by Judi Fennell
And now she had to share him.
Jenna took in a shaky, shallow breath. “Do we have to? I mean, right o f f the bat? Can’t we let him get to k now you, ease into it ?”
Bryan shook his head . “Jenna, Trevor’s my son; I will be in his l ife. I’d like things to be amicable between you and I, with what’s best for him at the center of everything we do, but I will be his father. He will k n ow me.”
The words she’d wanted Carl to say. To feel. Not this stranger who’d suddenl y laid claim to everything she held dear.
And had more right to that claim than she did.
“Okay. But let’s give it a few days. Let him get used to you being around, have other people get used to seeing you here.”
“How long do you think tha t’s going to last? You’d heard what I’d said about you in under an hour. How long do you think it’s going to take for this news to get around town—and back to Trevor ? His ‘buddy’ Michael is going to relish sharing this little tidbit.”
Michael was a jerk like that. So were his parents. The kid came by it naturally.
Jenna blew out a breath trying to settle the butterflies in her stomach. This was it, the irrevocable step. Once she gave in, there was no going back.
But part of being a parent was doing what was best for your child, even if it meant something that wasn’t good for you. “Okay, Bryan, we ’ll tell him when he gets home later.”
“Good. That’s settled.” He pulled the cash out of his pocket. “Now, as to the money—”
“I told you, I’m not taking it.”
“Jenna, it was never for sex. I was never going to demand that from you.”
So much for Cathy’s suggestion.
Jenna was appalled to find out she was disappointed.
“I wanted you to have it so you wouldn’t have to, well, do what I th ought you were doing. But now, I want you to t ake it. It’s the least I can do to help out. You ’ve had four years of doing it all by yourself. You don’t have to anymore.”
She refused to touch the money and it had nothing to do with his mistaken assumptions. This had to do with her. Who she was. “Let’s get one thing straight, Bryan. I can provide for my son.”
“Our son.”
“Fine. Our son. But I can do it. If you want to contribute, put the money aside for college. “
“Nice gesture, but we’re sharing him, Jenna. Fifty—fifty. And that includes the cost of raising him. I’ll put the ten grand in a college fund, but from here on out, I’m paying half of everything .”
“I’m not comfortable taking money from you .”
“Jenna—”
“No, seriously. Listen. I didn’t come after you for money when he was born and I’m not asking for any now. We’re not getting married, Bryan, we’re raising our son.”
“Then work for me. Earn the money . Surely, you can use some extr a cash.”
The extra cash would be nice, but… “You want me to strip for you?”
Good thing she was sitting down because he r knees got more than a little wobbly at that image: her and Bryan in her bedroom, seductive music playing in the background, shimmying her shorts down her legs, pulling her top over her head—She didn’t even know how to strip seductively and doing so would out her in a m inu te. No way would she have been hired by any dance company anywhere.
“Dance? No. But there’s a mountain of paperwork in the office, however, that I’d love for you to make sense of. In voices, p urchase orders, new hire paperwork… I can dance and I can manage dancer s and I can bring patrons in; wh at I don’t want to do is figure out invoice n umbers and net bi l ling and escrow accounts and stuff like that . I ’ll gladly turn all of that over to you so you can earn your paycheck. Work around Trevor’s schedule. What do you say ?”
“Just office work? Paperwork and things like that?”
“Just paperwork.”
“No dancing?”
“No.” Not even if she wanted to. The dancers made great tips, but she was not going to show off her body for anyone.
Except him.
Bryan wanted to laugh , but it actually wasn’t funny. The only way he’d get to see Jenna’s body was i n his dreams.
If only he could remember that night.
“Why?” Jenna was staring at him with her beautiful blue eyes. They’d sparkled in the candlelight last night and he’d fallen a little under their spell. It was happening again here.
“Why?” He dragged his gaze off of hers. He needed to keep his wits about him right now; what they defined would affect Trevor for who-knew-how-long. Momentary lust had no place in this discussion.
And then she inhaled and her breasts moved under her t-shirt , two soft mounds that he’d obviously had in his hands and probably his mouth four years ago .
Shit. There was nothing momentary about what he was feeling for her.
“Yes, why? Why are you so hell-bent on me working for you? You don’t even know me.”
But he did: i n the biblical sense. Didn’t matter if he didn’t remember ; Trevor was proof. This was not what he’d expected when he’d come here this morning. At most he’d been worried about changing her job description. Now, he had to convince her to take the legit job he was offering. “You’re a single mom. I was given up for adoption by my birth mother; I always wondered if she’d had help if she would have kept me. You need help, I can provide it. It’s a win-win situation for both of us.”
“For all three of us, you mean.”
Yeah, all three of them.
Chapter Fourteen
“You’re sure the kid’s yours, right ?” Gage pointed to one of the down lights on the stage that’d been knocked out of whack.
“He’s mine.” Bryan checked the wiring and adjusted the light. Some patron always had a little too much to drink and leaned over it to grab the dancers. Male, female, it didn’t matter; the drunks were equal opportunity grabbers. He was going to have to re-think the lighting design before someone got hurt either by having to be pulled off the stag e or fried to a crisp by touching the bulb.
“How can you be sure? I mean, you don’t remember what she look ed like. You sure she’s not after your money? This place?”
Yeah, Gage had the right to be worried. His future was tied up in BeefCake, Inc. as much as Bryan’s was.
“When you meet Trevor , you’ll see. There’s no question. But what are you doing here? I thought Connor’s surgery was today?”
Gage winced, a look Bryan was all too familiar with on his partner’s face. The hit-and-run that had injured Connor had knocked his whole family down and the pressure all rested on Gage’s shoulders. Bryan had never been happier for his friend than when he’d found Lara. For the first time in a long time, he’d seen Gage really happy.
“He woke up with a sinus infection. They don’t want to put him under anesthesia until that clears up, so we’ve had to postpone.”
“Ah, man, Gage, I’m sorry. I know ho w much you were looking f orward to getting it over with.”
“Yeah , seven down, two to go. We just want them to be done .”
Bryan coul d relate on a different level. No, he wasn’t facing surgeries for Trevor—that he knew about anyway; he’d have to make a mental note to remember to ask Jenna about that later—but the worry and the love and the thoughts of what the kid’s future would be like… Bryan suddenly got all of those. The parental feelings had been creeping up on him ever since he’d left Jenna’s house. What was his son doing right now? Who was he playing with? Or was he drawing? Taking a nap? Was Michael telling him a bunch of inappropriate things… Most p eople got nine months to adjust ; he’d had about nine hours.
“Do they know when?”
Gage shrugged and adjusted the centerpiece on the table. “He’s got at least two weeks with the antibiotics. They wa n t to make sure it’s knocked out of him before we go back.”
“Makes sense. Doesn’t help your stress level, but you want what’s best for Connor.”
&nb
sp; Gage turned one of the chairs around and straddled it at the table. “So . A son. You have a son.”
A goofy smile showed up on Bryan’s face and he couldn’t wipe it off. Not that he wanted to. He had a son. “I know, right? I feel like I should be handing out cigars or something. Buying blue stuff.”
“Four’s a little old for t h at sort of thing.”
The goofy smiled disappeared. “Yeah. Four. I missed a lot.”
“You mad?”
Bryan had to think about that. “No, I can’t say that I am. She had tough decisions to make and I hav e no right to question them. I wasn’t there, I don’t know what she was going through or her situation. It was just a one—night thing and she’s right; for all she knew I could have been married and the baby would have been trouble. She didn’t k n ow me.”
“And you didn’t know her. Yet now you want her to work here?”
“I’ll pay her out of my take.”
“The money’s not the problem. I’m worried about you. You don’t know anything about this woman.”
“She’s an English teacher at the high school and has lived here for three years. Sarge thinks she’s great, all of her students that I’ve met love her, and Trevor seems to be pretty well adjusted. I think she’s trustworthy .”
“But the circumstances of how you met—”
“Watch it, Gage. You’re talking about the mother of my child.” Bryan hadn’t realized the caveman attitude was lurking in his psyche, but, yeah, it was. Maybe that’d be his costume the next time he had to cover for one of the dancers instead of his cop persona. “I certainly wasn’t winning any Respectable Citizen awards that night either. I’m just as much to blame as she is.”
Words he had to remember. No double standards when it came to hook-up sex and broken condoms.
“Okay, as long as you know what you’re doing. I just don’t want you blinded by the white picket f ence image and not see the weeds.”
There were no weeds. He’d been the weed by m aking the assumption he had about her.
“So when are you turning over the reins? We’ve had a couple calls come in from vendors looking for their payment s . I know we’ve got the money on the b o oks, so I figured it was just a matter of paperwork.”
“Yeah, you know me; I’d rather be doing any thing than push ing papers. That’s why I’m hiring Jenna.”
Gage stood up and repositioned the chair. “Good. Now maybe all our female dancers will stop mooning over you.”
“You’re just jealous that it’s not you —w hich it would have been if we’d hired them before you met Lara.”
“Yeah, but since the female dancers were Lara’s idea, they wouldn’t be here.” Gage got that goofy smile Bryan had grown accustomed to seeing in the last year . One year and so much had changed for his friend. “And besides, I’m perfectly happy with only Lara mooning over me.”
A couple more seconds of that goofy smile , but then Gage got serious. As Bryan knew he would. They’d been friends for ever. They goofed around, teased each other, gave each other shit, but they were there for each other. “So other than hire her, what else are you going to do about Trevor’s mother? Is there anything else between you?”
Bryan had been asking himself that same thing. He walked to the window and looked out at the lunchtime traffic. A young mother was pushing a baby carriage down the sidewalk towards a man who enveloped her in a hug . He gave her a sweet peck on the cheek before picking a rattle out of the carriage and shaking it for the baby. Pudgy little arms and legs waved beneath a blur of pink.
Had Jenna taken Trevor for walks? Had anyone hugged her or played with a rattle for Trevor ?
He wished he had. Wanted to now.
Maybe in the future …
“Hell, Gage . I don’t know have a clue .” He gathered the book and invoices and the rest of the hated paperwork. “I have to get back. We’re going to tell Trevor when he wakes up from his nap today.”
“Don’t you think you should fig ure things out before you involv e him?”
“Can’t. The gossip in this town is rampant. We don’t want hi m hearing it f rom someone else , and after Jenna stormed out of Tosco ’s last night, we’re on the gossips’ radar. It’s better if he hears it from us.”
“It’s your call, Bry. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Chapter Fifteen
Jenna straightened the last magazine on the table and fluffed the last pillow on the sofa . This was silly. Bryan didn’t care what her house looked like . Neither did Trevor. As l ong as he had room on the rug to build his football stadium—again—he was happy. She’d had to pry him away from the blocks to get him to take his n ap, but take his nap he would. There’d never been a more important time for him to be well rested because once they told him Bryan was his father, Jenna had a feeling Trevor would never close his eyes again.
Bryan tapped the sidelight by the front door.
She had to smile. Already he was acting like a parent, keeping the noise to a minimum so he didn’t wake Trevor .
“He’s still napping,” she said as she opened the front door.
“Good. That’ll give us time to go over these.” He held up a pile of papers, but Jenna wasn’t looking at them. She was looking at hi m . At those eyes that were the spitting image o f Trevor’s, at the smile that crossed lips she wished she’d been the one to kiss four years ago, and down to his broad chest covered in that sexy as hell t-shirt that she wished she’d been the one to remove that night…
She shook her head. The only reason she was wishing she’d been the one that night was so that her parental rights wouldn’t be called into issue. If she were truly Trevor’s biological mother, she wouldn’t be risking her son’s family, stability, and happiness by bringing his father back i n to the picture.
It was a Catch -22: s he wanted Trevor to have a father, she just didn’t want that father to have any claim to supersede hers.
“Let’s go into my office.”
Bryan stopped in the doorway. “No wonder you wanted to toss my money back in my face.” The room was ringed with eye-chart—like posters of letters and numbers and sentence structures and diagrams. A couple of timelines from the Revolutionary War were lined up on the wall on the far side. Her desk was covered with lined paper, rulers, and pencils, and stacks of notebooks where her students practiced their writing.
“I’d thought there was a lavish bed back here. Silk sheets, a waterfall, sensual music—”
The image was getting to her so Jenna took her seat behind her desk. Normally, she’d sit next to her clients at the con f erence table she’d shoved up against the wall to conserve space, but with Bryan weaving seduction—albeit unknowingl y—into the room, she needed a buff er.
Bryan spread the papers out and handed her the ledger.
“You don’t use the computer?”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t a top priority cash outlay at the beginning since we had to hire s taff , get a venue and fix it up. Manually has been working for us.”
She nudged the stack of unpaid bills. “Uh huh.”
A black curl fell over his forehead when he ducked his head. “Well, it worked for a while.”
“Okay, so show me your system. I might need to make some adjustments.”
“As long as it’s no t diverting funds to the Cayman s, be my guest.”
She put her pencil down. “Look, Bryan, either you trust me or you don’t, but I wasn’t the only person there that night Trevor was conceived . You might think I’m cheap and trampy or something—most people do when they think of strippers—but I’m honest.”
The words mocked her. Here she was, declaring her honesty when the biggest lie in the world just rolled off her tongue .
But she was doing it for the right reasons; that’s what she had to remember. Didn’t history treat Robin Hood much kinder than the Sheriff of Nottingham had? Sure, what he’d been doing was illegal by the
letter of the law, but by the spirit, Robin Hood had been doing what was right.
Was she really comparing herself to a fairy tale?
“Jenna, it was a joke. I do trust you. You’ve proven yourself by getting yourself out of dancing and into teaching, and by how well you’ve raised Trevor. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”
“Oh.” She picked her pencil back up, different factions warring inside of her. She hated lying. Really really hated it. Had never been good at it and hadn’t wanted to be. And the fact that she was good enough at it that he didn’t question her—and even trusted her—was scary.
It’s all for Trevor .
Right. She had to remember that. “Okay, so show me what’s current.”
They worked on the books with Jenna pulling out her laptop to load a basic accounting program and typing in the data.
“This won’t be hard, and it’ not going to take me much time. I can probably get it done during his nap.”
“I don’t wanna take any more naps.”
Trevor stood in the doorway to her office.
“Hi Bwyan. Can we pw ay football now?”
“Hey, Sp ort.” Bryan hopped out of his chair and scoop ed Trevor up beneath his arm before Jenna could make h er way out from behind her desk.
And, yes, she was jealous that Trevor had his arms wrapped around Bryan’s neck and was perfectly comfortable b e ing in his arms.
She was jealous th at Trevor was in hi s arm s.
“Trevor, a growing boy n eeds his naps. That’s when he grows.”
“Nu h uh. Mi chael said that’s a crock of… Something. Anyway, Michael said it’s a really ba d idea. But I dunno, his stories sounded kinda c ool.”
“Everything was “cool” these days to Connor. Except Bryan , that was. Bryan had been aweso m e .
“How about this ?” Bryan sat down and settled Trevor on his knee. “How about if you take a nap for your mom, then I’ll take you out for a cupcake afterwards? No nap means no cupcake.”
She was going to have to educate Bryan on the merits—and lack thereof—of bargaining with a child. Especially Trev. He could be as stubborn as they came at times.
