“He called me his dad,” Joe whispered as Aaron ran for the phone, eager to brag about his coolness.

Louisa turned to him and said, “Yes, he did.”

Joe paused a moment, lost in the warm glow of Aaron referring to him as dad, my dad, then said, “Thank you.”

Before he knew what he was doing, he leaned down and kissed her. It started soft and tentative, just a quick thank-you. But it slowly built into something bigger and more intense.

Her arms snaked around his neck, holding him tight, as if she didn’t want to let go. The feel of her pressing against him, welcoming his touch, shook him.

“Hey,” Aaron said.

They broke apart with the speed of guilty teenagers caught in the act. Louisa was blushing as she backed up, putting distance between them.

“Hey,” Joe said, trying to keep it light. “It’s okay if he catches us kissing. We’re his parents.”

Dear Reader,

The summer after my thirteenth birthday, I read my older sister’s dog-eared copy of Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and I was hooked. Thousands of romance novels later—I won’t say how many years—I’ll gladly confess that I’m a romance freak! That’s why I am so delighted to become the associate senior editor for the Silhouette Romance line. My goal, as the new manager of Silhouette’s longest-running line, is to bring you brand-new, heartwarming love stories every month. As you read each one, I hope you’ll share the magic and experience love as it was meant to be.

For instance, if you love reading about rugged cowboys and the feisty heroines who melt their hearts, be sure not to miss Judy Christenberry’s Beauty & the Beastly Rancher (#1678), the latest title in her FROM THE CIRCLE K series. And share a laugh with the always-entertaining Terry Essig in Distracting Dad (#1679).

In the next THE TEXAS BROTHERHOOD title by Patricia Thayer, Jared’s Texas Homecoming (#1680), a drifter’s life changes for good when he offers to marry his nephew’s mother. And a secretary’s dream comes true when her boss, who has amnesia, thinks they’re married, in Judith McWilliams’s Did You Say…Wife? (#1681).

Enjoy!

Mavis C. Allen

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Dad Today, Groom Tomorrow
Holly Jacobs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Sharon Lorei, a woman who, even if she’d chosen a different profession, would always have been a true teacher! I was lucky to have her for a teacher at Seneca High School…luckier still to call her a friend.

Books by Holly Jacobs

Silhouette Romance

Do You Hear What I Hear? #1557

A Day Late and a Bride Short #1653

Dad Today, Groom Tomorrow #1683

HOLLY JACOBS

can’t remember a time when she didn’t read…and read a lot. Writing her own stories just seemed a natural outgrowth of that love. Reading, writing, chauffeuring kids to and from activities makes for a busy life. But it’s one she wouldn’t trade for any other.

Holly lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with her husband, four children and a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound Old English mastiff. In her “spare” time, Holly loves hearing from her fans. You can write to her at P.O. Box 11102, Erie, PA 16514-1102 or visit her Web site at www.HollyBooks.com.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilogue

Chapter One

“Aaron Joseph, don’t you dare eat that,” Louisa Clancy called, but her grin took any menace from the words. “What have I told you about sneaking chocolates? You’re eating my inventory.”

“Ah, Mom,” the boy said with all the exasperation of a seven-year-old caught in the act of pilfering treats.

“I mean it,” Lou continued, resisting the urge to shake a finger in her son’s face. “I’m closing the store in fifteen minutes, and then we’re going home and eating dinner. You and I both know that if you’ve been munching chocolate, you’re not going to eat a bite.”

“But it was just a taste,” Aaron said, defending his act of petty larceny. “I mean, this is your new chocolate. What if it’s horrible? Then all your customers would go somewhere else. We’d be broke and then you couldn’t buy me a new video game.”

“Oh, so you’re just snitching chocolate to be helpful?” she asked.

Aaron nodded his head so hard, Lou wondered how it stayed mounted on his shoulders.

She mussed his hair.

When had he gotten so big? Every time she turned around he seemed to have grown another inch. “Well, thanks for thinking of my business. Your thoughtfulness is noted, even though I suspect you’re more worried about buying video games than living on the street.”

Sighing at the injustice of being seven—or maybe sighing because of his failed robbery attempt—Aaron thumped his way out of the showroom and into the back room.

Louisa looked around her store, making sure everything was ready to close for the day.

Her store. The words sounded as sweet as the chocolate she sold. She’d owned it for less than a year, but already The Chocolate Bar had more than lived up to its name and its Perry Square location felt like home.

The bell over the front door chimed merrily as Lou slid an envelope back behind a stack of birthday cards.

She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes until she shut the doors. This was her last customer of the day.

She turned, plastered her business smile in place and said, “Hi. Welcome to The Chocolate Bar.”

She looked up. Her smile slowly faded as she stared into piercing green eyes she hadn’t seen in almost eight years.

“Joe,” she whispered as she stared at the one man she never wanted to see again. Despite that fact, her heart sped up of its own accord.

“Hello, Lou. Fancy meeting you here.”

Joseph Delacamp could have kicked himself.

Fancy meeting you here?

What kind of lame greeting was that?

He stared at Louisa Clancy. She hadn’t changed in the past eight years. At least not much.

She still wore her auburn hair long. It was in a messy ponytail today, making her look more like eighteen than the twenty-seven he knew she was. Blue eyes darted everywhere but at him.

This was more awkward than he’d ever imagined it would be.

Not that he’d imagined walking into a candy store and running into Louisa. For years he’d imagined running into her at home in Lyonsville, Georgia, but he never had. Finally he’d simply decided she wasn’t coming back. But that hadn’t stopped him from thinking about her.

And now here she was.

“So, how are you?” What he wanted to ask was, How could you? But he didn’t.

“Fine. Fine. And yourself?”

“Fine.”

So polite. After all they’d shared, they were reduced to pleasant, little, meaningless social nothings.

Silence hung in the room, thick and painful.

Louisa finally broke it by asking, “So what brings you to Erie?”

“I took a job in the E.R. at the hospital. It was a great offer. Plus, you can walk outside and see the bay.”

He wanted to ask if she remembered all the times they’d talked about Lake Erie, about living on its shores, about buying a sailboat and going out every evening to watch the sunset.

He wanted to ask, but he didn’t. Too much time had passed, and childhood dreams were long since put away.

“So, you did it, then. You’re a doctor,” she said. “I’m not surprised. I always knew you could, I just wasn’t sure if your parents would let you. And you’re working in an emergency room. I know your dad wanted something more in keeping with the family image. A surgeon or some other impressive specialty.”

“I didn’t let my father live my life back in school, and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.” He left the underlying accusation that it was about the only thing that hadn’t changed.

Louisa might look like the girl he’d known so long ago, but she wasn’t who he’d thought she was back then, and he was sure she was even less like his imagined first love now.

“And you?” he asked. “Did you study marketing or advertising like you planned?”

“No. Things—” She stopped short.

Joe wondered what she’d been about to say.

“Well,” she continued, “my plans changed. I came to work in Erie. I opened The Chocolate Bar last year. It’s all mine. At least with the bank’s help it is.”

“When I came here, I never expected to find you here. After—” He forced himself to cut off any recriminations. “Well, it just never occurred to me you’d have come here. Actually, this was the last place I thought I’d find you.”

“You were wrong,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders.

“What made you look for a job in Erie?”

Erie, Pennsylvania.

When they were in high school back in Lyonsville, they’d sworn they wanted to leave town. They wanted to move someplace where no one knew who the Clancys or the Delacamps were. They wanted to go someplace where they could be anonymous, where no one knew their family histories three or more generations back.

They wanted a chance to be just Joe and Louisa.

Joe remember that day when, as a joke, they’d thrown a dart at a map. It had landed on Lake Erie, just beyond the Erie shoreline.

We’ll move to Erie when I graduate, Louisa had said, laughing.

All these years later, he could still hear the sound of her laughter.

Despite the hardships in her life—her father had been the town drunk before he died and had left Louisa and her mother impoverished—she’d always been laughing. A quiet, joy-filled sound that had made his heart constrict even as it had made her blue eyes light up.

There was no laughter in those eyes today. Just wariness as she answered, “It’s just that I always thought I’d live here. I’d spent such a long time dreaming about a Great Lake, about a place where I could just be me, not ‘Clancy’s kid’—you know how they used to say it with that mixture of scorn and pity in their voices. I just wanted to leave that behind.”

When she’d left that behind, she’d left him behind, as well. Joe didn’t understand it then, and he didn’t now, but he was too proud to ask her why.

Why she’d left him when he would have followed her anywhere.

“I drove here on a whim. I drove to the foot of the dock. It wasn’t as touristy then as it is now. But I stood there, and could look at the peninsula across the bay, and I knew this was home, just like I’d always dreamed it would be.”

“That’s how I felt, too,” he said. “I’d been working at the hospital in Lyonsville, but wanted to do something different. A friend told me he knew someone who was on staff at a hospital that needed an E.R. doctor. When I checked it out and found it was in Erie, well, I knew it was the job for me, so here I am.”

“Welcome to Erie.” She glanced at a door toward the back of the shop, then at her watch. “But as much as I’ve enjoyed catching up, it’s time for me to close.”

“I came in to buy something for the nurses and aides in the E.R. Everyone’s been so great helping me settle in, and I wanted to thank them.”

“Fine, but we need to make it quick. What did you have in mind?”

She was looking at the back of the room again.

Joe looked, as well, but all he could see was a door framed by shelves, loaded with little trinkety sorts of items.

“Do you have any suggestions?” he asked.

“Would you like an assortment of chocolates? That way you’re bound to have something everyone will like in the mix.”

“Fine. Give me…what do you think? Five pounds?”

“Well, that would ensure that everyone got their share and then some.”

“Great. Five pounds, then.”

He watched as Louisa ducked behind the big glass case. She plucked handfuls of chocolate from this pile, then from that, filling up a huge box.

Five pounds of chocolate was an awful lot of chocolate. Not only could he treat the staff, but all the patients, as well.

“So this is all yours?” he asked, needing to fill up the silence.

“Like I said, it’s mine and the bank’s. I bought out my old boss’s equipment when he decided to get out of the candy business.”

She smiled when she mentioned her old boss. Joe felt a spurt of something hot. What was it?

No way could it be jealousy. He and Louisa hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade. They had no claims on the other. He had no cause to be jealous.

“The lease was up on his store,” she continued, “so I moved everything here. Perry Square is perfect. There are so many businesses down here, and there’s been such a surge in tourism that The Chocolate Bar has done well its first year.”

“I’m happy for you.” He paused, looking for something else to say. “Do you ever go home?”

“No. With Mama dying six months after I left…well after that, there was nothing holding me there.”

“I heard about your mother. I was sorry.”

“Me, too. She’d have loved—” Louisa stopped short and stared at him a moment, then gave a little shake of her head “—to see me succeed. She always told me I could do anything I set my mind to.”

“She was an amazing lady.”

Louisa placed the box on the counter. “Here you go.”

“How much?”

“Nothing. It’s on the house.”

“I can’t take it without paying.” He reached in his pocket and withdrew a bill and placed it on the counter.

Louisa looked ready to argue, but suddenly her eyes moved past him, and focused on something behind him.

“Hey, Mom, I’m done with my homework. Can I take a Mud Pie home, do you think?”

Joe turned around and found himself face-to-face with a boy…a boy who had his black hair and his green eyes.

“Aaron, you know better than to interrupt when I have a customer. Go into the back, and I’ll come get you when I’m done.”

“Geez, I just want one stupid Mud Pie,” the boy mumbled as he left the room.

Joe stood, unable to move or say anything, as he tried to process what he’d just seen.

No, who he’d just seen.

“Louisa?” he said as he slowly turned around and faced her.

She didn’t need to answer his unasked question. It was there in her face.

Guilt. “Why?” he asked.

Why had she hidden the fact he had a son—he had a son!

The boy had to be sevenish, he thought, quickly doing the math in his head.

“Why?” he repeated.

Louisa was white as a sheet. “I didn’t mean for you to ever know.”

“That’s obvious,” he said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He didn’t want to.

Even after she’d left him without a word, Joe would have sworn that Louisa would never do anything so despicable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t want kids—”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know enough. And I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry we rocked your nice, neat little world. You can be sure that wasn’t my intention. You never wanted kids—you made that clear. I didn’t plan on Aaron, but I don’t regret him. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Just walk away and forget that you saw me, forget that you saw him. Go back to the life your parents planned and plotted for you.”

When they were young and talked of a future, he’d said no children. He looked at the mess his parents and Louisa’s parents had made raising children and had decided he wouldn’t take the chance of following in their footsteps.

He was so young then, and all he’d wanted was the woman standing in front of him. He thought she’d known him inside and out, but if she thought he would turn away from her because she was pregnant, she’d never really known him at all.

But she was about to.

Joe needed to think. Needed to somehow find a way to breathe again. He felt as if he’d been sucker punched and there was no oxygen left in the room.

He turned to leave. Not to walk away, but to get his feet planted firmly beneath him before he tried to decide what to do next.

He just had one more question before he left. “What’s his name?”

For a moment he didn’t think Louisa was going to answer.

She sighed and said, “Aaron. Aaron Joseph Clancy.”

She hadn’t even given the boy his last name. The thought added to the pain.

He turned and walked toward the door, chocolates forgotten.

“Joe,” she called. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.”

But figuring it out was harder than Joe could have imagined. Hours later Joe still didn’t have a clue. His mind couldn’t seem to focus on anything except the fact that he had a son.

Aaron.

The boy’s name was Aaron.

He’d lost the first seven years of the boy’s life…of Aaron’s life. He felt a sense of awe and wonder every time he thought his son’s name.

He made his way to the dock, though if asked he couldn’t have said how he got there.

“Aaron Joseph,” he whispered out loud. He didn’t say Clancy. The boy should be a Delacamp.

Louisa had given the boy his name for a middle name, but that’s the only thing Aaron had of his. He’d walked into the room, looked Joe straight in the eye, and there hadn’t been the slightest trace of recognition.

But Joe had known. Aaron looked just the way he had at that age. All gangly, not quite grown into his body. Dark hair. And his eyes.

Aaron had his eyes.

Joe had given him physical attributes, but nothing else. Not by choice, but that didn’t matter.

Joe had missed so much, so many things he should have done for and with his son.

He’d never gotten to change a diaper, never cradled him when he fussed. He hadn’t seen Aaron take his first step, never kissed a boo-boo. He’d never sat up with him all night when he was sick or afraid. He’d never sung him a lullaby.

Of course, with his lack of singing ability, Aaron probably wouldn’t miss that part, but Joe did. He resented the hell out of it.

The list of nevers kept growing as he sat on a bench at the end of the dock, mindlessly watching the sun sink behind the peninsula.

He hadn’t taken Aaron to his first day of school, hadn’t helped him with his homework. He’d never gotten to teach his son how to stand up to bullies, or how to stick up for the underdogs.

There were just too many “nevers.” The endlessness of them weighed so heavily on Joe he was afraid he couldn’t move under it.

Joe couldn’t change the “nevers.” His heart ached at the thought, but he was sensible enough to acknowledge one fact.

Joseph Anthony Delacamp had a son, and he didn’t plan to miss any more of his life.

That was a promise, to himself and to his son.

“Mamma, you’re sad today,” Aaron said that night.

Louisa had tried to keep up the appearance of normalcy for Aaron’s sake. Oh, rather than cooking dinner, she’d treated him to fast food, but that was a treat. She’d even managed to focus enough to scold him after he showered and missed a dirt smudge on his right arm.

“Soap. It’s not a real shower if you don’t soap all over,” she’d told him.

His grumbling had felt good. It had felt normal.

But nothing else did.

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

The thought kept intruding, inserting itself between showers and scoldings, making her stomach clench and her head ache.

“Mom?” Aaron repeated.

She’d finished reading a chapter of the newest Harry Potter book to Aaron. It was their evening tradition. She enjoyed sitting next to him, feeling his warmth and sharing the quiet time with her son.

Her son.

Not Joe’s. Joe had made it clear he didn’t want children all those years ago, and today, when he’d turned and seen Aaron…

“Mom? What’s up?”

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Louisa pulled herself together and kissed Aaron’s forehead. “Nothing. I’m just tired. See you in the morning, bud.”

She walked woodenly toward the door.

“Hey, Mom?”

She turned back and drank in the sight of her son.

When he’d asked, she’d told him she’d loved his father, that they’d been young—too young to handle a relationship.

That much was true, at least as far as it went. She’d told him when he was older she would help him find and meet his father, if he wanted. He accepted her explanation and never seemed particularly bothered by the lack.

What would he think of Joe?

What would Joe would think of him?

Aaron was snuggled under the denim quilt she’d made him. It fit so perfectly with the dark-blue walls of his room. A giant poster of the planet earth was behind his head, other space pictures dotted the other walls. Aaron dreamed of being an astronaut someday, and she’d done her best to indulge him.

She wanted nothing more than for every one of her son’s dreams to come true.

“Yes, Aaron?” she asked.

“I love you.”

She held back the tears that threatened to overflow and managed to croak out, “I love you, too.”

She turned off the light, and shut the door.

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

She was still numb.

No, she was aching. There was a lump in her throat, and she thought her heart was going to break all over again.

Joseph Delacamp had come into her store today, and he’d found out he had a child. He wasn’t pleased. She could see that on his face.

Maybe he was worried that she would come after him for support, or would try to make him take some interest in his son. His wife wouldn’t like that. His mother would like it even less.

Well, Louisa could put Joe’s mind to rest. She wanted nothing at all from him. He could keep his society wife and his society life.

Once upon a time she’d thought she couldn’t live without Joe…but she’d learned differently. She wondered that she was able to keep breathing after she’d left town…left him. And yet, day after day, breath after breath, she survived.

Not that it hadn’t been tough at times.

She’d moved to Erie when she was almost three months pregnant and had worked full-time throughout the remainder of her pregnancy for Elmer Shiner at his small chocolate store. Somehow she’d managed to survive her mother’s death, just weeks before Aaron’s birth.

Elmer had helped her through that. And he’d been the one to suggest she bring the baby to work with her, when Aaron was born.

Elmer had started out a boss and turned into her best friend. She smiled at the thought. Oh, maybe it was odd, having a seventy-year-old man as a friend, but Elmer was full of life and wisdom. He was the only father figure Aaron had ever known.

She owed him a debt she’d never be able to repay.

Everything she had, she had because of Elmer.

Aaron had never gone to day care, but had spent his first five years going to the candy store with her. He was a favorite with the customers.

When Elmer’s lease on the building ran out, he announced he was ready to retire, and sold her the chocolate-making machinery at a ridiculously low price.

He’d helped her locate her new building. Helped her set up everything and get the store off the ground. He still stopped in almost every day, just to check on her and was always willing to work when she needed him.

She heard the downstairs door slam.

She rented the upstairs flat. Elmer lived in the lower one. He was home.

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

She ran down the back stairs that connected the two apartments and knocked on the door.

“Come on in, Louie,” he called.

“Elmer…” She wanted to tell him everything that had happened and tried to force the words out, but her throat constricted, and all she managed to do was cry.

“There, there, puddin’. Don’t cry.” He wrapped her in his arms and patted her back.

“I don’t cry,” she said midsob.

“What happened?” the gray-haired man said in a gruff voice. “Did something happen to Aaron?”

“No,” she finally managed to say. “Not really, at least not that he knows about. His father came into the store today.”

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Elmer let her go and stared at her. “What’s he doing in Erie? I thought you left him behind in Georgia?”

“So did I. But he’s here. He’s working at the hospital, so he’s living in Erie.” She gulped convulsively. “Oh, Elmer, it’s so horrible. Aaron walked into the room and Joe knew—he couldn’t help but know. Aaron’s the spitting image of him at seven. Joe knew and he looked furious. He’s probably worried a secret son will upset the life his parents planned for him, that it will upset his perfect society wife. I don’t know what he’s going to do, and I’m sick with worry.”

“Now, what’s to worry about? He went and got himself engaged to someone else all those years ago, despite the fact he’d asked you to marry him. So you sign some paper saying you don’t want anything at all from him, make it all legal,” Elmer said, echoing her own thoughts. “You and Aaron have got along without him this long. You certainly can manage. Just go see a lawyer and make it all legal-like, then he’ll have nothing to complain about.”

“You think?” she asked.

She needed reassurance. She’d built a wonderful, happy life for herself and her son. She didn’t want Joe Delacamp to complicate it.

“Sure I think.” Elmer patted her back. “Now, stop fretting and go get some rest. You call a lawyer. That Donovan guy across the street seems okay. At least Sarah seems to think so.” He laughed.

Weddings seemed to be becoming commonplace within the Perry Square business community.

Libby at the hair salon had married her neighbor, Josh, the eye doctor. Then Sarah, the interior decorator who’d opened her store about the same time Louisa opened The Chocolate Bar, married Donovan, from the neighboring law firm.

“You’re right. I’ll call Donovan tomorrow.”

“Then call me. I’ll watch the shop when you go and see him.”

“Thanks, Elmer. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well, don’t look to be figuring it out anytime soon. I plan to stick around a good long time.” He paused a moment and then said, “Did I tell you I have a date?”

“No,” Louisa said, knowing he was trying to change the subject, to brighten her mood. She was more than happy to allow him to. “Who?”

“You know Mabel, that acupuncturist? I was a bit nervous about dating a lady who pushed pins for a living, but she’s mighty cute.”

Louisa couldn’t help the small smile. Mabel had been hanging out at the candy store a lot, but only on days when Elmer was there. She sensed a romance in the making. “When are you going out?”

“Next week. She asked me for this weekend, but I told her me and Aaron had plans.”

“Oh, Elmer, you should have simply canceled.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “There’s a bunch of blue gill in the lake that have my name on them. And I got tickets to some fancy-shmancy show Mabel wants to see, so it all worked out.”

“If you’re sure.”

Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Why couldn’t she shake that thought?

Because Joe was in Erie.

Somewhere, right outside that window, Joe Delacamp was walking around, breathing the same air she was.

Elmer must have sensed her thoughts. He said, “I’m positive about fishing with Aaron. Now, don’t you fret about that man—though I use the term in its very lightest sense. He got engaged to someone else, which means that not only isn’t he much of a man, he’s not very bright, either. Just call up Donovan tomorrow, and take it from there.”

Louisa felt a bit better as she climbed the stairs back up to her apartment. Of course Elmer was right. Joe hadn’t wanted children eight years ago; he wouldn’t want his son now.

The thought wasn’t quite as comforting as it should have been. She climbed into her pajamas and went to her room. She pulled a dark-green journal from her drawer and started writing.

“Dear Joe, today you met your son—the son you never wanted….”

As she wrote, she glanced up at the eight similar books that sat on the top shelf, above the television. She’d started a journal right after she found out she was pregnant and had bought a new one when Aaron was born. After that she bought a new journal on each of her son’s birthdays.

If Aaron ever wanted to meet his father, she planned on giving them to Joe as an introduction of sorts. An introduction to a son he’d never known and hadn’t wanted.

My heart froze in my chest when Aaron walked in. I saw the look of understanding dawn on your face, and then the raw, bitter anger. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, but it would have been a lie. No matter what your mother said, I didn’t plan to get pregnant, I wasn’t trying to trap you. You were engaged to someone else and asked me for time. I’d have given you anything…but I didn’t have time to give. Your mother was right—Aaron and I would have held you back from the life you were born to have. My only sorrow was that you’ll never know what you missed.

She wrote and finally she rested. Her last thought was Joe Delacamp had met his son today.

Chapter Two

Joe waited outside the candy store, still uncertain what to do, what to say to Louisa.

He worked third shift last night, and was kept busy for the entire eight hours. But at the oddest time a mental picture of the boy, his son, would explode in his mind.

Aaron.

He’d whispered the name to himself, marveling in the wonder of having a son, and strangling on the knowledge that he’d missed so much.

He spotted Louisa walking down the block.

She still was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. The kind of woman who didn’t realize how striking she was.

If all that lay between them didn’t exist, she was the kind of woman he’d ask out.

Her expression when she spotted him gave none of her thoughts or feelings away. So many things about Louisa were different than he remembered, but that was probably the biggest change in her.

When they were kids he’d been able to read her like a book. Well, now the book was closed, at least for him.

He refused to speculate about whether there was another man reading her these days.

Joe met that emotionless face and wondered if maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he just thought he’d known her when they were kids.

The Louisa he’d believed in could never have done what she’d done.

“Louisa, we have to talk,” he said.

“Come in,” was her wooden response.

She unlocked and opened the front door and set a stack of papers down on the counter to her left.

“What do you want, Joe?”

What he wanted was to have the first seven years of his son’s life back, but since he couldn’t have that, he settled for asking, “Why?”

Maybe if he could understand, he could forgive Louisa.

She turned and he could see pain in her expression.

“Joe, I never meant for you to know,” she said softly. “And now that you do, it doesn’t change anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to make an appointment with a lawyer. I’ll have it all drawn up, nice and legal. Aaron and I expect nothing from you.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it? How could you keep the fact that I had a son from me?”

“Joe, I was going to tell you, but then that announcement came. You’d just gotten engaged to Meghan.”

“I explained that.”

“You asked me for time…. I didn’t have time to give you.”

“You should have told me then.”

“And what? You’d have gone against your parents, risked the business merger, broken the engagement with Meghan?”

“It wasn’t real. Our parents felt the stockholders would be more comfortable merging the companies if they thought the families were merging through a marriage between us. But it wasn’t real. I told you that. You should have believed me.”

“I did. I believed you when you said repeatedly you didn’t want children. You had a life all planned out. I couldn’t take your dreams away from you.”

“You were my dream. You know that.”

“Joe, look at you, a doctor working in an E.R. You’ve done everything you wanted. You accomplished your dreams. I couldn’t take them away from you.”

“So you made the decision for me? You left, taking my son with you…a son I didn’t even know existed.”

Louisa might have learned to hide her emotions, but Joe couldn’t. He could hear the pain in his own voice, but it did little to reflect the depth of what he was feeling.

“Joe, my whys and the past aren’t worth talking about. We can’t change it. It’s over. I know you’re worried about what your wife will think, what your family will think. They never have to know. I’ll have the papers drawn up and send them to you stating we have no claim on you financially. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to work.”

She turned as if she was going to leave, but he grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around.

She’d shut him out by not telling him about his son, but she would never shut him out like that again.

“I do mind,” he said. “We have to come to some sort of agreement here and now. The kind of agreement that doesn’t require a lawyer.”

He dropped his hand from her shoulder.

This time Louisa didn’t move.

“There’s nothing to agree on. Aaron’s my son.” Her voice was flat and her statement final. As if she expected him to shrug his shoulders and simply walk away from the knowledge that he had a son.

Maybe Louisa hadn’t known him any better than he’d known her.

“He’s my son, too,” he said softly.

“Only in the most biological sense. You’re nothing to him.”

It was a direct hit. Her remark cut at him, but rather than let her see how much, he simply said, “That’s about to change.”

Right now there wasn’t much Joe was sure of—his whole world had been tilted off its axis—but he was sure that there was no way he was losing another minute with his son.

He saw that statement register and heard a faint quaver in Louisa’s voice as she asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I want to get to know my son.”

“I won’t have you coming in here, disrupting his life and then disappearing.”

“There won’t be any disappearing. I plan to stick around. I missed the first seven years of his life, I won’t miss another minute. You’re going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that I’m going to be a part of his life. You’re going to have to share him.”

“What do you propose? Joint custody? What will your wife say to that?”

“I never married her, Louisa,” he said softly.

He’d explained that it was just business, that he and Meghan were just friends and she’d said she understood, but obviously she hadn’t. Just like he still wasn’t sure he understood why she’d left.

She wasn’t telling him everything. Eventually he’d get the answers he wanted, but right now he was concentrating on getting his son.

“I told you then my parents set it up,” he continued. “I had to wait until after the merger to get out of it, but I did get out of it. I didn’t marry Meghan. I couldn’t, you see. I was in love with someone else, and back then I hadn’t given up hope she’d come back to me.”

She stopped a moment, staring at him, some emotion on her face that he couldn’t quite identify.

“But she never did,” he finished.

Finally she said, “What do you want me to do? Just introduce you to him, and say, ‘Aaron, by the way, this is your father and he wants to spend time with you, so you’ll be bouncing from the only home you’ve ever known over to his place and then back again.”’

“I don’t want to upset him, I want what’s best for him, and I think I’m best. I am going to be part of his life. I spent the night thinking of options. I’m suggesting something better than joint custody.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Marry me.”

Marry me.

When Louisa had discovered she was pregnant she’d dreamed he would say those words.

Marry me.

It’s what they’d always talked about. She’d always dreamed that she would one day marry Joe Delacamp, no matter that she was just a Clancy. Just the dirt-poor, town drunk’s daughter.

Then he’d gotten engaged to Meghan Whitford. A girl from his social circle. A girl he’d always claimed was just a friend.

He’d said his parents had set it up.

She’d told him to just break it off, but he’d claimed he couldn’t. There was a business deal in the works and publicly breaking off with Meghan could ruin the deal.

Louisa didn’t understand people who would use something as sacred as marriage—or even just an engagement—to forge a business merger.

Joe had asked her to give him time.

Time was something Louisa hadn’t had. She’d been two months pregnant with a child—the child of a man who’d always claimed he’d never be a father.

Still, despite his pseudo-engagement, she’d planned to tell him. To let him decide what he wanted to do.

And then his mother had come to her, and that one visit had changed everything….

Louisa pulled herself back from the past.

It was history.

Ancient history.

She couldn’t alter what she’d done. At the time she’d thought she’d done what was best for everyone.

Now?

Listening to him talk about the son he’d never known, she wasn’t sure.

“Marry me,” he repeated.

“Marry you?” She laughed then, shocked at the bitterness she heard in her own voice. “You’ve got to be insane to think I’d marry you.”

“You’ve got to be even more insane if you think I’m sharing custody of Aaron. I want it all. Every day. I want to be there when he gets home from school, when he goes to bed, when he gets up the next morning and has breakfast. I want to be there when he brings home his report cards. I want to hear how school went. I want to see him play—does he play sports?”

“Soccer and football,” she answered.

There was a yearning in his expression. “Then I want to go to every game. I missed seven years and I don’t want to miss another moment. The way I see it I have two options. I could sue for sole custody, or I can become a part of your family. Taking Aaron away from the only home and parent he’s ever known is cruel. That leaves becoming part of your family. I don’t think us living together—even if we’re not together in a physical sense—sets a good example. That leaves marriage.”

“And what if I have a significant other?” she asked.

“You’d have to break it off, of course.” He paused and asked, “Do you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“No, I guess it’s not.” Abruptly he asked, “How could you just leave me like that?”

His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I explained about the engagement. I thought you understood. And then you were just gone. I decided you were too young. After all, I was three years older than you. I figured you’d had second thoughts and were just too young, too confused to tell me, so you’d just left. But that’s not why. You left to have my son in secret. Why? Did you think I’d be like my parents, trying to control him and squeeze the life out of him, inch by inch?”

“You said you never wanted children.”

“Did you think I’d abandon you and our baby?”

She could tell him about his mother’s visit. She could tell him that it had been easier to just leave than risk having him agree with his parents, having him think she’d tried to trap him.

Of all the things his mother could have said, that was the one that cut to the quick.

Louisa had believed what the town said, that she was just “that Clancy girl,” a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

She’d believed that people would agree with Joe’s mother, that she’d tried to trap him.

She’d believed that his parents would cut him off without a dime, force him to quit school to support her and the baby, and steal his dream of being a doctor.

Maybe they could have found another way…could have dealt with all that. What others thought of her had long ago ceased to matter. But a part of her had felt that eventually Joe would believe all that as well. That he’d think she’d trapped him and stolen his dreams.

That, she couldn’t live with.

What had she done?

She’d been so hurt, felt so betrayed, been so afraid that she’d simply left. In her heart she’d never understood how Joe could love her.

How could she have doubted him?

Looking at the pain in his face right now, she knew that he’d never have abandoned their son.

“Louisa?” Joe said. “You look like you’re going to faint. Sit down before you fall down.”

He led her to a chair behind the counter and helped lower her into it.

His voice was gentle, a whisper of the Joe she used to know. “Here, tuck your head between your knees and breathe deep.”

She’d let her own fears and doubts rob the man she loved of knowing his son.

Slowly she sat up and fought back the tears that threatened to fall.

She should tell him. Should tell him everything that happened.

She wanted to.

She’d believed his mother and doubted Joe. She’d taken the check his mother had offered to secure her son’s future and left, thinking that breaking her own heart was easier than waiting for Joe to break it for her.

She hadn’t trusted him enough…or trusted in their love.

No other explanation was needed.

She’d trust him now.

It was too late for their love, but not too late for him to know his son.

Not that she could marry him.

He said he wanted his son—he wanted Aaron—not Louisa.

She’d thrown away their future when she left, but she would find a way to give Aaron a future with his father.

She’d make it work.

“The past is ancient history. Right now it’s the present we have to worry about. I have an idea,” she said. “I have to do some checking. Meet me after work tonight and we’ll talk.”

“I mean it, Louisa, I want every minute of his life.”

“I understand. And I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I’ll do whatever I can to see to it you and Aaron build a good relationship. We’ll talk. After work.”

Chapter Three

As new man on the job, Joe worked third shift. Ten-thirty at night until six-thirty in the morning.

He should have spent the day sleeping, but instead he spent it tossing and turning.

By five-thirty, as he waited outside Louisa’s store, he was a wreck.

So many questions he wanted to ask. So many details he wanted filled in.

She opened the door and looked surprised to see him there. “Joe, I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I said I’d be here.”

“Yes, yes you did.” She was quiet a minute, studying him. “Let’s go over to the diner. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I look like I need one?”

“It’s a polite way of saying you look like hell.” The comment was softened with a weak smile.

“You always were direct.”

“I still am.”

They walked across the square to The Five and Dine.

“Cute,” he said as he looked around.

It was decorated like something out of Happy Days, right down to a vintage jukebox.

“I like it,” she said as she led him to a small booth in the back.

A waitress followed right on their heels. “Hey, Louisa.”

“Hi, Missy. Could I have a coffee?”

“Sure. And you?” the girl asked Joe.

“Same.” As soon as she was out of earshot, he asked, “You said something about an idea.”

He needed this settled. He didn’t want to waste another minute waiting to be with his son.

Louisa nodded. “I had to ask first, but…” She sighed. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”

“Yeah, like why you left. Why you kept my son from me. None of your explanations have answered all the questions. As a matter of fact, they just raise more. Why—”

“Joe, it was so long ago, and I’ve changed so much since then, but I still remember what it was like.”

“What what was like?” he asked.

“Growing up as Clancy’s kid. I remember feeling as if I’d never be more than that and wondering what you saw in me. Whatever it was you saw, I didn’t see it in myself. When I found out I was pregnant, I’d never been so afraid. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the baby, or even what people would say—they’d been talking all my life. I was afraid of losing you.”

“Why? How could you think I wouldn’t stand by you?”

The waitress brought their coffee and said, “Holler if you need something else.”

“Joe,” Louisa said, as soon as the woman was out of earshot, “when we talked about the future, you said repeatedly how much you didn’t want kids.”

“I was young and I was afraid I’d be like my parents. I thought I couldn’t take the chance. But I’d never have abandoned you.”

How could she have said she loved him and not known even that much about him?

“But at the time, all I knew was that I didn’t measure up to you or your family and I was pregnant and you didn’t want kids. I was so scared. But I planned to tell you. It took me a couple weeks to work up to it, but I’d planned it all out. We were supposed to go out that night and I even memorized what I was going to say. But then I saw the paper.”

“The engagement announcement?”

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