their planned outing. Both of them would probably welcome that, must be unable to wait to be alone together.
Before she took the turn into the living room, she froze.
Mauri’s voice carried to her, serious, almost agitated.
“Do you know that my real name is Ricardo? Today I discovered it’s Spanish for Richard. Mom used to call me Rico until I was two, then started calling me Mauri. But I always hated Mauri. I always wanted to be Rico.”
Slumping against the wall, tears stung her eyes again. She hadn’t even realized that Mauri—Rico—remembered. What had she done to her own son to ameliorate her own suffering?
There was absolute silence. Richard, for the first time, had no ready answer.
So Mauri...Rico just hit him with his next question.
“You’re my father, right?”
That question had come much later than she’d anticipated. Her knees still almost gave at finally hearing it.
Every nerve quivered as she waited for Richard’s answer.
By now she knew anything she’
d ever feared on Mauri’s...Rico’s behalf would never come to pass. Richard, for all his darkness and complexities, was proving to be a better father to Rico than she could have ever wished for. He was beyond amazing with him. She believed he either loved their son or felt all he was capable of feeling for him. Rico would be safe and cherished with him. And Richard had revealed himself to be a tremendous role model, too. Powerful, resolute, committed, brilliant, everything a boy could look up to and wish to emulate. Not to mention that she didn’t think Rico could go back to a life without him.
What she feared now was all on her own behalf.
If Richard revealed the truth and demanded to be in his son’s life indefinitely, she could only continue to do what she’d been doing. Make his presence in their lives as welcome as could be. She wanted Rico to have his father.
But his desire for her had come to an abrupt end the moment she’d gone from black widow in his eyes to hardworking doctor and the steadfast mother of his child.
She could have lived with that, if only she didn’t yearn for him. More than ever. For against all her efforts and better judgment, what she felt for him made her previous emotions fade into nothing. If she’d loved him before, she worshipped him now, while he’d never felt anything beyond desire for her. A desire that had ceased to exist.
But she might have been able to put up with seeing him regularly, as she’d been doing so far, even knowing he’d rather she wasn’t part of the equation. What made it untenable was the thought that he might, probably would, one day find the one woman for him, fall head over heels in love with her as his friends had with their wives and marry her.
How could she survive watching him with another woman up close for the rest of her life, the life she knew she’d spend alone if she couldn’t have him?
A one-note ring made her jump. She felt around in her pocket frantically before she realized it was Richard’s phone.
He answered at once. “Numair?” After moments of silence, he exhaled. “Mauricio...Ricardo, I’m sorry, but I have to run. Numair, the partner I told you about, said it’s an emergency. I don’t know if I’ll be back in time to have our outing, but we’ll continue our discussion later, I promise.”
