Claiming His Secret Son(50)

Just today, he’d done something she was certain he’d never contemplated within the range of possibilities.

He’d taken them shopping.

She’d agreed only after he’d promised no splurging. After the fact, she’d kicked herself for not defining splurging. To him, it could be keeping it under a million dollars.

As it had turned out, she shouldn’t have worried.

Thinking they were shopping—rightfully so—with the genie of the lamp, the kids had asked for things they wouldn’t dare ask of their family. She’d bated her breath, hating to have to shoot him down in front of them if he succumbed to their demands. But he’d only given them the most subtle but stern lesson in needless excess and its detriments. After that, they’d let him choose, and he’d picked reasonably priced stuff they’d been delighted with, but would also truly enjoy and benefit from.

Mauri was the one who didn’t ask for anything, excessive or otherwise. He was overwhelmed each time Richard picked something out for him that he revealed he’d intensely wished for. What he’d never asked her for. Mauri never asked for anything, as if he was aware of her burdens and never wanted to add to them, even when she entreated and cajoled him to ask for anything. It forced her to try to predict his desires. Clearly very inaccurately. It upset and stirred her in equal measure that Richard, after such short if intense acquaintance, was the one to read him so accurately.

After the shopping for the kids was concluded, she told Richard he was forbidden from buying the adults anything. He again said she didn’t have a right to dictate terms on the others’ behalf. She grudgingly conceded that his relationship with her family should remain independent of theirs.

Especially since that was now nonexistent.

Ever since he’d come offering his so-called alliance, there’d been no hint of the voracious predator he’d been. Each day, each hour that passed without him bringing up his desire for a continuation of their affair left her partially relieved...but wholly distraught. For she wanted him now, this new him she could admire and respect, far more than she’d ever wanted him before. But it seemed her earlier assumption had been correct. The reality of her being the mother of his son, the domesticity of her life situation, seemed to have doused his passion irreversibly.

Just as she was considering putting herself out of her misery and asking him what his intentions were, she found Rose and her family right in their path.

Rose hadn’t asked her about Richard again. To her relief. And astonishment. Isabella surmised she hadn’t because she feared Isabella knew nothing about his real identity, and didn’t want to cause him trouble since he was hiding it. Following the same rationalization, Rose probably wouldn’t bring up her suspicion again in everyone’s presence.

As Jeffrey and their kids, Janie and Robbie—named after Rose’s mother and brother, Janet and Robert, as Isabella only now realized—rushed to greet them, Rose stood behind, staring at Richard. Richard, after shaking hands with Jeffrey at Isabella’s brief introduction, stared back.

After her mother and sister took the kids and went to the food court, only the four of them remained. Jeffrey’s animated conversation petered out when he realized it was a monologue and finally noticed the turmoil in his wife’s eyes as she stared at the stranger.

Before he could react, Rose threw herself at Richard, clung to him with all her strength.

Isabella’s lungs almost burst. Richard looked as if he’d turned to stone the moment Rose touched him.

Then Rose’s incoherent whimpers started to make sense. “Don’t tell me you’re not Rex...don’t you dare.”

Richard squeezed his eyes shut, bared his teeth as if straining under an unbearable weight.

Rose suddenly pulled back, features shaking out of control, eyes reddened and pouring tears as she grabbed his arms in trembling hands. “You’re my brother. Say it.”

Richard breathed in sharply, emptied his massive chest on a ragged exhalation and nodded. “I’m your brother.”

A sob tore out of Rose’s depths and she flung herself at Richard again. Among the cacophony filling her ears, Isabella heard Jeffrey exclaiming a string of hells and damns.

As Rose wept uncontrollably, mashing her face into her brother’s chest, this time Richard contained her in his great embrace, stroked her gleaming head soothingly, his hands trembling. Isabella remembered to breathe only when she felt the world dimming.

Richard had decided to stop hiding, to let his sister have him back.

A week ago she’d asked him why he’d never done that. He’d said so he wouldn’t taint Rose’s life with his darkness. When she’d said that same fear should apply to her and her family, he’d assured her he’d installed every precaution, would never impact them negatively in any way. When she’d countered he should do the same with Rose and come clean to her and his response had been a silent glance, she’d figured it was only a matter of time before he did.