As he drove, he pounded the steering wheel. He’d turned into his father, for Christ’s sake, chasing a woman who didn’t seem to want to be found. He didn’t want to turn into his father. No good could come of that kind of dogged determination to hold on to a woman.
He sighed. If she didn’t come back on her own, he would just have to let her go, no matter how much it hurt. He wouldn’t chase her. He wouldn’t repeat the doomed legacy of the past.
Chapter 16
Three years later
“I don’t understand why you feel like you have to run after her. She’s been gone for three years. If she really gave a damn about you or the boy, she wouldn’t have stayed away so long.”
Carlton looked up from the desk in his study and stared at his grandfather. The old man had a point. Carlton had waited and waited for Latonya to return. When it seemed like she would never return, he resigned himself to a life without her. He’d stayed in contact with her family and made sure that they saw little Carl on a regular basis. He’d hoped that one day she would return and little Carl would have his mother again, if nothing else.
“Little Carl wants his mother and I need—”
Grandfather cut Carlton off in an angry rant. “You need what! To go running after her like a lovesick puppy? No good can come from it. Stay here. Let her stay wherever the hell she is. Throw the envelope away.” He gripped the front of the desk and spat out his words. “Forget that you know where she is. I can’t believe you went and hired a private detective without consulting me, anyway!”
Carlton narrowed his eyes. His grandfather was overstepping his boundaries. Carlton had shared his plans with his grandfather out of courtesy, not for feedback or to be told what to do. No one told him what to do. “I don’t need to consult you on my private affairs, Grandfather. I’m going to get my wife and bring her home.”
“Why?” Grandfather sneered. “She cheated on you. God knows how many men she’s been with in the past three years.”
“I told you she hadn’t had sex with Weatherby. Her story checked out. He had an allergic—” Carlton started.
“Just because she didn’t have sex with him that day doesn’t mean she didn’t have sex with him ever. If they were having an affair, then they could have had sex numerous times. They could have even been planning to have sex that day. I told you what I saw!”
Carlton gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t continue to let his grandfather cut him off so rudely. Even if he meant well, the man was out of line.
In a way his Grandfather was correct. He had no real proof that she had never slept with Weatherby. That she hadn’t had plans to have an affair. However, something in Carlton’s gut now told him that Latonya wouldn’t do that to him. He wished he could have trusted in that back then. He narrowed his eyes on his grandfather. There was nothing that Grandfather could say that would stop Carlton from going to his wife and trying to get her to come home.
“I’m going to get my wife.” Carlton slid a picture that the private detective took across the desk. “She has a child.”
“So! How do you even know the child is yours?”
“Look at the picture, Grandfather.”
His grandfather studied the picture. He pursed his lips in consideration. “You still don’t have to go. We can have someone take the child—”
Carlton shook his head in disbelief. He had no idea his grandfather could be so vindictive. He was actually advocating kidnapping! Carlton snapped, “I’m going to get my wife!”
“Fine! Fine! I’m going with you!”
“Knocking hard, Mommy. Won’t stop. I’m scared.” The tiny mocha-complexioned child rubbed his hands across his face and blinked away tears from his expressive dark brown eyes.
Latonya didn’t have the energy to get up from her bed and answer the door. The idiot, who obviously had the wrong door, would not go away. As a result, her two-year-old son Terrence—whom she had just gotten to take a nap while she rested—was awake again and on the verge of tears. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom they shared looking from her to the hall door.
She covered her mouth and let loose a series of coughs. Latonya was having a bad fight with what she’d self-diagnosed as the flu and it was winning by a landslide. Coughs racked her body yet again before she could attempt to soothe her child.
“They’ll go away eventually, baby. Come back to bed. Once Mommy gets some rest we can play a game. Would you like that?” The normally soft, husky tone of her voice had a raspy edge due to the rawness in her throat.
The knocking became louder and more rapid. She didn’t have any friends or know a lot of people in the small New Jersey town of Lodi. Hiding from her past here seemed like a viable possibility instead of some unattainable hope. She kept to herself and no one there knew her.
The door began to shake and the hinges jingled. Tears trailed down Terrence’s face and Latonya realized that if she was going to make any headway against the flu that had her flat out on her back for two days, she was going to have to muster up the strength to go to the door, politely curse whoever it was the hell out and then crawl back into bed to comfort her scared child.
It was probably someone for the young woman across the hall. Her many suitors often mistakenly knocked on Latonya’s door. They usually weren’t so persistent.
Latonya draped the sweat-soaked sheet around herself and walked the few steps—that felt like a million to her sick legs—it took to get from her bedroom to the front door. It took even longer because Terrence had found a way to latch on to the sheet and was firmly attached to her right leg. Trying to catch her breath by inhaling deeply, she felt the phlegm rattle in her chest.
Wanting to yell, her voice came out in a strained whisper instead. “One second. My goodness!” Her sore throat was tested by even those four words. Leaning against the door for rest before opening it, she realized that she would be lucky to tell the irritating person that they had the wrong apartment, let alone curse him or her out for being so rude and nearly breaking down her door. Her irritation blocked her normal caution of looking through the peephole and putting the chain lock in place. She angrily snatched open the door.
Latonya immediately regretted her haste. A cold chill washed over her as her worst fear materialized. Her husband and his grandfather had found her. She tried to slam the door shut, but the two men were too quick for her weak attempt. They pushed their way inside with little effort and all Latonya could do was squeak a feeble “no.”
Her arm instinctively and automatically reached down to pull her child closer to her. Terrence looked up at the men as he grabbed her leg tighter. The two men were fully in her living room and they seemed to overwhelm the small, sparsely decorated space with their presence.
They had stunned expressions on their faces as they studied her child. It was obvious that they were taking in Terrence’s rich deep complexion, thick wavy hair and his proud, sturdy features that hinted at a rich Bahamian heritage. They no doubt saw the Harrington-trademark square chin even though it was slightly softened on the small child. To look at Terrence was to know whose child he was.
The elder Harrington’s face broke out into a wide grin as he studied her son. The younger man simply watched Terrence. His eyes were unreadable when they moved to Latonya.
Her eyes did a quick glance toward the bedroom and then the front door. In her state of illness, making a run for either one seemed pointless. Latonya was too sick to get far, and with Terrence latched on to her leg, she probably wouldn’t even make it to the door. A pain that felt like fire shot through her chest and her head throbbed as if someone had used it as a drum.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” The elder Harrington’s voice came out in a low whistle, almost awestruck. He reached out his hand. “Come here, son. Come to your great-grandpop.” The older Harrington’s once-wavy salt-and-pepper hair had given way to a startlingly white-covered dome that was more straight than wavy. His features proud and pronounced, he still sported very few wrinkles for a man his age.
She instinctively held Terrence closer and thought about denying the words that the old man had spoken. She couldn’t. Anyone taking a cursory glance at her child and the two men that had come back to haunt her from the past would be able to see the connection.
She glared at the old man who had made her life a living hell the entire time that she had lived with his grandson as his wife. Holding her head up defiantly, she spat out, “You don’t have any claims to my child.”
“That boy is a Harrington and you are no better than a common thief. How dare you keep this child from his rightful place in our family!” The elder Harrington’s tone took on a sharp edge even as he continued to smile at his great grandson.
She opened her mouth to speak and winced instead. Letting go of her hold on Terrence to cover her mouth and hold her aching chest, she shut her eyes tightly.
It can’t be happening. I won’t let it happen again.
The elder Harrington knelt beside Terrence and hugged him. “Would you like to come live with your great-grandpop and your daddy?”
“No.” She tried to grab Terrence, but the old man had a tight grip. Not wanting to scare her son, she tried to calm down. Her head was spinning and she felt as if she was going to pass out.
Latonya glanced at her husband with pleading eyes, but his face remained expressionless. She figured she probably was the last person in the world that he would help.
Carlton still had a physique that would put most pro athletes to shame. His dark complexion was still flawless and his wavy black hair had some beginnings of gray at the temples. The way the tailor-made, pinstripe navy ensemble hung on his body, it was clear the man could still wear a suit like nobody’s business. The years had been kind to him, and the forty-one-year-old Carlton looked just as good, if not better than the thirty-five-year-old man she’d married. Latonya felt a familiar fluttering in her stomach as she took in the barreling mass of masculinity that was her husband and silently cursed her still-intense reaction to him.
She turned to the man who held her child. He wouldn’t harm Terrence, but she knew as sure as she stood that he would take her child away without so much as a backward glance. Tears sprung to her eyes at the thought.
“Please don’t do this. I’m begging you. Don’t take my child. Can’t we work something out?” Even as she spoke, she knew that the elder Harrington was not willing to compromise. Turning back to her husband, “Carlton, please—” was all she managed to get out before her whole world went black.
Carlton sat in the sterile hospital room watching as his wife sleep. Her breathing was finally sounding normal and he thanked God. She was recovering from a bad case of pneumonia. Listening to her struggled breathing the past couple of days had been difficult. She drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes calling out, begging him not to take her child. His heart ached and his mind was consumed with guilt. He didn’t know how he would get her to come back with him and give their family another chance. He only knew that he had to try.
Seeing her again after three years looking so different had left him stunned and speechless. Seeing their child, their second son, also had him at a loss for words. He could barely get it together quickly enough to react and catch her when she’d passed out. He’d never known such fear. The thought that he might lose Latonya after finding her again was a reality he didn’t want to face. So he did the only thing he could do. He sent his grandfather home with Terrence and stayed by his wife’s side.
He rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes just as Latonya woke up. She seemed more lucid than she’d been the previous times, but it was clear she didn’t know what to think.
The sun shined startlingly bright through the blinds. Latonya blinked several times to get her bearings. She took a deep breath. Hearing the clarity in her lungs as she did, Carlton again thanked God.
