She took the child’s hand and all three of them went outside into the hot sunshine. Jonah moved to the shade of a tree, away from the drugstore entrance. He dropped her arm and looked again at the child and then back to Kate.
“How old is he?”
“He’s four. In a few months, he’ll be five,” she replied, and Jonah flinched as if hit. Five years ago was when Kate had walked out.
“You knew when you left me,” he said, thinking about the divorce and the battles they’d had. “You knew, Kate! Dammit, how could you!”
“Please,” she whispered, “not here.”
He wanted to shout that they would talk here and now, but he had to think about his child. “We have to talk,” Jonah declared.
“I know that,” she answered, and glanced at their son. Jonah realized she didn’t want the little boy to overhear the conversation. “But not here and not now. This is my son, Henry,” she said. “Henry, meet…” Her voice trailed away. When words failed her and she looked stricken, Jonah realized she had been unprepared to ever cross paths with him.
“It’s Jonah,” he said to the boy, extending his hand.
Jonah took the small hand offered to him, wanting to pull the child into his arms and hug him. But he knew he couldn’t. It took great effort to keep from staring at Henry. Jonah scanned every inch of the little boy, memorizing forever the child’s straight black hair, slender frame and wide, thickly lashed eyes. His slightly full lips and that hawkish nose that had been passed down to nearly every male in Jonah’s family, and more than a few of the females.
“Hello, sir,” the boy said politely.
Jonah tried to smile as he released the child’s hand, but failed.
“I’m staying at a motel. I can give you my phone number—” Kate began, but Jonah shook his head. He wasn’t giving her a chance to disappear again.
“No, Kate,” he interrupted. “Let’s go to a park and talk right now. Henry can play while we talk. C’mon. I have a car.”
Wide-eyed, she stared at him and slowly nodded. “We have to get Henry’s booster seat from my car. I’d drive, but with the car packed with our belongings, there’s no room.” He linked her arm in his, trying to ignore the jump in his pulse when he touched her. She took Henry’s hand, and they got the booster seat and then walked to Jonah’s rental car, where Jonah held the door while she climbed inside. As soon as Jonah secured the booster seat, Henry got into the back and buckled himself in.
They drove in silence to the park, and Jonah wondered whether Henry was an extremely quiet, shy child or if he had picked up on his mother’s anxiety.
After they parked in the shade of an elm, the three of them walked to a wooden park bench that was close to swings and playground equipment. As Henry ran off to climb on a wooden structure, Jonah and Kate sat on the bench, leaving a wide space between them. As soon as they were settled, he turned to her.
Gazing at her profile, he realized she had changed. She was far thinner now, her skin drawn tightly over those prominent cheekbones. His gaze drifted down to her long, shapely legs, which stirred his desire even when he didn’t want them to.
“Are you married?” he asked bluntly, and she shook her head.
“No, I’m not.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about my son?” he demanded, still trying to control the fury that burned in him.
She turned to look at him, gazing steadily, with a lift of her chin. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I had told you. You wouldn’t have left Special Forces just because your wife was pregnant.”
“I had a right to know,” he said, each word clipped with suppressed anger that he struggled every second to control.
She flinched as if he had struck her. “I know you did,” she said, looking away and watching Henry. “But it would have made it harder to separate, and I wanted out of the marriage. And you had your life, the life you wanted more than anything else.”
“Don’t say that I wouldn’t have cared about my son,” he said tightly, clenching his fists again.
“I know you would have cared,” she stated quickly, “but it wouldn’t have changed anything.” She shook her head and sunlight caused golden glints in her thick brown hair.
“It might have, Kate.”
“You know it wouldn’t have!” she snapped, then bit her lip and looked away. Henry had climbed into a large sandbox and was digging in the sand, and both his parents stared at him.
“How could you keep silent? How could you keep my son from me?” Jonah asked, pulling on his earlobe.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” she replied in a tight voice.
“Damn straight you shouldn’t have!” he snapped. “It’s not just me you cheated, but his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and Henry himself! Dammit, Kate!”
She turned, fire flashing in her eyes and color spilling into her cheeks. “We divorced! Even if you had known, I would have tried to get full custody, and since you were out of the country most of the time, I probably would have succeeded.”
“You don’t know that. Would you have kept him from his grandparents?” Jonah asked, thinking about how much his mother and dad loved their grandchildren.
Kate closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
“You cheated me out of knowing my son as a baby and a toddler. Not even a picture, Kate. No knowledge of his existence, and you never planned to tell me! Damnation!” Jonah swore in a deadly quiet voice. He was furious, hurt, close to rage, yet even so, he wanted to reach out and touch her. She still dazzled him, and that angered him even more.
“You didn’t want us!” she snapped, looking him in the eye defiantly. “Your military life was the most important thing to you!”
Jonah took a couple of deep breaths. His pulse was pounding and he felt hot. Standing, he jammed his fists into his pockets and walked a few steps, feeling a pent-up need to move while he tried to calm himself.
He knew he needed to think before he spoke, because every word between them was loaded and could explode into a fiery fight or disaster. He was angry with Kate, angry with himself for still finding her incredibly attractive. How could he want to kiss her when she had done such a terrible thing? Yet when he looked at her lips, all he could do was remember—even through a haze of fury.
“I’m out of the military now, and I want to know my son,” Jonah declared.
She caught her lip with her teeth, looking at Henry and frowning. “You’re going to hurt him.”
“Never,” Jonah replied emphatically. “Do you think knowing his father is going to hurt him?”
“No,” she admitted with a sigh. “I know you would never deliberately hurt any child, much less your own son.”
“What are you doing in San Antonio?” Jonah asked.
“I just got a job here,” she replied.
“Where are you staying?”
When she named a motel that was part of a low-priced chain, he looked more closely at her. Her purse was frayed, her sandals scuffed and worn. She wore a dime-store watch. He wondered what had happened, because when they had been married she had had an excellent job as an account executive with an advertising agency.
“Why did you leave North Carolina? Are your folks still there?”
She looked away and shook her head. “No. Both of my parents died—Dad died in January and Mom in April.”
“I’m