by Jenna Kernan
Lori leaned against Jake and he turned toward her. He gathered her up in his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head.
He rocked her gently back and forth, then he dragged in a breath and set her aside.
“Come on. I made two frozen pizzas.”
She resisted grasping for his arm as he slipped away. “Sounds good.”
“Plus fruit cocktail.”
It was an odd addition, but Lori was past starving, and the aroma of sausage made her mouth water.
He held out his hand and she took it, allowing him to lead her to the unfamiliar dining table set for two with a candle in the middle of the table, the sort you find in grocery stores in a glass cylinder with a saint depicted on the front. A prayer candle. How appropriate.
But simply lighting a vigil candle against the darkness did not gain God’s favor. At least not for her.
“I found it on the windowsill,” he said, noting the direction of her attention.
She had lighted more than a few of those for their daughter.
He must have been watching her.
“I used to see your old Subaru parked at church before you left for school. I came in a few times.”
She glanced up from the candle and gaped. “I didn’t see you.”
“I should have let you see me. We should have talked about her.”
Lori’s gaze slipped away as the guilt rose again. What was he doing? Was this about them, or Fortune, or the child they had buried? It was all blurring together.
“Sometimes I’d sit just two rows behind you.” He went to the oven and used a dish towel to remove the pizzas, then rested them on the stove top. He brought the fruit cocktail and a plate holding baby carrot sticks and celery hunks. As he turned to head back to the kitchen, she grasped his wrist. He paused and turned to face her, standing beside her chair.
“I was hurt when you disappeared, Jake. I was grieving and I thought you were celebrating your near miss.”
He shook his head. “No, I was grieving, too. I was scared, you know, worried about being able to support you both. But it wasn’t until she was gone that I realized I wanted her. I wanted her...” He reached for her shoulder and then froze, fisted his hand as it dropped to his side.
“Jake?”
He shook his head, his mouth closing into a tight line.
He returned to the kitchen and carried one pizza after the other, then rested them on the pine table and handed her the pizza wheel. She stood to cut the crust into six relatively even pieces of the sausage and peppers and then turned to the cheese-and-pepperoni pizza.
Jake used the spatula to give her one of each. Lori looked down at the pizza and the strings of mozzarella that clung to the edge of the plate like a tether rope. Suddenly she did not feel very hungry.
She gave him a nudge back to the conversation. “You wanted her...”
“My dad and mom, they married early. That’s why she was so dead set against it. She felt forced to marry, and her marriage was bad. But after Dad went away, I tried really hard to make her happy. You know, proud.” Jake lifted his pizza slice and blew on the hot cheese before taking a bite. “Oh!” He reached for the glass of water and gulped. “Still too hot.”
Lori was aware that Jake’s father had been in prison and was now behind bars again for a long stretch for yet another robbery. She remembered him. He was a big man like Ty and Jake, and she knew he had hit their mother at least once. But it was never just once, she thought. She knew because Jake had told her, and he had also told her that he’d been the one to call the police on his father. But his mother had not pressed charges, and his dad was back home the next day. When he was finally locked up, it seemed the entire family breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, Ty was involved in the robbery and had quickly agreed to military service to avoid joining his father in prison.
Jake had told her many things that night, bared his heart and his soul. He’d been sad and lonely, and she’d been with the boy she’d loved all her life. She would have done anything he asked, and she had. In doing so, she’d proved his mother’s opinion of her was correct, having sex with her son on their first date and getting pregnant. It didn’t matter that she loved him or that she’d never had sex before. What mattered was that she was just like her mother and sisters, according to Mrs. Redhorse. She could bear that, but not that Jake bought into her opinion. He’d been young. He’d been scared. But he knew how it had happened.
She tried to keep her comments positive, although just the mention of his mother had her stomach squeezing tight.
Lori turned her attention to the meal and polished off three slices. Jake handled double that as she switched to the fruit and fresh veggies.
“I never should have listened to them, Lori. My mother, my brother Ty, my stupid friends. They were all wrong about you, about everything.”
She lifted her attention from her plate and stared at him, hardly believing her ears.
“Were they?”
“Yes. You’re a good woman, and you work hard. You’re smart and kind and so good with Fortune.”
She waited for him to tell her that he and she might have made mistakes, but their daughter was not one of them. He didn’t.
“Thank you,” she said and rose to clear her place and discard the paper plate and napkin.
He washed the few dishes as she put away the leftovers.
“You want to go settle in while I put these away?” he asked, motioning to the dishes. Was he avoiding talking about Fortune’s future? Tinnin said they had only until tomorrow to work things out.
“Sure.”
“You take Gill’s bedroom. He said to tell you that he changed the sheets. I’ll take the couch.”
“You need blankets?”
“They’re out there, I think.”
She glanced toward the couch and found the pile of bedding. Then she checked on the baby, who was still sleeping, before going to Gill’s room to unpack. Lori changed into her cotton nightgown and matching robe. She used the bathroom, washing up and preparing to grab a few hours’ sleep before Fortune woke again.
When she emerged, she checked the baby again—finding her still fast asleep in her crib. Then she went to find Jake and confront the topic of Fortune’s temporary placement. She planned to suggest that she take custody and he come around to visit Fortune when he could. After all, the tribal police department was short-staffed and the tribe needed every one of their officers. They also needed her at the clinic. But going back there now made her feel afraid. What was going on there?
She headed out to find Jake. He was in the living room. She watched him fold a sheet in two and then lay it on the long couch. He’d changed, as well. He now wore sweatpants and a muscle shirt that showed he was spending time at the police station’s weight room. The sight of all that male muscle brought her to a stop.
He straightened and smiled as his gaze swept over her. “You look ready for bed.”
She glanced at the open robe and the nightgown that ended at her knees. Somehow both sets of their bare feet made her feel more exposed. His were broad and brown with a dusting of hair across the tops of his toes. His sweatpants were not tight and it seemed that he wore nothing beneath them, and that information was playing havoc on her senses.
It was happening again. The internal tide was rushing, and her body made demands that she knew were foolish. Had the past few years taught her nothing?
Jake shifted from one foot to the other. “Lori, maybe it’s time that we stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the future.”
Chapter Fifteen
One long-ago night, when they were teens, they had taken his truck out to a quiet spot on the river and lain out on a blanket under a scattering of stars. Lori and Jake had explored each other’s bodies on that moonless night. As a result, neither of them had ever seen the other o
ne naked. She wanted that now.
She forced herself to break her gaze and the long, intimate silence by grabbing the blanket and down comforter, helping him drape the blanket over the couch on which he would sleep. She should leave now, before they touched. And they would touch. Lori was certain, because neither one of them could control themselves.
“It was nice of Gill to let us use his place.” She tried to avoid the nearness of him, but her gaze slipped against her will to watch the muscles of his arm and shoulder glide and bunch as he smoothed the bedding.
A couch with clean sheets fresh and waiting.
“It was,” he said. Jake set the pillow against the armrest. She laid the comforter on the bed and pictured them beneath it.
When she straightened, it was to find him staring at her with a scorching look that brought every nerve to life.
“Jake?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Lori.”
“Yes?” Somehow she’d prevented herself from telling him that she had thought of him as well, long and often.
“That night. You know? Even before that, we were friends. It made things different. I could tell you anything. I didn’t have that with anyone else.”
And he had told her things. All about Ty’s troubles and Kee’s operation and his mother and father’s terrible marriage and how his father frightened him. There was no doubt in her mind that he had become a police officer to protect families from men like his father. He’d been too young to stop his dad. He hadn’t left for school like Kee or joined a gang to find a new family like Ty. He’d stayed with his mother until his dad went to prison and May had a new man in her life. Now he came around to help with the things neither of them could manage. He was a good son, making everyone proud of him from the time he first stepped on the basketball court to his graduation last year from the Arizona police academy. He’d made only one misstep. With her.
“What about Alice? You never talked to her?” she asked, mentioning the girl everyone had thought he would marry.
He snorted. “Alice liked to talk about herself, mostly.”
His smile held a wistfulness that made her heart ache. Was he remembering Alice, his longtime girlfriend, and how, after he’d stumbled with Lori, the most popular girl in high school would not even look at him, let alone forgive him?
“Alice was never much for looking back. She was all about the moment and the next good time.”
“Do you hear from her?”
“Indirectly. Her younger brother tells me she and her daughter live in Tucson with her new husband. She’s expecting another child.”
“Imagine that.”
Lori wondered if Jake was thinking that he might, by now, be Alice’s husband and a father, had Lori and Jake not taken their intimacy to a physical place.
She flushed, recalling how neither of them had counted on the heat they generated after just one simple kiss. Jake had not known that she had been taken with him since grade school and over the years had done everything she could think of to move them from friends to something more.
She’d been so elated when he had finally broken it off with Alice and asked her out, and so crazy in love with Jake, that she never stopped to wonder why he’d left his old girlfriend and chosen her until Alice announced to her in front of half the school in the school auditorium that it was because she wouldn’t put out and everyone knew that Lori would. Lori had been so shocked that she didn’t say anything. And the worst part was that Lori already had “put out” and was pregnant as a result. More terrible still, some tiny fragile part of her brain wondered if Alice was right. She’d felt so stupid. So little. Like she was nothing at all. She never wanted to feel like that again, and after she lost their baby, Lori swore she never would.
Jake rested his hands gently on her shoulders. The sensual brush of his index finger on her neck warmed her and sent electric charges firing down her arms and across her chest. Her breasts ached in a reaction she knew but had not felt since he last touched her.
Why did it have to be him? Why the golden boy, three-sport captain, local hero and peace officer? Why did she have to be his mistake?
He bent to kiss her forehead, his lips warm as they lingered on her. She closed her eyes and prayed for the intimacy they had shared and lost. When he drew back, she followed, looping her arms around his neck and lifting her chin, welcoming a real kiss.
“Lori?”
“Kiss me,” she said. Lori was doing it again. Demanding his touch, taking all she could. Had it been all her fault?
He held back, finally nodding. “Yes.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Lori lifted on her toes to press her lips to his. His mouth glided over hers, stirring and rousing her, bringing her back to that place of heat and sensation.
She reached between them and tugged at the string holding his pants. They fell, and he stepped clear of them. She pulled back. He followed until she was on her back on the couch and he was looming over her. He moved lower, kissing the tops of her shoulders, and then lower still, taking his time and rousing her to a frenzy. He reached her inner thighs and she thought she might shatter. Jake Redhorse did not stop until she did just that. Sensation swirled and built inside her. She arched back and let herself go, spilling over the edge as she called his name.
He let her rest a bit as he toyed with her, his fingers grazing her stomach with feathery strokes that relaxed her at first and then aroused as her body came to life again. His kisses began once more, first at her ribs and then moving upward until he sucked at her breast as his other hand moved to tease and tug at her nipple. She was panting when his mouth finally reached hers.
“That was wonderful,” she whispered. He kissed her neck as he pressed his arousal to her leg and bent her knee to increase the pressure, even as her body thrummed with the need to feel him inside her.
“Jake, now. Please.”
He stilled and then reached for something. She waited as he rummaged in his discarded pants and knew what he was doing. The responsible thing.
“I’m on birth control,” she said.
“No mistakes this time,” he said and ripped the foil packet.
A mistake—their child. She stiffened and opened her mouth to raise an objection. To try to put into words the fury and the pain. But there was nothing, no way to explain what she felt.
“Besides, you’re killing me. This will help me make this last, and that’s what I want.”
He fit the condom and smoothed it over the long, delicious length of him, then turned back to her.
“Lori?”
She struggled as her arousal crashed against her fury.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing and everything,” she said.
He wrapped her in his arms and held her. His scent and the contact of the warm velvet of his skin made her flesh tingle.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We can stop.”
But she couldn’t. And she knew that this one night was her chance to have Jake as the man he had become. They were no longer teens fumbling in the dark. Here was her chance to see if Jake was all she remembered, or if what they had once shared was over.
She lifted her chin and smiled.
“We never could before,” she said.
They kissed deeply, his tongue gliding against hers, and she forgot all the reasons this was such a bad idea. She gave herself the gift she had longed for—the touch of a man whom she had once adored.
Lori closed her eyes to better feel him moving over her and let her legs drop open in welcome. But he called to her, made her look up into his soulful dark eyes as he glided inside, connecting them in a way that, despite all her efforts, had never really died.
She savored the velvety texture of his skin on hers and the low, throbbing want deep inside herself that he satisfied with each stroke. He gaze
d down at her, his eyes burning with passion as his nostrils flared. Jake was the picture of feral desire. She raked her nails down his chest. He threw his head back and dropped deeper inside her, taking them both to the brink. She arched up into the breaking wave of sensation, and he followed an instant later. They held each other through the rippling beat of release. He collapsed upon her for just a moment. She tried to wrap her arms about him, but he rolled away, one hand on himself as he made certain the protective sheath came with him.
No mistakes, she thought.
She lay on her side next to him on the wide leather couch as the cool air chilled her skin, listening to his labored breathing, and she realized that little had changed except he was more cautious now. The desire and passion were stronger than before. But Jake did not want her pregnant, and he even wanted a double layer of protection.
And she did not forgive him for thinking of their daughter as a mistake.
She threw an arm over her eyes, not wanting to look at him. The scent of their coupling now turned her stomach. What was she doing here? He would break her heart again, and she was only helping him do that.
“That was amazing,” he said.
An amazingly bad choice, she thought.
“Lori?” He rolled to his side to face her. “Are you crying?”
She drew her arm away. “What are we doing?”
He shook his head, seeming confused. His brow knit. “What do you mean?”
“We’re here to care for that baby and figure out what Tinnin should ask the tribal council regarding her placement, not to drop back into this again.”
“This?”
“Sleeping together. This won’t make us a couple or fix what is broken between us. You don’t have feelings for me, Jake. If you did, you would have hung around after the funeral, tried to patch things up. But this time you should know better. I know that I sure as heck should.” She pushed herself to a sitting position and snatched up her discarded nightie, then dragged it over her head.
