LITMIR.BIZ

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with desire, but she shook her head. “I am smarter now than I was four years ago. I’m not going to fall for your patented Kendall charm.”

      “Patented?”

      “Already at three, Mark has it. He can wrap me completely around his little finger.” Just like Thad used to be able to do.

      “You’re not immune to me,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes bright with desire. “And I can prove it to you.”

      When she opened her mouth to ask him how, his lips were there covering hers. His tongue delved deep, stroking over hers, stroking her passion from flickering flame to full conflagration. He’d wrapped his arms around her, too, so that she couldn’t step back. But she didn’t want to get away; she wanted to get closer. His chest pressed against hers, his heart beating the same frantic rhythm as hers.

      “Hey!” exclaimed a little voice, full of curiosity. “What are you doing to my mommy?”

      They broke apart as guiltily as teenagers caught necking on the couch. Caroline would have laughed at the shock on Thad’s flushed face if she hadn’t felt more like crying. She didn’t know what was bringing her closer to tears—the kiss or the fact that her son had interrupted it.

      THAD’S SKIN BURNED, his fingers numb from the cold as he rolled a snowball across Caroline’s front yard. He’d brought no gloves with him and Caroline’s were too small. But when Mark had asked him to build another snowman to go with the lopsided one already in their front yard, Thad had been unable to refuse no matter how many excuses he’d had to do just that.

      She was right. The kid had the Kendall charm but with Caroline’s innate kindness and generosity.

      “I can roll it,” Mark said, putting his mittened hands over Thad’s. “You’re cold.”

      Maybe his skin was cold, but the rest of him was still on fire from kissing Caroline. If Mark hadn’t interrupted them …

      Caroline probably would have pulled away. She was over him. He’d kissed her to prove her wrong, but instead he’d proved to himself that he wasn’t over her. Not even close.

      He wanted more than a kiss, but she wanted nothing from him but for him to not hurt their son. He stared at the tiny, mittened hands clasping his, and his heart twisted in his chest.

      “Just a li’l bigger,” the boy directed. When the snowball grew to the size of a beach ball, he stopped and tried to lift it.

      Thad lifted it instead, setting it atop the other two balls they’d formed into the base of the snowman. The lopsided snowman was actually a snow lady, and he and Mark had already made a snow boy. “There. It’s done.”

      Mark shook his head. “We gotta make his face.” He reached in his pocket for the things that Caroline had given him after she’d bundled him into a snowsuit, boots, mittens, scarf and hat.

      She was a great mom, just as he’d known she would be. That was another reason he’d forced himself to leave her four years ago. She’d deserved more than he was capable of giving. Because of his real job, he’d never intended to be a husband or a father. He hadn’t wanted to leave a family behind like Len Michaels had.

      But he had left behind a son … without ever realizing he’d become a father.

      “Here,” Mark said, shoving a carrot into Thad’s cold hand. “You’re gonna have to put it on ‘cuz I’m not big enough.”

      Thad handed back the carrot and then, his hands shaking slightly, he slid them around his son and lifted him onto his shoulders. “You’re big enough now.”

      A giggle slipped from Mark’s lips. “I’m too big now.” He wrapped one arm around Thad’s neck and leaned forward to reach their snowman. His tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration, he carefully arranged the carrot and a collection of colored stones to make the snowman’s face, which he must have been comparing to Thad’s because he kept looking back and forth between them.

      “Mommy says these rocks are the same color as my eyes,” he remarked. He turned toward Thad. “They’re the same color as yours, too.”

      “You look like me when I was a little boy,” Thad said.

      After discovering he had a son, he’d found some of the old photo albums his aunt Angela kept in the library, and he’d flipped through the pictures of himself and his family. He hadn’t looked through the albums in years because he hadn’t wanted to see old pictures of his parents. Surprisingly there hadn’t been as many in the albums as he’d thought there would have been. The photos had mostly been of just him and his brothers and some of Natalie.

      He lifted Mark from his shoulders and then crouched down to the boy’s level. “Do you know why you look like me?”

      The child gave a solemn nod. “‘Cuz you’re my dad.”

      Thad sucked in a breath of surprise. “You know?” Kissing Caroline had distracted him so much that he hadn’t known whether the boy actually knew who he was yet or not. Mark hadn’t said anything to Thad but to wonder what he’d been doing to his mother and then to ask him to make a snowman with him.

      “When I came home from Aunt Tammy and Uncle Steve’s, Mommy told me who you are,” he said, as if it had been no big deal for his father to finally show up after three years.

      “Do you have any questions for me?” Thad said. He had a million for Mark. He wanted to learn everything about the little boy, everything that he had missed.

      Mark shook his head, though, and returned his attention to the cluster of snowmen. “Look!” he exclaimed with pride. “There’s a snow mommy and a snow kid and now a snow daddy.”

      “Wow,” Thad said, trying to sound suitably impressed. This meant a lot to his son.

      “We have a snow family,” Mark said with a bright smile of satisfaction, as if a family was something he’d wanted for a while.

      Thad stood back to admire the family, but then the sound of an idling engine drew his gaze to the street beyond the picket fence. Had the white SUV followed him again?

      He suspected it had been in the parking garage the day before when he’d felt someone watching him. Then he’d thought he glimpsed it near the estate, as well. But he’d made sure he wasn’t followed here, taking a circuitous route again.

      And really he was probably overreacting. There were a million white SUVs. He hadn’t noted the plate, so he couldn’t be certain if the one he’d seen near the estate was the same one or even the same make and year as the one from the parking garage.

      But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he’d felt in the parking garage, the sense of foreboding that someone was watching him with an intense hatred. He glanced toward the house and confirmed that he was being watched.

      Caroline stood at the living-room window, staring intently at him. He doubted she was reliving that kiss as he had and wishing they hadn’t been interrupted. He suspected instead that she was watching to make sure that he hadn’t already screwed up with Mark.

      She was right to worry about his parenting skills. The only parenting he’d ever really known had been when Uncle Craig and Aunt Angela became his and his brothers’ and sister’s guardians. But that had been a long time ago.

      Where he’d been the past several years had had nothing to do with family and everything to do with survival. His own and all those he’d been able to save. He had to go back to finish his assignment and make sure Michaels’s killers were brought to justice. But what kind of father could he be to Mark if he wasn’t even around?

      Something struck the back of his head and exploded in shards of ice that ran down his neck and inside his collar. Thad whirled around so quickly that Mark shrieked and ran from him. He’d stayed alive for years in the most dangerous places in the world but had taken one in the head from his own kid.

      He grabbed up a handful of snow

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