“Mack?”
“I’ll take the truck back to LA,” he said.
She nibbled at her bottom lip as she eyed him warily. “And then what?”
He came closer to her, so that he could lower his voice. “I’m going to buy an in-home paternity test.”
The blood drained from her face. “Why?”
He pointed at Lucas, who was busy taking toys out of a box they’d brought in. “That’s why.”
The gravity in his voice somehow drew Lucas’s attention, and he hurried over. “Me, Uncle Mack? Are you talking about me?”
Mack didn’t answer. He was too focused on Natasha, who didn’t seem to know what to say.
Lucas tilted his head back to look up at him. “Uncle Mack, are you mad?”
Mack pulled the boy close enough to be able to give him a reassuring pat. “No, I’m not mad. What happened was my fault.”
“What’d you do?” he asked.
“I made a mistake. But I’m hoping your mother will give me the chance to fix it.”
Natasha covered her face.
“Come on, Tash,” he said. “You know I would never have left you high and dry with a kid.”
She rubbed her forehead as though she had a spot on it she was trying to remove.
“Let me get the test,” he pressed. “Hiding from it won’t change the truth.”
“It’ll change other things,” she mumbled. “But now that you suspect, you’ll do it anyway.”
“I’d rather have your permission,” he said. “And I would rather you not hate the idea of it quite so much.”
She dropped her hands. “Damn it, Mack. I could’ve moved here myself. You didn’t have to come. Then that woman wouldn’t have said what she did and—and this probably would never have happened.”
She couldn’t even have rented the moving van without him. But he didn’t point that out. This wasn’t about helping her move and they both knew it. She was scared. If he was Lucas’s father, it would completely rewrite her child’s story, change one of the most important aspects of the boy’s life, which would be hard on Lucas and would certainly necessitate a difficult conversation with her ex-husband and his family.
Those were no small things.
“I’ve wondered from the beginning,” he admitted. “I would’ve asked you eventually, even if...if Camilla Ricci hadn’t said anything.” He lowered his head to catch her eye, since she was now staring at the floor. “I’ve just been working my way up to it.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “You almost asked me last night.”
His stomach filled with butterflies at the prospect of gaining proof of what he’d long suspected. Was he a father? What would it feel like to know for sure? “So you’re okay with my getting a paternity test?”
She blinked rapidly, giving him the impression she was on the verge of tears. “Where will you get one?” she asked without specifically answering.
“I researched it online. They sell them at Walgreens.”
“Walgreens,” she echoed faintly. “It’s that easy.”
“These days, yes.”
“How long does it take to get the results?”
“After we swab our cheeks—they need the mother’s DNA, too—and mail in all samples, it’ll take the lab only a couple of days before we can get the results online. So...from start to finish, including shipping, I’d say a week.”
She rubbed her palms on the front of her cutoffs, a nervous gesture he’d seen her do many times before—and one that drew his attention to her legs. She’d always had magnificent legs.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Once we know, we can’t un-know. There will be no going back. And if what we suspect turns out to be true, your brothers will find out about that night seven years ago. Your father will, too. And my mother.” She drew a deep breath. “Maybe we should rethink this.”
She didn’t mention her ex, but he knew she had to be imagining what the results might mean for him, too. That their son didn’t belong to Ace would not be an easy thing to explain to him, especially after so long. And what would she tell Lucas?
“I’ve spent seven years thinking about it,” he told her.
“Thinking about what?” Lucas piped up.
“Thinking about you,” he replied and felt his heart melt as he lifted the boy into his arms and received a spontaneous hug.
Five
Mack left right after dinner. Natasha let Lucas help her unpack the kitchen, but once she got him into bed, she spent the remainder of the evening pacing. Was she facing yet another big upheaval?
If the paternity test came back positive, and Mack moved to Los Angeles, he’d be close enough to visit Lucas. Which meant he’d become a fixture in her life, too. There’d be phone calls to coordinate visitation, and he’d come to the house to take their son and bring him home. Maybe he’d even stay over once in a while. And she’d have to be amenable. How could she not be accommodating after everything he’d done for her?
And yet...how would she cope with having Mack back in her life? With having the man she’d always wanted to love her love her son instead?
Her phone began to ring. She could hear the vibration on the counter. Grabbing it, she checked the screen. Dylan was trying to reach her. She didn’t hear from him often, and they’d spoken recently, so she wondered if he was calling because he couldn’t get hold of Mack.
She pressed the talk button as she went out onto the front porch, where the katydids were singing and the air was cooling off as it grew late. “Hey, Dyl.”
“Tash, how are you?”
She sank onto the top step. Dylan was like a big brother to her. She loved him but also resented the fact that Mack had always put Dylan and his other brothers first, that he’d chosen to abide by their sense of propriety over being with her.
But Mack and his brothers were especially close and incredibly loyal to each other. They’d had to be to survive. So she supposed she should’ve expected that she would never quite be one of them—and yet, because they’d taken her and her mother in when they were homeless, she would be off-limits in a romantic sense. “Hanging in there,” she said. “What about you?”
“The same. It’s crazy busy at the shop.”
“That’s a good problem to have. How’re Cheyenne and Kellan?”