Second Chance Family - Cindy Kirk Page 0,63
the look in her eyes. At first he worried that something had happened to Charlie, until the little boy burst around the corner and tackled him.
“Everything okay?” he asked in a low tone over the top of Charlie’s head.
In response she cast a pointed glance at Charlie. “We’ll talk later.”
Cole didn’t want to wait. But it appeared he didn’t have a choice, not with Charlie happily chattering about all the things he’d done while Cole had been in town, and tugging on his hand, asking him to play Lincoln Logs with him.
He placed the sack of learning supplies for Charlie on the side table in the foyer, keeping the smaller sack with him.
“I need to drop something off in my room,” he said to Charlie, “then we’ll play.”
Meg pulled a phone from her pocket. “You might as well take this with you. It’s yours.”
“Sorry ’bout that.” Cole grabbed an identical one from his coat pocket and handed it to her. “I didn’t realize I’d taken yours until Ryan and I were already in Jackson.”
She didn’t smile or make a joke about him stealing her phone. Instead, as they exchanged phones, her gaze kept shifting from him to Charlie.
If Cole didn’t know better, he’d think she suspected… Nah, that was simply his overactive imagination mixed with a large dose of guilt.
Still, as he headed to his bedroom, his sixth sense told him something was wrong and it involved him and Charlie. Surely his attorney wouldn’t have sent something to the house. Cole had made it very clear to Brian that any communication regarding Charlie’s paternity was to be by email or phone only.
Phone.
Cole stepped inside his bedroom and pulled the door shut. Only then did he pull out his phone, the one Meg had returned to him only moments before. He went immediately to the recent calls. When he saw Brian Danaher’s name at the top of the list, Cole’s heart stopped.
Taking several deep, steadying breaths, he hit Redial.
“Brian,” he said immediately when the attorney answered. “It’s Cole.”
“I bet you’ve been doing some celebrating today.”
“Celebrating?”
“About the positive DNA test results.” Brian paused. “How much of what I told you did you hear?”
“Remind me what you said.” Cole dropped down to sit on the bed. “I want to make sure I heard it all.”
“Well, to summarize—you are the boy’s father. I’ve emailed the paper to petition for sole custody,” Brian said. “Like we spoke about before, we’ll need to do another DNA test following the strict chain-of-custody protocol for it to hold up in a court of law.”
“About those papers,” Cole said. “I’m going to hold on to those for now.”
“You said earlier that you wanted to move quickly on the custody issue.” Brian’s tone was filled with puzzlement. “Is something wrong?”
A sick feeling filled the pit of Cole’s stomach. “I really hope not.”
Chapter Seventeen
The next five hours were the longest ones of Cole’s life. He was hypersensitive to every look, every comment.
Like at dinner when Meg said, “I noticed before that you and Charlie are both left-handed.”
Charlie didn’t make things any better when he proudly announced that his hair stuck up in the back just like his uncle Cole’s.
Though Cole had planned to have a very different conversation with Meg this evening, while he picked at his food over dinner, he tried to convince himself that it was good they were having this conversation now. Now that it had been confirmed Charlie was his son…
Shifting his gaze from the log cabin he was building on the floor, Cole settled it on the little boy, overcome with love for this child of his.
When he finally looked up, he found Meg staring. Her expression gave nothing away, but the flash of pain in her eyes before her lids dropped told the story.
He prayed he could make her understand. If not, he feared that the life he wanted—the one that had been within reach only this morning—would be gone.
When Charlie’s bedtime rolled around, the three of them took turns reading from an age-appropriate storybook. Tonight it was Charlie’s favorite, the one about farm animals.
Cole had informed her that a dyslexic child’s reading could be improved if they read aloud. It had something to do with activating the “Broca’s area” in the child’s brain, which remembers speech muscle movement.
But instead of admiration over his desire to help the boy, all Meg felt toward Cole was disgust. How could he have lied to her? How could he have made her believe that he wanted them to