Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I don’t understand any of this.” River was sitting on one of the couches in the sitting room. He had now looked at all of Declan’s photographs.
And, as Fawn already knew, each one was more damning than the last. “You have to admit, Connall looks like you when you were little.”
River grimaced. “You would know that better than me. All little children look the same to me.”
“They really don’t,” Fawn assured dryly.
There was absolutely no doubt in her own mind that the young boy in those photographs was River. Which meant that River had to be Connall. How that could positively be, she had absolutely no idea.
“I’ve never really given this any thought before now, but I was eight when Mum brought you home,” Fawn said, attempting to explain something that should have been evident to her for some time but which she had honestly never given a thought to.
“You were four. Or, more accurately”—she glanced at Declan—“almost four.”
River frowned. “What does that mean?”
She shook her head. “I had wished for a younger brother or sister, and suddenly there you were. My own little brother. Except, I realize now I never saw Mum pregnant with you. Or remember you as a baby.” She released a shaky breath.
“You were already a little boy, old enough for me to play with, the first time I met you.”
River grimaced. “And that didn’t seem odd to you?”
“I was a child myself, and all I saw was the little brother I had so desperately wished for. I didn’t question it then, and I stupidly have never thought about or questioned it since.
Especially not during these past few years since you became ill and were then diagnosed as having kidney disease.
Then our parents died.” She turned to Declan.
“I have no idea how this happened,” she choked.
“None at all. But those photographs tell their own story.”
Declan swallowed. “You really think River is Connall?”
Fawn’s heart broke at the hope he was trying so hard to keep under his control. “Don’t you?”
Declan was afraid to hope that River was Connall.
He focused on Fawn. “You said your blood group wasn’t a suitable match for you to be Co—River’s kidney donor?”
“River’s blood is group B, and mine is group A.”
“I’m group B too,” Declan revealed softly. “Which means, theoretically, I can give him a kidney.” Did that also mean, despite those doubts he’d had about Connall’s paternity years ago, that he really was Con—River’s father, rather than Bridget’s longtime lover?
“I can’t ask you to do that?—”
“You aren’t asking me!” Declan fiercely interrupted River’s protest. “Whether you’re my son or not, if we’re tested and found compatible, I’ll willingly give you one of my kidneys.
Not because you’re my son but because you’re in need of one.
You’re also the brother of the woman I love and want to marry. ”
The younger man raised surprised brows. “That was quick work, sis,” he teased Fawn.
She gave him a cheeky smile, some of the color having returned to her cheeks.
“When you know, you know.” She sobered before asking Declan, “Is there a reason why you also seemed to know stuff about kidney disease when we were talking about it before? I had absolutely no knowledge about any of the symptoms or the outcome until River was diagnosed.”
“My mother had it,” Declan explained. “Unfortunately, by the time they found a suitable donor for her, she was too ill to survive the operation. She told them not to even bother and to give it to someone who still had the rest of their lives to lead.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was.” He shrugged. “But it was her body, and so it was her decision.”
Fawn frowned. “We were told some forms of kidney disease are hereditary.”
“They can be, yes,” Declan agreed. “If it turns out that River is Connall, then we would need the doctors to tell us whether he inherited this disease from my mother or if it’s just a fluke.
I would like for us to know that so we can safeguard any future children the two of us might have,” he told Fawn.
Fawn’s cheeks blushed a beautiful red. “You do want more children, then?”
“If you do?”
“I do,” she confirmed huskily.
They shared a smile of intimacy before Declan continued. “For now, we need to see if I’m a viable donor to give River one of my kidneys.”
Declan didn’t say so, but he knew those tests would also be able to tell them whether River really was the long-lost Connall.
But it made no difference to Declan whether he was or not; he was still sincere in his offer to give the younger man one of his kidneys, if it was possible for him to do so.
All he’d wanted to do from the moment he’d first looked across the kitchen and seen the man who looked like his fully grown son, Connall, was to pull the younger man into a fierce hug. To hold him tight and never let him out of his sight again.
At the same time, Declan recognized that all this must have come as a deep shock to River.
Because, as far as he was concerned, until a few minutes ago, there had never been even a hint of a suggestion that he wasn’t exactly who he had thought he was all his life.
Which was River Meadows, brother of Fawn Meadows and the son of the people who had brought him up.
Declan had thought his heart would stop when the younger man called him Da in response to his calling him Connie. It had always been Connall’s name for him. Declan was his Da rather than his Dad.
If he was Connall.
Declan turned to Fawn. “You mentioned before that you have a lot of your parents’ papers stored away in a box in your apartment?”
Her eyes widened. “God, yes, there might be something in there to confirm or deny our suspicions. No birth certificates,” she said, confirming Linus’s previous information, “because they didn’t believe in ‘all that government oversight’ in their lives.
But Mum occasionally wrote stuff down in journals.
She said she was compiling research for a book she never got around to writing.
” She gave another of those affectionate smiles.
Declan nodded. “We need to read them. As soon as possible.”
“I could take Fawn over to the apartment now if?—”
“Absolutely not,” Declan cut in on Danny’s offer. “I’ll be the one accompanying Fawn. But not until after we’ve all eaten the dinner we prepared.” He glanced at River. “A healthy and regular eating regimen is important for people with kidney disease.”
Some of the tension eased from River’s expression. “I think I might have just inherited another fusspot rather than a potential brother-in-law and Da,” he confided in Danny with a teasing glance at Declan.
“No reason why I can’t be all three,” Declan answered gruffly.
“Not at all,” the younger man agreed. “But, to get back to basics, I think the garlic bread is way over the five-second rule of still being edible after being dropped on the floor.”
Declan chuckled. “You’re lucky the garlic bread is the only casualty and that I didn’t keel over with a heart attack the moment I saw you.”
Fawn appreciated the three men as they kept up the lightly bantering conversation as the four of them ate dinner. It gave her time to think her own thoughts.
The first question being, how could River be Connall, as it seemed more and more likely he might be?
The second question was, how could he not be, with the evidence of those photographs of Connall Quinn as a baby and toddler, and the fact that Fawn didn’t remember a single thing about River before she was eight, when River would have already been four.
Almost four, if he really was Connall. Dear God, even River’s birthday might not be on the actual day he had always celebrated it, but rather it had been guesswork on her mother’s part.
The sooner Fawn looked through her parents’ personal papers, the better.
“Are you okay?” Declan prompted some time later as the two of them sat in the back of the SUV while Danny drove them to the apartment she shared with River. Declan held tightly to Fawn’s hand.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” she teased.
He gave a self-derisive grimace. “Did I overstep by talking about the two of us having children, in front of River and Danny, when I haven’t even asked you to marry me yet?”
Fawn laughed. “You can make it up to me later.”
“Can I ask you to marry me later too?”
She sobered. “I can already tell you my answer will be yes.”
Declan’s eyes brightened, the tension easing a little in his shoulders. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “I love you, and I know it will be just as much my pleasure to be your wife,” she assured huskily.
“I really hope, for both your sakes, that River is Connall.” She could only imagine the heartache it must have been for Declan to lose his son and never know what had happened to him beyond the age of four.
They had promised River that they wouldn’t look through the box of their parents’ things, but would bring it back to Declan’s apartment for them all to look through together.
Which was exactly what they did for the first hour after they returned to Declan’s penthouse apartment. Most of the papers were actually drawings and other artwork from Fawn and River’s childhood. Good memories, but hardly helpful in their quest.
There were half a dozen of the journals Fawn had mentioned, and so the four of them each took one to look through. Hopefully, they might find something useful in one of them; if not, they would have to look through the last two as well.
Declan sat on the couch to look through his, with Fawn sitting on the carpeted floor between his legs, flicking through a second one. The two of them gave in to their need to touch each other.
River sat in a chair, looking through the third journal, with Danny also sitting on the floor next to him, looking through the fourth. Probably for the same reason: he wanted to be close to River.