Christopher had given him a measuring look that contained wariness, doubt and, maybe, just maybe, a little happiness at all the possibilities ahead of them.
Marshall would have to work for those possibilities, he knew. As if to confirm the thought, Christopher tilted his jaw up. “Yeah, but what if I don’t want some weird cop for a dad?”
“I can try not to be so weird, I guess. But as for the rest, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it. I’m a cop to the bone. Don’t know if I can be anything else.”
“I guess that’s okay,” Christopher said, and Marshall had to fight a smile of pure happiness.
After a few more moments of talking, Marshall sensed Herm, Louise and Christopher needed a little time alone to absorb the shocking grenade he had just tossed into their world.
As he said his goodbyes, Christopher walked him to the door. At the last moment, Marshall reached out and hugged the boy. To hell with what he should or shouldn’t do or what Christopher might want. To his great joy, his son had hugged him back, just for a moment, before he stepped away.
“I never thought I wanted children,” Marshall had admitted to his son, that raw emotion back in his throat and chest. “I had no idea until I found you how very wrong I was.”
Now, as he made his way to his house, he couldn’t wait for Andie to get home. He wanted to tell her everything, the entire word-for-word conversation.
He wanted to hold her close and tell her she was right and to thank her for showing him by example how to find the strength and courage he needed to move forward with the hard choices he had needed to make.
To his disappointment, the house was empty of all but Sadie and her slinky black feline friend, who peeked around the corner when he walked in the back door, stared at him for a long moment out of hypnotic green eyes, then bounded back to parts unknown.
He stood for a moment, knowing the last half hour had changed his life irrevocably—and Christopher’s, as well.
How would he tell his mother? His sisters? Elliot?
He didn’t want to rush into anything. After the DNA test results, when all the formalities had been followed, he would sit his family down and explain the situation.
He didn’t question how they would respond. The Baileys would embrace his son completely. He knew his family and he had no doubt whatsoever. Charlene would be in ecstasy to have someone else to fuss over and Uncle Mike would probably want to give the kid a job down at the body shop, just like he’d done for Elliot, Marshall and Wyatt. As for Wyn and Katrina, he imagined his sisters would instantly be crazy about Christopher, not least of which because he looked so very much like Wyatt.
Wyn would sob when she saw him, and Kat would probably want to teach him to drive in her little sports car, and both of them would spoil him horribly.
That wasn’t even counting all the other great-aunts and uncles and cousins who lived in Lake Haven County.
Poor kid. He would have so much family he wouldn’t know what to do with it.
How would the kid feel about adding a younger stepbrother and stepsister to their little tribe?
The thought came out of nowhere and Marshall had to grip the edge of the table as a deep yearning just about knocked him over.
Whoa. That wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going to marry anyone, especially not a lovely widow who had told him in blunt, unmistakable terms that he was the worst possible man in Haven Point for her. She didn’t want to marry another police officer with the accompanying risks and he had already established that he couldn’t imagine being anything else.
That sharp ache seemed to have lodged permanently in his chest at the heartbreaking impossibility of the situation. He wanted Andie in his life and he wanted Will and Chloe as well, while she wanted a different man than he could ever be.
The doorbell rang suddenly. His pulse jumped, but he knew instantly it couldn’t be Andie. For one thing, she had a key and wouldn’t need to ring the doorbell. For another, Sadie—normally so sweet and easygoing—snarled and hurried to the front door, where she waited, hackles raised, for Marshall to make his way down the narrow hallway on his crutches.
When he opened the door, Marshall stared. “Jackie! What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
It didn’t take a crack detective to recognize someone who had reached a precipice and stumbled over the edge. She wasn’t wearing a coat, despite the weather, just a shirt with the buttons not quite matched up. Her hair was wild, tangled, in a crooked ponytail that looked as if it hadn’t been combed in at least two or three days and the circles he had noted a week earlier under her eyes looked several shades darker.
“Come in. What’s wrong?” he asked again.