Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,104
and returned home. She’d taken Michael Sullivan’s death hard, but he knew her well enough to know that seeing anyone suffer the way Sullivan had would upset her badly.
He’d stayed with her last night, but he hadn’t wanted to be there when she awakened. He didn’t want to know what he would see in her eyes when she looked at him.
He’d been an idiot to think she would marry him. Claire would want love and commitment. She’d want happily ever after. He wouldn’t have the vaguest idea how to give her those things.
He glanced at the door, surprised to see his son standing in the opening. He got up from the weight bench, grabbed the towel off the rack, mopped his face and slung the towel around his neck.
“You’re up early.” He’d sent Mrs. McKenzie home when he’d come in this morning. Sam had still been sleeping. “You hungry?”
Sam eyed the heavy weights. “You’re really strong. Do you think I will be, too?”
“If you work at it. Staying in shape isn’t easy.”
“Mrs. McKenzie said you stayed with Claire last night. She said Claire was feeling bad.”
“Claire felt bad because one of her friends died.”
His expression turned somber. “Is she okay?”
“She will be. It takes a little time.”
He looked as if he knew exactly what that meant. “If you stayed at her house, you must not be mad at her anymore.”
He mopped at a trickle of sweat that ran down his chest. “I wasn’t mad at her.” It was the other way around. And after the way he’d botched things, he didn’t blame her. “We’ve both just been busy.”
“So she can come over sometime?”
Did he want her to? From the hopeful look on Sam’s face, he didn’t have much choice. “If she wants to.” Though he wasn’t sure she would.
“Claire likes you. Whenever I go over there, we talk about you a lot.”
Interest trickled through him. “That right? What’s she say?”
“She said you loved my mother very much. Did you?”
He had, but it seemed like another lifetime. “Yes. But it was a long time ago.” He thought of what Claire had told him. That Laura had ended their engagement in a way that would force him to go on with his life. To go after the dreams he would have given up for her. He hadn’t believed it at the time, but more and more he wondered if it could be true.
Was it possible to love someone that much?
Had Laura sacrificed everything for him?
Had he spent all these years keeping his emotions locked away for the wrong reasons?
“I’m gonna jump in the shower,” he said. “Then I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Okay.”
“You can watch TV till I get dressed, then you need to get ready for school.”
“Do you think someday you and Claire might get married?”
The words tightened a knot in his stomach. No chance of that happening now.
“I don’t think Claire wants to marry me.”
“If she did, would you?”
“I think you’d better go watch TV.”
Sam grinned and headed for the living room, flipped on the Disney channel.
Kids, Ben thought. They took some getting used to.
After a breakfast of French toast and bacon, Ben took Sam to school. He usually rode the bus, which made Ben a little nervous, but Sam was making friends and he wanted the boy to fit in with the rest of the kids at school.
Once in a while Ben liked to drive him. He enjoyed watching him mix with the other kids as they all poured into the school building. He liked the feeling of being a father. Sometimes he still found it hard to believe.
After he dropped Sam off, he thought about calling Claire, see how she was feeling. In the end, he just went into the office and started working on the security plan he had been hired to design for the Hamilton Medical Center.
Trace would take care of the alarm system, but it was Ben’s job to work out the number of security guards that would be needed, figure where they should be stationed and organize their routine.
He hoped he’d be able to concentrate enough to get the job done.
* * *
Claire worked hard all day, trying not to think of yesterday, trying not to wonder what progress the police had made in solving Michael’s murder. Michael had been searching for information. That was his job as a reporter. But digging so deeply into whatever he was working on had managed to get him killed.