Wanted: A Real Family

by Karen Rose Smith

  Amy was all for that, so Sara took her inside and they both quickly changed. By the time they returned out front, Jase had attached the hose to the spigot. He showed Amy the nozzle with its fan spray, cone spray and shower spray, and told her to pick one to wash off the blue chalk. She did and the two of them started on one of the squares. Then all of a sudden, Jase shifted the hose so Sara got sprayed. She squealed as the cold water hit her tank top and shorts.

  “Just remember, I get a turn,” she called to him.

  “Oh, I remember.” Then he sprayed Amy and she squealed, too. As each blue number and square disappeared, they all got wetter. Jase picked up his camera, snapping photos whenever the hose wasn’t aimed at him. When he took control of the water spurts, he would aim the nozzle up in the air and the drizzle would sprinkle down on all of them. The sound of Amy’s giggles filled Sara’s heart. Jase knew how to play with kids and she loved that fact. He and Amy were coconspirators as they sprayed Sara, but then she grabbed the hose and yanked it out of his hand and turned the tables on him. Pretty soon, he was as wet as they were.

  They were all laughing and unaware that someone was watching.

  Sara was bent over, her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath when she spotted the very expensive boots. Her eyes traveled up a pair of creased jeans and a starched snap-button shirt until they landed on Liam’s handsome face. She wondered if he’d been at some kind of meeting, or if he always dressed like this around the winery, casually chic.

  He winked at her. “Looks as if everyone’s having fun.”

  The wink unsettled her, until she reminded herself that Liam no doubt flirted with any woman in sight. “As much fun as I’ve had in a long while,” she said, knowing it was true.

  The hose was lying on the ground and Amy was dancing in and out of it, playing her own little game.

  Jase came over to stand beside Sara. “On your way out for the evening?”

  “Matter of fact, I am. I just had to see your dad about something first. A friend of mine opened a new restaurant in Sacramento, and I’m driving down there for the night.” He held up a hand. “Don’t worry. Everything’s under control here.”

  “I don’t worry...about your winemaking. You know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes, I do. I like that new brochure that came back from the printer. Marissa’s doing a mass mailing, as well as sending them to wine festivals. We should have a good summer.” He eyed Jase’s wet clothes, then Sara’s. “Maybe you should talk to Ethan about putting an inground pool on the property.”

  “That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun,” Sara said, not wanting Liam to feel she was ignoring him.

  Though she was beginning to feel a little self-conscious standing there in her wet outfit. She hadn’t felt self-conscious with Jase, but she did with Liam. Maybe it was the way he canvassed her up and down.

  “So I imagine you enjoy amusement park rides, too. Ever been to Santa Monica Pier?” Liam wanted to know.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “I think you and your daughter might enjoy it.”

  “Do you go often?” Sara asked, curious.

  “Nope. Rock climbing is more my thing. But maybe you should try the pier sometime. Not in that outfit, though.” He grinned. “Quite a difference from the way you looked Saturday night, but I like it. Wet chic.”

  She felt Jase tense beside her. He even took a step forward as if he was going to defend her honor...or something. But she clasped his arm. She didn’t want trouble between Jase and Liam, so she changed the subject.

  “What kind of food does the restaurant in Sacramento serve?”

  “French gourmet. They even import truffles. And, of course, our wines are on their list.”

  “So this is business and pleasure?”

  “Mostly pleasure. Friends are joining me.”

  “Well, enjoy your night on the town,” she said, meaning it.

  “I will. It was great to see you again, Sara. See you tomorrow, Jase.” Then Liam was striding away toward the main house.

  Jase muttered, “He has his eye on you.”

  “I think he has his eye on lots of women. I saw him charming them on Saturday night.”

  “Can he charm you?”

  She was about to answer that no one seemed able to charm her but Jase, when Amy ran up to her and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I’m hungry, Mommy. When are we gonna eat?”

  Sara glanced at Jase in his wet clothes, looking absolutely sexy with his T-shirt molded to his muscles, his jeans clinging to those powerful thighs. She was grateful for his help this afternoon, as well as the photographs he’d taken to remember the day. Well, she thought, in for a penny, in for a pound....

  “I have a working grill out back,” she said to him. “We were just going to grill some burgers.”

  “Pickles and tomatoes?” Amy asked, with a four-year-old’s enthusiasm for a barbecue.

  “With pickles and tomatoes and ketchup and mustard. Care to join us?” she asked him lightly, as if it didn’t matter if he said no.

  “Payback for babysitting?” he asked.

  She had to be honest. “Partly, but for some reason, I also enjoy talking to you.”

  “Talking?”

  “Yes, talking. And that’s what we’re going to be doing over hamburgers.”

  He grinned at her. He actually grinned. “Give me five minutes to change clothes, and I’ll do the grilling for you. You can put the rest of it together.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Being with Jase sounded good.

  * * *

  The swirl of ever-ticking thoughts ran through Jase’s head as he stood at the grill behind the cottage, cooking burgers. His focus, however, wasn’t on the burgers. It was on Amy...and Sara.

  Sara was going to like the photos he’d shot of her and Amy. Maybe they’d make up for some of those she’d lost.

  As Sara arranged plates and napkins on the table with Amy’s help, Jase realized the sound of the little girl’s laughter was a balm that soothed a deep ache he’d brought home with him from Africa. Even more so, Sara’s understanding heart soothed that ache, too. What he didn’t comprehend so well was the irritation and annoyance he’d felt when Liam had winked at Sara as if they’d established a relationship. Had they? Sara had had no problem making conversation with Liam. She hadn’t actually been flirting—

  Jase corralled his imagination. She had a right to associate with whomever she chose.

  But he felt raw at the idea of her with Liam.

  Memories of Dana had come rushing back in. All too well their breakup still played in his head.

  He’d been in the hospital recovering. Another journalist he’d been friends with for years had stopped in to see him. They’d both known Dana. In fact, Peter had introduced them. After the preliminary small talk when Peter had assured him he’d make a complete recovery, Peter hadn’t been his usual sarcastic self. Jase had felt the underlying tension and hadn’t known what it meant.

  Finally, Peter had said, “You know I’ve always been a straight shooter.”

  Jase had retorted, “Same here.”

  Peter had taken a photograph from his pocket, or rather a printout of a photograph. Before he’d handed it to Jase, he’d said, “Believe me, I don’t want to show you this, but better me than someone else. If I could shoot this last week, then others have seen her, too. It will only be a matter of time until word gets around.”

  The journalistic community was a small world, even though they were scattered all over the continents. With emails, text messaging and social media, not much got by anybody.

  Jase had been on painkillers, then. They hadn’t been dulling the pain all that much or the absence of his fiancée whom he hadn’t seen since a few weeks before he’d been shot. He’d had a premon
ition of what he was going to see in the photo and he’d braced himself as best he could.

  The photograph was, of course, telling. With the Eiffel Tower in the background, Dana was kissing a man in a way that told anybody passing by this wasn’t a brother or a friend. Peter had seen it and captured the shot.

  “Two questions,” Jase said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Does she know you saw her?”

  “No. I didn’t want her making up some kind of story, and I wanted you to be prepared. What’s the second question?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Do you really need to know that? Because I don’t think it matters, really, who he is. She was shaken up by what happened to you.”

  “So shaken up she’s kissing anybody these days?”

  “Something like that. You know her, Jase. She’s a risk taker. She likes danger. But she doesn’t like anything bad to touch her.”

  “This didn’t touch her, it touched me.”

  Peter just gave him a look.

  “In other words, she’s afraid I’ll never be whole again?”

  “I don’t know what she’s afraid of. Maybe you’d better ask her.”

  Dana had been on assignment. Though they had spoken once or twice on the phone, it had never occurred to him until then that if she really wanted a life with him, she would have been at his bedside.

  Back then he hadn’t known much about relationships. He hadn’t known much about commitment. After all, he hadn’t known his biological father, his mother had died of a drug overdose and he’d had three foster parents before Ethan had adopted him. What did he really know about relationships at all?

  Except when Dana had walked into his hospital room a few days later, he’d known a relationship meant more than the opportunity to be unfaithful. He’d suddenly known that an engagement should mean building a life together, not living separate lives.

  Dana had been flippant at first, avoiding his gaze, even jittery, which was unlike her. Under other circumstances, he might have suspected it was the hospital room and his condition. He was hooked up to IVs and monitors. His shoulder was wrapped and in a sling. Two ribs were broken, and he was still healing from a second abdominal surgery. That was enough to make any visitor jittery.

  But he knew more than that was going on, and he wasn’t going to play games. He told her to look in the drawer by the bedside table. When she did, she found the picture.

  “Who took this?”

  “Does it matter? Pictures don’t lie, right? Pictures don’t, but you’ve been.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Jase.”

  It wasn’t an “I’m sorry” or “It won’t happen again” or “Can you forgive me?” Any of that might have revived feelings he’d once had. She simply said, “You have a long recovery process, here. I probably won’t be back in the States for a few months.”

  “So my getting shot’s the problem?”

  “No, but when you got shot, I started thinking. You talk about kids as if you want to have them someday. You relate to them like I can’t. I don’t want to be a mother. I want to stay in the life I have. But the way you talk about your father’s vineyard sometimes, I think you want more than a life as a photojournalist.”

  “I know I want to be involved with someone who knows how to be faithful.”

  “You deserve someone who knows how to be faithful. Obviously that person isn’t me. I turned to someone else because I was upset about you...about everything I’d realized about us...how we’re different in things that matter.”

  Although he’d felt bitterness and resentment and betrayal, they hadn’t parted as enemies. What was the point? If nothing else, Jase was a practical man. Still...that photograph was etched in his mind.

  He thought about everything Dana had said as he watched Sara showing Amy precisely where to put the napkin. Exactly what did he want from Sara? What did she want from him?

  As she and Amy sat at the table to wait for the burgers, she dished out broccoli salad she already had prepared, and baked beans that she’d doctored with bacon and brown sugar, onion and celery. She’d told him she liked to cook and putter in the kitchen. He liked the idea of a woman who enjoyed doing that.

  “Almost ready,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I read the new brochure you laid on the table. It really captures everything about the vineyard. Did you write the copy, too?”

  “I did,” he said, flipping the burgers onto a plate and bringing them to the table. “Photos of something unique to Raintree weren’t in the brochure—hot springs. We don’t tell the general public about them.”

  “But you’re telling me.”

  “If you’re up to a four-wheeler ride and a hike, we could go see them. Anytime you want to go, just say the word.”

  He knew the hot springs setting. He knew it could be a place for romance. But whether Sara wanted that or not was still in question.

  When he settled across the table from her, his knee brushed hers. She didn’t move away, and she did meet his direct eye contact when she said, “I will.”

  Jase knew if they ever went to those hot springs, they’d return to Raintree as much more than friends.

  Chapter Eight

  Around one, Sara took her lunch out back at the PT center and sat at one of the picnic tables. Doing so brought back memories of last night and having burgers on the grill with Jase...Jase playing hopscotch with Amy...Jase in a wet T-shirt.

  To distract herself from going there, she pulled out her cell phone. There was a text message from Marissa. She simply said, Call me.

  So Sara did. When Marissa answered, she asked, “Did you see it or hear about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Today, the article about The Mommy Club was in the paper. It’s on the newspaper’s website, too, and there are comments already.”

  Sara didn’t have mobile web access on her phone. “Good comments?”

  “Mostly good. They’re about other drop-off points for food and clothes, contributors wanting a list of items The Mommy Club really needs and requesting more info about Thrifty Solutions. But most of all, there are comments from readers who want women’s stories.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “Jase asked me if I’d let him interview me.”

  “Me, too, but I said no. I just can’t, not with wanting to keep Jordan’s father from knowing about him.”

  “That would be a terrible way for him to find out.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Marissa said with vehement determination.

  “My fire story is already public. Not the insurance investigation. I’m sure the insurance company doesn’t want that public, any more than I do. So if Jase just wrote about the fire and moving into the cottage, and all the help The Mommy Club gave me, we could keep the focus on that. If he can find others who were helped and will talk about it, the point of the article wouldn’t be just on me but the organization.”

  When Marissa didn’t respond right away, Sara admitted, “I know there’s a chance everything can come out, but I haven’t done anything wrong. Maybe my story can help someone else.”

  “You’re braver than I am.”

  “Not brave. Maybe I just have less to lose.”

  * * *

  Those same words echoed in Sara’s head that night when Jase came over to the cottage. She suspected he might. After she’d put Amy to bed, she’d stayed dressed herself. To give her courage? Backbone? Resistance where he was concerned?

  She was beginning to realize that Jase Cramer was a temptation like no other she’d ever had. She’d never skipped from relationship to relationship. In fact, Conrad had been her first real serious involvement. With Conrad, passion hadn’t been a driving f
orce. She’d wanted to love and have him love her back. Conrad had been older and more experienced. Since she’d lost her parents, she’d felt adrift and Conrad had anchored her. But had her values and Conrad’s ever meshed? Maybe she’d married him for all the wrong reasons.

  Insight that had come too late. She’d never be sorry she’d married Conrad. She’d had Amy. But she did have regrets that she and Conrad had never had the intimate kind of relationship they should have both craved.

  Now she was beginning to crave it. She was beginning to crave Jase.

  He didn’t talk about the article at first, rather he handed her a manila envelope. “See what you think,” he said with a crooked smile that urged her to forget all about good sense and dive into his arms.

  “Cookies and milk?” she asked. “Or...I just happen to have a very good bottle of wine.”

  He laughed. “The cookies and milk sound great. By the way, my dad enjoyed the ones you baked. I told him he should thank you himself, but—” Jase shrugged. “Parents aren’t any easier to control than kids.”

  She supposed that was the truth all children came to face, as well as parents.

  After they were seated on the sofa, she opened the envelope and pulled out the contents. There were six pieces of photographic paper with two prints on each. Underneath those, she found the article that had appeared in the paper. That, she set aside for the time being. She couldn’t wait to see the prints.

  Immediately she was entranced by them. Amy’s expressions were priceless as she played hopscotch, ran in the spray of the hose and grinned up at Sara as if she were the best mother in the world. “Oh, Jase, these are beautiful.”

  “They did come out well, didn’t they?” he said with some self-satisfaction. “I guess I haven’t altogether lost my touch.”

  “You haven’t lost your touch one little bit, and you know it. You take wonderful photographs of scenery, but people and especially children are your specialty.”

  “I have more of you and Amy. I’m going to send the whole batch to the printing house I use. Then you can start a new photo album. You’ll have to get a point-and-shoot camera so you can add to it.”