Revealed: His Secret Child. Sandra Hyatt

the doorway.

      Max stayed where he was, her desperation making him curious. Something wasn’t right here. Did she have a man back there, someone she didn’t want him to see?

      Another soft thump and he looked deeper into the house to where it had come from.

      “Max,” she hissed his name and tugged his arm. “Not now.” Panic tightened her voice.

      Max gave it up and took a step. He wasn’t going to care. Either about what she was trying to hide or about unsettling her by lingering or about how that simple touch, her hand on his arm, had resonated through him.

      “Mommy,” a happy singsong voice called. She let go of his arm and her hand fell to her side.

      “Mommy?” he asked, unable to keep the shock from his voice. She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. The pieces dropped into place—the hatchback, her softer curves, her haste to get rid of him—it suddenly made sense. She might not be married but she certainly hadn’t wasted any time in replacing him in her bed, in finding someone to give her the child she’d talked about. “When did that happen?” Max was no expert on children, he had no idea how old the child might be. Anywhere less than three but old enough to talk. So, not a baby.

      “Go. Please,” she repeated, but this time the authority had gone from her command. A bleak resignation filled her eyes. “I need to talk to you. But not now. Not here.”

      “Sure.” Definitely time to go if there was a child here. He barely knew how to be in the room with his own nieces. And he was still processing the fact that Gillian had had a child.

      “Mommy.”

      One glance. That was all he’d allow himself to satisfy his curiosity. Max turned back to see a little, curly-headed boy, clutching a faded blue blanket, standing at the foot of the stairs.

      “I’m hungwy.”

      A little boy, who was the spitting image of Max and his brother in the picture his parents still had on their hallway wall, taken when he was two.

      Shock swamped him. He, not Gillian, was the one who’d been skating on thin ice. And he’d just fallen through into a paralyzing new world.

      Max looked from the boy to Gillian. Her skin, always pale, had faded to ashen, her knuckles as she gripped the door handle were white.

      “Mommy?” He echoed the child’s word, not taking his eyes from her. “Mommy?” And for a second he wished that he, too, had the door handle to hold on to, to steady himself. The boy was Gillian’s. The boy who looked like Max. He didn’t need to do the math to know the child was his.

      “Okay, honey,” Gillian said, her voice soft, “go on into the kitchen. I’ll come get you some cereal.” The boy looked steadily at her and Max for the longest time then trotted through a doorway.

      The depth of her deceit stunned him.

      And to think he’d attributed her defensiveness to conscience over the piece she’d written. That wrong didn’t even register on the same scale as the deception she’d practiced on him for the past three and a half years.

      “I don’t suppose we can talk about this later?” Her eyes didn’t quite meet his, and her throat moved as she swallowed. She knew there was no way he was leaving now.

      He took hold of the door and swung it shut.

      The fury was back in full force as he followed her to the kitchen. Overlaying a deep and utter shock. Shock that he couldn’t process and fury that he couldn’t give vent to now, not with a child here.

      A boy.

      His son.

      Two

      Gillian’s stomach churned. What was going to happen now? She knew only one thing. She knew it the instant Max recognized himself in Ethan.

      The carefully protected bubble of her life was about to be blown apart. She followed Ethan through to the kitchen. Every slow deliberate step of Max’s Italian-loafer-clad feet sounded like an ax fall behind her.

      But underneath her anxiety she recognized a flicker of relief. The relief a condemned man might feel on his way to execution. If nothing else, the agony of anticipating the inevitable was over.

      She’d known Max was head of PR for Cameron Enterprises. She’d known, therefore, that her articles had the potential to bring her into contact with him. And that perhaps the time had come to tell him about Ethan.

      But not in her own home. She’d never thought that. Not where he could see her son. Not without her first doing the impossible and preparing Max for the news.

      In the center of the kitchen she stopped as Ethan climbed onto his booster seat at the table. So much about her kitchen and its cozy dining area advertised the fact that a child lived here. Which was why she hadn’t brought Max to this room in the first place.

      Her half-drunk coffee sat on the opposite side of the table from Ethan. The same newspaper that had brought Max to her door lay folded to reveal the crossword, reminding her that a mere ten minutes ago her biggest problem had been finding an eleven-letter word for incident.

      Her day had stretched out, relaxed and pleasant, before her.

      She needed to move, to be doing something. Keeping her back to Max and Ethan, she poured a bowl of cereal. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she sliced banana into the bowl and added milk, but there was only so long she could drag the preparation out. Eventually, she had to turn from the counter and face the music. Or in this case the absolute silence.

      Max sat in the chair she’d vacated earlier, opposite Ethan. They were staring at each other—from perfectly matched blue eyes—with unabashed curiosity. Ethan could outstare almost anyone. She now realized where that ability had come from.

      Gillian set her son’s bowl in front of him, milk slopping over the side as she did so. Her hands clenched into fists, her nails dug into her palms. She had to calm down, take control, of herself and of the situation.

      Ethan, having looked his fill at the stranger, picked up his spoon and began eating, his breakfast now more important than the man at the table. Gillian found a cloth for the spilled milk.

      And Max … watched.

      He still hadn’t spoken a word and his silence may not be affecting Ethan, but every second of it ratcheted up the tension in her stomach. “Do you want coffee?”

      He shook his head. A single abrupt movement.

      She’d known her son looked like his father, but seeing them here together for the first time, the resemblance was even stronger than she’d realized. Seeing them here together was both her greatest wish and her greatest fear.

      “What’s your name?” Ethan had stopped spooning cereal into his mouth long enough to ask the innocent question.

      Max opened his mouth.

      “His name’s Mr. Preston,” she said before Max could supply anything confusing or startling, because she’d suddenly had the terrifying thought that this man, who’d had no intention of ever being a father, had been about to say “Daddy.”

      “Pweston.”

      “We’ll find something else for you to call me,” Max said, the piercing blue of his arctic gaze firmly on Gillian. He looked back at her son. “What’s your name?”

      “Ethan. An’ I’m gonna be three soon. How old are you?”

      Max’s eyebrows shot up. Clearly he wasn’t used to the directness of a child’s questioning. He ought to be, he was pretty good at it himself. A smile lifted the corners of his lips, momentarily smoothing the deep lines that had furrowed his brow. “I’m thirty-two. Nearly thirty-three.” His gaze swung to her. “Which means I was thirty when you were born.”

      Not here. Not now. Gillian tried to telegraph the silent