That Thing Called Love

by Susan Andersen

  Jenny retrieved the line at the bow, and she and Jake were winding figure eights around the dock cleats, fore and aft, when someone hailed Austin. She looked over her shoulder in time to see her honorary brother’s face light up.

  “Hey, that’s Mr. D’s Chris-Craft! Looks like Nolan and Squirt and their folks and...” He rose to peer over the windshield, then shrugged at Jenny. “I don’t know who the girl is.”

  The boat pulled alongside them. “Ahoy,” Mark Damoth said, using the same technique as Austin to stop his fishing-style boat before stretching out a leg to brace his foot against the Bayliner, keeping the two boats parallel without allowing their sides to bang together. He gave them all a cheerful smile before saying to Austin, “Nolan thought that was your boat.”

  Austin blinked at his friend. “I didn’t know you guys were coming out today.”

  “Me neither,” Nolan said. “But we wanted to show Bailey around and I remembered you sayin’ you were bringing Jenny and your da—um, him—” he tipped his head at Jake “—here.” Obviously wanting to change the subject, he grabbed the hand of a girl who looked to be about his and Austin’s age. “This is Bailey.”

  “She’s our cousin,” Nolan’s little brother Josh interrupted.

  “Right,” Nolan said drily. “I think I told you about her, didn’t I, A? The girl who rocks baseball?”

  “Sure, who could forget that?” Sliding his fingertips in his front pants pockets, he looked at the girl. “How ya doin’?”

  “Okay,” she murmured.

  “My aunt Debbie’s been sick,” Nolan said. “So Bails is gonna live with us through the summer.”

  Jenny saw a shadow cross Bailey’s blue eyes. It came and went so fast, she couldn’t swear she hadn’t imagined it—or that it hadn’t been caused by one of the puffy clouds drifting across the sky or the brim of the girl’s blue-and-brown plaid newsboy cap, which she wore pulled down to the delicate arch of her dark eyebrows.

  She suspected, however, that it was neither of those things. Not if the girl’s mother was sick enough to send her daughter to a new school this close to the end of the school year.

  The brief look she exchanged with Rebecca Damoth didn’t lessen her suspicion.

  “This is Jenny and Jake, Bailey,” Austin informed the girl, jerking his chin to indicate them. “I don’t think you’ve met Jake either, have you, Squirt?” he asked Josh, then turned to the boy’s father. “How ’bout you, Mr. D? You met him?”

  A muscle in Jake’s jaw ticked, no doubt due to Austin’s continued insistence on calling him by his first name rather than acknowledge their relationship. But if so, he smoothed out his expression so quickly, she wasn’t sure what she’d seen.

  “Your dad might not remember,” Mark Damoth said with easy friendliness, leaning out of his boat to offer his hand, “but I student coached Jake’s Little League team with my dad one summer.”

  “Wow.” Jake shook the other man’s hand across the foot of water separating the two boats. “I didn’t put you together with that kid from back when. I thought you were so cool when I was twelve.” He shot the other man a sly smile. “But you’re old, dude.”

  Mark threw back his head and laughed. “Not to mention a few pounds heavier,” he agreed amiably, giving his paunch an affectionate slap. “I’d hoped to meet you again at the kids’ pizza party, but I got held up at work.”

  “We thought we’d hike up to the café and get the kids a cone,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you join us?”

  The suggestion clearly appealed to Austin, and Jake nodded. “Sounds like an excellent plan.”

  “I’ll go moor the boat,” Mark said and pushed his craft farther away from the Bayliner.

  “Woo-hoo!” Austin was all smiles as he climbed out of his boat and strode down to where Mark docked behind them. He caught the line Nolan tossed him, and the two boys secured the boat.

  Jenny watched Jake hesitate for a moment before he reached for the flat, plain brown paper-wrapped package she’d noticed him carrying earlier. Then he turned and held out his free hand to her. Lacking the length of the Bradshaw men’s legs, she knew better than to turn up her nose at the gesture. Scrabbling out of the boat like a two-year-old, only without the charm, held no appeal. Sliding her fingers into his palm, she allowed him to hand her onto the dock.

  He followed behind her, making the single steep step from the deck of the boat to the float look effortless.

  Austin and the Damoths met them moments later, and they all crossed a nearby footbridge and hiked to the top of a switchback trail. A café, general store and coffee shop/ice-cream parlor nestled in a sunny clearing among the trees at its top. They headed for the latter and a bell ting-a-linged over the door of the shop as they entered.

  The kids promptly claimed a white wrought-iron table that was barely big enough for the four of them once Austin had pulled over two additional chairs from a neighboring table. The message was clear that no adults were allowed.

  Mark laughed and claimed a slightly larger table on the other side of the room. The shop wasn’t spacious enough to support a reasonable expectation of privacy, but the teens seemed satisfied with the bit of independence the separation provided them.

  Josh was clearly happy just being able to hang with the bigger kids.

  Jenny discovered the adult table wasn’t all that roomy either when her feet tangled with Jake’s much larger ones beneath it. The second time it happened she tucked hers between her chair’s legs.

  The Damoths were open and friendly, and they all chatted easily as a young woman distributed laminated lists of ice cream flavors to both tables. Mark, big and easygoing, waved a beefy hand in the kids’ direction. “Put whatever they’re having on my tab.”

  Jake had set his small package on the table, but had to move it to the floor when their coffee and ice cream arrived a short while later.

  “What’ve you got there?” Mark asked, as Jake rested it with patent care against the leg of his chair.

  “Just something I made for Austin.”

  Jenny watched the teen snap his head up to stare at his father. He’d obviously heard and was torn between a natural teenage curiosity and his need to hang on to the distance he’d stringently been trying to maintain. The green eyes so similar to Jake’s lit up when Mark demanded for him, “That right? What is it?”

  Seeing that Jake was about to answer, Jenny didn’t have a clue why she jumped in before he could. “You ever do much fishing when you were a kid?” she asked him.

  He looked puzzled, undoubtedly as much by the rudeness of her interruption as the out-of-the-blue question. But he said politely, “Not so much. My dad took me once or twice, but he left my mom and me when I was still pretty young. Why?”

  “Because one of the hard-and-fast rules when you get a fish on the line is to let it run with the bait a bit to set the hook before you haul him in.” As if she’d know. Still, she’d certainly heard enough fishermen over the years to talk a decent game.

  His dark brows furrowed. “O-kay.”

  Mark, who faced the kids from Jenny’s side of the table, caught on much faster. “It’s true,” he said. “Trying to reel a fish in too quickly rarely pays in the end.” His gaze rested on the kids’ table for a second before he gave Jake a meaningful look. “You get a much more satisfying result if you play ’em a little, then haul them in slowly.”

  Enlightenment dawned. “Aw,” Jake murmured. “Sure. You probably have a point.”

  “Okay, I don’t have a clue what you all are talking about,” Rebecca said mildly. “But this sure is good ice cream.”

  They laughed and turned the conversation in another direction.

  Suddenly Austin blurted, “Aw, man, how’d you get so lucky?” Nolan said something in return, and Austin pushed out of his chair and came over to the adults’ table.
“Nolan and Bailey getta watch the new Transformers movie tonight on Mr. D’s Blu-ray.”

  “Me, too!” Josh said.

  “Yeah, even Squirt gets to see it,” Austin agreed. “You remember that show, Jenny? The one I didn’t get to see when it played in Silverdale because I caught the stinking flu from the guy in room 118? The one who—”

  “—ran around spreading germs instead of having the decency to stay home when he was sick?” she completed the lament in unison with the boy.

  Yes, she remembered. It was hard to forget when he’d been so vocal about the way he’d been robbed of the movie that he had waited forever to see.

  Nolan and Bailey joined him at the table, Josh scrambling in their wake. “I told him he could watch it with us, Mom,” Nolan said. “Bailey’d like that, too, wouldn’t you?”

  The girl nodded politely and he promptly turned back to his mother. “See? And I think he should probably ride home with us to save time. That’d be okay, wouldn’t it?”

  No, Jenny thought. She wasn’t going to get stuck alone with Jake.

  “Well, it would be,” Rebecca said, “except for the part where it’s a whole lot of unfair to Jenny and Jake. They were on an outing before we came tootling along to horn in on it.”

  You tell him, sister, she thought. “Not to mention it’s a school night,” she added with faux regret.

  “No, it’s not.” Austin said. “Tomorrow’s teacher prep, remember?”

  Crap. She’d forgotten.

  “Teacher prep?” Jake said.

  “Or something.” The boy grinned. “Who cares what, exactly, as long as it means a day off for us?”

  “Not me!” Nolan whooped.

  “Not me,” Josh echoed, his eyes alight and a glaze of chocolate ice cream ringing his mouth.

  “So how about it?” Austin asked Jenny.

  “Don’t look at me. It’s up to your father.” Sitting back, she refrained from patting herself on the back for her slick passing of the buck. But, really. If Jake wanted to be a parent so bad, then let him drive the last nail in the coffin. She’d been the biggest disciplinarian in Austin’s life for quite some time now. It would be nice not to be the one saying no for a change.

  “Okay,” Jake said.

  She whipped around to stare at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Just sticking to the spirit of hook, line and running with the bait,” he said with the facial equivalent of a shrug. Then he turned to Rebecca. “So it’s okay with me, but you’re the one who should have the final say. The boys worked the angles pretty hard to railroad you into doing what they wanted. If you’re not in the mood for another kid tonight, just say the word. We can always rent the video this weekend.”

  “Dude!” Austin protested. “We don’t have a Blu-ray.”

  “And yet I’m pretty sure we’d somehow muddle along.” The level gaze Jake used to pin his son in place stayed steady until Austin looked away.

  “I guess,” he muttered to the floor.

  “Austin’s welcome to join us,” Rebecca said. “We’re just going to set them up in the family room with the video and a bowl of popcorn—nothing fancy.”

  The boys cheered, and Bailey, who had been fairly quiet—at least where the adults were concerned—smiled.

  “Speaking of which, we should probably get going,” Mark said. “I’ll go settle the bill.”

  Jake crooked a finger at his son and, when Austin cocked his head, he held out his hand. “I need the key to the boat.”

  The teen dug it and its small rubbery key ring out of his pocket, but gave him a suspicious stare. “You ever even driven a boat?”

  “Not often, but enough to know what I’m doing. If you’d rather come home with us, though—”

  Austin handed the flotation key ring over.

  Jake grabbed the plain package. “Here.” He held it out. “This is for you.” Turning to Rebecca he said, “Let me give you my card. My cell number is on it. Have Austin call after the show and I’ll come pick him up.”

  “He can stay overnight,” Nolan said, but zipped his lips when Jake turned his gaze on him. “Uh, that is...we’ll do that, okay?”

  Rebecca watched her flustered son turn away, and her lips curled up at the corners. “I need to get me that look,” she said under her breath as she accepted the card Jake fished out of his wallet. “Because that was very nicely played.”

  Jenny had to admit it was. He’d acted like a real father for perhaps the first time since coming back into Austin’s life. He hadn’t tried to be the boy’s friend. He had let it be known, not only that he understood they were being played, but that going with the Damoths tonight was a privilege—not a right—and had laid down the conditions under which his son could reap the benefit.

  “Oh. Man.”

  The awe in Austin’s voice had her turning in his direction. He held a framed photograph in his hands, its brown paper discarded on the table, and he was staring at it with dazzled eyes.

  Even as she watched, however, he marshaled an expression of boredom.

  The other kids didn’t share his reserve. “Dude!” Nolan exclaimed, while Bailey said with breathless appreciation, “That. Is. So. Cool!”

  Truly curious now, she joined them. “May I see?”

  Wordlessly, Austin held out the frame. Taking it from his hands, she looked down.

  And blurted, “Oh! My.” Glancing over at Jake, she noted a hint of color on his cheekbones, but the black-and-white photograph he’d taken tugged at her like a toddler for her mother’s attention, and Jenny turned back to study it.

  It was an action shot of Austin just after he’d hurled the ball toward first base. It showed his body English and the blur of the baseball in midair not far from his fingers, showed, too, the determination and concentration on his face.

  “That’s incredible,” Mark said from over her shoulder.

  Rebecca wriggled her way between them. “Don’t leave me in suspense—let me see!” The same look that appeared on everyone else’s face suffused her expression when Jenny handed it over. “Wow.” She looked up at Jake. “Wow. This is amazing.”

  “It turned out pretty good,” he said in a low-key way. “That’s always a good feeling.” His shoulders gave a subtle hitch. “I thought Austin might get a kick out of it.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.” The teen was clearly trying to adopt his father’s casual cool. “Uh...thanks.”

  “No problem. You want me to take it back to Jenny’s for you?”

  “No, that’s all right,” Austin said a hair too quickly.

  Jake, however, didn’t indicate by so much as a muscle twitch that he’d caught on to the fact that Austin wasn’t ready to let it out of his sight. “Well, I guess Jenny and I should take off. I want to check over the boat before I drive it. Give me a call when you’re ready to come home.”

  “’Kay.”

  They thanked Mark for the ice cream and said their goodbyes, then left the clearing and walked single file down the switchbacks to the docks. Jake didn’t talk and, once on the boat, sat in the driver’s seat to study the boat’s instruments.

  Jenny got out their life vests and began to relax. Heck, it didn’t matter that it was just the two of them. It was a short ride to The Brothers’ dock on the other side of the canal, Jake was clearly preoccupied, and all she had to do was sit tight for fifteen minutes max, and she’d be snug as a bug in a rug back in her own space. She passed Jake his safety vest, untied the back of the boat and stood prepared in the bow to unloop the front line as well when he was ready to go.

  With an economy of motion, he donned the flotation device and started the boat’s engine. As soon as she freed the boat from the last cleat, he put the craft in gear and slowly pulled away from the dock, then headed for the mouth of the harbor.

 
Jenny returned to her seat, expecting him to give the boat a burst of speed as soon as they hit open water.

  Instead he looked at her across the short space separating the two seats and continued putting along at a snail’s pace. “So this is your favorite place, huh?”

  She made a face. “Actually, it’s Austin’s favorite place, but he likes to attribute it to me.”

  “You got any hot plans for the night?”

  “What? No.” Dammit! Wrong answer. But caught flat-footed by the change of subject, she could only stare at him, too slow to lie through her teeth and say, “Yes, indeed. Big plans. Biiig plans. Gotta hurry.”

  She’d always stunk at on-the-fly lying.

  “Excellent,” he said easily. “I’m too wired and it’s too nice a night to head straight home. Let’s go explore a little bit.”

  Oh, let’s not. But she didn’t want to make a bigger deal of this than it warranted. She’d give him ten minutes or so, then plead a long day today and a bigger day at work tomorrow.

  She tried to ignore the kick in her stomach as their eyes met. “Ducky.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  OKAY, SO JENNY WASN’T THRILLED. Jake’s initial inclination was to ignore the fact and just enjoy a little freedom on the water. Hell, his hand was on the throttle and he was ready to give it the forward momentum that would send them blasting down the canal.

  But he couldn’t in all good conscience do it. Pulling the throttle into neutral, he turned to look at her. “You’re pissed at me.” Although she’d been nothing but outwardly polite this evening, he’d felt her underlying reserve.

  She raised her brows. “Am I?” The shiny dark hair he’d watched her tie in an honest-to-God knot earlier had listed to the left until it now nestled just behind her ear. Silky pieces had escaped the knot to float about her face or slither down her nape.

  He ignored the sudden itch in his fingers. “I know I said I’d quit depending on you to smooth my way with Austin—and, swear to God, I intended to. But my timing’s been off all over the place, because—damn, Jenny—I also knew better than to bring up the boat business in front of his friends, where it had a high potential to embarrass him or put him on the defensive right from the get. But I’d been worrying about the idea of him being out in a powerful boat without supervision, and the words just slipped right out of my mouth.” He gave her a stern look. “Trust me, blurting things out that way? That’s not me.”