Every Breath You Take (Second Opportunities 4)

Gray grinned at her joke. missed the good stuff. His later years were filled with triumphs. In one of those files there’s a magazine article about Stavros Konstantatos. He called Wyatt ‘my left fist.’ ”

what?”

Leaning across her, Gray sorted through the top files, slid one out, and removed the article he’d shown to Jeff Cervantes and Lily Reardon. Kate read it, her smile faded, and she handed it back. ’s a little easier for me to see him as a boy and young man than as a dynamic businessman. It’s harder for me to forgive a successful, intelligent man than it is to overlook the heartlessness of a boy who grew up with rich kids while he thought he himself was a charity case without a relative in the world.”

With a vague notion of trying to persuade Gray to let her have a copy of a picture of Mitchell to show her son someday, Kate reached for a file that obviously contained photographs.

The top photograph was a picture of Mitchell standing alone at the wharf in Philipsburg with the sun setting in the background. According to the date and time stamp in the lower right-hand corner, the photograph was taken at 5:45PM .

It was taken on the date she was supposed to meet him there at four o’clock.

Her hand shook as she picked it up and looked at the date and time again, unable to believe her eyes.

, my God!” she whispered, looking from the photograph to the one that had been beneath it. That one was taken at 5:15 on the same day in the same place. , my God!” she said again.

are you upset about that shot? You’re not in it.”

was supposed to be there,” Kate said, swiftly sliding the next photograph aside and then the ones beneath it. They were in chronological order. The first shot taken of Mitchell at the wharf that day was time-stamped 3:30PM .

Not caring that Gray Elliott would think her demented, she touched Mitchell’s picture as if she could smooth back a loose black lock near his temple. were there,” she whispered achingly. were waiting there for me . . .” There was no mistaking that date—she’d gotten pregnant in the predawn hours of that day.

Gray straightened, taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. I get you a glass of water or something?”

Kate started to laugh and ended up weeping.

’re scaring me, Kate.”

She went from weeping to joyous laughter and stood up, wrapping him in a quick, fierce hug with one arm, while she held the picture in her free hand. have nothing to be scared about—unless you try to pry this photograph out of my hand,” she warned him, with a beaming smile.

can’t—”

, you can. No one will ever know. It’s for his son to see someday.”

When he looked prepared to wrestle her to the ground for it, Kate sketched in the details of why it meant so much to her. When she was finished, he was a beaten man, and she knew it. me when you’d like to have dinner,” she said, “and I will see that you and your guests have a meal fit for a king.”

sounds like a bribe.”

She was so deliriously happy that she patted the arm of a man she barely knew and smilingly said, a bribe, apayoff. ” She picked up her tote bag and headed for the door, then she stopped in the middle of his office and turned back. out of curiosity, where did he go when he left the wharf?”

went directly to the airport and flew back here. His brother’s body had been found that day, and his nephew phoned him and pleaded with him to come straight home.”

same nephew who later confessed to killing William?”

Gray nodded, his expression turning grim. very same crazy little bastard who duped the most lenient judge in the juvenile court system and got off with a year in a psychiatric facility, followed by outpatient therapy, and three years probation.”

Outside on the sidewalk, Kate had to restrain the urge to throw her arms out wide and turn in slow, delighted circles. Mitchell had been waiting for her at the wharf. She wasn’t as na now as she’d been then, so she didn’t deceive herself into thinking he’d been in love with her and waiting there to carry her away with him.

The fact that he was there at the wharf didn’t negate the pretenses and secrets he’d built their brief relationship on. He’d pretended he knew nothing about Chicago, he’d pretended he knew nothing about Zack Benedict, and he’d sent her back to the villa to break up with Evan without ever admitting he knew who Evan was.

But he hadnot intended for her to trot back to the Enclave like an eager puppy only to find out that her master had checked out and vanished. He had not been going to let that happen. Maybe he had been waiting at the wharf just to say, ’m sorry I’ve used you and hurt you—the Bartletts were my real target.”

It didn’t matterwhy he’d been waiting there for her. It only mattered that he’d been there. Holly might have been right after all—while he was executing his plan for revenge, he’d started to care for Kate a little, maybe enough to want to watch the sunrise with her. His behavior at the Children’s Hospital benefit rather negated that last thought, so Kate decided never to think about that awful night again.

In her heart a little voice pleaded with her to find Mitchell and see if she could make whatever feeling he’d had for her grow deeper and stronger. But then logic pointed out the futility of that. She was pregnant with his child, and Mitchell did not want anything to do with fatherhood. No doubt he felt that looking at his own child would bring back all the helplessness and pain of his own childhood. Kate felt an impulse to do real violence to Henry and Evan Bartlett and Cecil Wyatt, and everyone else who had put a beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed little boy through a life of senseless misery.

Kate hailed a cab, slid into the backseat, and asked the driver to take her to Donovan’s restaurant. When she started to give him the address, he waved his hand and said, in Chicago knows where it is.”

That was an exaggeration, but Kate didn’t argue. Sliding her hand protectively over her stomach, she whispered to the baby she’d been unable to accept until an hour ago. Patrick Donovan,” she said, “you and I have a restaurant to run!”

Walking straight and quickly, Kate pushed the heavy door open and walked into Donovan’s; then she paused a moment and decided that Daniel Mitchell Donovan was the perfect name.

Chapter Forty-two

KATE PULLED HERcar to a stop at the Valet Parking sign ten minutes before Donovan’s regular opening time, but none of Donovan’s valet attendants were waiting under the awning as they normally were by 11:20 in the morning.