Their Baby Bond

by Karen Rose Smith

  He realized that when his gaze had riveted on the older woman, Tori couldn’t help but notice. “I thought I recognized her, but I was wrong.”

  “Who did you think she was?”

  “Drop it, Tori. Just drop it. I’m going to be doing some work for you. That doesn’t give you the right to pry into my life.”

  When he saw the hurt on Tori’s face, he almost apologized. Then he told himself that a wall between them was a good thing. “We’d better get back.”

  She didn’t argue, and he could see that she now wanted to end this outing as much as he did.

  Chapter Three

  To Jake’s dismay, when he arrived at Tori’s on Tuesday morning her car was still in the carport. She’d given him a key to her house after their uncomfortable ride home from Taos, and he’d hoped she’d have already left for work when he arrived. But it was only eight o’clock, and he guessed the gallery didn’t open until nine.

  Instead of using the key, he pressed his finger to the doorbell. He was surprised when, after a couple of minutes, Tori didn’t answer. Certainly she’d be up by now. He pressed the bell again. Still no answer.

  Maybe she was having a cup of coffee on the back patio and couldn’t hear the bell.

  Following the narrow pathway around the carport to the back, he saw the patio was empty. Maybe she went for a run as part of an exercise regimen. Maybe she’d walked to a coffee shop or a bakery.

  Wherever she was, it didn’t matter. He had to get started. The sooner he got this job done, the sooner he’d be out of her life. End of sleepless nights, vivid dreams and heart-stopping urges that made him feel as if he’d been kicked in the gut.

  He couldn’t remember when a woman had ever made him feel so turned inside out.

  Using the key Tori had supplied, he opened her front door. When he called her name, she didn’t reply.

  Returning to his truck, he took his toolbox out of the back and carried it into the house. He’d set up the saw on the patio. First he’d work on the closet in the baby’s room, building and fitting shelves, attaching a low bar that a child could eventually reach. When he’d discussed prefabricated closet organizers with Tori, she’d wanted this done the old-fashioned way. He didn’t blame her. The fixtures would be sturdier and last a lot longer. Hopefully he’d finish the closet today and could begin the patch plastering. This job could go into next week when all was said and done.

  He was headed down the hall to the baby’s room when the bathroom door suddenly opened. Tori stood there with one pink towel wrapped around her head and another fetchingly tucked in at her breasts. The sight of her long, graceful legs made him forget all sense of propriety.

  He swore just as she gasped, “Jake!”

  “I rang the bell,” he managed to say in a low, accusing tone, controlled with a great deal of effort.

  “I must have been in the shower. I overslept this morning and I’m running late. I thought I could get dressed before you arrived.”

  “It’s after eight.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was clutching both the towel at her breasts and the one enfolding her hair as if her life depended on holding them in place. Almost mechanically he offered, “If I’m going to be in your way, I can start out on the patio.”

  “No. You won’t be in my way. But I…” Her face was red, and turning redder. “Could you…could you just turn your back until I get into the bedroom? I’m afraid something’s going to give way…”

  He realized he was waiting for exactly that. If the towel slipped… He kicked himself for being a boor. “Sure.” He swiftly turned and faced the living room. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you like this.”

  “No problem,” she said a bit breathlessly as she scurried down the hall to her room. “It’s my fault for not setting my alarm last night. I was writing in my journal until late and I fell asleep.”

  As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw she was hidden behind her bedroom door now. Only her head and one shoulder peeked out. The turban had apparently come loose because she swiped that towel away. Her wet hair framed her face. She looked vulnerable, younger than the thirty he knew she was and tempting enough to kiss.

  Concentrating on her words rather than his last thought, he said, “Someone once suggested I do that. Keep a journal. But I couldn’t see the point.” Before he’d decided to take a leave of absence from the police department, he’d had sessions with one of the psychologists.

  “Oh, there is a point to keeping a journal. It helps me sort things out. It helps me articulate thoughts that haven’t completely formed yet. Putting them down on paper somehow releases them from my head and my heart.”

  Although he knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help closing some of the space between them. “Maybe you just have a talent for it.”

  She shook her head and her wet hair swung. “It doesn’t take talent. It just takes time and…honesty.”

  That was the crux of the matter. Maybe he knew if he was completely honest with himself, he’d never recover from what had happened in Albuquerque.

  As they gazed at each other, the space in the small hall seemed filled with sparks of electricity. He was much too conscious of what she wasn’t wearing, of the bed a few feet from her door. How did he get drawn into conversations with Tori that opened up places he wanted to keep closed?

  With a great effort he decided that a lighter touch would be best. So he forced a smile. “I’d better get started or I’ll still be here when you get home for supper.”

  Then he went into the baby’s room to examine the areas that needed to be plastered. Working with his hands would help him forget about a woman he was thinking entirely too much about touching.

  Tori’s arms were full of packages when she returned home that evening. As she peeked into the nursery, she saw Jake sweeping debris into a corner. “I left work a little early. One of the department stores was having a terrific sale on baby clothes.”

  All day she’d thought about Jake seeing her barely dressed, the look in his eyes when he had. Her gaze swept the room and the work he’d done. “It looks great. How soon can I paint?”

  “I’ll finish the plastering tomorrow. You should give it at least ten days.”

  “Barbara’s not due for three weeks. I might be able to get it painted and let it air out. I plan to keep the baby with me in my room for the first week, anyway.” She knew she was babbling, but she was still embarrassed about this morning, and talking kept her less aware of Jake.

  “You might not get much sleep. Babies make all kinds of sounds,” he offered practically.

  “I doubt if I’ll get much sleep, anyway. We’ll see.”

  One of the bags in her arms started to slip, and she would have dropped everything if he hadn’t strode quickly toward her and taken a few of the bags. He smelled like man, and work, and stirred up sensations she’d kept a lid on for years. When he was this close, all she could think about was kissing him.

  “Where do you want these?” he asked huskily.

  Breaking eye contact, she went over to the closet, examining the prepainted shelves he’d installed and the bar securely fastened in the lower section. “We can put all the bags in there for now.”

  She was stacking her purchases on the shelves when he approached with the ones he held. His arm brushed against hers. “I thought you’d be gone when I got home,” she murmured.

  “It didn’t work out that way,” he said easily, though his eyes had gone almost black, and she glimpsed the fire and intensity there.

  She knew both emanated from a place inside Jake that had led him into police work. Why was he working with tile, instead? She decided to go at the conversation sideways. “I guess you put in less hours now than you did on the police force.”

  His expression became wary. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “The night of the prom when I asked you why you were going into police work, you said you wanted to make the world a better place. Was that the only reason?”

  As
he thought about her question, she held her breath. She needed to know this piece of the puzzle.

  Straightening the packages he’d set on the shelves, he finally answered her. “I became a cop because of my father.”

  Tori hadn’t known anything about Nina’s family when she’d worked with her all those years ago. She’d met her mother once or twice, and back then Rita Galeno had seemed quiet and reserved, maybe even withdrawn. Much different from the way she’d been the other night. “Your father encouraged you?”

  Jake gave a humorless, short laugh and turned away. “Not in the way you mean. He was an angry man—angry at the world for the hand it had dealt him. When he drank, the anger would come out. If a meal displeased him, if Nina and I made too much noise, he’d erupt like a volcano.”

  “Did you know why he was angry?”

  Leaving her standing at the closet, Jake once again picked up the broom. “Because of me. My mom was pregnant with me and they had to get married. I never saw one happy moment in their marriage. She never stood up to him, never wanted more than she had. I was about twelve when I asked her why she stayed. She was so matter-of-fact about it. She said Dad earned a good living, and she had no education and two children to raise. How could she make it on her own? I came to believe that my father didn’t want to be married or responsible for a family, and that’s what kept him short-tempered. My mother was always sad because she felt like a hostage.”

  “So…why police work? To intervene in domestic disputes?”

  This time Jake’s answer came more slowly. “I learned very young that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Whenever Dad was volatile, my tone of voice, the right words and a sympathetic ear could defuse his anger. When I joined the police force, I think I did it simply because I wanted to keep peace. Everything I’d learned with my father led me into hostage-negotiation work, and eventually I supervised and was a primary negotiator on the team.”

  Supervisor of the negotiations team—the epitome of protection and responsibility. “Why did you leave?” she asked quietly.

  He kept sweeping. “It doesn’t matter.”

  She knew that wasn’t true. But it was obvious Jake was drawing a boundary between them, a boundary that now felt too restrictive.

  “Jake…” she began.

  Propping the broom against the wall, he approached her, his eyes dark and piercing. “Leave it alone, Tori.”

  But she couldn’t. “Why?”

  “Because my life cracked into a thousand pieces and I’m trying to glue it back together. It’s a solitary road.”

  That was another piece of the puzzle she needed to understand him. “You’ve always chosen the solitary road, haven’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  Good sense urged her to look away. She knew she shouldn’t let desire rise inside her. Most of all, she shouldn’t let Jake see it. But gazing into his eyes now, she knew she wanted to touch him. She knew she needed to feel his lips on hers. Maybe she needed to prove that everything she’d remembered about their kiss twelve years ago had been a teenage girl’s dream.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he warned hoarsely.

  But she was powerless to turn away. She wanted to taste passion again, even if it was only for a moment.

  With a deep groan, Jake took her by the shoulders and bent his head to hers.

  Tori had anticipated the kiss, had been longing for it. But he didn’t set his lips on hers. Not right away. His tongue outlined them first. She shivered, even more eager for the feel of his mouth. Even in that kiss at eighteen, she’d known Jake was experienced. That experience still showed as he teased her. Then, as if he couldn’t stand the torture, either, he finally sealed his lips to hers.

  When his hips pressed against hers, her breath caught. He was obviously attracted to her as much as she was attracted to him. His hands left her shoulders as his arms enveloped her, and along with desire, she felt the safety of a strong man’s embrace.

  She’d never, ever experienced anything like this—not the tingling fire in her limbs, not the excitement twirling in her stomach, not the intoxicating knowledge that he wanted her.

  Her marriage to Dave had been staid and comfortable—before the accident. What would Jake say if he knew she couldn’t have children?

  That thought fled with all the others as his tongue coaxed her lips apart and she found herself lost in a land that was as primordial as the high desert, as dizzying as the tallest mountain, as vast as the universe. She melted into him as he securely held her, tempted her, intoxicated her.

  Then as suddenly as black clouds gathered over the mountains, Jake pulled away, leaving her standing alone. His eyes were black with turbulence, his face grim with regret. “That was a mistake. It won’t happen again.” He looked almost fierce in his certainty of that.

  Tori strove to put her scrambled thoughts in order, still trembling from the power of the passion that had risen between them. “Because you don’t know where you’re going?” she asked shakily.

  “Because we both have lives that are more complicated than we know what to do with. You’re going to be a mother, and that child is going to come first, isn’t he?”

  She nodded, knowing her life would revolve around her child, knowing there was no room for the doubt and uncertainty a relationship with a man would bring.

  “I don’t think you’re the type of woman who would have the inclination to hop into a man’s bed while a baby’s crying in the room next door.”

  He knew her, maybe even better than she knew herself. She was usually cautious, analyzing everything three different ways. But the feelings Jake aroused had made her forget caution, and she couldn’t do that—especially not with a baby to think of.

  She didn’t know what to say any more than she knew what to do. There was no reason she should feel like a tongue-tied teenager around Jake, but she felt as naive and vulnerable as she had after his kiss the night of the prom. “You’ll be back tomorrow?” she asked, looking around the room, wanting to make sure he’d finish the job he’d started.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m hoping to finish this by Friday.” Then he turned and left.

  When she heard the door shut, she took one very deep breath, closed her eyes and thought about getting the room ready for her baby.

  On Thursday Jake was working in the bathroom when Tori returned home. It was a few minutes before five and she had hoped to catch him still here. They needed to clear the air. Yesterday he hadn’t arrived until after she’d left, and he’d been gone before she’d gotten back home. It was fine if that was the way he wanted to play it. But Nina had asked her to go shopping with her on Sunday, and if they renewed their friendship, there was no way Jake was going to be able to avoid her completely.

  When she peeked into the bathroom, he was washing down a section of tile. He glanced over his shoulder and her heart sped up when his gaze locked with hers. The kiss and everything she’d felt while he was kissing her hummed through her with vibrations that could still shake her.

  He broke eye contact first and continued wiping the tiles. “I’m almost finished here. I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.” His wide-legged rigid stance as he stood in her bathtub told her he was remembering the kiss, too.

  “I made stew in the crockpot this morning and it’s ready. Would you like some?”

  “Tori, I don’t think it’s a good idea—”

  “We need to clear the air. I thought we could talk. It’s a bowl of stew, Jake, not a full-course meal.” Her attempt to lighten the atmosphere didn’t work.

  “I need to wash up.”

  She pointed to the sink. “The soap’s in the cupboard underneath. If you really don’t want to stay, that’s fine. But Nina and I are going to be friends again, it seems, and you and I might run into each other. It would be better if there isn’t all this…awkwardness between us.”

  At her attempt to characterize whatever was between them, the corners of his lips twitched up. “Awkwar
dness is a new way of putting it.” At last he nodded. “All right. I’ll have a bowl of stew with you. I have a clean shirt in the truck.”

  A short time later, Jake came to the table in a clean black T-shirt that stretched appealingly over his broad shoulders and hugged the muscles of his upper arms. At that moment Tori almost panicked. Maybe she’d been wrong about this tête-à-tête. Could she learn to be just a casual friend to Jake when her heart always pounded furiously in his presence?

  He motioned to the table. “Looks like more than a bowl of stew.”

  She’d bought a fresh loaf of bread on her lunch hour and made a quick salad while he’d washed up.

  “Nothing fancy,” she assured him. “I would’ve done the same for myself. Should I make a pot of coffee?”

  “No. This is fine.”

  It was obvious he didn’t want to linger. He’d eat her stew, have the talk and get out of her house as quickly as he could.

  Jake waited for her to sit before he lowered himself into his chair. “It smells good.”

  He was making conversation, but she could tell he was on guard.

  “My mother’s recipe. She used to prepare most meals before she left for work. Then we had more time to spend together in the evenings.”

  “It was just you and your mom?”

  “My father left when I was nine. My mother went to night school and became a paralegal.”

  Something in her voice must have hinted at the hurt still there. “Are you in contact with your dad now?”

  “No. A few years ago I heard he and his fourth wife moved to Missouri.”

  “Fourth wife?”

  “He falls in and out of love easily. At least, that’s what my mother always told me. But I don’t think it’s love at all. He finds a woman who suits his needs for the moment, and when she doesn’t, he moves on.”

  After a few spoonfuls of stew, Jake remarked, “That’s the way some people look at marriage.”

  “Your parents stayed together.”

  “For all the wrong reasons. Their marriage kept them both in a prison. My father’s resentment made him mean. From what I can see, marriage is a trap.”