Jake's child (2 page)

His eyes, though, were like the lake in summer when the water level dropped and the water gleamed sherry-bright and clear, not like the dark winter depths that lured and betrayed fishermen out too far. She forgot to be afraid when she looked into this man's eyes.

'There. You survived, lady. Wasn't too painful, was it?"

Sarah swung the bat lazily. "Don't get nasty. It suits you, though," she dared, narrowing her eyes. At the man's frown, she rushed on. "Well, glad I could help out." Opening the door wide, she made her intention unmistakable.

Nobody moved. Two pairs of very different eyes met hers steadily: the blue eyes glazed over with fatigue; the brown ones challenging her. Once more fear slithered through her.

Now what? "That's that, then." She tightened her lips into a smile.

Again the boy tugged on the jeans and the big body bent down. Again the low murmurs. The man folded his arms over his chest and glared at her. "The kid wants a cookie. Can't you give him a cookie first?"

"A cookie?" Sarah's mouth dropped open. He expected her to hand out cookies? To a sick child? At this time of night? But his expression clearly said that, by God, she'd better come up with a cookie or else. "I don't have any cookies! Anyway, he's sick. He shouldn't be eating cookies." She inched to the door. The man was clearly unhinged. Her lips caught on dry teeth as she tried to smile. "You'd be welcome, of course, if I had any. Cookies, that is. Really, you would be," she insisted as he shifted his weight.

Sarah stretched one hand in back of her, straining for the door so that she could slam it behind her as she raced into the night. She'd turn off the light outside, too, leaving him blind in unfamiliar country.

He still hadn't moved, but she felt as though he surrounded her.

She raised the bat.

"For God's sake, you got a bee in your brain? Quit waving that damn fool bat at me and settle down, okay?" Tall, dark and hairy flicked the bat out of her hand and closed the door. "Look, we've been driving all day and the kid's tired and hungry. I guess you're right about the cookie, but he's just heaved up everything he's eaten today. Don't you have anything that would settle his stomach?" The man banged the bat on the floor.

Sarah heard the boy's whispered, "It's all right, Jake."

The angry reply was loud in the silence. "I'll get you food, Nicholas. It's the least she can do."

The man called Jake swung towards her, the bat forgotten in his large hand, and a surge of terror rose in Sarah like bile. Why had she ever opened that now-closed door? Was she going to be killed over a stupid cookie?

"Don't, Jake. I'm not real hungry."

Sarah looked at the boy's pinched face and the bruised shadows under his eyes. Reluctantly, in spite of her best intentions, she spoke. "I have some bread, crackers." Frantically she ransacked her brain. "Maybe chicken soup?"

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

"You, too, Jake? It's Jake, isn't it?" At his blank expression, she rattled on. "Yes, of course, Jake." She led them to the kitchen. Knives, a back door.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the boy's wide-eyed stare. "Sure, ma'am. I'd like soup. Right, Jake?" Again he tugged on Jake's faded jeans.

With the ease of long familiarity in the dark, she walked straight to the icebox. Everybody in her family had always called it the icebox. Right now, thinking of all the people who'd lived here helped her believe she might survive this night. The small bulb shone on her shaking hands as she reached inside for soda and bread.

"You here alone?" Jake flipped the light switch.

"Not for long," she lied, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder. He was too close. She must be panicked. She'd never even thought about turning on the light in her desire to reach the safety of the kitchen.

Now she was trapped. He dropped into the seat nearest the back door. She couldn't get to the door without passing dangerously close to him.

The boy—Nicholas?—scooted onto the seat next to the man and watched her. Interest chased the glaze of fatigue from the boy's eyes. "Need some help, ma'am?"

If he were a dog, his whole body would have shaken with the force of his enthusiasm. She didn't smile at him, didn't encourage his reaching out, but she felt like a real stinker when he looked away. She'd seen the flash of awareness in those young-old eyes.

She swallowed. The fear the man's presence aroused in her didn't justify treating the boy the way she had. Not his fault. If both of them would... would just leave. The boy drummed his heels on the rung of the chair.

"Be still, Nicholas." Jake's level voice stopped the restless movement.

Unnaturally obedient, Nicholas folded his hands together and laid his head down. His eyes followed her every movement. Sarah was irritated with herself. She slapped the table knife hard on the dry toast. Even in a situation like this a little kindness wouldn't kill her. Well, it might, but if it didn't she was going to remember that child's face for the rest of her life. One more portrait for her nightmare gallery.

Grudgingly she turned, meeting the man's unsettling brown eyes for only an instant, and spoke to the boy as she dumped canned soup into a pot. "You can get jelly if you want some."

The boy looked to his father—how different they looked—for permission. When the man nodded, the boy

bounced out of his chair. Where was he getting his energy? He'd been ready to fold ten minutes earlier.

"So, ma'am/' he asked from the depths of the icebox, "why do you keep your bread in the fridge?" He poked around in the refrigerator and dug out a jar of guava jam.

Curious little monkey. Definitely not from the area if he didn't know that. "Bugs," Sarah muttered.

"Bugs. Yeah, I suppose." His expression was sagely understanding, a pint-sized guru. The light shone on his thin wrists.

Didn't he get enough to eat? Sarah wondered. He seemed awfully small and stringy.

"So what kind of bugs?" By now he'd opened the jar and stuck his index finger in, unself-consciously tasting it.

The man had tipped his chair back against the counter and watched the proceedings through half-closed eyes as though he were running a tally sheet on her.

"The bugs, ma'am." The boy leaned against her hip, his face tipped to hers.

She moved sideways, away from him, before she could stop herself. His small bones against her were unbearable, like an accusation. Clearing her throat, she ignored his expression. "Cockroaches. Florida has huge cockroaches."

"Yeah?" He was enraptured. "Roaches! Really big, huh?"

"Well, sometimes we call them palmetto bugs because they nest in palmetto trees, but we have new bugs now, Asian cockroaches, bigger, meaner." She felt as if she were at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Midnight intruders. Cockroaches. She sliced the toast into rectangles and poured soup into a green bowl. "Here."

"So how big, a foot?" The plate and bowl dangled precariously from the boy's dirty fingers and his narrow face sparkled.

"Enough, Nicholas," a commanding voice broke in. "Eat." The man's chair banged on the floor. Sarah jumped. "Thank the lady."

"Yeah, right, but, Jake, I really want to know about them cockroaches. She don't mind, do you, ma'am?" Nicholas leaned against her again.

Sarah shook her head. "I don't mind." Her hand trembled.

"See, Jake? She don't mind about the bugs. She just don't want me leaning up on her. Probably because I'm so dirty. You told me not to roll down that hill." He swallowed a huge mouthful that had swollen his cheeks up like a chipmunk's.

She wanted to cry. The man's eyes were on her, a strange pity moving in them. She turned off the burner. "They're just big bugs, Nicholas. They fly."

The boy nodded, content.

Sarah gave the man soup and iced tea and poured 7-Up for Nicholas.

"I don't have any milk for your boy." She opened the icebox door and put the bread and jam inside. "Have more iced tea if you want," she said, setting the pitcher down with just enough force that it tilted forward, spilling the cold tea down the man's chest and thighs.

"What the hell?" He leaped to his feet. The plate skidded across the tea-splashed table.

Sarah whirled. She could make it out the back door. She could.

His muscular arm caught her around the middle.

"Oomph." The breath was knocked out of her. Looking into his annoyed eyes, she drew a deep breath. "Turn me loose, please."

"What?" He glanced down at his palm splayed across her middle, his square fingers tight against the tiny flowers of her shirt. "Sorry." He looked at his hand as if surprised by its quick movement.

"See, Jake? She don't like you touching her, neither. Even if you're not as dirty as me." The boy's bright blue gaze shifted between the two adults. His tone carried a note of satisfaction.

Sarah still felt the warm imprint of those muscles against her stomach.

"Jake, you and me need a bath." The boy's face was peaceful. Filled up with toast and soup, he sat there with a sleepy grin splitting his mud-flecked face, his teeth a white line drawn through the grime.

Sarah heard Jake's quiet breathing, heard her own heart beating in her ears. She smelled her own fear rising from her.

Nicholas laid his face sideways on the table and sleepily traced noodle circles on the plate. "That guava's good. Maybe sometime I can have it on toast."

Jake hadn't moved. Up close like this, Sarah saw a thread of gray in the glossy brown of his beard. His aggressiveness frightened her, but those light brown eyes didn't. They judged her, pitied her, dismissed her.

At her indrawn breath, he stepped back. "Look, I barged in here like a Brahma bull, I reckon." He was uncomfortable, as though he'd just realized how she'd taken his actions.

She stepped carefully back. "You did." Sarah sensed the easing of tension. Perhaps she'd overreacted. He really hadn't done anything. It was just his attitude. He was rude, crude, and probably tattooed, but he hadn't actually forced his way in.

"God knows what you must have thought." Once again his eyes watched her knowingly.

She saw Nicholas's lashes droop. "I think it's clear what I thought."

He glanced towards his son, whose sleepy snores disturbed the quiet. "Yeah, I can't blame you, I guess. But you

must be used to all kinds of activity out here, day and night. People must drop in at night." Watching, watching.

What was he suggesting? Sarah turned back to the sink, washing the knife. "Not really."

"Don't you get a lot of people wanting to go night-fishing?" He moved around the boy, touching his neck lightly as he passed.

"No. People make arrangements ahead of time if they plan on using my boats at night." She swished the dishrag over the table, scrubbing hard at a splotch. Rinsing the rag out, she draped it over the sink and faced him.

She was tired of this cat-and-mouse game. Weary fatalism sapped her energy. Whatever was going to happen, would. Her sympathies were all with the mouse. No wonder it got pounced on. It didn't have the patience to out-wait the cat. "Look, if you're trying to scare me, okay, you have. I don't know what game you're playing, but why are you here?"

"I told you. Nicholas got sick, probably because he's been in the car too long and he's tired. He's afraid of the dark around here. You know how kids are sometimes. They get the most ridiculous notions. Then I saw your sign."

"How?"

He hooked his thumbs in his belt. "From the road."

"It's a small sign with no lights."

He looked straight into her own eyes, almost as though he knew how nearsighted she was. "I have good eyesight."

"You must." Sarah tried to figure out why his simplest statements sounded like lies. Her fingers smoothed the wet dishrag. "I think it's time you and your son leave." Skirting the table, she cast a quick glance at the sleeping boy. He should be home in bed; not humped over a kitchen table at one o'clock in the morning.

"We can't." The man's voice was flat and low.

Her hands gripped the chair where the boy slept. "What do you mean, you can't?" Even in the chill air, sweat

beaded her forehead. With an effort, she kept her voice down. "You have to!"

Suddenly he was at her side, his rough whisper matching her tone. "We can't. The truck has a flat."

"Fix it!" Sarah took two steps away from his rugged strength.

"I don't have a spare. I thought you might have one. This being a fishing camp, you must carry spare parts." He circled between her and the back door.

"Well, I don't." Sarah forced her words out. "You have to leave. I don't want you here."

"Yeah, you made that clear, all right. I can understand you not wanting to let us in at first, but you couldn't even spare a sick kid something to eat without having your arm twisted." Contempt colored his voice.

Put that way, her reluctance to let him and his son in seemed cheap and stingy, not cautious. But she didn't have to justify herself to him. He was the intruder. "Now just a minute—" As he leaned forward, his jeans brushed her bare thighs, sending a shiver over her skin. She pulled back. "You should have thought about that before dragging him out at this time of night." She smoothed her hair off her forehead and saw him follow the movements of her fingers down to her cutoffs. Suddenly she didn't know what to do with her hands.

The hum of the ice-maker was followed by the thunking of cubes into the tray. The anger faded from his eyes. "Yeah, you're right," he said tiredly, "I should have thought about a lot of things. But I didn't." He looked back at his son for a long moment. "We can't leave tonight."

Sarah looked at the grimy scrap with his thin fingers smeared with God-knew-what-kind of dirt and smashed noodles. She really didn't want this pitiful child in her home. His wiry energy and intelligence tugged at her memories. She wanted him gone. "I don't rent cabins. You can't stay here."

4 'Hell. You have a big house. Can't you find a corner somewhere? I mean, I don't want to inconvenience you or anything." Sarcasm lashed his rough voice. "You're a real sweetheart, you are. Haven't you ever heard the story about the Good Samaritan?"