“I only care about Ben. He deserves to be with his father. Your judgment is flawed, and Ben deserves better. If you’d stopped to think first, if you’d been honest with yourself, you would have known I’d love him. I’d never hurt him. I am not my father.”
“You have no idea what it takes to be a parent. You’ve only had yourself to think about. Wait until the work starts, staying up all night when Ben’s sick, listening to the stories about other kids at school who hurt his feelings, worrying about the countless things that might go wrong.”
“What could be more wrong than never knowing my son?”
OWEN SWALLOWED, THE HEAT of anger drying his mouth. Now that she understood his intentions, he’d back off. “You’re right about one thing. We both need to calm down.” He could hardly suggest Ben needed his father but not his mother. “I might consider coming here for a while if I weren’t in the middle of a work project. I can’t get away from Tennessee.”
“You never wanted to leave those mountains, but you should for Ben’s sake if you want to spend time with him.”
His temper snapped, but he wasn’t his father. He seriously wanted revenge, but four years had given him time to realize he’d been honest and yet made a choice that had driven Lilah to break up with him. He didn’t for a second believe that excused her decision to keep his son from him, but he also didn’t need to hurt a woman.
He just didn’t intend to let her make all the decisions from now on. “This time we do things my way.”
Her laughter was like brittle cracking glass. “This time,” she said in a mocking tone. “Unlike when you first started selling your furniture and sculpture to my gallery, and you insisted on working under an assumed name.”
“You should understand I wanted privacy.” Crowds of people made him want a drink. Happiness could increase the thirst that never let up. Anger, loss, like the loss of his son’s babyhood, made it a dull, insistent urge that gripped him. “You don’t want anyone asking you about Little Lost Lilah.”
She eased a deep breath between her lips. He had to make her believe he’d expose her past. She was a caged animal, pacing around the small kitchen, but she wouldn’t run away with Ben again if she thought he’d use everything in his power to find them.
When she reached the coffeemaker, she picked up the pot. “Do you want a cup?”
Was she giving in? “Please.”
“I don’t remember how you take it.” She poured the coffee into a mug and then got sugar from a cabinet. “There’s cream in the fridge.”
He went to the large, stainless-steel refrigerator, playing for time and space. Inside, he reached between organic peanut butter and several jars of homemade jam to get the cream. The Lilah he’d known was barely on speaking terms with her stove. “Did you make these?”
She stepped in front of him, her scent a distracting delight to his senses. He closed his eyes and backed away, making sure to look normal by the time she turned around.
“I’ve done everything I could to keep my son healthy,” she said.
He ignored the unspoken “including keeping you out of his life” and shut the refrigerator door. “I never picked you as a home canner.”
“Thanks. And while we’re discussing my abilities, you obviously haven’t considered that I run the gallery I opened up here. I can’t leave my job.”
“You don’t have any staff? You did in New York. At least you talked about them. I think I remember you talking about them.”
“I’m surprised you remember anything.” She caught her breath. “Sorry, that was ugly. We both drank too much. I worried about Ben at first because I didn’t stop drinking until I knew I was pregnant.”
“You could always take it or leave it,” he said. “I did notice that you looked after me those nights we went out.”
“No. I was reckless. If you dared me—if someone implied I was afraid to do something, I most often took the dare.”
Even though he was angry at what she’d done to him and Ben, he couldn’t pretend she’d matched him vice for vice. “It wasn’t all drinking,” he said, his tone dry. “Sometimes we watched movies.”
Her head came up. She looked into his eyes as if she were searching for a softness he couldn’t feel for her. “Think about what you’re asking, Owen. Ben has never met your family. He doesn’t know you.”
Because she’d turned her back on him. “Maybe I would have kept drinking even if I’d known you were pregnant, but you didn’t give me the chance to try for Ben’s sake.” Even to him, that sounded weak—but maybe, with Ben as motivation, he might have found the strength to ignore the urge that never left him. “Come to Tennessee with us, or Ben and I will go alone.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t know you. He’d be afraid.”
“Not if you come with him.”
She shrugged, and her hair splashed across her back like a silky, blond wave that made him want to feel its softness against his fingers again. She called herself reckless when they were together, but she’d been laughing and loving, and she’d shown him the city’s hidden treasures. Small parks and museums where no one looked at him with doubt that a drunk from the remotest mountains of Tennessee could appreciate art or beauty. Restaurants where the chefs made them Lilah’s favorite meals, which they’d shared with love, confiding the secrets they could only trust with each other.
Deep inside, a part of him wanted to believe the woman he’d known back then was still a real part of this Lilah, who seemed to think the only way Ben could be safe was apart from his father. “I’ll go with you.” She didn’t explain. He didn’t push his luck by asking what changed her mind.
“Fine. I believe you can work from Bliss. I’ll introduce you to some of the other local artisans. There are plenty of antiques stores in the mountains, and many artists produce the primitive pieces you like.”
“Why are you so accepting of all this?”
Her suspicions about him only matched his own toward her. “For Ben. So that he knows he can count on both his parents to put him first.” He added a parting jab. “And work keeps you happy.”
“Ben makes me happy.” She yanked her hair into a coil and wrapped one of those elastic things women used around it. “I’m not sure I trust you.”
“You have to.”
She exhaled, and he saw the first sign of guilt in the gaze she averted. “I’d be out of my mind if you kept him from me.”
Anger ground through him. “Then you understand?”
She shook her head, and he remembered her young face in the faded headlines of newspapers she’d kept as reminders of her own strength. The same stubborn refusal to give in to her fear. The same determination not to let the experience break her.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked. “None of this had to happen.”
“For the same reason I don’t believe in you now. Alcoholics want to change. Surviving depends on change, but you will always be an alcoholic.”
“I’m trying to want other things more.” But he couldn’t deny that vodka, cold as ice, would have eased him through this day.
She looked rattled,