night’s mistake.
If she’d believed Wyatt was in love with her, that would have been one thing. But before the night Matty was conceived they’d only been casually dating, and the night they’d shared had been born of sorrow, not joy. A marriage and family based only on a man’s sense of decency and not true love? Her heart couldn’t take it.
So she’d left.
And now she was back, only to discover Wyatt had never left at all. Why wasn’t he in Uganda or deep in the Amazon jungle somewhere?
Had her sacrifice been for nothing?
“Mama?” Matty said again, yanking her arm more intently this time. “Mama. Mama.”
She scooped him into her arms and gently patted his back, reassuring herself as much as him. Her fight-or-flight instinct was working overtime, and it was all she could do to stand firm and not flee.
But what good would it do her to turn away now? Wyatt had already caught sight of Matty. He was watching the toddler through narrowed eyes and pressed lips as the boy tangled his fingers into Carolina’s hair.
“You’re a mama?” Wyatt asked, and for one confused moment, no longer than a blink of an eye, Carolina thought...hoped...prayed that he wouldn’t comprehend what that meant. That he wouldn’t realize the truth about those identical chocolate-brown eyes that were literally staring right back at him, among the many features that mirrored his own.
“I—how could you?” he stammered, picking off his hat and threading his fingers through his hair.
Carolina cringed, waiting for him to come loose at the seams. How could he not? She wouldn’t blame him. He had every right to be furious.
She held her breath, waiting for the explosion she knew was coming.
But when he spoke, it was deep, and hushed, and as hard and cold as steel.
“Tell me the truth, Carolina, for once in your life. This boy—is he my son?”
* * *
Wyatt’s breath felt like icicles in his lungs, poking and puncturing his chest with each ragged gasp.
That boy, the animated, dark-haired, dark-eyed child clinging to Carolina’s neck, was his son.
For the very first few seconds after he’d realized Carolina wasn’t alone, that she had her toddler with her, there had been a flash of confusion—of anger, of envy—that she had been able to move on with her life so quickly after abandoning him. It had taken him months to recover enough to go on with his daily life without thinking of her with every heartbeat, and there were still days—and nights—he found difficulty putting the past behind him.
And she already had a husband and a toddler? She must have met the guy right after—
His gaze had dropped to her left hand, but her ring finger was bare. So she wasn’t married, then.
Yet there was a child.
And then, in an instant, it all came together.
The moment he looked into the child’s eyes, Wyatt knew, with the same certainty that he recognized the wild, unsteady rhythm of his heart beating in his chest, that the little boy was his son.
His child.
He didn’t have to count back the months or measure the years. Anyone with eyes could see the resemblance.
The boy could have stepped right out of a photograph of Wyatt at that age, from the stubborn cowlick in his black hair right down to the curve of his dimples when he smiled. Wyatt now covered his dimples with a few days’ growth of beard, but they were there. Just like this boy’s.
“What’s his name?” he ground out, barely able to find his voice.
“Matty,” Carolina answered shakily.
Matty was his son.
His thoughts were coming quick and choppy, echoing over and over in his mind, each time stronger and with increasing clarity.
Matty was his own flesh and blood, created out of his love for Carolina. They’d done everything backward, to be sure, but even before Matty had been conceived, Wyatt had had every intention of asking Carolina to marry him, had been ready to make a lifetime commitment to her.
Obviously Carolina hadn’t felt the same way about him, or else she never would have left him.
Left. Knowing she was keeping him from his son.
Where was the love in that?
The little boy staring back at him with wide, curious brown eyes should have had the benefit of his father’s love and attention from the very day he was born.
Already those emotions were welling in Wyatt’s heart. One second ago he’d been a single man. Now he was a daddy.
The whole scenario was wrong on so many levels. He should have been there when Matty was born. When he took his first steps. Said his first word. Wyatt would have showered Matty with love and attention. He and Matty had both been cheated out of time together.
Years.
For a reason Wyatt couldn’t begin to comprehend, Carolina had willingly chosen to live as a single mother, without so much as asking him for financial support, much less anything emotional.
His gut fisted as another thought occurred to him.
Was there another man in the picture now? The fact that Carolina wasn’t wearing a wedding band didn’t necessarily mean anything. The woman he’d thought he’d known would never live with another man without being married to him, but what did he really know about her?
She had proven him wrong in every way that mattered.
Had Wyatt been replaced before he’d ever even had the opportunity to be a dad to his son? The idea of someone else taking on his role of father to Matty made him sick.
It was too much information to process, too many emotions to contain all at once.
Bewilderment, uncertainty, grief, pain, fury—yet at the same time an affection and warmth unlike any he’d ever known. He had no idea where the tender feelings for Matty came from. They were just there.
He switched his gaze to Carolina. She looked stricken, as well she might.
How dare she keep all knowledge of his son from him for all this time?
And why had she come back now?
He guessed the boy had to be around two years of age. Had Carolina suddenly grown a conscience and decided Wyatt needed to know about the boy? It didn’t seem likely, especially since Carolina appeared completely shocked to have encountered him the way she had. She certainly hadn’t been seeking him out.
There were so many questions he wanted answered, so much confusion rolling through his mind and heart that he couldn’t seem to form the words to voice a single one of them. He wanted to grill and interrogate Carolina on every aspect of Matty’s life, but he didn’t know where to begin.
And really, what did it matter anyway?
The fact was, three years ago Carolina had left him high and dry with no notice and no explanation, and now, years later, she had suddenly returned with their son in her arms.
He couldn’t imagine any conceivable excuse or reasonable explanation that he would actually accept as a legitimate reason why she hadn’t bothered to tell him about his child. There was simply nothing she could say to talk her way out of the conversation they were about to have.
“W-Wyatt?” Seventeen-year-old Johnny Drake touched his shoulder and tentatively broke into his thoughts. The teenager, whom Wyatt was personally mentoring, was reed thin, with floppy, curly brown hair and clothes that always looked like they were a size too large for him. “D-did you want me to c-catch the g-g-goat for you?”
In the shock of finding out he had a son, Wyatt