Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Fawn’s gaze remained on Declan as he surged to his feet and began to pace the room. His expression was as bleak as his voice had sounded seconds ago. She’d obviously touched on a raw and exposed nerve.
She sat and waited patiently until he felt in control enough to answer her.
“I left the military a couple of years ago for a very specific reason,” he finally bit out.
“Which was?”
“I need to start at the beginning.” His nostrils flared as he breathed in before speaking.
“I originally joined the military at the age of twenty-one, straight out of university. I gave them twenty years and reached the rank of major in Special Forces, and then two years ago, I read a story in the newspapers that changed my life.” He looked at her with fiercely glowing blue eyes.
“The article was about a man named Rufus Wynter, who had just been reunited with his daughter after having believed she was dead for the previous twenty years.”
Fawn remembered seeing the story in the newspapers. Mainly because, having only recently lost her own parents, Fawn had cried when she saw a photograph of how happy Rufus’s daughter looked to have her father at her side as he accompanied her down the aisle on her wedding day.
Was Declan now saying that the Rufus Wynter she had briefly met when the other man came to visit Declan in the hospital the previous week was the same Rufus Wynter she had seen in that newspaper article?
Fawn hadn’t recognized the man as such. But it was two years ago, and having just lost her own father, Fawn had related more to the daughter’s happiness than she had in noticing what Rufus Wynter looked like.
But neither Rufus nor Wynter was exactly a common name, so it now seemed likely they were, indeed, one and the same man.
She eyed Declan curiously. “Why did it change your life?”
“Because it gave me hope. A hope I admit has faded in the two years since,” he acknowledged heavily.
“But at the time, it was monumental in my decision to finally resign from the military. I thought…” He swallowed.
“I thought that if one father could be reunited with his lost child, then it was possible that another one could be too.”
Fawn swallowed. “You?”
Declan’s nod was abrupt. “I’m the cliché of a soldier who decided to marry his girlfriend of a few months before being deployed to fight in someone else’s war,” he said with a rueful smile. “I was na?ve enough to think the two of us would be together forever.”
“What happened?” Fawn could see that Declan was now so lost in recalling the past that he needed little prompting from her to continue.
He drew a deep breath before speaking again.
“As I said, we married quickly, and a week later, I went away on deployment. It was six months before I came home on leave for two weeks. During that leave, Bridget became pregnant. I came home again on another deployment when she was six months along. Unfortunately, I was away again fighting when our son was born.”
“That’s really sad.”
“It happens a lot to servicemen.” His expression softened at what were obviously good memories from that time.
“Bridget sent me photos of our son minutes after he was born. She also told me she’d named him Connall, in honor of her father.
It wasn’t what we’d agreed on, but the baby was three months old by the time I met him for the first time, and the name Connall had been firmly established by then. ”
“What name had you agreed on?” It seemed really selfish to Fawn that Bridget had given their baby a different name from the one they had chosen together.
But who was Fawn to say when she wasn’t married or a mother herself? Maybe when the baby boy was born, he had looked more like a Connall than…
“I had wanted him to be named Ronan, after my father,” Declan supplied.
“But the hurt I felt at this arbitrary change of name disappeared the moment I saw Connall for the first time.” His expression softened.
“He was so small. So beautiful. He had curly blond hair. With the bluest-of-beautiful-blue eyes.”
“Like yours.”
Declan gave her a quick glance before confirming. “Yes, like mine.” He stopped smiling. “I had only been home on leave for a day this time when Bridget asked me to resign from the army, effective immediately, or she was going to divorce me.”
Fawn gasped. “Just like that?”
His expression was grim. “Just like that.”
“She hadn’t given you any hints she was unhappy?”
“None that I’d noticed. She told me she wanted the divorce because she had discovered she hated being married to someone who wasn’t there most of the time.”
“But she knew when she married you that you were a soldier on active duty.”
“Apparently, according to her, I wasn’t attentive enough to her even when I was at home,” Declan drawled.
“But even if I had wanted to leave the military, which I didn’t, I’d initially signed on for four years.
I couldn’t leave under Discharge of Service because I had already been in for eighteen months, and that loophole only applied if someone changed their mind during the first few months.
When I asked my commanding office what I would need to do to be able to leave the army, he said I had to give them twelve months’ notice. ”
“How did Bridget take that news?”
He grimaced. “Not well. So not well, in fact, that I received the divorce papers to my barracks in Iraq just a week after I had arrived back from that leave.”
Fawn gasped. “How could she do such a thing?”
He shrugged. “A lot of women find the reality of being married to someone in the military not what they had expected. It all looks and sounds romantic, being married to someone in service to their country. But the long separations and short leaves aren’t conducive to those relationships continuing. Even more so when children come along.”
“But Bridget knew all that when she married you,” Fawn repeated.
“She did,” he agreed. “I telephoned her after I’d received the divorce papers. I thought maybe we could talk the situation through. That was when she told me there was no possibility of that because she’d found someone else. Someone who loved her, wanted to marry her, and be with her all the time.”
Fawn flinched at the callousness of the other woman’s behavior. “Did you know about this other man?”
“Until that moment, not a clue,” he admitted.
“We had been together so little during our brief marriage, and those times always started off awkwardly, after such a long separation. Then the two weeks would be over before a rapport could be fully reestablished. But I never even considered the possibility she might be having an affair. I should have done, of course,” he added bitterly.
“It happens so often to servicemen who are away for months at a time.”
“She really didn’t give your marriage a chance.”
His nostrils flared. “I very quickly realized that had never been her intention.”
Fawn eyed him incredulously. “What do you mean?”
He nodded. “I got my first inkling of the true situation when I read in the divorce papers that Bridget wanted the house we owned jointly put solely in her name, plus any gifts I had given her, jewelry and a car, would be included in the financial settlement she was demanding for herself. She also wanted sole custody of Connall, with a huge payment every year for child maintenance until he reached the age of twenty-one. There was another clause stating that the original amount for his maintenance would be reassessed once Connall was old enough to attend private school and then university. All that was to remain in place when Bridget remarried.”
“So greedy,” Fawn murmured in disgust.
He sighed. “She wanted everything on her terms. My visitation rights would also be at her discretion. If I didn’t comply, she told me she would fight me for Connall and take everything else I had.”
“Surely she wouldn’t have been successful?”
“My lawyer was pretty sure she wouldn’t, but he also warned me there was never any guarantee in those sorts of divorce cases.” Declan’s nostrils flared. “I wasn’t willing to take the risk of the case coming before a judge who wasn’t sympathetic to my circumstances.”
“But—”
“I was twenty-two years old, Fawn, and my only concern was not to lose access to my son,” he snapped tensely.
“Bridget had threatened to drag the case out in court if I didn’t sign the divorce papers as-is.
In the meantime, she told me she would ensure Connall grew up hating me.
” His jaw tightened. “I might not have been able to spend every day and night with my son since he was born, but I loved him. Fiercely.”
Fawn didn’t doubt that for a minute. She knew that when a man like Declan loved, it would be with everything he had. Which was a lot. Bridget was a fool if she hadn’t realized that from the start of their marriage.
As far as Fawn was concerned, Bridget was a fool anyway for not having realized how lucky she was to have such a gorgeous and loyal man as Declan as her husband.
“Can I ask a personal question…?” Fawn prompted cautiously.
His smile lacked humor. “I think what I’ve already told you is as personal as it gets.”
“And I am well aware of the trust you’ve placed in me by telling me all those things.”
“You placed that same trust in me when you told me the truth about you and River.”
She grimaced. “But you might find my next question too intrusive.”
Declan eyed her searchingly for several seconds before abruptly nodding his consent for her to continue.
“You said that you didn’t think giving your marriage a chance was ever Bridget’s intention?”
He smiled without humor. “No.”
“On that note…” Fawn looked around them at the obvious luxury of their surroundings. “This apartment doesn’t look as if it belongs to a man who spent over twenty years enlisted in the army.”