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Pride surged at Ellie’s staunch defense. Knowing how her anxiety tended to flare, he was again amazed that not once had she stuttered. Hell, he’d seen his father make grown men stutter and quake in their boots. Yet Ellie was standing her ground, defending him.
Ty closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind, her smile, her eyes, the way she looked at him when he kissed her.
The way he knew he looked at her. As if she meant the world to him.
Because she did.
“You’ve known him, what, a few months? Don’t pretend you know my son better than I do.”
“Harold, don’t do this,” Ty’s mother begged, speaking up for the first time since Ellie had come into the conversation. “Don’t say such things.”
“You know I’m right. That foolhardy boy always had his nose in a book when he should have been doing other things.”
“Other things such as being like you, Dad?” Ty hadn’t consciously decided to step out of the shadows, but he couldn’t risk his father launching into Ellie. He wouldn’t risk it. She was too fragile.
Too precious.
As timid as she’d always been around the hospital, recalling how panicked she’d been at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, he was amazed at how she’d defended him, at how her shoulders were high and her gaze bright, confident. Had she been wearing a long red cape and the wind blowing in her hair, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Ellie was his heroine.
His father’s lips pursed and his gaze narrowed as it settled on Ty. “A boy could do worse than to grow up to be like his old man.”
True. His father was a hardworking man who had always provided for his family, had always given as much as he demanded of others. But that didn’t mean Ty had to follow in his footsteps.
“I’m not like you, Dad.”
“Ty,” his mother began, her nervous gaze going back and forth between her husband and her younger son, “perhaps we should have this conversation later.”
“Why, so that we can sugarcoat the fact that my own father is disappointed in me?” Had he ever said those words out loud before? He didn’t think so. Maybe he’d never even mentally acknowledged them, but something about Ellie’s defense of him made him acknowledge a lot of things.
“No, thanks. We’ve been doing that for years and it’s not helped one bit. And if it’s for Ellie’s benefit, don’t bother. She’s already seen how he feels about me. Hearing the words only confirms what she has already figured out.”
“Don’t you be rude to your mother, boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” he countered, not really thinking he’d been rude to his mother and certainly not intending to have disrespected her in any way. But his father’s chest puffed up and his gaze narrowed.
Out of years of deferring to the man he’d been taught his whole life to respect, Ty automatically zipped his lips.
Ellie, on the other hand, did not.
“He’s right,” she said with that easy confidence again that surprised him. “Ty is a man. A very good man who is going to be a father. A very good father to our baby, who can grow up and do anything he or she likes in life, whether that be a baby doctor or a rancher or a garbage collector. What’s important is that our child grow up healthy and happy and knowing that he or she can do or accomplish anything and that self-worth does not come from how others see you but how one sees oneself.”
Ty bit back a smile at the shocked look crossing his father’s face and took a step forward in Ellie’s direction. Hell, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and spin her around for the staunch way she defended him.
But she was oblivious to him and focused solely on his father. Her shoulders lifted, her eyes burned with dark intensity and she met his father’s gaze squarely.
“If you want anything to do with our baby, you will learn to appreciate the wonderful man you have for a son because he is a brilliant doctor and an honorable man,” she warned, her hands on her hips and her expression serious. “I will not have my child around someone who obviously has so little appreciation for a man who does so much good for so many.”
Blood pounding in her ears, Eleanor wondered if Ty was going to read her the riot act for daring to be so outspoken to his father, but she didn’t care at the moment. Anger burned too hotly in her veins for her to hold her tongue. Really, how could any man be so obtuse?
No wonder Ty had moved so far away.
She’d awakened, realized Ty was gone, and that he must have been for some time because the bed barely held an imprint of him having been there. She’d gone downstairs to find him.
And stumbled on Ty’s parents, discussing him.
Discussing being the mildest of ways she knew how to put what Ty’s father had been doing.
Degrading his son.
