On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [119]
“I don’t know. I never really planned that far ahead.”
The phone rang, startling them both. Devon lunged for it.
His face as he listened to whoever was on the other end gave Lilah heart palpitations.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, send them up, please.”
He set the phone down carefully.
“What is it?” Lilah cried.
“There’s somebody down in the lobby to see me.”
“Huh. Maybe there’s a New York casserole tradition you don’t know about.”
Devon was shaking slightly; Lilah could see it as he got up from the couch and moved to open the front door. He didn’t wait for a knock or a ring at the doorbell, he just opened the door wide and stood staring out into the hall, waiting for the elevator doors to open.
Afraid to hope, Lilah joined him.
When the chime sounded to announce the arrival of the elevator, Devon braced himself against the doorjamb. The doors shushed open, and Lilah heard a high voice shout, “Dad!”
Then a short, dark-haired form streaked across the hall and barreled into Devon.
Tucker.
Lilah’s knees almost buckled at the wave of relief.
There was a sound from down the hall, and she looked up to see a thin, blonde woman step slowly from the elevator. The woman’s face was lined with strain, almost haggard, and the look in her eyes when they fell on Devon and Tucker was full of enough regret to make Lilah’s heart go out to her.
Lilah walked forward, hand out, face expressionless. “Heather Sorensen, right?”
The woman started. “Yes. I’m sorry. You must be Lolly. Tucker told me all about you.”
“Has he been with you the whole time?” Lilah asked.
“Yeah. I mean, he called the rehab facility and asked me to come get him from a diner in Times Square where they let him use the phone . . . so I did. But as soon as I had him, all he did was talk about Devon. He wanted to come back almost as soon as he left, I think, but he got lost. So here we are.”
Dull pain throbbed through Heather’s voice during her brief recital of the facts, but Lilah wasn’t quite ready to pull out her hankie and dab the woman’s tears away.
“How did you get out of rehab?” she demanded. “I thought it was court-ordered, not the kind of thing you could check yourself out of.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Heather said. “But Tucker called. His voice on the phone . . . he wasn’t happy.” She shrugged. “What could I do? I’m not perfect, I know that. I’ve done stupid things, taken stupid chances—I probably don’t deserve to call myself his mom. But if I’d gotten that call and refused to listen to my son—I couldn’t do that.”
You could’ve called to let us know he was okay, Lilah wanted to say. But somehow, despite the frantic panic of the past few hours, Lilah couldn’t bring herself to beat up on this sad, struggling woman. Heather was like a cornfield after a storm, beaten and bent almost to the ground, but not quite broken.
“You’re not as bad a mother as you seem to think,” Lilah said gently. “Tucker loves you very much.”
Heather looked past her to where her son was still clinging to his father. Devon had lifted him up against his chest and lowered his head to Tucker’s ear. Lilah couldn’t hear them, but she could imagine the words Devon was saying. Her heart swelled. Devon’s arms were strong around Tucker’s back, their dark heads close together.
She glanced at Heather in time to see the woman lower her eyes. “I love him, too,” she said, her voice thready. “But he needs to be with his dad right now. He’s smart enough to know that. And so am I.”
When Devon could breathe through the crushing weight of joy he’d pulled up to his chest along with his son’s slight, squirming form, he gasped out, “Don’t ever do that to me again. I’m serious. This dad stuff is new to me, but I’m telling you now, I can’t take it.”
Tucker had called him “Dad” when he ran out of the elevator, Devon thought. It was the first time he’d ever done that.
“You said it was only temporary,” Tucker said, plaintive, but with an edge of stubbornness. “I heard when you were talking to Lolly, down the stairs. You said it wasn’t real, we weren’t a real