The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [717]
“We should speak of this later, Tyler. This is between us. Please.”
Sam looked down at his plate, his small face drawn, pale in the dim kitchen light.
“All right then,” Tyler said. “I’m going to put Sam down with a blanket in the living room, on that real comfortable sofa. What do you think, Sam?”
Sam didn’t tell them what he thought.
“I’ll be right back, Becca.”
He scooped Sam up off his phone books and carried him out of the kitchen. She shivered. The house felt uncomfortably cool. She hoped Sam would be warm enough with just one blanket. She hoped Sam had gotten enough to eat. She wished Tyler had wiped Sam’s fingers off better.
What was she going to do? Was she the one off base here? Had she given Tyler the wrong impression? She’d known he was jealous of Adam, and that’s when she had pulled back from him, even cooling her friendship toward him. But still he’d misunderstood, still he’d come to believe that she wanted to be his wife. How could it be possible? She’d said nothing, done nothing, to give him that idea. And he was using Sam, which was despicable of him.
Sam. What was she going to do? There was something very wrong, triggered, she supposed, by Krimakov’s kidnapping of him. She heard Tyler walking back toward the kitchen. She had to clear this up, quickly and cleanly. She had to think what she could do to help Sam.
She’d gotten the name of a really good child psychologist in Bangor from Sherlock. She would start there.
But she didn’t have a chance to start anything because Tyler said from the doorway, “I love you, Becca.”
32
“No, Tyler, no.”
Tyler just smiled at her, an intimate smile that chilled her to the bone. “I’ve loved you from that first time I saw you in Hadley’s freshman dorm at Dartmouth. You were looking lost, wondering where to find a bathroom.”
She smiled at that, no recollection at all of that meeting. “You didn’t love me, Tyler. You dated lots of girls in college. You married Sam’s mother, Ann. You loved her.”
He came into the kitchen and sat down across from her. “Sure I loved her for a while, but she left me, Becca. She left me and she didn’t plan to come back. She was even going to take Sam, but I didn’t let her.”
What was he talking about? Of course things couldn’t have been smooth between them, since Ann had ended up leaving him. They’d faced off about it? There’d been a confrontation? But that didn’t concern her now. She said, “I’m really sorry if you’ve gotten the wrong idea, Tyler. Please believe me. I am your friend and I hope I always will be. I would like to see Sam grow up.”
“Since you’re going to be his mother, of course you’ll see him grow up. You’ll make him well again, Becca. He’s been silent and withdrawn ever since his mother left.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure, if you’re going to make some.” He watched her measure the coffee into the machine, then pour in the water. He watched her press the switch, watched it turn red.
“Tell me about Ann,” she said, wanting him to remember the woman he’d loved, distract him from her. Why had Ann left him? Had there been another man? Why hadn’t she taken Sam with her? So what if Tyler had tried to fight for custody? Sam was still her child, not his. But she had just run away without him.
Tyler was still watching the coffeemaker. She watched him breathe in the aroma. Finally, he said, “She was beautiful. She’d been married to a guy who left her the minute he found out she was pregnant. We hooked up kind of by accident. She couldn’t get the gasoline cap off her car. I helped her. Then we went to Pollyanna’s Restaurant.” He shrugged. “We got married a couple months later.”
“What happened?”
He said nothing for a very long time. “The coffee’s ready.”
She poured each of them a cup.
He took a drink, then shrugged. “She was happy and then she wasn’t. She left. Nothing more, Becca. Listen, I swear I’ll make you happy. You won’t ever want to leave. We can have more kids, yours and mine. Sam was Ann’s kid anyway.”
“I