Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [149]
“You’re still in love with my sister,” she whispered so faintly he barely heard the words. Her face was ashen, her eyes haunted, agony evidenced in her expression.
“Oh, no, Maggie. It’s not as simple as that.” He plowed stiff fingers through his hair and took another deep drag.
“Then what?”
“It’s that the last time I saw Mary Theresa she dropped a bomb on me.”
“What kind of bomb?” Maggie asked.
It’s now or never, he thought angrily as he stared down at the tortured face of the only woman he’d ever loved. “Mary Theresa told me that she and I have a son.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What?” Maggie felt her face drain of color. Her legs wobbled and she dropped onto the arm of the couch. This was a lie. It had to be. If Mary Theresa had ever had a baby, she would have said something. Wouldn’t she? “No…wait a minute—”
“That’s right. He’s a teenager now. Conceived before we broke up; a boy I didn’t know existed until the last time I saw her.”
“But Mary Theresa wouldn’t have kept this from me. From you.” Her throat was dry, her palms itched.
“No? Come on, Maggie. This is Mary Theresa…Marquise we’re talking about.” His lips compressed with nearly twenty years of raw emotion, nearly two decades of deception. “You know she’s lied to us both.” His eyes found hers and she saw the naked pain—the torment he’d dealt with for years.
“And that’s what your fight was about?” she guessed, feeling sick inside. The expression of pure hell on Thane’s face convinced her that he wasn’t lying, wasn’t making this up just to gain some kind of misguided sympathy. His mouth was tight, his eyes dark and narrowed on the fireplace, but she was certain he didn’t see the marble facade; Thane’s view was turned inward to a murky nightmare only he could see.
“Sixteen years,” he said as the cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers. “Sixteen years of my boy’s life. Lost.” His eyes found Maggie’s again. Guilt, hurt, and a quiet, seething rage burned deep in his gaze.
Maggie shuddered knowing in an instant that she was going to hear something she’d rather not, a deep secret that Thane had kept hidden to the world.
“You don’t know much about me.”
“I think I know enough—”
“No, Maggie. You don’t understand. I grew up in a small town in Wyoming with an old man who drank too much and, when he wasn’t screwing other women, beat up on my mother. Fine guy, hard worker when he was sober; a mean son of a bitch when he drank, which he did a lot.
“I can’t tell you how many times Mom would have to drive into town and pull him out of a tavern, and when she did, she was repaid with a fist to her face.” Thane’s eyes turned black. “But she always forgave him. Because of me. She didn’t even have an eighth grade education; couldn’t afford to leave the bastard, because of me and my brother.”
“Brother?” she repeated, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
“He’s dead. Car wreck. Had the same problem with alcohol Pa did.” Thane’s nostrils flared and one hand curled into a fist that was so tight it shook. “I swore that when I had a kid of my own, I would do it right. Nothing, and I mean nothing would stop me from being the best damned father on this planet. I’d raise him the way he was supposed to be brought up, knowing a father’s love, a mother’s nurturing, a parent’s sacrifice, but I didn’t get the chance. Mary Theresa made sure of that.”
“Dear God,” Maggie said, her heart bleeding for the pain this man had borne, the secrets that had ripped at his soul, the demons that tortured his brain. He sucked hard one last time on his filter tip, then squashed it in a planter. Smoke curled out of his nostrils and mouth.
Dropping her head into her hands she tried to think, to remember a time her sister could have hidden the fact that she was pregnant with Thane’s child. “So that’s why you married her. The first time when she was pregnant.”
He didn’t reply. His jaw slid to one side and he stared at her as if he would never stop.
“And now you have…she has…a son.” Maggie shivered inside. “And she never told you?”
“Not