"Not usually, sweetie." Jamie brushed at curls, still damp from the bath, on her daughter's brow.
' 'Mommy, if a tall man jumps really, really hard and even jumps from a tall, tall ladder, could he at least peek into heaven?''
Afraid she knew right where this was going, pained that her daughter found it necessary to struggle so adamantly for her identity, Jamie slowly shook her head. "I'm afraid not, honey."
"Don't cry, Mommy."
"I'm not crying, Ash."
"But if I ask about my daddy, you'll cry, huh?"
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"No, honey. We can always talk about anything, you and I. I thought you knew that."
'"Cept my daddy. We never, ever talk about him."
"You never asked."
"Miss Karen has pictures of Kayla's daddy. Where are my daddy's pictures?"
"I don't have any." The words almost choked her.
"Did my daddy die fighting for our country before you could take pictures?"
Hugging the child against her, Jamie forged on. She'd have prayed for guidance if she'd thought there was any chance her prayers would be heard. But the only God she'd ever learned about couldn't hear people like Jamie Archer.
"No, sweetie, I just didn't have a camera."
"'Cause you were poor?"
She hadn't been rich. But she'd had enough money. She'd worked hard for it. Sold her soul for it. "'Cause I didn't think there'd be anyone I wanted to take pictures of."
Wriggling closer, sliding her pudgy little arms around Jamie's neck, Ashley said, "But now you gots me for pictures, huh?''
"Yep." Jamie smiled. "Now I do. As soon as I knew you were on the way, I went out and bought a camera."
"That's when I was in your tummy?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Ashley was quiet for so long Jamie assumed she'd fallen asleep. And though they hadn't resolved a
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darn thing, Jamie was relieved. She just didn't know where to go with this one. And was finding herself damn stupid for not foreseeing this eventuality. When she'd let the town think what they wanted about her husband, she'd never thought about this tiny baby of hers growing up. Hadn't considered the fact that while she could ignore the curiosity of a town, she couldn't refuse to answer her own child.
"Where was my daddy when you bought my cam'ra?"
Damn. So much for sleeping. "He was, um, already gone."
"Gone away forever?"
"Yes, honey, forever."
"To heaven?"
"No."
"Then he was gone 'cause he getted mad and didn't want a baby girl?"
"Is that what Nathan told you?"
Ashley's nod against Jamie's chest hurt worse than a lot of the things she'd endured in her lifetime.
Jamie sat the child upright and gazed into Ashley's eyes. "That's not true, Ash. It's just not true. You understand?"
Never breaking contact with her mother's gaze, Ashley nodded. But Jamie knew that Ashley didn't understand at all.
"Your father never even knew I was pregnant, honey. He didn't know he had a baby girl to love."
'"Cause he died fighting for our country before you could tell him?''
The little girl's earnestness almost broke Jamie's
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heart. "No, baby. He didn't die fighting for our country. But he'd already left before I knew I was pregnant with you and so I couldn't tell him. I didn't know where he was."
"But is he died now?"
Frozen to the core, Jamie stilled, no longer holding Ashley, barely supporting the child's weight against her body.
"No, Ashley, he isn't."
Wincing as the little girl scrambled around so fast she bruised her in the process, Jamie waited almost with equanimity. What was to be, was to be. She couldn't lie. Not to Ashley.
"Miss Karen said he's died," the little girl said.
' 'When she told you that, she thought he was and I hadn't told her he wasn't."
"Why, Mommy?"
"Because that was my secret," Jamie said, choosing her words carefully. "And now it's your secret, too."
"I can too keep secrets, can't I, Mommy?" the child asked solemnly.
"Of course you can, darling. Did someone tell you that you couldn't?"
"Kayla," Ashley said. "Her mommy has a secret and Kayla says she won't tell us 'cause we don't keep secrets good."
"But you'll keep this secret, won't you, Ash?" The words stuck in her throat, burning her even as she uttered them. They were wrong. She was wrong to ask such a thing of her child. But what was her
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alternative? What would Ashley's life become if the truth were revealed?
Ashley nodded. "It's our secret, huh, Mommy?" the little girl asked. "Just you and me?"
Gathering the child close once again, Jamie hid the tears brimming in her eyes. "Just you and me, Ash, and that's okay, isn't it?"
"Mmm-hmm." Ashley's thumb was obviously back in her mouth. The guilt in Jamie's gut grew a little bigger, singeing her a little more.
And as she tucked her sleeping daughter into bed half an hour later, Jamie knew she'd accomplished nothing. In trying to protect the innocence and sweetness of Ashley's life, the security, she'd done nothing to alleviate the child's doubts about herself. About the man who'd fathered her and then disappeared. She'd given Ashley nothing to take to school with her, nothing to help her face a world full of curiosity and nastiness and children with cruel tongues.
Because, when it came to Ashley's father, Jamie had absolutely nothing to give her daughter. Except the truth. And that would hurt Ashley far worse than all the accusations the Nathans of this world could ever conjure up.
Jamie sent Ashley to school with a note for Miss Peters the next morning. She thanked the teacher for her kind offer to help with Ashley's problem, but added that she and Ashley had talked and she'd decided just to let things lie for a while. She ended the note with a request that Miss Peters call her imme-
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diately if she became aware of any further altercations on the subject of Ashley's father.
Small moments. Not big pictures.
And the next small moment was getting Kyle Radcliff out of her life. Her fascination with him didn't matter. The fact that he seemed able to reach something in her that nobody else could—that didn't matter. The money mattered. All she had to remember was the wad of bills he'd left her five years before. And get rid of him.
"Brad, can I see you a second?" Kyle called out after dismissing class five minutes late on Friday afternoon.
' 'Sure, Professor Radcliff, wha''s up?'' The bulky linebacker lumbered up to Kyle's lectern.
Kyle waited until all the other students had vacated the classroom. "Coach Lippert tells me it's really important that you pass this course."
"Yessir, it is."
"We're almost four weeks into the semester and I'm rather concerned about your chances of doing that."
Brad shuffled his feet, looking like a little boy in spite of his imposing size. "Me, too, sir."
"So what do you think's the problem?"
"I don't know, sir." The young man shrugged, his face contorted in a serious frown. "I just don't get this stuff. A boy breaking rules, an old black slave running from the law. Just don't seem like no heroes to me. And the rest, I don't see it at all. You
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say it's got undercurrents, that it means stuff, but it ain't like no politics or religion talk I ever heard."
So the boy was listening. Kyle just wasn't reaching him.
"Okay," Kyle said, straightening his notes and placing them in the open folder on the lectern. "That's fair."
Brad grinned, looking immensely relieved.
"But I still can't pass you," Kyle added. "Not unless we find a way for you to learn about American literature."
"But I'm never going to use this stuff!" Brad said, his voice raised. He tossed h
is book bag on the desk behind him. "I just want to play football! Why do I need to know stories about fake people written by dead guys to do that?"
Kyle removed his glasses and set them down on top of his folder on the lectern. ' 'A college degree stands for something," he replied slowly. "It's the assurance to anyone who asks that the person holding the degree has been given a well-rounded body of knowledge. That this person can think logically about a problem or situation and come to an informed conclusion. That he or she can join in various conversations and actually have something to contribute."
The frown was back on Brad's face. But the momentary anger had abated.
"Let's say you're at a party sometime," Kyle continued. "Let's say some franchise owner's daughter's there."
"What she look like?"
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"She's a beaut. Great legs. Terrific body."
"Big breasts?"
"Sure, if that's what you like."
"Okay," Brad said. "So?"
"Well, she's looking for some fun, but she's bored by all her daddy's brute guys who have no brains. Nothing to talk about but football."
"Why would we need to talk?" Brad asked, his grin cocky. "I can make sure she ain't bored without ever saying a thing."
"But, you see, that's just it, Brad." Kyle leaned his forearms on the edge of the lectern, the way he always did when he was driving home a particularly important point. "She can have her pick of a roomful of men who've had lots of practice pleasing a woman. She's got so much money she can't be swayed in that direction. She wants…conversation. Somebody who can talk about something besides football."
Brad plopped his big body down into the chair. His bulky frame barely fit between the chair and the regulation college-classroom desk.
' 'You sure about this girl, Professor?'' he asked. He didn't seem at all convinced, but he was studying Kyle.
"I'm sure that sometime in your life, whether it be at the doctor's office, the bargaining table or when you're out with a beautiful woman, you're going to need to be able to think. To reason. To know something besides football."
"And you ain't gonna pass me, are you?"
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"Sure." Kyle put his glasses back on. "If you do passing work."
"An' how'm I gonna do that?" The linebacker was getting angry again.
Kyle couldn't lie to the kid. "I don't know for sure if there's time, Brad, but I'm willing to tutor you—no charge—and see where that gets us."
"Tutor me."
Kyle grinned. The idea seemed so foreign to someone who needed the service so desperately. "Yeah. Like private coaching to help you learn the right plays."
"When you gonna tutor me?"
Reaching for his planner, Kyle gave the kid a pained look. "Hey, don't make it sound like I just shot your grandma."
With a sheepish smile, Brad said, "She'd shoot you dead 'fore you even had a chance to pull your gun, Professor."
Kyle might have continued that conversation if he hadn't suddenly discovered that he had the wrong planner. He'd opened the book to the day's date to find only three words scribbled there. Dinner with Jamie. He'd been in such a hurry to get to class he'd grabbed his personal planner. Not the one he used for school.
Damn.
"How about Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays right after class?" he ad-libbed, hoping he was free then. After having gotten this far with his most recalcitrant and neediest student, he wasn't about to
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lose credibility by admitting he couldn't even bring the right calendar to class.
"I got gym time then."
"Can you make gym time an hour later?"
"Maybe." Brad's face was blank. "I'm not sure."
Kyle grabbed up his folder, the planner and the text he'd brought to class, and slid them all back inside the leather satchel that went everywhere with him. "It's your choice, Brad. Either you make passing this class a priority or you don't."
"I'll be here," Brad grumbled as he followed Kyle out of the classroom. "Thanks a lot."
Kyle ignored the sarcasm.
Karen glanced around critically, although she already knew what she'd find. The house was spotless. There were fresh flowers in the foyer and on the kitchen table. Kayla and Ashley were upstairs in the playroom doing puzzles and listening to Disney songs. The girls had had an early bath and dinner and were ready for bed. And the best news was, in return for Karen's keeping Ashley that night while Jamie met with a client, Jamie was going to keep both girls the following day and night so Karen and Dennis could have some time alone.
Karen had been to the hairdresser while the girls were in school that morning and had treated herself to a manicure as well as a trim. She'd even thought about highlights, but Dennis loved the color of her hair.
She'd bought a new outfit, too. A black, long-
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sleeved dress that reached only enough past her thighs to be decent. And she'd made reservations at Dennis's favorite ski resort. The weekend package included dinner and dancing the following evening, as well as champagne and a whirlpool bath in their room. She and Dennis had gone to the resort only a couple of months before. It had been the best weekend of her life.
Even if the consequences were disastrous.
Dennis was due home any minute. The table was set with candles, flowers and their best china. The makings of a steak dinner waited for him in the kitchen. On the counter, his favorite dessert, blueberry buckle, was still warm from the oven. Fresh sheets adorned the king-sized bed upstairs in their room. His robe lay across the bed, ready for him to get comfortable and relax.
She couldn't wait to see him after their long week apart.
And she'd made up her mind. She wasn't going to tell him about the baby. Not yet. Not until she was better prepared to handle the news herself. She couldn't bear it if his reaction confirmed what she already suspected. That the pregnancy would turn him off, make him not want her anymore. Throwing up and pregnant, she'd never be able to compete with his savvy business associates.
Walking around with spit-up scented clothes and leaking breasts—yeah, that would impress him.
Not only would she lose her husband's interest, she'd lose her chance to be something more than a wife and mother. Any hopes she'd had of starting
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college in the fall when Kayla started school full-time were smashed before they'd ever been born. She could hardly put her own needs before that of a baby. Couldn't even contemplate giving her children over to strangers to raise while she gallivanted like some immature kid around a college campus.
Jamie had been so smart. As usual. She'd gone to college first and then started her family. Karen wished, not for the first time, that she had half the sense her friend had. Jamie always made the right decisions. If Karen didn't love her friend so much, she'd have to hate her for being perfect.
Too tense to sit and wait any longer, and loath to peek through the living-room curtains one more time, Karen slowly climbed the stairs. Lured by the sweet voices coming from the room at the end of the hall, she sought solace from the two little girls, who always managed to make life seem bearable.
Refusing to think of her dinner with Kyle as anything other than a business meeting, Jamie dressed accordingly. After donning one of her simplest one-piece skirt outfits from her "accountant attire" wardrobe, she even closed the top button she normally left open. Navy and white, with a white collar and a navy belt that cinched at the waist, the outfit screamed business. Not woman.
She hoped.
Her hair was halfway up in a professional-looking chignon when she remembered that was exactly how she'd been wearing it when she'd first met Kyle. She had, after all, been working that night, too.
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She could still remember his fingers pulling the pins from her hair, one by one, his smoky brown eyes devouring every inch of her face, his lips alternating between kissing h
er and telling her how beautiful—how perfect—she was.
The most amazing thing of all was that she'd believed him. She, who'd heard every compliment in the book, who got paid to take compliments while she let men touch her body, had actually believed a John.
The money. She just had to remember the money he'd left on the bedside table—and then she'd be rid of him. Free to get back to the long lonely chore of trying to forget.
What did it matter if he'd come back with breakfast that morning, as he claimed? He'd still paid for her.
She left her hair down, held back from her face with a couple of combs. And wore a minimum of makeup. She'd have put on a pair of glasses if she'd had them. Men weren't turned on by schoolmarms.
At least Kyle wasn't; she knew that much. His tastes ran to the more exotic—enough makeup to disguise even the most distinguishable features, breasts falling from skimpy clothes. Oh, yeah, and young. He definitely liked them young. Jamie had barely been old enough to drink the champagne he'd poured for her the last time—the only other time— she'd spent an evening with him.
Reaching for a bottle of perfume, she stopped. She didn't need to adorn herself. She wasn't going on a date. Hadn't been on a date since she'd slept
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with Ashley's father. Hadn't slept with a man since that night, either.
There was no man alive who could ever love the woman that Jamie had been. The woman she still was, deep inside where the memories lurked. Those memories were always there in the background, vivid reminders of things she'd done.
And there was no reason for Jamie to date a man except for love. Because she was never going to return to the life she'd known. She'd had no choice then. But she had a choice now. And she'd rather die than live one minute of that life again.
Damn Tom Webber and his generosity. Damn his friends. Damn his lies, his choices, the choices he'd left her. Damn him for taking her youth, her innocence, and making her a whore without her even knowing what he was doing. But most of all, damn him for making it so easy to fall into a life she'd never wanted. For making it almost impossible, and completely stupid, for her to walk away.
Minutes later, Kyle's knock on the door reverberated through her small house. Jamie wasn't sure what he'd see as she opened her door to him. She'd been unable to meet her reflection in the mirror before she'd left the bedroom, couldn't stand to see the woman who would've been staring back at her.
Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret Page 7