Mad About You (29 page)

When she set down the pen, he said, "Now, Mr. Maybry, take us to our son."

"Right this way."

They were led down a carpeted hallway with numbered doors on either side. Ginny gripped his hand tightly. He caught her worried glance and gave her a wink and a comforting smile.

The end of the hall opened into a recreation room, complete with game tables, bookshelves, and bean-bag chairs scattered in front of a TV. Bright fluorescent lights reached into the corners of the room, dimmed by blinds that had been pulled, Bailey realized, to keep out prying cameras. His eyes scanned the quiet room, alighting on a small figure sitting at a table against a far wall. At their entrance the woman sitting with the boy stood and moved away.

Bailey's eyes were riveted on the child as he turned to look their way. His heart threatened to explode as he took in the boy's familiar features. Same dark, unruly hair, same deep widow's peak and slight cowlick, same dense brows, same cobalt-blue eyes. It could have been himself at eight years old.

He heard Ginny's sharp intake of breath, felt her death grip on his hand. "Oh, my God," she whispered.

The boy stood up, his eyes guarded, his expression wary. He wore a baggy blue-and-white-striped T-shirt over denim shorts and high-top athletic shoes. As they walked closer, he dropped his gaze and flicked a paint chip from the surface of the table. When at last he looked at them, Bailey saw pain and fear in the boy's wide, dark eyes. Blood pounded in his ears.
My son... my son...
my
son.

"Hello," Bailey ventured, pleased that his voice worked at all.

"Hey," came the cautious reply.

Ginny seemed speechless, unable to tear her eyes away from the boy. Bailey wasn't sure what to say next, but his son had apparently been giving this moment a great deal of thought.

"So you're my real parents, huh?" He spoke with the low tone and casual grace of a street-smart kid.

"Yes," Ginny said, her voice wavering only slightly. "Bailey is your father, and I'm Virginia, your m-mother."

The dark eyes scanned them both head to toe, and Bailey held his breath.

"I can see you're my old man," Chad said to Bailey. "We got the same face."

Bailey nodded, confirming the obvious. He was going to have a heart attack if his pulse didn't slow soon.

Then Chad turned to Ginny, and tilted his head. "But you don't look like any mother I've seen."

Bailey had to agree. She looked too young and too slim in a blue wrap dress and high heels. He watched as she smiled, her face lighting with wonder. "But I am," she said gently. "I'm your mother."

His son considered Ginny's words for a few seconds, then turned belligerent eyes her way. "What kind of mother lets her kid get stolen in a grocery store?"

Chapter Four

BAILEY BLINKED. Ginny dropped his hand, her shoulders falling, her hand covering her open mouth. Anger bolted through his stomach as he looked back to his unruffled son. The boy even had a slight smile on his face. "What did you say?" Bailey demanded.

Chad rolled his eyes. "I said what kind of mo—"

"Never mind," Bailey interrupted. "I heard you." He turned to the small knot of people in the back of the room. "We'd like some privacy, please."

Ginny's father puffed up and opened his mouth to respond, but her mother quieted him and pulled him from the room along with the others. The door closed noiselessly. The only sound in the room was Ginny's soft sniffling as she struggled to regain her composure.

Bailey wanted to comfort her, but his immediate concern was the cocky cause of her tears.

Chad stood with his arms loosely crossed, challenging Bailey with his eyes and his stance. He was apparently unmoved by tears, and unafraid of a reprisal.

Even as Bailey's mind raced for the appropriate reprimand, he cursed himself. What right did he have to chastise? The boy's words to Ginny were almost identical to the words he'd said to her after the kidnapping. And Bailey had been old enough to know better, not a confused eight-year-old kid.

Whether by design, Bailey wasn't sure, but Chad had lashed out at the very person who would be the most devoted to him.
Like father, like son.
He rubbed at the ache forming in his temple, then leveled his gaze on Chad. "This is strange for all of us, but you had no cause to say that."

Chad shrugged, his eyes remaining passive. "It's a free country, I can say whatever I want."

Bailey straightened, placing his hands on his hips. "Then I hope you want to say you're sorry."

His son's chin raised a notch. "And I suppose you're going to make me,
Daddy?"

The taunt stung Bailey, and it took him a few seconds to recover. The boy was as belligerent as he'd been at that age. He took a deep, steadying breath to rein in his anger. "You can be a jerk to me if you need to blow some steam, son, but"—he took a few steps closer to Chad and assumed an authoritative stance of his own—"don't take it out on your mother."

Chad's eves narrowed. "My mother was Lois Green."

Bailey remained completely still. "Then consider yourself lucky. Some kids don't have a mother at all, and you've had two."

The boy jerked his thumb toward Ginny. "I'm not calling her Mom, and I'm not calling you Dad."

His heart squeezed over yet another intangible loss.

"That's fine," Ginny injected, her voice much stronger. "Virginia and Bailey will do for now." She looked at Bailey, nodding encouragement.

"Sure," Bailey said stiffly.

"And I
don't
want to be called Junior. A counselor told me I could have my name legally changed to Chad Green."

Another pause, and he and Ginny shared another glance. The kid sounded like an eight-year-old going on sixteen. Bailey conceded. "Okay, we'll talk about the name change later."

"So what's this place like, this Columbus, Ohio?" Chad's tone sounded as if he were already decidedly unimpressed with his destination.

Bailey shrugged, immensely relieved to be on more neutral ground. "It's flat, and big, and busy, not unlike here."

"A friend of mine used to live there and said he froze his ass off."

Bailey frowned. "Do you always talk like that?"

"It's a free country—"

"I know," Bailey cut in. "But watch your language."

Chad gave a dismissive wave and turned back to the table. "I changed my mind—I don't want to live with you."

Bailey tamped down his anger. "You're not going to live with me, you're going to live with Ginny."

At last he was rewarded with Chad's undivided attention as the boy sorted the words in his head. He snorted. "You mean you guys are divorced?"

Regret washed over Bailey—he didn't dare look at Ginny because he knew he'd find no remorse there. "That's right."

The boy threw up his arms in resignation. "Great. How many half and step brothers and sisters do I have?"

"None," Ginny said.

"But I have stepparents, right?"

"No," Bailey said.

Their son frowned, the wind taken from his sails. "When did you get divorced?"

Bailey exhaled a long, noisy breath. "A few months after you were kidnapped."

"No more kid, no more marriage?" Chad hooted. "What was I, an accident or something?" One look at Ginny's face, and his smirk disappeared. "You're kidding—I was an accident?"

"Unplanned," Ginny said quickly, "but we wanted you very much."

"Oh, right," Chad declared haughtily. "You were probably glad I was kidnapped! You probably left me alone on purpose!"

"No," Ginny whispered, shaking her head. "We looked everywhere—"

"That's enough," Bailey said, his voice low and just short of threatening. He buried his hand in his hair and bit back a curse. "You're my kid all right. I'd have known it if you didn’t look like me because you don't know when to keep your mouth shut."

"Bailey," Ginny began, but he held his hand up to silence her.

"From the minute we arrived, you've been nothing but rude, disrespectful, and downright mean."

"Don't like me, huh?" Chad's voice had lost some of its bravado. "Well, maybe I don't like you either, mister."

When he noticed moisture gathering around the corners of the boy's dark eyes, Bailey experienced his first glimmer of hope that things might work out someday, somehow. He reached over to squeeze Chad's shoulder, and the boy turned his head, but didn't pull away. Another good sign.

"My daddy always told me it was a shame you couldn't pick your relatives like you pick your friends." Chad's hooded gaze darted back to him and Bailey shrugged. "But you can't, so I guess we're stuck with each other."

His son pondered the words a few seconds, then asked, "Are you the only family I got?"

Bailey reluctantly withdrew his hand, shaking his head. "An aunt, uncle, and six-year-old cousin in Ohio—"

"A boy cousin?"

"Jean Ann's a girl, but she's no sissy. Throws a baseball so hard it'll burn your hand through a glove."

Chad seemed mildly impressed. "Who are those old people who came with you?"

"They're my parents," Ginny said softly, stepping forward. "Your only grandparents, and they're dying to meet you." She smiled and wiped at her lingering tears with the heel of her hand.

Bailey left and returned a few minutes later with Edward and Peg. Chad shuffled over to them with little enthusiasm, but surprised Bailey by shaking hands with Edward and allowing Peg to give him a hug. As he watched his son nod and answer questions, pride filled him and he struggled a few seconds with his own emotions. He wondered if his expression matched Ginny's.

She positively glowed. Her eyes never left Chad, soaking him up like a thirsty sponge. The top of his dark head nearly reached her shoulder. At times her fingers hovered just above his skin, as if she wanted to touch him, but didn't dare. She looked as tentative around Chad as Bailey felt around her.

Taking advantage of her distraction, he allowed his gaze to roam over her figure. He'd always loved her slender neck, and the topknot she wore gave him a tantalizing view. The fabric of the dress she wore clung softly to her shoulders and slight curves. He remembered the skin on her stomach being satiny smooth—flat muscle before the baby, stretched during the pregnancy, then softness afterward on the way back to muscle tone
—
his fingers had been explicably drawn to her abdomen at every stage. Her legs were long, her calves well defined, narrowing to slender ankles.

Desire welled within him. The sexual aspect of their relationship had never been lacking—Ginny had been a warm, enthusiastic lover, at times leaving him too tired for his physically demanding job. He remembered the ribbing he'd taken at work on days he'd moved with less energy than usual.

His prevailing memory of their lovemaking was her whispering his name in urgency. Every time he'd lain with a woman since his divorce, he'd imagined Ginny's satisfied gasp...
Bailey...
oh,
Bailey...

"Bailey," Ginny said, snapping him out of his reverie. She volunteered her first genuine smile since their reunion and motioned
him
to the table where the four of them were pulling up chairs. "Join us."

As he walked toward them, Bailey locked his gaze on Chad and Ginny. The last eight years seemed to disintegrate. Here was his family, his son and wife, the two people he loved most in the world. Guilt slammed into him with the force of an anvil.

He'd failed miserably at his husbandly duties. How well would he handle parenthood?

* * *

Virginia had never experienced such a deluge of emotions in such a short time span. As an hour slipped by, then two, her pulse finally slowed to just below the dangerous mark, only to leap again when Chad revealed some interesting tidbit about his life. In fidgety, staccato sentences, he admitted that he skateboarded, hung out at the video arcade, and could hit a three-point shot on the basketball court in his school gym. And that he liked animals, hated girls, and tolerated homework. While not exactly warming to his new family gathered around the table, Chad seemed to become less confrontational as the sparse conversation progressed.

But he avoided all eye contact with her.

The ceiling, the floor, and every other person at the table seemed worthy of his attention, but not Virginia. His earlier outburst still rang in her ears, but she tried to push it from her mind. And she really didn't mind his averted eyes, because then she didn't have to worry that he would discover her secret.

She was terrified at the thought of taking him home.

Virginia could scarcely reconcile this belligerent, gangly boy with the baby she'd carried home in her arms so many years earlier. As she watched him move and speak, she felt twinges of happiness and longing, but the fear... the fear dwarfed every other sensation. She kept smiling while her skin prickled, and her blood raced.

Before this moment, only one other person had ever made her feel so completely overwhelmed—Bailey.

She lifted her eyes to find her ex-husband engrossed in Chad's explanation of why the South Eastern Conference was
definitely
the best college basketball conference in the country. Bailey nodded thoughtfully, his eyes warm and rapt on his son. Then he offered his own argument for Ohio State's conference, the Big Ten. Bailey sat back in his chair and splayed his hands, then cracked his knuckles with a bend of his wrists. She'd once hated his noisy habit, but now found it oddly familiar and comforting.

He had removed the gray sport coat and rolled up the sleeves of his starched dress shirt to reveal impressive, darkly tanned forearms. The calluses on his large hands further attested that he often abandoned his position of crew chief and pitched in to help his men, a revelation that didn't surprise Virginia at all. She smiled sadly to herself. Bailey had never been afraid of hard work—it had been the more abstract demands of life he'd found too challenging. Like loving her...