A Father's Promise Read online

  "His hugs." Ellis's voice cracked with emotion, "No one can hug like Trev."

  She pictured little-boy's arms wrapped around Ellis's neck and squeezing as tight as they could. Darn, the tears were forming again. She hadn't expected that answer. She thought Ellis would have said knowing his ABC's, or tying his shoes, or coloring inside the lines. She hadn't been expecting him to say hugs.

  Hugs were intimate. No two people hugged the same. Hugs between a father and his son were special. Shared hugs between Ellis and his son were probably more special than most. "You miss him terribly, don't you?"

  "More than I would miss my next breath." Ellis didn't seem embarrassed by his honest yet sentimental answer.

  "Did you call him earlier?" When they returned from their trip to town, she had left Ellis with her father and had headed over to the nursery to get some work done. She had managed to put in six hours today and the pile of paperwork she had carried home with her had been only half as big as yesterday's.

  "Twice. I told him to expect a package tomorrow morning and that I'll be bringing home a surprise with me."

  "You didn't tell him about the family of orangutans that had taken over your back seat?" Had Trevor been her son, she honestly didn't think she could keep them a secret.

  "No, it would be too cruel to tell him I bought him the monkeys and then tell him he can't play with them until I get home. This way he knows it's a surprise and half the fun will be anticipating and guessing what I'm bringing home." Ellis relaxed and slouched back into the chair. "He probably drove Rita crazy all evening guessing what it might be."

  "Rita?" Maybe Ellis and Trevor weren't as alone as she thought.

  "My housekeeper and Trevor's surrogate mother. I hired her when Ginny and Trevor came home from the hospital. Ginny wasn't feeling up to handling a newborn so I employed Rita until such time that she was. Ginny left and Rita stayed on to take care of Trevor and the house."

  She remembered him mentioning a Mrs. McCall before.

  "Rita keeps my home life running smoothly," he went on, "so I can concentrate on the business end of my life."

  "You mentioned that you were in transportation." Ellis hadn't mentioned too much about what he did for a living. "Something to do with trucking, right?"

  "I put myself through college by driving an eighteen-wheeler all summer and during the holidays. When I graduated, I bought my own rig."

  "You're a truck driver?" She had never met a truck driver who drove a Mercedes, wore expensive Italian shoes or carried around his own top-of-the-line laptop computer.

  "Was a truck driver. I don't drive any longer. Within five years of buying my first rig, I purchased a small fleet of trucks, hired on my own drivers and started my own trucking company, O.I.B.L."

  "One If By Land?" My Lord, Ellis owned O.I.B.L.! A person would have to live under a rock sixty miles away from any interstate not to have heard or seen any of the distinctive-looking trucks with a portrait on the side of Paul Revere holding a lantern. "I see your trucks all the time. Heck, we even have some deliveries made by them at the nursery."

  "Thank you."

  Ellis Carlisle was rich! He was beyond rich, he was stinking filthy rich. Now the laptop and the luxury Mercedes made a lot more sense. Ellis could buy the town of Coalsburg seven times over without feeling the pinch and yet, with all his money, he might not be able to save his own son. It would have been ironic if it wasn't so sad. "I'm sure you can answer the question that always pops into my mind whenever I see one of your trucks."

  "What's that?"

  "Is there a Two If By Sea?"

  "T.I.B.S. was deep in the developmental stage when Trevor was diagnosed with leukemia. I put everything on hold and concentrated all my energy on my son's health." Ellis stood up, walked over to the sink and stared out into the night. "Getting my son well is more important to me than some new business venture."

  The tension in his shoulders told her there was a lot more to the story than he was telling. How does one just "put on hold" something as global as a shipping fleet? "I think you made the right decision." She had to wonder if anyone ever told him that. Ellis was a businessman, and a damn good one, going by the achievements he had made over the past ten years. Everyone in business probably told him he was crazy to possibly lose such a venture.

  Ellis chuckled softly and turned around to look at her. "I know I did."

  She liked his warm rough laugh. It made her feel all soft and light inside. It made her believe that everything would work out and Trevor would find his match. It made her want to believe in happily-ever-afters. Something she hadn't believed in for a very long time, if ever. "What happens if there's a match?"

  "If Thomas is a match and he is willing to be the donor, he would have to stay overnight in the hospital. His bone marrow would be taken from his hip and he'd be sore or tender there for a couple of days. That's it." Ellis paced in front of the sink. "I would handle all his medical expenses and make sure he's as comfortable as possible."

  "I know my father's role would be minimal, I was more concerned about Trevor and what he'd be going through."

  "Trevor will have to be admitted into the hospital two weeks before the transplant. He would be given large doses of chemotherapy, maybe some total body radiation, to destroy his own bone marrow and blood cells as well as the cancer cells. Once he was 'conditioned,' he would be given your father's purified marrow intravenously. That part will take about two hours, but it will take two to three weeks before his marrow finds its way to the proper place in the interior of Trevor's major bones and starts producing new and normal blood cells. If everything is fine, Trevor can go home about seven weeks after the transplant. He'll be closely followed. Six months after the transplant he will be able to start school, but it usually takes up to a year for total convalescence."

  Sydney felt her heart lurch with each word he spoke. "He'll be in the hospital for over two months?"

  "Two months is a small price to pay for living, Sydney."

  She knew that, but still, Trevor was only five years old. "What happens if there isn't a match?" She needed to know it all.

  "If your father doesn't match and a match can't be found before Trevor comes out of remission, then there is no hope."

  She had thought the description of the actual transplant was terrifying. It was nothing compared to the words there is no hope. She stood up and walked over to Ellis and placed her hand on his forearm. "I'm praying for Trevor and for you that my father will be a match. Even if it means he won't be my father any longer, he would be yours."

  "That's where you are wrong. Thomas St. Claire will always be your father, not mine." Ellis reached out and gently cupped her cheek. She felt the heat of his palm against her cool skin. "One thing I have learned over the past five years of being a dad is that it takes more than genetics to be a father, it takes love. Thomas St. Claire loves you, Sydney, that's plain enough even for this stranger to see."

  "But if you're his son…" The tip of his finger pressed against her moving lips and stopped her next words from coming.

  "I will never be his son." The pad of his index finger slowly and sensually stroked her lower lip, just as he had done this morning while standing next to his car on Main Street. "I don't want your father, Sydney. I don't want a father at all. All I want is a donor and a chance for my son."

  She felt the heat coil low in her stomach and wind its way to the core of her being. She wanted Ellis. It was that plain and that simple. That basic. Need, unlike anything she had ever experienced, surged its way upward. "Then we both want the same thing." She was talking about a lot more than just Trevor. Ellis's lightest touch made her want. Made her need.

  Ellis's finger stopped its torturous journey across her mouth and a spark of heat blazed in his gaze. His gray eyes turned molten with need and his breathing grew uneven. His voice contained jagged edges of desire that sliced their way down her spine. "Do we, Sydney? Do we both want the same thing?"

  She knew they wer
e no longer discussing Trevor. They were talking about this heat that had flared up unsuspectingly between them. Heat that shouldn't have been there. Her gaze lowered to his mouth. Oh yes, they both wanted the same thing. She had had two lovers in her life. Neither had ever inspired this instantaneous … lust.

  Was that what she was feeling, lust? Or was there something more? How could there be more?

  She slowly reached out and placed her hand upon his chest. The rapid beating of his heart came through the soft cotton of his shirt and vibrated against her palm. She could feel his warmth seep into her fingers and spread up her arm. Her gaze lowered to where her fingers pressed against his chest before shooting back up to his face. Ellis was going to kiss her, she could see it in his eyes. She wanted that kiss. "Yes, I do believe we want the same thing."

  With a rough growl, Ellis pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth with his own.

  Sydney welcomed his kiss but was unprepared for the overwhelming desire that assaulted her body. Firm lips seduced her mouth into deepening the kiss and she went willingly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself closer. Her tongue met and danced with his as her world tilted to the left and then slowly righted itself to a more perfect position than it had ever been before.

  Ellis tasted like coffee, cherry pie and need. Or maybe she was tasting herself. She had had the same late-night snack, and she was definitely feeling the need.

  His hair was soft beneath her searching fingers and his month hard and demanding where it meshed with hers. Ellis kissed like a man who was used to getting what he wanted. By the way he was kissing the breath right out of her, she would have to say Ellis wanted her. Probably as much as she wanted him.

  The edge of the counter dug into the small of her back, forcing her to arch her hips forward. The low groan that rumbled up his chest told her she was pressing against a very sensitive part of his anatomy. A part of his body that was reacting to the kiss. The hard column of his arousal bulged behind his zipper.

  Where he was turning hard and wanting, she was turning soft and accepting. Opposites that were meant to be joined since the beginning of time.

  With a ragged groan Ellis cupped her hips and put a few needed inches between them. He broke the kiss and stared down into her face. His eyes churned with so many emotions she couldn't name them all. There were glimpses of surprise and hunger beneath the burning need. She wanted to answer that need. She was ready to answer that need.

  Ellis took in an uneven breath and lightly touched her mouth with the tip of his finger. "We either stop now, Sydney, or we won't be stopping until we're both naked, satisfied and totally exhausted."

  She almost smiled. Did he think he was scaring her off? Naked, satisfied and totally exhausted sounded like paradise to her. Last year, last month or even last week she would have been totally appalled had someone told her she would be contemplating going to bed with a man she had met three days before. It sounded silly to say she wasn't that kind of girl, when she was just discovering everyone was that kind of girl when the right man came along. Her instincts were telling her Ellis was the right man.

  She did smile then. Right against his finger. "Sounds like a plan to me."

  Ellis groaned louder and put a few more inches between their bodies and lowered his hand. "I think we both might be a little bit vulnerable right now, Sydney."

  Vulnerable! "What in the world are you talking about?" She wasn't vulnerable. The last time she had been vulnerable was when she was ten years old and stuck in a foster home with a foster father who had made her extremely nervous. She was never going to be vulnerable again.

  Ellis took another step backward. "To be honest with you, I haven't been with a woman in a very long time." His gaze skimmed the front of her blouse before jerking to a spot somewhere over her left shoulder. "Between Trevor and my business, I really haven't had time for a relationship."

  She slowly nodded as if she was understanding what he was saying. She didn't. "Are you trying to tell me you aren't involved with anyone at this time?"

  "No, that's not what I'm trying to say, but for the record I'm not."

  She was glad to hear that. She didn't know what she would do if Ellis had a lover tucked safely back in Jenkintown. "So what exactly are you trying to say?"

  "I consider myself a pretty good judge of character."

  "If that were so, you would know my father was telling you the truth about him and your mother." She refused to feel guilty for some of her own doubts. They weren't talking about her, they were talking about Ellis.

  Ellis shrugged that comment off. "What I meant was, I don't think you are the type of woman who jumps into bed with every man who might be interested. If that was true, your feet would never touch the floor."

  "Was that suppose to be a compliment?" Lord, she hoped not, for if it was, then Ellis needed more than a quick Emily Post refresher course.

  "Yes," snapped Ellis, sounding frustrated. In a move so totally uncharacteristic of the confident and calm man she had come to know, he thrust his fingers through his hair. An unruly cowlick sprang up. "What I'm trying to say in a very backward and awkward way is that I can't stay, Sydney. In a few days, as soon as the results are in, I'll be gone. I'll have to go. Trevor needs me at home."

  Now she knew why Ellis had called a halt to their kisses. He was afraid of hurting her when he went back home to his son and his business. Not only was his gesture incredibly sweet, he was right. She would have been hurt. Ellis Carlisle had been touching more than her body, he had touched her heart. She didn't know if she had it in her to make love to a man and then sit quietly by as he walked out the door and got on with his life. She didn't think she did.

  "I see your reasoning." She saw more than that, but she didn't comment on any of the heartbreak that might have been in her future. Instead, she stepped to the side and tucked in her gold blouse where it had been pulled free of the waistband in her jeans by Ellis's stroking hands. There wasn't going to be any heartbreak because there wasn't going to be anything to cause it. She stared at the toe of his shoe. "The kiss was a mistake, Ellis, it won't happen again." Self-control was such a terrible virtue at times.

  "Kissing you wasn't a mistake, Sydney." Ellis reached out and touched a curl teasing her shoulder. "Making love with you and then leaving you would be a mistake. You deserve a man who would stick around for more than a few days."

  "How do you know what I deserve?" She took another step away from him. Ellis didn't know her at all. If he did, he would have never kissed her. Deep down inside her soul where the dark things lived, she was praying with all her might that Thomas wasn't his father. Her prayers had nothing to do with Trevor and his chance for a bone marrow transplant. She hoped Ellis would find his biological parent and be able to save his son's life—as long as that parent wasn't Thomas.

  Her prayers had more to do with her own fears. All her life she had never been good enough. Her biological parents hadn't been killed in some freak accident or died from some mysterious disease as she had been led to believe. They gave her away to the state. They signed a piece of paper and away she went. It was the horrible truth and she had faced it many years ago. Ever since she'd learned her adoption history, she'd been left with the belief that she had to have done something terribly wrong for her parents just to sign her away like that. She hadn't been good enough. The string of foster homes she had managed to work herself through only reinforced that knowledge. When Thomas and Julia took her in and legally adopted her, she had been the happiest little girl except for the doubt that was still planted deep inside her. She always expected that one day her new family would discover she wasn't good enough to be their daughter and send her on her way.

  It had been decided a long time ago that she didn't deserve anything special in life.

  "I can only guess that you deserve something more than I could give you, Syd. I would rather be wrong than to see you get hurt."

  She could see a lot more written in his eyes than
the fact that he would be heading home in a couple of days. She knew he was thinking about the future and praying for a miracle. Ellis was worried how she would react if they did become lovers and then it was proven he really was Thomas's son. He had the right to be worried about that, because she didn't know how she would react. Thomas had never lied to her before.

  "It's okay, Ellis. I understand." She moved to the doorway. Her escape to the stairs and the privacy of her bedroom was only a couple of yards away. She needed to get away so she could work out the conflict of emotions assaulting her mind. "Turn off the lights when you are done in here. I've already locked the doors."

  She made it out the doorway, but not to the stairs before his voice stopped her. "Sydney?"

  "What?"

  Ellis stepped out of the kitchen and joined her in the living room. "I said it would be a mistake if we became lovers." He gave her a small smile that strained the corner of his mouth. "I didn't say anything about not kissing you again."

  She felt a traitorous flush of pleasure stealing up her cheeks and hurried toward the stairs. The cad still wanted her kisses, even though they weren't going to be making love. It was outrageous. It was scandalous. So why was a rush of excitement sweeping through her body and making her feel lighthearted? She felt his intense gaze on her as she climbed each step. She couldn't resist stopping at the top of the stairs and softly calling down, "We'll see about that, Ellis. We'll just see." Without waiting for his response, she turned and walked to her bedroom.

  * * *

  Ellis glanced around the main building of the Ever Green Nursery in wonder. Sydney owned all of this! The place was amazing. It was truly magnificent. It was so colorful that it nearly hurt his eyes. The main building consisted of the cash registers, rows of colorful flowerpots, clay pots and windowsill planters. There were miniature mountains of potting soil, wreaths, birdhouses, hoses and so many brilliant silk flowers that a person would need half a day to inspect them all. Two huge greenhouses filled with row after row of tables overflowing with trays of flowers joined the main building on the east and the west.