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