At the round oak table in the dining room, all three of them sat down and dug into the hearty bowls of homemade potato soup. While they ate, they talked, and Jenny was glad her uncle seemed to be calming down.
“There’s just no point in worrying over what is,” Betty said, with a warning look at Hank. “Jenny’s fine and she’ll keep being fine with or without a man.”
“’Course she will,” Uncle Hank shot back. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point,” Betty argued. “Why would you want her to have a man who doesn’t really see her for who she is?”
“I want him to do the right thing, is all.”
“The right thing is to walk away if you can’t care.”
Jenny felt as if she were at a tennis match. Her head swiveled back and forth as she followed the heated conversation that swirled around her as if she wasn’t even there. Through the windows, she could see tiny white patio lights strung across the pergola, blinking like fireflies.
“I’m just saying she shouldn’t have to do all of this alone,” Uncle Hank muttered with a nodding glance at Jenny.
“She’s not going to be alone,” Betty snapped. “She’s got us, doesn’t she? We don’t count?”
Jenny smiled, reached out and covered Betty’s hand with her own. Betty was right. She wasn’t alone. She had family. A family that Uncle Hank had given her. She grabbed for her uncle’s hand, too, linking the three of them.
“She’s right, you know,” Uncle Hank told her, with just a touch of discomfort. “You’ve got us. For whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” she said, as warmth spread through her. He’d given her a real gift today. He’d let her know that her early fears in childhood hadn’t had a basis in reality. He had wanted her. Still did. And now, he was making another choice, Jenny thought. A deliberate one, to once again be there—not just for her, but for her baby.
“Jenny,” Betty said, giving her hand a quick pat, “you should think about moving back home.”
“What?”
“That’s a good idea,” Uncle Hank piped up. “Never did like the idea of you living alone.”
“Nonsense, why shouldn’t she live alone?” Betty countered. “You’re living in the dark ages, Hank. What I’m saying is, with a baby coming, she should come back home where she will have all the help she needs.”
Both of them turned to look at Jenny, waiting for her response. Though she really appreciated the thought, Jenny wasn’t ready to give up her little apartment and go running back home. Maybe that would change later on, when the baby’s due date was closer, when she began to worry about being able to handle everything on her own.
But for now... “Thanks,” she said, meaning it completely. “I appreciate that a lot, really.” She looked from one to the other of them. “But I’m fine for now. I have my work and my own space.”
Betty and Hank exchanged a knowing look, then her uncle turned to her. “Okay, but...” He paused and with an embarrassed shrug added, “You should remember that you’ve got a home here. People ready to help.”
Jenny’s eyes filled with tears but she blinked them back because she knew if she cried, Uncle Hank would panic. Instead, she squeezed his hand and whispered, “Thank you, Uncle Hank.”
He squeezed back briefly. “No need to thank family.”
Betty gave a loud sniffle, then snapped, “All right, now, that’s enough of that. Soup’s getting cold and, Jenny, you need to eat. That baby doesn’t need a skinny mama.”
Smiling to herself, Jenny did as she was told.
* * *
Mike spent the next few days at home. He couldn’t go to the office because there, he’d have to deal with Jenny and he needed some damn time to come to grips with what had happened.
A baby.
Because of faulty condoms, he was going to be a father and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around that one simple fact. Mike had never considered having children. To his mind, being a father meant being married and he’d never do that. Never give another person the ability to cut him off at the knees. To bring misery and—
Hell.
He left the silence of the house and stalked across the stone patio that led down a wide sweep of lawn toward the cliff. Beyond those cliffs was the Pacific and as he stared out at the ocean, glittering brightly beneath the morning sun, he squinted to see the handful of sailboats skimming the water. Closer to shore, there were a few surfers waiting for a decent wave.
The sound of the ocean reached him and the steady pulse of water against rocks seemed to steady him. He’d bought this house mainly for the view. It was too damn big for a man alone and he knew it, but until today, the quiet and the...emptiness really hadn’t bothered him much.
Now, though, he looked at the pristine backyard and pictured a swing set there. He turned and stared at the shining windows and imagined Jenny in one of them, smiling down at him as she held their child in her arms.
Shaking his head, he rubbed his eyes and told himself he was just tired. Not surprising since he hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past few days. How could he when memories of Jenny kept intruding? He saw her as she was the night he’d come to her after a miserable dinner at his parents’ house. In her flannel pajama bottoms and slinky tank top. Saw her eyes as she leaned into his kiss. Heard her sighs as he entered her.
“How the hell is a man supposed to sleep when his own mind is working against him?” he demanded of no one.
“It’s a bad sign when you talk to yourself.”
Mike spun around to see Sean strolling out of the house and down the patio toward him. “When did you get back?”
“Last night,” Sean said, shaking his head. “It was a hell of a storm. Kept us locked down for way too long.” He tipped his head back, stared up at the blue, sunny sky and sighed. “It’s good to be back in the sun. Man, I thought I’d never get warm again.”
Mike gave him a halfhearted smile. It shamed him to realize he hadn’t given Sean a thought in days. His own brother trapped in a snowstorm and he hadn’t wondered once how he was doing. But now, it was good to steer his brain in a different direction. “You didn’t kill the contractor, did you?”
Sean shot him a look, frowned and said, “No. Didn’t kill her.”
Mike frowned, too. “Something going on there?”
“Not a damn thing,” Sean told him, then changed the subject abruptly. “I don’t want to talk about Kate Wells, all right? Went by the office this morning. Glad to see everyone got the final changes in on ‘The Wild Hunt.’”
Huffing out a breath, Mike realized he hadn’t paid attention to that, either. One of their biggest games getting ready to roll onto the assembly line and he hadn’t bothered to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
“Jenny’s Wise Woman character turned out spectacularly. Dave showed me the final sketches. That woman is talented.”
“Yeah.” Mike turned his face into the wind. Jenny was talented. And beautiful. And exasperating. And pregnant.
Sean was still talking. “Linda told me you haven’t been in to the office in days. You sick or something?”
“Or something,” Mike said. “You want some coffee?”
“Got a cappuccino on the way over.” Sean grinned. “It was worth waiting for. But you’re stalling. What’s going on, Mike?”
He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his faded jeans and rocked on his heels. He hadn’t told anyone about Jenny. About the baby. If Brady had been here, instead of in Ireland, Mike might have spilled the whole thing. But now, Sean was here and he found he needed to say it all out loud.
“It’s Jenny,” he said, looking at his brother. “She’s pregnant.”
A second or two ticked past as Sean simply stared at him, a befuddled expression on his face. Then a slow smile curved his mou
th and he said, “I knew there was something going on between you two. And there’s a baby? That’s great, right?” He rushed across the patio and gave his brother a brief, hard hug. “I like Jenny a lot,” he said, stepping back and grinning. “And everybody’s noticed the red-hot chemistry between you two.”
Mike went still. He’d been sure that what was between Jenny and him was a secret. Private. “Everybody noticed? You mean people at work know about—”
“Well, they don’t know, but sure, there’s been some talk.” Sean shrugged. “Mostly the women. They really notice the stuff that sails right over most guys’ heads.”
“Great. That’s great.” Just what he wanted. All of his employees knowing about his private life, speculating, maybe even making bets on what would happen next.
“What’s the problem?” Sean asked. “It’s not like it would have stayed a secret for long. Not with Jenny pregnant. And here’s another question. If she’s pregnant, why is she out working on the hotel in Laughlin and you’re not with her?”
“She’s in Laughlin?”
“Yeah. Linda says she went out yesterday. She didn’t want to take the jet, so she drove, hauling all of her paint supplies with her.” He paused. “And you didn’t know anything about this, did you?”
“No.” Mike wasn’t happy about it, either. She could have told him she was driving out alone to Laughlin. He thought about that long, lonely road through the desert. Hell, there were sections where you could go for miles with nothing but sand on either side of your car. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Mike snapped his brother a hard look. “None of your business.”
“What’d you do, Mike?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he argued, feeling defensive even though he knew there was no reason for it.
“Yeah? The woman you’re crazy about is pregnant with your kid and you look like you want to punch somebody.” Sean tipped his head to one side and said, “Why don’t you spill what’s really going on?”
“She did this on purpose,” he muttered.
“Wow. She forced you to have sex with her?” Sean snorted. “You poor guy.”
“Shut up, Sean.”
“Do you get how ridiculous you sound? Get over yourself, Mike. She didn’t trick you. Or trap you. Hell, you’re not that great a prize.”
“Thanks. So glad you’re home.” Mike scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck and remembered that Jenny had said the same damn thing to him not so long ago. But you’d think his own brother would be a little more supportive.
“Come on, Mike. Condoms leak. Nothing’s perfect.” Sean slapped Mike’s shoulder. “So you gonna marry her or what?”
“No, I’m not marrying her.”
“Why the hell not?” Sean threw both hands high, clearly exasperated. “She’s gonna have your baby and you’re obviously nuts about her.”
“I need more coffee.” Mike walked away from his brother to the glass-topped table at the edge of the patio. There, he poured a cup of coffee from the thermal hot pot his housekeeper had brought out. He took a sip and let the heat slide through him.
“What’s going on?” Sean followed him. “I can’t believe you won’t marry her. This is your kid we’re talking about, Mike. Marrying her is the right thing to do and you know it.”
His head was pounding, brain racing. Sean’s haranguing wasn’t helping with the headache throbbing behind his eyes. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t been able to think clearly in days, and now he’d found out Jenny was in Laughlin—without bothering to tell him.
“What do you think Mom and Dad’ll have to say when they find out?”
“They should understand better than anyone.” Mike’s gaze shot to his brother’s and before he could stop himself, he was blurting out the secret he’d held since he was thirteen. “I’m not marrying anybody, you understand? I won’t risk being lied to, cheated on. You think I want to take a chance on ruining my own kid’s life?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Too late to pull it back now, Mike told his brother about the day his own image of the perfect family had been shattered. “When I was thirteen, I came home from baseball practice and found Mom crying,” he said tightly. “I was worried, thought maybe Dad had been in an accident or something.”
“What was it?”
He could still remember it all so clearly. Sunshine pouring through the kitchen window. His mom sitting at the table, head in her hands, crying. He’d never seen her cry before and it scared him.
Mike set his coffee cup down, crossed his arms over his chest and said, “She grabbed me into a hard hug and she told me that Dad had cheated on her. That she found out he’d been out with some woman.”
“No way.” Sean’s eyes went hard and cool and flat.
Mike knew how he felt. Back then, it had seemed to Mike as though the floor had opened up beneath him. He’d worried about his mom, wondered if his dad would ever come home again. Would they get a divorce? Who would he live with? A thirteen-year-old kid shouldn’t have to think about any of it. Shouldn’t have to learn so suddenly that his parents were flawed. Human.
“She never would have let any of it slip if I hadn’t caught her in a vulnerable moment,” he said, and knew it for truth since his mom had apologized over and over again over the years. “Dad lied. To her. To us. He was a liar and a cheat and ever since that day, I can’t be around him without remembering our mother crying.”
Sean looked away toward the ocean and Mike finished. “I won’t get married, Sean. I won’t put my faith in someone only to be lied to and cheated on. Not gonna happen. I won’t risk my kid being destroyed by lies.”
After a moment or two, Sean turned his head to look at him and Mike read the fury in his brother’s eyes.
“You had no right,” Sean said tightly. “No right to keep this from me. I’m a Ryan, too.”
“Why the hell should you feel as crappy as me?” Mike argued. “You didn’t have to know and a lot of the time I wished to hell I didn’t know.”
“And you make the choice for me, is that it? You decide what I should know, what I should think?”
“That’s not it,” Mike said.
“Sure it is,” Sean snapped. “You don’t even see it, do you? You’ve been mad at Dad for years for lying. Every time you talk about Jenny, you call her a liar, say you can’t trust her. But you’ve been lying to me since we were kids.
“So what’s the difference, Mike? Are you the only one who gets to lie? Do you get to decide which is a good lie and which is bad?”
Mike had never thought about it exactly like that until now and he didn’t know what he could say to the accusation. His father’s lies had destroyed Mike’s image of a happy family. Mike’s own lies of omission were to protect Sean from the same hurt Mike felt.
And yet today, Sean was slapped with not one, but two sets of lies.
“You ought to take a good look at yourself, big brother,” Sean said quietly. “Whatever was between our parents back then? They fixed it. Healed it. In case you hadn’t noticed, they’re still together, stronger than ever.”
Truth could hit as hard as lies.
“So don’t kid yourself. This isn’t about Dad. Or Jenny. This is all on you, Mike. You’re the liar now.” Sean turned and walked away, stalking across the patio and into the house.
Alone in the yard, Mike felt the ground he’d built his life on tremble beneath his feet. Sean was right, he realized. Which meant that Mike was wrong. About a lot of things.
Nine
Laughlin in February was pretty.
The summer heat was still a few months off and the river was quiet but for the inevitable tour boats and an occasional Jet Ski. There were a lot of snowbirds in town, older people coming in to e
scape snow country with a few months in the desert. Tourists were always there of course, and every day, pontoon boats full of visitors to the city slowed to watch the progress being made on the River Haunt.
True to his word, the contractor, Jacob Schmitt, was keeping to schedule. He had men working on both the hotel facade and the interior, where Jenny spent most of her time. There was the constant drone of saws and the slamming of hammers, not to mention shouted conversations and laughter ringing out all around her.
But she was still glad she’d come. Being in the desert, away from the office for a while, had been a great idea. In Nevada, she didn’t have to deal with the worry of having to face Mike again so soon after their confrontation. It hurt, knowing that their connection was over. But it would be even more painful if she had to see him every day. To be reminded of what they might have had.
No, what she needed was a little space, a little time, to get used to the idea that she was going to be a single mother.
She’d always wanted to have kids—lots of them. But in her secret dreams, she also had a husband who loved her. That little dream wasn’t going to come true, though. Remembering the look on Mike’s face when she told him she was pregnant was enough to convince her of that. Even if she didn’t also have the memory of him accusing her of trying to trap him into marriage.
Pain and anger twisted into a knot that sat like lead in the pit of her stomach.
“He really is an idiot,” she muttered, swiping a paintbrush loaded with deep violet paint across the entryway wall. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone—anyone—else? Why did Mike Ryan have to be the only man for her?
Jenny sighed and finished covering the wall with the paint she’d chosen for the biggest impact. Once it was dry she’d lay out the lines for the forest, the moon and the hints of figures she wanted lost in the trees. It would take a few days, but that was okay with her.
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