Nothing else matters. Just get him out of here before Sammy comes in.
I dont know who sent it. I didnt. I dont want anything from you. It took a fierce effort to look at him as coolly as if he were a stranger.
He is a stranger, a tiny voice sobbed in her ear. Hes not the man you loved.
Tyler straightened, his shoulders stiff, his face a mask. In that case, Ill
The creak of the screen door cut off the sentence, and fear obliterated her momentary relief.
Hey, Momma, Im home. Sammys quick footsteps slowed when he saw that his mother wasnt alone. He glanced curiously at Tyler, then tossed a green spelling book on the desk. Can I get a snack?
May I, she corrected automatically. Cool, careful. She could still get out of this in one piece. As long as Sammy didnt hear Tylers name, she was all right. Go on into the kitchen. I have some cookies started.
Sammy nodded, turned. She held her breath. Almost out of danger. Thered be time enough later to sort it all out. Get Sammy out, and
Just a minute. Tylers voice had roughened. It carried a raw note of command.
She forced herself to move around the desk, grasp Sammys shoulders, look at Tyler. The expression on his face chilled her to the bone.
He knew. Hed taken one look at Sammy, and her sons beautiful eyes, so like his fathers, had given them away. Tyler knew Sammy was his son.
Tyler couldnt stop staring. At first hed seen a child with Mirandas heart-shaped face, her pointed chin.
Then the boy looked at him, and Tyler had seen the childs eyes. Deep brown, with the slightest gold flecks in them when the light hit as it did in that moment, slanting through the wavy panes of the hall window. Eyes deeply fringed with curling lashes.
Winchester eyesthey were the same eyes he saw every time he looked at his brother and every morning in the mirror.
Stop, take a breath, think about this.
He didnt really need to think about it. Maybe the truth had been there all along, beneath his initial assumption that he couldnt have a child. Hed known, at some level, that if Miranda had a son, that boy was his.
She hadnt told him. Anger roared through his thoughts like a jet. Miranda had borne his child, and she hadnt told him.
The three of them stood, frozen in place, the old house quiet around them. From somewhere outside came the raucous squawk of a seagull, seeming to punctuate his anger. She hadnt told him.
He shifted his gaze to Miranda, furious words forming on his tongue. Hed tell her just what he thought
He couldnt. Not with the boy standing there, looking at him with those innocent eyes. No matter how little he welcomed this news, how angry he was at the woman hed once loved, he couldnt say anything in front of the child.
He took a breath. We have to talk.
Miranda turned the child toward the swinging doors. You go on back to the kitchen. Ill be with you in a little bit.
The boy nodded. After another curious glance at Tyler, he pushed through the door.
He gave the childhis childanother moment to get out of range. He heard the swish of the kitchen door closing. He could speak, if he could find the words.
Well, Miranda?
Her soft mouth tightened. Not here. Anyone might walk in.
The fact that she was right didnt help. His son. The words pounded in his blood. There must be privacy somewhere in this place.
She gave a curt nod, then led the way to the room on the right of the hall.
Tyler shut the door firmly, glancing around at overstuffed, shabby chairs, walls covered with family photos, a couple of toy cars abandoned on a round pedestal table. He didnt remember being in this room before, but that wasnt surprising. Mirandas family had been as opposed to their relationship as his had been.
He swung toward Miranda.
Well? he repeated. Why did it take you eight years to let me know Im a father? Or didnt you want child support until now?
She flinched, her eyes darkening. I dont need or want anything from you, Tyler.
He suppressed the urge to rant at her. Tyler Winchester didnt lose control, no matter what the provocation. That was one of the keys to his success. Then why send me that picture now?
I didnt!
Even through his anger, he had to recognize the sincerity in her voice. And he couldnt deny the shock that had been written on her face when shed first seen him.
You mean that, dont you?
She nodded.
Then who?
I dont know. Does it really matter? You know.
I should have known eight years ago. His anger spiked again. Why didnt you tell me, Miranda? Even if our marriage was a mistake, surely I deserved to know I had fathered a child.
She crossed her arms, hugging herself. Hed thought, when he first saw her, that she didnt look any older than she had at eighteen. Now he saw the faint lines around her eyes, the added maturity in the way she stood there, confronting him.
Well? He snapped the word, annoyed at himself for the weakness of noticing how she looked.
She spread her hands out. I dont know what you want me to say, Tyler. By the time I knew I was pregnant, our marriage was over.
Hed told himself he barely remembered that one short month. That wasnt true. He remembered only too wellremembered the furious quarrel with his father over his involvement with a local girl, remembered storming out of the beach house intent on showing the old man that he could manage his own life.
A runaway marriage would do it. He hadnt found it difficult to persuade Miranda or himself that was their only option. Theyd come back from their secret honeymoon to face the musicto tell both their families they were married.
Mirandas father had been disapproving but ready to accept the inevitable.
Not his. His father had ranted and raged at both of them, his emotions spilling out like bubbling acid. And then hed had a heart attack. Hed died before the paramedics reached him.
Tyler slammed the door on that memory. Hed better focus on the present. You were having our baby. I should have been told.
Anger flared in her heart-shaped face. You wanted the divorce.
I had a right to know, he repeated stubbornly. He moved toward her a step, as if he could impel an explanation. But this wasnt the old Miranda, the sweet young woman whod been so dazzled by love shed gone along with anything he said.
What was the point? She brushed a strand of coppery hair away from her face impatiently. You were busy taking your fathers place and saving the company. You had a life mapped out that didnt include a child.
And you figured you didnt need me. That was what rankled, he realized. She hadnt needed him then, didnt seem to need him now.
I had my family.
She gestured toward the groupings of family photographs hung against the wallpaper, the movement sending a whiff of her scent toward him. Soap and sunshine, that was how Miranda had always smelled to him. She still did, and he was annoyed that he remembered.
They thought you shouldnt tell me? This branch of the Caldwell clan had never had much money, as he recalled. Hed have expected them to be lining up for child support long before this.
She glanced at him with an odd expression he couldnt quite pin down.
They were as opposed to our marriage as your family was, remember? They never held with marrying someone from a different world. My daddy said only grief could come from that.
Looks like he was right, doesnt it?
Her chin lifted, looking considerably more stubborn than he remembered. I have Sammy. I dont consider that a source of grief, no matter what.
Sammy. He didnt even know his sons full name. Whats the rest of it?
She didnt look away. Samuel Tyler Caldwell, like mine.
It struck him, then, a fist to the stomach. He had a son. Somehow, he had to figure out how to deal with that.
Didnt he ask questions about his father?
She winced. Of course he asked. Any child would.
And did you bother telling him the truth?
Sammy knows his fathers name. He knows our marriage ended because we werent suited to each other.
It was what he believed himself, but it annoyed him to hear her say it. Why does he think I never came around?
When he asked, I told him you had to work far away. For an instant there was a flicker of uncertainty in her face. Eventually he stopped asking. He gets plenty of masculine attention. My father, my brothers, my cousinshe doesnt lack male role models, if thats what youre thinking.
It hadnt been, but now that she said it, he knew the sprawling Caldwell clan would take care of its own. But Sammy was his son. He didnt know what that was going to mean yet, but it had to mean something.
Im his father.
She crossed her arms again, as if she needed something to hang onto. He doesnt have to know you were here. You can leave, and well go back to the way things were.
I dont think so, Miranda.
Why not? You dont want to have a son.
Maybe not, but I have one. Im not just going to walk away and pretend it never happened.
She took a breath, and he seemed to feel her gathering strength around her.
If you mean that, then Ill have to tell him youre here.
His world shifted again. He had a son. Soon that son would know Tyler was his father.
Chapter Two
Had she ever felt quite this miserable? Miranda sat on the porch swing, staring across the width of the inland waterway at the sunset over the mainland. Maybe, when she was eighteen and discovering that she couldnt function in Tylers world. And that her fairy-tale marriage wouldnt survive the strain.
At the sight of Tyler standing in the hallway that afternoon, all the pain of losing him had surged out of hiding. Tyler was backTyler knew about Sammy. Somehow she had to come to terms with that.
This old swing, on the porch that stretched comfortably across the front of the inn, had always been a refuge. It wasnt today.
She closed her eyes, letting the sunset paint itself on the inside of her lids. Lord, I dont know what to do.
No, that wasnt quite right. She knew what she had to do. She had to tell Sammy his father was here, before her son heard it from someone else. She just didnt know how.
Please, Lord, help me find the words to tell Sammy without hurting him. Panic gripped her heart. Dont let Tylers coming hurt him. Hes so young.
Certainly there werent any easy words for this situation. Telling her family that Tyler was here had been difficult enoughtelling her son would be infinitely worse.
Her mother had been comforting, her father rigidly fair, silencing the angry clamor of her three brothers, who wanted to dump Tyler into the deepest part of the channel. Her sister, Chloe, married now, hadnt been present, but shed undoubtedly join them as soon as she heard.
Her father had been firm. Tyler had a right to see his son, Clayton Caldwell had said. Theyd have to put up with it, for Sammys sake.
That had been the only thing that would make the twins and Theo behave, she suspected. David and Daniel considered themselves substitute fathers, while Theo had always been a big brother to his ten-years-younger nephew. None of them would do anything to hurt Sammy.
She rubbed her forehead tiredly, then tilted her head to stare at the porch ceiling, painted blue as the sky. She cherished her family, but coping with their reactions had made it impossible for her to work through her own feelings about Tylers reappearance.
Maybe she wouldnt have been able to, anyway. Just the thought of him seemed to paralyze her with shock.
Momma? Sammy pushed through the screen door and let it bang behind him. Grandma says you want to talk to me.
She forced down a spurt of panic and patted the chintz-cushioned seat next to her. Please, Lord.
Come sit by me, sugar. We need to talk.
Sammy scooted onto the swing. Those jeans were getting too short already, she noticed automatically. He was going to have his fathers height.
His face clouded. I studied for my arithmetic test. Honest.
She was briefly diverted, wondering how Sammy had done on that test. What she had to tell him made arithmetic unimportant for the moment.
I know you did. She ruffled his hair, and he dodged away from the caress as hed been doing for the last year or so, aware of being a big kid now. For an instant she longed to have her baby back again, so that she could savor every single experience.
Tyler had missed all those moments. Tension clutched her stomach. Was he angry about that? Or just angry that she hadnt told him about his son?
Sammy wiggled. Is somethin wrong?
No. I just need to tell you something. She hesitated, searching for the words.
Somethin bad?
Sammy must be picking up on her apprehension, and that was the last thing she wanted. She forced a smile. No, not bad. Just sort of surprising.
Say it, she commanded.
You know the man who was here this afternoon, when you got home from school?
He nodded.
She took a breath. Well, that wasTyler Winchester.
Sammy jerked upright on the swing. My father?
Your father. He came to see you.
Her sons small face tightened into an expression that reminded her of his grandfathers when faced with an unpalatable truth. He never wanted to before.
Sugar He didnt know about you. Her throat closed at the thought of saying that. She ought to, but she couldnt.
He wants to see you, she said finally. He wants to get to know you.
Sammy slid off the swing and stood rigidly in front of her, his solemn expression at odds with his cartoon-character T-shirt. When?
Maybe tomorrow after school? She made it a question. If thats okay with you.
Ill think on it. That was what her father always said when presented with a problem. Ill think on it.
All right. She was afraid to say more.
He went to the door, his small shoulders held stiffly. Then he paused. Will you come up and say good-night?
She couldnt let her voice choke. In a minute.
She watched him disappear into the house. Hed taken it quietly, as he did everything, but this was a bigger crisis than hed ever had to cope with in his young life. And she was to blame.
Had it really been for Sammys sake that shed hidden his existence from Tyler? She struggled to say the truth, at least to herself.