With a penetrating look, Jake sat back and gave his attention to his ice-cream cone, stretching his legs out under the table. The swirl of his tongue on the dessert sent a shiver up Tori’s back.
After he lazily licked chocolate from his lips, he acknowledged, “I guess everybody has one of those stories.”
An awkward stretch of time settled between them as cars sped up and down the street. Ricky and his brother took licks from each other’s cones as dusk settled in and began to envelop the city.
Finally Jake asked, “What did you think of Charlie?”
She’d caught Jake watching Charlie carefully more than once. “I didn’t spend much time talking with him. Nina likes him a lot. He seems good with the boys.”
Jake frowned. “She’s only been dating him for two months. I just met him last weekend when she invited him to Sunday dinner.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. Today you can’t be too careful, that’s all. He’s a car salesman, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just hope he’s not handing her a line. I can’t believe she’s ready to jump right in so soon after Frank.”
“Maybe she feels the boys need a father figure.”
“They have me.”
Jake’s arm was almost touching hers. Tori sat back and gave him a sideways glance. “Nina’s afraid you aren’t going to stay in Santa Fe. Are you?”
He finished his cone and wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I don’t know. But no matter where I am, I’ll be part of their lives.”
After she took the last bite of her own cone, she wiped her lips. Just then Jake turned toward her, and his gaze lingered where she’d wiped. Feeling hot, bothered and unsettled, she asked, “Why did you come back to Santa Fe?”
The question brought his gaze to hers. Two cars zoomed up the street before he answered her. “I had to get out of police work for a while. I like working with my hands. I’ve done that for years, mostly on weekend projects for friends. I find peace in it, and I need that now.”
Tori had always admired his honesty. She had the feeling Jake was living in the moment, not knowing what was going to happen next. She’d done that after her divorce.
“Speaking of working with ceramic tile,” he said, changing the subject easily, “have you picked out what you want to use yet?”
She shook her head. “I can do that this week. The thing is, I’d love to use hand-painted tiles. I know it would be expensive to use them everywhere, but I hoped I could find some to use as accents here and there. I haven’t had a chance to look into it, though.”
“I know someone who does hand-painted work. He lives in Taos. If you’d like to see what he has to offer, we could drive up there on Saturday afternoon. Can you get away?”
“I have one full-time assistant and someone who helps part-time. Let me check with them. If they can both work, I’ll take the day off.”
The twins had finished their cones now, too, and were jabbing each other with sticky fingers, squealing and jumping from their chairs to play tag around the table.
“Okay. It’s time to put a lid on it,” Jake announced. He motioned to the truck. “Let’s move on out. Don’t touch anything until I wipe your hands.”
Without the complaining Tori expected, Ricky and Ryan looked up at their uncle, then raced to his truck.
Jake’s expression was affectionately patient.
As Tori followed Jake and the boys, she noticed again how Ricky and Ryan adored him. Why had he never married and become a father?
When Tori’s telephone rang Saturday afternoon, she wondered if Jake was calling to tell her he’d be delayed or couldn’t go to Taos. After their trip to Carlo’s Place, he’d become quiet, more remote. A little voice full of common sense told her that was best. If they got to know each other better…
However, picking up the phone, she heard Barbara Simmons’s voice.
“Hi! Tori?”
“How are you?” Tori asked, always glad to hear from the teenager, yet always fearful, too.
Once Barbara signed the consent papers to give up her parental rights, her decision was irrevocable. She understood that and had asked the court to allow Tori to act as the baby’s legal guardian for sixty days before she signed the final papers. In essence, Tori would become the parent, but not officially. She’d agreed to those terms because Barbara was an intelligent, sensitive young woman, just trying to do what was best for her and her baby. And once Tori had seen that baby’s picture on the sonogram, she’d fallen in love with him. She had wanted to be a mother so badly, she was willing to take this risk.
“I gained another two pounds,” Barbara almost wailed. “Dr. Glessner said it’s okay, but I have to get it all off afterward. I’ll only have three months. I don’t want to be fat when I go to college.”
“You’ve been officially accepted for the winter term?”
“Yes. The letter came last week. Mom and I have been shopping for everything I’ll need.”
Just as Tori had been shopping for baby supplies. Her closet was full of them, and she couldn’t wait to get the baby’s room ready. As soon as Jake did the closet and patched the plaster, she could paint.
Her doorbell rang.
Carrying the cordless phone with her, she opened it. Her heart fluttered. Jake looked incredibly sexy in a beige polo shirt and jeans.
Still, she concentrated on Barbara as she motioned him inside.
“I just wanted to tell you,” Barbara went on, “that the doctor said everything’s A-okay. I can’t wait to get this over with. I can hardly see my feet.”
In a few weeks, she would be bringing Barbara’s baby home. “Keep me up to date on how you’re doing. You know I like your progress reports. And stop by if you want to talk.” It was better to know than to guess exactly what Barbara was thinking about everything.
Whenever she talked to Barbara, fear crept into Tori’s heart—fear that the young woman would change her mind, that she wouldn’t go through with the adoption. It was a worry Tori couldn’t put out of her head.
After she said goodbye to Barbara, she pushed the worry aside and smiled at Jake. She remembered again how good he was with his nephews, how much he enjoyed them.
Then she breathed in the scent of his spicy aftershave and forgot about his nephews. “I just have to grab my purse. Would you like something to drink before we go?”
He shook his head. “I told Luis we’d be there around two. We’d better get going.”
A few minutes later Tori was sitting beside Jake in the truck and awkwardness hung between them. Jake’s remote attitude gave her the feeling he didn’t want to make this trip with her, even though he’d suggested it. “You know, Jake, if you’d given me the directions, I could have driven up here myself.”
“Luis’s place isn’t easy to find.”
“I can follow directions and I can read a map.”
“Some women don’t like to go to strange places by themselves.”
“And some women don’t mind. I guess I’m one of them.”
At that he glanced at her. “You’re as independent as Nina.”
“Is that a compliment?”
A smile twitched the corner of his lip. “Yeah, I suppose. Independent women are just thorny to deal with sometimes.”
“As are remote men,” she returned before she could stop herself.
The hum of the truck’s engine filled the cab as the tires ate up the distance to Taos. Tori stared out the window. She never tired of the Southwest’s beauty, a beauty that seemed to change with each passing mile, with the angle of the sun, with the time of the day.
The mountains up ahead were cloaked in sunlight, and streams of it played over peaks and valleys, brush and earth. Sometimes Tori yearned to wrap herself in the scenery and just let the landscape of the yucca, sage and piñon beat through her in primitive rhythms. As old as the land, the vibrations were the same kind of primitive rhythms that thrummed through her with Jake only a couple of feet away.
E
xcept for a glance at her every once in awhile, a flip of the switch to start the tape on the truck’s cassette player, Tori thought Jake was lost in his own world.
Finally he asked, “Was that the mother of the baby you’re going to adopt on the phone? I couldn’t help overhearing.”
It seemed funny discussing this with Jake. She hadn’t really discussed the adoption with anyone but her lawyer and her mother. “Yes, her name’s Barbara. She was accepted for the winter term of college and is looking forward to it.”
“When’s her due date?”
“September twenty-ninth.”
“And then you’ll be a mother.” The way Jake said it made her think he was reminding himself of that.
Because her worries were so very tied up with her joy, she murmured, “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once Barbara signs the papers, her decision is irrevocable. But she’s smart enough to understand that feelings aren’t something you turn on and off like a water spigot, so she asked for a sixty-day grace period. I’ll be legal guardian as soon as the baby’s born, but Barbara won’t have to make the final decision for sixty days.”
“You agreed to that?” There was concerned amazement in the question.
“I don’t know how to explain this, Jake, but I can’t imagine any woman giving up her baby and not having doubts. I don’t want to adopt a baby and then have some kind of war afterward because the mother changes her mind. I want Barbara to be absolutely sure about what she’s doing. If those sixty days will do it, then I’m prepared for life to be a little uncertain for that amount of time.”
“But what if you’ve cared for this baby and Barbara does change her mind?”
“I don’t believe that will happen. I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I thought it might. She wants to be a doctor. Her mother wants her to be a doctor. Her mom’s divorced and won’t accept care of Barbara’s baby. She won’t even help her with it, because she believes Barbara will be destroying her future if she keeps it. Barbara does, too. She chose me out of fifteen women. She cared about every aspect of the social worker’s report. The judge understood that she’s a conscientious teenager who wants the best for everybody involved.”
“I still think you’re taking quite a risk.”
“Maybe I am. But motherhood is a risk, no matter how it happens.” Now she had a question for him. “Do you want kids someday?”
He was silent for a few very long heartbeats, and then he answered firmly, “That isn’t going to happen.”
Why? was on the tip of her tongue. Yet she didn’t let it slip off. If she knew why, that meant they would be getting to know each other much better. If she knew why, she’d be delving into the part of Jake’s life he kept guarded. If she asked why, she had the feeling he wouldn’t tell her, anyway.
The sun’s brilliance made the landscape dance with golden light. It played over the cottonwoods along the Rio Grande. It flowed over the mountains, outlining a ramshackle house here, a small adobe there. And then there was nothing but land and scrub and piñon. Mountain crests seemed to envelope them, only to disclose higher crests, pink earth, more turquoise sky.
Their conversation was minimal after that, and Tori tried to ignore the movement of Jake’s strong, tanned, hair-roughened arms as he guided the steering wheel. His eyes didn’t leave the road now, and she wondered if he thought of her as a woman with more optimism than sense.
When they entered the boundaries of Taos, they passed a few fast-food restaurants. Jake took several side roads then, finally weaving between a few houses surrounded by coyote fence. He stopped at a tan adobe casita with an Open sign taped to a screen door that rattled in the wind.
“Luis told me he has plenty of tile in stock. Unless of course you want something terrifically unusual. I told him that wasn’t likely since you wanted to get the work done quickly.”
Forty-five minutes later, Jake loaded boxes of tiles into the back of his truck, thinking about the ones Tori had chosen. She’d seemed enthused about Luis’s painting. But then, that shouldn’t surprise him. One of the things Jake remembered about Tori was how she became excited over even very small pleasures—colors melting together in a rug, the turquoise-and-coral necklace her mother had given her to wear on her prom night, the Camelot-theme decorations in the hotel ballroom.
And today he’d caught her gazing at the mountains and known she was appreciating their color, their texture, their majesty.
Slamming the tailgate closed on the truck, he decided that being anywhere around her was a mistake. This trip today had been a mistake. After a year, he’d finally found a balance for his emotions, and he didn’t want that balance disrupted by desire that couldn’t be satisfied, beauty that was out of his reach, a woman who’d captivated him as a teenager and now even more so as an adult. He was in temporary mode. Tori was about to become a mother. He never intended to get married. She was the type of woman who deserved vows.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, his mood darkened as he caught another whiff of her perfume and noticed the creaminess of her skin where her sleek hair fell against her neck. He turned the key in the ignition.
He’d taken a side road toward the center of Taos when Tori asked, “Do you have to be back at any special time?”
He certainly wasn’t in the mood to prolong this outing, to corral his libido and fight his fantasies. “Why?”
“There’s a church near the Plaza—Our Lady of Guadalupe. There’s a painting inside that I just love. I thought maybe we could stop there for a few minutes. Would you mind?”
It had been a while since he’d been in a church, even before Marion had died. In his work he’d seen too much of the seedier side of life to think a few prayers could fix anything. When he’d attended Marion Montgomery’s funeral, the ritual and ceremony and words from the priest had only made him feel guiltier, as if he didn’t deserve to be remembering her with the other mourners.
Tori could read his hesitation. “It’s okay. I can visit another time.”
They were less than three minutes from the church parking lot. He wouldn’t deny her such a simple request. “It’s no problem.” Silently, he made the turn that would take them to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
After they parked, they walked toward the rusty-pink adobe church. Tori headed for a door that took them into a vestibule located to the side of the main building.
Stained-glass windows, shadows and the sacred hush compelled Jake to say, “Go ahead. I’ll wait here.” As he wandered over to the brochures in a wall rack, he added, “Take your time,” although he was hoping she would get her fill in a few minutes and they could be on their way.
He knew the painting she spoke of on the side wall of the church. It portrayed Our Lady of Guadalupe and her appearance to an Indian on a hilltop in Mexico. Golden light shone all around her.
After he’d read every brochure in the holder, after he’d studied the church bulletin, after he’d stared at the stained-glass windows, there wasn’t one more thing to occupy him. He wandered toward the doors leading into the church, and he saw Tori—not in a pew near the painting, but rather on the kneeler in the small alcove in back where candles were lit. As she looked up at the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he knew what she was praying for.
Finally she stood, blessed herself and joined him in the vestibule. The dimness of the lights, the hushed silence of a holy place seemed to form a net around them.
“You prayed that Barbara wouldn’t change her mind, didn’t you,” he said, his voice husky.
Tori nodded. “I want what’s best for her baby, but I want to be a mother so much it hurts.”
He had no bolstering words for her. He’d been gifted with words before he’d sent Marion into the hostage situation. He’d known what to say and how to say it and the best person to say it to. Now words always eluded him when he needed them most.
When he stepped outside into the sunshine, he didn’t think he could bear being confined in the truc
k with Tori again right away. “How would you like to walk up to the Plaza? We can stretch before the ride back.”
“Are you sure you have time?”
“I’ll make the time.”
As they strolled side by side the couple of blocks, hot sun bounced off the pavement. The breeze tossed tendrils of Tori’s hair along her cheek. Jake longed to brush them away. He longed to do a hell of a lot more than that.
Taking Tori’s elbow, the feel of her skin was soft and almost scorching under his callused fingers. After he ushered her across the street, they took the ramp that led down into the Plaza where huge trees were surrounded with adobe borders and a dark brown cross stood as a memorial to veterans. He was guiding her toward one of the benches when he stopped cold.
“What’s wrong?” Tori asked.
The woman coming down the steps from the pavilion looked like Marion’s mother, Elaine. She had the same short salt-and-pepper hair, wore the same flowing broomstick skirt.
Then the sun hit her face and Jake realized the woman was a stranger. He felt relieved. He hadn’t said two words to Marion’s mother since her daughter had been killed, and he’d steeled himself for the confrontation ever since he’d been back in Santa Fe, since that was where the woman lived. He knew the possibility existed they could run into each other—in a mall, in a restaurant, on the street. Even in Taos.
“What’s wrong?” Tori asked again.
“Nothing.”
Her hand clasped his forearm. “Something is wrong.”
What was wrong was that the past year hadn’t eased his guilt or the memory of what had happened one iota. “I’m fine,” he said evenly, wanting Tori to drop it.
“I don’t think you are. You’re different than you used to be.”
That comment snapped his gaze to hers. “Hell, yes, I’m different! And so are you. It’s been twelve years, Tori. The police work I did taught me a few things and opened my eyes to others.”
“Who was that woman?” she asked.
Their Baby Bond Page 3