Finding Their Son (11 page)

Char rubbed her back supportively. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” Carly said. “I lied earlier. I’m not going to a meeting at the hospital. I’ve decided to move your aunt to a full care facility. Her primary physician has been advocating this for several months, but I couldn’t bring myself to consider it.”

Eli looked at Char to see her reaction to the news. “To be honest, Carly, I expected this months ago. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. I only wish there was more I could do. If you need me to stay…”

Carlinda shook her head. “You’re a doll. Thanks for offering, but everyone says it’s best for the patient if we make this a clean break. Once Pam enters the home, I’m taking a cruise through the Greek isles.”

The two embraced then, heads touching. “You’ve fought this disease with every weapon in your arsenal, Carly. Now it’s time for Pam to follow her path, and you to stay on yours. No one will judge you for that.”

The self-imposed locks Eli had clamped over his heart sprang open like a child’s jack-in-the-box toy. He’d never met anyone as kind and generous of spirit as Char. He liked her. A lot.

But it was also clear a few minutes later when they
entered a spectacular suite of rooms on the second floor with a knock-your-socks-off view of the Bay Bridge that Char’s patience and goodwill didn’t extend quite as magnanimously to her aunt.

“Hi, Aunt Pam,” Char said cordially. “It’s me. Charlene.”

There was a nasally twang to her pronunciation that he’d never heard before. “How are you? Same great view. Boy, I bet this never grows old, huh?”

She walked straight to the whiskey-color leather chair where a small, stocky woman with short gray hair was sitting. Dressed in a navy-blue jogging suit and Uggs, her aunt appeared as normal as any of them. Until she turned her head to look in their direction. Then Eli saw that something was missing. Any spark of recognition for one thing.

A woman in her mid-forties wearing baggy white pants and a brightly colored smock acknowledged them from the doorway of an adjoining room but pointed to the cell phone she had to her ear. Eli had the feeling the call was from one story below them. The nurse gave a little wave and closed the door between the two rooms.

Eli appreciated the privacy. Bad enough he had to interview a woman who was obviously in a place far, far away from reality without airing his and Char’s dirty laundry for a crowd.

“Aunt Pam, I brought someone along to see you. This is Eli Robideaux. He went to school with me. Back in South Dakota,” she added, motioning him closer.

He took off his jacket and joined Char on the leather sofa adjacent to her aunt’s chair. The grouping was situated to take advantage of the view.

“Hello, Miss Jones. Nice to see you again.”

“Miss Jones?” her aunt repeated. She looked at Char in obvious confusion.

“That’s your last name, Auntie. Pam Jones.”

“Pamela Edwina. After my father.”

Char looked at him in surprise. “That’s right. Granddad’s name was Edward. I’d forgotten. Do you remember my mother’s name? Your baby sister.”

“Charlene?”

“Nope. That’s me. My mother’s name was Gloria. You called her Glory.”

The tiny glimmer in the woman’s eyes went out.

Char made a couple more attempts to connect with her aunt, but it was obvious to Eli that her patience had been tapped out.

He cleared his throat. “I think I could use another cup of coffee, if the offer is still open.”

“You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

“I’m giving you an out before you turn into the bad cop.”

Her smile seemed genuine again. “I keep remembering the way she was. ‘A force to be reckoned with,’ my mom used to call her. Once Pam decided on a course of action, there was no stopping her.”

He heard a hint of anguish in her tone.

“You make her sound like a bully.”

Char stared at the woman who appeared to have no interest in them whatsoever. Pam’s gaze never left the horizon, which was finally showing hints of sunlight as the fog burned off.

“Honestly? I hated her for a really long time. When Mom married her last husband and moved to Arizona, I moved in with my girlfriend’s family rather than live alone in the same house with Pam.” She looked at her aunt for
several heartbeats, then she sat up straighter and added, “In hindsight, that was probably mean, but it all worked out for the best. Pam met Carlinda at a medical conference and a few months later sold Grandma’s house and moved. She shared the money equally with Mom, Aunt Marilyn and me. She didn’t have to, but she did.”

“Out of guilt?”

She shrugged. “I doubt it.” To her aunt, she asked, “You never felt guilty about anything you did, did you?”

“Nope,” Pam answered, almost as if she knew what she was saying.

Char lingered a few minutes longer then jumped to her feet and hurried away. Eli scooted over to where she’d been sitting so he could face her aunt directly. Char’s warmth lingered on the leather and he savored the sensation for the tiniest of moments before reaching out to take the woman’s hands.

In a strange way, the disease that had ravaged Pam’s mind made her appear younger than Carlinda, who according to Char was the same age as her aunt. Everyday stress and worry was gone from Pam’s face. She seemed placid, lost in some other world beyond the veil.

“Pam,” he said. “I don’t expect you to remember me, but you do remember being a nurse-practitioner, don’t you? People counted on you to fix them up. I need your help now, Pam. Char had a baby boy. You were there for her. Can you think back to that time, Pam? When you lived in Pierre.”

“Pierre is the capital of South Dakota.”

A tiny zigzag of hope skittered through his extremities. He squeezed her hands gently. “That’s right. You lived
there. You took care of people. You helped Charlene give birth to your great-nephew.”

She looked straight into his eyes. “Black hair and blue eyes. Strangest thing I ever saw.”

Eli was reluctant to breathe for fear he’d lose their connection. “Who’d you give him to, Pam?”

Her gaze started to drift away. He squeezed her hands a tiny bit tighter.

“He flew away.”

“The baby?”

“The captain. He took the baby and flew away.”

The captain? A pilot? Maybe in the Air Force?
“What was the captain’s name? Do you remember?” Going on gut instinct he started rattling off men’s names. “John. Mark. Paul. Robert. Tony.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Italian.” She leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t tell Charlene. She made me promise he was Indian. Like you.”

The blood in Eli’s ears rushed noisily as adrenaline shot into his system. He might not have a name, but he had a start. And that was a helluva lot more than he’d had ten minutes ago.

She yanked her hands away and tried to get up. He could tell her balance wasn’t quite right. “Um…hello? Nurse? Help?”

The door to the next room opened and the attending nurse hurried over. “There you are, Pam. Are you ready for your walk? I hope so. The sun is out and I need some fresh air. But you still need a coat, my dear. No arguments.”

Eli moved out of the way and smiled his gratitude as the woman helped her charge toward the hall. They paused to
let Char enter. Char set down the cup she was carrying and gave her aunt a light hug. A moment later, she joined him.

“See?” she said, pointing to the view. “I told you the sun would come out.”

He took a drink of coffee. High-end. Better than the cup that cost them four bucks. “Does the hotel you booked have WiFi?”

She nodded. “Why?”

“We have a name. Sorta. Maybe.” He didn’t want to get her hopes up. “I wouldn’t take it to court, but my gut says it’s a lead worth following.”

She looked at him, a bemused smile on her lips. “Well, then, let’s go. And you know the best part?”

He shook his head.

“It’s downhill all the way…to the hotel,” she added with a hint of mischief.

T
HEY HAD A NAME
.

The pieces weren’t easy to come by, but slowly, after calling in a few favors, Eli had managed to put the puzzle together. He was ninety-nine point nine percent sure his and Char’s child was named Damien Martelli. The boy currently resided with his mother, Wanda Johnson, a widow, who had remarried six months earlier. The boy’s adoptive father, Anthony Martelli, had been career Air Force. He’d died in a plane crash while on active duty in Iraq two years ago. But what made this scenario so attractive, Anthony Martelli and his wife had lived at Ellsworth Air Force base, near Rapid City, South Dakota, from spring of 1990 to mid-1992.

“Can you believe it? He lives in Seaside,” Eli exclaimed, skimming down the map on the screen. “That’s only a few hours south of here.”

“Well, his mother does,” Char said, her excitement noticeably more restrained than Eli’s. “You know yourself that family dynamics change when a woman remarries.”

He paced to the window of their hotel room. They’d checked in four hours earlier, but the street six stories below seemed as busy as it had at noon. “True. But according to the father’s bio, Damien has two younger siblings.
And he’s only seventeen. I’d put money on him still living with his mother, even if there is a new dad in the picture.”

Char had read aloud from Colonel Martelli’s obituary, which had been published online in his hometown newspaper. There’d been a fuzzy photo of the fallen war hero’s burial in Arlington National Cemetery. A mother and her brood all in black. The tallest of the children was the same height as the woman.

“Do you have a current number for her?” Char asked.

She was sitting at the corner desk, her attention focused on the laptop. Her voice seemed strained.

They’d traded places back and forth all afternoon. Him on the laptop pursuing leads, her on the cell phone making calls. He’d watched her sweet talk and cajole, laugh and fume. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d had to walk into the bathroom to escape the attraction he felt toward her.

Like now. A part of him—a very foolish part—wanted to walk across the room and pull her into his arms. To celebrate. They’d done what they set out to do. They’d cracked the bureaucratic code. They’d found their child—or had a general idea of where and who he was. Weren’t they entitled to a couple of high fives and hugs? Maybe a kiss or two?

That was what he wanted. What he did was nothing. Because, damn it, Char deserved better than an emotional basket case looking for any port in a storm. He was a boatload of hazardous waste material rudderless on the crest of a tsunami.

Either that or you’re a durn coward.

“No,” he said sharply. Not
that
voice again.

She looked at him, her head tilted to one side. “Okay.
But Johnson is a pretty common name. Do I start at the top of the list and work my way down?”

“We could try one of the social networking sites. They’re really popular with teens. Damien might have a page.”

He pushed away from the window and paced to the middle of the room. “Is there a minibar?” he asked, walking to the double doors of a modern black enamel wardrobe.

Her left eyebrow arched questioningly. He knew that look. His grandmother had been a master of it. Without uttering a word she could make him stop dead in his tracks, usually keeping him from doing something he’d later regret.

“Fine. Where’s the water you bought?”

They’d made several stops on their trek to the hotel. At a chain pharmacy, Char taught him the tricks of traveling on a budget. “Distilled water is cheaper and better for you,” she’d said, handing him a plastic gallon jug. “Compare that to four bottles of fancy label springwater.”

He’d tucked the memory away to share with his daughters…if he ever got the chance.

“In the bathroom, next to the glasses,” she told him. “I filled the ice bucket while you were on the phone with your friend.”

As soon as they’d set up Char’s laptop, Eli had called in a favor from an old pal, Travis Turner. The two had met in the Marines. Travis, a self-proclaimed white honky from
Baaaston
, and Eli, the mysterious red man who pretty much kept to himself, had been rivals first, friends second. Travis was now employed by the Department of Defense.

Eli had prefaced his questions with, “Don’t ask,
amigo,
but I promise you this is personal and not a matter of national security.”

Within an hour, Eli had a list of possible names. A list that included one Anthony Martelli, U.S.A.F. (deceased).

Eli walked into the adjoining room. He almost embarrassed himself by losing the battle with the wrapper on the sealed plastic cup, but he managed to get the cellophane off by ripping it with this teeth. Three giant gulps later, his nerves were starting to settle. Until he looked in the mirror and saw Char watching him.

“What’s going on, Eli?”

“I’m not sure I want to do this,” he admitted. He hadn’t even realized the truth of the words until he said them out loud.

“Do what?”

“Contact the mom.”

Char threw out her hands in a what-are-you-talking-about gesture. “We have to go through her. If we show up in Seaside…Oceanside…whatever side and try to find him without talking to her first, we fall into the stalker camp. Not a place I want to be.”

He leaned his butt against the tile counter. The hotel was a lot nicer than he’d expected for the price. Char called it a boutique hotel and claimed she got excellent rates because she knew how to bargain. She knew a lot of things he didn’t know. But
he
knew what it was like to learn that the child you loved with all your heart belonged to someone else.

“This lady didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t deserve to have this bombshell dropped on her.”

Char entered the room and grabbed a plastic cup. With one smooth tearing action, she removed the cover and
filled it with water from the jug. “I can see your point, but you’re implying that we’re a bad thing. Like locust or the plague. Why can’t we be beneficial? You said yourself that blending families has its challenges.”

She had a point, but he couldn’t let go of the memory of the moment when E.J. uttered those terrible words: “You’re not my dad.”

“You’re a dad. You know you can’t shield your kids from every bad thing that might happen in their lives. Maybe the bad stuff builds character. Look at me—a bit crazy, but not completely wacko. And I had tons of moments growing up that would have made Dr. Phil puke.” She took a drink. “There was this one afternoon when my mom was in her room with her loser boyfriend, whom I loathed. I accidentally set the living-room carpet on fire and—this is where it turns ugly—Devon came running out of the bedroom naked.” Her face scrunched up in a way that epitomized disgust. “I honestly believed that men’s dicks were little red shriveled things that flapped around like the ear of a beagle.”

“There’s an image,” he said, wincing.

She took a step closer to him. “Fortunately,” she said, “you showed up at my aunt’s door a year or so later, and I got a more detailed, less-traumatic anatomy lesson.”

He groaned and let his chin drop to his chest. “Glad I could help.”

Her soft snicker was the only warning he had. “Me, too,” she said, suddenly right in front of him. She looked directly into his eyes. “If you hadn’t shown up that night, we wouldn’t be here now.” She paused to moisten her bottom lip. Sexy in an unpracticed way that went straight to his
groin. “And, no matter what happens, Eli, I know this is where I’m supposed to be.”

He could have argued with her. He had no idea where he was supposed to be. But did it matter? This is where he was. With her. And he’d been fighting this attraction he felt for her ever since that kiss in the parking lot.

Was that yesterday? he asked himself. Why did it feel as though they’d been on this journey for weeks, if not years? Maybe they had been—only far, far apart. Now, they were together.

He put his arms around her and pulled her close. Her body felt small but substantial, if that made any sense. He kissed her. Not fast and hard like the last time. Instead he savored her lips. Warm, wet from the water she’d drunk. Her bottom lip was fuller than the top. Her breath sweet and faintly minty.

“I have to warn you,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “When Bobbi left, she called me an emotional black hole. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She framed his face with her hands and smiled. “What do you get when you combine two emotional black holes together?”

He shook his head. “I’m not an astronomer. I don’t know.”

“Me, neither, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be cosmic.”

Was it possible to laugh and kiss at the same time? he wondered.
Hay-yell, yes. Hop to it, boy.

He froze, his lips an inch from hers. “There’s also a distinct possibility that I’m losing my mind.”

“I’ll pick up any pieces I find along the way. Come on. Let’s give the city voyeurs something to blog about.”

He had no idea what she meant by that comment, but
he let her take his hand and lead in the direction of the two queen-size beds. The corner room had large, double-hung windows, offering a view of the old U.S. Mint across the street. Char had opened the blinds to welcome in the brilliant sunlight that she’d so brilliantly predicted.

The sun had peaked hours ago and long shadows angled through the windows with a sultry golden color. She led him to the end of the bed but didn’t sit. Instead she walked to the desk where the laptop sat and purposefully closed the screen.

“This isn’t about Damien,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Agreed?”

Damien. A seventeen-year-old stranger made up of Char and him and the people who had loved and raised him.

As if reading his mind once more, she smiled. “We can discuss whether or not to contact him over dinner. In the meantime, I say we work up an appetite.”

His rational mind—the responsible cop who always did the right thing—hesitated. But honestly? What the hell good had that guy ever done for him? Screw responsible. He was going with his gut—or something damn close to his gut.

He leaned back, resting his elbows on the mattress. “Don’t you want to close the blinds?”

She slipped off her wool vest then pulled the hem of her black turtleneck sweater out of her jeans. “No, actually, I don’t. The last time I stayed here, I was one floor up on the other side of the building, but I remember thinking what I would have done if I hadn’t been alone.”

She unsnapped the waistband of her pants and slowly lowered the zipper.

Eli got hard from the sound. He shifted sideways so his arousal wasn’t quite as noticeable.

She wiggled out of her jeans and neatly folded them over the back of the desk chair. Her socks disappeared without her even bending over.

His mouth went dry when she turned to face him and started to peel her sweater upward. Pretty white belly. Not swimsuit-model flat. He liked her real woman shape. Her hips were rounded in a good way that fit her physique.

She hesitated a heartbeat before pulling off the top completely, but once she had she dropped it unceremoniously and stood, arms at her side, waiting.

He couldn’t move at first. He felt like a kid at Christmas who was given so many toys he didn’t know where to begin. But with a nudge from some inner coach, he cleared the distance between them like a predator falling on his prey. She didn’t flinch or show any sign of fear.

Instead of kissing her lips, he lowered his mouth to her neck an inch or so above her shoulder and softly sank his teeth into her flesh. Not enough to break the skin, of course, but enough to brand her with his wolf touch.

Wolf. His animal totem, his uncle had told him years and years ago. Some base, primitive part of his mind made room for that alter ego. He swept her into his arms, pleased by the way she fit against his heart. She wrapped one arm around his neck and held tight. The other gripped the material of his shirt.

He carried her to the bed. Not the one she’d selected. He wasn’t putting on a show for anyone in this city. If people wanted to watch, they were going to have to work for it. That was as much of an edge as he needed. Good,
old-fashioned lust was working just fine as an arousal factor.

“Coward,” she said in his ear. Teasing, but breathless.

He liked her breathless.

“We’ll see who the coward is when you’re naked.”

“I can’t wait.” She wiggled against him. Her breasts, squeezed as they were practically right below his nose, distracted him so much he nearly stumbled over his boots, which he’d kicked off earlier.

He went down on one knee on the mattress. “You’re dangerous,” he said, kissing her.

“I know,” she managed to mumble, despite kissing him back.

Her tongue dueled with his a moment, further distracting him. “Are you going to put me down?”

A flash of heat filled his face. For once, he was glad for his skin tone. “Yes, but I like you like this.”

“Like a plate for your dining pleasure?” she asked, referring he supposed to the proximity of her breasts to his mouth. He was certain he detected an edge of cynicism in her voice. He guessed she didn’t appreciate her body as the work of art it was.

“Close to my heart.”

She pulled back slightly to look him in the eyes. “You mean that?”

He did, but he only knew one way to prove it.

He kissed her again, deeply, exploring the nuances of her mouth, the energy and teasing nature of her tongue. The contact opened him up in ways he’d thought were closed forever. Shut down by pain and disappointment.

I could love this woman. Maybe I already do.

The words came as a revelation, but he managed to
keep them to himself. They barely knew each other. They might have made a kid together but that was a long time ago. And even then they’d been strangers. What was happening between them now was physical. For both of them. He was sure of it.

I
LOVE YOU
, E
LI
.