“In your position, I would feel exactly as you do.”
“Then I hope you’ll be able to make Caroline understand how I feel.”
“She will understand,” Nather said with sad certainty. “She cares very much for you.”
Mitchell promised to call her in a few days and hung up.
Calli arrived a few minutes afterward, and by the time Kate walked into the living room, he was sitting at the kitchen island, already on duty.
Chapter Fifty-one
MITCHELL WAS STANDING IN THE LIVING ROOM WITH HIS shoulder turned to her, looking through a photograph album, and Kate paused in the doorway, her emotions in a turmoil of uncertainty, guilt, relief, and happiness.
The shower she’d taken had revived her and cleared her head, and when that happened there was no escaping the truth: she should have told Mitchell she was pregnant. Everything Mitchell had done in the hours since he’d learned of Danny’s existence was proof of that. And the most indisputable, poignant proof of all was the tenderness on Mitchell’s face when he looked at his son.
She’d wronged Mitchell, and she’d wronged Danny, by depriving them of each other. She had no doubt Mitchell intended to make her understand that now, and whatever means he used to do it were going to be deservedly unpleasant.
In an effort to assuage a little of her guilt, she reminded herself of how deceitful he’d been in the islands, and how badly he’d treated her the last time she saw him. Unfortunately, that was little comfort, and it was no buffer against the visual jolt of seeing him standing there, looking exactly as she remembered him—tall, wide-shouldered, immaculately groomed, and wickedly handsome. Every detail about him was as sharply, poignantly familiar as if she’d seen him yesterday—the shape of his hard jaw, the curve of his cheek, the sensual mouth.
She realized she was wringing her hands, dropped them to her sides, and stepped forward, prepared to face the outrage he’d been holding back until Danny was asleep. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said, and then added a lame explanation. “I stayed in the hall outside Danny’s bedroom for a few minutes in case you needed a little help.” He put the photograph album down abruptly and turned toward her, his dark brows drawing into a frown. Kate braced herself for an angry salvo.
“I don’t think I did a very good job reading to him,” he said. “I lost his attention right away.”
Kate’s emotions veered from anxiety to amusement. “When you read to him next time, try to sound less incredulous.”
He nodded, but his gaze shifted to the floor, where Kate’s cats were making their decorous entrance into the living room.
“Lucy and Ethel,” Kate explained, and she could have sworn he almost smiled.
“What happened to Max?”
“My head chef volunteered to take him home today. He kept growling at Detective MacNeil.”
The small talk that had been Kate’s reprieve came to an end. He gestured toward the photograph albums on the table and said in a businesslike voice, “I’d like to borrow these.”
“You don’t need to do that. Leave them here and I’ll have a set made for you.”
“I have two years of my son’s life to catch up on. I’d like to start on that tonight.”
The television set was on and turned down very low, but it pulled their attention to it because the station was running a tape of Father Donovan’s statement to the press earlier, and at the end, several reporters were calling out the same question: “Is Mitchell Wyatt Danny’s father?” Kate’s uncle simply ignored the question and thanked everyone again for their prayers for Danny.
“I want that taken care of tonight,” Mitchell said flatly, his blue eyes shifting to Kate in a cool challenge. “We can confirm it to the press together, or I can do it myself when I leave. Either way, I want the conjecture about my son’s parentage ended immediately.”
“Why don’t you speak for both of us? You could say something like ‘Kate and I want to thank everyone for their prayers for our son’s safe return.’ That has a nice ring to it.”
It had a very nice ring to it, but Mitchell was more interested in her reasoning. “Why don’t you want to go out there with me?”
“I don’t know,” she joked half seriously. “Could it be because I’m the niece of a Catholic priest who has been dealing with the press all day, and I just can’t work up any enthusiasm about publicly announcing to all his parishioners—and the entire Archdiocese of Chicago—that Father Donovan’s niece had an illicit fling and got knocked up? I know I’ll regret passing up this opportunity someday, but—”
“I’ll handle it when I leave,” he said, but this time Kate was almost certain she saw amusement flicker in his eyes. There was none in his voice, however, when he said, “You and I need to talk. What are my chances of getting a sandwich while I’m here?”
Mitchell understood why the press announcement was going to be embarrassing for her. He also realized that her pregnancy was probably what put an end to her hope of marrying Bartlett. Mitchell had been furious with her the last time he saw her, but ultimately she had paid an extremely high price for their time in St. Maarten.
Instead of blaming Danny for the sacrifice she’d had to make, she had obviously lavished him with her love. Whatever bitterness she harbored toward Mitchell for his role in ruining her life, she hadn’t taken it out on his son. In fact, she hadn’t taken it out on Mitchell either. At least not yet. However, the time for a showdown was at hand, as long as it was out of Danny’s earshot.
“This is a restaurant,” Kate pointed out with a hesitant smile. “Tell me what you’d like to have and I’ll bring it up here.”
“I’d rather eat downstairs.”
“I can’t leave Danny alone.”
“He won’t be alone.” In explanation, Mitchell nodded toward Calli, who immediately got off the stool and walked into living room. “This is Giovanni Callioroso,” Mitchell explained. “Calli is a bodyguard. Until Billy Wyatt is arrested, Calli is going to be with Danny wherever Danny is.”
Kate’s initial reaction was shock at the discovery that there was someone else in the room; it was followed by uneasiness over his profession, followed by uncertainty over whether she wanted a stranger in constant proximity to Danny, followed by … a vague memory.
“You’re a bodyguard?” she said idiotically, and then the memory snapped into focus. Callioroso! That was the name of the family Mitchell had lived with in Italy when he was a child; she remembered seeing it in the file on Mitchell that she’d pored over in Gray Elliott’s office. Her doubts about having him with Danny dissipated. Smiling, she held out her hand and said sincerely, “I’ll feel much better knowing you’re with Danny. Thank you.”
Instead of shaking her hand, Calli took it between both of his, grinned at Mitchell, and said in Italian, “Her smile is warm enough to bake bread. She has eyes like green jewels, hair the color of flame, and skin like cream. If you took this woman to bed and then forgot about it, like you said, you need to see a doctor about your memory.”
Kate smiled uncertainly at Mitchell, hoping for a translation; but he shot Calli a quelling look, then he looked at Kate and said firmly, “You and I have some things to discuss. Let’s go.” He walked over to the coffee table and picked up his briefcase along with the photograph albums.
Nervous anxiety set in, and Kate glanced briefly toward Calli, unaware that her emotions were written all over her face. “Will you ask Calli what he’d like to eat so I can have it brought up?”
Mitchell opened the door and stepped aside for Kate to precede him. “Calli ate downstairs.”
Behind him, Calli issued a warning. “She is your son’s mother, and she is very nervous. She watched you from the living room doorway wringing her hands. No matter what she has done, do not forget that she is the mother of your son. She is entitled to—”
Mitchell closed the door on the end of Calli’s sentence.
Chapter Fifty-two
“YOU’RE IN LUCK,” KATE SAID. ??
?THE LIGHTS ARE STILL on in the kitchen.”
“Why is that lucky?” Mitchell asked, following her down the wide, oak-paneled hallway, lined with offices, at the bottom of the staircase.
“Because it means that someone else may be preparing our meals, which means they’ll be edible,” she said with a laughing glance over her shoulder.
As she spoke, she shoved open a pair of wide stainless-steel doors concealed behind an antique oak screen inlaid with ebony parquet, and Mitchell saw a small group of men and women who, he surmised, were still celebrating Danny’s return. Rather than going in there with Kate, he retraced his steps to the hallway so that he could look at the assortment of framed photographs, plaques, and magazine and newspaper articles he’d noticed moments before.
It was a very impressive display, he realized as he looked at the many awards Donovan’s had received and the articles written about it. The items were arranged in chronological order, so he didn’t come to Kate’s accolades until he neared the far end of the hallway. Based on what he saw of those, not only had she managed to maintain the restaurant’s reputation, she’d enhanced it. When he came to the last, most-recent item, he felt an inappropriate twinge of pride—which he immediately reclassified as mere admiration—that Kate had just been named Chicago’s Restaurateur of the Year.
She returned from the kitchen while he was still reading the Tribune article. After her shower she’d changed into tan-colored jeans and a soft cashmere sweater that was the same green as her eyes, with an open cowl-neck that threatened to bare one shoulder. With her long red hair falling in wavy curls around her shoulders and her hips swaying gently as she walked, she looked feminine, poised, and sexy at the same time.
Mitchell tipped his head toward the Tribune article and said, “I remember when you were terrified you wouldn’t be able to keep this place open, but look what you’ve accomplished.”
“I made a mess of everything the first few months, and I would have given up back then if it hadn’t been for Danny. I needed to make a success of the business for his sake.”
As she spoke, she led him to the front of the restaurant, walking past the maître d’s desk and through a doorway. She flipped on a light switch, and mellow lights illuminated a stylish lounge with an ornate bar lining two walls; despite its size, the room was cozy and inviting. “I asked Tony to bring our meals to us in here,” she explained, walking toward the bar.
Mitchell suddenly remembered the way she’d looked presiding over a candlelit table in a villa by the sea. Now as he watched her, he understood why she’d seemed so sure of herself and self-possessed that night.
From beneath her lashes Kate watched him studying the room. This day had begun as the worst of her life, and it was ending as one of the very best, because no matter what he said to her now, it couldn’t offset the fact that he was going to be a part of Danny’s life. He took off his jacket and tie, draped them over the back of barstool, and loosened the top buttons of his white shirt. The minute he put his jacket over the chair, her mind flashed to the night in the villa in Anguilla when he’d left his jacket over a chair and forgotten it there when he left abruptly. Her stomach knotted at the memory, and painful questions popped into her mind, questions she didn’t want to ask, with answers she didn’t need to hear and probably wouldn’t believe if she did. Obviously, the best thing to do, for both their sakes, was to scrupulously avoid any discussion, any reminders, and any recriminations about the past. She was prepared to let him vent his anger at her for not telling him about Danny, but everything else was off limits. At least for the immediate future.
Kate resolved to stick to that decision tonight, and to make Mitchell stick to it. And if that wasn’t possible, then she would make light of their past and persuade him to follow suit.
Anticipating that his answer to her next question would be yes, Kate stepped behind the bar. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes,” Mitchell said, watching her in the mirror.
He drank vodka, Kate remembered, and automatically reached for the best bottle on the shelf; then she jerked her hand down and in a belated attempt to stick to her own decision, she glanced over her shoulder at him, and politely inquired, “What would you like?”
His gaze pinned her. “You know the answer to that.”
Kate turned back to the shelves of liquor. “Apparently, you still prefer vodka,” she concluded wryly.
“And you’re still very beautiful.”
Kate’s hand froze on the vodka bottle; then she took it carefully down and reached for a glass. “I wasn’t aware that you thought I was beautiful.”
“The hell you weren’t.”
Kate knew she wasn’t beautiful; at best, her coloring might qualify her looks as striking. And except for an indirect reference to her legs the night they went to the casino, Mitchell had never commented on her appearance. No, that wasn’t true at all, she remembered. In bed, he’d lavished her with whispered praise while he stroked and touched—
Kate mentally put her foot down, pushed all those thoughts away, and added ice to his glass. She finished making his drink and poured a glass of red wine for herself; then she turned around, glasses in hand. “Let’s talk about Danny,” she said with an overbright smile. Walking out from behind the bar, she nodded toward a nearby pair of small burgundy upholstered sofas facing each other across an oval cocktail table, and Mitchell followed her there. She put his glass and a cocktail napkin in front of one of the sofas; then she walked around to the sofa on the opposite side and curled up on it, her legs tucked beneath her, her wineglass in hand. Across from her, Mitchell reached for his glass, propped his ankle on the opposite knee, and took a swallow of his drink. “What would you like to know about Danny?” she said as soon as he started to lower his glass.
Mitchell already had his own conversational agenda firmly in mind, and he had no intention of letting her divert him from it; however, there was one thing he did want to ask her about Danny before he started. “In the bedroom tonight, he was talking, and then he stopped and looked at me as if he couldn’t say a word, but he was trying to.”
“And tomorrow,” Kate explained, “he may lapse completely into baby talk and not say two words you understand. If he’s extremely upset or agitated, he’ll look at you in mute, heartbreaking misery. If that happens when he’s with you, say quietly to him, ‘Use your words.’”
“Does that help?”
“Often it does.”
“If there’s a problem with his speech—”
“Danny’s verbal skills are remarkable,” Kate assured him. “So much so that, right now, they’re outpacing his brain’s ability to simultaneously process his thoughts and words. He’s also extremely well-coordinated. In addition to inheriting all of your features,” she finished with a smile, “he also inherited your gift for language and your physical coordination.”
In response, Mitchell stretched his left arm across the back of the sofa and casually inquired, “Whose temper did he inherit?”
“Yours,” Kate said without thinking.
“What a relief. I won’t be afraid to put a glass in his hand.”
His deliberate reference to their confrontation at the fund-raiser doused Kate’s smile. “Please don’t go there,” she warned. “That’s very deep water, and—”
“Our history is all deep water. Because of Danny, we can’t avoid going, so let’s discuss it now, but try to tread water instead of trying to drown each other.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Honesty and restraint.”
Kate stared at him in wary silence.
“Shall I start?” Mitchell volunteered, and when she nodded slightly, he said, “All right. You gave me two reasons for not telling me you were pregnant: my refusal to have children with my ex-wife and my treatment of you the last time we met. As to my behavior at the hospital benefit, I apologize for that. It was inexcusable, and there will never be a repetition.”
Kate looked at him ov
er the rim of her glass and decided to test the depth of his commitment to honesty and restraint. Very politely, she said, “I’d rather have an explanation than an apology.”
“Fair enough. If you’d sauntered up to me with that same coy expression on your face and told me you’d just gotten engaged to anyone except Evan Bartlett, I would have courteously and insincerely offered you my very best wishes and that’s all. If I’d have known about your engagement to Bartlett longer than twenty seconds before you were standing in front of me with that same playful expression on your face, I wouldn’t have given you the satisfaction of evoking any reaction from me whatsoever. Unfortunately, things didn’t happen that way.” He reached for the cocktail napkin on the table, knowing she’d find it easier to lie if he wasn’t looking at her. “I have an unpleasant history with the Bartletts. Did Evan tell you about that?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “He told me how you feel about them and why.”
Pleased with her reply, Mitchell transferred his gaze to hers and rewarded her honesty with a forthright explanation about the second issue: “I refused to have a child with Anastasia because I knew she wouldn’t sacrifice her freedom or change her lifestyle if we had one. She was doing recreational drugs, and it was getting out of hand. She went on tangents. She came home from Paris with two Yorkshire terrier puppies that she dressed up in clothes from doggie boutiques, played with constantly, and took everywhere she went. They were the center of her life for a few months, and then she lost interest and ignored them. When they still tried to follow her around, they became an annoyance, so she gave them away. She decided she wanted horses instead and she bought two Thoroughbreds that she never went near. Then she wanted a baby.”
“Babies are different; they capture your heart. Just because she lost interest in puppies and horses doesn’t necessarily mean she’d have been an indifferent mother.”