Wrecked (Stories of Serendipity #8): #8 (19 page)

The lake was peaceful and serene. He stopped paddling and watched as a flock of ducks flew low over their heads and landed in the water to their right. She sighed wistfully, and Jason watched the expression of serenity settle on her face, mentally applauding his choice of outings. She looked relaxed for a change.

When they got to the spot he’d been aiming for, he got out first and pulled the canoe up to shore before holding out his hand to help her. She took it, gracefully hopping out of the canoe, and then he got the ice chest and duffle bag with all the other stuff in it.

She had picked up the blanket and followed him to a spot under the trees. “I’ve never been out here before. This is great.”

The spot he’d chosen was so secluded that you could hardly see the lake, even though it was only about twenty feet away. Behind the branches of a weeping willow tree, the spot spoke of seclusion. It actually reminded him of fairy tales he’d heard as a kid, but he kept that to himself.

Renae spread the blanket, and Jason dug around in the bag. Pulling out what he needed, he placed it behind his back.

“Do you trust me?”

She paused. “Sure.”

“I mean, you trust that I wouldn’t hurt you, right?”

“Yes.” Her eyes had widened with unspoken fear, and Jason wanted to question her but chose to distract her instead.

“Okay, close your eyes and put your hands behind your back.”

“What?”

“You said you trusted me.”

“I do…” She sighed. “Okay. Fine.” Renae did as she was told, stiffening her body, ready to make a break for it.

He waved one hand in front of her face to make sure she wasn’t peeking and then pulled the strip of cloth from behind his back, walking behind her to tie her hands.

“You can open your eyes now.” He was still tying her hands, making sure the knots were firm, yet still comfortable. She wasn’t fighting him, but she was still tense as he could see it in the veins popping against the creamy skin of her hands and the set of her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Is this some sort of bondage fetish?”

The words coming out of her mouth made his cock jump at sudden images flashing through his mind, but that wasn’t what he had planned. “No. You said you have a hard time controlling yourself when we kiss, and I’m tired of not kissing you. This is my way of helping you keep some control. By taking it all away. How’s that? You still have your mouth. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do whatever. I promise.”

Jason helped her to sit down, and sat next to her. “First, to get you comfortable, I brought food. Do you like fajitas?”

“Oh yeah. Love them. Did you get steak?”

“Steak and shrimp. Any shellfish allergies?” When she eagerly shook her head no, he said, “Open up.” He held up a fajita with steak, shrimp, avocado, and grilled onions and peppers with sour cream smeared all over the top. She dutifully opened her mouth, and he put the end in as she closed her lips around it, groaning in appreciation. His cock jumped again. He told it to be patient.

He fed her fajitas, giving her sips of limeade between bites in silence. He couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to. The noises of gratitude for each bite were unravelling him at the seams.

She’d leaned back against the tree and was relaxed, her eyes closed while she chewed. A piece of avocado was on her lip and Jason used his thumb to wipe it off, followed by his lips, unable to resist the temptation any longer.

Once he’d tasted her, it was over. His mouth closed around her lips and suckled, nibbling on the tender flesh there. His hand caressed her chin and neck while his mouth made love to hers. When she opened up to him, his tongue swooped in ready to conquer. He’d been so patient with her for so long, giving her the space she seemed to need, but it had been a long week.

Without her hands tangling in his hair, he was free to roam her body with his mouth, and judging by her words and sounds of encouragement, she wanted him to. He kissed her neck, accompanied by rasping gasps that came from her.

Just to make sure he wasn’t overstepping any boundaries, he asked, “Is this okay?” between kisses on her neck.

“Yesss…” She hissed in his ear as she tried to capture his earlobe in her teeth. When she got it, a jolt of electricity went straight to his groin and he moaned against her. His hands pulled up her shirt and captured her breasts, molding them between his fingers, squeezing and pushing them together. He broke away from the heady scent of her neck and lowered his mouth to her bra, nicking an erect nipple with his teeth, while freeing her other breast from its confines and moving over to sample it, reaching around to unclasp the damn thing.

“Oh God, Jason…” He looked at her face around his mouthful of heaven and saw a rapturous look on it as she threw her head back and moaned.

“Do you want me to untie you? Is this okay?” She looked at him, her lip stuck between her teeth and nodded. Eagerly, he reached around and untied the knot he’d made in the cloth and freed her hands, which immediately went to his hair, pulling him closer.

“You make me feel so good…”

“That’s the idea, baby.” Jason muttered while his hands fumbled with the snap of her pants. When her hands went to the buckle of his belt, he stilled them. Everything inside him told him to let her continue, but his sense won out. “I didn’t come here for that. You want to make love, we’ll have to go find a bed. I’m not nineteen anymore. I don’t make love on pine needles.”

She stopped as if she’d been doused with cold water and sat up, pulling her shirt down. “I don’t want to have sex here. I’m sorry.”

Jason sensed he’d fucked up again. “Don’t apologize. I brought you here to kiss you and make you feel good. I want you to know you’re mine. For whatever reason, you’ve got this wall up around you and won’t let me in. I brought you here to climb that wall.” He grabbed her hand. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let me make you feel good.” He leaned in to kiss her again, make her forget whatever he’d said that put a damper on her amorous mood. But she pushed him away.

Standing, she brushed her hand through her hair. “I’m pregnant, Jason.”

He watched her pace, trying in vain to process the words she’d said. “What?”

Renae turned to face him, her gray eyes fiery. “I’m pregnant. I wasn’t on the pill. You never used a condom. I’m pregnant.”

Still trying to comprehend her words, he said the ultimate wrong thing. “It’s mine?”

The fire in her eyes exploded. “Of course it’s yours. Up until that night, my vagina had cobwebs growing on it. Not only did you clear them out, but I can’t even keep the thing dry when you’re around. First sex I’ve had in eight years, and boom. I get knocked up.” She turned and started pacing, muttering to herself. All he could make out was, “is it his… mother-fucker…”

Tears were streaking down her face and Jason felt a twinge of guilt for being the cause of that. Then he did the math.

“How long have you known?”

“Two months.” She was still pacing, but now Jason was up.

“You’ve known about this for two months, and you’re just now telling me? Who else knows?”

“My mom and Alyssa figured it out, and I told Kelly yesterday.”

Two months. She was pregnant. Renae had been pregnant for over two months. He missed the first doctor’s appointments, he’d missed hearing the first heartbeats. Could she feel the baby move? What else had he missed? All the time they’d spent together, and she hadn’t told him. He looked back at her. She’d stopped pacing and was watching him warily. “How could you?”

“What?”

“What? What?!” His voice was rising. “How could you spend all that time with me and not say anything? You’d quit drinking but never thought to tell me why?” And apparently, she wasn’t going to tell him initially. She’d never called him after that night and hadn’t intended to, either. He felt like a tool, one that had been used and left outside to rust.

“I didn’t know how to say it!” She’d stood, throwing her hands into the air in exasperation, but he didn’t care. Jason was pacing back and forth, his mind whirling, while Renae stood, watching him, wringing her hands together. “It never was the right time, and then I couldn’t figure out what to say…”

He snapped. “Easy! You say, Jason I’m pregnant. Better yet, you could have answered your fucking phone the first six times I called you and said, “Oopsie! I forgot something. I could be pregnant!” All those things you left unsaid, Renae. All of it!” Rage fired him up.

“I thought you were going back to Houston. I thought your life was there! I didn’t know you were staying.”

He forced himself to lower his voice and stop yelling. But he couldn’t keep the anger out of it. “I will ask you this one more time. Did you know you were pregnant when we were at the goat farm, when you came into my shop, when we had dinner with my dad, when I took you out to dinner, during the hours of conversation we’ve had over the last month, have you known you were pregnant that entire time?”

“Yes.” He almost didn’t hear the whisper, but when he saw her lips move, he couldn’t help but break inside.

“Get in the boat.”

Furiously, he grabbed at the cooler and blanket, shoving everything else back inside the duffel bag. Tossing it on the boat, he shoved off, not looking at Renae’s tear streaked face. He paddled ferociously, not daring to stop. When he’d reached the middle of the lake, his phone rang.

It was Ruby, his dad’s new care taker.

“Your father’s fallen. The ambulance is here, and they’re taking him to Serendipity Medical.” The words made his already pounding heart beat faster. Now he was angry
and
worried.

“Thanks, Ruby. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He didn’t speak again the entire canoe ride back, not trusting his words.

Before he started the motorcycle, he looked at Renae. “Baby’s healthy? Have you been going to the doctor?”

She nodded. “Yes. I saw him Monday.”

This brought a fresh round of anger. Did she think he wouldn’t want to go to the doctor’s appointments? He could remember Jodie talking about the first time he’d heard Savannah’s heartbeat. How dare she rob him of those experiences? Even if she thought he was in Houston, he still would have come back for that stuff.

He kick started the motorcycle and it roared to life. He didn’t make sure she was hanging on. He just shot out of the parking lot by the lake and took her back the shortest way possible. When he pulled up in the driveway of the bank, he didn’t cut the engine, but yelled at her over the rumble after she lurched off the bike.

“Why didn’t you tell me? What did you think I would do?”

“I thought you wouldn’t want me anymore.” He couldn’t hear her, but he could read her lips even though they quivered.

“You may have just gotten your wish.” He watched her shoulders slump as he backed down her driveway and drove off to the hospital.

J
ason did what he always did when his emotions kept him from functioning. He pulled his horn out of the closet and played. Fingering the keys straightened his thoughts, and feeling the notes coming out put an order to the tumult inside his head. There was something about making music out of all the sounds that brought him a peace he hadn’t felt in weeks.

It was nearly Christmas, and he was waiting for the doctors to replace his Dad’s hip. They hadn’t been able to do it because he’d had a low-grade fever initially. They’d run some tests and found a staph infection, probably from his first visit to the hospital when he’d broken the bone in his foot. This morning, they’d scheduled the surgery for next week as long as his fever stayed gone. After that would be two weeks in the rehab facility, and after that, Jason didn’t know. He’d talked to Jodie about it, and they’d agreed Jason would need to move in with him, but Jason wasn’t sure what to do with the shop. The second care-taker hadn’t worked out. Miss Ruby was a nice lady, but she used a cane to get around as well and hadn’t been much of a help to Joe getting around. He’d tripped over her cane, which was how he’d fallen and broken his hip. Miss Ruby felt awful, and Jason felt guilty letting her go, but that was how it was.

And then of course there was Renae. Three weeks had passed since she’d told him. Three more weeks of her pregnancy gone without his involvement. She was almost out of the first trimester, and he’d missed it all.

His fingers moved over the horn, slowing to a soulful rendition of a familiar song as he sorted his thoughts about her. She’d mailed him a letter, which he’d received today, and it brought to the surface a torrent of emotions. As he played, the words he’d read over and over today came back to him.

Dear Jason,

When Cody died and I learned how it happened, I told myself I would never depend on anyone else for my happiness again. That was a lie I conveniently made up to make myself feel better, less inadequate as a woman, a mother. I depended on Kelly for my happiness. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time. All those years I spent raising her, I never gave a thought to what would happen when she was grown and out of the house. When that time came, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I spent weeks discovering I didn’t like being alone, and I can’t sit and dwell on my own thoughts.