Dance Away with Me(87)

Denning brought the faint smell of soap with him as he emerged from the bedroom. She set the beer at one end of the dining table and walked with Wren to the other end, as far away as she could get. He picked up the bottle but didn’t sit. Neither did she. The table stretched between them, loaded with land mines. “Your parents said you were in Afghanistan.”

“I was.”

“Have you seen them?”

“I’m going there after I leave here.”

Wren sucked at her collarbone. She waited.

He tilted the bottle to his lips and took a long slug before he spoke again. “I don’t know what Bianca told you, but that’s not my baby.”

A long, ragged sound escaped from somewhere inside her.

“I did the math,” he said. “The numbers don’t add up.”

Wren’s wet fingers touched her cheek. She grasped the baby’s hand. “But . . . You talked with your parents. You said . . .”

“I know what I said.” He took another long drag of beer. “I was out near the Korengal Valley, and the connection kept breaking up. It wasn’t until two days ago when I was back in Kabul that I could sort out all the dates. I was due for a vacation, so I took the next flight out—first to see you and then to talk to them.” He finally sat at the table, the beer still curled in his palm. “Look, I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this. That’s why I knew I had to come here and tell you in person. Tell them.”

The front door opened and Ian walked in. He stopped when he saw their visitor. “Another injury in the neighborhood?”

She backed away from the table. “Ian, this is Simon Denning.”

Ian was a master at hiding his emotions, and she witnessed his skill in a whole new way. “Is that right?”

“He says he’s not Wren’s father.”

“I’m not.” Denning drained his beer and set the bottle down with a thunk.

Ian came closer, not looking at her, only at him. “Maybe you’d better tell us the whole story.”

Denning outlined his brief fling with Bianca, beginning with their meeting in an East Village bar. “A couple of guys were hitting on her, and she obviously wasn’t happy about it, so I stepped in and acted like we had a date. She was fun, crazy, wild. I’d never met anyone like her. She was into me, but I was only going to be in town for a week, so it was never serious. Still, it was intense while it lasted.”

He went on, offering up dates, where they’d gone, who’d they’d seen. He was so forthcoming that Tess knew he was telling the truth even before he pulled out his phone and flipped through a series of dated photos of the two of them together. Bianca’s stomach was flat, but a quick mental calculation suggested she was about six weeks pregnant.

Simon rubbed his scruffy jaw. “I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but I never saw her drink, not even the night we met at that bar. Now it makes sense. She was already pregnant.”

“You’ll take a DNA test?” Ian said.

“As long as you’re paying for it.”

*

“This is my fault,” Ian muttered when Simon left. “She told me Denning had gotten her pregnant, and I bought it, even though I know better than anyone how careless Bianca could be with the facts.”

Why wouldn’t Ian look at her? “You had no reason to suspect she’d lied to you.”

“I knew her.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I should have investigated, but she’d told a couple of acquaintances the same thing.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe this is for the best.”

“You know it isn’t.”

He was right. Tess couldn’t imagine enduring months—years—waiting for another man to show up and claim her child.

“I’m going to Manhattan,” Ian said. “I’ll talk to everyone who knew her. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“It’s my responsibility.”

“Why?”

“Because Wren is mine. You’re her . . . her fairy godfather.”

He finally looked at her, but there was a distance about him, as if they’d only recently met.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“About many things, yes. But not about this.”

“I can handle it alone.”

“I’m sure you can, but why should you?”

Because that’s how she would be raising Wren. Alone.

*

Ian surprised her by setting off a few hours later. Something about his manner—an aloofness that hadn’t been there a few days ago—made her uneasy. She told herself to ignore it. She needed to stop trying to read his thoughts and focus on her own life. That meant moving into the cabin permanently.

It didn’t take long to transfer the rest of their belongings. She worked on her notes for tomorrow night’s community meeting, but mainly she held her tiny, cranky baby and tried not to think about the uncertainty that lay before them.

Even with the drapes shut that night, she imagined Brad Winchester peering through the windows, and she hated that he’d made her so skittish. As she lay in bed, she missed Ian, and not only for their sex life. She missed talking to him, being with him.

Wren didn’t seem to like the cabin any better than Tess—or maybe she missed Ian, too—because she fussed on and off all night.