“No.” He put a finger out and touched her cheek, wishing things were different, that their past could be re-written so their future stood a chance. “I feel the same way.”
She was drowning in his eyes. A mosquito buzzed somewhere between them but she didn’t so much as lift a hand to bat it away. Her lips parted, as her body seemed to spark anew with need for him. Her stomach was a pool of jelly. “I have to get back inside,” she complained huskily. She wanted nothing more than to disappear with Kirk. To forget everything that lay between them except how they made each other feel.
“I know.” He couldn’t stop staring at her. He must have looked like a fool. But she was so mesmerizingly beautiful, with her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, her body glowing. “Let me help you.” He ran his hands over her hair, pulling it together on top of her head.
Annabeth watched, fascinated, as he concentrated on putting her blonde curls back into a high pony tail. His expression was so serious, as though he were calculating figures that might remedy third world debt.
“There.” He stood back to admire his work.
“Do I look like someone who’s just been ravaged against the side of the Boatshed?”
“Only to me,” he promised throatily.
She straightened her shirt and took in a deep breath. “Okay. I have to go back in.”
“Beth,” he called after her. She paused, turning to look at him. He was every bit as much the hometown hero now as he had ever been. Against the dilapidated building with its peeling paint and wonky slats, he was stunning. A vision of strength and masculinity. “The car is yours. Don’t argue with me.”
She cast him an impish smile. “But arguing with you is such fun.”
When she walked back into The Whistlestop, Annabeth told herself the inquisitive look Emma gave her was in her imagination. She cleared her throat. “Did I miss anything?”
“Nah. Quiet night. Doc’s looking for you.”
Annabeth scanned the bar and smiled when she saw her friend sitting in a booth, his eyes on one of the many medical journals he subscribed to. “Did he order dinner?”
“Yeah. Go sit with him, hon. I’ve got you covered.”
“You sure?” Annabeth frowned.
“Heck, I’d rather you spend time with Dan over Kirk any day,” Emma said honestly.
Annabeth grimaced as she walked away. She suspected Emma would not view their tryst in quite the same inevitable way that she and Kirk had.
“Hey, Dan,” she interrupted, tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention.
“Annabeth,” he smiled up at her. “Join me for a minute?”
“Sure.” Her legs were like jelly anyway. Sitting down was a fine idea. “How’s things?”
“You know. Spider bites. Tummy aches. The usual.”
She grinned. “You wanted to be a small town doctor, huh? Missing the glamour of your New York hospital rotation?”
“Not one bit, I assure you.” He thought back to those maddening sleepless weeks, the devastating injuries he’d helped patch back together. The ones he couldn’t. He’d take common colds over gunshot eleven year olds any day.
Jeanie wandered over, a plate of ribs in her hand. “You want anything, Beth?”
“No, thanks, Jeanie.” She couldn’t eat. She could hardly speak. Her stomach seemed to be filled with butterflies, her face aching with the smile that was stretched across her cheeks.
They looked like a couple, sitting there, chatting about their weekends. Two friends, casually shooting the breeze. But Kirk was attuned to every nuance of Annabeth’s body. He saw the way her legs were crossed beneath the table, and the Doctor’s legs stretched out to lightly touch them. He saw the way she was so relaxed with him. So encouraging. He could have punched something.
“You don’t own her, you know.” Emma, leaning against the bar, was watching him with all the shrewd powers of observation he was employing to study Annabeth.
He’d liked Emma, back in school. She’d always been Annabeth’s tail, following her around. Annabeth hadn’t been like the other girls on the cheer squad. She hadn’t cared that Emma was small and pale, that her interests lay in the arts, and the academic. Annabeth had never been into that high school crap. She might have been homecoming queen and a popular cheerleader, but she’d been sweet and kind too. He sighed. She still was.
“The same can’t be the said for me,” he muttered darkly. “You just gonna stand there, or can I get a beer?”
Emma raised her brows, moving to pull him a drink from the ice cold taps. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
That Beth owned him now every bit as much as she ever had. He sighed restlessly. “Nothing. So what’s going on with them, anyway?”
“What do you think this is, Kirk? We’re, like, friends or something? That I’m going to talk about my best friend with you?”
“I admire your loyalty, Emma. But you don’t need to protect her from me. I’m not here to hurt her.”
“Yes, you are. You can’t help hurting her.”
He hoped, rather than knew, that Emma was wrong. “You’re going to have to put up with me for a while. I’m sticking around this time.”
It was a reasonably impulsive decision, borne out of the discovery that he had a son.
“Yeah, right,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”
Kirk brought the foaming drink to his lips and drank it gratefully. His eyes stayed on Annabeth and Dan. She was listening intently to something he was saying. Her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but he could sure as hell see the way the doctor was looking at her. Eyes that were practically drinking her up. He recognized the expression. It was very familiar to him.
Finally, after what felt like forever, she stood, and walked, smilingly, back to the bar. She visibly startled to see Kirk sitting on a stool. “Oh! You’re still here?” Her cheeks suffused with color. “I didn’t know.”
“Yes. I’m still here.” His eyes held a challenge and an accusation, and Annabeth looked guiltily in Dan’s direction.
There were only a handful of patrons left at The Whistlestop, as well as Emma, who Annabeth suspected was not going to be easy to shake. “You wanted to know about Wade?”
Kirk tried to calm his temper. It was a hang up from his tour. Rage, swift and sharp, sometimes came over him. The Navy had taught all the returning officers techniques to deal with it. He took a long, slow breath, and focused on Annabeth’s eyes. They were watching him, thoughtfully, curiously.
“Yeah. I want to know about Wade,” he agreed with a nod.
“Okay.” She threw Emma a self-conscious smile. “Let me just get Muddy a drink and I’ll be right back.” She moved down the bar and topped the last of the regulars up.
Emma, following behind, send Annabeth a mutinous look. Annabeth couldn’t help but laugh in response. “Oh, Em. Come on. We’ve already talked about this. You don’t need to worry about me so much, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, throwing her slender hands up in exasperation. “I’m telling you, he’s bad news for you.”
“You might be right. But he’s Wade’s father,” she whispered pointedly. “He wants to know about his son. And I’m going to tell him. You can come sit with us, if you’re worried anything’s going to happen?”
“Like your chaperone?”
“Sure, if you want to pretend we’ve slipped between the pages of a Jane Austen novel,” Annabeth teased with a wink.
Emma was torn. On the one hand, she wanted to keep her friend from making any stupid mistakes with Kirk. On the other hand, she was too furious at him to sit down and act like everything was okay. Like he hadn’t broken Annabeth’s heart callously and intentionally; like he wasn’t poised to do it all over again. She eyed her friend dubiously. “You can handle yourself, I suppose.” It was a grudging admission. “Just… try to remember what that time in your life was like. I know he’s gorgeous and charming, and that you’re probably still
a little bit in love with him. But no good would come of it. Be careful.”
A warning that was about an hour too late, Annabeth thought with a wistful twist of her lips. Still, she didn’t feel regret. Just sensual pleasure. She looked back down the bar. Kirk was watching her. His eyes were possessively surveying her body, and it felt as though he was actually touching her skin. She felt goose bumps cover her arms, a warm heat trickled down her spine. His gaze was magnetic. It pulled her to him. Slowly, without looking away, she walked behind the bar, back to Kirk.
“Hey,” she whispered, leaning against the countertop, so they were as close as they could be without arousing suspicion.
“Hey yourself,” his eyes raked her face, landing on her soft, parted lips and lingering there.
Her skin flushed, her stomach clenched, and her moist heart was slicked anew with need. Her voice, when she spoke, was breathy. “So, what did you want to know?”
“Everything,” he said simply. “What’s his full name?”
She took a sip of his beer. “Wade Kirk Sparks.”
“You’re surname?”
She nodded. “No one knows about you. Except Emma.”
“Not even the good doctor?”
“No. No one.”
“Your dad?”
She rolled her eyes and spoke deliberately slow. “No. One.” She put his beer back down. “My dad wouldn’t have cared that you were in the middle of a war zone. I’m pretty sure he’d still have flown over and kicked your ass.”
Kirk slanted her an amused smile. Horace Sparks might have had the heart of a lion, but he had the stature of a mouse.
“Tried to kick your ass,” she amended, feeling immediately disloyal.
“So who does everyone think is the father?”
She shrugged. “Most people have been polite enough not to ask.”
Kirk’s masculine face showed his emotion. Guilt lanced him, sharp and hard. Clearview was a small town. The gossipmongers would have had a field day, whispering about her fall from grace. Annabeth Sparks had led a charmed life. Beautiful, interesting, intelligent; always destined to go far. And she’d dropped out of college and returned home, pregnant and alone. Yes, she must have suffered at the hands of community ninnies. And that was his fault too. He shook his head. “If I’d known…” his voice was a hoarse whisper.
Beth didn’t want to go down the path of ‘if only’. It could only lead to more hurt. Remembered pain. Recriminations that served no purpose in being rehashed. “But you didn’t.” Her smile was over-bright. “Wade loves ice cream. Especially strawberry. And Oreos. I only let him have them once a week, on Sunday afternoons, but I suspect Cassandra feeds them to him behind my back.”
“Cassandra, your old babysitter?”
She nodded. “The very same.”
Kirk could have listened to her talk about Wade all night. All the silly things like his favorite colors and how much he loved the beach. They didn’t scratch the surface though. Not really. Kirk left The Whistlestop with a pain in his chest for the life he could have been leading, if only he had loved Annabeth less.
CHAPTER FIVE
“But I only like the drumsticks, mama.” If Wade’s lower lip jutted out any further, he was at risk of being mistaken for a porch.
“I know they’re your favorite. But mama’s, er, friend is coming for dinner tonight, and you know it’s good manners to offer our guest food first.”
“I don’t want to have dinner with someone else. Especially not if he’s gonna nab all the best bits.”
Annabeth concentrated on stirring the gravy to hide the smile that was playing about her lips. “Honey, he might not want the drumstick. I want you to use your good manners tonight, okay?”
“No.”
Annabeth shook her head wearily. Doctor Dan had assured her the ‘terrible twos’ would pass. But they’d lasted through Wade’s third year, and now into his fourth. Horace had marveled at his grandson’s fiercely determined streak. “You were a pushover, Beth. I don’t know where he gets this from.”
But Annabeth knew.
She’d encountered Kirk’s determined streak for herself. He’d learned a little finesse with it, but it was still there.
The car was the perfect example. Five years after she thought she’d finally gotten through to him, he’d made short work of picking up the argument, and winning.
She pulled some butter from the fridge and cut a knob from the square parcel. “Just mind your manners, Wade.”
“No.” He repeated, and crossed his arms across his chest for good measure.
Annabeth scooped the butter into the gravy pot, and whisked it through. She stirred a little more fiercely than was necessary. But Wade had been pushing her buttons all day, and now she had the added complication of the heart palpitations that wouldn’t quit.
In less than an hour, Kirk would be there. In her home. In her living room, her kitchen. Solidly back in her life, and almost as though he’d never left it.
Her stomach twisted as her body remembered the way his had possessed her, against the boat shed. Pleasurable sensations ran through her. How she ached for him. Again. Already.
Annabeth had spent the last five years telling herself that she was over him. That he was a piece of her past. And now…? Now she didn’t know what the heck she wanted from him, but like the first spark of a match, she was burning with a growing yearning for him. The thought of living without him was anathema to her.
“Do you need to go to your room and think about good behavior?”
“No.” A little less determined this time. Nothing got through to Wade like the threat of a time out.
“Okay then. Go play with your trains, young man. I will do my best to make sure you get your drumstick, okay?”
Like all things with parenting, their disagreement was not about the dinner she’d been preparing all afternoon. Wade was in a stage of needing to call the shots, and intuitively Annabeth knew she couldn’t let him get away with it. As a single mum, she’d needed to be both mother and father, soft and gentle, and authoritative and strict.
A smile thick with emotion touched her lips as she watched his too-small body flounce dramatically from the room. For the hundredth time in an hour, her eyes flicked to the fifties style clock on the wall.
All day, she’d obsessed over trivial details. She was so nervous she thought she might explode. She’d cleaned the house from top to bottom. There wasn’t a lot she could do about the faded wallpaper and uneven floorboards, but she’d fluffed the cushions, cut flowers from the garden and arranged them in every vase she owned, and she’d taken extra care with her appearance. It was quite the trick – to look good without appearing to have tried in the slightest. Her hair she’d washed and blow dried until it was straight and smooth. Then, she’d teased and finger combed it until it looked alluringly disheveled. Her first choice of outfit – a sleek black dress, had quickly been eschewed for her denim cutoffs and an oversized pink t-shirt. Casual, but flattering to her tan and figure. Even the dinner had been agonized over. Her cooking prowess had been acquired long after Kirk had left her. She wouldn’t have been human if there wasn’t a part of her that wanted to show off a little.
But her signature dinner party dish of prosciutto wrapped scallops followed by whole baked salmon would have screamed, ‘I love you, please love me back,’ so she’d opted for a homely roast chicken. With all the trimmings. Because she did love him. She always had, and now? She was even more lost than ever before. The knowledge terrified her.
By the time she heard Kirk’s truck pull up out front, she was almost jangling with tension. “Wade?” She called, trying to remove the screechy sound from her voice. “Kirk’s here. Where are you?”
“I’m hiding.”
Annabeth rolled her eyes heavenward. She didn’t need to deal with Wade’s moods at that point. Her own were causing her enough grief.
“Can you come out, then?”
“No.”
She gritted her t
eeth and forced a smile. “Okay, then. But if Kirk has chocolate with him, you will not be getting any, I’m afraid.”
Silence.
He was really in a foul strop if even the promise of chocolate couldn’t lure him out of hiding.
With a small shake of her head, she headed out of the house.
Her eyes arrested on Kirk immediately. He sat in the driving seat, staring straight ahead. His tension was obvious even through the darkly tinted windows, and it went some of the way to easing her own stress. However hard this was for her, it must have been thirty times more difficult for Kirk. He was about to meet a son he hadn’t even known existed a week ago.
Sympathy softened her anxiety.
“Hey,” she smiled, as she approached his window.
When Kirk’s eyes met hers, Annabeth felt her stomach turn roll with tension. The pleasurable kind of tension. She felt a throbbing begin, low in her body, that she knew would demand answer.
“Hello.”
“You nervous?” She leaned in the open window of the driver side door.
“Wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t.”
“He’s going to love you,” she promised, squeezing his strong hand in hers.
Kirk slanted her a dubious glance. It was so strange to see this man, who had always burned with fierce confidence and power, seem humbled and unsure.
“Just remember, he’s only four. Don’t pressure him. Let him get to know you and then think about, um, anything else.”
Kirk nodded, his palms sweaty. He wasn’t used to feeling anxious. His work demanded him to be confident and unafraid of new situations. He’d met with the President of the United States the month before, to talk about construction industry grants. And yet the idea of meeting a four year old was filling him with complete anxiety.
“Okay, I can do this,” he muttered, pulling his keys from the ignition and looking up at the weatherboard house Annabeth had made her home. It brought a grim frown to his face.
She’d obviously tried to pretty it up. There were pot plants everywhere, with bright geraniums and daisies spilling over the side. A hedge of lavender spiked on either side of the front steps. But nothing could disguise the fact that the place was about one building inspection away from a demolition order. He looked higher, to the rusting roof, and a window that looked permanently broken, and clenched his hands into fists.
Raising the Soldier's Son: So what if they share a history? That's in the past. And it's staying there. (Hometown Hero Series Book 3) Page 6