Читать онлайн книгу «A Daddy for Her Sons» автора Raye Morgan
A Daddy for Her Sons
Raye Morgan
When bona fide playboy Connor McNair watched his best friend marry Jill Darling, he never expected a second chance with the girl who got away.Now she’s a single mother and he’s back to persuade her to give up her pastry company. It’s just business…until Jill’s sweet smile has Connor thinking about fatherhood and forever. But that’s against all the rules…
THE SINGLE MOM DIARIES:
First comes baby, then comes happily-ever-after.
The Darling sisters, both single moms, have always supported each other through the ups and downs of life and love. But they’ll need each other’s advice more than ever when the possibility of true love comes knocking!
Playboy Connor McNair thinks life behind a picket fence isn’t his speed—until Jill Darling, the girl he secretly loves, traps him with kisses and Bundt cake. How can he turn away from the woman he’s always wanted and her twin baby boys?
Don’t miss:
A DADDY FOR HER SONS
Sara Darling’s joy at adopting her deceased half-sister’s baby turns into a bad dream when she realises that the rough, handsome man she’s just met has come to claim that same child. Could a marriage of convenience with Sara be exactly the medicine the tortured Jake Martin needs?
Find out in
MARRIAGE FOR HER BABY
Dear Reader,
This story is about a woman who bakes such lovely Bundt cakes she’s hoping to build a business on it. What a fun way to make a living! Personally, I’m pretty much a disaster in the baking department, but I do have one favorite Bundt cake that makes friends ooh and aah. Hope it works for you!
Measurements are according to US custom. I grew up with Dutch cookbooks, but converting recipes to metrics is just too risky for me. Sorry!
Chocolate Overload Bundt Cake
1 package chocolate cake mix
1 small package instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
¼ cup cold coffee
¼ cup water
12 ounces fine-quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat eggs until well mixed, add sour cream, then water and coffee, and mix thoroughly. Add cake mix, beating in slowly, then the pudding. Mix the same way. When smooth, fold in chocolate chips and pour it all into a prepared Bundt pan.
Bake for about one hour. Test with pick and take out when pick comes clean. Cool, but glaze while still somewhat warm.
Rum Glaze (a chocolate or coffee glaze will do as well)
Mix together in a saucepan:
½ cup butter
1 cup white sugar
¼ cup white rum
¼ cup water
Bring to boil and simmer for 2 minutes, then pour over warm cake that has been poked all over with a toothpick.
You don’t want to think about the calories, carbs and fat per slice. If you let that bother you, you wouldn’t bake this in the first place!
Eating Bundt cake goes perfectly with reading romances! Enjoy!
Raye Morgan
About the Author
RAYE MORGAN has been a nursery school teacher, a travel agent, a clerk and a business editor, but her best job ever has been writing romances—and fostering romance in her own family at the same time. Current score: two boys married, two more to go. Raye has published more than seventy romance novels, and claims to have many more waiting in the wings. She lives in Southern California, with her husband and whichever son happens to be staying at home at the moment.
A Daddy
for Her Sons
Raye Morgan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is dedicated to Lauri, for everything wonderful
that comes out of her oven!
CHAPTER ONE
A NIGHTMARE. That was what this had to be. She must be dreaming. But what had she expected from a blind date?
Jill Darling was no shy innocent, but her face was blazing. She could feel it. The man was trying to … Ugh, it was just too creepy to even try to name what he was doing. She couldn’t really be sure unless she took a look under the table. And that would cause a scene. She couldn’t do that. She knew people in this restaurant.
But … was that really his foot sliding up and down her leg?
He was leaning close, talking on and on, his breath hot on her neck. Okay, maybe that was all in the game. But what the heck was that foot doing?
She tried to move away, but she was trapped, huddled right up against the edge of the planter that sat right beside their table, tickling her nose with its palm fronds. They were eating in the restaurant of the nicest hotel in this part of town. It had Irish linen tablecloths, real sterling silverware and a small combo playing for dancers on a tiny dance floor to the side.
She took a long drink from her water glass, then looked over at him. She tried to smile, but she knew it was wobbly and pretty darn unconvincing if he should happen to actually notice it.
Karl Attkins was his name. Her friend’s brother. He was good looking enough, but somehow cold, as though she could have been anyone with an “available female” label stamped on her forehead. Should she ask him about the foot? And maybe warn him not to lose sight of his shoe. It wouldn’t be easy to replace that here in this crowded restaurant.
Oh, Lord, he was using his toes now. She was going to have to say something. If she didn’t, her nice steak dinner just might come back up. And all that wine she drank, trying to keep busy. This just wasn’t cool. She took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to say it without being insulting.
But then he gave her the out she needed.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow as though he knew she must consider him quite debonair.
Dance. No, not at all. But she steeled herself to the effort. Dancing ought to give him a reason to put his shoe back on, and if so, it would all be worth it.
“Sure,” she said breathlessly. “Why not?”
Well, the fact that they were playing a tango at that very moment might have been a reason to sit this one out. But it hardly mattered. At least the man was shod once more. She tried to keep the electric smile painted on her face as he led her to the proper position. And then she glanced at her watch and wondered how much longer she was going to have to endure this torture. She had to put in a good chunk of time or the friends who’d got her into this wouldn’t believe she’d really tried.
Oh, Mary Ellen, she groaned silently as Karl pushed her to and fro dramatically across the dancing floor, leaving her to lunge about like a puppet with its strings cut. I love you dearly, but this is just too high a price to pay for your friendship.
“But, Jill,” all her friends had counseled solemnly, “you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to get back into the swim of things. It’s been over a year since Brad … well, since you’ve been alone.” The timing had helped make her receptive. Changes were making her feel vulnerable. Her sister was probably moving away, and her younger half-sister had recently died. Loneliness was looming large in her life. “Time is streaking by,” another friend lectured. “Don’t let it leave you behind. Don’t be a coward. Get out there and fight!”
Fight? For what?
“A man, of course,” said Mary Ellen. “Once you hit your age, they don’t come a dime a dozen any more. You’ve got competition.”
“But, what if I …?”
“No! You can’t give up!” her friend Crystal had chimed in. “Your kids need a father figure in the home.”
Mary Ellen had fixed her with a steely stare. “And you want to show old Brad, don’t you?”
Show old Brad. The need to do just that surged in her. Of course she wanted to show old Brad. Sure. She would date. If he could do it, so could she. Stand back. She was ready for the challenge.
But where would she find someone to date? Mary Ellen knew just the man for her.
“My brother Karl is a real player,” she said airily. “He’ll get you back into the swing of things in no time. He has so many friends. You’ll be dating like crazy before you know it.”
Dating. She remembered dating. The way your heart raced as you waited for him to come to the door, the shy pauses, the way your eyes met his and then looked quickly away. Would he kiss you on the doorstep? Were you really going to let him?
Fun!
But that was then. This was a completely different thing, seemingly from a galaxy far, far away. She was older now. She’d been married and she had two kids. She knew how things worked. She could handle it. Or so she thought.
No. This was a nightmare.
At least her dress was pretty, and she didn’t get many chances to wear something like this anymore. A sleek shift dress in teal-blue, it was covered with sequins and glistened as she walked, making her feel sexy and pretty and nice. Too bad she was wasting that on a man who spent more time looking at himself in the mirror than she did.
The tango was over. She turned back toward the table in relief, but Karl grabbed her free hand and twirled her around to face him. The band was playing a cha cha. He grinned. “Hey mambo!” he cried out and began to sway. He seemed to consider himself quite the ballroom dancer, even if he couldn’t tell one Latin dance from another.
Jill had a decision to make. Would she rather dance, or go back to playing footsie? She wasn’t sure she knew how to cha cha. But she knew she didn’t want to feel that foot on her leg again.
What the hell.
“Everybody loves to cha-cha-cha,” she murmured as she let him twirl her again.
And then she looked up and saw Connor McNair staring at her in horror.
Her blood ran cold. She was still moving, but no one could accuse her of dancing at this point. The music didn’t mean a thing.
Connor. Oh, no.
First, it appalled her to think that anyone she knew might see her here like this. But close on that thought came the shock question—was Brad with him?
No. She glanced around quickly and didn’t see any sign of her ex-husband at all. Thank heaven for small blessings. Connor must have come to town and was staying here at the hotel—alone. But still, it was Connor, Brad’s best friend, the one person most likely to report to him. She could hardly stand it.
He was mouthing something to her. She squinted, trying to make it out. What was he trying to say?
She couldn’t tell, but he was coming out onto the dance floor. Why? She looked around, feeling wild, wanting to run. What was he going to do?
“May I cut in?” he asked Karl.
He was polite, but unsmiling, and Karl didn’t seem to be in a friendly mood.
“What? No. Go get your own girl,” Karl told him, frowning fiercely. And just to prove his point, he grabbed Jill and pulled her close.
She looked over his shoulder at Connor. He offered a safe harbor of sorts, but there was danger there, too. She didn’t want to talk to Connor. She didn’t want to have anyone close to Brad anywhere near. The pain of Brad’s desertion still ached inside her like an open wound and she didn’t want anyone from his side of the rift to see her like this—much less talk to her.
So she glared at Connor. Let him know she didn’t need him or his rescue. She was doing fine. She was here enjoying herself. Sort of.
She got back to dancing, swaying her hips, making her sequins sparkle, and trying hard to smile at Karl. Let Connor see that she was having the time of her life. Let him take that bit of news back to Brad, if that was what he was after.
“Mambo!” she cried out, echoing Karl. Why the heck not?
Connor gave her a look of disbelief as he stepped back to the sidelines, but he didn’t leave. The next dance was a simple two-step, but that meant Karl’s arms around her again, and she couldn’t disguise the shudder that gave her.
And there was Connor, taking in every nuance. She glowered at him. He was very handsome in his crisp white shirt with the dark slacks that looked tailor-made. But that was beside the point. Didn’t he have a table to go to? What gave him the right to stand there and watch her? Biting her lip, she tried to keep him out of her line of vision and blot him out of her head.
But then he was back, right at Karl’s elbow again, stopping them in their tracks.
“Excuse me,” he said, looking very serious. “Listen, do you have a silver BMW in the parking lot?”
Karl blinked. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he couldn’t resist the question. “Why, yes I do. What about it?”
Connor’s brows came together in a look of sorrow. “I’m afraid your car’s on fire.”
Karl dropped Jill like a hot potato and whirled to face Connor. “What?” he cried, anguish contorting his face.
Connor was all sympathy. “I think they’ve called the fire department, but you might want to get out there and …”
No more words were necessary. He was already gone.
Connor took Jill by the arm, looking annoyed when she balked and tried to pull away.
“Come on,” he said impatiently. “I know a back way out.”
Jill shook her head, not sure what he thought he was doing here. “But … I can’t just leave.”
Connor looked down at her and suddenly grinned, startling her. She’d forgotten how endearing he could be and she stared up at him. It was like finding a beloved forgotten toy in the attic. Affection for him trembled on the edge of her mood, but she batted it back.
“Why not?” he said. “Do you want to spend the next two hours with the guy?”
She tried to appear stern. She wanted to deny what he was implying. How could she go? What would she say to her friends? What would she tell Mary Ellen?
But in the end, his familiar grin did her in. “I’d rather eat dirt,” she admitted, crumbling before him.
“There you go.” He led her gently across the dance floor, only hesitating while she scooped up her sparkly little purse. They headed for the exit and he winked at a waiter who was holding the door for them, obviously primed to help with the escape. He paused only long enough to hand the man some folded money and then they were out the door.
“But what about his car?” Jill asked, worrying a bit. She knew the sense of guilt would linger long after the evening was gone. “He loves that car.”
“Don’t give it a second thought,” he advised, steering her toward his own souped-up, twenty-year-old Camaro, a car she remembered from the past, and pulling open the passenger door.
“His car isn’t really on fire, is it?” she asked as she plunked down into the leather seat.
“No.” He sank into the driver’s seat and grinned at her again. “Look, I’ll do a lot for an old friend, but setting a guy’s car on fire … no, that’s a step too far.”
She watched him start the engine and turn toward the back exit.
“But you will lie to him about it,” she noted.
“Oh, yeah.”
She sighed and settled back into the seat. All in all, at least she didn’t have a naked foot exploring her leg at the moment. That alone was worth its weight in gold.
“Rickey’s on the Bay?” he asked in the shorthand they both remembered from earlier years.
“Of course,” she responded without thinking. That was where everyone always went when the night was still young enough to make the last ferry to the island. She turned and looked at the lights of Seattle in the distance. If only you could go back in time as easily as you could go back to the places where you hung out in your youth.
“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this,” she said with a sigh.
“I can’t believe you needed me to do it.”
She laughed. “Touché,” she muttered. So much for the great date that was supposed to bring her out of her shell and into the social whirl.
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked it.
“What are you doing?” Connor asked with just a hint of suspicion in his tone.
She glanced up at him and smiled impishly. “Waiting for Karl to call. I’ve got to explain this to him somehow.”
He shuddered. “Is Karl the mambo king?” he asked.
She gave him a baleful look.
“Don’t worry. I gave the waiter a little money to tell old Karl what the score was.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And just what is the score, pray tell?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “I told him to tell Karl I was a made guy from the mob and we didn’t take kindly to outsiders poaching on our women.”
“What?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. Definitely corny. But it was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment.”
She had to hold back her laughter. He didn’t deserve it.
“I didn’t even know you were Italian.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” He gave her a mocking wink. “A lot of things you don’t want to know.”
“Obviously.”
She frowned, thinking the situation over. “So now you’ve single-handedly destroyed my chances of dating anyone ever again in this town. Thanks a lot.”
“I’m just looking out for you, sweetheart.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was biting back a grin.
Rickey’s was as flamboyant as a fifties retro diner should be, with bright turquoise upholstery and jukeboxes at every table. They walked in as though they ought to see a lot of old friends there, but no one looked the least bit familiar.
“We’re old,” he whispered in her ear as he led her to a booth along the side with windows on the marina. “Everyone we used to hang out with is gone.”
“So why are we still here?” she asked, a bit grumpy about it. This was where so much of her life had played out in the old days. And now, the waitresses didn’t know her and the faces all looked unfamiliar.
“Lost souls, searching for the meaning of life,” he said, smiling at her across the linoleum-covered table. His smile looked wistful this time, unlike the cheerful grin from before.
“The meaning of life is clear enough,” she protested. After all, hadn’t everyone been lecturing her on it for months? “Get on with things. Make the world a better place. Face reality and deal with it. Or something along those lines.”
He shrugged. “Sounds nice, until you start analyzing definitions. What exactly does ‘better’ mean? Better for whom? How do you get the whole world involved, anyway?”
She made a face at him. “You always were the great contrarian,” she said accusingly. “And now I’ve let you kidnap me. Someone should call the police.”
The waitress, a pretty young girl in a poodle skirt who’d just arrived at their table blanched and took a step backward.
“No, no,” Jill told her quickly. “I’m only joking. Please don’t take me seriously. Ever.”
The waitress blinked rapidly, but risked a step closer in to take their order. She didn’t hang around to chat, however.
“You scared her,” Connor suggested as she hurried away.
“I scare everyone lately,” Jill admitted. “What do you think? Am I too intense? Are my eyes a little wild?”
He looked at her uncertainly, not sure if the truth would be accepted in the spirit he would mean it. His gaze skimmed over her pretty face. She had new lines between the brows, a new hint of worry in her eyes. Her hands were clenched around her water glass, as though she were holding on to a life preserver. Tense was hardly a strong enough word. His heart broke just a little bit. What had happened to his carefree girl?
But that was just it. She wasn’t “his,” never had been.
He knew she’d been through a lot since Brad had left her. She had a right to a few ragged edges. But when you came right down to it, she was as beautiful as she’d ever been. Her golden hair sprang into curls in an untamed mass all around her head. Her dark eyes were still warm, her lips were still full and sexy. Still gorgeous after all these years.
And looking at her still sent him over the moon. It happened every time. She was like a substance he had to be careful he didn’t mess with, knowing it would be too dangerous to overdose.
But he could see a difference in her and silently he swore at himself. Why had he stayed away so long? She probably could have used a friend. She’d lost her young girl sparkle and he regretted it. He loved that sparkle.
But now he frowned, studying her face as though he was worried about what he found there. “How are you doing, Jill?” he asked her quietly. “I mean really. How’ve you been?”
She sat back and really looked at him for the first time, a quiver of fear in her heart. This was what she really wanted to avoid. Silly banter was so much safer than going for truth.
She studied his handsome face, his crystal-blue eyes sparking diamond-like radiant light from between those inky black eyelashes that seemed too impossibly long. It had been over a year since she’d seen him last and he didn’t seem quite so much like a kid living in a frat house anymore.
He’d always been such a contrast to Brad, like a younger brother who didn’t want to grow up. Brad was the serious one, the ambitious one, the idea man who had the drive to follow through. Connor was more likely to be trying to make a flight to catch a party in Malibu or volunteering to crew on a sailing trip to Tahiti. Brad was a man you could count on. Connor—not so much.
Only that had turned out to be a lie, hadn’t it? It was hard to trust anything much anymore once the man you’d considered your rock had melted away and wasn’t there for you anymore.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then gave him a dazzling smile. “I’ve been great,” she said breezily. “Life is good. The twins are healthy and my business is actually starting to make a profit, so we’re good.”
He didn’t believe her. He’d known her too long to accept the changed woman she’d become. She’d always been careful—the responsible sort—but she’d also had a sense of fun, of carefree abandon. Instead, her eyes, her tone, her nervous movements, all displayed a wary tension, as though she was always looking over her shoulder to see what disaster might be gaining on her now.
“So good that you felt it was time to venture out into the dating world again, huh?” he noted, being careful to smile as he said it.
“Why not? I need to move on. I need to … to …” She couldn’t remember exactly what the argument was, though she’d heard it enough from her friends lately. Something about broadening her horizons. Something about reigniting her womanly instincts. She looked at Connor as though she might read the words in his eyes, but they just weren’t there.
“So who talked you into that fiasco tonight?” he asked her.
She frowned at him. “It was a blind date.”
“No kidding. Even you wouldn’t be nutty enough to go out with that guy voluntarily.”
“Even me?” His words stung. What did he think of her, anyway? Her eyes flashed. “Just how nutty am I, Connor?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand, gazing at her earnestly. “Will you stop? Please?”
She glanced back, her bottom lip trembling. Deep breaths. That was what she needed. And no matter what, she wasn’t going to cry.
“So where have you been all this time?” she asked, wishing it didn’t sound quite so petulant.
“All what time?” he said evasively.
“The year and a half since I last saw you.”
Her gaze met his and skittered away again. She knew he was thinking about exactly what she was thinking about—that last time had been the day Brad left her. Neither one of them wanted to remember that day, much less talk about it. She grimaced and played with her spoon. The waitress brought their order so it was a moment or two before they spoke again.
“So you said your business is doing okay?” he noted as he spread his napkin on his lap.
“Yes.” She stared down at the small dish of ice cream she’d ordered and realized she wasn’t going to be able to eat any of it. Her throat felt raw and tight. Too bad. It looked creamy and delicious.
He nodded, reaching for a fork. It was pretty clear he wasn’t going to have any problem at all. “What business?”
She blinked at him. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t Brad tell you?”
He shook his head and avoided saying anything about Brad.
She waited a moment, then sighed. “Okay. When Brad left, he took the electronics business we had developed together. And told me I might as well go out and get a job once the babies were born.”
He cringed. That was enough to set your teeth on edge, no matter who you were.
She met his gaze with a touch of defiance in her own. “But I gave birth to two little boys and looked at them and knew there was no way I was handing them over to someone else to raise for me. So I racked my brain, trying to find something I could do at home and still take care of them.”
He nodded. That seemed the resourceful thing to do. Good for her. “So what did you decide on?”
She shrugged. “The only thing I was ever really good at. I started a Bundt Cake Bakery.”
He nodded, waiting. There had to be more. Who could make a living baking Bundt cakes? “And?”
“And that’s what I’m doing.”
“Oh.” He frowned, puzzled. “Great.”
“It is great,” she said defensively. She could hear the skepticism in his voice. “It was touch and go for a long time, but now I think I’m finally hitting my stride.”
He nodded again, wishing he could rustle up some enthusiasm, but failing on all fronts. “Okay.”
The product Jill and Brad had developed together had been a bit different from baked goods and he was having a hard time understanding the connection. Jill had done the bookkeeping and the marketing for the business. Brad had been the electronic genius. And Connor had done some work with them, too. They’d been successful from the first.
With that kind of background, he couldn’t imagine how the profits from cakes could compare to what they’d made on the GPS device for hikers to be used as a map App. It had been new and fresh and sold very well. He wasn’t sure what he could say.
He looked up across the restaurant, caught sight of someone coming in the door and he sighed. “You know how legend has it that everyone stops in at Rickey’s on a Saturday night?”
Her eyes widened warily. “Sure.”
“I guess it’s true.” He made a gesture with his head. “Look who just walked in. Mr. Mambo himself.”
She gasped and whirled in her seat. Sure enough, there was Karl starting in their direction. He was coming through the restaurant as though he thought he owned the place, giving all the girls the eye. He caught sight of her and his eyes lit up.
Her heart fell. “Oh, no!”
CHAPTER TWO
AND THEN, KARL’S jaunty gaze fell on Connor and he stopped dead, visibly paling. Shaking his head, he raised his hands and he seemed to be muttering, “no, no,” over and over again, as though to tell Connor he really didn’t mean it. Turning on his heel, he left so quickly, Jill could almost believe she’d been imagining things.
“Wow.” She turned back slowly and looked at Connor accusingly. “I guess he believed your cockeyed story.” She put a hand to her forehead as though tragedy had struck. “Once he spreads the word, my dating days are done.”
“Good,” Connor said, beginning to attack his huge piece of cherry pie à la mode. “No point wasting your time on losers like that.”
She made a face and leaned toward him sadly. “Are they all like that? Is it really hopeless?”
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “Erase all thoughts of other men. I’m here. You don’t need anybody else.”
“Right.” She rolled her eyes, knowing he was teasing. “You’d think I would have learned my lesson with Brad, wouldn’t you?”
There was a catch in her voice as she said it. He looked up quickly and she knew he was afraid she might cry. But she didn’t cry about that anymore. She was all cried out long ago on that subject.
Did he remember what a fool she’d been? How even with all the evidence piling up in her daily life, she’d never seen it coming. At the time she was almost eight months pregnant with the twins and having a hard time even walking, much less with thinking straight. And Connor had come to tell her that Brad was leaving her.
Brad had sent him, of course. The jerk couldn’t even manage to face her and tell her himself.
That made her think twice. Here was Connor, back again. What was Brad afraid to tell her now?
She watched him, frowning, studying his blue eyes. Did she really want to know? All those months, all the heartbreak. Still, if it was something she needed to deal with, better get it over with. She took a deep breath and tried to sound strong and cool.
“So what does he want this time?”
Connor’s head jerked back as though what she was asking was out of line. He waved his fork at her. “Do you think we could first go through some of the niceties our society has set up for situations like this?” he asked her.
She searched his face to see if he was mocking her, but he really wasn’t. He was just uncomfortable.
“How about, ‘How have you been?’ or ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Why not give me some of the details of your life these days. Do we have to jump right into contentious things so quickly?”
So it wasn’t good. She should have known. “You’re the messenger, not me.”
His handsome face winced. It almost seemed as though this pained him more than it was going to pain her. Fat chance.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asked her.
Were they? She used to think so. “Sure. We always have been.”
“So …”
He looked relieved, as though that made it all okay. But it wasn’t okay. Whatever it was, it was going to hurt. She knew that instinctively. She leaned forward and glared at him.
“But you’re on his side. Don’t deny it.”
He shook his head, denying it anyway. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “That day, the one that ended life as I knew it, you came over to deliver the fatal blow. You set me straight as to how things really were.” Her voice hardened. “You were the one who explained Brad to me at the time. You broke my heart and then you left me lying there in the dirt and you never came back.”
“You were not lying in the dirt.” He seemed outraged at the concept.
She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “It’s a metaphor, silly.”
“I don’t care what it is. I did not leave you lying in the dirt or even in the sand, or on the couch, or anything. You were standing straight and tall and making jokes, just like always.”
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to relax a bit. “You seemed calm and collected and fine with it. Like you’d known it was coming. Like you were prepared. Sad, but okay.” He shook his head, willing her to believe what he was saying. “Or else I never would have left you alone.”
She shrugged carelessly. How could he have gotten it all so wrong? “And you think you know me.”
He pushed away the pie, searching her eyes, looking truly distressed. “Sara was with you. Your sister. I thought …”
He looked away, frowning fiercely. He remembered what he’d thought. He’d seen the pain in her face and it had taken everything in him not to reach out and gather her in his arms and kiss her until she realized … until she knew … No, he’d had to get out of there before he did something stupid. And that was why he left her. He had his own private hell to tend to.
“You thought I was okay? Wow.” She struck a pose and put on an accent. “The corpse was bleeding profusely, but I assumed it would stop on its own. She seemed to be coping quite well with her murder.”
He grimaced, shaking his head.
“I hated you for a while,” she admitted. “It was easier than hating Brad. What Brad had done to me was just too confusing. What you did was common, everyday cowardice.”
He stared at her, aghast. “Oh, thanks.”
“And to make it worse, you never did come back. Did you?”
He shook his head as though he really couldn’t understand why she was angry. He hadn’t done anything to make her that way. He’d just lived his life like he always did, following the latest impulse that moved him. Didn’t she know that?
“I was gone. I left the country. I … I had a friend starting up a business in Singapore, so I went to help him out.”
She looked skeptical and deep, deep down, she looked hurt. “All this time?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, feeling a bit defensive. “I’ve been out of the country all this time.”
Funny, but that made her feel a lot better. At least he hadn’t been coming up here to Seattle and never contacting her.
“So you haven’t been to see Brad?”
He hesitated. He couldn’t lie to her. “I stopped in to see Brad in Portland last week,” he admitted.
She threw up her hands. “See? You’re on his side.”
He wanted to growl at her. “I’m not on anybody’s side. I’ve been friends with both of you since that first week of college, when we all three camped out in Brad’s car together.”
The corners of Jill’s mouth quirked into a reluctant smile as she remembered. “What a night that was,” she said lightly. “They’d lost my housing forms and you hadn’t been admitted yet. We had no place to sleep.”
“So Brad offered his car.”
“And stayed out with us.”
“We talked and laughed the whole night.”
She nodded, remembering. “And that cemented it. We were best buds from that night on.”
Connor smiled, but looked away. He remembered meeting Jill in the administration office while they both tried to fight the bureaucracy. He’d thought she was the cutest coed on campus, right from the start. And then Brad showed up and swept her off her feet.
“We fought the law and the law won,” he noted cynically.
“Right.” She laughed softly, still remembering. “You with that crazy book of rules you were always studying on how to make professors fall in love with you so they’d give you good grades.”
He sighed. “That never worked. And it should have, darn it all.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked back into the past a little deeper. “And all those insane jobs you took, trying to pay off your fees. I never understood when you had time to study.”
“I slept with a tape recorder going,” he said with a casual shrug. “Subliminal learning. Without it, I would have flunked out early on.”
She stared at him, willing him to smile and admit he’d made that up, but he stuck to his guns.
“No, really. I learned French that way.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Parlez-vous francais?”
“Uh … whatever.” He looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t say I retained any of it beyond test day.”
“Right.” She laughed at him and he grinned back.
But she knew they were ignoring the elephant in the room. Brad. Brad who had been with them both all through college. Brad who had decided she was his from the start. And what Brad wanted, Brad usually got. She’d been flattered by his attention, then thrilled with it. And soon, she’d fallen hard. She was so in love with him, she knew he was her destiny. She let him take over her life. She didn’t realize he would toss it aside when he got tired of it.
“So what are you doing here?” she asked again. “Surely you didn’t come to see me.”
“Jill, I always want to see you.”
“No kidding. That’s why you’ve been gone for a year and a half. You’ve never even met the twins.”
He looked at her with a half smile. Funny. She’d been pregnant the last time he’d seen her, but that wasn’t the way he’d thought of her all these months. And to tell the truth, Brad had never mentioned those babies. “That’s right. I forgot. You’ve got a couple of cookie crunchers now, don’t you?”
“I do. The little lights of my life, so to speak.”
“Boys.”
“Boys.” She nodded.
He wanted to ask how they got along with Brad, but he wasn’t brave enough to do it. Besides, it was getting late. She had a pair of baby boys at home. She looked at her watch, then looked at him.
“I’ve got to get home. If you can just drop me at the dock, the last ferry goes at midnight and …”
He waved away her suggestion. “You will not walk home from the ferry landing. It’s too late and too far.”
She made a face. “I’ll be fine. I’ve done it a thousand times.”
“I’ll drive you.”
She gave him a mock glare. “Well, then we’d better get going or you won’t make the last ferry back.”
“You let me worry about that.”
Let him worry—let him manage—leave it to him. Something inside her yearned to be able to do that. It had been so long since she’d had anyone else to rely on. But life had taught her a hard lesson. If you relied on others, they could really hurt you. Best to rely on nobody but yourself.
The ferry ride across the bay to the island was always fun. He pulled the car into the proper space on the ferry and they both got out to enjoy the trip. Standing side by side as the ferry started off, they watched the inky-black water part to let them through.
Jill pulled her arms in close, fending off the ocean coolness, and he reached out and put an arm around her, keeping her warm. She rested her head on his shoulder. He had to resist the urge to draw her closer.
“Hey, I’m looking forward to meeting those two little boys of yours,” he said.
“Hopefully you won’t meet them tonight,” she said, laughing. “I’ve got a nice older lady looking after them. They should be sound asleep right now.”
“It’s amazing to think of you with children,” he said.
She nodded. “I know. You’re not the only one stunned by the transformation.” She smiled, thinking of how they really had changed her life. If only Brad … No, she wasn’t going to start going back over those old saws again. That way lay madness.
“It’s also amazing to think of how long we’ve known each other,” she added brightly instead.
“We all three got close in our freshman year,” he agreed, “and that lasted all through college.”
She nodded. “It seemed, those first couple of years, we did everything together.”
“I remember it well.” He sighed and glanced down at her. All he could see was that mop of crazy, curly blond hair. It always made him smile. “You were sighing over Brad,” he added to the memory trail. “And I was wishing you would look my way instead.”
She looked up and made a face at him. “Be serious. You had no time for stodgy, conventional girls like I was. You were always after the high flyers.”
He stared at her, offended despite the fact that there was some truth in what she said. “I was not,” he protested anyway.
“Sure you were.” She was teasing him now. “You liked bad girls. Edgy girls. The ones who ran off with the band.”
His faint smile admitted the truth. “Only when I was in the band.”
“And that was most of the time.” She pulled back and looked at him. “Did you ever actually get a degree?”
“Of course I got a degree.”
She giggled. “In what? Multicultural dating?”
He bit back the sharp retort that surfaced in his throat. She really didn’t know. But why should she? He had to admit he’d spent years working hard at seeming to be a slacker.
“Something like that,” he muttered, thinking with a touch of annoyance about his engineering degree with a magna cum laude attached. No one had been closer friends to him than Brad and Jill. And they didn’t even realize he was smarter than he seemed.
It was his own fault of course. He’d worked on that easygoing image. Still, it stung a bit.
And it made him do a bit of “what if?” thinking. What if he’d been more aggressive making his own case? What if he’d challenged Brad’s place in Jill’s heart at the time? What if he’d competed instead of accepting their romance as an established fact? Would things have been different?
The spray from the water splashed across his face, jerking him awake from his dream. Turning toward the island, he could see her house up the drive a block from the landing. He’d been there a hundred times before, but not for quite a while. Not since the twins were born and Brad decided he wasn’t fatherhood material. Connor had listened to what Brad had to say and it had caused a major conflict for him. He thought Brad’s reasons were hateful and he deplored them, but at the same time, he’d seen them together for too long to have any illusions. They didn’t belong together. Getting a divorce was probably the best thing Brad could do for Jill. So he’d gone with his message, he’d done his part and hated it and then he’d headed for Singapore.
He turned to look at her, to watch the way the wind blew her hair over her eyes, and that old familiar pull began somewhere in the middle of his chest. It started slow and then began to build, as though it was slowly finding its way through his bloodstream. He wanted her, wanted to hold her and kiss her and tell her.… He gritted his teeth and turned away. He had to fight that feeling. Funny. He never got it with any other girl. It only happened with her. Damn.
A flash of panic shivered through him. What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He’d thought he was prepared for this. Hardened. Toughened and ready to avoid the tender trap that was always Jill. But his defenses were fading fast. He had to get out of here.
He needed a plan. Obviously playing this by ear wasn’t going to work. The first thing he had to do was to get her home, safe and sound. That should be easy. Then he had to avoid getting out of the car. Under no circumstances should he go into the house, especially not to take a peek at the babies. That would tie him up in a web of sentiment and leave him raw and vulnerable to his feelings. He couldn’t afford to do that. At all costs, he had to stay strong and leave right away.
He could come back and talk to her in the morning. If he hung around, disaster was inevitable. He couldn’t let that happen.
“You know what?” he said, trying to sound light and casual. “I think you really had the right idea about this. I need to get back to the hotel. I think I’ll take the ferry right on back and let you walk up the hill on your own. It’s super safe here, isn’t it? I mean …”
He felt bad about it, but it had to be done. He couldn’t go home with her. Wouldn’t be prudent, as someone once had famously said.
But he realized she wasn’t listening to him. She was staring, mouth open, over his shoulder at the island they were fast approaching.
“What in the world is going on? My house is lit up like a Christmas tree.”
He turned. She was right. Every window was ablaze with light. It was almost midnight. Somehow, this didn’t seem right.
And then a strange thing happened. As they watched, something came flying out of the upstairs window, sailed through the air and landed on the roof next door.
Jill gasped, rigid with shock. “Was that the cat?” she cried. “Oh, my God!”
She tried to pull away from him as though she was about to jump into the water and swim for shore, but he yanked her back. “Come on,” he said urgently, pulling her toward the Camaro. “We’ll get there faster in the car.”
CHAPTER THREE
JILL’S HEART WAS racing. She couldn’t think. She could hardly breathe. Adrenaline surged and she almost blacked out with it.
“Oh, please,” she muttered over and over as they raced toward the house. “Oh, please, oh, please!”
He swung the car into the driveway and she jumped out before he even came to a stop, running for the door.
“Timmy?” she called out. “Tanner?”
Connor was right behind her as she threw open the front door and raced inside.
“Mrs. Mulberry?” she called out as she ran. “Mrs. Mulberry!”
A slight, gray-haired woman appeared on the stairway from the second floor with a look close to terror on her face. “Oh, thank God you’re finally here! I tried to call you but my hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t use the cell phone.”
“What is it?” Jill grabbed her by the shoulders, staring down into her face. “What’s happened? Where are the boys?”
“I tried, I really tried, but … but …”
“Mrs. Mulberry! What?”
Her face crumpled and she wailed, “They locked me out. I couldn’t get to them. I didn’t know what to do.…”
“What do you mean they’ve locked you out? Where? When?”
“They got out of their cribs and locked the door. I couldn’t …”
Jill started up the stairs, but Connor took them two at a time and beat her to the landing and then the door. He yanked at the handle but it didn’t budge.
“Timmy? Tanner? Are you okay?” Jill’s voice quavered as she pressed her ear to the door. There was no response.
“There’s a key,” she said, turning wildly, trying to remember where she’d put it. “I know there’s a key.”
Connor pushed her aside. “No time,” he said, giving the door a wicked kick right next to where the lever sat. There was a crunch of wood breaking and the door flew open.
A scene of chaos and destruction was revealed. A lamp was upside down on the floor, along with pillows and books and a tumbled table and chair set. Toys were everywhere, most of them covered with baby powder that someone had been squirting out of the container. And on the other side of the room were two little blond boys, crowding into a window they could barely reach. They saw the adults coming for them, looked at each other and shrieked—and then they very quickly shoved one fat fluffy pillow and then one large plastic game of Hungry Hungry Hippos over the sill. The hippos could be heard hitting the bricks of the patio below.
“What are you doing?” Jill cried, dashing in as one child reached for a small music toy. She grabbed him, swung him up in her arms and held him close.
“You are such a bad boy!” she said, but she was laughing with relief at the same time. They seemed to be okay. No broken bones. No blood. No dead cat.
Connor pulled up the other boy with one arm while he slammed the window shut with the other. He looked at Jill and shook his head. “Wow,” was all he could say. Then he thought of something else. “Oh. Sorry about the door. I thought …”
“You thought right,” she said, flashing him a look of pure relief and happiness. Her babies were safe and right now that was all that mattered to her. “I would have had a heart attack if I’d had to wait any longer.”
Mrs. Mulberry was blubbering behind them and they both turned, each carrying a child, to stare at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she was saying tearfully. “But when they locked me out …”
“Okay, start at the beginning,” Jill told her, trying to keep her temper in check and hush her baby, who was saying, “Mamamama” over and over in her ear. “What exactly happened?”
The older woman sniffled and put a handkerchief to her nose. “I … I don’t really know. It all began so well. They were perfect angels.”
She smiled at them tearfully and they grinned back at her. Jill shook her head. It was as though they knew exactly what they’d done and were ready to do it again if they got the chance.
“They were so good,” Mrs. Mulberry was saying, “I’m afraid I let them stay up longer than I should have. Finally I put them to bed and went downstairs.” She shook her head as though she still couldn’t believe what happened next. “I was reading a magazine on the couch when something just went plummeting by the bay window. I thought it was my imagination at first. Then something else went shooting past and I got up and went outside to look at what was going on. And there were toys and bits of bedding just lying there in the grass. I looked up but I couldn’t see anything. It was very eerie. Almost scary. I couldn’t figure out what on earth was happening.”
“Oh, sweetie boys,” Jill muttered, holding one closely to her. “You must be good for the babysitter. Remember?”
“When I started to go back in the house,” the older lady went on, “one of these very same adorable children was at the front door. As I started to come closer, he grinned at me and he …” She had to stop to take a shaky breath. “He just smiled. I realized what might happen and I called out. I said, ‘No! Wait!’ But just as I reached the door, he slammed it shut. It was locked. He locked me out of the house!”
Jill was frowning. “What are you talking about? Who locked you out of the house?”
She pointed at Timmy who was cuddled close in Jill’s arms. “He did.”
Jill shook her head as though to clear it. He’s only eighteen months old. “That’s impossible. He doesn’t know how to lock doors.”
Mrs. Mulberry drew herself up. “Oh, yes he does,” she insisted.
Jill looked into Timmy’s innocent face. Could her baby have done that? He smiled and said, “Mamamama.” No way.
“I couldn’t get in,” Mrs Mulberry went on. “I was panicking. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” Tears filled her eyes again.
Jill stared at her in disbelief and Connor stepped forward, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We believe you, Mrs. Mulberry,” he said calmly. “Just finish your story. We want to know it all.”
She tried to give him a grateful smile and went on. “I was racing around, trying all the doors, getting more and more insane with fear. Finally I got the idea to look for a key. I must have turned over twenty flower pots before I found it. Once I got back into the house, I realized they were up here in the bedroom, but when I called to them, they locked the bedroom door.”
She sighed heavily, her head falling forward on her chest. “I thought I would go out of my mind. I tried to call you but I couldn’t do it. I thought I ought to call the police, but I was shaking so badly …” She shuddered, remembering. “And then you finally came home.”
Jill met Connor’s gaze and bit her lip, turning to lay Timmy down in his crib. He was giving her a warning glance, as if to say, “No major damage here. Give her a break.”
For some reason, instead of letting it annoy her, she felt a surge of relief. Yes, give her a break. Dear soul, she didn’t mean any harm, and since nothing had really happened, there was no reason to make things worse. In fact, both boys were already drifting off to sleep. And why not? They’d had a busy night so far.
Turning, she smiled at the older woman. “Thank goodness I got back when I did,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “Well, everything’s alright now. If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll just put these two down and …”
Connor gave her a grin and a wink and put down the already sleeping Tanner into his crib as though he knew what he was doing, which surprised her. But her mind was on her babies, and she looked down lovingly at them as they slept. For just a moment, she’d been so scared.…
What would she do if anything happened to either one of them? She couldn’t let herself think about that. That was a place she didn’t want to go.
Connor watched her. He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking about. Anything happening to her kids would just about destroy her. He’d seen her face when she first realized she was losing Brad. He remembered that pain almost as if it had been his own. And losing these little ones would be ten times worse.
He drove Mrs. Mulberry home and when he got back, all was quiet. The lights that had blazed out across the landscape were doused and a more muted atmosphere prevailed. The house seemed to be at peace.
Except for one thing—the sound of sniffles coming from the kitchen where Jill was sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.
“Hey,” he said, sliding in beside her on the bench seat. “You okay?”
She turned her huge, dark, tragic eyes toward him.
“I leave the house for just a few hours—leave the boys for more than ten minutes—the first time in a year. And chaos takes over.” She searched his gaze for answers. “Is that really not allowed? Am I chained to this place, this life, forever? Do I not dare leave … ever?”
He stared down at her. He wanted to make a joke, make her smile, get her out of this mood, but he saw real desperation in her eyes and he couldn’t make light of that.
“Hey.” He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It’s not forever. Things change quickly for kids. Don’t let it get you down. In a month, it will be different.”
She stared up at him. How could he possibly know that? And yet, somehow, she saw the wisdom in what he’d said. She shook her head and smiled. “Connor, why didn’t you come back sooner? I love your smile.”
He gave her another one, but deep down, he groaned. This was exactly why he had to get out of here as soon as he could. He slumped down lower in the seat and tried to think of something else reassuring to say, but his mind wouldn’t let go of what she’d just said to him.
I love your smile.
Pretty pathetic to grasp at such a slender reed, but that was just about all he had, wasn’t it?
Jill was back on the subject at hand, thinking about the babysitter. “Here I hired her because I thought an older woman would be calmer with a steadier hand.” She rolled her eyes. “A teenage girl would have been better.”
“Come on, that’s not really fair. She got a lot thrown at her at once and she wasn’t prepared for it. It could have happened to anyone.”
She shook her head as though she just couldn’t accept that. “I’m lucky I’ve got my sister close by for emergencies. But she’s getting more and more caught up in her career, and it’s a pretty demanding one. I really can’t count on her for too much longer.” She sighed. “She had to be at a business dinner in Seattle tonight, or she would have been here to take care of the boys.”
“Family can be convenient.” He frowned. “Don’t you have a younger sister? I thought I met her once.”
Instead of answering, she moaned softly and closed her eyes. “Kelly. Yes. She was our half sister.” She looked at him, new tragedy clouding her gaze. “Funny you should remember her tonight. She was killed in a car crash last week.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, Jill, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. “It’s sad and tragic and brings on a lot of guilty feelings for Sara and me.”
He shook his head, not understanding. “What did you have to do with it?”
“The accident? Oh, nothing. It happened in Virginia where I guess she was living lately. The guilt comes from not even knowing exactly where she was and frankly, not thinking about her much. We should have paid more attention and worked a little harder on being real sisters to her.”
There was more. He could tell. But he waited, letting her take her time to unravel the story.
“She was a lot younger, of course. Our mother died when we were pretty young, and our father remarried soon after. Too soon for us, of course. After losing our mother, we couldn’t bear to share our beloved father with anyone. We resented the new woman, and when she had a baby, we pretty much resented her, too.” She shook her head. “It was so unfair. Poor little girl.”
“Didn’t you get closer as she got older?”
“Not really. You see, the marriage was a disaster from the start and it ended by the time Kelly was about five years old. We only saw her occasionally after that, for a few hours at a time. And then our father died by the time she was fifteen and we didn’t see either one of them much at all after that.”
“That’s too bad.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m really sorry about it now.” She sighed. “She was something of a wild child, at least according to my father’s tales of woe. Getting into trouble even in high school. The sort of girl who wants to test the boundaries and explore the edge.”
“I know your father died a few years ago. What about your stepmother?”
“She died when I was about twenty-three. She had cancer.”
“Poor lady.”
“Yes. Just tragic, isn’t it? Lives snuffed out so casually.” She shook her head. “I just feel so bad about Kelly. It’s so sad that we never got to know her better.”
“Just goes to show. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Don’t let your opportunities slip by.”
“Yes.” She gave him a look. “When did you become such a philosopher?”
“I’ve always been considered wise among my peers,” he told her in a snooty voice that made her laugh.
A foghorn sounded its mournful call and she looked up at a clock. “And now here you are, stuck. The last ferry’s gone. You’re going to have to stay here.”
He smiled at her. “Unless I hijack a boat.”
“You can sleep on the couch.” She shrugged. “Or sleep in the master bedroom if you want. Nobody else does.”
The bitter tone was loud and clear, and it surprised him.
“Where do you sleep?” he asked her.
“In the guest room.” Her smile was bittersweet. “That’s why you can’t use it.”
He remembered glancing in at the master bedroom when he was upstairs. It looked like it had always looked. She and Brad had shared that bed. He looked back at her and didn’t say a word.
She didn’t offer an explanation, but he knew what it was. She couldn’t sleep in that bed now that Brad had abandoned it.
He nodded. “I’ll take the couch.”
She hesitated. “The only problem with that is, I’ll be getting up about four in the morning. I’ll probably wake you.”
“Four in the morning? Planning a rendezvous with the milkman?”
“No, silly. I’ve got to start warming the ovens and mixing my batter.” She yawned, reminding him of a sleepy kitten. “I’ve got a day full of large orders to fill tomorrow. One of my busiest days ever.” She smiled again. “And hopefully, a sign of success. I sure need it.”
“Great.”
“Wait here a second. I think I’ve got something you can use.”
She left the room and was back in moments, carrying a set of dark blue men’s pajamas.
He recoiled at the sight. “Brad’s?” he said.
“Not really.” She threw them down in his lap. “I bought them for Brad but he never even saw them. That was just days before he sent you to tell me we were through.”
“Oh.” That was okay, then. He looked at them, setting aside the top and reserving the pants for when he was ready for bed. Meanwhile, she was rummaging through a linen closet and bringing out a sheet and a light blanket. That made her look domestic in ways he hadn’t remembered. He thought about how she’d looked with Timmy in her arms.
“Hey,” he said gently. “That’s a pair of great little boys you’ve got there.”
She melted immediately. “Aren’t they adorable? But so bad!”
“I’ll bet they keep you busy every hour of the day.”
She nodded. “It’s not easy running a business from home when I’ve got those two getting more and more mischievous.” She sighed and sat back down. “Can you believe they were locking doors? I had no idea they knew what a lock was.”
“Time to dismantle some and add extra keys for others,” he suggested.
“Yes. And keep my eyes on them every minute.”
“Can’t you hire a daytime babysitter?”
“Yeah, hiring a babysitter really works out well, doesn’t it?” She shook her head. “Actually Trini, my bakery assistant, helps a lot. She doubles as a babysitter when I need her to, and does everything else the rest of the time. And then, Sara comes by and helps when she has a free moment or two.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “We manage.”
He resisted the impulse to reach out and brush back the lock of hair that was bouncing over her eyebrow. The gesture seemed a little too intimate as they sat here, alone in the dim light so late at night.
But Jill didn’t seem to have the same reservations he harbored. She reached out and took his hand in hers, startling him. Then she gazed deep into his eyes for a moment before she spoke. His pulse began to quicken. He wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, but he knew he couldn’t deny her much.
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Raye Morgan
When bona fide playboy Connor McNair watched his best friend marry Jill Darling, he never expected a second chance with the girl who got away.Now she’s a single mother and he’s back to persuade her to give up her pastry company. It’s just business…until Jill’s sweet smile has Connor thinking about fatherhood and forever. But that’s against all the rules…
THE SINGLE MOM DIARIES:
First comes baby, then comes happily-ever-after.
The Darling sisters, both single moms, have always supported each other through the ups and downs of life and love. But they’ll need each other’s advice more than ever when the possibility of true love comes knocking!
Playboy Connor McNair thinks life behind a picket fence isn’t his speed—until Jill Darling, the girl he secretly loves, traps him with kisses and Bundt cake. How can he turn away from the woman he’s always wanted and her twin baby boys?
Don’t miss:
A DADDY FOR HER SONS
Sara Darling’s joy at adopting her deceased half-sister’s baby turns into a bad dream when she realises that the rough, handsome man she’s just met has come to claim that same child. Could a marriage of convenience with Sara be exactly the medicine the tortured Jake Martin needs?
Find out in
MARRIAGE FOR HER BABY
Dear Reader,
This story is about a woman who bakes such lovely Bundt cakes she’s hoping to build a business on it. What a fun way to make a living! Personally, I’m pretty much a disaster in the baking department, but I do have one favorite Bundt cake that makes friends ooh and aah. Hope it works for you!
Measurements are according to US custom. I grew up with Dutch cookbooks, but converting recipes to metrics is just too risky for me. Sorry!
Chocolate Overload Bundt Cake
1 package chocolate cake mix
1 small package instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
¼ cup cold coffee
¼ cup water
12 ounces fine-quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat eggs until well mixed, add sour cream, then water and coffee, and mix thoroughly. Add cake mix, beating in slowly, then the pudding. Mix the same way. When smooth, fold in chocolate chips and pour it all into a prepared Bundt pan.
Bake for about one hour. Test with pick and take out when pick comes clean. Cool, but glaze while still somewhat warm.
Rum Glaze (a chocolate or coffee glaze will do as well)
Mix together in a saucepan:
½ cup butter
1 cup white sugar
¼ cup white rum
¼ cup water
Bring to boil and simmer for 2 minutes, then pour over warm cake that has been poked all over with a toothpick.
You don’t want to think about the calories, carbs and fat per slice. If you let that bother you, you wouldn’t bake this in the first place!
Eating Bundt cake goes perfectly with reading romances! Enjoy!
Raye Morgan
About the Author
RAYE MORGAN has been a nursery school teacher, a travel agent, a clerk and a business editor, but her best job ever has been writing romances—and fostering romance in her own family at the same time. Current score: two boys married, two more to go. Raye has published more than seventy romance novels, and claims to have many more waiting in the wings. She lives in Southern California, with her husband and whichever son happens to be staying at home at the moment.
A Daddy
for Her Sons
Raye Morgan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is dedicated to Lauri, for everything wonderful
that comes out of her oven!
CHAPTER ONE
A NIGHTMARE. That was what this had to be. She must be dreaming. But what had she expected from a blind date?
Jill Darling was no shy innocent, but her face was blazing. She could feel it. The man was trying to … Ugh, it was just too creepy to even try to name what he was doing. She couldn’t really be sure unless she took a look under the table. And that would cause a scene. She couldn’t do that. She knew people in this restaurant.
But … was that really his foot sliding up and down her leg?
He was leaning close, talking on and on, his breath hot on her neck. Okay, maybe that was all in the game. But what the heck was that foot doing?
She tried to move away, but she was trapped, huddled right up against the edge of the planter that sat right beside their table, tickling her nose with its palm fronds. They were eating in the restaurant of the nicest hotel in this part of town. It had Irish linen tablecloths, real sterling silverware and a small combo playing for dancers on a tiny dance floor to the side.
She took a long drink from her water glass, then looked over at him. She tried to smile, but she knew it was wobbly and pretty darn unconvincing if he should happen to actually notice it.
Karl Attkins was his name. Her friend’s brother. He was good looking enough, but somehow cold, as though she could have been anyone with an “available female” label stamped on her forehead. Should she ask him about the foot? And maybe warn him not to lose sight of his shoe. It wouldn’t be easy to replace that here in this crowded restaurant.
Oh, Lord, he was using his toes now. She was going to have to say something. If she didn’t, her nice steak dinner just might come back up. And all that wine she drank, trying to keep busy. This just wasn’t cool. She took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to say it without being insulting.
But then he gave her the out she needed.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow as though he knew she must consider him quite debonair.
Dance. No, not at all. But she steeled herself to the effort. Dancing ought to give him a reason to put his shoe back on, and if so, it would all be worth it.
“Sure,” she said breathlessly. “Why not?”
Well, the fact that they were playing a tango at that very moment might have been a reason to sit this one out. But it hardly mattered. At least the man was shod once more. She tried to keep the electric smile painted on her face as he led her to the proper position. And then she glanced at her watch and wondered how much longer she was going to have to endure this torture. She had to put in a good chunk of time or the friends who’d got her into this wouldn’t believe she’d really tried.
Oh, Mary Ellen, she groaned silently as Karl pushed her to and fro dramatically across the dancing floor, leaving her to lunge about like a puppet with its strings cut. I love you dearly, but this is just too high a price to pay for your friendship.
“But, Jill,” all her friends had counseled solemnly, “you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to get back into the swim of things. It’s been over a year since Brad … well, since you’ve been alone.” The timing had helped make her receptive. Changes were making her feel vulnerable. Her sister was probably moving away, and her younger half-sister had recently died. Loneliness was looming large in her life. “Time is streaking by,” another friend lectured. “Don’t let it leave you behind. Don’t be a coward. Get out there and fight!”
Fight? For what?
“A man, of course,” said Mary Ellen. “Once you hit your age, they don’t come a dime a dozen any more. You’ve got competition.”
“But, what if I …?”
“No! You can’t give up!” her friend Crystal had chimed in. “Your kids need a father figure in the home.”
Mary Ellen had fixed her with a steely stare. “And you want to show old Brad, don’t you?”
Show old Brad. The need to do just that surged in her. Of course she wanted to show old Brad. Sure. She would date. If he could do it, so could she. Stand back. She was ready for the challenge.
But where would she find someone to date? Mary Ellen knew just the man for her.
“My brother Karl is a real player,” she said airily. “He’ll get you back into the swing of things in no time. He has so many friends. You’ll be dating like crazy before you know it.”
Dating. She remembered dating. The way your heart raced as you waited for him to come to the door, the shy pauses, the way your eyes met his and then looked quickly away. Would he kiss you on the doorstep? Were you really going to let him?
Fun!
But that was then. This was a completely different thing, seemingly from a galaxy far, far away. She was older now. She’d been married and she had two kids. She knew how things worked. She could handle it. Or so she thought.
No. This was a nightmare.
At least her dress was pretty, and she didn’t get many chances to wear something like this anymore. A sleek shift dress in teal-blue, it was covered with sequins and glistened as she walked, making her feel sexy and pretty and nice. Too bad she was wasting that on a man who spent more time looking at himself in the mirror than she did.
The tango was over. She turned back toward the table in relief, but Karl grabbed her free hand and twirled her around to face him. The band was playing a cha cha. He grinned. “Hey mambo!” he cried out and began to sway. He seemed to consider himself quite the ballroom dancer, even if he couldn’t tell one Latin dance from another.
Jill had a decision to make. Would she rather dance, or go back to playing footsie? She wasn’t sure she knew how to cha cha. But she knew she didn’t want to feel that foot on her leg again.
What the hell.
“Everybody loves to cha-cha-cha,” she murmured as she let him twirl her again.
And then she looked up and saw Connor McNair staring at her in horror.
Her blood ran cold. She was still moving, but no one could accuse her of dancing at this point. The music didn’t mean a thing.
Connor. Oh, no.
First, it appalled her to think that anyone she knew might see her here like this. But close on that thought came the shock question—was Brad with him?
No. She glanced around quickly and didn’t see any sign of her ex-husband at all. Thank heaven for small blessings. Connor must have come to town and was staying here at the hotel—alone. But still, it was Connor, Brad’s best friend, the one person most likely to report to him. She could hardly stand it.
He was mouthing something to her. She squinted, trying to make it out. What was he trying to say?
She couldn’t tell, but he was coming out onto the dance floor. Why? She looked around, feeling wild, wanting to run. What was he going to do?
“May I cut in?” he asked Karl.
He was polite, but unsmiling, and Karl didn’t seem to be in a friendly mood.
“What? No. Go get your own girl,” Karl told him, frowning fiercely. And just to prove his point, he grabbed Jill and pulled her close.
She looked over his shoulder at Connor. He offered a safe harbor of sorts, but there was danger there, too. She didn’t want to talk to Connor. She didn’t want to have anyone close to Brad anywhere near. The pain of Brad’s desertion still ached inside her like an open wound and she didn’t want anyone from his side of the rift to see her like this—much less talk to her.
So she glared at Connor. Let him know she didn’t need him or his rescue. She was doing fine. She was here enjoying herself. Sort of.
She got back to dancing, swaying her hips, making her sequins sparkle, and trying hard to smile at Karl. Let Connor see that she was having the time of her life. Let him take that bit of news back to Brad, if that was what he was after.
“Mambo!” she cried out, echoing Karl. Why the heck not?
Connor gave her a look of disbelief as he stepped back to the sidelines, but he didn’t leave. The next dance was a simple two-step, but that meant Karl’s arms around her again, and she couldn’t disguise the shudder that gave her.
And there was Connor, taking in every nuance. She glowered at him. He was very handsome in his crisp white shirt with the dark slacks that looked tailor-made. But that was beside the point. Didn’t he have a table to go to? What gave him the right to stand there and watch her? Biting her lip, she tried to keep him out of her line of vision and blot him out of her head.
But then he was back, right at Karl’s elbow again, stopping them in their tracks.
“Excuse me,” he said, looking very serious. “Listen, do you have a silver BMW in the parking lot?”
Karl blinked. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he couldn’t resist the question. “Why, yes I do. What about it?”
Connor’s brows came together in a look of sorrow. “I’m afraid your car’s on fire.”
Karl dropped Jill like a hot potato and whirled to face Connor. “What?” he cried, anguish contorting his face.
Connor was all sympathy. “I think they’ve called the fire department, but you might want to get out there and …”
No more words were necessary. He was already gone.
Connor took Jill by the arm, looking annoyed when she balked and tried to pull away.
“Come on,” he said impatiently. “I know a back way out.”
Jill shook her head, not sure what he thought he was doing here. “But … I can’t just leave.”
Connor looked down at her and suddenly grinned, startling her. She’d forgotten how endearing he could be and she stared up at him. It was like finding a beloved forgotten toy in the attic. Affection for him trembled on the edge of her mood, but she batted it back.
“Why not?” he said. “Do you want to spend the next two hours with the guy?”
She tried to appear stern. She wanted to deny what he was implying. How could she go? What would she say to her friends? What would she tell Mary Ellen?
But in the end, his familiar grin did her in. “I’d rather eat dirt,” she admitted, crumbling before him.
“There you go.” He led her gently across the dance floor, only hesitating while she scooped up her sparkly little purse. They headed for the exit and he winked at a waiter who was holding the door for them, obviously primed to help with the escape. He paused only long enough to hand the man some folded money and then they were out the door.
“But what about his car?” Jill asked, worrying a bit. She knew the sense of guilt would linger long after the evening was gone. “He loves that car.”
“Don’t give it a second thought,” he advised, steering her toward his own souped-up, twenty-year-old Camaro, a car she remembered from the past, and pulling open the passenger door.
“His car isn’t really on fire, is it?” she asked as she plunked down into the leather seat.
“No.” He sank into the driver’s seat and grinned at her again. “Look, I’ll do a lot for an old friend, but setting a guy’s car on fire … no, that’s a step too far.”
She watched him start the engine and turn toward the back exit.
“But you will lie to him about it,” she noted.
“Oh, yeah.”
She sighed and settled back into the seat. All in all, at least she didn’t have a naked foot exploring her leg at the moment. That alone was worth its weight in gold.
“Rickey’s on the Bay?” he asked in the shorthand they both remembered from earlier years.
“Of course,” she responded without thinking. That was where everyone always went when the night was still young enough to make the last ferry to the island. She turned and looked at the lights of Seattle in the distance. If only you could go back in time as easily as you could go back to the places where you hung out in your youth.
“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this,” she said with a sigh.
“I can’t believe you needed me to do it.”
She laughed. “Touché,” she muttered. So much for the great date that was supposed to bring her out of her shell and into the social whirl.
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked it.
“What are you doing?” Connor asked with just a hint of suspicion in his tone.
She glanced up at him and smiled impishly. “Waiting for Karl to call. I’ve got to explain this to him somehow.”
He shuddered. “Is Karl the mambo king?” he asked.
She gave him a baleful look.
“Don’t worry. I gave the waiter a little money to tell old Karl what the score was.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And just what is the score, pray tell?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “I told him to tell Karl I was a made guy from the mob and we didn’t take kindly to outsiders poaching on our women.”
“What?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. Definitely corny. But it was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment.”
She had to hold back her laughter. He didn’t deserve it.
“I didn’t even know you were Italian.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” He gave her a mocking wink. “A lot of things you don’t want to know.”
“Obviously.”
She frowned, thinking the situation over. “So now you’ve single-handedly destroyed my chances of dating anyone ever again in this town. Thanks a lot.”
“I’m just looking out for you, sweetheart.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was biting back a grin.
Rickey’s was as flamboyant as a fifties retro diner should be, with bright turquoise upholstery and jukeboxes at every table. They walked in as though they ought to see a lot of old friends there, but no one looked the least bit familiar.
“We’re old,” he whispered in her ear as he led her to a booth along the side with windows on the marina. “Everyone we used to hang out with is gone.”
“So why are we still here?” she asked, a bit grumpy about it. This was where so much of her life had played out in the old days. And now, the waitresses didn’t know her and the faces all looked unfamiliar.
“Lost souls, searching for the meaning of life,” he said, smiling at her across the linoleum-covered table. His smile looked wistful this time, unlike the cheerful grin from before.
“The meaning of life is clear enough,” she protested. After all, hadn’t everyone been lecturing her on it for months? “Get on with things. Make the world a better place. Face reality and deal with it. Or something along those lines.”
He shrugged. “Sounds nice, until you start analyzing definitions. What exactly does ‘better’ mean? Better for whom? How do you get the whole world involved, anyway?”
She made a face at him. “You always were the great contrarian,” she said accusingly. “And now I’ve let you kidnap me. Someone should call the police.”
The waitress, a pretty young girl in a poodle skirt who’d just arrived at their table blanched and took a step backward.
“No, no,” Jill told her quickly. “I’m only joking. Please don’t take me seriously. Ever.”
The waitress blinked rapidly, but risked a step closer in to take their order. She didn’t hang around to chat, however.
“You scared her,” Connor suggested as she hurried away.
“I scare everyone lately,” Jill admitted. “What do you think? Am I too intense? Are my eyes a little wild?”
He looked at her uncertainly, not sure if the truth would be accepted in the spirit he would mean it. His gaze skimmed over her pretty face. She had new lines between the brows, a new hint of worry in her eyes. Her hands were clenched around her water glass, as though she were holding on to a life preserver. Tense was hardly a strong enough word. His heart broke just a little bit. What had happened to his carefree girl?
But that was just it. She wasn’t “his,” never had been.
He knew she’d been through a lot since Brad had left her. She had a right to a few ragged edges. But when you came right down to it, she was as beautiful as she’d ever been. Her golden hair sprang into curls in an untamed mass all around her head. Her dark eyes were still warm, her lips were still full and sexy. Still gorgeous after all these years.
And looking at her still sent him over the moon. It happened every time. She was like a substance he had to be careful he didn’t mess with, knowing it would be too dangerous to overdose.
But he could see a difference in her and silently he swore at himself. Why had he stayed away so long? She probably could have used a friend. She’d lost her young girl sparkle and he regretted it. He loved that sparkle.
But now he frowned, studying her face as though he was worried about what he found there. “How are you doing, Jill?” he asked her quietly. “I mean really. How’ve you been?”
She sat back and really looked at him for the first time, a quiver of fear in her heart. This was what she really wanted to avoid. Silly banter was so much safer than going for truth.
She studied his handsome face, his crystal-blue eyes sparking diamond-like radiant light from between those inky black eyelashes that seemed too impossibly long. It had been over a year since she’d seen him last and he didn’t seem quite so much like a kid living in a frat house anymore.
He’d always been such a contrast to Brad, like a younger brother who didn’t want to grow up. Brad was the serious one, the ambitious one, the idea man who had the drive to follow through. Connor was more likely to be trying to make a flight to catch a party in Malibu or volunteering to crew on a sailing trip to Tahiti. Brad was a man you could count on. Connor—not so much.
Only that had turned out to be a lie, hadn’t it? It was hard to trust anything much anymore once the man you’d considered your rock had melted away and wasn’t there for you anymore.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then gave him a dazzling smile. “I’ve been great,” she said breezily. “Life is good. The twins are healthy and my business is actually starting to make a profit, so we’re good.”
He didn’t believe her. He’d known her too long to accept the changed woman she’d become. She’d always been careful—the responsible sort—but she’d also had a sense of fun, of carefree abandon. Instead, her eyes, her tone, her nervous movements, all displayed a wary tension, as though she was always looking over her shoulder to see what disaster might be gaining on her now.
“So good that you felt it was time to venture out into the dating world again, huh?” he noted, being careful to smile as he said it.
“Why not? I need to move on. I need to … to …” She couldn’t remember exactly what the argument was, though she’d heard it enough from her friends lately. Something about broadening her horizons. Something about reigniting her womanly instincts. She looked at Connor as though she might read the words in his eyes, but they just weren’t there.
“So who talked you into that fiasco tonight?” he asked her.
She frowned at him. “It was a blind date.”
“No kidding. Even you wouldn’t be nutty enough to go out with that guy voluntarily.”
“Even me?” His words stung. What did he think of her, anyway? Her eyes flashed. “Just how nutty am I, Connor?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand, gazing at her earnestly. “Will you stop? Please?”
She glanced back, her bottom lip trembling. Deep breaths. That was what she needed. And no matter what, she wasn’t going to cry.
“So where have you been all this time?” she asked, wishing it didn’t sound quite so petulant.
“All what time?” he said evasively.
“The year and a half since I last saw you.”
Her gaze met his and skittered away again. She knew he was thinking about exactly what she was thinking about—that last time had been the day Brad left her. Neither one of them wanted to remember that day, much less talk about it. She grimaced and played with her spoon. The waitress brought their order so it was a moment or two before they spoke again.
“So you said your business is doing okay?” he noted as he spread his napkin on his lap.
“Yes.” She stared down at the small dish of ice cream she’d ordered and realized she wasn’t going to be able to eat any of it. Her throat felt raw and tight. Too bad. It looked creamy and delicious.
He nodded, reaching for a fork. It was pretty clear he wasn’t going to have any problem at all. “What business?”
She blinked at him. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t Brad tell you?”
He shook his head and avoided saying anything about Brad.
She waited a moment, then sighed. “Okay. When Brad left, he took the electronics business we had developed together. And told me I might as well go out and get a job once the babies were born.”
He cringed. That was enough to set your teeth on edge, no matter who you were.
She met his gaze with a touch of defiance in her own. “But I gave birth to two little boys and looked at them and knew there was no way I was handing them over to someone else to raise for me. So I racked my brain, trying to find something I could do at home and still take care of them.”
He nodded. That seemed the resourceful thing to do. Good for her. “So what did you decide on?”
She shrugged. “The only thing I was ever really good at. I started a Bundt Cake Bakery.”
He nodded, waiting. There had to be more. Who could make a living baking Bundt cakes? “And?”
“And that’s what I’m doing.”
“Oh.” He frowned, puzzled. “Great.”
“It is great,” she said defensively. She could hear the skepticism in his voice. “It was touch and go for a long time, but now I think I’m finally hitting my stride.”
He nodded again, wishing he could rustle up some enthusiasm, but failing on all fronts. “Okay.”
The product Jill and Brad had developed together had been a bit different from baked goods and he was having a hard time understanding the connection. Jill had done the bookkeeping and the marketing for the business. Brad had been the electronic genius. And Connor had done some work with them, too. They’d been successful from the first.
With that kind of background, he couldn’t imagine how the profits from cakes could compare to what they’d made on the GPS device for hikers to be used as a map App. It had been new and fresh and sold very well. He wasn’t sure what he could say.
He looked up across the restaurant, caught sight of someone coming in the door and he sighed. “You know how legend has it that everyone stops in at Rickey’s on a Saturday night?”
Her eyes widened warily. “Sure.”
“I guess it’s true.” He made a gesture with his head. “Look who just walked in. Mr. Mambo himself.”
She gasped and whirled in her seat. Sure enough, there was Karl starting in their direction. He was coming through the restaurant as though he thought he owned the place, giving all the girls the eye. He caught sight of her and his eyes lit up.
Her heart fell. “Oh, no!”
CHAPTER TWO
AND THEN, KARL’S jaunty gaze fell on Connor and he stopped dead, visibly paling. Shaking his head, he raised his hands and he seemed to be muttering, “no, no,” over and over again, as though to tell Connor he really didn’t mean it. Turning on his heel, he left so quickly, Jill could almost believe she’d been imagining things.
“Wow.” She turned back slowly and looked at Connor accusingly. “I guess he believed your cockeyed story.” She put a hand to her forehead as though tragedy had struck. “Once he spreads the word, my dating days are done.”
“Good,” Connor said, beginning to attack his huge piece of cherry pie à la mode. “No point wasting your time on losers like that.”
She made a face and leaned toward him sadly. “Are they all like that? Is it really hopeless?”
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “Erase all thoughts of other men. I’m here. You don’t need anybody else.”
“Right.” She rolled her eyes, knowing he was teasing. “You’d think I would have learned my lesson with Brad, wouldn’t you?”
There was a catch in her voice as she said it. He looked up quickly and she knew he was afraid she might cry. But she didn’t cry about that anymore. She was all cried out long ago on that subject.
Did he remember what a fool she’d been? How even with all the evidence piling up in her daily life, she’d never seen it coming. At the time she was almost eight months pregnant with the twins and having a hard time even walking, much less with thinking straight. And Connor had come to tell her that Brad was leaving her.
Brad had sent him, of course. The jerk couldn’t even manage to face her and tell her himself.
That made her think twice. Here was Connor, back again. What was Brad afraid to tell her now?
She watched him, frowning, studying his blue eyes. Did she really want to know? All those months, all the heartbreak. Still, if it was something she needed to deal with, better get it over with. She took a deep breath and tried to sound strong and cool.
“So what does he want this time?”
Connor’s head jerked back as though what she was asking was out of line. He waved his fork at her. “Do you think we could first go through some of the niceties our society has set up for situations like this?” he asked her.
She searched his face to see if he was mocking her, but he really wasn’t. He was just uncomfortable.
“How about, ‘How have you been?’ or ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Why not give me some of the details of your life these days. Do we have to jump right into contentious things so quickly?”
So it wasn’t good. She should have known. “You’re the messenger, not me.”
His handsome face winced. It almost seemed as though this pained him more than it was going to pain her. Fat chance.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asked her.
Were they? She used to think so. “Sure. We always have been.”
“So …”
He looked relieved, as though that made it all okay. But it wasn’t okay. Whatever it was, it was going to hurt. She knew that instinctively. She leaned forward and glared at him.
“But you’re on his side. Don’t deny it.”
He shook his head, denying it anyway. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “That day, the one that ended life as I knew it, you came over to deliver the fatal blow. You set me straight as to how things really were.” Her voice hardened. “You were the one who explained Brad to me at the time. You broke my heart and then you left me lying there in the dirt and you never came back.”
“You were not lying in the dirt.” He seemed outraged at the concept.
She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “It’s a metaphor, silly.”
“I don’t care what it is. I did not leave you lying in the dirt or even in the sand, or on the couch, or anything. You were standing straight and tall and making jokes, just like always.”
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to relax a bit. “You seemed calm and collected and fine with it. Like you’d known it was coming. Like you were prepared. Sad, but okay.” He shook his head, willing her to believe what he was saying. “Or else I never would have left you alone.”
She shrugged carelessly. How could he have gotten it all so wrong? “And you think you know me.”
He pushed away the pie, searching her eyes, looking truly distressed. “Sara was with you. Your sister. I thought …”
He looked away, frowning fiercely. He remembered what he’d thought. He’d seen the pain in her face and it had taken everything in him not to reach out and gather her in his arms and kiss her until she realized … until she knew … No, he’d had to get out of there before he did something stupid. And that was why he left her. He had his own private hell to tend to.
“You thought I was okay? Wow.” She struck a pose and put on an accent. “The corpse was bleeding profusely, but I assumed it would stop on its own. She seemed to be coping quite well with her murder.”
He grimaced, shaking his head.
“I hated you for a while,” she admitted. “It was easier than hating Brad. What Brad had done to me was just too confusing. What you did was common, everyday cowardice.”
He stared at her, aghast. “Oh, thanks.”
“And to make it worse, you never did come back. Did you?”
He shook his head as though he really couldn’t understand why she was angry. He hadn’t done anything to make her that way. He’d just lived his life like he always did, following the latest impulse that moved him. Didn’t she know that?
“I was gone. I left the country. I … I had a friend starting up a business in Singapore, so I went to help him out.”
She looked skeptical and deep, deep down, she looked hurt. “All this time?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, feeling a bit defensive. “I’ve been out of the country all this time.”
Funny, but that made her feel a lot better. At least he hadn’t been coming up here to Seattle and never contacting her.
“So you haven’t been to see Brad?”
He hesitated. He couldn’t lie to her. “I stopped in to see Brad in Portland last week,” he admitted.
She threw up her hands. “See? You’re on his side.”
He wanted to growl at her. “I’m not on anybody’s side. I’ve been friends with both of you since that first week of college, when we all three camped out in Brad’s car together.”
The corners of Jill’s mouth quirked into a reluctant smile as she remembered. “What a night that was,” she said lightly. “They’d lost my housing forms and you hadn’t been admitted yet. We had no place to sleep.”
“So Brad offered his car.”
“And stayed out with us.”
“We talked and laughed the whole night.”
She nodded, remembering. “And that cemented it. We were best buds from that night on.”
Connor smiled, but looked away. He remembered meeting Jill in the administration office while they both tried to fight the bureaucracy. He’d thought she was the cutest coed on campus, right from the start. And then Brad showed up and swept her off her feet.
“We fought the law and the law won,” he noted cynically.
“Right.” She laughed softly, still remembering. “You with that crazy book of rules you were always studying on how to make professors fall in love with you so they’d give you good grades.”
He sighed. “That never worked. And it should have, darn it all.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked back into the past a little deeper. “And all those insane jobs you took, trying to pay off your fees. I never understood when you had time to study.”
“I slept with a tape recorder going,” he said with a casual shrug. “Subliminal learning. Without it, I would have flunked out early on.”
She stared at him, willing him to smile and admit he’d made that up, but he stuck to his guns.
“No, really. I learned French that way.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Parlez-vous francais?”
“Uh … whatever.” He looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t say I retained any of it beyond test day.”
“Right.” She laughed at him and he grinned back.
But she knew they were ignoring the elephant in the room. Brad. Brad who had been with them both all through college. Brad who had decided she was his from the start. And what Brad wanted, Brad usually got. She’d been flattered by his attention, then thrilled with it. And soon, she’d fallen hard. She was so in love with him, she knew he was her destiny. She let him take over her life. She didn’t realize he would toss it aside when he got tired of it.
“So what are you doing here?” she asked again. “Surely you didn’t come to see me.”
“Jill, I always want to see you.”
“No kidding. That’s why you’ve been gone for a year and a half. You’ve never even met the twins.”
He looked at her with a half smile. Funny. She’d been pregnant the last time he’d seen her, but that wasn’t the way he’d thought of her all these months. And to tell the truth, Brad had never mentioned those babies. “That’s right. I forgot. You’ve got a couple of cookie crunchers now, don’t you?”
“I do. The little lights of my life, so to speak.”
“Boys.”
“Boys.” She nodded.
He wanted to ask how they got along with Brad, but he wasn’t brave enough to do it. Besides, it was getting late. She had a pair of baby boys at home. She looked at her watch, then looked at him.
“I’ve got to get home. If you can just drop me at the dock, the last ferry goes at midnight and …”
He waved away her suggestion. “You will not walk home from the ferry landing. It’s too late and too far.”
She made a face. “I’ll be fine. I’ve done it a thousand times.”
“I’ll drive you.”
She gave him a mock glare. “Well, then we’d better get going or you won’t make the last ferry back.”
“You let me worry about that.”
Let him worry—let him manage—leave it to him. Something inside her yearned to be able to do that. It had been so long since she’d had anyone else to rely on. But life had taught her a hard lesson. If you relied on others, they could really hurt you. Best to rely on nobody but yourself.
The ferry ride across the bay to the island was always fun. He pulled the car into the proper space on the ferry and they both got out to enjoy the trip. Standing side by side as the ferry started off, they watched the inky-black water part to let them through.
Jill pulled her arms in close, fending off the ocean coolness, and he reached out and put an arm around her, keeping her warm. She rested her head on his shoulder. He had to resist the urge to draw her closer.
“Hey, I’m looking forward to meeting those two little boys of yours,” he said.
“Hopefully you won’t meet them tonight,” she said, laughing. “I’ve got a nice older lady looking after them. They should be sound asleep right now.”
“It’s amazing to think of you with children,” he said.
She nodded. “I know. You’re not the only one stunned by the transformation.” She smiled, thinking of how they really had changed her life. If only Brad … No, she wasn’t going to start going back over those old saws again. That way lay madness.
“It’s also amazing to think of how long we’ve known each other,” she added brightly instead.
“We all three got close in our freshman year,” he agreed, “and that lasted all through college.”
She nodded. “It seemed, those first couple of years, we did everything together.”
“I remember it well.” He sighed and glanced down at her. All he could see was that mop of crazy, curly blond hair. It always made him smile. “You were sighing over Brad,” he added to the memory trail. “And I was wishing you would look my way instead.”
She looked up and made a face at him. “Be serious. You had no time for stodgy, conventional girls like I was. You were always after the high flyers.”
He stared at her, offended despite the fact that there was some truth in what she said. “I was not,” he protested anyway.
“Sure you were.” She was teasing him now. “You liked bad girls. Edgy girls. The ones who ran off with the band.”
His faint smile admitted the truth. “Only when I was in the band.”
“And that was most of the time.” She pulled back and looked at him. “Did you ever actually get a degree?”
“Of course I got a degree.”
She giggled. “In what? Multicultural dating?”
He bit back the sharp retort that surfaced in his throat. She really didn’t know. But why should she? He had to admit he’d spent years working hard at seeming to be a slacker.
“Something like that,” he muttered, thinking with a touch of annoyance about his engineering degree with a magna cum laude attached. No one had been closer friends to him than Brad and Jill. And they didn’t even realize he was smarter than he seemed.
It was his own fault of course. He’d worked on that easygoing image. Still, it stung a bit.
And it made him do a bit of “what if?” thinking. What if he’d been more aggressive making his own case? What if he’d challenged Brad’s place in Jill’s heart at the time? What if he’d competed instead of accepting their romance as an established fact? Would things have been different?
The spray from the water splashed across his face, jerking him awake from his dream. Turning toward the island, he could see her house up the drive a block from the landing. He’d been there a hundred times before, but not for quite a while. Not since the twins were born and Brad decided he wasn’t fatherhood material. Connor had listened to what Brad had to say and it had caused a major conflict for him. He thought Brad’s reasons were hateful and he deplored them, but at the same time, he’d seen them together for too long to have any illusions. They didn’t belong together. Getting a divorce was probably the best thing Brad could do for Jill. So he’d gone with his message, he’d done his part and hated it and then he’d headed for Singapore.
He turned to look at her, to watch the way the wind blew her hair over her eyes, and that old familiar pull began somewhere in the middle of his chest. It started slow and then began to build, as though it was slowly finding its way through his bloodstream. He wanted her, wanted to hold her and kiss her and tell her.… He gritted his teeth and turned away. He had to fight that feeling. Funny. He never got it with any other girl. It only happened with her. Damn.
A flash of panic shivered through him. What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He’d thought he was prepared for this. Hardened. Toughened and ready to avoid the tender trap that was always Jill. But his defenses were fading fast. He had to get out of here.
He needed a plan. Obviously playing this by ear wasn’t going to work. The first thing he had to do was to get her home, safe and sound. That should be easy. Then he had to avoid getting out of the car. Under no circumstances should he go into the house, especially not to take a peek at the babies. That would tie him up in a web of sentiment and leave him raw and vulnerable to his feelings. He couldn’t afford to do that. At all costs, he had to stay strong and leave right away.
He could come back and talk to her in the morning. If he hung around, disaster was inevitable. He couldn’t let that happen.
“You know what?” he said, trying to sound light and casual. “I think you really had the right idea about this. I need to get back to the hotel. I think I’ll take the ferry right on back and let you walk up the hill on your own. It’s super safe here, isn’t it? I mean …”
He felt bad about it, but it had to be done. He couldn’t go home with her. Wouldn’t be prudent, as someone once had famously said.
But he realized she wasn’t listening to him. She was staring, mouth open, over his shoulder at the island they were fast approaching.
“What in the world is going on? My house is lit up like a Christmas tree.”
He turned. She was right. Every window was ablaze with light. It was almost midnight. Somehow, this didn’t seem right.
And then a strange thing happened. As they watched, something came flying out of the upstairs window, sailed through the air and landed on the roof next door.
Jill gasped, rigid with shock. “Was that the cat?” she cried. “Oh, my God!”
She tried to pull away from him as though she was about to jump into the water and swim for shore, but he yanked her back. “Come on,” he said urgently, pulling her toward the Camaro. “We’ll get there faster in the car.”
CHAPTER THREE
JILL’S HEART WAS racing. She couldn’t think. She could hardly breathe. Adrenaline surged and she almost blacked out with it.
“Oh, please,” she muttered over and over as they raced toward the house. “Oh, please, oh, please!”
He swung the car into the driveway and she jumped out before he even came to a stop, running for the door.
“Timmy?” she called out. “Tanner?”
Connor was right behind her as she threw open the front door and raced inside.
“Mrs. Mulberry?” she called out as she ran. “Mrs. Mulberry!”
A slight, gray-haired woman appeared on the stairway from the second floor with a look close to terror on her face. “Oh, thank God you’re finally here! I tried to call you but my hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t use the cell phone.”
“What is it?” Jill grabbed her by the shoulders, staring down into her face. “What’s happened? Where are the boys?”
“I tried, I really tried, but … but …”
“Mrs. Mulberry! What?”
Her face crumpled and she wailed, “They locked me out. I couldn’t get to them. I didn’t know what to do.…”
“What do you mean they’ve locked you out? Where? When?”
“They got out of their cribs and locked the door. I couldn’t …”
Jill started up the stairs, but Connor took them two at a time and beat her to the landing and then the door. He yanked at the handle but it didn’t budge.
“Timmy? Tanner? Are you okay?” Jill’s voice quavered as she pressed her ear to the door. There was no response.
“There’s a key,” she said, turning wildly, trying to remember where she’d put it. “I know there’s a key.”
Connor pushed her aside. “No time,” he said, giving the door a wicked kick right next to where the lever sat. There was a crunch of wood breaking and the door flew open.
A scene of chaos and destruction was revealed. A lamp was upside down on the floor, along with pillows and books and a tumbled table and chair set. Toys were everywhere, most of them covered with baby powder that someone had been squirting out of the container. And on the other side of the room were two little blond boys, crowding into a window they could barely reach. They saw the adults coming for them, looked at each other and shrieked—and then they very quickly shoved one fat fluffy pillow and then one large plastic game of Hungry Hungry Hippos over the sill. The hippos could be heard hitting the bricks of the patio below.
“What are you doing?” Jill cried, dashing in as one child reached for a small music toy. She grabbed him, swung him up in her arms and held him close.
“You are such a bad boy!” she said, but she was laughing with relief at the same time. They seemed to be okay. No broken bones. No blood. No dead cat.
Connor pulled up the other boy with one arm while he slammed the window shut with the other. He looked at Jill and shook his head. “Wow,” was all he could say. Then he thought of something else. “Oh. Sorry about the door. I thought …”
“You thought right,” she said, flashing him a look of pure relief and happiness. Her babies were safe and right now that was all that mattered to her. “I would have had a heart attack if I’d had to wait any longer.”
Mrs. Mulberry was blubbering behind them and they both turned, each carrying a child, to stare at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she was saying tearfully. “But when they locked me out …”
“Okay, start at the beginning,” Jill told her, trying to keep her temper in check and hush her baby, who was saying, “Mamamama” over and over in her ear. “What exactly happened?”
The older woman sniffled and put a handkerchief to her nose. “I … I don’t really know. It all began so well. They were perfect angels.”
She smiled at them tearfully and they grinned back at her. Jill shook her head. It was as though they knew exactly what they’d done and were ready to do it again if they got the chance.
“They were so good,” Mrs. Mulberry was saying, “I’m afraid I let them stay up longer than I should have. Finally I put them to bed and went downstairs.” She shook her head as though she still couldn’t believe what happened next. “I was reading a magazine on the couch when something just went plummeting by the bay window. I thought it was my imagination at first. Then something else went shooting past and I got up and went outside to look at what was going on. And there were toys and bits of bedding just lying there in the grass. I looked up but I couldn’t see anything. It was very eerie. Almost scary. I couldn’t figure out what on earth was happening.”
“Oh, sweetie boys,” Jill muttered, holding one closely to her. “You must be good for the babysitter. Remember?”
“When I started to go back in the house,” the older lady went on, “one of these very same adorable children was at the front door. As I started to come closer, he grinned at me and he …” She had to stop to take a shaky breath. “He just smiled. I realized what might happen and I called out. I said, ‘No! Wait!’ But just as I reached the door, he slammed it shut. It was locked. He locked me out of the house!”
Jill was frowning. “What are you talking about? Who locked you out of the house?”
She pointed at Timmy who was cuddled close in Jill’s arms. “He did.”
Jill shook her head as though to clear it. He’s only eighteen months old. “That’s impossible. He doesn’t know how to lock doors.”
Mrs. Mulberry drew herself up. “Oh, yes he does,” she insisted.
Jill looked into Timmy’s innocent face. Could her baby have done that? He smiled and said, “Mamamama.” No way.
“I couldn’t get in,” Mrs Mulberry went on. “I was panicking. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” Tears filled her eyes again.
Jill stared at her in disbelief and Connor stepped forward, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We believe you, Mrs. Mulberry,” he said calmly. “Just finish your story. We want to know it all.”
She tried to give him a grateful smile and went on. “I was racing around, trying all the doors, getting more and more insane with fear. Finally I got the idea to look for a key. I must have turned over twenty flower pots before I found it. Once I got back into the house, I realized they were up here in the bedroom, but when I called to them, they locked the bedroom door.”
She sighed heavily, her head falling forward on her chest. “I thought I would go out of my mind. I tried to call you but I couldn’t do it. I thought I ought to call the police, but I was shaking so badly …” She shuddered, remembering. “And then you finally came home.”
Jill met Connor’s gaze and bit her lip, turning to lay Timmy down in his crib. He was giving her a warning glance, as if to say, “No major damage here. Give her a break.”
For some reason, instead of letting it annoy her, she felt a surge of relief. Yes, give her a break. Dear soul, she didn’t mean any harm, and since nothing had really happened, there was no reason to make things worse. In fact, both boys were already drifting off to sleep. And why not? They’d had a busy night so far.
Turning, she smiled at the older woman. “Thank goodness I got back when I did,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “Well, everything’s alright now. If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll just put these two down and …”
Connor gave her a grin and a wink and put down the already sleeping Tanner into his crib as though he knew what he was doing, which surprised her. But her mind was on her babies, and she looked down lovingly at them as they slept. For just a moment, she’d been so scared.…
What would she do if anything happened to either one of them? She couldn’t let herself think about that. That was a place she didn’t want to go.
Connor watched her. He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking about. Anything happening to her kids would just about destroy her. He’d seen her face when she first realized she was losing Brad. He remembered that pain almost as if it had been his own. And losing these little ones would be ten times worse.
He drove Mrs. Mulberry home and when he got back, all was quiet. The lights that had blazed out across the landscape were doused and a more muted atmosphere prevailed. The house seemed to be at peace.
Except for one thing—the sound of sniffles coming from the kitchen where Jill was sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.
“Hey,” he said, sliding in beside her on the bench seat. “You okay?”
She turned her huge, dark, tragic eyes toward him.
“I leave the house for just a few hours—leave the boys for more than ten minutes—the first time in a year. And chaos takes over.” She searched his gaze for answers. “Is that really not allowed? Am I chained to this place, this life, forever? Do I not dare leave … ever?”
He stared down at her. He wanted to make a joke, make her smile, get her out of this mood, but he saw real desperation in her eyes and he couldn’t make light of that.
“Hey.” He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It’s not forever. Things change quickly for kids. Don’t let it get you down. In a month, it will be different.”
She stared up at him. How could he possibly know that? And yet, somehow, she saw the wisdom in what he’d said. She shook her head and smiled. “Connor, why didn’t you come back sooner? I love your smile.”
He gave her another one, but deep down, he groaned. This was exactly why he had to get out of here as soon as he could. He slumped down lower in the seat and tried to think of something else reassuring to say, but his mind wouldn’t let go of what she’d just said to him.
I love your smile.
Pretty pathetic to grasp at such a slender reed, but that was just about all he had, wasn’t it?
Jill was back on the subject at hand, thinking about the babysitter. “Here I hired her because I thought an older woman would be calmer with a steadier hand.” She rolled her eyes. “A teenage girl would have been better.”
“Come on, that’s not really fair. She got a lot thrown at her at once and she wasn’t prepared for it. It could have happened to anyone.”
She shook her head as though she just couldn’t accept that. “I’m lucky I’ve got my sister close by for emergencies. But she’s getting more and more caught up in her career, and it’s a pretty demanding one. I really can’t count on her for too much longer.” She sighed. “She had to be at a business dinner in Seattle tonight, or she would have been here to take care of the boys.”
“Family can be convenient.” He frowned. “Don’t you have a younger sister? I thought I met her once.”
Instead of answering, she moaned softly and closed her eyes. “Kelly. Yes. She was our half sister.” She looked at him, new tragedy clouding her gaze. “Funny you should remember her tonight. She was killed in a car crash last week.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, Jill, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. “It’s sad and tragic and brings on a lot of guilty feelings for Sara and me.”
He shook his head, not understanding. “What did you have to do with it?”
“The accident? Oh, nothing. It happened in Virginia where I guess she was living lately. The guilt comes from not even knowing exactly where she was and frankly, not thinking about her much. We should have paid more attention and worked a little harder on being real sisters to her.”
There was more. He could tell. But he waited, letting her take her time to unravel the story.
“She was a lot younger, of course. Our mother died when we were pretty young, and our father remarried soon after. Too soon for us, of course. After losing our mother, we couldn’t bear to share our beloved father with anyone. We resented the new woman, and when she had a baby, we pretty much resented her, too.” She shook her head. “It was so unfair. Poor little girl.”
“Didn’t you get closer as she got older?”
“Not really. You see, the marriage was a disaster from the start and it ended by the time Kelly was about five years old. We only saw her occasionally after that, for a few hours at a time. And then our father died by the time she was fifteen and we didn’t see either one of them much at all after that.”
“That’s too bad.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m really sorry about it now.” She sighed. “She was something of a wild child, at least according to my father’s tales of woe. Getting into trouble even in high school. The sort of girl who wants to test the boundaries and explore the edge.”
“I know your father died a few years ago. What about your stepmother?”
“She died when I was about twenty-three. She had cancer.”
“Poor lady.”
“Yes. Just tragic, isn’t it? Lives snuffed out so casually.” She shook her head. “I just feel so bad about Kelly. It’s so sad that we never got to know her better.”
“Just goes to show. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Don’t let your opportunities slip by.”
“Yes.” She gave him a look. “When did you become such a philosopher?”
“I’ve always been considered wise among my peers,” he told her in a snooty voice that made her laugh.
A foghorn sounded its mournful call and she looked up at a clock. “And now here you are, stuck. The last ferry’s gone. You’re going to have to stay here.”
He smiled at her. “Unless I hijack a boat.”
“You can sleep on the couch.” She shrugged. “Or sleep in the master bedroom if you want. Nobody else does.”
The bitter tone was loud and clear, and it surprised him.
“Where do you sleep?” he asked her.
“In the guest room.” Her smile was bittersweet. “That’s why you can’t use it.”
He remembered glancing in at the master bedroom when he was upstairs. It looked like it had always looked. She and Brad had shared that bed. He looked back at her and didn’t say a word.
She didn’t offer an explanation, but he knew what it was. She couldn’t sleep in that bed now that Brad had abandoned it.
He nodded. “I’ll take the couch.”
She hesitated. “The only problem with that is, I’ll be getting up about four in the morning. I’ll probably wake you.”
“Four in the morning? Planning a rendezvous with the milkman?”
“No, silly. I’ve got to start warming the ovens and mixing my batter.” She yawned, reminding him of a sleepy kitten. “I’ve got a day full of large orders to fill tomorrow. One of my busiest days ever.” She smiled again. “And hopefully, a sign of success. I sure need it.”
“Great.”
“Wait here a second. I think I’ve got something you can use.”
She left the room and was back in moments, carrying a set of dark blue men’s pajamas.
He recoiled at the sight. “Brad’s?” he said.
“Not really.” She threw them down in his lap. “I bought them for Brad but he never even saw them. That was just days before he sent you to tell me we were through.”
“Oh.” That was okay, then. He looked at them, setting aside the top and reserving the pants for when he was ready for bed. Meanwhile, she was rummaging through a linen closet and bringing out a sheet and a light blanket. That made her look domestic in ways he hadn’t remembered. He thought about how she’d looked with Timmy in her arms.
“Hey,” he said gently. “That’s a pair of great little boys you’ve got there.”
She melted immediately. “Aren’t they adorable? But so bad!”
“I’ll bet they keep you busy every hour of the day.”
She nodded. “It’s not easy running a business from home when I’ve got those two getting more and more mischievous.” She sighed and sat back down. “Can you believe they were locking doors? I had no idea they knew what a lock was.”
“Time to dismantle some and add extra keys for others,” he suggested.
“Yes. And keep my eyes on them every minute.”
“Can’t you hire a daytime babysitter?”
“Yeah, hiring a babysitter really works out well, doesn’t it?” She shook her head. “Actually Trini, my bakery assistant, helps a lot. She doubles as a babysitter when I need her to, and does everything else the rest of the time. And then, Sara comes by and helps when she has a free moment or two.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “We manage.”
He resisted the impulse to reach out and brush back the lock of hair that was bouncing over her eyebrow. The gesture seemed a little too intimate as they sat here, alone in the dim light so late at night.
But Jill didn’t seem to have the same reservations he harbored. She reached out and took his hand in hers, startling him. Then she gazed deep into his eyes for a moment before she spoke. His pulse began to quicken. He wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, but he knew he couldn’t deny her much.
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