Beefcake & Mistakes

by Fennell, Judi

  And now for the coup de grâce. “You’re going to stop me from teaching? Why? What do you have against high school English?”

  “How can you even ask that? It’s not like it’s a subject in schoo—” His hands fell to his sides. “What? What did you say?”

  She bit her lip to stop the laughter. “I asked what you have against high school English. Shakespeare not do it for you? Or did The Scarlet Letter scar you for life?”

  “I—” And now he was back to gaping. She’d bet it wasn’t a common occurrence for him. “English?”

  “Yes. You know, the language you’re butchering so badly right now?”

  Bryan looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign one.

  She took pity on him and patted the sofa. “Bryan, sit down.”

  When he did—speechless now, and she’d bet that was new for him, too—she explained. “Sarge told me what you thought of me. That you’d reported me for prostitution.”

  “You knew?”

  “Of course I did. And I bet all of Tosco’s clientele knew, too. The secretarial pool at the police station isn’t known as a big keeper of secrets.”

  “But… you’re not? What about your clients? The kid’s parents paying for it? Accepting my offer?”

  This time she had to smile. The truth would set her free. Well, in this aspect of their relationship anyway. “I tutor kids in the summer. Jason is taking the SATs in the fall and needed help to improve his scores.”

  “Richie, too?”

  “Richie has trouble with reading. Sheila with math. I’m certified to teach both. History, too.”

  “Cal and his girlfriend?”

  “We met in an adult literacy course I was speaking at.”

  “So then why did you quote me that astronomical sum?”

  She ducked her head, not overly proud of herself, but she had to remember what he’d done. Accusing her of prostitution. In her home with a child about, no less. He’d deserved it.

  “I wasn’t going to take your money, not after I found out what you thought. I really did think you wanted a tutor for your child but you were being awfully obnoxious about it, so I tossed out an obnoxious amount, hoping you’d go away. Imagine my surprise when you didn’t. And, hey, if you were willing to pay that much, the least I could do was agree to take it.” She took a deep breath. “But once Sarge told me, well, you ticked me off. I kept up the pretense just so I could fling the money back in your face. I was really looking forward to doing that.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “You must think I’m a total ass.”

  “Um, yeah. Kinda.”

  He blew out a half-breath/half-laugh. “I guess I deserved that.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  He stood up and paced, this time avoiding the blocks. Even nudged some of them back into a pile. “I… I’m sorry, Jenna. But that doesn’t seem to cut it, does it?”

  No, but what would be the point. “What’s done is done. We just have to move forward.”

  “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

  Kiss me senseless would be a good start.

  Okay, not her brightest moment. Leave town would be a better wish, but, again, not something she could say without going into explanations she wasn’t prepared to give.

  So she opted for something innocuous. “You wouldn’t happen to have brought that ten grand would you? Flinging it back in your face would be so satisfying.”

  “As a matter of fact…” Bryan walked over to the satchel and picked it up. He handed it to her. “Do your damnedest.”

  Jenna slid the zipper back. There, inside, were a bunch of hundred dollar bills, all wrapped neatly with a paper band around them.

  She pulled one out. “You really have ten thousand dollars in here?”

  “It was our agreed upon price, why wouldn’t I?”

  She’d never held this much cash in her hand at once.

  Jenna broke the seal and fanned the bills in her hand. Ten hundred dollar bills.

  She brought out another stack. And another. Ten in all.

  She broke the seals on each one, piled all the bills together then stared at it. This is what he’d thought would buy her off.

  Suddenly, the laughter was replaced by anger. He really didn’t have a high opinion of her. Okay, so he thought she was a stripper, but some people—women and men—danced for a reason. As he should well know. And for some, like Mindy, it was all they had.

  And he ran a freakin’ strip joint. He could call it whatever he wanted, but clothing came off when people danced on that stage. What high-and-mighty respectable leg did he have to stand on?

  “Well? You going to do it? Or did you change your mind?” He sat down on the far end of the sofa, one elbow braced on a knee.

  Change her mind? As in, she was now going to take it and give in to his demands? Why, of all the smug, self-centered, manipulative—

  Jenna threw the pile at him. Bills fluttered all over the place and she had to say, it was a very satisfying feeling.

  “Feel better?” Bryan spit out one of the bills that was stuck to his bottom lip.

  “Actually, yes. I do.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, then flicked a pair of hundreds off her lap. Stepped on them. That was satisfying.

  Bryan scraped a couple of bills off the sofa and stacked them on the table amid a sea of green and white Ben Franklins. “I swear, you are unlike any woman I’ve ever met.”

  That’s because they’d never met, but she couldn’t tell him that.

  “That’s right, I am. And don’t you forget it.”

  As if Bryan could forget it.

  He slid several hundreds from beneath the table with his running shoe, still trying to process this series of events.

  She wasn’t a hooker; she was a teacher. And, yes, he did think of his wish yesterday: Why couldn’t she be a teacher he could consider settling down and raising a family with?

  Looked like that one had come true. Well, the family part. The settle down part? Could they settle down? Together?

  Bryan studied her as she gathered the money. She was undeniably pretty in an unconventional sort of way. Jean shorts, a baggy t-shirt, not a lick of makeup, and that wildly curly mussed up hair that refused to stay nicely tucked behind her ears. Jenna was real. No pretense at all.

  The mother of his child.

  The words reverberated in his brain. He hadn’t exactly chosen her for the role, but he had to admit he’d made a good choice in his drunken stupor.

  He wanted to find out about that night. Why she hadn’t sought him out when she’d learned she was pregnant. What her pregnancy had been like. Had she ever thought of ending it? Giving Trevor up for adoption?

  Bryan closed his eyes as the pain stabbed him. Jesus. Thirty-four years old; he’d like to be over it by now. But it was always there, hovering in the background. Making him wonder if he’d ever be good enough.

  He’d been adopted. Knew what it was like not to be wanted by the woman who’d borne him.

  Oh, sure, he knew all the statistics. Had heard all the stories. Better to be raised in a loving home by a couple who wanted children than in some drug-motel by a crack-whore mother.

  The thing was, he never knew if that’d been his case. Had his mother been a junkie? Had she been a runaway? Was he the product of incest? Rape? Had she been trying to manipulate someone into marrying her? Had he been a one-night stand? Or had she been a teenager who hadn’t thought pregnancy could happen to her? Had she believed her boyfriend was using a condom? Had it broken?

  The scenarios swirled in his head as they’d done for every one of the last thirty years. His adoptive parents had never hidden it from him; had been sure to let him and Kyle know that they’d been picked out especially because of who they were. Reassurances, Bryan recognized, from loving parents to insecure children.

  He knew all that. Knew all the psychoanalysis mumbo-jumbo, but the fact remained that he knew no one in this world to whom he was biologically related.

&nbs
p; Until Trevor.

  No way was he going to walk away now.

  “We have something else to discuss, Jenna.”

  Jenna shot to her feet, wrapped her arms around her waist—where she’d carried their child—and walked over to the front window. “Bryan, I… I can’t. Not now. I need some time.”

  “You’ve had enough time, Jenna. Now it’s my turn.” He dropped the money inside his duffel bag, then walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’d like to spend some time with my son.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  His son.

  Trevor was her son. Hers!

  “Jenna, I know Trevor’s mine.”

  Bryan wasn’t going to go away any more than she would. And, honestly, for Trevor’s sake, she should be happy about that.

  Unfortunately, happy was not what she was feeling at the moment.

  She swallowed and looked at him in the window’s reflection. Definitely not happy.

  “I get why you didn’t tell me before. We hadn’t exactly exchanged phone numbers.”

  True. Body fluids, yes; simple means of communication? Apparently not.

  But it was Mindy who’d exchanged fluids with Bryan. It was important to remember that—and never let on.

  “But now… I know. And you know. If you hadn’t before, you had to the minute you saw my eyes.”

  She looked at them now. Violet with a sparkle of blue around the pupil. Just like the ones she’d looked at every day for the past three and a half years.

  “Yes.” One word, such an impact. On not only her, but on Bryan and Trevor. Three letters, three lives.

  Bryan removed his hands from her shoulders to rake them through his hair. “So, the question is, what are we going to do?”

  That was the question. She turned around. “What do you want to do?”

  “I’d like to get some answers if you wouldn’t mind.”

  It wouldn’t matter if she did. He was entitled to them. But only up to a point. Anything having to do with Trevor’s biological mother was getting the spin treatment.

  She turned back around to the window. Outside, everything was exactly as it’d always been. Mr. Heiner was edging his sidewalk, Mrs. Heiner hanging the laundry. The Tolofsons next door were playing baseball with their twins. Tyler Hepburn ambled from mailbox to mailbox delivering the mail. Life à la Rockwell, yet her insides felt like a Picasso, disjointed and out of whack.

  “I…” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t know whose baby he was.” She heard his quick intake of breath and winced along with him. “One of the girls… she was jealous. Decided to get back by poking pin holes in the box of condoms.” All of it, so far, true. Except this was Mindy’s story to tell.

  “Couldn’t you find out who I was somehow? Weren’t there records? I hired the strip—your company personally for Brad’s party. Couldn’t you retrace your… steps?”

  The euphemisms for such an intimate act struck Jenna as particularly funny in a situation that was far from humorous.

  “There were a lot of… parties.” Though Mindy had assured her there weren’t a lot of men, but still, enough that tracking them down had required a lot of work, and most guys weren’t into giving up that they’d slept with a stripper. “Besides, I figured I’d get the run-around once the guy found out why I’d tracked him down. Who would want to claim a baby?”

  Bryan was close enough behind her that she could feel his warm breath on her neck. Feel the electricity between them. Hear the catch in his voice as he answered, “I would’ve.”

  Pain, raw and jagged-edged, rolled over her. She rode the wave, and waited for the next one just because it would come. Like the tide, she knew it would come. “But I didn’t know that. For all I knew you were a married man and the baby would be a huge issue.”

  “He’s my son, Jenna.” His stood right behind her and stared at her in the reflection on the window. “I want to be part of his life.”

  Part of his life was a lot different than he’s mine and I want him.

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “I was adopted. My brother and I were. I know what it’s like not knowing who your biological parents are. I don’t want to do that to Trevor. I can’t do that to him.”

  She ought to be thrilled. This man was Trevor’s father. Her son could finally have the dad he wanted. The dad he deserved.

  So why did she want to scoop him up and bundle him off to the farthest corner of the world and keep him for herself?

  Jenna moved back to the sofa and sank down onto the arm. She couldn’t do that any more than she could deny Trevor the right to his father. Or Bryan the right to his son.

  Maybe there could be a compromise. “O…kay.”

  “You’re not going to fight me?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself again, nerves making her cold. “What would be the point? Anyone can see he’s yours.”

  The smile that lit Bryan’s face took Jenna’s breath away. Both because it made him even more gorgeous and because it was just like Trevor’s.

  “I want to take him camping. Go fishing. Take him to a game. Every sport. Build a tree fort with him. Teach him to drive, answer his questions about girls… All the things a father and son do. Maybe someday, he’ll even call me dad.”

  Her heart broke over that, as much for Bryan as for Trevor. Bryan’s adoption meant that he had no biological relations anywhere except for Trevor. And neither did Trevor. She owed it to both of them to let this happen.

  But where did that leave her? Now, more than ever, Bryan could not know about Mindy.

  “How are we going to tell him? How are we going to tell anyone?”

  Bryan grimaced. “I’m afraid both of us can’t come off in a good light if the truth gets out.”

  Especially if the truth got out; she’d be labeled a liar. She crossed her arms. “True.”

  “I’m willing to manufacture one if you are.”

  “How? I’ve lived here for over three years and you’ve been here all along. No one will believe we didn’t know the other was living in the same town.”

  “Why not? That much is the truth.”

  “No one will buy it.”

  Bryan sat down next to her. “Does it matter? We know the truth, who cares what others say?”

  “Trevor will when he starts getting teased.”

  “No one’s going to tease my son.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true father. Who forgets what junior high was like.”

  “Junior high was great, what are you talking about?”

  For him, it probably had been. For the rest of the tween-er crowd it was three years of acne, greasy hair, body odor, bad hair cuts, braces, and trying to fit in.

  She got to her feet. It was her turn to pace. “We have to have a story, Bryan. Preferably one that doesn’t make me look like a whor—a woman with loose morals. After all, I am a teacher. I have a certain reputation to uphold for my contract.”

  “I’ll take the fall.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged, then pushed off his thighs and stood. “I’ll say it was me. That you came to me and told me about the baby, but I didn’t believe he was mine. We had a fight and you never spoke to me again.”

  “But then you look like the jerk.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  It was such a sweet gesture she ran her hand down his arm before she thought about it.

  And, nope, it wasn’t a good idea. Her fingers wanted to stay there.

  She retrieved her tempted little digits and tucked them into the crook of her arm. “Not that it’s not sweet of you, but Trevor can’t grow up with that story. We need to find one that’s going to make both of us look as good as possible given the circumstances. Remember, this is what he’s going to know about his conception and how he’ll think about us.”

  “So we stick as close to the truth as possible.”

  Jenna was going to put a big fat veto on that one. She wasn’t bringing Mindy in
to the equation.

  Bryan ran a hand over his mouth. “We’ll say we met at a party, had a good time, but by the time you realized you were pregnant, we were through, and I was gone, and you didn’t know how to get in touch with me.”

  She headed back to the sofa. All these lies were making her head hurt. “Except the internet makes it easy to find almost anyone.”

  “Almost being the operative word. I’m not on any of the social networking sites, the only website I have is for the club and I didn’t have that back then, and my cell phone’s unlisted. I never told you where I was from, so you wouldn’t have been able to track me that way.”

  “What about the other people at the party?”

  Bryan dropped into the chair opposite her. “You came with a friend of a friend and the party was at a rental property. No formal guest list; we both crashed it and ended up hooking up.”

  “So we had a one night stand that resulted in a baby and could never find each other again?” It wasn’t the best story, but given her own past, one people would believe.

  Unfortunately.

  “We didn’t have a reason to find each other again.”

  “You didn’t. I was stuck with a baby.”

  Bryan turned those violet eyes her way and they were startling—both for the intensity of them and the fact that they were exactly like Trevor’s. “We are still talking about our cover story, right? Because you sound a little angry for something I had no idea was going on.”

  She licked her lips. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I could have kept looking, I guess. It’s just that it was such a shock.”

  All of which was true. Mindy’s pregnancy, trying to figure out what to do and how to support another mouth, then the cancer diagnosis and his birth and only six months until Mindy was gone. There’d been the lawyer to see, the funeral to arrange, the last-minute videos Mindy had wanted to make for her child that Jenna had stored away for the day Trevor was old enough to see them… There hadn’t been any time to track down the guys at the parties and figure out which one could be Trevor’s father.

  “Did you ever… that is, had you ever considered getting rid of it? Him?”