The Comeback Mom

by Muriel Jensen

  The bare leg that he’d covered with a blanket only hours ago was now bare again and braced against his own bare leg. He was in serious trouble.

  “One of Arthur’s knights?” he repeated, trying to pull himself away from a dangerous vortex that seemed to be drawing him in. “You mean King Arthur? And a knight of the Round Table?”

  She wasn’t herself yet. The usually competent, fearless nanny who had little compunction about spying on him or telling him she thought he was being unfair to his mother, still clung to him, her face burrowed against him.

  “Yes. I thought I might be traveling again,” she said with a sigh. “Thank God, I’m not.”

  “Traveling?” he asked. He remembered that she’d mentioned a minuteman as well as a knight. “You mean…time…traveling?”

  She heard him say the words, but they didn’t register for a moment. She was lost in the delicious security created by the warmth of his enveloping arms, the solidity of his body bracing hers.

  Then she heard the words again: time traveling. And everything jarred within her. He was simply speculating about what she’d just said, of course. He didn’t know that that was how she’d come to him. But she’d come entirely too close to revealing her position.

  She put a hand to her head and pretended confusion, finding that it wasn’t that difficult. Panic did confuse one.

  “I…I was dreaming about…a minuteman and a knight,” she said, trying to cover her dangerous slip. “I wasn’t sure where I was when I woke up. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  She drew away from him, thinking she should go back to her room before she betrayed any more. She could ride out the thunderstorm by herself—that was what she’d always had to do in the past…or the future?

  But thunder crashed again and she flew back into his arms.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently. “We’re safe. It’s all right.”

  “This is so embarrassing,” she whispered against his chest. “I’m supposed to be the one who comforts the children at moments like this—and here I am acting like one.” She pulled away again abruptly, her eyes wide with new concerns. “The children! Are they…?”

  “They’re fast asleep.” He pulled her back into his arms and rubbed gently up and down her spine. “Just relax. It’s your weekend off. You don’t have to do anything for anyone but you. And we all have our unresolved fears. There’s no need to be embarrassed about them.” He held her aside for one moment and reached to the chair beside his bed to pull on the jeans and sweatshirt he’d removed to go to bed. He caught her hand and dragged her with him as he left the room. “Come on. I’ll pour you a brandy to relax you.”

  Libby followed, her heart thudding against her ribs, and this time her reaction had nothing to do with fear of thunder. She was reacting to the knowledge that she’d been wrapped in his arms and he’d been wearing nothing but boxers and a T-shirt.

  As gooseflesh rose along her limbs, she decided now was not the time to think about that. Jared seemed to be responding simply out of concern for her, but she felt as though the night—the moment—had taken a dangerous turn.

  They paused in the doorway to the children’s room and saw that both were indeed fast asleep. He flipped a switch on the intercom to open reception in the kitchen, and led the way downstairs.

  Lightning lit the kitchen as they reached it, and Libby put her hands up to cover her ears, anticipating the thunder. Jared held her in one arm and flipped the light switch on with the other hand.

  It was several seconds before thunder shook the house. It was loud and reverberating, but not directly overhead.

  Jared’s dark eyes looked upward as he analyzed the sound. “It’s already beginning to move off. We seldom get electrical storms here, and they don’t usually last very long.”

  She was ambivalent about that news. She was delighted that the storm was moving away, but she was less than happy that this idyllic time with Jared would end. His attention was strictly the concern of one human being for another. When she was no longer frightened, he would no longer feel the need to hold her—and she had to admit to herself that she wished things were different.

  But they weren’t. He wanted her children, and she was not about to let him have them. So the possibility that something romantic might develop between them was out of the question.

  He took her with him to the cupboard and reached to a top shelf for a squat brown bottle with a canning label on it that read Peach Brandy.

  “You make your own?” she asked.

  He pulled down two snifters. “Darren does. It’s pretty good stuff. This way.” Carrying the bottle and the glasses, he headed for the living room. “Watch your step until I get the light on.”

  She heard glass clink against the top of the coffee table, then the stained-glass lamp near the big chair went on suddenly, a little pool of light jeweling the design of pink roses, green leaves and gold highlights.

  He pointed her to the sofa. “Sit down,” he said, and went to turn up the thermostat.

  She tightened the belt of her robe and sat near the middle of the sofa, careful to make certain her knees were covered.

  Jared noticed the care she took with the ends of her robe and snatched up the cotton throw from the chair as he went back to the sofa. He opened it out and dropped it over her lap. He had reasons of his own to make sure her knees were covered.

  “Did you have a bad experience in a thunderstorm?” he asked as he settled near her. He left half a cushion between them and turned his attention to pouring brandy.

  She was entirely too beautiful in the glowing light of the single lamp. Her golden hair was tumbled and fragrant, her eyes wide, her vulnerability seductive.

  Attraction to her was a complexity he intended to ignore. After all, following years of happy bachelorhood he was suddenly the father of two little children, the confidant of a mother wanting to remarry after thirteen years as a widow and move to Puerto Rico and the referee between his brother and the woman he loved, who wanted his brother’s baby without having to take him as a husband.

  And then there was the truckload of artifacts arriving from the castle in Scotland the day after tomorrow. He had to turn his mind back to business sometime soon, or his new family would starve.

  “No,” she replied, accepting a snifter from him filled with the honey colored liquid. “Unless you consider being all alone in a thunderstorm traumatic. Thank you.”

  He leaned an elbow on the back of the sofa and turned toward her. “At what age?”

  “Eight.”

  “What were you doing all alone at eight?” He frowned, half expecting some sad story of parental neglect. Then she smiled in self-deprecation.

  “Chasing a rabbit,” she said, and took a sip of brandy. She opened her mouth to continue, then she gasped and her eyes filled with water. “Good grief!” she whispered on a strangled note, holding her snifter up to look at it. “Nitro in a glass.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. It’s good stuff. About the rabbit.”

  She cleared her throat. The fire that had rendered her speechless a moment ago now spread a comforting warmth in her stomach.

  “I was visiting my grandmother’s dairy farm in Wisconsin that summer because my parents weren’t getting along very well.” She made a careless gesture with one hand, intended, he guessed, to indicate that it had been a problem for her at the time. “I was supposed to stay in the front yard, but it was a beautiful day and I wandered into the woods in the back after butterflies, then I spotted a rabbit. Well, he was far less excited to see me and he took off when I got too close. I chased him, certain he’d be delighted with having me as a friend if he would just get to know me, but…” She spread both hands this time in a gesture of defeat.

  “By the time it occurred to me that he was probably in some underground burrow and I wasn’t going to find him, I was thoroughly lost.”

  He shook his head at her. “And it began to thunder?” he guessed.

  She nodded. “My life at that
point had been filled with loud, threatening noises I didn’t want to hear. I could hear my parents shouting at each other after I’d gone to bed, my mother sobbing. Anyway…” She sighed. “An afternoon storm blew up and I couldn’t find shelter. I saw a few trees get struck by lightning and burst into flames. I was terrified. And the sound of the thunder seemed to vibrate in the woods, and in my little mind it sounded as though it were somehow animate and looking for me.”

  She spoke with the calm detachment of adulthood, but in her eyes, he saw the residual fear of the little girl, the fear that would probably always be with her when it thundered.

  He wanted to take her in his arms again, but it wasn’t safe. Earlier he’d reacted with the simple need to provide comfort and protection. Now it wouldn’t be that simple.

  “How long before you were found?” he asked, instead.

  “It was after nightfall. My grandmother had gathered the neighbors, and one of them found me. I’ve often thought about all those people who wandered around in the pouring rain and risked their lives among all those trees to find me.”

  Thunder rumbled and she looked up at the ceiling, apparently tracking the sound. It was definitely quieter, moving away. She sighed as though relieved. She took another sip of brandy. “Anyway,” she went on with a playful grin, “since that day I can’t watch Bugs Bunny cartoons, ride in Volkswagen Rabbits or go to Playboy clubs.”

  “Are your parents still together?”

  She sighed. “I guess you could say that. They resolved some things, but they died in an auto accident when I was a junior in high school. I lived with a friend’s family my senior year, won a scholarship to the Museum School in Portland and took off on my own.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, thinking it sad that someone who loved to hover over people and try to iron out the wrinkles in their lives had no family of her own to fuss over. That was probably why she fussed over his to such a degree.

  She shrugged. “I’m fine about it.” Then she downed the rest of the brandy in one swallow and focused on him. “Is it hard for you to look at Savannah every day,” she asked, “and be reminded of her mother?”

  He wondered what had brought that subject about. Perhaps the fact that she’d shared a weakness and now expected him to share, too. Or maybe she’d simply downed the brandy too quickly.

  “No,” he answered honestly. “Savannah’s such an individual that you can’t help but see herfor herself.”

  She frowned, her gaze unfocused, and nodded as though she could agree with that.

  “Isn’t there a woman in your life now?” Libby couldn’t believe she’d asked that question. She was a little intoxicated, she guessed, on Darren’s flamethrower brandy. This was the middle of the night, anyway, and she was in her robe. They’d dismissed the employer-employee relationship when she’d burst into his room and flown into his arms. “What does she think of your bringing two children into the equation?”

  “There isn’t anyone serious,” he said evenly, “and I like it that way. There’s no one to consider but me.”

  “What about a mother for the children?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “That would be ideal, of course, but before I came on the scene, they had no one, so it seems to me that having just a father is better for them than having no one at all.”

  They had had someone. Her. But fate had intervened and she’d lost them. It was difficult to let that remark go. But she did, and pushed herself to her feet. He’d been the epitome of kindness tonight. “Thank you, Jared…for the—”

  She stopped abruptly as the room began to whirl. Exhaustion combined with the trauma of the storm and the quick consumption of a generous portion of Darren’s strong brew to make her feel as if she were boneless.

  She began to fold.

  Jared stood quickly to catch her and lifted her into his arms.

  She put a hand to her head and opened heavy eyelids. “Sorry,” she said woozily. “I…don’t know what’s the matter…with me.”

  That was a sentiment he could echo. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, either. Holding her in his arms felt very natural, very right. And his mind wandered ahead of its own volition to the possible outcome of taking her upstairs if the situation were different. But it wasn’t.

  “You probably just drank the brandy too fast.” He carried her up the steps without hurry, enjoying the light weight of her in his arms. He could feel the rounded curve of her breast under the fingertips of his left hand, the elegant turn of hip and thigh on his right arm, her warmth against his chest and that ever-present floral scent that enfolded him when she was near. “On top of working so hard yesterday and being frightened awake by the storm, I imagine your body’s just had it. Relax.”

  She wanted to. But her body had other ideas. The brandy may have induced it to succumb to sleep, but the moment Jared lifted her into his arms, it came wide-awake, all its processes pulsing.

  She’d looped her arms around his neck instinctively and now she became very conscious of the inside of her wrists against the short, wiry hair at the back of his head, of his stubbly cheek against her forehead.

  Earlier, when he’d held her in his arms, she’d been able to put distance between herself and the feelings his embrace engendered. But this time she couldn’t. This time she was woozy with brandy and temporarily warm with the glow of his kindness and concern. She forgot for a moment that he stood in the way of her having the children, and knew only that his presence in her life suddenly filled her mental viewing screen.

  He was the man she’d seen herself with in her girlish daydreams—tall, strong, kind, determined. Passionate.

  That last was only conjecture based on the dark depths of his eyes and the underlying restraint she sensed in his touch. And as he carried her into her room and placed her in the middle of her bed, she wanted more than anything to have it confirmed for her.

  When he tried to straighten away from her, she linked her fingers behind his neck.

  Jared felt the pressure of her sustained hold and thought she was simply still feeling disoriented, unsure. He took hold of her wrists and tried gently to disengage her hands.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly. “You’re back in bed and the storm’s going out to sea.”

  But she didn’t free him. He saw her eyes gleam in the darkness. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for being so kind.” Then she raised her head off the pillow and put her lips to his.

  He didn’t even consider all the practical cautions. All he knew was that he’d wanted to kiss her for days, and having the opportunity to do it at her instigation was a gift he’d never expected.

  He reached a hand under her to cup her head and another to brace her back, and reined himself in to let her maintain the initiative.

  She gave him a series of small, taunting kisses, her lips warm and flavored faintly with brandy. Then she parted her lips, dipped her tongue inside his mouth and explored with dainty interest.

  He had to suppress the desire to devour her.

  He responded gently, remembering that she was slightly under the influence of brandy and the remnants of fear. He circled the inside of her lips with his tongue, kissed and nipped at the small protrusion of her bottom lip, then let her take charge as her tongue probed more deeply and her fingers went into his hair.

  She broke the kiss suddenly and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, saying in a wan whisper, “Oh, Jared. I wish…”

  But she broke the wish, also, and gave him one lengthy, final kiss, then dropped her arms from around him.

  He continued to hold her, one hand still cupping her head. He looked into her eyes and saw tears brimming there.

  “What?” he asked. “What do you wish?” If it was within his power, he would give it to her.

  She looked back at him, opened her mouth as though to speak, then closed it again. “Nothing,” she said finally, her eyes large and sad. “Thank you for…helping me. Good night.”

  Recognizing a situation he co
uldn’t force, he stood and tucked her in. “Good night, Libby.”

  He closed the door between their rooms, did one more check of the children, flipped the intercom back to pick up in his room and climbed into bed. But he didn’t expect to close his eyes. There was suddenly too much on his mind.

  LIBBY FELT a tear roll down her temple and onto her pillow. She turned her face to the window, looking desperately for a star. But there was none. The electrical storm had moved on, yet rain still fell heavily.

  It was a good thing there was no star, she thought. She’d have only made a foolish, futile wish.

  She would wish, she thought, almost afraid to let the words form in her brain, that he would share the children with her.

  Chapter Seven

  Jared and Darren sat side by side on Darren’s sofa, feet propped up on a modern oak coffee table while they watched the Redskins cream the Bills. Zachary played happily in Darren’s lap with a rattle toy, and Savannah worked intently on the floor with paper, tape, felt-tip pens and adhesive labels.

  During a commercial break, Darren carried the baby into the kitchen, and returned with a fresh bag of potato chips. He handed it to Jared, who tore it open and poured the contents into the almost empty bowl on the coffee table.

  Savannah pushed up onto her knees and approached the table greedily.

  “You’ve already had enough chips to sink a tanker,” Jared cautioned, catching her little wrist when she reached out. “One more handful, okay, and that’s it, or you’re going to be sick.”

  “I’m hungry,” she said plaintively, dark eyes wide.

  He leaned closer to her. “You ate more chips than I did.”

  She smiled winningly and held the bowl up toward him. “Want some more?”

  He opened his mouth to try to explain that that wasn’t the point, then decided it was futile. “Just one more handful,” he said firmly.