Marriage, Interrupted

Hands in pockets, Blake’s eyes flicked again over the living room he’d never seen before today. Hadn’t been able to face. Shaun had flown up to Denver a few times since Cass’s marriage, but Blake hadn’t once returned to Albuquerque. His business had provided a convenient excuse.

Oh, yeah. She’d done well. The house, set high in the Foothills on the east side of the city, screamed money. Fairly new money, Blake thought, tempered by good taste. Sleek, contemporary furniture in blacks and grays, richly patterned Navajo rugs, gallery-quality artwork. Impressive. And not a trace of the Cass he’d known—or thought he’d known—anywhere.

“Nice place,” he managed.

A slight wince preceded her shifting as she tried to find the mythological, more comfortable position. She had narrow hips; the final months of pregnancy weren’t easy for her. Irrationally—again—Blake hated this guy, for being her husband, for making her pregnant. Even for dying on her. For leaving her with that frightened-little-girl look in her eyes. Hell, not even Blake had done that.

Or had he?

“Thank you,” she replied at last. “The view at night—” he followed her gaze to the expanse of glass that led out to an upper level deck “—is really something. You can see the whole city from up here—”

Her voice caught. He was intruding, he knew. But leaving wasn’t an option. Not until…

Until what?

Cass was watching him, he realized with a start. “What?” he asked.

“Is it me, or is this incredibly awkward?”

His lips cracked a little when he tried to smile for her. “Probably not all that unusual, though. With so many step-families nowadays…” His heart rate kicked up as her brows hitched underneath her bangs. “I’m still our son’s father. That didn’t change because you remarried.”

Heeling one hand on the end of the table, she pushed herself out of the chair. “The limo’s coming for us at ten-thirty,” she said, her words clipped. “Now I do need to get dressed.” She seemed to hesitate, worrying her knock-your-socks-off solitaire with the fingers of her right hand. He found himself wondering what she’d done with the plain gold band he’d given her. “Do you…you could ride with us, if you want.”

“Thanks, but no.” He smiled, a little. “That would be awkward.”

That got a quietly assessing look for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so.” She started out of the room, then turned back. “I didn’t thank you for coming.”

“Please, forget it. You’re a little preoccupied, I’m sure.”

Understandably, there was no joy in her smile. “I hope I don’t reach the point where I ever forget my manners, Blake. No matter what the circumstances. Besides, I know how busy you are, with your business and all—”

“This is still family, Cass. That always takes precedence.”

Accusation flared in her eyes, reminding him of his less-than-sterling reputation in that particular area, before she finally left the room. It struck him, as it had so often since the divorce, how badly he’d failed her.

“Dad?”

And that he’d failed his son even more.

Like tangled barbed wire, guilt lodged in Blake’s chest as he glanced over at the unwitting victim of his own pain and disappointment, standing on the opposite side of the room.

The boy’s grin seemed shy. “You look really weird in that suit.”

As in, Shaun had rarely seen Blake in anything other than jeans. With a grin that was in all likelihood equally timorous, Blake reciprocated. “Not nearly as weird as you do.”

“Dork-city, right?”

“Hardly. Just different. Good different, though.”

In the mildly uncomfortable silence that followed, Blake thought again how much he’d missed his child every day they were separated—far too many days for his comfort. But stuff got in the way, didn’t it? If only…

A sharp gasp of realization caught in his throat, as even the blood chugging through his veins came to a screeching halt. Blake wasn’t a religious man in the traditional sense, but he liked to think he knew an epiphanous moment when one smacked him upside the head. And this one was a pip:

He wanted his family back.

And if that didn’t earn him a deluxe, all-expenses-paid trip to the booby hatch, he didn’t know what did. As if…what? He could somehow pick up the widely scattered pieces from the last dozen years and glue them back together, good as new? As if Shaun—as if Cass—would let him?

Well, you could scratch that epiphany right off the list, boy, ’cause this one had No Way in Hell written all over it.

“So, anyway,” Shaun tried again, as if Blake had been the one to let the conversation die, “Towanda wants to know, you wanna cup of coffee?”

His brain buzzing, Blake covered the distance between them, drawing his son into a quick, one-handed hug around shoulders at nearly the same level as his. “Coffee sounds great.” If there was ever a Maxwell House moment, this was it. “But who’s Towanda?”

Catching the startled “What the heck is this?” look on Shaun’s face, Blake released his grip. After they both tugged at their jacket hems, neither seemed to know where to look or what to do with their hands. “You’ll see,” Shaun said, still eyeing Blake with suspicion.

As he followed Shaun down a short, tiled hall to the kitchen, a series of revelatory aftershocks rattled his skull (since clearly his brain hadn’t gotten the memo about scratching the epiphany off the list). It isn’t too late, came the thought. At least, there might still be time to forge a relationship with his son, to repair the inadvertent damage inflicted by total cluelessness.

But the epiphany had said family. Not son. Family. As in Cass.

Forget it, Blake mentally yelled at whoever was in charge of these things.

Uh…no, Whoever calmly replied. Which is when Blake came to the mildly depressing realization that there’s apparently an iron-clad No Return policy on epiphanies. Who knew?

All well and good. Except how the hell was he supposed to heal a breach with someone who regarded him as though he were carrying a contagious disease, hadn’t even buried her second husband yet, and—oh, yeah—was pregnant with said dead husband’s child? The timing wasn’t exactly ideal here.

Tough. Deal with it.

Yeah, well, there was also the minor detail of his still, to this day, having no idea how to fix something that had at one time seemed so right and yet had gone so horribly wrong.

Then maybe it’s high time you get off your lazy butt and figure it out.

Right about now, Blake thought as they reached the kitchen, a lobotomy wasn’t sounding half-bad.

“Well now…” The generously bosomed black woman in the monochrome kitchen, her prodigious figure encased in a geometric-pattern shirt and polyester pants with permanently stitched-down creases, rose from a stool behind the granite island and walked over to Blake, clapping a firm hand on his arm. The dark eyes that met his were warm and fearless and unapologetically judgmental. “I take it you’re this boy’s daddy.”

Blake met her confident grin with a slightly less certain one of his own. “Last time I checked.”

“Well, I’m Towanda, and the rule around here is don’t give me any guff and we’ll get along just fine.” With that she returned to whatever she’d been doing, her crepe-soled oxfords making no sound on the gray-tiled floor. “Coffee’s over there,” she said with a twitch of her head, her dark blond waves remaining suspiciously rigid. “Help yourself.”

In business, Blake mused as he filled a mug, he’d gloried in a succession of triumphs. In life, he’d bombed, big-time. After the divorce he’d dated, some, when he could fit it in, but none of the budding relationships ever caught fire. Nor had he cared overmuch that they hadn’t. No other woman had ever gotten to him the way Cass had, and he suspected no other woman ever would. And if that sounded sappy and overly sentimental and improbable, so be it. He hadn’t purposefully closed himself off to loving again, but since it hadn’t happened, or even come close, in all this time…

Blake took a sip of the best coffee he’d ever tasted, mulling this over.

For way too long, he realized, he’d dwelled on what had gone wrong with his marriage, an exercise which had done little more than leave him with a nagging, burning sensation not unlike chronic heartburn that he’d somehow let the ball drop. That he’d given up too easily. Well, now…maybe, just maybe, it was time to remember what had been right. And with time—lots of time, considering the woman’s husband had just died—with patience, and with a lot of prayer, maybe Cass would remember, too.

Of course, there was also the definite possibility that he was on the brink of making a total ass of himself.

He took another sip of coffee, then grunted.