Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Especially not for him.

  "Professor Radcliff? Jamie Archer here." The heavy beating of her heart was due to the speed with which she'd made it from the garage to her office after dropping the girls off at school. Nothing more. With Karen's news still fresh in her mind the next morning, Jamie was in a hurry to immerse herself in business. Or so she told herself.

  "Jamie!" The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. "I didn't expect to hear from you so soon." He paused. "And what's this 'Professor' bit? I'm 'Kyle,' remember?"

  HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

  Yeah. She remembered. "I'm missing some receipts."

  "Okay."

  His voice cooled a bit. And Jamie hated herself for being disappointed.

  "I'll see if I can find them. What do you need?"

  Reading from the list she'd prepared before falling into bed early that morning, Jamie told him.

  "I don't know if I even have all this stuff, but I can check this afternoon," he said. "Give me your address and I'll bring them by this evening."

  "No!" Thinking only of Ashley, Jamie panicked. "I mean, um, I'll be out this evening." She paused. Swallowed. "Tomorrow's soon enough. I'll come to your office."

  "Since you're going to be out, why don't you come here to pick up the receipts tonight?" he asked, sounding more cheerful. "I'll be home."

  "That won't be necessary. Tomorrow at your office is fine."

  "It's just that with some of this stuff, I'm not sure exactly what all you need. It might be better if you look things over yourself. It'll probably save you another trip."

  Deforming a paper clip, Jamie blurted, "I might be out late."

  "Doesn't matter. I'll be up grading essays, anyway."

  It was hard to picture him as an English professor. She would have been much more comfortable if he'd turned out to be an ambulance-chasing lawyer or something.

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  ' 'What kind of essays?'' She didn't want to know.

  "We're doing an in-depth study of Clemens, his political and religious views."

  "Huckleberry Finn." She'd loved the American-literature class she'd taken on Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain.

  ' 'And 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.'"

  ' 'Tom Sawyer,'' she said, remembering.

  "Yeah, what's with Aunt Polly? You think she's a woman ahead of her time—or a small-minded old bat?"

  "She loved Tom."

  "You go for small-minded, huh?"

  Jamie picked up another paper clip. "She did her best. Life hadn't dealt her an easy hand, raising a hellion like Tom."

  "You think the cards you're dealt are an excuse to be small-minded?"

  "No!" Jamie almost laughed. And then caught herself. What was she doing? "And this has nothing to do with your taxes," she reminded them both.

  "So you're coming by tonight?"

  "I don't think that would be a good idea."

  "Don't trust yourself?"

  "Of course I trust myself." Jamie forced every bit of disapproving indignation she could muster into her reply.

  "You don't trust me?"

  "Why wouldn't I trust you?" Why, indeed? But that was something they weren't going to talk about.

  He rattled off the directions to his house. ' 'Come

  HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

  anytime. I'll be up," he said. And then rang off before Jamie could tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she would not be stopping by his home that night, taxes or no.

  When she rang back, she got his answering machine. Throughout the rest of that day, the man never answered his phone. Jamie didn't know if it was her imagination that had her thinking he was purposely avoiding her—or if she was just growing unnaturally paranoid. But because she couldn't get hold of him to make other arrangements and because she needed those receipts if she was going to get his taxes done and out of her life, she asked Karen to keep Ashley that evening.

  It had been so long since he'd cared enough to impress a woman that Kyle was a little unsure of himself as he unpacked enough stuff to make his house look like home. A home minus most of his furniture, of course. There'd been a little mix-up with that.

  Give him a classroom full of know-it-all six-foot punks who hated English, and he was comfortable. But give him an hour to win over a 110-pound woman with a heart of gold, and he was at a complete loss.

  In the first place, he didn't even know why he was having to win her over again. He thought he'd done that—quite thoroughly—five years before. He couldn't have imagined those phenomenal hours with her. Couldn't have imagined her response.

  And couldn't understand why she'd disappeared.

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  But one thing he did know for sure: now that he'd found her, he wasn't letting her get away again.

  "At least not without knowing why," he muttered. "Now, where are those damn files?"

  Spying an unopened box across the kitchen, he grabbed his razor knife and headed over. The box was full of files. Surely the ones he needed were in there. Pulling off his glasses and tossing them on the counter, he crouched down to investigate.

  "Oh, good, there you are," he said a few minutes later as he opened what was probably his twentieth manila folder to reveal the extra set of lesson plans he'd worked up for the semester. He'd had to turn in the set he'd brought with him in his briefcase and had forgotten to make a copy first. At least now he'd be spared the relatively humiliating experience of having to go ask the department secretary for a copy.

  The doorbell rang just after eight. He'd finally found the travel receipts Jamie had requested—at the bottom of a box of socks and skivvies. They'd all been in a suitcase together, left over from his visit to New England, where he'd visited the homes and graves of most of his idols—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott.

  "This isn't late," he said as he opened the door. He had to say something. Drooling over his reluctant accountant probably wasn't wise.

  She shrugged her beautifully slim shoulders. "I finished earlier than I thought."

  And what he thought was that she hadn't had anything to do that night to begin with. That she'd been

  HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

  making excuses. Which made him all the more curious. And determined.

  "Here's my office, such as it is." He directed her to the little room off the entryway. His desk was there because he'd purchased a new one. And a sturdy box he was using as a chair. The filing cabinets hadn't made it yet.

  "What on earth is in all those folders?" she asked, staring at the piles surrounding the room.

  "Stuff." Kyle shrugged. He still hadn't found his folder of photos from Walden Pond. Maybe they were in the sock and skivvies box, too.

  "So, you have the receipts?" she asked, standing just inside the door of his office.

  Handing her the manila folder he'd unearthed, Kyle said, "You'd better take a glance at those, make sure everything you need is there."

  And while she looked, he looked, too. Dressed in a pair of loose-fitting slacks and an equally loose cotton blouse, she could have been trying to hide her glorious body. But unfortunately Kyle found her modest clothes more of a turn-on than the form-fitting skimpy red dress she'd worn the night he met her.

  She could wear a tent, and he'd be turned on. He knew what secrets the voluminous clothes hid. Knew them intimately. Every inch. Every taste. Every smell…

  ' 'These are all plane tickets and hotel receipts, but what about mileage, parking and meals?" she asked, frowning as she once again thumbed through the slips of paper.

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  Meal receipts? Who saved meal receipts? And where would he save them? His organizer was already bursting at the seams. "Surely they aren't going to amount to enough to matter."

  ' 'Of course they will." She glanced up—and then quickly back down. "They're one-hundred percent deductible as a business expense."

  "What happens if
I don't have them?"

  "We can claim up to a certain amount without them. You lose the rest."

  Her expression was so serious he couldn't help grinning. "Gosh, and I'm such a big eater, too."

  Jamie's face was straight as she looked back up at him, taking him in from the glasses across the bridge of his nose to his jeans and bare feet. "I wouldn't know," she finally said.

  "You would have, though, if you'd hung around long enough to find out," he said softly. He'd promised himself to move slowly, to stay away from accusation.

  But patience wasn't one of his strong suits.

  "Hung around?" Her blue eyes were confused. "Where?"

  "In the hotel room."

  Head bowed, she studied the receipts she held. "I did hang around. All the way till morning."

  "Dawn was more like it."

  "It was long enough." She raised a hand to lift the hair off her shoulders. He thought her fingers were shaking. "When I woke up, you were gone."

  "Only to get breakfast." Kyle took her hand, held it as he stepped behind her. ' 'I came back with two

  HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

  sacks of goodies and had no one to share them with."

  She was trembling. He could feel it as she turned slowly to face him. "You came back?"

  Gazing down into the only pair of eyes that had ever taken his breath away, he nodded. She thought he'd abandoned her? Was that why she'd run away? Was that all the past five years had been about?

  "Why'd you come back?" she asked.

  "You had me under your spell."

  "The sex was good."

  So she'd felt it, too! Kyle breathed a huge sigh of relief. He'd nearly driven himself crazy the past twenty-four hours wondering what he'd done wrong, what he'd done to scare her away.

  He moved closer to her, rubbing his thighs against hers. "The sex was great."

  "What about electric and phone bills?"

  "What?" His body was on fire, his head filled with visions of…

  She pulled away from him, flinging out her arm to encompass the room, her voice cold. "You have a home office. Electricity and phone are deductible for that portion of your home."

  Kyle would have said goodbye and good riddance then and there if he hadn't noticed the slight trembling at the corners of her lips. She wanted to pretend that what they'd shared wasn't special. That it meant nothing. But it was; it did. Deny it all she wanted, she still felt the connection.

  Somehow, somewhere, he had to come up with the patience to wait for her to be as happy about

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  that fact as he was. But first, he was going to find out why she was so adamantly against taking up where they'd left off. She'd given herself to him that night five years before. Not just her body, but the person she was inside.

  Their conversation had been unusually frank. He'd attended Tom Webber's party at the invitation of an old college buddy, to avoid thinking about the woman he'd buried that day. The mother he'd never loved. More emotionally vulnerable than he'd realized, he'd told Jamie things he'd never told anyone before—or since. Dreams, hopes, emotional stuff a man spent most of his life avoiding. He'd told her how lonely and empty his childhood had been. Without needing any of the details, details he'd been loath to give, she'd known exactly how he felt— because she'd grown up lonely, too. Was still alone, inside, where life really happened. He'd always loved reading, had always escaped into books. So had she. She wanted to be a mother—and have a house with a white picket fence. He hoped to write a classic someday.

  But more than the words they'd said were the things they'd understood without words. They'd connected in a way he'd never known was possible, an intimate, intuitive way.

  The sex had been an unexpected bonus. She'd given herself to him joyfully. Willingly.

  And Kyle didn't turn his back on what was his.

  The note from Ashley's teacher was a total shock. It came home with Ashley two days later, just after

  HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

  Jamie had hung up the phone from leaving a message for Kyle Radcliff. His taxes were done. All she needed was his signature in the appropriate places and she could mail them—and him—right out of her life.

  "Miss Peters wants you to have this," Ashley said, running into the house. Karen and Kayla were right behind her.

  Jamie's eyes met Karen's over the girls' heads. Opening the envelope, she frowned; Karen just shrugged and mouthed the words, "Don't know."

  Ms. Archer, Jamie's hand trembled as she tried to read the letter she held.

  I'm sorry to have to report that your daughter, Ashley, had some trouble at school today involving one of her classmates. Please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss…

  "Ash?"

  "Yes, Mommy?" The little girl left the toy she'd been showing Kayla and came over to Jamie's desk.

  "You have some trouble at school today?"

  Ashley shook her head, auburn curls bouncing with the force of her denial.

  "Miss Peters said you did."

  "Pro'bly means that dumb Nathan," Kayla muttered, not looking up from the different-sized squares she was fitting one into the other.

  Karen's raised eyebrows and shake of her head were the only help Jamie got from that direction.

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  "What happened with Nathan?" Jamie asked her daughter, taking Ashley's hands in her own.

  "He says dumb stuff 'cause he's dumb."

  "That's not a nice word to use, Ash, especially when you're talking about someone else."

  "But it's true, Mommy, he is dumb." Ashley's pretty gray eyes were somber yet completely sincere.

  "And I'll bet you told him so, didn't you, Ash?" Karen asked, still standing in the doorway. Her gaze was compassionate.

  Ashley nodded and Jamie let the little girl go. Ashley's thumb promptly found her mouth.

  Jamie would have her talk with Miss Peters first, and then, when she had the full story, she'd have a heart-to-heart talk with her daughter. Ashley needed to learn to be a little more accepting of other people's shortcomings.

  "How about some lunch?" she asked.

  Karen nodded, but her smile was forced. ' 'I made some chicken salad this morning," she said. "How's that sound?"

  "Great." Standing, Jamie ushered the two energetic children next door.

  But as she helped Karen make sandwiches and pour juice, Jamie felt increasingly worried about her friend. Karen had been looking a little lost ever since she'd taken the pregnancy test. She wasn't bubbling with excitement yet. Not the way Jamie would be if she were in her shoes. She decided Karen was probably just anxious for Dennis to come home so she could share her news. He was going to be thrilled.

  Of that Jamie was certain.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "We'd like you to make things a little easier on him."

  Pulling off his glasses, Kyle peered up at the coach standing in the doorway of his office. For a Monday, the day was going stereotypically true to form.

  "You want me to doctor his grade."

  Coach Lippert, the head coach of Gunnison's football team, slipped his bulky frame into the room and closed the door.

  "Brad Miller's good. Better than good."

  Kyle nodded. He could appreciate that. Talent was a valuable commodity. As was integrity.

  "He's star material. Scouts are already looking at him. Another year at the university and he's sure to get the offer of a lifetime." Coach Lippert came closer, leaning his beefy hands on Kyle's desk.

  "I hope he gets it."

  "He's already on academic probation. If he doesn't pass your lit class, he's out."

  "I've offered to tutor him."

  "Come on, Professor." Coach Lippert pushed away from the desk. "The boy shows up for every class. He attempts all the homework. And he's still

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  failing. You really think a little tutoring's gonna help?"

  Kyle shrugged. "I can only give him the grade he
earns."

  "That's bullshit and we both know it." The coach paced in front of Kyle's desk, his shoulders bunched until his neck disappeared beneath a face getting redder by the minute. "Your tests are mostly essay questions, they're subjective. You control the grades."

  "On the basis of preset criteria."

  "But it's your opinion as to whether or not he meets those criteria."

  "To date, Brad Miller hasn't met any of them. If he reads this stuff at all—'' Kyle held up a copy of Twain's Huckleberry Finn "—he doesn't comprehend a single sentence."

  "It's a little late in the boy's life to be diagnosing reading disorders, Professor. All he needs is one more semester. Two at the most, and he's home free. Without football he doesn't have a hope in hell of making something of himself."

  "Most of the essay questions are also discussed in class. If he can't figure out what a novel or a poem's about, he could learn it in class."

  The coach slammed his palm against Kyle's desk. "You're not going to budge on this, are you?"

  "I'll tutor him. Every afternoon if you like."

  "He's got a workout schedule!"

  "I guess he needs to decide what's most important."

  "To Brad Miller, football is the most important.

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  It's all he knows. And that's what bugs you, isn't it?" There was a sneer on Coach Lippert's face as he headed for the door. "You're so caught up in your fairy tales you can't stand it that someone else doesn't love your imaginary people as much as you do."

  Steepling his fingers across his chest, Kyle half smiled. "I can't stand it that a poor boy has an opportunity to get a fully funded college education and is gaining nothing more than what he knew before he came here—football."

  With a few choice words, Coach Lippert wrenched open the door, then slammed it behind him.

  Kyle picked up his glasses and carefully positioned them across the bridge of his nose, glad no one could see how his hands were trembling.

  Nervous, Jamie knocked on the door of Ashley's classroom early Monday morning. The kids were all in another room for story time, and Miss Peters had suggested this might be a good moment for her and Jamie to talk.

  "Come in, Ms. Archer." A warm smile on her face, Miss Peters ushered Jamie over to the art center. "Hope you don't mind sitting on a table," she said, perching on the corner of one herself. "The chairs are all a bit small in here."