Second Time's the Charm

“Kate just had different goals. She was going to New York, to make it big in advertising. She wanted to travel. She’d grown up under the strict thumb of an overprotective father and yearned for freedom more than anything else.”

Logically, he understood it all.

“Her worst nightmare, as she’d put it, was to live in the town where she’d grown up, changing diapers and wiping noses.”

Lillie still wasn’t saying anything. Just staring out the windshield. Jon tried not to care about what she might be thinking.

He checked again on Abe instead, satisfied to see that his son was still sleeping soundly, his head propped against the travel pillow Jon kept in the truck for such occasions, his little mouth open and wet with drool. God, he loved that kid.

“I know it might sound like Kate’s heartless,” he told Lillie, what he’d told himself over and over during those early days. “But she’s not. As soon as she saw how much our unborn child meant to me, she agreed to have it. As long as I’d take full custody and release her from any obligations or responsibilities, legally as well as any other way.”

“A surrogate mother.” Lillie’s voice sounded far away.

“Right. She moved in with me while she was pregnant?” although they’d slept in separate bedrooms “—and followed through with excellent prenatal care. I was present for every doctor appointment and

was there when Abe was born.”

A small cough sounded from Lillie’s side of the car. When Jon glanced over, he saw a tear slide down her face.

He focused on the road in front of him. “A couple of hours later, she signed the baby over to me, checked herself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and moved on with her life. I stayed at the hospital with Abe that night, and when I brought him home the next day, all of her stuff was gone.”

Lillie didn’t say anything for so long, Jon wasn’t sure they were going to speak again for the rest of the trip. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Pulling a tissue out of the pack on his visor, he handed it to her. She took it without saying a word.

The woman cared enough for his son to cry for them. If he wasn’t careful he was going to fall right back into his own trap and make too much of that.

They’d been driving without conversation for more than twenty minutes when Lillie’s words, “She was a fool,” fell softly into the silence.

Shrugging, Jon said, “Or she was smart, and decent for being honest with me, rather than pretending that Abe and I were what she wanted and then being unhappy and eventually divorcing us. She did right by us. She had him.”

Her gaze was on him again. “Do you ever hear from her?”

“No. At her request, we went through the court and had her name removed from his birth certificate.”

She’d also done it to make her mother’s quest to get custody of Abe a bit harder. But not impossible. Kate couldn’t do anything about the Abrams DNA running through Abe’s veins.

“She could change her mind.”

She wouldn’t. Because, in the end, Jon was an ex-con. And Kate Abrams was still an Abrams. She wanted a blue-blooded father for her children.

“You never know. You might hear from her someday.”

Was Lillie telling him something? Or just being her usual compassionate self?

Either way, he hoped she was wrong. Because if he heard from Kate it could only mean that her mother had decided that Kate’s threat to keep her away from her future grandchildren was not enough reason for Clara to leave Jon and Abe alone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“LIL?”

Hearing her name on her way to her car in the mostly deserted clinic parking lot Thursday night, Lillie paused and continued to walk. She was exhausted. Hadn’t sat down since her bike ride with Caro just before dawn.

“Lil!” The voice came again. Kirk’s voice. Louder this time. She hadn’t imagined that unmistakable tone of voice. She just hadn’t heard it in years.

Turning, she saw her ex-husband, looking as perfect as always.

“Kirk? What are you doing here?” Besides walking toward her from the other side of a brick wall where he’d evidently parked his car. In jeans and a blue-and-white long-sleeved shirt, he appeared younger than she remembered. More like the Kirk she’d known in college—back when she’d thought she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him.