No time to mourn what she’d had—or thought she’d had—with J.D. No chance to imagine what might have been between them without all the secrets. The lies.
But those thoughts kept sneaking up on her. Grief was knocking on her door. So she gave in.
Resting her head back on her chair, she just opened herself up to the pain and it crashed over her like a waterfall—never-ending, utterly disorienting, terrifying.
J.D., her whole body wanted to scream.
His reaction in the parking lot had been in line with what she’d expected when he heard the news. Well, that wasn’t true. His reaction in the parking lot was a million times worse. She’d expected anger. She’d expected blame. But she hadn’t expected that he’d leave. Just walk away without giving her a chance to explain.
It hurt. It hurt so much that he could walk away like that. Like she didn’t matter. Like Spence didn’t matter. That ten years together were nothing.
In fact, combined with the revelation earlier—that she’d been sleeping with a man she clearly didn’t know—she was totally adrift. She could barely figure out what was real and what was this new nightmare.
I don’t even know who I am, she realized, staring down at her hands. I lied to him. I kept the truth from him. I’m no better than him at all.
Oh, man, that was the worst. It hurt to see herself that way. To know herself for what she really was. A coward.
But what did keeping secrets make J.D.? She started to answer that, then stopped herself. She’d made this mistake before, answering her own questions about him. Filling in the blanks of her knowledge with things she wanted to believe.
He was a hero.
A good guy.
A man to love.
Ha!
Were she any less destroyed by the events of the day, she’d laugh.
The only thing she knew for sure about J.D. was that she didn’t know him at all. And now he was gone.
And that somehow hurt the most. Life without J.D.—without the J.D. she thought she knew, without fantasizing about that man, anticipating him, imagining him—was all such a bleak affair.
She had work, J.D. and thoughts of J.D. That was it. The sum total of her life. And she wished for one more chance to tell him she was sorry and that he was a jerk.
“Sam?”
For a moment she thought she’d created the sound of his voice, pulled him back here by sheer force of will and fantasy so they could get some closure on this chapter of her life.
But then she heard the soft click of her office door shutting and smelled the spicy scent of J.D. and her whole body reacted, tensed wildly in a sudden fight-or-flight instinct.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, turning to face him with what she hoped was a passable imitation of indifference.
“Your Jane Doe is trouble,” he said, his face impenetrable. So cold it made her efforts at calculated nonchalance look like sobbing.
Right, Jane Doe. It seemed like a million years ago that girl walked into Serenity House.
“What’s the story?” Sam asked, leaning back in her chair, happy to have something else to concentrate on. And as usual, the shelter provided plenty of reason for her to never have to think about herself or her life.
“Jane’s name is Christina Conti. Her father is Francis Conti, a capo in the Gamboni crime family.”
Sam’s stomach fell through the floor. This was more than trouble. Way more than trouble.
This was Eve’s death all over again.
“She’s running from him?” she asked.
“Apparently.” J.D. widened his legs and crossed his arms over his chest, all business. All calm, cool and collected stranger.
She wished she could turn away from him, stop seeing him so the hurting in her chest could just be done.
But it wasn’t possible. It had never been possible with him. If he was nearby, he drew her like the sun.
“Is he looking for her?” she asked.
“Not yet. Christina’s story about visiting her sister is true. Frank is still buying it and hasn’t bothered to call the sister. But it’s only a matter of time.”
“So what do we do?” she asked, her voice tight and scared. “What are we talking about here?”
“I know it sounds bad. But I don’t think we need to worry about them showing up here just yet. I’ve got a friend in the bureau who is reaching out to Christina’s boyfriend. Apparently, there’s no love lost between him and Frank, particularly after learning that Christina was pregnant.”
Ah, Sam thought, connecting the dots. The father was involved but not in an incestuous way. In an I’m-going-to-shoot-you-in-the-back-of-the-head-for-touching-my-daughter kind of way.
What a relief, Sam thought, the irony heartbreaking.
“So?” Sam asked. “What am I supposed to do with a pregnant mafia princess?”
“Keep her here,” J.D. answered and Sam’s eyebrows hit her hairline.
“You’re kidding, right? Keep her here until when? Frank shows up with a machine gun?”
“No, until my friend shows up with the boyfriend.”
Sam blinked, her knotted stomach making it hard for her to breathe. Wait until the boyfriend and the FBI agent showed up and pray that it was before Frank got smart and started following Christina’s trail to here?
That was an ugly and potentially brutal waiting game.
“I know what you’re thinking, Sam, and it’s not that bad. Really. Frank doesn’t know she’s here and by the time he realizes his daughter has run away, this will all be over. And even if he does figure it out, it would take him days to trace her here.”
“You’re sure?” she asked. And she knew it was ludicrous to trust him, to need his assurances, but she did. She’d never trust him with her heart or her body again, but she could trust him in this. It was his job, after all, and he was very good at his job.
He nodded and she took some solace in that.
But after the day she’d had, her nerves of steel were fraying. And she knew she couldn’t handle this alone. This was why J.D. was in the Rolodex.
But asking him for help now seemed like rubbing salt in her own emotional wounds. The words were stuck behind her pride and her own mistakes.
“You okay?” J.D. asked, and she hated his intuition. Hated the way he knew her.
“I’m pretty freaked out,” she admitted. “I’d be lying if I told you otherwise.”
“I really don’t think it’s going to turn into anything,” he said.
“Well, not for you,” she said. “You’ll be back home in—”
“I’m staying, Sam,” he interjected, his eyes momentarily familiar. Momentarily warm. “I won’t leave you. Not until my friend shows up.”
I won’t leave you. The words were so beguiling.
Oh, but you have, J.D., she thought. The J.D. I knew and loved has vanished and I don’t know this replacement.
“Okay,” she said. Grateful, she hoped for the last time, that he was here when she needed him. “Thank you.”
“Well,” he muttered. “I’m sleeping on your couch so don’t thank me yet.”
She sucked in a quick breath. Of course he’d stay in her apartment. With Spence and Jennifer taking the last room, her couch was the only place to sleep.
“Funny, isn’t it?” he asked, in a tone of voice that indicated he found nothing at all entertaining about this. “Twelve hours ago staying the weekend would have seemed like a dream come true.”
She nodded, lanced with pain, imagining how the weekend could have been different. How just a few hours ago her whole life had been different.
“Spence and Jennifer are staying the weekend, too,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your son.”
He flinched as if she’d punched him. “Don’t call him that,” he said, his voice icy. “He doesn’t ever need to know that I have anything to do with him.”
“But,” she murmured, “he’s your son—”
He hel
d up his hand, cutting off her words. “He doesn’t need to know that,” he said.
There were so many things to say. Details to get straight, questions to ask, truth to tell. She wanted to dig into him, sift through him with her fingers, find everything he hid from her like rocks buried in sand. Relentlessly she wanted to lay him open so she could see truly, who he was.
He must have wanted to do the same to her.
Maybe this could be a chance for them. To start over without the secrets. To show each other who they really were.
She opened her mouth to apologize and explain again but he shook his head, his eyes piercing her skin, seeing her intentions, her anger and grief.
“It won’t change anything,” he said. “I’ll be gone on Monday and until then, nothing’s personal.”
He left without another word.
7
The kid was following him. The kid and Daisy, actually. From the parking lot, through the side yard, around the back of the shelter.
J.D. could not believe it, but the sound of the boy following him through the grass and kudzu vines as he circled the house, checking locks, could not be mistaken.
A hot wind blew through the trees, bringing the smell of the kid that chilled him to the bone, despite the heat of the day.
My son smells like doughnuts and pencil graphite.
Uncle Milo would advise J.D. to trap the kid. To turn and confront him. Scare the bejesus out of the boy so he’d leave him alone. Actually, only if the boy wasn’t his son. As his son, Uncle Milo would no doubt have a totally different piece of advice.
Talk to the boy, he’d say. Get to know your flesh and blood. Give him some answers.
But since that was definitely not going to happen and J.D. had had enough of confrontations, and Uncle Milo had been dead for ten years, J.D. veered off toward the thin woods to the left of the shelter that had a few trails and a small swimming pond at the center of it, hoping to force the kid to lose interest but it didn’t work.
The boy followed. And Daisy followed the boy.
God. The kid needed a lesson in the dangers of strangers. What nine-year-old followed a man he didn’t know into the woods?
“Are you looking for trouble?” J.D. asked. The kid was so startled he dropped his notebook and frantically reached down to grab it.
Daisy growled at J.D. and he shot the dog a can-it glare. The last thing he needed was Daisy thinking he was the bad guy, too.
“No, ah…I’m not. I’m looking for you.”
Same thing, J.D. wanted to say. “Well, your mom should have taught you not to follow strangers into the woods.”
“She did. I mean…she taught me stuff like that… about strangers. Not about the woods, specifically.” For one wild brave moment the kid looked him square in the eye and J.D. felt a pulse, a giant tug on his guts.
The kid went back to studying his notebook and with those eyes off him, J.D. could breathe again. “Go away.”
“I wanted to ask you some questions.” The boy didn’t move, but he didn’t look up either.
J.D. ignored him, turned and walked farther into the woods, wiping away the sweat rolling off his forehead and swatting at mosquitoes. For a moment it seemed as though the kid had gotten the message. Then the sound of breaking twigs and rustling leaves followed him.
“I’m not kidding, boy,” he growled. “Go. Away.”
The kid was terrified and for the scarcest moments J.D. felt a small breath of guilt, against the nape of his neck, but he dismissed it. There was no point in catering to this kid. No point in answering his questions, or spending time with him.
Even his uncle’s voice, reminding him that there wasn’t any virtue in cruelty, couldn’t stop him.
J.D. walked past the boy toward the shelter, careful not to get too close to Spence’s ginger curls or fresh pencil smell.
There was work to be done and he felt the old suction of Serenity House. Sam’s J.D. looked around and saw ways to help, ways to make things easier on Sam and the women here.
J. D. Kronos, private investigator, saw a million weaknesses.
First things first. He had to replace a lock on the kitchen window. He didn’t think Francis was going to show up—J.D. could put a little faith in Greg and the U.S. government—but Sam should know better than to leave the broken lock that was there on the window.
There was a drainpipe, so easily climbable it was stupid, that marched right up the side of the house past Sam’s bedroom window.
The kudzu vines were creeping across the rear of the yard and needed to be chopped back to the tree line, something Sam usually did with regularity, but maybe she’d been too busy.
The pipe under the sink was no doubt leaking again. He could take another look at that.
Odd, to do such things for her, the things he used to like doing for her, when just thinking about her made his head pound.
Above all, he had to avoid Sam. Avoid her apartment where it seemed everywhere he turned held some kind of X-rated memory. And if that meant repainting the damn shelter, he’d do it.
“Do you have B negative blood?” Spencer asked, persistent as all get-out.
“Why?” he asked, facing the kid, who was blushing so hard it was amazing the trees next to him didn’t go up in flames.
“Just wondering.”
“About my blood type?”
“Science experiment.”
J.D. almost laughed. As lies went, it was pretty good. But not good enough to make him stay or to answer the question.
“Are you Jonathon David Kronos?” Spencer asked, his blush building and turning him nearly purple.
J.D. wanted to take pity on the kid. He really did. But Sam didn’t know his real name. He’d made sure of it.
“Nope,” he answered, in all honesty. And this time when he walked away the kid didn’t say anything.
Sam liked dinnertime at the shelter the best. It reminded her of growing up with her own family in Texas. And since she was emotionally close to her family—although geographically distant—dinner hour at Serenity made her believe that the women she helped and the friends she worked with were family enough for anyone.
There was laughter. Homework. Communal cooking. Talk about the day and its success and failures.
Tonight was a small group, but merry.
Even Christina sat at the table, breaking lettuce into chunks, watching the meal preparation with wide eyes. Deb sat next to her. Shonny, Deb’s little boy, played on the oak floor beside them.
Dinnertime was female and it was tribal. And tonight as Spence stood beside Sam at the sink peeling a potato as though his life depended on it, it was one of the best moments of her life.
“It’s hard to get just the skin,” he said, pushing the peeler against the brown skin and coming away with lots of white potato flesh.
“Well,” Sam said, “it takes a gentle touch. It’s not like sharpening a pencil.” She closed the oven door on the pork roast she’d put in and leaned over to show Spence how it was done.
My first mom lesson, she thought. Never thought it would be about potatoes.
“I’ll do it.” Jennifer swept in, curling her arms around Spence, blocking Sam with her back.
Well. Sam tried not to be disheartened. Or offended that Jennifer saw her as such a threat.
Jennifer had brought him here, after all. She’d opened this door and it sucked that she kept slamming it in Sam’s face.
“Sam, I could use your help with these veggies,” Deb said, sitting beside Christina making the salad at the table.
“You bet,” Sam said, forcing herself to sound unbothered, because she could feel Jennifer’s gaze on her back as she walked over to Deb and Christina.
She took over cucumber duties and watched as Jennifer and Spence cut the potatoes and put them on the stove to boil, feeling unbearably left out.
You just found out about him, she reminded herself. And he’s leaving in two days. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Sh
e tried to warn herself to not rush into feeling something for this boy. But rushing in emotionally was what she did. It was how she worked. It was why she was here, living above her women’s shelter.
It was how she’d been with J.D. It was…depressing.
Not personal, she reminded herself, when her emotions, black and poisonous, bubbled up from her chest.
“Should I set a plate for J.D.?” Deb asked, her brown eyes centered on Sam’s face. “He’s staying, right? I saw him move his bags up to your room.”
All the eyes in the kitchen swept to her and by sheer force of will she kept her skin from going red. “He can take care of himself. Don’t worry about it.”
“That guy?” Christina asked. “He lives here?”
“No,” Sam said.
At the same time Deb said, “Sometimes.”
Well, that certainly cleared up the whole situation.
“What’s the J.D. stand for?” Jennifer asked, and it took all of Sam’s strength to meet those eyes.
“Not Jonathon David,” Spence said, before Sam had decided whether or not to lie. He hopped off the stool he’d been standing on.
“How do you know?” Sam asked, her voice sharp.
Spence shrugged. “I asked him.”
Everyone turned back to their jobs, the attention blissfully off her, and she was able to put down the knife and clench her shaking hands together.
She wanted to believe J.D. had lied to the boy but her gut—her gut that knew a lie from the truth almost every time—knew that J.D. had lied to her.
About his name.
And that felt unbearably personal.
It was midnight before J.D. went inside the shelter. He used his key to open the back door into the kitchen. Daisy growled at him briefly, then recognized him and trotted over for a head scratch.
J.D. obliged, scrubbing the dog’s ears the way she liked.
He’d managed to avoid Sam and the boy. Going into town to talk to the police chief had been a waste of time, but at least it killed a few hours. And, hopefully, alerted the guy to watching out for strangers in town during the next few days. But he doubted it. Try as he might, J.D. did not get along well with others, especially when those others were small-town police chiefs.
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 8