“What do you want to eat, sport?”
“Pancakes.”
“Uh…let’s see what I’ve got.” Jake had no idea how to make pancakes. He could scramble eggs but there weren’t any in the fridge. “I can run upstairs to see if Wes has some eggs.”
“Your college roommate Wes?”
“Yeah, you remember him.”
“Don’t bother. Surely you have some cereal.”
“Frosted Sugar Os and Captain Crunch.”
“He’ll have toast with butter.”
“Educational TV and healthy food. Larissa, does our boy get to have any fun?”
“Of course, he does. Just not bad influences.”
“Is that why you never called me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Am I a bad influence for our son?”
“No. Never.”
She closed the distance between them, reaching up to touch him and then dropped her hands. “The reasons are complicated. Let’s get Peter settled, then we can talk.”
He nodded. He’d wanted her to touch him. Needed her to in a way that made him feel vulnerable, reminding him that he was just a man and had more weaknesses than he wanted to acknowledge.
The toast was buttered and eaten in short order. Jake grabbed a soccer ball from the closet, and now that the morning sun was shining brightly, they took it outside. Peter kicked the ball, chasing it from one end of the yard to the other.
He gestured for Larissa to sit down on the chaise and dragged over one of the Adirondack chairs he’d made last summer.
He watched his son running after the ball on pudgy legs. Larissa had taken something from him that he could never get back. Though deep inside he allowed he probably wouldn’t have been ready for fatherhood three years ago, he still felt betrayed.
Jake suddenly thought of his father. God, the old man was going to be extremely disappointed when Jake told him he had a three-year-old son. Just one more screwup from a son who never measured up.
Larissa sat there looking much the same as she had in their college days. A sweet innocent who didn’t really fit in at Georgia Tech. He’d befriended her because she’d reminded him of his younger sisters and he would’ve wanted Victoria and Imogene to have found a guy who’d do the same.
But all of that faded when he glanced at their little boy. “I’m so angry I want to shake you.”
Two
Larissa had been hoping that Jake would just jump on the problem with the reporter, but she should’ve known better. He was a detail man who liked to get all his facts in order before making a decision. Many times during their college days, he’d used her as a sounding board for his theories and ideas before drawing a conclusion. She leaned back in the lounge chair and took a sip of her coffee.
“Stalling is not going to make me less angry,” he said.
“I know.” She watched her small son chasing the ball across the yard and tried to find the words to tell Jake that she’d kept Peter a secret for herself and for him. She hadn’t wanted Peter to grow up in a household similar to the one she had.
Her parents had married because her mother had been pregnant. From her earliest memories Larissa was aware that if she hadn’t been born, her parents wouldn’t have been married. Theirs was an unhappy house. So she sought refuge in a world of books, creating her dreams from the stories she cherished. Tales of epic love and vanquishing heroes.
But the real world wasn’t full of those epic love stories she’d dreamed of for her life. And instead of being a fair lady waiting in her tower to be rescued, Larissa’s fate had become her mother’s.
“I’m waiting,” Jake said, his voice quiet and deep with suppressed emotion. Her heart ached because she knew how hard it had always been for Jake to express his emotions. To the outside world he presented his devil-may-care bachelor image but Larissa knew that Jake’s emotions ran deep. He was anything but carefree.
She studied Jake’s face. He was so familiar to her, not just because of his resemblance to their son. But because she saw his face every night in her dreams. Even before Peter was born, Jake had been the one man she’d never been able to forget.
Perhaps it was because of their friendship. She’d survived her college years at Georgia Tech because of him. Unlike the other guys who’d looked right through her, Jake had seen her.
He’d been her first male friend. The first man she’d trusted. The only man she’d ever really been comfortable with.
She couldn’t tell him that she’d kept their son a secret because she’d been afraid that one day he’d leave her for a more glamorous woman and perhaps take their son with him.
“Everything about Peter is complicated.”
Jake sat on the edge of her lounge chair and touched her face carefully. She knew in that instant that however Jake saw her, it wasn’t the way other men did. “It doesn’t have to be. Just level with me.”
When he touched her she couldn’t think. Shivers of awareness spread throughout her body and she’d never been more aware of Jake’s maleness.
The fact that he was filled with rage at the secret she’d kept for too long didn’t make it any easier to stop her skin from tingling, her nipples from tightening, or the warmth from pooling between her legs. She closed her eyes. But that only intensified his touch. It brought the entire focus of her world down to the two of them and the warmth of his fingers on her face.
“I’m waiting, Rissa.”
Rissa, Jake was the only person who’d ever cared enough to call her by a nickname. To the world she was the serious librarian who could find any fact in record time, but to Jake she’d always been…she wasn’t sure what she’d been to him. Or what she would be now.
She opened her eyes and his face was barely an inch from hers. His breath brushed her cheek and she knew if she leaned the tiniest bit toward him, he’d take control of this unexpected embrace. His lips would touch hers and she’d give up reason and sanity to experience again the magic they’d shared on that long-ago night.
She cleared her throat and leaned away from him. He rubbed his fingers, which had just been touching her face, and looked at her with regret.
“I’m not sure where to begin. The reasons are long and complicated. And you’re too angry to really listen.”
“Any man would be.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be. I just don’t want to become a victim in your quest for vengeance.”
He watched her for a moment then stood in a rush, cursing under his breath. She realized she was right.
She should have known better. She’d never been more than a rather average looking woman and Jake…well, Jake was used to prime cuts of womanhood. Tall, leggy blondes with D cups and flawless complexions. The closest she’d come to a D cup was after Peter had been born and her milk had come in.
“Then let’s get this talk about our son over with.”
She took a deep breath. She felt even more vulnerable than she had when she’d arrived at his house this morning. “I don’t know what to say.”
“For God’s sake, woman, you graduated from Georgia Tech with honors. How hard can it be for you to find the words?”
“I wish it were easier, but it’s all tied to my feelings.”
“About me? I didn’t force you that night.”
“Jake, I was there, remember? It was an incredible night. I don’t have any lingering resentment from that.”
“I knew it.”
“Good thing we’re outside.”
He quirked one eyebrow at her in question.
“So that your swelled head has room.”
“Start from the beginning. I thought I used a condom.”
“I think it broke.”
“What?”
“I was a little sticky the next morning. So I took a test as soon as possible.”
“You knew when I called to ask you to go to Cancun?”
“Yes.”
Jake turned away from Larissa, intent on leaving before he said s
omething he’d regret. Larissa was watching him with tears in her eyes and his head told him there was no way she’d intended to hurt him with her decision. But right now his heart told him he didn’t care.
He felt betrayed because he’d always trusted Larissa. If any of the other women he’d slept with had shown up on his doorstep with a child in tow, he’d know they were there for money. He was always careful about protection because he knew that his name and his money left him vulnerable to ambitious women.
But Larissa was the sweet girl he’d felt comfortable talking to in the late hours at the library. The woman who’d come back to their five-year reunion looking like the embodiment of every female fantasy he’d ever had. The woman who’d come to him today for help whether she admitted it or not.
And he was in no mood to help. He had to shake the fury pumping through him with every beat of his heart.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and walked into his house.
He headed down the hall to his tae kwon do workout room. In the corner was a bag he used for kickboxing practice and for sparring when Wes wasn’t available to work out. He closed off his thoughts. Centered himself and focused all of his energy on the punching bag. Twenty minutes later he was dripping with sweat and still not sure he was ready to talk to Larissa. But they didn’t have the luxury of time. There was a reporter who was determined to flash his face across the front page of every paper with the word father in the headline. He had to step up to the plate. He had to drop the safety of his carefree existence and really make his life count.
He bit back a savage curse. He wasn’t ready for this. Didn’t know that he ever would be. But Peter—that little boy—and his family deserved better. His uncle had enough to worry about with his campaign and some vaguely threatening e-mails. Jake wasn’t going to add Larissa and Peter to the mix.
Grabbing a monogrammed towel from the rack near the door, he walked through his house. His town house had been featured in Modern Architecture as the ultimate bachelor pad. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge before stepping out on his patio. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he returned.
He knew it wasn’t Larissa sitting on the grass with their son in her lap. Both of them had their eyes closed and faces turned to the sun. He thought they were sleeping but then realized that Larissa was speaking softly. The words were familiar to him. Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
He’d never felt more inadequate for the task before him than he did at this moment. Sure, Fortune magazine had called him and Adam the golden boys of the coffee bean world, “taking a tried and true idea and making it new and fresh.”
But fatherhood was different. It involved emotions and all kinds of variables that didn’t work in a solid business plan. And emotion was the one thing he’d always felt most uncomfortable with.
He guessed that was partly why he had a son with Larissa. The night of the reunion he’d realized she’d become more than just a smart girl who’d listen to him ramble on about what he wanted to do with his life. And he’d been uncomfortable with all she’d made him feel. Except for the passion she’d evoked in him. Passion was one area he was extremely comfortable with. So he’d seduced her under the stars.
Watching mother and child now kindled a desire for something that he hadn’t realized was missing from his life. He wanted to be a part of that golden circle of light. Of that deep bond between mother and son. He wanted to insure that Rissa and Peter could always find a patch of sunlight to sit in. He set his towel and water bottle down on the table and crossed to them.
Not questioning his actions, he sank to the ground behind Larissa and settled himself around her. He left a couple of inches of space because he knew that in spite of his feelings of betrayal, he wasn’t above using sex to manipulate her. He wanted her like hell on fire. And if he touched her again, he wasn’t going to be able to control himself.
He put his hands over Larissa’s and felt her stiffen. Peter’s small hand moved to rest on his wrist and Jake felt something close to peace for the first time since he’d been old enough to know that he was a Danforth.
He liked the sound his deep voice made added to Larissa’s soft tone and Peter’s childish one.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.”
They finished the poem together and Peter leaned around his mother to watch him with wide questioning eyes.
“How did you know the words?” Peter asked.
“Your mom taught them to me,” he said, softly. The boy continued to watch him with a focus that was unnerving.
Peter broke into a wide grin and said, “Cool.” The boy hopped to his feet and ran across the yard toward the ball.
Jake turned his head a quarter and met Larissa’s clear blue gaze. For a moment they were back in the uncomplicated days of college. Life was just about doing what felt right and making each moment count. Victoria had still been safely at home, and he hadn’t yet fathered a child. But times had changed and Victoria was gone—disappeared at a concert so long ago. And though everyone warned them she was dead and would never return, Jake’s family kept hope alive.
Larissa smiled at him and his groin tingled. She was so close that her scent filled his nostrils with each breath.
“I did, didn’t I?” She licked her lips nervously and he leaned closer to her. Her mouth had always fascinated him. Her lower lip was fuller than the top and he knew from that one brief night how sumptuous her mouth would feel under his own.
He leaned farther toward her, but Peter used his wrist for balance as he stood and then raced across the yard to the soccer ball.
“Yes, you did,” he said to Larissa.
“That seems like so long ago.”
“It was a different life,” he said.
Peter kicked the ball over to them with more energy than skill. Jake had always been very good at soccer and his son showed…none of Jake’s aptitude.
“Where’d you go before?” Peter asked, coming over to them.
“To my workout room. I needed to clear my head.”
“Is it clear now?”
“Almost,” Jake said, ruffling his son’s hair.
He stood and helped Larissa to her feet. He still wanted to know why she hadn’t told him she was having his child, but he’d save that conversation for later when they were alone. Right now they needed to figure out what to do next.
But Peter was watching him and he didn’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation in front of the boy. “Let me show you how to kick the ball like the pros do.”
“What’s a pro?” Peter asked.
“A professional player. You know someone who gets paid to play the game.”
“You can get paid to play?” Peter asked.
“Only if you’re really good.”
Jake showed his son a few basic kicks and then got out his practice goal net and left his son playing.
Larissa had returned to her lounge chair and watched him warily as he walked toward her. He didn’t like the look on her face. He didn’t like it at all.
Larissa tried not to stare as Jake walked over to her, but she couldn’t help it. Sweat glistened on his neck and she knew that if she got close to him, he would smell earthy. She wanted to indulge herself in him once more. But he needed answers and she’d come here this morning intent on giving them to him.
She closed her eyes. While Jake had been gone, she’d found the words she needed to tell him. She’d have to sacrifice her pride, but Peter was more important than pride.
Jake returned and sat on a chair facing her. He braced his elbows on his knees and leaned toward her. She took a deep breath.
“Jake, I—”
“Larissa, I—”
She laughed. In the old days when they’d been friends, often they’d both started talking at the same time.
“You first
,” Jake said.
Knowing that Jake had never been anything but good to her, she sorted out the pieces of her troubled past and took a deep breath. “The reason why I didn’t tell you about Peter is that I wanted to manage parenthood on my own.”
“You always were pretty stubborn about that. Why don’t you save the rest of the tale for a time when we are alone? Let’s talk about what we do now.”
She appreciated the reprieve, but she was curious. “What made you change your mind?”
He shrugged massive shoulders. “Something about you looking at me like I was an ogre.”
“I didn’t.”
“Sweetheart, you have the biggest, most innocent eyes I’ve ever looked into, and it only takes one instant for you to make me feel like a bully.”
His words made her feel special. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know. Let’s fix this reporter problem and then we’ll talk. We’ll find a sitter for Peter and we can learn each other’s secrets.”
“I don’t have any secrets.”
“Peter’s it?”
“Yes, just Peter. I felt so…panicked when Jasmine Carmody called and said she knew you were Peter’s father. There’s nothing I can do to protect him from anything she writes for her newspaper. At least he can’t read.”
“How did she find out about Peter? Am I listed on the birth certificate?”
“No. She said she’d talked to Marti Freehold. Do you remember her?”
“She’s the biggest gossip I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, she is. Marti mentioned she’d seen us leaving the reunion together. And that we’d looked, well, like we needed to find a private room and quick.”
“Sounds like Marti,” Jake said.
“Jasmine Carmody has Peter’s birth certificate and she knows you’re not listed on there, but she also has a picture of you when you were the same age as Peter. They’re practically identical.”
Jake leaned back in the chair and Larissa tried not to stare at him. She knew that he was trying to solve a very sticky problem. And she shouldn’t be lusting over him at a time like this.
Sin City Wedding (Dynasties: The Danforths Book 3) Page 2