Her Secret Miracle Read online

  Of course, she’d told herself other things, too, that she’d backed away from, hadn’t she? Namely, not telling Eric he was daddy to her two-year-old. She’d tried, had made futile attempts at calling, texting and using any other means of electronic communication available. Then she’d given up. But that didn’t make things better. In fact, in the long run it would make things worse than she could probably even imagine.

  “Mommy’s going to make it all better,” she said. How? She didn’t know. But she’d figure it out.

  And now, on the second step of her journey—trying to figure out how to tell him—here she was, looking in Eric’s window, holding his son, and so confused her head was spinning. In just a few days Riku’s long-awaited surgery would take place—a surgery Eric should know about as it had been his specialty when he’d been a practicing surgeon.

  Of course, that would have meant telling Eric somewhere along the way that he had a son, then also telling him his son had a heart defect. Neither of which she’d done. Yet. Except the yet part was looming like a black raincloud over her. All the good intentions in the world wouldn’t stop it from bursting and pouring down on her. It was up to her to make the plan that would avoid it—step into a doorway or, in this case, Eric’s office.

  But, no. Instead, here she was, like a little girl with her nose to the toy-store window, hoping for the prettiest doll inside. Expecting to get it but fearing she wouldn’t. Expecting Eric to overlook that she’d kept his son from him all this time but fearing he would not forgive her. And in some fragmented way, hoping the three of them could become a family on some level. All while the black cloud was getting closer and closer to bursting.

  “Be glad you’re too young to know about responsibilities,” she said to Riku, turning so her body would shield his from the slight gust of warm wind whipping up the streets and down the alleys. “Or how to make something right you’ve already made such a mess of.”

  Realistically, she wasn’t counting on things turning out well as far as Eric was concerned. Sure, he could walk away from the entire situation, which didn’t seem at all like the man she’d known for little more than a night. Or he might recognize Riku as his son, then want more of Riku in his life than she was prepared to give him. And that seemed the greater possibility. But would he go so far as try for full custody since she’d hidden his sick child from him for two years? Or argue that she was negligent given how he was an expert in the procedure his son needed to have done?

  This was what scared her. And why Eric scared her. He might want more of Riku than she could bear to give up. Now, she feared, she was about to find out just how much, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do once she knew. Wasn’t ready for that, wasn’t ready to face the consequences she’d set into motion, whatever they might be.

  Still, she had always to remember this was about Riku, not her. Not even Eric. Right now, her son was the only one who counted, and when she did tell Eric about him, she hoped he would be able to see that was the case. At least until after Riku’s surgery.

  “Your daddy’s inside that building, Riku,” she said, turning again so the boy bundled in her arms could look through the window. “He’s a very nice man. And kind. A perfect man to be your father. I know you don’t understand what I’m telling you, but you will someday.”

  And she prayed he didn’t hate her when he did understand, even when she’d finally gathered the courage to correct her mistakes long before Riku would be old enough to hate her for what she’d done.

  That was another fear she had to live with: the possibility that Riku could turn away from her once he was old enough to know what his mother had done. If that day ever came, well...she wouldn’t think about it. The way she hadn’t thought about other consequences.

  So, true to form, she wasn’t going to deal with that now, when she was so confused, so angry at herself, and so afraid for her son’s life. Especially not when every ounce of everything inside her was devoted to Riku and what was ahead for him.

  “I wish you could tell me what to do,” she told Riku, snuggling him in even closer to her. “Your mommy didn’t make some wise choices and now she’s very discouraged that what she’s done might touch you in ways I never intended to happen.”

  Riku’s response was to reach up and grab Michi’s hair, then giggle.

  “Do you know how cute you are?” she asked, trying to extricate herself from his playful grip. This child was her world, nothing else mattered. And it still surprised her how much she’d changed in such a short time. “OK, so you’re not going to answer me. But take my word for it, you’re the cutest little boy ever.”

  It was a mild November day, the sun was bright, the slight gusts of wind warm enough that people had taken off their jackets to enjoy the unexpected rise in temperature. But Michi tucked Riku’s little fist into the blanket in which he was wrapped. So maybe she was overprotective. What of it? She’d had so much difficulty bringing him into this world.

  She’d lost count of how many times she’d almost lost him before his birth; didn’t know how long she’d been hospitalized to prevent a miscarriage early on and a stillbirth later. It had been such a struggle, then afterwards a beautiful baby boy...with a heart defect. All of it had been so much to deal with, the hysterectomy after Riku’s birth being the least of her concerns. That mess with the social worker calling her unfit had been traumatic. So, if she wanted to be overprotective, she had good cause.

  In her defense, she’d tried contacting Eric early on, but the information on him from the seminar had been old, and she’d refused to ask her aunt to forward information on to him as that would have revealed her pregnancy long before she’d wanted to. So, she’d put it off. Had promised herself she’d do it later. But later had brought her pregnancy difficulties, then a sick baby, outside complications...too many “laters” had added up until she’d known she’d passed the point of reasonability. All that, plus she simply hadn’t been coping. One step at a time. That was all she had been able to manage. One difficult, often heartbreaking step at a time.

  Still, she had always intended to find Eric at some point, maybe when Riku was through the worst of it. Or maybe when she wasn’t so consumed by guilt and confusion and strange emotions she couldn’t even identify.

  Even with all the mistakes she’d made, though, look what she had. The world. Riku was the whole world to her. And now, as she hugged him and stood looking into the Hart building, the urgency to make this right was pounding at her. “He’s in there somewhere,” she said, hoping yet not hoping to catch a glimpse of Eric. “Anyway, it’s silly standing out here, not sure what I’d do if I did see him,” she said to her son. “Besides, look who’s here.”

  She twisted so Riku could see his great-aunt walking with outstretched arms to greet them. Riku stretched his arms out to her as well.

  “Just what we need,” Agnes Blaine said. “A whole afternoon to spoil my nephew.”

  Michi laughed. “Not too much spoiling, I hope.”

  Takumi, Agnes’s partner of twenty-five years and Michi’s uncle, stepped to Agnes’s side. “That would be between Riku and us.” He bent over and kissed his nephew. “And maybe the clerk in the toy store.”

  Michi loved these people. They’d been there for her at the end of her pregnancy, then through some of Riku’s early tests. And they were part of the small circle of family she’d trusted enough to let them care for Riku for a few hours, or even a full day.

  “The amount of spoiling we bestow upon our nephew is a personal matter,” Agnes teased, looking up at the gold embossing over the building: Eric Hart Property Management. “You haven’t...?”

  Michi shook her head, then stepped back. Agnes and Takumi knew to leave it alone. Her whole family did. Yes, everybody knew Eric Hart was Riku’s father, but it was not a topic anyone ever discussed. At least, not in front of Michi. “He’s just up from his nap, so he should be good for a while. And
I shouldn’t be gone long.” Just long enough to spend some time alone, to think.

  “We’ll be back home when you get there,” Takumi said, pulling Michi into his arms. “Be patient with yourself,” he said. “Everything will be as it’s meant to be.”

  And, in the blink of an eye, she was alone on the sidewalk in front of Eric’s building. It was the first step. And her second step would take her inside.

  * * *

  “No, I’m not going to my afternoon meeting. We couldn’t come to terms over the phone, so I cancelled it. No point in wasting everybody’s time. But Bucky Henderson is still coming in this morning since he flew all the way from Texas before I could stop him, and I’m hoping we can come to some kind of terms. I like the land he’s proposing I buy, but I’m not really into what he wants to do with it. Which means I need this meeting to see if he’s open to compromise.”

  So maybe he wasn’t the best businessman in the world. Lord knew, he wasn’t his old man when it came to property management and land deals, but this was his lot now. People depended on him, and he tried his best not to let them down.

  “Will you need the lawyers here for the meeting?” his secretary Natalie asked.

  “No. And I don’t need anybody from the real estate acquisition division here either.” He’d settle for it to go all his way, or even for a compromise. But if Bucky didn’t buy into that... “They know what the deal is, and what I’d like to see it become, so we’re set.” Besides, having too many people around the business table was intimidating and while that might have been his old man’s way of conducting business, it wasn’t his.

  “Then you’ve made up your mind?” Natalie asked. She was an older woman. Nearing seventy, he thought. Efficient, smart, and his dad’s mistress for more than a quarter of a century. One of the many. Only Natalie was the one who’d kept him on the business track and for that devotion, no matter how misguided, Eric had let her stay, despite the badly kept secret that she’d played some part in his parents’ divorce. But Natalie wasn’t alone—there was the part his mother had played in the story, a part he knew nothing about.

  “Not entirely. But I’m getting closer.”

  “Your father would have had this deal wrapped up weeks ago,” Natalie reminded him. Her gray hair pulled back into a knot at the base of her neck, her glasses riding low on her nose, her perpetual frown and critical tone...there were days he wished she’d retired. Pretty much most days. But, like everything else, he felt an obligation to right his dad’s wrongs. And there were so many of them. As for Natalie, she was just a drop in his father’s unfortunate ocean.

  “Of course he would have. But I’m not my father. I’m a surgeon, and as a surgeon I don’t just hop into a procedure without knowing every angle of it.” He forced a friendly smile, even though he knew Natalie would take one more shot. She always did.

  “You were a surgeon,” she reminded him. “Past tense, Eric. Remember that.”

  “You’re right, of course. I was a surgeon.” At heart, he still was. But circumstances had changed when his dad had died, leaving him not only an international property management corporation but a billion dollars, windmills, camels and God only knew what else.

  Oh, his dad hadn’t expected he’d be able to run the company and had even gone so far as to make provisions to put the governance under the control of a hand-picked board. Hand-picked by his father, of course. In other words, ten daddy clones trying to rule his life instead of one daddy. He’d fired them and put into place various people who made sense to him. An environmentalist, a construction engineer, a social worker, even a teacher. All people he respected and admired and not a designer suit amongst them.

  “Look, I’m going across the street for coffee.”

  “But we have that expensive coffee system your father had put in.”

  “We have a coffee system that makes espresso, latte macchiato, cappuccino and even milk foam. It makes café mocha, frappé and yungyang, whatever the hell that is. But what it doesn’t make is a decent cup of black coffee. So, I’ll run out and grab one, then I’ll be back in time to meet with Bucky. Oh, and if the coffee machine doesn’t make anything he prefers, text me and I’ll bring him a cup of black coffee, too.”

  “He’s a busy man, Eric,” she warned. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

  He never did. A habit from his doctor days, he supposed. But Natalie always said it, and he always responded with, “I won’t.” While gritting his teeth. “Anyway, would you like something?” he asked. “Regular coffee, tea, a scone?”

  Every time he asked she always looked surprised. Probably because his dad had never made a simple, kind gesture toward her. Which, in a way, was the same boat he was in. Always trying to find a way to get noticed by his dad, and never succeeding. So, while she may have had the occasional romp in his father’s bed and a paycheck, at the end of her day she’d always gone home alone. Just like he had, until he’d been sent off to boarding school.

  Was there a term that meant more than alone? Because that was what he’d always felt growing up...more than alone. The one left out. Left behind. Forgotten. An obstacle in his dad’s path.

  “I’m perfectly fine with what your father’s coffee system makes,” she said.

  Poor Natalie. Always the trouper. And always let down. Yep, he knew the feeling. “OK, then I’ll be back in a few.” Even though he would have preferred a nice walk, or maybe some people-watching in Central Park, he didn’t have a choice. That wasn’t his life now. Getting back to Bucky Henderson to discuss the purchase of a large chunk of Texas for a casino with all the frills was.

  Sighing, Eric stood after Natalie left, then went to the window. His dad’s office had always been at the top—the twenty-fifth floor. In a massive corner suite, with plate-glass views of the city in all directions. His own office, however, was on the second floor, one window, limited view, and small in comparison to what awaited him on the top floor. Occupying it was an egregious act, he supposed. One that signaled ambivalence. And being at the top signified power. So, his defiant little office on the second floor would probably speak volumes to a shrink, if he cared to go that route. Which he didn’t. But none of it really mattered, did it? He did his job, his employees had their lives secured, and the world kept spinning.

  For a moment, Eric scrutinized the people walking on the sidewalk below. Where were they going? Why were they in such a hurry? Were they happily married or cheating on an unsuspecting spouse? He liked speculating about other people’s lives since he barely had one of his own. Speculating made him feel like he was still in touch, even though he knew damn well he wasn’t.

  One last glance before he headed out for coffee and someone down there caught his eye. From his vantage he couldn’t see much of her, so he adjusted for a better look and what he saw was well worth the effort. She was walking with a purpose. Long strides that outdistanced all the people around her. Shouldering her way through all the congestion like a woman with a purpose. He could almost hear the click of her heels on the cement, she was moving so fast. Like a whirlwind whooshing in and out of the crowd. And beautiful. Black hair pulled back away from her face. A stunning figure that men could only dream about.

  She was Japanese, he thought. Reminded him of Michi...her height, her stature. Michi...so often on his mind. The one he shouldn’t have let get away. But in the nearly three years since he’d spent that incredible night with her, too much had happened. Too many responsibilities had pulled him away from what he wanted to do and dumped him into the pile of all the things he had to do.

  There had been a time Michi had been what he’d wanted. Maybe in some ways, she still was. But it was too late for that. He’d made his choice the morning he’d left without a goodbye. After that, there was no turning back.

  Michi was the one he regretted walking away from, though. The only one. Even now, she floated through his mind in the unguarded moments, taunting hi
m for what he’d missed out on. One night only. It was what he’d told her because it was what he’d meant. Something had happened that night. Something that had unhinged him and compelled him to do what he’d never done before—given himself over to a casual fling that had turned out to be so much more. At least, in his thoughts. Still, one night with Michi...

  Eric closed his eyes, conjuring up her image. Funny how what he remembered of her seemed to meld with the woman he’d just seen on the walkway outside. Maybe it was because he’d never truly gotten over her. Granted, they’d only known each other a few hours when the text that had changed his life had come. But in those few hours...it had been like he’d known her for days, or weeks, or months. Maybe his whole life. Could she have been the one? He didn’t know as he’d never found himself in that mindset before. The possibilities hadn’t escaped him, however. And as she’d lain there next to him, her breath sounds so tiny and precise, he’d simply listened, and wondered what would happen if they had one more night.

  Unfortunately, the opportunity to go beyond that night had never happened. Still, in the very few—as in could be counted on one hand—dates he’d had with other women since then, nothing had ever seemed right. To himself, he’d nitpicked every woman to pieces before their date, then always cut the evening short because she hadn’t what he’d wanted. And for sure, he’d never dated any of those hopefuls twice. Because of his job, he always told himself. Yes, because of his job.

  But somewhere in all that mess, thoughts of Michi pushed everything away. Even now, when he should be concentrating on Bucky’s proposal, his mind was wandering back to Sapporo, to that one perfect night.

  Which meant it was time to go get that coffee, refocus, and figure out his next step in the Texas land acquisition deal. So, Eric put on his suit coat—he really hated wearing suits every day, but that was the dress code, so he observed it—took a quick look in the mirror in his private bathroom, straightened his tie, then traced, with his left index finger, all the new lines and creases that were beginning to show. So many changes to his body in the past couple of years. What did it matter?