A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

Was there relief mixed in with the incredulity in the man’s tone? Jamie couldn’t take the time to find out. Or allow the distraction.

“I want to marry her,” he said, as though the idea had been consciously in his mind when he’d walked in that door.

He hadn’t even thought about marriage. Maybe he should have. Emily would be shaking her head with that grin of hers and teasing him about his emotional denseness.

The thought of his wife didn’t bring shame. Strangely, the memory of that grin comforted him.

“I don’t know a thing about you, but if you managed to get past Christine’s independence, then you have my full support,” Dennis said. “I can’t tell you how...”

“Sir, if I may...” Jamie interrupted, his tone filled with the confidence of the man in charge of a class filled with exceptionally smart people. “I’ve come seeking your help. You mention Christine’s independence, but it’s more than that. Her independence masks pain that was too much for her to bear. I think it stems from losing her mother and son.”

He sounded like some kind of therapist. Funny, how smart love made you when you cared enough to see.

“But...she hasn’t mentioned me to you at all, I take it?” Dennis asked.

“No, she has not.”

Had she mentioned the pregnancy? Surely her father knew...

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Several months ago. Christine’s like that. We’d love to see her more, but we generally have to settle for once or twice a year.”

Good to know. He was betting the man didn’t even know his daughter was pregnant again. Which made him all that much more determined to be successful in his quest. At whatever cost to Dennis Elliott. Or himself, for that matter.

“I believe Christine loves me, but she won’t listen to her heart,” Jamie said. “All that’s ever done has brought her pain. Hurt her. And she won’t let herself need anyone. Or believe that anyone can be there for her.”

When the man nodded, eyeing him with fingers steepled at his lips, Jamie continued.

“I need to find her son, sir.” Jamie held up a hand when the man opened his mouth. “I understand that the adoption was closed. I also understand you handled all of the details. I’m not asking for the impossible here.” Okay, maybe he was. So be it. “I understand that you might not know who the parents are, and even if you do, you have no way of forcing whoever adopted her son to allow her to see him. I’m just asking you for any information you can give me, the name of the agency through which we could request someone contact the parents. We don’t need a picture. Or to know where he is. We don’t even need a name. If I could just let her know that he’s okay. That he’s loved and happy...”

He was a man in love. Fighting for the woman he loved. Not for himself. But for her.

Even if she hated him for doing what he was doing, if he could give her back even a hope of opening her life to love again—any kind of love. Partner. Parent...

“Her whole life, her family, is that clinic—where she makes sure, every day, that no biological parent, or child, under her jurisdiction, and in conjunction with the law, is ever prevented from knowing of one another. Her whole life, sir. She gets up every day to make sure that in her little part of the world, no one suffers as she does. Every day.”

Dennis Elli

ott stood. Sat on the corner of his desk.

“What do you do?” he asked, studying Jamie. “For a living?”

Jamie might have been more put off by the question, in response to his plea, if he hadn’t spent the past several months with Christine. In at least one way she appeared to have learned from her father to avoid internal emotional warfare by changing the subject to something innocuous. He knew the drill.

“I’m a college professor. Mathematics.” Sweating, Jamie was inordinately thankful he’d opted not to mention that he was also the father of Christine’s surrogate child. Or even that she was carrying a child.

“Where do you teach?” Jamie named the university branch in Mission Viejo and the college in Marie Cove.

Dennis nodded. “You’re local a lot of the time, then.”

“I am.”

“You own a home?”

“I did. I sold it.” And then he added, “I’m making an offer on the little cottage on the beach I’m renting until I find something. It’ll be nice to have for romantic weekends, or summer days at the beach. And for out-of-town guests.”

He hadn’t even told Christine his plan, and he was telling her father?