He’d said that before over the years, but this was different.
Desperate suddenly for her body, her kiss, her naked skin, he picked her up and took her to her bedroom, hoping dawn, and her inevitable questions, could be delayed.
Sam stared out her window and waited for the coffee to brew. Dawn was a pink light over the horizon and the air was already heavy with the beginnings of humidity. Somehow Sam had a feeling that this was going to be a very bad day.
She had stayed up most of the night watching J.D. sleep and counting on both hands the concrete things she knew about him.
He was a good lover. He was a P.I. His name was Jonathon David. He was thirty-seven. And…she thought maybe he had some sisters.
That was it. And last night when Jane had taken one look at him and gone white, Sam realized that it would behoove her and maybe Jane Doe to find out a little bit more.
Around 3:00 a.m. everything she didn’t know about him became suspicious. How did he get here so fast last night? Within two hours? It was as if he were on his way. And why would Jane think he’d been sent for her? Had she seen him somewhere? Did she know him?
All things Sam should have asked. Probably before she had sex with him, but better late than never. Not asking him questions was a habit she didn’t know how to break.
But it was time.
The coffeemaker gurgled its last and Sam poured two mugs full. She added a little sugar to his because that’s the way he liked it.
There, she thought triumphantly. That’s five concrete things I know. J.D. likes sugar in his coffee.
But it didn’t make her feel better.
Who has an affair with a man for ten years without knowing his birthday? Or his favorite color? Or if he’s been hired by Jane Doe’s father to find her?
At the sound of her pushing open the bedroom door, J.D. snapped upright from the sound sleep she’d left him in.
“Hi,” she said, handing him his mug, trying to avert her eyes from his chest. His groin where her ladybug sheets didn’t quite hide his morning erection.
“Hi yourself.” His voice was a gravel road. His smile a hundred-percent invitation.
Why am I so nervous about this? she wondered, as the butterflies in her stomach got butterflies in their stomachs. It’s not like I’m accusing him of anything, or asking him to tell me about his past girlfriends. Or even current ones, should he have them.
And wasn’t that a pleasant thought.
She just needed to know if he knew Jane Doe. If he was, in fact, after Jane Doe.
“What time is it?” he asked, looking out at the brightening sky.
Time to answer some questions, she thought. “A little past seven,” she said and he groaned.
She sucked in the warm air of her bedroom, felt the heat of sunlight from the big windows at her back. It was peaceful here, a sanctuary, and she had thought it was that way for him, too.
But what did she know? Really?
“We need to talk,” she said and it was as if she’d pulled a gun on him.
His body tightened, his face shut down. All that sleepy, sexy happiness that had been in his eyes vanished as if it had never been there.
“We don’t talk,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. Not totally true. When he was here they talked a lot. About College football. And books. Music. They talked politics.
But they didn’t talk about them.
“I know we haven’t,” she said. “But I think…we should. I have some questions. About last night. About Jane Doe.”
They both watched his thumb stroke the handle of his mug. “You can’t go back,” he said, his voice low and somehow ominous. “Once you do this.”
Dread fell hard upon her shoulders. He was hiding something. “I know,” she said, trying to pretend she didn’t understand exactly what he meant. “But we’re friends, right?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even nod and a thin ribbon of disbelief trickled through her bloodstream. This man, the one in her bed who had gone down on her last night until she saw stars, was a stranger.
Sam stood, paced to the window to get some distance. A little clarity. “I think considering the way Jane reacted to you last night, I would be pretty negligent if I didn’t ask you some questions.”
He blinked once. Processing her accusation. “You mean when she asked if I’d been sent for her?”
“Yes.”
“She reacted to me because I am a man and she’s scared. And she knows whoever she’s running from probably will send someone after her.”
God, it sounded so reasonable when he put it that way. It was like running into a brick wall. But she knew when she was right, and this was right.
“I understand that,” she said. “But it was as if she recognized you. She said she knew you.”
“I was in the shadows,” he said. “There was no way she could have seen my face.”
“You could have been hired by someone to find her.”
“I wasn’t.”
That was it. He took another sip of coffee and her mouth fell open. He was so calm, so cool, turning away her questions like a loans officer or someone equally impersonal.
“But you do know who she is?” She stepped closer, ready to drag some honesty out of him, if just to satisfy her pride.
“I have some ideas but a colleague will get back to me today.”
“What kind of colleague? A cop?”
“Not really.”
She jerked away, stupidly injured to realize he didn’t respect her enough to be honest.
“Hey,” he said, reaching for her arm, but she didn’t let him touch her. “I’m not lying.”
“But you’re not telling me the truth either,” she said, blinking at him, stunned that a man could share so much and still be an utter mystery. She had a responsibility to the women of Serenity House and she’d thought he understood that. Respected that.
She pulled the collar of her robe up slightly higher.
“Don’t do that. Don’t act injured. You have your share of secrets too. It’s how this whole thing between us works.”
“I know. But, right now I’m confused and worried and to be honest, feeling a bit stupid for spreading my legs for a man who clearly doesn’t respect me enough to answer the most basic questions.”
His face turned to stone and he set the mug down on the bedside table with a thunk before plucking his underwear from the floor. “Why don’t you ask me the question you really want to ask?” he said, drilling her to the wall with his gaze.
She swallowed. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
She shook her head, suddenly all too aware that she didn’t. At all.
“I’m a private investigator,” he said. “I have contacts who are cops and contacts who are doing life at Rikers. I get paid to sneak around at night and confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about their loved ones. Is that what you want to know?”
“No,” she said. “Well, yes. But your work—”
“Do you want me to tell you that I only work for the good guys? That I would never work for Jane Doe’s father? That I wouldn’t put that girl downstairs in danger because someone paid me money?”
“I guess, yes.”
“Then the answer is no. No, I work for bad guys a lot of the time. And maybe Jane recognized me because I might have done some work for whoever is chasing her. And if someone hired me to find Jane Doe, I’d still be here and I’d do my job.”
And you. The words, unsaid, hung in the air.
I would betray you, was what he really meant. Without thinking twice.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, believing it to her core. The man who drew hot baths for her, held her while she slept, loved her sometimes as if she were precious wouldn’t hurt her, not deliberately.
“I would.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You—”
“Stop, Sam. I’m not your white knight.”
“I never said you were.”
&
nbsp; “But you thought it. You wished it.”
That was the truth. And she couldn’t deny it. She had an image of him that he was taking a sledgehammer to and she didn’t understand why.
“Okay, what about you?” he asked.
She stilled, every muscle tense. “What about me?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Asking you questions? Because—”
“Sleeping with me. Or, wait, how did you put it, ‘spreading your legs’?”
Oh. Ouch.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, lifted her chin, armoring herself with the truth. “Because I can’t stop,” she said. Even when she knew she should. Even though she kept a terrible secret from him and he no doubt kept millions of them from her.
“Do you want to stop?” he asked. The fire in his eyes was banked, his face so carefully bland. No emotion. No indication of what he wanted. No sign of her lover.
Just a stranger in her bedroom.
She swallowed, everything numb below her hairline. “I don’t want to change what we have,” she said. “But I suddenly realized last night that what I don’t know about you is slightly scary.”
“You’re scared of me?” he asked, and for the first time since starting this awful conversation, he seemed to register a real human emotion.
“I’m scared of what I don’t know about you.”
They stared at each other, another one of those showdowns that she usually won. And she wished she could keep her mouth shut until he made some kind of explanation. But she couldn’t.
“I’ve trusted you,” she whispered. She thought of when Eva and her daughter had been killed, when Sam had called J.D. and he’d come, bringing sex and understanding and a guard dog. I’ve loved you, she thought, knowing it to be true, and felt as if she were cutting off an arm. “I’ve trusted you with the women who come here, with their lives, their information. I’ve trusted you with my home. My body.”
“It’s just sex, Sam.”
It was as if he’d slapped her.
It was as if he’d hauled off and punched her in the gut.
She turned before he could see her cry, staring out the window at the willow in the front yard until it blurred and swam in the tears pooling in her eyes.
The hands that wiped them away shook.
Since she wasn’t an idiot, she didn’t argue. It was just sex, in black and white. But she’d grown to believe over the years that there was something more. A communion between them. An unspoken…care. A delight and respect in the other’s self that went beyond sex.
Well, I guess I was wrong.
She opened her mouth to tell him to leave, but the shrill blast of her phone ringing interrupted.
Relieved, she left him and her bedroom for the phone in the kitchen.
“Hello,” she croaked, her voice thick with tears and pain.
“Hey, Sam,” Deb said from the phone downstairs. “I hate bugging you when I know you got J.D. going on up—”
“It’s all right. What’s going on?” Sam asked, pinching her nose as a headache blew up behind her eyes.
“Sue and Juny left a couple of things when they moved out this morning. Said they’d be back to get them.”
“Is that all?”
“No, Ms. Happy, it isn’t. I’ve got a woman down here asking for you.”
“Is she looking for help?”
Deb laughed. “This lady don’t need our help. She could sell her watch and fix our plumbing problems. She said she’s got some business with you about something that happened nine years ago. A letter or something?”
None of that made sense, but considering the short-circuiting in her brain, the alphabet was a mystery right now.
“I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
She hung up and turned, only to find J.D., shirtless, his pants unzipped, arms braced wide on the frame of the kitchen door.
It’s just sex, she reminded herself when her heart surged at the sight of him. That’s all you are to him.
She’d seen enough self-destructive behavior in her life to know when she was beginning to walk down that path. And wanting to get back in bed with him after the conversation they’d just had was as self-destructive as it got.
She stepped toward him, but he didn’t budge.
“I have to go to work,” she said. “Let me by.”
“Look at me, Sam,” he said, his voice soft, and she couldn’t help but comply.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his stunning blue-gray eyes contrite. “I am. I’m not good at answering questions. Or talking. Really. You…ah…caught me by surprise.”
Sam laughed, but it was an ugly sound, full of hurt and anger. “You and me both. I need to get dressed.” After a moment, he stepped aside and she went into her room and shut the door between them.
Jennifer Stern had a spot on her shirt. A big fat coffee stain right over the second button on her cream blouse. And of all the catastrophes that had befallen her in the past six months, the fact that she was about to have this meeting covered in spilled coffee seemed the worst.
And the fact that this meeting was about to happen in a supply closet added insult to injury. Sure, there were two chairs and a desk, but Jennifer knew a supply closet when she was forced to wait in one.
She wanted to cry. And she hadn’t cried for months.
“Mom?” Spence rested against her knee, wedged between the desk and a box of what looked like shower curtains. His nine-year-old body smelled of sunshine and doughnuts. He wasn’t spotted or stained, though. No, he was in his best clothes, his red curls slightly more managed than usual.
He even wore his good shoes without complaint. He’d drawn the line at the tie she’d brought along and she had to concede that her efforts to make him a walking, talking testimony to her mothering skills had to end somewhere.
But he was healthy, polite, smart as a whip. Confident and silly. Kind. Inquisitive and serious at times to the point of hair-pulling frustration.
But most importantly he was hers.
And she would die before she gave him up.
“Yeah, hon?” She didn’t stroke his head as she wanted to because she knew that he’d shrug her off. Too old, too cool for such things.
“What are we gonna do?” he asked.
Jennifer bit her lip to stop from laughing. Now he wonders? When they were sitting in this office, her covered in coffee, him smelling of Dunkin’ Donuts?
Admittedly she wasn’t much better. In fact, she’d only started to come up with a game plan this morning, after finding out that Samantha Riggins did still live at the address she’d left on file nine years ago.
What were the chances really?
A thirty-eight-year-old woman staying in the same place for nine years. It was unheard-of. From the age of twenty-eight Jennifer had moved no less than ten times, working her way up the ladder of television news.
And because she never, ever thought this meeting would actually happen, Jennifer had concocted a speech for Spence regarding the way people change and grow up and leave things behind, to help him get over the fact that he wouldn’t be able to meet Samantha.
But now they were about to meet her.
I am breaking so many rules, she thought, stunned that she was even capable of that. There were regulations she as the adoptive mother was supposed to follow. And here she was in this closet, ignoring every single one of them.
What’s happened to me? she wondered, panicked and scared of who she was becoming.
And if Jennifer had been able to foresee this particular moment—complete with coffee stain and closet—she would have told Spence no when he brought this adventure up.
“Mommy,” he’d said solemnly two weeks ago, “I think it’s time for me to meet her.”
“I mean, do we just tell her?” he asked now.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be very nice to her, do you? Just springing it on her like that? What do you think we should do?”
“Wel
l.” He dug his notebook out of his knapsack. The grief counselor had told Spence to write things down and the boy, in his usual fashion, had taken her advice to heart.
That notebook was the first thing he picked up in the morning and the last thing he put down at night. “I have some questions for her.”
Jennifer’s mouth unfroze from the perpetual frown she had these days and she felt the brief warmth of a smile. “I’m sure you do, sweetie. But I think maybe what would be best is if I talk to her first for a few minutes. Just to tell her who we are and what we’re doing here. Then you can ask her questions.”
“What do you think she looks like?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. She tried to cross her legs but hit the desk with her shin. “We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” She tried to sound excited because Spence was.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Yeah, hon?”
“Do you think she’ll like me?” he asked, blinking owlishly at her.
The tears she’d been fighting since spilling her coffee clawed at the back of her eyes and she had to bite her tongue hard enough to draw blood to keep them at bay.
“I do,” she finally said. “It’s impossible not to.” She sighed. “But if you don’t like her, we’ll leave right away.” She ducked her head to better see his face. He’d been so brave for the past year. And so excited the whole drive down, only now to be stricken with fear and doubt.
She pulled him into her arms and he let her. He let her stroke his hair and press a kiss to his sweaty forehead, which only told her how nervous her boy was.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know,” he whispered.
Finally the door opened. A tall woman in a black top and khaki pants stood in the doorway.
She had red hair.
Spencer gets his hair from her, Jennifer thought, feeling a little more of her heart break.
Jennifer put her hand against her son’s trembling back. He was practically vibrating. And she realized this was too much. There were a million things Jennifer should have done before this meeting, protocols she should have followed. But none of that seemed important or real.
She’d driven down here thinking this was simply a road trip that would end with her son’s brief disappointment. But now they were looking possible heartbreak in the face.
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 4
