Читать книгу Owen's Best Intentions - Anna Adams - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

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, and he learned at once to admit nothing more about his own flaws.

“Give me time,” Lilah said. “A week to speak to my family and prepare Ben. My assistant will need information about the books and deliveries. I’ll need to give her instructions before I can leave her with the shop.”

“I can’t wait around here for a week.”

“I’m not asking you to, and I won’t take Ben away. There was always a chance you’d find us. I’m not trying to keep him from you. You’re the one who’s trying to take him from me.”

“You kept him all these years.”

“But I didn’t hide. That’s proof I won’t take Ben from you now.”

“We tell him now, before I go back to Tennessee. If you’re lying about coming, or if you run, I’ll find you, no matter where you go or how hard you try to hide.”

He sounded like his father. If you leave me, I’ll find you. No one will hide you well enough. No one can keep you away from me. That was what Odell Gage had said. So many times, Owen’s mother had believed.

So had he and his brothers and sister.

“I know I can’t keep you apart any longer,” Lilah said.

“Before I go back to Tennessee, we’ll tell him who I am,” Owen said again.

She seemed to think it over, as if she had the right. “What if you change your mind?”

Incredible.

“Look at me.” He didn’t try to hide anything. “I’m stunned to find I’m anyone’s father, and I want revenge for what you did, but most of all, I want to do the right thing for Ben.” He needed to rebuild his reputation, so he could make a decent living, but he didn’t want to lose any more time with his son. It had to be this way. “I won’t change my mind. I want to know my son.”

“O-kay,” she said, with doubtful emphasis on both syllables.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, Owen bought a booster seat for Ben. Afterward, he stopped at the first fire station on his way to Lilah’s. A uniformed man came out as Owen parked in the wide driveway.

“What’s up?” the man asked, his breath forming a wreath around his head.

“I bought this seat for my son.” Had he said that word out loud before? It made him proud. He’d like to say it again.

He popped the trunk open with his key fob and pulled out the huge box. “They told me at the store that you’d install it for me.”

“You’ve never installed your kid’s car seats?”

“My child is new to me,” Owen admitted. “I don’t mind explaining the situation to you, but do you need me to?”

The firefighter shook his head. “Sorry, man. You want to watch?”

“Yeah. This is a rental car. When we get home to Tennessee, I’ll have to do it myself.”

The fireman installed the seat, instructing Owen as he did. “You’re sure you got the right one?”

He’d called Lilah from the hotel the night before. After making arrangements to pick up Ben and take him out today, he’d gotten his son’s measurements. “I asked a salesperson at the baby store. She assured me this was right for my boy’s weight and height.”

“Then you should be good.” The other man stepped back and folded his arms. “If you can do it on your own.”

Owen had trouble the first time, but then installed the seat correctly twice.

At last they both stepped back, Owen with a sense of accomplishment. The words “I’m a dad,” repeated inside his head, but he kept silent as he dug a few bills out of his wallet. “In my town, the fire service sponsors a burn charity. I don’t know if you do that up here?”

“We have a brother in ICU at the hospital right now. We’ve started a fund for his family. If you’d rather give the money to a different charity, I will, but his wife and children could use this.”

Owen added another bill. “Thanks for your help.”

He walked back to his car, ducking the fireman’s gratitude. It was crazy the money his simple furniture brought him. Might as well put it to good use.