His Best Friend's Baby (9 page)

But she knew better than anyone that that didn’t happen in real life. Not for her.

Standing on the sidewalk with her sniffling baby in her arms and his stroller in ruins at her feet, she had to wonder the same thing Agnes had been insinuating for days. What the hell was she trying to do?

Tears burned behind her eyes. She couldn’t go back to that house right now. She was so raw, so…lost that she just couldn’t take Agnes’s censure and pity.

What made you think this was going to be
easy?
The voice in her head was her husband’s again and she wished that her memory of his voice had faded as much as her memory of his handsome face.

“Ouch, mama,” Ben whined. “It hurts.”

“I know, sweetheart.” She lifted his little calf to see the blood beading up from his scrape. “Let’s go home and get that cleaned up.”

Home was still a couple of blocks away. She took a step forward but the stroller wouldn’t roll properly and she had to drag it. She took three awkward steps then bowed her head, defeated by the stroller, her empty bank account, the ghost of her dead husband and his living family.

Oh, please God, help me. I don’t think I can
do this
.

“Are you okay?”

Julia whirled toward the voice to find a pretty teenager, her blond hair scraped away from her thin face, standing there with a world of sympathy in her eyes.

“We’re okay, thanks,” she lied with a smile and tried to lift the stroller so it wouldn’t drag, but she accidentally rubbed Ben’s scrape and he lost it right in her ear.

“Here, come on,” the stranger said. “Let me help you get this—”

She tried to take the stroller from Julia, but just as she grabbed it the right front wheel, already cockeyed, fell off and bounced down the street.

She and the girl watched it go and finally, Julia realized there was nothing left to do but laugh.

At first it was only a weary chuckle. But
when the teenager joined in and then Ben, they all laughed until things didn’t seem so bad.

“Are you okay?”

He was behind her.

Her lungs went tight and face got hot. She could smell him—sun and sweat and something else, something dark and moody that crept into her head and made it swim. Jesse’s gravelly voice scraped down her spine into her belly.

“We’re fine,” she said, pleased her voice didn’t tremble or waver or give away any of her discomfort. She turned to face him, but she couldn’t look at him, and she guessed that gave away everything her steady voice did not.

“I’m Amanda,” the girl said into the thick hot silence that surrounded Jesse and Julia. “Do you want to come over and clean up a little?”

“That’d be great,” Julia answered quickly, trying to pretend the side of her neck, where she could feel him staring, wasn’t on fire. “Do you live—”

“Uncle Jesse?” Amanda asked, her voice and eyes held a note of steel and accusation. “Would that be all right?”

“Oh, don’t worry. We can make it home.” Julia quickly backpedaled. She’d rather deal
with Agnes than her own fiery reaction to Jesse’s icy dismissal. “We’re only a few houses down.”

“It’s not a problem,” Jesse said, and finally she had to look at him. Thank God he was wearing a shirt. But the faded black T-shirt was threadbare, damp with sweat and clung to his chest and arms in a far more provocative way than the sunshine and air had.

“Do you two, like, know each other?” Amanda asked, her eager eyes darting between them.

“No,” she said, just as Jesse said, “Yeah.”

“Whoa. Cool,” Amanda said, but Julia was barely listening.

“No, really, I’d much rather—”

“Deal with Agnes?” he interjected and Julia’s gaze flew to his. “I doubt that.”

“She’s been great to us,” she said, feeling stiff and prickly even though he’d somehow read her mind.

“I’m sure she has. You can use my bathroom or not. Your choice.” His black eyes seemed to understand that she dreaded going back to that house with a crying baby and a broken stroller. She couldn’t take any more of those sideways looks and barbed words that accused her of not being the best mother to her son.

Jesse’s eyes seemed to see right through to her worry that the Agnes was right. Good mothers didn’t drag their sons all around the world in a broken stroller looking for jobs they weren’t qualified for.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He turned and walked away.

“Come on,” Amanda said, “he’s a jerk but he’s harmless.”

“Maybe to you,” Julia muttered. She felt in dire peril every time she was near him.

“I’ll grab this and we’ll see if Uncle Jesse can get his head out of his butt long enough to fix it.” Amanda grabbed the stroller and headed toward the house.

Julia knew she had every chance to decide otherwise, to take her chances with the devil she knew at the Adamses rather than the one that lurked in Jesse’s eyes, but she picked up the stroller wheel and followed Amanda anyway.

“I
DON’T HAVE ANY BANDAGES
. Just soap and water,” Jesse told them as soon as they walked in. He had braced himself in the far corner of the kitchen between the two counters, like a hunted animal about to strike back.

He took a swig of the beer he’d grabbed the moment he walked in—as if he needed further proof of how shaken he was, how weak and close to utter ruin.

He rarely drank, but every time he did he felt as though he was his father.

“Thank you, Jesse, we won’t take long,” Julia said, her eyes clinging to his for a moment too long.

God, did she have to be so naked? Did she have to be so damn obvious in her feelings for him? It made the air so thick he couldn’t breathe.

“Bathroom’s through there.” He pointed down the dark hallway.

“Uncle Jesse, do you think you could fix this thing?” Amanda asked, swinging the stroller beside her as she walked in.

“Sure.” He grabbed it midswing and she let go. She looked down the hallway to make sure Julia was out of earshot and then leaned toward him, her eyes wide and bright.

“Wow,” Amanda said. “She’s so pretty. Do you think she’s married?’ Cause, she’s totally into you. So, you shouldn’t—”

“Call your folks to come pick you up,” he told her. “I don’t need your help around here anymore.”

His too-wise niece eyed him with skeptical disbelief, and he watched her right back until she finally looked away, clearly disappointed in him. He took a long swallow of the beer that slid down his throat like ice after a trip through the desert.

“Fine,” she said, then grabbed her school bag from the kitchen table and dug out her cell phone. “I’ll tell them you’re mean and a jerk and—”

Jesse walked out, cutting off her tirade with the slam of the screen door.

He’d let that girl hang around and it had gotten into his head, made him forget who he was and what he was here to do. And now, thanks to her, he had Julia and her boy in his house, using his sink, his towels, filling the rooms with her smell.

Things had gone too far.

Well, he knew how to fix that.

He headed to the garage and the tools he’d spent sleepless nights cleaning up. He rattled all the jam jars filled with screws until he found one that might work. He had to bend the metal crossbar to its original shape. Even with the new screw and a little grease, the stroller maybe had a week left.

“Do you need this?”

Julia stood in the doorway of the dark garage, sunlight streaming in around her, turning the dust in the air to glitter.

“What?” Her beauty physically punched him.

“The wheel.” She smiled, shy and careful like the beautiful woman/girl he remembered in Germany.

He grabbed the beat-up wheel from her and bent over the stroller.

“Thank you for doing this.” She stepped closer and Jesse fought the urge to step away, to keep the distance between them tolerable.

“It’s not going to do much good. This is a piece of crap.”

He saw her shrug from the corner of his eye. “Well, it’s all the crap I’ve got at the moment.”

“Where is the boy?” he asked, glancing around her feet for the boy with Mitch’s hair.

“Amanda and Wain are playing with him.” She fiddled with the clamp attached to the old workbench. “She seems like a very nice girl.”

Jesse searched through the jar at his elbow for a screw that would work with the wheel.

Cheap plastic things. What was she thinking
hauling her baby around in this?

“You never mentioned a niece that night in Germany,” she said in the way of a woman who wanted to play with fire. He didn’t answer her.

He twisted the screw in and spun the wheel once. It wobbled, but it worked.

“I don’t understand you, Jesse. This isn’t what you were like in Germany.” She reached out a hand to his shoulder and he dodged it. He ignored the foolish bravery and determination she seemed compelled to display and concentrated on chasing her out of his life.

“Well, it’s what I’m like now.”

“Is it because of Mitch? I’m not married anymore,” she finally whispered, like some sort of invitation to his worst impulses. “He’s not between us.”

Mitch would always be between them. Every time Jesse looked at her, he saw Mitch in that burning helicopter. Every time he thought of her he was reminded of all the reasons he couldn’t have her. And having her so close and still so far out of reach hurt worse than any of his injuries.

And he just couldn’t take it.

“We need to get something straight.” He propped himself against the bench because his knee seemed suddenly weak. “Whatever
you think happened, whatever you think it meant—” he leaned forward and spoke real slow just so she got the point “—it didn’t.”

Her pale skin glowed red at her cheeks.

“We won’t be friends,” he continued.

“But—”

He stepped in closer.

“Ever.”

Stepping closer was a mistake. The atmosphere between them sizzled and glowed with electricity. She breathed hard, her mouth parted and her eyes fell to his lips. He could feel every cell of her body reaching toward him because every cell in his body was doing the same.

Good God! How much did a man have to take?

“We’re both alone in this town. I thought—”

“I’m going to say this one more time. Real slow.’ Cause you don’t seem to be getting it. I do not want a friend and I don’t want anything else you’re offering me.”

“I’m not…”

He smiled, mirroring all the slick men he’d known who’d hurt countless women. “Yes, sweetheart, you are. And I don’t want it.”

He stared into the endless blue of her eyes,
willing her to accept what she could not change and get the hell out of his garage before he fell apart in front of her.

S
HE BURNED
. She burned with her shame and desire. She couldn’t breathe for the pain of wanting him and hating him. She reached for the stroller and fought tears.

“Thank you,” she whispered and pulled the stroller from his hands. For a moment, a mere second, he didn’t let go. Her gaze crept to his. For the briefest flash the look in his eyes was the very same look he’d given her that morning in Germany.

She wasn’t the only one who burned with want.

He let go of the stroller and turned away from her, his broad back looking so strong yet so terribly wounded in the half light.

A wild current traveled over her skin.

She could leave. She could continue doing the things people told her to do. She could fill out a million applications. She could marry another man who was completely wrong for her. She could live with her mother or, worse, remain in the charity of her in-laws. She could walk out of this garage and avoid Jesse until he left, or she did.

She could do all of that.

It was what she was good at—what she’d done her whole life. Allowed other people’s wants and expectations to dictate her life.

And where has it gotten you?
she wondered, bitterness sliding through her blood like anger.

To this moment. This moment when she could change everything.

“You’re lying.” The strength of her voice surprised her, jolted her shoulders back and her head up. “You don’t want me to leave.”

“This isn’t a game, Julia.” He didn’t face her, and her sudden knowledge of him, her ability to see through his sharp armor, filled her with a power she’d never dreamed of possessing.

“I know that, Jesse.”

She took a step closer and finally he turned. She took a deep breath, relieved to see that all of his put-on anger, his cruelty and indifference, were gone.

This
was the man she’d known in Germany.

“I killed your husband.” His voice seemed dredged from the depths of his throat.

She gasped, horrified that he felt that way, that he should carry that guilt.

“That’s not true.” She believed it to her bones. Mitch had been on his own path to destruction 
for too long to need someone else to take him there.

His nostrils flared and his lips went white and thin. “It doesn’t matter what you think. Your husband’s dead and it’s my fault.” He shook his head. “Your stroller’s fixed, now just go.”

He moved to her right as if to walk past her. Emboldened by her own actions and on fire to touch him in some way, she put out her arm to stop him. Her hand curled around the inside of his elbow where the skin was smooth and warm. She could feel his pulse under his skin. Her fingers slid under the sleeve of his shirt and her lungs clogged and shrank.

He moaned. Whether from her touch or her newfound stubbornness she didn’t know, but her body stirred at the rough sound. She turned toward him, yearning for the kiss that lingered in the air around them.

He grabbed her hand and pulled it, yanking her off balance, sending her into a light-headed and lustful collision with his body.

“I have nothing to offer you.” His gaze roved over her face, lingering on her lips. “If you want to be my friend, if you have any feeling for me at all, you’ll leave me the hell alone.”

His grip squeezed the bones of her hand
together but she was so wrapped up in the misery she could see in his eyes, that her own pain barely registered. Finally, he dropped her hand and took a step away. “Please,” he growled.