Simon shook his head, and his gray eyes had turned shiny silver. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Oh, man, don’t let the kid start crying. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I knew the offices were up here and you said you had work to do. I came up the stairs and looked in all the open doors.”
“Yeah, okay, you can tell me what you want, Skipper, but you’ve got to let me call your mom first. She’ll be worried sick.” Adam already had his phone in his hand.
Heaving a sigh, Simon nodded glumly.
Joanna answered before the first ring finished. He could hear the tension in her voice. Obviously she’d already discovered the boy’s absence. Having seen how carefully she watched her son, he figured Joanna must be frantic.
“Simon’s with me,” he said. “He just showed up in my office. He’s fine.”
He heard her gasp. “Oh, thank God. What is he doing there?”
“I was just about to ask him.”
“I’ll come—”
“No,” he said, seeing with a grimace that the kid’s tears were falling in earnest now. “I’ll bring him to you. Just give me a couple minutes to find out what’s going on, okay? I’ll call you again when we’re on our way.”
He could tell she still wanted to rush to her son, but she conceded. “He got away so fast,” she lamented. “I took my eyes off him for only a few minutes...”
“I know. He’s a slippery one,” Adam answered. He didn’t blame her. She was going to have to be even more vigilant in the future, of course, if Simon didn’t learn his lesson this time. “I’ll call you, JoJo.”
After sliding the phone into his pocket, he turned his attention back to the sniffling child. He pulled a tissue from a box on his desk and held it out. “You might want to blow your nose.”
The boy did so noisily and thoroughly, then wadded up the tissue and extended it to Adam. Taking it with two fingers, Adam tossed it into the trash, relieved to see that Simon’s tears were drying.
“You, uh, want to sit down?” he asked, motioning toward the two cushioned straight-back chairs.
Simon gazed up at him. “Could you sit down, too?”
Smiling a little, Adam sank into one of the chairs. Whatever made him more approachable from the kid’s perspective. Simon climbed into the other, his little feet dangling over the edge as he made a visible effort to sit straight and tall.
“Can I offer you anything?” Adam wasn’t sure how to begin such a serious discussion with a five-year-old, so he fell back on social niceties. “There are some sodas and bottled water in the minifridge in the credenza.”
Shaking his head, Simon answered with equal formality, “No, thank you.”
“Okay, then what can I do for you, Skipper? Is there a problem I can help you with?”
He half expected a gripe about rules or bedtime or the swiftly approaching end to the vacation. Maybe some worries about the approaching move to Seattle. Some sort of guy question the son of a single mom might have for a man who’d befriended him. All reasonable potential topics the kid might want to talk about.
So, he was stunned when Simon said in a low, uncertain voice, “I just need to ask—are you my father?”
Adam all but reared back in shock.
Okay, so maybe he should have let Joanna come rushing over. What had made him think he could have a discussion with Simon on his own? And what the holy hell was he supposed to say now? How could he possibly explain how Simon had come into being, and why they were both only now finding out about their relationship?
Because the boy was still staring almost fiercely at his face, and bolting in panic didn’t seem like an option—this time, at least—he cleared his throat and stalled. “Um—what makes you ask that?”
Twisting his fingers in his lap, the only sign of childish nerves, Simon continued to look steadily at him. “Everyone says we look alike. Everybody. And I looked at the pictures Mom took of us and they’re right. And she said she knew you before I was born, and then Aunt Maddie came and she’s been acting funny.”
“Did, uh, did your aunt say something about me?”
The boy shook his head. “No. But I could tell something was going on.”
The drawback to having a kid this smart was that it wasn’t going to be easy to put things over on him in the future. In fact, it wasn’t going to be easy right now. “Maybe you should talk to your mom...”