My feet. My shoulders. My entire body.
“So I’m going to massage them,” he explained.
“And I’m guessing you’re a pro at that?”
He smiled, and as usual his dimples almost did me in.
At his expert touch, my feet turned to liquid—not to mention a few other body parts. Each nerve fiber came alive, which said a lot after how dead my feet had been since midway through my shift. If Jared ever gave up playing the guitar and creating songs, he could make a great living giving foot massages, with me as his number one customer.
“Are your feet the only parts that are sore?” he asked, after finishing with my now very happy feet.
“Were sore. Past tense. You cured them.”
“Good to hear. Anywhere else?”
“My shoulders and back are sore,” I said without hesitation.
He spread his legs and patted the spot between them. This time I did hesitate. The nerves in my feet weren’t the only ones that had come alive. The nerves between my legs had ventured closer to happy land. Who knew what would happen if his magic fingers touched any more of me?
“I don’t bite,” he pointed out.
“Nice to know.” With a deep breath, which failed to do what I had aimed for, I moved between his legs.
His hands kneaded my shoulder muscles. I winced at his touch, but then let myself go as he continued working on them, releasing all the knots. The man was magic when it came to his hands.
I moaned. I couldn’t help it.
Jared’s hands stilled for a second. “You okay?”
“Oh, definitely.” My voice came out low and husky. Now that was unexpected.
Working with a game plan different from the one my brain had agreed to, my head moved to the side, exposing my neck. I closed my eyes.
Lips, warm and soft, hovered over the exposed skin, teasing me. I leaned back against his hard chest. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy had touched me this way. It felt good, better than I remembered.
His hands drifted up along my ribs, lightly tracing them. A shiver ran though me. I was dreaming this. I was so tired from work, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. Now I was dreaming that Jared was touching me in the way I longed for.
His hands cupped my breasts and his thumbs brushed against my nipples. My very happy, perky nipples. I groaned.
Best. Dream. Ever.
The lips moved to the shell of my ear. The tip of a tongue trailed along the outside. My panties grew damp with want.
My eyes still closed, I turned my head to taste those lips. Sadly, they were just part of my active imagination, but that was okay. A girl couldn’t be too fussy.
The kiss was a brief touch of the lips. Nothing more than a tease. Against my wishes, my eyes opened a crack.
Then they snapped open fully.
I scrambled off the couch, but in my haste to escape Jared—the real Jared, not the dream Jared—I tripped over his leg and landed on my ass. Nice.
“Sorry,” I croaked, “I thought you were someone else.” Jared was the guitarist of a popular band who spent a lot of their time touring. He didn’t have room in his life for a girlfriend, especially one with a child. Which meant this was about him getting laid—like I was nothing more than another of his groupies.
That thought was a bucket of icy water between the legs.
He frowned. “Who the hell did you think I was? Logan’s father?”
I laughed, the sound bitter. At least he had no idea how he had nailed the truth square on its nose. “Of course not. I’m…tired.” My butt smarted from the impromptu landing, slightly eclipsing the smarting of my pride at his reaction. “But you have to agree that what just happened was a mistake, right?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re right. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
At his cold tone, my heart tore into several pieces. But that was okay. There was only room in it for one person anyway. At least that was what I kept telling myself.
I mentally straightened the NO VACANCY sign on my heart and walked Jared to the front door. “Thanks for helping me today.” I gave him a bright smile even though I felt anything but happy. “Miserable” was a better word for it. “It meant everything to me when you brought him to the diner. I miss him a lot when I’m working, and…Well, thank you.”
He returned my smile, but it seemed as forced as mine felt. “You’re welcome.”
Everything between us had suddenly shifted, and if I could have rewound time to get a redo, I would’ve jumped at the chance. Only this time my body wouldn’t have experienced his touch. My lips wouldn’t have experienced his kiss.
And I wouldn’t have been left craving more—a more I’d never get to have.
Chapter 15
Jared
But you have to agree that what just happened was a mistake, right? Callie’s words repeated in my head as I drove away. I’d lied when I had agreed that the kiss was a mistake.
It had felt like anything but a mistake.
The only mistake was when I lashed out at her and told her it wouldn’t be repeated. The last thing I was ready to do was walk away from Callie yet again.
And I suspected it had to do with more than just wanting to be friends.
A lot more.
I drove aimlessly around L.A., my mind careening everywhere. To the conversations I’d had with Callie since first bumping into her at the store. Mason’s comments at practice today. The similarities between myself and Logan that I couldn’t ignore.
It wasn’t until I pulled into my parents’ driveway an hour later that I realized my driving hadn’t been aimless after all. Deep down, I knew what I had to do.
I rang the doorbell. Mom answered it a moment later.
“Is everything all right?” She opened the door wider to let me in.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because it’s Tuesday night. You’re five days early for Sunday dinner.”
I smirked. “What, that’s the only time I’m allowed to visit my parents?”
“Hey, you know I’m always thrilled to see you and your sister.” She hugged me. “It’s just very unexpected.”
So was my reason for being here.
“I was just wondering if you have any photos of me when I was four or five.”
“Of course we do. It will just take some time to go through the pictures to find them.”
She led me to the guest room and pulled from the bookshelf several narrow plastic boxes, each containing a couple hundred photos. “Unfortunately, your father wasn’t into organizing photos until after we got the digital camera.”
We both grabbed several boxes and carried them downstairs to the kitchen. We spent the next hour at the table sorting through pile after pile of photos. Since they had dates printed on the back, Mom decided this was as good a time as any to start organizing them.
“I have some bad news about Callie’s parents,” I finally said, after deliberating over the best way to tell her. “They died a few years ago in a car accident.”
“Oh, God.” Mom’s hand flew to her mouth. “No wonder Violet never returned my call. How are Callie and Alexis doing?”
“I don’t know about Alexis, but Callie’s still hurting.”
We continued searching through the photos.
“Here’s one of us when we were camping during spring break.” Mom turned it over and read the date. “You’re about four in it.”
I took it from her and studied the picture. Kristen and I, along with Mom and Dad, were standing in front of the rowboat, waiting for Dad to take us out on the lake. Both Kristen and I had fishing rods. Unlike Kristen’s, mine was nothing more than a toy. We were all grinning.
The similarities between Logan and four-year-old me were startling. Both of us had the same amount of wave in our hair that caused the ends to curl up. We both had the same face shape, with the chubbiness in the cheeks that came with being four. And we both had the same dimples.
If I didn’t know better, I woul
d’ve sworn that Logan and I could’ve been brothers—with twenty-two years between us. The one thing I did know was that Logan couldn’t possibly be mine. Callie and I had never had sex. That much I could guarantee.
Whoever his father was must look a lot like me. That was all there was to it.
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
“Sure. Do you want any more?” Mom handed me another photo. In it I was holding my first guitar. It had been just a toy, but back then it had felt real to me.
“I’ll keep these two. Thanks.” I helped Mom finish organizing the photos. “Does a birth certificate include the father’s name?”
“Your father’s name is on yours, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mom said, peering at me with her usual astute eyes. With Kristen and me as her kids, she’d learned that what we said wasn’t always what we meant. We’d been skilled at skirting the issue—and she had been equally talented at getting the truth from us. But for now, she was calmly waiting for me to reveal the real reason for my question.
“But is it mandatory to include it?”
“My guess is no. I’m sure that when some babies are born the mother has no idea of the father’s identity.”
A smile twitched at the corner of my mouth at what she was implying.
Her head tilted slightly to the side, not enough to be noticed by most, but enough for me to recognize I didn’t have long to come up with a plausible lie. “Is there any particular reason why you’re asking?” she said.
“Not really. The drummer from one of the bands I used to hang out with just found out he has a kid.” I inwardly cringed. The lie wasn’t even in the neighborhood of answering her question.
“A drummer? Or is there something I should know that you aren’t telling me?” Those astute eyes homed in on me again, and I squirmed, just like I had when I was a kid and was trying to get away with something.
I formed a smirk on my face that I prayed was convincing enough. “No one has claimed I’m a dad, if that’s what you’re asking.” I pushed away from the kitchen table. “I should be going. I have an early morning meeting tomorrow.”
—
The next day, after I dropped Logan off at preschool, I returned to Callie’s apartment. The memory of four-year-old me in the photo wouldn’t let go. I wandered around the place, unsure what I was looking for. Maybe a photo of Logan’s biological father. Some proof the guy existed. And yes, I was a tad bit curious about how much he resembled me.
The search started out casual. I just scanned the photos displayed around the apartment, where anyone could stumble across them. The pictures of Callie’s parents filled me with sadness. Her mother and father had been like second parents to me. There were a few things they knew about me that my own parents didn’t, like who really had broken the bathroom window at my house when I was thirteen. None of Alexis’s pictures looked recent, but thinking back to a conversation she and I had once had back in my senior year of high school, this didn’t surprise me. At the time she’d been finishing her nursing degree and had planned to spend a few years volunteering with Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross. Maybe she was still working overseas doing that.
When that search revealed nothing beyond pictures of Logan and Callie, and of Callie with her family, I entered her room. This was the first time I’d been in here. Like the rest of the apartment, it was furnished with what I’d guessed was her parents’ old furniture—all of it dark, reddish brown wood.
A Mac computer sat on the antique-looking desk that used to be in her father’s home office. It was an odd contrast of old and new. This computer was a top-of-the-line model, like the one my brother-in-law used when he worked at home. Callie was studying graphic design. It would make sense that she needed a computer like this.
Two framed pieces of artwork, which I was positive Callie had created, hung on the wall behind her bed. One was a rough cartoon sketch of two white ducks and a duckling. The parents—a heart pendant around the mother’s long neck—were gazing down at their duckling, proud smiles on their faces. The duckling was inspecting a worm on the ground.
The next picture was similar, except this time it had been created on the computer with lots of bright colors. Callie really was talented, not that I’d ever doubted that. It was a shame her talent had gone to waste now that she was no longer pursuing her dream of working for Pixar.
I turned away from her artwork and checked out the framed photos lined up on her oak dresser. If pictures of Logan’s father existed, they weren’t here. Like before, these pictures were of her family. Some were of her old friends from high school and from when she lived in San Francisco. There wasn’t a single photo of someone who could’ve been her old boyfriend.
The other photos were of me and Callie, taken before I began “dating” Alexis. In one, Callie was smiling, my arm around her shoulder. I was sixteen years old, Callie was twelve, and we had gone camping with our families. Alexis had opted out of the trip. Even back then Callie had been pretty. If things had been different and there hadn’t been that four-year age difference, I could’ve easily seen myself dating her when she was older. She was sweet, funny, and generous, and she had a way of making you feel good about yourself, even when you were having the worst day ever. And with Callie, it wouldn’t have been about the hot sex. It would’ve been something more real. Of course, if she had wanted to have hot sex at the time, I wouldn’t have complained.
The final picture caused my heart to trip over itself. In it, Alexis was holding a baby, and the love in her eyes was unmistakable. She must have been twenty-three years old in it. Her blond hair had been cut to shoulder length, and the baby couldn’t have been more than a few months old. The baby—a boy, if the blue blanket wrapped around him was anything to go by—had spiky brown hair. This must’ve been Logan.
My heart pinched that she could show so much love toward her nephew but hadn’t wanted to give our own baby a chance. Unlike Logan’s father, I would’ve been there for both her and our child.
I returned the photo and turned toward the door…except something held me back.
I wasn’t even sure what compelled me to do it, but I opened the top drawer of the dresser, wondering if Callie kept anything important there, the way I did. Fortunately, it didn’t contain Callie’s underwear. Despite what I was doing, even I had my limits. Going through a woman’s underwear drawer without her permission went well beyond creepy.
The drawer contained her jeans, neatly folded. I carefully pulled them out and found an envelope at the bottom labeled BIRTH CERTIFICATES. Underneath that was a large brown envelope that I ignored for the moment, homing in on what was on top.
I hesitated for several seconds, my hand hovering over the top envelope. I released a hard breath, picked the envelope up, and removed the birth certificates. The first document was Callie’s. Both her mother’s and father’s names had been included. The second certificate had Logan’s name on it, with Callie’s last name listed also as his. But Callie wasn’t listed as his mother—Alexis was.
My heart stopped beating as I did the mental math. There had to be a mistake. Logan couldn’t be my son.
I looked at where the father’s name should’ve been listed. Alexis hadn’t declared his name. What were the odds the baby hadn’t been mine after all?
Without thinking, I opened the other envelope. Inside it were legal documents. I skimmed them very quickly, realizing that they named Callie as Logan’s legal guardian.
The question about the odds that Logan wasn’t mine was not the only one firing around in my head. Why was Callie claiming Logan was her son? She had given up on her dream of working as an animator for Pixar, but why? And where was Alexis? Had she gotten up one morning and decided that being a mother wasn’t in her plans after all? That Doctors Without Borders was more important to her?
The questions kept circulating, but one specifically kept coming back—did Callie know who the father was, or had Alexis lied to her? Or maybe Alexis didn’t know who the fat
her was. She liked sex. There could’ve easily been other guys. Any one of them could’ve been responsible for creating Logan.
I could’ve asked Callie, but what would I say? I was snooping in her drawers. She wouldn’t appreciate that. And Callie had been lying to me about her relationship to Logan. Who was to say she wouldn’t continue to lie about the real father, assuming she knew who he was?
I returned the birth certificates to the drawer and yanked my phone from my back pocket. I needed answers, and there was only one person I could think of who could give them to me. But I no longer had Alexis’s number, nor did I have any idea where she lived—or if she was even in the United States. Maybe she was working overseas as a nurse after all, and Callie was looking after Logan while she was gone. But then why was Callie lying about being his mother? And what kind of mother left her young child so that she could volunteer overseas for a few years?
I ignored the loud voice in my head pointing out that maybe Callie’s parents weren’t the only ones who had died in the car accident.
I sent Callie a text: What’s Alexis’s #? I need to talk to her.
She finally responded an hour later, confirming my worst fears. She was in the same car accident that killed my parents. She also died.
When I was fifteen and playing football, I’d been about to hurl the ball to my teammate when one of the guys from the opposite team forgot what the “touch” in touch football meant. His shoulder made contact with my stomach, hard, causing me to land on my ass and knocking the air out of me.
That was the best way to describe how I felt after reading Callie’s text. I sat down on her bed, struggling to get the air back into my lungs.
Callie’s text was followed up a moment later with: Why did you need to talk to her?
“Because I want to know if I’m Logan’s goddamn father,” I muttered. “The only biological parent he has left.” But instead of telling her that, I typed: I’m sorry, Callie. I didn’t realize. Don’t worry. It’s nothing important.
I waited a minute, hoping she would text me right back and admit that Logan was my son…but she didn’t. And why would she? She had no idea that I knew Alexis was his biological mother.
My Song for You: A Pushing Limits Novel Page 10
