Free The Second Time by Janet Dailey

afraid I’ll hurt him?! My own child?!”
    His outrage put her fears to rest, even making them appear foolish in retrospect, but they had been very real to her for a long time.
    “I didn’t know how you’d react when you found out,” she admitted. “And I didn’t want to take any chances of Randy being hurt.” She felt almost weak with relief. “It could have been easy for you to use him as a weapon against me.”
    Slater was slowly bringing his temper under control. He bolted down the rest of his drink and turned to refill the glass, a whiteness continuing to show along the taut line of his mouth. “If you weren’t the mother of my son, I think I could killyou for even suggesting I’d do that,” he muttered thickly.
    But his threat struck a responsive chord in her own feelings and reassured as opposed to frightening her. This strong love for their son was a primitive bond they shared in common. It suddenly became easier to talk.
    “I suppose he asked you a lot of questions today,” Dawn surmised.
    “No. Mostly Randy just talked . . . about himself, school, things he liked to do . . . and I just listened.” He stared at his drink, but didn’t taste it. “How long has he known that Simpson wasn’t his father?” It was close to being a loaded question.
    “Since I felt he was old enough to understand. He was around five years old at the time. I explained only as much as I thought he could comprehend, then waited for him to come to me with questions when they occurred to him. So actually, his knowledge of you was gained over a period of years.”
    “He’s known about me all this time. And you’re only now bothering to inform me about his existence. Didn’t I have the right to know before this?” he accused harshly.
    “Yes, you did.” But it had taken her a long time to arrive at that conclusion.
    “Then why didn’t you tell me?” Slater demanded. “For eleven years, another man raised my son. There’s eleven years out of his life that I’ll never have!” He was growing angry at the injustice of it. “I thought there wasn’t anymore you could take from me. But you took my son!”
    “If I had known I was pregnant with our child, I never would have married Simpson,” Dawn countered to deflect some of his anger. “But I didn’t know it. And when I discovered I was pregnant, I thought it was my husband’s baby. And I was glad, because I was finally giving something back to him after all I had taken.”
    “So you passed him off as Simpson’s child,” he accused.
    “I believed he was.” She remembered how happy she had been when the doctor had confirmed her suspicions only a couple of months after the wedding. She had been so eager to tell Simpson the news, knowing that he had given up any hope of having an heir and guessing how much he secretly hoped for one whenever he played with his nieces or nephews. She recalled, also, how confused she had been when he had failed to express delight at her news.
    “How long before you realized he wasn’t?” Slater wanted to know.
    “Almost right away,” Dawn admitted with poignant recollection. “Simpson told me.” Her mouth twisted with the irony of it. “A week after I told him the happy tidings, he came back to tell me his.”
    “Which was?”

Chapter Five
    “Simpson couldn’t have children.” Her voice was low with the remembered shock of that moment. “Some childhood fever had left him sterile. It was a small detail he hadn’t considered important enough to tell me before the wedding. When I informed him we were expecting a baby, he didn’t tell me about his sterility until he had reconfirmed it with his doctor in case some miracle had happened.”
    “Why didn’t you get an annulment?” Slater challenged and watched with narrowed and critical eyes.
    “And do what?” Dawn asked, because it had occurred to her at the time. “Come back here to you? Pregnant and divorced? After what I’d done to you, you might not have wanted me