by Loree Lough
She bit her lower lip and braced herself for the awful truth.
“You’re not mine.”
Skip darted into the kitchen. “I thought I’d never get you alone,” he whispered. “Awright, Jaina, ’fess up. What gives?”
She met her friend’s green eyes and said in her best Southern belle voice, “Why, Skip darlin’, whatevah do you mean?”
He regarded her with a sidelong glance. “Connor Buchanan, that’s what I mean. He’s been makin’ cow eyes at you all day long. What’s goin’ on between you two?”
Her heart pounded at the mere mention of his name, just as it had all through the long, lonely night. “I think the great generals would say we’ve declared a truce.” She licked her lips and smiled, thinking of that kiss…. “Connor and I have decided it’s in Liam’s best interests if we try to get along.”
“So it’s Connor now, is it?” He raised his dark eyebrows. “That sounds very cozy.”
She didn’t like his insinuation. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re…we’re—”
“Friends?” The sarcasm in his voice rang like an Oriental gong.
“We’re becoming friends. Yes.”
“Aha. And my old Aunt Bessie is a horse.”
Jaina clucked her tongue. “Shame on you, Skip. Bessie can’t help it if she’s a bit overweight.”
He frowned. “You can’t distract me that easily, pal. I know what’s going on between you and our attorney friend, and if you ask me, you’re making a big mistake.”
“First of all,” she snapped, “I didn’t ask you.” Propping a fist on her hip, Jaina added, “And secondly, it’s obvious from this nonsense you’re spouting that you haven’t the foggiest idea what’s going on.”
“Oh, don’t I? That guy,” he said, thick forefinger jabbing the air, “is the only thing standing between you and permanent custody of Liam. And I’ve seen the way you look at that kid. I believe you’d do anything to keep him.”
Her eyes widened and she gasped. His insinuation had become a full-fledged accusation. “We’ve been friends for ages. You know better than that.”
He raised a brow. “I thought I did.”
Leaning forward, she aimed a threatening digit at his nose. “Listen, pal, I’d never do anything so underhanded to get something I want!”
“Not even something you want as badly as you want Liam?”
She met his challenge head-on. “There’s nothing I want badly enough to make me—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “Save it for the courtroom.”
Jaina couldn’t believe her ears. This wasn’t like Skip at all. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was acting like a jealous suitor. Did Skip really think she was so desperate to keep the baby that she’d resort to…to that? Hadn’t he learned anything about her in all the years they’d known one another? “I have hamburgers to make,” she said flatly, turning away from him. “If you’re going to help, wash your hands and grab some gloves. Otherwise…”
Connor entered the room, grinning and rubbing his palms together. “I’d be happy to help,” he began. His smile faded as he took note of the surly expressions on their faces. “Sorry, guys. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Walking backward, he headed for the door, hands up in mock self-defense. “I’ll just—”
“No. I’ll ‘just,’” Skip interrupted, his voice brittle with bitterness. He shoved the screen door open. “You know what they say, two’s company, three’s a crowd,” he grumbled.
“Skip, don’t be silly!” Jaina’s retort crackled.
The door slammed as Skip stomped down the steps.
“What was that all about?” Connor asked when Skip was out of earshot.
Jaina cut the end off an onion. “He thinks,” she began, the blade hovering inches above the vegetable, “that I’m using my feminine wiles to trick you into letting me keep Liam.” She quickly carved parallel slices three-quarters of the way through the onion, then deftly turned it ninety degrees and repeated the process.
Remembering the way she’d responded to his kiss, Connor swallowed. Skip thinks she’d…
He stopped himself. He didn’t know Skip from a hole in the wall, so why should he take anything the man said to heart? He stepped up to the sink, turned on the faucet and tested the water temperature before grabbing the bar of soap on the counter. “So…are you?”
The knife split the onion in two, stopping with a dull thunk on the battered cutting board. She held his gaze for what seemed a full, agonizing minute. A slow, mischievous grin drew up the corners of her mouth, glittering in her dark, long-lashed eyes. “Am I what?”
He looked from her eyes to her lips, and it took every ounce of control he could muster to keep from kissing her right where she stood. One side of his mouth lifted in a sly grin. He decided to rearrange the question slightly, see what her reaction might be if he caught her off guard. Play it safe, he decided, his smile broadening, at least until she puts that knife down.
“Are you using your feminine wiles?”
“No.”
“Just as well,” he said, though every male fiber in him wished she’d said yes. He shrugged. “’Cause what would a scheme like that get you in the long run?” Their kiss simmered in his memory. Anything she wanted, he admitted, regretting her quick denial even more. Anything she wanted.
She laid the knife on the cutting board and crossed her arms over her chest. “You, for starters.”
“Me?” He chuckled. “What would you want with me?”
She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “If we were…together, I wouldn’t have to fight you for Liam, now would I?”
He wished he’d known her longer, wished he knew her better, so he could determine if that flash in her eyes meant she was teasing…or not. Connor didn’t want to believe she was like every other woman he’d known—capable of underhanded and deliberate manipulation—but there was too much at stake, and he simply couldn’t afford to discount the possibility.
Despite his concerns, his grin broadened. “But, Jaina,” he drawled, taking a step closer, “what would you do with me afterward?”
To his surprise, she said, “Why, I’d honor my marriage vows, of course. Which would be to your benefit.”
Laughing, Connor moved closer still. “And why is that?”
She gave a nonchalant little nod of her head. “I’m right handy with an iron for one thing, and you wouldn’t believe how fast I can sew a button onto a sleeve. I believe cleanliness really is next to Godliness, and if I do say so myself, I’m pretty good in the kitchen.”
If that kiss in my kitchen is any indicator, I agree! “So you’re saying we should get married? Avoid the courtroom altogether?”
She picked up the knife again. “I’m no lawyer, but if I’m making any sense at all of Skip’s advice, a stable, married couple would have an easier time trying to adopt Liam than two people who are—”
“Footloose and fancy free?”
“Cliché, but yes, being single will make it harder.”
“Much harder.”
He watched her turn the onion on its side so she could carve quarter-inch slices through the grid pattern she’d already cut into it. Tidy opaque squares avalanched onto the cutting board. “I guess your dad served some KP time in the service, eh?”
Jaina’s hands froze. “Excuse me?”
“He’s retired air force, right? I’m just assuming he did kitchen duty at some point in his military career and taught you that nifty little trick.”
She looked at the cutting board, at his face, at the board again. “As a matter of fact,” she said, her voice trembling slightly, “my father did teach me this nifty little trick.” Jaina met his eyes. “But the only KP he did was during barbecues.”
She straightened, and he read the pride in her stance and on her face. “He was a test pilot.”
“I know.”
Glaring, she all but slammed the knife down. “Of course you know.” Her mouth formed a taut line as she pointed to a
shelf above his head. “Would you mind handing me that bowl?”
Connor placed it on the counter, and while she filled it with chopped onions, he sighed inwardly. Her marriage talk had been a joke, nothing more, he believed. Which was too bad, since it made sense. A lot of sense.
It actually would make the adoption process a lot simpler if they were a couple. Besides, he could see what a wonderful mother she was. He wanted Liam, wanted him badly. But he wanted Jaina, too. To be Liam’s mother, of course….
The mental pictures he’d gotten at the office—of her seeing him off in the morning, welcoming him home again in the evening, caring for Liam, for him—flashed through his mind. He’d dismissed the feelings those images had aroused. Feelings of warmth and comfort, of peace and passion. Feelings born of the knowledge that, in her eyes, whether rich or poor, he was okay just the way he was.
After discovering his ex-wife’s betrayal, he’d made a promise never to get serious about another woman. There was no point since they all had a similar plan: lure him into their web with whatever deceitful means they deemed necessary, wrap him securely in their silken lies and leave him there to hang.
It had been a halfhearted promise at best. Because if he was honest with himself, Connor had to admit he’d been searching for the right woman all his life. If he’d listened to his own gut instincts, he’d have admitted way back then that Miriam hadn’t been that woman; if he’d heeded his own good advice, he wouldn’t have wasted all those years. Maybe now he’d have his dream—a devoted wife and a house full of rambunctious kids.
Why not marry Jaina? he asked himself. Then he’d—
“Tell me something, Connor.”
“Hmm?” he said distractedly.
“How do you know so much about me?”
He repeated her question in his head. She’d been honest with him—at least he thought she had been—and he saw no point in being evasive. “I hired a private detective.”
Her glare intensified, and she faced him head-on. “A private detective,” she echoed.
He nodded.
“So you know—”
“Everything,” he finished. “And it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me.” It was true after all. He’d read the reports, and in his opinion, none of it had been her fault. And even if some of the blame did belong on her shoulders—and he refused to accept that as a possibility—she could be forgiven her mistakes because she’d only been nineteen or so at the time. In the years since then, she’d accomplished a great deal.
Rage blazed in her eyes. She turned abruptly away and grabbed a handful of raw hamburger. “Well, it’s going to make a difference.” She rolled the meat into a sphere, then slapped it flat between her palms. Setting the burger on a plate, she plucked off another lump of beef and smacked it into a patty. “How are you going to feel when the judge says you can’t have Liam…because your wife is an excon?”
“Not a problem. I’ll adopt Liam first, and then we’ll get married.”
“Slick, Buchanan,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“You get me to hand him over just like that, and once the papers are filed…”
He was focusing on the fact that she’d said “when,” not “if.” Then he noted her determined expression. He’d heard all his life that love was blind. Not till that minute did he realize it was stubborn, too. “If that happened, I wouldn’t be thrilled,” he admitted, “but…” Could he say it? Dare he admit how he felt? But I’d feel like a lucky guy all the same, because I’d still have you.
Practice makes perfect, he thought, knowing that he’d always made a habit of thinking first and speaking later. He’d always kept a tight rein on his emotions, something he was grateful for right now. Because what he wanted didn’t matter. Much as he wanted—no, needed a life with Jaina—Liam needed a secure home, a stable parent more. If there was a chance, even a slight one, that her background might cost him a life with the child…
Connor cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re right.” Several silent seconds ticked by before he helped himself to a fistful of meat. “How many of these things do we need?”
He glimpsed the flicker of pain that glimmered in her dark eyes before she answered.
“Ten more oughta do it. ’Cause we have hot dogs and potato salad and baked beans and—”
She stopped speaking so suddenly that he wondered if maybe something had blocked her windpipe. He looked up in time to see her wiping her hands on a towel.
“I, uh, I’ll be right back,” she stammered. “Can you hold down the fort for a few minutes?”
“No problem,” he said as she dashed away.
Before she’d run off, the room had seemed warm and sunny, despite the storm-threatening skies. As the door between the kitchen and the diner hissed shut behind her, Connor acknowledged that without her, his world was as dark and bleak as a windowless cell.
Jaina stood in the ladies’ room, palms flat on the countertop. “What were you thinking?” she asked the woman in the mirror.
The answer was clear: she hadn’t been thinking. If she had been, would she have suggested they get married? Would she so boldly have suggested she’d make some lucky guy a pretty good wife?
Not in a thousand years, she admitted. Not in a million years.
She turned away from the mirror and covered her face with both hands. He knows what you are. He knows, and yet he’d said he didn’t care, that it didn’t matter.
But how could it not?
There hadn’t been much point in trying to keep her past a secret throughout her life; the accident and everything that had happened on the heels of it had been in the papers for weeks afterward. Like Eliot and Billie and Joy, she’d been forced to learn to live with the sneers and whispers that so often followed her when folks found out her past was not spotless. Some of her friends and coworkers really had been headed down the wrong path. Jaina, on the other hand, hadn’t been guilty of anything but empty-headed gullibility.
To her knowledge, no one had tried to pass a bill that made foolishness against the law; if they had, six months in Jessup wouldn’t have been nearly long enough because it had been blatantly stupid to get into that car with Bill! She’d suspected something was wrong that night and hadn’t heeded her own inner warnings. That in itself deserved severe punishment, didn’t it?
But when would she stop paying for her naiveté? Hadn’t the injury, the months of physical therapy, the long, dark days in prison been enough? What of the supposedly lifesaving surgery that had more than likely killed her chances of having children, leaving her stomach so contorted with scars it looked like a relief map? And what about the limp she tried so hard to disguise? How much more pain must she endure before she’d atoned for her transgression? When would she have done enough penance for her foolishness, and be set free at last from the humiliating, oppressive burden that was “the past”?
Jaina blotted her eyes on a brown paper towel and blew her nose. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so sorry for herself. In the hospital? During rehab? In Jessup? She sighed, remembering that long ago, she’d decided that self-pity was an ugly, egocentric waste of time and emotion. It had not furthered her recuperation, had not erased Bill’s brutal death from her mind, hadn’t wiped visions of the accident from her memory. And it hadn’t cleared away the charges filed against her by the state.
Self-pity hadn’t done her any good then, and it wouldn’t do her any good now.
A verse she’d often read during her self-pitying days now came to mind. Jeremiah 20:7-18 had given her a sort of perverse comfort, for reading the ragings of that holy man, she’d felt less alone, less forgotten; if even God’s chosen few had, from time to time, been furious with the Almighty, was she so different, for being angry because, in her mind, He’d let her down?
As a child, she’d learned that God loved all his children equally, no matter what. He had a capacity for love and mercy far beyond man’s understanding, her Sunday school teachers
had said, and promised to forgive and forget every sin…provided the sinner admitted culpability and confessed it with a contrite heart.
Connor, for all his insistence that her past didn’t matter, was a flesh-and-blood man. She didn’t know how long it would take, but sooner or later, she feared, he’d see how wrong he’d been and put a safe, permanent distance between them. It would break her heart when that happened, and she honestly didn’t know if she could survive another crushing blow to her soul.
Jaina faced the sink again, patted her cheeks with cold water and ran now damp fingers through her hair. He had run his fingers through her hair last evening she remembered. And hiding her lips behind her palm, she tried to forget the sweet, soft kisses he’d pressed to her mouth.
She’d made a complete fool of herself, she acknowledged, and making a fool of herself was getting to be a bad habit. A habit she’d break, starting now.
Jaina stood as tall as her five-feet-three-inch frame would allow and took a deep breath. You go out there and try to forget about that kiss, ’cause it’s a sure thing he will.
Maybe he could forget, but she wouldn’t.
Because it was too late.
She’d already opened the door to her heart and let him in.
Chapter Eight
Liam lay sound asleep on his tummy, a thumb in his mouth, oblivious to the brightly colored explosions overhead. Jaina and Connor were on their backs on either side of him, their murmured oohs and aahs harmonizing with those of other spectators enjoying the fireworks.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said earlier,” Connor remarked.
Jaina got up onto one elbow, smoothed a wrinkle in the red plaid blanket beneath them. “What, specifically, did I say?”
Connor now, too, levered himself up. “That we should get married.”
In the rainbow of light that drizzled from the sky with a prismatic glow, he watched her dark eyes widen, her full lips part, her delicate hand flutter at her throat.
