Текст книги "Heir to scandal"

Автор книги: Andrea Laurence

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Three

There was a long, uncomfortable silence after Rose spoke. She kept waiting for Xander to say something, but he didn’t. The car just kept steady and even, heading for the hospital. She supposed that she should say something, but she didn’t want to lie to Xander. She’d only ever wanted to protect him from himself. He would’ve done the right thing, which would’ve been the wrong thing for him.

“His name is Joey. He’s part of the reason I ended up dropping out of college.”

She waited for him to push. To ask the big question, but he didn’t. When she turned to look at him, his eyes were laser-focused on the road.

“Is he okay?”

Rose let the air she’d been holding out of her lungs. “My brother says he broke his arm. I won’t know for sure until after he sees the doctor. Hopefully, it won’t require surgery. As it is, he’s going to end up missing the Little League regional championship. He’s going to be crushed.”

“I saw on the news that one of the local teams was doing well.”

“Yes. They won for our county, which made them eligible to play in the regional tournament in a few weeks. It probably won’t be long enough for him to play. I feel so bad for him. He loves baseball.”

“I played in Little League for several years, although we never came close to winning any tournaments. The summers of my childhood were always filled with night games and popcorn from the concession stands. I quit the league when my parents died. Playing in high school was never quite the same.”

“I liked watching you play. And I like watching Joey play, too, when I can go. A lot of times, Craig has to take him because I’m working.”

“That must be hard, missing out on things.”

Rose shrugged away his concerns. Lots of things in life were hard, but you did what you had to do. “Someone has to pay for Little League. It’s not cheap. Neither is clothing a boy that seems like he grows an inch a month. He’s not even a teenager yet.”

“You won’t be able to keep enough food in the house,” Xander said teasingly. “I remember when all the boys hit their midteen growth spurts. Molly was having fits trying to keep us fed. It was impossible.”

“Craig was like that. I think that was half the reason he ended up getting a job at a fast-food place. He ate most of his salary.”

Rose could see the lights of the hospital in the distance. Xander slowed down and pulled into the parking lot near the emergency-room entrance. He found a spot and turned off the engine. She was anxious to get inside to Joey, but she could sense a hesitation in Xander. She waited a moment and at last he spoke.

“Rose, why didn’t you mention that you had a son before? We’ve been talking for hours. I would think that would come up in the conversation.”

Panic seized her, tightening her chest like a vise clamped on to her lungs. Her mind raced for an answer. “Honestly, tonight was about being back in high school again.” These words were true, if not entirely so. “You were attracted to me, just like the old days. I didn’t want to ruin the fantasy of our reunion by mentioning I was a single mother.”

“Why would that ruin it?”

Rose shrugged. “Because then I’m not the sexy girl from high school. I’m the single mother you used to date, complete with her own set of baggage.”

“Everyone has baggage.”

Boy, didn’t she know it. Joey wasn’t even the half of it. “I’m sorry not to bring him up. I’d better get inside. Thank you for driving me.”

Rose reached for the handle of the door but realized as she climbed out that Xander was getting out, too. Was he coming in with her? Why would he do that? Damn it. He was too thoughtful.

She rounded the hood of the car and stepped into his path. “You don’t need to go in with me.”

“I know that.” He ignored her protests and took her elbow, guiding her toward the building. “You’re upset. I’m going to walk you inside.”

With every step closer to the door, Rose could feel the noose tightening around her neck. There was no way that Xander would be able to look at her son and not realize the truth. Until he was about four, Joey had been a towhead and looked more like her sister than anyone. That and distance from Cornwall had bought her time from questions. But now Joey was so much the image of his father that sometimes it was painful for Rose to look at him. They had the same light brown hair, the same wide golden-hazel eyes. Joey had her nose and lighter complexion, but everything else was his father, especially as he got older. In a few years, he’d develop the same strong build and square jaw.

If Xander went into the patient area with her, there’d be no hiding it. Or denying it. As they pushed past the information desk into the E.R. waiting room, she wondered if she should stop and tell him the truth. Put an end to the hiding and the worries. At the very least, warn him before they got inside. They were in the middle of a crowded emergency room, surrounded by strangers with a variety of injuries and infectious diseases. It wasn’t the ideal place or time, but when exactly was? She couldn’t go back eleven years and change things. She either had to tell him or send him home. At least here there were too many witnesses for him to kill her.

“Xander?” She hesitated outside the door that would lead to the pediatric triage area. “Before I go in there, I need to tell you something.”

“Right now?” His brow knit together in concern. “Don’t we need to get back there to Joey?”

“I do,” she said. This was the moment. She could confess. The words were on the tip of her tongue. Then she chickened out. “But you don’t. Please go home. It’s late.”

Xander frowned, his hazel eyes searching her face for answers. “Why do you—?”

“Rose!” The triage door opened and Craig came out.

“We’re coming,” Xander replied.

The expression on Craig’s face was unmistakable. Her brother was not Xander’s biggest fan. He’d been around all these years, acting as Joey’s surrogate father. He probably blamed Xander for not being there, although it wasn’t his fault. Rose hadn’t told Xander about the pregnancy, because he deserved a better life. He would’ve walked away from his scholarship to stay in Cornwall and marry her. He would’ve given up his dreams of a life in politics to work some low-pay unskilled job and support his family.

She wouldn’t ask that of him. And she certainly didn’t want to ask him to take her back just for the sake of their child after she’d pushed him away. But maybe now that he was a success and Joey was older, the time had come. Fate seemed to be nudging her in that direction.

None of that mattered to Craig. As far as he was concerned, Xander was guilty of having sex with his little sister and that was crime enough. “We?”

“Of course,” Xander said. “I’m not just going to drop her on the curb and call our date done because her son is hurt.”

“Her son,” Craig repeated with a smirk. His gaze met Rose’s and she felt the urge to shrivel up into herself and disappear. Craig had figured out that Xander didn’t know the truth yet. Fireworks were about to fly in the E.R. and he would have a front-row seat. He shouldn’t look so damn smug about it, though.

“Shush, Craig. Come on.” Resolved to her fate, she took Xander’s hand and pulled him behind her. “Where’s Joey?”

Craig pointed down the hallway. “He’s in the fourth bed down on the pediatric side.” He started down the corridor and they both followed.

“Mom!”

The minute her broken child came into view, everything else that was going on no longer mattered. She let go of Xander and rushed over to her son’s bedside. They had his left arm in a sling to keep him from moving it.

She hugged him gently and brushed his damp hair back to press a kiss on his forehead. His skin was pale and moist from coping with the pain. “Hi, baby. How are you?”

“I’m doing a little better,” he said with a weak smile. “They gave me some medicine and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I also can’t feel my lips.”

Rose smiled. “That’s good. Did they take X-rays yet?”

“No,” Craig interrupted. “They’re coming to do that in a minute.”

Rose nodded but refused to turn and look at Xander. Not yet. She wanted to focus entirely on making sure her son was okay. That was the most important thing.

“Hey, everyone,” one of the nurses said, parting the curtains around his bed. She pushed a wheelchair over to where Rose was standing. “I’m going to take Big Shot here over to X-ray to get a look at this arm.”

Rose and the nurse helped Joey out of bed and got him settled into the chair. “Do I need to go with him?” She desperately hoped the answer would be yes.

“No, it’s better for you all to stay out here. We’ll be back in about fifteen or twenty minutes. Take a break. Get a drink. It will be a long night.”

Rose watched the nurse roll Joey away. The minute the chair rounded the corner, she heard Xander’s quiet, even voice from the other side of the hospital bed.

“I think we need to have a talk, Rose.”

She took a deep breath. The moment had come. She had been waiting eleven long years to finally unburden herself of this secret. Unfortunately, it was the kind of secret that was harder to tell the longer you waited. Now she didn’t have a choice. Rose nodded softly and shot a glance at her brother that said in no uncertain terms that he was to get out.

Craig gave her a disappointed look and started backing away. “I’m going to go see what they have in the gift shop. Text me if you need me.” He disappeared down the hallway.

Now it was just the two of them. And the truth.

“Rose...” His voice trailed off in near disbelief. His palm rubbed over his face, then back over his hair. His hazel gaze was near penetrating as he focused it on her. “Do you have something you need to tell me?”

“I think you already know, Xander. Yes, Joey is your son.”

* * *

The room felt as if it were spinning around him. Xander reached out and steadied himself on the footboard of the hospital bed. He tried to take a deep breath, but his chest was too tight to draw in the air.

He had a son. A ten-year-old son. And she’d never told him.

Rose sat down on the edge of the hospital bed. “I found out that I was pregnant about a week after you left for college. I was about to leave myself and I wasn’t sure what to do. I had broken up with you. You were leaving to do great things.... I decided to just start school and figure it out later. I had time.”

“You had a few months, not a few years, Rose.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness of betrayal from his voice.

“I know. I spent a lot of time at the hospital talking to my mother about my situation. It kept her mind off the treatments and how poorly she felt. She walked me through all my options, but I knew that I wanted to keep our baby. It might be all of you I ever had. She urged me to contact you. You know how moms are. She didn’t have much time left and worried about me doing this on my own. She thought you would marry me if you knew.”

“I would have.”

Rose turned and looked him straight in the eye. “I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

Xander had a hard time processing what she was saying. “You didn’t want to marry me?”

“Of course I wanted to marry you. I wanted to go to D.C. with you, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t want you to marry me just because of the baby. That wasn’t the path you were on, Xander. Look at all you’ve done in the last eleven years! All that you’ve accomplished... None of that would’ve happened if you had come home and married me.”

Xander opened his mouth to argue with her, but he was struck with the truth of her words. She was right. Even if she had moved to D.C. with him and they’d gotten an apartment in family housing, finishing school would’ve been challenging. He’d had a full-ride scholarship with books, room and board, but it wouldn’t have covered baby food and clothes and diapers. He would’ve had to work. It was hard enough to finish school without the distraction of a young family at home.

“It wasn’t your decision to make,” he said instead.

“I couldn’t let you give up everything you worked so hard for because we made one little mistake.”

“Little? He’s ten years old.”

“I know that I should’ve told you later, maybe, when he was older and you’d finished school. But the longer you keep a secret, the harder it is to tell. I didn’t even know where to start.”

“So you just waited until you had no choice? No wonder you didn’t want to go to dinner and didn’t mention your son all night. Even when you had the chance, you didn’t want to tell me. You’ve had all these years to do it, but no, you wait for the worst possible time. I’m about to start my reelection campaign. My book comes out in two days. I don’t need any scandals right now.”

He watched Rose’s expression crumble into tears and his chest ached for her, even though he didn’t want it to. She had lied to him. Hidden his child from him. And yet she had done it for him. She’d sacrificed her own dreams, her own life, to raise Joey on her own and allow him to live his dream.

He wanted to be angry with her. To shake her and let out some of his pent-up aggression, but he just couldn’t do it. Instead he sank down onto the foot of the bed. “Please stop crying,” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Everything I’ve done was to protect your dream. It never occurred to me that Joey and I would still be a liability to your success this far down the road.”

“Well, we’re lucky, I think. The reporters got bored with me very early on and spend most their time digging up other people’s scandals. But the spotlights will be on me during the book tour and the reelection.”

“Can we keep it a secret for a while? No one else needs to know yet, right?”

“Perhaps. If we can keep this quiet for a little while, I might be able to defuse the damage. Compared to the things my colleagues have gotten into, this is hardly headline news.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice quiet.

“Who knows that I’m his father?” Hopefully, the information hadn’t spread too far. The fewer people who knew, the easier it would be to contain it. Given that Molly didn’t know, it had to be pretty hush-hush.

“For certain? Just the two of us, since Mom passed a few weeks after he was born. My brother knows, but I’ve never told him directly. He’s just pieced it all together over the years.”

“How did you explain it to everyone else?”

“I went away to college. I came back a couple years later with a little boy. When people asked, I told them a story about an ill-fated fling at school with a jerk that didn’t love me. Everyone seemed to take it at face value. At the time, there were bigger stories than the father of my child.”

Xander frowned. What did she mean by that? “Bigger stories about you?”

“Not directly. It was several years ago and not important.”

Xander doubted that, but it seemed he could only pull one secret from her at a time. “I’m surprised no one ever asked if he was mine.”

“People around here don’t see Joey very much. He goes to school in Torrington and I only bring him into Cornwall when I don’t have anyone to watch him and I have to work. If people suspect, they’ve been polite enough to keep it to themselves for the most part. A notable exception was Christie Clark, that catty girl from school. She went to Western Connecticut State, too, and saw me pregnant in the grocery store one day. She asked if you were the father and when I told her no, she told me I was a fool for letting the wrong guy knock me up. I wanted to punch her in the face and I was hormonal enough to almost do it.”

Xander felt awful. He knew Rose didn’t have it easy in this town as it was. Her family had never had much money and she’d never fit in the popular set. This probably made it that much harder for her.

“I’m sorry you felt like you had to go through all of this alone.”

Rose smiled and waved her hand dismissively. “I wouldn’t trade Joey for the whole world. Things may not have always been easy, but if I went back in time, I’d make the same decisions. Well, except maybe I would’ve punched Christie Clark.”

At that, Xander had to chuckle. Christie had been a real bitch in school. She thought she was better than everyone else and would always complain loudly that she never understood why Xander had chosen Rose when he could’ve had her instead. He would’ve sooner stuck his penis in a box fan.

“So now what?”

Xander looked up at her. She was right. Joey would be back in a few minutes and they had a lot to work out. They could rehash the past and the hows and the whys for hours, but they needed a plan going forward. “I think you’re right. I say we agree to keep this quiet for the time being. Especially where Joey is concerned. He’s got enough to deal with right now without all that piled on top.”

“Agreed,” she said, looking a touch relieved. She didn’t look as if she were ready to deal with the fallout of her secret, either. “We won’t tell anyone until we determine the timing is right for us both.”

“I want to acknowledge Joey as my son, and I will, but don’t think I can go forward with any legal claims right away. The minute I file the paperwork, some nosy reporter will jump on it, especially if my face is all over the news doing interviews and talking about my charity. But I don’t want you to think that means I’m going to shirk off my responsibilities. I do want to help.”

“Help?”

“Yes, help. It will be hard with me out of state, but I can send money, at least. I’m sure you could use the extra money for things like school expenses or summer camp. Emergency-room co-pays, perhaps?”

Rose clenched a tight fist of sheets. She was a proud woman, and he appreciated that about her. He could tell how hard this was for her to accept, but she wasn’t a fool. They both knew she could use the help. “I thought public servants weren’t paid that well.”

“I’m comfortable. The advance of my book was very nice and I made some good money investing. I can absolutely help.”

Xander had invested what little money he had in the start-up of Brody’s software company. That alone had him sitting pretty, financially. If and when Brody’s company went public, the stock would skyrocket. He couldn’t tell Rose that detail, however, because people still hadn’t connected his brother Brody Butler to mysterious software tycoon Brody Eden.

She nodded at last, giving in. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure where I was going to come up with the money for this.”

“What about living expenses? You said you had a place pretty far out of town. That has to cost you a lot in gas.”

Rose frowned at him. “There’s no apartment complexes around here. The closest thing I could get was a two-bedroom apartment over near Torrington.”

Torrington was about fifteen miles away. It wasn’t a terrible drive, just a straight shot down Highway Four, but it wasn’t close, either. In bad weather it could be a nightmare to drive back and forth. “Maybe we can get you a house someplace closer to town.”

“A house?” Rose chuckled. “Have you seen the home prices around here?”

“I said I wanted to help, Rose.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to become a major drain on your finances. Help is help. What you’re suggesting is more than that.”

“What? More like child support? That’s the point. You’ve done this on your own for ten years. I have a lot to make up for.”

Rose sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I just don’t want to be—”

“We’re ba-ack!” the nurse announced, rolling Joey back to his bed.

They both leaped up and hovered anxiously as the nurse helped Joey back onto the hospital bed. “How did everything go?” Xander asked.

“Fine. The doctor should be in to talk to you guys in just a minute. Then, after that, I’m pretty sure the casting crew will be here.” The nurse turned to Joey. “Start thinking about what color wrap you want. We have bright blue, neon green, red, hot pink—” she wrinkled her nose and shook her head “—and construction-cone-orange.”

“So it’s broken?” Rose asked.

“I’m not a doctor, so I’m not supposed to say, but between you and me...oh, yeah.”

The nurse disappeared with the wheelchair, leaving Rose, Joey and Xander alone together for the first time. He didn’t really think about that until he heard Joey ask Rose a question.

“Mom?” he whispered in an attempt to be sneaky, but it was loud enough to hear down the hallway. “Who is that man? Was he your date?”

“Oh,” Rose said, putting on her best smile. “I’m sorry, baby. I was too worried about your arm. Joey, this is Mr. Langston. And yes, he was my date. We went to high school together a long time ago.”

Xander frowned at the super-formal use of his name for the second time tonight. It was bad enough for Rose to do it. He didn’t want his son calling him that, too. “You can just call me Xander.”

“Xander?” Joey said, his eyes wide. “I wouldn’t even know how to spell that.”

“No worries,” he said. “There won’t be a test.”

“Good,” Joey said with a wide smile that was so much like his own at that age. There was even a hint of his same dimple in his left cheek.

The first moment he’d laid eyes on Joey, he’d known the truth. There were pieces of both him and Heath at that age in the boy. His brother had better well not be the father of his ex-girlfriend’s baby, so that left only one answer.

It had actually thrown him for a loop seeing Joey lying in that hospital bed. Xander hadn’t been with his parents the night of their car accident. He had been spending the night at a friend’s house after going to see the latest superhero movie. Heath had been with them, though.

The next morning, his friend’s parents had brought him to the hospital, not quite sure what to do with the child who’d become an orphan while they’d watched him overnight. His father had been killed immediately and his mother had been on life support in a coma she wouldn’t wake up from. Heath had been in stable condition, but he had been hurt pretty badly—a broken leg, a laceration across his forehead and a few cracked ribs.

When he’d gone into the hospital room and seen Joey for the first time, he’d looked just like Heath had. He’d almost had a flashback to the most traumatic moment of his life in that instant. And then to realize that it wasn’t his brother lying there but his son...

“How are we feeling, Joey?” The doctor stepped in, X-rays gripped tightly in his hands.

“I think the medicine is starting to wear off,” Joey said, favoring his arm.

“We’ll get you some more. But first let’s talk about what you managed to do to yourself.”

The doctor flipped on the light panel and threw one of the X-rays up onto it. Xander wasn’t a medical professional, but even he could see the slight displacement of one bone and the crack in the other bone of his forearm.

“You’ve given your radius a good whack. Cracked your ulna, too. The good news is you won’t need surgery. This should come back together just fine with a cast. And since you’re right-handed, this shouldn’t interfere as badly with daily activities. You’ll have a cast for a few weeks, and then we can switch you into a brace. The bad news is, I’m afraid this baseball season may be over before you can play again.”

Joey’s face tightened as he tried not to show how upset he was. He was determined to be a man and not cry, but clearly he wanted to. Xander understood. Baseball had been his life at that age. Losing it when his parents died had been just one more tragedy piled on the rest. At least his son would get to play next season.

“I’ll bet they’ll save me a good seat to watch from the dugout,” Joey offered cheerfully, his lower lip barely quivering as he held in his disappointment.

He was ever the optimist, just like his mother.

“The crew will be in here to get you all plastered up. Did you decide what color you want your cast to be?”

“Green,” Joey said. “That’s my favorite color.”

Xander met Rose’s gaze across the hospital bed and she smiled softly. She had probably been noticing the similarities between her son and her lover for years, but it was all new to him and somehow surreal. Green was Joey’s favorite color.

It was his, too.