His Long-Lost Family

by Brenda Harlen

  * * *

  Kelly had planned to spend most of the day Sunday reviewing the information Craig Richmond had sent to her about Richmond Pharmaceuticals. Then she woke up to find the sun spilling into her bedroom and decided the review could wait until after the sun went down. It was too nice a day to be stuck indoors and there were gardens to be tended.

  She’d tried to persuade Ava to come outside with her, but her daughter had decided to weed through her closet instead. She was sorting through her clothes and discarding those that she didn’t want anymore. Kelly had suggested that she do exactly that before they packed everything up in Seattle and shipped it halfway across the country, but of course Ava had resisted.

  Kelly didn’t mind working alone, and she found the outdoor chores surprisingly relaxing. Her twelfth-floor condo in Seattle hadn’t boasted any kind of yard, but she’d had a balcony. Every spring, she’d filled it with baskets and pots of flowers.

  As it turned out, she wasn’t alone for very long. Quinn and Shane and Finnigan and Frederick—the adorable twins from next door and their energetic puppies—ventured over to see what she was doing, and so that Finn could “water” the alyssum. And then, a short while after that, Mrs. Dunford wandered across the street to see how Kelly and Ava were settling in.

  She didn’t mind the interruptions. In fact, casual drop-ins and easy conversations with neighbors were some of the reasons Kelly was glad to be back in Pinehurst. Or so she thought until Jackson stopped by.

  He parked in front of the house and casually strolled up the walk. He was wearing a blue golf shirt that stretched across the breadth of his shoulders and a pair of well-worn jeans that molded to the strong muscles of his thighs, and with each step that drew him nearer, her heart started to pound just a little bit faster.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that you had a green thumb,” he mused.

  “I’m not sure that I do,” she responded in a similarly casual tone. “But I like flowers.”

  He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and gave her a leisurely once-over. “You should have a hat on—your nose is looking a little red.”

  She rubbed the back of her hand over it, shrugged. “Is that why you’re here, Jackson—as a representative of the SPF police?”

  His lips curved, just a little. “No, I actually came to see my brother.”

  “He lives over there,” she reminded him, pointing to the house next door.

  “And I was hoping to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to explain.”

  Kelly didn’t ask what he was talking about. In that brief moment of eye contact at the restaurant, too much had passed between them for her to pretend otherwise. Instead, she only said, “No explanation necessary.”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  She hacked at the roots of a stubborn weed with her trowel. “Do you?”

  “Yeah. And before you try and execute me, you should know that the woman I was with at the restaurant last night is a client.”

  She almost laughed out loud. If he was going to insist on offering an explanation, she would have expected something a little more creative than that. Or at least more credible.

  And though she didn’t want to ask—because asking would suggest that she cared, and she didn’t want to care—the words spilled out, anyway, and with enough of an edge to belie the casual disinterest she wanted to project. “Do you usually conduct business with wine and candlelight?”

  “No.” He took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the pocket of his golf shirt. “But it’s not unusual to meet a client outside of the office, so when she called and suggested a meeting at Mama Leone’s, I didn’t see any reason not to agree.”

  Kelly hacked at another weed, probably more viciously than was necessary.

  “I handled her divorce a few years back,” he continued. “She’s thinking about getting married again and wanted to talk about a prenup.”

  “Yeah, she looked like a woman who was in a committed relationship with someone else,” she noted dryly.

  “She was at the restaurant before me and already halfway through the bottle of wine when I got there. I had one glass, she finished off the rest with her dinner, then I drove her home.”

  “She was feeding you off of her fork.”

  “She asked if I wanted to try the cheesecake, I said no thanks. She held the fork out to me, and when I tried to decline again, she stabbed me in the mouth with the tines. I figured sampling the cake was a better alternative than a bloody lip.”

  Kelly remained skeptical. From her perspective, she hadn’t seen any evidence of Jack resisting the woman’s advances. But if the woman truly was exploiting their professional relationship to put the moves on him, she could see how that would have put him in an awkward situation. Or maybe she was an idiot for wanting to believe any part of his explanation.

  “And the reason she was plastered to your side as you left the restaurant?” She shook her head and held up a hand before he could answer. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. It’s really not any of my business.”

  “I think I have some pretty good reasons to be angry with you—but why are you mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “You sound mad,” he noted.

  She huffed out a breath. “If I’m mad, it’s at myself.”

  His brows rose. “Care to explain that one?”

  “I was...surprised to see you with her,” she admitted. “And then I realized I shouldn’t have been.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “I thought you’d changed. I’d hoped you’d changed.” She stood up and brushed her hands down the front of her shorts. “That was my mistake.”

  His gaze narrowed. “You think I was kissing you in your kitchen one day and seducing another woman the next?”

  She didn’t bother to deny it.

  “Dammit, Kelly, I didn’t sleep with her.”

  “I don’t care who you sleep with,” she finally told him. “But I would appreciate it if you exercised a little discretion—for Ava’s sake, if no one else’s.”

  She picked up the basket of gardening tools and started to turn away, but he caught her arm, halting her escape. She didn’t try to pull away; she knew he wouldn’t release her until he was ready. Instead, she looked at him with what she hoped was casual disinterest.

  “I didn’t sleep with her,” he said again, the icy tone of his voice a stark contrast to the heated fury in his eyes. “And when I do take a woman to my bed, I prefer that her faculties aren’t impaired by alcohol.”

  “Too much of a gentleman to take advantage of an intoxicated female?”

  “No,” he corrected her. “Too demanding to settle for any less than equal and eager participation.” His hand trailed down her arm, slid behind her back to draw her closer. “As I remember it, you were definitely an equal, and very eager, participant.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she reminded him.

  “I’m looking forward to having you in my bed again.”

  It wasn’t arrogance in his tone, but confidence, and his absolute certainty made everything inside her tremble. But there was no way she was going to let him see it. She wasn’t an infatuated twenty-one-year-old anymore, and she tilted her head back to meet the challenge in his gaze head-on.

  “When I take a man to my bed, I prefer if he’s not inhibited by his ego.”

  Jackson’s lips curved in a slow and devastatingly sexy smile. “Then we understand one another.”

  But as Kelly watched him cross the grass toward the house next door, she realized that she didn’t understand anything, least of all the tangle of emotions inside of her.

  * * *

  After Jackson had gone over to his brother’s
house, Kelly moved around to the backyard and continued with her gardening as if the encounter had never happened. Thankfully there was no one around to witness her distraction when she yanked a petunia out of the dirt.

  What was wrong with her that she could still get tangled up in knots over the man who had broken her heart thirteen years earlier? She’d been so sure that she was over him, that the only connection between them was their daughter. But when he looked at her, when his eyes skimmed over her from head to toe in slow and blatantly masculine perusal, every hormone in her body went on full alert. It was a complication she hadn’t been prepared for and definitely didn’t need.

  Since her divorce almost a decade earlier, she could count on one hand the number of sexual liaisons she’d had—with two fingers left over. And she honestly hadn’t felt as if she was missing out on anything.

  As far as she was concerned, the whole dating and mating thing was hugely overrated. Especially when most of her time and energy was focused on raising her daughter and building a career. So why was it, after only five minutes with Jackson Garrett, she couldn’t think about anything else but him?

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Kelly glanced up at Georgia. “Yes,” she said. “And thank you.”

  Her neighbor chuckled. “Are the weeds winning the battle?”

  “No—it’s not the garden but my own wandering thoughts.” She dropped her gloves and trowel on top of the basket she’d filled with weeds—and one broken purple petunia. “I just finished.”

  “The boys and I baked too many cookies.” She gestured with the plate she carried. “So I was hoping I could pawn some off on you and Ava.”

  “Anytime you want to pawn cookies, we’re more than happy to help.” Kelly headed back toward the house. “I put a pot of coffee on before I came out, if you want a cup.”

  “Maybe half a cup,” Georgia allowed. “I’m still nursing.”

  Kelly smiled. “I remember those days—and how much I missed my daily jolt of java.”

  Georgia followed her into the kitchen, set the plate of cookies on the table. “I almost manage to convince myself that I don’t miss it, and then I’ll walk past the Bean There Café and catch the scent of freshly roasted beans in the air, and I actually get weak in the knees.”

  “I know what you mean.” Kelly took two mugs out of the cupboard, poured half a cup in one for Georgia. “Milk?”

  The other woman shook her head. “Matt thinks Pippa is lactose intolerant. She went through a really bad colicky phase that finally eased when I cut milk from my diet.”

  “I’ve heard horror stories about colic,” Kelly admitted, filling her own cup to the top. “Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with that with Ava.”

  “The twins were good, too,” Georgia told her. “It was just hard because there were two of them. And maybe my memory of those early days has faded, but I know I wasn’t nearly as sleep-deprived caring for the two of them as I was in the first few months with Pippa. Of course, I wasn’t on my own when Quinn and Shane were babies, either.”

  “I had a wonderful neighbor who was happy to pitch in whenever I was ready to pull my hair out, and I never felt like I was on my own when she was around.” Kelly picked up a cookie and smiled. “Bev liked to bake, too.” Then she bit into the treat, and sighed with pleasure. “Oh, these are heaven.”

  “Chocolate chip are Matt’s favorite, and the boys wanted to help make them this time. The plan was for them to take turns measuring out ingredients—instead they each measured everything, so we doubled the batch.”

  “They should help you bake more often,” Kelly suggested.

  Georgia smiled. “There’s some peanut butter, too, because they’re Jack’s favorite. Quinn and Shane wanted to thank him for taking them to see Ted E. Bear’s Birthday.”

  Kelly paused with a cookie halfway toward her mouth. “Jackson took your boys to see a kids’ movie?”

  “Matt was supposed to take them when I went to Megan Richmond’s baby shower, but he got called into the hospital, so Jack stepped in.”

  “Was there bribery or blackmail involved?”

  Her neighbor chuckled. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Because the Jackson Garrett I used to know would have run far and fast in the opposite direction of a movie theater full of preschoolers.”

  “A few months ago, he probably would have,” Georgia agreed. “And while I was a little concerned about his reputation in the beginning, I have to admit, I’ve developed something of a soft spot for Jack.”

  “Now you’ve piqued my curiosity,” Kelly admitted.

  “When I first moved in, even before Matt and I were officially dating, Jack warned me off.”

  “I can see how that would endear him to you,” she said dryly.

  Georgia laughed. “What it showed me is that, despite his casual and cavalier attitude, he is close to his family, cares deeply about people and has protective instincts.”

  Kelly was skeptical, but since she’d been gone for a lot of years, she really couldn’t disagree with any part of that assessment. So all she said was, “Even as kids, they were close. The three brothers would—and often did—fight with one another, but against anyone else, they always stuck together.”

  “They still stick together,” Georgia said. “Usually on Sunday afternoons in front of the television, watching whatever sport is in season.”

  “Is Lukas there today?” Kelly asked, keeping her tone deliberately casual.

  The other woman shook her head. “No. He called earlier to say that he was behind on his paperwork at the clinic.”

  Kelly would have bet that Lukas wanted to avoid another confrontation with Jackson more than he wanted to catch up on paperwork. And she knew that was her fault, but she didn’t have the first clue how to fix it.

  The clatter of footsteps on the stairs drew her attention back to the present.

  “Hey, Mom, can we go— Oh, hi, Mrs. Garrett.”

  “Hello, Ava.”

  “Where did you want to go?” Kelly asked her.

  “Back to that store at the mall, the one where I got the green top.” She smiled coaxingly. “I think they had it in purple, too.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Ava sighed, obviously disappointed. Then her gaze landed on the plate in the middle of the table and her eyes lit up. “Cookies?”

  Georgia laughed. “Help yourself.”

  Ava zeroed straight in on the peanut butter, forcing Kelly to acknowledge that the truth about her daughter’s paternity couldn’t remain a secret forever.

  Chapter Six

  By Wednesday night, Jack had spent more than enough time alone with his thoughts and still didn’t have any answers to the questions that plagued his mind. He needed to talk to someone. He didn’t necessarily want advice so much as he wanted to vent. And since there was no one outside his immediate family who he would trust with the information, his choices were limited.

  He didn’t even consider going to see Lukas. His younger brother had made his feelings about the situation more than clear when he’d introduced his fist to Jack’s face the week before. Though the bruise on his jaw had already faded, Jack wasn’t willing to chance a repeat performance. Which is why he found himself dialing Matt’s number.

  Less than thirty minutes later, his brother was at the door.

  “I’m sorry to drag you away from your wife and kids,” Jack apologized.

  Matt took the bottle of Millhouse his brother opened for him. “The offer of beer and a baseball game aside, I know you wouldn’t have asked me to come over if it wasn’t important.”

  Jack nodded. “It’s about Kelly.”

  Matt paused with his bottle halfway to his lips. “Kelly? Or Ava?”

  He scowled as he dropped onto the opposite en
d of the couch. “She told you?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” Matt said.

  “Then it was Lukas,” he guessed.

  “No one told me—no one had to,” his brother assured him. “The first time I saw Kelly’s daughter, I figured she had to be yours.”

  Jack hadn’t been prepared for his brother’s simple and ready acceptance—especially when it contradicted his continued denials. “You really think so?”

  Matt shook his head. “I can’t believe you doubt it. There’s no mistaking the fact that Ava’s a Garrett, even if it doesn’t say so on her birth certificate. And since I know neither Luke nor I ever slept with Kelly, that narrows the choice of paternal prospects down considerably.”

  He tipped his bottle to his lips, giving himself a moment to consider his brother’s logic. “Luke is furious with me.”

  “I’d bet he’s even more furious with Kelly right now,” Matt told him. “From the beginning, Ava has called him ‘Uncle Lukas,’ but he never knew that he really was her uncle.”

  “She never told me that she was pregnant,” Jack told him.

  “And if she had told you—what would you have done?”

  Damn, his brother always asked the tough questions. It was the same one Jack had been asking himself since Kelly had dropped her bombshell in his office. And it was a question to which he still didn’t have an answer. “I was engaged to Sara,” he reminded Matt.

  His brother frowned. “While you were sleeping with Kelly?”

  “No. Of course not.” His reputation aside, Jack had never been one to juggle women. He might not stick with anyone for very long, but he wasn’t a cheater. “What happened with Kelly—it was one weekend, after Sara had given me back her ring.”

  “I don’t need the details,” Matt told him.

  Jack took a long swallow from his bottle. “I don’t know anything about being a father.”

  “No one does in the beginning, but you’ll learn.”

  Jack wasn’t so sure that he would—or even that he wanted to. Almost a week after Kelly’s visit to his office, his head was still spinning, and whenever he let himself think I’m a father, his heart would start to race with as much apprehension as anticipation. “I had everything I wanted—a successful career, an executive condo, female companionship when I wanted it, and peace and quiet when I didn’t.”