Secret Baby Santos. Barbara McCauley

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      Three

      She couldn’t sleep. Hot shower, warm milk, counting sheep, three chapters of a boring book. Nothing had worked. She was wide awake, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Nick.

      Dinner with him tonight had been the longest two hours of her entire life.

      She’d sat beside him, said grace, then passed him the potatoes as nonchalantly as if he were any other guest at her parents’ table for any other dinner.

      But it was hardly just any other dinner, and Nick was hardly just any other guest.

      He certainly had a healthy appetite, Maggie thought. The way he packed food away, she couldn’t believe he wasn’t at least twenty pounds heavier. But there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. She’d discovered that firsthand when Drew had tackled her straight into those strong arms and Nick had held her against his broad chest. He was solid muscle, every last inch of his six-foot-four-inch frame.

      Exactly as she remembered him five years ago.

      How could he just show up here like this now, throwing her entire life into turmoil?

      With a groan she sat and turned on the bedside lamp. Running into Nick at the store had been one thing. That she could have handled. But him showing up here, charming everyone in sight, including Drew, was another matter entirely.

      The image of her son placing his small hand in Nick’s would be burned in her memory forever.

      At that moment she’d felt as if time had stopped, as if the world had stopped and nothing else existed but the two of them. The two men in her life who had changed her the most, both of them unintentionally altering her life forever. And neither one of them had a clue how important they were to her.

      When her heart had started beating again, when she’d recovered her ability to breathe, all she could do was watch them, watch them in amazement and disbelief that two such wonderful people had touched her life.

      She’d found a calm in that moment. As if she’d been waiting for that moment without even realizing it, and now that it had happened, she felt an incredible relief. She’d also realized she’d been acting like an idiot. There’d been no reason for her to be so afraid of them meeting.

      In a hundred years Nick Santos would have no reason to believe that Drew was his son.

      How could he, when Nick himself didn’t even realize that he’d made love to her?

      Sometimes even she wondered if she’d dreamed that night, if she’d simply lost it completely and confused a fantasy with reality. At those moments all she’d have to do was look into her son’s eyes, watch him smile and she knew the truth: Drew was Nick’s son. Absolutely no doubt about it.

      And she’d do everything in her power to be certain that Nick never knew.

      The soft light from the table lamp spilled onto the rose wallpaper, and Maggie stared at the delicate patterns of flowers and vines. This had been her bedroom growing up, until the day she’d left ten years ago. Hoping for excitement, she’d chosen a large East Coast university, but had realized soon enough that a plain, painfully shy small-town girl just didn’t fit in with the big city. She stuck it out, though, earned her journalism degree, and through a college placement agency found her first job with the North Carolina Tribune. Never mind she was making coffee and filing, and no one in the office ever gave her a second look, she had a real job with a real newspaper. She’d vowed to prove herself somehow, make them see she could write the best damn article the Tribune had ever seen. All she needed was a chance.

      Eight months later, due to a flu epidemic that left two-thirds of the office home in bed, she finally got her chance. A sports assignment. Following the National Motorcycle Championship race that afternoon at the local speedway, she was supposed to interview twotime national champion Nick Santos.

      She СКАЧАТЬ