Special Delivery (Mountain Meadow Homecoming 1) (12 page)

“No cookies?” Evan teased between bites.

Holly shook her head. “I just make them. I don’t eat them.”

“She doesn’t like sweet stuff,” Tyler clarified. “But put some popcorn or some fries within reach and you could lose a finger if you get in the way.”

Holly pulled a face at him. “Thanks, Tyler.”

He grinned and finished his glass of milk. “What are brothers for?”

“’Bout time for you to hop in the shower, kid,” Jake said. Holly’s jaw dropped when Tyler told everyone good night and headed out of the room. She stared after her brother and then back at Jake.

“What have you done to my kid brother?” Holly narrowed her eyes.

Jake grinned. “We made a deal. I told him he could have the attic room if he could show me he was man enough to follow the house rules and not whine.”

She just shook her head. Jake was just the positive, male role model Tyler needed. Tyler seemed to agree.

“I should get home, Jake,” Jenny interjected. “I have rounds to make in the morning.”

Evan cleared his throat, eyes focused on the far wall. “I’ll take you, so Jake can get Holly settled for her first night.”

Jenny’s brow furrowed, worry clouding her features. Before she could refuse, Holly jumped in. “Great, Evan. That’s so thoughtful.”

He grimaced and said self-deprecatingly, “I manage it every once in a while. I’ll get my car.”

After he’d left, Jake asked Jenny, “Will you be okay?”

She nodded, but her brows were still drawn together. “We’ve sidestepped each other for almost two years. It was bound to come to a head. I guess tonight’s the night.” Jenny pulled on her coat and gave them a wan smile as Evan honked out in the driveway.

Jake touched her arm. “You have our number if you need it.”

“Thanks.” She hurried from the room and a moment later the sound of the door shutting drifted down the hall.

Our number
…like they were a family. No. Holly shouldn’t think that way. She’d said she wanted to be friends, and that’s how it needed to stay. Depending on Jake was too easy.

Noelle chose that moment to cry, and Holly hurried to get her. Practicalities were what she should concentrate on.

* * * *

Evan didn’t open the car door, Jenny noticed. Just another sign of how their relationship had deteriorated. Evan had always stood apart. He’d had class. His family counted themselves among the area’s original settlers, but they had always been just a bit different, a little more refined than most families. The Richardsons traveled to New York and Washington. His father had served two terms in the United States Senate before he abruptly retired from the political scene.

His parents had been appalled when Evan chose to date Jenny Owens, whose mother had long since taken off for parts unknown and whose father everyone knew made the best moonshine around. Of course nobody said that out loud, but they still lined up to buy it. The funny thing was her daddy was just as upset she was dating “one o’ them snooty Richardsons” and she’d never understood why.

Her father had wanted her to get out of the Blue Ridge, to be a doctor in some big city, anywhere besides Mountain Meadow. Jenny wanted to come home. They both got their wish. And so had Evan’s parents. They’d wanted whatever would keep Jenny Owens away from their golden boy. For more than a decade, she and Evan had stayed as far away from each other as possible.

Jenny buckled her seat belt and sat in the passenger seat. After a brief glance, Evan put the car in gear and headed out of town. Animosity filled the silence between them.

“You surprise me.” Evan’s lip curled as he maneuvered over the twisty roads. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d allow any competition for Jake.”

“Competition? Jake and I are friends,” she snapped as Evan turned onto the long road leading to her house.

“Would that be friends like you were with half the basketball team?” Evan’s tone changed from just biting to as cutting as a hunter gutting his kill. While she was still reeling from that, he stopped in front of her house and added, “I guess it’s a good thing you got rid of your baby, huh. It might have been a little difficult to ask half the senior class to take paternity tests.”

Dead silence reigned for just a fraction of a second as she struggled through the pain drowning her. Her hands shook so much she fumbled with the seat belt. Jenny sobbed in frustration before it loosened so she could rip open the door. As the overhead light blazed, Evan sucked in his breath, but Jenny barely spared him a glance before she ran for her house. She had to get away from him, away from the pain.

He leaped from the car, sprinting after her. Just as she stopped to open the door, he caught her arm and spun her to face him. “Did you really think I didn’t know?”

Jenny’s eyes burned with tears she refused to shed. “You know nothing. Nothing!” she yelled at him.

“Like hell!” he shouted right back. “Your father, your own father, let me in. I saw you lying there with them. Half my teammates! Your dad just thought I’d come to join the party. More fool me.”

Jenny shoved at him. “It’s a lie. You’re lying.”

“No,” Evan snarled. “You were the one lying. Lying with your legs spread and your clothes scattered all over the room. The night after you promised yourself to me.” He stopped and raked a hand through his hair. “There I was with an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket. The night after you told me about
our
baby. Whose was it, Jenny? Did you even know?”

She felt whatever blood remained drain from her face. Her eyes and nose ached with frustration about a night she couldn’t remember. But she’d seen it. Oh yes, she’d seen it. “The baby was yours,” she whispered. Her jaw tightened so she could barely continue. “They raped me. My daddy drugged me and let them in. They raped me, and I miscarried our baby because of it.”

Her words hung in the air like ice crystals of pain. A split second of silence followed in which neither of them moved or even breathed. The past had reared up, pulling them back in with suffocating hands. She had buried it and simply couldn’t relive the awful pain again.

“Jenny!” Evan’s voice was choked.

She blinked feeling as if she’d come out of a trance. What did it matter now? “Leave me alone, Evan.”

She was drained, her anger gone, leaving only the horrifying emptiness of the past twelve years. Jenny walked through the doorway and shut it in his face. He pounded on the wood.

“Jenny! Open the door, damn it. Open the door!”

She twisted the dead bolt instead. Stay away from Evan. Stay away from the pain. There was a long pause in which all she heard was her own breathing before he spoke again.

“Please, Jenny,” he whispered. “Please let me in.”

She closed her eyes as she leaned back against the door. Her breath came in short, sobbing gasps. Jenny hadn’t meant to tell him. She hadn’t told anyone, not in all those years…

Both men she had ever loved betrayed her that night. Her father had drugged her, desperate to keep her from marrying and settling down, and the boy she had loved since she was old enough to even think of boys believed his eyes rather than his heart. But even that wasn’t enough. When her father lay dying her final year in medical school, he had confessed. The drugs he’d used came from Stoner Richardson. Even the money for her college education and medical school had also come from Evan’s father. Hush money.

It would be so easy to drop that bombshell on Evan, but Jenny still couldn’t do it. Too many lives and too many relationships had already been destroyed.

She heard his car start, then the crunch of tires as it pulled away. She slid along the door until she sat with her knees drawn up. Resting her forehead against them, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, Jenny cried.

They were pinned down. Along with the
rat-a-tat
of the insurgents’ machine guns were the deeper punctuations of explosive charges. But that wasn’t what drummed in his ears and hammered on his brain.
Help me, Jake!
The same cry of pain repeated again and again. His best friend lay wounded across an open expanse of unprotected ground.
Leave no man behind.

Their mission had gone south before they’d even known anything was wrong. On paper it had been simple. Drop into the camp, complete their objective—in this case rescuing a businessman taken hostage by extremists—and signal the helo for a pickup.

In his dream version, Will continued to call Jake between groans of pain, the screams and cries getting louder, and Jake unable to do anything to end it. Helpless, frustrated rage filled him until he thought he would explode.

He sat upright with a gasp. For just a moment his groggy mind couldn’t assimilate his surroundings. His house in Mountain Meadow. Not Afghanistan, but the nightmare never changed. At least he no longer awoke screaming. As he sat in his bed waiting for his breathing and his heart rate to return to normal, he heard another noise. This time someone else cried, but it didn’t sound like Noelle. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants, snatched the bedroom door open, and the source of the noise became clear.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Holly sobbed. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Noelle was fussy and irritable, but Holly’s sniffs tore his insides. Something was wrong with the baby? With Holly? Jake hurried across the master bedroom to the door of the nursery, his nightmare fading in the face of a new worry.

“Holly?”

She raised a tear-streaked face to him. “I can’t nurse. She can’t latch on, Jake. Something’s wrong.”

He swallowed as he realized Holly’s nightgown was unbuttoned, exposing her breasts. He forced his gaze away. “Do you want me to call Jenny?”

In his peripheral vision, he saw her shake her head. A beat later, she whispered, “No. Just grab the book. It’s next to my bed. See if you can figure out what’s going on. If that doesn’t work, then I guess we’ll have to call.”

The book, as thick as a dictionary, had everything about taking care of babies. Relief coursed through him. Reading a book he could handle. “Tell me some of your symptoms,” Jake called as he crossed the room to her bed, feeling much more confident now. He turned on the reading lamp.

“My breasts feel hard, and Jake…they’re huge. I—I have milk leaking, but Noelle can’t get her mouth latched onto me.”

Jake’s mouth was dry as dirt. Her breasts were huge and hard and leaking milk? He gulped and sent a prayer God would somehow make it so he didn’t have to torture himself by seeing Holly’s bare breasts again.

“Have you found anything yet?” she asked, her breath hitching yet again while Noelle continued fussing. Jake frantically flipped through the table of contents until he came to the chapter on breast-feeding. He scanned the subtitles until he landed on one labeled “What happens when your milk comes in.”

“I’ve found something. Hang on.” He scanned it “…around the second or third day…breasts may double in size…may have difficulty nursing…” Okay, this was sounding like what was going on and the timing was right. Now what were they supposed to do?
Please God, don’t make me have to touch them! She’ll know then what a fraud I am. How much more than just friends I’d like to be.
“You or your partner should express some of your milk so your baby can latch on.” The book slipped out of his nerveless fingers and dropped onto a very sensitive part of his anatomy already throbbing for very different reasons.

Jake groaned, leaning over with his face screwed in pain while he clutched himself.

“Jake? Did you find anything?” Holly called.

He blew a breath out. “Yeah. Hang on. I’ll be right there.” At least his voice hadn’t gone all soprano on him. He hobbled toward the door.

“Why are you walking funny?” Holly inquired.

“I…uh…stubbed my toe.”

“Is that all? So what’s wrong?”

Jake stared at her then her breasts, and for the life of him, for just a moment, his brain went blank. They were huge. Big beautiful breasts, the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen.
Mine.
Oh, his body didn’t need thoughts like that thrumming through it right at this moment.

“Jake?”

“Um…yeah. It says your milk has come in. You were producing colostrum, but now the real stuff has arrived. It says you might overproduce until your body and the baby get in sync.”

“Okay.” Holly gestured to her chest. “What do we do about it?”

We?
We?
Jake closed his eyes. He could think of a couple things but doubted if Holly would go for either suggestion. He licked his lips. “The book says you need to express some of the milk. Once the pressure is reduced, Noelle will be able to latch on.”

“Well how do I do that?”

“Shit.” He angled one hand across his front hoping to hide his arousal. “Didn’t you take some class to show you this stuff?”

“Busy avoiding the stalking ex…remember? Look, if you don’t want to help, it’s okay.” Irritation crept into her tone.

“Sorry.” Oh man. He was so fucked.

Holly sighed. “Here, take Noelle. Are there pictures in the book?”

Oh there were pictures all right, but nothing like the real thing
. Jake nodded as he took the fussing baby. Holly snatched the book off the floor and disappeared into the master bath. An angry cry brought his attention back to the baby in his arms, and he smiled at Noelle as he rocked her. “Mama will help you in a bit, honey. Seems both the women in my life are mad at me right now.”

Holly stopped what she was doing, looked into the mirror, and swallowed. She’d left the bathroom door open, and even as quiet as Jake’s words were, they carried enough for her to hear him.
Women in his life?
Did she want to be the woman in his life? Other than Noelle, she wanted to be the only woman in his life. The admission left her gaping until the pressure in her breasts reminded her why she was in there.

Holly went back to work, studying the pictures, and trying to release enough milk to ease the painful throbbing. The pictures made it look much easier than the reality, but she was able to express enough to ease the pressure. At least she wouldn’t have to wake Jenny in the middle of the night. But Holly was going to face up to one reality right now. Bring Jake Allred’s
friend
was no longer possible.