“I didn’t realize you’d have a waiting room full of clients at this time of day,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you, but Colleen assured me you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “But I am curious. The last time you came here, it was to tell me that I had a child.”
She smiled, just a little. “No breaking news today. I was just out running some errands and thought I’d check in to see if you wanted to meet Ava and I for dinner after her basketball practice.”
“I want to, but I can’t. I got caught up in court, so I’m running behind, and I have at least half a dozen clients to see before I can call it a day.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t really expect you would be free.”
“I wish I was,” he said, sincerely disappointed to have to decline her impromptu invitation. But he took it as a good sign that she’d even issued the invitation. They were into the second week of the three-week trial period that she’d insisted upon for their living arrangement, and she’d finally stopped marking the days off on the calendar. It gave him hope that she wasn’t just getting used to having him around but might actually enjoy his presence, rather than simply tolerating it for Ava’s sake.
Although his appointments kept him busy for several more hours, he still found his thoughts drifting occasionally. He was confident that he and Ava were on the right track. He and Kelly, on the other hand, seemed to be on very different tracks. She continued to fight the attraction between them, and he didn’t want to fight anymore.
When he finally left the office he was tired and hungry—and surprised that Kelly’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Ava was home, snuggled up in her pajamas and watching TV in her mom’s bedroom, and she told him that Kelly had just popped out to pick up a few groceries.
Since there were no leftovers waiting for him tonight, he pulled out some meat and cheese and bread and made himself a sandwich. Kelly came in the back just as he was sitting down at the table.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you back here tonight,” she said.
“Where else would I go?”
She shrugged and started to put the groceries away. “Maybe back to your condo.”
As she opened and closed cupboards, he tried to figure out what was going on. Because there was definitely something going on. She’d been in a friendly mood earlier, now she was distant and cool. He bit into his sandwich. “Why would I go there?”
She turned to face him. “Because I saw Miss Scarlet in the waiting room when I was at your office.”
Miss Scarlet?
Jack frowned, and then the pieces clicked into place. She was referring to Norah, who liked to dress in red and paint her lips to match.
He pushed his plate aside, his appetite gone. “You really don’t think much of me, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think when I see a woman like that climbing all over you. Or when I walk into the hardware store and Annalise Wilson makes reference to your intimate history.”
“Jesus, Kelly, you know my relationship with Annalise started and ended in high school.”
“Not to hear her tell it.”
“And you believe her?”
She blew out a weary breath and turned to get a glass from the cupboard, then filled it from the tap. “No, I don’t believe her,” she finally said. “But Cassie Silverstone looks at me like she wants to claw my eyes out whenever I see her in the cafeteria at work, because she thinks I’m sleeping with you and she wishes she was, and Leesa Webster looks right through me if our paths cross in town.”
“I have no interest in Cassie Silverstone or Leesa Webster,” he assured her. “As for the client you saw me with at Mama Leone’s—she fired me tonight because I told her I would never sleep with a client.”
“She fired you?”
He nodded. “And then she rehired me when I confided that our professional relationship wasn’t the only reason I wouldn’t sleep with her.”
“Aren’t you breaching lawyer-client confidentiality by telling me this?”
“I’m not revealing any privileged information,” he pointed out. “And I hope you don’t mind that I told her I was living with you and not interested in a relationship with anyone but you.”
“Do you really think that will dissuade her?”
“I didn’t say it to dissuade her. I said it because it’s true. I want you, Kelly. Only you.”
“You only want me because I’m a challenge.”
His lips quirked. “I won’t deny that you’re a challenge.”
“It’s a game to you,” she clarified. “And you’ve always been intensely competitive. If I said, ‘Okay, let’s go do it,’ that would be the end—game over.”
“You want to test that theory?”
She shook her head. “You’re here to build a relationship with your daughter,” she reminded him.
“Why can’t I build a relationship with my daughter’s mother at the same time?”
“Because that’s not what you really want.”
“Don’t try to tell me what I want,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “You’ve been under my skin, and in my heart, for more than thirteen years.
“Did I try to forget about you? Hell, yes. But it didn’t work. No other woman was ever able to erase the memory of your warmth, your smile, or your touch. No other woman’s kiss satisfied my craving for yours. No other woman felt so right in my arms.
“So don’t you dare try to tell me what I want,” he said again. “Because you obviously don’t have a clue.”
Then he dumped the rest of his sandwich in the garbage and shoved his plate in the dishwasher before stalking out of the kitchen.
* * *
Kelly stood with her hands still wrapped around her water glass for several minutes after he’d gone. He hadn’t touched her, but he’d still managed to leave her shaken to the very core. The stormy intensity in his gaze had made her heart pound and her knees weak. She knew he had a volatile nature, but she’d never seen him like that, and she hadn’t known how to respond when every ounce of fury and frustration was focused directly on her.
He’d looked angry. Dangerous. And incredibly hot.
She took a long sip of water to cool herself.
The words—if he hadn’t practically shouted them at her—might have warmed her heart. Certainly they suggested that his feelings for her might be stronger than she’d dared to hope.
Her ground rules aside, she hadn’t expected Jack to give up his social life, nor did she want him to. Because as long as he was going out with other women, she would remember to keep her guard up. But when he insisted on hanging around the house, spending time with her and Ava, it was harder for Kelly to remember all the reasons she shouldn’t fall for him again.
In the absence of those reasons, she would just have to give him a wide berth.
* * *
“I have to admit you were right, Jack.”
He paused outside of Judge Ryan’s courtroom and turned to face Gord Adamson with a grin. “Those words are magic to my ears. But what, exactly, was I right about?”
“Your baseball player.”
Travis Hatcher had been granted a conditional discharge pursuant to their joint recommendation of the judge, but he wasn’t completely in the clear just yet. He still had twelve months of probation to complete, including an anger management course and fifty hours of community service.
“I appreciate your cooperation, and the vote of confidence,” he told his friend.
“I was at the probation office when he came in to sign the papers,” Gord said. “Most of the kids that I’ve met in court would have looked away, even after I’ve cut them a break. Your guy crosses the room, holds out his hand, and thanks me.”
Jack had to smile at the incredulity in his friend�
�s tone.
“And then he says he’s going to make sure he stays out of trouble because he wants a baseball scholarship to put him through college so he can maybe be a lawyer someday. Like you.”
“Really?” Jack was as pleased as he was surprised by that revelation.
“I told him to set his sights a little higher,” Gord said. “Like the ADA’s office.”
He chuckled. “I’m sure you did.”
As he shook Gord’s hand, another thought occurred to him. “Who came in with him to sign the undertaking—his mother or his father?”
The look on his friend’s face gave him the answer before he spoke. “Neither. It was his high school baseball coach.”
“Damn.”
“Some people were not meant to have kids,” Gord noted.
Jack just nodded as the ADA walked away. He used to worry that he was one of those people. Actually, that wasn’t even true. He’d never worried about it because he’d never given the matter much thought. And because he’d never aspired to parenthood, he’d assumed that he lacked parental instincts.
The past few weeks with Ava had proven otherwise. He didn’t think he was going to be a candidate for Father of the Year anytime soon, but he would make sure that his daughter never had cause to doubt how much he loved her.
Jack’s experience in family court had demonstrated time and time again how crucial parental involvement was to a child’s success in life. And he realized that the abandonment by Kelly’s parents was probably one of the reasons she was so wary about rekindling their relationship. She didn’t trust him to stand by her, and why should she? He’d left her once already, after she’d been abandoned by her mother and her father—the two people who should have loved her most. And then her husband had walked out, too, choosing the advancement of his career over his marriage.
He knew it would be an uphill battle, but he was going to prove to Kelly that not only could he stick, he wanted to.
* * *
On Wednesday, Jack had a meeting at Legal Aid after work, so it was just Kelly and Ava at the dinner table.
“Did you finish all of your homework?” Kelly asked.
“Except for social studies.” Ava made a face as she pushed a piece of cauliflower around her plate. She disliked social studies as much as she disliked cauliflower. “I’m supposed to research European colonization of the Americas.”
“That’s a pretty hefty subject.”
“It’s a group project that Mrs. Kellner wants us to work on at the library. She said she wants proper research, not just an internet search.”
“Who are you working with?”
“Laurel and Hayley. They want to meet at the library tonight at six o’clock, if that’s okay.”
Kelly glanced at the clock, saw that it was almost quarter to six already. “You’re trying to get out of kitchen duty again, aren’t you?”
“Actually, if I had a choice between dirty dishes and history, I’d probably choose the dishes.”
“Well, tonight you get a reprieve,” she told her daughter. “Go wash up and get your stuff together. I’ll drop you off at the library and give you my cell phone so that you can call home for a ride when you’re finished.”
When the phone rang at eight o’clock, Kelly assumed it would be Ava calling, but it was Jack to say that he was on his way home. Since the library was en route, she asked him to pick up Ava; then she called their daughter and relayed the plan.
Half an hour later, the back door slammed.
Kelly looked up from the book she was reading as Ava stormed through the living room. “How did your research go?”
“I hate him!”
And with that, Ava raced up the stairs and into her bedroom, slamming that door, too.
Kelly set her book aside and followed her path. She tapped on the closed door, then turned the knob. Seeing her daughter in such obvious distress—face down and sobbing into her pillow—made Kelly’s heart ache. She cautiously lowered herself on to the edge of the bed and rubbed Ava’s back. “Who do you hate?”
“Jack.”
The fact that Ava had said “Jack” and not “Dad” warned Kelly of the need to tread carefully even more than the slamming of the doors had done. “What did he do?”
Ava lifted her tear-streaked face. “He told Devin Nicholls that I was in seventh grade.”
“I don’t know who Devin Nicholls is,” Kelly admitted. “But since you are in seventh grade, I’m not seeing the issue.”
“Devin’s a guy I saw at the high school last week, when we had our class trip to hear the band. He was at the library tonight, and we got talking. He’s really cute and smart, and he thought I was in high school.”
Kelly mulled over the details for a minute, giving her mind a chance to catch up. She wasn’t really surprised that her baby girl was noticing boys—by the time she was twelve, she’d been more than halfway in love with Jackson—but she wasn’t ready for those boys to be noticing her back. Especially not high school boys. She pushed aside the unease that stirred inside her and casually asked, “And what were you and Devin doing in the library?”
“Nothing.”
She exhaled a slow, unsteady breath.
“Jack totally overreacted.”
“But what was he reacting to?” Kelly prompted.
“Nothing,” she said again. Then she swiped her hands over her tearstained cheeks. “We were upstairs, in the stacks, just talking. And then Devin...well, he kissed me. Sort of.”
“He sort of kissed you?”
“His lips barely touched mine, then Jack barged in.”
“And what did he do?”
“He yelled. In the library.” Fresh tears filled her eyes, spilled over. Then she demonstrated. “‘Get away from my daughter.’ And Devin jumped about ten feet away from me.
“Then he said, ‘Let’s go, Ava. Seventh grade starts early in the morning.’” She buried her face in the pillow again. “He ruined my life.”
Kelly winced in sympathy. “I’m sure that wasn’t his intention.”
“It was the result,” Ava responded into the pillow.
* * *
Jackson was staring out the kitchen window into the darkness when Kelly came back downstairs.
“Do you want to tell me your side of the story now?”
“She was with a boy in the nonfiction section.”
“The nonfiction section?” she said in mock horror.
His gaze narrowed. “Nonfiction is on the upper level. The only time anyone ever goes up there is for privacy.”
“Definitely not for research.”
“I might not know much about being a father,” he admitted. “But I was a fifteen-year-old boy once. If I wanted to be alone with a girl, I would lead her into the nonfiction section, so I know damn well what that kid was thinking.”
“And it probably wasn’t much different than what she was thinking,” she warned him.
He scowled at that. “She’s twelve.”
“You think only fifteen-year-old boys are ruled by their hormones?”
“Are you saying that I should have left her there with him?”
“No,” Kelly said immediately. “I just think you might have handled the situation a little differently.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?”
“Let’s just say you’re not her favorite person at the moment,” she told him.
“I saw him lean toward her, and all I could think was, ‘Get away from my daughter.’ I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of her so clearly and unequivocally as mine to protect.”
She smiled. “If you learn not to overreact, you might get the hang of this parenting thing, after all.”
“It’s scary,” he admitted. “Accepting the responsibility, k
nowing that there will be consequences if I fail.”
“There’s no pass or fail—it’s a learning experience for all of us. And we’re all going to make some missteps along the way.”
“She reminds me so much of you at that age.”
“How would you know?” she challenged. “You didn’t pay any attention to me when I was twelve.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But by the time you were sixteen, you scared the hell out of me.”
She remembered, all too clearly, how shy and inexperienced she’d been at sixteen, and she couldn’t imagine why he would have been afraid. “Why?”
“Because you had no one to look after you.” He smiled. “Aside from Lukas, of course.”
“Why did I need someone to look out for me?”
“Because you were curious. And I was afraid that if I’d pushed, you wouldn’t have pushed me away.”
She felt her cheeks flush, because she knew it was true. “Then why did you kiss me?”
“Because I couldn’t stop myself. Then you got mad at me.”
“I wasn’t mad because you kissed me,” she told him. “I was mad because you stopped kissing me.”
“You were sixteen,” he said again.
“I knew what I wanted.”
“So did I, but I knew that if I let things go any further that night, Lukas would have killed me.”
“As if I would have run straight to your brother.”
“I wasn’t willing to take the chance.”
“You didn’t worry that I’d tell him we spent the weekend together in Chicago?”
“When I saw you behind the bar at the pub, I couldn’t think about anything but how much I wanted you,” he admitted.
“The chemistry between us was pretty explosive,” she agreed.
“I was never very good at chemistry,” he said. “But one of the few things I remember from high school science class is that whatever effect was generated—a bright flash of light or a bubbling liquid—it eventually fizzled out.”
“I’m not sure I see your point.”
His Long-Lost Family Page 16