The Secret Baby Bond

“Michael…this is hard.” She worked up her courage to say the words but she couldn’t look at him. “I…I want a divorce.”

She felt his shock like the blow that it was. For a moment he was utterly still. Then his hands loosened their hold on her shoulders, dropped to his side.

“You don’t mean that,” he said after a moment in which they both felt the truth and the finality of her decision like the cut of the wind against their faces.

“Look at me,” he demanded, each word a command, each breath an effort. “I deserve to have you look at me when you tell me you want to rip my life apart.”

“Our life.” She raised her head, felt her heart beating with anger and hurt and utter helplessness. “It’s our life that’s being ripped apart, and I’m not the only one responsible. This didn’t start here, Michael. Not today.”

She felt the tears and couldn’t blink them back. “I—I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to.”

“I don’t accept that.” His words were as clipped as the wind.

She lifted her chin, looked past him at the glut of humanity crowding toward the terminal doors.

“I’m sorry. But your acceptance doesn’t change things. I want a divorce,” she repeated, meeting the bleakness and the anger in his gray eyes one last time. Then she turned away.

Like an automaton, she walked around the front of the car, opened the door and slid behind the wheel. She wasn’t aware that she’d fastened the seat belt, turned the key and slipped the car in gear. But as she checked the rearview mirror, she was very aware of him standing there. The wind tugged and whipped his dark hair around his beautiful face; his strong cheeks were red from the cold, his gray eyes were set with defiance and denial.

It wasn’t until after she’d parked in front of their apartment that she’d realized she was still crying, that she couldn’t stop crying.

Tara blinked herself away from a moment that even now, two years later, remained as vivid as Lake Michigan in the swell of a storm. She looked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of her parents’ manor house and felt like crying now.

She still missed what she and Michael had once had. The passion, the hopes, the dreams, the defiance that had them eloping on prom night simply because they were in love. They were in love, but he was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks and she was the princess her wealthy parents wanted to exile to an exclusive girls school to get her away from him. Away from Michael, who hadn’t been good enough for her, who could never provide for her by Connelly standards.

“John won’t wait forever, Tara.”

Her father’s voice broke through the years, through the tears she hadn’t been able to shed for some time now. The accuracy of his statement undercut all the might-have-beens and should-have-beens, and relayed the truth.

“I know.” She laid a gentle hand on Brandon’s bottom, needing to feel his sturdy little bulk, to touch what was real when the surreal threatened to outdistance it.

The door to the den opened with a subtle creak.

“Mr. Connelly, I’m sorry to intrude.”

Ruby, dressed in her starched black uniform even at this late hour, stood in the doorway. Her hands clenched the doorknob so hard her knuckles had turned white. Her eyes were as round as the buttons on her blouse, her cheeks as gray as her apron.

Her father realized that something was wrong at the same moment Tara did. The unflappable Ruby, who had been their head housekeeper, a fixture and a friend for all of Tara’s memories, was far from the composed manager of Lake Shore Manor.

“Ruby?” Grant’s brows knit together with concern. “What is it?”

“Mr. Connelly,” Ruby repeated, clearly struggling for control. “There…there’s a gentleman here. He wishes to…he wishes to see Miss Tara.”

“At this hour?” Grant snorted. “And does this gentleman—who has the audacity to come to my home at—” he raised his arm, shoved back the cuff of his custom tailored white shirt and checked his watch “—just after nine o’clock in the evening—have a name?”

A preemptive anticipation had Tara’s heart suddenly pounding. Her breath inexplicably clogged in her throat as she rose jerkily to her feet.

If possible, Ruby turned a whiter shade of pale. Her gaze shot to Tara, apologetic, even a little alarmed, and yet guardedly hopeful as she opened the great oak door wider.

A man stepped into the room, a shadow in the doorway, a ghost from the past.

“Good Lord,” Tara heard her father murmur in shock and incredulity as Michael Paige’s lean, athletic frame filled the doorway.

Tara shook her head, disbelieving, yet wanting, with everything that was in her, to believe. She touched her fingers to her lips, tears brimming as the man’s somber gray gaze sought and found hers.

“Michael.”

Her father rose to his feet behind her; his strong hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her. But all she could see, all she could feel was Michael.

Blood roared through her ears. Her heart pounded like thunder—in her chest, in her throat. Her legs grew wobbly and weak. Tears stung in a hot, burning flooding of emotions.

Through the watery mist she stared as her husband stood there, his eyes—those flinty gray eyes—warm on hers, unblinking on hers.

He took a step forward and caught her hands in his. She cried out at the shockingly familiar feel of his fingers grasping hers. His grip was hard, his hands callused. Warm. Real. Alive.

She stared down at their clasped hands, aware that hers were shaking, and she studied the strength and the scars—some she recognized, some she did not.

“Tara.”

She raised her head at the gruff need in his voice, watched his eyes as he searched her face, then cast an unspoken plea at her father. Her father squeezed her shoulders protectively, hesitated, then with reluctance, dropped his hands.

With his gaze fast on hers, Michael pulled her into his embrace.

She fell into his arms on a sob, clung to him desperately, wept without shame—for him, for herself, for everything they’d lost.

He was here. My God, he was alive. Strong, warm and real. He smelled—oh, he smelled like Michael. She buried her face in his neck, needing more assurance that it was him—really him—and not some horrible trick of imagination and misery and guilt.

His hands roamed her back with a tender urgency, a familiar intimacy that said he, too, was struggling with the reality. His heart beat wild and strong against her breast as he whispered her name against her hair.

She pulled back so she could see his face, to cement into fact that it was really Michael.

The man she had loved.

The man she had asked the courts to declare legally dead.

The man she planned to divorce.

Two

Michael buried his face in Tara’s hair, wallowed in the silk and honey scent of her. It seemed like forever since he’d felt the sweet press of her breasts against his chest, her slim hips aligned with his. It seemed like a thousand forevers—and yet it felt like yesterday and the hundreds of yesterdays they’d shared.

He’d seen everything from shock to joy, disbelief to denial, hope to love in her eyes before she’d flown into his arms. He didn’t care that her reaction had been knee-jerk, maybe even involuntary. The only thing he cared about was that he was finally holding her.

“Michael…son.”

He heard Grant say his name a second time before he reluctantly lifted his head, searched Tara’s eyes. He touched his thumb to the aristocratic arch of her cheekbone, smiled gently, then transferred his attention to her father.

The man looked shaken. He appeared to be in as much shock as Tara and Ruby.