Revealed: His Secret Child

The depth of her deceit stunned him.

And to think he’d attributed her defensiveness to conscience over the piece she’d written. That wrong didn’t even register on the same scale as the deception she’d practiced on him for the past three and a half years.

“I don’t suppose we can talk about this later?” Her eyes didn’t quite meet his, and her throat moved as she swallowed. She knew there was no way he was leaving now.

He took hold of the door and swung it shut.

The fury was back in full force as he followed her to the kitchen. Overlaying a deep and utter shock. Shock that he couldn’t process and fury that he couldn’t give vent to now, not with a child here.

A boy.

His son.

Two

Gillian’s stomach churned. What was going to happen now? She knew only one thing. She knew it the instant Max recognized himself in Ethan.

The carefully protected bubble of her life was about to be blown apart. She followed Ethan through to the kitchen. Every slow deliberate step of Max’s Italian-loafer-clad feet sounded like an ax fall behind her.

But underneath her anxiety she recognized a flicker of relief. The relief a condemned man might feel on his way to execution. If nothing else, the agony of anticipating the inevitable was over.

She’d known Max was head of PR for Cameron Enterprises. She’d known, therefore, that her articles had the potential to bring her into contact with him. And that perhaps the time had come to tell him about Ethan.

But not in her own home. She’d never thought that. Not where he could see her son. Not without her first doing the impossible and preparing Max for the news.

In the center of the kitchen she stopped as Ethan climbed onto his booster seat at the table. So much about her kitchen and its cozy dining area advertised the fact that a child lived here. Which was why she hadn’t brought Max to this room in the first place.

Her half-drunk coffee sat on the opposite side of the table from Ethan. The same newspaper that had brought Max to her door lay folded to reveal the crossword, reminding her that a mere ten minutes ago her biggest problem had been finding an eleven-letter word for incident.

Her day had stretched out, relaxed and pleasant, before her.

She needed to move, to be doing something. Keeping her back to Max and Ethan, she poured a bowl of cereal. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she sliced banana into the bowl and added milk, but there was only so long she could drag the preparation out. Eventually, she had to turn from the counter and face the music. Or in this case the absolute silence.

Max sat in the chair she’d vacated earlier, opposite Ethan. They were staring at each other—from perfectly matched blue eyes—with unabashed curiosity. Ethan could outstare almost anyone. She now realized where that ability had come from.

Gillian set her son’s bowl in front of him, milk slopping over the side as she did so. Her hands clenched into fists, her nails dug into her palms. She had to calm down, take control, of herself and of the situation.

Ethan, having looked his fill at the stranger, picked up his spoon and began eating, his breakfast now more important than the man at the table. Gillian found a cloth for the spilled milk.

And Max … watched.

He still hadn’t spoken a word and his silence may not be affecting Ethan, but every second of it ratcheted up the tension in her stomach. “Do you want coffee?”

He shook his head. A single abrupt movement.

She’d known her son looked like his father, but seeing them here together for the first time, the resemblance was even stronger than she’d realized. Seeing them here together was both her greatest wish and her greatest fear.

“What’s your name?” Ethan had stopped spooning cereal into his mouth long enough to ask the innocent question.

Max opened his mouth.

“His name’s Mr. Preston,” she said before Max could supply anything confusing or startling, because she’d suddenly had the terrifying thought that this man, who’d had no intention of ever being a father, had been about to say “Daddy.”

“Pweston.”

“We’ll find something else for you to call me,” Max said, the piercing blue of his arctic gaze firmly on Gillian. He looked back at her son. “What’s your name?”

“Ethan. An’ I’m gonna be three soon. How old are you?”

Max’s eyebrows shot up. Clearly he wasn’t used to the directness of a child’s questioning. He ought to be, he was pretty good at it himself. A smile lifted the corners of his lips, momentarily smoothing the deep lines that had furrowed his brow. “I’m thirty-two. Nearly thirty-three.” His gaze swung to her. “Which means I was thirty when you were born.”

Not here. Not now. Gillian tried to telegraph the silent message to him. Not in front of Ethan. “His birthday is the same day as yours,” she said quietly. Max jerked back as though she’d hit him.

“Do you wanna see my twain?”

“Yeah,” he said, to all outward appearances calm and back in control, “I’d like that.”

Max stood and father and son left the table, Ethan trotting ahead, Max tossing aside his leather jacket and modifying his stride to follow. Gillian couldn’t bear to follow but knew she had to. She had to be there in case Max said anything to upset or confuse Ethan.

As calmly and as quietly as he’d sat at the table, she could tell he was livid. But that anger was for her. She didn’t think he’d let Ethan see it—after all, he was better than any man she’d ever met at controlling his emotions.

With dragging footsteps, she followed. She stood in the doorway and watched as, for twenty minutes, Max lay on his side, propped up on one elbow on her family room floor, his long legs stretched out and his shirtsleeves rolled up, playing trains with his son. The sight was as surreal as if James Bond had waltzed in and done the same thing. With an obedience that had to be alien to him, he pushed engines and carriages around a blue plastic track, taking garbled advice from the expert on the trains’ names and what they carried and the appropriate noises to make. The two of them spun stories and orchestrated derailments.

It broke her heart.

She thought she’d done the right thing.

She was so sure she’d done the right thing. For everyone. For Max because he didn’t want a family, for Ethan because he deserved better than a father who didn’t want him and for her because she hadn’t wanted to trap, or be trapped with, a man who didn’t love her, who didn’t open up emotionally, who would always put his career ahead of anything else in his life. Who would ultimately, in the ways that counted, reject her and their son.

She’d thought she could provide all that Ethan needed.

But now? A chasm had opened and uncertainty flooded in.

For the first time since they’d come into the room, Max looked at her. The light, the softness, the pleasure that had been in his eyes, dimmed and hardened. In one swift movement he stood. “Are you all right here, son, if I go and talk to Mommy?“

“Son” Gillian went cold. It was just an expression. He wasn’t the first man to call Ethan “son.” It didn’t mean anything. Despite the fact that he was the first man for whom it was truly more than just an expression.

Ethan didn’t look up from the train he was pushing toward a tunnel as he said, “Uh-huh.” She hadn’t had any daddy questions from him yet. She’d known they’d come one day but she’d hoped that day was a long way off.

A tendril of fear snaked through her. What if there was more to Max’s reaction than anger over the secret she’d kept? What if he wanted to claim Ethan? Max, because of his nature and his profession, chose words carefully. And if he’d called Ethan “son”…

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

Two long strides had Max at her side, his fingers gripping her elbow as he spun her and led her back to the kitchen. Three years and he still used the same cologne. Eternity. The one that made her think of him whenever she’d smelled it. The scent reassured her. He was a creature of habit. He didn’t change his ways for anyone. He wouldn’t want a son. There would be no room in his life.

Her legs unsteady, and needing some kind of barrier in front of her, she sat at the table. She traced a scar in the old wood with her fingernail as he paced her too-small kitchen, tension and anger radiating off him in waves.

He’d always been passionate—about his career, his life and at one point about her. She could still vividly remember their lovemaking. But now that passion was channeled into anger. The fact that he hadn’t yet given vent to it gave her a clue as to how powerful it was.