“I know that,” Duncan snapped. “There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s yours?”
Duncan’s irritation reassured Ben. At least he hadn’t needed to be told that his older brother would never have ignored his son if he’d known the boy existed. He answered Duncan’s question by crossing to him and handing him the photograph.
Duncan’s eyes widened, then clouded with some emotion Ben couldn’t read. After a long moment he handed the photo back. “Poor kid. He looks so much like you it’s scary.”
“Yeah.” Ben couldn’t say anything else right away. He didn’t know what to do, what to think—his emotions were so full, so contradictory, he was afraid he’d start cursing. Or maybe bawl like a baby. He cleared his throat. “Not that I would have thought she was lying, even if he hadn’t turned out to look like me.”
“You knew her well, then?”
There was a subtle insult in the tone. Or maybe the insult lay only in Ben’s mind. “No. Not exactly. Hell.” He ran a hand over his hair. “It was pretty much a one-night stand, all right? We met, we hit it off, and… You remember that vacation Annie nagged me into taking a few years ago? Gwen and I met then. We spent a couple days together.” And one night.
“Then you walked away without realizing you’d fathered a child.”
“She could have told me.” Ben began to pace. “She should have told me. I’ve missed so much… He’s four. Four and a half years old.” His voice held wonder and loss and anger.
“So why didn’t she tell you?”
Ben felt all the weight of his own guilt in those softly spoken words. “That’s between her and me.”
“When I think of all those Friday-night lectures you used to hand me and Charlie about responsibility and safe sex…” Duncan’s mouth tightened. “Dammit, Ben. What the hell happened? How could you not know there was a chance you’d started a child in her?”
The disillusion in Duncan’s eyes was harder to face than his anger. Ben stopped by the big picture window. He’d forgotten to pull the drapes, and his own reflection stared back at him from the night-darkened glass—a big, dark man in worn jeans and an old flannel shirt. “I knew,” he admitted gruffly. “We used protection, but…” He couldn’t bring himself to go into detail, but the fact was, she’d put the condom on him. Only she hadn’t gotten it on right, and he hadn’t noticed until afterward, too intent on what he felt, what he wanted.
Just the sort of thing he used to warn Duncan and Charlie against.
He grimaced. “The odds of her getting pregnant were pretty small. When I didn’t hear from her, I assumed everything was okay.” He’d convinced himself of that. He hadn’t wanted to think about her. Or the way he’d ended things between them almost as soon as they began.
Duncan didn’t say anything. It was Ben’s own reflection that stared back at him accusingly from the dark glass. The image wasn’t clear enough to show the touch of gray that had appeared in his hair lately, but his mind supplied that. He was pushing forty, and he was alone. It wasn’t how he’d ever thought his life would work out.
But he had a son. He straightened his shoulders and turned to face Duncan. “She’s coming here with Zach in a couple weeks. They’ll stay here to give me a chance to get to know him, let him get to know me.”
“I can go back to the base.”
“Hell if you will! This is your house, too. Your home. And—” he grimaced “—maybe it will be easier if we have someone else in the house. She and I have a lot to work through.”
“A single night together doesn’t exactly constitute a relationship. There can’t be that much to work out.”
“I’m going to marry her.”
Duncan’s eyes went blank. After a moment he turned away, shrugging out of his jacket as he spoke. “She came here because she wants you to marry her? It seems…belated.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Irritation at his brother’s denseness eased some of the other feelings. “That isn’t why she came here, and I haven’t asked her yet.”
“But you think she’ll agree?”
“She’s the mother of my child.”
For the first time that night, there was a hint of humor in Duncan’s voice. “She might not see the two as being equivalent.”
“That’s why we’ll have a lot to work out.”
Duncan looked as if he might say something more, then shook his head and headed for the hall to hang up his jacket.
Ben was starting to feel better. They’d gotten through some of the worst of it. He remembered the drink he’d poured earlier and went to get it. The liquor tasted warm and mellow, but there was a bite beneath the smoothness. Tonight he needed that bite. When Duncan came back into the room, Ben swirled the amber liquid in his glass without looking up. “So, are you going back to the base, or are you going to stay here where you belong?”
“Do you need me to stay?”
Ben almost snapped out something about wanting and needing being different, but stopped himself in time. Duncan was the one who needed help, not him. But he was too stubborn for his own good. He’d hang around if he thought Ben needed him, though. “Yeah,” he said, though it wasn’t easy.
“All right. Ben…” Duncan seemed to struggle for words. “For God’s sake, think about this. You spent a couple days with her five years ago. You didn’t even recognize her.”
“She looks different now. Her hair was long then.”
“You didn’t know her,” Duncan repeated. “And now you want to marry her.”
“She’s got my son.”
Duncan turned away. “How old is she?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you even know?”
Ben searched his memory. “I think…probably close to thirty now. Maybe.”
“At least you didn’t rob the cradle,” Duncan muttered. He still wouldn’t look at Ben. “You have feelings for her, or do you just plan on using her to get custody of your son?”
It was strain Ben heard in his brother’s voice, not anger. He reined in his own temper as firmly as he could. “I don’t use women.”
Duncan turned slowly to face him. His eyes were winter-gray and unreadable. “If you didn’t want her enough to hang around five years ago, what kind of marriage can you have?”
“Things have changed. She didn’t need me then. She does now.”
“Because of the boy.”
“That’s part of it.” Ben took a deep breath, let it out and got the rest of it said. “Twenty months ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Chapter 3
Andrews, Florida, three days later
Gwen tucked the letter neatly back in its envelope. She took a deep breath, striving for calm.
The moist air carried the taste of home into her lungs—Florida air, flavored with hibiscus and jasmine. Outside a mockingbird welcomed the evening. The orange-gold rays of sunset streamed at a familiar slant through the windows of the porch. An easy profusion of light filtered through the leaves of the big bay tree to dapple the wooden floor, the glass table where she sat and the long white envelope with the Colorado return address.
Ben