Lightning Storm

by Anne McAllister

  ‘Sure.’ Jake managed a smile and reached out to touch Scott’s hair. Seconds later the door banged and Scott was gone.

  Into the silence Torey said, ‘I’m sorry, Jake. About him going with Christy. But he did want to get you a present.’ It sounded lame and inadequate, but she had to say something.

  ‘Some present.’ Jake’s voice was hollow. His hand brushed the tissue paper to the floor and he sank back against the pillow, rolling on to his side away from her. ‘Some present,’ he muttered again. ‘Losing my son.’

  Had he? Was the dragon family that Scott wanted to mirror his own, one in which Christy and Doug would be the parents and Jake would have no part? No! she wanted to cry. No, Scott was Jake’s son! No one could deny him his child, not after five years of love and care just because Scott’s mother was now ready to accept him into her new life. Torey sighed wishing she was sure of that. She went down and got his laundry from Addie, returning immediately so she wouldn’t have to listen to Scott regale Addie with stories of his afternoon out. Jake was lying in bed, silent and unmoving, and there was nothing more she could say, so she left him alone. She began folding the laundry, mechanically smoothing out the small T-shirts that were Scott’s and piling them alongside Jake’s larger ones. The Jack Daniel’s Whiskey one was in the heap and she brought it up against her cheek, thinking again about the first time she had seen him this summer after seven long years. God, how she had fought against her renewed attraction to him! How different he seemed from the tender, gentle, loving husband she had had in Paul. Even now, she knew, he was different. He was moodier than Paul, mercurial, gifted. But he had a solid core of responsibility too. He might not be the steady, uncomplaining, always smiling man that Paul had been, but he was just as strong and dependable in his own way. If he wasn’t the romantic hero she had once imagined him, the epitome of handsome wickedness just waiting for her to love and reform him, he was still the man whom, without trying, without even wanting to, she had come to love again.

  Whether Jake was sleeping because he was exhausted or whether it was a way to avoid the problems of his life, he still made a good job of it. He slept right through dinner which was a can of ravioli for Torey while Scott and Addie had meat loaf downstairs. They ate birthday cake without him, and by Scott’s bedtime he was still not awake.

  ‘Will you keep Scott down here tonight?’ Torey asked her grandmother when she came down to get her own nightgown, and receiving an affirmative reply, she went back to Jake’s place and settled in to spend the night. She first heard him fumbling his way to the kitchen as the digital clock on Scott’s dresser read 2:56. Drawing a thin cotton robe on over her nightgown, Torey scrambled out of bed and walked noiselessly into the dark living room. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Jake flinched as though he’d been shot. Spinning around, he stared across the room in the direction of her voice. ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘Of course. You didn’t really think I’d leave when you were hurt, did you?’

  Jake shrugged, coming around from behind the bar where he had been standing so that she could see his face and bare chest more clearly in the spill of silvery moonlight through the windows.

  ‘I thought you’d have quit me long ago,’ he said slowly, coming to stop about a foot in front of her, near enough so that she could distinguish the dark whorls of hair on his chest had caught the faint smell of ammonia in the air. Her eyes dropped. Another mistake. He was still as bare as he had been after she took his swimming trunks off that afternoon. Quickly, heart hammering, she sought his face again.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m still here. Do you feel bad again?’ There was a heavy silence between them. Then Jake sighed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do the stings still bother you? Can I give you one of the pills?’

  ‘No. It’s not that.’ He stared at her, then with noticeable reluctance, he moved around her to go towards the bedroom.

  ‘Is it Scott?’ She turned to watch his back and saw the slumped line of his shoulders.

  He stopped, dark head bent. ‘Yeah.’ Then he padded into the bedroom and she heard the springs creak as he lay back down on his bed. For a full minute she hung suspended like a marionette, trying to decide if she should follow him or leave him alone with his misery. He was not, after all, asking for sympathy. He wasn’t asking her for anything. But she couldn’t let him go on like this. If it was Scott bothering him, he needed to think realistically about what he was going to do with Christy in his life again. He had to learn to let go of Scott. Even just a tiny bit.

  ‘Jake,’ she said, decision made. She went to the door of his room and peered in at him huddled in the bed in the darkness. ‘I don’t think you’ll lose Scott. Truly, I don’t. But you can’t smother him either. You can’t protect him against all contact with his mother.’

  ‘I’m not protecting him,’ Jake growled, and she saw him pull himself up to a sitting position, his dark shape looming in the bed.

  ‘Well, you act like it. Why are you keeping him away from her then?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Silence.

  She moved nearer to the bed, then sat on the edge of it, her hip pressing against Jake’s knee. ‘Do you still love her?’ she asked tightly, fearing what the answer would be.

  ‘Love Christy?’ That seemed to floor him. ‘God, no, I never did!’

  Torey pulled back, stunned. ‘Then why did you marry...’ Stupid, stupid question, she told herself at once. Why did all sorts of people get married? Babies. Children like Scott. Christy had been pregnant. Torey felt her cheeks grow warm, but she stumbled on. ‘But then, if you don’t love her, why do you care if she marries Doug? Just because of the custody thing?’

  Minutes seemed to pass before he answered. Torey held her breath until she heard his barely audible, ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’ve had Scott all his life,’ she argued. ‘You could say that in a court hearing. You could tell them how she left you. Natural fathers have a lot of rights these days.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jake agreed softly. ‘They do. But naturally speaking, Scott is not my son.’

  ‘What?’

  Jake shifted in the bed, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them, pulling himself together like a turtle into his shell. ‘You knew Christy when she was dating Mick, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Scott is Mick’s child. Christy was pregnant with him when Mick was killed.’ His voice was muffled against his wrist. ‘I don’t think he even knew it. There were a bunch of us out surfing. It was a wild day, high wind, steep breakers. We’d driven down to Laguna. The surf curls tighter there. Or it did that day.’ His words were coming slowly as if he were pulling them out, one by one, as he made himself relive the pain of it. Torey ached to stop him, but she couldn’t. She had to know it all if she were ever going to help him, and she sensed that, to face Christy again, he would have to work it through again himself.

  ‘We were the last ones coming in, Mick and I,’ he went on. ‘Christy and some other girl were waiting for us on the beach. I—’ his voice cracked here. ‘I challenged M-Mick to one last ride.’ His body tensed with pain and Torey’s fingers closed around the calf of his leg, needing to share his anguish. ‘I came in without a scratch. Mick fell and knocked himself out. He drowned.’ Jake bent his head, resting it on his arm, his fingers twisted, knotting the sheet, and Torey felt a sob tear through him. She kneaded the muscles of his calf, her heart aching for him. For Mick.

  ‘Three days after Mick was buried, Christy came to my place and said she was pregnant with Mick’s baby. She wanted me to give her the money for an abortion. She couldn’t raise a kid alone, she said. Besides, she figured I owed it to her.’ His mouth curved in a smile of bitter self-recrimination and she shook her head in despair. ‘I couldn’t give it to her. I wouldn’t give it to her. I felt responsible enough for Mick’s death. I wasn’t about to destroy his child.’ He sighed heavily. ‘So I said no
to the abortion. I told her she didn’t have to raise the kid alone, I’d marry her.’ He shrugged and laced his fingers together. ‘What choice did she have then? She agreed.’

  ‘So you got married and had Scott.’ Torey’s mind was reeling.

  ‘Yeah. But Christy never loved me, nor I her. It was expedient, that’s all. She didn’t like being tied down and, once Scott was born, she didn’t like me for having forced wife-and-motherhood on her. So she went back to work and I kept Scott. Three years ago she got disgusted with even that. I can’t blame her. I was wrong to force her to marry me. But I didn’t see any other way out. Not to be fair to Mick and his child. God, I love that child!’ His eyes were pools of misery and despair.

  ‘I know.’ Torey inched up the side of the bed and put her other hand on his shoulder, needing to touch him, to show him that she understood.

  ‘But,’ he said heavily, ‘I know, intellectually at least, that you’re right. Christy is not a bad person. And. I think in her way, especially now, she probably does love Scott. And now that she’s getting married, for love this time,’ his voice caught on the last phrase, ‘I think she may try to take him away from me.’

  ‘But you’re still his legal father.’

  ‘Legal father, moral father, everything but his natural father,’ Jake intoned grimly. ‘I’m also a single father. And we both know the limitations to that. Hell,’ he sighed, rubbing a weary hand against the back of his neck. ‘I ought to get married too. At least then if she challenges me for custody, I’ll have a fighting chance.’

  Torey thought he was joking, but he didn’t look it. There was a crazy light of desperation in his eyes. Marriage? Was he serious? Her heart, started speeding as she considered it. It was crazy really, wasn’t it? To get married just to hang on to Scott? ‘Jake?’ she whispered tremulously, and he turned his head to face her. For an eternity neither of them moved. Then, as if the cord which had confined him had snapped, Jake reached for her, his arms going around her with the desperation of a drowning man, pulling her back down with him on the bed.

  Torey, too, felt something snap. She had kept her emotions reined in all the time she had listened, letting him spill out all his pain unhampered while she had longed to comfort and shush him. But now, in his arms, all thoughts of restraint vanished. Her hands moved feverishly over his body, learning the muscles of his back, the planes of his chest, outlining his neck and shoulders. Her fingers threaded themselves through the silky softness of his hair, stroking and twining, making him moan with pleasure.

  But the pleasure was not all his. Jake, too, was feverish, demanding, almost desperate as his fingers fumbled with the snaps on her robe, dragging it apart with haste and tossing it on the floor only to encounter her nightgown. ‘God, so many layers,’ he complained hoarsely as he nibbled with exquisite tenderness on the lobe of her ear.

  Laughing silently, Torey drew back enough to allow him to ease the nightgown over her head. Then his shaking hands were curving down her bare torso in the dim silvery blue moonlight. She shivered under his gaze, an artist’s gaze, seeing more of her than she thought possible in the shadowy darkness of the room. Just the look on his face caused her to smoulder. But when he bent down, his hands shaping her breasts and lifting them to receive his mouth, she thought she would burst into flame.

  ‘Jake,’ she murmured, tugging at his head, trying to bring his mouth up to hers, to ease the delightful sensations he was creating, to dampen the flames coursing throughout her body. But Jake would have none of it. His mouth roamed lower, nibbling, caressing, traversing her ribs, then easing slowly up towards her breasts again. Torey trapped him by hooking her leg around his, causing them both to lose their balance and tumble off the bed on to the thickly carpeted floor.

  ‘Glad we don’t have downstairs neighbours,’ Jake murmured just before his mouth fastened over hers, his tongue slipping between her parted teeth, stroking lightly against hers.

  But Torey wasn’t thinking of neighbours. Her universe had shrunk to the size of one man. He was all that mattered, and she wrapped her arms around the warmth of his body, drawing him down on to her, into her, shuddering at the feeling of exquisite rightness. She felt him shaking, moving ever more quickly, his breath coming in gasps just as hers was. Her heart seemed to expand, pressing against the walls of her chest, and she dug her nails into his back until finally the flames exploded into one great bonfire consuming them both.

  The fire quenched, Torey lay quietly, her eyes closed, her mind centred on the glorious feeling of Jake’s body, damp and heavy, warm on top of her own. As her breath slowed, she drew one hand up in almost slow motion and stroked gently down the length of his back.

  Jake let out a long deep breath. ‘Wow.’ A quiet laugh shook his chest. ‘That was definitely worth waiting seven years for!’ He lifted his head off her shoulder to look down into her eyes.

  Was it? she wanted to ask. Had she pleased him as much as she had been pleased? Did he love her as she loved him? There were a million questions, all of them needing answers, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask a single one. Instead she smiled at him, offering him her heart with her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, reaching up to draw his lips down to touch hers. ‘Yes.’

  This time their lovemaking was leisurely, a lingering exploration that teased and titillated their senses and which bore little resemblance to their first desperate union. Jake took his time, loving her as she had always imagined he would love, giving himself to her just as she gave herself to him. And when, once more, they had consummated their passion in a storm of summer lightning, Torey slept secure and warm, home at last in Jake’s strong arms.

  She awoke early, the morning sun on Jake’s face causing him to shift his head to find a shaded spot on her shoulder to rest his head. The events and revelations of the night before came back in a rush. But above all she knew that this man next to her was the man she loved. With her eyes she traced the line of his jaw, the bump of his once broken nose, the dark hair that feathered across his forehead, and knew that, far from being the strong man always in control of every situation, Jake was just as vulnerable and needful of true love and understanding as she was. And she wanted to be the person to love him. She wanted to be the one to help him keep Scott. If she married him she could do both.

  In the clear morning light the thought of marrying Jake struck her to the core. Like a dangerous animal, the issue of marriage to Jake had been one she had avoided ever seriously thinking about. There was too much temptation to indulge in wishful thinking, in romantic pipedreaming. But it was no pipedream that Jake had been talking about last night. He had talked about marriage as a necessity, as a means of keeping Scott in his home, and suddenly Torey knew that now was the time to face the dangerous animal head-on.

  Ever since Paul’s death she had been thinking about her own life, her own happiness. Even when she had been dating—or avoiding—Harlan and Vince, it hadn’t been them she was concerned about. No, she had always been too busy protecting herself from involvement, always trying to make sure that the love she gave was on her own terms where she stood the least chance of being hurt. She had never given anyone else’s needs a thought.

  Least of all, Jake’s. But now she did because she loved him. He was as much a part of her life as Paul had ever been, however different they might be. And her love of him was on no one’s terms. It was an overwhelming, overriding passion which knew no reason other than to give itself to him. And if she married him, things would come right for him—he would get to keep Scott and, if he didn’t really love her now the way she loved him, at least he had a start on it. The look in his eyes last night proved that. It would work out, she knew it would!

  Smiling she leaned over and kissed his cheek, rubbing her lips against his dark stubble, drinking in the smell of ammonia and seawater and that indefinable essence that could only be called Jake. Sleepily he opened his eyes, the same colour as the ocean on a sunlit morning, and saw her smiling at him. Slowly, ever so tent
atively, he smiled back.

  ‘You know, Jake,’ she said softly, her eyelashes brushing against his nose. ‘You might have a good idea there—that business about getting married to keep Scott.’

  She felt him tense beneath her. ‘Oh?’ The ocean blue eyes narrowed warily as he studied her.

  Torey lifted herself away from him, feeling like an idiot, wishing she had written out her dialogue ahead of time so it wouldn’t sound so inane when she said it. ‘I mean, I’d marry you,’ she offered. God, no wonder men didn’t like to propose.

  Jake blinked as if he thought he might not be awake. ‘You’d marry me?’ He sounded stunned.

  ‘Yes.’

  The silence lasted an eternity.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The bottom fell out of her world. ‘No?’

  Jake shook his head, avoiding her eyes. ‘No.’ He sat up and hauled himself out of bed, groping around on the drafting table for a pair of jeans, his movements harsh and jerky. ‘I married once for the wrong reasons. It was a mess from beginning to end. I’ll never do it again.’ He found the jeans and a pair of underpants and hastily stepped into them, zipping them up and running a nervous hand through his dishevelled dark hair. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  Just as well, Torey thought mortified. She found her robe on the floor and tugged it on, snapping it with trembling fingers as though she -could camouflage her body, as though there were parts of it he hadn’t seen! How could he have just said, ‘No,’ in such a flat cold voice when last night they had shared something so beautiful? Well, perhaps to Jake it hadn’t been beautiful, maybe it was only a need to be assuaged. So much for her ability to interpret the look in his eyes. Surely such a blatant refusal was a terrific indication that he didn’t really love her.