Claiming His Family by Barbara Hannay

Author:Barbara Hannay [Hannay, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2006-09-21T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘YOU’VE got to be joking,’ Luke cried. ‘How could a happy little bloke like Joey be heading for disaster?’

Erin bristled. ‘Why do you think I suddenly wrote to you and asked if he could meet you?’

‘I—I just thought—’ Luke broke off and he felt suddenly lost as he stared at her. Eventually he forced a weak smile. ‘I suppose I thought you’d suddenly realised how desperate I was to meet my son.’

Now, he realised, he’d given Erin the perfect opportunity to demand why he hadn’t done something about that. Why, after their divorce, had he refused any further contact with her? Why had he made no attempt to contact Joey?

But perhaps she was wise enough to know that these questions would only lead to more tension. They would never be able to talk this through if they got too tense.

‘I’m afraid your feelings weren’t my first priority, Luke,’ she said quietly. ‘I was only thinking of Joey. You see, I’ve been very worried about him ever since he started school last fall.’

‘What happened?’

‘I guess mixing with so many other kids brought the whole father issue to the surface.’ She swallowed nervously and fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup. ‘Until then I hadn’t talked to Joey about you.’

‘Never?’

‘No. I’m sorry. I know it sounds terrible. And now I look back I can see it was a mistake. A big mistake. But until then Joey didn’t ask questions about you and you didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us, and the whole subject was rather painful for me, so—’ Erin paused and cleared her throat. ‘For a lot of reasons I found it easier just to pretend you didn’t exist.’

Luke swallowed to try to shift the painful rock wedged in his throat.

‘Soon after Joey started school, I realised that I’d created a bigger problem by never talking about you,’ she said. ‘Joey’s a bright, sensitive little boy and he’d picked up that in our house the Daddy topic was scary.’

She sent him a quick, anxious glance.

‘You were on the other side of the world, Luke. I didn’t know what to do.’

He knew she expected a response from him, but he couldn’t speak. The rock was still there in his throat. He was picturing her, alone in Manhattan, with Joey and without him, Joey’s father.

She looked so vulnerable as she sat there telling him this—vulnerable, yet gorgeous with her blue eyes shimmering with the hint of tears and her lovely silken clothes clinging to her in all the right places.

Why the hell had he been such a stubborn bastard? Why hadn’t he chased after her when she’d left? It didn’t make sense any more that he’d gone to so much trouble to shut down his emotions, to have nothing to do with her.

What had he achieved besides leaving his son totally confused? Erin was right, it was a bloody disaster.

Erin, realising he wasn’t going to comment, continued. ‘Joey compensated by inventing elaborate fantasies about you,’ she said.

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