Jake's child (9 page)

He watched Sarah collapse into the faded rocking chair. He wanted to yell at her; she had no right to make him feel guilty after what she'd done. No, he wasn't going to feel guilty. Tough if she was all torn up. Life was tough. For everybody. He sat as far away from her as possible and leaned his head back against the sofa. She'd looked so defeated and vulnerable with her soft hair spread on the pillow next to Nicholas. Jake had to kill that something in himself that was drawn to her anguish and her softness or he was going to end up failing Nicholas.

He rubbed his forehead with the wet, cold bottle and shaded his eyes. "Well?" he began.

"Yes, well ..." Her husky voice trailed off. If that voice could be bottled and sold as an aphrodisiac, someone would make a fortune. Jake shut his eyes, but he could still hear her and couldn't escape what her voice did to him.

"I kissed you, you kissed me back—not bad but nothing special," he lied. "Nothing to cause what happened next."

She'd sent him into an absolute cold sweat when she'd gone running to see Nicholas. Jake had been paralyzed by inaction for the first time in his life. He hadn't known what she was going to do. Lost in their kiss until the cold water of her words snapped him back to reality, back from the sense of homecoming in her softness, he'd forgotten who and what she was. "You want to say anything, go ahead. If not, let's forget it, and chalk it up to bad technique on my part."

"I owe you an explanation."

He surged to his feet and turned his back to her, looking out at the dark yard. He should never have come here. "I told you, you owe me nothing. You looked after Nicholas for me, gave him a bed for the night. I'd have taken one, too, if you'd offered." He faced her with a deliberately nasty grin.

"Stop it. Why are you being so crude?" she cried. "You turn it on and off like a switch, so just stop it. I want to talk about what happened."

"Drop it," he persisted.

"You need to know!" Her small hand touched his bare arm.

Jake yanked away from the touch that went right to his toes and curled his insides. "Yeah. I guess I do." He paced the length of the room. "So go on. You have a son, right?" He refused to look in her direction. He was crackling and sparkling with anger, guilt. And desire. That's all. Just a good, old-fashioned itch for a woman. Nothing more. He crossed his arms and leaned his head against the front door leading to the porch. He'd listen to her lies.

"I... have a son." Her voice was thready but controlled.

He rubbed his arms. "Yeah?"

The quiet house wrapped them in its timelessness, surrounded them with security and history and made him aware of his own emptiness. It was a house whose voice seduced him as much as Sarah's did.

"Had." Her long, drawn-out sigh settled in the corners of the room and in the bleak spaces of his hard heart.

"So tell me about it." Jake wondered how soon he could wake Nicholas up and leave.

"He would have been six next month." She pressed her fists to her chest. "Funny, isn't it?" He saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. She moved to the table by the chair, slid the bowl of roses back and forth.

"No, not funny. What happened?" Jake sat down again on the couch, tenting his fingers over his face, watching her troubled movements around the room as she adjusted pictures, stacked magazines and rubbed her fingers over shining wood surfaces.

"Somehow I always thought he was alive. Prayed. Hoped." She opened the door and looked out onto the porch where the low rumble of thunder over the lake and lightning low on the horizon disturbed the peace of the house. Swept in with the wind, the heavy, sweet smell of orange blossoms filled Jake's nostrils. He waited.

"You see," she turned toward him and the wind whipped her hair forward and tossed her skirt around her smoothly rounded hips and legs, "I never believed them. They told me he'd been killed, but I didn't believe them." She moved toward him, her hands outstretched. "I would have known if he were, wouldn't I? In here?" Her clenched hands rose fiercely to her heart. "Wouldn't I?"

Jake shrugged. "Maybe not. Maybe," he added reluctantly, unable to resist the appeal of those clenched, trembling hands.

"From the moment I opened my door to you and Nicholas, it's been as though I've been moving through a dream. I can't explain it, but just before you knocked I was dreaming, oh, I don't even remember what it was, but I felt so happy, and then you scared me when you pounded on the door and nothing has made sense from then on."

"I was rude, that's all."

4 'Yes, you were, but it was more than that. I think it was being thrown off balance. Suddenly I started seeing things differently. Did you ever look at someone's face upside down, so that the mouth is on the top? You view the person so strangely then. Your perception changes."

He knew what she meant. "So?"

"Some part of me has always refused to accept that my son was... anyway, when I spent so much time with Nicholas, time I'd never had, would never have, with my son, something snapped into focus and all of a sudden, I don't know, it was as if the only thing that explained your appearance and the whole dreamlike quality was that somehow, against all rational explanation, Nicholas was my son."

Jake tried to ignore the hoarseness running under her calm voice. "Yeah, I can see how that might happen."

"And then when you kissed me—you had a look in your eyes that you get when you look at Nicholas." She looked pleadingly at him. "It was ridiculous, I know, but can't you see how it made sense to me?"

"Not really," he muttered, trying not to let her voice slide under his skin.

"I was crazy for a few minutes." Sarah curled up in the chair and tucked her legs under her.

Her bare toes with their pink polish peeked shyly at him. If things were different, if she weren't Nicholas's faithless mother... "Forget it," he said.

"But I want to thank you," she added.

A bleak laugh escaped him. "I'm the last person you should thank."

"You see, I'd avoided pain for so long that I didn't feel anything any more. And that's not living. I'll never get over the loss of my son. I think about him every day."

Jake's conscience twisted the knife. Did she deserve what he was doing? What if everything Ted had said was true? The Sarah who sat curled in front of him surely wasn't the

same Sarah Ted had told him about. Had she gone off the deep end? That would explain the story Ted had stuck to with his dying breath. Explain it, but would it make her a fit mother even now for Nicholas? If she'd left him once, she'd do it again. Leopards didn't change their spots.

4 * What about your husband?" he said.

"It's a long story."

"I'm a good listener." He wanted to hear how she'd explain what she'd done, but he knew she couldn't.

"But some things aren't worth talking about. He's dead. Killed with my son." Her mouth tightened.

"How did it happen?" Jake felt like a disembodied voice in the confessional. Like a priest, he wouldn't be satisfied until she spilled out the horror of what she must have done. Had done.

"Just one of life's tragedies, that's all." Her voice dwindled into silence.

"What do you mean?" He wouldn't let her off now.

"It doesn't matter," she cried. "They both died and they didn't have to! They would never have died like that if—"

Jake moved restlessly. He was so close. "If what, Sarah, if what? How did they die? Tell me."

The intensity in his voice must have drawn her back from wherever she had gone, for she glanced at him and then away as she said, "In a little country in the Middle East, one of those countries perpetually at full boil. They were there and they died. And I was here."

Her last three words sent chills over him, but then a sizzle of lightning raised the hair on the back of his neck and he smelled ozone.

"That was close," Sarah said. "Will Nicholas—"

Just as she spoke, Nicholas hove into view like a small ship racing for port and launched himself into Jake's arms. "Hey, Jake." His mouth stretched wide in a yawn. "Hey, Sarah."

"Hey, yourself, sport."

''And hay's for horses, I know, Jake." Nicholas's eyes were wide open even as he yawned from ear to ear. "What you and Sarah doing down here?" He grinned at Sarah who smiled back.

Her smile was filled with such warmth and welcome that Jake hungered. No one except Nicholas had ever smiled at him like that, welcomed him with such unreserved affection.

"Not much, Nicholas. Did the lightning wake you?" Her voice was low and comforting, the sound of hot cocoa and marshmallows and fuzzy slippers.

"Nah, I just missed Jake." He slid his arm around Jake's neck and Jake gave him a small squeeze. "I'm not afraid of lightning." Nicholas looked at Jake. "Jake might be."

"What would I do if I were, kid?"

"Maybe you could ask me to keep you company?" Nicholas peered earnestly at Jake through tangled eyelashes. "I wouldn't mind much if you wanted me to, Jake," he added generously.

Jake liked the feel of Nicholas in his arms, the sleepy trust. He'd been ridiculously touched and pleased when the kid had come vaulting into his arms, bypassing Sarah without a glance. Jake had always thought kids automatically went to females for comfort. Over the top of Nicholas's head, he looked at Sarah and surprised such a look of yearning that he was jarred. What in God's name was he doing?

"How about it, Jake?" Nicholas put both his hands around Jake's face just as Sarah had done and brought Jake's attention to him. "Then you wouldn't have bad dreams, either."

"Do you have bad dreams, Nicholas?" Sarah had come over to them, her hand gently touching Nicholas's foot, which hung over Jake's arm.

For a moment Nicholas didn't answer. Jake could tell Nicholas was thinking through the possibilities before he finally spoke. "I'm too big for bad dreams, Sarah."

"Gosh, Nicholas, I have really bad dreams sometimes, and I'm a lot older than you." Sarah tugged at Nicholas's big toe and Jake felt the small movement as if she'd touched him.

"You do? Well, I have bad stories in my head sometimes. But they're not bad dreams," he insisted.

Jake chuckled. The kid was hardheaded and filled with pride. "Look, sport, how about something to drink before you head back up to bed?"

Nicholas slid slowly to his feet. "I think you should come with me, Jake. You'd feel a lot better if you did." He tugged at Jake's hand.

Looking at Sarah, Jake silently asked permission. For Nicholas's sake, he'd play a civilized waiting game, waiting for her to make a mistake. She would. He knew it in his bones.

Nicholas turned to her. "You can come, too, Sarah, but Jake takes up a lot of room."

Sarah's ears turned bright pink. "Um, thanks, Nicholas, but, um, that's all right. Tell you what, I'll let you take Jake upstairs and then I'll bring you some milk."

"Come on, then, Jake." Nicholas pulled Jake to the stairs before adding, "I don't mind if you carry me up."

"Here you go. Hang on, goofus." Jake swooped Nicholas up into a fireman's hold and took the stairs two at a time. Nicholas smothered a giggle against Jake's shirt.

When Sarah walked in with warm milk, Nicholas was half-asleep, his hand gripping Jake's tightly.

"Here, I'll take that," Jake said, cupping his free hand around the yellow mug. He watched Sarah's face as she looked at Nicholas. She didn't fuss over him, but her face was filled with something that might pass for tenderness, he thought peevishly.

"If he doesn't drink it, just leave it on this coaster. I'll get it in the morning."

Jake put the milk down on the nightstand. "Okay. I'll wait until he's asleep and then—"

A crack of lightning interrupted him.

"No, Jake, you gotta stay here," Nicholas said and hung on to Jake's hand.

"Of course he does, Nicholas. Anybody could see Jake needs you on a stormy night like this." Sarah's bright eyes sparkled at Jake as she made a teasing face.

She was so much like Nicholas. But with a major difference, he thought, as he watched her skirt pull tight against her thigh as she sat next to Nicholas on the bed.

Jake went warm all over.

"G'night, Sarah," Nicholas yawned. "Let's go fishing tomorrow." Then, like a member of royalty, he conferred a supreme honor. "You can kiss me goodnight. I don't mind, but I am too big for kissing, you know."

Jake heard Sarah's whisper as she leaned over Nicholas. "I know, and too big for bad dreams. But you're only going to have good stories because Jake will be right here. He needs you." Sarah's lips touched Nicholas's cheek very gently.

"You better kiss Jake, too, or you'll hurt his feelings," Nicholas added as Sarah got up to leave.

She looked startled. "Oh, I think Jake's definitely too big for goodnight kissing." Her whole face flushed.

Raising his eyebrows, Jake shrugged. "Yeah, but you don't want to hurt my feelings." He knew he was playing with fire, but he wanted that illusory warmth momentarily.

Her kiss was a cool butterfly touch on his skin, and it made him lonelier than he'd ever been in his life as she shut the door behind her.

"Turn loose just a sec, sport, so I can get my boots off, and then slide over. I'll stay until you fall asleep."

Jake shucked off his boots and stretched out. Nicholas was already half-asleep. Jake shifted uncomfortably. Who'd believe the kid could spread himself all over a whole bed like that? Jake plumped up the pillow, the same one where Sarah's head had lain earlier, and a faint scent of her wafted to him. He slammed the pillow grimly under his head and refused to think of how she'd looked face to face with Nicholas.

How could he take Nicholas away from her?

Nicholas's foot worked its way back over to Jake's arm. Cold little toes slid up and down. He reached down carefully and took them in his hands, warming them. Odd how the kid liked him, had from the first. Jake hadn't thought the kid would have trusted him so completely right off, but he'd stuck by his side like superglue from the beginning.

How could he go away and leave Nicholas behind?

Jake didn't know how long he lay there holding Sarah's son by the toes and breathing in the faint, sweet smell of her on the pillow and waiting for her son to fall safely asleep before he went to his own bed, but he knew he felt completed in a way he never had before. An ache uncoiled in him with the knowledge that it could only be temporary.