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“Lilah.” He made no effort now to hide his anger.
Startled, she jumped. Almost deafened by the silence after Owen barked her name, she didn’t answer. Ben’s voice came down the stairs as he talked to his trains or his army of action figures, who were hampered by the fact that he’d broken so many of their body parts.
In the sink, the faucet dripped with annoying regularity. Lilah’s own breathing sounded like someone hissing.
She had to run. Hide her son. Why hadn’t she done that four years ago—made herself and her baby invisible to the one man on earth who could destroy her life?
“How did you find us?”
He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a large gift tag the size of a postcard. He passed it across, and Lilah read the Christmas-red text that wrapped around a photo of her and her parents and her brother. And Ben. They were sprawled or standing or slouched on the porch of the beach house at Fire Island.
“From our family to yours,” the gift tag read. And her family had told Owen about his son.
She knew immediately what had happened. Her parents had arranged to send an alcoholic a bottle of good wine with this gift tag around its neck.
“I knew the second I saw the photo,” Owen said. “But I got out an old picture of myself to compare Ben and me at the same age. You understand I’m not leaving him with you, right?”
“You don’t have custody.” She had kept his son from him. If he didn’t have a reputation as an alcoholic, he might have a leg to stand on. “You can’t come up here and walk off with my son. First, I won’t let you, and, second, you don’t know him.”
“What can you do?”
“Ask anyone who knows you to testify in court that you couldn’t possibly be a good parent because you’re an alcoholic.”
“That won’t work. I’ve changed.”
“You mean you’ve changed again?” she asked. “I talk to Tim. He knows you’ve tried to quit drinking, and you can’t stop. All I have to do is ask your family and friends what you’re like at home. No court would consider me the less fit choice.”
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “Why did you do it? You weren’t a heartless woman. You robbed our son of his father. For four years.”
She avoided that knowledge as often as she could. She’d made the best choice for Ben. “You told me you were afraid you were like your father. You told me he beat you and your brothers and sister. If you were like him, you had no place around my child.”
He stared at her, his lips thin, his gaze practically expressionless. She wrestled silently with panic. What did he plan to do next? Lilah’s best gift was thinking on her feet. She’d done it even when she was five, just a little older than Ben, and escaped her kidnapper.
She had the same sense of being threatened now.
And all the while, water splatted rhythmically on the steel bottom of the sink.
“I understand you’re angry, but I don’t know what you mean by saying you’re never leaving Ben again.”
“My son.” He lowered his voice, coming to stand right next to her. He was too tall, too intense, his frustration whipping up bad energy between them. “Ben is my boy, whom you’ve hidden from me. You didn’t dump me because I drank. That was an excuse to give you control. You didn’t stop drinking because you suddenly wanted to be healthier. You quit because you were pregnant with Ben, and if you’d told me about our baby, I would have quit, too.” He thought she was the bad guy? “You left because you decided I wasn’t worthy of making a life with him.”
“Tell me I was wrong. You still drink. The damage is all over you. You’re twenty-eight, but you look years older. You think you can bully me with a raised voice and anger.” She turned her back to him, putting the counter between them.
“You’ve had him for four years. Four years, and every day you passed up the chance to tell me the truth.”
“I asked you to quit drinking. You said you liked it too much. You’d told me about your father. How could I take the chance that you’d be like him?”
“How could you refuse to let Ben know me or me know him?”
His eyes were troubled. He was angry, but deep inside those haunted eyes, she saw remnants of the man she’d known. When he was hurt, he fought back, instead of admitting he was in pain.
“I gave you as much of a chance as I could,” she said. “I never told my family you were Ben’s father. I never asked them to keep Ben a secret, and I didn’t ask them to help me hide from you.” Big mistake. “I wasn’t naive.” She shook her head. “Maybe I thought that if you wanted to find me, it would be some kind of proof that I mattered to you. That Ben could matter to you. But after a few months passed with no call from you, I knew you weren’t interested.”
He shook his head. Slightly, as if the effort hurt. “After you told me I was a lush you couldn’t trust? How was I supposed to guess you were pregnant?”
“I had Ben to think of.”
“And that’s why you changed?”
“Changed?” She put her hands over her eyes. They burned as if she’d been crying.
“You were paranoid. You assumed the worst would happen, just like you always do. Instead of telling me why you wanted a different relationship, you went from being my—”
“Designated driver. I got you from bar to bar and back to my place every time you came to New York. I couldn’t be that woman anymore when a child depended on me. I had to do the right thing for Ben, and you told me plainly that you couldn’t.”
Owen froze, but his gaze cut her. “You knew everything about me, and all the while you kept your own secrets. You asked me to change because I wasn’t good enough to be a father to my own child.”
He was right that she only let people see the parts of her she wanted them to see. “You won’t believe this, but I didn’t hurt you on purpose.”
He laughed, but he clearly found nothing about her funny. “You thought denying me my son—denying him his father—was the right thing for all of us?”
“I hoped there was a chance you’d understand if you ever found out.” She scooped a dish towel off the counter and folded it, creasing each corner. “You saw my brother just before Thanksgiving. He said you were still drinking. Excessively.”
He chose to ignore the comment about his drinking. “Did you really think I’d find out about Ben and think—well that’s a mistake anyone could make? What’s four years to a father and son?” His despair was a living thing that snaked around her as he pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t even understand the way you think.” He straightened, seeming to reach a decision. “You forget I know how much you hate reporters bringing up the subject of ‘Little Lost Lilah.’ Either give me time with my son, or I’ll deliver that secret of yours to every news station.”
He had her weakness in his hip pocket. The media had loved her story when she was five. Little Lost Lilah. Abducted from her parents in broad daylight but brave and smart enough to run away from her kidnapper. Reporters had hounded her at regular intervals when she’d started high school and gone away to college— checking in on Little Lost Lilah to see if she’d let that man scar her for life. The thing she wanted most for Ben was to save him from the horror of microphones in his face and strident voices asking for his feelings—because his mom was taken by a stranger when she was not much older than he was now.
“How can you suggest you’d set those monsters on me?” Owen had never been cruel.
“Lilah, did you think I’d be grateful? Ask how I could thank you enough for taking four years of being a father to Ben away from me? Because I drank?”
“Because you drink. I thought I was doing what was best for Ben. I don’t believe you’ll hurt him now to get back at me.”
“That’s exactly the kind of man you think I am.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he could see through the floor to Ben playing above.
Blood rushed in Lilah’s ears, and she considered calling the police. They’d never helped her when she was kidnapped. She’d had to count on herself.
But Owen could prove he was Ben’s father. He’d never given up custody. If he chose to fight for parental rights, he’d win visitation.
On the other hand, if she played along, she’d find a way out of this. There’d come a moment when he’d make a mistake, take a drink. Prove even to himself that she’d been right to protect their son from a man whose worst fear was turning into the monstrous man who’d terrorized his own family.
“Visit Ben here, Owen. Let me keep him in familiar surroundings.”
He seemed to hesitate. Fighting a battle of conscience? His fists came out of the tops of his pockets, and he flexed his fingers, and his jaw tightened. At last, he shook his head. “I can’t. I have a job at home that’s life and death to my career. I have to finish it.”
“Your career? Who cares about a career?” Not the Owen she’d known.
“It matters to my reputation,” he said. “I didn’t stop drinking when you asked me to. You’re right about me, except for one thing. I’m not violent, and I would never harm another human being.” His eyes narrowed until they were chips of ice that cut straight through her. “But I will do everything I can to see my son.”
If she were in his shoes, if he’d kept Ben from her, would she be as angry? Absolutely. But she faced him down. “Do your worst.”
“I will if I have to,” he said, his voice contained, his breathing even. “I’m desperate. You’ve proven I can’t trust you to give me a chance with my son.”
“I could not hand him over to a man who told me he preferred alcohol to me.”
“I said that without knowing all the facts, Lilah. I want a chance with my boy, and he’ll have to come to Tennessee. I wish it could be different, and I don’t want to frighten him. But I’ve made some mistakes, and this job may be my last chance at getting enough work to make a living.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I’m not being dramatic,” he said, but then he shrugged, as if her opinion didn’t matter enough for him to explain. “When you pack, add some of Ben’s toys, so he’ll have familiar things around him and his favorite books. Whatever will make him comfortable while he’s with me.”
“This is crazy, Owen. No way will I send my son off with a stranger.” She didn’t trust Owen any more now than she had four years ago.
“I won’t be a stranger for long,” he said.
“You’re not taking him, Owen. I’ll fight you on this. Besides, he and I haven’t spent a night apart since he was born.”
“Then pack your stuff, too.” He paced out of the kitchen, across the living room to the bay window that looked out on her snow-drifted backyard. “If you come along, that solves the problem.”
“If you really care about him, you’d just leave him alone. Ben is a happy child. We have a life here.”
“You have a life you stole from me.” His voice sliced through the air.
Lilah squeezed the towel in her hands. “You said yourself you’re still drinking. You have to stay away from Ben. He’d be afraid of you if he saw you the way you used to get.”
He turned back to her, and his pain was hers for a single moment. She froze, but she felt as if she were vibrating. She couldn’t control her body’s reaction to seeing Owen again.
She didn’t want to remember how much she’d cared for him. Loved him. She couldn’t let him back in.
“I will not frighten my own child,” he said, his voice low, controlled. “Stop dreaming up excuses to keep Ben and me apart.”
“I don’t need excuses. My mother loved me. She was responsible. She only looked away for a few seconds, and see what happened? I was kidnapped by a stranger.” Lilah never talked about the past. She’d dealt with it and moved on, but he needed to know exactly why she’d rejected him as Ben’s father. “I will never turn my back on Ben, especially to leave him with an alcoholic like you.”
Owen barely glanced at her. “Give me a break, and stop comparing me to my father and a kidnapper.”
A switch had turned on when she found out she was pregnant. All the years of healing had disappeared the second she’d read that positive pregnancy test. She’d become a little girl again, running for her life. How easily that man had lured her with his story of a lost kitten that needed her help. “I vowed what happened to me would never happen to my child.”
“Our child. So, you let your own paranoia keep your son from his father? What kind of mother does that?”
“You told me you wouldn’t stop drinking, and I told you I couldn’t live with that. I wasn’t going to let Ben grow up the way you did, Owen.”
“I won’t drink around Ben.” Owen straightened with a pride she’d never seen in him before, not even when he was the star attraction at his exhibitions in her family’s galleries. “I will be a good father to my son.”
“Ben doesn’t know you’re his father.”
“My name is on the birth certificate.”
She clenched her fists to keep from going for his throat. “How did you get your hands on his birth certificate?”
“After I saw Ben’s photo on that gift tag, I took a chance and requested a copy of my son’s birth certificate. I found the announcement your parents put in the paper, and that gave me all the information I needed. I started looking for you.”
“You’ve been stalking us?” She knew she was being ridiculous, but she was angry with herself. She’d left him a string of clues. Made it too easy for him to find them.
“Ask yourself what you would have done in the same situation. I didn’t stalk you, Lilah.”
“What do you call it?”
“Making sure my son knows he has a father.”
“You’re sober now, but you look as if you’ve been on a bender.”
“You didn’t bother to tell me the real reason I should have made sobriety stick four years ago And what about your own issues? I’m not the one who abandoned college after college because everyone I saw looked threatening. And I didn’t move out of my apartment overnight because I thought a woman in my building was following me. Turns out she commuted the same way you did. We both have problems, Lilah, but we’re both Ben’s parents.”
Her skin seemed to be on fire. She knew her face had turned bright red, but she wasn’t so embarrassed about the truth that she couldn’t fight back. “You told me you liked to drink, that you chose to drink.”
He ignored the accusation. “So once again you packed up and walked away from yet another place, without warning, without notice, without reason. Just because of your fear.”
“Ben was my reason.”
“Go to Bliss with Ben and me, or I’ll go to the courts and fight for custody on the grounds you’re not a fit mother.”
This was not the Owen she’d known. “You wouldn’t bring up my past and use it against me.”
“I’m asking again, how cruel would you be if I’d stolen Ben from you?”
The papers, the reporters. She’d been five years old, swarmed by curious faces and camera flashes and questions that only put her back into the bad place.
If Owen took revenge, it would be hard to keep her past a secret. It would be all over social media, complete with photos and old newspaper articles. There’d be commentary on blogs. She felt sick. She’d tried with all her might to keep Ben safe from the notoriety of her past.
She moved closer to him. “You can’t. You won’t. You may not know him, but you must instinctively care about Ben, or you wouldn’t have come here. Making him an object for people to gawk at would hurt him.”
“So, now you’re using him to keep me in check?”
She’d still do anything to protect her son.
“Go ahead and push me,” Owen said, with no hint of the gentleness that had once drawn her to him despite the drinking.
And he’d helped her at first. Pushed her to overcome her fears. But over time she’d grown to loathe his drinking, and hers. Daring anything to prove she wasn’t afraid quickly lost its appeal as she’d pulled and pushed Owen into a taxi or through her apartment door, or dragged him out of a fight in a bar.
But at least when he was under the influence, Owen had never hurt anyone except himself.
“Show some compassion,” she said.
“Like you did?”
She wanted to yell. His warm breath fanned her face. She reassessed her chances of getting Ben out of the house and making a run for it.
But that would be a ridiculously reckless decision. Whatever she had to do to keep Owen from taking Ben, she would. He could threaten her all he wanted, but she would make him see things her way. What was best for Ben would be best for all of them. “Let’s calm down for a minute.”
“I’m not an idiot, Lilah, and I’ve been played by bigger and better cons than you.”
They shared one trait, a survivor’s sensitivity to undercurrents.
“We both care about Ben,” she said, “and you don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you about him.” That was true. If he’d been a different person, she would have told him. “I made a bargain with myself. If you showed up, I’d be honest.”
“I showed up today.” He stepped away from her. “We need to make plans.”
Panic tightened her throat. “How can you be serious?”
“At least in Bliss I can make sure you’ll have a harder time taking him away again.”
“You want him to stay in that little cabin of yours?”
“Plenty big enough for one man and one small boy.”
And no woman. She didn’t figure into his plan. “What are you talking about? You don’t think I’m letting him live with you.”
“I’m not playing with you. I am desperate, and I don’t trust you. You can take a room at my mom’s inn, but Ben stays with me until we create a legally binding custody agreement. See him whenever you want, but until we have an understanding, I won’t believe you’d suddenly consider I have rights at all.”
She went to the sink, her mind racing. “You think legal papers will stop me?”
“Yes.” Owen came around the counter, too. Stopping inches away, he touched her face with the back of his hand. Gently, to get and keep her attention. “Because you don’t want Ben’s name or pictures in headlines.”
“You don’t care about Ben. You’re angry at me.” She wished that were true. How else could she believe that this man she’d once loved would take away her son? She was the one who’d kept Ben safe all his life. She made the decisions about how he was raised.
“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?”
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.”