McKnight in Shining Armor by Tami Hoag Page A

down onto thebed. She didn’t think she’d ever dreaded anything so much in her life as having to tell her son he wasn’t going to this ball game.
    “Jeff,” she said softly, barely able to look at him, “that was your dad on the phone.”
    As he sat up, the boy’s expression went carefully blank, but he couldn’t erase the look of fear from his warm brown eyes. He knew what was coming; Kelsie could see it. Jack had disappointed him too many times for him not to know. It didn’t make it any easier for her to tell him.
    “He can’t make it tonight. Something came up. I’m so sorry, honey.”
    The day had come for him to find out there wasn’t a Santa Claus, Kelsie thought as she watched his fragile hopes for a relationship with his father shatter into a million irreparable shards. Her eyes filled with tears as quickly as Jeffrey’s did.
    Fighting valiantly to not cry, Jeff looked down at his magazine. “Why does he hate me so much?”
    He sounded so small and lost, it tore Kelsie’sheart in two and defeated her in her own battle against tears. They spilled over their boundaries and ran down her cheeks as she took her son in her arms and held him close.
    “I’m sorry he’s not the father you want him to be, Jeff,” she whispered into his hair.
    He let go of his pride, all the hurt and disappointment pouring out of him in heart-wrenching sobs. Kelsie wanted to do something, to say something to comfort him, but all she could do was hold him and whisper over and over how sorry she was, as if it were her fault because she had married Jack.
    Alec turned his car into Kelsie’s drive and parked it, whistling as he climbed out. He was going to have Kelsie all to himself for the entire evening. If luck was with him, Jeffrey would be spending the night with his father. Alec looked up at the cloudy black sky and whispered,
“Please.”
    His overactive imagination had spent the better part of the afternoon mapping out the scenario. After the North Stars won the hockey game in a thrilling overtime finish, he would drive Kelsieback to her house—because it was closer to the Met Center—and spend the next five or six hours making love to her. If he could stand it, he would spend at least an hour undressing her, lingering over her lacy lingerie. His body tightened at the thought. Maybe he would have to make love to her first and then spend an hour peeling off her underwear, he thought, grinning as he punched the doorbell.
    His grin faded as the door swung open to reveal Kelsie’s tear-stained face.
    “Kelsie! Honey, what’s wrong?” He didn’t wait to be asked in. He was through the door and had it closed behind him before Kelsie could sniffle. His cold hands stroked her mussed hair back from her face as he took in every nuance of her expression—the pale strain, the trembling of her soft mouth, the agony in her red-rimmed eyes. “What is it, sweetheart? Are the kids okay?”
    Kelsie pulled together what little strength she had left; she felt so tired, so drained. “I’m sorry, Alec,” she said in a rusty voice. “I can’t go withyou tonight. Jeff’s dad backed out on taking him to the ball game.”
    It took a moment for the importance of what she’d said to sink in. Why would she be crying because of that? They could simply hire a sitter, couldn’t they? Then the sound of crying came to him from somewhere in the house and he realized there was more to the situation than a minor disappointment and inconvenience.
    He remembered what Kelsie had told him when he’d asked if Jeffrey was close to his father. “He would like to be,” she had said. Now the little boy was sobbing his heart out because the one man who should have adored him hadn’t seen fit to keep what was to Jeffrey a very important promise.
    “I knew this was coming,” Kelsie said, turning away from him. She raked a hand through her tangled blond hair and leaned against the back of the brown tweed recliner, her foot absently shoving stray