When she met his gaze, Andi’s expression softened. “For me, too. And for Brett, I imagine.”
“I hope the way I look doesn’t scare him off.” Gray closed his eye, unwilling to risk stirring the emotion he’d see in her eyes.
“Damn it, can’t you forget yourself for a minute? Anticipate meeting your son? This isn’t just about you.”
Gray looked so stricken, Andi wished she could take back her angry words.
Then Brett bounded into the kitchen, skidding to a halt.
Gray’s gaze locked on the boy. A smile lit his face, turned his expression of despair to one of pure happiness that instantly choked Andi’s heart in her throat.
Brett hung back for a moment, his wide-eyed gaze focused on the black patch covering Gray’s damaged eye. Gray’s smile wavered, as though he sensed the boy’s hesitation.
Then Brett grinned. “Are you my dad?”
Gray let out the breath he’d apparently been holding, stuck out his hand, and smiled. A huge smile this time, one that deepened the creases around his mouth. “Yeah. Come on over here and let me get a good look at you.”
Such mundane words, but they conveyed so much emotion. Andi wiped the tears from her eyes.
She watched Brett climb onto Gray’s lap as though he’d been doing it for years. A sob of joy came from somewhere deep inside her when she watched Gray put his arms around their son. The scene she’d dreamed of yet never dared think she might ever see.
Brett started to snuggle up against Gray’s cheek, then pulled back. “Mommy said you got hurt.”
“Yes, I got hurt, but I’m pretty much okay now. I won’t break.”
Brett hesitated, then reached up with one hand and touched his dad’s scarred cheek. Andi sensed the questions Brett apparently didn’t know how to ask. Questions she’d be hard pressed to answer.
How on earth would Gray manage to explain how he’d been locked up but wasn’t a criminal? How could he tell his son he’d been held hostage by demented South American drug lords? Andi couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d survived the unimaginable physical and mental torture they’d inflicted, much less how he’d describe his experiences to a seven-year-old.
“Are you going to stay here now?” Brett asked.
A simple question, one Andi would never have guessed would come before the rest.
Gray’s arms tightened around Brett’s skinny shoulders. “Yes. It’s way past time for us to get to know each other.” When Brett shifted on his lap, Andi saw Gray wince, but otherwise he gave no indication holding his son gave him anything but pleasure.
It struck her how Brett and Gray shared strong chins and deep-set eyes more smoky than blue, as well as the shocks of wavy blond hair with cowlicks in almost the same places on the crowns of their heads.
The resilience of kids!
Andi wished she could take Gray’s return from the dead with the degree of equanimity Brett managed without any apparent effort.
“How’d you get hurt?” Brett asked, his gaze on the crutches Gray had set in the corner beside his chair.
Gray shifted Brett onto his other knee. “I fell while some soldiers were helping me get out from where the bad guys had been holding me.”
Brett’s eyes widened. “You broke your legs?”
“One leg. Mostly, it was my back that got hurt.”
“Then why do you need those?”
With patience that surprised Andi, Gray explained where he’d been and how he’d gotten the injuries even a child couldn’t fail to notice. She was sure he downplayed the gory truth, because the way he explained it to Brett, he sounded almost as if his ordeal had been a great adventure.
“Are you gonna get any better?” Brett asked.
“Some. Maybe. I won’t ever get around as well as you, though.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not. I could be much worse off than I am.” When he looked at Brett, his joy seemed genuine.
“Why have you got that patch over your eye?”
“My eye got hurt, so they had to take it out. I decided to wear the patch instead of a fake eye because the patch covers up some pretty bad scars.”
Andi wasn’t certain she liked for Gray to flaunt his scars like medals of valor, but Brett seemed to think the scar and patch were cool.
Brett grinned. “Sure. Mom, I’m getting hungry again.”
She looked at her watch. They’d spent the entire afternoon together. Time had gotten away from her. “It is getting close to dinnertime.”
“I’d better go, then.”
“You’re not going to stay here with us?” Brett asked.
“Not now, buddy. I’ve got to get home and get ready for my new job on Monday.” Gray paused, as though he hated disappointing his son. “We’re going to see lots of each other, though. How about coming to see me next weekend? My place is on the beach.”
“Cool. Mom, can we?”
Andi looked from father to son, then nodded. “If you’re good all week long.”
“I will be.”
“Then it’s settled. We’ll spend next weekend together.” Gray reached down and straightened first one leg, then the other. After locking his braces, he placed his crutches carefully and heaved himself out of the chair. Brett watched, wide eyed, as Gray made his way very slowly through the house.
Andi rushed ahead to hold the front door open. “Gray, you’re welcome to stay,” she said when he paused on the porch.
“I can’t, but thanks anyway. He’s a great kid, Andi. Could I talk you into bringing him to stay at the beach for a few days?”
“Your place?”
“Yeah. Walk me to the car?”
She figured she’d better. He looked as if he might keel over. “Brett, go in the house and get ready for dinner.” She didn’t imagine Gray was anxious for the boy to watch him make his way down the sidewalk.
“‘Bye, Dad. Come back soon.”
“I will.” After he watched Brett go back inside, Gray made his way to his car.
“I’d rather have you come here. You could stay in the guest room.” Or with her. All that had happened in the past eight years hadn’t altered the chemistry that had sizzled between them from the start.
Gray took her hand and rubbed his thumb along the creases of her palm. “Think, Andi. There are some things I can’t do, others I can manage only if I’ve got access to facilities that have been modified to fit my needs. For example, if I’m going to drive, I’ve got to have a car like this, with automatic everything and hand controls. My depth perception’s nil, so I haven’t tried driving after dark.”
Andi’s cheeks heated. She should have thought before opening her big mouth. She also ought to have realized last night why he hadn’t jumped at the opportunity of coming here right then. “I’ll be glad to drop Brett off—”
“Whoa, there. You’ll have to stay, too. Well, you really don’t. I can hire someone to make sure Brett doesn’t drown when we’re on the beach. But you’re welcome. I’d like to spend time with you, too. I imagine it will be easier for him, at least the first few times he stays with me, if you come with him.”
It was pure instinct that made her bend and brush her lips across Gray’s cheek, over the scar that disappeared beneath the patch. “I’d like to spend time with both of you, too. We’ll come over after I get off work on Friday.”
“Good. When can I call and talk with Brett?”
“Anytime.” She laughed. “Well, anytime before his bedtime, which is usually around
.”
He squeezed her hand then released it. “Until Friday, then. Thanks, Andi. For everything.”
Andi wasn’t about to let him go like that. Not when every cell in her body ached for more than that tame sisterly kiss. Bending, she took his mouth, ran her tongue along the seam of his lips until he took over control, thrust his tongue deep in her throat. It was his kiss now, his hands holding her face to his. A hello kiss, much like the goodbye tongue-fucking he’d left her with so long ago.
Confused, she pulled away. It was now, not then, and she’d just made a prize fool of herself. “Well, Gray, that was just as good as I remembered,” she said, making an effort at levity. “We’ll see you on Friday.”
When she stepped back, he started the car. For a long time she followed his car with her gaze, remembering…and wanting. Wanting a man the way she hadn’t wanted one for eight long years.
“Mom, I like Daddy. Why wouldn’t he stay with us?” Brett asked when Andi finally went back inside.
She reached down and tousled her son’s blond curls. “I imagine he had things he had to do. He’s invited us to spend next weekend with him at the beach, so you’ll get to spend some more time with him.”
Late that night, after Brett had gone to sleep, it came to Andi that she, too, had wanted Gray to stay. She wanted more than was smart, more than she sensed Gray was ready to give—and she wanted to give him far more than she dreamed he might accept from her.
* * * * *
He’d wanted to stay. If he had, though, he’d have had to reveal more than he imagined any woman would want to know about the logistical challenges he faced. Somehow his therapists’ claims that he was one of the lucky ones held no water, not when he still couldn’t make do in bathrooms that didn’t come with grab rails and raised toilet bowls.
As if he could hide the truth. Well, at least he could keep from slapping Andi and their kid in the face with the gory facts. For a while, anyhow. Maybe he’d prove the doctors wrong, gain more mobility than they thought he could, manage to make some kind of a life he’d be willing to ask them to share.
Gray laughed out loud. There was nothing like meeting the playmate he’d never forgotten and the son he never dared imagine he might have, to make him start dreaming impossible dreams.
That night he tossed in restless sleep, his body tangled in smooth cotton sheets, his breathing ragged. His cock rock-hard and ready, his body broken out in a cold sweat, he reached for a lover who wasn’t there.
Something didn’t fit. Smooth clean sheets in this hellhole of a prison?
Strange. He couldn’t hear water dripping down the walls, or the usual pathetic moans from prisoners in the cells next to his own. Had their captors silenced them? Gray strained to hear the sound of booted feet against hard-packed clay, smell the pungent odors of cheap rum and high-grade Colombian ganja.
Expecting more poking, prodding, perhaps another beating at the hands of the animals who were his jailers, Gray held very still. Maybe they wouldn’t bother with him if they thought he’d passed out.
Suddenly he awakened. Soft light streamed through half-closed vertical blinds, not bars. A glance around the spacious room revealed no hard-packed earth, no sweating walls to drip foul-smelling water over his aching flesh.
Gray was home, and it was morning. Time to get up, begin a new life that suddenly had new meaning. He had a son. Brett.
And Andi. Had she meant it when she kissed him yesterday, or had that kiss been, as she’d said, merely to see if he tasted as good as she remembered? He dared not assume she meant more, or that she wanted more of whatever he might be able to give her sexually.
Still he wondered. He imagined Andi’s lithe silky body under his hands, getting wet and hot while he stroked her incredibly soft, sensitive skin. When he thought of Andi on her knees over his face, begging him to lick her pussy—or straddling him, welcoming his cock into her hot, wet cunt—his balls felt as though they’d burst.
For a minute he fantasized that he still could satisfy her…that with his voice and his hands he could arouse her as much as he’d once done by sweeping her off her feet, fucking her standing up while they showered together. Shit, he couldn’t even top her anymore unless she wanted to risk being squashed under his still substantial weight.
He transferred himself to his chair and headed for the bathroom. The persistent throbbing in his groin didn’t go away until he hit it with a frigid blast from the showerhead. Not that Gray didn’t welcome the arousal. He did. It was a welcome reminder that he’d been spared a permanent spinal injury. That unlike some of the paraplegics he’d met at the rehab center, he could still have sex.
Of course there were plenty of ifs to that. If he could get past the mental hurdle of letting a partner see all his scars. If he could find a woman who could look past them and see him. If he could swallow his pride and ask her to take the leading role in bed.
When he looked at himself he had trouble believing a woman could want him now. Particularly Andi, whose voracious sexual appetite had taxed him to satisfy when he’d been whole.
Maybe if he had the surgery…
No. The risk was too great. The operation to drain and shunt the cyst that had formed at the site of the injury that caused his spinal stenosis could improve his mobility as well as alleviating the pain. Unfortunately it might as easily sever his spinal cord.
At least the constant pain let him know he was still alive. And he had control over his bodily functions. All of them. He wouldn’t if the cord were severed at the point of the injury. He’d leave well enough alone.
Gray shoved dreams of sex to the back of his mind. Instead he thought of Brett and all the things he wanted them to do together. They’d start making up for lost time right away.
Damn. He could barely stand looking at his fractured face without the concealing patch. Pity he couldn’t very well bathe and shave with the thing in place. As he raked the electric razor over his cheeks and chin, he considered whether he could manage a trip to Disney World. Or maybe deep sea fishing in the Keys. He and Andi could take Brett…
What the hell was he doing, picturing outings not just with his son, but with Andi too? He had to be losing his mind, imagining the three of them doing things as a family.
No matter how he tried over the next few days, Gray couldn’t banish that impossible scenario from his mind. By Friday morning, he found himself longing for
, when Andi had said she and Brett would arrive to spend the weekend.
* * * * *
“How much longer will it be before we get there?”
Andi glanced at the snarl of cars on Courtney Campbell Causeway, then grinned at Brett. “About twenty minutes, if we ever get out of this traffic jam.”
She’d take her bungalow in old Hyde Park any day rather than fight the rush hour nightmare to get to the Gulf beaches. “Do you hear sirens?”