He felt disconcerted because his son was still straining to reach the woman, his tiny arms outstretched.
“Hello, Cody.”
At the sound of Lexie’s voice, low and husky, goosebumps rose all over Sullivan’s body. That was the same mesmerizing voice that had coaxed him into her arms.
He tried to hand Cody back to his grandmother, to put him out of Lexie’s reach, but his mom’s arms were folded over her chest, and she had “that look” on her face that told him she knew exactly who was standing on their back porch. And that what Sullivan was doing—keeping a mother and her son apart—was wrong.
But he wasn’t wrong. He knew it in his gut.
What if Lexie stepped into Cody’s life and made his son love her, and then changed her mind again? He wanted to spare his son that pain. Better she never became a part of Cody’s life in the first place.
Lexie had dropped her hands, and her smile had faded, but her eyes still implored him to let her hold the baby.
Cody settled his warm body against Sullivan’s heart and stuck his thumb in his mouth, but his eyes were still focused on the woman standing in front of him.
“Go away, Miss Grayhawk,” Sullivan said in a calm voice that wouldn’t upset his son. “There’s nothing for you here.”
“Except my child, whom I love with every fiber of my being.”
He was startled by the fierceness of the statement as much as by the words she’d spoken.
“You can’t stop me from being a mother to my child, Rye. The courts are on my side. Make up your mind that this is going to happen.”
His heart was beating frantically, pushing against his ribs like a terrified animal trying to escape, knowing there is no escape. “Fine.” The single word was harsh, and startled both her and Cody, who lifted his head and looked up at him with a tiny furrow between his brows.
“Fine,” he repeated in a more moderate voice.
“I can take him?” she said, a look as wary as his son’s—the same look, reminding him that he saw her every day when he looked at his child—on her face.
“No.”
“Then what—”
“Cody doesn’t know you. And you don’t know his routine. If you’re going to do this, you might as well start from the beginning.”
“May I hold him?” she asked.
Sullivan felt an ache in his chest. Why couldn’t she have asked that at the hospital? But the time for regrets was past. She was here now, and he was going to have to make the best of a bad situation. He would do what had to be done for Cody’s sake.
“He might not want to go to you,” he said as she took a step toward him.
Cody put the lie to his words, as Lexie smiled again and held out her arms and cooed in a baby voice, “Hello, Cody. I’m your mother.”
The little boy eagerly reached out to her and left the safety of his father’s arms for the far less certain ones of his mother.
She held his son awkwardly at first, shifting him until she had him sitting on her female hip, which God had apparently made for just that purpose. Her whole face was lit up so brightly it hurt to look at her. He saw before him the vivacious woman he’d met in a bar, who’d become his lover, and who was now the mother of his child.
He’d forgotten about his own mother. She pulled the screen door open wide with another loud screech and said, “Why don’t you come inside?”
He stood helplessly by as Lexie Grayhawk, a woman he could never trust, a woman he both despised and desired, stepped into his kitchen…and into his life.
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Surrender: A Bitter Creek Novel Page 31
