If he had known, if he’d had a clue what that smile was capable of doing to his insides, he’d have found a way to prompt it much, much sooner. He’d have gone to great lengths, in fact, to see it long before this.

  In the next moment he realized he’d have been better off if he’d never seen her smile at him that way—as if he’d made her happy beyond measure, as if he’d said something wonderful and selfless and wise. It was one more memory he’d have to deal with when he left her.

  Juan picked that moment to turn to Carmen. Logan watched, a confused frown deepening to a scowl as the little boy began to make slow, painfully meticulous formations with his fingers. The gestures, though strange to watch and seemingly meaningless at first, gradually took on significance. They weren’t meaningless at all. In fact, it became glaringly clear how much meaning they had. The boy was signing.

  His heart sank as it all made sense. The silence, the intense stares, the way Carmen looked directly at him when she spoke to him. Juan wasn’t silent out of shyness. He was silent because he was deaf.

  Logan raised stricken eyes to Carmen. She was smiling. So broadly. So proudly. She gave Juan a quick, loving hug then set him away from her and answered him in sign language.

  Stalled somewhere between compassion and a crippling sense of dread, Logan managed to form a question.

  “What did he say?”

  She gave Juan another quick, prideful smile then turned that smile on Logan. “He said, ‘You make great cookies, Mom.’”

  Mom? The word reverberated through Logan’s head like a freight train thundering over rough rails. Mom. He closed his eyes, cursing Johnny Dallas for this slight omission about Carmen’s background. Then he cursed himself for his brilliant deception.

  Carmen had a child. A deaf child.

  What the hell had he gotten himself into?

  Several stunned moments passed before he realized she’d given up and a tear had escaped to spill freely down her cheek.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, I know,” she said, swiping it away, then turning her back so neither Juan nor Logan could see her face. “Crying I mean.”

  When she got herself under control, she turned back to him, a tremulous smile hovering on her lips. “It’s only that it’s the first time he’s ever signed for me. I’ve waited so long to have him talk to me. It . . .” She paused, warding off a renewed threat of tears. “It’s been so hard not having him here. Wondering— always wondering if he’s okay when he’s away.”

  Her gaze swung to his, a little wide with elation, a little glazed with lingering doubts.

  “I miss him so much. Every time I bring him here for a visit, it gets harder to take him back to the group home.”

  Still stunned, still absorbing, Logan listened in silence while she talked. He was still having difficulty with the fact that she had a child. Not only a child, but a deaf child.

  “It’s been hard on him too. But seeing him sign . . .” She paused and tousled Juan’s dark head as she set another plate of cookies on the table. “Maybe it’s all been worth it. They’re helping him.”

  Logan inched out of shock enough to see from the look in her eyes that she still questioned if she was doing the right thing. He didn’t think about perimeters or consequences or the wisdom of keeping his distance. He simply acted on an uncompromising urge to reassure her.

  He held out his hand. “Come here.”

  She moved hesitantly to his side.

  Drawing her to him, he buried his face in the softness of her belly and wrapped his arms around her hips. “You are doing exactly the right thing. He needs this from you. And as much as you want him with you, you need this for him too.”

  He had no idea where the words had come from. His heart, probably, he decided, resigned but no longer surprised.

  Her hands fell lightly to his shoulders before she drew his head against her with a gentle caress of her hands in his hair.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I needed to hear that.”

  He couldn’t stop himself. He nuzzled his face into the pillow of her breasts, absorbing her warmth, wallowing in her softness, remembering her taste.

  Warmth spread through him as he held her. It had little to do with chemistry; it had everything to do with caring. Warning signals started to sound at the same time he felt her stiffen, as if she’d just realized what they were inviting. As if she’d just remembered the intimacies they’d shared and the blow he’d landed to her fragile ego.

  She made to pull away.

  He stopped her and held her fast. “Carmen, about this morning. Please believe me when I tell you that I didn’t want what was happening between us to stop.”

  He felt the muscles of her abdomen tense against his jaw, felt her hands drop from his hair to rest limply on his shoulders.

  “I told you, you don’t have to explain,” she insisted.

  It was time he told her the truth. “Yes, I do. I wanted you. I still want you. But I’m not the man you think I am. I’m not the man you want me to be.” He let her go then, needing to see her face, needing to see her anger when he made his confession.

  But she looked so vulnerable and so open to hurt, he realized right then that he couldn’t tell her. Not now, at any rate.

  “I’m not the man you need,” he said finally. It was a compromise, but that much at least was true. “I never will be.”

  She wanted to say something. He saw it in her eyes. But he also saw how much hurt it caused her and let it drop. When her eyes registered recognition of his intent, he was glad he did.

  This wasn’t the time. This was the time she needed to enjoy her son. Her son. That revelation was still giving him some problems.

  He looked from her to Juan. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

  “Two weeks,” she said quickly, making it sound like it had been two years. “They—the people at the group home—say it’s best that way. I’m beginning to believe them.” Her gaze caressed the boy.

  “But, like you said,” he added, finishing her thought for her, “it’s hard.”

  She nodded. Her gaze darted to his then back to Juan.

  “He looks good, doesn’t he?”

  Logan studied the child. Juan looked, he decided, revisiting his earlier assessment, like a child who was wise beyond his years. He really couldn’t see a resemblance to Carmen. Maybe he favored his father.

  A tightening in his gut told him that was a line of thought he’d be better off steering clear of. He didn’t like to think of her with another man who touched her the way he had touched her this morning, making a baby with her.

  In brooding silence, he studied Juan. While he’d initially thought he was painfully thin, he could see now that he was built on the wiry side. His skin glowed with vitality and health, his black hair was shiny bright.

  “How long do you get to keep him?”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  She shook her head. “Not until tomorrow night. I traded shifts with Barb. She owed me one.”

  He suspected that a lot of people owed Carmen.

  He owed her too. Before he left her, he’d somehow figure out a way to pay his debt in full. That didn’t mean it was going to make it any easier to walk away.

  She touched Juan’s shoulder. When she had his attention, she spoke slowly. At the same time she expertly signed the words. “Are you ready to go to the museum?”

  Juan nodded enthusiastically, then cast an expectant grin toward Logan.

  Logan didn’t have to know sign language to understand what the child was asking. More dangerous melting took place in his chest.

  Damn, he had to get out of here before he discovered more soft spots in his armor, more weaknesses.

  “Tell him I’d like to go,” he said gruffly, “but that I’m not quite ready for a day on the town.”

  “You tell him,” she said, slanting him a puzzled frown. “If you speak slowly, he can read your lips.”

  Disappointment clouded Juan’s eyes when Logan slowly and distinctly told him he couldn’t go.

  “Maybe if Johnny rests this afternoon, he can play Chutes and Ladders with you for a little while tonight.”

  She glanced at Logan, her brows raised hopefully.

  “Sure,” he heard himself saying when a smile brightened Juan’s face. “As long as you promise not to beat me too badly, okay?” He’d worry later about the fact that he didn’t have a clue as to what he’d just agreed to do.

  Juan’s grin widened as he signed the word okay.

  With concentrated effort, and not stopping to analyze what possessed him, Logan made a clumsy attempt to sign the word right back.

  He must have gotten his message across because both Carmen and Juan were beaming at him when he finished.

  Feeling inordinately pleased with himself, then self-conscious, he mumbled something about needing to lie down and left them.

  When he heard the door shut behind them, he lay down on the bed, stacked his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

  Maybe it was a good thing this charade was going to be cut short, he told himself darkly. He needed to get back to the things that were important to him. Back to the things that mattered. Money. Power. Control. Those tangible constants that moved the world and kept him from thinking about alternatives. Alternatives like involvement with a trusting little boy whose smile did the most incredible things to his heart. Alternatives like getting lost in a soft, giving woman who made him want to believe in love—a concept, he reminded himself, that he’d learned early on was an illusion as transient and as elusive as time.

  No matter how diligently he tried to reanchor himself in proven realities, the unproven ones wouldn’t let him alone.

  Restless, unsettled, he rose and prowled the bedroom. It didn’t dawn on him for a while that he was looking for something. What, he didn’t know. Answers maybe. To what made Carmen tick. Missing pieces that might have clued him in to the fact that she had a son.

  Finding none, he stared at a single picture on her dresser that he hadn’t noticed from his vantage point on her bed. It was a recent shot of the two of them together. Nothing formal, just a Polaroid someone had taken that she’d tucked into a small frame. And, he realized as he looked around him, it was the only picture of Juan in the entire house. No baby pictures on the walls, nothing to chronicle a history.

  Puzzled, he wandered back into the extra bedroom that he knew accommodated Rico and confirmed his first impression. It wasn’t really decorated with a little boy in mind.

  Something wasn’t ringing true. Without tipping his hand—he wasn’t yet ready to do that—he decided he needed some answers. He picked up the phone and made another call. After a short but informative chat with Dallas, he had enough of an explanation to understand what was going on. What he didn’t understand was how he felt about it.

  Pensive, he stared out the living-room window, out to the street five stories below, which rumbled with the sounds of the city and the poverty of the projects only a block or two away.

  He was on foreign turf. Totally out of his element. He was as much of a stranger in Carmen’s world as she would be in his. He was as much in the dark about her motivations as she was to his identity. Yet as much as he knew he should be fighting it, he was becoming more deeply embroiled in her life. A life that was light-years away from his in terms of culture, economics, attitudes.

  He’d never had to wonder where his next meal was coming from. She had.

  He’d never had to agonize over meeting basic expenses such as rent and utilities. She clearly had.

  He’d never rolled up his shirt sleeves, dug into the decay, and tried to make a difference one-on-one in another person’s life. She had.

  And, while under his leadership Prince Enterprises was noted for its generosity with charitable contributions, he found himself bucking both the humility and the shame of being a “have” when the world was filled with so many “have-nots”.

  How, he asked himself, had he managed to become involved with a woman who turned her back on her own needs for the sake of helping others? A woman who made him question his motives and feel defensive about a wealth he’d worked like hell to accumulate?

  The most troubling questions he didn’t have answers for either. When had he come to care about what she thought, how she would get by when he was gone, and how, when the time came to leave her, he was going to find the strength to walk away?

  CHARADE

  Cindy Gerard

  FIVE

  Logan waited in pensive silence until Carmen and Juan had returned from the museum. Seeing them together, the way they loved each other, made him realize that walking away wouldn’t be as simple as logic dictated. It might have been simpler if he hadn’t made that last phone call to Dallas.

  Dallas had filled him in while Logan was still trying to recover from the idea of Carmen with a child. As it turned out, he shouldn’t have wasted the time. While Dallas couldn’t provide all the details, he’d related enough information to clarify that this child, who had called Carmen Mom, wasn’t her child at all.

  Juan wasn’t her son, but clearly she loved him as if he were. And Juan loved her as if she were his mother. The bond between them ran as deep and as true as common blood.

  Grim-faced, Logan watched Juan, his dark head huddled over the game board he’d spread out across the kitchen table. As his gaze strayed slowly from Juan to Carmen, he reminded himself that he was a man who’d spent his life vigilantly dodging emotional involvement. For thirty-six years he’d been successful. For thirty-six years the self-imposed isolation had suited his purposes.

  So he didn’t fully understand why their commitment to each other affected him so. He only knew that it did. Profoundly. In the short span of a few days, he’d become as mired in Carmen’s life as if he’d stepped in quicksand. That fast, that unsuspectingly, he’d begun to care. Soon he’d be in neck-deep.

  An expectant look from Juan nudged him back to the business at hand. “My move?” he asked slowly and distinctly.

  Juan grinned and nodded.

  He’d been eager to play Chutes and Ladders the moment Carmen had brought him back from the museum. Carmen had been firm. She’d insisted Juan rest while she prepared dinner but promised him that if he did, he could get the game out right after the dishes were done.

  The boy hadn’t wasted any time. As soon as the last dishes were put away, he’d set things up and issued Logan a challenge.

  Aware that Carmen was watching them, sensing Juan’s confidence was at stake, Logan fussed idly with the game-box lid, covertly scanning the directions so he’d have an idea as to how to play.

  Then he made the mistake of glancing up across the kitchen table. Carmen was leaning against the counter, her eyes misty.

  She was too much sometimes. Too much woman. Too much temptation. Right now she was much too proud and happy. He steeled himself against the pleasure he felt at seeing her that way. He didn’t want her looking at him like he was responsible for some of that happiness. Yet it was apparent she felt he was. Her smile said a silent thank-you for taking a little time with Juan.

  He slumped back in the chair, scowling. Why couldn’t she have been a woman who would have been happy with diamonds? Diamonds would have been simple. He could give her diamonds. He understood a woman who was taken in by their allure. He didn’t understand this woman or why a gift of diamonds would never bring the sparkle to her eyes that was shining in them now.

  She dazzled him. She dazed him. She humbled him.

  He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, feeling like a fraud. He felt a lot of other things too. Pride in her. Affection for Juan. In spite of the fact that he couldn’t rightfully claim ownership of any of those feelings, in spite of the fact that he’d been fighting them tooth and nail, he’d still become caught up in them.

  He didn’t belong in their lives, so what happened after he left them shouldn’t matter. Yet it did. He was afraid for Carmen. Afraid it would prove too costly for her to invest all this emotion in a child who wasn’t even her own. He was afraid for Juan.

  He should have been afraid for himself. He was the one who was in beyond his depth.

  A small hand on his arm recalled him to the game. He spun the dial then moved his little plastic person along the winding path on the game board. Juan broke into another broad grin then took his own turn.

  “He’s come a long way in a few short months, hasn’t he?”

  Even before he looked up, Logan knew that the pride and love projected in Carmen’s voice had also touched her face.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see him like this,” she continued. “Inquisitive. Communicating. Happy. He is happy, don’t you think?”

  Juan bounced a couple of times in his chair and made a muffled, mewling sound of delight when his little red man pulled ahead of Logan’s blue one.

  Logan grinned in spite of his determination to maintain a fighting distance from emotions that were threatening to turn his insides to mush. “Wouldn’t you be happy if you were beating the pants off someone who’s not only older but supposedly wiser than you?”

  She smiled . . . a smile that slowly faded as a troubling thought dimmed it. “When I think back to the day I first saw him at the clinic, I can’t believe he’s the same little boy.”

  It was the opening he’d been both waiting for and dreading. Dallas’s account of the relationship had been informative, though sketchy, because of the limited time they had to talk. This was Logan’s chance to have Carmen fill in the blanks. This was his chance to become more deeply embroiled when he should be struggling like hell to break free.

  “How long has it been now?” he asked, knowing as he did so the gravity of the error he was making.

  “Six months, yesterday.” She shivered and hugged her arms around her waist as if trying to ward off an ugly memory.

  “He was so lost. I can still see his eyes. Vacant. Wary. No.” She stopped and corrected herself. “Not wary. Void. I remember thinking then that I wish he had been wary. At least it would have indicated he had some fight in him. He had withdrawn so far into himself, I didn’t think he’d ever come back.”