LITMIR.BIZ

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order to see his son. She didn’t know why that should hurt so much, but it did.

      “I’ll get the key,” she said. “You’ll find everything you need in the cottage—linens, some food staples, coffee and wood for a fire. We can get the rest when this storm clears up. Until then, you’re welcome to have your meals here. And we’ll explain things to Scotty after he’s had time to get to know you.”

      He pulled his gaze away from her to stare out the window. “When will this weather clear?”

      “I’m not sure. The weatherman predicted a lot of snow. It could be tomorrow or days from now.”

      He rolled his eyes, indignant with this confinement. Eli Trudeau was not a man to be locked away or shut inside. He looked like he belonged out in nature, walking, hunting, stalking, staring at the moon. He had a heart of the night.

      Gena prayed she could bring some light into his battered soul.

      

      Eli pushed his head back against the soft pillows on the old four-poster bed, then closed his eyes, memories of Leah moving like wind through his tired mind. He could see her there walking along the bayou behind their little house, her long blond hair falling away from her face, her hand on her already-protruding belly as she smiled down at the child she carried. But that vision was quickly replaced by the one he couldn’t keep out of his mind, the one he could only imagine because he hadn’t been there—the sight of his beautiful wife lying in a sterile hospital room hooked up to wires and tubes so that their child could stay alive long enough to be born.

      Eli jerked his head up, wiping his eyes as if to get rid of the horror of that image. Staring into the crackling fire across the room, he thought, Do you know how much I loved you, chérie? Do you know that I would have fought all of them just to be by your side?

      Too late now for that. But not too late for a chance to be a father to his son. And so he waited, hearing the clock strike midnight, hearing the gentle falling of snow all around the little house and the falling of the last burned log in the grate, hearing the ocean crashing madly against the shore. He waited and watched and listened as if he were on the most dangerous mission of his life. And maybe he was. He just had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling about things.

      He wouldn’t sleep. He knew that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep. Eli found no peace in his dreams or in his waking hours.

      He’d traveled thousands of miles just to find his son, but his soul had traveled a long and rocky road just to find a little redemption. He’s seen that redemption tonight, shining like a beacon in his son’s dark eyes.

      “Scotty,” he said out loud. “What kind of name is that?” He tested it. “Scotty Trudeau.”

      Did they even let him go by the name Trudeau? Probably not. Scotty Malone? “Scotty,” he said again into the darkness of the neat, comfortable room. The name echoed like a child’s giggle against the walls.

      Outside the wind howled and laughed, mocking Eli’s attempts to wrap his mind around fatherhood. It was bitter cold, but he felt a hot sweat moving over his body like a fever. He gripped the patterned quilt on the bed, wondering if he was going back into that dark place inside his own head again.

      “Can’t go there,” he reminded himself. “They’d force me to go back to Ireland.” And he was not going back there, ever. How the Shepherd lived there was beyond Eli’s comprehension, but at least his friend and fellow CHAIM agent had been kind when Eli had tried every trick in the book to break out of the ancient stronghold that had held him captive for months. “Retreat? More like a padded, emerald-green prison.”

      Pushing that time and those memories out of his mind, Eli tried to pray. He’d promised Lydia he would pray each time he got an urge to do something stupid—like leave New Orleans and come all the way up the coast in the middle of winter to see his son and make sure he was safe and sound. But his prayers were more of a haphazard merging of words. Help. Hurt. Anger. Pain. Scotty. Scotty. Leah. Gena. Help me. Help them. Lord, help us all.

      Gena. She hated him. He had felt that hatred like clouds of swamp mosquitoes whirling around them earlier when she’d handed him the keys to this cozy cottage. And how could he blame her? She might hate him, but she surely loved his son. Her son.

      His son.

      “What now?” he asked himself. “How are you going to get out of this one?”

      His cell phone rang. Not many had his number, so he figured this was urgent. When he saw Lydia’s number flashing, he let out a sigh, then answered. “Chère, you are for sure like an old mother hen.”

      “Only because I love you,” Lydia Cantrell said in her drawling Georgia accent. “Eli, Kissie called. She said you took off without saying goodbye, and she doesn’t know where you went. Please tell me you didn’t—”

      “I didn’t do anything crazy,” he said, knowing what she was asking. And because he couldn’t lie to Lydia, he said, “I’m in Maine, ma petite. I’ve seen the boy.”

      She whispered a soft prayer. “Oh, Eli. Why didn’t you let us know you were going? You didn’t scare Scotty, did you? You didn’t do anything you’ll regret, right?”

      “I told you, it’s cool. Everything is okay, except this infernal cold and snow. I hate cold and snow.”

      But Lydia was beyond listening to his complaints and well into her interrogation mode. The woman would have made a great CHAIM agent. “You didn’t try to take him from Gena, did you?”

      Skipping the part about disarming the alarm system and waiting in the broom closet, he said, “I thought about it, but Gena put me on my back and pinned me down until I cried ‘uncle.’”

      “Good for her. You know, she’s trained in self-defense.”

      “You don’t say? It’s all right now, though. We talked pretty for a while and now I’m as cozy as a kitten in my little cottage by the sea.” He shivered as he said that, his gaze hitting the dying embers of the fire.

      “I hope so. Devon doesn’t know I’m calling you, but I’ll have to tell him. And I want to tell him you’re being a gentleman. You promised me if you ever went to Maine, you’d only go to visit Scotty.”

      “I’ve been known to break my promises, oui?”

      “You won’t break this one,” Lydia said in her smug, proud Lydia way. “I know you won’t.”

      “You know me so well then?”

      “I think I do. You want to make your son proud. You can do this, Eli. I’m praying you will.”

      “You might want to save those prayers, catin. I’m not doing so good right now.” He pinched his nose. “I want my son.”

      “Eli, don’t talk like that. Think about how you’d confuse Scotty. You can’t do that. He’s a little boy. He doesn’t understand. You have to take this slow.”

      “He doesn’t know his father.”

      “It’s hard, I know,” she said, “but…you have to be very careful. You have to give Gena time to accept that you’re there. And you have to be gentle with Scotty, okay?”

      “I’m not a gentle man. And I’m not a gentleman.”

      “But you can be, you big brute. You can be. Will you try, for me?”

      Eli got up to pace around the bedroom. “Ah, now, don’t go laying that on me, Lydia. You know you are one of the few to sway my cold, hard heart.”

      “Then consider this my way of swaying,” she said. “Do I need to call Devon and put him on you?”

      “Non. I can’t take his lectures tonight.”

      “Okay, then. We have an understanding. You are going to be a good father, Eli. No, make that a great father. I have faith in that. But first,

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