Michael's Father

Cori’s pulse quickened as she realized how dangerous the book could be. If Michael left his baby book anywhere he shouldn’t, if someone picked it up and flipped to the first page, they’d know the truth.

Oblivious to her turmoil, Michael retrieved the book from his backpack, then climbed back up on the bed. He wriggled into her lap, turning to the first page.

“This is all about me,” he said proudly, the night’s drama temporarily forgotten.

BLAKE SAT ON THE BANK of the Russian River in the darkness, letting the fog envelop him in its chilly embrace. Behind him, hidden by the thick mist, acres of grapevines separated the Messina mansion from the river. Before him, the river flowed silently by, accented by the night symphony of crickets and an occasional plaintive cry from a frog or owl. Obscured by the fog, Blake’s old truck was parked a few feet away, next to a tangle of blackberry bushes.

He’d said good-night to Jen and checked on Sophia long ago, but he’d avoided going to bed. Blake knew he’d be plagued with thoughts of Cori Sinclair that would keep him from sleep. Instead, like a sentimental fool, he’d ended up here, where he and Cori used to meet, reliving thoughts he had no right to think in the first place.

It wasn’t as if he was staying and waiting for her to show up. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. For so many years, this had been his spot.

I loved her. The thought rippled through Blake, eliciting more anguish than he’d felt in years. But Blake’s love hadn’t been good enough for Salvatore Messina’s granddaughter.

Something stumbled in the night. In one smooth motion, Blake shot up and swung the beam of his flashlight in the direction of the noise. It wasn’t uncommon for a puma or a vagabond to wander through the area, and Blake wanted to recapture the element of surprise.

An arm came up against the light. A female voice cursed.

She looked like a vision stepped out of the past. Worn blue denim clung to her legs. A faded red Stanford sweatshirt covered her other curves. Drops of water from the fog were sprinkled on the hair around her forehead, glowing like a halo in the beam of his flashlight.

“Damn it, Cori. What are you doing here?” He’d said something similar years ago, the first time he’d found her down by the river after dark. Blake’s heart beat just as rapidly now as it had then.

“Could you shine the light on my feet instead of in my eyes?”

He readjusted the beam toward her sneakers, incredibly white despite the soft, muddy ground she’d hiked through to get this far.

“Thanks.”

She was always so polite. Too damn polite. Even that one precious night they were together and they’d argued, she’d said thank you as she’d left him alone in bed. “You don’t always have to thank me.”

“I needed some air,” she said, as if explaining why she was here in this place. Their place.

“Where’s the kid?”

“Michael,” she reiterated gently. “Asleep. He’s a good sleeper. Always has been. Even when he was a baby.”

She was babbling, but Blake didn’t care. Part of him was fascinated by the idea that she’d tackled motherhood on her own. Another part of him—the stupid part—was jealous that she’d let some other man touch her as intimately as he had.

“And the boy’s father?” he found himself asking, even as he kicked himself for letting his curiosity fall between them. “Forget it. I don’t need to know.” Wishing she’d go, Blake turned back toward the river, flicking off the flashlight and plunging the area into a darkness that was only dimly lit by the distant lights from the mansion.

Her footsteps carried her closer. Blake’s pulse picked up a notch when he imagined he could smell her flowery perfume.

“We were a burden he didn’t need.” Her voice carried a note of sadness.

Fool. Blake wished he could wrap his hands around the bastard’s neck and make him regret causing Cori pain. Had they argued? Or had Cori just accepted the jerk’s excuses when he left her?

Blake swore under his breath and wiped a hand over his face.

“Looks like you’ve done well with Jen.”

“She’s a handful for only being twelve,” Blake admitted. No sense telling Cori Sinclair about his problems.

“No boy trouble yet?”

“No, thank God.” Her question sent his mind back to the first time he’d kissed Cori.

“She’s going to be a knockout. You’ll be fighting them off.”

Her words brought back the memory of what had crumbled Blake’s guard against his feelings for Cori. By the end of that first summer, Blake had fallen into the habit of tucking Jennifer into bed, then waiting up for Cori, reluctant to slip into his empty bed until she made it safely back within the Messina compound. His instincts told him Cori would find herself in trouble eventually. She was beautiful, and the Messinas didn’t seem to mind that she dressed like a woman of the world.

He knew that they couldn’t be anything more than friends. But he enjoyed their late-night private conversations, her brilliant smiles and the knowledge that she was home safe.

Blake had been waiting for Cori to come home from some function the Messinas had required her to attend. She’d gone to the event in a sleek little sports car with a young, blond, next-in-line-to-be-a-millionaire college boy.

The new British convertible had pulled up, and with a heavy heart, Blake realized the driver was going to kiss Cori. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. Then, just as the boy’s lips neared Cori’s, Blake heard her say “No.”

Blake snapped. He sprang into action. Ran to the car. Yanked the guy out and threw him to the driveway.

“Don’t touch her!” He went cold just remembering that primitive territorial note of warning in his voice.

Cori was at Blake’s side in an instant. Holding her trembling body against his, Blake never wanted to let go. Moments later, when her soft lips touched his, he knew he was lost.

He loved her.

She was everything he wasn’t—well educated, wealthy, someone important. None of that mattered when they were together. Or so he’d thought.

Blake fought the memory of the feel of Cori’s body against his. Luckily, the physical memory was overshadowed by the burning need to know what had been happening to Cori all these years.

“What kind of man were you involved with, that wouldn’t want to marry the mother of his child?”

Cori sat down on the far end of the steep riverbank, several feet away from Blake, choosing her words as carefully as she had chosen her seat.

“We wanted different things.”

“Obviously you wanted the same thing at least once. You created a child together.” She created a child with someone else. The thought burned in his belly, worse than the jealousy he’d carried all these years imagining her in a happy relationship with someone else—someone who was good for her, as Sophia put it.

Cori didn’t answer. Blake peered through the fog but couldn’t make out her features without turning on the flashlight. “Were you the one who decided you wanted different things?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Déjà vu. That’s what you said to me the last time I saw you.” He’d confessed his love and plans for the future. Hell, he’d done everything but propose marriage. She’d practically tripped over herself in her haste to flee.

“I needed to make it on my own first, remember?” The words spilled out bitterly from the shadows.

Blake didn’t remember it that way. He only remembered the rejection. For a moment, he wondered if he’d mistaken her meaning years ago. But he’d never had the chance to find out. She’d eventually fallen into the arms of another man.

“You never came back.”

“No.” The word signaled the end of the conversation. “I had Michael and that’s all that mattered.”

That’s all that mattered to her. She didn’t seem to care about how her actions affected others, saddened them or ripped them apart inside.

“You don’t come home for the holidays.” Having his family torn from him left Blake with this need to set down and foster roots, kept him here with the Messinas, who’d become a second family to him and Jennifer. Blake would do anything for them.

“I let them down.”

How could she have disappointed the Messinas? She’d been the dutiful granddaughter—once—until she met somebody who changed her mind. Someone other than Blake.

“And you’ve been raising him alone?” He’d have bet money Cori would have come right back to the family’s money and security. He knew firsthand that raising a child was too difficult to do alone if you didn’t have to.

“Yes. Is that so hard to believe? That I could make it on my own without my family?” She laughed but the sound lacked humor. “You must really think I’m something special.” She stood up, her face still unreadable in the gray shadows. “Sleep well, Blake.”

But Blake knew sleep would elude him.

CORI SLIPPED INTO HER mother’s room and lowered herself carefully onto the bed. Soft light from the hallway crept across the thick carpet, casting her mother’s gaunt face in shadow. Luke dozed on the sofa on the far side of the room, his stocking feet dangling over the edge of the sofa’s arm. Gently, Cori drew the covers on the bed up around Mama’s thin shoulders, tucking her in, in much the same way she did Michael every night. Seeing her mother asleep and unmoving, Cori was sure she was losing her battle with cancer.

Cori smoothed the blankets along the edge of the bed, unwilling to leave her mother’s side. She could still hear Blake’s tone, full of condemnation, his words ripe with disbelief. After her confrontation with her grandfather, Cori had needed some reassurance that she’d done the right thing by keeping Blake’s fatherhood from him. For years, the secret had chipped away at her conscience. Irrationally, she’d wanted some sign from Blake that her decision had been for the best, that she should continue to guard her secret. So, she’d walked down to the Russian River in the foggy darkness.

Her conversation with Blake had been much like their talks that first summer. The intimacy of the night. Questions asked that one wouldn’t dare ask in the daylight. She’d wanted to tell him about Michael, had even started to gather her courage. Then, sensing Blake’s disappointment in her, the fragile mood between them collapsed. Just as her world seemed to be.

“You’re worried about something.” Sophia spoke softly, her eyes still closed as if she lacked the strength to open them. “I could always tell when you were worried, by how carefully you paid attention to what you were doing.”

“I’m a mother. I worry about everything.” Cori hoped her voice sounded lighter than she felt.

“I’m here if you want to talk.”

How long will you be here? The question paralyzed Cori’s thoughts, and she fell silent. She wouldn’t accept her mother was dying, despite the evidence in front of her.

Sophia sighed, then opened her eyes. “You’re wondering why I’m not in a hospital.”

Cori’s hand slipped under the blanket and found her mother’s. It was such a small, fragile hand. “Ye-es.” Cori’s thin acknowledgment cracked, the word as brittle as her fears.

“There comes a time when you have to decide, Cori. And I realized it was my time to stop fighting.”

Closing her eyes, Cori turned her head toward the hallway, away from this reality. “The doctors can’t do anything for you?”

“The doctors can ease my pain or they can continue to attack the cancer. Either way is a losing battle.”

Cori bit her lip, trying to hold herself together. “Why don’t you have a nurse?” They could afford an army of nurses.

“No nurses. No doctors. No tubes or shots. Just my family and my home.” Mama squeezed Cori’s hand.

“How long?” Cori closed her eyes against her tears. “How long have you known?”

“I found out the cancer metastasized right after Christmas.”

It was now late February. Her mother had kept the illness hidden from her for nearly two months. The guilt was almost as debilitating as the truth she wouldn’t accept. Cori’s hand crept to her throat. She had to know more.

“When did you decide to…?” Die. Cori couldn’t say the word aloud. To do so was to admit defeat. “To stop fighting?”

“When I asked you to come home and you said yes. They took all the tubes out of me after I hung up. Blake brought me home from the hospital that same day.”

How was Cori supposed to deal with that? Her mother had given up because Cori had agreed to come home. In need of a distraction, she opened her eyes and focused on her mother’s last words.

“Blake took you home?”

“Blake and Jennifer are so supportive. They spent quite a bit of time with me at the hospital. Blake has some spare time until bud break.”

Spare time? Every month was busy in the vineyard. January and February were filled with pruning and replanting damaged stock. February sometimes offered a few weeks of respite until the warmer weather coaxed buds to open on the vine. Maybe Blake relied on the other staff to cover for him while he helped Sophia.

No. Cori doubted Blake had much, if any, spare time.

“What about Luke and Grandpa?” Cori cast a glance back at her sleeping brother, snoring softly on the couch.

“Lucas and Father have been focusing on the business. We’re introducing internationally, you know.” Sophia’s voice sounded drowsy.

“I didn’t know,” Cori murmured. She couldn’t do anything about her grandfather’s absence from Sophia’s life, but she was going to take Luke to task for having his priorities screwed up. His saving grace was the fact that he guarded Mama through the night.

“Do you have regular checkups, Corinne?” Sophia’s eyes opened and fixed wearily on Cori. “That’s very important.”

Momentarily consumed with fear when she couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited the doctor, Cori could only stare blankly at her mother. When she blinked, her memory returned.

Last summer. She’d been to the doctor last summer and everything was okay. And then came the awful thought: Who would take care of Michael if something happened to me?

“Honesty is important, too. I wish I had been honest with your father. Maybe then he’d have stayed with me. You don’t ever see your father, do you?”

“No.” Cori drew back. John Sinclair wasn’t discussed in the Messina household. He didn’t call or send birthday cards. He’d walked out of their lives about twenty years ago and never looked back. Did her mother know that Salvatore had paid John Sinclair to marry her? And most likely paid him to leave?

“It’s too bad that you don’t see your father. I’ve always regretted losing touch. A child needs a father. You should tell him, for Michael’s sake.”

Struggling to follow her mother’s logic, Cori asked, “Tell John Sinclair?”

“No. Tell Blake he has a son.”

Cori forced herself to breathe normally. She couldn’t read her mother’s expression; her eyes were closed again. Cori peeked at Luke to make sure he still slept. Finally, she asked, “How long have you known?”

“I suspected all along, but couldn’t really see it until today. Michael looks less like a baby and more like a little Austin.” Sophia moved her head listlessly as if trying to get comfortable. “Blake’s a good man. He deserves to know the truth no matter what your reasons for keeping it from him.”

Cori wanted—at times needed—to tell Blake, but she doubted Blake would want to keep his fatherhood a secret. He was a proud, honorable man who’d want Michael to call him Dad. In which case, Cori didn’t think she could protect Blake from her grandfather.

“WELL, IF IT ISN’T Sleeping Beauty,” Blake greeted Cori with sarcasm at the door to Sophia’s bedroom the next morning. He checked his watch. “Nine o’clock. Kind of early for you, isn’t it?” He slouched farther in the flowery chair, stretching his jean-clad legs toward Sophia’s bed frame. He should be out in the vineyards. But not wanting Sophia to be alone, he’d waited for Cori to appear.

Sophia either didn’t catch or ignored the dig in Blake’s greeting. “She certainly looks lovely today.” From Sophia’s smile, it seemed the sight of Cori made her happy—while it confused, irritated and hurt Blake.

“I’ve been working since five. Got to pay the bills,” Cori replied mildly, with a quick glance at Blake’s bootless feet, enveloped in dingy socks.

What had she expected from a workingman? Socks in pristine condition? Self-consciously, Blake pulled his feet back to the edge of the chair. He often left his boots at the back door when he’d been traversing a particularly muddy patch of vineyard.

Tugging her short, clingy blue sweater over her khaki walking shorts, Cori moved to her mother’s side. The kid dragged his feet behind her, one hand clutching the bottom of the long-sleeved denim shirt she wore over the sweater.

Ignoring her excuse, flimsy as it was, Blake’s eyes surveyed Cori’s legs and bare feet. It was less dangerous than looking at her curves in that skimpy sweater. “It’s a bit chilly out for shorts,” he found himself saying.

“If the sun’s out, Southern Californians wear shorts,” Cori replied, her words as brisk as the weather. Cori stepped between Blake and Sophia, presenting him with her backside.

Blake swallowed and wet his lips, finding it hard to have Cori so near and untouchable. The kid popped free to lurk on the far side of the bed, a welcome distraction to Blake at this point.

“There’s nothing like a little sun to give a woman that glow,” Sophia conceded, obviously missing the subtext of the conversation.

“A little sunshine would do you good,” Blake said to Sophia, leaning to one side so he could see her face, trying not to look at Cori’s slender figure. She’d left him. He shouldn’t be reacting to her this way now, with interest as inappropriate now as it had been years ago.

“Not today.” Sophia rolled her head. She smiled wanly at Michael, who ducked behind the bed out of sight. “I must look frightening.”

“Nonsense.” Cori’s hand gently encompassed her mother’s. “If that’s a hint, I’ll style your hair.”

“That would be heaven.”

The kid chose that moment to jump onto Sophia’s bed.

“Grandma, we’re going to change the pink room to blue.” The kid’s thin voice rang out as he hopped, jolting Sophia’s limp body with each bounce.

“Michael, don’t—” Cori reached for her son, but Blake reacted faster.

“Can’t you control him?” Blake snatched the boy off the bed with two hands on his little waist, holding him none too gently in the air, inches from his face. “Don’t ever do that again.”

The brat’s dark eyes rounded as they stared at Blake. His mouth puckered tremulously.

Immediately, Blake knew he’d overreacted from stress and lack of sleep, and some other dark reason he was reluctant to acknowledge. Resentment.

I should have been this boy’s father.

Air escaped Blake’s lungs, taking his strength with him. Suddenly, the kid felt as if he weighed a hundred pounds.

“Put him down.” Cori spoke with the unchecked fury of a mother protecting her young. She held out her arms for her son.

Blake met her gaze squarely before setting the kid down. Holding the boy’s sticklike arms, Blake knelt to his level. “I want you to promise me you won’t do that again. You could have hurt your grandmother.” Blake may not have been his father, but he could still be a positive influence on the child. “Are you all right, Sophia?”

“Yes. More startled than anything,” she answered breathlessly.

Cori stood between her mother and her son, seemingly torn as to which needed her the most.

“Promise?” Blake prompted, returning his full attention to the boy. Blake had forgotten how frail a little kid’s emotions were. The boy was small, yet not as fragile as Sophia was.

When the kid nodded, his face full of fear, Blake released him. In the blink of an eye, Cori’s son fled the room. Blake stood, his stomach clenching from what he’d done, not blaming the kid one bit for his hasty retreat.

“That was uncalled for.” Cori’s voice shook, her eyes still focused on the floor where the boy had stood.

Blake shrugged, not backing down, even when he knew only a parent had the right to punish, even when he loathed his own actions. “You want the kid to behave, start setting some rules.”

“Rules—” Cori sputtered, eyes narrowing.

Blake cut her off before she could gather steam. “I have to go. Maria’s downstairs, but I told her you’d stay close to Sophia today. Do you think you can handle that?”

CHAPTER THREE

HOW COULD HE NOT SEE that Michael was his son?

Looking down upon the heads of her son and his father, she’d noted the same swirling pattern of brown hair on each crown. She’d vacillated between anger at Blake for tossing Michael around like a sack of potatoes and disappointment that he couldn’t see the similarities between himself and his son. Yet, should she expect Blake to recognize what she’d tried so hard to hide?

Crash! Tinkle, tinkle.

Cori froze as she slid the last hairpin into her mother’s lifeless hair.

“Michael?” she asked, just as her cell phone rang in her shorts pocket.

“It wasn’t me!” Michael called from the hallway.

“It’s probably that crystal vase,” Sophia observed calmly.

“The one that good-looking actor gave you?” Cori asked, trying to keep her tone light as she reached for her phone.

“Ronald Reagan was our president,” Sophia replied with mock dignity.

Ever since Ronald Reagan had given the vase to Sophia, Luke and Cori had teased her about her crush on him. Cori hoped she wouldn’t find that vase in pieces in the hall.

As Cori answered the telephone, she went in search of her son. His fast-retreating footsteps on the hardwood floor, punctuated with a door slam, signaled his escape to the pink room.

“Cori, I need some PR angles for Nightshade, pronto,” Sidney Collins, Cori’s boss, trilled in her ear. “They liked what you proposed last week, but they want to hear some other ideas from you, just to be sure the first one is the best.”

Cori sighed heavily, as much in response to Sidney’s request as at the sight of Ronald Reagan’s vase in pieces scattered across the floor.

“Not again.” Cori peered into the bedroom at Michael, shaking a finger at him when he looked up from his cartoons.

“I didn’t do it,” he whispered.

“Yes, again.” Sidney didn’t sound happy, either. “Just because they’re so forward thinking they can’t recognize brilliance when it’s right in front of them doesn’t mean we don’t jump through the hoop when they snap their fingers.”

“Tell them we’re out of recommendations. Tell them that was our best idea and the others were so bad we won’t even show them.” Cori stomped down the back stairs in search of a broom.

“No way. Bell-Diva’s new vice president of marketing was talking to the Parker Agency, just testing the waters, he said, but we’ll lose the account if we don’t shine, and shine brightly, in the next few months.”

“I did shine. That last press release was picked up for a segment on the Today Show. Let Adam Parker deliver that.” Collins & Co. was taking off, creating great buzz for their clients, who told others of their success. They were so busy that Cori was starting to wonder if she had any fresh ideas left. The pace had become grueling. If Sidney hadn’t taken a chance on Cori right out of college and stuck with her through the pregnancy, Cori would have moved on by now to someplace where she could be in the spotlight less and with her son more.

“I’m sure Adam Parker will promise them everything. You know him. He’d sell his mother the Brooklyn Bridge if he thought he could make a buck. Seriously, Cori, Bell-Diva is half our billings right now.”

Cori lowered her voice to a whisper. “And more than half of my headaches. I really don’t have time for this.” She knew that the deal she’d struck with Sidney to work from Sonoma was going to cause a snag or two along the way, but she hadn’t expected a problem to arise so soon. At least she could do her public relations/spokesperson job with a telephone, e-mail and fax—as long as her clients didn’t require a meeting or hold an event where her presence was mandatory.