Her Secret, His Son

‘Why?’

‘How can you ask that, Mary?’

Her hand flew to her chest and her heart knocked. ‘I don’t understand. You can’t be suggesting…’

Tom waited for her to finish. Mary couldn’t breathe. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t be telling her that he’d been unhappy all these years. Not because of her.

‘You’re not blaming me, are you?’ she whispered.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘But, Tom, I didn’t think you minded that I didn’t go away with you. You just vanished without contacting me.’

His upper lip curled into a cold smile. ‘Because that was what you wanted.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t pretend you can’t remember. You sent your cousin.’

‘Yes, she went to tell you what happened. My father—’

‘She came with the message that you didn’t want to marry me.’

‘No, she can’t have.’

‘You changed your mind, Mary-Mary.’

‘No!’

‘No?’ Tom whispered.

‘No way. You must have known. My father caught me and wouldn’t let me out of the house. Of course I didn’t change my mind. How could you think that?’

They stared at each other—the woman in the doorway, clutching the door handle to keep herself from falling; the soldier on the bottom step with a face so still it might have been carved from dark granite.

Mary’s head swam and in the next heartbeat Tom was leaping up the steps, clasping her hands in his and drawing her back into the house.

‘We have to talk,’ he insisted, his voice choked, breathless.

‘Not now, Tom,’ Mary protested weakly. ‘There’s no point.’

The intensity in his eyes and the strength of his grip on her wrists frightened her. Talking to Tom about the past was dangerous.

Having him hold her like this was dangerous. She’d always been so susceptible to his touch.

No matter how hard she’d tried to forget, she remembered so much about Tom’s touch. Heavens, she could even remember the first night she’d felt it—when she’d danced with him and the music had slowed and he’d drawn her close. She’d rested her head on his shoulder and she’d felt the whisper-soft brush of his lips on her temple just near her hairline.

How crazy that she’d remembered the electric thrill of that tiny caress through all these years. She mustn’t think about it now.

‘We have to talk. You owe me this, Mary,’ he said quietly.

It was useless to pretend she didn’t understand. The moment she’d asked Tom if he was happy she’d begun a conversation that had to be completed. She’d asked the first in a series of questions that had to be asked. And answered.

But what could they achieve besides heartache? There was no way they could go back. They couldn’t undo the past eight years. And she was afraid of Tom, afraid of the power he’d always had over her.

Afraid he might somehow learn the truth about Ethan.

But, without another word, Tom led her back into the kitchen. They stepped around Ethan’s castle and the scattered knights and he pushed her gently into a chair. Their empty coffee mugs were still sitting on the table where they’d left them. From the family room came the sounds of canned laughter and Mary thought guiltily that she mustn’t let Ethan spend the whole morning watching television.

Tom sat opposite her with his elbows on the tabletop and his clenched fists pressed together. His dark eyes seemed to pierce her.

She took a deep breath. Best to get this over with. ‘What did Sonia tell you that night my parents stopped me from going to you?’

‘She said that you’d changed your mind, that at the last minute you’d hadn’t been able to dredge up the courage to elope with me.’

‘But that’s not true. You didn’t believe her, did you?’

Tom’s gaze held hers for the longest time. She could see the way his eyes were searching her face, trying to gauge how honestly she was answering.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t believe her. I told her that I would be in touch with you, that we needed to talk it through and come up with a better plan.’

Mary pressed a hand against the pulse beating wildly at the base of her throat. ‘Sonia didn’t tell me that, Tom. She told me you were angry with me for chickening out—that you called me a tease.’

‘The witch. I’d like to wring her scrawny neck.’

Mary sighed. ‘It might cost you a packet. She’s a lawyer these days and quite good at pressing charges.’

‘That figures.’

‘But, Sonia aside, what about your move to Perth? You never told me you’d applied for a transfer.’

‘I didn’t!’ Tom shouted, then looked a little shame-faced and lowered his voice. ‘Your father had me transferred. I had no choice.’

Mary stared at him as she came to grips with his news and the total injustice of what had happened. ‘Dad convinced me that you were only pretending you wanted to marry me. He said it was some kind of payback because he refused your promotion. He said you’d already applied for a transfer to Perth.’

‘Every word was a bloody lie. Your father had me transferred.’

‘Oh, Tom. If only we’d been able to talk.’

‘I tried to phone you.’

‘My mobile phone mysteriously disappeared around that time.’

‘Damn it, I tried everything, Mary. I hung around your house waiting to see you. I wrote letters. After I was transferred to Western Australia I even telephoned your house using a disguised voice, but I was told you wouldn’t take my call. And when I tried to call again a few weeks later I was told that your father had been posted overseas and you’d moved to the States.’

‘Dad managed to wangle a kind of exchange position at the Pentagon.’ Mary hugged her arms over her chest. ‘But you—you got on with your life, didn’t you, Tom?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ He sent her a grimacing smile. ‘I went out of my way to stop thinking about you. I disciplined my mind to cancel out thoughts of you. I just put you out of my mind.’