Any Man Of Mine

But he hadn’t loved her. He’d married her like it was joke. He’d left her like she meant nothing. Less than nothing. He’d left her without looking back. She set the glass in the sink, the sound of the glass against porcelain echoed in the empty house. He’d left her devastated and confused and with a lot of other emotions. She’d arrived in Vegas alone. She’d left married and alone. She’d been alone and scared when she’d taken her first pregnancy test. Alone and scared when she’d felt the first gossamer flutter of her baby in her womb, and the first time she’d heard Conner’s heartbeat. She’d been alone and scared when she’d discovered she was having a boy, and she’d been alone and scared when she’d delivered Conner with no one in the room but a doctor and two nurses.

A week after Conner’s birth, she’d cal ed Sam’s lawyer and informed him that Sam had a son. A few days later, Conner had been given a paternity test, and a week later, Sam had seen his baby for the first time.

She turned off the kitchen light and moved down the hal . Autumn no longer felt alone and scared, but it had taken her a few years to stitch together a life from the shattered pieces. To make a secure place for Conner to live and forge a protective shield around her heart. There was a part of her that wished she’d kept Conner a secret from Sam. A part of her that wanted to keep Conner to herself. A part of her that didn’t think Sam was worthy of her beautiful boy, but she knew that it was best for Conner to know his father. Autumn had hardly known her father, and she knew from experience it was best that Conner grew up having Sam in his life. Even if Autumn didn’t approve of him or his lifestyle, Sam was Conner’s father, and that was that.

She paused by Conner’s bedroom door and looked at the empty bed. His Barney pil ow lay on the Barney quilt she’d made him, and her heart squeezed a little. Conner should be in his bed, hugging his Barney pil ow. Sam didn’t deserve Conner. She’d seen him leave the Rainier Club with a group of his hockey buddies and the playmates. A child didn’t fit in with Sam’s lifestyle. He was an athlete, a playboy, and he was no doubt spending the night somewhere with one of those Playmates. Heck, he was probably spending the night with more than one while Autumn went to bed alone. Al by herself. Every night.

Not that she minded being alone al that much. She was too busy to be lonely, but… but sometimes, after she’d planned a wedding like Faith and Ty’s, she got a little wistful. She wanted that. She wanted a man to look at her the way Ty looked at Faith. She wanted a man to love her like that. She wanted to be the pinch in a man’s heart. The catch in his breath. The reason his stomach tumbled, and he lost sleep. She’d married Sam, but he’d never felt those things for her. And if she married again, and she wasn’t ruling that out completely, she would not be fooled by a pretty face and charming smile. She wanted a man to look at her like he wanted to look at her for the rest of his life. The problem was that between her job and her son, she didn’t have a lot of time and even less energy. She’d tried dating a few times, but men wanted girlfriends who had time for them. When Autumn did have a few hours, she longed for a massage or a pedicure more than she longed for a man. She could give herself an orgasm, but she couldn’t give herself a deep-tissue massage or paint daisies on her own toes. She turned away from Conner’s room and moved down the hal . Dating was way down on her list of priorities. Maybe someday when Conner was older and her business wasn’t so demanding, she’d be ready to move dating up on her to-do list. Light poured through the open door, stretched across the beige carpet and onto the dark blue and red Transformers quilt. Sam loosened his tie as he walked across the floor. He unbuttoned the neck of his shirt and stood within the spil of light at the side of his son’s bed. Conner lay on his side, his eyes closed and his breathing slow and steady. Like Sam, Conner was a heavy sleeper and threw off heat like a furnace. His blond hair stuck up in the back, and his hands were stretched out on the bed as if he were reaching for something.

The first time he’d seen his son, his heart had shifted in his chest, and his world had shifted beneath his feet. The first time he’d seen Conner, he’d been afraid to touch him. He’d been so sure he’d bruise him or drop him or break him somehow. Conner had been about six pounds and wearing some sort of footed blue thing. The enormous responsibility had hit Sam like a club to his spinning heart. He hadn’t planned to be someone’s dad. Knew he probably wasn’t going to be good at it, and the irony of it al had not escaped him. For a guy who avoided anyone’s depending on him whenever possible, he’d been handed the biggest responsibility of his life. Al because he’d been irresponsible. He moved from the room, pausing at the door for one last look at his little boy. He loved his son. The kind of love he’d never known existed before he’d seen his tiny face for the first time, but he didn’t always know what to do with Conner. He unbuttoned his col ar and pul ed the tie from his neck. By the time he’d seen Conner that first time, the paternity test had been a fait accompli, but he hadn’t needed a test to know the child belonged to him. Conner looked like him. Fair-haired and blue-eyed. Conner was tal for his age, and Sam had dreamed of teaching his son to skate. But as much as Conner looked like a LeClaire, the kid didn’t like to skate, which was just inconceivable given that the boy was a LeClaire, and half-Canadian.

The few times Sam had tried to teach him, Conner had cried every time he fel . There was no crying in hockey, and after about the fifth time of trying, Sam had given up. Hel , Conner hadn’t even been there in the stands last season when Sam had won the Stanley Cup. He’d stayed home with a cold. True, Conner was only five, but Sam had been skating for two years by the age of five, and there was absolutely no way he would have let a little thing like a cold keep him from attending the final game of the playoffs. He blamed Autumn. She’d never hidden the fact that she thought hockey was too violent. He shrugged out of his blazer and moved down the hal . Because of al the Stanley Cup events the past summer, he hadn’t spent much time with his son. Now, with school and the hockey season, he was going to see him even less. He wasn’t thril ed, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The door to the spare bedroom was ajar, and he shut it. The latest assistant, Natalie, slept inside. She was young and beautiful and seemed to be good at her job. Most important, Conner liked her.

The shades in the master bedroom were open, and the Seattle skyline poured its light across the floor and onto the king-sized bed. He hit the light switch and saw a note on top of the white-and-blue quilt on his bed. It was from Natalie, letting him know that she had to leave at 6:00 A.M. Since she’d come to work for him at the last minute, he wasn’t going to get al twisted about her leaving early. He folded the note and glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was a little after midnight. If he wanted Nat to take Conner home, he’d have to get up with Conner at five thirty. He reached for a pen inside the nightstand. I’ll take Conner home, he wrote, and slipped it under Natalie’s door. As he moved back to his room, he realized that he didn’t know where Conner lived these days. He knew they’d moved to Kirkland last year, and he had a vague idea, but he hadn’t been to the house. He walked into the closet and tossed his tie on the center island. Contrary to what Autumn thought of his assistants—heck, what a lot of people thought—he didn’t sleep with them. Most of them were part-time students who needed extra money, and he paid them wel to be at his beck and cal . Their job description ranged from general gofer to nanny, and they were too important, and he depended on them too much to mess it al up with sex. His pants hit the floor as he stepped out of his shoes. And he knew why everyone thought it, too. Because the assistants were al pretty. If any of the assistants had been homely girls with hairy warts, no one would think a thing about it. But he didn’t worry about what other people thought. He was only concerned with himself and, as far as he was concerned, why have an unattractive woman in the house if he could hire someone nice to look at? It just made perfect sense.

He stripped to his boxer-briefs and, because Nat was down the hal , stepped into a pair of pajama pants. He didn’t like anything restrictive and tended to overheat. He preferred to sleep bare-assed.

Sam scratched his bare chest and turned off al the lights. He’d have to cal Autumn in the morning and let her know, but he didn’t think she’d have a problem with him dropping Conner off home. And if she did, tough shit. Yeah, they’d agreed not be in the same room together, but tonight they’d been in the same room and hadn’t kil ed each other. Hadn’t even thought about it. Of course, he could only speak for himself. A remote control lay on his dresser, and he picked it up and pointed it at the windows. The shades slowly lowered as he crawled into bed. Daniel and Blake and some of the guys had gone out after the wedding. This was the last weekend before the start of the season, and they’d probably party al night. One last blowout. Of course, they wouldn’t let a little thing like work stop them completely, but they would have to slow down. He adjusted the pil ow beneath his head and thought of Autumn. He hadn’t laid eyes on her for two years, but he stil felt the same knot of confusion and guilt that he’d felt the day he’d walked out of the hotel in Vegas, leaving her behind. Sam didn’t like feeling those things and avoided them as much as humanly possible.

He pushed al that guilt aside and thought of everything he had to do the next day and the season opener against San Jose Thursday. He thought of the Sharks’ strengths and weaknesses. How best to exploit their lack of mental toughness. Within minutes, he drifted into a heavy dreamless sleep, and when he woke the next morning, he woke with a feeling of being watched.

“You’re up now,” Conner said, as soon as Sam opened his eyes. Wearing Incredible Hulk pajamas, Conner stood by the bed, his light blond hair sticking up on one side of his head. He looked at Sam as if he’d been trying to stare him awake. The morning sun lit up the blinds but left the room in dusky shadow.