Even cooking chicken pasta for dinner together was fun. Chicken and pasta were two of the foods River could eat without any repercussions to his health. Fawn prepared a creamy sauce, rather than a tomato one, for the same reason.
Fawn and Declan stopped to kiss often as they moved around the kitchen, totally in synchronization with each other, as if they had been cooking together for years.
It was…heaven.
Perfect in every way?—
“Dear God…!” Declan’s hissed outburst was accompanied by him dropping the basket of garlic bread he had been carrying across the kitchen to put in the center of the table. Their four places were already set in readiness for eating their meal.
Fawn had turned at Declan’s initial exclamation, her eyes widening as she watched the bowl fall from his hand and the garlic bread scatter across the floor.
Declan’s face was completely white, his gaze transfixed as he stared across the kitchen to where River and Danny had just entered the room.
“Connie…?” Declan choked.
River stared back at Declan, myriad emotions passing over his face, far too swiftly to be accurately analyzed. But the predominant one seemed to be puzzlement. His face was still bruised but no longer swollen, clearly revealing his normal youthful features.
Features that Fawn now realized bore a striking resemblance to the white-face man staring at River with such intensity.
They might have stood there forever, caught in a tableau of…
Fawn wasn’t sure what this was.
But then River spoke. Just one simple word that threatened to change all of their lives forever. “Da?”
Declan was shocked.Stunned.
So much so that he couldn’t move.
Couldn’t speak.
At the same time as he felt a tsunami of euphoria rolling over him, threatening to completely consume him.
The man standing near the door had blond curls, not dark. The babyface bore the sharp angles of a man. And he was so tall, almost as tall as Declan.
And yet…
“Connall…?” Declan breathed the name a second time, a name he had been sure he would never be able to say again without creating yet another painful chasm in his heart.
The younger man swallowed, his deep-blue gaze as fixed on Declan as his was on him. “I don’t understand… You… Why did I just call you Da when I know your name is Declan?”
“Because I believe that’s who I am to you,” Declan stated hopefully. “I have no idea how you can be both Fawn’s younger brother and also my son, but I believe that’s exactly who you are.” Tears of happiness began to fall unchecked down his cheeks.
“Declan?” Fawn sounded as puzzled as River.
Sounded, because Declan was afraid to take his gaze off River for even a second. In case he disappeared in the same puff of smoke as he seemed to have appeared.
Could this really be his missing son?
After all these years?
How was that possible when he was also Fawn’s brother?
The doubts immediately began to bombard Declan. Relentlessly. Like arrows piercing his chest, one after another, until he almost staggered from the never-ending pain.
Even after all these years, he had never given up hope of one day finding Connall alive.
But maybe that intensity of need had coalesced and become something that made him yearn for the impossible? Until ithad resulted in this single moment of him thinking River was Connall?
