Revealed: His Secret Child. Sandra Hyatt
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honey.” She stroked their son’s curls back from his forehead. “Don’t worry, Max,” she said quietly. “You’ll get no argument from me. At least not in public. But just so you know, I’ll be doing it for Ethan’s sake, not yours.”
“I expected nothing more. You’ve made it clear that my feelings aren’t something you take into consideration.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Max, I …”
He waited, curious to see whether she’d go on the offense or defense. He was ready for either.
She took the cheese wrapper Ethan held out for her, took her time folding it up and tucking it into a small plastic bag from within her handbag. She looked back at him, her composure regained. “If your parents are going to think we’re happily married then I need to know something about them. Like, for starters, their names.” She opened the shoulder bag that he was beginning to view as something akin to a magician’s hat. “Because if our marriage is based on love then we’ll have talked about our families.” As she rummaged in its depths, her hair swung forward, glossy and inviting, curtaining her face, hiding the lips he’d so recently kissed. He wanted to brush it back.
Ethan, his thoughts in sync with Max’s, reached for her hair. Ethan’s execution, though, was somewhat different to what Max had been thinking. His little fist closed around a handful of hair and he pulled as he giggled.
“Ethan, no.” Gillian tried to turn her head but Ethan held firm and giggled louder. “Ethan. Let go of my hair.” He giggled some more, his fingers now well and truly tangled.
Max reached over and held his laughing son’s wrist steady while he unwound Gillian’s hair from around his fingers.
“He’s not usually a hair puller,” she said when she was able to straighten. “Thank you.”
“A pleasure.” And it had been, touching her hair again, every bit as soft and silky as he remembered. “Except for the raisiny bits.”
She smiled as she ran her fingers through the recently pulled hair, smoothing it back into place, and something tenuous and beguiling shimmered between them as she held his gaze. He remembered so much more about her than just her hair.
Returning her attention to her bag, she produced a small plastic car for Ethan and then a notebook and pen. She held her pen, poised above the paper. “Your parents’ names?”
“Stephen and Laura. My sister’s Kristan, and my brothers are Daniel, Jake and Carter.”
She looked up, her face paler than it had been seconds ago. “Are they all going to be there?”
Was that apprehension in those earnest green eyes? “Surely the formidable Gillian Mitchell isn’t worried about meeting a few people?”
“Of course not.” She lifted her chin. “It was a simple question. Are they all going to be there? It impacts how much I need to know now.”
“All except Kristan and her family, and Daniel.”
“And your other brothers, are they all like you?”
“In what way?”
“Career-focused, forthright, suspicious, emotionally shut down?”
“You could be describing yourself.”
She frowned and then the creases vanished. “Maybe that’s how I used to be. But I’ve changed, Max. I had to.”
He wasn’t going to ask if the intervening years had been hard for her. Not when she’d denied him the opportunity of helping, of even being there. But he’d noticed some of the changes in her. There was a softer edge to her, a nurturing side he’d been unaware of. Even physically she looked softer, curvier. And he would not think about exploring those changes. Just this morning he’d told her she’d killed any attraction he could have ever felt for her. And he needed that to be true.
He’d married her because he was determined to be a part of his son’s life and that his son would grow up with a father who was married to his mother. And despite his threat to win custody of Ethan, he wouldn’t have been able to do that to the boy. Or even to Gillian.
She shifted in her seat, crossed one leg over the other then tugged the silver skirt of her dress down from where it had ridden up her thighs.
But it was turning out that the attraction he’d once felt was far from dead. Contrary to his efforts and intentions, a heartbeat, faint but steady and insistent, was registering.
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