“You have some date in mind for this meeting?” he asked, arms crossed defensively, still rattled by how easily she was discussing what he considered a sensitive subject.
For the first time, she seemed uncertain. She put both of her hands on his arms and leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips. Then she looked into his eyes and said, “I love you so much I almost can’t bear it. I want to be with you, to be flesh of one flesh.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d slipped in some phrase from the Bible when they’d been talking, but nothing she’d ever said had resonated with him as much as those words did. It brought home to him the significance of what they were about to do.
But it didn’t keep him from wanting to be with her, from wanting to make love to her.
He cleared his throat, which had swollen almost shut, and said, “I’ll check and see when we can get the room and let you know.”
Her voice was almost a whisper when she added, “I hope it’s soon.”
Jennie was nowhere near as calm and collected once they were in the hotel room alone. Her hands were shaking, and she stuttered several times when she tried to speak. Seeing her so rattled made him feel protective.
He pulled her into his arms and whispered in her ear, “It’s just me, sweetheart. We have all the time in the world. If you’re not ready, we can leave and come back another time.”
She’d swallowed and said, “I don’t think I’d have the courage to do this again. My parents—”
She cut herself off, but he knew how hard it was for her to go against what her parents had taught her.
“Let’s just lie down and hold each other,” he said, leading her over to the bed. They climbed onto the bed and lay down with their heads on the pillows facing each other.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
She snuggled close, her nose against his throat, and murmured, “I didn’t expect to be this nervous.”
The truth was, he was every bit as edgy as she seemed to be. He’d experimented plenty, but he was essentially as much a virgin as she was. He knew making love the first time might hurt her, and he wasn’t looking forward to that. And he wanted to make it good for her, but he wasn’t sure how to do that, either. He felt foolish and fumbling, but he didn’t want to expose his ineptness, because the guy was supposed to know what he was doing and lead the way.
Luckily for him, Jennie was a lot smarter than he was about this sort of thing. She made it easy for him by telling him what she wanted, what felt good, and at the same time asking him what he liked.
“Would you touch me here?” she said, moving his hand lower on her body. She moved her own hand to a similar spot on his body and said, “Should I touch you here?”
Little by little, they began to explore each other’s bodies more freely. Clothes came loose. And then came off. Until they were naked and he was poised over her, ready for the final step that would unite them.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“I might not do it right.”
“You will.”
He’d taken the time to arouse her, and he knew she was wet, but she was small and he could feel from the way she tensed that he was too large and it was hard for her to take him inside. He grunted when he’d penetrated enough to feel a barrier keeping him out. He would have retreated, but he felt her hands on him and her voice urging, “Don’t stop. Please, Matt. I want you inside me.”
He thrust hard and soothed the small cry of pain with a kiss. When he was seated to the hilt, he met her gaze and saw the light of feminine satisfaction there. And knew it would be all right.
It wasn’t all good. It was over too soon, and she bled a bit. But he did his best to comfort her, kissing the tears—of joy or pain or whatever it was she was feeling, he was never sure—from her dove-gray eyes.
They’d learned a great deal from each other over the next few months, always careful to use a condom to protect Jennie from pregnancy. He could still remember the wonder on her face the first time she’d experienced an orgasm. And the joy he’d experienced making it happen again. And again.
And then disaster had struck. Jennie was late.
“Maybe you’re not pregnant,” he’d argued. “Maybe it’s something else.”
She’d looked at him with serious eyes and said, “I’ve been as regular as clockwork from the first time I had a period.”
“But we’ve been careful!”
“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective.”
“But we’ve been careful!” he’d repeated.
She’d walked into his arms and held him tight and whispered, “What are we going to do? I can’t tell my parents. They’ll be so angry and disappointed in me.” She’d met his gaze with troubled eyes and said, “They’ll never let me see you again.”
“Wait a minute! They can’t do that.”
“They can. And they will. I’m fourteen years old. They’re my parents. They can do anything they want.”
“We’ll run away,” he said.
“And go where? And live how?”
He’d always admired Jennie’s practicality, but right now it was getting in the way of what he wanted. “We’ll figure out a way to be together,” he told her, holding her tight in his arms, terrified of losing her. “We’ll figure out something to make this work.”
But he was afraid that she was right. That the adults in their lives would make all the decisions “for their own good,” and that they would be separated from each other and from their child. He hadn’t planned on being a father so soon, but he figured he could learn what he needed to know. How hard could it be to take care of a baby?
He would ask his father for a loan of enough money to cover living expenses in a home of their own until they finished high school and college. They’d need to pay a nanny while they were in school. Surely his father would bend that far. He never let himself imagine a future that didn’t include Jennie and their child, as fantastical as that might seem.
But somehow he never got around to saying anything to his father. He must have known deep in his heart that the fantasy life he’d planned for himself and Jennie was just that. A fantasy. That neither his father nor her parents were going to allow the two of them to “play house.”
But he didn’t want to face reality. So he kept her pregnancy a secret from his father, hoping that once the baby was born King would see how much Matt wanted to be a father to his child and help make his dream of a future with Jennie and their baby come true.
From the beginning of Jennie’s pregnancy, Matt worried about her health. He didn’t understand how someone so tiny could throw up so much and survive.
“It’s just morning sickness. It’ll pass.”
It did. She wore blousy clothes to hide the changes in her body. He loved watching their child grow inside her. He was enchanted by the look on her face the first time the baby moved—“Like a butterfly,” she said—inside her. Loved the changes in Jennie and feared them. She was getting so big! How could her parents not see the truth? He marveled at how hard her belly was, when it had once been so soft.
Their idyll lasted for six months.
One morning, the principal called him to the office, and Jennie was there with her parents. His insides clenched when he saw the heightened color in her cheeks. She never looked up from her hands, which were knotted together in her lap.
The principal asked him to sit down, but he said, “I’ll stand.” And he did, his hands stuck in the back pockets of his Levi’s to keep anyone from seeing how they were shaking.
“You are not to go within twenty feet of Jennifer Fairchild when she is in school,” the principal said. “Is that understood?”
“Who’s going to stop me?” he snarled.
Jennie looked up at him with dismay in her wounded gray eyes, and he realized he’d given exactly the wrong answer. He should have been smarter. He should have pretended to agree.
“See what I
mean?” Jennie’s father said. “He’s an animal! I want him expelled.”
“I understand your concern, Mr. Fairchild, but since Jennie says the sex was consensual—”
Mr. Fairchild pointed a daggerlike finger at Matt. “He’s responsible for this abomination!”
“Daddy, please. It’s not Matt’s fault!” Jennie cried.
“Shut up!” Her father raised his hand as though to strike her, and Matt lunged for him.
The principal stepped between them, catching the arm that would have struck Jennie and keeping Matt from reaching her father. “Go back to class, Matt.”
“That sonofabitch was going to hit her!”
“I’ll take care of it. Go back to class. Now.”
Matt leaned around the principal and said, “You better not touch her, you bastard.”
“Matt! Leave!” the principal said.
He’d stalked out, determined to see Jennie as soon as she left the principal’s office, already planning how they could run away together.
But that was the last time he’d seen her.
Jennie’s parents had sent her away somewhere he couldn’t find her. He’d gone crazy trying to locate her, but all his efforts had been in vain. He’d gone to his father for help, but King thought things were better left as they were. He’d heard nothing about Jennie for the next three months, until his father told him that she’d died during childbirth, along with their baby. The pain he’d felt was like a blistering fire in his chest that burned down through his gut.
Matt had become a wild child, refusing to follow rules, constantly getting into trouble, not caring whether he ended up in jail. King had made sure none of his troubles came to public light. It was almost a year later that Uncle Angus revealed that Matt’s child was alive—and so was Jennie. Angus had found their little girl, but Jennie’s whereabouts, now that the baby had been born and supposedly died, remained a mystery. Uncle Angus told him that his father had known all along where Jennie had been taken when she left Jackson, and that he’d lied to Matt to keep him from ruining his life.
Matt could still remember the first time he’d held Pippa in his arms. She’d looked back at him with Jennie’s gray eyes, and it had taken all his fortitude not to break down. He’d taken his daughter and gone as far from his manipulative, scheming, controlling father as he could get.
And goddamned if he wasn’t back here again. King hadn’t changed. He was the same lying bastard he’d always been.
It had taken years more to find Jennie. By then, Matt was married to a woman he hoped would be a good mother for his daughter. It turned out Jennie was married, too, to the junior senator from Texas, Jonathan Hart, living part-time in Washington and part-time on her husband’s Texas ranch.
She’d never had another child, which made Matt wonder if there had, in fact, been complications when Pippa was born that made it impossible for Jennie to have any more children. He bore a great deal of the responsibility for that tragedy, if it was true. He was the one who’d gotten her pregnant when she was only fourteen.
They were both older and wiser. He wanted to see Jennie again, to hold her in his arms, to kiss her, to make love to her. And if that weren’t possible, at the very least she deserved to know that their daughter was alive and well.
It was that last part he feared Jennie would never understand or forgive. Because of what he’d done, she’d never had a chance to experience the joy of being a mother and raising their child. Matt had stolen that opportunity from her when he took Pippa and disappeared.
He wondered if Jennie had ever discovered the truth. Did she have any inkling that their daughter was alive? Or would Pippa’s existence come as a complete surprise to her?
Their daughter had never needed a mother’s advice and counsel more than she did now. He shouldn’t put off contacting Jennie any longer. After all, reconnecting with her was one of the main reasons he’d agreed to come to America. That and the opportunity to punish King Grayhawk. Thwarting King was the easy part. The hard part was finding the courage to seek out Jennie with the truth.
Chapter 12
PIPPA SPENT A restless night considering everything her father had said, wondering about her mother—and wondering what sort of mother she herself would be. Her resentment had grown overnight. Her father had not only cheated himself when he’d left her mother behind. He’d cheated Pippa as well.
She was having trouble coping with her feelings. Her father had always been her hero, but lately, it felt like he was pressuring her to make the choice he thought would be best for her. The same way he’d made the choice to keep her mother from her. She didn’t agree with either one.
She felt confused and unhappy. In Australia she would have taken Beastie and gone into the Outback and let the sunshine and open spaces heal her soul. She’d found a similar escape here in Wyoming at the pond, but she couldn’t take the chance of running into Devon. She felt trapped.
She arrived in the kitchen for breakfast and discovered to her dismay that the twins had returned.
“So you’ve decided to join us this morning. To what do we owe the honor?” Taylor said from her seat at the breakfast bar. She was eating a bowl of oatmeal. Victoria sat beside her with a bowl of strawberries in front of her.
“How was Texas?” Pippa said in an attempt to remain cordial.
“Frustrating,” Victoria admitted. “We didn’t find out a thing we didn’t know before we left.”
“What were you hoping to discover?” Pippa asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Why your father left,” Taylor said. “And why he came back.”
“To what end?” Pippa asked, dropping a slice of bread into the toaster—checking the setting before she pushed down the lever—and then retrieving her Vegemite from the fridge.
“So we can figure out how to get him to leave again,” Taylor said.
Pippa immediately felt both alarmed and indignant on her father’s behalf. Especially since she now knew that at least one of the reasons her father had returned was to reunite with her mother, a story in which King seemed to be the villain. “Maybe instead of snooping into my father’s life you should be examining the actions of someone a little closer to home—like your own father.”
“What does King have to do with Matt leaving?” Victoria asked.
Pippa realized she’d opened a can of worms, and that if she wasn’t careful they might all wriggle out. The more she said, the more she would be revealing of her father’s private business. The last thing she wanted to do was give her horrid aunts ammunition they could use against her dad. What if they pressured King for answers and he gave them?
“Forget I said anything.” She got a knife from the drawer, retrieved the toast when it popped up, and began slathering it with Vegemite.
“You brought it up,” Taylor said, dropping her spoon on the granite bar with a clatter. “You’re the one slinging mud. Finish what you started.”
Pippa pursed her lips. Slinging mud? There were so many things she hadn’t said that she wished she could.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because you won’t leave us alone,” Victoria retorted. “You and Matt and your nuisance of a brother are turning our lives upside down.”
Pippa bit her tongue. It was bad enough to attack her or her father, but Nathan should have been off-limits. She saw a flash of remorse on Victoria’s face when she realized what she’d said, but it was too late. The words had already been spoken.
“Vick is right,” Taylor said. “None of you belongs here. This is our home. You should go back where you came from.”
Pippa gladly would have returned to Australia, but she couldn’t. Her home was gone, and she was pregnant. But these two women knew nothing about that, nothing about her or her father or her brother or what they’d been through over the years to survive.
Her hormones were working overtime, and Pippa felt angry tears rising in her eyes. Her throat was swollen with emotion, and she was only a heart
beat away from screaming in rage and frustration. She wasn’t about to give her aunts the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart.
She left her toast sitting on a plate on the counter and headed for the door.
Taylor slipped off her bar stool and caught Pippa’s arm as she hurried past, stopping her. “Hold on a minute. I’m not done talking to you.”
Pippa looked down at her arm and then back at Taylor through dangerously narrowed eyes. “Let go of me.” Her father had taught her enough self-defense that she could easily have broken her aunt’s arm to free herself.
Taylor held on long enough to say, in a voice more poignant for its quiet intensity, “I just want to know what’s going on. We’re being thrown out of our home. Can you understand that?”
Pippa understood all too well. But the last thing she wanted to feel was sympathy for her aunts. She jerked her arm free, then met Taylor’s gaze and said, “Your father is at the bottom of all this. Get your answers from him. Just stay the bloody hell away from me!”
She grabbed her coat and managed not to run as she escaped out the door. She couldn’t spend a whole year with King’s Brats. She couldn’t spend another minute with them!
Pippa started toward the stable, scrubbing at the tears in her eyes, and stopped in her tracks. If she went to the pond, she might run into Devon, and she was certain that if he opened his arms, she’d walk right into them. That sounded wonderful, but she couldn’t accept comfort—or kisses—from him without telling him the truth. Was she ready to do that? Not now. Not yet.
She wanted more of the tenderness, the kindness, the friendship he’d offered, all of which might go away when she told him she was carrying another man’s child. But honestly, if she spent more time with him, how long could she hide the fact that she was pregnant? Not long. She felt like an animal on the run, desperate to avoid the perilous, steel-jawed trap that seemed poised to snap closed on her.
Pippa couldn’t seem to catch her breath. It felt like she was suffocating. She gasped a breath of air and realized her lungs still felt empty. She sucked in another breath, frightened at how hard it was to get enough air to relieve the pressure in her chest.
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