Eli burped. Lucy Ann rolled her eyes and cradled her son in the crook of her arm, too aware of the weight of Elliot’s stare.
Malcolm thumped Elliot on the back. “You can thank us later.”
Conrad leveled a somber steady look her way. “Call if you need anything. I mean that.”
Without another word, both men disappeared back into the wooded perimeter as quickly as they’d arrived. For the first time in eleven months, she was alone with Elliot.
Well, not totally alone. She clutched Eli closer until he squirmed.
Elliot stuffed his hands in his pockets, still keeping his distance. “How long have you been staying with your aunt?”
“Since I left Monte Carlo.” She’d been here the whole time, if he’d only bothered to look. Where else would she go? She had money saved up, but staying here made the most sense economically.
“How are you supporting yourself?”
“That’s not your business.” She lifted her chin. He had the ability to find out anything he wanted to know about her if he’d just looked, thanks to his Interpol connections.
Apparently, he hadn’t even bothered to try. And that’s what hurt the most. All these months, she’d thought he would check up on her. He would have seen she was pregnant. He would have wondered.
He would have come.
“Not my business?” He stalked a step closer, only a hint of anger showing in his carefully guarded eyes. “Really? I think we both know why it is so very much my business.”
“I have plenty saved up from my years working for you.” He’d insisted on paying her an outlandish salary to be his personal assistant. “And I’m doing virtual work to subsidize my income. I build and maintain websites. I make enough to get by.” Her patience ran out with this small talk, the avoidance of discussing the baby sleeping in her arms. “You’ve had months to ask these questions and chose to remain silent. If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s me.”
“You didn’t call either, and you have a much more compelling reason to communicate.” He nodded toward Eli. “He is mine.”
“You sound sure.”
“I know you. I see the truth in your eyes,” he said simply.
She couldn’t argue with that. She swallowed once, twice, to clear her throat and gather her nerve. “His name is Eli. And yes, he’s your son, two months old.”
Elliot pulled his hands from his pockets. “I want to hold him.”
Her stomach leaped into her throat. She’d envisioned this moment so many times, but living in it? She never could have imagined how deeply the emotions would rattle her. She passed over Eli to his father, watching Elliot’s face. For once, she couldn’t read him at all. So strange, considering how they’d once been so in sync they could finish each other’s sentences, read a thought from a glance across a room.
Now, he was like a stranger.
Face a blank slate, Elliot held their son in broad, capable hands, palmed the baby’s bottom and head as he studied the tiny cherub features. Eli still wore his blue footed sleeper from bedtime, his blond hair glistening as the sun sent dappled rays through the branches. The moment looked like a fairy tale, but felt so far from that her heart broke over how this should have, could have been.
Finally, Elliot looked up at her, his blasé mask sliding away to reveal eyes filled with ragged pain. His throat moved in a slow gulp of emotion. “Why did you keep this—Eli—from me?”
Guilt and frustration gnawed at her. She’d tried to contact him but knew she hadn’t tried hard enough. Her pride... Damn it all. Her excuses all sounded weak now, even to her own ears.
“You were engaged to someone else. I didn’t want to interfere in that.”
“You never intended to tell me at all?” His voice went hoarse with disbelief, his eyes shooting back down to his son sleeping against his chest so contentedly as if he’d been there all along.
“Of course I planned to explain—after you were married.” She dried her damp palms on her sundress. “I refused to be responsible for breaking up your great love match.”
Okay, she couldn’t keep the cynicism out of that last part, but he deserved it for his rebound relationship.
“My engagement to Gianna ended months ago. Why didn’t you contact me?”
He had a point there. She ached to run, but he had her son. And as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she’d missed Elliot. They’d been so much a part of each other’s lives for so long. The past months apart had been like a kind of withdrawal.
“Half the time I couldn’t find you and the other half, your new personal secretary couldn’t figure out where you were.” And hadn’t that pissed her off something fierce? Then worried her, because she knew about his sporadic missions for Interpol, and she also knew his reckless spirit.
“You can’t have tried very hard, Lucy Ann. All you had to do was speak with any of my friends.” His eyes narrowed. “Or did you? Is that why they brought me here today, because you reached out to them?”
She’d considered doing just that many times, only to balk at the last second. She wouldn’t be manipulative. She’d planned to tell him face-to-face. And soon.
“I wish I could say yes, but I’m afraid not. One of them must have been checking up on me even if you never saw the need.”
Oops. Where had that bitter jab come from?
He cocked an eyebrow. “This is about Eli. Not about the two of us.”
“There is no ‘two of us’ anymore.” She touched her son’s head lightly, aching to take him back in her arms. “You ended that when you ran away scared after we had a reckless night of sex.”
“I do
not
run away.”
“Excuse me if your almighty ego is bruised.” She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling as though they were in fifth grade again, arguing over whether the basketball was in or out of bounds.
Elliot sighed, looking around at the empty clearing. The limo’s engine roared to life, then faded as it drove away without him. He turned back to Lucy Ann. “This isn’t accomplishing anything. We need to talk reasonably about our child’s future.”
“I agree.” Of course they had to talk, but right now her heart was in her throat. She could barely think straight. She scooped her baby from his arms. “We’ll talk tomorrow when we’re both less rattled.”
“How do I know you won’t just disappear with my son?” He let go of Eli with obvious reluctance.
His son.
Already his voice echoed with possessiveness.
She clasped her son closer, breathing in the powder-fresh familiarity of him, the soft skin of his cheek pressed against her neck reassuringly. She could and she would manage her feelings for Elliot. Nothing and no one could be allowed to interfere with her child’s future.
“I’ve been here all this time, Elliot. You just never chose to look.” A bitter pill to swallow. She gestured up the empty dirt road. “Even now, you didn’t choose. Your friends dumped you here on my doorstep.”
Elliot walked a slow circle around her, his hand snagging the rope holding the swing until he stopped beside her. He had a way of moving with such fluidity, every step controlled, a strange contradiction in a man who always lived on the edge. Always flirting with chaos.
Her skin tingled to life with the memory of his touch, the wind teasing her with a hint of aftershave and musk.
She cleared her throat. “Elliot, I really think you should—”
“Lucy Ann,” he interrupted, “in case it’s escaped your notice, my friends left me here. Alone. No car.” He leaned in closer, his hand still holding the rope for balance, so close she could almost feel the rasp of his five o’clock shadow. “So regardless of whether or not we talk, for now, you’re stuck with me.”
Copyright © 2014 by Catherine Mann
ISBN-13: 9781460324073
PROJECT: RUNAWAY BRIDE
Copyright © 2014 by Heidi Betts
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