Trying in vain not to shake, Lily rose from the chair. “That’s…Jack.”
“Jack? Who is Jack?”
She started toward the bedroom, keenly aware that Robert was following her and that she didn’t have the slightest idea how she was going to explain a one-year-old baby to a man who had every right to know.
Lily closed her eyes. “Jack is…my son.”
Behind her, she heard Robert stop dead in his tracks, but she didn’t slow down. She didn’t turn to look at him. She wasn’t sure what her eyes would reveal if she did. She’d never been able to lie—not to Robert. She wouldn’t lie now—even if the truth was more brutal than any lie she could have fabricated.
Jack is my son.
The words reverberated like the echo of a killing shot inside Robert’s head. He stood in the semidarkness of the hall and watched Lily disappear into a small bedroom at the rear of the cottage, his head reeling.
Lily had a child. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she’d moved on so easily while he’d spent the last twenty-one months crippled by the past. The thought angered him, shook him more than he wanted to admit. He tried to blame his reaction on exhaustion and stress and the shock of seeing her again after believing her dead for so long. But he knew there was more to it than that. Knew it went a hell of a lot deeper than any of those things.
Movement down the hall yanked him from his dark reverie. He looked up to see Lily holding a small bundle wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket. He wondered how, in a country as devastated as Rebelia, she’d managed to find a blue blanket for her baby boy.
He stared at her, then the child, trying desperately not to think about what her having a child meant.
I’ve moved on. You should have, too.
The full meaning of the words penetrated his brain. Evidently, she had, indeed, moved on. Judging from the size of the baby, she hadn’t waited too long after Robert had left to do so. He wondered who the father was and tried like hell to ignore the knot of jealousy that tightened in his gut. He knew it was stupid to feel that way. His relationship with Lily had been over for a long time. Any feelings he’d once had for her had been replaced by bitterness.
The bitterness surged forth now with such force that Robert could taste its acrid flavor at the back of his throat. He watched her approach, then pass him without acknowledging him. Feeling angry and out of place, he trailed her to the living room, then paused to watch her spread a blanket on the sofa and lay the child down to change him.
“He’s your…son?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him but continued tending the baby. “Yes.”
Robert felt the affirmation like a physical punch. Lily had a son. He couldn’t believe it. His brain simply refused to absorb the information. “How old is he?”
She did look at him then, but her hazel eyes were cool. “About nine months.”
Mentally he calculated the months, felt a hot cauldron of anger begin to boil. No, she hadn’t waited very long at all.
“His name is Jack,” she added.
“Jack.” He repeated the name, thinking of the young man who’d brought him here. His name was also Jacques, but he’d had a French accent and pronounced it differently. Robert wondered if Jacques was this child’s father.
Robert thought of the endless months of grief. The kind of black grief that ate at a man’s soul and changed who he was. He thought of all the surgeries that had been required to repair the shattered bone in his thigh. The ensuing months of rehabilitation. The knowledge that he would never be the same. He thought of the secret hope he’d held in his heart that Lily would show up alive and smiling and ready to spend the rest of her life with him. God, he’d been such a fool.
It infuriated him that while he’d been going through all those things, she’d taken up with another man—and had a son with him.
Anger and jealousy melded into a single, ugly emotion and snarled inside him like a rabid beast. He wanted to lash out at her. The words were poised on his tongue, sharp as a knife and ready to cut. But he knew better than to let that beast out of its cage. Knew it would take him apart if he let it.
With the mission foremost in his mind, he couldn’t let that happen.
Relieved that Lily was busy tending to the baby, Robert closed his eyes, willing away the emotions swamping him. She’d moved on. He had to accept it. She was alive. That was the important thing. It would have to be enough.
“He’s been ill,” she said, fastening old-fashioned diaper pins at Jack’s pudgy hips. “I’ve taken him to the doctor in the village, but Dr. Salov hasn’t been able to give me a diagnosis.”