Silence for a moment; then she said, soft and sad, “Not yet, Jimmy. I can’t go for a swim during the party. There’s too much gossip as it is. I can’t embarrass them. If I swim with you during my party, they’ll start taking bets that you’re the real father…”
“I wish,” Jimmy said, with quiet, comical fervor—and Laila laughed, beautiful and strong and happy, as she hadn’t done since the day she’d told him about the baby.
“You’re a goof,” she said, with real affection in her voice.
“Yeah, I know,” Jimmy replied firmly. “But we’re going swimming, sooner or later. I wanna see the sexiest pregnant woman ever, drenched in dam water and her makeup off. I didn’t come four hundred miles for nothing.”
Laila gave a watery giggle. “I’m so glad you came.” She turned in his arm and held him as tightly as her burgeoning body would allow. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.”
“Of course I came,” Jimmy said softly. “I’ll always be here for you. No matter what. Even when you get pregnant to some dumb goof who’s so blind he can’t see the treasure he’s got right in front of him.”
“You have no idea how much I needed to hear that,” she whispered back. Jimmy laid his chin on her hair…and the dumb goof listening in on the conversation stood rooted in shock, feeling all the force of irony.
He’d spent months pushing Laila away; and now, at their baby celebration party, she was reaching out to another man—a man with obvious and very deep feelings for her.
His child, his son, could end up calling that man Daddy—and again, he couldn’t blame Laila. She’d been honest about her needs from the start, and he’d given her what he thought she wanted, but not a single thing she needed.
But the root cause of his shock, he realized—only now, when it seemed to be too late—that the fear of losing his rights to the baby wasn’t the only massive change going on inside his heart. Laila, this baby, were on his mind day and night.
Jenny and Annabel were fading from their constant place in his mind.
Panic, utter and complete terror, filled him. He couldn’t forget—he’d sworn to Jen that he’d always love her, always remember. He’d given his solemn vow to bring up their daughter with love and her memory.
He hadn’t even been able to do that for her, or for Annabel. He’d failed his family in every possible way. The least he could do was to remember them—and keep the love alive; yet at this moment, all he could see in his mind was Jen’s dying form, not her sweetness and life and laughter, or their moments of love…
If Jen was fading, it was Laila’s fault, with her brightness and impudence, her outspoken wisdom and her vivid passion for living. She’d brought him back to life, dominated his thoughts and made him want to reach out again, even if it was only for the sake of the baby—
Liar. You want her so bad you forget the baby whenever she touches you.
He’d never thought this could happen to him, but it had. He’d loved Jenny with a warm, sensual, comfortable love that could have lasted a lifetime—but this violent craving he had for Laila ate at him until he was with her again. Touching her again.
He wasn’t in love—there was no possible way he could be—but he seemed to need—
No! He didn’t need Laila, or the hectic jumble of emotions she inspired in him—reminding him that while he was safe in this life, it wasn’t life: he existed, but didn’t live. He didn’t feel, which was exactly what he’d wanted.
Laila had taken that from him, that safe, comfortable cocoon, and he resented it, resented her. He utterly refused to show her just how far he’d come from the man she’d met first, or the aching in him to be a man again—
Then why can’t you stay away from her for longer than an hour?
The baby. He wanted his child, and Laila was carrying him.
Yeah, right. That explains why you can’t keep your hands off her, the little voice inside him jeered.
He couldn’t escape that single truth. It seemed that, for now, they were both locked in sensual thrall, with a mutual fascination and need for each other—but Laila had the courage and strength to admit it…and to not use him to gain her own ends. If she had any ends. All the Princess seemed to want was simple love and happiness.
Laila was a woman with strong feelings. Sooner or later, her heart-deep need to be loved would overrule any sensuality or security he could give her. She needed not just a lover, but a friend: someone to share her life with. And faced with this young, good-looking guy who teased and cuddled her and was obviously deeply in love with her, Jake couldn’t fool himself. She had a man who wanted to give her all the things he couldn’t.
She probably had dozens of friends, and a hundred guys who’d line up to take his place, just as Glenn had said; but his greatest threat was right here, right now.
She’d marry Jimmy if he kept pushing her away, if he didn’t let her into his life—but God help him for the world’s biggest jerk, he no longer knew how to stop locking the world out.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?”
Jake turned to where the whisper came behind him. Andrew Robbins stood there, neither in satisfaction nor triumph, but a curious understanding. “Marcie wants to talk to you. Come on.”
Jake whispered in fury, “I’m not leaving her with him!”
“If you blunder in now, you’ll lose her.” Andrew placed a hand on Jake’s resisting shoulder. “I know her. She needs time, man—something none of us have given her since she told us about the baby. Jimmy’s one of the good ones. He’ll take care of her. She’ll come back.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then she was never going to,” Andrew said, very softly. “She’s not a sheep—you can’t bark at her and expect her to go the way you want. We all know that’s your baby in there, and she hasn’t forgotten that, but if you push her any more she’ll go with him—and he loves her, man. If Jimmy takes her out of here, she might give you full visiting rights, but she’ll never come back. This is your last chance to get this right. Lai knows what you want. It’s what she wants that she has to figure out. She needs time.”
He tugged at Jake’s shoulder, and, without knowing why, Jake let Laila’s brother lead him away. He needed time to figure out what to do next.
Failure wasn’t an option. Not when his part in his child’s life hung in the balance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAILA’S mobile phone began bleeping within forty-five minutes.
Lying on her back on Jimmy’s jacket, melting a chocolate ball in her mouth and enjoying the rare luxury of silence, she chose not to hear the sound…until Jimmy touched her shoulder. “Looks like the cavalry’s about to ride in,” he whispered, pointing at the indistinct human form coming through the shadowed trees separating the dam from the house.
She giggled, then sighed. “Drat.”
Jimmy shrugged and grinned. “I got a few days. I don’t have to go anywhere until next weekend…that is, if your dear papa will allow me to hang around.”
“Oh, he will,” she replied grimly. “If he wants me to stay here, he will.”
“Laila.”
She swiveled around, feeling like a puppet pulled by wires she couldn’t find. Jake spoke, and she obeyed. “Yes, Jake?” she answered levelly. “What can I do for you?”
He didn’t come any closer. “Your dad’s getting pretty hot under the collar,” he said, his voice quiet, restrained. “It’s your party and people are wondering why you’re not there.”
Ten possible retorts rose to her mind, but something in his tone stopped her—his words—and the fact that he hadn’t moved closer, filling her with his physical presence.
He wasn’t telling her what to do.
“I’ll be in soon.” She glanced at Jimmy, who was already on his feet, a look of exaggerated resignation on his face that was almost saintly—and she laughed again.
“I’ll be in the house if you want anything.”
“Thanks.” Laila’s frown deepened as Ja
ke turned and walked back without a glance.
“That’s the hovering non-boyfriend?” Jimmy whispered. “Maybe my coming did some good. Looks like he got the message.”
Laila shrugged. She never knew what to make of the enigma that was Jake Connors. “Time to get back in there.”
Jimmy grinned. “And won’t the party girl be making a big entrance. How many, you reckon, will start thinking I’m the daddy?”
She elbowed him in the stomach with a return grin. “At least twenty—and every one of them will believe it. There isn’t much else to interest people out here. Gossip’s the number one choice for fun.” She stood up, and grimaced as her sandals landed in a still-fresh horse pat. “Oh, great,” she groaned, and leaned on Jimmy’s shoulder as she pulled off the sandals.
Jimmy laughed. “Now she’s a real walking cliché—barefoot and pregnant.”
She mock-punched his arm, and held his hand as they walked through the trees and back to the house.
“So which of this lot is the guy’s family?” Jimmy asked on the way up the veranda. He totally ignored the raised brows of several guests wandering around the front garden and path as they walked past. “Who in this crowd belongs to him?”
“None. These are all our people, apart from a couple of the guys over there.” She let go of his hand and pointed to a group of jackaroos on the side veranda, uncomfortable in their best clothes, hanging around the open-air bar. “They’re his friends from his last job.”
She moved to open the screen door, but Jimmy grabbed her wrist. “No family? Is he an orphan or something?”
Laila shook her head, slowly, feeling disturbed as she hadn’t before. “No. He has a brother and sister that I know of, and a mother.”
“And they’re not here? When it’s a party to celebrate his baby?” Jimmy shook his head, looking stunned.
She felt his incredulity. It seemed she was seeing a lot of things she hadn’t before, through Jimmy’s eyes.
Jimmy had a massive family, and their gatherings tended to be shouting-only affairs. She’d gone to two with him, and came out swishing from the beers and tea given to her, ten pounds heavier from all the good food, and feeling crushed from all the hugs. Of course Jimmy wouldn’t understand what motivated Jake to keep his family from…
From what?
She dropped her smelly sandals, pulled the screen door open, and marched in.
Half the room fell silent at her entrance. Beers stopped halfway to mouths; lips paused in gossip. Eyes grew large at her entrance: barefoot, hair loose, and a tall, dark stranger behind her.
Laila lifted her chin, daring anyone to ask. She just hoped nobody could see the pulse pounding in her throat as she walked past people without offering an explanation.
Ignoring all the speculative looks, and Dar’s compelling stare, willing her to come over and explain herself, she sought out just one person.
She found him, not in his usual corner, but talking to a group of men by the bar; but like everyone else, he watched her now. Yeah, she’d really made an entrance this time. She might as well have taken that swim—the sensation couldn’t be bigger.
She lifted a brow, her gaze remaining on him. After a long moment the hooded look grew, but he nodded, put down the beer in his hand and headed toward her.
“Go for it, tiger,” Jimmy’s quiet whisper sounded in her ear, as she waited for Jake. “Give him hell.”
Her fingers fluttered back to his, touching in gratitude. It was so good to have a friend like Jimmy at her back.
She walked out the door ahead of Jake, with a strange sense of destiny walking behind, treading softly in her bare footprints.
To Jake it wasn’t destiny following her, it was doom. It had been coming on with a slow relentlessness he’d chosen to turn from—but now he could feel the hardening of Laila’s heart, and sensed that whatever she was about to say would decide his future.
She waited to make it to her place of refuge, her childhood swing, and sat on it—her thighs instead of her butt—and swung a few times before she spoke. The glow touched her half-averted face, pale, translucent and lovely. Moonlight reflected soft reddish lights from her hair; her dress clung to her, showing her fuller breasts and ripening belly. He ached with something more than desire: a yearning he dared not name. Still he envisioned her cold, beautiful face turning to his with all the emotion she’d once been unable to hide, lifting for his kiss—
It wasn’t going to happen. She had something to say, and being a prudent man, he knew when to shut up and wait. But her words seemed to fly out of nowhere—and they were nothing that he’d expected.
“Why aren’t your family here? Why didn’t you want to invite them tonight?”
Though her question had been restrained, the shock came to him from darker emotion lurking beneath. He noted that even as he jerked back, wanting to check to see if he was awake or dreaming. Laila had been so good at minding her own business until now—at least since her initial attempts to get to know him—this was the last question he’d thought she’d ask.
“I thought you said you believed in giving people their space,” he said quietly, to give himself time to think. What on earth was he supposed to say? I don’t deserve my family because I killed my wife and child? I can’t face their forgiveness until I can find a way to forgive myself?
The swing came to a slow stillness. She didn’t speak until it stopped altogether. “It’s my business if I’m the reason for you not wanting your family to meet the mother of your child.”
She wasn’t looking at him, but forward into the night, her normal vivid passion for living gone. She was so pale in the autumn moonlight, so cold. It was as if she didn’t want to know, but felt driven to ask against her will.
Jake stood still behind her. When she became like this—quiet, strong and insightful—facing her was almost painful, like looking into a mirror and seeing the ugliness of his past written on his face. Yet this time her insight wasn’t turned on him, and realizing that made him see the truth with a clarity that hurt in a way he couldn’t explain.
“You think I’m ashamed of you?” he asked, feeling as if she’d shoved her knuckles into his solar plexus. “Is that what you think of me?”
The one-shouldered shrug was almost defiant; she didn’t even turn her head. The distance between them seemed to grow longer with every word she said. “I don’t know what I think. I don’t know you.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Laila,” he muttered, wishing they didn’t have to keep coming back to that.
At that, she finally turned her head. Her eyes were dark, hollow—mirroring the turbulence in her soul. A reflection of all the emotion she was getting so good at hiding from him. “Are you? Or are you giving yourself permission to keep your distance?”
Slowly his fists clenched together in impotent defiance. He didn’t have an answer, but he didn’t need to: she knew.
At his silence she shrugged again. “You expect me to take you on trust, to hand you my future without a word spoken. All I know is that you took what I stupidly offered one night, you have a family you won’t share with me and you want to do the right thing by your child.”
“It’s all I have,” he said, blunt but hoarse. Was it truth, or was he lying to them both? Lost in a mass of emotions he didn’t want to acknowledge, he had nothing else to say.
“If that’s all you have, agreeing to anything you want from me would be committing emotional suicide.”
She said it in the same tone she’d use for remarking on the weather; her face reflected the same lack of emotional input. Why did that frighten him so badly? Why did he feel as if he’d committed the unforgivable sin in being honest? “I can’t change it, Laila. I wish I could.”
“Who is she?” she asked quietly. Her eyes watched him in a tired kind of sadness, as if she already knew the answer. “Who’s the woman you can’t put behind you?”
Shutdown.
The pain shot through his chest. His throat closed up; h
e couldn’t speak. The wounds never stopped bleeding, day and night. Even now, when Jen’s face had begun to fade from the front of his mind, and he could barely remember the good times, he lay in agony on his bed at night, trying to remember everything he’d forgotten. Going through a day without thinking of Jenny and Annabel was a betrayal he couldn’t stand. His wife and daughter were dead and there was nothing he could do to change that.
Nothing Laila could do would end the anguish, or change the facts. No matter how much he thought about her, or how much he wanted their child, the facts remained. She made him yearn and ache for a happiness he didn’t deserve—unless time suddenly went backward and he could relive the decision to put his work before his family.
This is your last chance to get this right.
He spoke with a voice scratchy with his will fighting Laila’s need. “This is my problem. You will meet my family one day. I’m not ashamed of you, Laila.”
“Uh-huh.” With a long creak, she’d hauled herself off the swing. “It’s all yours, isn’t it? The problem is yours, the solution is yours. I have to take that on trust, to believe that everything you do without explanation, each decision you make without my input, every question you don’t answer and every kiss you give me without feeling anything for me, will somehow make life right for me and my baby.”
She began walking back to the house, striding with a definition and purpose. He’d sent her away without explanation, without letting her in, too many times; now she was walking away without being sent. She was giving up on him, on any hope of sharing a life with him.
If she goes with Jimmy she’ll never come back.
Harlequin Romance Bundle: Crowns and Cowboys Page 24
