She had borne her baby with a nurse she didn’t know serving as the coach while her father and brothers paced the halls.
She had left the line of ‘father’ on Jason’s birth certificate blank.
Oh, yes. It was very ironic.
And very painful.
Chapter Four
Wade stood outside the bookstore, staring inside at the display. It was a salute to local writers, featuring none other than Nicole Kline. He tucked in his hands into his back pockets and rocked back on his heels as he counted the books featured. Three of them. Damnation, she had really done it.
He went into the bookstore, to the display stand. He took down one book, the one that had drawn his attention. The rendering on the front was what had caught as his eye as he wandered through the mall, waiting on his mother and Abby to finish up their ‘girl’s things’.
The man looked just like him.
He was dressed in odd clothing; in one hand he held a sword, in the other, a ball of light. In large letters, it read: Times of Darkness. Below that, in smaller letters, were the words Chronicles of Dien No. I.
Opening it to the first few pages, he scanned them over. A knot was in his throat. It was hers, all right. One page was list of thank you’s and acknowledgments. He hadn’t read anything she had written, but he recognized names, turns of phrases that she would use. Damn it, she really did it.
The next page was blank save for these words: This is for all the people who said I could do it. And all of those who said I couldn’t.
He flipped back to the front, looking for the copyright. When had her books started to sell? He knew she had sent them off sometime that last summer, but hadn’t ever heard anything.
Then he saw the first printing date. The book fell from his numb hands. July 1995. It took a minimum of twelve months, if not longer, to get a sold book into print. He knew that because Nikki had often fretted about not being able to wait that long, should she ever sell one.
Finally, he had the answer to a burning question. He had wondered for years what had brought her to his house in the middle of such a bad storm.
Nikki had shown up at his house that last day, her eyes bright and shining with a secret. Rain had soaked her clear through, plastering her white cotton Oxford to her torso, her wet hair clinging to the shape of her skull. She had practically danced onto the deck, face glowing, shouting that she had unbelievable news.
Son of a bitch. Nikki had come to tell him the most important news of her life. He’d bet his next paycheck she had shown up to tell him something about the story she’d sent to New York.
And he had handed her news that could have destroyed somebody weaker.
Congratulations on the book, Nik. And by the way, have a cigar. I’m about to become a papa.
Damn it, could things have possibly turned out worse for her?
Hands shaking, Wade scooped up the fallen book before gathering up the books with her name on them and took them to the counter.
What was really ironic was that in the time she had been writing, he had never paid much attention to what she had been putting into words. Wade hadn’t a clue as to what kind of stuff she liked to write. He really hadn’t cared that much, didn’t think it would ever come to anything. After all, how many aspiring writers ever really sold anything?
Wade hadn’t been one of the ones who said she couldn’t do it, but he had never really expected her to. And lo and behold, years later, Wade was nothing more than a paramedic. A burned out, disillusioned paramedic. Nikki she was a published writer, with three books already published, and more on the way. What had she been doing in Monticello? Did she live around there?
Maybe have a cabin somewhere on the lake?
Was she married? Was she happy?
Damn it, if she lived there, and if she was married, would he be running into her and husband all the time? Could he handle that?
Dropping down on the bench, Wade stared morosely into the fountain. All around him he heard the babble of too many people talking at once. Crowded malls on Saturday afternoon weren’t exactly his favorite way to be spend his time. But he had promised his mother he would bring Abby back one weekend a month when he had broke the news that they were moving
Abby wasn’t happy with Monticello, away from all her old friends, her grandparents, and Uncle Joe. He had begun to question the wisdom of this move.
But if he hadn’t moved, he wouldn’t have seen Nikki again.
At this particular moment, he couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad.
It was late Sunday when they returned home. Wade knew he’d be lucky to catch five hours sleep before he had to be up for his six a.m. shift. Working three twelve hour days a week was great for the most part, freeing up time to spend with Abby. But it was wearing, and would be doubly so, on so little sleep.
Fortunately, nothing much seemed to happen around here. His job mainly consisted of chauffeuring little old ladies to the doctor’s from the area’s lone nursing home. On occasion, it was a broken bone, and once, a little boy had eaten one of his grandmother’s suppositories and his mother had screamed over and over that the old woman had poisoned him.
It was a relief in itself to be away from gunshots and stab wounds. He was off the night shift and far away from the violence of Louisville. Wade prayed never to see it again.
But Wade’s dreams of late had turned bloody and his sleep restless. The last run he had made in Louisville before his vacation lived large in his mind. A four-year old boy shot by his older brother because the little boy had threatened to tell his parents that the older brother was smoking cigarettes.
That four-year old child had died beneath Wade’s blood stained hands and nothing modern technology produced could change that. That was what had prompted the move to a smaller town, someplace a little further away from the violence seen all too often in the city.
Shoving the thought firmly to the back of his mind, Wade dressed a sleepy Abby in her P.J.’s. With a soft sigh, she turned on her side, pulled her blanket up to her neck, and slipped right back into sleep.
Wearily, Wade dragged himself to his room, checked the alarm and fell down face first on the mattress, without bothering to undress.
This time his dreams weren’t bloody, but they were far from pleasant…
“Aw, shit,” Wade groaned, then instantly wished he hadn’t. His head was ringing from too much booze the previous night. A thousand tiny soldiers were playing reveille with glee in his skull. Bright early morning sunlight streamed through shades he had forgotten to pull and the light was killing him. Or at least, he wished it would. The inside of his mouth tasted horrible, of stale whiskey and beer and felt as dry as cotton.
But all of it had been for nothing, because he vividly remembered what had driven him to Zack’s, one of his oldest childhood friends. The beer had flowed endlessly and he had drank a vast amount before his memory faded. But it was what happened after the drinking that was a blank. Not what happened before.
Why in the hell had he gone and picked that damn fight with Nikki? Damned if he knew. Wade’s lower lip was swollen and throbbed like a son of bitch, but it was the very least he deserved.
Wade forced himself to roll over, knowing he had to get out of bed, make an attempt to look human, and go find Nikki and apologize. Eyes wide open, he stared at the ceiling above, wishing he could undo the past twenty four hours.
Forcing himself to sit up, Wade cradled his aching head in his hands while he waited for the world, and his stomach, to stop spinning. He stifled the urge to whimper and almost crawled back under the covers in an attempt to escape the misery.
“G’mornin,” a husky female, unfamiliar voice drawled from behind him.
Wade froze His head came up and he briefly wondered if he was dying and this was an auditory hallucination.
Slowly, dread curdling low in his belly, he turned.
And stared
Damnation, what had he gone and done last night?
&nbs
p; Jamie Sayer, her cornsilk blond hair tumbled and attractively disheveled, peered up at him with sleepy, sated cornflower blue eyes. And she was as naked as he. Shaking, he rose, trying to get his frozen vocal cords to work. “What are you doing here?” he finally croaked, headache forgotten as shame and revulsion ate its way up his throat.
She frowned and sat up slowly, tucking the sheet around her as she did. “Don’t you remember?” she asked softly, her eyes darkening.
“Remember what?” he growled “I might have been drunk, but it would take more than that to invite you here.”
“I drove you home,” she reminded him. “You were too drunk to do it, so I volunteered. Zack was pretty wasted, too.”
“That doesn’t explain what you are doing in my bed,” Wade said through clenched teeth. “Or what you were doing at Zack’s. I don’t remember you showing up there, and I doubt he invited you.” He spied his jeans laying tangled on the floor, next to something silky peach. As he jerked his jeans up, it fluttered down to the floor.
Staring at that soft silky bra, Wade swallowed against the bile rising in his throat.
Damn it, what had he done?
Jamie seemed not to notice his discomfort as she stood and pressed her body against his, arms wrapped securely around his neck. “It was everything I had always dreamed it would be, Wade,” she whispered in his ear. “It was perfect. I always knew that you loved me.”
For a moment, he was frozen, arms held rigidly at his sides as he tried to make his brain function once more. What in the hell had happened?
Careful, not trusting his temper or his state of mind, Wade freed himself from her arms and moved away. “I don’t love you,” he said calmly, turning to face her once there was distance between them. “And I sure as hell can’t believe that I would invite you into my bed. I don’t remember a damn thing, and I sure don’t remember you showing up at Zack’s.”
She smiled softly, shrugged. “You were upset,” she said gently. “You finally broke things off with that… girl from Portland. It’s normal for you to be upset; you wasted the past few years on her.”
“None of the time I spent with Nikki was a waste. And I haven’t broken up with her. But after this… Hell, I deserve to horsewhipped. I just might do it myself,” he said grimly, the fog of shock starting to retreat. “Damn it, how could I do this?”
She paled in anger. “You don’t have to sound so disgusted. You can’t talk to me like that. I’m not your little Portland tramp.”
Coldly, he eyed her up and down. “Tramps aren’t confined to Portland, angel,” he drawled “I may not remember last night, but I do remember other times when I clearly told you that I wasn’t interested. In fact, I think I even told to just stay the hell away from me.”
“You don’t mean that,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “I know it was wrong for me to push it like I did last night, but I just love you so much!”
“I want to know what happened last night,” he said, softly, not moved at all by those crocodile tears. After knowing her all his life, he was well aware of how manipulative she was. “I want to know it now and I want the truth.”
“Well, you were just so upset, and crying over the terrible fight you two had…” Jamie said, forlornly, sitting on the edge of the bed. “She had been so mean to you and made you feel guilty over absolutely nothing. You were just so upset.
“I… I felt so bad for you, I was trying to comfort you and it just happened.”
“Like hell,” he snarled, grabbing her arm and jerking her to feet. He put his face close to hers and said, “I know a lie when I hear it, Jamie. The truth.”
“That’s the truth,” she whimpered.
“Bullshit,” he said succinctly. “Part of the reason I wanted to get so drunk was so I’d forget that I made an ass of myself, picking a fight over nothing. I do remember being drunk on my ass and blubbering to Zack about what I could do to make it right.
“And I damn well wouldn’t have come to you for comforting, Jamie,” he finished. “That would be like asking a black widow for comfort.”
Tears spilled over and vaguely, Wade felt some guilt. Damn it, this was just as much his fault as hers. But what was he going to tell Nikki?
He hadn’t realized he had spoken that final thought aloud.
“What do you mean, what are you going to tell Nikki?” Jamie shouted. “It’s none of her damn business. You’re mine now!”
“Screwing you didn’t turn me into your lapdog, Jamie. Apparently, it wasn’t memorable enough to even be interested in a repeat performance. I’m going to talk to Nikki and if I have to crawl and beg, I will. Because I am hers, and there’s nothing else I want to be.”
Damn, what had he done?
…What had he done?
Wade jerked awake just as the alarm went off, body tense, remembered shame eating at his stomach like acid. Damn it, why did he go from one nightmare to another? Wade scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands before shutting off the alarm. He felt as though he had been through an intense five-hour war, instead of five hours of restless sleep.
Dragging himself out of bed, Wade shed the wrinkled clothes on the way to the bathroom. His stiff back screamed at him and his eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, a tension headache was already throbbing behind his eyes.
Hot water was the only cure for this. Lots of it.
Turning his face into the hot spray, he let the water wash away the cobwebs and the oily feel that remembered guilt left on his skin. His stomach churned and burned, letting him know it would another Rolaids breakfast. Hands braced against the tiled wall, he prayed that the day would get better than it had started.
It got worse.
He came face to face with a young hazel-eyed man with brutally short ash blond hair. A man who looked ready to kill him. He topped Wade by a good four inches and was lean muscle from the neck down. Those shrewd cold hazel eyes studied him, hate burning in them.
Wade had been gassing up the ambulance when the Harley pulled into the gas station. Wade admired its clean lines, his gaze wistful and a bit envious. Obviously rebuilt and carefully done. He had lifted his eyes to comment on it only to find the rider shucking a helmet and moving to stand toe to toe with him, his dislike palpable.
It was difficult to place him at first. But something about the way he moved registered as familiar As did the way his chin lifted insolently. But it was those shrewd hazel eyes that finally clued him in. Even back when he had been nothing more than a mouthy hoodlum from Portland, Wade had recognized that this boy was a force to be reckoned with. Those eyes could cut a man off at the knees from ten feet away.
Dylan Kline.
There was nothing left of the sullen boy he had known. He didn’t resemble Nikki much, save for the spiky long lashes and sulky mouth. He had always been long and lean, but in the past few years he had filled out.
“Dylan,” he greeted, removing the nozzle and replacing it before screwing on the tank lid. “You’re looking well.” And strong enough and ready enough to rip my guts out.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped, his words clear and precise, none of the ‘gangsta’ drawl left.
“I live here,” he said calmly
“Since when?” Dylan demanded, those hazel eyes narrow.
“Since four weeks ago. I suppose your family is here now? Lived here long?” Hopefully, Dylan would see the sense in not mauling him in broad daylight. He was, relatively speaking, the calmer of the Kline brothers If Shawn were here, blood would already be flowing.
Wade was honest enough to admit, very little blood would have been Kline blood.
“Stay away from Nikki, buddy. She’s had enough grief in her life. She doesn’t need you to add to it,” Dylan warned, his eyes glinting with a promise. Just give me one reason, he was saying. One good reason. And then, he turned and stalked away.
Close call. It wasn’t all that long ago that Dylan would have pounded into somebody he had taken such a dislike to,
without even waiting for a reason.
Wade did wonder a bit of the reversal in loyalties. There had been a time when Dylan Kline hadn’t even spare his older sister a second glance. Hell, he had let that bastard Dion mouth off for weeks on end, before he took exception to it.
Wade had never seen Dylan stand up for anybody but himself, much less bother getting into a fight over it Shawn might have done it, but only because he was a natural born brawler. He would have done it for the fun of it, not out of any loyalty or love for his sister.
Time apparently did change things.
Wade spent the next few days convincing himself that he shouldn’t hunt her down. There was no point in it No point in rehashing old times, no point at all. So much time had passed and they hadn’t parted fondly.
Better to just leave things as they are, he told himself as he went to bed Tuesday night.
Wednesday morning, he woke with the sole intention of finding her. He had to at least talk to her, if only this one time.
The thirty-minute drive gave him more than enough time to question his motives. He insisted that all he wanted to do was clear the air. They had been friends once upon a time, and it was only right that he try getting things on a friendly note between them.
And Wade didn’t believe a word he told himself, either. The winding road led up a steep hill completely covered in trees. Gravel crunched beneath his tires and he began to wonder if he had misread the directions. Surely she wouldn’t be living this far from…
The trees suddenly opened up to reveal a large cabin style house constructed of wooden beams and glass. A black Ford Explorer was parked in front of a large two-car garage. The front of the house seemed to consist of little more than windows. And damn, what a view. It was practically perched on the face of the hillside, overlooking a deep valley that was bisected by a wide lazy creek. Rolling waves of impossibly green grass surrounded him, marked here and there with the chaotic colors of wildflowers.
NO LONGER MINE Page 6
