The Secret Baby Bond

From a distance, from behind dark glasses, he watched Tara—the wife he’d lost even before the world had decided he was dead—while his wildly beating heart reminded him how very much alive he truly was.

Sitting quietly on the park bench, while the early September sun shined brilliant and pure through the shifting oaks and the scent of summer’s last roses drifted on the breeze, he watched. And he remembered the way she moved, the way her short, sleek cap of stylish black hair felt sliding like silk between his fingers, the way her violet eyes clouded to misty lavender when he made love to her. Two years ago. A lifetime ago.

She smiled, her face full of love for the child who toddled by her side. The boy wore tiny running shoes, a baby-sized Chicago Cubs jacket and cap and stared up at his mother through laughing gray eyes.

Through his eyes.

A lump formed in his throat that he couldn’t swallow.

He had a son.

He had a son whose name was Brandon, whose face he’d seen and whose name he’d learned for the first time just two weeks ago. Michael buried his hand in his jacket pocket and clutched the dog-eared piece of newsprint. The photo of Tara in the grainy gray print of a tabloid newspaper had caught his eye in a Quito, Ecuador supermarket and blindsided him with a staggering rush of memory. So had the dramatic account of his own death.

A shooting pain stabbed through his right temple. He touched two fingers to the scar there and rode it out. It would pass soon and until it did, he focused on reality.

The reality of his wife. The reality of his son.

An ache swelled and grew and filled his chest with a love and a longing so profound that he almost went to the boy then. Just to gather him close. To feel that robust and healthy little body warm and real against his own. To look into his liquid silver eyes and see a reflection of himself there. To cement into fact that the amazing miracle he and Tara had made together was not a cruel trick of his imagination. And to confirm, unequivocally, that he really was alive.

But the man who had been Miguel Santiago for the past two years couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not here. So he stayed where he was and accepted that this was not the time. This was not the way. He couldn’t just walk up to his child—his child who didn’t know him. He couldn’t just smile and say to his wife, “I’m not dead. I was just lost for a while. And I’ve missed you.”

He couldn’t say any of those things because to Tara, he was dead. And because, just before he died, she’d told him she wanted a divorce.

So he sat, unable to move, unwilling to leave as his son tumbled to his back with a shriek of gurgling laughter—and the man at Tara’s side bent to pick him up and lift him into his arms.

Then the three of them walked away together. Tara, his son and the man who would take his place—or so said the tabloids.

It was only after they’d faded to a memory that he realized his hands were clenched into fists inside his pockets, that his eyes were staring blankly.

“Mister… Hey, mister, you okay?”

He looked up abruptly, squinted against the crisp September sun. A tall, gangly teenager frowned down at him. The boy had a basketball tucked under his arm and freckles bridging his nose. He wore baggy pants, a sloppy Chicago Bulls T-shirt and an expression that mixed wariness with concern. Even from where he stood, a cautious couple of yards away, Michael could smell the salt and sweat and vitality of him.

“Man,” the kid said. “You’re white as a ghost.”

A ghost.

It should have been funny.

If the kid only knew.

Michael took one last look at the spot where his wife and son had disappeared. Then he rose and started walking.

This time he promised himself that when he walked, it would be out of the shadows. This time he would walk toward the living, not away.

He wanted his life back.

He wanted his wife back.

He did not want to be dead any longer.

One

Tara Connelly Paige sat cross-legged on the plush rose carpet that covered the floor in the den at Lake Shore Manor. She stared into a fire that cut the unusual chill of the early September evening.

Beside her, on his favorite quilt that was soft and blue and plump with the loving care his great-grandmother, Nana Lilly Connelly had sewn into it, fourteen-month-old Brandon slept like the babe he was: blissful, innocent, ignorant of the turmoil his mother was feeling.

“It’s a little late for second thoughts, Tara,” her father said carefully from the sofa behind her.

Tara looked up and over her shoulder into the concern in Grant Connelly’s eyes. It shouldn’t surprise her anymore that her father could read her thoughts. His insight was almost frightening. He didn’t call it insight, though. He called it understanding.

Maybe he was right. It seemed that since she’d moved back home to Lake Shore Manor after Michael died two years ago, her father could read her mind almost as well as he read the market. It was another reason that it was past time for her to move back out on her own—or move in with John.

Move in with John.

Too much reluctance accompanied the possibility. With reluctance came guilt.

“I know it was a hard decision, honey, but John is right,” her father continued. “And you’re right to finally have Seth initiate the legal work to have Michael declared legally dead.”

Michael. Dead.

She drew in a serrated breath. Tried, as she always tried, to let go of the hope that after all this time he could be alive. Intellectually, she knew it wasn’t possible. If her intellect wasn’t enough, her family’s gentle but insistent persuasion was. Even Seth had finally jumped on the wagon.

Thank God for Seth. Her brother, the lawyer. Her brother who had morphed Tara into Terror when they were kids and whom she loved to tease—or at least she had once loved to tease him.

“Hey, Seth, what do you call five hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

“I’ll bite, brat. What do you call five hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

“A good start.”

A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth then quickly dropped away. She hadn’t seen much of Seth’s flashing grin lately. But then again, he hadn’t seen much of hers, either.

He was there for her, though, as the rest of her brothers and sisters had always been there for her. Seth was handling the paperwork it had taken her two years to gather the courage to set in motion. Smoothly, efficiently, discreetly. Seth was a man you could count on. Much like their father.

Tara looked at him. At sixty-five, Grant Connelly was still a handsome man. His granite jaw was a perfect complement to his deep tan and dark hair, but it was his eyes that set him apart. One quelling look from Connelly Corporation CEO’s steel gray eyes and grown men cowered, women wept.

She’d been the benefactor of those looks herself, though not for a while. Definitely not tonight. Tonight his eyes were gentle, as they always were for his wife and for his children. When Brandon snuffled in his sleep and tucked his chubby little fist under his chin with a sigh of baby ecstasy, steel-gray transitioned to an indulgent, smoky silver.

They shared a smile then for this precious child whose power ran the gamut from melting hearts with his laughter or his tears, to raising roofs when he was full of himself and wanting everyone’s attention. Out of the softness of her father’s smile came more concern.

“The boy needs a father, Tara.”

She swallowed, looked at her hands and agreed softly. “I know.”

“John wants to be his father. He wants to be your husband. He’s a good man, honey.”

Yes, John was a good man. A little stuffy, per Seth, but good. Good for Brandon. Good for her. He gave her direction, offered security, even the extravagant lifestyle she was accustomed to. The opportunity to move back out from under her parents’ roof. She’d taken advantage of their indulgence long enough.