“We’re not your family,” she said automatically, without thinking. The immediate darkening of his expression told her that she’d made a mistake.
“Yes.” His voice was firm, direct, offering no room for argument. “You are. Justice is my flesh and blood. My son, my family.”
She clamped her mouth closed, uncertain what more to say yet wanting to say a lot, but really what could she say? He was right. Justice was as much his as he was hers and for her son’s sake she foresaw a lot of tongue-biting in her future to prevent him from hearing things best left unheard by little ears.
CHAPTER NINE
WHISTLING A TUNE from a cartoon he’d watched one evening with Justice, Ross threaded line through an eye of the fishing pole he’d bought less than an hour before. He’d also bought a tackle box, lures, and a few other items he’d thought they might need to go along with the simple kiddy poles Justice and Brielle already owned and used.
Someday soon he’d buy his son a real pole and tackle, but for now the black superhero one with its emblem on the float would do. After all, the kid was only four.
“You look as if you know what you’re doing, but do you actually know how to fish?” Brielle asked from where she was perched on a rock, watching him rather than baiting her hook. Then again, she’d already informed him that they usually used plastic bait rather than live crickets or earthworms.
What was the fun in that for a little boy?
He’d bought both, but after a few minutes of watching the crickets and letting the earthworms crawl around in his palm, Justice had lost interest. Right now he was stooped over just out of earshot, more interested in searching through the rocks, looking for dinosaur fossils, than in fishing. Apparently dinosaurs were starting to give Justice’s favorite superhero a run for his billions.
“I grew up just a few hours away, Brielle. Of course I know how to fish. My dad and I went fishing several times a month during school breaks. Those times are some of my favorite memories of my childhood. The last time he and my mom came up to Boston we chartered a boat and went out for a day of fishing.” He smiled at the memory. “It was a good day.”
A slight frown marred her forehead. “How come I never knew that about you?”
Not sure how to answer her question, he shrugged. “You never asked. When I was with you I had other things on my mind besides fishing.”
When he and Brielle had been together, she’d occupied way too many of his thoughts. Ultimately, when their relationship had become stressed, he’d resented the distraction. Obviously, out of sight was not out of mind when it had come to Brielle Winton, though. Far far from it. He’d never forgotten her, never gotten over her. Now that he knew she was the mother of his child he accepted that she was part of his life. For ever. Even with how strained their relationship currently was, he couldn’t say he resented her effect on him. Not this time. He was older, wiser, had learned a lot of life lessons.
“We never went fishing,” she pointed out, almost sounding accusatory, and he grinned at the near pouty expression on her pretty face.
“I was in medical school and pouring my heart and soul into becoming the best doctor I could be,” he reminded her. “What little free time I had to spend with you, well, I didn’t want to spend that time fishing.”
She blushed bright red and Ross bit back a smile. If she recalled, she wouldn’t have wanted to spend their limited free time fishing either, unless it had been fishing in the dark for each other.
“No, I guess we didn’t have a lot of spare time for things like fishing...” Her voice trailed off, then she lifted needy eyes to him. “We did have a lot of good times, didn’t we, Ross? I didn’t imagine that, did I?”
He tied the line around the hook, knotted it, then secured it to the pole by looping the tip around an eye. He stood the pole next to him, propping it against the tackle box and holding it loosely in his grip just to have something to do with his hand.
“We had a lot of good times together.” He looked at her, at the nostalgic expression on her face, and he mentally kicked himself yet again. How could he have tossed away their relationship without fighting for her? Without trying to correct the things that had gone wrong? He knew the answers, of course, but he couldn’t help but think that if he had his life to live over from that point, he wouldn’t have left Brielle behind. He’d have convinced her to go with him, have put effort into repairing their relationship. And that was even without the knowledge that she’d been pregnant. “You know we did.”
Memories of chasing her around their apartment, both of them laughing so hard they could barely breathe, of catching her and tickling her while she squirmed, trying to escape, of his touches soon going from playful torture to sexually charged. Of her lips going from teasing to moaning with pleasure. Of her squirming morphing into needy gyrations as his body took control of hers.
But not just the sex. Memories of holding her while she’d cried after her first code where the patient had died, letting her fall asleep in his arms, and lying there breathing her in, feeling as if she had been right where she’d belonged, feeling as if he’d been right where he’d belonged.
With Brielle.
That same feeling hit him, making him grip the fishing pole tighter. For the first time in five years he was where he belonged. With Brielle.
“Great times,” Ross rasped, then cleared his throat, hoping to ease the tightness clamping down on his vocal cords. “We were great. The best.”
His gaze met Brielle’s and the tightness took hold of his whole body. He’d often heard the expression “tension so thick you could cut it with a knife.” This was one of those moments. A moment so intense that emotions were almost palpable around them. Sexual tension. Physical tension. Emotional tension. Mental tension. Tensions he couldn’t label pulsed between them.
The past. The present. The future.
All pulsated alive and real between them.
Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths. Her lips parted.
He fought kissing her. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her, to chase her around until they collapsed together in laughter and kisses. And more. He wanted so much more with this woman.
If Justice wasn’t a few yards away, he would kiss her.