Riptide

the
    confidence you've had in me, but I can't be your wife. I'm very sorry, but I just don't feel about you the way you want me to."
    Sam continued to sit there on two thick phone books, still and
    silent, the half-chewed pork rib clutched in his small fingers.
    She forced a smile. "We should probably have this talk after
    Sam's gone to bed, don't you think?"
    "Why? It concerns him. He wants you for his mother, Becca. I
    told him that was why you were coming back. I told him you were
    going to fix everything and you'd be here for him forever."
    "We should speak of this later, Tyler. This is between us. Please."
    Sam looked down at his plate, his small face drawn, pale in the
    dim kitchen light.
    "All right then," Tyler said. "I'm going to put Sam down with a
    blanket in the living room, on that real comfortable sofa. What do
    you think, Sam?"
    Sam didn't tell them what he thought.

"I'll be right back, Becca."
    He scooped Sam up off his phone books and carried him out of
    the kitchen. She shivered. The house felt uncomfortably cool. She
    hoped Sam would be warm enough with just one blanket. She
    hoped Sam had gotten enough to eat. She wished Tyler had wiped
    Sam's fingers off better.
    What was she going to do? Was she the one off base here? Had
    she given Tyler the wrong impression? She'd known he was jealous
    of Adam, and that's when she had pulled back from him, even cooling
    her friendship toward him. But still he'd misunderstood, still
    he'd come to believe that she wanted to be his wife. How could it
    be possible? She'd said nothing, done nothing, to give him that
    idea. And he was using Sam, which was despicable of him.
    Sam. What was she going to do? There was something very
    wrong, triggered, she supposed, by Krimakov's kidnapping of him.
    She heard Tyler walking back toward the kitchen. She had to clear
    this up, quickly and cleanly. She had to think what she could do to
    help Sam.
    She'd gotten the name of a really good child psychologist in
    Bangor from Sherlock. She would start there.
    But she didn't have a chance to start anything because Tyler said
    from the doorway, "I love you, Becca."

Chapter 32

    to, Tyler, no."
    Tyler just smiled at her, an intimate smile that chilled her to the
    bone. "I've loved you from that first time I saw you in Hadley's
    freshman dorm at Dartmouth. You were looking lost, wondering
    where to find a bathroom."
    She smiled at that, no recollection at all of that meeting. "You
    didn't love me, Tyler. You dated lots of girls in college. You married
    Sam's mother, Ann. You loved her."
    He came into the kitchen and sat down across from her. "Sure I
    loved her for a while, but she left me, Becca. She left me and she
    didn't plan to come back. She was even going to take Sam, but I
    didn't let her."
    What was he talking about? Of course things couldn't have been
    smooth between them, since Ann had ended up leaving him.
    They'd faced off about it? There'd been a confrontation? But that
    didn't concern her now. She said, "I'm really sorry if you've gotten
    the wrong idea, Tyler. Please believe me. I am your friend and I
    hope I always will be. I would like to see Sam grow up."
    "Since you're going to be his mother, of course you'll see him
    grow up. You'll make him well again, Becca. He's been silent and
    withdrawn ever since his mother left."
    "Would you like some coffee?"
    'Sure, if you're going to make some." He watched her measure

the coffee into the machine, then pour in the water. He watched
    her press the switch, watched it turn red.
    "Tell me about Ann," she said, wanting him to remember the
    woman he'd loved, distract him from her. Why had Ann left him?
    Had there been another man? Why hadn't she taken Sam with her?
    So what if Tyler had tried to fight for custody? Sam was still her
    child, not his. But she had just run away without him.
    Tyler was still watching the coffeemaker. She watched him
    breathe in the aroma. Finally, he said, "She was beautiful. She'd
    been married to a guy who left her the minute he found out she
    was pregnant. We hooked up kind of by accident. She couldn't get
    the gasoline cap off her car. I helped her. Then we went to
    Pollyanna's Restaurant." He shrugged. "We got married a couple
    months later."
    "What happened?"
    He said nothing for a very long time. "The coffee's ready."
    She poured each of them a cup.
    He took a drink, then shrugged. "She was happy and then she
    wasn't. She left. Nothing more, Becca. Listen, I swear I'll make you
    happy. You