Jake's child (19 page)

Sarah looked right through Jake. 'Ted stood up. I remember he bumped his head." Her face twisted in reminiscence. "I told him to hurry, I wanted to give the baby his bottle as he took off so his ears—" She paused and her mouth quivered. "So his ears wouldn't hurt." Frantically she pulled her hands free and rubbed her arms. "Is it getting colder?" she said plaintively.

"Not really. Stand over here. I'll block the wind." Jake faced the spitting wind. They were going to have to leave before the skies opened. Buck and Nicholas would be coming back any minute. He glanced up. A few heavy clouds with a front moving in.

Still she rubbed her arms. "I kept watching for Ted to come down the aisle." She looked down at the ground. "I'll never forgive myself for that. How could I have risked my child by trusting Ted?" Blindly she looked up at Jake.

"Ted's child, too, Sarah," Jake emphasized.

Over and over she rubbed her hands. "He was so hungry and kept sucking my thumb—" Her sob was dry and old. "I was so careless. Ted kept at me and at me and I let him take my baby."

"It wasn't your fault."

Her look was uncomprehending. She was in another world and time.

"I touched his sleepy little eyelids—so droopy and silky. I still feel them at night in my dreams, that baby-silk against my fingers. Oh God, I still wake up thinking I'm on the plane holding him and Ted is reaching for him and I hold my baby tighter and tighter and don't let go and the plane takes off with him still in my arms, still wrapped in his blue blanket with white puffs, and I reach down to smooth his silky skin—"

"Sweetheart, don't," Jake reached out for her. Her pain was destroying him.

"Robbie," she murmured, rubbing her empty hands together and looking around at a world gone insane with Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds.

"Nicholas," corrected Jake. "Ted changed his name after you left. God only knows why. If he wanted to make finding them more difficult, he should have changed both of their names. He didn't, though, and the kid only knows himself as Nicholas. You can't confuse him now by calling him Robbie."

He was just understanding the enormity of what he'd done to this woman with her fragile face and courageous heart. He'd kept her son from her. She'd never forgive or forget that.

Like a winter wind, the loneliness of life without Sarah blew through Jake, freezing the tender shoots sprouting in his soul. He tasted salty rain in the air and realized it was his own tears. He couldn't remember ever shedding tears before. Once again he covered her empty, seeking hands with his.

He wanted to kill Ted for causing Sarah such pain. Bitterly Jake realized how he'd been taken in. Ted had known Jake's past and used it against him, against Sarah. "Ted planned it?"

"It would never have worked if I hadn't been so gullible. I should have known better, but I believed him. I have no one to blame but myself, my own stupidity."

Jake knew Sarah would have fought like a woman possessed for her son. Why had he resisted that knowledge for so long and used his anger to twist his feelings about Sarah into hostility? The answer seeped into his heart. Nicholas. He'd grown to think of Nicholas as his own and couldn't give him up.

"What did you do after you got home?" Jake sought refuge in speech from his disturbing thoughts. She shrugged. "I don't remember very clearly. There was a doctor on the plane who gave me a sedative, and from that point on I blanked everything out for months. I made hundreds of phone calls and used every contact I could to reach anyone who could help me. I even put an ad in a mercenaries' magazine. Buck says he told me not to, but that I screamed and yelled at him and did it anyway."

Jake wanted to wrap her in his arms and never let anyone, including himself, hurt his Sarah again. But he'd messed up the chance to do that. Soft as drifting spume, her voice interrupted his thoughts. 'Then I was told they'd been killed in a terrorist bombing, and the world turned gray. Until now." Her glance accused him.

Even after promising not to, he'd hurt her. Defensively, Jake jammed his hands in his back pockets. He'd hurt her, but he'd also brought Nicholas to her. Ted had taken her son, not him. He wasn't Ted.

Desperation urged him into action. He'd always been more comfortable going on the offensive. "I did what I thought was right." She had to accept that.

"You still don't get it, do you, Jake?" Sarah looked at him, her eyes drowned in tears.

He wouldn't let her shove him out of her life this easily. A barely comprehended hurt pushed him. Slouching on one hip, he drawled, "I understand I brought your son back to you." Fear generated anger and overrode caution. "And I understand that I can have you any time I want you." He

yanked her to him, holding her against his hard, rain-damp length.

Sad and mournful, like slivers of glass on terrazzo, her words pierced him as nothing else ever had. "Once. Not any more. You want, you take. That's not what I need in my life, Jake. I need love."

"So help me learn." He'd use whatever weapon he could. He opened his mouth over hers in a claiming he'd not known he was capable of. Again and again he sought the sweetness of her mouth which lay cool and unresponsive under his. Shoving her against the damp boards of the booth he touched her, smoothed her hair sparkling with carousel lights and mist, and murmured dark words of passion and love he'd never said before, moved his seeking fingers over her. Nothing he did changed her marble-cool lips to the soft warmth of Sarah. Nothing.

One last time he let himself surge into the honey of her mouth, tasted her, sought the deepest recesses of her mouth with his stroking, hungry tongue. Heaven. Hell.

"Love is more than this, Jake." Sarah stepped back, not even bothering to wipe away his kisses. "If you loved me, you'd have told me about Nicholas. You couldn't have waited this long. Every time I came close to the truth, you lied to me. Is that your definition of love, Jake? Because it's not mine." Sarah looked around her before brushing off her jeans.

"Maybe I don't know love as you define it, Miss Simpson." Deliberately, Jake insulted her. "My definition leans more to passionate kisses and long, slow nights in bed." He was furious with frustration and pain. How could she dismiss the way she felt in his arms? He had to find a way to convince her that what he'd done wasn't as black-and-white as she was making it.

"Well, you should have no trouble falling in love again, then," she said. "Try any street corner. In the meantime, I want to get Nicholas and go home."

Jake flexed his fingers. He wanted to rip the booth behind him apart, board by board. "What does that mean, precisely?"

Slowly and precisely, she told him. "It means Nicholas and I are going to the house with Buck. You can go where you want to. But I want you gone."

"And what are you going to tell Nicholas when I don't show up?"

'Til start with the truth," she said, her clear gaze searching the shadows around her.

Jake spoke through clenched teeth. "Won't work. You'll have a hysterical kid on your hands. Anyway, do you think it's fair to uproot him again? You've been talking about love. Explain, if you can, please, how that fits into your definition." He couldn't help lashing out like a wounded animal with its paw caught in a trap gnawing at itself in pain.

"All right. You can tell him. Then you leave." The soft contours of her face tightened with determination.

"You have it all worked out, don't you?" Acid dripped from his voice. "And how do you propose to make me?"

"What?" She frowned.

"What if I decide I don't want to leave?"

"Why would you want to stay?" Bewilderment was in her voice.

He hadn't come this far to lose the only thing that had ever given shape and meaning to his life. "I love you. I love Nicholas. I've never loved anyone the way I love both of you." Rough and primitive, the feelings poured out. "I found something with you I didn't know existed."

He hadn't even known he loved her until the words came out from some deep well inside. When had it happened? And how? Maybe when he first saw her, or that day in the boat, but there was no way out for him now. The words were all said.

A flicker of compassion moved over her face, and he seized on it.

4 'What I did, I did at first because I loved Nicholas. Is that so wrong?" He rolled his shoulders in frustration.

"Poor Jake." She sighed. "You really don't know about love and trust, do you?" She raked her hair back. "I loved and trusted one man and it cost me my child." At last her hands stilled. "And I was falling in love with you."

She held up a hand to stop him as he began to speak. "I was bewitched by the way I felt with you and the way you acted with Nicholas. And once more I trusted where I shouldn't have. You'd have taken my son away, too."

A cow horn's raucous blast split the air.

"You must have been satisfied every time I kissed you back." Her lip trembled and Jake touched the corner.

"Never. I only wanted more. Everything you could give." He realized that was true, and he wasn't going to give up now, now when he could see what life might be like.

"Anyway, Jake, it's not important. I want you gone. I don't think I could look at you day after day and remember what almost was."

"I'm not going, Sarah." Jake stepped back, giving her all the room in the world. Not important? How could she dismiss everything he felt so casually? "I'm not going until I'm ready to. And I'm not ready."

"You don't have any say-so." Her face empty of anger, passion, love, empty of everything except a distant sadness, she shrugged as she said, "I'll have Buck draw up whatever legal papers it takes to keep you away."

Jake didn't think she could be that merciless, but just the thought of being kept away from her and Nicholas crucified him. "You do that, Sarah," he said, knowing he was digging his own grave but not knowing what else to do, "and I'll be out of here with Nicholas so fast it'll make your head swim." He gripped her tightly.

"You wouldn't!"

j

"Sweetheart, I'm the guy that sneaked the kid out on fake

papers. If you go to Buck, you'll never see Nicholas again.

I can hide anywhere I want to. I'm the kind of guy you can't

trust, remember?" Acid ate at his stomach. "I don't think you could do that to me or to Nicholas." "Maybe not." He hooked his thumbs onto his pockets.

"But are you willing to bet on it?"

Chapter Ten

Ividing

home in the truck down the dark, rain-slick highway, Sarah held Nicholas in her lap while rage and confusion battled in her. She couldn't stop touching him and regretting all the lost years. She brushed his funny little ears and recognized now they were just like Buck's at that age. No wonder she'd kept thinking about her lost son. Every time she'd looked at Nicholas, he'd stirred her subcon-' scious. No wonder she'd thought she was losing her mind. But now he was in her arms, for real, not just in dreams.

An unapproachable Jake drove carefully, his thoughts hidden. Tiny snores bubbled up from Nicholas, and Sarab leaned against the door so that he could stretch out.

At the midway Buck had returned with Nicholas, registered the tension and left at Sarah's urging. His dark red eyebrows lifted in question. At the shake of her head, he'd shrugged and mouthed, "Call me."

An intimidating presence, Jake said nothing, merely stared at Buck with narrowed eyes in an otherwise expressionless face. He didn't keep her from talking with Buck,

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but Sarah wasn't ready to challenge Jake and risk his disappearing with Nicholas.

Now, the miles sliding by, Sarah pictured herself tied on an old-time cartoon bomb with its lit fuse fizzing closer and closer.

With her son held close to her, though, she was determined to control events. Into a silence thick with submerged emotions, she finally spoke. "I don't want Nicholas to know about all this tonight. He's too tired. Let me know before you tell him anything."

Jake slanted a look at her. "Fair enough."

"And don't go off alone with him." Her voice wavered despite her best efforts. The thought of once again losing him was unbearable.

The truck sped up before dropping back to the speed limit. Jake's expression never changed.

"I mean it, Jake." Anger clipped her words.

"You planning to stay up all night, every night, Sarah? Or bell me like a cat so you'll know any time I move?" His fingers curled tightly around the wheel. "Lots of luck, sweetheart. If I decided to disappear, believe me, I wouldn't leave a trace. That's the advantage of having no ties or roots."

"Jake," she gasped, turning to him.

At her strangled sound, he continued. "Of course, you might try to get in touch with the companies I've consulted for, but since I've only worked for them on an as-needed basis, you won't get much information." His lips tightened. "So you'd be up a creek without the proverbial paddle if you push me." Headlights from an approaching car splashed across his taut face. Darkness again as he continued. "Don't push me, Sarah."

"In other words, not one living soul on this planet would miss you if you disappeared in a puff of smoke?" She believed him. She knew his history.

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That's about it." Slapping the turn signal on, he punctuated his words with its clickety-clicking. "I told you the gloves were off, sweetheart."

4 'So you did." Sarah heard his harsh breathing and turned away. "Don't go off alone, Jake. I won't tell you again." The lines were drawn.

Sarah carried in "F. Roggie" while Jake carted Nicholas upstairs. She wanted to insist that Nicholas sleep with her, but one look at Jake's tightly controlled face stifled the words.

Nicholas squalled. Jake was patient. Nicholas yelled. Jake turned him upside down and wheelbarrow-walked him to the bathroom. Moving fast, Jake peeled off Nicholas's muddy jeans while Nicholas giggled. The two of them disappeared into the cloud of steam boiling out of the bathroom.

Sarah heard splashing sounds, towels flapping, Nicholas sighing. When he came out, flushed and half asleep, he clung to a towel-wrapped Jake.

The pink-and-white striped bath towel should have looked ridiculous slung around Jake's lean hips. It didn't. The small boy cradled in his arms should have looked out of place. Yet nothing had ever looked so right. Jake's chest was made for cuddling small boys—and big girls—Sarah thought. Dark hair angled to the frivolous towel knotted at his navel.