Chapter 6 - THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM
The private hangar at Midway Airport was cold, whipped by the fierce autumn winds howling off the runway, but inside the executive reception lounge, the air was dead silent.
Grant stood by the tall glass windows, watching the private Gulfstream jet taxiing across the tarmac, its landing lights cutting through the gathering dusk. Behind him, Sophie and Luke were sitting on a leather sofa, both wearing brand-new winter coats Grant had bought them that afternoon, clutching matching stuffed golden retrievers Marian had tracked down.
“Is she really coming, Mr. Grant?” Luke asked, his small fingers nervously picking at the fur of his stuffed dog.
“She’s really coming, buddy,” Grant smiled gently, walking over and placing a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder. “She’s going to walk right through those doors in just a few minutes.”
The heavy glass door of the lounge clicked open.
A woman stepped inside, her breath pluming in the cold air as she dropped a travel bag to the floor. She wore a dark wool coat, her brown hair falling in loose waves around a face pale with shock and exhaustion. Her gray-blue eyes—the exact eyes that had haunted Grant for seven years—scanned the room until they landed on the two children on the sofa.
“Mommy!”
Luke screamed the word, leaping off the sofa and sprinting across the room.
Claire dropped to her knees just in time to catch him, wrapping her arms around him so hard she nearly fell backward, burying her face in his hair as she sobbed uncontrollably. Sophie scrambled off the couch a second later, throwing herself into the pile, making it a weeping, tangled knot of mother and children.
Grant stood a few paces back, watching the reunion he had no right to be part of, yet desperately wanted to belong to.
After several long minutes, Claire slowly lifted her head. Her eyes, red-rimmed and fierce, shifted from her children up to Grant. The softness vanished, replaced by the protective, defensive fire of a mother who had fought through hell.
She stood up, gently setting the children behind her. She walked over to Grant, stopping just an arm's length away.
“You found them,” she said, her voice shaking with a mixture of immense gratitude and lingering resentment. “Arthur Vance’s men took them. I spent three days running, hiding, trying to figure out how to get them back from a monster with unlimited money. And you... you found them in forty-eight hours.”
“Arthur Vance is finished,” Grant said quietly. “His operations are being dismantled by federal prosecutors as we speak. He will never touch your family again.”
Claire looked at him, searching his face for the arrogant, distant man she had walked away from seven years ago. She saw the lines around his eyes, the humility in his posture, the undeniable truth written in his expression.
“Why did you do it, Grant?” she asked softly. “You didn't even know who they were when Sophie walked up to you.”
“She looked at me with your eyes,” Grant confessed, his voice cracking. “And she asked me to be her dad for one day. But the truth is... I never stopped being yours, Claire. I just forgot how to be a human being.”
Claire looked down for a moment, letting out a long, shaky breath. When she looked back up, the armor had finally melted away.
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“You have a lot of making up to do, Grant Bennett,” she said, a faint, watery smile touching her lips.
“I have the rest of my life,” Grant replied.
