Jake's child

by Lindsay Longford

  "I don't understand." She twisted on the stoop towards him. A faint aroma of lemon rose to his nostrils.

  Jake leaned back against the top stoop. "You're making something out of nothing." He sighed, wondering how much he could say.

  He'd decided this afternoon that he wasn't going to tell her Nicholas was her son. Not now, maybe not ever. She was going to have to prove she could be trusted with the boy. If Jake had any doubts, any, he and Nicholas were hightailing it out faster than lightning could strike. If even one of the things he'd been told were true, she didn't deserve Nicholas, anyway.

  Fairness and justice didn't matter. This time he held the cards. If he were some noble fool maybe he'd have a problem with his decision, but he couldn't afford any mistakes. Nicholas needed someone and Jake was all he had. He could be tough enough, cruel enough to disappear with Nicholas.

  This time Jake could be God. What did he care about Sarah and her illusions?

  He shifted and began again. "You and I have gotten off on the wrong foot. Everything I've said or done has been twisted by your fear, your suspicion/' He cleared his throat. "I should never have stormed up to your door the way I did."

  "No." She nodded.

  He looked away. "I lack finesse sometimes."

  "Oh, yes, I think we're in agreement there." Underlying her cool voice was laughter.

  Jake went with it. Despite her doubts, she seemed willing to humor him. He was sure she had her own tainted motives. "And Pm mule-headed. Once I get the bit between my teeth, I'm hard to stop."

  "Hmm."

  "I'm not a nice guy."

  Her hair lifted in the breeze and something changed in the night. "You're nice to Nicholas." Rivers ran deep in her voice, sweeping him along in their currents.

  "Nicholas." Jake stretched his legs in front of him, waggled his feet.

  "Yes, Nicholas." She stood in front of him, a small, indomitable figure smelling of lemon and flowers.

  He almost admired her courage. Except that it, too, was an illusion.

  "I don't like to talk about Nicholas," Jake continued, brushing away her thin cotton skirt that clung to his leg.

  "You've made that very clear. / want to, though." Thinking of him and Nicholas and the story he'd told stirred a crazy thought up from the depths of Sarah's mind, one that explained everything except the impossible. But the idea sank below the surface when Jake stood up, powerful, his heat reaching out to her in the moonlight. She continued, "His situation baffles me. And there's something about him—"

  As she moved in front of him, the cotton fabric of her skirt fluttered in the slight breeze, molding to her delicate curves. He wished he were someone else, anyone else, so he could wander off with her down toward the lake and find a shadowed, private spot where only the touch of skin on skin mattered. A place where he could stroke her skin, make her look at him with dazed blue eyes. As he watched her in the night, he sensed that with her he'd find something lost long ago.

  He swore. What a fool he was making of himself. She was just a woman, and not even a nice one at that.

  "Will you accept that what I'm going to tell you is as much of the truth as I can give you? That I mean no harm to Nicholas?"

  "I know you wouldn't hurt him. He worships you." Sadness crept into her voice. "I might accept your version of the truth. It all depends." She looked up at the moon, her throat a silver silhouette in the dark.

  "Good enough." Jake rose and stretched out the muscles of his back. "I am responsible for him right now, until his situation with his mother is resolved." He kept emotion out of his voice, knowing he didn't dare think of this woman in connection with Nicholas. "I was his father's friend, so I was asked to help. That's all I'm doing. Anything else you might be thinking, and God only knows what it might be, is just the result of my rudeness and your own imagination. I don't know what Nicholas meant by whatever he said, but I've told you the truth."

  Jake touched the smooth strand of hair blown across her face. "And for my clumsiness, I apologize." Her eyelashes tickled the back of his finger as her eyes closed, opened. This time her beautiful eyes, Nicholas's eyes, looked at him with no wariness, no shutters. He couldn't afford to believe in her, for Nicholas's sake he couldn't, but his restless fingers moved with their own demands.

  The bumpy fabric of her blouse slipped under his finger as it moved over the slope of her shoulder. He slid the fabric in small circles over her skin. Her shoulders were fragile wings under his hands. "No, don't," she murmured. He felt as though he were spreading lemon oil all over her, stroking it into her skin, her bones. He ran his thumbs down the indentation of her spine, pressing against her arching muscles. A muted whisper. His. An imperceptible sigh. Hers. For Jake the world tipped on its axis as he touched the hollows under her arms, urged her hands behind his neck. His breath came hard from his lungs, rasped. He needed her against him.

  Sarah found herself pressed against the old tree, found herself touching the hard muscles of Jake's neck, lost herself in the feel of him against her. There was still something wrong about his story, but everything she'd denied herself for years was rolling in, drowning her with feelings. Questions could wait. She felt as vulnerable as baby turtles scuttling foolishly to the sea while the gulls circled hungrily overhead. Like the turtles, she raced for the breakers, defying death in a mad dash for life. That was what Jake was making her feel—that pulse-pounding, life-validating race for the sea.

  He was a living pulse beat against her, and she clung to the life that throbbed in him and sent her own pulse surging against him. When he pulled her down on the swing with him, her skirt caught the breeze and lifted. She reached down to push it under them, but his hand stopped her, traced the edge of the skirt and smoothed under the light fabric. His palms met in back, cupping her, pulling her against him.

  Through the nylon of her panties she felt the rasp of his hands, sensed the snag of callus against silky fabric. The tips of his fingers traced under the elastic edges, and she ached for his touch. She'd seen him touch Nicholas with tenderness and affection, and now his hands moved on her with a

  fierce tenderness that she needed. His hands slid over her thighs, thumbs meeting where she hurt for his touch. And he stopped.

  Then the swing moved slowly forward, and she was lifted in the air, soaring against him. They wobbled for a moment, and Jake chuckled against her. He dug into the ground with his heels, and the swing twisted crazily. Sarah clung to him and he pulled her heels in back of him, locking her to him, locking her to his life pulsing on her, showing her how much he wanted her. One large, warm palm slid under the waistband of her panties and held her tightly while his free hand grasped the rope of the swing. His legs pushed hard on the ground, and Sarah felt the muscles of his thighs pumping under her as he sent them flying higher and higher in a mad spiral under the moon.

  Sarah clung to Jake while the breeze blew back the sleeves of her blouse, billowed under her skirt, brushed her skin. The pounding of her heart and the giddy rush of sky over her were childhood relived with a difference. Jake pumped-hard one more time, throwing his legs straight out and grabbing onto the rope with both hands while he fell backward, his head just missing the ground. Sarah collapsed against him, and there, upside down in slowing spirals and a tangle of arms and legs, he kissed her.

  Sarah tasted anger and reluctant pity, but then Jake slanted his lips over her and hunger took her, leaving her breathless. His hunger, hers, she didn't know, didn't care while Jake's urgency sped her along.

  But the pity in the kiss nudged her thoughts down a dark tunnel she'd run screaming from years ago.

  Impossible. She didn't want to think. Wrapped in Jake's heat and urgency, she wanted to forget everything.

  Something about Nicholas... Her thoughts seized her, compelled her.

  Chapter Four

  Sarah!"

  The roaring in Sarah's head drowned out Jake's voice. His lips moved, but he was at the end of a long tunnel and was unimportant. Madness had come
striking up at her like a shark from the deep, ripping her apart and sending her blood spurting into the dark waters. "Not again," she whispered, remembering the days and nights she'd spiraled in despair. Her son. Not dead. Not dead. She fought the fantasy.

  She'd thought she was through with all that kind of thinking, but here it came again. It was too painful now to let that fantasy seize her and throw her down that tunnel she'd dragged herself from once. She couldn't do it again.

  She'd been reckless to let Jake leave Nicholas with her.

  "Sarah?" The roughness in Jake's voice pulled her back.

  "I want to see Nicholas." Her cold hands pressed against her hot face. She tried to control the longing forcing her into irrational action.

  "Why?" Jake chained her to him.

  "Never mind!" Sarah shoved his arms away and tumbled off the swing. In the grip of her compulsion, she raced for the porch.

  "Are you crazy?" Jake's grip sent her stumbling towards the shell-packed driveway. "You can't go running into Nicholas's room like this!"

  His hands imprisoned her.

  "What's the kid going to think?" Jake shook her.

  That stopped her. Jake was right. She'd scare Nicholas. "I have to see him," she insisted, no longer sure why, just that she had to. She pushed at Jake, plucking futilely as his long fingers tightened around her wrists.

  "Fine, you can. Just hold on a minute, okay?" Jake's voice held a gritty note she couldn't identify. Goose bumps raised on her arms.

  "Don't treat me like an idiot!"

  "Then don't act like one!" The yellow porch light lit up the shadowy planes of Jake's face and a reluctant compassion in it, a compassion that seemed as surprising to him as to her. He smoothed her hair behind her ears.

  Anger plunged into melancholy. The past was dead.

  "Sarah, what are you doing? You're not making any sense." Jake stroked her hair, and Sarah wanted to weep with frustration and dying anger.

  "I want to see Nicholas." Her skirt whirled against her. Like leaves circling and whispering in the wind, her thoughts circled and returned, blurring the line between reality and possibility. "Oh, God, help me. I want my son!"

  Jake's fingers clenched in her hair. She felt the small pain and welcomed it as a barrier against the greater pain of old loss.

  "I don't know what you're talking about." On the rising wind, the clean scent of Jake's warm breath touched her face.

  Sarah brushed away his hands. "Nothing makes any sense to me. I know you're lying to me. I don't know why. I know

  you're here for some reason and I don't know what it is!" Wanting to block out Jake's face, Sarah pressed her hands against her eyes.

  "Sarah, think. How could that be?" Jake's sigh whirled away with the wind.

  "I don't know," she answered bleakly.

  Jake shook his head slowly. "Sarah, I didn't even know you. You don't know me. There's no reason in the world for me to show up on your doorstep."

  "I'm not crazy. I'm not." Sarah wrapped her arms around herself to still the shaking deep inside her. Maybe she was crazy. What had made her think for a moment that Nicholas could possibly be her son? Her son was dead, had been dead for years. The State Department had sent her official notification. They'd made sure she'd known. So sorry, of course, but facts were facts.

  "Nicholas and I are strangers to you. What else could we be?" Jake's sandpapery voice scraped the night.

  "I don't know. I can't think." She sighed. Her teeth chattered.

  "Listen, I've kissed a lot of women in my time, but I usually get a different reaction. What did I do wrong?" Jake shrugged when she only looked vacantly at him. "Sorry, stupid joke." He opened the screen door. "Let's go inside. Have some coffee? A beer?" He rubbed his head hard.

  Sarah saw the calculation in his eyes and wondered. Jake Donnelly was still playing games with her. She just hadn't learned the rules. Ever since Jake and Nicholas had come knocking on her door, her emotions had been yo-yoing to the pull of Jake's hand on the string, and the child had stirred up old grief. She'd drifted into make-believe with him and carried it into reality.

  "No. I'm going up to see Nicholas." Sarah snicked the screened door behind them.

  "No, you're not." Jake stepped between her and the front door. "I won't let you." Darkness underlay his casual tone.

  'There's no way on God's green earth you're going to stop me short of killing me," she said flatly. "And you're not a killer."

  "I might be." His voice was as flat as hers had been.

  Sarah looked him up and down, looked steadily in his uncompromising eyes while their colors shifted and changed. "Not in this life, you aren't." She pushed him aside. "I just want to see him, that's all." She was surprised by the ease with which she shifted his bulk. She would remember that later.

  She gazed into the dark second story where the faint glow of a night-light softened the void. Nicholas had pretended he didn't want the pink shell plugged into the socket. "Sissy stuff," he'd scowled, but he hadn't turned it off. Sarah's heart pounded as her bare foot touched the carpeted staircase. Nausea churned her stomach. What was she doing? She had to control her behavior. She knew she was on the edge, knew it and couldn't stop. She had to see the child.

  "By myself," she continued as Jake stayed close behind her.

  "If you think for one minute I'm letting you go into the kid's room to wake him up and scare the living daylights out of him, you're really out of your cotton-picking mind!" Anger roughened Jake's voice. "I've been real patient, but this is the limit. He's my responsibility and I won't have you disturbing him!"

  The protective passion behind Jake's anger startled her.

  "I'm not going to disturb him. Surely you must know that?" Sarah halted in amazement. "How could you think I'd do such a thing?"

  "How can I know what you'd do?" Jake countered, bitterness grooving lines around his mouth. "But I'm not letting you go up there by yourself."

  "I don't understand you, at all," Sarah murmured. "You confuse me."

  'That goes double, sweetheart, because you confuse the hell out of me." Jake shook his head. "Anyway, I know who Nicholas is and he's my business, not yours. No way am I turning you loose on him while you're in this state, so get that little notion out of your brain!"

  It was the longest speech Sarah had heard from Jake. "Don't worry," she said. "I won't wake him up."

  "Why do you want to see him, anyway? He's nothing to do with you! Nothing, that's what!" His furious whisper startled her as he pushed his face close to hers.

  "I don't know," she wailed. "I don't know anything any more. I just want to see him! Can't you get that through your thick head?" Sarah took his head, trying to shake sense into him. Like black satin the strands of his hair moved through her fingers.

  The air grew heavy between them. She could hear her breathing, his, the banging of the screen door. Jake moved a step closer, almost, she thought, against his will. Her fingers slipped out of his hair. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have done that." She clasped her fingers together, still feeling the satin of Jake's hair between them.

  "Oh, go on," he said tiredly. "But I'm going with you."

  When he stepped up again, Sarah backed away from the implied threat and turned, reluctant now to ascend the stairs. Why did she feel this need to see Nicholas? She was out of control. No wonder Jake treated her like a threat. She was, but not to Nicholas, only to herself.

  Her son had had no telltale birthmarks, no giveaway genetic markers. He'd just been a perfect little boy and she'd kissed his belly button with delight in his uniqueness as the doctor laid the small weight on her, the squinched-up face, the tiny fingers scrabbling against her and seizing her heart forever in their fragile grasp.

  A whimper forced itself between her lips and she pushed Nicholas's door completely open, afraid now to see him be-

  cause of the memories he would stir up, memories she'd tried to kill before they killed her.

  Her heart was pounding, pounding. She loo
ked down at the small, huddled form and, after all, what was there to see? Just a small, tired boy with his thumb in his mouth. A skinny little kid with a pointy face and ears that jutted out from his head. Her son? Of course not. In the clear light of rational thought, she knew better. Someone's son. But not hers.

  Tears slipped silently down her face as she watched the sleeping child. She gripped her hands tightly together against the urge to take him to her. She'd been right to stay away from children, from entanglements of any kind. Oh, she'd been right to detach herself from all the pain people brought with them. She still wasn't strong enough.

  "He's such a little boy," Sarah whispered. "My son would have been the same age." Blinded by her tears, she leaned forward, wanting to touch his thin cheek, wanting to tuck the blanket under his chin, wanting something she was never going to have.

  Jake's callused fingers stopped her. "Don't," he ordered harshly.

  "Oh, please, don't be cruel," Sarah whispered. Jake's fingers dropped from her arm as if she'd scorched him with a red hot iron. His dark form moved away into the shadows of the room and she bent to Nicholas.

  His skin was cool to her fevered touch and he sighed as she brought the blanket securely around him. She'd had so few chances to comfort her own son in the night. He'd been so small, wrapped in his blanket as she'd carried him through— "Satisfied?" The burr of Jake's voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Gratefully she turned to him, eager to escape the memories. "Satisfied?" She laughed, a tear-choked harshness to her own ears. No wonder Jake thought she was crazy. She rubbed the salty tracks of her tears. "If you only knew!"

  "So tell me," Jake invited in a distant voice as he walked abruptly out of the room.

  Sarah lingered, sorting out her thoughts. Nicholas and Jake were forcing her to face her memories, face herself and her own failures. Her failure to keep her son safe. But she'd done everything, everything in her power, and in the last analysis everything hadn't been enough.

  Kneeling beside Nicholas's bed, she watched the movements of his closed eyes as he dreamed and breathed in the small-boy smell of him.