By Candlelight

by Janelle Taylor

  “You wouldn’t,” he repeated tautly, clearly not liking what she had implied.

  “No, because then I wouldn’t have April. And I wouldn’t have my memories of you.”

  Jake’s eyes darkened. He hadn’t expected her heartfelt honesty. Gazing into her anguished golden eyes, he couldn’t stand it. He wanted to drag her warm body into his arms and bury himself inside her. He wanted to push all the dreadful realities away and forget for at least one moment, concentrating instead on his passion and love for her.

  For he did still love her. He wished he could deny it, but he couldn’t.

  As if she read his mind, she suddenly said, “Jake, I love you. And I love my daughter. I’m not perfect, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you both.”

  “Damn it, Kate, you ask too much,” he muttered roughly.

  “I know.”

  Long, dismal seconds stretched between them. Kate’s nerves screamed. She gulped wine and fought treacherous emotions. She wanted to run to her daughter, and then fall into Jake’s arms, but she couldn’t do either.

  “However, you do make a mean peanut butter sandwich,” he said in a serious tone.

  She glanced at him, searching his eyes for the humor she expected. For a heartbeat, she saw it—his mouth curved, and there was a flash of white—a smile as bright as Hollywood.

  “Jake…,” she whispered.

  The creak of a door opening froze Kate where she stood. Jake, too, tensed at the sound of April leaving her bedroom.

  She came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, looking rather pale for her and definitely on the serious side. Her gaze swept over their makeshift dinner. She snorted. “Good God,” she said; then her eyes filled with tears, and she broke into heartbreaking sobs that nearly killed Kate.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Kate choked out, holding her arms out to her daughter. April didn’t move, and Kate crossed the room, dragging her daughter’s resisting body into her embrace. She brushed back her hair, cooing reassuring love words, her own tears falling without heed. April turned her face into her mother’s neck, and they stood together in the trembling comfort of each other.

  The sight hit Jake in the gut. My family, he thought, dazed. My family.

  “Mom,” April murmured brokenly.

  “I’m sorry. I love you. You know I love you. I’m so sorry…” Kate couldn’t stop the words that tumbled like a waterfall from her lips. “I’m sorry. Oh, darling, I love you so much!”

  April hiccupped, cried some more, then finally lifted her head and wiped her nose. On a half laugh, she asked, “Could I have one of those?” and she pointed to Jake’s peanut butter sandwich.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was so much to be said, and nobody felt like talking. April merely curled up beside Kate on the couch, and Jake stood by the windows, staring into the dark night as if answers lingered in the shadows.

  Kate was replete. Happy. The pain in her soul expunged. April had, if not forgiven her, started back on the road to forgiveness. Kate would have walked through fire for her daughter. She would give up her own life. And at some level April understood that as terrible as her mother’s betrayal had seemed, it had been made to love, protect and provide for her child.

  April’s adult understanding was awesome. Kate had always known it, but it left her humbled and speechless tonight. And when April said, “I couldn’t make the wrong decision now. Not really. Didn’t you know that?” Kate understood that her disappearance had been an immediate reaction without any lasting consequences.

  “Do you love him?” April whispered in Kate’s ear, her gaze following Jake.

  Kate nodded, not wanting him to hear.

  “Does he love you?”

  “He did,” she said, picking her words.

  “I don’t know how I feel about him,” she admitted just before disentangling from Kate’s embrace and heading off to bed. Kate’s gaze followed her, and April shrugged and frowned at Jake before disappearing.

  “What did she say?” Jake asked, as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “She’s kind of unsure about things.”

  “Really,” he said sarcastically.

  “What did you say to her, when you were in the bedroom earlier?”

  “You couldn’t hear?”

  “The music was too loud.”

  Jake smiled faintly. “I told her to turn down the music and she said no. We fought about it.”

  “That was it?” Kate couldn’t believe it.

  “Well, not quite. She finally screamed at me that I’d never be her father, and I told her that was okay because I didn’t know the first thing about being a father. She said she was going to be eighteen in a few months, and I said fine, no child support.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did.” Jake was unrepentant. “She almost laughed, caught herself, then turned down the music. That’s all.”

  In truth, there was so much more. Jake had felt it, and he had seen an answering emotion in his daughter’s eyes. But their relationship was too new, too fragile, to be anything but a fight for control. He had known it; so had she. And yet, he had suddenly wanted to hug her like a father, starved for the closeness he hadn’t even known he had missed out on until two days ago.

  She looked like him. The resemblance he had put down to Kate was really a resemblance to him. The eyes. The chin. The smile…

  But there was no smile in evidence tonight. She had stared at him with deep intensity, an intensity he also possessed. She was like Kate, too: her hair, her humor, her innate beauty.

  “You would have been a great father,” Kate said to him, drawing him back to the present.

  “Yeah, well…” He didn’t think he could hear it right now. With an effort, he said instead, “Should I take you back to your car?”

  It seemed such a strange and cold response. Kate wanted so much more. She nodded her head jerkily, and she and Jake sped through the early morning in moody reflection until they reached her sports car.

  But as she climbed from the Bronco his hand reached out to grab her wrist. “Don’t go,” he said simply.

  She gazed at him, her heart in her eyes. “Don’t go?”

  Jake groaned. “I don’t want to be alone yet.”

  Kate could see that even though he wanted her, he was fighting his own instincts. “It might be a mistake,” she said.

  “Then I want to make a mistake,” he answered without smiling, his fingers releasing her wrist long enough to cup the back of her nape and draw her willing mouth to his.

  She didn’t recall the trip up the elevator to his condominium. All she could feel were his urgent hands and her own anxious fingers digging at him as they struggled through the front door, dragging clothes from each other, their mouths melded in a kiss while the rest of them fought for freedom from restriction. Once Kate laughed as Jake couldn’t release his cuff, the shirt hanging on his arm like some offending, uninvited guest.

  “Damn it,” he muttered without heat, which sent her into gales of laughter.

  For that he dragged her into the bedroom, sweeping off her clothes and his own until their hot, hungry bodies were tangled together. His mouth ravaged hers, and she reveled in the possession. Her hands slid down his sinewy back, clasping his hips until Jake groaned and pushed her legs apart with one knee.

  She was starved for his possession. Mindless. Uncaring. She took his lack of control as a sign that he had half forgiven her. And she had forgiven him his callousness. She understood and she didn’t care, and if Jake would only make love to her with some of the pleasure and abandonment he had before, their future could be sealed.

  These were random thoughts. Unstable, and rooted in quicksand. But Kate had been so certain she had lost him and anything they could have together that she was feverish with desire and the need to put things right in the physical sense.

  For his part, Jake was right with her. His tongue stabbed into her mouth, foreshadowing the possession she longed for from another par
t of his anatomy. He groaned his need, and as his mouth sought the hard nub of her breast, little moans of desire and frustration passed her lips in tiny squeaks.

  She had never been so bold and needful. She twisted and writhed and practically demanded he thrust himself inside her, and though Jake sought to keep the rollicking pace under control, he gave in with a moan of pleasure of his own, driving inside her to the core of her femininity in a hot, sensual thrill that had Kate’s body arching into a shooting climax within milliseconds.

  “Jake!” she cried, her hands digging into the skin of his back.

  “God…,” he rasped, his own pleasure spilling into her at the same moment.

  Time seemed suspended. Hanging outside of her reality. When Kate, sated and drugged with satisfaction, slowly opened her eyes, it was to find Jake collapsed atop her, their hearts still beating in rapid tandem.

  “I never want to be without you,” he admitted in a voice raw with need.

  “Oh, Jake!”

  “Marry me,” he said, slowly disengaging himself from her. “Sometime in the next few months. Marry me and don’t change your mind.”

  Her answer was an urgent nod of her head as she gazed deeply into his eyes and silently answered him with all the love she possessed.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said with a deep-throated chuckle, and as Kate kissed him all over his face, he added, “I’ve got an engagement ring, you know, slightly worse for wear. Tomorrow we start planning.”

  And drawing his mouth down to hers, Kate answered huskily, “Tomorrow…”

  If Kate had envisioned a perfect future for herself, it couldn’t have been any better than the one she had suddenly been given. Her engagement to Jacob Talbot was announced to the newspapers, and suddenly everything turned rosy. Even his reluctant and taciturn parents came around, and Kate was amazed at a quote from Marilyn Talbot citing that she “couldn’t be happier with Jacob’s choice” and how much happiness she wished for their future.

  Of course, they still didn’t know the truth about April. Jake, from years of experience, knew better than to hit them with too many blows all at once. The knowledge of April’s parentage remained with only a select few individuals, and both Kate and Jake decided to let her make the choice about when, and how, she wanted that news to become public.

  As for April herself, she threw herself into her senior year of school with a vengeance, sending out applications to dozens of colleges and working at her studies with renewed concentration. Kate could hardly credit it, and though she worried her daughter had given up her social life entirely—Ryan appeared to be out of the picture as well—Jake cautioned her not to interfere. It was April’s way of finding herself, April’s way of charting her own course, April’s way of accepting.

  Jake’s brother, Phillip, had his suspicions when it came to April, however. She had been his find, his special choice for the Talbot spokesperson. While he and Jake worked through their problems, he spent most of his time on the set with April, bonding with her in a way neither Jake nor Kate quite understood. But Phillip’s problems with Jake, and Talbot Industries, had taken an unexpected turn. As the investigation continued, it became more and more evident that Nate Hefner had executed his destruction and vandalism as a retaliation against Phillip rather than Talbot as a whole. He had been Phillip’s friend while he was employed at Talbot, and when he had been fired over lazy work practices, he had been angered and infuriated that Phillip, because he was a Talbot, had gotten little more than a slap on the wrist for his liquid lunches while Nate had been ousted from a fairly cushy job, one he had not been able to replace. Nate consequently tried to renew an association with Phillip and, failing that, had let his drinking get away from him and had broken into the strip mall, then taken a job at the West Bank Hotel just to wreak havoc.

  Throwing suspicion on Phillip had been a side benefit he had capitalized on.

  Phillip, for his part, had suspected Nate from the start, but had been unwilling to finger him to the brother whom he deeply resented. He had begun a relationship with Marcus Torrance’s wife for no better reason than the woman had been willing, then had whispered about the sabotage just to cause problems for Jake and Talbot Industries as a whole.

  Jake had gleaned most of this information from Phillip himself. “I offered him the airport property on a platter,” Jake had explained to Kate. “And that apparently did it. As soon as I gave in and said, ‘You’re out of Talbot Industries once and for all,’ he just stopped fighting.”

  “What happened?” Kate had asked.

  “Detective Marsh was on to Nate Hefner. Phillip was straight with the police, and then he told me he was through causing problems for the company. I think, when I rolled over about the airport property, it forced Phillip to face his faults. He didn’t really want to cut all ties with his family.”

  “Is he still seeing—Mrs. Torrance?” Kate hadn’t been certain how to ask the question.

  “No.” Jake had been thoughtful. “She and her husband have separated, but apparently Phillip was a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The ironic thing is, Torrance wants the joint venture after all! He called Dennis Watley, our attorney, and wants another shot at it.”

  “That’s great!”

  At that point, Jake had gathered her in his arms and said, “Now, if April comes to realize how good everything is, it’ll all be perfect.”

  Kate agreed. A part of her couldn’t help regretting that Jake would never be able to go through all the steps of parenting, but that couldn’t be helped. And the few times she had brought that up in recent weeks, he had shushed her instantly. “I have April,” he reminded her, which was both a discouragement and a blessing since it was Kate’s fault they had been separated for so many years.

  Stop being so hard on yourself! she admonished now, as she reached for the phone on her desk. It was a set of circumstances that had built this scenario. Jake understood; so did April, come to that. It was Kate who wouldn’t set the blame aside, and though she knew she must if she were ever to come to terms with everything, it was still difficult.

  “Hey,” she greeted Jake, as his secretary put her through to his office. “Are we still on for tonight?”

  “Still trying to back out, huh?” he teased.

  Kate’s diamond winked at her in the light, almost as if it shared the joke. “Who me? Now, why would I want to back out of making wedding plans with your mother?”

  “Give me a few hours and I’ll list the reasons.”

  “I’m fine!” she chuckled. “I’ll meet you at my house at six-thirty.”

  Kate had just replaced the receiver when Delilah, dressed in skin-tight black leather, whirled into her office. “I bet you’re surprised to see me!” she declared.

  “Well, yes I am.” Kate actually had almost forgotten about her mercurial client. “How was L.A.?”

  “Forget L.A. New York’s the place to be. You know I had a callback for a soap?”

  “Really? Which one?”

  “Oh…” She shrugged. “I was an extra on ‘All My Children.’”

  “Cool,” Kate said, hiding a smile. An extra was hardly the same thing as getting a callback for a role, but hey, if Delilah’s fantasies made her happy, who was she to argue? “Are you going back right away, or do you miss Portland?”

  “Oh, I’m back home now. That was fun, but this is where I belong.” She hesitated, smoothing her hair. “Do you have anything for me?”

  “You mean, something to match the turkey commercial?” Kate asked, fighting to maintain a straight face.

  Delilah gave her a swift look, then actually smiled. “I know I was bad, but will you forgive me?” For an answer Kate reached across the desk and shook Delilah’s hand. Delilah’s gaze, however, caught the glittering diamond on Kate’s left ring finger. “Oh, my God!” she cried. “Who?”

  “Jake Talbot.”

  “Of Talbot Industries!” Delilah shrieked. “You lucky girl! That does it! I’m never leaving
here again. I could use a good man with a bankroll.”

  “Couldn’t we all?” Jillian said dryly, ducking her head in the door. “Your daughter’s on her way back.”

  “Thanks.”

  April was just finishing work on her second commercial. She had looked so incredibly grown up on her way to the shoot, her hair brushed back into a loose french braid, her slim legs encased in a pair of natural-shade nylons under a straight blue dress. They would pick out her apparel for the shoot when she arrived, but it was April’s demeanor that arrested Kate. She seemed more like twenty-five than just shy of eighteen.

  Kate finished up some paperwork while she waited for her daughter. She smiled to see the note from the bank stamped “Paid in full.” As a means to solve her financial troubles, Jake had directed Talbot Industries to pay off her loan to the bank, so she was no longer under the guillotine of a balloon payment. Instead, she now owed Talbot the amount of the note, but there was no balloon payment looming. She had twenty years to pay the balance, and even with interest, the payments had been whittled down so that she was more than able to make them and still breathe easier. Also, business was increasing, thanks again to Talbot’s association with Rose Talent Agency. She hated to think the business world was so political in its dealings, but she had to admit that being linked with Talbot Industries had helped her company enormously.

  Still, Rose Talent Agency’s health was way down the list of Kate’s priorities these days. Call it selfish if you must, but all she cared about right now were her relationships with Jake and April.

  Sliding her chair back, Kate climbed to her feet, adjusting her blouse as she stepped around her desk. A faint dizziness assailed her, but when she drew a deep breath it passed. Vaguely she realized she’d had a few other similar episodes. With a groan, she wondered if she was getting sick. It was now mid-October, and the flu season was just starting to get into full swing, even though the weather was still fairly mild and warm.