***Part 2
For a moment, the world outside O’Hare International Airport seemed to stop moving.
Cars still rolled past the curb. Drivers still held signs. Travelers still dragged suitcases over the pavement. Somewhere behind us, a horn blared impatiently.
But Blake Harrington heard none of it.
He stood there staring at my sons as if the ground had opened beneath him.
The boys clung to me, still laughing, still talking over one another.
“Mom, Oliver spilled juice in the car.”
“I did not!”
“You did. On Leo’s dinosaur book.”
“It was an accident!”
The youngest, Leo, lifted his face from my coat and announced solemnly, “The driver said we are not supposed to wrestle in a Bentley s.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
“I would agree with the driver.”
Then I felt Blake’s gaze move from one child to the next.
No one needed to explain the resemblance.
Not even the boys.
Noah, the oldest, had Blake’s sharp cheekbones and serious eyes. Oliver had Blake’s stubborn chin. Leo had his smile—the one Blake used to have before ambition hardened it into something polished and cold.
Blake swallowed.
“Emma,” he said again, quieter this time.
I placed my hands protectively on Noah and Oliver’s shoulders.
“No,” I said.
His eyes flicked to mine.
“No?”
“Not here.”
His jaw tightened, but there was no anger in him now. Only shock.
“Are they mine?”
The question struck the air like broken glass.
Noah looked up.
“Mom?”
I bent down immediately, brushing his hair back from his forehead.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
But it wasn’t okay.
It had never been okay.
For five years, I had imagined this moment in a thousand different ways. I had pictured Blake finding out through lawyers, through tabloids, through a charity photograph, through some careless stranger who noticed what he should have known before anyone else.
But I had never imagined the boys would be standing beside me when he asked.
I straightened slowly.
“You don’t get to ask that on a sidewalk.”
Blake’s face tightened as if I had slapped him.
A man stepped out from beside the Bentley then. Tall, composed, silver-haired, dressed in a dark coat and leather gloves.
“Dr. Winters,” he said gently, “should I take the boys to the car?”
Blake noticed him for the first time.
His expression changed.
A flash of suspicion returned.
“Who is he?”
I almost laughed.
Five years had passed, and still his first instinct was jealousy.
