Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Please let him kick me out. She was barely aware that he'd stood up, that he'd walked to the front of his massive oak desk and rested his lean body against it.

  She could get help if he kicked her out. There were places she could go—as long as she didn't have to worry about him coming after her. As long as she was free from the lies, the threats. The violence. Loretta had a huge room. Jamie could probably stay there. She could finish school. Get a job. If he'd just let her go…

  "But then, I wouldn't be the man I am if I tossed your little butt out in the gutter where it belongs, would I?" he asked.

  Of course not. Jamie's heart sank. How stupid could she be? He wasn't ever going to let her go. Because he'd look bad if he did. He could explain

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  away her tripping on the stairs, falling during a family hike or being thrown from a horse. He'd never be able to explain leaving his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter homeless.

  His eyes were gleaming as he watched her squirm in the doorway. Why did it always have to come to this? Why did she always end up reacting just the way he wanted her to? Like…like a helpless bug at his mercy?

  "So, my dear daughter, you're going to have to earn your keep."

  So, what else is new? The words almost escaped. She'd been doing the majority of the housework for years.

  He came closer, slowly, gaining on her inch by inch, his height throwing a shadow on her in the doorway. Jamie didn't want to shrink from him. She forbade herself to give him that satisfaction. Not anymore. Her mother had gone to her grave a beaten woman. Jamie wasn't going to do the same.

  "I'm curious." He stopped, pinning her with his cold stare. ' 'How does it feel knowing all of those people were crying today because of you?"

  ' 'What?'' She shifted away from the door frame.

  "You killed her," John said.

  His expression had softened and he smiled sadly as he gazed at her. Jamie's heart began to thud so heavily in her chest it constricted her breathing. But she still didn't shrink from him.

  "I didn't," she whispered. She wasn't going to let him convince her of something so horrible. She refused to accept any guilt. She'd risked her life for

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  her mother—many times. Sadie Archer had been the one person in the world who loved her. Jamie would have killed herself before she ever did anything to hurt her mother.

  "Of course you did," John whispered hoarsely. He'd stopped a couple of feet in front of her and stood with his hands in his pockets. "Won't do you any good to pretend, Jamie. You killed her as surely as if you'd put a gun to her head."

  "No!" Jamie felt the tears start to flow, deep inside, where no one could see them.

  "That night you called to ask permission to stay later at the library."

  "You said I could." Jamie hadn't wanted to leave her mother alone with John, but he'd been in one of his nicer phases. And she'd needed to get a few more references for an English paper she was writing.

  "Yes, well, unbeknownst to me, your mother had already left to get you."

  He was a raving lunatic, his story so obviously unfounded. "She knew where I sat in the library. If she'd come, she would've found me."

  "Her car broke down on the way."

  Thinking back to that night a couple of weeks ago, Jamie remembered her mother and John picking her up when the library closed. They'd been in John's car.

  She wasn't sure where this was leading, but she was suddenly scared. Too scared to run. Too scared to move when John took a step closer.

  "It was raining that night," he said.

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  His voice was still soft, but Jamie trembled anew when she heard the lilt of victory in his tone. He advanced another step.

  She was confused now, doubting herself. And if she'd had anything to do with the illness that had finally taken her mother's life, she didn't care if John hit her. She didn't care if he killed her.

  "Your mother was exposed to that rain when she had to walk the half mile to a phone, then wait there for me to come bail her out of her troubles again," John said. His hands were still in his pockets, but the muscles in his forearms were bunched.

  His dark hair left menacing shadows on his forehead.

  ' "The next day, as you know, she came down with a cold that led quickly to the pneumonia that killed her."

  Jamie stared at him. Horror made her sick, weak. Surely she couldn't be blamed for the rain! Or the run-down state of her mother's car.

  "If you hadn't been at the library, forcing Sadie out in the first place, she'd never have been exposed to that rain at all."

  "But…"

  "Or if you'd found another way home, a friend maybe, like most teenagers do, rather than relying on your mother all the time, she wouldn't have been out in that rain."

  "But…" Desperate to end this nightmare, to be certain she wasn't to blame for her beloved mother's death, Jamie meant to tell John that if he'd only kept her mother's car in better shape, Sadie wouldn't

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  have had to worry about the rain. But she never got the chance.

  "Or—" he took another step "—if you'd called sooner, before seven, when she left to pick you up, none of this would have happened."

  He was right. Dammit, he was right. She'd been so caught up in her reading that she hadn't noticed the time. Her mother always got her from the library at 7:30; it was a standing arrangement. Jamie should have called earlier, saved her the trip.

  John took another small step, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket.

  Jamie shrank back.

  Shivering, Jamie clutched her stomach with both arms, her gaze darting frantically around her cheery kitchen, trying to connect with the present, to bring herself back. To hold on. But the memories just kept right on coming, right on hurting…

  "You're lucky I'm willing to keep you, considering what you've done."

  John's soft voice penetrated Jamie's numb mind. So filled with guilt was she that for a second or two she almost believed him.

  She saw his hand coming toward her, braced herself for a blow to the side of her head.

  And felt a gentle caress, instead. His hand stroked from the top of her bent head, moving slowly down to her chin, lifting her face to look at him. And suddenly Jamie knew fear like she'd never known before.

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  She couldn't breathe, couldn't stop trembling, couldn't stop the tears that ran down her cheeks when she encountered the hot fire of lust in her stepfather's eyes.

  "You took my companion from me," John whispered. "A man has needs, natural, powerful needs."

  Unable to make a sound, shaking convulsively, Jamie just stared at him in horror. God. No. Not this. Let him beat me to death. Let him stick a gun to my head. But not this.

  "Wouldn't look right for me to search out another woman to take to my bed, not so soon after your mother." His caress continued slowly downward, along the length of her neck.

  She stood frozen beneath his touch, completely unprepared.

  "So you see how lucky it is that I don't have to search. You took her from me." His hand reached her collarbone, his fingers sliding inside the neckline of her sweatshirt.

  Jamie flinched. And just that quickly, the caress became brutal, a vicelike grip bruising her collarbone as John pulled her closer.

  "The very least you can do after depriving me of my wife is to take her place yourself."

  "No!" Her scream tore past the constriction in her throat. She was burning up. Sick. And freezing, too.

  "Yes." John bit the word out through clenched teeth as he planted his other hand firmly on her breast.

  A part of Jamie just evaporated as her stepfather's

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  big hand kneaded her soft flesh roughly, touching her where she'd never been touched before. Where he should never have been touching.

  His eyes gleamed, almost glassy with lust. Still holding her
in a bruising grip, he moved his hand to her other breast. "Oh, yes, I'm going to like this," he murmured.

  And almost before she knew it was happening, he'd pushed up the hem of her sweatshirt, ripping her bra in his hurry to get to her naked flesh.

  "Nooooo!" Jamie screamed. She yanked away from him, not caring if he broke her neck with his violent grip.

  "Get back here, you little bitch!" He grabbed her hair, his fingers tangling in the tightly wrapped curls, wrenching her back to him. "You owe me, and I'm going to have you."

  Only if he killed her first.

  Filled with a strength she wasn't aware she possessed, with a purpose that hadn't been there seconds before, Jamie suddenly knew exactly what to do. John was too busy groping her again, too caught up in his crazed lust, to be wary. With one perfectly aimed swipe she kneed him squarely between his legs.

  And ran for her life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Looking back, Jamie wasn't sure just when she'd made the wrong turn, which decision had been the one that catapulted her from a damaged childhood into a hellish life. Though she desperately didn't want it to be so, she couldn't help wondering if maybe she'd always been tainted; maybe there'd never been any question as to what course her life would take.

  Lord knows, she'd tried to be moral, to do what was right. She'd tried to make the proper decisions, to search out the best choices available to her. There just hadn't seemed to be much to choose from.

  Leaning her head against the kitchen cupboard, she closed her eyes, wishing that sleep would come. The night was already half over. And there she sat, a full nine years after she'd last seen John Archer, still alone, still frightened.

  Had it been wrong to run? Slowly shaking her head, Jamie couldn't believe that running wasn't her only choice. She'd run to Las Vegas. Because it was close. And because she knew enough about the city to realize that if there was any place in the United States that she had a chance of not being found, it

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  was in the city that never slept. Where "no questions asked" was an accepted standard.

  She'd left her purse on the front table when she'd come in from the funeral that day and had grabbed it again on her way out. She had enough money for a couple of nights' cheap lodging, but other than that, she was broke. She'd tried to get a job immediately. Had spent two days answering every want ad she could find. She was a high-school dropout, though, and the most anyone offered her was a fast-food position that didn't pay enough to cover rent and expenses—let alone any extra to cover the education she'd need to better herself.

  Jamie studied the uneven grain in the cupboard across from her. Maybe she should have known when she'd visited the community college, passed the entrance exams without her diploma and applied for scholarship money that she was reaching too high. The guidance counselor she'd seen had tried to tell her, suggesting Jamie go home to John, apologize, ask him to take her back until she finished high school. She was told to save her money and move out when she'd established herself, became "independent."

  Maybe that was where she'd gone wrong, Jamie thought now. She hadn't listened.

  But she couldn't possibly have returned home as the counselor had encouraged her to. Nor could she have begged her stepfather to take her back. What he'd asked of her had been wrong. Very, very wrong. And illegal.

  The possibilities floundered in her weary mind, a

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  cacophony of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. Still, she'd known even then that she couldn't have gone to the authorities for help. After thirteen years of silence, of John's generous example to the community, of his breaking down her own credibility, who'd have believed her? And what if they had? Could she really have faced her stepfather across a courtroom? Could she have told a roomful of strangers, of reporters, what he'd done to her?

  But more, could she have hidden herself from John? After thirteen years of living with the man, of witnessing his diabolical abilities, she knew that even the witness protection program wouldn't have been able to keep him from finding her if she'd turned traitor on him. And that was exactly how he'd see it; what was self-protection to her would seem betrayal to him.

  So maybe her biggest mistake had been believing in fairy tales. Not running as fast and as far as she could when Prince Charming bowled her over in the lobby of his office building. Prince Charming, alias successful business entrepreneur Tom Webber. She'd been standing there looking at a watercolor she didn't understand, waiting to be interviewed for a job she knew she'd never get, and he'd knocked her right on her butt as he'd come barreling through the revolving door on his way up to the penthouse office.

  He'd not only picked her up but insisted on buying her lunch. A meal she'd have turned down flat if she hadn't been so hungry. As it was, she'd needed the meal even more when she met him at

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  the restaurant an hour later, as he'd instructed. She'd had her interview—and lost the job—in the interim. And over the first real meal she'd had in days, she'd told him the whole sorry tale. She hadn't been able to resist. He'd been kind, sympathetic, showing her more compassion during that long lunch than she'd known her entire life.

  Maybe she should have said no when he'd offered to help her, no strings attached. But he'd said almost plaintively that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He'd offered to set her up in a small unit in one of his many apartment buildings, support her while she finished high school, send her to college. He'd begged her not to say no—and she hadn't. Should she have denied him the opportunity to be the Good Samaritan he wanted to be? Denied herself the miraculous help that had finally fallen her way?

  After growing up under John's damaging influence, she'd soaked up Tom's kindness. And he had been kind, if not as altruistic as he'd seemed. He'd been true to his word, too. For a while. Long enough for her to grow fond of him, feel indebted to him. He'd helped her—no strings attached, just as he'd said—right up until she turned eighteen.

  He'd been there at her high-school graduation. And had come immediately the day he'd received the news that John was dead. He'd apparently hired a detective agency to keep track of John and had told her as soon as he'd heard. John Archer had been killed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver.

  John was dead. If there was anything in her life,

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  besides Ashley, for which Jamie was thankful, it was the death of her stepfather. Which was probably just another immoral decision she'd made. To be happy that a man had lost his life.

  Jamie stood and took her exhausted body to bed, her mind finally quieting with fatigue. She had no more answers now than she'd ever had, and she was beginning to suspect that she'd never have them— that, in fact, her questions were unanswerable. Maybe it didn't matter how she'd become the woman she used to be, the woman she'd renounced.

  Maybe there'd been choices and maybe there hadn't.

  But she'd been wrong to think she could escape that woman.

  "Ashley asked me yesterday if her daddy died fighting for our country."

  Jamie's stomach, already queasy, protested as she glanced across at Karen. The two were sharing a cup of coffee during Jamie's morning break before Karen left to get the girls from school.

  She said the first thing that jumped into her mind. "Why didn't she come to me?"

  Karen shrugged, paying unnecessary attention to the sugar she was stirring into her coffee. "I asked her the same thing."

  "And?"

  "She said you might get sadder at her."

  "Sadder at her?"

  Karen shrugged again. And continued to stir.

  "She thinks she makes me sad?"

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  Karen glanced up, her blue eyes warm with compassion. "Kids are pretty perceptive."

  "But Ashley hasn't made me sad a single day of her life!"

  "Apparently, she doesn't think so."

  "She hardly even makes me m
ad."

  "You do have amazing patience with her."

  Jamie pushed her coffee away, sick at the thought that Ashley might be growing up the way she had, shouldering the blame for everything that happened, or might happen, in the lives around her.

  "Obviously I need to be more careful, as well." Jamie flipped the spoon she'd used to stir her abandoned coffee. "She must read my moods like a book."

  "She's one smart little girl. Imagine, a four-year-old figuring that her father was a war hero."

  And suddenly they were back to where the conversation had begun, Ashley inventing excuses for the absence of her father. And Karen wondering how true they were.

  Funny how life had a way of regurgitating on you all at once. First yesterday's phone call. And now this.

  "I thought I'd have a few more years before she started asking questions."

  "Wished was more like it, huh?" Karen asked with understanding, in spite of the fact that Kayla's father was very much a part of their lives. A software consultant, he traveled frequently, but when he was home, he belonged one-hundred percent to Karen and Kayla.

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  "Ashley's father isn't dead."

  The bald words fell into Karen's sunny kitchen to lie, completely exposed, on the table between them. Karen had never asked about Jamie's past. Jamie had never offered a word. This particular silence was an understood part of their friendship. A pact Jamie had needed in order for the friendship to exist—a pact she'd just broken.

  And she had no idea why. She couldn't tell Karen about that time in her life. Not if she wanted to hang on to the life she'd made for herself since.

  "He didn't want her?" Karen stirred furiously, staring at the coffee sloshing over her cup.

  "He doesn't know about her."

  "Oh."

  "We were only…together…once."

  Karen laid her spoon in her saucer and looked up at Jamie, her eyes still glowing with tenderness. Not with the condemnation Jamie knew she deserved.

  "The baby that resulted simply wasn't an issue. Wasn't part of that night."

  "How can you say that if he didn't have the opportunity to make her a part of that night?'' Karen asked softly.

  Jamie remembered, very clearly, the wad of bills on the nightstand.