Jake's child (16 page)

"See what I mean?" Buck appealed to Jake. "We were spanked, but Miss Priss went for ice cream." He turned to Nicholas. "Speaking of ice cream, this guy's had two double-dippers."

"Buck! You didn't!"

"Aw, why not? This is special. Let him pig out to his little heart's content. The kid can sure put away the food. Eats as much as you did, little pig." He pinched her nose. "Kid could even be yours, same kind of stubborn grit." He winced. "Damn, Sarah, I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget."

The old, familiar pain twisted inside, but she knew now that it was the reverse side of the coin and she could live with it. "Don't worry, Buck. Everybody's walked on eggs around me for so long, it's second nature, I guess. Really," she insisted as he frowned, "it's okay. I buried myself alive in Mama and Daddy's house too long, Buck."

He hugged her tightly and whispering into her ear, teased, "Does Tough Stuff over yonder have anything to do with it, Sairy?"

Jake didn't like the way Buck was hugging Sarah. Cousin or not, Buck was entirely too free with the hugging and kissing. Gut deep, Jake figured Buck was laying it on. He'd seen the shrewdness behind the country-boy blue eyes. With that combination, Buck would be a terror in a courtroom.

Jake didn't underestimate him. Buck, for reasons of his own, had proceeded to see which of Jake's buttons he could push. Uncomfortably, Jake admitted to himself that Buck was too successful. All of Jake's buttons were down.

Jake was relieved when Sarah changed the subject. "What about Nicholas's prize catch?"

Looking in the bucket, Jake asked, "What do you suppose their plans were? This is a frog."

"Buck?"

"There's a pet parade at one, remember? Nicholas and I thought the frog had a better chance there."

Buck's guileless smile made Jake's teeth ache.

Sarah looked at Jake. "Well, I don't know. We'd need something to put it in."

"Kid sure likes frogs," Buck said with a bland look at Jake.

"What do you think?" Sarah's parted lips distracted Jake. At least she was looking at him now, and not Cousin Good-Old-Boy-But-Watch-Your-Wallet Buck.

"Sure." Jake dropped the screen lid down. "We'll find something for the frog in town." He urged Sarah forward. "Let's get Nicholas."

With a forefinger, Buck dipped his hat back farther on his head and saluted Jake. "Be seeing y'all later, then?"

The knowing look in Buck's eyes was like a fingernail screeching down a blackboard. Jake reined in primitive impulses and stomped down all kinds of territorial imperatives. "We'll look for you."

"You do that." Buck winked at Sarah. "Bring Nicholas around any time. I like him. Sarah, will you be seeing him after he goes home?"

"I hope so."

Jake hated the small catch in her voice. What a mess.

"When did you say y'all were heading back?" Buck straightened up and his sharpened gaze reminded Jake of a fox on the scent of prey. Buck would go for the jugular.

"I didn't." Jake smiled viciously just for Buck. "But I'll let you know." Jake made sure Buck saw him curve his palm over Sarah's hip bone.

"You do that," Buck said in a level voice. "And in the meantime, take good care of Miss Priss. We're kinda fond of her, even though she's not much bigger than a minute."

J

Jake acknowledged the warning with a nod. He knew what Buck was telling him, and if it weren't for the fact that Buck had gotten under his skin, Jake would like him. Wasn't Buck's fault Jake was on edge.

Not too many men had had the nerve to confront Jake, much less mount a frontal attack. A sneaky admiration shaped his attitude toward Buck. "I won't let anything hurt her."

Buck surveyed Jake. "Don't guess much could get past you." The underlying meaning was clear. Buck inclined his head toward Jake's arm before leaning down and kissing Sarah. "She looks to be in good hands."

"Nice talking with you, Buck." Jake wanted to leave while he could still act like a civilized man. He had to think about the emotions Buck was stirring up in him.

"Good seeing you, Scarey." Buck shoved his hands in his back pockets and, whistling, strolled towards a slim blonde surrounded by kids dangling fish on stringers.

Even though it was pleasant along the river, sweat pooled on Jake's neck. Nerve endings bristled all over his body. He wanted to run. His inner clock was ticking away like a bomb.

Sarah wandered over to Nicholas who squatted on the bank. Light dappled her legs, and shone in a nimbus around her and the boy. The mother and child looked far away and unreal to Jake, like a painting he'd seen in a museum, all muted colors and hazy contours.

Reaching them, he looked at Sarah's tender smile as she lightly touched Nicholas's hair and tweaked his ear. Such yearning and sweetness on her face. So much regret in the way she smoothed Nicholas's hair behind his ear. Jake saw everything in a painful flash.

He'd run out of time.

Chapter Eight

J ake waited for the right moment.

"When am I goin' to see real live Indians?" Squeezed between Jake and Sarah, Nicholas bounced on the truck seat.

Jake drove with his arm across the back so that he could keep the light material of Sarah's sleeve between his fingers. It was his anchor.

Now. Challenge her. Once he told her, though, he thought moodily, he'd lose Nicholas, and he couldn't bear shattering the look on her face as she watched her son. Not just yet. He couldn't tell her in front of Nicholas. There would be a better moment.

Pointing to a small girl dressed in a long, horizontally striped cotton skirt with red, black, and yellow stripes circling the material in varying widths and designs, Sarah answered Nicholas. "The Brighton Reservation is in Glades County. A lot of the kids you were fishing with are Semi-noles."

"Where are their bows and arrows?" Nicholas wasn't happy. Peaceful Indians weren't his idea of adventure.

Sarah changed the subject. "Did you know the Semi-noles are the only undefeated Indian tribe, Nicholas? Maybe you'll see the chief of the Seminoles at the parade."

"Well, that's something, at least," he said. "When are we going to the alligator wrestling? And the rodeo?"

Jake couldn't work up a smile when Sarah looked to him for help as she said, "I think some food first—not ice cream!—before the pet parade, right?"

"Yeah." Stopped in traffic, Jake looked out at the people passing on the sidewalk. Backed by the four pillars supporting the triangular Greek pediment of the courthouse, a small woman waved at them.

"Hey, Crystal Drake!" Sarah called out.

Royal palms, cabbage palms and live oak trees framed a picture straight out of Norman Rockwell, Jake thought, unaccountably provoked by its stability and peace. "This town looks just the way I'd imagine an old, Southern town."

"That's why I stay here. Too much of Florida has been homogenized by tourism and growth. I like a small town." Sarah split a piece of cinnamon gum three ways, handing Jake a square.

He folded it into his mouth. The flavor bit his tongue and he welcomed the sharpness because it pierced the numbness suffocating him.

It should be raining. Then he and Sarah could go home and talk. Once he'd forced the truth from her, who knows? He would kiss her and make her want him, kiss her and touch her until she understood that nothing else was important except the sweetness pouring through her. Not what she'd done, not what he'd been. Nothing was as important as what he could be with her, what she could be with him. He slapped his palm on the wheel.

"Jake?" Worry flowed under her nighttime voice.

He managed a twisted smile. "I'm hungry, too, I reckon." That was the truth of it. "Where do you want to eat?"

She chewed on her thumb. Had Nicholas picked that habit up from her? "How about hitting the food booths after we fix up Froggie here?"

"Soda?" suggested Nicholas.

"Why not?" Sarah tapped his nose. "You're already wired for sound, so how much more harm can a large dose of absolutely calorie-laden, nutritionally empty junk do you?"

"I don't know," he replied earnestly. "Let's see."

Sarah rolled her eyes at Jake. "Want me to tie a string to him so you can reel him in off the ceiling tonight when you're ready to sleep and he's not?"

"He'll crash." Jake glanced down at Nicholas who was banging on the bucket lid. "I think. If he doesn't, I'll send him in with you."

He tried not to think of Sarah in her bed.

She stretched her arms forward and up. The paler skin of her underarm lured his eyes. He wished he could follow the pale line to its disappearance down the sleeve of her blouse and farther. Of its own volition, his finger knuckled the underside of her slim arm. She shivered, and her eyelashes drifted down momentarily.

"Cold?"

She shook her head.

Jake curled two fingers over the curve of her shoulder and refused to think of where he wanted to touch her and how much.

Until he faced her with the truth he had to guard against the lure of her. He couldn't allow himself to think about touching her that way. Couldn't afford to, his damnable inner voice whined. He wanted it over.

They found a cage for the frog and gave in to Nicholas's plea that they buy a tiny dog sweater and tam-o'-shanter for F. Roggie, as Nicholas dubbed him. Jake found himself

cursing dogs and frogs as he worked the small sweater over F. Roggie's bulbous head.

"I don't think he has the neck for sweaters," Sarah snickered when only the frog's unblinking gaze was visible.

"No. Froggie's okay. I like him and he likes me." Nicholas eyeballed F. Roggie. "Is the sweater hurting him? He looks like he don't like it."

Jake decided to rescue Sarah who looked as though she needed a few seconds to steady herself. Every time she looked at the frog, she giggled.

Before he could speak, though, she gasped, "We'll wait and put the sweater on in time for the parade. I don't think he likes formal clothes." She kept looking back and forth from the frog to Jake and laughing.

"All right. What's so funny?" Surprising himself, Jake laughed with her. He'd never had this sense of shared laughter and companionship until Nicholas—and Sarah. It wasn't just the physical attraction he had to resist, it was everything about her.

"Courting," she giggled again. "Remember that old song? 'Froggie went a-courtin'?"

"I remember." Her smile melted some of the ice encasing him. "But green's not my color."

"No, indeed," she chuckled.

"If you kiss me, though, I might turn into a prince." He intended his comment to be lighthearted, but the words came out more seriously than he'd meant, disturbing in their hint of something he didn't want to consider, but he liked the way her face softened and blurred.

"That's true. You do have the soul of a prince, Jake Donnelly." She looked at him with her blue eyes dark with some emotion he couldn't identify.

"It's you, Sarah, you. The magic's all you," he murmured through dry lips, catching a glimpse of what might be.

Jake raised her slight palm to his mouth and kissed the inside, softly biting the small mound of her thumb. "You, only you." He closed her fingers together, but he wanted them open and on him.

"You don't talk much, but when you do you really make your words count for something." She brushed her closed fist against his lips. "You say the loveliest things."

"You have that power over me," Jake said, following her knuckles with his mouth, knowing it was true and regretting it. "Remember that, no matter what."

"Why do you talk as though something dreadful is going to happen? You're frightening me." She stopped her fingers against his lips. "I don't want my life the way it used to be. Please, don't do this."

"Just a mood. Chalk it up to no sleep."

"I'm hungry," Nicholas interrupted.

"Well, let's go have some barbecue," Sarah said, turning to him, leaving Jake aching for something he couldn't name.

" 'kay." He crawled over Sarah to the door as the truck stopped.

Dangling Nicholas with his frog cage between them, they headed into the park.

Roaming through the stalls of "chickees" decorated for the festival with replicas of bass and sawed-off palm branches, Sarah said she was hungry, too. Nicholas wanted fry bread, she wanted a cola and barbecue, and Jake snacked his way through the park from the Boy Scout troop booth to Martha Gopher's.

Jake bought swamp cabbage and teased Sarah until she was red-faced with laughter. Underneath his teasing, though, he couldn't prevent the dark current that ran strong and heavy and caused her to watch him warily.

Jake wished he had a camera when the judges handed Nicholas the trophy for Best Dressed Pet. Sarah said someone sure had a sense of humor. Nicholas said maybe they

should leave the teddy bear sweater on F. Roggie. Jake said no. Sarah said no. And for the first time since he'd known him, Jake saw Nicholas throw a rip-snorting, heel-stomping, eye-popping tantrum. After everything the kid had been through and lost, he pitched a fit over a sweater on a frog. Jake was dumbfounded.

Sarah, though, pulled Nicholas onto her lap and wrapped him tightly in her arms. Carefully she removed the frog from his hands. "Stop it, Nicholas. F. Roggie isn't used to sweaters. They're not good for him. See how miserable he looks?"

"I don't care," Nicholas screamed.

"Of course you do. You're responsible for him. If you don't treat him right, he'll die." Sarah was slipping the sweater off the frog as she spoke.

Jake was responsible for Nicholas. If he did the wrong thing—

"Is that true?" Nicholas swallowed tears and rage.

"Of course it is. Truth is important. I wouldn't lie to you just to make you mind me."

"No." Nicholas accepted that.

"I hate lies." Passion roughened Sarah's words.

Her words pounded one more nail in Jake's coffin. She was so warm and loving with Nicholas. All Jake's knowledge of human nature told him he'd made a disastrous mistake. She constantly blunted the sword of his anger.

"Sometimes I lie." Nicholas's voice was small. "Do you hate me?"

"Oh, honey, of course not. I love you." She handed the frog to Jake as she said to Nicholas, "How could I hate you?" She gathered him to her. "It's hard to understand, isn't it?"