The Rival's Heir
Page 11
“We hate playing you, Darby,” Matt said, whistling as Judah made the trick shot.
Huh, Judah might be worth her time. She could challenge him to a game of strip pool. It would be fun to see how quickly she got him out of his clothes.
Judah walked around the table, patted her butt and dropped a sexy “yes” in her ear.
Darby rolled her eyes. “Yes to what?”
“Yes, to whatever you’re cooking up regarding you and me and pool,” Judah whispered, pulling her hair away from her neck to place his lips beneath her ear. Unconcerned by their amused audience, he pressed his big body against her back, his hand on her stomach, and he felt so warm, smelled so amazing. And that mouth on her sensitive skin...dynamite.
“And why,” Judah growled, his voice back to its normal level, “do I have this sneaky suspicion these guys are trying to hustle me? I think you might be good at pool. Good as in exceptional.”
Darby tried to keep her face innocent as she turned around. “Why would you think that?”
Darby melted under his sexy grin, aware that the game was over and that her friends had moved on to discussing a new yacht Matt was designing. “Their very careful choice of words. They do hate playing with you because you are good. That’s not a surprise because there isn’t a damn thing you aren’t good at and you’re competitive. And I’m not an idiot.”
Dammit. Judah had a hell of brain to go with that gorgeous face and brawny body.
“And yes, strip pool would be fun,” he quietly added.
Darby threw up her hands, laughed at his smirking expression and turned her back on their game. Needing to get some distance before she embarrassed herself by throwing her arms around Judah and kissing him comatose, Darby walked over to the fireplace. DJ and Jules sat on the squishy couch and Callie sat opposite them, totally absorbed by the baby sitting in her lap.
Mason wasn’t here at this family dinner and that was a surprise.
DJ looked up and smiled. “Oh, Lordy, Darby, you have to hear the latest nonsense Mrs. Jenkins has come up with. I swear the old lady is losing her mind.”
Mrs. Jenkins had been ancient when they were kids. For as long as they could remember, in rain or snow or hailstorms, every afternoon she hopped on her motorized scooter and did a tour of the grounds. She was the community’s primary source of news and gossip.
“She said she saw a half-naked woman in the window of Mason’s coffee shop last Wednesday. She was plastered up against the glass door and a man was kissing her.”
Yeah, the sweet old thing was losing it. Mason would never let something like that happen at his place. Darby thought back. “Last Wednesday was the height of the blizzard, no one was out.”
“I think she’s getting a little more senile,” Callie said, her hands over her face as she played peekaboo with Jac, who thought it was a brilliant game.
“Has Mason said anything about the rumor, Mom?” Jules asked.
“Mason doesn’t listen to rumors. But I’m sure he’ll find the story amusing,” Callie said. Holding on to Jac, she stood up, her cheeks tinged with pink. “Uh, it’s getting a bit hot this close to the fire.”
Darby, who was standing closer, hadn’t noticed the heat. “I think it’s you, Mom.”
Callie flushed a deeper red. “Me? What’s me?”
Why was her mom acting so weird? “Are you getting sick? Do you have a temperature? There’s a lot of flu going around.”
Callie nodded. “I’m fine, don’t fuss. Come on, Jac, let’s go change you.”
Darby looked at Callie’s departing back. She’d changed Jac not a half hour ago but...okay. Since returning from Bali, her mom had been acting a little weird.
Turning back to her twin and best friend, Darby remembered something she’d been wanting to ask. “Listen, have either of you two borrowed my thigh-high black boots, the sexy ones I bought for that Halloween party? I can’t find them anywhere.”
Jules and DJ said they didn’t think so, but they would check—their closets were a mess of borrowed items—and the conversation moved on. Darby, curled up in the opposite sofa, tuned out and just watched her family.
In all her dreams growing up, this is what she’d imagined. Her sisters, one by blood, the other by heart, were happy and in love with good men, her mom was seeing a man who wasn’t her dad and she was okay with that. And there was a man across the room who made her feel amazing every single day. Jac was as sweet as sugar and wonderfully easy to look after.
Her business was going well. She was a professional success and she should be happy.
Except that she wasn’t. It was all a lie, a sham, an illusion. Oh, not her sisters, they were, as far as she knew, as happy as they looked, and her mom seemed reasonably content, but as for the rest? The baby, the man?
Darby and Judah weren’t what they looked like.
Darby closed her eyes against the familiar wave of pain and embraced it, allowing the barbs and the spurs to pick at her skin. She welcomed the way it scratched and burned because pain was better than fooling herself, imagining there was a chance this was what the rest of her life would look like. There was no possible way it could.
No matter how she looked at it, a happy-ever-after was not possible for her and Judah.
Their relationship was tied into this short-term project and into looking after Jac. The little pretend family they’d so swiftly become had an imminent expiration date. The news from Italy was good, Carla was recovering nicely and was interviewing nannies. They were expecting the call that would whip Jac out of their lives.
Darby, as the local liaison for Huntley and Associates, had everything for the museum project under control, and she knew Judah had a bid on a project in Kuala Lumpur and he’d been approached to design an eco-friendly lodge in Costa Rica.
He’d hand Jac back to Carla, kiss the baby goodbye and move on with his life. And Darby should look to move on with hers. She had to make a definite decision about whether to try IVF.
No matter what happened in the future, she was glad she’d had this time with Jac; it had given her a realistic idea of what caring for a baby day in and day out meant. She had a better idea of the work involved, how much energy it took. If she had to do it on her own, she could but...
But it would be so much easier with a partner, with Judah.
But Judah didn’t want kids.
Ever.
And she’d, foolishly, fallen in love with him. Dammit. Her heart was convinced he was her forever man, but her brain couldn’t fathom how she could love someone who didn’t want what she wanted. How could he be so fabulous with Jac—patient, kind, calm—but not want to experience having a child himself? How had that happened? Why had it happened? How could life be this cruel?
Darby rested her head against the cool column, reluctantly respecting his decision not to procreate but also not understanding it. Judah was warm, funny, loving... In her opinion, he should have kids. He needed a partner, a home, children.
Over the past week they’d discussed her desire to have a child, his desire to remain childless, and she knew there was no hope of a future with him that looked anything like the future she wanted, of a house filled with noisy boys and feisty girls.
Even if she and Judah agreed to keep seeing each other after Jac left—the distance between Boston and New York wasn’t that far—Darby knew nothing would come out of it but some sexy times. Judah would never love her like Noah loved Jules, like Matt loved DJ.
Darby was competitive, she admitted it, and knowing that her lover didn’t love her the same way her sister’s and friend’s men loved them—with everything they had—would kill her. It would be a slap in the face at every family gathering. She’d be reminded that Judah might love her body, appreciate her skill as an architect, but he still chose to stand apart from her and from everything that a family meant.
It wou
ld be better, cleaner, if they all moved on now. Jac needed to go back to Carla, Darby needed to try IVF, Judah needed to do whatever Judah wanted to do.
Darby bit her bottom lip, her eyes on Judah. He wore chinos and a loose white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and his stubble gave him a rakish air. He looked hot and amazing. Her life and her bed were going to be lonely, lonely places without him in it.
As if he felt her eyes on him, Judah snapped his head up and looked for her. Finally finding her, he frowned. Heading toward her, he laid his arms on the back of the sofa and touched his knuckle to her cheekbone.
“Hey, you okay?”
Darby forced a smile onto her face. “Sure. I was just about to go and find Jac. Callie took her, saying she needed to be changed.”
At that moment, Callie appeared in the doorway to the living room, Jac in her arms. “Supper is almost ready. Can I have some help in the kitchen?”
Judah’s hand on Darby’s shoulder kept her in place while the others obeyed Callie’s cheerful request. When they were gone, Judah rested his hip on the back of the sofa. He placed his big hand on her bent knee. “What’s going on, Darby? You look a little lost.”
Whether it was to her work or to her body, Judah paid attention. “I just wanted a minute to think.”
“I expected you to be at the pool table, telling Noah and Levi how to sink their shots,” Judah teased.
“I’m not that bad.”
Darby met his eyes and saw the speculation in them, knew she wasn’t hitting the light tone she was aiming for. Trying to distract him, she reached for the bottle of beer in his hand. She took a long sip and rested the bottle against her cheek. “I have a slight headache.”
“When are you going to realize you can’t lie to me, Brogan? Something else is going on inside that big brain of yours.”
“I’m fine, Judah.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve been watching you for a while and you’re anything but fine,” Judah persisted. He squeezed her knee. “Talk to me, Darby.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him that she loved him, that she wanted the dream, the full house, the family dinners with kids they’d raised together.
Feeling like her skin was too tight for her body, Darby stood up. “Have you spoken to Carla lately?”
“Yeah.”
“Any word on when Jac is going back?”
Judah’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “Soon. Within the next few days.”
Darby nodded, telling herself she would not cry. “I’m going to miss her.”
“I know.” Judah raked his hair back, his eyes miserable. “If I had known you wanted children so badly, I would never have asked you to look after her.”
“You didn’t ask, you offered me a deal. I took it.”
“Still, it wasn’t fair to you.”
He made it sound like he’d forced her into looking after Jac. That simply wouldn’t do. “I’m an adult, Judah, I make my own decisions. Looking after Jac has been fun but...” She hesitated.
“But?” Judah pressed.
Darby gathered the scattered bits of her courage. “But I’m sort of glad she’s going soon. I’m getting attached and the longer she stays, the harder it’s going to be to say goodbye,” Darby said, keeping her voice low.
Judah didn’t say anything for a long, long time. “That bad, huh?”
Yeah, it was that bad.
But she didn’t want only the little girl, she wanted the man and her dream and the house and... No, enough. She had to stop thinking about what she didn’t have and look forward to what she could have. Being a single mom, raising a child on her own.
She tasted panic, fought to find air. She could do it; she would do it.
And really, she had to let Judah go, to do his own thing. She refused to live her life hoping he’d change, that he’d come to love her enough to give her something she wanted but he didn’t. Sleeping with him, staying with him, playing happy families with him was too difficult; she couldn’t do it for much longer.
She loved him and every time she made love with him, she fell a little harder, a little deeper. Every time they argued about architecture, discussed books, art, sports, politics, she found herself rolling around in his mind, enjoying his sharp intellect and his dry humor.
She loved him and loving him was starting to feel a little like torture.
“What do you want, Darby?” Judah quietly asked, his expression as serious as she’d ever seen it.
He’d said that nobody could become attached in two weeks, but he’d been so wrong.
“Unfortunately, I want everything, Judah. I want it all.”
Nine
Having abandoned DJ’s apartment to move in to the big house the day after he and Darby first made love, Judah opened the back door to the mudroom, kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his coat. Outside, the wind was picking up and the clouds were low in the sky. The weather reporters were talking about another massive nor’easter hitting Boston sometime during the night and they would wake up to many inches of snow.
The house was quiet, and Judah frowned. For the past fifteen years, he’d treasured quiet but now it seemed oppressive, almost strange. After just two weeks, he was used to music, Jac’s squeals, Darby singing off-key, a radio or television playing in the background.
The sounds of home.
Wondering where his girls were, Judah pulled out his phone to call Darby, but before he could pull up her number, his phone rang. He stared at the phone like it was an annoyed snake ready to strike, knowing the call would flip his life back to normal.
He didn’t want his life to go back to how it had been. He loved his life with Darby, with Jac.
He shouldn’t. But he did.
The call died, but two seconds later, the same number popped up on his screen. He couldn’t avoid her. He had to have this conversation.
“Carla.”
“Hello, Judah.” Carla’s voice sounded thin and thready. Nothing like the sultry tones he remembered so well. “How’s my girl? How is Jacquetta?”
Happy. Content. Full of smiles. Judah swallowed those words and opted for a simple reply. “She’s fine. Are you out of the hospital?”
“I am back at my home in Como. With a full-time nurse. Luca has hired a nanny for Jac, an American who has a degree in early childhood development.”
Jac didn’t need a teacher, she needed a mom.
“I need peace and quiet to recover, to build my strength. The nanny and Jac will live in the cottage until I am recovered enough to have them in the house.”
Jac wasn’t the noisy equivalent of a construction site. Carla had undergone an appendectomy, not a heart transplant. God.
“She’s not an untrained puppy, Carla, she’s your daughter!” Judah said. He ground his teeth together so hard he was sure he felt enamel pepper his tongue.
“Nevertheless, it’s imperative that I focus on myself, in doing whatever I can to recover quickly. I will send the nanny to come and get Jacquetta. She will be there on Friday. Please have her packed and ready to go.”
Over my cold, dead body.
Judah gripped the bridge of his nose so hard that a sharp pain ricocheted into his sinuses. “I am not handing Jac over to some stranger.”
Carla waited a beat before speaking again. “Then the only other alternative is for you to bring her to me.”
“If that’s what I have to do,” Judah ground out.
Carla’s husky voice drifted into his ear. “Don’t worry so much, Judah. The nanny is good, and I will try to be a better mother to Jacquetta.”
If wishes were horses and all that crap. And her name was Jac...
“I want normality, Judah, a simple life. A man, my baby, sun on my face, fresh air and good food. Just a simple life.”
Poor Jac.
Thinking about Jac constantly looking for Carla’s attention lit the detonation cord attached to his explosive temper. “Try to remember that Jac is not a damned book you can loan out, have returned and loan out again, Carla. She’s a little girl and she needs stability. Can you give her that?”
“Stability is overrated. I never had any as a child but I’m okay.”
Okay was a nebulous term. Her okay was his very messed up.
“Bring Jacquetta home, Judah. You’ll never have to be bothered with her again.”
Judah heard the phone disconnect and shook his head, lifting the phone to bang it against his forehead.
Jesus, how was he going to tell Darby that Jac was leaving? How was he going to find the strength to take her back? But he had to...
Jacquetta wasn’t Darby’s and she sure wasn’t his. He didn’t want kids, remember?
He needed to go back to his old life, back to freedom, to long nights working at his desk, early morning walks through whatever city he happened to be in, or sleeping the morning away, waking up and finding a small local restaurant for a late lunch. Working through the next night...
No one to report to, no one to worry about, no one to worry about him.
So, if that was what he wanted, why did he feel hollow inside?
Annoyed with himself, Judah walked into the kitchen, tossed his phone onto the marble-topped island and padded into the hall. At the bottom of the stairs, he finally heard girly laughter. He was too far away to hear individual words, but he allowed the soft feminine sounds to wash over him. As he climbed the stairs, the words became more distinct and Darby’s off-tune voice became stronger.
Judah walked down the long hallway of the first floor and wondered how he could go back to silence. How was he supposed to embrace freedom when freedom didn’t include Darby’s singing and Jac’s bold smile and naughty laughter?