Another Woman's Son (Harlequin Romance) (7 page)

“Too?” She pulled away and tugged down the hem of her sweater. “You don’t believe what he said about me being repressed?”

Light glinted from Ben’s eyes for the first time since she’d been back. “I’m glad it pissed you off,” he said.

She hated to encourage him with a smile. “Why don’t you go downstairs? I’m going to wash my face and then I plan to eat until I can’t move.”

He went without argument. Isabel tucked the letter into an inner pocket in her suitcase. Then she splashed her face with cold water until she looked less as if she’d been crying. Then she hurried to the kitchen where her family had gathered at the table. “Everything looks great, Mom. Shiny and bright.”

Her dad stood. “Your mother cleaned a bit this afternoon. She made me help her.”

“Good going, Mom.”

“If he’s not careful, we may start on the closets.” Her mother smiled, but it was obviously an effort. Though grief and exhaustion strained her face, she still tried to be cheerful.

Tony beat his spoon against his bowl. “Iz-bell,” he said, as happy as if she were a Christmas present.

She searched for a non-soupy patch of skin to kiss. “Hey, you—heart of my heart.” She kissed, tasted and then grinned at her mother. “I love corn chowder.”

“I’m sorry about the brisket, but I thought this made a nice substitute. We can all use comfort food.”

Isabel sat down. “I feel like a slacker, getting here in time to eat but not to help.”

“You already have a big job, and I was glad to tidy up and make dinner.” Her mother offered Ben her strange, sad warmth. “The sooner this house feels like a home again, the better for our men.”

“I appreciate the way the house looks, and dinner is delicious.” Ben scooped a spoonful of soup and of
fered it to his son. “But you don’t have to take care of us, Amelia. Try to enjoy playing with Tony.”

“Your mom and Tony went to the park this afternoon,” Isabel’s father said as if he hadn’t told her before. “They played on the slide and climbed the jungle gym,” he said.

“I held Tony up to the bars. He grabbed and then dangled.” Her mom tried another smile. “Your father’s trying to advise you not to worry about me. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

“Normal’s a concept none of us is familiar with right now.”

“What did Will’s letter say?” Amelia asked.

Accidentally, Isabel looked at Ben before an answer came into her head. “He wanted to let me know how the business was going.” He’d hardly ever shared business news with her during seven years of marriage. She hoped she’d been too
repressed
to complain about it to her mother.

Apparently so. Her mom nodded, and her dad joined in. Isabel took advantage of the opening to spew a step-by-step report of all she’d done at her own house. While relating every move she’d made, she helped Ben feed Tony so he could take the occasional bite himself.

“This is delicious, Mom. I was starving.”

“Were you, honey?” Her appetite pleased her mother. “I thought solid and warm.” She passed a plate of jalapeño cheese bread. “And what’s a carbohydrate or two among family?”

After dinner, Isabel volunteered to clean the kitchen. Ben swept Tony off for a bath—trailing bits of corn behind him. She heard him speaking in the family room. The low rumble of his voice drew her to the open kitchen doorway.

“Come help us, Amelia. Tony loves company at bath time.”

“You think? George, did you want to leave anytime soon?”

“We’re not under curfew. You go ahead.”

Before they could catch her eavesdropping, Isabel busied herself with dishes, scrubbing a little harder than she needed to, giving in to adrenaline rather than reverencing Faith’s china.

Ben might be trying to turn himself into a cruel, distrustful man, but inside, his compassionate heart still beat. He’d invited her mom to help with Tony because he knew how much she needed a connection to her grandson.

But Isabel thought back to last night. Didn’t Ben realize Tony could remind her mother to live again?

Once again caught between her best friend and her parents, Isabel launched an attack on the cluttered counters. She could become everyone’s enemy in the time it took to put the truth about Faith and Will into words.

Her parents wouldn’t understand why she hadn’t told them. Ben would cut her out of his and Tony’s
life if she did. Unless her parents took the baby from him.

And could she bear that? Hadn’t Ben lost enough because of her family?

The black granite counters gleamed under Isabel’s scrubbing. She tucked every superfluous appliance away, dried the dishes and returned them to their cabinets.

Water ran overhead, and laughter rang out. Isabel smiled, imagining her mother wrestling Tony into the tub. No one ever gave him enough floaty toys. Plus, he loved to write on the tub with crayon soap. The tub and himself and any unsuspecting soul foolhardy enough to come near him.

Finally Isabel threw the damp dish towels down the laundry chute and loaded the coffeemaker with ground beans and water for the morning.

All the while she prayed her parents would leave and Ben would stay immersed in the cycle of lullabies Tony demanded each night. A clear path up the stairs to her room would solve her most immediate problems. She knew too much and she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

After the din of splashing and laughter finally died down, she crept to the family room. Her father set his paper in his lap.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Exhausted. I’m going to bed.”

“Are you okay? Is it too hard going into your old house?”

Difficult because she’d lost everything marriage brought a couple—intimacy, trust, happiness. But her father couldn’t know she’d barely had those things with Will.

“It’s not fun, but I have to sell the place, and Leah wants her belongings back. I can’t blame her. They remind her of Will and her husband.”

“You should set them aside and make her come get them.”

“I’d rather handle it myself.” She smiled without seeing anything funny in the image of Leah whirling like the Tasmanian devil through the house, collecting goods along the way. “Night.” She kissed his papery cheek. “I love you, Dad.”

“You know how much your mother and I love you. We’re distracted right now because of Faith, but don’t feel we loved her more.”

That might be true for him. Faith had definitely been her mother’s favorite. Isabel believed she’d learned to take second place in stride, but sometimes she wondered if she was keeping the secret in some unconscious act of revenge.

Like a cat burglar, she hurried to her room. As she passed the nursery, peals of her mother’s laughter all but pinned her to the wall. She’d heard that sound so many times in her teenage years, reminding her she and her mom didn’t have the ease her mother and Faith had shared.

“Ben, be careful,” she said in a whisper.

B
EN WOKE
before light was more than a blue shadow between the drapes at his window. He’d wrestled with dreams of chasing Faith, fighting Will, to take back his son.

And always, Isabel stood to the side in nightmare indifference, refusing to act for him but making no move against him. He suspected more than exhaustion had made her turn in early last night.

She’d been glad to see him and Tony leave her house yesterday and then she’d sent him downstairs ahead of her after they’d read the letter. He’d assumed she wanted to compose herself, but something more might be driving her.

He tried to remember Will’s letter, but all he’d taken from it was the fact that his so-called best friend hadn’t truly wanted Tony, and that Will and Faith had blamed him and Isabel for everything that had gone wrong.

Lies. He’d take his fair share of blame, but no man forced his wife to sleep with her sister’s husband.

Lies? Ben pushed back his bedding. Isabel’s one refrain since she’d come back had been a refusal to live with lies. She might be right about the inevitability of his situation. If her mother had read that letter yesterday, the truth about Tony would have come out.

He rubbed cold sweat off his forehead and crossed the room to open his door. Isabel’s was closed still.

Relief swamped him. Uneasily, he admitted that
she might not have his worst interests at heart. She was trying to help him, though she obviously felt uncomfortable not telling her parents the truth.

He had to make sure she wasn’t changing her mind.

He glanced at Tony’s door and then looked back at the clock in his room. Last night, in the middle of Tony’s enthusiastic bath, Amelia had suggested she and George might take him downtown to the Smithsonian. He’d agreed but half expected she’d call to cancel when the apathy of grief took over again this morning. But he needed to talk to Isabel. With any luck Amelia would still want time with her grandson more than she’d want to be alone with her pain and her husband.

For a second, he wondered what it would be like to depend on another human being when you’d lost everything else that mattered, but he had no time to feel sorrier for himself. He showered and went downstairs to start Tony’s breakfast. After the Deavers showed up and then left with Tony, he’d face Isabel with his doubts.

She’d get the look that told him he was hounding her. She’d remind him they were only putting off the inevitable, but he was willing to take the chance that he could keep his son’s birth father a secret for the next sixteen-and-a-half years.

I
SABEL OUTFOXED
him. While he was making Tony’s cereal, he heard a faint sound that turned out to be the front door opening and then closing.

He dialed her cell phone number. She didn’t answer. That stung.

He stirred warm milk into the cereal until it formed the pastelike consistency Tony liked. His hand shook.

“Dad-dee!” Tony’s morning bellow.

“Coming, son.” He ran up the stairs to fly his boy out of the crib. They ate breakfast and finished dressing as the Deavers rang the bell. With Tony perched on one arm, Ben opened the door. George reached for his grandson. Amelia tucked an orange scarf into her beige overcoat. The first time she hadn’t worn black.

“Hey.” He let Tony go to George.

“Hello, my bunny.” Amelia kissed the baby’s nose. “Shall we see some of those rocks you like so much?”

“Rocks,” Tony said with a couple of extra
r
’s. He opened his hand and closed it, reaching for the stairs. “Iz-bell?”

“Where is Isabel today?” Amelia glanced over Ben’s shoulder. “Still asleep?”

“I think she already left to work on the house.” Ben stood aside to let them in. Amelia came inside. George looked surprised. “In fact,” Ben said, “I thought I’d help her while you all are downtown. We could make some good progress today.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” Amelia said. “Tony loves the Natural History museum. By the time we
see all of it and have lunch on the Mall, he’ll be ready for a long nap.”

“Lunch outside in this cold?” With the door open, the wind blew at him with a knife’s edge.

“Calm down, Ben. We won’t risk our little guy. If it’s too cold we’ll eat inside one of the museums.” George opened the closet door with Tony on his shoulder. “Where’s your coat, buddy?”

Tony wriggled around to question Ben. “Iz-bell?” He pointed at the stairs again. “Iz-bell,” he said, his small voice raising.

“Not here right now,” Ben said. “She’ll come back tonight.”

“Help me with his coat, Amelia.” While she helped George, Ben ran upstairs and packed a bag with extra diapers and juice boxes. He tried to give the Deavers money for Tony’s lunch, but they looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. They’d probably fed him a time or two in the days before Ben had become so paranoid about anyone else doing anything for his son.

Distracted because he couldn’t get Isabel and the letter out of his head, he put Tony’s car seat in the back of George’s car. Tony peered over George’s shoulder as the older man tried to buckle him in.

“Let me do that, George.”

“We’re fine,” George said. He tickled his grandson and Tony giggled, relaxing in his seat. Ben gripped the door frame, trying to ignore second
thoughts about sending his child off with the two people who were most likely to try to take him.

He struggled with his own instincts. Keeping his son away from the Deavers would make them ask why. His laughing son caught and held Ben’s gaze. He’d been a loving father. He’d changed diapers and walked him when he was sick, and he’d sung his half of the nightly lullabies.

He’d tried to work out his problems with Faith, thinking a loving husband was a good example to set. He couldn’t cut Tony’s grandparents out of his life. A boy needed all the love due to him.

Ben walked Amelia to the front passenger seat. She took his hand.

“You don’t think something in Will’s letter upset Isabel?”

He went blank. “I do,” he finally said, though his first impulse was to lie again so she wouldn’t worry or ask herself what the letter contained. How the hell did a man keep up with lie after lie? “It was probably the letter itself. She only left Will three months ago. That’s hardly time to get over a bad cold, much less a seven-year marriage.”

Amelia rested her hand on the car door. “She didn’t tell you anything?”

Nothing she’d want him to share. “Trust her, Amelia. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.” God, he hoped not. He released the door. “You have my cell phone number?”

Amelia teared up. “Faith used to ask me that every time she left Tony with me.”

He opened his mouth to ask when Faith had left Tony with Amelia. As far as he knew, she’d only gone to visit her mother to make sure Tony had family time.

Amelia might mean that Faith had left Tony with her while she’d gone out with friends or something equally innocent. He couldn’t ask without looking foolish—maybe even suspicious—but he searched his memory for times when Faith and Will had both been out of town. If he could live the past three years over again, he’d start by opening his eyes.

“Time to roll, honey,” George said, across the roof.

Amelia smiled at her husband and then hugged Ben before she climbed into her seat. “We’ll take good care of Tony.”