beach with gray shaker siding and seagull wind chimes hanging from the front porch. Nothing like his house in Sausalito. Not even close to the place they’d shared together in San Francisco. But still, property in Moss Beach wasn’t cheap. He wondered how she had the funds for a place out here.
As he took in the small beach houses on the treeless street, he rubbed the dull ache in his chest with the palm of his hand. He wanted to see her, needed to see her. There were things he needed to say now that they knew for sure. He couldn’t sit around and wait for her to make the first move.
On legs more unsteady than he wanted to admit, he made his way up her walk, knocked on the door. When no one answered, he paused to listen. Voices echoed from the back of the house. Trying to figure out where they were coming from, he headed around the side.
The yards were unfenced. Grass gave way to sand, which bled into the Pacific. As he reached the back of Annie’s cottage, a young boy crouched in the grass playing with a pile of sticks stood up and stared at him with big, blue eyes.
Eyes that were just like Ryan’s eyes. Same shape, same color. The blond-haired boy even had the same shaped face.
“Um, hi,” Ryan managed when he could find his voice.
“You’re a stranger.” The boy turned and took off running. “Mama! A stranger!”
Mama? Ryan stepped out of the trees along the side of the house to get another look at the kid. He ran up to a woman seated on the sand. She turned and shielded her eyes from the sun to look back across the yard, then jumped to her feet.
The pair spoke for a moment. Then the boy shrugged and ran toward the house. He paused when he approached Ryan again, this time smiling, flashing that same dimple Ryan had seen so many times before on Mitch’s face, on Julia’s face, on Annie’s face. “Mama said I could watch cartoons.”
He disappeared into the house. The screen door slapped shut behind him.
Ryan’s pulse raced as he stood in the yard, sunglasses in hand, trying to figure out what the hell he’d just seen. No way that was real. He mentally ticked off time in his mind as his gaze shifted across the sand to Annie. Words choked in his throat. Snapshots of their life together flashed behind his eyes, memories of a pregnancy that had only just begun before she’d left on that trip.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” she said as she approached slowly.
“Yeah, ah, I can see that.” He looked back toward the house, still too stunned to do anything but stare. “The boy…”
“He’s my son.” When Ryan looked her way again, she added, “I’m pretty sure he’s your son, too.”
“My…” he swallowed hard “…son?”
She crossed her arms over her middle, looking gorgeous and nervous a thousand other things he couldn’t describe because he was too wigged out to think clearly. “He was almost three years old when I woke up. He was born by cesarean when I was in that coma. He’s four, and he doesn’t know anything about this yet. I haven’t told him about it, about you.” She hesitated. “He thinks his father died in that plane crash.”
Ryan couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the house. “I have a son.”
A son. A four-year-old boy who looked just like him. With his blue eyes and his blond hair and Annie’s silly dimple. His heart felt like it kick-started right there in his chest. A son he hadn’t once let himself dream about over the years because it was too painful to think of one more thing that he’d lost.
But he hadn’t lost him. He was here. He was as alive as Annie. He was…
A son who, after seeing him, he knew couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else. A son he was only just now finding out about. Over a week after she’d come into his life.
The surprise and elation he’d originally felt morphed to confusion. He turned to face her. “You didn’t say anything. All this time, and you didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t know for sure until yesterday. I still don’t. I didn’t have him tested.”
“You’re pretty sure now.”
“I’ve a strong hunch. It’s not the same.”
“A strong hunch. It doesn’t take a strong hunch to see he looks just like me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Dammit, all this