Page 22 of Dragon Daddy's Second Chance

“I need to sit down,” he said, feeling his knees begin to buckle. “Did you know that Wren’s parents and her sister were coming to the island?”

“Of course, I arranged it yesterday afternoon. It was supposed to be a surprise,” Max said, swinging the door open. “You’d better come in before you fall down. What the hell is going on, Blake?”

“Did you know they were bringing a little boy with them?” he asked, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table. “He looks like he’s about five years old. His name is Theo.”

“Sure, Wren’s nephew, I guess,” Max said, setting a cup of coffee in front of him. “I still don’t see what the problem is.”

He could only stare at Max, the words he needed to say stuck in his throat, his brain not ready to accept the truth. “He’s not Wren’s nephew,” he finally said. “He’s her son.”

Max looked surprised for a second. “I guess I got that wrong,” he said, then shrugged his shoulders. “So, she’s got a kid. It’s not the end of the world; things happen.”

“He’s five years old, Max,” he said, then took a deep breath. “He looks just like me.”

Max’s eyes widened. “Do you mean…” his words died away.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said, then plunged on. “I think he’s mine. I think I’m Theo’s father. Wren has been trying to tell me something for two days, I think that was it. I think she was trying to tell me that I have a son.”

“Oh, that’s well…” Max sat down heavily in the chair across from him. “Are you sure he’s yours? You could be wrong, you know.”

“I’m not wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “He looks just like I did when I was five; he’s mine, Max, and Wren never said a word; all this time, she kept him a secret from me.”

Max held up his hand. “Give me just a second to catch up. I haven’t had my coffee yet,” he said, then took a long sip. “Okay, so you’re the father of a five-year-old, and his mother never told you, but you’re in love with her, so maybe this isn’t so bad. It sounds like instant family to me.”

“You seem to have missed the part where she hid Theo from me and would have continued to if we hadn’t met again,” he said, anger surging through him. “He’s my son, I might have gone my entire life not knowing about him. I might have died alone, never knowing that he existed.”

“Don’t you think that you’re being a bit dramatic?” Max asked, sitting back in his chair. “I know that you’re mad, and I don’t blame you. I would be too, but I just want you to look past that and ask yourself why Wren didn’t tell you. I’m guessing she had a good reason.”

He took a deep breath, realizing that Max was right, pushed the anger away, and tried to look at things from Wren’s perspective, and it didn’t take long to figure out the answer. “My mother,” he said. “She ambushed Wren the day she disappeared. I didn’t know about her little visit until Wren told me the other day, that’s why she left me, my mother scared her off, she said some terrible things to her. I bet she had something to do with Wren not telling me.”

His anger began to build again when he thought about all his mother’s meddling had cost him, it was bad enough when it had just been the loss of the only woman he’d ever loved, but now he’d lost the first five years of his son’s life. He wanted to strike out at her right then, pick up the phone, and tell her exactly how he felt, but shut the anger away andfocused on the little boy and woman on the other side of the island.

“I need to talk to Wren,” he finally said. “We have to straighten this out.”

Before he could get to his feet, there was a knock on the door. “I bet that’s her,” Max said, getting to his feet. “I still can’t believe that you’re a father. I feel sorry for that kid.”

“Very funny,” he said. “Are you going to get the door?”

***Wren***

Blake was standing with his back to the door, looking out the window, when Wren walked into the kitchen. She hesitated for just a second, bracing herself for his anger and rejection. When he turned around, there was a different emotion in his eyes, and she was instantly filled with an intense feeling of loss that made tears come to her eyes. The urge to rush over and comfort him was almost too strong to control, but she was painfully aware that she was the cause of his distress and didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Blake,” she said, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. “I should have told you sooner, I just…”

“You mean like when you found out you were pregnant?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm, anger flashing in his eyes. “Or what about when he was born? Did you think of me then?”

“I’ve thought about you every day since I left,” she said, knowing that she deserved his anger, but feeling the pain of it anyway. “I did what I had to, Blake. You have to understand, I couldn’t lose Theo; he was my baby.”

Blake stared at her for a second, then his anger seemed to drain away. His shoulders relaxed a little, and he let out along sigh. “Why would you have lost him?” he asked. “What did my mother say to you?”

“She told me that if I even thought about getting pregnant to trap you, she’d take the baby away from me,” she said, unable to stop the tears this time. “She said I’d be sorry if I didn’t leave you alone, that she could ruin my entire family with just a snap of her fingers. When I found out that I was pregnant a few weeks after you went home, I knew that I couldn’t tell you. I knew that she’d follow through with her threats.”

“Dammit, Wren, you should have known I would have never let that happen,” he said, shaking his head in frustration. “We were planning a life together. I was going to ask you to marry me, and a baby would have just made everything that much better.”

“But I didn’t know that back then,” she said. “You hid who you really were from me, Blake. I was just a kid, and I was scared. Your mother sounded so serious. My parents had already kicked me out. I was alone in the world. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to take the baby away from me.”

“So, it all comes back to my mother,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know how to fix this, Wren, I don’t know where to go from here.”

She took a couple of steps toward him. “How about meeting your son?” she asked. “We can’t do anything to change the past, Blake, and I’m truly sorry that you had to find out the way you did. I should have told you sooner.”

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