“Stop it!” he barked.
Abby stared up at him. His eyes were like blue flames, his lips sealed in a straight line. He still smells the same, some stupid sentimental part of her brain remembered. His eyes changed as they held hers prisoner. His gaze was still hot and blazing but desire replaced anger. His lips came closer to hers and Abby panicked. She wouldn’t survive his kiss whole.
“Bastard!” she roared at him. Catching him off guard, Abby broke away. She took several steps backward, but refused to give more ground.
“Not me, my dear. However, our son is apparently considered a bastard by the townspeople, thanks to you.”
Abby hadn’t thought she could get any angrier. There was no way she’d strike out physically at him again and risk getting too close, but she’d not stand docilely by, either. “Well, now that’s where you’re wrong. I tried to protect him from gettin’ that name flung at him. I found a husband, but it was too late.”
“You gave my son another man’s name,” Josh charged.
“That is no one’s fault but yours, Joshua Wheaton. It was you who deserted us.”
The fire in Joshua’s eyes became an inferno. “Deserted you? I begged you to come with me. You’re the one who refused to leave here.”
“I was frightened. For God’s sake, I was only seventeen. You wanted me to sneak away. My parents would have been frantic. And my mother was doing poorly. She needed me.”
“I heard she died in childbirth not long after I left.” Abby heard true regret in his voice, and saw a flash of regret in his expression, but she looked away. Those were the most painful months of her life what with her mother’s death and Joshua’s desertion.
“So you took her place,” Josh continued ruthlessly. “You’ve cooked for her husband and sons and cleaned her house all these years. I’m sure the townspeople have nearly sainted you for your sacrifice, but tell me how they treat my son.”
“Like the bastard you made of him! I tried to hide behind Sullivan but it didn’t work. And I’ve not been sainted but condemned as the whore you made of me.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Abby ignored the ridiculousness of his question and countered with one of her own. “Why didn’t you come back for me? You could, by God, at least have acknowledged my letters. But you chose to ignore us until now Daniel’s right here under your nose. Tell me, why the sudden interest? Is the great and world-famous engineer embarrassed to be living in the same town as the little boy he fathered then ignored?”
Joshua stared at Abby; her mouth moved but he’d heard nothing since she’d mentioned having written him. “What letters?” he asked, deathly afraid to hope she’d actually tried to contact him.
“What do you mean ‘what letters'? The letters I wrote telling you about the baby I was carrying. The ones Brendan sent from Pottsville to try keeping my business private. He mailed the last one for me the day after Daniel was born.”
Joshua gritted his teeth. How stupid did she think he was? “Don’t lie. You’d already married Sullivan by then.”
Abby’s eyes flashed ice. “Why in the name of all that’s holy would I lie? Sullivan was dead before Daniel was born.”
Joshua stared at Abby’s flushed, angry face for several tension-filled minutes before responding. “Am I to believe all your supposed letters mysteriously disappeared?”
Abby glared at him then turned her back. “Leave. Leave now and don’t ever darken this door again.”
“We’ve already established that it’s my door.”
Abby whirled on him, her small fists curled up tight. “That’s right! Lord it over us. The Wheatons and their slaves. You want to know what proof I have that I tried and even begged for your help? Look around you. Look at me. Do you think I picked this life for me or my son? Do you think I like decent women holdin’ their skirts aside so mine won’t brush theirs? Do you think I like seeing my son bleeding after yet another tiff over his mother ‘the whore’ and his father who used her but wouldn’t marry her?”
It wasn’t a pretty picture she’d painted nor did it make sense. Why would she have chosen that life? She had loved him. He’d been young and stupid but he didn’t doubt her feelings back then. But why hadn’t she used the money he’d sent to follow him. “Why did you stay here?”
“After Sullivan died, I thought about leaving. Fool that I was, I believed you hadn’t been able to send help, but would soon. And Brendan thought I should wait for you. Then days after Daniel was born, there was an accident. Da lost his leg and Brendan had to start as a laborer. We couldn’t even afford the rent on this place let alone strike out for another patch with a newborn babe and a badly injured man. But you never did come back or send help and then it was too late to leave. We had the debt we owed that just kept mounting. We’ve yet to pay it off. Little Tom started working as a breaker boy, trying to help, but Brendan couldn’t let him continue. That’s how my talented artistic brother wound up as a carpenter’s helper and how Brendan, who hates closed-in places, wound up in the mines. By helpin’ support your son and his mother.”
So he owed Brendan loyalty for more than just past friendship. It looked as if he owed the man a new life—and he’d see he got it, too. For the time being though all he could do was protect him the only way he knew how. By spying on Gowery and his father during their meetings with the Pinkerton man and keeping silent about him lest Brendan, feeling a loyalty to a friend of his own, bring on the earl’s death by sounding a warning of the man’s presence.
Abby walked away then, over to the kitchen area, and stood fussing with dishes. Nervous. Flitting from place to place without any purpose. Josh looked around at the neat, tidy little shack of a home. She clearly did her best and the furniture was of unexpectedly good quality. But the structure was shabby and must barely keep them warm in the winter. “Abby, I’d like to help. I’d like to be a father to Daniel,” he said in a low voice he wasn’t sure would even reach her.
“No!”
Abby stared at Joshua. The morning sun slanted through the parlor window and glinted in his golden hair. He wants Daniel. He’s rich and powerful and he’ll take him away, a voice inside her warned. In his rock-hard gaze there wasn’t a hint of the boy who’d been all artless charm and sincere intent. But the fulminating anger of minutes earlier was gone from his eyes. That didn’t calm Abby’s anger or her fear of him and what he could do. She no longer trusted any man or her judgment where they were concerned.
“What do you mean ‘no'?” he demanded.
“No. You can’t be a father to him.”
“I am his father.”
“You can’t have him. I won’t let you take him away from me!” Abby shouted, speaking from her fear and her brother’s warning.
The angry fire blazed in Joshua’s eyes again. “Because you won’t allow it?” Though spoken in a low, quiet tone, Abby heard the threat in his question. A threat she quickly realized hadn’t been there before.
“Daniel won’t allow it,” she spat back. “He loathes you.”
Joshua grinned, but it was a grin bereft of humor. He looked like an irritated cougar. “I’ve noticed you saw to your father’s threat. Apparently Michael promised to alienate the boy in retribution.”
“Well, we didn’t. None of us want him hating part of himself. I told him his father had gone before he was born and never returned.”
“Then how did he know I was his father?”
Abby thought she would fly apart if he didn’t stop