A Daddy for Her Sons Read online

  “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.”