Her Secret, His Son

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‘Why?’

‘How can you ask that, Mary?’

Her hand flew to her chest and her heart knocked. ‘I don’t understand. You can’t be suggesting…’

Tom waited for her to finish. Mary couldn’t breathe. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t be telling her that he’d been unhappy all these years. Not because of her.

‘You’re not blaming me, are you?’ she whispered.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘But, Tom, I didn’t think you minded that I didn’t go away with you. You just vanished without contacting me.’

His upper lip curled into a cold smile. ‘Because that was what you wanted.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t pretend you can’t remember. You sent your cousin.’

‘Yes, she went to tell you what happened. My father—’

‘She came with the message that you didn’t want to marry me.’

‘No, she can’t have.’

‘You changed your mind, Mary-Mary.’

‘No!’

‘No?’ Tom whispered.

‘No way. You must have known. My father caught me and wouldn’t let me out of the house. Of course I didn’t change my mind. How could you think that?’

They stared at each other—the woman in the doorway, clutching the door handle to keep herself from falling; the soldier on the bottom step with a face so still it might have been carved from dark granite.

Mary’s head swam and in the next heartbeat Tom was leaping up the steps, clasping her hands in his and drawing her back into the house.

‘We have to talk,’ he insisted, his voice choked, breathless.

‘Not now, Tom,’ Mary protested weakly. ‘There’s no point.’

The intensity in his eyes and the strength of his grip on her wrists frightened her. Talking to Tom about the past was dangerous.

Having him hold her like this was dangerous. She’d always been so susceptible to his touch.

No matter how hard she’d tried to forget, she remembered so much about Tom’s touch. Heavens, she could even remember the first night she’d felt it—when she’d danced with him and the music had slowed and he’d drawn her close. She’d rested her head on his shoulder and she’d felt the whisper-soft brush of his lips on her temple just near her hairline.

How crazy that she’d remembered the electric thrill of that tiny caress through all these years. She mustn’t think about it now.

‘We have to talk. You owe me this, Mary,’ he said quietly.

It was useless to pretend she didn’t understand. The moment she’d asked Tom if he was happy she’d begun a conversation that had to be completed. She’d asked the first in a series of questions that had to be asked. And answered.

But what could they achieve besides heartache? There was no way they could go back. They couldn’t undo the past eight years. And she was afraid of Tom, afraid of the power he’d always had over her.

Afraid he might somehow learn the truth about Ethan.

But, without another word, Tom led her back into the kitchen. They stepped around Ethan’s castle and the scattered knights and he pushed her gently into a chair. Their empty coffee mugs were still sitting on the table where they’d left them. From the family room came the sounds of canned laughter and Mary thought guiltily that she mustn’t let Ethan spend the whole morning watching television.

Tom sat opposite her with his elbows on the tabletop and his clenched fists pressed together. His dark eyes seemed to pierce her.

She took a deep breath. Best to get this over with. ‘What did Sonia tell you that night my parents stopped me from going to you?’

‘She said that you’d changed your mind, that at the last minute you’d hadn’t been able to dredge up the courage to elope with me.’

‘But that’s not true. You didn’t believe her, did you?’

Tom’s gaze held hers for the longest time. She could see the way his eyes were searching her face, trying to gauge how honestly she was answering.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t believe her. I told her that I would be in touch with you, that we needed to talk it through and come up with a better plan.’

Mary pressed a hand against the pulse beating wildly at the base of her throat. ‘Sonia didn’t tell me that, Tom. She told me you were angry with me for chickening out—that you called me a tease.’

‘The witch. I’d like to wring her scrawny neck.’

Mary sighed. ‘It might cost you a packet. She’s a lawyer these days and quite good at pressing charges.’

‘That figures.’

‘But, Sonia aside, what about your move to Perth? You never told me you’d applied for a transfer.’

‘I didn’t!’ Tom shouted, then looked a little shame-faced and lowered his voice. ‘Your father had me transferred. I had no choice.’

Mary stared at him as she came to grips with his news and the total injustice of what had happened. ‘Dad convinced me that you were only pretending you wanted to marry me. He said it was some kind of payback because he refused your promotion. He said you’d already applied for a transfer to Perth.’

‘Every word was a bloody lie. Your father had me transferred.’

‘Oh, Tom. If only we’d been able to talk.’

‘I tried to phone you.’

‘My mobile phone mysteriously disappeared around that time.’

‘Damn it, I tried everything, Mary. I hung around your house waiting to see you. I wrote letters. After I was transferred to Western Australia I even telephoned your house using a disguised voice, but I was told you wouldn’t take my call. And when I tried to call again a few weeks later I was told that your father had been posted overseas and you’d moved to the States.’

‘Dad managed to wangle a kind of exchange position at the Pentagon.’ Mary hugged her arms over her chest. ‘But you—you got on with your life, didn’t you, Tom?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ He sent her a grimacing smile. ‘I went out of my way to stop thinking about you. I disciplined my mind to cancel out thoughts of you. I just put you out of my mind.’

Was it easy, Tom? Mary’s eyes and throat stung. Did she have the right to ask that question? On the surface it must look as if she’d had no trouble turning her back on Tom and creating a new life.

‘I was so mad at my parents,’ she said, needing to change the subject.

‘But then you found Ed,’ Tom said quietly. It wasn’t an accusation, just a plain statement of fact.

‘Yes.’

She’d been a single mother in a foreign country—surrounded by military families. She’d been so lonely and Ed’s smile had been so warm. He’d been like a lighthouse—a friendly beacon for a shipwrecked sailor. And, as it turned out, he’d needed her and Ethan as much as they had needed him.

‘And what about you, Tom?’

‘I told you I haven’t been married.’ He scratched his head and smiled sheepishly. ‘I was engaged once, for twenty-four hours, but I was drunk when I proposed.’

Mary rolled her eyes. ‘How come you’ve always had a reputation as a bad boy, and yet I’ve never seen that side of you?’

He cocked his head to one side and sent her a crooked, quizzical smile. ‘Funny about that, isn’t it?’

Mary looked away. Was he suggesting that she had the power to transform him?

‘To be honest,’ Tom said, ‘I was a bit of a problem in your father’s unit. There were things about the regular Army that drove me nuts—guard duty, drill parades, admin book work. But when I got to Perth, and they discovered I had good grades, was good at languages, but had a bit of a wild record, the SAS snapped me up. That suited me better—action all the time, interesting people—important projects like Afghanistan—Iraq.’

The telephone rang, startling Mary, and she jumped to answer it.

‘Hi, honey,’ came her mother-in-law’s warm voice.

‘Oh, Susan, hi.’

‘I wasn’t sure if I’d catch you before tennis.’

Oh, heavens. Mary glanced at the clock and remembered that she still hadn’t rung to excuse herself from tennis this morning. ‘I have Ethan at home with a cold,’ she said.

She was aware of Tom standing, gathering up their coffee mugs. They made a slight rattling sound as he put them in the sink. Then came the sound of water running as he rinsed them.

‘Do you have company?’ Ed’s mother asked.

‘Actually, I have a visitor here who knows Ed,’ Mary said as calmly as she could. ‘He’s from Ed’s Special Squad.’

‘Fancy that.’ Susan McBride’s voice quavered. ‘Does he have any—any news?’

‘He brought Ed’s watch, Mom.’

‘Oh, Mary. Oh, dear Lord. Does that mean…?’

‘Tom doesn’t know where Ed is. Ed gave him the watch just before their last mission.’

‘Oh.’

During the stretch of silence that followed, Mary twisted the phone cord with nervous fingers.

‘Will this man be here for long?’ Susan asked. ‘You must bring him down our way. How about coming to lunch on Sunday? Or perhaps tomorrow would be better if he’s only here for a short stay. Frank and I would love to meet him.’

Mary hesitated. Clutching the phone receiver against her shoulder, she turned to Tom. ‘Ed’s mother has invited you to lunch on Sunday,’ she said as casually as she could manage, trying to hide her reluctance to have him more deeply involved in her life. ‘Or perhaps you’d prefer tomorrow.’

She prayed that he would refuse. How could she cope with the complication of Tom meeting Ed’s parents? Every minute with Tom stirred the deep hidden feelings she’d worked so hard to bury, and she didn’t know if she could hide her confusion with Ed’s parents watching her.

Tom must be as anxious as she was to leave the past dead and buried behind them.

‘Sure,’ he surprised her by answering readily. ‘Please tell Mrs McBride thank you. I’d like to meet Ed’s parents. Tomorrow would be great.’

CHAPTER FIVE

AS TOM strode down the hill away from Mary’s apartment the undulating green parkland of Arlington National Cemetery stretched beyond the trees to his right. In the distance ahead of him he caught a glimpse of the slow, dignified curve of the Potomac River.

The sun was warm on his back and it was a relief to be walking. The way he felt right now he needed to walk all the way from Arlington right on to downtown Washington DC. Hell, finding Mary had him so wired with pent-up energy and angst he could walk clear across Virginia to Chesapeake Bay without stopping.

What a whacko world they lived in.

How could fate be so crazy that it led him to Mary Cameron again after eight long years, only to reveal that she was married to one of his best mates? And, damn it, she was a mother as well. Mother of his mate’s son.

And the hell of it was, she was still able to cause him heartache. Mary had an extra aura of womanliness about her now, a Madonna-like softness and a mysterious, sensuous depth to her beauty that pierced him like a bayonet.

Ramming his hands into his trouser pockets, he flexed his shoulders and tried to release some of the building tension. Mary—his Mary. It shocked him to realise that he still thought of her as his. Damn fool that he was.