The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1)

by Molly O'Keefe

  For the first time regret seized her. Had she kept Spence, perhaps her life wouldn’t be so focused on work. So lonely.

  “I’ll go get the cards,” she said, jumping up from the table.

  Jennifer was sitting beside Doug’s bed. Again. Watching his chest lift and fall. Lift and fall. Knowing there wasn’t going to be any hesitation. That, should she allow it, his chest would never stop its measured undulation thanks to the machine he was attached to.

  She sat back, weary to the bone just as one of the machines started blaring a terrifying alarm. Jennifer hurled herself across his bed, trying to gauge which machine hooked up to which part of his body was malfunctioning.

  Lungs. Heart. Kidneys.

  More alarms. More blaring. Her heart pounded in her chest. Which one? Which one?

  “Jennifer?”

  She whirled to face her husband, ashen and so thin it nearly killed her to look at him. But there were no intubation tubes, no oxygen mask. He was smiling.

  “It’s your phone, sweetie,” he told her. “Not my heart.”

  Jennifer crashed into consciousness with a sickening impact. Sitting up, the reality of her surroundings, the shelter’s rough sheets, beige walls, snapped her out of her dreamland. Nauseous and disoriented, she looked for Spence, panic a flash flood in her bloodstream. But then she saw the note next to her ringing phone. He was reading in the common room. Relieved, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table.

  “Yes?” she barked, pushing her hair from her face.

  “Jennifer? It’s Kerry.”

  “Waldo?” she asked, reality like an IV drip coming to her slowly, one blessed bead at a time. “What time is it?”

  “About eight on Sunday. I’ve been trying to get you at home.”

  “I’m not there.”

  Kerry laughed. “So I gathered. I know you don’t like us using this number, but it’s an emergency.”

  Uh-oh. Kerry Waldo, her producer—or maybe former producer, depending on whether or not the station was going to hold all these unpaid leaves against her—was calling her with an emergency.

  It was almost like old times.

  If old times included spending the night at homeless shelters and dreaming of her dead husband.

  “What’s up?” She swung her feet to the floor.

  “Annabelle Greer wants to do an interview.”

  Everything went still. Annabelle Greer. Jennifer waited for the rush of excitement, the old thrill that used to fill her at the prospect of such a story. God. Annabelle Greer. It was once in a lifetime. Jennifer’s very specific career dream come true.

  And Jennifer felt nothing.

  “That’s great,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could fake. Kerry laughed.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Kerry asked. “You’ve been hounding that woman for three years.”

  That was three years ago. A lifetime and a husband ago.

  “I’m on vacation.”

  Kerry was silent and Jennifer could tell it wasn’t one of the good types. Kerry was biting her tongue.

  “It’s been six months, Jennifer—”

  “So I should be over it? My husband died, Kerry.”

  “I know, I know, Jennifer. I’m not saying you should be over it. I’m saying maybe work would do you some good. Maybe it’s time to get out among the living.”

  “The living?” Jennifer asked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means Doug died, not you,” Kerry said. “You’ve spent most of the past year in a hospital and your bed. And right now the woman you have been wanting to interview your entire career has agreed to sit down with you. Her husband’s out of the White House, her son is all over the gossip magazines. She’s got a blockbuster on her hands with her latest book and she wants to talk to you. The former First Lady of the United States will only do this interview with you. No you, no interview.”

  Jennifer’s hands shook. Fear like a knife slid right through her guts. Right through her heart. “I’m not—” She swallowed, awash in doubt. “I don’t think I can—”

  “She felt terrible about not being at Doug’s funeral,” Kerry said and Jennifer’s eyes slid shut. “She didn’t want the press to be there. So she’s invited you up to her parents’ place on the Hudson. I’ll produce. Just you, me, Eric on camera and her.”

  She nearly laughed. Just me and the former First Lady. Me and my idol. My hero. My son’s favorite author. My husband’s godmother.

  But, God, where was her excitement? Where was her hunger, her instincts? Doug took everything with him. Everything that was her was gone. Except for Spence. Without Spence here she’d probably melt into her sheets.

  Oh, God, if that wasn’t reason enough to get back to work she didn’t know what was.

  “When?” she asked.

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I’m just asking when, Kerry. Don’t get excited.”

  “Wednesday morning,” Kerry answered. “But we’ll need you tomorrow.”

  She sighed. “I’ll call you back in a few hours,” she said, hung up and then flopped sideways onto the bed.

  J.D. approached the kitchen with his Leatherman tool and a new lock from the hardware store. He was braced for Sam, having been able to smell roses and coffee over the smell of slightly industrial disinfectant that usually filled the shelter.

  His whole body went on high alert the second he stepped through the door.

  I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. Tired of his body being a dog on a leash at the mere thought of her. Come on, Greg, he thought. Make the boyfriend talk and set me free.

  J.D. had slept for all of thirty seconds last night, lying on her lumpy fold-out couch, the smell of her a torment in his head, the memories of what they’d done on that couch in the past a stone in his stomach.

  He felt full of her, like there was a part of her living under his skin and he had to be on guard against it at all times.

  He pushed open the door to the kitchen.

  So, in a sense, he was constantly braced for her.

  But he wasn’t braced for the kid. Could never be braced for the sight of that boy.

  “Skip,” Sam said, laying down UNO cards with flourish. “Skip, oh, and look at this, another skip.” She grinned at Spence, but then caught sight of J.D., breathless and stupid in the doorway.

  It was so like that vision he had. The three of them around a table. Laughing.

  But the smile fled from her face and she laid down another card. “Yellow seven,” she said and cleared her throat.

  Any joy in the room had been sucked out by his arrival and part of him wanted to turn around. Walk right back out. But he had this lock in his hand and there was work to do.

  And that’s my son.

  Damn, thinking like that wasn’t going to do him any good. Wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

  But still he didn’t leave.

  “You know,” Spence said, groaning. “I’m a kid and most adults let kids win.”

  She’s not most adults.

  “I’m not most adults,” Sam said. Her gaze flickered up to J.D. “Was there something you needed?” she asked, cool as winter, and Spence turned around to see who she was talking to.

  The effect of his own eyes in that miniature body hadn’t lost any impact. They still seemed like a laser cutting right through his guts and sinew. To the heart of him.

  Spence lifted the fingers he had curled around the back of the chair in a small wave and J.D. forced himself to act.

  “You need a new lock on the window,” he said, striding across the room like it was a battlefield he was taking over. He ignored the boy’s little wave and felt like a jackass for doing it. J.D. was treating Spence like he had the plague when he was just a kid trying to be polite. Yet J.D. couldn’t stop.

  “Oh,” Sam said, and he could feel her eyes on the naked skin of his neck. “Thank you.”

  Her gratitude made him churlish. The whole damn situation made him want to t
hrow things through the window.

  “You’re welcome,” he snapped.

  “Grouchy,” Sam whispered, no doubt to Spence in an effort to clear the toxic air J.D. had brought in the room.

  Spence laughed and they resumed playing cards. J.D. took a deep breath, unaware he’d been holding it.

  He could practically see Uncle Milo, shaking his head with disgust.

  “Spence is just a kid,” Milo would say. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

  J.D. leaned against the counter and began to unscrew the bolts on the old lock.

  Uncle Milo would do the right thing. Like the old man had done with him. Just thinking that made guilt swell in his throat like vomit.

  If Uncle Milo could claim him, despite what J.D. had done, why couldn’t J.D. be decent to this kid?

  The phone in Sam’s office rang and the sound of her chair scraping across the linoleum seemed loud.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to Spence, then seemed to wait. No doubt wondering what terrible thing J.D. would do if left alone with the kid.

  I’m not a monster, J.D. wanted to snap. I’m not going to hurt him.

  But then he wondered if she’d searched the Internet about him. And found out that he was indeed a monster.

  “He’s fine here,” J.D. said, tossing the busted lock in the sink and making a point of not looking at Sam. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  He felt the moment he was alone in the room with the kid like a cold wind at his back.

  “Whatcha doing?” the boy asked.

  J.D. glanced quickly over his shoulder, getting an impression of red hair and blue-gray eyes filled with a wary curiosity.

  “Putting on new locks.” He ripped open the packaging for the new lock, spilling the parts onto the counter in clumsy haste. He swore under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Spence said.

  Great.

  “You want to play cards?” Spence asked. “You can have Sam’s hand.”

  “I’m fixing the lock.”

  “Right.” Cards slapped against the table and J.D. heard the kid get up, his bare feet almost silent against the floor. “Can I help?” he asked.

  J.D. turned and nearly took the kid’s head off with his elbow. “Dad always let me help,” the kid insisted. J.D. could not look at the boy’s earnest face. “He said I did a good job.”

  “There’s not much—”

  “He gave me a tool set for Christmas last year. A real one. Not a kid set.”

  J.D. could barely breathe. His brain was turning to mush, a pile of goo inside his skull. The boy’s chatter was like a spell. He couldn’t move.

  “Here.” Spence braced his arms, so skinny under the wide sleeves of his T-shirt, on the counter and shimmied himself up and beside J.D. in a second.

  The silk of Spencer’s hair brushed J.D.’s arm and he jerked away as if he’d been brushed by live wires.

  “I can hold it,” Spence said, blinking at him. “And you do the screws.”

  J.D. looked at the boy and saw himself. Saw himself at sixteen, alone and scared and wanting, despite all the bravado he’d learned at Wilhelm, to help. To be useful.

  He’d wanted more, of course. J.D. had looked up at Uncle Milo and wanted something clean, something to wipe away some of the black swill of his life.

  He hoped, again, that Spence would never know that darkness.

  “My dad died,” Spence said and the screwdriver fell from J.D.’s hands, banging off the sink.

  Don’t do this to me. Don’t make this so hard. I’m trying to do the right thing here.

  “I’m sorry,” J.D. said, picking up the screwdriver. “About your dad.”

  “It’s all right. I mean it’s not. But—” The boy shrugged, digging his thumbnail in the grout around the stainless steel sink.

  “I know,” J.D. said, because he did know. He knew how things could be so wrong, all the way down deep, but on the surface be okay.

  Spencer looked up, his eyes so clear, such a beautiful mix of blue and gray like the ocean off the coast. The boy tilted his head, his eyes touching on every one of J.D.’s features as if he were looking in a mirror.

  “Do you want me to help?” Spence asked.

  J.D. could barely nod. But a light returned to Spence’s eyes and he maneuvered to sit on the edge of the sink, his bare feet planted on either side of the drain, his knees pressed tight together.

  J.D. tried not to breathe. He tried not to feel. Or think. Or want. Or wish. But it was all right there anyway, as real as the smell of bananas coming off his son. And things inside of J.D. broke. Walls he’d erected in juvie, under the brutal hands of his father, walls that were reinforced every day doing his job, all collapsed and he found himself wanting something. For the first time in years.

  He wanted to reach out to this kid.

  “J.D.?”

  “My name is J. D. Kronos,” he whispered. “I’m your dad.”

  9

  Sam held herself up by sheer force of will. Her knees were water and her hands, braced on the door frame of her office, felt like cobwebs.

  Closing her eyes couldn’t block out the scene in her kitchen. It was burned into her head, her heart branded by the look in J.D.’s eyes as he stared down at Spencer.

  J.D., at that moment, was so naked, so vulnerable, so real. And it only proved that he’d never been half as vulnerable, half as naked, half as real with her.

  She’d never seen that look in his eye, that caution and worry. J.D. looked so young staring down at Spence. His arms at odd angles, his eyes wide.

  He looked like a boy.

  And she wanted, she wanted so badly—knowing it was stupid and useless and practically suicidal—to stroke his forehead, curl him against her chest, hold him tight warding off those feelings of doubt that she saw in his eyes.

  “You said your name wasn’t Jonathon David,” Spencer said and Sam’s head spun. J.D. had claimed Spencer. He’d done it.

  “It’s not,” J.D. said, his voice a gruff whisper in the quiet kitchen. “It’s Jakos Diavoletes. Sam thought my name was Jonathon David.”

  “Jakos Diavo—” The boy stumbled over the foreign name and Sam stepped backward into the shadows of her office. Her heel hit the boxes of shampoo and she lowered herself onto them, feeling older than dirt. Older than the world. Something ugly filled her—a green, greedy monster.

  You’re better than this, she tried to tell herself. You know better.

  But it was one more thing about herself that this situation with J.D. had ripped away.

  She wasn’t above jealousy.

  She was envious of her son. Of what J.D. was giving that boy.

  What’s wrong with me that I would begrudge Spencer this moment?

  But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. Not entirely. It’s that J.D., not once in ten years together, had ever given her this moment. He’d surprised her, brought her a guard dog, listened to her fears late at night. She’d thought she had part of him, carried something of him with her, in her, around her.

  But he’d never given anything of himself. Not the way he was giving to Spencer.

  And she felt like she’d given so much of herself. Every time.

  “Jakos. The J makes a Y sound. Diavoletes,” J.D. said. “It’s Greek.”

  “I’m Greek?” Spence asked, as if there might be superpowers involved in such a thing.

  There was a long pause and finally J.D. cleared his throat and said, “Yes. I guess you are.”

  J.D. had claimed Spencer.

  She knew she shouldn’t care. She was still angry, furious with him. With herself. But it still hurt.

  Almost more than she could bear.

  Sam leaned forward and swung her door shut.

  Jennifer managed to pull herself out of her bed and into the clothes she’d worn yesterday. Everything hung from her body like a sack.

  I’m a scarecrow, she thought, catching sight of herself in the cheap mirror above the cheaper chest of
drawers. Doug had always called her elegant. Fragile, even. Audrey Hepburnesque. Now, she looked like bones in loose flesh.

  She leaned closer to the mirror, pulling taut the newly sagging skin at her jawline. How had she gotten here? A face-lift candidate.

  None of that mattered now. She’d packed their bags, leaving out a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt for Spence. She’d gone so far as to make up their beds, tucking down the sheets just as she’d found them last night.

  She looked around the room, and it was as if they’d never been here at all. Which is how she wanted it. She wished she could just reach into Spencer’s head, tuck down his memories, making it seem as if he’d never met Sam. Never seen this place.

  It was time to go.

  Spence had met Sam, asked his questions. Life was calling her back to Baltimore.

  The First Lady, after all, was waiting.

  She paused, searched hard inside herself for some kind of reaction, but again, there was nothing.

  She left the room, stepping into the hallway toward the kitchen. Following the smell of coffee and the sound of her son’s voice and, surprisingly, the deeper vibration of an adult male’s voice.

  She sped up, encouraged by some nameless panic, nearly erupting into the kitchen, only to discover Spence and that man, J.D., putting screws to a lock on the window.

  “Hey, Mom!” Spence cried, his face flushed with excitement, his eyes glittering with an inner energy she hadn’t seen in eons.

  It was blinding and beautiful.

  “Guess what, Mom?” Spence asked and she opened her mouth to say what, but apparently he was in no need of prompting. “I’m Greek.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Part Greek. This is J.D.” Spence gestured to J.D., who nodded at her without making eye contact. Her stomach contracted in sudden apprehension. “He’s my dad.”

  It wasn’t the words—a fool could see that this silent man was Spencer’s biological father. It wasn’t even the way J.D. looked at Spence, as if the boy was a gift-wrapped box he didn’t know what to do with.