Their Secret Son. Judy Duarte

her. And letting her go had been the right thing to do.

      So why, after eight years, was he having such a heart-banging reaction to seeing her again?

      Her scent, something classy and exotic—expensive, no doubt—wrapped around him like a quilt of memories on a cold and lonely night.

      Joe cursed under his breath. How could she still evoke this kind of reaction in him—both emotionally and physically?

      It had been eight years since he’d last held her. And it had taken ages to get over her.

      “I’m okay, Mom,” the boy said.

      Joe looked at Bobby, and suddenly the similarities he’d seen in the kid slapped him across the face. His mind, although somewhat taken aback, did a quick calculation, starting with eight years and subtracting nine months.

      The tall, honey-blond woman addressed her son. “You were supposed to be in your room, young man.” When she turned her gaze to Joe, she sucked in a breath, and her lips parted in recognition.

      Kristin stared at an adult version of the high school senior she’d once loved, once given her heart and virginity to. The guy who’d thrown it all back in her face and walked away.

      It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected to see him when she returned to Bayside to spend the summer with her ailing father. She just didn’t expect to see him now. Like this.

      “What happened?” she asked, trying to regain her composure.

      “Is this boy your son?” Joe asked.

      Did he see the resemblance? Did he suspect?

      How could he not? She’d been faced with the obvious every time she looked into those sweet eyes—amber-colored, like his father’s.

      And she’d been reminded all over again of the heartache caused by the rejection of her first and, up until recently, only lover.

      It had taken years to forget Joe, but seeing him brought it all back to the forefront—the pain, the rejection, the humiliation of telling her dad she was going to have a child out of wedlock. The lie she’d told when asked who had fathered her baby.

      “Yes,” she said. “I’m his mother.”

      Joe’s eyes sliced right through her usual cool and formal demeanor. And she found herself at the awkward, gangly stage again, staring in wonder at the new boy in school.

      Joe had matured, filled out and grown taller. His amber eyes, more sharp and piercing than before, studied her and Bobby with a keen assessment, threatening to peel away each layer of the lie until he discovered the truth, the truth she couldn’t allow to surface.

      She brushed her moist palms against the hips of her slacks and prayed for a quick and easy escape. She had to get out of here, before the secret she’d kept for the past eight years muscled to the forefront.

      Did Joe know?

      Did he see what she saw everyday? A boy who was the spitting image of “that Davenport kid?”

      Joe handed her the gold lighter she’d given her father two Christmases ago, then slid her a crooked grin. “It seems that this fire is your fault.”

      “Mine?” Had her voice shrieked like a fishmonger’s wife? Surely not.

      “That’s what Bobby told us,” Joe said. “He needed some glue for a model car that was broken.”

      “Bobby,” she said, squatting to meet her son at eye level. “I can’t let you play with Superglue.”

      “Lighters aren’t a good idea, either,” Joe said. “He tried to weld the plastic together.”

      Having a bright and inquisitive child who was prone to mischief provided her once predictable life with one adventure after another. She could only wonder what other troubles were sure to come. Her instinct told her Bobby was just an active little boy, although her fiancé suggested she’d spoiled him by being too lenient.

      “Bobby, we’ll talk about this at home,” Kristin said. Then she looked at Joe, caught the flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, the bad-boy smile that used to make her heart go topsy-turvy.

      Used to? That was an understatement.

      But she couldn’t allow those adolescent obsessions to interfere with her life plans. Not anymore.

      For the first time in years, she’d found peace and contentment, not to mention a fiancé eager to marry her. And not just any fiancé.

      Dylan Montgomery was a man who understood relationships, people. Children. He was a man who’d made a name for himself in the self-help market and was entering the realm of talk shows, the kind of man her father always dreamed she’d marry.

      And speaking of her dad, she had his feelings to consider, as well as his health. A smoker for years, his idea of cutting back was to switch to a pipe, but his lungs were a mess and he had signs of emphysema. The overweight diabetic needed open-heart surgery, but his health complications prohibited the lifesaving procedure.

      There was no way Kristin would subject him to the stress a truthful revelation would trigger at this point in his life. She might have spent the last eight years on the east coast, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t worried about her dad. That’s why she’d come home, to be with him, to talk to his doctors. To protect him, just as he’d always protected her.

      Thomas Reynolds might seem to be an overwhelming brute at times, but that was because he was a successful businessman. Rumor had it that he wasn’t a man to be crossed, especially when it came to real estate sales and property development. And maybe there was some truth to that. There’d been a few lawsuits that she’d been aware of, litigations that her father had won, causing the financial ruin of at least one company. But that was business.

      There was so much more to Thomas Reynolds than met the eye. He was Kristin’s father—the man who adored her. The man who lugged a video cam to every school function and sat in the front row, sometimes blocking the view of others when he stood to film his daughter’s attempts to perform. The man who created a goofy-looking butterfly costume for her to wear for the spring pageant, who listened over and over to her recite a poem in preparation for the elementary school speech meet.

      The gentle giant who tucked her into bed each night and listened to her prayers. The brokenhearted husband who tried to compensate for his daughter’s loss of her mother.

      If it took the rest of Kristin’s life, she wanted to make up to her father for the pain and disappointment he’d suffered because of her misplaced love and trust in Joe Davenport.

      Joe touched her arm, chasing prickles of heat along her skin and jump-starting her heart. “We need to talk.”

      “If you’re suggesting we discuss the past, there’s nothing to say.”

      Joe looked down at her son, then back at her. “I think we have a great deal to talk about.”

      No way would she get into a discussion with Joe about the past, their past. Not here. Not now.

      Not ever.

      “I’ll pay for any damages my son has caused,” Kristin said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back home. I left the potatoes on the stove, and unless you want to be called to a kitchen fire, I’d better go check on them.”

      She took Bobby by the hand and started the long walk up the driveway that led to her father’s estate, intent on escaping the rugged fireman’s perusal and getting her son home before too many questions arose.

      As she neared the house, a white three-story Victorian home built more than a hundred years ago, her lies came back to haunt her.

      You’re what? her father had bellowed into the phone when she called him from college to break the news.

      I’m pregnant.

      The day she’d intended to tell Joe that she