Jake's child (17 page)

"Like teasing. I don't understand it, either." He stuck his thumb in his mouth.

"No, I suppose not." She rubbed her cheek against his hair and looked at Jake.

Her warmhearted glance swamped Jake in its wake with melancholy. Everything was slipping away from him. He cupped her elbow and rubbed the skin against her delicate bones just to reassure himself that she was there, still there. He'd wanted her in his bed even when he'd forced himself to hate her, and now when he needed to fight her sweetness and spirit, he was losing the battle. He was going to lose everything.

Sunshine wrapped them in warm amber as they sat on a bench. Tipped with gold, Sarah's eyelashes fluttered on her silky skin. Jake brushed his wrist against them, and they lifted with his touch, responding to him. The moment seeped into him, its golden peace an ointment for the sickness in his soul.

"We going to the games now?"

Squeezing Nicholas's shoulder, Jake let his fingers graze Sarah's. "Just a minute, sport." In a low voice, he checked with her and wished the moment were just what it seemed, not colored by past darkness and doubt. "Think he's too tired?"

"Probably, but we'll manage." She fluffed Nicholas's hair. "Right?"

His sniff expressed disgust. " 'Course."

"No tantrums," Jake cautioned.

"I'll try." Nicholas's worried eyes searched Jake's face. "I want to go real bad. I'll be good. Okay, Jake?"

"Okay." No way in the world could he hold out against that look in the kid's eyes. If he wanted games, he could have them.

And have them he did. Nicholas strained to blow a bubble, and Jake picked gum out of his hair. Sarah lined up with him and waited for the Hay Stack Scramble. When Nicholas's turn came, he dived headfirst into the pile of hay, shrieking and laughing. He forgot to look for the candy and

coins, but Sarah, caught up in the action, jumped up and down, screaming, "The candy, Nicholas! The candy!"

When Nicholas came charging out of the enclosure with candy and coins falling from his fists, Sarah whirled him in her arms as Jake watched with his booted foot angled onto the fence until Sarah and Nicholas stumbled against him, out of breath and panting.

Landing on the ground, both feet pumping, Nicholas barreled off to the sack race.

In back of Sarah, Jake steadied her with his hands on her waist. Her blouse slid and bunched under his fingers. Suppleness and silk and Sarah. He yielded to the need to touch her. He took a deep breath and nuzzled her neck, his tongue tracing a secret path under wisps of hair.

"Jake. Not here," she whispered with a shy smile.

"Why not?" he whispered back.

"Peoplecan see." But she tilted her head.

"Nobody's watching." His thumbs rested on her waist as his fingers opened and spread over her hips. "I love the feel of you," he murmured against her neck.

"Please, not here."

Her fanny brushed against him with her restless movements. He stilled her as he inhaled the scent of her skin and then stepped back from her. He'd lost. "Somewhere, Sarah. And soon."

Wiping her palms down her legs, she looked over her shoulder at him. "What about my courtship?" She cleared her throat. "I liked being courted."

He snagged the waistband of her shorts and pulled her to him. "The courtship's over."

Her eyes widened. "You make that sound like a warning."

"It is."

"I think it should be a mutual decision." Wariness edged into her eyes.

"It should be."

"Why now?"

"I can't keep on like this."

4 'Why the warning, then?"

"Fair play. I'm putting you on notice. The gloves are off."

She clasped her hands together. "We're not in a battle, Jake."

"Not yet." He pulled her hands apart and wedged his fingers in between hers. "But we may be."

"You're scaring me again." She rubbed her hands together.

"I mean to. I told you I'm not a good guy. Everything I said was true."

Her fingers trembled against his. "What wasn't true, Jake? Are you in trouble?" A shaky laugh accompanied her words.

"Yes." He couldn't back out now. Whatever would be, would be, but his future loomed emptily before him.

"I can help you with whatever it is," she said carefully. "Buck can solve any legal problems, believe me." At his silence, the glow in her eyes dimmed. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"Yes." He withdrew into himself, steeling himself for the next words, the words that would destroy everything. Now he knew—how could he have been such a fool as not to know before?—what he was losing. Dropping her hands, he stepped back. "I didn't plan for this." Perspiration ran down his back. "Believe me." He flipped his sunglasses over his eyes.

As he moved away, Sarah reached out to him. His eyes hidden, he'd become a stranger. All the tenderness of the last weeks disappeared as though they'd never been. His words left her shaking to the core. She didn't want to hear what he was going to say. It was going to be bad.

"You don't have to tell me anything." Pressing her knees together, she tried to stop their shaking. Don't tell me, she wanted to beg him.

Carved from stone, he stood at a distance from her, his words pounding at her. "I have to." He blocked the afternoon sun and his shadow fell over her.

"Whatever you've done, Jake, we can solve it." She swallowed. Knowing she was on safe ground, she tried to joke. "You haven't killed anybody, have you?"

His craggy face slanted to the blood-red sun. "Not lately."

"I was kidding," she said.

He turned fully to her and lifted his glasses. "I wasn't." His expression was closed off.

"You must have had a reason." If Jake had killed someone, he'd done it in self-defense. She'd talk to Buck. Buck could fix it.

Jake didn't move a muscle, but the harsh lines around his mouth eased a little. "Oh, I did."

"But—"

"You'd go bail for me, would you?" A remnant of warmth curled through his words.

"Of course." Her answer was immediate. She'd do more than that for him, if it would ease the desolation on his face. "What can I do to help you?"

At her question, he shifted his weight. "That was a long time ago, in a nasty little war. And not the problem now. I wish it was." He looked around when Nicholas tackled him at the knees. "Hello, sport."

Jake's expression as he looked at Nicholas frightened Sarah.

"I was last in the sack race." Nicholas said. "Me and my partner kept falling down. On purpose. It was the greatest."

"Good for you." Jake threw Nicholas up in the air and caught him, swinging him again and again before settling him on his shoulders. Holding Nicholas's fists in his, Jake spoke to Sarah. "Later."

Her breath flew out of her lungs as if she'd been thumped in the stomach. Something loomed on the horizon that threatened to shatter the life she'd begun rebuilding. Everything that had started with Jake knocking on her door was coming to a head.

This time, though, she was going to be in charge. Never again would she be a victim. No one was going to yank the reins of choice out of her control this time. Whatever Jake told her, she'd handle. Whatever she had to do, she'd do.

Sarah let Nicholas run interference. She needed time to sort out her emotions and thoughts. Avoiding Jake, she concentrated on Nicholas and tried to ignore the fear nibbling away at her, tried to ignore, too, the stab of Jake's glance every time she moved. Once, looking up from tying Nicholas's sneaker, she surprised Jake as he watched her. Desire, possessiveness and despair swam in the brown depths of his eyes as they trailed along the length of her bent legs.

The red sun burned into twilight. There would be a storm.

At a little before eleven that night, they hit the midway for Chalo Nitka Midnight Madness.

Sarah didn't like midways, but she'd promised Nicholas. In the flashing lights and nightmare world of the carny, faces were distorted, the familiar turned inside out by garish greens and reds.

A whipping wind tossed pennants and banners and stung her eyes with drops of rain. The sky glowed with reflected oranges and its own storm colors against fast-moving dark clouds blowing in from the east.

Overwhelmed by the strangeness of the sights and sounds, Nicholas rode Jake's shoulders and grew quiet. Darting, shrieking figures dodged in and out, bumping against the booths and people. Sarah noticed that no one bumped into the three of them. Jake's rock-like solidity and the expression on his face discouraged contact.

"Hey, Priss, having a good time?" Buck emerged from the shadows near the Ferris wheel.

At the sudden movement, Jake's shoulders rolled and tightened as he gripped Nicholas's ankles and stepped in front of Sarah.

"Whoa, big guy. Just ole Buck here." He ambled up to them. "How's the fisherman?" He reached up and gave Nicholas a high five. Perched on top of Jake, Nicholas returned a low three. "I came to see if Little Stuff here wanted to keep me company on some of the rides." Buck checked Jake's face for permission before cocking his head at Nicholas. "Think you're up to it?"

"'kay."

"Well, time's a'wastin'. Let's hit the stomach-scramblers and see." Buck grabbed Nicholas's hand and strolled off to the tilt-a-whirl.

As they disappeared into the lights and noise, Sarah regretted the loss of Nicholas's protection. She knew the next few moments were going to change her life.

Gripping her elbow hard, Jake piloted her towards a small section in back of the merry-go-round. "We have to talk. I can't take any more." Electrical cables snaked around their feet, but he led her through the maze to a clear spot lit by the circling lights of the carousel as it wheeled round and round. "Sit down."

With his rigid face and flat, mechanical voice, he was a robot, not the man she'd known these last weeks, not—and the knowledge burst upon her like fireworks—not the man she'd been falling in love with as slowly and inexorably as tides moving to the pull of the moon.

"I lied to you, Sarah, right from the beginning."

Harsh, ugly, the words fell on her ears like a cracked bell tolling. Fear immobilized her. It had been five years since terror had seized her so absolutely. She remembered it and the helplessness it brought.

Childlike, she pressed her hands over her ears, cutting off the words crashing over her. Jake's soundless lips moved.

Then, in an iron grip, he forced her hands down. "I didn't show up at your door by accident. But you knew that."

"Yes."

"You just never figured out why."

Unbearable suspicions were raising their snaky heads in her mind, suspicions she'd ignored over and over because they were too crazy. Somewhere inside she reached for courage and found it. "Go on."

"I'd been driving around for hours trying to decide whether I ought to give you a chance. I kept thinking I had to see you for myself." His fingers bit into her wrists.

"Why should you think you owed me a chance? A chance at what, Jake?"

In the background, Sarah heard soft laughter from the children on the merry-go-round. Red and green and yellow, its lights flashed on Jake's hard features. His mouth slashed white in the green when he spoke.

"I hated you." He shook his head. "And then you came to the door and everything went right out of my head, everything Ted had told me, everything I believed about you."

"You knew my husband? And you never told me?" It was going to be worse than she'd even imagined. She closed her hands around his imprisoning fingers until her nails sank into his skin.

"I knew Ted. I'd known him earlier, and then I ran into him again on a job in the Middle East. He had his son with him."

Sarah moaned. "When?" She was swallowing dry heaves

"Last year."

"You're lying! That's not possible!" she said. "They di four years ago."

Jake stood, dragging her to her feet. "They didn't. Ted looked me up early this year. He was dying. He said he'd

ith

pay me to take his son back to America, but there was one condition.''

4 'What are you saying?" She grabbed his shirt and shook him. "What are you telling me?" She knew, she knew, but it wasn't possible. She'd convinced herself of that impossibility over and over again.

Fierce, like a hawk ripping at its prey, he spoke. "I'm saying Ted paid me to bring his son back to America on the condition that I never let the boy's mother know he was alive." Gripping her shoulders in his powerful hands, he pulled her to him. "I'm telling you I brought Ted's son to America."

She struggled against him, rage engulfing her. He was plunging her into a nightmare.

"And I told myself I had to see if his mother was fit to raise the son she'd abandoned, just as I'd been abandoned. I owed her that."

Sarah's slap against his hard features was soundless in the carnival noise, but she heard his words.

"And I found you."

Her question forced itself past clenched teeth. "Nicholas?" Tears streamed from her eyes. "You bastard! Nicholas is my son, isn't he, isn't he?"

"Ted's son. The one you left behind when you fled to safety, Sarah. Your son."

Chapter Nine

Oarah couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Everything shut down on her. She bit her lip and didn't feel pain. The cold-eyed, blank-faced stranger in front of her was proving to her that reality didn't exist. Idiot-like, she parroted, "My son?"

"Your son," he affirmed. "Ted's, yours. Nicholas." He folded his arms across his chest and stood there, his empty eyes watching her.

Her knees buckled and she looked around, wondering how she found herself on the hard-packed dirt. Jake sank next to her and reached out a hand.

"Don't—don't touch me. Don't you dare," she spat, anger once more bringing sensations with it—the damp of the earth, the rawness of her lip where she'd bitten it, the tinny waltz of the carousel. Blindly, she flicked his hand away like a loathsome insect and tried to scramble to her feet. "Nicholas. Where is he? I want him!"

In a frenzy, Sarah scrutinized the crowds. She had to get to Nicholas.

44 Sit down." Jake's voice was rough, and his hand clamped around her arm. "You're not going anywhere until you've heard me out. We're settling this."