The Seal's Secret Child. Elisabeth Rees
He stared at her, his patience with her condescension wearing thin. “I’ll take the risk.”
“I’m just trying to look out for you, Blade,” she said, a little more softly this time. “This is serious.”
His patience finally snapped. “I know this is serious,” he said. “And the risk is mine to take, not yours.” His pent-up anger was threatening to burst its way out into the open, so he threw his hands up into the air and turned on his heel. “I’m done talking with you.”
As he stalked away, Josie called him back. “Blade, wait.”
He stopped, but kept his back to her.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she said. “Let’s not fight. I don’t want Archie to see us arguing.” She sighed. “I won’t call my aunt today. I’ll give it a few days and then reassess the situation. How does that sound?”
He let the anger flow from his body and turned around. This was progress. “It sounds like we just made our first coparenting decision. I’m happy with that arrangement.”
Josie’s eyes flicked everywhere but to Blade’s. “Good.”
Silence descended, quickly followed by awkwardness, and the huge gulf between them was evident. Neither knew how to reach out to the other, too afraid to speak for fear of igniting another disagreement.
“I’ll go help Archie unpack,” Josie said, running upstairs as if making a quick escape. “He might need me.”
Blade watched her feet bounce up the stairs, her ballet pumps lightly brushing each step, and he wondered whether she would find every coparenting decision as difficult as that one. If so, he had a long, hard battle ahead of him.
And she not only was unwilling to share her parenting role but also continued to treat him like an invalid. Blade had come to terms with other people’s misplaced offers of help, but to hear them from Josie was doubly hard. They made him sad, angry and disappointed.
He shook his head, still smarting from her comments about needing to protect his good leg. Both his legs were good. They were strong and fast, serving him well. He certainly didn’t need to be cosseted and protected. Josie should have known him better than that.
But apparently, she didn’t know him at all.
* * *
Josie sat on the edge of Archie’s bed, watching her son play with Sherbet while her father settled into his room. The bird was out of his cage, walking along the wooden floorboards, exploring his new environment. The budgie’s wings were slightly clipped, so he couldn’t fly far, but he enjoyed his freedom and usually ended up in mischief somehow.
Along one wall of the bedroom was a huge mural depicting various animals that wouldn’t be found living naturally side by side in the wild—lions and tigers, pandas and kangaroos, giraffes and grizzly bears—but the effect was striking and vivid. She could see why Archie loved it.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Archie asked, steering Sherbet’s beak away from his Power Rangers toy. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
Josie smiled brightly and rubbed her thumbs beneath her eyes. “I’m fine, honey.” A few tears had managed to spring forth on her way up the stairs, but she had hoped her son wouldn’t notice. “I’m just a little tired.”
She stood and walked to the window, hoping to see Detective Pullman drive up in the car that contained her suitcase. All her clothes and toiletries were in that bag, and she didn’t want to be without it. She hated to admit it, but she wanted to look her best while Blade was around. Although they were poles apart, she still felt an old attraction simmering away. Blade was as good-looking today as he was the last time she’d seen him, with sandy curls and a wide, playful smile. She admired him for pulling himself up by the bootstraps and turning his life around, but she wished he didn’t look quite so handsome. It would have been much easier if he had returned to her life as a less attractive man.
She focused her attention back on her son. “Archie,” she began, “how would you feel about going to stay with Aunt Susan in Nebraska for a little while?”
Josie knew that she and Blade had already discussed this issue and made a decision, but it wouldn’t hurt to get Archie’s feelings on the matter, would it? She ignored the sensation of disloyalty to Blade and awaited the answer.
“I want to stay with Dad,” he said, continuing to play with the budgie. “I like it here, and so does Sherbet.”
Archie’s response was predictable. Even though he had known his dad for so little time, accepting Blade as his father came totally naturally to him, exactly as it should have been. Yet her son’s words stung deeply.
“What about me?” she said with a forced laugh. “Don’t you want to stay with me, too?”
“Sure,” he said, jumping up to fetch Sherbet’s toys. “I don’t want to go to Aunt Susan’s house. Her big, sloppy dog will frighten Sherbet, and she always watches boring movies where ladies cry all the time.”
Josie giggled. Her aunt Susan loved old romance movies, and Archie hated them.
“Okay, honey,” she said. “I just wanted to know how you felt about it.”
“If I stay here with Dad, we can watch boy movies where cars turn into other stuff.” Archie struck a pose, extending his arms and clenching his fists tight. “And we can pretend to be robots and fight everybody who tries to come in. It’ll be awesome.”
Josie bit hard on her lip. Her son had no true idea of the level of danger facing them, and she was glad of it. In his mind, he and his father could save the day simply by imagining themselves as Transformers. On arrival at the safe house, Archie had instantly torn around the place as if in a racing car, encouraging Blade to do the same. She had seen a sudden change in his behavior since Blade had shown up. In just a few hours, her son had gone from being a sweet and gentle-natured boy into a car-loving, boisterous kid. Although her own dad had tried hard to be a father figure to Archie, he was missing an essential ingredient—the energy of youth. Blade’s appearance had triggered a rambunctious quality in her son, and it made her even more concerned that she was losing him. Blade was demanding an equal say in parenting, and her son had talked of little else but his father since he’d shown up. She knew it was silly, but she felt shut out.
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