Jake's child (20 page)

Had things been different she might have strolled boldly up to him, winked, slid her finger to the knot and tested its reliability. The dull throb of longing would die, though, soon enough.

"Sorry, this was all I could find."

"No problem," Sarah said through a constricted throat. The muscles under Jake's ribs twisted with his movement and Sarah resented him for still being able to make her ache for him.

"I want Sarah to tell me a story," Nicholas yawned. "In her room."

"Come on, sport, let's just go to bed. I'll tell you a story, okay?" Jake strode to the bedroom, his calves flexing and sleeking down to the high arch of his feet.

Beautiful feet, Sarah thought, like his hands. Dressed, Jake was all bulk. Stripped, his body showed smooth, coiling strength and muscle, perfectly shaped and proportioned.

"Want Sarah."

At Nicholas's words, Jake's eyes burned on her. Her skin flushed with the heat flaring through her.

"Whatever you want, sport." Jake settled Nicholas under the sheets in her room, and, turning to go, spoke. "Sarah—"

"Not now."

He inhaled. "You sure?"

"Yes. Not tonight. Whatever it is will wait until tomorrow. We'll deal with it tomorrow. Go to bed, Jake."

Tension reached out to her from him, from his broad, bare chest, from the ridged planes of his face. For a moment she wondered if she could make him leave, if his determination would bend in the face of her insistence.

"Your decision," he finally said, sliding his palm down over the light switch and leaving them in the muted light from the hall.

Sarah felt the slow glide of his palm as though it were moving over her throat. She swallowed. She hadn't expected this—this wanting —to survive after what he'd done to her.

"G'night, Jake."

"Sleep tight, sport."

Jake's wide back blocked the light and Sarah saw his shoulders slump before straightening. He left the door partially open behind him and his feet thudded softly on the carpet.

The smell of Nicholas, warm and soapy, rose to Sarah in the silence. Cuddled next to her, he watched her with sleepy

blue eyes. Her eyes. "Tell me a story about when you were a kid."

"Well, a long, long time ago, in a faraway place—"

"Like space?"

"A more magical place where a small blue-eyed boy—"

"Like me?"

"Just like you, honey, just the same."

Nicholas's eyes drifted shut. Lightly, lightly, Sarah touched his eyelids. Silky still.

She'd been cheated of so much.

Sometime in the night, the frantic beating of her heart woke her and she looked up to see Jake leaning against the doorway. Nicholas slept against her, a small lump at her side.

Silence stretched between them, a living river flowing and touching, a current of longing and frustration.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

Like a wave, Jake's yearning undulated against her. Motionless, his shadow answered her. "You."

"I know." She wondered if he could hear her heart pounding.

"It's not over, Sarah."

"Go to bed, Jake."

His shadow moved soundlessly down the hall, and Sarah heard the click of his bedroom door.

Sarah stared out the window into endless night. What was she going to do? How were they going to survive in a siege state? Eventually she drifted asleep, waking with each creaking sound, her heart banging against her ribs.

For the next four days, rain squalls blew in and out. In the afternoons a watery sun shone weakly through gray skies. Sarah and Jake maintained a polite distance, walking warily through the mine fields all around them. Sarah cancelled her fishing clients and stayed near Nicholas and Jake. She held on to her anger, nursing it, feeding it, hating the way she felt around Jake.

Habit eased them through the days although Sarah took to slamming cabinet doors and banging pots and pans. She shoved all the towels off the bathroom shelves, emptied the kitchen cabinets, poured a bottle of Lysol in a bucket and worked until she was so tired she could drop. She couldn't sleep.

She yanked off the dining-room wallpaper, making Nicholas roar with laughter as flakes of powdery glue and backing showered them. Nicholas lifted the long strips up and trailed them around over his head, billowed them across the dining table, and crowed that this was neat stuff.

Sarah couldn't eat.

Nights she wandered down to the kitchen and heated milk. All she had to show for her effort was scorched pans. She didn't know what she wanted.

She couldn't understand Jake. What had made him think he had the right to play with all their lives the way he had? Why couldn't he see what a terrible thing he'd set in motion?

The questions drove her from bed to the kitchen and back, and still she couldn't sleep or forgive.

Jake watched her all the time just as she watched him. Nothing showed on his blank face. She knew when he was around, no matter how quietly he approached. No need to bell him, not with her nerve endings alive to his presence.

She and Nicholas were building a leaf boat to float in the puddles that lined the driveway, and Jake was taking advantage of the sunshine to paint the porch. He'd crashed a can of white paint down on the kitchen table that morning and hadn't said anything. The swish of his brush against the old wood counterpointed Nicholas's chatter.

Picking up another small leaf, she jabbed the twig through it, anchoring it to the larger bottom leaf. "Here, Nicholas. See if it floats, okay?" She touched the tender column at the back of his neck. So fragile.

Hurling himself off the top step, he collapsed in a heap. He sprang up and then ran in long, swerving loops down the driveway to the biggest puddle. Sarah smiled.

Leaning back against the stoop, she surprised Jake with his mask down. The paint brush stilled as he met her eyes, and small white drops plopped onto the floor.

The loneliness that had always pulled at her was a naked hunger. Once again he was the wolf prowling on the outskirts, and her heart softened fleetingly before she looked down at the crushed leaf in her hand. She brushed her hands clean and cleared her throat. Maybe she'd go sail boats with Nicholas.

She never thought of him as Robbie. Robbie was the baby who haunted her dreams. The Nicholas whose energy propelled him and her through the awkward days was the child of her heart and present. Her child would always be Nicholas to her now, never again Robbie. She stood up. The wooden steps creaked.

Jake tapped the rim of the can with his brush. "Sarah, I'm going to tell Nicholas today. Do you want to be there?" The bristles shh-shhed on the can as he worked out excess paint.

Did she? Which would be easier for Nicholas? "Let me think about it." She rubbed the sole of her sneakers against the edge of the step. "Tell me something, will you, Jake?"

"All right." His smooth strokes spread gleaming white paint over the faded boards he'd already scraped.

Needing to see his reaction, she faced him. "If you could do it all over, would you handle things differently?" Hurt and confusion dragged the question from her.

Jake dipped the brush in, loading it with glossy paint, tapping it on the rim, before he answered. "No."

"I see." His answer hurt more than she'd expected.

He threw the brush down into the can. Paint sprayed up onto his jeans. "No, I don't think you do. All things being equal, Sarah, I'd do it exactly the same. I'd have to." He

grabbed the rag and scrubbed the floor. Looking up at her, he underlined his refusal. 'Tor Nicholas." He flung the rag away and went back to smoothing paint over weathered boards.

"So." She was halfway down the steps when he gripped her arm.

"Does all that righteous anger feel good, sweetheart? Are you enjoying it?" His chest heaved under his open work shirt. "Must be wonderful to be so absolutely sure that you're the injured party." He glared at her. Tiny flecks of white paint dotted his face and chest. His fingers were white-tipped and crackly with paint.

"Do I look as though I'm enjoying myself?" she spat. "I can't help asking myself what if. You know how it goes. What if you'd disliked me instead of been attracted to me? What if I'd taken to dulling my pain at night with a drink or two? Would you have kept my child from me, then? In all your arrogance would you have decided that I was unfit?" She gulped down the sour bile rising from her empty stomach.

"Stop it, Sarah."

"I can't! That's what keeps me up at night, wondering, wondering what if. What if in all your infinite wisdom you'd decided I didn't meet your standards for parenthood? Parents aren't perfect people. They yell and scream and sometimes make mistakes. And who knows what I might have done, what error of judgment could have sent you rattling off in the night while I never knew you were taking my son with you? For all I know, you probably thought I was running drugs out here."

Dull red mottled the planes of his cheeks.

"Good God. You did." She collapsed into the wicker chair. "I suppose I should be grateful you ever decided to tell me the truth." She beat the intricate wicker work in a tattoo of fury.

Jake planted his fists on each arm of the chair and leaned over her, trapping her. "My turn for a question, Sarah. Who are you really angry with? Me? Some corner of that angry, little heart of yours knows my only concern was Nicholas, and I think if you'd been in my shoes you'd have done the same thing." He paused, eyes pinning her to the chair. "Ted? Is all this anger really meant for Ted, who died before you could unleash your outrage on him?"

"I don't have to take this." She struggled to her feet, but Jake crowded closer, pushing her back into the chair.

He tapped her chest right above her heart. "Or are you really angry with yourself? Angry with the Sarah who wasn't all-seeing, all-protective, and so let her child be taken from her? Any of this righteous anger for her?"

"That's a terrible thing to say." She hunched her shoulders.

"But true." His shirt swung open around her, and the sweaty, warm male scent engulfed her. "I know what I did hurt you. I don't excuse myself. But as God is my witness, I'd do it again." Like a battering ram, his words struck her. "I didn't see any other way I could protect Nicholas. I took responsibility for him." The chair slid backward under the force of his shove. "So get your anger untangled, Sarah, before you come dumping it all on me."

Slamming the screen door behind him, he took the stairs in one long stride, calling, "Nicholas! Come here, sport. Sarah and I want to talk to you."

A small tornado, her son charged up the driveway, his bramble-scratched legs pumping for all they were worth. "Coming at you, Jake," he yelled and launched himself into Jake's waiting arms.

Sarah watched Jake's arms go around Nicholas in a comforting squeeze, saw his shaggy, dark head bend to her son. Jake loved her son.

"Come inside for a minute, sport." Jake's voice was harsh, but the tenderness he always showed to Nicholas shimmered under curtness.

"My boat's gonna sink." Nicholas slid down Jake's leg. "I hope this is real important."

"It is."

Sarah wondered if she should say anything, but she couldn't. Jake's accusation had stunned her. Was she angry with Ted? With herself? She listened as Jake told a bare-bones version of the events to Nicholas.

"Sarah's my real mom?" Nicholas frowned for a minute. "Or is this some more of that teasing, Jake? 'Cause I already told you I don't like teasing." He poked Jake's chest.

"No one's teasing you, sweetheart," Sarah murmured as Nicholas looked to her. Words stuck in her throat and she didn't know what to say, what to add. Why had Jake decided to tell Nicholas now?

"You love me." Absolute certainty rang in his voice.

"Oh yes," she whispered. "You can't know how much."

"Daddy was wrong, then."

"Yes." She swallowed the tears as she watched Nicholas work out this new development.

"Buck's my cousin, too?"

"Yes." Sarah couldn't look away from the pointy little face with its ridiculously earnest expression.

"I'm gonna stay here?" He stood up and fidgeted. "Me and Jake?"

"I don't know about that, sport." Jake tied Nicholas's shoe laces.

Sarah wondered what Jake was feeling.

"You're going to trip and break your neck one of these days if you don't watch out, kid. Keep an eye on those shoes."

"Listen, Sarah," Nicholas leaned on the chair arm, "me and Jake's a team."

She reached to touch him, but, straightening up as though confident he'd settled the matter, he sprinted out the door and back to his boats.

"Why did you tell him now?" Sarah wrapped her arms around herself to contain the trembling.

"Because I'm sick and tired of the wounded deer look on your face. Because I'm sick to death of hearing you roam this house for hours at night. Yeah, I hear you. I know you're not sleeping." He raked her up and down with a derisory glance as he folded the loose waistband of her shorts. "Not eating." Glaring at her, he swacked the paintbrush on the can and began spreading paint with hard swipes.

"Jake—"

He cut her off. "And don't say 'thank you' in that polite voice you get every now and then." He wiped his face with his shirt tail and turned to the wall. "Now I'm going to be here for the rest of the afternoon painting this damned wall, so you don't have to keep me under observation." Viciously he slapped the brush against the wall. "Go away, Sarah."

The whack of his brush on the boards followed her. She knew some caged emotion was struggling up against its chains. She knew, too, that she had to think about Jake's accusation.

Very quietly she shut the door behind her as she went to join Nicholas. In back of her Jake muttered a low curse.

For several days she and Jake threw themselves into an orgy of cleaning and repairing. At one point as they passed in the hall, Jake lugging a ladder and Sarah carrying rolls of wallpaper, she wondered how much longer they could keep up the pace. Either they would give out, or the house would collapse from an overload of paint.

Nicholas wound between them in cheerful unconcern. He fed F. Roggie, swung on the tree and seemed relatively unaffected by his new status. Every now and then Nicholas