Page 32 of Point of Mercy

“You don’t. You have to trust me on this one, Turner. I never made love to anyone but you until I married Dennis—two weeks after the doctor confirmed my pregnancy. You can think what you want of me, but that’s the God’s honest truth. Adam’s yours.”

His heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood pumping at his temples. She leaned closer to him, and he could see the golden crown of her head, could smell the provocative fragrance of her perfume. Just as before, he found her impossible to resist.

“I wouldn’t have come here unless you were my only hope, Turner. It’s just that I’m out of options and I would risk anything, even facing you again, to help my boy. I was hoping you’d feel the same way.”

Turner’s guts twisted. Leukemia! Wasn’t that fatal? His mouth turned to sand as he thought about a boy he’d never had the chance to know, a son that he could lose before he’d ever really found him. Damn Heather and her lies! She should have told him. She’d owed him that much. His fingers curled possessively over the slick snapshot. “What if he hadn’t gotten sick? Would you have ever told him about me—or let me know I had a kid?” he asked, rage beginning to swell inside him.

“Yes.”

“When?”

She hesitated just a second. “When he was eighteen.”

“Eighteen!” She had it all planned out. And she’d intended to rob him of ever seeing his boy as a kid. So that they’d never play catch, never ride trails and camp out on the river, never even meet. “Eight-friggin’-teen?” he said in a voice so low he saw the fear register in her eyes.

“He’d need to know someday.”

“And me? Did I need to know?”

She shook her head, and there was a trace of sadness in her cold blue eyes. “You gave up that right when you walked away from me and acted as if what we’d shared never existed,” she said as icily as if she meant every word.

He started to argue with her. To ask why she’d never returned his calls, why she’d never answered her mail, but he already knew the reasons. By the time he’d returned and started looking for her, she’d already married the son of one of the richest men in the bay area.

Pregnant or not, she’d realized even then what she’d wanted and it had come with a price tag. A price tag he could never afford. He handed her back the picture of Adam and watched as the disappointment registered on her face. “I want to see him,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “Face-to-face. I want to meet my son.”

“You will.”

“You’ll bring him here?”

She was startled. Again, fear registered across her beautiful features. Nervously, she licked her lips, and Turner’s diaphragm slammed up to his ribs. “I thought in the city, in the hospital…”

“Does that have to happen immediately?”

“No, right now he’s better, but—”

“Then I want to meet him, but not in some sterile hospital room with a bunch of doctors and nurses stickin’ tubes and needles in him.”

To keep his hands busy, he grabbed a pitchfork and tossed hay into Gargoyle’s empty manger. He felt trapped, felt as if he had to move on, and yet he wouldn’t have it any other way. If the kid was his, and he was starting to believe Heather, then Turner planned to include the boy in his life.

He shoved the pitchfork in a split bale and leaned upon it. Heather was waiting, her elegant features tense. “Look, no matter what happened between us, I’ll do what you want,” he said, his heart twisting as the tension left her pretty face. “I’ll go to the city, have the tests done. No reason to hold this thing up. If the kid needs a donor and I’m a match, I’ll do whatever I have to. No problem.”

Relief brought a tremulous smile to her lips, and he anticipated the words of gratitude that were forming on her tongue. She misunderstood and he had to set her straight.

“But that’s not the end of it, Heather. As soon as he’s well enough and the tests have proven that he’s mine, then I want you to bring him back here…and not for an afternoon.”

The color in her face turned pasty and her fingers curled into tight little fists. “That might take a while. I don’t know when he’ll be well enough. The doctors might decide to do the transplant—if it’s possible—and he’ll need a long recovery.”

“Then I’ll meet him at your place, but not the hospital. Afterward, when it’s all done, and he’s well enough to come to the ranch,I want to spend some time with him. Two, maybe three weeks—enough time to get to know the boy.”

“That’s impossible—”

He picked up the pitchfork and hung it on a nail on the wall. “The way I figure it, you’ve had him for five years. Now it’s my turn.”

Panic registered in her eyes. “But he’s sick—”

“I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his health, Heather, but I have a right to know my own boy.”

She swallowed hard and sweat collected on her forehead. His reasoning was sound, but a deep fear started to grow deep within her, a fear that if she didn’t lose her son to this horrid disease, she might very well lose him to his father. But it was a chance she had to take. She was all out of options. “I… I…suppose if the doctor will approve.”

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