A Mother's Secret Read Free

And she wouldn’t have to agonize yet again over whether, in not telling him he had a son, she’d done something terrible.
     

    D ANIEL COULDN ’ T HELP HIMSELF . He kept replaying the whole scene, looking for clues he might have missed. What he didn’t understand was why he’d become obsessed. Rebecca had severed their relationship five years ago with no apparent regrets, and clearly she hadn’t felt any since. Let it go , he told himself, and had to keep repeating it every time he caught himself trying to remember exactly what she’d said.
    Maybe it was an ego thing. He didn’t like admitting she just plain wasn’t interested.
    Yeah, but he met women all the time who weren’t interested. He didn’t expect to be irresistible to every woman who caught his eye. So why was he so bugged by Rebecca Ballard’s reaction to him?
    Because he had missed her. Whether he liked it or not, she had wounded more than his pride.
    He was in his office, looking at his computer monitor where cost projections for the Cabrillo Heights subdivision were laid out on a spreadsheet. Daniel couldn’t make himself concentrate on them. His mind kept doubling back to that first sight of Rebecca, laughing.
    He sat back in his chair and quit bothering to pretend he was scrutinizing the damn spreadsheet.
    It was that first moment, he thought, when she recognized him midlaugh. A moment when something else had bloomed on her face. Pleasure. Awareness. Joy. His eyes narrowed as he remembered. He didn’t think he was wrong in believing she had been happy to see him, until…what? A blink of the eye later, she had looked aghast.
    From then on, she’d been civil, but the strain was easy to see. She ached for him to depart. All she wanted was to rejoin her friend and the little boy.
    Daniel frowned. The friend wasn’t anyone she had introduced him to, back when he and Rebecca were damn near living together for over a year. So “Aunt Nomi” was someone she’d met in the past five years. Well, Rebecca had always been good at making friends. Maybe this Nomi was another teacher.
    Adults and kids alike had been drawn to Rebecca. It wasn’t surprising the boy had seemed so comfortable with her.
    Daniel’s brows drew together again. More than comfortable, he thought.
    I’m getting real hungry. When are you coming back?
    Did children talk like that to friends of their parents? He sure as hell wouldn’t have, when he was that age.
    Forget the kid , he told himself, shaking his head. Figure out why Rebecca had been so shocked to see him. If she was truly indifferent to him, she wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable.
    Something else was going on. He wished he knew what that was.
     

    H E ’ D SPENT WORSE Christmas Eves, although Daniel wouldn’t have chosen the holiday for his own wedding.
    In the unlikely event he ever got married, that was.
    But for his nephew, Joe, and the pretty young teacher he’d evidently fallen for, it seemed to work. Joe had decided to propose in a big way, boldly doing so on stage after the Nativity play at the elementary school where Pip taught. Since he’d also flown in Pip’s family all the way from New Zealand, it made sense to get married right away, while her family was still here in San Francisco.
    They’d likely envisioned a small wedding, but had ended up with a nearly full church. Even though Pip hadn’t been in the U.S. that long, she’d made plenty of friends. Between her family and half the staff of the school, she came close to filling her side of the church. Joe had friends and coworkers, too, and family.
    Family that neither he nor Daniel had known about not so long ago. Daniel’s mother, Josephine Fraser, had died ten years ago, leaving only Daniel himself, his much older brother, Adam, Adam’s son, Joe, and Joe’s daughter from his first—failed—marriage, Kaitlin. With Adam having died this fall, this Christmas their family group should have been small: Joe, Daniel and cute, ten-year-old