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She stared at him, knowing the trap was closing around her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"It's just..." She stopped, started again. "It's just fried chicken. And a video from the children's section. You'll be …you'll be bored."
Cole smiled. Once again, his gaze stripped her naked. "Nothing about you could ever bore a man."
She felt her cheeks redden. "Fine," she said, the word as clipped and cold as she could make it. "Do what you like. Go to town, buy the chicken, rent a video. If you insist on spending the evening here, there's nothing I can do to stop you short of bolting the door-" She caught herself, forced a smile.
"Peter and I will be waiting."
"You'll be waiting." Cole put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Pete and I are going to town."
"No!"
"You'll have to show me where the video store is," Cole said, ignoring her completely. "There wasn't any, when I lived here."
"It's right near the chicken place," Peter said, nearly jumping up and down with excitement. "What we do is, we order the chicken and then-"
"Are you both deaf? I said no."
Again, their faces turned to her but this time instead of panic, what she felt was anger. How dare Cole Cameron come stomping back into her life and take over? She wasn't about to let that happen and the sooner he knew it, the better.
"My son is staying with me." Faith stepped forward, put her hands on Peter's shoulders and drew him away from Cole. "I've no intention of letting him go anywhere with you. Do you think I'm crazy? My boy is not-" Is not going to grow up to be like you, she almost said, caught herself just in time and, instead, spoke the first words that came into her head. "My boy is not going to ride on the back of a motorcycle."
"Oh, wow. A motorcycle?" Her son was almost breathless with awe. "Have you got a motorcycle? Where? I didn't see it outside. I just saw that long black car. It's got a cat's picture on it."
Cole laughed. "You're an observant kid, you know that?" He looked at Faith. "It's a Jaguar," he said. "Brand new, with all possible safety bells and whistles. Destroys a whole bucket of illusions, doesn't it?"
Trapped, she thought again, trapped.
"Mornmy? Can I go with Cole? Say yes, Mommy, please."
Every instinct told her to say no, to tell Cole that this house still belonged to her and she wanted him out of it, right now. But he wouldn't leave any more than he'd accept her answer. And then there was Peter. His face was lit with excitement. For the first time in weeks, he looked happy.
"All right," she said, accepting defeat. "You can go." She reached for her son and hugged him again. "I love you," she whispered.
"Me, too," Peter said, but with the eager impatience of a child about to set off on a great adventure. He wiggled free of her arms and grinned at Cole. "We can get the stuff and Mommy can get dressed while we're gone."
Cole took his time looking her over, from the top of her head to her toes. She knew her face was burning.
"Out of the mouths of babes," he said politely, and their eyes met. "You know, Faith, it only just occurred to me... Did you suspect I was going to pay a visit? Did Jergen phone,perhaps, and suggest I might be stopping by?" His smile froze. "And did you dress accordingly?"
"What's `accordingly'?" Peter asked.
"It's a grown-up word," Cole said. "It means when someone does something deliberately."
"That's not what it means at all," Faith said tightly.
Cole smiled. Then he turned the smile on Peter. She saw it become real and warm. He held out his hand. Peter took it. And the child she loved and the man she hated strolled casually out the door.
The trip to town and back should have taken half an hour. Forty-five minutes, if the chicken wasn't ready for pickup and Peter dawdled the way he almost always did when he chose a video.
At the two hour point, Faith was almost frantic. Where was her son? Where was Cole? And why had she let him intimidate her? He was every cliché in the book, the proverbial bad penny that always turned up, still looking as dangerous and unsettled as he had at eighteen, and never mind the Jaguar. She wasn't an impressionable teenaged girl anymore.
Cole had come back only to lay claim to Ted's estate. He'd discovered she had a son and laid claim to him, too. And what had she done? She'd let him get away with it, just as he had years before.
What Cole wanted, Cole got. For whatever reason, he wanted to impress Peter. And she'd let him, dammit, let him maneuver her into compliance while he won her son's smiles with an offer of greasy fried chicken and a stupid video and a ride in a car he'd probably gone into hock to rent...
