“I remember Cathy from that awards dinner six years ago when our fathers were honored. She was just a little kid back then.” Diana smiled wide this time, as wide as she could without lipstick. “Jessica’s a precious little thing.” Now she could appreciate the baby. She hugged her closer, and Nick didn’t act in any kind of hurry to take the little girl back.
They walked across the circular driveway and headed toward the street Diana could almost pretend that they belonged together—her, Nick and their child. By unspoken agreement, they stopped in front of the eight-foot-tall brass-and-silver Stratford-upon-the-Brazos sign. From where they stood, no prying eyes would be able to see them talking. Namely, her father, or his spies.
Jessica let go of her finger and Diana used her free hand to rub the baby’s back. She didn’t know why she did that, but the softness of the baby soothed her jumbled nerves. Jessica seemed to like it since she still cooed and smiled and gave a singsong version of “Nooo, nooo, nooo.”
“She likes you,” Nick said. He wasn’t looking at her eyes anymore. His gaze slowly traveled downward over her body.
“Do you really think so?” Her voice came out breathless. The path his gaze took torched her. Her stomach tightened, and her breasts felt heavier, needy. Something she’d never felt before. She had to be imagining the seductive look he gave her. She was sure Nick’s perusal was all innocent, because he couldn’t know how she had felt about him all these years.
“I know so. Just like I know she hates me.” His gaze continued to glide downward.
Diana held her breath, unwilling to break the moment She tried to keep his sentences straight in her mind but it was getting so hard to concentrate. She was standing here with Nick. The whole idea was almost too overwhelming. “Nobody hates you, Nick,” Diana said softly. Some people, she wanted to say, dream wonderful thoughts about you.
“Don’t kid yourself. Look at your father.”
“Oh, you can’t take that personally. He hates your whole family.”
“Agreed. But Jessica here is another matter. We’re family. She should love me. I gave her cookies for lunch,” he said with pride.
“A bribe?”
“Of course.” He said the words as if there was no doubt he could buy her affections.
“But, were they chocolate-chip?”
“Oatmeal.”
“There’s your answer. Chocolate’s the key to a woman’s heart. You, being a man, may not have known that.”
“Do you really think a chocolate-chip cookie would have done it?”
He gave her a boyishly heart-stopping grin. His teeth were so white and straight. Perfect teeth except for a small chip on the front left one. She didn’t remember that being there before.
“I know a little about science.” If she ran her tongue over that tooth, would it be rough or smooth? “And chocolate has these endorphins, that make women happy.”
“No kidding. Thanks, Diana. I’ll get some at the grocery store this afternoon. Me and the water fountain over here have to go get some good kid food.” He didn’t try to take the baby back. “I can’t believe it. Jessica really likes you.”
“You haven’t told her my last name is Smith yet.”
“She knows I’m a Logan and she hates my guts.”
“Maybe she’s on my family’s side of the war, instead of yours.”
“Considering my family, that’s a strong possibility.”
“You can’t believe that.” Diana knew the Logans had as strong a family bond as she and her father had. Or once had.
He didn’t seem to agree. “When my sister left for Paris this morning, she gave me a list of instructions. I’m glad we ran into you because nowhere did it mention chocolate.”
“I used to live there. In Paris. Went to school there for a short time.”
“No kidding. Paris is a beautiful city,” he told her, looking as if he’d had a pretty good time there once. He must not have eaten their steak.
“Beautiful, yes. But the people have a certain—how do you say?—way of eating that’s not normal. Just a warning, when you talk to your sister, tell her not to put catsup on any kind of meat. If she does, they may kick her out of town.”
“No one uses catsup on their food in Paris, Diana.”
“Oh, really?” Catsup and Paris were sore subjects with her. While it didn’t take away the way she felt about Nick, she wasn’t going to be a doormat either. “I have to disagree.” She hoisted Jessica a little higher on her hip. “Would you make a cup of coffee, and leave out the coffee grinds? Would you make chicken soup, and not use chicken? Well? Who would eat steak and not put on catsup? It isn’t done.”
“The Parisians do it”
She sniffed daintily. “Yes. And they made me feel very unwelcome.”
“That’s the way Jessica makes me feel. Unwelcome in my own home.”
Nick looked at Diana’s feet thoughtfully, and that curlicue feeling in the pit of her stomach was there again. It grew and expanded, and she didn’t know how to get rid of it except to have Nick kiss her, which she knew he’d never do and she’d never ask. She was surprised they were even talking. Then again, she thought of all the explosions she’d set off over the last six years and she had to question whether or not he had been responsible for all of them. Whether she had been so far off in her imaginary world with Nick Logan that she hadn’t been paying attention when she mixed chemicals, or wrote down formulas.
Everything that could go wrong, whether in the lab or in her life, did whenever she thought of him.
“Nice socks,” he said.
She looked down at her orange-juice-colored socks. She had limeade-colored ones, too.
“Being a guy, I’m probably the last to know about fashion. But if wearing two different shoes at the same time is what’s in style, then I’ll have to get Jessica outfitted properly. I know how women feel about those things.”
“Two different shoes?” Diana looked at Jessica’s tiny little feet. They were encased in the same little sneakers. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Nick pointed down past Diana’s orange-juice socks to her leather-covered feet. Proof right there in the white leather that thinking about him, confessing that morning to her father how she’d switched the bids, had made her do things she normally would never do, like wear an Air Jordan on her left foot and a Reebok on her right. “You know, Nick. This style is so popular that I have another pair at home exactly like these.”
“Would you like to go shopping with me and Jessica, and help me find a pair just like those?”
“A Smith and a Logan shopping together?” Oh, what she’d give to go with him, to be in the same car with him, sit next to him, spend the day with him. Diana looked at Jessica, who was smiling up at her, blowing little bubbles out of her mouth.
Reality hit her. If either one of their parents saw the two of them together, they’d both be disowned, disbarred, dismembered. “That’s a nice thought, us getting her shoes. Thank you for even suggesting these are a pair. I didn’t see what I was putting on this morning. I dressed in the dark.”
“It’s okay. You should see what I end up wearing sometimes.”
If only she could. Diana lifted Jessica off her hip and moved to hand her back to Nick. “You better reclaim this little girl before some relative snitches on us.”
“I’m not worried. Are you?”
“A little.” A lot. “Are you afraid of Jessica?”
“You betcha!” He grinned.
She had to smile right back at him. Nick was as nice a man as she had remembered. She really hadn’t wasted all these years thinking about him. Yet, there was no future for them, so in a way, that was bad.
“I can’t keep holding her.”
“I know.” His shoulders slumped and he looked resigned to the fact he was getting his niece back.
“If my father got wind of me talking to you, he’d kill me, and he’s so mad at me now, he wouldn’t need much of an excuse to carry it through.”
<
br /> “I understand. Believe me. I’m on the other side of the war.” He took a deep breath and held out his arms.
Diana placed Jessica in them, feeling his flesh for the first time in years. She had to pull away quickly, before she let her fingers roam over the corded muscles in his arm.
Jessica sat quietly for a few moments, cradled next to Nick’s massive chest, sucking on a finger, and looking at Diana through big blue eyes so like her uncle’s. For no reason at all, since Nick wasn’t really doing anything except holding her, Jessica’s eyes began to tear up, her nose turned red and she started to sniffle.
Diana couldn’t take it anymore. She’d be the worst kind of person to desert the two of them, when the baby was so unhappy. “Give her back,” she ordered.
Nick didn’t waste any time, and before Diana could blink, Jessica was once again in her arms. “Thanks, Diana. You’re terrific helping me out like this.”
“You know, if I listened to what my father tells me about you and your family, I’d be running in the other direction.”
“Same with me.” His smile got bigger.
“If I thought Jessica could understand, I’d tell her not to give you a hard time.”
“Would you really, Diana? Even though I’m a Logan?”
“Of course I would.” She wished he was anybody but a Logan. “You didn’t make fun of my shoes. I’ll always remember that.”
“Hey, I’m a nice guy. I keep telling people that, but no one believes me. Isn’t that right, Jessica?”
Jessica gave her uncle a genuine smile, which she could do from the safety of Diana’s arms. “Aren’t you the most unhappy baby?” Diana rubbed her tiny button nose.
Jessica squealed and laughed then grabbed both of Diana’s cheeks and pulled. “Nooooo.”
“You’re such a sweetie.”
“So where were you going?” Nick asked, adjusting the backpack. “If I’m not being too nosy for a Logan.”
They crossed the street side by side and entered the Sugar Land Park and Wildlife Refuge. A natural canopy of live oak and drake elm branches kept the sun out, and the temperature on the asphalt track cool. Diana tickled Jessica’s tummy and baby-talked to her. Not that she understood what Jessica was trying to tell her. That didn’t seem to matter to her though.
They came to the first fork in the trail. One way led to the left, the other to the right Diana stopped in the middle between the two walks.
“You’re not going to give her back to me, are you?” he asked.
“You look frightened.” She had to laugh at him. Never would she have thought Nick, who looked so big and strong, could look so petrified and vulnerable at the same time. That was a deadly combination to her. She had to get away from him before she made a fool of herself. Fantasy was getting all mixed up in reality. “It was nice seeing you, Nick. Really nice.” She gave Jessica’s foot one last tickle. “And you, too, pretty little girl.”
“Behind that pretty girl beats the heart of a tiger.”
“I don’t think so. But then what do I know? Try chocolate.”
He gave her the thumb’s-up sign. “First thing this afternoon.”
“See you ’round.” She waved and walked away. “Sometime.”
Nick had always been her forbidden fruit. For so many years, he’d been the hero in her fantasies. Nick and her on a first date. Nick and her going swimming. Nick and her holding hands. Nick and her with their own baby. Neither her father, nor his, were ever in the picture. She had stood next to him. She had talked to him but had failed to make any kind of lasting impression.
How she wished more than ever that her mother was still alive and that she could talk to her. To be able to ask her what had happened to start the Smith-Logan war. How did it feel to have two men so in love with her that they had been feuding now for over twenty-five years?
Mostly she wanted to ask her mother if the love she had felt for her father was anything like what Diana was feeling for Nick. Was this tingly, giddy feeling, this tongue-tied, stomach-knotting experience really love, or was it just a fantasy being played out in real time?
Diana had to remind herself, with her and Nick there was no such thing as real time. All she could have of him were her fantasies. Fantasies were just wishes to keep a person warm at night when a live body wasn’t there.
She marched farther and farther away from him, and with each step became more determined to convince herself that she had to get over him. He’d been a crush—that’s all. She was a woman now, and she needed to grow up. She needed to find herself a real man with whom she could have a future. She needed to get herself a life.
“Diana,” Nick called out. “Come on back here.”
She kept moving forward.
“Please, Diana. We need you.”
Oh, Lordy. She would have to get on with her life some other time. There should be once, in every woman’s life, when she could take a day to live through a fantasy.
Diana was such a sucker for Nick. At least she was honest enough to admit it to herself. Sucker, sucker, sucker.
Jessica’s nose had turned pink and her eyes had started to water, but she wasn’t crying. Yet.
“Come and walk with us,” Nick invited. “There’s no point in going off by yourself when we’re here.”
“You know that’s not a good idea.” She was one tough mama. Yes indeed. To think she didn’t jump when he had called her back. Nope, she went back slowly. Where the willpower came from, she couldn’t begin to guess.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “If you come with me and Jessica for a walk, I’ll buy you lunch.” He pointed to the hot-dog vender halfway down the path to her left
She thought about it for a whole half second, and then held out her arms for the baby. “Don’t tell my father, but I can be bribed, too.”
“Don’t tell mine.” He handed her Jessica. “So can I.”
They smiled at each other in a conspiratorial way. Life couldn’t get any better than this. Not in her book anyway.
Diana held Jessica’s rose petal-soft hand in her own and gently kissed the little fingers. “Hello again, pretty baby.” She glanced at Nick and knew her heart was on her face, and she didn’t care.
4
NICK WATCHED Diana kiss his niece’s hand, a Madonna smile on her lips, and knew what it felt to be sucker punched. When she looked up at him, and saw him staring at her, she smiled. When she smiled, he almost lost all the air in his lungs. Sucker punched, that’s what it was. No woman had never made him feel as if he couldn’t breathe. No woman had ever had the ability to make it so he couldn’t think straight.
Then along comes Diana Smith and does it all with a beautiful smile and a kiss to a baby’s hand.
“I remember you from the dinner that Sugar Land association had in honor of my father,” he said.
“My father was honored, too.”
“Sure. He had to have been, or you wouldn’t have been there. Do you remember talking to me? I know it was a long time ago.”
“Oh,” she said, pausing. “I vaguely remember. You were sitting next to me, right? Or was it your brother?”
“It was me. How can you forget me?” Boy, hit a guy in the ego, why don’t you.
“Of course it was you.” She smiled as if she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. “How silly of me. But you know, I was so young—”
“I can’t believe you don’t remember me that night.”
“It’s coming back to me. Slowly. If I’m not mistaken, your brother was sitting on the other side of me, right?”
“I suppose.” Now that he thought back on it, he didn’t remember who had been sitting on the other side of her. He didn’t remember who had been sitting on the other side of him, either. He had been too busy concentrating on Diana. It didn’t sit well either that she had remembered who sat on her left, more than she remembered who had sat on her right Namely him.
“I do remember your mother. She glared at me.”
“What can I sa
y? My dad was in love with your mom once. My mother is still jealous.”
“My mother died a long time ago. If your mother is jealous, she needs to get over it.”
“Easier said than done. She likes being jealous. It makes her feel like a martyr.”
“That’s sad,” Diana said softly, then gave Jessica a hug.
“Are you kidding? She’s the happiest person I know, living in her own misery.”
Diana laughed, and her laughter reminded him of the tinkling of little bells. He’d have to remember how prettily she laughed and try to get her to do it some more. Sometime.
“We talked a lot that night,” Nick said. “I remember that.”
“I’m glad you were nice to me, and I’m assuming I was nice to you, too.”
“Very nice. After listening to my father talk about your father, I thought any offspring Harry had would have horns. It was kind of nice to meet you. You were cute back then.”
“Thanks,” she said almost begrudgingly.
She didn’t sound too pleased. She didn’t look happy, either, and he didn’t know what he’d done. Then he snapped. Good thing he had a sister, because growing up around a girl made a guy like him more sensitive than an average Joe. “You were cute then, Diana, but you’re beautiful now.”
Her large brown eyes widened, and her mouth parted slightly. She said thank you again, only this time he knew he’d done the right thing. She looked happy again. She sparkled.
They walked farther, going slowly. Neither seemed in any rush to get back. Jessica gurgled her nos, and played with Diana’s dark hair, pulling strands out of its ponytail. Nick had to resist the urge to brush the hair off her face. But when a piece got caught in her mouth, he had to stop and tuck the strands back behind her ears. Her hair was soft, her cheeks were soft. Her breath was warm and inviting.
She went on talking as if he’d never touched her. “I remember you now, Nick. I had a very good time that night You made the evening special for me.”
“I have to admit that I started talking to you because it really ticked my mother off. I was young back then, I think about twenty, maybe twenty-one.”
“Twenty-two,” she corrected almost instantly.
Kidnapped / I Got You Babe Page 21
