The Mommy Proposal Read online

  Iris waved the volume with a shaking hand. “Two-thirds of the love poems in Seamus’s collection are mine!” Furiously, she angled a thumb at her chest. “I wrote them! And I helped construct the rest of them, too!”

  Brooke could barely breathe. “Surely there’s been some mistake.”

  “You’re darn right there has. I’m going to sue Seamus’s estate for plagiarism!”

  Nate stepped out of the shadows. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

  Brooke was startled by his presence. She’d thought she and Iris were alone.

  The grad student sputtered, clearly taken aback. “I’ve got the originals on my computer!”

  Nate stood next to Brooke, silencing Iris with a look. “That doesn’t mean anything. You were sleeping with Seamus. You could have copied his work while he was alive. Now that he’s gone, you’re trying to pass it off as your own.”

  The woman’s jaw dropped.

  Brooke was a little surprised, too. She hadn’t expected Nate to come to her defense, never mind so gallantly.

  “That’s not what happened,” Iris said heatedly.

  In CEO mode once again, Nate withdrew his wallet from his back pocket, took out a business card and handed it to her. “Why don’t you gather your proof? Hire an intellectual-property lawyer to represent you. And then call me tomorrow. I’ll facilitate a meeting with lawyers for you and Brooke and the publishers.”

  “The university should be involved, too,” Brooke said with a sigh.

  Iris glared at her. “Just so you know…I’m not going to let you get away with this. I’m not going to let you and your son benefit financially from my work.”

  “Believe me, that is the last thing I would ever want to do,” Brooke retorted.

  Nate draped a comforting arm around Iris’s shoulders. “Let me escort you to your car,” he murmured. She relented.

  Brooke walked as far as the patio next to the pool, then sat down on a chaise, dropping the bedding beside her.

  In the driveway, Nate stood talking with Iris for several minutes. Brooke had no idea what he was saying, but the effect of his words was palpable. When Iris got in her car and finally drove away, it was in a calm, deliberate manner.

  Nate returned to Brooke’s side. He hunkered down in front of her, took both her hands in hers and searched her face. “Are you okay?”

  She gestured impotently, not really sure if she was or not. As she worked to steady her nerves, she said, “I can’t believe Seamus did that. And yet…”

  “You do?” Nate guessed.

  She inhaled deeply and held his gaze. She needed a sounding board. For many reasons, Nate was it. “Seamus had writer’s block the last three or four years of his life. No matter how much he tried, he was unable to finish anything. He said he just didn’t feel inspired. And then the last year or so, he told me the muse had returned, and he was doing all this great work. It was his excuse for staying away so much, working late.”

  “You think he was collaborating with Iris?”

  “Maybe. She had just started at the university then, as a PhD candidate in poetry. So it’s possible he was mentoring her and working with her to improve her writing, and there’s just been some confusion about who came up with which lines.” Brooke swallowed and forced herself to deal with the worst-case scenario, too. “Then again, maybe what Iris says is true—Seamus was just stealing her words and planning to pass them off as his own all along.” Brooke buried her face in her hands, doing her best to recall. “Whatever happened, the poems for the collection were turned in to Seamus’s editor before he died. Nothing has been added or deleted since. The only thing that was done was some very minor editing.”

  Shifting the pillow and blanket, Nate moved to sit next to her. “It seems like an awfully foolish thing to do. Surely Seamus would have known he would be caught.”

  That was the logical conclusion for anyone who hadn’t possessed illusions of grandeur. Brooke sighed. “Maybe he thought he could ‘handle’ Iris, if and when she ever found out.” Seamus had been known for his ability to lay on the Irish charm. “Or…I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t so much the medicine he was taking to help him out in the sack as the stress of the deception that really caused his fatal heart attack. Maybe he was already having an attack of conscience and second thoughts about what he’d done.”

  “I meant what I said earlier.” Nate clasped her hands in his. “I’ll help you find an intellectual-property lawyer. I’m sure something can be worked out.”

  The urge to throw herself in his arms and let him handle everything was almost overwhelming. Knowing she couldn’t risk being a passive participant in her life again, even in difficult times like these, she pushed away, bounded to her feet and began to pace. Talking as much to herself as to him, she said, “I have to keep this quiet. I can’t let Cole know his father was a fraud. It would destroy him.”

  Nate paused, his brow furrowed.

  It didn’t take a body language expert to know what he was thinking. “You don’t agree,” Brooke surmised.

  He gave a small shake of his head. “Cole is a smart kid.”

  “It would destroy him,” Brooke exclaimed, moving closer. She took his hands once again, gripped them hard. “Promise me, Nate. You’ll never breathe a word of this to him.”

  Nate eyed her reluctantly. Finally, he relented, even though she could see he thought it was the wrong move to make. “I promise.”

  “MOM!” Momentarily disoriented, Brooke opened her eyes and became aware she was stretched out on the living-room sofa of the caretaker’s cottage. Early-morning sunshine filtered in through the closed blinds.

  Cole waved the volume of poetry and the embossed invitation in front of her face, while Landry lounged in the background, taking in everything.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Dad had a new book coming out?” Cole demanded. “Even if it was mushy stuff, I would have wanted to see it.” Brooke blinked.

  Realizing she must have fallen asleep while perusing the writing, to see if she could figure out if Seamus had actually written any of it or not, she brushed the hair from her eyes and struggled to sit up. Not easy, given how tangled she seemed to be in the blanket she had thrown over herself for warmth.

  Landry edged closer, curiosity mixing with the concern on his face.

  “I…” Brooke faltered.

  “So how come you didn’t tell me about this?” Cole repeated intently. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, her son plopped down beside her. Too late, Brooke realized she should have hidden the book and invitation away before she fell asleep. Either that or set her alarm, which she had also apparently neglected to do.

  “Are we going to the party?” Cole asked eagerly as Landry roamed the room, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts, as usual. “The invitation is addressed to both of us.”

  “Yes, it is.” Something else she hadn’t really noticed when she’d received the invite from Phineas Rylander. But it was fitting, since Cole had attended all Seamus’s other book signings.

  Brooke cast another look at Landry. “But…”

  “So we’re going!” Cole beamed.

  “No!” She stopped short at the crestfallen look on her son’s face, and the perplexed expression on Landry’s. Why did Cole choose this morning to look so much like Seamus, especially around the eyes? How was it that Landry knew she was hiding something?

  She turned back to her son, shaking off her unease. “I meant…” She faltered again.

  “We’re not going?” Cole echoed in disbelief.

  Brooke held up a hand. Never a morning person to begin with, she felt completely overwhelmed and out of her league today. Especially since she had lain awake half the night worrying about what to do. “Cole, I just…” Guilt and indecision warred within Brooke. Wary of blurting out the wrong thing again, or further alerting Landry to the turmoil roiling inside her, she rose and said beseechingly, “Can you give me a moment to get a cup of coffee?”

 
Hurt registered on her son’s face. “I don’t get why you do this.”

  “Do what?” she asked nervously.

  His lower lip trembled. “Act so weird whenever Dad’s name comes up, instead of just talking to me about whatever you are worried about!” Cole spun on his heel and bolted out the door. Then came back in to add furiously, “I hate it when you treat me like a little kid who doesn’t know anything about anything! ’Cause I am mature enough to go to that book party and not get all bent out of shape just because Dad died and can’t be there!”

  Brooke latched onto the idea that it was residual grief keeping them from going, rather than the scandal Cole still knew nothing about. She approached her son and put a reassuring hand on his arm. It wouldn’t be much longer before he was taller than she was. “Honey, I know it used to be fun when you went with your dad to his poetry readings and book signings. But this wouldn’t be the same.”

  Scowling, Cole clamped his arms over his chest. “Why can’t we do what we did at the wake? Have everybody make a toast and remember him fondly?”

  Because, Brooke thought, that would only invite someone like Iris Lomax to make a scene. The kind that, thank heaven, had not been made at the funeral, since she had been persuaded by Phineas Rylander not to attend. Now, it was different. Iris had something Professor Rylander did not want revealed, not the other way around. And if it was a university event, there was no way to bar her without raising a lot of eyebrows—and some very fair questions—since she was still a teaching assistant in the English department.

  “Why can’t we tell stories about Dad and make it fun, Mom?”

  Once again, Brooke had to think on the fly. “Because it would be inappropriate. This is a literary function, and I believe they’re planning for it to be very stuffy and intellectual—not something either of us would want to sit through for hours on end.”

  Cole glared at her. “What you really mean is you don’t want to go.”

  What could she say that her son wouldn’t see right through, except the truth? “No, honey, I don’t.”

  “Well, I do!” Cole stormed back out of the cottage.

  Landry shoved his hands through his newly spiked hair, which actually looked kind of cute, in a disheveled-rock-star kind of way. “You sure blew that one,” he commented, his brow arched in adolescent disapproval.

  “No kidding,” Brooke muttered. She folded the blanket and set it on the pillow, then looked around for her flip-flops. “Stay here,” she told him.

  Landry seemed to appreciate that directive as much as Cole liked being kept in the dark.

  “I’ll be back to fix breakfast for you boys in a moment,” she added.

  Clad in her sleepwear of athletic shorts and a T-shirt, she raced outside. To her dismay she saw that Cole was standing next to Nate, who appeared to have just come back from a run.

  She had to admit that Nate’s athletic pursuits kept him in really buff shape. Even his legs were amazingly powerful and sexy.

  “…so completely unfair,” Cole was saying.

  Nate wiped the sweat from his face with the hem of his damp, clinging T-shirt. “I’m sure your mom meant to tell you,” he soothed.

  Brooke joined them. “I just found out about the party yesterday,” she said.

  “But you had to know this was coming,” Cole waved the volume. “Books don’t just appear overnight.”

  He was quoting his father now, Brooke realized.

  “Especially poetry books.” Cole flipped the hardcover over to look at his father’s photo on the dust jacket. “They take years to write and get published.”

  Brooke turned her gaze away from the handsome face that had fooled her for so many years. “That’s true. And I did know the publisher was bringing out a new volume of your dad’s poetry.” After all, she had signed the contract.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” Cole persisted.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said lamely. It wasn’t the first time she had lied to Cole to shield him from his father’s frailties, but it was the first time she had done so in front of Nate.

  The look in Nate’s eyes told her what she already knew in her heart—that it was a mistake. “The proceeds from the book are going to be added to your college fund.”

  Cole seemed mollified. “You still should have showed me the book the moment you got it.”

  Nate clapped a paternal hand on Cole’s shoulder. “Point taken, buddy.”

  “Hey, I thought you were coming back to make breakfast?” Landry had ambled out to join them.

  “Sounds good to me,” Nate stated cheerfully. “That is if I’m invited.”

  Increasing the intimacy between her and her client was not wise—Brooke felt they had already crossed too many boundaries as it was—but right now she really needed the diversion. She flashed an enthusiastic smile. “Absolutely. I’ll get those pancakes started right away.”

  NATE WENT UP TO THE HOUSE to quickly shower and change. By the time he returned, short minutes later, Brooke had breakfast going.

  “Did you know my dad?” Landry asked him.

  The question came out of left field, and had Nate feeling as off balance as Cole’s third degree had left Brooke. Parenting was harder than it looked, Nate realized. Doing his best to be honest and forthright, he nodded. “Yes, I did. Miles Lawrence lived in the same apartment building as me when we were just out of college.”

  Landry helped himself to a strip of crispy bacon from a plate that had been set on the table. “Did you ever see his stand-up act?”

  Nate poured a cup of coffee and lounged against the counter next to Brooke. “A couple of times.”

  Landry rocked back in his chair. “Was it any good?”

  Brooke kept her attention riveted on the pancakes she was cooking.

  Nate turned to face the boy. “He was a funny guy.”

  Hope shone in Landry’s eyes. “My mom always said if he’d lived my dad would have been really famous.”

  Nate forced himself to be generous. “I think she was right.”

  The teen frowned. “He never married my mom.”

  It was no comfort, knowing the woman who had shattered Nate’s illusion suffered heartbreak, too. “Your great-grandmother told me that.” The knowledge had made him sad. If he had wished anything for Seraphina, it was for her to be happy.

  Landry broke another strip of bacon in half. He was quiet for a moment. “Do you think that was right?”

  This was definitely not getting easier. “I…don’t know.”

  Brooke shot Nate an empathetic look from beneath her lashes, which neither of the boys could see, then swept by him with a plate of steaming hotcakes in hand.

  “You’re dodging the question,” Landry complained.

  Warmed by Brooke’s steady presence and unspoken support, Nate took another sip of his coffee. “It’s complicated.”

  The instant Brooke set the platter on the table, Landry stacked several golden-brown pancakes on his plate and doused them with maple syrup. He picked up his knife and fork. “If you were the baby daddy, would you marry the baby momma?”

  Nate had no doubt whatsoever about that. “Yes.”

  “Why?” Landry asked with narrowed eyes.

  Feeling the warmth of Brooke’s approval, Nate answered, “Because I think whenever possible kids should have two parents, a mom and a dad.”

  Brooke tensed. Although what she could find wanting in that answer, Nate didn’t know.

  Cole looked over at Brooke, curious now, too. “Do you feel the same way?” He also helped himself to several pancakes.

  She nodded and poured more batter on the griddle.

  Cole considered that, while he took his first bite. “My dad didn’t feel that way,” he announced when he had finished chewing. “He said marriage was a trap, and unless I was really in love I should avoid it.”

  Nate choked in midsip. “You must feel that way, too,” Cole said to him, when he’d stopped coughing. “Because you’re not mar
ried.”

  Brooke’s eyebrows rose. “Cole, for heaven’s sake!”

  Nate held out a hand, glad this had come up. He wanted to lay it on the line for both boys, set an example. “It’s not because I don’t want to be,” he explained, then paused to look at Brooke, too, before turning his gaze back to them and continuing with heartfelt sincerity. “I want a wife and family more than anything.”

  Cole and Landry remained skeptical.

  “Have you ever been married?” Cole asked.

  “No,” Nate admitted.

  “Engaged?” Landry pressed.

  This was more difficult. “Yes,” Nate said.

  “Who to?” the boy asked curiously.

  There was a beat of silence. Aware he couldn’t sidestep the question now, Nate confessed, “To your mother.”

  For a moment, both boys were frozen in shock. Then anger and resentment permeated the room.

  “How come nobody ever told me that?” Landry fumed.

  “LANDRY HAD A POINT,” Brooke said to Nate later, after the boys had disappeared into their rooms to get ready for summer camp. She and Nate had seized the opportunity to step outside with their second cup of coffee and engage in some private conversation. “Someone should have told him about the relationship between you and his mother.”

  Nate didn’t like receiving criticism that was ill-founded, but in this case it was worth enduring, since he needed a sounding board. “I assumed someone had.”

  Brooke paused, mug halfway to her lips. “You don’t mind the questions it’s going to create?”

  He shrugged. “They would have come up anyway.” Kids were curious. Heck, he was curious. About Brooke in general…and specifically, in whatever she’d put into those pancakes to make them taste so good. They were hands down the best he had ever eaten. And he’d dined in some mighty fine places over the years.

  Brooke’s delicately shaped brows knit together. She hadn’t had a chance to get dressed in the clothes or put on the subtle make up that comprised her work armor. Her slightly tousled hair and bare lips made her seem more accessible. She twisted her mouth in disagreement. “You don’t know that.”