“I don‟t even know your name.” Had she said that before, sixteen years ago?
“Morgan.”
Another memory, of sitting upright in her hospital bed, staring blankly at the application form for Zachary‟s birth
certificate. FATHER‟S NAME.
Unknown, she had written, the point of her pen gouging the paper.
“Last name,” she said.
He hesitated. “Bressay.”
His accent, faint and indefinable, roughened on the word. She cocked her head. “What is that, French?”
“Scottish.”
She waited. Sometimes listening encouraged patients to talk better than asking questions.
“Bressay is an island north of Scotland. Settled by the Viking longships.”
He looked a bit like a Viking, big and brutally handsome with his hair like foam.
Like Zack‟s.
He was Zack‟s father . The implications made her head pound.
She drew a painful breath. “How did you find us?”
“I didn‟t,” he said so simply she almost believed him.
“Until I saw the boy yesterday, I was unaware of his existence.”
She would have told him. If she‟d ever had the chance. But he never came, he never called, he never contacted her.
He never tried to find them. Her.
The realization was like peeling adhesive back from an old wound. “So you‟re telling me your being here is, what?
Coincidence? An accident.”
“Or destiny,” he said. “Fate has brought us together. Twice.”
As if their one-night stand was more than lust on his part, stupidity on hers.
“I don‟t believe in fate. Bad luck, maybe.”
Those pale gold eyes assessed her. “You consider the boy a misfortune.”
“Of course not.” She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “When I found out I was pregnant . . . My parents didn‟t
want me to have the baby. They said if I went through with the pregnancy, I‟d have to take full responsibility for my choices
and my child. So I did. I put myself through med school. I kept my baby.” She raised her head, the old resolve burning in her
breast. “And you can‟t just show up sixteen years later and take any of that away from me.”
“No female among my people would choose as you did,” he said quietly. “I honor your choice.”
The sincerity in his voice, the admiration in his eyes, caught her off guard. Since Ben‟s death, she was used to getting
through the days and the nights and the years on her own. There were rewards, sure. But precious few compliments.
She blinked back sudden tears. “Thank you.”
“But the choice is not yours any longer,” he continued inexorably.
She stiffened, on the alert again. “Zack is my son.”
Morgan regarded her steadily beneath hooded lids. “He is almost a man. He must make his own choices.”
“You don‟t know him. You don‟t know anything about him. He‟s fifteen years old and going through a very difficult time.”
So difficult she had given up her practice and moved her family nine hundred miles to provide them with a fresh start. “You
have no right to tell me how to raise my son.”
“What about his rights?” Morgan asked.
She stared at him blankly, attracted. Unsettled. Afraid. “What are you talking about?”
“He has the right to know his father.”
She didn‟t want to consider the truth of his words. Without moving a muscle, he had managed to threaten everything she
valued, her life, her family, her control. “Bernardo Rodriguez was his father.”
“Your dead husband.”
Anger shook her. Anger at Ben, for leaving. Fury at Morgan, for making her feel, for making her face that loss again.
She curled her fingers around the wineglass. “Ben loved Zack. He was there for him all of his life.”
Morgan‟s gaze collided with hers. “But not at the beginning of it.”
The air whooshed from her lungs, sucked away by heat and memory. Only this, only him, his hot gaze, his overwhelming