"Mommy?"
Peter. She dropped the brush on the dresser. She wasn't ready to face him yet...
"Mom? Can I come in?"
Faith took a deep breath. "Yes, of course, darling," she said brightly, and flung the door open. He son looked at her, then peered past her into the bedroom.
"Is he here?"
"Cole?" She could feel her smile tilt and she fought to keep it on her lips. "Yes. Yes, he is. Peter. I have... I mean, we have something to-to tell you..."
"What your mother means," Cole said, from just behind her, "is that we got married last night."
"Married? You and my mom?"
"Uh-huh." He put his arm lightly around Faith's shoulders. "I apologize for not telling you about it but we made the decision kind of fast. We figured we'd surprise you."
Peter stared at him. "Alice said there'd be a surprise but I never figured..." He looked at Faith. "Mom?"
"Nothing will change," she said quickly. "Not for you."
"That's right, champ." Cole dropped his arm from her shoulders and squatted on his haunches. "So, what do you think? Will it be okay? Having me around, I mean?" He cleared his throat. "I understand it might be tough. You loved your father a lot, and he loved you. But I'll love you, too-if you'll let me."
The boy's lip trembled. "A lot?"
"Yeah." Cole cleared his throat again. "A whole lot." "As if you were my father?"
"Exactly as if I were your father."
Panicked wings seemed to flutter in Faith's breast as her son smiled and went into Cole's arms. He could never know the truth, she thought desperately. Never-or he would do as he'd wanted to do all along. He'd go to court, sue for custody of Peter...
And win.
The summer days drifted past, one merging, unnoticed, into the next. And as they slipped by, Faith lost hope that Cole might remove himself from her life.
Didn't he have things to do? she finally said, when she came down the stairs one morning and found him waiting for her in the dining room. Someone else to torture? Ultimatums to issue? An empire to run?
That made him laugh. "An empire, huh?" He pushed back his chair, enjoying the sound of the legs scraping against the wooden floor. His old man would have cuffed him a good one had he done such a thing when he was a kid. "I can handle things from here. For a while, anyway."
For how long a while? Faith wanted to ask, but she could see the answer for herself. He'd had two more telephone lines brought in; a fax machine, a computer and a couple of printers had been installed in the library. Cole was settling in for the duration and Peter was enthralled. Her son had become Cole's shadow.
At first, she'd tried to keep him from barging into the library. She didn't much care about Cole's privacy. Her concern was for Peter. He'd done that to Ted, who'd used the library as a home office, too. Ted never turned him away; he just ignored the intrusion. Faith would go searching for her son and find him sitting quietly on the leather sofa, or playing on the floor with a toy.
"Sorry," she'd say, and Ted would look up and smile as if he hadn't noticed ... which was fine. It was just that there'd been times she'd seen the lonely look on Peter's face and it made her heart ache, knowing that her little boy was trying for a relationship Ted just couldn't provide.
Cole was different. "Hey, champ," he'd say, when Peter scooted through the door. "How're things going?"
He'd take a few minutes to talk with him. Sometimes, he'd put aside what he'd been doing altogether. Faith was startled the first time she found the two of them on the floor, laughing as they zoomed toy cars over the Italian tile.
"Peter," she'd said gently, "don't bother Cole. He's busy."
"Actually," Cole replied, "Pete's doing me a favor. I was looking for way to get off the phone with Paris, and he gave it to me." He grinned at the child. "Right, Pete?"
"Right," Peter said, grinning back.
Faith started to protest but what was the point? She was Cole's wife. She'd agreed to abide by his rules and anyway, she'd never seen her little boy happier. Denying him these moments would be selfish. As the days slid by, she found herself wondering what would happen if her son found out that the man he was starting to love was really his father.
When she caught herself, she was horrified. It was a terrifyingly dangerous way to think. She could not permit such thoughts ... but then she'd hear the two of them engrossed in an earnest discussion of the latest Braves game, or what was going to happen to the Falcons when football season started. She'd find them laughing over a Monopoly board on a rainy afternoon. She'd watch as two hands, one small, one large, dipped simultaneously into a bowl of salted popcorn with what Peter called just a wisp of sugar added because, it turned out, both of them preferred it that way.