Summer Heat: A Steamy Romance Boxed Set

by Carly Phillips

  Jake inclined his head, and for one moment, Lance caught a glimpse of the old Jake. “She must really be something.”

  A deep stabbing ache ripped through his chest. “She is that,” he said, and his voice sounded rough. And more quietly, “She is that.”

  Jake moved abruptly, putting his cup down. “I’d give half my life to feel a glimmering of faith in a woman right now.” His jaw looked hard. “Don’t let her get away.”

  Lance laughed bitterly. “But don’t you see, Jake? It’s practically a criminal act for a Forrest to settle in with a woman that good.”

  “Yeah.” He picked up his cup again. “But I’d still get a blood test. Don’t be a fool.”

  * * *

  But Lance didn’t do it. He didn’t have to—he only had to look at Cody to see the extraordinary family resemblance. And the bottom line was, he trusted Tamara. He also knew he’d been with Valerie nearly every waking minute through that three-week period at Christmas all those years ago. She wouldn’t have had time to have another lover.

  Cody was his. And damn anyone who said differently.

  He tried not to consider the possibility that he wanted to believe it because he wanted an excuse to make Tamara’s life easier.

  Over the next few days, Lance occupied himself with the details of this big change in his life. He spoke to his accountant, and had him draw up a monthly payment schedule that was double the state standard. He’d have made it triple, but doubted Tamara would accept it.

  He also made arrangements for a single lump sum to be paid for back child support the day she signed the papers granting him visitation rights. He thought that was enough to ask for in the beginning.

  The one stipulation he asked for, and Tamara agreed, much to his relief, was that neither of them could take Cody out of Red Creek. Lance wanted the stability of the small town for Cody, but he also worried that Tamara might, since she would have the financial wherewithal, return to the university.

  It made him feel like a heel in some ways—of all things, the university life was one she’d aspired toward for many years—but he couldn’t bear the idea that he’d finally come to know his son, and then she’d marry someone else and leave Red Creek.

  He told his mother. She was not surprised—she’d suspected Cody was Lance’s child, but hadn’t realized he “started up again with that Valerie,” as she put it. Tyler was as pleased as he ever was about anything, and said it would make Curtis happy to have a cousin.

  Jake didn’t say anything else about the blood test.

  After a week, Lance was finally ready to face Cody himself. Saturday morning dawned bright and crisp, with a promise of more Indian summer in the air. The snow, except in shady spots, was gone, and Lance woke up with the taste of trout in his mouth.

  He called Tamara. It was harder than he thought to hear her voice. The sound of it sent a wave of need through him, deep and wide, and for a moment, he sat on the other end of the line, seized by an erotic vision of her in the car, half-naked as they drove through Red Creek.

  “Is anyone there?” she repeated.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s Lance.”

  A short pause. “I recognize your voice, you know.”

  “Oh.” On a pad of paper, he drew an almond-shaped eye. “I just wondered if I could come get Cody this morning for a few hours, and take him fishing at the lake.” He cleared his scratchy throat. “I thought maybe it was time to get going on all this. Make it right.”

  “I see.” She sounded afraid.

  “Tamara, I’m serious about what I said at the lawyer’s office.” They’d met there briefly two days before to go over the details. He’d seen the immense relief on her face when she heard his custody request—simple visitation, nothing more. And although she’d protested the amount of money he wanted to settle upon them, he’d managed to talk her around. “I’m not going to interfere.”

  “I know. It’s just strange.” She paused, and in the silence, Lance could hear Mozart playing in the background. “The truth is, I usually spend Saturdays with him, and I’ll miss that.”

  “We can do it tomorrow, if you’d rather. Or I can baby-sit when you need to work. Just tell me what works best for you.”

  “No, today is fine,” she said. “I have a test on Monday and I need to study.”

  “Are you sure?” The eye he was sketching took on an elliptical fold, that distinctly American Indian and Asian detail that gave Tamara’s eyes such an exotic cast. “Tomorrow is supposed to be really gorgeous, too. We can fish then, instead.”

  “No, I think he’d love to go today. I’ll get him ready.”

  * * *

  To make things as easy as possible for both of them, Lance tried to make it short when he came to pick up an eager Cody, who was practically bursting with the anticipation of a fishing trip. His exuberance took some of the strain out of the air, but Lance still couldn’t look at Tamara head on, and he noticed she kept her distance.

  “Don’t let him fall in the lake,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “Cody, you mind, you hear? When you go by a lake, you have to behave yourself.”

  “Or you can get drownded.”

  “Drowned. Right.” She buttoned his jacket and kissed his forehead. “Have fun.”

  For a split second, Lance caught her gaze. For that single heartbeat, a flare of pure yearning and silent agreement passed between them. Then it was gone. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go catch us some trout for supper.”

  * * *

  Tamara watched them through the big front window with a sense of deep loss. Lance took Cody’s hand, and they walked to his car, two blond heads shining in the sun, two loping walks. Father and son.

  And she didn’t even have the comfort of being Cody’s mother, of being part of the union that had created this beautiful child. It made her feel alienated, like she’d never really belonged in the picture. Now Cody would take his rightful place among the Forrest family, while Tamara was only his caretaker, with nothing to give him.

  It was a lot more depressing than she would have expected. Hadn’t she wanted this for Cody? With the money Lance provided for his care, Tamara would be able to at last afford some of the things she’d longed to give him and simply couldn’t: a computer to help stimulate his astounding mind before he got bored, art and dance classes if he wanted them, a musical instrument a little later. She would be able to afford to buy him many books, and wouldn’t have to worry about the price of peewee football uniforms.

  All the things she’d had to do without as a child. All the things she’d been desperately afraid Cody would have to do without.

  And she couldn’t ask for an arrangement that was any fairer, or with a better man. Lance had shouldered his responsibility easily, fairly, quickly, without undue demands or restrictions. He had the power to do anything he wished, and he had only asked for simple visitation privileges.

  So why was she so unhappy this morning?

  Lance.

  It was Lance. Somehow, his arrival in Red Creek had turned her whole life upside down. What had seemed normal in the past was now intolerable. His vividness, the bold brightness he’d brought into her life, made everything that went before seem drab and gray.

  Because it had been drab and gray.

  Now Tamara found herself filled with yearning. She wanted to make love more than once every four years. She wanted a partner to share her life with, more children, a job she cared about and that felt important, not just something to pay the rent.

  And even more. She wanted a life filled with books and music and stimulating conversation, a real life, not the grinding day-to-day struggle that had marked her own mother’s life.

  Slowly Tamara looked around the room, feeling a dawning sense of awareness. Her mother had loved her with a deep, devoted passion, but the struggle had put her in an early grave. Would her mother have succumbed to a disease like cancer so young if her life had been smoother? If she’d had someone to help her
, share things with? If she hadn’t had to struggle so hard every single day?

  Maybe she would have anyway. Disease was capricious and unfair. But Tamara couldn’t help thinking that life had worn her mother down so much that when the cancer struck she had no reserves left with which to fight it.

  Surprised, tears sprung to her eyes. “Oh, Mama, what would you tell me now? What should I do?”

  And suddenly Tamara knew. Her mother would say the same things she always had: don’t settle for anything less than exactly what you want. Fight as hard as you can. Don’t ever give up.

  For four long years, Tamara had been lost. In retrospect, she saw that she’d been grieving her mother deeply when everything with Valerie happened. That grief, and the unexpected desertion by Eric, had clouded her judgment. She could have gone back to finish her degree, but she’d been too overwhelmed. It was just easier to stay in Red Creek with Cody. In Red Creek where things were familiar, where her mother lingered in the breath of the trees and the sun on the mountains; and in the aisles of the grocery stores.

  And here in Red Creek, she had fallen into a rut, a rut of survival that echoed her mother’s life with Tamara. It was an odd tribute, and not surprising, but it was also not at all what her mother would have wanted for her. Her mother had made the monumental effort to move a thousand miles from home to give Tamara a better life than the one she’d known.

  And in her rut Tamara might have stayed forever if not for the bold, blindingly bright presence of Lance Forrest, blowing into town like a carnival, exciting and full of laughter.

  Smiling, Tamara thought he was also as inconstant as a carnival, but there was nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t a quality a woman wanted in a husband, but he never made any pretenses about that.

  Which made it possible to love him as he was.

  If she were truly honest, she had to admit she also wanted Lance Forrest. Part of her discontent this morning had to do with the fact that she wanted more than breath to have gone with them to the lake. Just to hear him laugh. Just to see that glittering mischief in his eyes. Just to touch his strong forearm one more time.

  “No,” she said aloud. The facts were, he wasn’t marriage material and she wouldn’t try to make him so. There were things you couldn’t do to a person. He was as free as a hawk in the sky. It would be cruel to cage him.

  With bittersweet resignation, she knew she would get over him. Someday.

  In the meantime, she would accept the gift he’d brought into her life. She would break this dull routine. She would claim the life she wanted.

  On the table were her loathed accounting books. Very slowly Tamara smiled.

  No more accounting, not another single minute. She didn’t care if it messed up her grade-point average. She loved history and poetry and literature, and she intended to spend her life immersed in them, teaching or researching or whatever she could find. There was no law that said she had to spend her life at a university. She was only a few credits away from her degree. She could make arrangements to study three days a week in Denver to complete them, especially now that she knew Cody had family in town.

  Then she could teach. At the high school or the junior high, or even at the community college. They went through teachers like spring snowfall in this climate—people always thought living in the mountains would be glamorous and thrilling, but the reality was, the winters chased a good many of them away within a year.

  Feeling exhilarated, Tamara slammed her accounting books closed, picked them up and put them in the trash. As she did it, she laughed.

  And inexplicably, found herself in tears at the rush of emotion in her breast. “Oh, Lance,” she whispered. “Why can’t you be the marrying kind?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the shores of Lake Rosalie, Lance taught Cody to fish. The weather was as gorgeous as he had anticipated, well into the fifties by noon. Coupled with the high-altitude sunlight, fierce even at midwinter, they were warm enough to shed their jackets before long, and Lance worried that Cody’s fair skin might burn. He found a baseball cap in his trunk and popped it on Cody’s head.

  And all morning, Lance thought about his own father. When the two of them had come out here, Olan became a different man—patient, kind, quiet. In all the times they’d gone fishing together, Olan had only lost his infamous temper once, when Lance fell out of the rowboat and nearly drowned because he’d been showing off.

  The memories made him miss Olan deeply. “You know,” he said to Cody, “my daddy used to bring me out here sometimes. He taught me to fish, just like I’m teaching you.”

  “He did? How come he doesn’t fish with you now?”

  “Well, he was old,” Lance said, even though he hadn’t been. Not really. “He died a couple of months ago.”

  Cody looked up at him solemnly. “Are you sad?”

  “Yeah, I am sometimes.” Lance felt a tug on his line. “Hey, I think I got something.”

  He reeled in a little, and sure enough, the fierce weight of a fish tugged back. “Hold on, Cody. We got us a live one.” It might be a big one, too, by the feel of it. Lance carefully reeled in a little, then let it fight and pull out the line, feeling the quick, familiar excitement of a fighting fish on his line. His mouth filled with the anticipation of lemon-drenched rainbow trout.

  And beside him, Cody was filled with questions. Why didn’t he pull the fish out of the water? Why did the fish fight? Would the fish die?

  Tough questions, but Lance believed in the honor of fishing. He had respect for the creatures, and respected their fight, but he had also grown up on fresh-caught trout. It was a lot more honorable, at least in his view, to come out here and face the fish himself than let somebody else butcher it for him.

  Holding carefully to his pole, he knelt next to Cody and helped the boy close his hands around the pole. “Feel that tugging?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Now we’re going to bring him in.” Slowly he reeled the trout, letting Cody help him turn the reel, feeling by the fight and tension on the line that it was going to be an admirable fish indeed.

  When at last Lance felt the fish near the surface of the lake, he gently took the reel from Cody’s hands and said, “Watch this. He’s gonna come out of that water and be more beautiful than anything you ever saw.”

  With impeccable timing, Lance tugged—and the trout came flapping out of the water, suspended for a moment against the sunlight, silver and flashing and furiously fighting. In exhilaration, Lance whooped. The fish landed on shore. Mercifully, he hit his head on a rock and lay still immediately. Lance knelt and put his hand on the cold fish. He looked at Cody, whose bright blue eyes looked uncertain. “One thing you can do, if you want,” Lance said, “is to tell the fish thank you for giving his life to feed you.”

  He waited. Cody finally knelt with fierce concentration. “Thank you,” he said, patting the trout’s silver body.

  And there in the clean, crisp morning, with a 4-pound trout at his feet and a beautiful, sweet little boy at his side, Lance was struck with a fierce, all-encompassing sense of fatherhood. The emotion was so deep, Lance almost could not breathe. Love, uncomplicated and clean and somehow healing, filled him like soda in a glass, effervescent and foaming.

  “Good work, kid.”

  Cody beamed at him. “What do we do with him now?”

  “We’ll put him in this bucket over here, and then we’ll take him home and cook him for supper. You ever had trout baked with lemon?”

  “No.”

  “Mmm. You’ll love it.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Lance chuckled. “Well, we have to wait on the fish, but I did bring some sandwiches and cookies. How about that?”

  “Okay.”

  They sat on the rocky shores of the lake, looking out at the water. Lance was surprised by the length of Cody’s attention span. He didn’t seem to need to rush and run, just sat quietly eating peanut butter and jelly. Lance was used to Curtis, who couldn’t s
it still for three minutes.

  And finally, it felt like the right moment to tell him. Lance had been worrying about it all day, but now his mouth just opened and he said, “Cody, what if I told you I’m your dad?”

  Cody looked up. “I don’t have a dad.”

  “Well, yes you do.” Lance lifted his eyebrows. “I’m your dad.”

  “But I don’t have a dad,” he said again, a frown tugging his brows down thunderously. “I only have a mom.”

  This wasn’t going the way he’d expected. “You haven’t had one until now,” he said. “But that’s because I didn’t know you were my little boy until now. I would have come sooner if I’d known.”

  “You’re my dad?” Cody said in a little voice.

  “Yeah. Is that okay with you?”

  Cody took a bite of his sandwich and looked at the lake for a long minute. Or maybe it only felt long because Lance was afraid he’d screwed everything up. At last, Cody said, “Curtis has a dad, but he doesn’t have a mother.”

  “I know. You know what? Curtis’s dad is your uncle Tyler.” He smiled. “And Curtis’s grandmother is your grandmother.”

  That got his attention. A blaze of joy covered the little boy’s face. “My real grandma?”

  Lance chuckled. Mothers were good. Dads were okay, but grandmas were the ultimate. “Yep.”

  Cody leapt up and gave Lance a huge, encompassing hug. “Oh, boy! I love my grandma!”

  Lance closed his eyes, smelling peanut butter and sunshine on the soft, round little body of his son. He felt almost dizzy with love. “She loves you, too, kiddo. Let’s go ask your mom if you can go see your grandma now.”

  Cody pulled back and nodded vigorously. Before Lance entirely let him go, Cody put his small hand on Lance’s cheek. “You’re my daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I call you Daddy?”

  Lance found his throat didn’t work. He nodded.

  * * *

  Life changed with blinding speed for Tamara over the next few weeks. Money and time—the two most strained commodities in her life for four years—were suddenly plentiful. Besides Lance’s generous sum for back child support, between Ty and Curtis, Louise, and Lance himself, Tamara found she also never had to worry about finding a baby-sitter.