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“I see,” Rachel murmured. She had called Chloe to let her know she’d be even later than she’d first thought tonight. And then she had called the restaurant for Mac.
“I liked her. She seems really nice.”
“She is,” Rachel informed him. Chloe Chancellor was nice. And she was so much more than a roommate. She was also Rachel’s friend. It had been Chloe who had comforted her during those first lonely weeks after Mac had left. It had been Chloe who had bullied her into taking care of herself when she’d first discovered she was pregnant. It had been Chloe who had insisted she hated living in the big, old house alone and had convinced her to get out of her tiny apartment and move in with her so that P.J. would have a real home.
And it had been Chloe who had insisted she was wasting her time by dating Alex. According to Chloe, who had known Alex Jenkins since they were kids, the good doctor had grown up to be a major stuffed shirt who wanted what he perceived to be a perfect wife. A position that, according to Chloe again, Rachel appeared to fit perfectly. But ever the romantic, Chloe believed marriages should be entered into for one reason only—love. And, of course, Chloe had been enthralled by the tale of her affair with Mac and had long since made up her mind that Mac was the only man Rachel would ever love. She certainly prayed her friend was wrong, Rachel thought.
“She’s a very gifted artist.”
Rachel jerked her attention back to Mac. “Chloe invited you inside?”
“She practically insisted when I told her who I was. Anyway, I happened to notice the artwork. She seemed a little surprised that I thought they were good. Then she admitted they were hers and I got her to point out a few of the others she’d done. Like I said, she’s very talented.”
“I know she is.” It was Chloe, who for all her bravado, doubted her own talent.
“She’s agreed to sell me one of the small oils for my mother.”
“Sounds like you two hit it off,” Rachel said with dismay.
Mac grinned at that. “My guess is the uniform had something to do with it. That, and the fact that she apparently knew who I was. I take it you told her about us.”
“I may have mentioned your name to her in passing,” Rachel replied, knowing as she said the words what a whopper she was telling. Chloe had listened to her sob her heart out far more times that she cared to remember after Mac had left. And she had been the one in the delivery room with her when she’d borne Mac’s son. Thoughts of their son had her nerves—already wound tight as a spring—growing even more strained. Rachel held her breath and waited for Mac to mention P.J.
The smile disappeared from his lips. “Then I guess I’m lucky she didn’t slam the door in my face.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Come on, Rach. I can’t imagine you would have many nice things to say about me, considering how badly I handled things before I left.”
Rachel met his somber gaze. “Then you’d be wrong, Mac.” No matter how things had ended between them or how deeply he had hurt her, she would always be grateful to him for giving her P.J.
“Rach,” Mac said her name like a prayer as he moved in, cupped her shoulders. “If only you knew how many times I—”
The lights flickered on inside and after a quick snick of locks, the door opened to reveal a sleepy-eyed Chloe clutching her big fluffy robe around her. “Are you guys deliberately trying to catch pneumonia? It’s freezing out there.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to wake you,” Mac told her.
“You didn’t. The little monster did.”
Rachel stiffened at her friend’s words, and the frown on Mac’s face set her nerves to racing again. “I’d better go,” she told him, hoping to hurry him along. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
Ignoring her dismissal, Mac kept his focus on Chloe. “Little monster?” he repeated, a determined expression on his face.
“P.J.,” Chloe offered with a yawn.
“P.J.?”
As if on cue, P.J. let out a squeal guaranteed to wake the dead. And just as she knew he would, he came waddling over to the door on his little chubby legs, his arms outstretched. “Mama,” he said, one of the few words in his limited baby vocabulary that anyone could understand.
“You have a son?” Mac asked Chloe.
Seeing no hope for postponing the truth, Rachel reached for her son. Holding him in her arms, she turned back to face Mac. “He’s not Chloe’s son, Mac. He’s mine.”
Two
“Yours?” Mac repeated, feeling as though he’d been sucker punched.
Rachel hiked up her chin. “That’s right,” she told him. “Mine.”
Still reeling from the shock of discovering Rachel had a child, Mac looked from her to the dark-haired boy in her arms and back again. Rachel’s son and his, Mac realized as he stared into eyes identical to his own.
He had a son. A son!
A son he’d known nothing about.
Suddenly shock gave way to temper as the reality of the situation hit him. He kept his eyes trained on Rachel’s face. And even though he already suspected he knew the answer he asked her, anyway, “How old is he?”
When Rachel remained silent, he asked again. “How old is he, Rachel?”
“He’s eighteen months,” Chloe offered, and earned a scowl from Rachel.
He didn’t have to be a math wizard to figure out that Rachel had been about four weeks pregnant when he had left New Orleans. Had she known about the baby and chosen not to tell him? Or had she found out later and decided he didn’t deserve to know that he was going to be a father?
Either situation left a foul taste in his mouth and did nothing to ease his anger with Rachel or with himself. Doing his best to control the emotions slamming through him, Mac said, “Which means I’m his father.”
“Of course you’re his father,” Chloe told him as she moved beside Rachel and placed a protective hand on her shoulder. She looked him up and down, narrowed her eyes. “All you have to do is look at him to see that. Or do you need proof?”
Rachel groaned.
“No, ma’am. I don’t need proof. He’s my son,” Mac announced, daring Rachel to deny it.
She didn’t. She simply hugged the squirming tike to her.
“Down,” the little boy insisted.
“No, P.J. It’s time—”
“May I?” Mac asked. Taking a step forward, he held out his arms. When Rachel hesitated, he added, “You don’t have to worry that I’ll drop him. I have a couple of nieces and nephews. I’ll be careful.”
Rachel said nothing. She simply handed him the baby.
“Hey, big guy,” Mac managed to say past the lump in his throat. He stared at this miniature version of himself, recognizing the strong McKenna chin, the eyes so like his own. The nose was Rachel’s, though, he thought. So was the mouth. But there was no question that he was a McKenna. His son. His son, Mac repeated silently, rocked again by the realization that he and Rachel had created a child. When the boy reached for the hat Mac had forgotten was clutched in his fist, Mac laughed and gave it to him. “Hey, you’re a strong fellow, aren’t you?”
“He’s also stubborn,” Rachel offered. “No, no, P.J.,” she told him, and rescued the hat before the little guy could chomp down on it.
“What’s P.J. stand for?” he asked.
“Peter James.”
Surprised, Mac met Rachel’s gaze. “You gave him my name?”
“Actually I gave him our father’s names. I remembered you saying you were named after your father. And my dad’s name is James. I hadn’t planned to give him a nickname, but somehow, the initials seemed to fit him.”
Sort of the way the name Mac had always fitted him better than the names Peter or junior, Mac thought. “It happens that way sometimes,” Mac offered and noted the way P.J. was eyeing his medals. “It’s all right, P.J. You can touch them,” Mac encouraged, and earned a grin that warmed him down to his toes.
“That might not be such a good idea. I’m afraid that he’s at that stage where everything goes into his mouth,” Rachel began, but P.J. was already trying to sample one of the medals. “No, no, P.J. No eat,” Rachel corrected.
“Your mom’s right, buddy. Trust me. They look a lot better than they taste.” Reluctantly he started to hand him off to Rachel. P.J. had other ideas. Clinging to the medal, he began to wail in protest.
“Come on, sweetie,” Rachel cooed.
Those big, fat tears nearly did him in. “Hey, it’s okay,” Mac said, and gave serious consideration to ripping off his shirt and giving it to the little fellow. “Why don’t I just—”
Rachel leveled him with a look, and he fell silent as she pried the chubby little fingers free from his shirtfront. “There, there now. It’s all right, angel,” she murmured.
“Why don’t I take him inside and give him a snack?” Chloe offered. “I’m sure you guys have things to discuss.”
“Thanks, Chlo,” Rachel said, and relinquished the sniffling P.J. to the other woman.
“Come on, handsome. What do you say? Aunt Chloe is in the mood for cookies. Want to help me find some?”
“Tookie?” the tear-eyed tike repeated.
“That’s right,” Chloe told him, and disappeared inside the house.
Mac’s heart was still trying to recover from the impact of those tears rolling down P.J.’s cheeks when Rachel said, “He’ll be fine, Mac. He’s a baby, and babies cry.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just that he was crying so hard.”
“That’s because the tears work all too well. He has a very strong will and doesn’t like being told no. Unfortunately, I don’t use the word often enough. And neither does Chloe.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s easy to see why. He’s a cute kid.”
“I certainly think so.”
And he’s my son.
His son and Rachel’s. The reality of that fact hit him again.
The realization excited him.
It scared the hell out of him.
And it infuriated him to realize that he had missed the first year and a half of his son’s life. He shifted his gaze from the doorway, where P.J. had disappeared with Chloe, back to Rachel. She was tired. Even in the dim light on the veranda, he could see the shadows beneath her eyes. Strands of honey-colored hair had worked free of the braid she wore and now framed her face. A face that was far too pale. Yet seeing her exhausted like this only added to his frustration because he realized that not only had she had to support herself, but their son as well, without any help from him. “Why didn’t you tell me about him, Rachel? Didn’t you think I deserved to know?”
“Of course,” she answered. “And I wanted to tell you. I probably sat down to write you a hundred times, but I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have reached me through Delta Team Six.”
“I know. And I was going to…”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t know how to tell you,” she said, some of the strain and weariness coming through in her voice. A gust of wind whipped across the veranda, and she huddled deeper into the navy-blue jacket she wore.
Mac immediately stepped in front of her to block the wind. “You’re shivering. Maybe we should go inside where—”
“No,” she shot back. “I’m fine. Really. I’d rather…I’d rather we talked out here.”
Though a part of him could understand her not wanting him in her home after the way he’d ended things between them, the rejection stung all the same. Probably because there had been a time when Rachel had eagerly welcomed him into the tiny apartment that had been her home, he reasoned. Of course, they had been lovers at the time, and she had believed herself to be in love with him.
As eager as he was for answers, it was obvious she was exhausted. “Maybe you should get some rest, and I’ll come back in the morning.”
“No,” Rachel snapped. “I’d just as soon answer your questions now.”
Mac hesitated a moment. “Then you’d better sit down before you fall down.” He motioned to the old-fashioned porch swing where he’d sat earlier to wait for her. “You’re dead on your feet.”
“I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
Mac recognized how she avoided touching him. Still, it didn’t stop him from noticing the way her nurse’s uniform rode up when she sat down or her efforts to tug the hem down toward her knees. Mac couldn’t help remembering other evenings when she’d been pleased to see him waiting for her at the end of a long day. Or how quickly her fatigue melted beneath his kisses. They would barely make it inside the apartment before they’d be reaching for each other—hot, hungry, insatiable.
“I suppose you’re wondering how this could have happened,” Rachel began, looking everywhere but at him.
“If by ‘this’ you’re referring to your getting pregnant, I have a pretty good idea. I was there remember? And I haven’t forgotten anything about the time we spent together.” Which was true. He hadn’t been able to forget Rachel—despite his best efforts to do so.
“I was talking about the fact that we always used protection.”
“Darling, we both know there’s only one form of birth control that’s guaranteed. Abstinence—which is something we didn’t come anywhere close to exercising.” Quite the contrary, Mac thought. During the month they had been together they had made love countless times, never seeming to be able to get enough of each other. And there had been one particularly steamy afternoon in late August just before a rainstorm had flooded the city. The desire between them had escalated along with the high temperatures that day until every touch, every glance, every breath had fed the gnawing ache inside them both. “It was that afternoon of the big rainstorm, wasn’t it? The one that caused a power outage in the city.”
As though it were only yesterday, the images came rushing back to Mac….
“The snowballs were a great idea,” he had told Rachel as they’d strolled lazily down the sidewalk in the unrelenting heat. Waves of heat shimmered from the paved street, and Mac swallowed another mouthful of the chocolate-and-cream-flavored ice. Despite the fact that it was already past six in the evening and thunder rumbled in the distance, the sun continued to beat down upon them.
They turned the corner onto the street that led to her apartment, and Rachel gasped at the rush of hot air. “I can barely breathe,” she complained. “Why aren’t you withering, too?”
Mac chuckled. “SEAL training, darling,” he told her and pitched his empty paper cup into the trash bin while they waited for the traffic light to change so they could cross the street. “You don’t know the meaning of hot until you’ve spent a week baking out in the desert.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said dryly. Scooping a few fingers of the ice-only snowball she’d opted for from her cup, she began bathing her neck and collarbone with the swiftly melting ice shavings.
Mac’s mouth went dry at the sight of the water sliding down her throat, past the open neck of her prim uniform and disappearing between her breasts. It didn’t matter that they had made love less than two hours ago when she’d returned from work, his body responded immediately.
Rachel stilled. “Mac,” she admonished, her voice thready. She clutched the cup to her chest.
Removing the cup from her hand, he grazed the side of her breast with his fingers. Desire shot through him like a missile as he watched the answering flare of hunger in her gray eyes. He tossed the cup into the trash bin. “Come on,” he all but growled the command. Grabbing her hand, they raced down the long block toward her apartment. And while an observer might have attributed their mad dash to the fat drops of rain that began to pepper the city like bullets, he and Rachel both knew the urgency had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with their fierce need for each other.
They rushed up the stairs. Rachel’s hand trembled, and she dropped the key. Mac scooped it up. He slammed the key into the lock. And when the door opened, he ushered Rachel inside. The door had barely closed when Rachel reached for him.
“This is insane,” she told him.
