The Newcomer (Thunder Point #2)(68)

“Thanks, Cooper.”

“My pleasure.”

Then he joined Sarah. He leaned back and propped his feet up on the opposite chair.

“I think you like this life,” she said.

“What’s not to like? A night in May by the ocean. And you right beside me.” He looked at her. “Landon will be out late. We can sneak upstairs.” He gave her a purely lascivious grin. “For a while.”

“You haven’t told me how your family reacted to your news. I’m dying to hear about that.”

“Oh, right.” He sat up straighter. “It was classic. My father was speechless and my mother started to cry. Austin is the same age as one of my nephews. Our conversation was a little awkward—they wanted details on how Bridget got pregnant six or eight months or a year after we broke up. I did the best I could with that—told them we’d called off the engagement but still saw each other sometimes. You know—old habits are hard to break. My mother said, ‘Henry Cooper!’ at least once. I tried to put Spencer in a good light—he and Bridget had been dating, but hadn’t gotten too serious until... Well, you know. But word spread and my sisters got in touch. They were ruthless—each one of them called me. They wanted all the intimate details of everything! They wanted to know who was sleeping with whom and when.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I told each one of them that the only really important things is that I was never, at any time, sleeping with Spencer. If you come from a family like mine, it is impossible to have a personal life.”

She pulled up her feet, circling her knees with her arms and resting her chin on her knees. “Are they happy with the news?”

“I think they’re a little too intrigued by the biology of it all. I promised to take Austin to meet them sometime. Probably this summer.”

“Aren’t you a little intrigued with the biology?”

He shook his head. “I have it figured out. The important thing is that Spencer has it figured out, too. Our engagement had been broken off for over six months and even though I blew into town sometimes, she was moving on. I knew that even if I didn’t take her seriously enough. She’d been dating—she’d met someone she really liked a lot. And if you knew the Bridget I knew... She was extremely straightforward and honest, almost to a fault. Had she known, she would have told us both.”

“But have you wondered about—”

“I was tested, Sarah....”

“No, I mean, others? Have you wondered if this is the only time, the only one?”

He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, looking up at the sky. “The truth is, I did a memory check. It’s possible there was a miracle before I met Bridget, and I say miracle because I was always careful. Responsible. Not because I’m some angel, but because I wasn’t looking to get tied down. And I know this is probably hard to believe, but I never liked one-night stands. Seemed like I either had no woman in my life or I specialized in brief engagements. That all came to an end after Patti. I was a monk after that one.”

“Oh?” she said, peering at him.

“It didn’t feel good, Sarah. I can’t blame anyone but myself, but it wasn’t... Hmm, how do I put this? An optimal experience?”

“You get over that?”

He reached over and gave her back a gentle rub. “Oh, yeah. I think it’s highly improbable there were any other unknown children from my past. You know what I think about a lot more? That I might’ve never known about him. If Bridget had lived a long and happy life, they might not have known. Or even under the circumstances, they could have decided not to tell him. Or me. Most families are notorious secret keepers if not outright liars. Everyone in my family hides Aunt Mercedes’s tippling and we don’t talk about Grandpa’s earlier years—the ones where he had this other family, the one he left to make our family.”

She laughed. “Are those some of your family secrets?”

“They’re not secrets, they’re just things we don’t talk about in front of Aunt Mercedes or Grandma and Grandpa. And I’m sure there are lots more—I have three sisters. My mom and the girls—they love that stuff. They trade in secrets. Dad and I are kind of...” He shrugged as if to say Who cares?

“He’s cute...Austin. What a happy kid. I mean, after all he’s been through lately, he sure knows how to have a good time.”

“You have to remember, he’s known about me for months—Bridget and Spencer told him long before they told me. And that other awful thing—losing his mother. He’d been losing her for a long time. On some level it might have been a relief for him to be a kid again, not worried and sad every day.”

“He reminded me of Landon at that age.”

“Really?”

“It was probably the hardest time of my life and yet the most fulfilling. He was only five when we lost our parents. I wrestled him away from mean old Aunt Frances when he was six and I struggled adapting to the life of a single mother who was also a Coast Guard pilot. It was so hard to keep up with everything—so hard to take care of him, be a parent, get to the school and sport events, find the right people to keep him overnight or after school. But he was the light of my life—so funny and smart and...and...he just loved me so much, even when I was inadequate. Oh, and I so often felt inadequate!”