JAX
The only good part about being the son of a billionaire is that you’re never without connections. We had our pick of guesthouses to stay in: associates of my dad who mostly just wanted to piss him off. They were tempting offers. Within an hour of dropping Jillian off at the airport, Tessa and I had a place to stay. Sam’s girlfriend Julie offered us the tiny little guesthouse in her backyard. Tessa and I moved into it happily.
Julie is letting us live rent-free until we can get our bearings. It’s only five hundred square feet, but it feels palatial compared to living with the suffocating presence of both of our parents.
“How do I look?” Tessa asks me two weeks after we stormed out of my dad’s house, spinning around the small kitchen in her simple outfit. She’s wearing a jade green sundress with a cardigan over it. Her breasts look like presents to me.
“Gorgeous,” I reply with a grin. “You’ll fucking kill at the interview today.” I lean back on the tiny sofa. Ryan is on the floor playing with his favorite wooden blocks.
“Are you going to be alright? You look more nervous than I do,” Tessa replies.
I laugh, but she’s not wrong. “It’s just babysitting. I’ve been changing his diapers for the last two weeks, Tess. I’ve got this. You know that I’ve got this.”
She gives me a skeptical look. “You’re practically sweating bullets over there, Nanny McPhee.”
I wipe my brow. “It’s a little warm today, that’s all. Seriously, I’ll be fine. Now, go knock ‘em dead at the art gallery.”
Tessa beams at me and flounces over to give me a long kiss. “Mm,” I say. “Hurry home.”
“Be good for Jax,” Tessa says to Ryan, kissing him on his fuzzy little head. She walks out the front door and for the first time, it’s just me and Ryan.
“What will we do today?” I ask him. He claps his hands together happily, his long, dark eyelashes rimming blue eyes. “You sure are a happy little fucker, aren’t you?” He giggles in response.
Ten minutes later, I’ve exhausted my knowledge of kids’ songs and hand clapping games and Ryan is looking bored. He tries to pull himself up on the coffee table but ends up toppling headfirst into the hard surface. He screams at the top of his lungs and I scoop his rubbery, warm body into my arms. “Shh, it’s okay,” I murmur. But nothing’s working.
I look around desperately and see the baby carrier that Tessa wears sometimes. I put Ryan down on the floor where he screams louder. In this tiny space, the noise is like a jackhammer to my ears. I pick up the contraption and have no idea how to use it. “I started a business.” Ryan shrieks louder in response. “Alright, true. My business failed. But I can do this. I have a college degree. A baby carrier can’t be hard to figure out.” Ryan looks skeptical.
Great. I’m talking to a six-month-old. Three minutes of tangling myself up in the baby carrier leaves me nearly in tears. I look around and see curtains hanging from the window. “Okay, okay. This’ll be easier. We’ll do a Scarlett O’Hara, Sound of Music thing, Ryan.” I pull up a fabric wrap tutorial on YouTube and ten minutes later, I’m wearing floral curtains with Ryan facing outward on my chest. He’s kicking his feet happily.
The important thing here is that he’s finally fucking stopped crying.
We head out into the Santa Barbara sunshine, walking from Julie’s house down to Stearn’s Wharf. We wander past dog walkers, roller bladers, moms with strollers, and teens skipping school. I can’t blame them; the weather is just too good not to cut class. I stop to buy Ryan a baby hat from one of the beach vendors. “Looking good, little dude,” I say to him. He giggles when he sees his reflection in the mirror.
I make a funny face at him and he screeches with laughter.
A gorgeous blonde woman walks up to us. She flits her eyelashes at me and I automatically tense up. She eyes my muscular arms and tattoos and then reaches out to take Ryan’s hand. He looks as uncertain about her touching him as I feel. “Nice baby wrap,” she coos. Then she says some complicated brand name I can’t understand, asking me if it’s one of those.
“Nah, I made it,” I reply.
She laughs uproariously. “Wish I could find a man like you. And your baby is just gorgeous. He looks just like you!” she says.
“Oh, I’m not his dad,” I reply.
She laughs. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty damn sure. I think I would know if he were mine,” I say. Now I’m angry. I walk away from her and pay for the hat. I’m fuming as we walk back out onto the boardwalk. I have blue eyes. Ryan has blue eyes. But so does Paul. He also has dark hair. Just like Paul.
I try to breathe and kiss the top of Ryan’s head. It’s soft on my lips. He smells like Cheerios and some other delicious scent that I guess is the inimitable smell of infant. I sniff him again surreptitiously, getting a warm feeling in my sternum. We keep walking, and when I see a main painting on the beach I have an idea. I know there’s an art supply shop somewhere around here. I pull out my phone and navigate to one.
An hour later, I’m carrying a now-asleep Ryan along with three shopping bags of paint brushes, tubes of acrylic paint, and something called gesso. Under my arm are three different-sized canvases and a folding easel.
We pass a coffee shop on the way home and I order an iced latte. We sit under an umbrella and watch the ocean waves crash into the shore. A seagull lands a few feet away and Ryan screeches in delight. “Wish I were as easily amused as you are,” I whisper into his soft head. He smells good. Really good. I keep sniffing his ears as I sip my latte.
Ryan grabs my straw and tries to drink my drink. I let him think he’s won, and Ryan is happy. An old man wearing a bucket hat that looks a lot like the one I just bought Ryan smiles at us. “Like father, like son,” he says.
“He’s not my-“ But I stop and smile, my heart quickening. “That’s right. He’s a good kid.”
Ryan and I take our drink and head back home. I unwrap him from the baby wrap and carry him into the bathroom. I set his legs into the sink and let him lean back against me. I look at both of us in the mirror, letting down my hair.
We have the same hair. But Paul has curly, dark hair, too, my brain whispers. We have the same eyes. Paul has the same eyes, says that annoying little voice. Ryan smiles at me and his dimples fall into sharp relief. Paul doesn’t have dimples. I do. I smile back at him and for the first time I realize that we do look a lot alike.
The way I feel about this possibility could not surprise me any more than it does.
I feel hopeful. I feel happy.
When Tessa comes home, Ryan is sound asleep in his crib. She’s smiling. “Okay, I got the job!” she says, jumping up and down excitedly.
I stand up and take her into my arms. “I fucking told you that you would,” I say, kissing her.
She wrinkles her brow. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you look funny. You’re acting weird,” she says. She steps back from me. “Was Ryan okay today? Did he cry and cry and you want to move into a hotel away from both of us?”
I laugh and pull her back into my arms. “No, not at all. He was great. We went down to the Wharf and walked around for a while. It was great. He was great.” I have a funny feeling in my stomach. I’m supposed to hate kids. But I like Ryan. “It’s just – are you sure that Ryan is Paul’s?”
Tessa laughs. “Yeah. I mean, you and I used condoms. Paul and I…well. We didn’t. The night I got back from San Francisco.” She shakes her head. “It was stupid and reckless but I was desperate for him to love me again.” She squeezes my hand. “I know now that I was just trying to fill the void of not being with you, though.”
I swallow hard. “We didn’t use condoms every time, actually.” I say this slowly and let the words marinate in the air between us. “I only found two wrappers the next day. I know that we were really, really drunk.”
Tessa puts her purse down and sinks into the sofa. “Oh, God. I did
n’t know that.”
“He has dimples, Tessa. You don’t. Neither does Paul or your mom,” I say.
“My dad had dimples,” she says slowly. “Don’t be ridiculous. He has to be Paul’s.”
“How sure are you?” I ask.
“I’m…sure,” she says. “Oh, God.”
I sit next to her and wrap my arm around her shoulders. “We should do a DNA test. It’s the right thing to do.”
She nods. “Okay. Okay.” She’s in shock. She looks over at the bare, curtain-less window. “What happened to the curtain?”
“Fashion emergency,” I reply vaguely. She looks at me like I have six heads and I laugh. “I couldn’t figure out the baby carrier so I made a wrap out of the curtains.”
Tessa’s eyes go wide. “How do you solve a problem like Maria,” she murmurs.
I’m thankful for the change of subject. I tickle her until she can’t breathe. When she’s begging me to stop, I kiss her. “Ryan and I set up a little surprise for you in the back closet.”
Tessa looks curious. “Really?”
I grab her hand and lead her the few feet to the tiny room. “You want to guess what it is?”
“It can’t be too big. That room is like fifteen square feet,” she says.
“Fifteen square feet with north-facing windows and a window for fresh air,” I add.
She laughs. “Well, if it needs ventilation, I’m going with the sensible guess. You’ve set up a meth lab so we can make some fast cash.”
I laugh. “Open the door.”
Tessa opens it slowly as if expecting someone to jump out. Then she gasps. I look around her to make sure the scene I set up is having the proper effect. I set up the folding easel with one of the canvases. I dragged a small side table and a kitchen chair into the space. The light really is perfect in here, and I’ve opened the two small windows to let in the fresh, seaside air.
“Oh my God,” Tessa whispers. I look at her face. She’s crying.
“Do you like it? I know you love to paint but you haven’t been able to,” I say.
“How do you know that?” she asks, breathlessly. “I mean, I know I mentioned painting at dinner that first night at your dad’s house, but how do you know I haven’t been painting?”
I shrug. “Jillian let it slip when you were packing up the other day. That’s how. I thought I would change that. Every day when you get home from work, I’ll make sure dinner’s ready and I’ll get Ryan into bed. Then you can paint to your heart’s content. Maybe go down to the beach and paint the sunset?”
Tessa gapes at me.
“Well? What do you think?” I ask her, already knowing her answer.
“I think I want to fuck your brains out because this is the sexiest thing anyone has ever done for me,” Tessa whispers. I run my hands through her silky hair and sweep her off her feet, carrying her up the narrow steps into the loft where our mattress awaits. It’ll be another hour before Ryan’s up from his nap. That’s plenty of time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TESSA
“So basically you’ll just greet customers as they come in. We’re having a private viewing today and you’ll just need to be here to answer questions for the women.” Roxy, my manager, smiles at me. “You’ll be great. The group is just a bunch of old women from the country club. They’ll pretend to know more than they do about everything here, and you just smile and nod and try to get them to pull out their checkbooks. Got it?”
A shock goes through my body. “Which country club?”
Yeah. It’s that country club. Twenty minutes later, they’ve arrived. My mother is standing ten feet away from me, pretending not to see me. It’s awkward. This is my first day on the job and I feel like a small child. It’s bullshit.
I see the tall, skinny woman who seemed amused by me and Jax in the pool wave me over. I nod and walk quickly past my mother to the woman. “I hate bullshit functions like this,” she mutters unexpectedly. My eyes widen. “I’m Cindy, by the way.” She holds out a slender hand and I shake it.
“Tessa,” I say. “But you already know that.”
She smiles and looks back at the painting. It’s a square of simple, pure blue. “This is not my taste.”
I nod. “I prefer landscapes as well.”
“Do you collect art?” Cindy asks.
I shake my head quickly. “No, no. I actually paint.”
Cindy lit up. “Landscapes?”
I nod. “I just sort of dabble in it, really. I’m not great.”
Cindy waves her hand. “Nonsense. Do you have samples of your work?”
It’s been a week since Jax and Ryan surprised me with the painting supplies. I’ve spent every waking second painting on the beach. Jax had to go to the store for more canvasses. I pull my phone out of my pocket. “I have a few photos here,” I say sheepishly, looking over my shoulder to make sure Roxy isn’t looking.
Cindy grabs my phone and nods appreciatively. “Do you take commissions? I have a guest house I’m renovating and it needs a few different pieces. I want oceanscapes like you have here.”
I gulp and blush. “I could take commissions. Do you really think I’m that good?”
Cindy smiles and pats my shoulder. “Yes. And it will piss off your mother, so it will be a double win.” She winks at me and hands me a business card. I slip it into my pocket and go back to my post on the wall.
Microphone Lady with the helmet of hair is holding court in the middle of the room. “Oh, Suzanne,” whispers one of the other women to Microphone Lady. “It’s just positively too much gossip for me to bear.”
My mother trundles by and pokes her nose into the circle. “What are we gossiping about?” she asks brightly.
Microphone Lady, who is apparently named Suzanne, flips her immovable hair. “Oh, nothing,” she says airily.
“Oh, do share. I’ve been craving the distraction of someone else’s life,” my mother says.
The women all shift uncomfortably.
I suddenly realize they must have been talking about me. Suzanne is eating this up. I almost want to save my mother from this embarrassment. Almost. “Oh, if you’re looking for an escape from your own life, I’m afraid this gossip won’t suit,” Suzanne says airily.
“And why is that?” My mother inquires, entirely oblivious.
“Because it’s about your shop girl daughter and your stepson,” Suzanne says. “And how your whore children are both the parents of your adorable little grandson. What’s his name? Robert?”
My mother blanches and drops her champagne glass. The gallery goes quiet as it smashes on the floor. I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest. My mother pastes on a smile and, before I even can absorb what’s happening, reaches out and slaps Suzanne across the face. Cindy starts applauding drily, and the other women all whisper and titter. “Oh, Suzanne. I’m sure there would be more juicy gossip about your family if they weren’t all in prison for insider trading. Do your son and husband share a cell?”
Cindy laughs uproariously and a few of the women gasp. Suzanne, for once, is struck speechless.
My mother adjusts the shoulder strap on her purse. “Nobody calls my daughter a whore. Especially not ferret-faced inbred old-money bitches,” she adds with a flourish.
My mother smiles and nods at me on her way out of the gallery.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JAX
I’m hanging lights on our freshly-purchased miniature pine Christmas tree when Tessa storms in and tells me a story that seems too fantastical to be even remotely true. She doesn’t even stop to say hello.
“She said what?” I ask, my hands shaking so violently I can’t even toss tinsel onto the boughs.
“My mother defended me! In front of all of those people!” Tessa says. “I know. I can’t believe it either, honestly.”
I shake my head and set down the decorations. “How does Suzanne know about Ryan?”
Tessa shrugs. “I’m guessing that’s what we get for going
to the local pediatrician to do the test. One of the nurses must have made some phone calls.” Her eyes fall on a thick, manila envelope that rests on the coffee table.
“They came in today,” I say. “I didn’t look at them yet. I wanted to wait until we were all together.”
Tessa nods and swallows. Ryan is scooting himself across the rug, oblivious to anything that’s going on around him. “Should we…”
I grab her hand and lead her over to the couch. I hand her the envelope. “You do the honors,” I say. I’m nervous, I just don’t want her to know that.
Tessa starts to rip into the paper.
“Wait!” I say. “Wait. Wait. I need to ask you something. Wait here.” I run up into the loft and reach into my pillow. This is where I’ve stuffed the vintage ring Ryan and I found at a tiny shop a few days ago. I’ve been waiting until the right moment. This is it. I trot back downstairs and get down on one knee.
Tessa gasps. “Oh my God,” she whispers.
“Tessa Anne, I want you to know that the last few weeks with you in this place, with Ryan, have been the best of my entire life. I love you both. I don’t care what the results say. Ryan is my son. You’ve both shown me that settling down isn’t half bad.” I grin at her. “So I’m asking you this: will you marry me?”
Tessa covers her mouth. “Yes. Yes. Yes, I will,” she replies. I slip the ring on her finger. “It’s perfect,” she says. It has three miniscule diamonds set into the top of the rose gold band.
“I know it’s not huge but I figure we need to save all the money we can,” I say. “One day I’ll get you a stunner. I promise.”
Tessa shakes her head violently. “No! No. Don’t you ever. I love this one.”
I reach over to kiss her when Ryan falls and bursts into tears. Tessa stands up to get him but I beat her to it. I pick him up, rocking him in my arms. I sing into his ear quietly. I look at Tessa, who looks like she’s about to melt. Lesson here, guys: the fastest way into a woman’s panties is to be good with babies. I’m speaking from experience.
Ryan calms down within a few seconds, breathing softly against my chest. I carry him over to the sofa. “Open them up,” I say to her. “I already told you: no matter the results, he’s mine.”
Forbidden: A Stepbrother Secret Baby Romance Page 15