Secrets Gone South (Crimson Romance)

by Pace, Alicia Hunter

  Damn! What was he doing thinking about rocking chairs anyway? Rocking chairs were meant to soothe babies. Was everything going to lead back to that for the rest of his life now?

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting out here but he was cold—so cold that his injured hand had started to throb. That surprised him. He had thought he was numb. He needed to be numb. Numbness was the only thing between him and acting on the anger that was unlike any he had ever known.

  He was infuriated. And disappointed. Apparently Arabelle had not deserved his high opinion of her. Maybe she couldn’t help that he had idealized her but there were things she could have helped. Oh, yes there were.

  There were a lot of things he had wanted in life. He’d gotten some of them, some of them not. Either way, he had always been accepting. But not this time.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the time. He didn’t know exactly when he’d left the diner, had been too shaken to notice. He set the timer for ten minutes. She had exactly that long to get here before he went looking. Since he wasn’t sure if that would give her the full hour he’d promised, that might not be fair. However, fair was not something that he was all that concerned with right now. He might never be again.

  He saw the car lights through the trees long before she would reach his doorstep. If it was her. Not that he got many visitors out here. He hadn’t exactly cultivated a social life.

  Some kind of fancy SUV pulled up. The last time he’d noticed, she’d been driving a Porsche but it made sense that she’d have traded for something bigger.

  He heard the car door open. If he’d been a gentleman, he would have met her in the driveway.

  He used to consider himself a gentleman. But that was a lifetime and one hour ago. Maybe he never had been. Maybe you were born a gentleman, or you weren’t. Being from Mill Town, he wouldn’t really know anything about that. Arabelle was trying to pick her way toward the porch now. He hadn’t even put on a light for her. That went beyond the bounds of ungentlemanly to just plain acting like a mean bastard.

  He switched on the flashlight function of his cell phone. It wasn’t much, but it was handy.

  “Oh!” she said startled. Then she came up the steps of the wide porch. “What are you doing sitting out here in the cold?” She stood before him now. He did not rise.

  “Rocking.”

  “What?”

  “You asked what I was doing. I answered. I am rocking. What you really wanted to know is why I’m out here. People do that. They ask what when they mean why. Why is too personal.”

  “Either way, you ought not to be out in this cold. It lowers your resistance. You still have a nasty wound that we don’t want to get infected.”

  “We don’t want that, huh? We? Interesting that you would be concerned with what I want. I think what you want is to go inside where it’s warm and you’re veiling it with concern for my wellbeing. It would probably suit you better if I developed gangrene and died right here on this porch.” It was possible that he was being melodramatic. Or not. He didn’t know much about melodrama.

  She sighed. “Are we really going to argue about whether we are going inside or not?”

  She had a point. They had plenty else to argue about.

  He got up and opened the door for her. Funny, the last time she’d been here, he’d been so proud for her to see this house, with its airy open living area and wall of windows facing a grove of pines and cedars that was as pretty as any mountain range or ocean on the planet. He’d wanted her to know that he’d done much of the work on the house himself, that he’d made or carefully selected all of the one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture.

  Then he’d taken her to his one-of-a-kind bed with its handmade mattress made from all organic materials and made love to her until neither of them had anything left.

  What an idiot he’d been.

  He threw another log on the fire. She removed her coat and laid it on the back of the couch. He’d made that sofa from oak he’d harvested himself. The deep red cushions were made from some kind of fancy wool imported from Scotland that didn’t scratch. He had a set of cotton canvas ones for warm weather.

  “Might as well sit.” He took one of the matching chairs that faced the sofa. This was meant to be a cozy little spot, in front of the fire. It never had been. One person did not make for cozy. He hadn’t even tried for cozy with Aspen. That had been about sex. She’d been willing and he’d been trying to forget that Arabelle was in Africa.

  If she had been.

  That was as good a place to start as any. “Did you go to Africa?” he asked.

  “Of course I went. I told you that. I left two days after Luke and Lanie’s wedding just like I said.”

  “Did you stay there?” he demanded.

  “Why do you think I would not have stayed?” He could see that she was panicked and trying hard to hide it.

  “Because where you were going was riddled with disease and horrible conditions and you were pregnant.”

  “I was not.”

  Oh, Christ. “Don’t, Arabelle. Let’s get that out of the way. I will not waste time on it. I know you gave birth to Avery. I know he’s mine. Let’s start there.”

  She bit her bottom lip, weighing what she planned to say. “I did give birth to him. But he’s not yours. We used a condom.”

  “Condoms, Arabelle. Multiple. And isn’t this a reversal of roles? Shouldn’t you be insisting that he’s mine with me denying the possibility, all because we used the one hundred percent, never fail, fool proof holy condom? Holey, with an e, being the operative word. Don’t start. Or we’ll just get a paternity test, though I don’t need one.”

  “Will, a cowlick doesn’t mean—”

  “It’s not just the cowlick. My hair was dark blond when I was a baby too. And he’s got your eyes. But all those things are weak clues. I know because of the look on your face.”

  She stared at the fire.

  “He’s yours,” Will said. “And he couldn’t be anyone’s but mine.”

  “How do you know? Maybe I slept around a lot.”

  “No. You did not.”

  “All right!” She buried her face in her hands. “It’s true. Are you satisfied?”

  Cold shock washed over him. Why, he wasn’t sure. He had been just as certain before she admitted it, but there was something about getting the confirmation.

  He hadn’t felt this bowled over since that night two Junes ago when he’d found Arabelle crying at a table in the Merritt Country Club bar. It was a thousand wonders he’d been there in the first place. He wasn’t the country club type apart from grounds keeping and drinks serving. Joining the club had been a matter of practicality because he needed a place to entertain people who were willing to fly in to meet with him, on the chance that they might get him to take a commission. A back booth at Lou Anne’s would have suited him fine, but it was a little too quaint for some. Bringing strangers to his woods was out of the question. He didn’t allow the possibility of negative energy here.

  Yet, that night he had so willingly brought Arabelle home to his woods, his home, his bed. He had just sent a happy new client on his way, signed the bill, and was about to leave when he saw her. It had been years, but there she sat, wearing a party dress, quietly crying behind her hand, and drinking wine. Though he hadn’t been sure she would even remember him, he could have no more walked away than he could have burned his woods to the ground.

  But she did remember him—fondly, it seemed. And she was glad enough for his company and glad enough to pour her story out. Judge Luke Avery had married Lanie Heaven that day and Arabelle had endured the party as long as she could. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Lanie. What wasn’t to like? She was smart, nice, and she loved Arabelle’s brother and niece. And she was glad her brother was happy after living through such hell. Truly.

  But the wedding had brought back too many memories. The first time Luke had married, it had been to Carrie, who was Arabelle’s true sister of the he
art. Arabelle had stood up at that wedding, as had Jake, Luke’s lifelong best friend. But now Carrie and Jake were dead, had died in a wreck when Carrie was driving Jake to the airport after he had spent a week visiting them.

  Arabelle had been so beautiful, so devastated, and felt so guilty over her sadness, that he would have done anything to make things better for her. Since there was no better place on earth than his home, he’d taken her there to give her a little quiet, a little tranquility.

  And, it turns out, Avery.

  “Why, Arabelle?” he asked.

  “Why what?” she asked.

  It was a fair question. There were so many whys. They had already established tonight that why was personal.

  “I don’t know where to start. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He thought she would cry, but she didn’t. She didn’t look at him either, not at first.

  “I did try to tell you. I intended to. I called.”

  “What?” That couldn’t be. For weeks after she left he’d hoped to hear from her. “I never got a call.”

  “I called your business phone. I didn’t have your cell number. A woman answered. When I asked to speak to you, she said you were out, but that she was your fiancée and would give you a message. I hung up.”

  He ran his hand over his hair. Damn Aspen. “I was seeing someone who turned out to be a little deranged. You weren’t the first she told that we were engaged. I don’t know why she did it, but she seemed to think if she said it, it was true. I was not engaged, not even close.”

  Arabelle nodded. “When I came to Merritt for Thanksgiving last year, I found that out. You remember? We saw each other at Missy and Harris Bragg’s Iron Bowl party.”

  Remember? How could he forget? He had known she was in town and would be at the party. Brantley Kincaid had told him. That’s the only reason he’d gone to begin with. He’d practically begged her to go out with him.

  Still, she didn’t get a pass. “Let’s say I had been engaged, married even. Didn’t I still have a right to know that I had fathered a child?”

  “Yes,” she said after a long sigh. “But you have to see it from my prospective. I had been in Kenya six weeks when I figured out I was pregnant. I’d had some pie in the sky idea about saving the world. And I was not cutting it. They try to prepare you for the poverty and the living conditions, but you can’t know until you’re there. I was so sick, and it wasn’t just in the morning. The exhaustion was probably a combination of the pregnancy and the circumstances. But when I told my team leader I was pregnant, I was relieved when he told me I couldn’t stay there. Relieved that I had been given his blessing not to meet my obligation. That was something to be proud of, let me tell you. I was a failure. I had made such a mess. I didn’t want to mess up your life too.”

  Another time, he would have gone all soft at the thought of her sick and miserable so far from home. Not today.

  “What you failed at was not telling your baby’s father. That’s what you should have been ashamed of. You should have tried harder. If nothing else, you could have had Luke track me down.” He had never felt this mean in his life. He was hurting her and he was glad.

  “I didn’t want to tell Luke or any of my family. They had been through so much. And it was an election year for my father. And, really, Will, what would you have done?”

  “What would I have done?” Had that explosion really come from him? He hadn’t known he was capable. “I would have come to Africa and brought you home, or any damn place you wanted to go. And I would have taken care of you. I would have done right.” He would have married her.

  She shook her head. “Maybe I should have. But I thought you were getting married. I didn’t want to ruin that for you. I thought it was best. I made the worst decision of my life. Sheridan and David wanted a baby so bad and the fertility treatments weren’t working. So I told them I was pregnant, that I was in Switzerland. I was bedridden the last three months and Sheridan came and took care of me. And I let them adopt him. It seemed best.”

  “Because you couldn’t be bothered with him? I guess you had too many important things to do.”

  He would not have thought a face could have gotten any paler.

  “You don’t know a damned thing. I wanted him like I have never wanted anything in my life.”

  He believed her.

  “Then why? Because you didn’t want to ruin my romance that wasn’t? Because you didn’t want to embarrass your family? Arabelle, did you think it was 1961?”

  “It wasn’t that. Mostly, I wanted him to have a mother and father living in the same house, like Luke and I did. I wanted the very best for him and, at the time, that didn’t seem to be me.”

  “It could have been me. You could have given him to me. I would have taken good care of him from the very start. I wouldn’t have cared what people said.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you.”

  “Clearly.”

  “I thought if Sheridan and David had him, I could see him. They were in Birmingham. I took the job in Atlanta. I thought it was close enough that I could watch him grow up but not so close that it would break my heart. But it did and Sheridan and David must have known it, though we never discussed it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have left him to me. That was the worst and best day of my life. I lost Sheridan. And I thought Avery was on that plane. He was supposed to be.”

  She let her eyes wander to the window but she wasn’t seeing the view. She was seeing a world where Avery had died on that plane. His gut turned at the thought. He’d known Avery was his son for two hours, tops. He’d never held him, never fed him, or played with him, but already he couldn’t imagine a world without him.

  Arabelle was oblivious to how he felt of course. She continued, “David and Sheridan were going to their house on the coast to entertain clients for the weekend. That was the last plan I’d heard. But Avery woke up with a runny nose, so they left him with the nanny and flew down for a meeting. They let the clients use the beach house, but Sheridan and David were coming home. You know the rest. Their plane went down. All my fault. If I had kept Avery, they wouldn’t have had a sick baby to get back to. They’d be alive and I would have had my baby with me from the beginning.”

  She bowed her head but not before he saw the grief in her face—and the guilt. Only a mean bastard wouldn’t have sympathized. But a mean bastard had moved in earlier out on the porch when he wouldn’t turn on the light and it was looking like he was here to stay.

  “So, you spent time with him,” Will said with manufactured gentleness. “His first birthday? Halloween? Christmas? Easter? And in between too? You got to do that? Your cousin let you have it?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “But it was never enough.”

  “It was more than I got.” He sounded hard again. “Why didn’t you tell me after you found out I wasn’t engaged?”

  Her head jerked up like she’d been slapped. He understood why. If a cold voice could deliver a blow, she’d be flat on the floor.

  “It was too late, too late for you and me. By then, he was Sheridan and David’s child.”

  “But you got a second chance, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” She at least had the grace to look ashamed.

  “And you’ve had him since September.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “I don’t know. Everything was hard. I wasn’t thinking about you. Sheridan was dead. I had long hospital hours. I was worried about how Avery would adapt, if I was doing things right. Then I decided to move here. I needed a slower life. I needed to be near family but I didn’t want to go to the state capital where my parents are. Old Dr. Vines retired, so we came to Merritt.”

  “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at the ceiling when she said it.

  “You’re lying. You were not. You were going to let him grow up right here under my nose and hope I never found out. You were going to eventually
marry some stranger and let him be Avery’s father.”

  Suddenly, he was beyond furious with the phantom man of the future who Avery would call Daddy—the man who would teach him to ride a bike and take him to ball practice. The man who might lose interest completely when Arabelle had his baby, the man who might drink and neglect the child who was not of his blood.

  After all, if a man could do that to his biological son, one could certainly do it to a stepchild. That was not happening. Before, he had not had any say but, starting now, he was running this show.

  He sat quietly for a minute. The fire crackled and a log shifted. Outside, the wind picked up. Arabelle shivered.

  “We are going to do things your way, Arabelle,” he said. “We are going to see to it that Avery has a home with both parents. You are going to marry me.”

  Chapter Four

  Arabelle laughed, though not because she was amused. “You must be joking.”

  Will folded his arms over his chest. “I am not. I don’t joke. If I did, I wouldn’t joke about what’s going to happen to my son.”

  Had his voice almost broken on that last word?

  “You might as well be joking. That’s not going to happen.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’ll just go with plan B,” he said evenly.

  Dread set in. Who was this man? Maybe he had reason to be angry—good reason—but she would never have believed that the sweet boy from her teens or the man who had so tenderly cared for her when she needed caring for so badly could morph into this cold, angry person.

  She was almost afraid to ask. “Plan B?”

  “We’ll go to court. I’ll sue for full custody. We’ll see how that works out for everybody.”

  Up until now she’d felt shame, guilt, fear. Now, fury set in. No one was taking her baby, not ever again.

  “You do that,” she said. “We will see how it works out for everybody. My daddy is a state senator. My brother is a circuit judge. I am a doctor. The governor of this state is my father’s friend and my brother’s godfather. My mother’s college roommate and sorority sister is a State Supreme Court justice. Don’t screw with me, Will. You would never win.”