He kissed her again, then let her go. Reluctantly. He wanted to hold on to her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He would tell her what he’d done.
It was time to stop playing games.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WALKER FORCED HIMSELF to ask her out for dinner on her day off. She seemed thrilled with the invitation, and that only made him feel more guilty. And when she reached for his hand at the candlelit table at the nicest restaurant in Sturgeon Falls, and told him she was crazy about him, he felt like scum.
He bundled her away from the restaurant without coffee or dessert. Her knowing smile made him sick—she thought he was eager to be alone with her. He pulled the Porsche to a stop at the end of a dirt road at an abandoned cherry orchard. She looked around and smiled. Stars glittered between the trees and a chorus of spring peepers croaked in the distance. The faint smells of pine and water drifted through the air.
“Beautiful,” she murmured. She reached for his hand. “Romantic.”
“It seemed like a good place to talk.”
She slipped off one of her heels and lifted her leg over the gearshift to skim her toes down his shin. “I like talking.”
The caress of her foot on his leg drained all the blood from his head. Without conscious thought, he put his hand on her knee, and her silky skin was warm beneath his fingers.
“What did you want to talk about, Walker?” Her toes moved up and down. Up and down. Then she caught the hem of his slacks and her foot pressed against his bare leg.
“Ah, what were we discussing at dinner?” Focus. He had to do this. Tell her what he’d done. But he was hard as steel, and all he could think about was how Jen would feel beneath him. Over him. Around him.
“My restaurant.” She lifted her hand to the top button of her blue blouse.
“Right. Yes.” He stared at her fingers, pale against the dark fabric, as she fiddled with the button.
It slipped out of its hole.
“Stoves,” she said, her voice dreamy as she unbuttoned the second button. Her fingers slid down her chest to the next one. “What size I want.”
“What’s a good size?” he asked hoarsely as she trailed a finger over her bra.
“Big.” The third button slid free. “Definitely big.”
He swallowed.
Her blouse gaped wide as she undid the fourth button, and he saw black lace. His mouth dry, he said, “I said pink was my favorite color. I was wrong.”
Her shadowed breasts were creamy in the moonlight. When she undid the last button, the silk blouse fluttered open to reveal the white skin of her abdomen.
He reached across the gearshift and dragged her against him. The heat of her skin burned him and he knelt on the seat, trying to get closer. “Let’s not talk about restaurants anymore,” he said into her mouth. “You’re making me hungry.”
“Did I distract you?” Her hands trailed through his hair and roamed over his back. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”
Her laugh reached deep inside him, grabbing his heart and holding tight. “I don’t want you to stop.” Ever.
She let her blouse flow down her arms as she reached for him. “Tiny car, Walker.” Her eyes gleamed with laughter. With desire. “It’s a challenge. Are you up to it?” He closed his eyes as she skimmed her fingers over his hard length. “Think we can make this work?”
“Jen…”
She pulled at his sleeves, making the envelope in his pocket crinkle.
“Stop, Jen. We need to talk.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” She opened one of the buttons on his shirt, then another.
He put his hands over hers, pressing them against his chest. Holding them still.
Some of the laughter faded from her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nick. The DNA test.”
She sat back in the leather seat and pulled her blouse back on. Began to button it. The valley between her breasts was shadowed and mysterious. He knew her scent now, knew he’d smell jasmine if he kissed her there.
She watched him quietly. Her smile had disappeared, but her expression was still soft. Loving.
“You can do the test,” she said. “I thought you were crazy until you showed me the baby picture of your father.” She did up another button. “You were right. It looked just like Nick.”
“Jen…”
She put her hand on his arm. “I was scared of what would happen if you were right. I still am. What am I going to tell Nick? And Tony? If you’re Nick’s father, everything will change. My relationship with my son will never be the same. Neither will his relationship with his father.
“No matter what that test shows, Tony is Nick’s dad. He’s the one who held Nick after he was born. He’s the one who read to him. The one who taught him to throw a baseball.” She smiled. “Even though Nick didn’t want to learn.”
“I don’t want to take Nick away from Tony. I just want to be part of his life, too.”
“You already are,” she said. “He thinks you walk on water. Every other sentence out of him begins with ‘Walker says.’ That won’t change if the test is negative.”
“Having Nick think I’m a cool guy is a lot different from having him know I’m his father.”
“Yes. It is. So do the test. Let’s find out.”
The cowardly part of him wanted to forget about the envelope nestled in his pocket. It wanted to thank Jen, have her give him some hairs from Nick’s brush and run the test all over again. She’d never have to know.
But he didn’t want lies between them. Secrets. If he was to have anything more with her, it had to be built on the truth. And it had to start now.
“I hope you can forgive me, Jen.”
“I already have. You were right to push me to test him. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”
He closed his eyes. Pulling the envelope out of his coat pocket, he laid it on her lap. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned as she picked it up. “What’s this? ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ What’s that?”
“A firm that does paternity tests. You send the samples in and they send you the results.”
“Is this an application?”
“No. It’s the results.”
“Results? What…? How…?” She gazed at the white envelope, then slowly raised her eyes.
“The day Nick had that fight over Stevie, he got a bloody nose,” Walker said, his voice flat. “I ended up with a wad of bloody tissues in my pocket, and I sent them off. I didn’t think you would ever agree, and I wanted to know.”
“You had no right,” she whispered. Her fingers on the envelope tightened.
“I know that.”
She threw the envelope at him. “He’s my son. My son.”
JEN GAZED AT THE ENVELOPE lying in Walker’s lap, bright in the pale moonlight. The drawing of a man holding a baby, a question mark where his face should have been, mocked her. Walker had known about this for a long time. When he’d kissed her on the porch. When he’d played Sorceress at the Harp.
When they’d made love.
“Has it all been a game, Walker? Romancing me? Getting me to fall in…” She would not say that. Not tonight. Not ever. “Seeing how stupid with lust you could make me?”
“No! God, Jen. It’s not like that at all. I made a mistake. I’m trying to make it right.”
“You must have been laughing so hard at me.” Her skin crawled with humiliation.
She hadn’t realized how easily a heart could break.
“I did want you. Desperately. And I felt horrible afterward. Like I’d betrayed you.”
“Because you did! Why didn’t you tell me about your ‘mistake’ then? It was a big night for confession. You could have jumped in at any time.”
“Because I was a coward,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to face what I’d done.”
“So you set up this evening instead. Were you softening me up for the big revelation?”
When he didn’t deny it, a chill shuddered
through her. She’d thought this date had been about romance. About falling in love. Instead, it had been about lies. “Were you, Walker?”
“Yes. No.” He shoved his hand into his hair. “I was trying to find some privacy to tell you what I’d done.”
“You let me seduce you again.” She buttoned the rest of her blouse with jerky movements. “Did you get a kick out of that? Poor Jen, she’s so desperate she can’t even see that I despise her. Did you enjoy that?”
“Of course I didn’t. I hate what I’ve done.”
His voice washed over her like ice. “Not enough to tell me before tonight. You used my feelings for you to manipulate me, Walker. And you used me to get close to Nick. I’ll never forgive you for that.”
The scent of him filled the small space, rewinding too many memories. The two of them on the front porch. Beneath the tree at the miniature golf course. Giggling together in her bed.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she fumbled with the door. When she finally got it open, she threw herself out of the Porsche.
“Get in the car, Jen. Let’s talk this out.”
“I can’t be in that car. That close to you.” Leaving the door hanging open, she began walking away. She’d left her shoes in there, the fancy, expensive heels she’d bought for tonight. She’d thought they were sexy.
Tiny stones in the grass bruised her feet, but she wasn’t about to ask him for her shoes. She’d asked him to make love with her.
And look how that had turned out.
HE WAS LOSING HER.
Walker leaped out of the car. He wanted to grab her and hold on until she forgave him. Until she understood that he would do anything to make this right.
If he touched her now, she’d probably punch him.
“I didn’t have to tell you, Jen,” he said, desperate to find the words that would force her to understand. “At least I told you what I’d done.”
“You think that makes it better? I trusted you, Walker. With my son.” She bit back a sob.
“Tell me what to do, Jen. Please.”
“Tell me what it says.”
“I don’t know.” He looked at the envelope in his hands. “I didn’t open it.” He put it in her hand and closed her fist around it.
Jen stood in the moonlight, staring at the envelope. She was beautiful. Strong. And so alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JEN REACHED INTO her purse for her car keys, and her fingers brushed against the envelope.
Just as they had every other time she’d put her hand into her bag. The crinkle of the paper made her want to cry.
She’d left it in her purse because she didn’t want the boys or her parents to find it. Couldn’t bring herself to open it yet. What if Tony wasn’t Nick’s father? Would she tell Nick? Or Tony, for that matter?
And Walker. Walker had a right to know whether Nick was his son.
The boys were going to stay with Tony in Green Bay this weekend. She would have time to figure out what to do.
In the meantime, she had an hour before her sons got home from school. She’d already made sure they had everything they needed for their weekend away, and she was heading to the store she’d rented to work on her restaurant. Her mother had promised to see the boys off so Jen wouldn’t have to be there when Tony arrived.
Grabbing the bucket of cleaning products she’d gathered, she headed for the front door. Bottles of window spray and disinfecting soap gurgled, reminding her of all that needed to be done before she could open her business. Work was good. She could lose herself in the scrubbing, the polishing.
As she reached for the doorknob, the bell rang. She pulled the door open and saw her ex on the porch.
“Tony. What are you doing here so early?” Oh, God. She knew why he’d come.
“I wanted to talk to you. Alone. Before the boys got home from school.”
She could close the door in his face, tell him to go away. But that would just postpone the confrontation. “Fine. Come on in.”
He glanced at the bucket she held. “You in the middle of something?”
“I was going to work on the space I rented for my restaurant.”
“You finally pulled the trigger on that? Good for you.”
“Thanks.” She set the bucket down and pushed it to the side with her foot. “What’s up?”
“Walker Barnes. How did he know about your tattoo, Jen?
“It doesn’t matter. You and I are divorced.”
“Was it because you slept with him?”
“Not your business.” She headed back into the house.
Thank goodness. Tony had assumed Walker knew about the tattoo because he’d seen it recently. Not back then.
She’d barely made it past the door when Tony took her wrist and turned her to face him. “He didn’t design that game in the last few weeks. That means he saw the tattoo in high school. Were you sleeping with him then? Is that why he changed my grades?”
“Does it matter? It was a long time ago.”
He held her gaze and dropped her wrist. “Yes, Jen, it matters. It matters a hell of a lot. It would explain some things to me.”
“Like what?”
“Like why everything was different after we got caught.”
“Of course it was different. You lost your scholarship, so you couldn’t go to college. I got pregnant, and we had to get married right away. When you signed up with that minor-league team, it meant you were on the road a lot. At training camps. We hardly saw each other.” She nudged the bucket with her toe, unable to look him in the eye. “Of course things were different.”
“I know I wasn’t a perfect husband. Or a perfect father. But I’ve always thought it was my fault, you know? We couldn’t go to college because I asked you to get Walker to change my grade, and I lost my scholarship. I wasn’t around much when Nick was a baby.” Tony clenched his jaw. “Maybe if there was a reason for the tension between you and me back then, I wouldn’t feel like such a failure as a husband and a father.”
“If you could blame Walker for it, you mean?”
“You don’t think you have any blame there? If you were having sex with Barnes? If you were screwing around on me, maybe everything that happened wasn’t my fault.”
Had Tony been carrying around this guilt ever since Nick was young? Jen wondered. So many repercussions from that one mistake.
“Sit down, Tony.” She waited until he’d settled on the couch. “No more lies. Yes, I slept with Walker. Once.”
He jumped up from the couch. “I knew it. You cheated on me with that son of a bitch!”
She closed her eyes. “I was flirting with him, trying to get him to hack into the computer. To change your grades. Teasing, joking. It went a little too far.”
“Is that what you call it? Going a little too far? For God’s sake, Jen. We were a couple. You said you loved me.”
“I did love you. I was desperate to help you. Even if it meant having sex with Walker. That’s why everything was different afterward. I betrayed you, and I…I had a hard time with the guilt. You should have told me, Jen. Back then.”
“Yes. I should have. But I was a corward.”
Tony looked out the window. “What about Nick? Is he mine? I can count, you know. He was born nine months later. I’ve been wondering about that since I figured out how Barnes knew about the tattoo.” He turned back to her. “That’s a crappy thing to wonder about.”
Her first instinct was to put him off. To avoid the confrontation. But she was done lying. “I’m not sure. I never doubted it. But Walker thinks Nick might be his.”
Tony shoved his hand through his hair. “What a frigging mess.”
“I’m sorry, Tony.” She hesitated. “If I had a DNA test, knew for sure who Nick’s biological father was, is it going to change how you feel about him?”
“Hell, Jen, I don’t know.” He walked across the living room, picked up the framed collection of Nick’s school pictures and stared at them for a long time.
Fin
ally, he put them back on the bookshelf. “He’s my kid. He’ll always be my kid,” he said quietly. “Maybe it would explain why he hates sports. Even when he was little, he didn’t want to play baseball. Or anything else.”
“Nick has been difficult with you,” she said over the lump in her throat. “It’s his age. Nothing to do with you.”
“Hell, I know that.” He picked up one of Tommy’s baseballs from the end table and squeezed his hand around it, as she’d seen him do so many times. “I thought I was going to the show. The big leagues.” He mimed throwing a pitch. “That we’d always be in love. What a naive kid I was.”
“You would have made it to the big leagues if you hadn’t blown out your shoulder.”
He rolled it a couple of times and set the baseball down. “Maybe, maybe not.” He tried to smile. “I kill in the cops’ softball league in Green Bay, though.”
“You should take Tommy and Nick to one of your games this summer. They’ve never watched you pitch.”
“We’ll see.” He jiggled the change in his pocket as he stood by the door. “So what happens next? Do I need to give a blood sample or something?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
“Okay.” He picked up a picture of the two boys, studied it, then set it back in place. “I need to get out of here. Away. I’ll be back when the boys are home from school.”
“All right.” She put her hand on his arm as he started to leave. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m glad everything is out in the open. And I’m sorry you always felt as if our breakup was your fault. I was as much to blame as you were.”
He smiled wearily. “Maybe not quite as much. You didn’t have sex with Walker on the kitchen table in front of me.”
JEN PULLED INTO the lot of the Bide-A-Wee Motel and parked next to Walker’s dark blue Porsche. She couldn’t use the excuse he wasn’t here, and run home.
No, she’d face him now. She had a lot that needed to be said.
When she knocked, she heard the scrape of a chair across carpet. Footsteps. He opened the door.
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