A somber cloud spread over the four of them with its dark reminder that this wasn't strictly a happy occasion of father meeting son. Gage had a decision to make and he needed to make it soon so Robbie could get settled in the home where he'd live for the next eighteen years with his permanent parent.
Lauren announced it was Robbie's nap time. She left the room, disappearing into the back of the house to perform the mysterious ritual of "putting him down" and returned after ten minutes, her eyes puffy and red, as if she'd been crying.
"He's so precious." She sniffed. "It's so unfair. I can't tell you how it breaks my heart that he's lost his mother."
"It's hard for me, too," Gage admitted quietly. "My son should have a mother. Yet if Briana hadn't died, I might never have known about Robbie."
It was the most brutal sort of turnabout and it was definitely not fair play. But Cass couldn't argue that fate had set that pendulum in motion. And the swings had widened to encompass her, as well.
Gage held out his hand to Lauren. "Thank you for opening your home to him."
"I wouldn't have done anything else." Lauren shook Gage's hand solemnly and didn't let go as she caught his gaze to speak directly to him. "I love him. He's my nephew, first and foremost, and we will always share that bond of blood. But you're his father. That's something I can't be to him and I'm prepared for whatever decision you make. Please, take twenty-four hours, though. Make a decision you can live with forever."
Nodding, Gage squeezed Lauren's hand and turned to go, ushering Cass out the door ahead of him. His touch on her back was firm and warm and it infused her with the essence of Gage that she'd be a fool to pretend she didn't crave.
The best part was she didn't have to pretend. Instead of spending the weekend working Gage out of her system, something else entirely was happening and she couldn't wait to find out what.
He drove back to his mansion on the lake and helped her out of the Hummer, leading her up the flagstone steps to the grand entryway flanked by soaring panes of glass...all without asking if she planned to stay.
No way in hell was she going anywhere.
Throwing a frozen pizza in the oven passed for dinner, and an open bottle of Jack Daniel's managed to intensify the somberness that had cloaked them since leaving Lauren's house. They pulled up bar stools at the long, luminous piece of quartz topping the island in Gage's kitchen and ate.
Or rather, she ate and Gage stared into his rapidly diminishing highball filled with whiskey.
"I'd ask if you were okay," Cass commented wryly, "but that would be ridiculous under the circumstances. So instead I'll ask if you want to talk about it."
"He looks like Nicolas." Gage tossed the last of his Jack down his throat and reached for the bottle. "Robbie. He's the spitting image of my brother at that age. My mom had a shrine to her firstborn lining the hallway. Literally dozens of pictures stared down at me for eighteen years as I went between my bedroom and the bathroom. Today was like seeing a ghost."
"Oh, Gage." More alcohol needed, stat. Her own Jack Daniel's disappeared as she sucked the bottom out of her glass through a straw. "That's..."
She didn't know what it was. Horrible? Morbid? Unfortunate? Gage had talked about Nicolas in college on occasion, so she knew the tragic story well. It had shaped a family into something different than might have been otherwise.
"It's a miracle." A small smile lit up Gage's features. "I never would have imagined... My son is a gift that I don't deserve. A piece of myself and my brother all wrapped up into one amazing little package."
The love and tenderness she'd seen at Lauren's house when he looked at his son appeared again in his expression, and it pierced her right through the heart. It was breathtaking on Gage, a man she'd longed to look at her that way, a man she'd been sure didn't care about anything. The fact that he'd shown a capacity for it was a game changer.
And she had a strong feeling she knew what that look signified. "You don't want to give up Robbie."
Gage shook his head. "I can't. It never sat quite right with me anyway, but once I saw him... I don't need twenty-four hours to decide. He needs me."
He wasn't going to walk away from his son. And she'd never been more proud of someone in her life.
That burst Gage's dam and he started talking about Robbie. How was it possible that a man becoming a father before her very eyes could be so affecting? But it was. Gage's decision opened up a part of her inside that flooded with something divine and beautiful.
They drifted to bed where they lay awake, facing each other in the dark, as she listened to Gage's plans for his impending fatherhood. There was no subject too inane, from the color of the walls in his son's new room to what kind of car Gage would buy him when he turned sixteen.
Cass smiled and bit back a suggestion that he let his son pick out his own car. Far be it from her to interrupt his flow. This was his way of working through it and her job was to be there for him. It was nice to be needed by the one man who had never needed her. Heady even.
"Thank you," he said abruptly. "For coming on short notice. For holding my hand. For not heaping condemnation and a sermon on top of me. I had to figure this out and I couldn't have without you."
What, like he was expecting her to shake her finger at him and give him a lecture about accepting responsibility? She shook her head. "You're giving me too much credit. I just responded to a phone call. You did the hard part."
"No. I don't do hard." His voice went scratchy but he blazed ahead. "I get out before anything difficult happens. Back at your house, that was supposed to be about burning off the tension so we could focus. It wasn't supposed to be the start of something. I don't do relationships. You know that, right?"
That was the first time she'd ever heard him admit he had a commitment problem. Admitting it was the first step toward curing it, right?
"Yeah. I knew it wasn't anything more than sex."
"What if I want it to be?" he asked, sincerity warming his voice and curling through her in the dark. It was as if he'd read the same question in her heart and voiced it out loud.
"What if you do?" she heard herself repeat when she should have been saying so what? Or this is goodbye right now. "Have things changed?"
Please, God. Let that be true and not a huge mistake.
His hand found hers, threading their fingers together, and the rightness of it drifted through her like a balm. She could listen to him talk all night long if this was the topic.
If she hadn't gotten in the car when he asked her to come to Austin, she'd never have gotten to watch this monumental shift in Gage.
"So many things," he repeated quietly. "I'm not even sure how yet. The formula... I wasn't going to give up. I wanted it and I was going after it. But somewhere along the way, I started to want more."
The earth shifted beneath the bed, sliding away faster and faster as her mind whirled, turning over his words, searching for the angle, the gotcha. "What are you saying, Gage? That you want to keep seeing each other?"
He spit out a nervous laugh. "Why not? I like spending time with you. I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual or I'm much worse at this kind of thing than I think I am."
"You have a lot going on right now," she said cautiously. "Maybe this isn't the best time to be talking about this."
"I am worse at this than I thought if I'm not making myself clear. Let's see how it goes. I'll come up to Dallas. You drive to Austin. We talk on the phone during the week. Maybe a video chat late at night that involves some dirty talk. I don't know. I've never done this before."
She could envision it. Perfectly. Sexting during a conference call and naughty emails and rushing to throw her overnight bag into her Jaguar for a Friday night dash to the Hill Country in anticipation of a long weekend in Gage's bed.
But for how long? And what would happen when he ditched her again, as he surely would? "I don't know how to do that either."
His sigh vibrated through her rib cage. "Yeah. Robbie changes everything."
That was so not what she'd meant. "Why, because you think you being a father is a turn-off? Think again."
"It should be. My life will never be the same. It's ridiculous to even say something like ‘let's see how things go.' I already know where I'm going. Play dates, preschool, the principal's office and Cub Scouts."