The Family They've Longed For

by Robin Gianna

  “I have a feeling he’s going to have paint all over his clothes anyway.”

  Jake sat the small boy on her lap and she breathed in the baby scent of him, letting herself rub her cheek against his soft hair. She picked up one of the paint pots and had to laugh at the way his pudgy fingers happily dipped inside before rubbing the paint all around the paper.

  “Look at him having fun!” her mother exclaimed. “He’s like one of the family already.”

  Her belly tightened at her mother’s words. Rory held out a second color to Mika, kissed his round cheek and wished with all her heart that she had a beautiful child like this. But he belonged to Jake, and Jake would never belong to her again. She’d made sure of that, hadn’t she?

  They played with the paint together and his joy, the delighted baby noises he made, were so adorable she found herself wishing the moment would go on for hours. But his attention on swirling the paint didn’t last very long, and in a short time he was wriggling to get off her lap.

  Shoving down her disappointment, she tried to secure him with her elbows so he wouldn’t fall. “Jake, can you get Mika? My hands are all gooey.”

  “Yep. Done here anyway.”

  She watched his long body scooch out from under the sink and unfold into a standing position. Two long strides and he was lifting the boy from her lap, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bereft.

  “All fixed, thanks to my superior strength. You can wash up now, if you want.”

  “Thank you for getting us water again. I think I’m done with finger paints for the day.” Unless Mika decided he wanted to play with the paints a little longer after all. “But maybe you should wash your face first. You look a little scary.”

  “Geez, I forgot.” He laughed. “Thanks for not letting me walk around town like this.”

  “Wouldn’t want people to think the town doctor had lost his marbles.”

  “Except there’ve been a couple times recently when I think maybe I have.”

  Their eyes met and she found it hard to turn away from that intense brown gaze. Yeah, maybe they’d both lost their marbles, getting involved again even for such a short time. But she’d always been crazy when it came to Jacob Hunter. Probably nothing would ever change that.

  As she washed her hands she realized the pleasure of holding the baby and playing with him wasn’t over just for today—it would be over permanently very soon. That reality made her feel melancholy enough that she figured she should book her flight home as soon as possible. Staying away from Jake hadn’t come close to happening, and while she was glad they’d had this time to clear the air a little and make peace with the past, it was time to get back to her life.

  Her life filled with work and not much else.

  “You know what I haven’t had in front of my house for a long, long time?” her mother said as she washed her hands, too. “A snowman! It’s warmed up some today—perfect for snowman building. How about you two take Mika outside for his first snowman?”

  “I think he’d like that,” Jake said. “Rory?”

  She turned, and the entreaty in his eyes made her chest expand all over again. The clear desire she saw there was to spend another hour with her, the same way she wanted to with him, despite them agreeing not to. It was too late to protect her heart from caring about him again, and taking new memories back to LA—memories of her time with both Jake and Mika—seemed like the best idea in the world.

  “Not much possibility of making a snowman in Los Angeles. So, yes, I’d love to make a snowman with the two of you. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ROLLING THE BALLS of snow to make a snowman was more exciting to Mika than Jake would have thought, and for some reason the baby laughed out loud when Jake stacked the smallest one on top of the other two.

  “There’s the snowman’s head, Mika. Now we need a face.”

  “Stones for the eyes,” Rory said, poking them into the snowball. “More for the mouth. And here’s a carrot for the snowman’s nose. Can you put it right where its nose should be?”

  She handed him the carrot and Mika stabbed it into the side of the snowman’s head. It made Jake laugh, but Rory actually doubled over with mirth, tears in her eyes that this time he could tell were happy ones.

  The joy he could see on her face, which was glowing with the pleasure of the day, made him wonder about what her life in Los Angeles might be like. She’d always worked hard, from the minute she’d arrived as the odd one out at the public school after being homeschooled for the first eight years of her life. But he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d buried herself in work in order to forget about everything else. It was easy to do when you were studying medicine, and probably even easier if you were a woman competing for an orthopedic residency, and then a job, in a field filled mostly with men.

  Rory’s cheeks were pink from the cold and the exertion of rolling snow and stacking it, and Mika’s were, too. Probably time to head back home, though he couldn’t help wanting to spend as much time as he could with Rory before she left. Watching her now, though, enjoying the sparkle in her green eyes, loving the sound of her laugh, brought back that uncomfortable feeling he’d had before. The feeling that he could fall hard for her again, and God knew he didn’t want his heart to hurt the way it had the last time she’d left.

  “All that painting and snowman making means Mika missed his nap,” he said. “I should get him home.”

  The mirth and joy faded from her face before she nodded. “Of course. It’s been...so much fun. Oh, Lord, now I sound like my mother. But it has been. Thank you.”

  “For what? The plumbing repair?”

  “For forgiving me enough to hang out with me. For letting me spend time with your son.”

  “Rory... I thought we’d talked this through.” He hated the idea of her going to LA still dragging along the burdens she’d carried with her the last time, and he pulled her close so she could look into his eyes. “I’ve forgiven you. The past is the past.”

  “I... Thank you. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”

  He dropped a quick kiss to her forehead and then let her go, resisting the urge to kiss her for real. Everything that had needed to happen between them—a new understanding and forgiveness—had been accomplished. Time for both their lives to go back to normal.

  “When are you heading back to LA?”

  “I’m going to call tomorrow to schedule my interview, then book a flight, so probably in just a day or two.”

  “Well, I probably won’t see you before you go, then. Good luck with getting the job.”

  “Wait—we have one more thing to do.” She pulled off her hat and handed it to Mika before picking him up in her arms. “Let’s put this on the snowman’s head so he stays nice and warm, okay?”

  Jake watched her lift up his son, so he could try to put the hat on the top snowball, and the picture of the two of them made his heart physically hurt. She looked so vulnerable, and a mix of joy and deep sadness flitted across her beautiful features. She was obviously loving the time with Mika that they’d never gotten to have with Adam.

  It was good she was leaving in just a day or two. His emotions—and hers, too, he thought—were getting tangled up together again, and that was the last thing either of them needed. Probably he should have resisted kissing her and making love with her, but he couldn’t deny that being with her that way again had been incredible. The best he’d felt in a long, long time.

  But sex between them, however good, was fleeting and dangerous. Even when he didn’t plan to, he found himself kissing and touching her anyway. What could he do now, though? Say goodbye this minute, before things got any stickier between them? Before something else happened that would make it harder for both of them when she was gone.

  He stepped over to take Mika from her arms, but the baby fussed and resisted. He’d thrown Ro
ry’s hat on the ground and pulled off his own, determined to flatten it onto the snowman’s head. Finally, he wriggled so much she had to put him on his feet.

  “I guess the snowman does look better in your hat, Mika,” she said.

  She turned to Jake, and the look of longing in her eyes made his heart beat harder at the same time as he took a backward step. Self-preservation was kicking in, big-time, and he feared if he didn’t get away from Rory right now his heart would get pummeled in a way he never wanted to experience again.

  Mika might not be happy about it, but he moved to take the boy’s hat off the snowman anyway.

  “How about dinner tonight?” she asked as their eyes met. “I’ll bring stuff from here...cook dinner for the two of you.”

  “Rory, I don’t think—”

  “Just dinner. That’s all. Then I’ll be leaving for good.”

  Dinner, and then after Mika was in bed hot sex between the two of them, which would make it harder for both of them when she left? God knows, he wanted it again more than anything...

  Except that wasn’t quite true. He wanted it more than anything except another aching heart.

  Somehow he made himself reach around to pull her arms from him, and his chest constricted at the confusion and hurt in her eyes as he did so.

  “I’d like that, but I can’t. I have plans I can’t break. Sorry. Best of luck in LA, okay?”

  He grabbed Mika and strode to his car, afraid that if he slowed down he’d cave. He’d turn back and reach for her and kiss her breathless and invite her to his house. And where would that leave them? One step closer to falling in love again, and he just didn’t want to go there.

  Yeah, his gut told him, spending the evening with her would be a very bad idea, and he got Mika into his car seat as quickly as possible.

  Then he made a mistake. He let himself look back at Rory, to see her with her arms wrapped around her body and her beautiful face looking as wistful and forlorn as he’d ever seen it. And he could swear he felt her eyes on him even as he hit the gas and drove down her mother’s snowy hill to the road.

  * * *

  Rory finished cleaning the dishes that had been waiting for the sink pipes to be fixed, staring out the window at the snowy scene that earlier had delighted her.

  Now it just made her feel sad. Empty. Embarrassed.

  And utterly confused.

  In the kitchen earlier, Jake had teased and touched her. Flirted with her. Even surprised her with a delicious kiss that had curled her toes and made her forget that her mother was close by in the other room. Then he had seemed to be having the same wonderful time she’d been having with Mika. Snowman building and laughing at the baby when, awed by the cold white flakes, he had started stuffing them in his mouth.

  Jake had tossed a few snowballs at her that had scored direct hits and had had both of them chuckling and remembering all those years they’d played and rolled in the snow together, from the time they were kids and all the way through college.

  But then the thought of never seeing him again, or at least not for a long time, had made her chest hurt and her throat close. She’d impulsively asked to have dinner with him and Mika. Be with them one last time. Enjoy more of Jake’s heart-stopping kisses and maybe make love the way only they could.

  How that felt was something she’d nearly forgotten, and she wanted one more close moment with him to cherish. Wanted to take those memories back to LA with her, to keep her company during all the lonely days.

  And what had happened?

  He’d basically told her to take a hike and head on back to LA, then practically left skid marks on her mother’s snowy yard as he’d driven away.

  She tossed down the dishtowel and shook her head. The only explanation was that after the flirting and fun he’d gotten cold feet about seeing her anymore, knowing she was about to leave. Which she just didn’t understand—because they’d already kissed and made love and talked things through, hadn’t they?

  “Aurora?”

  She turned to see her mother walking toward her, remarkably steadier with her pink cane than she’d been the day Rory had first arrived, despite the scare of her sutures opening.

  “Can I get something for you, Twinkie?”

  “No, I want to talk to you.”

  She came close and wrapped her arms around her, much the way Rory had wrapped her arms around Jake not long ago.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot. I just can’t come to California with you. To live with you. But I will come for Christmas. If that’s okay?”

  Rory folded her slim body close, looked down into her mother’s eyes, and suddenly found it hard to speak. Her quirky little mother, like no one else in the whole world, was willing to visit her at Christmas, even though it was one of her favorite times of year here. She didn’t particularly like LA, and she missed her friends and her home when she came, but she loved and wanted to be with Rory enough to visit anyway.

  It struck her like a sledgehammer between the eyes that Jake had been right. Escaping to California, leaving her parents and Jake behind, had been selfish. She hadn’t seen it that way, but it was the painful truth.

  The sledgehammer hit a second time. How she felt right now—missing her mother and Jake and the place where she’d grown up before she’d even left town—told her that all the emotions, all the reasons she’d left didn’t exist anymore.

  Living in LA wouldn’t bring Adam back. It wouldn’t let her spend time with her mother, either, and after being with her these past two weeks she knew she didn’t want the long miles between them anymore. And it wouldn’t let her and Jake explore the fire, the love, that had started burning between them again, and she knew right then that she wanted that more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. Wanted to see if the two of them could continue to talk and work through their past. To be together and to love one another on their way to a new future. To create a family of three, with Mika.

  Would Jake want that, too? Did he feel the same way about her that she did him? God, she didn’t know—which terrified her. But what she did know was that she had to find out.

  “I love that idea, Twinkie.” She swallowed hard before she tried to talk again. “But you know what? I might not even get that job. And if I don’t I might even come back here to live. I... I might try to date Jake again. What would you think about that?”

  Since she had no idea how Jake would react to her telling him she wanted to stay in Eudemonia and be with him, she couldn’t make any promises to her mom. If he rejected her it would crush her heart too much for her to stay here full-time. But the days of her not seeing her mother for months on end were over—even if that meant steeling herself to endure seeing Jake with someone else.

  “Oh, my goodness, Aurora, I can’t think of anything I’d like better than for you to move back home and to be with Jacob again. That would be a dream come true.”

  For her, too. Her new dream.

  “I’m not promising. I have to see how it goes.”

  She had to see what the man who held her heart and future in his hands had to say when she told him she still loved him. As scary as that felt, she’d do it.

  Hadn’t she always gone for what she wanted?

  And she wanted Jacob Hunter back.

  They clutched one another and Rory kissed Twinkie’s cheek, then let her go. “I have something I need to do. Will you be okay for a while? I’ll make a plate for you to warm up, in case I’m not back for dinner.”

  And if things went the way she hoped, she definitely wouldn’t be.

  “I’m just fine, marshmallow girl. I’m going to rest for a bit anyway.”

  With her mom settled in her favorite chair, Rory felt her stomach churn with nervous energy. How was she going to approach this? Just knock on the door and have him wonder why she’d come chasing after him when he’d told her he had plans
?

  That thought made her heart stop. What if he really did have plans? What if he had a date?

  She wrung her cold hands and paced the kitchen. Maybe she should wait until tomorrow, just in case... But as soon as the thought came she knew that now she’d had this earth-shattering revelation she’d never sleep tonight if she didn’t go over there and get this done.

  The snowman caught her eye. “That’s it! The perfect excuse,” she murmured to herself.

  Mika’s hat was still perched on the snowman’s head. She’d take it over to the house, say she’d thought he might need it. Yeah, it was probably a weak and transparent excuse, but it was better than nothing, right?

  She shoved on her coat and boots, ran out to grab the hat and jumped in her car as butterflies flapped in her belly.

  Getting to Jake’s house and getting this over with as quickly as possible was the plan. She could only hope the evening would turn out the way she wanted. If it didn’t she knew it would end up being the second-worst day of her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JAKE SAT BACK and took a swig of beer, thinking about all that had happened between him and Rory and wishing she hadn’t come back at all. He’d thought that other than wanting answers from her about why she’d left without a word, any feelings for her were long gone.

  But here he was, sitting here and wanting her beside him. Wanting to kiss her again, to get her naked again, to laugh and joke with her again. It was stupid when she lived thousands of miles away and had already proved she wouldn’t hesitate to abandon him if life got tough.

  Having her back in town was messing with his mind—no doubt about that. And the truth was he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t still be messed up long after she’d gone again.

  Mika crawled across to the sofa and pulled himself to his feet, trying to get a toy that he couldn’t quite reach from the cushion. He started to wail way more than usual for something like that, and Jake wished they’d foregone the snowman making and come home for his nap. Both because his baby would now be happier and because he might not have these uncomfortable feelings rolling around in his chest.