She looked at Erik once, back at Marshall, and said, ‘Sure.’
‘I will see if Jake finds Sam,’ Erik said, with a warning glare at Marshall as he walked away.
‘So the old bear hasn’t exactly lightened up in his old age, hey?’ Marshall said to her.
‘Don’t talk about him. All I care about is Sam and you not mixing him up in any games.’
Marshall sighed. ‘So he’s really mine?’
‘Of course he’s yours,’ Ella said, way too loud. She lowered her voice. ‘I wrote to you twice after … after Nationals. I wrote you that I was pregnant, and I wrote when Sam was born. All I got back was a letter from your coach asking me not to distract you before Olympic trials. The coach said I might have missed my shot at gold but I shouldn’t wreck that opportunity for you. Did Roarke pass on the letter? Did you know we had a son?’
His eyes tried to find any place but her. ‘I got the first letter. Roarke convinced me that it was all about Erik wanting me back in his squad—that you’d made up the story I was the father to get me to go back to Perth. After that the newspapers were all about you and Erik. You moved in with him. You two got married.’ He shrugged as if to say, what was I supposed to think? ‘I assumed the same thing the rest of the country assumed. I didn’t get any second letter telling me Sam had been born. I swear it. When I didn’t hear from you again, I thought Roarke was right and the whole thing was a lie.’
He seemed genuine. God, he seemed genuine. But hadn’t he fooled her before?
Ella inhaled, and the rawness of it hurt her throat. ‘So what are you going to do about it, now you know?’
‘My wife isn’t happy. She made me do the DNA test, and it matched those samples you sent across. Tina thinks you’re after money. Child maintenance. A settlement.’
‘I don’t want your money. I never did.’
‘How did Sam find out about me? What did you tell him?’
‘I told him that Erik wasn’t his real dad. That his real dad lived a long way from us. But I didn’t ever tell him who it was. I kept thinking I’d wait till Sam was older … but Sam got older and I never knew what to say. Then he heard me telling Jake, and’—she shivered at the memory of that horrible weekend— ‘that got rough on everyone.’
‘How did you explain it then?’
‘I said that it wasn’t that his dad didn’t want him, but that he didn’t want me. He also doesn’t know anything about how he was conceived, and what you did, that night at Nationals.’
When she said those words, Ella laced them with threat.
Marshall got it. His nostrils flared and his jaw got tight.
Then abruptly, his posture changed. His gaze lit on a spot over Ella’s shoulder and she turned to see Jake, Erik and Sam—his purple cast the very brightest thing about the three of them—heading their way.
‘What happened to his arm? That’s not going to look good on camera, Ella,’ he said, eyes shifting sideways, and he smirked. ‘My long-lost son with a cast on his arm. Can’t you look after him?’
Ella’s blood froze. The bastard. He was trying to scare her. Trying to make her back off. And she wouldn’t let him, so she gave it to him straight. ‘He broke it the night he found out you were his real dad.’
Whatever Marshall had been about to say, Ella beat him to the punch. ‘Marshall, I remember everything after I woke up and worked out you were pulling on your pants and you’d already had your fun. And so help me, if you wreck this moment for Sam, that’s what I’ll be telling your cameras.’
She wouldn’t. She’d never tell anyone about the rape because of what that would do to Sam, but she’d bet everything she owned that Marshall wouldn’t take that chance. He had his reputation to uphold. Ladies’ man wouldn’t hurt him. Rapist would.
Then Jake was there, his hands on Sam’s shoulders. He nudged Sam towards Ella, and her baby boy who wasn’t a baby anymore cuddled close into Ella’s hip.
She breathed out, settled her nerves, smiled at her son and said, ‘Sam Brecker, meet your father. This is Marshall Wentworth. Marshall, please say hello to your son, Sam.’
CHAPTER
39
‘So I think I will not be down in Chalk Hill for a little while now, Ella,’ Erik said, as they stood by F Troop the next afternoon.
Sam was with her, cast up to shield his eyes from the sun, now setting over the lump of Chalk Hill to the west.
‘You have Jake with you now. You have a new life here. You have found good people here. People who love you.’
Erik said it with all the generosity he’d always carried inside that huge chest and enormous heart. He was the most beautiful person she knew, and she’d miss him, but events she’d triggered—all the things she’d written on her list of things to do before the next Olympic games—were falling into place.
She had a new career, fledgling, but heading in the right direction.
She was in a new town.
She had a new and remarkable man in her life.
And she had told Sam about his father.
Things were looking up.
Ella hugged Erik to her, and he kissed the top of her head before he let her go.
‘And now you, young man,’ he said to Sam. ‘You will come to see me in Perth any time you like. I can meet the bus. I am never far away.’
‘Or I can drive you, Sam,’ Ella said.
‘I teach you to swim faster than your mother,’ Erik said.
Sam clung to Erik, hard as he could with one strong young arm and another in a cast. Then Sam broke away with a sobbed ‘Bye, Erik’, and ran
