Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel by Ted Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

memorizing every curve and plane of his face. Alexei’s eyes were big and blue and lively. He seemed totally unafraid of the tall stranger now. Hawke was shocked to see a very small version of himself. It was the face he’d seen in scrapbooks his own mother had kept, little Alex building castles by the sea, little Alex on his pony, little Alex reading a picture book.
    “Does he speak English?” Hawke asked, his eyes never leaving his son.
    “Almost as well as he speaks Russian. We’ve been teaching him both since he first learned to talk,” the young English nurse said, and then she slipped silently from the room.
    “Hello,” Hawke said, reaching up and lightly stroking the boy’s plump cheek, lit to a lovely flame, the flush on the face of a child after a warm bath on a cold evening. Alexei turned to hide his eyes again, then, seeing his nurse gone, turned back to stare openly at this person called a “father.”
    “Say hello, Alexei,” Anastasia said. “Say hello to your father. Wherever have you put your manners?”
    “Hello,” the child chirped. “Hello, hello, hello.”
    “How old are you?” his father asked.
    He looked shyly at Hawke for a moment, then raised his chubby pink hand, holding up three fingers.
    “Good for you! And how many is that, Alexei?”
    “Free?”
    “Three, that’s right. Do you want to know a secret?”
    Alexei nodded his head vigorously, already a great lover of secrets. His father said, “When I was three, I was exactly your age. Isn’t that something?”
    The boy nodded again, instinctively knowing he was expected to agree, and his mother watched father and son together, finding a lovely peace wash over her.
    Alex said, “You’re a very big boy for three, Alexei. Will you give your father a wee hug? I would like that very much.”
    Anastasia bent down and whispered in the child’s ear. Alexei looked at Hawke’s open arms for a moment, unsure of himself, but then stepped into his embrace. Hawke held him closely, looking up at Anastasia, his eyes gleaming with unchecked emotion. He saw her look away, overwhelmed perhaps, and he suddenly felt as if all the molecules in the room had risen up and then rearranged themselves before settling down into a strange new pattern.
    He had found his life at last. The life he’d been meant to live.
    “Our baby boy,” he said. “Our beautiful, beautiful baby boy.”
    His mother turned her noble head slowly so that her eyes rested with overwhelming tenderness and affection on the man and the boy.
    “Will you give him a kiss before he goes back upstairs, Alex? It’s past time for his nap, I’m afraid.”
    Hawke bent forward and kissed his son on the forehead, then ruffled his curly dark hair, and stood back up. The nurse reentered the room and picked Alexei up in her arms. As he was carried away, looking back over her shoulder, unbidden, Alexei waved at his father and smiled, his blue eyes alight.
    Hawke stood mute, staring at the door long after the nurse had pulled it closed behind her.
    “Alex?” Anastasia said, stirring him out of his reverie.
    “Yes?”
    “Would you like to go for a walk along the lake? The snow has stopped and the light is lovely.”
    “Yes. Fresh air would be good.”
    “We can skate on the pond if you wish. The ice is perfect.”
    “I’ve never learned. But I’d love to watch you.”
    “Your coat is hanging in the entrance hall. I’ll run upstairs and get my skates and meet you at the door in ten minutes. All right?”
    “Perfect.”
    W atching Anastasia glide with such simple grace and style across the ice, Hawke could almost hear Tchaikovsky on the wind in the trees. He found himself remembering their evening together in Moscow at the Bolshoi, alone in the darkness of her father’s private box. The ballet had been Swan Lake, each member of the corps of ballerinas a perfect white swan, each one lovelier than the next, creating a rhapsodic fantasy in the air above the frozen wintry pond.
    That