His Best Friend's Baby (12 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Julia got a job waiting tables at the Petro Truck Stop. It wasn’t great, but it was money and it was work she knew she could do. Truckers, chicken-fried steak and bottomless cups of strong coffee—she felt as if she’d been there before. She walked back to the house with her shoulders back and her head held high.

She had a job, her first in years. Even though it was a crappy one, she could feel her self-worth inflate. Grow with every step.

She would start on Saturday, which gave her a few days to get up the courage to tell Agnes. Oh, she wasn’t going to like Mitch’s widow serving truckers out by the highway.

Julia picked up her son and headed out to the bulletin board at the grocery store.

The first thing on her list was to find some other daycare. She couldn’t, and frankly didn’t
want to, rely on Agnes for every moment of childcare.

Childcare.

Apartment.

Car.

Hopefully the tips out at Petro came in solid
gold
.

Julia moved the flyers for lost dogs and found cats on the Vons bulletin board, searching for the flyers with the phone numbers on the bottom she could tear off.

There were no used cars, no apartments for rent and only one babysitting flyer, but all the tear-off strips were missing.

“Well, there you go.” Her hands fell to her side and she tried to be philosophical about the whole thing. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Mama.” Ben patted her leg and handed her his train and one slimy raisin as consolation. “’Ere you go.” He smiled as if he’d known all along what she’d been going through and she swooped him up in her arms.

“Thank you, buddy.” She pressed big wet kisses to his neck and he wiggled and squealed. “But you know what Mama really needs?”

He shook his head and shrugged with the beautiful exaggeration of a two-year-old.

“Mama needs chocolate, Benny boy. Lots and lots of chocolate.”

She put Ben down on the ground and he ran over to the black pad that controlled the automatic door. He jumped on it with both feet causing the door to open and clapped his hands at the small consistent miracles in his world. She followed her son, pushing the repaired stroller into the air-conditioned store.

It wasn’t just chocolate she needed. She needed the heavy-duty, the sugar and fat equivalent to being hugged by her mother. She needed a brownie with walnuts and about an inch of chocolate frosting.

“This way, bud,” she called out to her son, who’d been distracted by the cereal display, and they took off for the bakery counter.

She got a brownie for her and a small peanut butter cookie for her son, just so he wouldn’t beg for bites of her treat, and joined the express line.

A pretty brunette stood in front of her, buying milk and a big bag of oranges.

“Hi, Rita,” she said to the cashier with a merry smile.

“Good morning, Rachel.”

“What’s new?”

“No, Ben,” Julia said, stopping her son from putting all the candy bars in the display on the floor, while Rita told Rachel all about her niece’s third birthday.

“How are things at the high school?” Rita asked.

“Busy.” Rachel smiled. “I thought I was run ragged working for the county, but being a guidance counselor is keeping me on my toes.”

Julia knew she shouldn’t listen in, but there was something in the easy back and forth of the conversation that lulled her in.

Imagine living in a town where even the cashier at the grocery store was your friend.

She got chills just thinking about it.

Maybe her mom was right. She could create what she wanted out of what she’d been given. She was in New Springs, for better or worse, and it was time to make the most of it. Create her own support system.

“How’s your brother this morning?” Rita asked, with a sympathetic wince.

Rachel paused as she pulled out the cash from her billfold. “You heard about the fight?”

“Clara came in early to buy doughnuts and told me how Mike McGuire and his friends put him in the hospital last night.”

“He’s not in the hospital, Mac took him home.”

Rita clucked her tongue and took Rachel’s hand.

“Poor guy, he’s had a tough go of it.”

Rachel laughed and Julia wondered if she should go to the other express aisle…this one was pretty slow.

“You must be just about the only person in town who thinks that,” Rachel said with a laugh that was slightly more acidic.

“I never thought he was as bad as this town thought he was. He and Mitch were allowed to run wild was all. Jesse just needed a firm hand. All that old gossip…” Rita kept talking but Julia no longer registered the words.

Jesse had been in a fight last night.

Her ears burned and her heart fell to her stomach.

“Mac and I are trying to get him to stay, at least for a while,” Rachel said and Julia guessed this was Jesse’s long lost sister.

“Good luck, sweetheart.”

Finally, Rachel walked away with her bags and Julia put two bucks on the conveyor belt for their treats, grabbed her son and the stroller and didn’t wait for her change.

“Excuse me,” she cried, through the slowly closing mechanical doors. But Rachel did not slow down.

“Excuse me,” she yelled louder, racing through the door. Ben ran beside her, laughing, but still the woman’s long strides didn’t stop.

“Hey!” Julia screamed. “Rachel! Please stop!”

The woman finally whirled, strands of hair caught in her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were yelling for me.”

“Hello.” Julia halted in front of the woman. Ben banged into the back of her legs. “Hi, I just—” She heaved a big breath, feeling scattered with worry about Jesse. “Is your brother Jesse Filmore?”

“Yes. What about it?” The woman’s friendly smile turned guarded.

“Is Jesse okay?” Julia’s pulse seemed as if it would pound out of her skin. “I mean, the fight—is he all right?”

“Who are you?” Rachel asked. “Not to sound rude, but it’s a small town and I know just—”

“I’m Julia. Mitch Adams’s widow.” Julia swallowed and watched the woman’s eyes go wide with surprised speculation before her reserve fell off her like old skin.

“Oh, no,” she sighed, “I’m—I’m so sorry. Mitch—”

“It’s okay.” Julia managed a smile, something lukewarm that she intended to curtail any sympathetic stories Rachel might have and feel compelled to share.

“I’m Rachel, Jesse’s sister.” Rachel shifted a bag into her other arm and held out her hand to shake. He smile was bright and welcoming. “You actually met my daughter the other day.”

“Your daughter?” Julia hadn’t met a lot of kids. Ben tugged on her hand, impatient, reminding her that a few kids would come in handy for poor Ben, who’d been spending far too much time with adults.

“Amanda. She said she met you on the street in front of Jesse’s.”

“Amanda’s your daughter?” The woman in front of her hardly looked old enough to have a sixteen-year-old daughter.

“Yep. Well, by marriage. It’s a bit of a story.”

Julia laughed. “Isn’t everything?” Rachel laughed, too, and Julia felt that sudden pull of kinship.

Wow, I really need a friend
. She felt like the new kid at school again, sitting down at a table
in the lunchroom filled with girls she’d die to talk to.

I’m too old to be this pathetic
.

A car honked and Julia realized they were standing in the middle of the laneway.

“Mama!” Ben hollered and dragged her toward the curb.

“Oops.” Rachel moved with them.

“About what Rita said…is Jesse okay?”

“He’s pretty banged up.” Julia could tell that Rachel was putting a brave face on things, but she wasn’t fooled. “I just don’t know what he was thinking last night. My husband found him in the parking lot of a bar getting the snot beat out of him and he wasn’t even trying to defend himself.” Rachel laughed incredulously. “Jesse was in Special Ops. Mike McGuire and his friends shouldn’t have had a chance.” Her sigh trembled and she looked down at her hands for a second as if she expected them to be able to do something. “I’m just worried about his state of mind. He’s—”

“I know,” Julia cut in, worried about the same thing. “He blames himself for the accident.”

“Do you?” Rachel asked.

“No!” Julia cried, appalled at the idea. “Not
at all. It was an accident and a war and Mitch…” She shook her head. “There was no way anyone could blame Jesse for what happened.”

“Except Jesse,” Rachel sighed and her lips tightened. “We’ve been trying to hang back and be patient and wait for him, but my husband has decided enough is enough and that we should just treat him like family.”

“I don’t really know what that means,” Julia said, with a rueful laugh. “How does family treat each other?”

“I’m pretty rusty myself.” Rachel smiled. “But I think we’re going to get in his face a little bit more. Amanda’s been doing it for a week and she said it was working, that Jesse was even beginning to joke around with her.”

“Your daughter is a great kid.”

“Well, she couldn’t stop talking about you. She said, and I quote, ‘she’s totally cool.’”

“That’s the best compliment I’ve gotten in a long time.”

“Mama!” Ben pulled with all his weight against her hand and she leaned toward him.

“Amanda couldn’t stop talking about your son, either.” Rachel smiled and crouched down. “Hi, Ben,” she said.

He waved, shy suddenly.

“I’m Rachel.” Rachel held out her hand and Ben stared at it suspiciously until Julia nudged him with her leg.

“Hi,” he said, putting his sticky hand in Rachel’s. “I’m two.” He held up five fingers.

“He’s adorable.” Rachel stood up. “You need a ride or…?”

“We’re okay,” Julia said.

“Here,” Rachel said digging through her handbag. She pulled her receipt from her pocket and a pen from her bag. “There’s my home phone.” She scribbled and handed the paper over with a smile that was somehow both familiar and reserved. Respectful. “I know you’re staying at the Adamses—”

“You do?” Julia asked. She’d never said anything about that.

“It’s a small town, Julia. Word travels fast. But if you ever need a change of scenery for dinner or something, please give me a call. I grew up here, but… Well, it would be great to have another woman to talk to besides Rita.”

“I…” Julia was literally speechless. She cupped the paper in her hand and pressed it into the breast pocket of her T-shirt. “Thanks. Really. I will. Call, I mean.”

“Well, it was very good to meet you, Julia.”

“Likewise.”

They smiled at each other, Julia so full of an awkward gladness, she felt young.

“Call me.” Rachel pointed at her and looked serious.

“I will,” Julia assured her, patting her pocket. “Trust me.” She laughed, thinking of the never-ending nights of Mitch worship she’d been going through at the Adamses. Last night, after her phone call with her mother, she’d been given a two-hour tour of Mitch’s high school football scrapbook.

She’d been nailed to that couch by Agnes’s painful grief, and her even more painful desire to keep the good memory of her son alive.

Julia had decided that it couldn’t hurt to let the woman have her illusions. But suffering through those illusions night after night was another thing entirely.

Rachel climbed into her car and drove off with a honk and a wave. Julia put her son in the stroller, took her courage in hand and headed for Jesse’s house.

J
ESSE EXAMINED
the damage he’d done to himself last night in the bathroom mirror. He had a black eye and a puffy split lip. His nose felt huge and the bridge was soft, like tapioca pudding. But it could have been worse. He was lucky Mac had shown up when he did.

Jesse bent his head to gingerly splash water on his face.

Last night’s suicide mission had been stupid. He had to repair the roof. Fix it, sell this place and get the hell out of town. And he’d just set himself back a day, maybe two.

He’d been in constant motion since being released from the hospital. He’d visited all the families of the guys who had died in the crash. He’d contacted Chris. He’d made plans as though his life depended on it, barely slept and now… He shook his head. He stared at his reflection and barely recognized himself. He’d
planned on spending a day, a week at most, in New Springs to get rid of the house and never look back.

But here he was, a week and a half later, stranded like a Jeep caught in quicksand. Every move he made sunk him deeper despite what he wanted. What he planned and needed.

“Get your shit together, soldier.”

He stepped out of the tiny bathroom into the hallway and then out into the sunny living room.

Where Julia stood with her son, stock-still, like a deer in the wild.

For a split second, dream and reality converged and his body sparked to life. He could feel her skin again, hear her sweet sigh against his face.

“Scary,” the boy said and buried his face in his mother’s legs.

“Doesn’t anyone knock?” Jesse muttered. “Everyone feels like they can just waltz in here.”

He collapsed into his father’s old easy chair ignoring, the tearing sound of the old blue brocade and the squeak of the springs.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, looking at Jesse through her eyelashes. He wanted to tell her to
stop looking so provocative, so damn appealing, but the words started and died in his throat.

He was hurt and wounded and confused enough that he wanted her to look provocative. He wanted her to come over and sit on his lap, wipe the wet hair from his face and set about kissing all of his minor and major pains away.

“You scared him,” Julia explained needlessly.

“Great.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. “I’ve always wanted a career in the circus, frightening kids.”

“You’re…you’re bleeding,” Julia said and, slowly, so as to keep his brain from sliding out his mouth, Jesse lifted his head. “Your nose.” She pointed uselessly at her own lovely nose.

He touched the back of his hand to his pained nostrils and his hand came away red and wet.

“Here.” A handful of tissue appeared under his chin. “I’ve got a diaper, too, if that—”

He snatched the tissues, careful to not touch her with his messy hands. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Hopefully the Huggies won’t be necessary.” His lip curved at that ridiculous image. He’d really look scary with a diaper stuck to his nose. He heard her soft chuckle and his body went tense, hard. He’d tasted her
last night in that terrible, wonderful dream and that taste, salty and hot, tipped his tongue and filled his fuzzy brain with a biting want. He did what he could to clean himself up with the tissues.

He heard the rattle of a toy and Julia whispered, “Here you go, buddy. It’s yummy.”

Julia gave her son a small pinch of a brownie. Soon, frosting covered the boy’s face and hands, but his smile was wide. Jesse felt himself smile back.

“He looks like Mitch,” he said stupidly, and the happy little scene in front of him shattered as though he’d taken a sledgehammer to it.

“That’s what everyone says.” Julia’s own smile disappeared. She stood and Ben sat on the floor, playing with a toy train and licking frosting off his cheeks. “I think he looks like himself.”

She tilted her head as if testing her assessment and then she looked up at Jesse, skewering him with her blue, blue eyes.

That look—that level gaze that somehow saw all the cheap things he’d ever done and then forgave him for them in the same instant—reduced him to something so elemental, so simple, so
forgotten
, he didn’t know how to handle it.

He looked down at his bloodied hands, at the ruined tissues.

“Here,” she murmured. Laughter like sugar dusted her voice. “You missed some.”

Before he could stop her, before he even knew what she intended, she stood beside his chair and licked her thumb and used it to clean a spot on his chin and neck.

“You should go to the hospital, or something.”

He didn’t answer, just stared, like some kind of green boy in front of his first woman, at the soft sweet swell of her breasts against her pink T-shirt. Her fingers brushed his flesh, grazed the corner of his lips, his whiskers, the erotically sensitive skin of his neck.

He went hard in a painful heartbeat.

“Thanks.” He stood, brushing away her hand. “Uh…what are you doing here?”

She swallowed, looking uncomfortable, and if there were ever a moment to rid himself of her, this was it. He could turn her kindness to ice in one moment. One terrible word aimed right at her tender heart. He looked at Julia’s bowed head and the boy playing at her feet and knew he didn’t have any more pretending left. He wasn’t going to kick her out. He wanted her here.

The quicksand was rising and if she pushed the slightest bit, looked too long, stood too close, what would happen? Where would his weakness lead him? He didn’t care anymore.

Before his eyes, she squared her shoulders and looked him straight on. She seemed to grow taller. The air changed and Jesse’s sense of danger went on high alert.

Julia was here on a mission. And he feared that mission was him.

“There are some things I’d like to talk to you about,” she said.

“I said everything I needed to say yesterday,” he told her, using the last of his bravado.

“Good.” She grinned. “Then you won’t interrupt while I talk.”

This was it. The moment he’d been running from since she’d shown up on his porch. Well, he was just too damn tired to fight it.

His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t had solid food in far too many hours.

“Can we do this in the kitchen?” he asked, wanting to have something to do during this conversation. A distraction from his desire.

“Suit yourself,” she said and followed him into the kitchen.

“I heard you were hurt and I wanted to make
sure you were okay,” Julia said, resting against the doorframe.

“I’m okay,” he lied, because it was second nature. He pulled out some ham and cheese and looked for the bread he figured should be around here somewhere. He was shaken, off-kilter, not just from the fight, not just from the dream last night or her presence here this morning. He was wrecked by how badly he wanted her here, how badly he wanted to talk to her and touch her.

He picked up a knife and she stepped forward.

“Let me make you a sandwich.” She pointed at the knife held in his shaking fingers. “You’ll kill yourself the rate you’re going.”

He put the knife down on the counter next to the loaf of bread that had apparently been there all along.

He stepped out of the way and dropped into a kitchen chair. If she was making the sandwich, she wouldn’t be touching him.

“So what happened last night?” she asked, peeling thin slices of pink ham from the package.

“Ran into a door.”

She looked over at him with raised eyebrows. “Big door.”

“Three big doors.”

She smiled and put two pieces of cheese on the meat—just the way he liked it. “Why’d you do it?”

Because you touched me. Because you won’t
leave me alone. Because it hurts so bad
.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” He took the sandwich she offered, but instead of stopping there, she opened his fridge and took out an apple and the rotting grapes he hadn’t touched since Mac dumped the groceries on him. He watched her rinse them, weed out the soft and brown ones, slice up the apple, remove the core.

He wanted to block it out, wanted to cover his ears to stop the sound of Ben singing to himself in the other room.

“You need to eat,” she said as a plate clattered in front of him. “You don’t look like you’ve had a good meal in months.”

He nodded, took a big bite of the sandwich.

“I want to clear something up,” she said and the tone of her voice made his eyes dart to hers. Her shoulders were back, her small breasts pressed against her T-shirt in such a way that he had to concentrate on peeling the cheese from the top of his mouth or fall on his knees begging for her touch.

“That morning in Germany—” she inhaled
through her nose like a bull about to charge “—that was you. You touched me. You came to me. I never once asked for it, or gave you the impression that it was okay for you to do that.”

Oh, sweet Jesus
. What he wouldn’t give to be anywhere in the world but at this table. He chewed carefully and swallowed. She was mad, and he’d never seen this woman in a temper. It made his wounded head spin.

She was pretty when she was angry.

“I know,” he muttered.

He’d sat on that couch watching her with her son and he’d battled every impulse he’d had to grab her and take her away from Mitch, the tiny house and the sad life she’d been living.

In the end he’d found a nasty compromise. He’d told her she deserved better. Should have kept his mouth shut.

“But you did it.” She put her hands on her hips. “And I don’t think you understand what you did to me that morning.”

“I know, I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” His one good eye opened wide at the tone of her voice. “You don’t know what it was like thinking that I deserved Mitch. That…” She swallowed hard. “The
things he did were my just rewards for being young and stupid and getting pregnant.”

He knew all too well what it was like to be caught in Mitch’s web. To believe you weren’t good enough to be stuck anywhere else. It was Mitch’s personal form of abuse. And it was effective.

“I’m twenty-four and I love my baby. I am grateful to Mitch for that. But you waltzed into that kitchen and you ruined my life. You tore down all my lies and my illusions and you made me think that…maybe I did deserve more.”

“You did,” he said. “You do.”

“Then what the hell is wrong with you?” she shrieked and Jesse winced. “God, it feels…” She clenched her hands in her short hair. “You’re here. I’m here. And I want you. It seems like I’ve wanted you forever. And you push me away but you look at me like you’re starving and I’m a ham sandwich. I’m not such a fool that I don’t understand that.”

He swallowed and felt himself hit the bottom of that pit of quicksand. He nodded. He let go of the charade and breathed deep, a full breath. His first in months. “You’re right,” he said.

“Then why won’t you let me—” She reached out to touch him and he grabbed her hands,
stared right into her eyes. “Mitch is dead,” she whispered. “He isn’t between us anymore.”

“He’ll always be between us.”

“But—”

“You married him, Julia.”

She nodded.

“And I killed him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

He stood, the chair screeching across the linoleum. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked. “You know, go ask anyone in this town whose fault that accident was. Go ask Agnes, she’ll tell you.”

She put her hands on his arms, his chest. She stepped closer, like some new version of Julia, someone brave and daring.

“I don’t care what anyone else says.”

He pushed at her arms, angry with her foolishness. Her recklessness.

“Mitch knew how I felt about you,” he told her, and watched her eyes go wide with surprise. That he should admit his feelings for her this way seemed wrong. But he could tell it didn’t matter to her. And he wanted to touch her, taste her, claim her.

But he had no right.

“He told me I shouldn’t sniff after married women. I shouldn’t sniff after his woman.”

She opened her mouth to say something.

“How do you know that I didn’t let him burn in that helicopter so that I could have you? So that you would be free of him?”

There it was. There was the truth, the dark cancer that ate at him in the dark hours.

“You don’t believe that,” she said. “You’re not that kind of man.”

“How the hell would you know what kind of man I am?” he yelled.

“I knew you the moment I met you. You’re good, you wouldn’t let anyone die if you could help it. My God, Jesse, look at what you did for Caleb Gomez—”

“Right. I put him in a coma. I’m a real hero.”

“You are, Jesse. Even if you don’t see it. Even if this town doesn’t see it. I see it. I know it.” Her voice shook, but her eyes were steady, those blue eyes that seemed to know even before he opened his mouth. “Why don’t you let someone else be the judge?”

She stroked his hair back from his forehead the way he’d seen her do with Ben and in that gesture, that sweet touch, he was lost.

He resisted for a moment. A second of telling
himself that her foolish hopes held no sway over him, that her romantic vision of what and who he was were her problem and he’d best just stay clear. And then all his restraint snapped and he leaned down and did what he’d wanted to do since Germany. He pressed his split, sinner’s lips to hers.

She sighed, and he could taste her breath, sweeter and hotter than anything he’d ever known.

He cupped her face with his rough hands, slid the tips of his fingers into her short, silky hair and memorized her, one sense at a time. Her small body trembled and her hands gripped his shirt as if at any moment he might push her away again. So he pulled her closer until her breasts touched his shirt and he could feel the bones of her hips against his thighs.

They were suspended, hung in amber, in the bright sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows.

Slowly her mouth opened and her tongue licked his lips, an unholy, earthly benediction against his wounds and his lies.

He groaned, a lost man, and his hand cupped her head. He opened his mouth and the innocence of their first kiss burned in the heat of the
second, the fourth, the tenth. Unending, until she was on her toes and he had gripped her hips and pushed her backward against the counter. His hands slid up her rib cage to the warm curve of her breasts.