Jake's child (13 page)

He stared at her, wondering what she was thinking as she watched him so solemnly. He'd like making love with Sarah Jane Simpson, watching her unfold bit by bit. Her breasts moved against him as she breathed, a sweet weight that curled his insides into knots of yearning.

"Jake?"

He might not be able to make her fall in love with him, but she wasn't indifferent to him—that was for sure. He could turn that against her, trap her. He could bind her to him with the chains of her own needs. And then she couldn't kick him out. Wouldn't want to. Then he'd know the truth about her.

"Yes, Sarah?" His arms anchored her to him.

"This isn't recommended boating procedure." She levered upright against him. "Come on back to your seat, Nicholas, and let's see if we can retrieve our dignity, okay?"

Nicholas frowned.

Jake frowned.

"Dinity's not as much fun." Nicholas plunked his behind on the seat and folded his arms, a miniature Jake.

The gesture absurdly touched Jake.

"But safer." Sarah crawled back to her seat near the Johnson motor. "So, fellas, what now? Any suggestions?"

"I didn't catch a fish."

"True," Sarah admitted. "I said we'd go fishing, and I guess it doesn't count if you don't catch a fish."

Nicholas nodded hopefully.

"What do you think, Moby Dick?" Sarah nudged Jake with her wet sneaker.

Every time she touched him, she sent tiny firecrackers along his skin. Bing. Bing. Bing.

"Think you could handle some more serious thinking while we see what's biting? We'll stay in the boat with you,"

she teased. "We'd hate to interrupt your 'man's work' with an unscheduled swim."

"Nobody appreciates a hero anymore," Jake grumbled. "Sure, go ahead and fish to your heart's content. Don't mind me. I'll just stretch out here and if I get in the way, just heave me over the side."

"You are so silly, Jake." Nicholas shook his head. "We wouldn't throw you to the sharks. You know that."

"Besides," Sarah added gravely, "there aren't any sharks in the lake." She nodded at Nicholas's disappointed expression.

"No sharks? Well, damn—"

"Nicholas!" Jake roared.

"Sorry, Jake. I been trying to remember. But it's a, a danged shame, that's what. There should be sharks. That'd be real neat."

Nicholas was clearly miffed by the lost opportunity to feed something, if not Jake, to the sharks. Bloodthirsty little monster. Jake sighed. Kid was going to be a pistol when he grew up. Be nice to see it happen.

"We can always chop off Jake's toes and use them for fish bait if we need to," Sarah consoled.

For a moment Jake thought Nicholas was considering it.

Nicholas shook his head. "Better not, Sarah." To his credit, he looked a little worried as he reassured Jake. "Sarah's just kidding you, Jake. She wouldn't do that. Anyway, we got lots of bait."

"Terrific, kid." Jake stretched out once again and wondered what disaster was next. "Fish away, but leave my toes alone."

Through partially closed eyes, he watched Sarah and Nicholas. The sun was drying her pink blouse in patches, leaving intriguing places damp and clinging. He'd like to slide his finger in under the damp spots and lift them up to dry. Her skin would be water-chilled and then warm quickly. There was one spot just at the side of her left breast that was

particularly slow to dry. That was his favorite spot. The curve of her breast shaped the damp material and he could see through the thin material.

"Here, Nicholas, use your wrist like this to pop the lure over the water."

Sarah's arm lifted up, and the damp material tightened against her lifted breast. That spot was beginning to obsess him. If he were lucky, it would dry fast. If he were luckier, it wouldn't.

She looked at him just then under her upraised arm and once again her face picked up the pink of her blouse. He smiled, a long, slow smile that let her know he liked what he saw, a smile that told her he'd like to do more than look. Her face flushed brighter pink.

Jake liked the way she hurried into speech. He watched her lips move with the syllables and wanted to feel their texture under his fingers, under his own lips. There was no other solution. He was going to have to lure Sarah Jane Simpson into betraying the truth. Lulled into trusting him she'd make a mistake sooner or later. He was doing the right thing for Nicholas. Jake smiled with satisfaction even as uneasiness about his own motives flickered.

"Nicholas, give the lure a little lift every now and then. Make it look real."

Real. That was how life would be every day if Sarah and Nicholas were always around him. The three of them, fishing, joking. Loving. The mirage shimmered in the sun, wrapping him in its warmth, seductive.

Laziness curled around him and carried him along in its slow drifting current. He lay there, lulled by warmth and peace, and watched Sarah with her son.

"Nicholas, we're going to move to a different spot and try some shiners. Maybe they'll work today." Sarah fired the engine and guided the boat away from the lee of the hammock out into the wind.

The choppier water spanked the boat bottom and wrenched Jake out of his sleepy indolence. "Want me to work the motor?"

"Oh, sure," Sarah gibed. "Insult my competence, make me say 'uncle,' and now you want to play captain. Fat chance." She stuck out her tongue.

Nicholas's mouth dropped open. "That's rude, Sarah." He turned to Jake. "Isn't it?"

"Yep. But," Jake leaned over, "it's just as rude to tell her." He winked at Nicholas.

"Oh." Nicholas cocked his head at Jake. "So when I stick out my tongue, you'll be rude if you yell at me?"

The boat hit a wave hard. Jake heard Sarah's stifled laughter. "Uh, not quite that way, sport. Anyway, Sarah was teasing." He wished her laugh didn't fizz inside him.

"I sure don't understand this teasing stuff," Nicholas moaned. "How come when I tell you I didn't do something I did do and then I say I'm teasing, you still yell?" He jammed his elbows on his knees. "Don't seem fair."

"No, I guess not." Jake gave up. He was fresh out of answers. The kid had more unanswerable questions than space.

"Nicholas, hand me the bait bucket, please." Sarah splashed the anchor over.

"What are we gonna do with the little fishies?" Anxiety crept into his voice.

Jake chuckled. He knew what was coming. Sarah couldn't handle this one.

"We're going to fish with them. Here, just hold it right behind the fin."

Through his lashes, Jake watched Nicholas reach out carefully with cupped hands.

"They tickle."

"Be careful and don't let it slip out, now." The bucket lid clanged shut. "I'll put mine on the hook and then you'll see

how it's done." She hesitated, and a frown pleated her forehead. "What's the matter?"

"Nothin'."

Moving slightly so that the sun wasn't blinding him, Jake played possum, waiting for Sarah to fail.

"Okay, then," Sarah continued. "Just slip the hook gently in all the way through and then, very carefully now, use your wrist to flick the line out, just the way you did with the lures." The boat rocked as Sarah edged closer to Nicholas. "Got it?"

"The doctor gave me shots. With a needle."

"Oh?"

"That was a little needle and it hurt."

"Yes?" Sarah's voice was patient.

She wasn't hurrying the kid or rushing him to get back to the business at hand.

Idly, Jake wondered what kind of lover she'd be. If he knew anything about women—and a life spent on the fringes had taught him a lot, he reckoned—Sarah wouldn't be a passive lover, content to let someone else establish the pace. She would be involved wholeheartedly. Body, heart and soul, she would lose herself in the act and the man. He pushed the deceptive image away.

"This is a big hook, Sarah."

"So it is."

She was quicker than he would have been, Jake had to admit.

"Awful big." Stubbornness settled into Nicholas's voice.

"You know, Nicholas, I've been thinking. The lures are so pretty when they flash out to the water. I'd almost rather use them. Would you mind?"

"No. But what're you gonna do with the little fishies?"

"Gosh, I just don't know." Sarah sighed. "Do you have any ideas?"

"I liked swimming in the lake."

"I did, too." Silence.

"It's a big lake."

"Sure is. Over seven hundred square miles, as a matter of fact."

Hell, she was smooth. Her earnestness almost convinced him.

"These fishies would like swimming here, I think."

"Me, too, honey. Why don't we let them go for it?"

Nicholas squealed as he slipped his hands into the water. "Look at my guy go! Hurry up with the others. They're missing the fun."

Sarah kneeled at the edge of the boat, slowly lowering the bait bucket into the water. Against the sun, her small figure was a curving, dark shadow making Jake hunger for night and Sarah all to himself on her pale sheets in a quiet room. Her shadow, his, blending in the musky night.

"There they go. They've all swum out."

"Hey, Jake, look at'em!"

Summoned to the party, Jake roused himself to lean over the side. The shiners moved this way, that, quick patterns of silver in dark water.

"Real pretty, kid." Jake's arm lay close to Sarah's. Her slender bones felt fragile.

Her smile flashed like the minnows as she hauled the bucket back. "So much for reality. Let's head in."

When they docked, Nicholas headed away with his fishing rod while Sarah reached into the bait well to drain it. When she looked towards the house, Nicholas was disappearing around the corner, out of sight and sound.

She straightened up, her fingers dripping water on Jake's leg. Very deliberately, with all the tenderness at his skill, he turned her wet hand wrist side up and placed his index finger on the pulse point, lightly holding her captive. "You're very good with him."

"I like him." Under his touch her pulse was a tiny triphammer.

.

"I can see that." Jake scraped his fingernail slightly against her skin as he moved his finger slowly up to the bend of her elbow where the blue veins showed. He wanted to be slow and easy with her, gentle, despite all he suspected.

She shivered. "What are you doing?"

"Why, Miss Simpson, don't you know?" Jake teased her as his finger edged softly up to the inside of her arm. Her mouth was slightly parted as she watched his face.

"No," she breathed. "I haven't the foggiest idea. Why don't you tell me?"

"Shame on you, Miss Sarah Jane. Don't you recognize a courting gentleman when you see one?"

Her breath was cinnamon sweet. Jake smiled as he leaned down and kissed the end of her pink nose. "I'm courting you, sweet Sarah, that's what I'm doing." The words sounded so right and the touch of her tempted him to forget the role he was playing.

Sarah looked at him as though he were speaking in tongues. "You've been in the sun too long. It's baked your brains," she sputtered, at a loss.

Sure, her first response had been an eager curling up of every nerve ending, but that was just hormones, and she already knew the effect Jake had on her treacherous hormones. Not to mention the hungry-outlaw look in his eyes, which undermined her emotions. She didn't have any defense against that loneliness.

"Think so?" He took her hand and laid it against his forehead. Water dripped down her wrist. "Want to check for fever?" He slid her wrist down against his chin. "See? No fever."

Her temperature shot up several degrees.

"Prepare yourself, Sarah. I'm in a flowers-and-candy, sitting-on-the-front-porch-courting frame of mind." The lethal toughness of Jake's craggy face softened.

Liquid sunshine flowed through her veins. "I'm not sure I'm ready for courting."

"What do you have to do to get ready? Iron your frilly white blouse? Oil the squeaky porch swing?"

"I don't know. I don't think I've ever been courted before." His thumb moved to her neck, which arched before she could stop it.

"So get your iron and oil can out because you're going to be courted, sweetheart."

"I don't have any frilly white blouses." Her neck curved into his relentlessly tracing thumb which glided down to her collarbone and flipped the button there back and forth.

"This blouse isn't bad. I think I could court you very easily while you're wearing it." His smile hinted that maybe he could court her better if she weren't wearing it, at all.

Sarah went hot from scalp to toe. "You're not the courting type."

"That's true," he mused, "but somehow with you, sweetheart, I think I could be." The reluctant note of truth in his voice weakened her knees, knees that had been churned to butter since his first words. "I was never interested in courting before."

"Why now?" She had to know. He'd come out of the dark and insinuated himself into her life and there were unanswered questions in spite of the sizzle between them.

"You."

Sarah heard Nicholas splashing in the empty bait wells. She looked down at Jake's fingers. She remembered how they had looked clasped around her front door. Even then she had noticed them, their strength and control.

"What about me?" She asked.

"You—make me begrudge all my wasted years." He added as she frowned, "Years lost passing time in smoky places where dreams hung in the air and drifted out the open windows. Places where people come when they have nowhere else to go. I want somewhere to go, Sarah. I want someone to come home to."

Sarah wanted to weep at the emptiness in Jake's voice. What kind of loneliness had eaten away at his soul? No wonder he'd become so attached to Nicholas. Jake's rough prickliness was his defense against a world in which he had no home.

She reached out her hand to touch his cheek. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything, then." He pressed his fingers to her lips. "Just give me time. Let me," he paused, as though searching for the right word, "let me court you."

Urgency came at her in waves. "An odd choice of words, Jake. What, exactly, do you want from me?"

Jake's hand pressed hers tightly to his face, holding it as if it were a lifeline. "Everything, Sarah, everything you have to give. I want it all."