That Thing Called Love
That Thing Called Love
Susan Andersen
He's the last man on earth she should want…For a guy she's fantasized about throttling, Jake Bradshaw sure is easy on the eyes. In fact, he seriously tempts inn manager Jenny Salazar to put her hands to better use. Except this is the guy who left Razor Bay–and his young son, Austin, whom Jenny adores like her own–to become a globe-trotting photojournalist. He can't just waltz back and claim Austin now.Jake was little more than a kid himself when he became a dad. Sure, he'd dreamed of escaping the resort town, but he'd also truly believed that Austin was better off with his grandparents. Now he wants–no, needs–to make up for his mistake. He intends to stay in Razor Bay only until he can convince Austin to return with him to New York. Trouble is, with sexy, protective, utterly irresistible Jenny in his life, and his bed, he may never want to leave….
He’s the last man on earth she should want...
For a guy she’s fantasized about throttling, Jake Bradshaw sure is easy on the eyes. In fact, he seriously tempts inn manager Jenny Salazar to put her hands to better use. Except this is the guy who left Razor Bay—and his young son, Austin, whom Jenny adores like her own—to become a globe-trotting photojournalist. He can’t just waltz back and claim Austin now.
Jake was little more than a kid himself when he became a dad. Sure, he’d dreamed of escaping the resort town, but he’d also truly believed that Austin was better off with his grandparents. Now he wants—no, needs—to make up for his mistake. He intends to stay in Razor Bay only until he can convince Austin to return with him to New York. Trouble is, with sexy, protective, utterly irresistible Jenny in his life, and his bed, he may never want to leave....
Reviewers love New York Times bestselling author
SUSAN ANDERSEN
“A smart, arousing, spirited escapade
that is graced with a gentle mystery, a vulnerable,
resilient heroine, and a worthy, wounded hero
and served up with empathy and a humorous flair.”
—Library Journal on Burning Up
“[A] fast-paced, charming romance
with plenty of heat and cool dialog.”
—RT Book Reviews on Burning Up
“A sexy, feel-good contemporary romance....
Palpable escalating sexual tension between the pair,
a dangerous criminal on the loose and a cast of
well-developed secondary characters make this a winner.”
—Publishers Weekly on Bending the Rules
“This start of Andersen’s new series has fun and interesting characters, solid action and a hot and sexy romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Cutting Loose
“Snappy and sexy.... Upbeat and fun, with a touch of danger and passion, this is a great summer read.”
—RT Book Reviews on Coming Undone
“Lovers of romance, passion and laughs
should go all in for this one.”
—Publishers Weekly on Just for Kicks
“Andersen again injects magic into a story that would be clichéd in another’s hands, delivering warm, vulnerable characters in a touching yet suspenseful read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Skintight, starred review
“A classic plot line receives a fresh, fun treatment....
Well-developed secondary characters add depth to this zesty novel, placing it a level beyond most of its competition.”
—Publishers Weekly on Hot & Bothered
That Thing Called Love
Susan Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader,
I am so excited about my new series. This first Razor Bay book stars Jake Bradshaw, a man who’s made a lot of mistakes, and Jenny Salazar, the take-no-crap woman who holds his full attention. And I got to plunk the fictional resort town down on Hood Canal, an area that holds a lifetime of memories for me.
Most people hear the word canal and picture man-made waterways. This canal is actually a natural sixty-five-mile saltwater fjord in western Washington. I was just a baby when my folks discovered it. Every summer for two weeks, I ran wild with my brothers and cousins, swimming in icy, superbuoyant water until my fingers and toes were pruney, playing until the sun sank behind the soaring Olympic Mountains, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over blazing bonfires. When I was nine, my folks bought land on the beach and built a little cabin on it. This, to me, is the most beautiful, peaceful spot on earth.
It’s likely a no-brainer to tell you I consider Razor Bay a character in its own right. So trust me when I tell you it’s my dearest wish that you enjoy it, too, alongside Jake and Jenny and the folks of Razor Bay.
~Susan
This is dedicated, with love, to my friends in the industry, both old and new.
To
Jen Heaton, who, despite a crazy busy life, always carves out time to brainstorm with me, to haul me back on track and make my work better, and is just an all-around really good friend
To
The M&Ms—Meg Ruley and Margo Lipschultz— my wonderful, marvelous, world’s best agent and editor
To
Robyn Carr, Kristan Higgins and Jill Shalvis, for daily posts, a host of laughs and shared tears
And to
all you readers, without whom I’d be writing this stuff just for myself. Thank you for your loyalty, lovely emails and Facebook friendships
Plus a special thanks
to
the brilliant Robin Franzen, R.N., who allowed me to have my chicken pox and excuse it, too.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#u6bcd7659-a9b4-5fe9-ba66-fc063b822da8)
CHAPTER ONE (#u2a13b8ce-5608-5c29-8b60-e9b46ebd9e80)
CHAPTER TWO (#u50d84e6d-8411-5111-8e1d-0fe0d2c72bf3)
CHAPTER THREE (#u64820e59-e133-5953-b394-1a87052bfedf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u60fe423c-bf75-59f2-b104-7bbe6682aef0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u0b43d0d9-78da-5b2c-ba18-606c402b423d)
CHAPTER SIX (#u414d4094-986a-5a47-b0d9-05a6b6b43479)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
February 23
Razor Bay, Washington
“JEEZ, JENNY, are they ever gonna go home?”
Jennifer Salazar heard the half angry, half plaintive query beneath the rise and fall of conversation coming from the dining room. Outside, gusts of wind, howling down out of Canada, chased rain from the Olympic Mountains rising across the water to ping and rattle against the venerable old Craftsman on the bluff.
Turning around from the momentary break she’d taken to watch raindrops fracture into prisms against the leaded glass porch light, she looked down the hallway.
Thirteen-year-old Austin stood between her and the doorways to the kitchen and dining room. He was curved in on himself, and his newly wide shoulders in that grown-up black suit coat looked out of proportion to the rest of his verging-on-skinny body—even hunched up around his ears as they currently were.
Moving quickly, she reached out to pull him into her arms. He hugged her tightly in return.
“They will,” she assured the teen. “And pretty soon, I imagine, given how fast the weather is turning.” She pulled back to smile into his tense face. “But Emmett was an institution, pal. People want to pay their respects.”
Austin was the closest thing she had to a brother, but lately she hadn’t known quite how to deal with him. It killed her to see his pain as he struggled with the loss of the grandfather who’d raised him. Emmett Pierce’s death had tromped on the heels of Austin’s grandmother’s, who had preceded her husband just a few short months ago, blasting the barely turned teen with a double whammy.
But he was so volatile these days. A well-adjusted kid one minute, unhappy or angry the next. And he rarely shied away from mouthing off the rest of the time. Emmett and Kathy had spoiled him shamelessly, up to and including buying him a brand-new Bayliner Bowrider—a boat she’d argued against—for his thirteenth birthday.
“I swear I’m gonna pop the next person who calls me ‘you poor boy,’” he muttered. “And Maggie Watson pinched my cheeks like I was four years old or something!”
She didn’t know whether to commiserate over the misguided insensitivity or laugh at the indignation in his voice. “I imagine they just want to express their sympathy but don’t know what to say.”
“And they think I do? I mean, am I supposed to say it’s okay or somethin’ when they tell me Gramps’s in a better place? ’Cause it isn’t. Plus, what genius thinks I’d jump at the chance to be ‘you poor boy’ to a bunch of people who’ve known me since birth? And I’m sure as hell not gonna talk about how it feels to lose him.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat angrily. “My feelings are— They’re...”
“Yours and no one else’s,” she supplied with an understanding nod when he stalled. She had experience with the phenomenon. She’d only been a few years older than he was now when her own world had fallen apart.
“’Zactly,” he mumbled.
Realizing she’d stepped back to give her neck some relief from looking up at Austin, Jenny dug at the bunched muscles in her nape and gave him a rueful smile. “I’m still not used to you being bigger than me—let alone so much bigger. The last time I checked you had maybe three, four inches on me. But I’m wearing four-inch heels today and you’re still way taller!”
For the first time since Emmett’s passing last week, Austin flashed her the wholehearted smile that until recently had been his default expression—the endearing grin that crinkled his pale green eyes and carved little crescents around the corners of his lips. “I hate to break this to you, Jenny, but crickets are way taller than you are.”
“Why, you little smart-ass.” She smacked his arm, but refused to be sidetracked. “When did you get to be, though? I swear you weren’t this tall yesterday.” She had begun to fear he might, in fact, turn out as height challenged as she. Heaven knew she wasn’t thrilled to have ended up a scant five-two in a default thirty-two-inch-inseam world—and that only if she practiced really excellent posture. She couldn’t help but think the same outcome for a boy would be even harder.
But considering the kid had apparently grown three or more inches overnight, her worry would probably be better directed at something that actually required it.
Austin’s momentary good humor visibly fading, he merely shrugged at her question. “What’s gonna happen to me now, Jenny?”
“Well, for starters, since Emmett’s will assigned me temporary custody, you’ll continue living with me at the resort. Or, if you’d rather...” She faltered a moment, hit with her first uncertainty. “I suppose I could move in here with you.”
“God, no!” He shook his head emphatically. “It was hard enough staying here when Grandma died—and we’d at least been kinda prepared for that.”
True. The elderly woman had been failing for the past couple of years.
“But with Gramps...” Austin surreptitiously knuckled away a tear, then scowled at her when he saw she’d noticed. “I keep expecting him to show up every time I turn around, ya know? I’d rather be at your place.”
“Then my place it is.” Jenny wouldn’t mind a good bawl herself. She missed Kathy and Emmett like crazy. They’d been so good to her, and losing them almost back-to-back had been a one-two punch to the heart.
She needed, however, to be strong for Austin.
“I went to the estate lawyer to talk about permanent custody, but he wanted to wait a bit.” She hesitated, then admitted, “He’s doing his best to contact your father.” Much as she’d prefer to keep that information to herself for the time being, Austin had a right to know.
His mouth flattened and his eyes went hard. “Like he’ll give a shit.”
She didn’t have the heart to chastise him for his language, because in all the years she had known him, she had not known his father to show a speck of interest in him.
Still. “Apparently he’s on a National Explorer shoot somewhere. No one seems to know quite where at the moment, but Mr. Verilla said he hopes to track him down soon.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to hold my breath waiting for him to show up.” Austin’s voice resonated with knife-sharp teenage sarcasm. But his angry eyes had taken on that stricken cast they adopted whenever the topic of his father came up.
And for one red-hot minute Jenny wished she could get her hands on the man who had disappointed this boy so many times over the years. It just sucked so bad that she couldn’t.
What she could do, however, was run interference as Kate Ziegler stuck her graying head out the kitchen door, focused faded blue eyes gone watery with sorrow on Austin and said, “Oh, you poor, poor b—”
Jenny strode right up to Kate with such authority she cut herself off midword and took a startled step back.
“Mrs. Ziegler!” Jenny exclaimed warmly, grasping the older woman’s arm to firmly guide her to the crowded dining room across the hall. “I’ve been meaning to compliment you on that wonderful ambrosia salad you brought. Why, if I’m not mistaken, it was the very first thing to go.”
As the woman bustled over to check out the table, Jenny shot Austin a half smile over her shoulder.
It broke her heart that, although he tried to smile back, he couldn’t quite manage it.
CHAPTER ONE
JAKE BRADSHAW BLEW INTO TOWN almost two months later, at a quarter to three on a blustery, sunny April afternoon.
Not that Jenny was keeping track or anything.
Hell, who kept track of those things? She was busy minding her own business, washing the window over her kitchen sink and thinking the shutters on the Sand Dollar—the luxury cottage across the shared parking lot from her small bungalow—would benefit from a new coat of paint, when the doorbell rang. She just happened to check her watch. Then, looking down at her seen-better-days cropped T-shirt and raggedy jeans, she sighed. Why didn’t anyone ever drop by unexpectedly when she was dressed to kill?
Murphy’s Law, she supposed. Shrugging, she set aside the old tea towel she’d been using, paused her iPod, pulled out the earbuds and went to answer the summons. School had let out for the day; it was likely a friend of Austin’s, although Austin himself wasn’t home yet.
When she pulled the door open and saw the man on the other side, her mind went blank. Holy Krakow, how wrong could one woman be—this was no teenage kid. This was a total stranger, something you didn’t see very often this time of year—unlike during the summer tourist season.
And the guy was a god.
Okay, not really. But he was definitely the next best thing. His hair, which she’d mistaken at first glance for blond, was actually a medium brown that had either been burnished by the sun or was the product of some world-class stylist.
She’d vote for the former, given that every man she’d ever known would choose castration before they’d be caught dead over at Wacka Do’s wearing a headful of little tinfoil strips. And although she could honestly say she’d never met an actual honest-to-gawd big-city metrosexual, she was pretty sure this guy wasn’t to be her first.
His tanned hands were too beat-up looking, his skin a little too weathered. He had muscular shoulders beneath a nice gray suit jacket, worn over an olive-drab hoodie and a silky, silver-gray T-shirt. And solid thighs that were molded by a pair of button-fly Levi’s that had seen hard wear.
She couldn’t see his eyes behind the shaded lenses of his sunglasses, but he had the most gorgeous lips she’d ever seen on a man, full yet precisely cut. If she were a different type of woman, in fact, she might almost be able to imagine lips like those kissing h—
“Is your mother home?”
“Seriously?” All right, not the politest response. But, please. She hadn’t almost imagined what his lips could do—Marvin Gaye had started crooning “Let’s Get It On” in her head. And having him talk to her as if she were a child was like ripping the needle across a vinyl record, bursting her pretty, if where-the-hell-did-that-come-from, fantasy.
After a startled look, he studied her more closely. Those lips curved up in a faint smile. “Oh. Sorry. Your size fooled me for a minute. But you’re not a kid.”
“Ya think?”
His smile deepened slightly. “I’m not the first to make that mistake, I’m guessing.”
Okay, get a grip, sister. What was her problem, anyway? She didn’t lust after strange men. And she’d been in the hospitality business since she was sixteen, for pity’s sake, so rarely, either, was her first inclination to unleash snide sarcasm on people.
At least not on people I don’t know.
She gave an impatient mental shrug. Because even if she was in the habit of lusting or unleashing, this guy could be a guest at the inn for all she knew. It was the dead lowest part of the low season, which was why she’d felt comfortable enough leaving Abby to man the front desk while she took a rare day off. But Abs was still green, and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine the girl blithely drawing directions on one of the resort maps to help a complete stranger find Jenny’s place on the back grounds of The Brothers Inn.
Jenny plastered a pleasant expression on her face. “Is there something I can do for you?”
He looked down at her. “Yeah. I was told I could find a Jenny Salazar here?”
“You found her.”
“I’m here about Austin Bradshaw, regarding his guardianship.”
Jenny’s heart picked up its pace, but she merely said, “You don’t look like a lawyer.”
“I’m not. But Mr. Verilla said you’re the person I need to talk to.”
She sighed and stepped back. “Then I guess you’d better come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she said, leading him inside. “You caught me in the middle of cleaning day.”
Her place was just under six hundred square feet of recently weatherized cottage, so it took a total of five seconds to reach the middle of her living room. She turned to face him and saw that he’d removed his shades and was hooking one temple arm into the neck of his T-shirt. Raising her gaze from his strong, tanned throat, she met his eyes for the first time.
Shock jolted through her. Oh, God. Only one other person in the world had eyes that pale, pale green—the exact same shade as the summer shallows in the fjord that was Hood Canal.
Austin.
Anger was deep, immediate and visceral. And it had her drawing herself up to her not-so-great greatest height. “Let me guess,” she said with ice-edged diction. “You must be Jake Bradshaw.”
When she looked at him now, she didn’t see that compelling face or the abundant sex appeal. Instead, she pictured all the times Austin thought his father might call, might show up, and the stark disappointment each and every time that didn’t happen. Disdain she couldn’t quite disguise tugged at her upper lip.
“Mighty big of you to finally decide you could spare your kid a minute of your precious time.”
* * *
FOR OVER A DECADE, Jake had dealt with all manner of people. He’d long ago perfected the art of letting things slide off his back. Yet for some reason the contempt from this little female dug barbed needles under his skin.
It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. The woman was all of five foot nothing, for crissake, and her shiny dark hair, plaited into two thick little-girl braids, with a hank of long bangs pulling free from the left one, didn’t exactly promote a grown-up vibe. She had spare curves, clear olive skin and brown eyes so dark it made the surrounding sclera look almost blue-white in comparison. Dark eyebrows winged above them, and her slender nose had a slight bump to its bridge.
His brows met over the thrust of his own nose. “Who the hell do you think you are, lady?”
Okay, not what he’d intended to say. But being back in Razor Bay, the place he’d spent most of his teen years plotting to see the last of in his rearview mirror—well, it put him on edge. Plus, after the thirty-two-hour trip from Minahasa to Davao to Manila to Vancouver to Seattle to here, he was so dead on his feet he was all but punch-drunk. Not to mention seriously tense at the thought of seeing his kid after all these years. Of having full responsibility for him for the first time.
So excuse the hell out of him for reacting to the contempt in her voice and his own flicker of temper that here was yet someone else who thought they could dictate to him about his son.
Stuffing down every negative feeling that arose, however, he managed to moderate his tone when he inquired, “And you think you have the right to judge me, why?” God knew, he’d done enough of that on his own. He didn’t need some half-pint stranger’s condemnation on top of it.
He watched as she crossed her arms and raised her chin. “Well, let me see,” she said coolly. “Maybe because I’m the woman who’s been in Austin’s life for the past eleven years. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen you.”
Jake wanted to howl at the unfairness of her charge. Except...was she actually wrong? He’d had a series of come-to-Jesus talks with himself on the endless journey back here and was forced to admit that he’d been looking at his dad ethic through a pretty skewed lens for a long time now. The admission made not defending himself to Ms. Salazar more than a simple matter of pride, more than an ingrained reluctance to plead his case to a stranger.
He couldn’t in all conscience smear the memory of Austin’s grandparents. Not only would it be too much like something his own father would have done—making it all about him and not giving a damn that his kid had loved the people he was trash-talking—but all that damn soul searching had made him realize that he’d spent too many years blaming Emmett and Kathy for doing the job he himself had abdicated.
They’d protected Austin. And if it cut to the bone that they’d felt it necessary to do so from him...well, I guess it sucks to be you, Slick.
Somewhere over Midway Island he’d dropped his defenses and admitted they had cut him a lot more slack than he’d deserved before they’d finally lowered the ax and banished him from Austin’s life.
But that wasn’t the central thing here—at least not right this minute. That would be that he was finally doing what he should have done a long time ago: stepping up.
So, go him.
Not that any of this prevented the woman standing in front of him from scratching at his temper. He took an involuntary step in her direction. “The fact remains, I’m Austin’s father and I’m here now.”
Apparently that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, because she blinked long, dense lashes at him, just a single slow sweep that lowered fragile-looking lids over her almond-shaped eyes, then raised them again.
The action ate up a couple of seconds tops, yet somehow it was long enough to make him aware that he was standing a whole lot closer to her than he’d intended. It made him aware as well that, except for the blink, she’d gone very still. Had she seen his banked anger? Jake slowly straightened. Shit. She couldn’t possibly think he was going to hit her, could she?
He took a giant step back, shoving his hands in his Levi’s pockets.
In the sudden silence, the back door crashed open, and from the way little Ms. Salazar stiffened, he knew exactly who it was. Heart beginning to kick hard against the wall of his chest, he stared at the opening to the kitchen.
“Hey, Jenny,” called a male voice from the other room. “I’m home.” The refrigerator door opened, then slammed shut and the lid of something rattled against a hard surface. “Dude! Leave a cookie for me.”
“Trade ya for that carton of milk,” came a second youthful tenor.
“You better be using glasses!” Jenny raised her voice to warn. “If I see washback in my milk, you’re dead men.”
Glass clinked and a cupboard slapped closed. Silence reigned for a few moments after that, before being abruptly broken by the sound of stampeding feet. Two boys burst through the archway.
The boy in the lead was a gangly brunette who—sweet mother Mary—had the exact same all-bones-no-meat thirteen-year-old build Jake had had at the same age.
God oh God. All the moisture dried up in his mouth and his habit of being aware of everything around him—honed by years of knowing that otherwise he’d likely end up bitten by a snake, stung by an insect or mauled by an animal with way more tonnage, power and teeth than him—went up in smoke. The cozy little room and everything in it faded from his consciousness, leaving nothing but his son.
His.
Son.
Awash with joy, with terror, with a raft of pain and regret, Jake stared. An emotion he’d never experienced suffused his chest, while panic clawed at his gut. Jesus. He was shaking.
He hadn’t thought it would matter so much, hadn’t expected to be struck so hard. Was this what love felt like?
The thought snapped his spine straight. Hell, no.
It couldn’t be. A: he was a Bradshaw and Bradshaw men’s version of the Big L was so fucked it gave the sentiment a bad name. And B: a man had to actually know someone before he could start slinging that word around.
He drew a deep breath. It was probably just simple wonder that the kid could have gotten so big already. Jake’d had this image in his head of Austin at two, at four. Hell, at six even, which was how old Austin was the year Kathy had sent him the last picture.
But this was no little boy—this was an almost-grown teen. Not that Jake hadn’t known how old he was, of course.
He just hadn’t had a clear picture of it in his head.
He’d long ago convinced himself that he was doing the right thing—that Austin was better off with his grandparents, who could give him the stable, structured life that he himself could not. And he’d been right.
But now—face-to-face with what he hadn’t merely let slip through his fingers but had actively thrown away with no more than an occasional second thought—his carelessness felt like shards of glass hacking his gut to shreds.
Oblivious to the thoughts and feelings that threatened to swamp Jake, the boy crossed directly to Jenny without even glancing in his direction.
“Can I spend the night at Nolan’s?” he demanded. “His mom said it was okay.” His gaze passed incuriously over Jake, returned to Jenny. “She’s gonna order pizza from Bella T’s, and Nolan has a new Xbox game we’re gonna try ou—”
With a neck-snapping double take, the kid’s gaze suddenly shot back to lock on Jake’s. He took a step toward him, making Jake’s overburdened heart leap into his throat.
Then Austin snapped upright and an ask-me-if-I-give-a-shit expression molded his young face. He looked at Jake through pitch-black narrowed lashes. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, even though his shuttered expression made it obvious to anyone with eyes that he knew.
Jake swallowed, fighting to sound calm in the midst of the fucking circus taking place inside of him. Automatically, he started forward. “Your dad. I—”
The teen made a wrong-answer-buzzer noise that stopped him in his tracks. “Like hell you are. In case you don’t know...and I’m guessing you don’t since this is the first time I’ve ever seen ya,” he said, contempt coating his every word, “I’m thirteen. I don’t need or want a daddy in my life.” He turned back to Jenny, pinning her with angry eyes. “So can I stay the night at Nolan’s or what?”
Jake watched as she reached up to stroke the boy’s cheek, then visibly quelled the urge, clearly knowing he would hate the public show of sympathy. Instead she nodded. “Sure.”
Without another word—or so much as a quick peek in Jake’s direction—the teen turned and vanished with his friend into a room off the living room. When he reappeared less than a minute later, he was tucking a toothbrush into his jeans pocket. His other hand clutched a pair of flannel lounge pants.
“You need money for pizza?” Jenny asked.
“Nah,” the other kid answered. “Mom’s got it covered.”
Still ignoring Jake, Austin headed for the kitchen, Nolan tight on his six.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Jake stepped forward, but the two boys were already slamming out the back door.
Jake didn’t know if it was disappointment or relief that crashed through him. Whatever the sensation was, it nearly knocked him to his knees. God, he must have pictured this first meeting a hundred times since he’d received the news of Kathy’s and Emmett’s deaths, must have run as many scenarios through his mind. Not once, however, had he envisioned this. He’d been braced for his son’s anger, for a barrage of pointed questions he wasn’t sure he could answer to the boy’s satisfaction.
But how did a guy brace himself to be so utterly...dismissed? He turned on Jenny. “Are you kidding me? You let him just walk out?”
“What did you expect?” Her voice was cool, her gaze even cooler. “Austin’s just discovered that the man who fathered him, the man who was never here when he wanted him most, has finally deigned to show up. Don’t you think he might need a little time to process that?”
Yeah. He supposed he did. The kid had said it himself: he was thirteen—not that many years from being grown. Jake had missed his opportunity to be a father.
No. He squared his shoulders. The hell with that. Austin was a good five years from the bare minimum of being grown, which was a helluva long way from full-out grown. Yeah, he was late to the party, but this was his opportunity to be the man he should have been. And the first order of business was to establish a relationship with his son.
Given Austin’s reaction, though, it clearly wasn’t going to be easy. Well, tough shit. He wasn’t afraid of hard work.
Still. It’s a damn shame the kid’s too old to buy a pony.
He cleared his head and turned his attention to Jenny. “I agree, he does need time to process. But let me make myself clear. I’ve spoken with my lawyer, and matters are well in the works to have my parental rights returned to me.”
“No.” She stared at him as if he’d told her he got his jollies mutilating puppies.
“Yes. My attorney is drafting the documents as we speak. I only need to sign them when I get back to Manhattan. Once they’ve been filed, Austin will be where he belongs. With me.” Okay, probably not smart to tell her that—she looked as though it might not be beyond her to stage an “accident” before that happened.
No. That wasn’t murder in her eyes; she looked...crushed. Bereft. Sick to her soul.
And because he knew exactly how that felt, he gentled his voice. “Look, I don’t intend to grab Austin and run.” Okay, so his initial reaction when he’d heard both the Pierces were gone had been exactly that—to get back here, command Austin to pack up, then drag the kid back to where Jake had built a life for himself, at least for the part of each year he was in-country.
But he wasn’t gonna be that guy. He wasn’t going to be his father. “I’m not here to yank the rug out from under him that way. I know he needs time to adjust, to get to know me.”
She sagged in patent relief, and it bugged him that he was so attuned to her, that he harbored an urge to relieve her mind. It would be better for all concerned if no one entertained any false hopes.
“Make no mistake,” he instructed in his coolest voice, “my life is in New York and we will be moving there. I’ll stay here to give my son time to get accustomed to the idea. While he does, I’ll find out what, if anything, needs to be done about Emmett’s estate.”
Suspicion entered her eyes and he narrowed his own in response. “Don’t even go there. I’m not after Austin’s money—I’ve got plenty of my own.”
“And I should believe you because...?”
God! Why did that look, that tone, make him want to loom over her, to step too close, crowd into her space and see how she dealt with it?
The urge startled him, because, really, where the hell had that come from? He’d never manhandled or acted threatening toward a woman in his life.
And looking into her fierce little face, he almost snorted. Mighty Mouse here would probably call the sheriff’s department if he even looked like he was about to make a misstep. And rightly so, considering she was a woman alone in her house with him—a stranger she didn’t know from Adam and mistrusted the little she thought she did know.
But wouldn’t that just be the cherry on his fucking cupcake if his half brother Max showed up to arrest him? It would probably make the bastard’s day to haul his ass to jail.
He drew a steadying breath. “I don’t require that you believe me, but in the interest of playing nice with others, I’ll give you a freebie.” He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and fished out a card, which he handed to her. “This is my assistant. Call her with your fax number and I’ll have her send you my latest bank statement.” He gave her a level look. “We have real issues to get through. Me stealing from my kid isn’t one of them.”
She folded her arms beneath little breasts. “What do you want from me?”
The reasonableness of her tone released some of the tension from his shoulders. “Austin clearly cares about you. I want you to be the conduit between us.”
She laughed in his face. “Why on earth would you think I’d do that?”
“Because while I’m willing to stay here for the next two or whatever months to let him finish the school year, in the end we will move to Manhattan.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “I’m going to be taking him away from everything familiar, and I don’t fool myself it’ll be a popular decision. If you care about him, you’ll make the transition easier for him. Or you can keep your mad on going with me and make it hard. I guess it’s up to you.”
She looked at him a long time. “All right. I’ll think about it.” Her extravagant eyelashes lowered until her eyes were mere coffee-dark glints shining between them. “For Austin’s sake,” she stressed. “Whatever I decide, I won’t be doing it for you.”
“No shit,” he muttered, but thrust out his hand to shake on the deal. Her narrow fingers were warm as she slid them across his palm, her grip firm.
He was caught unprepared for the spark of electricity that shot through him at the contact. But he buried his response, countering it with his all-purpose wry smile.
“Trust me, I didn’t assume otherwise for a minute.”
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER JAKE BRADSHAW LEFT, Jenny paced from the couch to the fireplace to the picture window, no sooner reaching one destination than lighting out for the next. The already small living room felt like it was shrinking decrementally by the minute.
She had no idea how much time had passed before her restless circuit finally ended back at the window. She stared blindly beyond the resort grounds to the peekaboo glimpse of The Brothers, the prominent twin peaks in the Olympic mountain range that the inn was named after. “Oh, God.” Thrusting her hands through her hair, she knocked her forehead once, twice, three times against the cool glass. “What the hell am I going to do?”
Nothing came to mind. And wasn’t that too whacked for words—she who had had a plan since her daddy was sent to the pen when she was barely sixteen? At the moment, however, her mind was nothing but white noise, her stomach awash in red-hot acid. And she couldn’t string two consecutive thoughts together to save her soul.
She needed Tasha.
Just the thought of her best friend made her stomach a fraction less messed up, and she dashed into the bedroom, snatched her purse from the top of her dresser where she always left it, and headed back toward the door.
On the way, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the inside of her open closet door.
“Holy crap.” She’d forgotten she was still wearing her cleaning clothes. Not to mention that she was devoid of so much as a hint of makeup and her do was totally pulled apart in front from her ten-fingered grab-and-bang. “That’s not pretty.”
Tossing her purse back on the dresser, she toed off her Keds and kicked them into the closet. She shimmied her jeans down her legs and wrestled her T-shirt off over her head. She was in no mood to go primp crazy, but surely she could do better than this.
It took her no time at all to pull on a nicer pair of skinny-wale cords, a thin red sweater and her three-inch Cuban-heeled black leather boots. She swiped a sheer red balm over her lips and gave her lashes a cursory pass with the mascara wand. Then, removing the rubber bands from her braids, she pulled a brush through her hair.
And called it good.
Two minutes later she was out the door, pulling on a military-style jacket as she headed for the boardwalk that followed the curving shoreline into town.
The wind whipped her hair around her head when she rounded the inn, and she pulled a knit beret out of her jacket pocket. Stretching its back opening, she caught up the bottom of her hair, tugged the gray angora front band into place and tucked in stray strands blowing around her face. The day was more blustery than cold, and the upside to the gusty wind was the clarity of the air now that the earlier clouds had blown away. The Olympics soared out of green layer upon complex green layer of foothills, rising a scant two miles away across the choppy, whitecapped water, their snow-blanketed peaks brilliant white against the clear blue sky.
Two blocks down the beach, the actual Razor Bay of the eponymously named town cut a deep, irregular half circle into the land. The boardwalk emptied onto Harbor Street, the face of the business district, with its brightly painted storefronts lining the long arc of the inlet. As Jenny walked away from the mouth of the bay, the winds dropped and the waters calmed within the protection of three sides of land.
Someone tapped on the window as she passed the orange clapboard Sunset Café, and she waved back at Kathy Tagart and Maggie Watson, who sat at a table on the other side of the glass. She strode past Razor Bay Jet Ski & Bicycle Rentals, darkened now as it was only open on Saturdays and Sundays this time of year. The neighboring aqua, blue and green building next door was Bella T’s Pizzeria, where she was headed.
Jenny whipped the door open, and the rich scent of pizza sauce wafted from brick wood-burning ovens to wrap around her like a security blanket. It was a little early for the dinner crowd, but an older couple she didn’t recognize sat at one of the window tables, and a group of teens, laughing and talking, crowded around two tables they’d pushed together near the game room. As she crossed to the order counter, the door to that room opened and closed, belching out the electronic beeps and clangs of the video-game machines behind it.
Tasha looked up from chopping something on a block below the sales counter—and broke into a wide smile. “Well, hey, girlfriend!” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon. Thought for sure you’d be spending your day off eating chocolate-drizzled popcorn and reading romance nov—” Her smile faltered and she lowered her voice as Jenny approached. “What’s wrong? Is it Austin?”
“No, Austin’s okay.” A bark of laughter that threatened to morph into something else escaped her throat. “Well, ‘okay’ might be stretching it a bit, considering his father is in town, and he’s determined to take Austin back to New York with him.”
“What?” Setting aside her knife, Tasha wiped her hands on the white waist apron circling her narrow hips. Then she shook her head. “No, wait, let’s go over to the far table where we’ll have a little privacy. You want a slug of red?”
“Oh, God. That would be soooo appreciated.”
“One glass of wine coming up then.” She selected a wide-bowled goblet and filled it higher than usual with the house cab. “Here you go, sweetie.” Pushing it toward Jenny with one hand, she poured a less generous portion for herself. Then she gave Jenny a quick but thorough once-over. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Breakfast, I guess.” She honestly didn’t remember.
Tasha was already turning away. “Let me make you a slice.”
“I’m not sure I can swallow anything,” she said, but her friend had already grabbed a section of dough out of the fridge, slid it onto a paddle and was ladling sauce onto it.
“If this is as bad as it sounds, you’re going to need fuel. I’ve got some of that Canadian bacon and pineapple you like, although how anybody can eat pineapple on—” She waved the old argument aside. “Take our wine over to the table and I’ll bring the food.”
“Fuckin’ A, dude!” A boisterous male voice suddenly rang through the room, making the elderly couple gape in shock at the table of teens.
Jenny didn’t even turn. Instead, she watched as her friend reached for the big-barreled gun she kept on the lower counter. Then she slowly pivoted as Tasha took aim at the offender and pulled the trigger.
The ping-pong ball that fired from the gun hit dead center in the back of the cursing teen’s head and bounced away to skip in decreasing hops across the linoleum floor.
“What the—” Slapping a hand to the spot, the boy pushed back from the table and whirled to face Tasha, his face a study in indignation.
But once he had her in his sights, he appeared to promptly lose his train of thought.
For the first time since she’d discovered Jake Bradshaw’s identity, Jenny experienced a trace of amusement. Tasha had that effect on the XY end of the chromosome pool. Jenny had always found it interesting because it wasn’t her friend’s body—Tasha was far from being built like a goddess. She was tallish and gangly, with average-size breasts and no hips to speak of. But with her gray-blue eyes, full upper lip and Pre-Raphaelite strawberry-blond curls, she had the more exotically striking than beautiful looks—and presence—of a model from a Michael Parkes painting.
It stopped males in their tracks every time.
The gaze she leveled on the teen at this moment lacked her usual warmth. “This is a place for families,” she said without raising her voice. “So clean up your language or get out of my shop. You only get one warning.”
He hesitated as if tempted to protect his machismo with the usual teenage, knee-jerk don’t-tell-me-what-to-do ’tude. Instead, he swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding the length of his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sorry, Tasha,” Brandon Teller called from his seat next to the boy who’d dropped the F-bomb. “This is my cousin’s first time here. He didn’t know the rules.”
“Now you do.” Tasha granted the boy a smile. “And admiring as I do a man who’s not afraid to apologize, I’ll tell you that you handled it better than many. Welcome to Bella T’s.”
When she and Jenny took their wine and food to a table on the other side of the room a moment later, however, she demanded sotto voce, “Seriously? When did I become a ma’am?”
She made an erasing gesture before Jenny could respond. “Never mind. That’s not what’s important. I want to see you eat some of that pie.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Try.”
So Jenny picked up the slice and took a tiny bite off its tip. She felt so sick at the thought of Jake taking Austin to the other side of the country, she was honestly afraid her stomach would rebel. But the pizza’s flavors exploded on her tongue and she found the crisp golden crust, flavorful sauce and hot, soft cheese a comfort.
Pizza to her was Tasha, and Tash had been her best friend since Jenny’s second day in Razor Bay High, when the other girl had put herself between Jenny and some kids who had thought it would be fun to torment her over the much-publicized statewide scandal from her father’s exposed Ponzi scheme.
She’d come to learn that Tasha’s mother made the strawberry blonde’s standing in school even lower than her own. But that only made Jenny admire her more, because most teens already on the fringe—and likely a good percentage of adults, as well—would have covered their own ass rather than put it on the line for a total stranger.
So she smiled at her friend as she reached for her wineglass. “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you? You did it, Tash—not only do you make the world’s best pizza, but you’re making this place a complete success.” Bella T’s had only been open for ten months, but it had taken off from the beginning, not just with the tourists during high season, but with the locals, as well.
Tasha gave her a lopsided smile. “Toldja a hundred years ago I was gonna.”
She had—the first time she’d made Jenny a homemade pizza in her mother’s single-wide. The same night she’d divulged her dream to one day own her own pizzeria.
From the beginning, the two of them had shared a mutual determination to move beyond their circumstances. But Jenny had been in awe that her new friend, who was only six months older than she, had a full-fledged, neatly typed business plan in her underwear drawer. She’d been living day to day, just trying to keep her grades up in school and her mother and herself off the streets with the after-school maid job at The Brothers that had brought her to Razor Bay. She so honest-to-God admired everything Tasha had accomplished and was happy for her success. Because nobody worked harder.
Now, in the unspoken agreement of good friends, they chatted about everything but what had brought Jenny here until they finished their meal. Finally, reaching for the half carafe she’d brought to the table, Tasha topped off Jenny’s glass and added a splash to her own.
“You look a little more relaxed,” she said. “So take a few deep breaths and try to give me the details without getting yourself all stressed out again.”
“Tall order,” Jenny said, and admitted, “I don’t know if that’s possible.” But she took the calming breath her friend advised and recounted everything that had happened from the moment she’d discovered who Jake Bradshaw was.
“Crap,” Tasha said quietly when she finished. “What are you going to do?”
She blew out a breath. “I don’t know. He’s ignored Austin his entire life—it never once even occurred to me he would show up. But not only has he,” she said with fierce indignation, “he’s here with a plan to disrupt Austin’s life by dragging him away from everything he knows! God, I just want to—”
She stared down at her hands and reached for another calming breath as she uncurled the white-knuckled fists she’d unconsciously tightened into her fingers. Then she looked up at her friend. Gave her a slight half smile.
“It would be nice if I could say I’m being altruistic here, that my concern is strictly for Austin’s welfare. But, God, Tash, I really thought I’d get permanent guardianship. I can’t bear the thought of him going that far away!”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve been in his life since he was, what, two years old?”
“Nearer to three and a half before I really got close to him.”
The other woman shrugged. “Close enough.” She reached across the table to give her hands a squeeze. “And maybe it won’t come down to that. You said Bradshaw is staying here until school’s out, right? Maybe he’ll get bored with playing daddy and go back before June.” She frowned. “Okay, that’s a shitty thing to wish for, too.”
“I know.” Jenny ground the heel of her hand against the headache beginning to throb between her brows. “It’s not like I haven’t considered the same thing. But it’s hard to forget how long Austin fantasized about having a father before he finally put that dream away.” She growled with frustration. “This is such a no-win situation. It’s pretty much guaranteed that one or both of us is going to wind up hurt.”
She leaned into the table. “But I’ve got to think like an adult. Because as much as it’ll kill me to lose Austin, I’m even more afraid that Bradshaw will win his forgiveness—will make him care—then do something exactly like what you said and stomp the kid’s heart to paste.”
The moment the words left her mouth, however, she thought of that glimpse she’d caught of...something. Something that had seethed in Jake Bradshaw’s pale green eyes when he saw Austin for the first time. She wasn’t sure what it had been, exactly. But it had caught her by surprise because she hadn’t expected a guy who’d ignored his son since birth to harbor such strong emotions.
Then she shrugged it aside. So what? It was probably just impatience at having to be here, at having to deal with her and Austin.
All the same, she sat up straighter. “If he’s telling the truth,” she said slowly, “Jake Bradshaw is going to have legal custody of Austin.”
“I’m not sure why he’d lie about it, since that’s something easily checked,” Tasha said.
“That’s my thought, too, because you can be sure I will check. But if it is so... Well, he’s right when he said that if I care about Austin, I have to help make the transition easier for him.” Acknowledging it made her feel like howling.
Tasha nodded. “I’m sorry, Jen. But I think you’re probably right. Look.” She leaned into the table. “You can’t do anything about it tonight, and I don’t like the idea of you going home to brood. You said Austin’s sleeping over at Nolan’s, right?”
“Yes. Part of me is so relieved that I don’t have to pretend in front of him. But you know me too well. Because as much as I’d love to tell you you’re wrong about the brooding, I have a feeling that rattling around the house alone is going to make tonight seem like a dog year.”
“So don’t go home. Things quiet down around here after seven. You can hang around here until then, or run errands or whatever and come back. Either way, I’ll have Tiff close for me tonight. You and I are going to the Anchor. There’s always some distraction to be had there. We can get stinkin’ or we can just feed the jukebox and knock ’em dead at darts. Whataya say?”
She really wasn’t in the mood for the local bar. But neither did she want to go home to take up pacing again. Plus, if she knew nothing else, she could rely on one thing: being with Tasha would help. “Deal. I think I’ll hang here until you’re ready. That’ll give me plenty of time to decide whether darts or getting stinkin’ is the best way to go.”
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE COULDN’T SETTLE DOWN. He’d driven around the area to refamiliarize himself with the spots he remembered and to check out the changes—surprised at how many of the latter there were. Back at the inn, he’d explored both his suite, which had taken all of five minutes, and the grounds of his former in-laws’ resort, which had at least used up a little time. He’d called room service to deliver his dinner, because he was too wired to sit in the dining room.
But now it was only six-thirty and the walls were closing in. He had to get out of here.
Grabbing his hoodie, he pulled it on, zipped up, then wrestled his sport jacket on over it as he headed for the beach. He’d walk into town. See if he couldn’t kill some more time.
He barely glanced at the rugged, panoramic mountain range across the water that stopped the tourists in their tracks. Head down in the wind, hands jammed in his pockets, he strode purposefully along the boardwalk, one of the additions that was new to him.
Moments later, he reached Razor Bay—only to discover they’d already rolled up the streets.
“Shit.” How could he have forgotten that? It used to be just one more reason added to the many that’d had him dying to get out of this backwater burg. There was bugger all to do in the low season. Hell, it only offered a limited selection of distractions during the high.
The Sunset Café, Bella T’s Pizzeria and a new Vietnamese sandwich place were still open, and those likely only because it was Friday night. At least in the summer both Harbor Street and Eagle Road were jumping until eleven.
Remembering Austin talking about his friend’s mom getting them pizza, he almost went into Bella T’s. He tried to convince himself that he had an urge to do so simply because the place was new to him and he was curious. But he wasn’t that good a liar. He knew damn well the fuel driving that machine was the off chance of seeing his son.
Even if Austin was in there this very moment—and what were the odds of that?—did he really want a public face-off with the kid? Jenny was right: he needed to give Austin time to get used to the fact that he was back in town.
He didn’t know why just thinking her name made a vision of his son’s guardian dragon pop into his head. But not only could he see her shiny hair, those big dark eyes and smooth olive skin, the damn mental picture was high-def.
He blinked the image away. Where the hell had that come from? She was so not his type.
He gave his shoulders an impatient hitch, looking for a more comfortable fit in his skin. The more he thought about it, the more his earlier idea—to have li’l Ms. Salazar help pave the way with Austin—seemed like the way to go. At the time it had merely been one of those throwaway ideas that sometimes popped off the top of his head. But it was a solid plan.
Of course, it was also predicated on her agreeing to it. And given her opinion of him, that was one big-ass if.
Suddenly recalling the Anchor, he headed for the narrow walkway that was cut between the General Store and Swanson’s Ice Cream Shack. The pedestrian shortcut led to Eagle Road, which paralleled the long curve of Harbor Street and comprised the rest of the town’s business district, and to the parking lot behind that. As Razor Bay’s sole bar, if you didn’t count the one off the lobby at The Brothers—which tonight he definitely did not—The Anchor was one place still bound to be open.
He spotted the white-framed mosaic sign he remembered the instant he cleared the tiled walkway connecting the two streets. It spelled out the bar’s name in sea-hued bits of tile on the bump-out over the marine-blue building’s three front windows. The same twin neon anchors from his youth flashed yellow and blue on either end of the sign, and what he’d swear were the same neon beer signs dotted the windows.
He felt an edge of anticipation and had to admit he was curious. He’d left town before he was old enough to be allowed in the bar. Back in the day, he’d tried to lay hands on some fake ID with the thought of going there, but it hadn’t panned out.
He snorted. Hell, even if he’d scored the best fake identification ever produced, it wasn’t as if there’d been a hope in hell he’d have gotten away with using it. Not in the Anchor. In a town this size, everyone pretty much knew who everyone else was.
Pulling open the door, he walked in.
Dimly lit, the interior sported dark wood-plank floors scuffed from years of foot traffic, and matching, if less beat-up, walls covered in black-framed photos that appeared to be black-and-white shots of midcentury Razor Bay. He wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at those.
A long bar with tall stools took up most of the back wall, and the two blackboards behind it, whose chalk menus were highlighted by art lights, showed a surprising selection of microbrewery beers and ales. A jukebox, pinball machine and a couple of dartboards took up a small slice of real estate down at the end of the front wall to his right. Tables and chairs took up the rest of the floor, and a few small booths occupied the wall opposite the gaming section.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but this was a bar pretty much like you’d find anywhere, if a touch more hip than he’d anticipated. But at least he could kill a little time here with a beer and those photos.
“Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in,” a deep voice drawled from one of the booths.
Jake froze midstride, and for a single hot second he was a fourth-grade boy again, forgetting for a moment that his dad had walked out on him and his mom, because he was finally on the much-coveted big kids’ fourth-to-sixth-grade upper playground at Chief Sealth Elementary. He’d had one perfect moment—until a boy two grades older came up to him, gave him a shove that almost knocked him off his feet and said, “Heard you got what you deserved. If your tramp of a mama hadn’t got herself knocked up, my dad would still be with me and my mom.”
It had been a shock on every level because how many darn families did his until-recently-adored father have? And Jake sure hadn’t started the new school year expecting to be pushed around by his previously unknown half brother. A brother, he’d learned over a course of several school-yard confrontations, whom their mutual father, Charlie Bradshaw, had totally ignored even when they’d lived in the same town—the way Charlie ignored him now that he’d moved on to a new family.
But the little flash down memory lane was just that—there one second and gone the next. Shaking off the mix of confusion and rage that dealings with Max Bradshaw had always given him, he strolled over. “Well, hey, big brother,” he drawled right back. “Long time, no see. I hear somebody thought it was a good idea to give you a gun. Tell me that doesn’t scare the shit out of the general populace.”
“Oh, most people don’t have a thing to worry about.” Max gave Jake a pointed look. “You, however—” His gaze grazed Jake’s chest as if visualizing a bull’s-eye.
It was never easy to tell when Max was serious and when he wasn’t, but Jake gave him the same cool look either case would garner. “So what number wife are you up to now? Three? Four, maybe? Any nieces or nephews I oughta know about?”
The words had barely left his mouth when he felt an odd regret. He and Max actually shared several traits, and when their father had waltzed out of town, they’d had a narrow window of opportunity to bury the hatchet somewhere besides in each other’s skull. After all, they were probably the only ones in Razor Bay who truly understood how the wreckage Charlie left behind affected the other. It had been a rare chance to take comfort in having someone who got it, someone with whom you didn’t have to pretend you didn’t give a damn that Charlie Bradshaw was a great dad as long as you were his current favorite, but that he forgot you even existed the moment he moved on. And they might have.
If hating each other’s guts hadn’t been so well ingrained by then.
Even in the dim light he could see his salvo cause something dark to flash across his half brother’s deep-set eyes. But the other man merely shrugged a big shoulder. “No wives, no kids. You’re the one who started early and followed in the old man’s footsteps.”
You opened yourself up for that one, Slick. But, ouch. It was a direct hit, and one that gouged at a long-festering guilt, more than a decade old.
Because as much as he’d like to blow off his half brother’s potshot as the usual sour grapes, Max wasn’t wrong. When Jake’s high school girlfriend Kari had gotten knocked up in their senior year, he had started out with good intentions, fiercely determined to man up in a way that his own dad never had. And for a while, he had done just that.
In the end, however, he’d turned out to be nothing but a chip off the old block.
The knowledge rankled now just as much as it had back then, so instead of acting cool and shrugging off Max’s remark the way he should have, he snapped, “You don’t know a damn thing about me, bro. You didn’t when I was nine and you turned the big kids’ playground into a battleground, and you sure as hell don’t now. When are you gonna get it through your head? My mom and I didn’t make the old man leave you and your mother, any more than whoever that other woman was made him leave us. When it comes to Charlie’s wives and kids, he’s got the attention span of a fruit fly.”
His half brother dug his knuckles into his forehead just above the bridge of his nose. Then, dropping his hand to splay atop the scarred table, Max looked up at him. And blew out a breath. “Yeah,” he agreed, his deep voice a tired rumble.
Jake took a seat in the booth across the table from Max. “You know what?” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t have the heart for this anymore. I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to make up for my past and hoping to hell I do a decent enough job to get to know my kid. I don’t have enough energy to fight you, too.”
Max gave him a puzzled look. “You do get that you’re handing me a whole shitload of ammunition, right?”
Jake shrugged. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do—it’s not like I can stop you. So fuck it.”
“Right.” Max shifted in his seat. “Fuck it. We’re not in high school anymore.” He leveled a look on him. “Don’t get the idea you’re ever gonna be my bud, little Bradshaw. But I can probably stomach being around you now and then.”
Jake had to swallow a grin at the “little Bradshaw” crack. That was a good one. He wasn’t particularly small: he missed the six-foot mark by a fraction of an inch. But Max was a good six-three and twenty pounds heavier. “Give me a minute,” he ordered. “I’m kinda overwhelmed here. I’m not sure I know how to handle so much enthusiasm coming my way.” He shook his head as he met the gaze of the man across the table. “The thrill of it all just may kill me.”
“We can only hope.”
A cardboard Anchor Porter beer coaster landed on the table in front of him and he looked up at a cheery, college-age blonde.
She gave him a toothy grin. “Well, hey there, new blood. Haven’t seen you before. Trust me, I’d remember.” Then she waved the mild flirtation aside. “Get you boys something?”
“Him another table,” Max said.
Jake flashed the waitress a smile. “My brother’s such a kidder.”
She did a double take. “Shut the front door! You two are brothers?”
“Half,” Max emphasized. “We’re half brothers.”
“Half, whole.” Jake shrugged. “What’s the diff? Blood’s blood, right?”
Max gave him a disgruntled glare. “Give it a rest, Jake...before I’m tempted to spill yours.”
“Whatever you say, my brotha.” He winked at the blonde. “Give old Bradshaw here another of whatever he’s drinking and I’ll have a Fat Tire.”
“One Bud tap and a Fat Tire coming up.”
“Budweiser?” Jake asked, turning his attention back to Max as the girl headed to the bar. “Seriously?”
Max rolled his muscular shoulders. “It’s a good American beer. And it doesn’t have a stupid name. Hell, I could’ve given you a fat lip for free.”
“And have, on more than one occasion. But it’s Fat Tire, philistine. I’m guessing you don’t get out of this burg very often.”
“Why would I want to? I’ve got everything I need right here.”
Jake shuddered. If he had to stay in Razor Bay a second longer than it took to make Austin trust him, he’d open a vein.
The waitress was back with their beer almost before their exchange ended, and he dug his wallet out of his hip pocket, paid for the order and dropped a hefty tip on her tray.
Max studied him. “It’s easy to tell you live in a big city.”
“Why? Because I tip?”
His half brother scowled. “I tip. Maybe not fivers for a four-dollar bottle of beer, but I tip. But I was talking about that metrosexual thing you’ve got going.”
“The hell you say!” He might like the amenities of a big city but, he’d never had a manicure or facial in his life.
“I do say.” Max gave him a feral grin. “You’re a pretty boy.”
“I’m ruggedly handsome.” He bounced a fist off his chest. “A manly man.” Then he shrugged. “Still, you’re right about the big city. I own a loft in Soho.”
“We talking New York City?” Max grimaced, then unknowingly echoed his own sentiments. “Christ. I’d open a vein if I had to live there.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been?”
“Nope. I’ve never had my balls waxed either, but I can tell you without a doubt that I wouldn’t like it.”
Unable to help himself, Jake laughed even as he hunched in a little over his own cajones. “Yeah, because the two things have so much in common. You ever been anywhere, Max?”
“Sure.” He hitched a shoulder. “California. North Carolina. Afghanistan. Iraq.”
“Of course. What else would a law-and-order type do but join the—what?” A laugh escaped him. “No, wait, this is a no-brainer. You couldn’t be anything but a jarhead. Or I suppose one of those Navy SEALS or Green Beret dudes.”
“Please. Like I’d join either of those pussy branches of the service. I was one of the few, the proud, boy.”
“And now you’re the sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Deputy of Nottingham. The sheriff’s about a hundred years old.”
But Jake was barely listening. Hearing a raunchy feminine laugh on the other side of the room, his head snapped up. That couldn’t possibly be...
His gaze cut through the crowd that was beginning to fill the watering hole, tracking the sound to its source. And discovered that—hell—not only could it be, it was. Jenny Salazar was at the bar, laughing with the bartender and another woman.
She looked different tonight. Not at all like the little girl he’d first mistaken her for. Her lips were red and soft looking. Her hair without those braids was longer than he’d realized, a shiny rippling curtain of dark against the red sweater she wore. And her—
“What the hell are you staring at?” Max twisted in his seat to look over his shoulder. Then with a nod he settled back. “Ah. Tasha. She has that effect on guys. Not sure why—it’s not like she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Still, she’s got a way of stopping the show.”
Jake tore his gaze away. Gave himself a mental smack to get his head back in the game. And discovered that even then he didn’t have any idea what Max was babbling about. “Who?”
“Tasha Riordan. The strawberry blonde? That’s not who you’re looking at? Who then—Jenny?” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t want to go there.”
That got his full attention. “I don’t? That is, I really don’t—my interest in her isn’t like that.” At least not much. He gave his head a shake. “But just to clarify, why don’t I? Is she yours?” He didn’t question too closely why the idea bugged him.
But his half brother seemed almost appalled by the idea. “No!”
“Okay. Some other guy’s?”
He shook his head.
“She’s a nun, then.”
Max gave him a what-the-fuck? look. “Here’s a thought. How ’bout you try not to be any more of an idiot than you already are.”
“I’m groping in the dark here, bro. She a lesbian?”
“Jesus. No. She’s just...sweet. Loyal. A good friend to everyone. Not someone for a guy like you to be messing with.”
“Yeah? Does she roll over and wag her tail when you scratch behind her ears, too?”
Max scowled, but Jake was too familiar with the expression to be intimidated. “What? She’s a woman, big B. You make her sound like an old dog.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No shit. I thought she was a kid when I met her this afternoon, but she herself disabused me of that notion right from the get. I take it she’s single, so I don’t see the problem if some guy—not me, but someone—wanted to slap the moves on her. So if she’s none of the things I’ve already mentioned, what does that leave? Terminal?” He shook his head. “No, the conversation I had with her didn’t leave me with that impression—she’s not inward looking enough. Leper?” He was enjoying his brother’s disgust at his guessing game, until a sudden thought turned his blood to ice and drop-kicked the smile right off his face. “Christ. Rape victim?”
“No. Where do you come up with this shit?”
He shrugged. “I’m a journalist. I’ve seen things.”
“I thought you were some hotshot photographer for National Explorer.”
“I am. Well, a photographer anyway. The hotshot part’s still a work in progress. But just because most of my work is told through the lens of a camera, doesn’t mean I’m not a questioning kind of guy.” Jake glanced over at the woman under discussion once again. She and her friend had migrated to a table. The friend, who had taken a chair facing him, did have something, he admitted. But it was Jenny, sitting in profile to him, who commanded his attention.
Well, of course she did. She held considerable sway over any relationship he might forge with Austin.
He looked back at Max. “I talked to her for all of maybe fifteen minutes this afternoon. So tell me about her. How does she fit into Austin’s life?”
“She’s like his sister.”
“Yeah, I got that. What I don’t get is, how did that happen? No way in hell they’re related. Kathy was an only child, and Emmett had one older sister who never married.”
Max shrugged. “She came here when she was fifteen—” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Sixteen?” He shook his head. “The exact age doesn’t really matter. She came here as a teen in the midst of a huge scandal. I was home on leave when she hit town.”
That caught Jake’s attention, but his brother immediately gave the air a negligent swipe with one big-knuckled hand.
“Not her scandal. It was her old man’s. He’d been all over the news because of some big swindle that crashed down around his ears and landed him in Monroe. Jenny came here with her mother.” Max’s face hardened. “Who, as far as I could tell, planted her skinny socialite ass in bed from the shame of it all, while her underage kid kept the two of them off the streets by doing housekeeping at The Brothers after school and on weekends.”
“And Emmett and Kathy just invited two strangers with a questionable past to move into their home?” In a way it sounded like something they’d do. But in other ways, it wasn’t like them at all, especially in light of Kari’s death, which couldn’t have been more than a year or two before that time.
Max shook his head. “That was a while later. When they first got here, Jenny and her mother rented the Bakers’ little place.”
“Christ.” He shifted uncomfortably. “That old rehabbed chicken coop?”
“Yeah. Where her mom just curled up and died. I’m talking literally. From what I heard, the woman couldn’t live with her loss of status and just willed herself to die. But it took her a while. By the time she passed, Jenny was a senior and had been working for the Pierces almost two years.”
“So—what? They just replaced Kari with her?” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he was the last person with any room for righteous indignation.
But somehow that didn’t stop him from feeling it.
Max gave him a look that suggested he was thinking the same thing. But he merely said, “The one time I went to their house to see Austin, I was strongly discouraged, so I’m hardly an expert on their mind-set.”
That sidetracked Jake. “You wanted to see Austin?”
“I thought I should meet my nephew.”
He simply stared at Max for a moment before admitting, “It never occurred to me you were his uncle. But you are, aren’t you?”
“Not as far as Emmett and Kathy were concerned,” Max said drily. “They said considering my background with you and the fact that the little dude didn’t know me from Adam, they didn’t see the point in my spending time with him—that he’d only be confused.” He shrugged. “They were probably right. I mean, you and I never acted like real brothers. Why should my relationship with your get be any different? But I always wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have pressed them a little harder. Done more. Hell, I put more effort into getting to know the boys over at Cedar Village,” he added, naming the home for delinquent boys on Orilla Road outside town.
Then he shook his head. “That’s not what we were talking about, though. Because one thing I do know about the Pierces is that they sure as hell mourned Kari. So I doubt replacing her with Jenny entered into the equation. I think they saw a hardworking girl who was the age their daughter had been when she died and who was struggling to make ends meet—and thought they could help. In the end, I believe they came to think of Jenny as the next best thing to a daughter.”
“What about her? What did she get out of the relationship, besides the obvious?”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like what you’re implying, bro.”
“She went from the Bakers’ chicken coop to the Pierces’ big Craftsman.”
“Where she refused every enticement to live a life of leisure.” Max looked him in the eyes. “And you know she could have. But Jenny kept working at the inn and, after graduating, put herself through college. With no help from the Pierces, from everything I’ve ever heard. She earned her promotions with good, old-fashioned hard work. And she moved out of that big Craftsman. Bought the little cabin she lives in from Emmett.” Max gave him a hard look. “So, you don’t want to be calling that kettle black, pot.”
Jake scrubbed his hands over his face. “I know. I know.”
“I’ll tell you what I think she got from her relationship with Emmett and Kathy. They were considerably older than her own parents, and I think she looked on them as sort of grandparents. You gotta know how they spoiled Kari—”
He nodded. God, did he ever.
“They did the same thing with Austin, but Jenny curbed it wherever she could. So the kid is less spoiled than his mother was. And she flat-out refused to let them spoil her.”
“Yeah, she’s a goddamn paragon,” Jake muttered, staring across the room at her profile.
“Pretty much,” Max agreed cheerfully. “A helluva lot more than you can ever hope to be.”
Jake abruptly became aware that the strawberry blonde was watching him watch Jenny, and even as he noticed, she leaned into the table to say something to her friend. Jenny turned to look his way, a friendly, interested smile on her face.
It turned cool as the evening wind when she saw him.
“Shit.”
Max glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at him with raised eyebrows. “And you call yourself a big-city sophisticate? Hell, even us rubes know if you stare at a female like a dog at a juicy bone long enough—”
“The hell I did!”
Max thrust an authoritative forefinger at him. “Dog.” The finger thrust in Jenny’s general direction. “Juicy bone.” He shook his head. “Jesus, kid. I’m embarrassed to acknowledge some of the same blood runs in our veins. It was only a matter of time until you were busted.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JENNY STROLLED INTO THE INN’S dining room the following morning, only to rock to a halt in the doorway when she saw Jake Bradshaw sitting alone at one of the window tables. How did he do that? How the hell did he manage to be everywhere she went?
Wasn’t it enough that he’d thrown a monkey wrench into her get-away-from-it-all evening with Tasha last night? Now he had to invade her dining room, as well? This was her time of the morning, dammit, her territory, her inn.
Okay, maybe the latter wasn’t hers in the legal sense, aside from the portion Emmett had so generously bequeathed her. But in all the ways that mattered, she claimed ownership. The Brothers Inn had been a major part of her life since she’d arrived in Razor Bay at sixteen. Hell, it was the reason she’d come to this town in the first place—the promise of a job when the pampered life she’d known had disintegrated in the wake of her father’s arrest and incarceration.
And ever since Emmett had promoted her to general manager, she’d made a habit of coming to the dining room each morning at the end of the breakfast shift to eat that much-touted most important meal of the day. She’d found it particularly beneficial since Austin had moved in with her. Breakfast at the inn was her way of easing into the day, a transition between getting the teen off to school and diving into her busy shift at the inn.
Striding across the room, she smiled at or murmured hellos to the few guests still finishing up their meals, before stopping at Jake’s table.
“What are you doing here?” Okay, so it was obvious, given the topped-off coffee cup at his elbow and the plate containing a smear of egg yolk, an untouched bunch of red grapes and a single crust of toast, which he’d pushed out of the way to accommodate the Bremerton Sun he was reading.
But it was the best she could do when she wasn’t allowed to say, You breathe, therefore you bother me—get the hell out of my dining room.
“Hey.” He looked up from the newspaper spread out on the table. Flashed her a million-dollar smile. “I’m having breakfast. You, too?”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and tapped the toe of a fabulous-if-she-did-say-so-herself Steve Madden Mary Jane. It reverberated a soft tattoo against the hardwood floor.
Jake’s smile faded. “Is it a problem that I’m staying here? Do you want me to leave?”
Yes! The moment Austin had left this morning, she’d put in a call to the Pierces’ lawyer to discuss her chances of keeping the boy with her now that his absentee father had stated a willingness to fight for custody. Already feeling ragged from the results of that conversation, learning that blood relatives are almost always chosen over a nonrelated contestant, she wished nothing more than for Jake Bradshaw to go far, far away.
And never come back.
But he’d made it pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen. And she knew the bastard had been right when he’d told her that either she could make things easier for Austin, or she could stick to her guns and likely make them a lot more difficult. So she sighed and dropped her arms to her sides.
“No. We don’t make a habit of turning customers away at The Brothers just because we don’t like their looks.” Hearing herself, she almost blew a pithy little raspberry, but managed to sink her teeth into her lower lip before she could follow through on the impulse. But, please. She doubted anyone had ever turned this guy away over his looks. “Or their history. Not if they aren’t currently doing anything wrong.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But it’s just a matter of time, eh?”
“You said it, not me.”
He laughed. “You’re not shy about trying to kick my teeth down my throat, are you? I like that about you.”
She gave him her politest GM smile. “Always happy to oblige.”
“I bet you are.” He kicked the chair across from him away from the table. “Have a seat.”
The response that rose to her lips was very un-GM-like, not to mention an anatomical impossibility. Austin, she reminded herself firmly. I have to consider Austin first and foremost.
She sat. “Thank you. I’m not sure I’ve ever received an invitation so suave.”
He grinned. “It’s my big-city polish.”
Dammit, she didn’t want to like anything about this guy, but she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from twitching upward in appreciation. Then the decision she’d made after a night spent tossing and turning slammed front and center.
And the smile dissolved.
“I gave your request a lot of thought,” she said. “And I’ve decided to do what I can to make Austin’s transition as easy on him as possible.”
He sat straighter in his seat. “Thank you.”
“Like I told you yesterday, I’m not doing this for you. And you might want to hold the thanks, anyway, because I don’t know if you’ll like my take on how you should handle things.”
“Lay it on me.”
“For starters, I wouldn’t tell him your plans to haul him back to New York yet, if I were you.”
His brows drew together. “You don’t think he should be prepared?”
A plate with scrambled eggs, toast and a ramekin of yogurt, blueberries and handmade granola was slid onto the table in front of her, and Jenny looked up at the waitress, giving her a smile. “Thanks, Brianna.”
“No problem.” The young woman turned Jenny’s cup over in its saucer and filled it with coffee. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thank you.” Glancing around, she saw that she and Jake were the only diners left—not that there’d been that many to begin with. “Go grab your own breakfast. And tell the crew to work around us if we’re still here when they’re ready to set up for lunch.” A chore they performed as soon as the breakfast crowd cleared out and they’d eaten their meals.
The girl shot her a grin. “Will do.”
She watched Brianna walk away, then turned back to Jake. “I absolutely believe Austin needs to be prepared,” she said, picking up the conversation. “But if you lead off with the fact you’re taking him from Razor Bay, he’ll shut down on you so fast it’ll make your head spin—and it will only take you that much longer to gain his trust. Look, you might be accustomed to packing up and taking off at a moment’s notice, but trust me, Austin is not.”
He studied her. “What makes you think I am?”
“Please,” she said with dismissive scorn. “There’s a wealth of stuff about you on the internet.”
“You looked me up?”
“Of course.” She tipped her head. “Do you find my assessment off the mark?”
He hitched one shoulder. “No, that’s pretty accurate.”
“So you’re used to living life on the fly. You’re also an adult. He’s a kid who’s lived in one place his entire life.”
“And is probably dying for a change.”
“Why, because you were at his age? That’s something you should definitely discuss with him, but aside from longing for a daddy when he was younger, I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed signs of Austin being dissatisfied with his lot.”
He started patting his chest and her eyebrows drew together. “What are you doing?”
“You slipped that knife in so sweet and slick, I want to be sure I don’t bleed to death before I even realize I’ve been shivved.”
She shrugged. “Put yourself in his place for a minute instead of trying to shoehorn him into yours. I know you’re getting up there in years but—”
A bark of laughter interrupted her. “Jesus, you’re a pisser.”
Jenny ignored him. “—try to remember back to when you were thirteen. How open would you have been if a man you’d never met suddenly inserted himself into your life and, without giving you so much as a moment to get to know him, told you he was gonna haul you away from everything you knew to a life different from anything you could imagine, clear on the other side of the country?”
“In all honesty?” He gave her an ironic smile. “I probably would’ve burned rubber packing my bag. But in the interests of that putting-myself-in-his-place thing, I agree that a different kind of kid might be pissed.” He gave a grudging nod. “I’ll keep my plans to myself until we get to know each other.”
“And I’ll work on trying to get him to spend some time with you.”
“Thank you.”
She shrugged and picked up her fork. She’d prefer to move to another table where she could eat her breakfast in peace, but for the sake of cooperation, she stayed put. But the sourdough toast and eggs in her standing Saturday order tasted like wood chips and glue.
He didn’t try to talk to her while she forced herself to eat every bite. For a while she appreciated it. But as the silence dragged on, she felt an antsy need to fill it with something.
Anything.
She shifted in her chair. Set her fork down and looked at him across the table.
Got hung up for a minute on his eyes.
Stop that! Dammit, what was it about him? She’d never been one to go all crazy over a handsome face. Yet with him—well, it was scary how unlike herself she felt when she looked at him too long or too closely. She was so not the bubbleheaded Ooh, what pretty eyes you have—what’s your sign type.
So why did she look at this man and feel darn near that vacuous?
Giving herself a mental head-smack now, she sat a bit straighter in her seat. “Why did it take you so damn long to get here after Emmett died?”
She almost crowed in self-approval, but managed to confine herself to a silent Thatagirl. Put him on the spot.
He leveled those glorious green eyes at her. “The phone call was made to my home rather than my assistant—”
“Maybe because no one knew you had an assistant,” she snapped.
He sighed. “Look, I stipulate that everything is my fault, okay?”
Jenny reined herself in, because these knee-jerk reactions weren’t helping. “I’m sorry,” she said and put real effort into sounding as if she actually meant it. She gave him the slightest nod. “Go on.”
“Said the queen to the peasant,” he said drily.
Shooting him her snootiest look, she twirled her hand to urge him to get on with it.
He only laughed. “It was a perfect storm of lousy luck. The housekeeper had been with me less than a month when I left on this trip, so by the time it occurred to her to contact Lucinda—that’s my assistant—the news was several weeks old. I was photographing the reefs and the Karangetang volcano in the Sangihe-Talaud Archipelago of Northern Sulawesi at the time. It’s remote, it’s freaking monsoon season, which our scheduler should have known before he set the damn trip up, and we only got access to a satellite phone when we came back to Minahasa about every third weekend or so.” He shrugged. “Even when I heard about it, I was obligated for an additional six days. Then it took time to get a flight to the Philippines and even more time to get a flight from there to Seattle. I don’t go to the most accessible spots in the world.”
“So even if you heard right away, you wouldn’t have been here any sooner?”
“I had a contract! Would you have left this inn in the lurch?”
“For Austin? In a New York minute.”
His expression went blank. “I genuflect to your superior parenting skills. But I’m trying here, okay?”
And since Jenny had caught a glimpse of genuine pain cross his eyes before he slapped on a poker face, she nodded. For the first time she really saw that he was, indeed, trying—and that maybe this wasn’t as easy for him as he’d made it appear up until now. “Okay. I guess the important thing is that you’re here now. But you’ve gotta understand that this isn’t going to be easy.”
“I know,” he said wearily. “Believe me, I get it that I’ve got a lot to make up for.”
She pushed her plate away, sat a bit taller and reached for her coffee cup, wrapping her hands around it in an attempt to warm her cold, cold fingers. Despite the lip service she’d given, a part of her must have secretly hoped this was something that would simply disappear if she wished hard enough.
Instead, it was growing more real, more concrete, by the second. She drew in a deep breath, then quietly exhaled. Replaced her cup in its saucer and pressed her hands, fingers splayed, against the cool wood of the tabletop to disguise the faint tremor they’d developed.
“Give Austin time and don’t bullshit him,” she told him quietly, “and he’ll likely come to love you. He adored the idea of you when he was little.”
Jake leaned into the table. Slid his own long-fingered hands across its surface as if to touch her. But he halted their progress when his fingertips were less than an inch from hers.
She hated that the near touch set up a series of quivers deep inside.
“And you’ll help me?” he demanded.
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
He nodded.
“Then I will.”
Even though it’d likely rip her heart right out of her breast to do so.
* * *
“BRADSHAW! GET YOUR head outta the clouds and pay attention!”
Austin literally jerked at the sound of Coach Harstead’s brisk bellow—and raised a baseball mitt-encased hand to acknowledge the reprimand. “Sorry, coach!” Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to refocus on the Bulldogs’ Wednesday practice.
God, it was hard, though. His so-called father had been trying to pin him down for the past week and a half, wanting to talk and bond and shit. Austin had been doing his best to avoid the guy, but surprisingly, Jenny, who he’d assumed would be the last person wanting him to spend time with the man, hadn’t been much help. She actually thought he should be—how had she put it?—open-minded.
My ass. Resettling his cap in front, he narrowed his eyes on the batter. His friend Lee was up. Dude was right-handed with a tendency to pull the ball, so ninety percent of his hits came straight to where Austin played shortstop, between second and third base. “Come to Mama,” he murmured.
Yet even as he concentrated on being ready for it, he wondered where his “dad” had been when he’d actually wanted a father. Nodamnwhere, that’s where. Or maybe, given the guy’s big-deal job, everywhere.
Everywhere except Razor Bay.
The crack of a ball off the bat focused his attention once again and, seeing Lee’s line drive arc to the left of him, Austin got himself in position. A second later he snagged the ball out of the air, feeling it hit his mitt with a satisfyingly meaty thwonk, and winged it to the second baseman to tag Oliver Kidd, who should have stayed put on first.
“Good work, Bradshaw!” Coach Harstead called. Then to the rest of the boys, he said, “That’s a classic example of the double play that frequently happens when you hit to shortstop. So let’s all work on not doing that, whataya say?”
Stoked over his play, Austin’s concentration improved for the rest of the practice. He actually felt pretty good by the time Coach called it quits. It was a nice little break from the stress he’d been feeling this week with his dad back in town.
Nolan came up and slapped him on the back. “Nice play with Lee and Oliver.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I did okay for once. Usually Coach catches me at my worst.”
“Nah. He knows you’re good. Maybe even all-star material—”
“Austin.”
He stiffened all over at the sound of Jake’s voice and, schooling his expression, turned to face him, giving a sullen shrug of acknowledgment. Making up his mind to play it cool, however, he tried real hard not to scowl.
But, jeez.
The guy didn’t resemble any of his friends’ dads. He was younger, for one thing. And even if he wanted to talk to him, it wasn’t like he’d have the first idea what to say. Jake had like a billion-dollar camera slung around his neck—and between the hot-shit globe-trotting photographs he took for some famous magazine and the way he looked—like an action-movie guy or something—well, it could be sorta intimidating. If Austin gave a rip about that kind of stuff.
Which he didn’t.
Jake turned to Nolan. “Your mother called Jenny,” he said. “She had to take your little brother to the doctor. It’s nothing for you to worry about,” he assured the boy, “but because she’s hung up, I’m here to give you two a ride.”
Crap! Still, there wasn’t a lot they could do about this plan—not when it had the parental stamp of approval. So by unspoken agreement, he and Nolan tumbled into the back of Jake’s Mercedes BlueTEC SUV that everybody and his brother had asked Austin about, as if he would be the first to know anything about it—not!—and visited with each other, ignoring their driver.
When Jake pulled into the driveway at Austin’s friend’s house a short while later, Nolan opened the back door but stopped to say, “Thanks, Mr. Bradshaw.”
Austin, who was damned if he’d thank Daddy Dearest for anything, simply nodded. “Yeah,” he said, climbing out of the SUV in Nolan’s wake. He met Jake’s eyes when he reached back in to grab his pack. “Tell Jenny I’m doing my homework with Nolan,” he said, and slammed the door shut. Then he turned and stalked away.
He refused to feel guilty over the flash of disappointment he’d spotted on the face of a guy he’d assumed didn’t need anyone.
CHAPTER FIVE
JAKE WATCHED UNTIL THE KIDS disappeared through the front door of Nolan’s house. “Well, that went fucking swell.” Blowing out a breath, he put the Mercedes in gear and backed down the driveway. Now what did he do?
He’d expected to get a little more out of the opportunity Jenny had presented him in the wake of Rebecca Damoth’s frantic phone call than to receive the invisible chauffeur treatment. Grumbling to himself to avoid acknowledging the hollow that had formed in his gut when his son resolutely ignored him, he drove aimlessly around Razor Bay.
He had to admire the irony. When he’d heard the news about Emmett and realized that this was his final chance to take responsibility for the parenting he’d abdicated so many years ago, what should have been a cut-and-dried decision wasn’t. He hated to admit it, but part of him had been seriously tempted to simply continue doing what he’d been doing. In the end, however, not a damn thing wasn’t an option. He was tired of the guilt. He might be able to shove it aside for blocks of time, but it always came back to haunt him.
Maybe he was like those chicks who were only drawn to men who treated them like shit. Because the more his kid ignored or tried to avoid him, the more fascinated he found himself.
Spotting the sign for the public access to the canal at the north end of town, he turned off the road into its long parking area and drove through the lot to the double-wide boat ramp, not stopping until his tires were a few feet shy of the water. The tide had turned but was only about halfway to high. He turned off the ignition and, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, stared out at the canal.
Not only was it midweek with most people at work, the day was gray as a bucket of day-old fish guts, the mountains obscured by liverish rain clouds too dense and weighty to push beyond the stratum of those stacked upon them. The parking lot didn’t contain a single vehicle with attached trailer, and Jake had his doubts that even the most intrepid, boat-happy sailor from Bangor—the naval station on the other side of Kitsap—would be hauling a boat down to the launch today.
He climbed out of the SUV, stepped off the paved launch and walked to the water’s edge.
It had been windy during the week and a half he’d been in Razor Bay, but today not so much as a breeze stirred. The skies looked as though they might open up at any minute, but for now they were dry. Squatting, he selected a few flat stones from the rocky beach then surged back upright, took a step back with his right foot and skimmed one across the water’s flat, mirrorlike surface. It skipped four times before sinking. He pulled another out of his jeans pocket and let it fly, as well.
He’d envisioned making at least a little progress with his son by now, but Austin avoided him like a case of the Asian clap. How was he supposed to get to know him if the boy was either impossible to find or faded like smoke in the wind the few times Jake could locate him?
It didn’t help that he was getting that closed-in feeling Razor Bay inevitably generated in him and, agitation building, he abandoned the lightweight skipping stones and culled some honest-to-God rocks—several with razor-edged oysters attached—from the beach. He hurled them, one after the other, as far as he could throw them. Each made a nice, solid kerplunk, sending up a decent splash as they struck the water.
That was where his satisfaction ended.
At the rate he was going, Austin would be thirty before he was ready to move with him to New York. Jake needed to get things moving at a faster clip than he’d managed so far.
Frustration at his failure to make progress bit deep. Dammit, he was accustomed to dealing with problems in a brisk, competent manner. He spent a good deal of every year in far-off places where situations without easy solutions regularly arose. Yet, when faced with dilemmas, he was the guy you could count on to dig in and find ways to fix them.
That wasn’t what he’d been doing here. And the hell of it was, whenever he bent his mind toward finding a way to break the ice with his son, instead of working with its usual efficiency, his brain turned into a barren moonscape.
Tires crunched over the scattering of pinecones that had dropped from the evergreen trees dotting the parking lot, but Jake had no interest in seeing who’d arrived. What did he care if someone decided to overlook the less than ideal weather conditions? Hell, as far as that went, why shouldn’t they? It might be a butt-ugly day, but the canal was calm for the first time since he’d arrived in this godforsaken town.
Hunkering down on the beach next to the paved boat ramp, he culled a new arsenal of the largest rocks he could find. The mood he was in, he’d welcome the opportunity to lob a boulder or two, but the beach wasn’t exactly littered with those.
He was aware in a disinterested corner of his mind that the vehicle hadn’t swung around to back a trailer down the ramp alongside his SUV. Instead, a car door opened and closed behind him and, as he rose to his feet to throw the first rock, he heard the gritty sound of shoes kissing sand-dusted pavement. Ignoring it, he hurled another rock, then another.
“Tourists pay big bucks for access to that water,” Max said from behind him. “They expect it to be there the next time they show up. So keep that up and I’m gonna have to write you a ticket for reef building within twenty feet of the shoreline.”
Hearing the deep tones of his half brother’s voice gave him the usual screw-you jolt of irritation—but laced this time with a new, unexpected thread of pleasure. He shrugged off the latter as a fluke, since his pleasure receptors and Max were a foreign pairing.
“Twenty feet?” he demanded, turning to face Max. “Please. I could throw these babies thirty in my sleep.”
Max’s mouth curved up on one side. “I’m guessing algebra wasn’t your long suit.”
“True.” His own lips quirked. “Business majors don’t need no stinkin’ algebra.” A degree he’d pursued in order to prove he was the financial achiever his father wasn’t. Not that Charlie Bradshaw hadn’t provided for his family—whoever that might have been at any given moment. But where he had been a middling salesman, Jake had an intrinsic knack with money. More important, he’d had an urge to be more successful than his father. To be better in every way.
The recollection wiped the smile from his face. Because look how well that had worked out for him. His precautions had failed, Kari had gotten pregnant and he hadn’t stuck around to be a father.
He wasn’t the least bit better than the old man. And in some ways was maybe even worse.
He eyed Max as he approached. His half bro wore a khaki shirt and black tie under a military-style black wool V-neck sweater with reinforced shoulders,
elbows and forearms. Velcro-closure cotton epaulets decorated each shoulder, a badge was pinned to his chest, and gold, black and green shield-shaped patches, each sporting a spread-winged eagle and the Razor Bay Sheriff’s Office designation, decorated the sweater’s upper arms. He wore jeans and a black web utility belt that bristled with the tools of his trade—not the least of which was a serious-looking gun. “You following me, Deputy Dawg?”
“Yeah, because I live in awe of the wonder that is you.” Max let the absurdity hang in the air a moment, then made a rude noise. “Get over yourself.
I heard the navy’s doing maneuvers out here this week, and I’ve stopped by every day to see if I can catch the show.” He gave Jake a comprehensive once-over. “What’s your excuse?”
Resurrecting as it did his many recent failures, the query made him want to snarl. Jake did his best, however, to shrug the mood aside. He intended to give Max’s question the brush-off, as well. Their relationship was a long way from either opening an emotional vein in front of the other. He didn’t share that kind of relationship with anyone.
So he was astonished to hear himself admit, “I’m trying to get to know my kid, but if he can’t outright avoid me, he acts like I’m see-through.” He looked over at Max. “Did you know he plays shortstop for the Junior League?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him play.” Jake must have looked as astounded as he felt, because Max said with cool authority, “I’m the deputy sheriff. It’s my civic duty to keep tabs on the kids in this town.”
Aw, man, he was so full of shit if he thought Jake bought that. But before he could call him on it, Max said, “He plays the same position as you, huh? I heard between baseball and your grades, you got yourself a full-boat scholarship to some fancy East Coast university.” He hooked his thumbs in the webbed belt. “It can’t be easy, following in your footsteps.”
Jake looked at him in surprise, then wasn’t sure why he was so bowled over. Both of them probably knew a great deal about each other. God knew that once upon a time he had kept close tabs on everything Max did, rationalizing that it was simply good business practice to keep track of the enemy. The truth was he’d always been unwillingly fascinated by this guy who shared the same blood but was a dedicated adversary.
“I doubt there was ever a comparison,” he said now. “I was out of the local sport scene for probably half a dozen years before Austin even attended his first T-ball practice. It wouldn’t have been like trying to fill your big shoes when they were practically still smokin’.” He waved the comparison aside. “In any case, from what I saw today, he’s good.” A headache sent preliminary scouts to see about the possibility of setting up camp in his temples. “That’s no thanks to my influence, either.”
Max gave him a level look. “So why did you walk?”
Jake stilled, his heartbeat a solid thudthudthud in his chest. “You really interested in knowing?” Who would have thought Max, of all people, would be the one to come right out and ask? No one else had since he’d been back.
“Not really.” Max started to turn away, but then stopped and gave his shoulders an impatient roll before meeting Jake’s gaze head-on. “No, that’s not true. I am.”
Girding himself, Jake remained silent for a moment. Then he drew a deep breath and blew it out. “For as long as I can remember, I wanted out of this town.” He looked out at the glassy water. “Kari and I made a lot of big plans to move somewhere cosmopolitan, and I spent our entire junior year plotting ways to make it happen that wouldn’t end up with me flipping burgers for the rest of my life.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Truth is, I had plans long before I met her. I’d been working toward that scholarship since Junior high. When it came through, I thought we were finally on our way.”
He looked over at Max. “Then, barely a month into our senior year, the fucking condom broke.”
“You stepped up and married her, though. And from what I hear, took a job at the inn.”
“Because I didn’t want to be another Charlie Bradshaw, y’know?”
“Hell, yes. We’ve got that in common.” Max studied him for a moment. “You must have loved her a lot.”
An unamused laugh escaped him. “Like that ever lasts,” he said dismissively. “She went almost overnight from the fun head cheerleader I knew to a cranky, complaining shrew who was convinced I’d ruined her life. Not that I was any better. I was miserable working the front desk at The Brothers, and it made me damn moody.”
“Then she died.”
“Yeah.” Digging his fingertips into a headache that now thumped full force, he turned his back on the water, feeling vestiges of the horror he’d experienced at the sight of the blood-soaked sheets when she’d started hemorrhaging. “They send people home from the hospitals too damn fast these days. If she’d still been there they probably could’ve stopped the bleeding. But they discharged her, and within the space of a few short hours, she was just...gone. And I found myself with sole responsibility for this wrinkly, leaky little creature I had no idea how to parent. When Emmett and Kathy offered to care for him while I got my degree, I jumped at the chance.”
And, eaten up with guilt, he’d hated himself for it. He had turned into the very thing he’d sworn he never would: a chip off the old block. Here his wife had died tragically young—yet had he been crushed? Had he stuck around? No, sir. He’d never wished her dead, but his dirty little secret was he’d been beyond relieved not to be stuck in a nowhere position in a nowhere town with a wife he’d fallen out of love with.
At least Charlie had loved him for a while. Jake hadn’t felt anything but panic when he’d looked at his son.
Max looked as uncomfortable hearing all this shit as Jake was at telling it. No doubt his brother was on TMI overload, and his gaze slid past Jake’s shoulder. Then he stood straighter. “Hey, what do you know?” he said with a casualness that was a little overplayed. “There’s a couple of cutters. The Trident’s likely not far away.”
Grateful beyond measure for the change of subject—for anything that would rescue them from this dangerous talking-about-feelings territory—Jake turned to look.
There was nothing to see except a couple of midsize navy boats cruising a half mile or so from the far shore, but he went over to his car all the same to retrieve his camera from the passenger seat. Back on the beach, he watched with Max as the boats navigated an obviously circumscribed area.
Nothing happened, and perhaps to fill the long silence between them, Max suddenly said, “I’m sorry about your mom. I heard about it when I was in Camp Lejeune.”
Jake nodded, his eyes still on the glassy water. “Thanks. Her having a heart attack wasn’t something anyone expected. She was only forty-six.” He turned to look at Max. “I’m surprised anyone here even knew about it—she moved to California the same time I started college.”
Max made a wry face. “Small-town connections, little Bradshaw. She kept in touch with Maureen Gilmore, who was friends with my mother.”
“Is your mom still in town?”
“No. She’s living in England, of all places.”
“Why of all places?”
“My mom is filled with a small-town prejudice against any town bigger than Razor Bay—never mind big cities in a foreign country. But she met a guy from London in the dining room of the inn one night, and that was all she wrote.”
The Ohio-class black nuclear submarine suddenly surfaced from the depths and they turned their attention to it. Nearly as long as two football fields, sleek as a shark and quieter than death, it was an impressive, ominous sight. “That doesn’t make me want to break into a chorus of ‘Yellow Submarine,’” Jake said, raising the Nikon D3 to his eye.
Max laughed. “No shit. But I never get tired of watching it. It’s like the Darth Vader of submarines. Strategic deterrence at its best.”
He lowered the camera long enough to shoot the other man a sardonic glance. “Spoken like a true soldier boy.”
“Wasn’t a soldier, sonny. I told you before, I’m a Marine.”
“Ex.”
Max snorted. “No such thing as an ex-Marine. Former, maybe, if you wanna be picky about it.”
“Whatever.” Jake shot a couple frames of Max, who immediately scowled at him. “So, tell me. I know there’s more than one of these subs stationed at Bangor—so why are they all called the Trident?”
A bark of laughter exploded out of Max. “For a guy with a bachelor of business from a fancy u—”
“I never actually got that degree,” he interrupted. “I interned with National Explorer my junior year, got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show my photography skills when their usual photographer was laid low with dysentery, and never went back to school.”
Max nodded. “Explains why you’re not the brightest bulb, I guess. None of the subs are named that. There’s eight of them out of Bangor, and except for the USS Henry M. Jackson, in honor of our late, great Senator Scoop Jackson, they’re all named after states. Alaska, Alabama, Nebraska—and who cares what all. Tridents are the missiles they’re packing.”
“Huh. Who knew?”
“Not you, obviously.”
A short while later the submarine submerged as quietly as it had come up, and Max abruptly morphed from fairly friendly for a guy who “wasn’t ever going to be your bud” to blank-faced deputy. He stepped back. “I’ve got work to do,” he said and pointed to where Jake’s SUV was blocking half an access that nobody was using. “Get that off the ramp,” he growled. Then without another word, he turned and strode up the slope in question to his rig.
Leaving Jake with an inexplicable smile on his face.
* * *
WORRY OVER HIS NONPROGRESS with Austin had replaced the unexpected moment of good humor by the time he got back to the inn. He headed straight for Jenny’s office.
He heard her voice before he reached it. “...forecasting staff needs for next week, and I need to set up a meeting with you before you leave for the day to discuss doing one of those Groupon or LivingSocial discounts. Reservations will get the immediate brunt of extra work,” she said, then laughed. “Well, if it does what I’m hoping, at any rate. What’s a good time for you?”
He stopped in the open doorway. Jenny sat facing the door, but twisted slightly to the left as she glanced back and forth between a weekly planner and a spreadsheet laid across the desk, the phone receiver wedged between her ear and a hunched shoulder. Light from the overhead fixtures and the lamp on her desk detailed the creamy curve of high cheekbones and picked out the sheen of her dark hair on either side of her center part. She’d tucked the long layers behind her ears, and they tumbled over the girly, not-quite-but-damn-near sheer fabric of her little black blouse, their blunt ends curving slightly in alternating lengths against the petite thrust of her breasts. He could almost distinguish the outline of a black bra beneath the top.
If he didn’t mind giving himself eyestrain.
“Five o’clock is perfect,” she said. “I’ll see you then.” Hanging up the phone, she leaned forward, made a notation in the planner, then turned her attention to the worksheet.
He could have sworn he didn’t make a sound, but her head suddenly jerked up and she looked straight at him, eyes startled and slender fingers spread like starfish on the oversize spreadsheet. And for just an instant their gazes melded with a spark that wasn’t solely on his side.
His whole body perked up.
He didn’t get it. He’d come away from his relationship with Kari with a carved-in-stone belief that there was no such thing as true commitment and a determination to never again put himself in the position of testing that belief. From the age of eighteen, he’d chosen women who knew the score. They understood they’d have a good time but that any relationship with him had a finite shelf date.
Jenny was so not the cool, casual-sex kind he usually went for. Yet she still had a way of making his hormones come to attention and lock on her like heat-seeking missiles.
Eye on the prize, Bradshaw! Shoving the attraction down where it belonged—in the subterranean depths of his mind—he stepped inside and for a second wasn’t sure where to start.
Her brow furrowed. “Are you okay? Can I do something for you?”
He walked over to her desk, spread his hands against its messy surface and leaned into them. His head drooped for a nanosecond before pride put some bone back in his spine. “He wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Who wouldn—?” Jenny blinked. “Austin?” The breath she exhaled wasn’t one of those exasperated, big sighs that females excelled at, but it wasn’t exactly a “poor baby,” either. “And you think this is my problem why?” she asked drily. “I gave you an opportunity. What you did with it was up to you.”
“I know.” Noticing a luscious, amazing whisper of scent rising off her—a female aroma he could’ve happily gone all day without detecting—he straightened and took a step back. “I do know that. Damn.” Using one hand to massage the knot of tension from the back of his neck, he tried to explain. “It’s just—they got in the backseat.” He could see she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Austin and Nolan, they got into the backseat like I was the damn chauffeur!”
The delighted laugh that rolled out of her lit her up like a little girl presented with a princess dress. But even as he was drawn to her unfettered enjoyment, even as he felt a spark of warmth take root low in his gut and high in his chest from the sound of her mirth, he found himself snapping, “It’s not funny!”
Amused appreciation for the boy’s tactics dropping from her face, Jenny’s laughter died even as her warm brown eyes sobered. “Yes,” she said quietly, “it actually is. It’s rebellious, yet polite, which has a certain creative charm. What isn’t funny is the fact that you ignored your son for thirteen years but expect him to get with your damn program in one week. Well, guess what, Bradshaw?”
She got up from her desk and circled it to the door. “It’s not all about you. So here’s an idea—quit expecting me to do your legwork for you, and try figuring out a few things for yourself.” She tapped the toe of one sexy high-heeled shoe against the carpet, her arms crossed beneath those cupcake breasts.
It couldn’t be any clearer she wanted him to leave, and his first impulse was to apologize for intruding and saunter past her as if her words hadn’t drawn blood.
Only...
She wasn’t wrong, dammit.
He hated to admit it, but avoiding the truth wouldn’t change the facts.
“Look, I don’t disagree,” he offered, stopping less than half a foot from her. “I’ve been expecting too much too soon, and relying on your efforts without putting enough of my own into the things I need to do to transition Austin from hating my guts to at least tolerating me. But it must be as painfully clear to you as it is to me that I’m crashing and burning here. So, if I promise to head back to my room—” even though the thought made him feel itchy and confined “—to put some serious thought into the matter, could you see your way clear to steering me in the right direction? Like...” What, genius? Then it came to him. Duh. “He played great in practice today, for instance, and I’d love to see him in action during his actual games. But I don’t know when they are.”
“I’ll make you a schedule,” she said, then hesitated. “And I suppoooose—” the word was drawn out with palpable reluctance “—it would be okay if you wanted to sit with Tasha and me at the next game.”
He grinned. “That would be great! Thank you.”
She gave him a little smile in return, free from the lack of enthusiasm she’d just displayed. For a moment he thought they might have an honest-to-God rapport.
Then Jenny stiffened. “Well. I need to get back to work. I’ll get you that schedule when I get a minute. Meanwhile—” she shot him an I-mean-business look “—get busy on more ideas. One-trick ponies only get you so far down the road.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m heading to my room to do that right this minute.” He supposed kissing her, even if only in gratitude for her help, probably wasn’t appropriate. He stepped back instead. “Thanks again.”
Her shoulders twitched. “Sure.”
Jake left her office, but only got as far as the hallway outside before he halted. He could not face going back to his room.
So, big deal, head outdoors. Or...
He snapped upright as two thoughts occurred to him. Not one, but two actual productive ideas. That made a total of three in the past few minutes.
He’d been concentrating too hard on the end goal instead of on the smaller steps that might get him there. Yes, he’d have to accomplish his first idea before he could think about implementing the second, but a faint, relieved smile quirked his mouth.
Because as he headed back toward the inn’s small lobby, he finally felt like his usual, competent self.
CHAPTER SIX
“HEY, WOULD YA LOOKIT THAT?”
Jenny glanced over as Austin paused in his Saturday-morning dishwashing chore, which he’d been powering through with his usual slapdash, water splashed everywhere, let’s-get-this-done gusto, to lean into the window over the sink. She plucked a plate from the drainer and raised inquiring eyebrows as she dried it. “What am I looking at?”
He rocked back on his heels, turning to her. “Blue skies!” he crowed and grinned, his face alight. “I don’t know where it came from, ’cause it was, like, all clouded over two minutes ago. But, dude!”
“Dudette!” she retorted.
The teen grimaced. “Sorry, Jenny. I forgot you don’t like me calling you that.” Then he laughed. “Know what else I’d almost forgotten?” He jerked his chin at the warm light outside the window. “What that looks like.”
“It’s certainly been a while since we’ve seen any sunshine.” And he was right, it was a huge mood elevator. She gave him a friendly hip bump. “I bet that’ll make your game more fun.”
“You got that right. This is gonna be righteous!”
The welcome break in the weather made them both a little giddy, and they joked back and forth as they finished cleaning the kitchen. Then as Austin squeezed the excess water from the sponge he’d used to wipe up the mess he’d made cleaning, he suddenly stiffened. “What the—? What is he doing in the Sand Dollar?”
“What?” Okay, so she’d heard him perfectly well. But hoping against hope that the “he” the boy referred to wasn’t actually the one person good sense reasoned it had to be, Jenny edged over to peer out the sink window, her heart beating a furious tattoo.
It only drummed harder when she saw Jake’s uptown SUV parked in the lot they shared with the most luxurious cottage on The Brothers’ grounds. Then she spied the man himself packing a big cardboard box up onto the covered front porch and through the open doorway into the dwelling.
The next thing she knew, Austin was charging out the back door. “Great,” she whispered and, tossing the tea towel aside, drew a couple of calming breaths before heading for the cottage across the way.
She climbed its three porch stairs in time to hear the anger infusing the teen’s every word as he yelled, “What are you doing here?” Walking into the Sand Dollar living room, she found him standing nose to nose with his father amid a plethora of boxes.
Found Jake placing his fingertips against his son’s chest and stepping back to put some space between them. Austin swiped them away with more force than was warranted, but the older man didn’t respond to his aggression. He merely glanced over at her, then directed his attention right back on the boy, his voice quiet when he replied equably, “Moving in.”
“Dude, I can see that! Why this cottage?”
“Because it’s the largest one available and I’m going to be here for a while. I need space to work—I left Indonesia in a hurry, and I’ve got close to a thousand photographs I need to download and go through so I can winnow out the best hundred. And whether I develop them or keep them digital, they’ll all need cleaning up before they’re ready for the National Explorer’s July issue.”
Austin snorted, but to Jenny’s relief, the explanation seemed to defuse some of his anger. “Big deal, how long can that take? You’ve got two friggin’ months.”
“No, I’ve got a hair over two weeks. They’re due the first week of May so the editors can select the ones they need for the edition. The exact number will change a dozen times while the layout’s being put together.” He stabbed a finger toward the ceiling. “There’s a little bathroom upstairs that I can use as a darkroom. I do less developing these days, but it’ll be handy for the ones that I do. And with the addition of some portable tables, the bedroom up there can be converted into a work space.”
“Whatever,” the boy said. “As long as you stay out of my way.”
“Yeah, well, about that.” Jake looked his son straight in the eye. “Not gonna happen.”
“Say what?” Austin started to bristle again.
Jake was contrastingly calm. “Like it or not, Austin, I’m your father.”
“I don’t like it!”
“Yet it doesn’t change the facts, any more than your displeasure would affect our green eyes or your ability as a shortstop, which you got from both me and your uncle Max.”
“Who?”
“Deputy Bradshaw.” Looking at the confusion on the teen’s face, Jake frowned. “Annnd...crap. You didn’t know he’s my half brother.”
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Susan Andersen
He's the last man on earth she should want…For a guy she's fantasized about throttling, Jake Bradshaw sure is easy on the eyes. In fact, he seriously tempts inn manager Jenny Salazar to put her hands to better use. Except this is the guy who left Razor Bay–and his young son, Austin, whom Jenny adores like her own–to become a globe-trotting photojournalist. He can't just waltz back and claim Austin now.Jake was little more than a kid himself when he became a dad. Sure, he'd dreamed of escaping the resort town, but he'd also truly believed that Austin was better off with his grandparents. Now he wants–no, needs–to make up for his mistake. He intends to stay in Razor Bay only until he can convince Austin to return with him to New York. Trouble is, with sexy, protective, utterly irresistible Jenny in his life, and his bed, he may never want to leave….
He’s the last man on earth she should want...
For a guy she’s fantasized about throttling, Jake Bradshaw sure is easy on the eyes. In fact, he seriously tempts inn manager Jenny Salazar to put her hands to better use. Except this is the guy who left Razor Bay—and his young son, Austin, whom Jenny adores like her own—to become a globe-trotting photojournalist. He can’t just waltz back and claim Austin now.
Jake was little more than a kid himself when he became a dad. Sure, he’d dreamed of escaping the resort town, but he’d also truly believed that Austin was better off with his grandparents. Now he wants—no, needs—to make up for his mistake. He intends to stay in Razor Bay only until he can convince Austin to return with him to New York. Trouble is, with sexy, protective, utterly irresistible Jenny in his life, and his bed, he may never want to leave....
Reviewers love New York Times bestselling author
SUSAN ANDERSEN
“A smart, arousing, spirited escapade
that is graced with a gentle mystery, a vulnerable,
resilient heroine, and a worthy, wounded hero
and served up with empathy and a humorous flair.”
—Library Journal on Burning Up
“[A] fast-paced, charming romance
with plenty of heat and cool dialog.”
—RT Book Reviews on Burning Up
“A sexy, feel-good contemporary romance....
Palpable escalating sexual tension between the pair,
a dangerous criminal on the loose and a cast of
well-developed secondary characters make this a winner.”
—Publishers Weekly on Bending the Rules
“This start of Andersen’s new series has fun and interesting characters, solid action and a hot and sexy romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Cutting Loose
“Snappy and sexy.... Upbeat and fun, with a touch of danger and passion, this is a great summer read.”
—RT Book Reviews on Coming Undone
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should go all in for this one.”
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—Publishers Weekly on Skintight, starred review
“A classic plot line receives a fresh, fun treatment....
Well-developed secondary characters add depth to this zesty novel, placing it a level beyond most of its competition.”
—Publishers Weekly on Hot & Bothered
That Thing Called Love
Susan Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader,
I am so excited about my new series. This first Razor Bay book stars Jake Bradshaw, a man who’s made a lot of mistakes, and Jenny Salazar, the take-no-crap woman who holds his full attention. And I got to plunk the fictional resort town down on Hood Canal, an area that holds a lifetime of memories for me.
Most people hear the word canal and picture man-made waterways. This canal is actually a natural sixty-five-mile saltwater fjord in western Washington. I was just a baby when my folks discovered it. Every summer for two weeks, I ran wild with my brothers and cousins, swimming in icy, superbuoyant water until my fingers and toes were pruney, playing until the sun sank behind the soaring Olympic Mountains, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over blazing bonfires. When I was nine, my folks bought land on the beach and built a little cabin on it. This, to me, is the most beautiful, peaceful spot on earth.
It’s likely a no-brainer to tell you I consider Razor Bay a character in its own right. So trust me when I tell you it’s my dearest wish that you enjoy it, too, alongside Jake and Jenny and the folks of Razor Bay.
~Susan
This is dedicated, with love, to my friends in the industry, both old and new.
To
Jen Heaton, who, despite a crazy busy life, always carves out time to brainstorm with me, to haul me back on track and make my work better, and is just an all-around really good friend
To
The M&Ms—Meg Ruley and Margo Lipschultz— my wonderful, marvelous, world’s best agent and editor
To
Robyn Carr, Kristan Higgins and Jill Shalvis, for daily posts, a host of laughs and shared tears
And to
all you readers, without whom I’d be writing this stuff just for myself. Thank you for your loyalty, lovely emails and Facebook friendships
Plus a special thanks
to
the brilliant Robin Franzen, R.N., who allowed me to have my chicken pox and excuse it, too.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#u6bcd7659-a9b4-5fe9-ba66-fc063b822da8)
CHAPTER ONE (#u2a13b8ce-5608-5c29-8b60-e9b46ebd9e80)
CHAPTER TWO (#u50d84e6d-8411-5111-8e1d-0fe0d2c72bf3)
CHAPTER THREE (#u64820e59-e133-5953-b394-1a87052bfedf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u60fe423c-bf75-59f2-b104-7bbe6682aef0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u0b43d0d9-78da-5b2c-ba18-606c402b423d)
CHAPTER SIX (#u414d4094-986a-5a47-b0d9-05a6b6b43479)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
February 23
Razor Bay, Washington
“JEEZ, JENNY, are they ever gonna go home?”
Jennifer Salazar heard the half angry, half plaintive query beneath the rise and fall of conversation coming from the dining room. Outside, gusts of wind, howling down out of Canada, chased rain from the Olympic Mountains rising across the water to ping and rattle against the venerable old Craftsman on the bluff.
Turning around from the momentary break she’d taken to watch raindrops fracture into prisms against the leaded glass porch light, she looked down the hallway.
Thirteen-year-old Austin stood between her and the doorways to the kitchen and dining room. He was curved in on himself, and his newly wide shoulders in that grown-up black suit coat looked out of proportion to the rest of his verging-on-skinny body—even hunched up around his ears as they currently were.
Moving quickly, she reached out to pull him into her arms. He hugged her tightly in return.
“They will,” she assured the teen. “And pretty soon, I imagine, given how fast the weather is turning.” She pulled back to smile into his tense face. “But Emmett was an institution, pal. People want to pay their respects.”
Austin was the closest thing she had to a brother, but lately she hadn’t known quite how to deal with him. It killed her to see his pain as he struggled with the loss of the grandfather who’d raised him. Emmett Pierce’s death had tromped on the heels of Austin’s grandmother’s, who had preceded her husband just a few short months ago, blasting the barely turned teen with a double whammy.
But he was so volatile these days. A well-adjusted kid one minute, unhappy or angry the next. And he rarely shied away from mouthing off the rest of the time. Emmett and Kathy had spoiled him shamelessly, up to and including buying him a brand-new Bayliner Bowrider—a boat she’d argued against—for his thirteenth birthday.
“I swear I’m gonna pop the next person who calls me ‘you poor boy,’” he muttered. “And Maggie Watson pinched my cheeks like I was four years old or something!”
She didn’t know whether to commiserate over the misguided insensitivity or laugh at the indignation in his voice. “I imagine they just want to express their sympathy but don’t know what to say.”
“And they think I do? I mean, am I supposed to say it’s okay or somethin’ when they tell me Gramps’s in a better place? ’Cause it isn’t. Plus, what genius thinks I’d jump at the chance to be ‘you poor boy’ to a bunch of people who’ve known me since birth? And I’m sure as hell not gonna talk about how it feels to lose him.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat angrily. “My feelings are— They’re...”
“Yours and no one else’s,” she supplied with an understanding nod when he stalled. She had experience with the phenomenon. She’d only been a few years older than he was now when her own world had fallen apart.
“’Zactly,” he mumbled.
Realizing she’d stepped back to give her neck some relief from looking up at Austin, Jenny dug at the bunched muscles in her nape and gave him a rueful smile. “I’m still not used to you being bigger than me—let alone so much bigger. The last time I checked you had maybe three, four inches on me. But I’m wearing four-inch heels today and you’re still way taller!”
For the first time since Emmett’s passing last week, Austin flashed her the wholehearted smile that until recently had been his default expression—the endearing grin that crinkled his pale green eyes and carved little crescents around the corners of his lips. “I hate to break this to you, Jenny, but crickets are way taller than you are.”
“Why, you little smart-ass.” She smacked his arm, but refused to be sidetracked. “When did you get to be, though? I swear you weren’t this tall yesterday.” She had begun to fear he might, in fact, turn out as height challenged as she. Heaven knew she wasn’t thrilled to have ended up a scant five-two in a default thirty-two-inch-inseam world—and that only if she practiced really excellent posture. She couldn’t help but think the same outcome for a boy would be even harder.
But considering the kid had apparently grown three or more inches overnight, her worry would probably be better directed at something that actually required it.
Austin’s momentary good humor visibly fading, he merely shrugged at her question. “What’s gonna happen to me now, Jenny?”
“Well, for starters, since Emmett’s will assigned me temporary custody, you’ll continue living with me at the resort. Or, if you’d rather...” She faltered a moment, hit with her first uncertainty. “I suppose I could move in here with you.”
“God, no!” He shook his head emphatically. “It was hard enough staying here when Grandma died—and we’d at least been kinda prepared for that.”
True. The elderly woman had been failing for the past couple of years.
“But with Gramps...” Austin surreptitiously knuckled away a tear, then scowled at her when he saw she’d noticed. “I keep expecting him to show up every time I turn around, ya know? I’d rather be at your place.”
“Then my place it is.” Jenny wouldn’t mind a good bawl herself. She missed Kathy and Emmett like crazy. They’d been so good to her, and losing them almost back-to-back had been a one-two punch to the heart.
She needed, however, to be strong for Austin.
“I went to the estate lawyer to talk about permanent custody, but he wanted to wait a bit.” She hesitated, then admitted, “He’s doing his best to contact your father.” Much as she’d prefer to keep that information to herself for the time being, Austin had a right to know.
His mouth flattened and his eyes went hard. “Like he’ll give a shit.”
She didn’t have the heart to chastise him for his language, because in all the years she had known him, she had not known his father to show a speck of interest in him.
Still. “Apparently he’s on a National Explorer shoot somewhere. No one seems to know quite where at the moment, but Mr. Verilla said he hopes to track him down soon.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to hold my breath waiting for him to show up.” Austin’s voice resonated with knife-sharp teenage sarcasm. But his angry eyes had taken on that stricken cast they adopted whenever the topic of his father came up.
And for one red-hot minute Jenny wished she could get her hands on the man who had disappointed this boy so many times over the years. It just sucked so bad that she couldn’t.
What she could do, however, was run interference as Kate Ziegler stuck her graying head out the kitchen door, focused faded blue eyes gone watery with sorrow on Austin and said, “Oh, you poor, poor b—”
Jenny strode right up to Kate with such authority she cut herself off midword and took a startled step back.
“Mrs. Ziegler!” Jenny exclaimed warmly, grasping the older woman’s arm to firmly guide her to the crowded dining room across the hall. “I’ve been meaning to compliment you on that wonderful ambrosia salad you brought. Why, if I’m not mistaken, it was the very first thing to go.”
As the woman bustled over to check out the table, Jenny shot Austin a half smile over her shoulder.
It broke her heart that, although he tried to smile back, he couldn’t quite manage it.
CHAPTER ONE
JAKE BRADSHAW BLEW INTO TOWN almost two months later, at a quarter to three on a blustery, sunny April afternoon.
Not that Jenny was keeping track or anything.
Hell, who kept track of those things? She was busy minding her own business, washing the window over her kitchen sink and thinking the shutters on the Sand Dollar—the luxury cottage across the shared parking lot from her small bungalow—would benefit from a new coat of paint, when the doorbell rang. She just happened to check her watch. Then, looking down at her seen-better-days cropped T-shirt and raggedy jeans, she sighed. Why didn’t anyone ever drop by unexpectedly when she was dressed to kill?
Murphy’s Law, she supposed. Shrugging, she set aside the old tea towel she’d been using, paused her iPod, pulled out the earbuds and went to answer the summons. School had let out for the day; it was likely a friend of Austin’s, although Austin himself wasn’t home yet.
When she pulled the door open and saw the man on the other side, her mind went blank. Holy Krakow, how wrong could one woman be—this was no teenage kid. This was a total stranger, something you didn’t see very often this time of year—unlike during the summer tourist season.
And the guy was a god.
Okay, not really. But he was definitely the next best thing. His hair, which she’d mistaken at first glance for blond, was actually a medium brown that had either been burnished by the sun or was the product of some world-class stylist.
She’d vote for the former, given that every man she’d ever known would choose castration before they’d be caught dead over at Wacka Do’s wearing a headful of little tinfoil strips. And although she could honestly say she’d never met an actual honest-to-gawd big-city metrosexual, she was pretty sure this guy wasn’t to be her first.
His tanned hands were too beat-up looking, his skin a little too weathered. He had muscular shoulders beneath a nice gray suit jacket, worn over an olive-drab hoodie and a silky, silver-gray T-shirt. And solid thighs that were molded by a pair of button-fly Levi’s that had seen hard wear.
She couldn’t see his eyes behind the shaded lenses of his sunglasses, but he had the most gorgeous lips she’d ever seen on a man, full yet precisely cut. If she were a different type of woman, in fact, she might almost be able to imagine lips like those kissing h—
“Is your mother home?”
“Seriously?” All right, not the politest response. But, please. She hadn’t almost imagined what his lips could do—Marvin Gaye had started crooning “Let’s Get It On” in her head. And having him talk to her as if she were a child was like ripping the needle across a vinyl record, bursting her pretty, if where-the-hell-did-that-come-from, fantasy.
After a startled look, he studied her more closely. Those lips curved up in a faint smile. “Oh. Sorry. Your size fooled me for a minute. But you’re not a kid.”
“Ya think?”
His smile deepened slightly. “I’m not the first to make that mistake, I’m guessing.”
Okay, get a grip, sister. What was her problem, anyway? She didn’t lust after strange men. And she’d been in the hospitality business since she was sixteen, for pity’s sake, so rarely, either, was her first inclination to unleash snide sarcasm on people.
At least not on people I don’t know.
She gave an impatient mental shrug. Because even if she was in the habit of lusting or unleashing, this guy could be a guest at the inn for all she knew. It was the dead lowest part of the low season, which was why she’d felt comfortable enough leaving Abby to man the front desk while she took a rare day off. But Abs was still green, and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine the girl blithely drawing directions on one of the resort maps to help a complete stranger find Jenny’s place on the back grounds of The Brothers Inn.
Jenny plastered a pleasant expression on her face. “Is there something I can do for you?”
He looked down at her. “Yeah. I was told I could find a Jenny Salazar here?”
“You found her.”
“I’m here about Austin Bradshaw, regarding his guardianship.”
Jenny’s heart picked up its pace, but she merely said, “You don’t look like a lawyer.”
“I’m not. But Mr. Verilla said you’re the person I need to talk to.”
She sighed and stepped back. “Then I guess you’d better come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she said, leading him inside. “You caught me in the middle of cleaning day.”
Her place was just under six hundred square feet of recently weatherized cottage, so it took a total of five seconds to reach the middle of her living room. She turned to face him and saw that he’d removed his shades and was hooking one temple arm into the neck of his T-shirt. Raising her gaze from his strong, tanned throat, she met his eyes for the first time.
Shock jolted through her. Oh, God. Only one other person in the world had eyes that pale, pale green—the exact same shade as the summer shallows in the fjord that was Hood Canal.
Austin.
Anger was deep, immediate and visceral. And it had her drawing herself up to her not-so-great greatest height. “Let me guess,” she said with ice-edged diction. “You must be Jake Bradshaw.”
When she looked at him now, she didn’t see that compelling face or the abundant sex appeal. Instead, she pictured all the times Austin thought his father might call, might show up, and the stark disappointment each and every time that didn’t happen. Disdain she couldn’t quite disguise tugged at her upper lip.
“Mighty big of you to finally decide you could spare your kid a minute of your precious time.”
* * *
FOR OVER A DECADE, Jake had dealt with all manner of people. He’d long ago perfected the art of letting things slide off his back. Yet for some reason the contempt from this little female dug barbed needles under his skin.
It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. The woman was all of five foot nothing, for crissake, and her shiny dark hair, plaited into two thick little-girl braids, with a hank of long bangs pulling free from the left one, didn’t exactly promote a grown-up vibe. She had spare curves, clear olive skin and brown eyes so dark it made the surrounding sclera look almost blue-white in comparison. Dark eyebrows winged above them, and her slender nose had a slight bump to its bridge.
His brows met over the thrust of his own nose. “Who the hell do you think you are, lady?”
Okay, not what he’d intended to say. But being back in Razor Bay, the place he’d spent most of his teen years plotting to see the last of in his rearview mirror—well, it put him on edge. Plus, after the thirty-two-hour trip from Minahasa to Davao to Manila to Vancouver to Seattle to here, he was so dead on his feet he was all but punch-drunk. Not to mention seriously tense at the thought of seeing his kid after all these years. Of having full responsibility for him for the first time.
So excuse the hell out of him for reacting to the contempt in her voice and his own flicker of temper that here was yet someone else who thought they could dictate to him about his son.
Stuffing down every negative feeling that arose, however, he managed to moderate his tone when he inquired, “And you think you have the right to judge me, why?” God knew, he’d done enough of that on his own. He didn’t need some half-pint stranger’s condemnation on top of it.
He watched as she crossed her arms and raised her chin. “Well, let me see,” she said coolly. “Maybe because I’m the woman who’s been in Austin’s life for the past eleven years. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen you.”
Jake wanted to howl at the unfairness of her charge. Except...was she actually wrong? He’d had a series of come-to-Jesus talks with himself on the endless journey back here and was forced to admit that he’d been looking at his dad ethic through a pretty skewed lens for a long time now. The admission made not defending himself to Ms. Salazar more than a simple matter of pride, more than an ingrained reluctance to plead his case to a stranger.
He couldn’t in all conscience smear the memory of Austin’s grandparents. Not only would it be too much like something his own father would have done—making it all about him and not giving a damn that his kid had loved the people he was trash-talking—but all that damn soul searching had made him realize that he’d spent too many years blaming Emmett and Kathy for doing the job he himself had abdicated.
They’d protected Austin. And if it cut to the bone that they’d felt it necessary to do so from him...well, I guess it sucks to be you, Slick.
Somewhere over Midway Island he’d dropped his defenses and admitted they had cut him a lot more slack than he’d deserved before they’d finally lowered the ax and banished him from Austin’s life.
But that wasn’t the central thing here—at least not right this minute. That would be that he was finally doing what he should have done a long time ago: stepping up.
So, go him.
Not that any of this prevented the woman standing in front of him from scratching at his temper. He took an involuntary step in her direction. “The fact remains, I’m Austin’s father and I’m here now.”
Apparently that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, because she blinked long, dense lashes at him, just a single slow sweep that lowered fragile-looking lids over her almond-shaped eyes, then raised them again.
The action ate up a couple of seconds tops, yet somehow it was long enough to make him aware that he was standing a whole lot closer to her than he’d intended. It made him aware as well that, except for the blink, she’d gone very still. Had she seen his banked anger? Jake slowly straightened. Shit. She couldn’t possibly think he was going to hit her, could she?
He took a giant step back, shoving his hands in his Levi’s pockets.
In the sudden silence, the back door crashed open, and from the way little Ms. Salazar stiffened, he knew exactly who it was. Heart beginning to kick hard against the wall of his chest, he stared at the opening to the kitchen.
“Hey, Jenny,” called a male voice from the other room. “I’m home.” The refrigerator door opened, then slammed shut and the lid of something rattled against a hard surface. “Dude! Leave a cookie for me.”
“Trade ya for that carton of milk,” came a second youthful tenor.
“You better be using glasses!” Jenny raised her voice to warn. “If I see washback in my milk, you’re dead men.”
Glass clinked and a cupboard slapped closed. Silence reigned for a few moments after that, before being abruptly broken by the sound of stampeding feet. Two boys burst through the archway.
The boy in the lead was a gangly brunette who—sweet mother Mary—had the exact same all-bones-no-meat thirteen-year-old build Jake had had at the same age.
God oh God. All the moisture dried up in his mouth and his habit of being aware of everything around him—honed by years of knowing that otherwise he’d likely end up bitten by a snake, stung by an insect or mauled by an animal with way more tonnage, power and teeth than him—went up in smoke. The cozy little room and everything in it faded from his consciousness, leaving nothing but his son.
His.
Son.
Awash with joy, with terror, with a raft of pain and regret, Jake stared. An emotion he’d never experienced suffused his chest, while panic clawed at his gut. Jesus. He was shaking.
He hadn’t thought it would matter so much, hadn’t expected to be struck so hard. Was this what love felt like?
The thought snapped his spine straight. Hell, no.
It couldn’t be. A: he was a Bradshaw and Bradshaw men’s version of the Big L was so fucked it gave the sentiment a bad name. And B: a man had to actually know someone before he could start slinging that word around.
He drew a deep breath. It was probably just simple wonder that the kid could have gotten so big already. Jake’d had this image in his head of Austin at two, at four. Hell, at six even, which was how old Austin was the year Kathy had sent him the last picture.
But this was no little boy—this was an almost-grown teen. Not that Jake hadn’t known how old he was, of course.
He just hadn’t had a clear picture of it in his head.
He’d long ago convinced himself that he was doing the right thing—that Austin was better off with his grandparents, who could give him the stable, structured life that he himself could not. And he’d been right.
But now—face-to-face with what he hadn’t merely let slip through his fingers but had actively thrown away with no more than an occasional second thought—his carelessness felt like shards of glass hacking his gut to shreds.
Oblivious to the thoughts and feelings that threatened to swamp Jake, the boy crossed directly to Jenny without even glancing in his direction.
“Can I spend the night at Nolan’s?” he demanded. “His mom said it was okay.” His gaze passed incuriously over Jake, returned to Jenny. “She’s gonna order pizza from Bella T’s, and Nolan has a new Xbox game we’re gonna try ou—”
With a neck-snapping double take, the kid’s gaze suddenly shot back to lock on Jake’s. He took a step toward him, making Jake’s overburdened heart leap into his throat.
Then Austin snapped upright and an ask-me-if-I-give-a-shit expression molded his young face. He looked at Jake through pitch-black narrowed lashes. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, even though his shuttered expression made it obvious to anyone with eyes that he knew.
Jake swallowed, fighting to sound calm in the midst of the fucking circus taking place inside of him. Automatically, he started forward. “Your dad. I—”
The teen made a wrong-answer-buzzer noise that stopped him in his tracks. “Like hell you are. In case you don’t know...and I’m guessing you don’t since this is the first time I’ve ever seen ya,” he said, contempt coating his every word, “I’m thirteen. I don’t need or want a daddy in my life.” He turned back to Jenny, pinning her with angry eyes. “So can I stay the night at Nolan’s or what?”
Jake watched as she reached up to stroke the boy’s cheek, then visibly quelled the urge, clearly knowing he would hate the public show of sympathy. Instead she nodded. “Sure.”
Without another word—or so much as a quick peek in Jake’s direction—the teen turned and vanished with his friend into a room off the living room. When he reappeared less than a minute later, he was tucking a toothbrush into his jeans pocket. His other hand clutched a pair of flannel lounge pants.
“You need money for pizza?” Jenny asked.
“Nah,” the other kid answered. “Mom’s got it covered.”
Still ignoring Jake, Austin headed for the kitchen, Nolan tight on his six.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Jake stepped forward, but the two boys were already slamming out the back door.
Jake didn’t know if it was disappointment or relief that crashed through him. Whatever the sensation was, it nearly knocked him to his knees. God, he must have pictured this first meeting a hundred times since he’d received the news of Kathy’s and Emmett’s deaths, must have run as many scenarios through his mind. Not once, however, had he envisioned this. He’d been braced for his son’s anger, for a barrage of pointed questions he wasn’t sure he could answer to the boy’s satisfaction.
But how did a guy brace himself to be so utterly...dismissed? He turned on Jenny. “Are you kidding me? You let him just walk out?”
“What did you expect?” Her voice was cool, her gaze even cooler. “Austin’s just discovered that the man who fathered him, the man who was never here when he wanted him most, has finally deigned to show up. Don’t you think he might need a little time to process that?”
Yeah. He supposed he did. The kid had said it himself: he was thirteen—not that many years from being grown. Jake had missed his opportunity to be a father.
No. He squared his shoulders. The hell with that. Austin was a good five years from the bare minimum of being grown, which was a helluva long way from full-out grown. Yeah, he was late to the party, but this was his opportunity to be the man he should have been. And the first order of business was to establish a relationship with his son.
Given Austin’s reaction, though, it clearly wasn’t going to be easy. Well, tough shit. He wasn’t afraid of hard work.
Still. It’s a damn shame the kid’s too old to buy a pony.
He cleared his head and turned his attention to Jenny. “I agree, he does need time to process. But let me make myself clear. I’ve spoken with my lawyer, and matters are well in the works to have my parental rights returned to me.”
“No.” She stared at him as if he’d told her he got his jollies mutilating puppies.
“Yes. My attorney is drafting the documents as we speak. I only need to sign them when I get back to Manhattan. Once they’ve been filed, Austin will be where he belongs. With me.” Okay, probably not smart to tell her that—she looked as though it might not be beyond her to stage an “accident” before that happened.
No. That wasn’t murder in her eyes; she looked...crushed. Bereft. Sick to her soul.
And because he knew exactly how that felt, he gentled his voice. “Look, I don’t intend to grab Austin and run.” Okay, so his initial reaction when he’d heard both the Pierces were gone had been exactly that—to get back here, command Austin to pack up, then drag the kid back to where Jake had built a life for himself, at least for the part of each year he was in-country.
But he wasn’t gonna be that guy. He wasn’t going to be his father. “I’m not here to yank the rug out from under him that way. I know he needs time to adjust, to get to know me.”
She sagged in patent relief, and it bugged him that he was so attuned to her, that he harbored an urge to relieve her mind. It would be better for all concerned if no one entertained any false hopes.
“Make no mistake,” he instructed in his coolest voice, “my life is in New York and we will be moving there. I’ll stay here to give my son time to get accustomed to the idea. While he does, I’ll find out what, if anything, needs to be done about Emmett’s estate.”
Suspicion entered her eyes and he narrowed his own in response. “Don’t even go there. I’m not after Austin’s money—I’ve got plenty of my own.”
“And I should believe you because...?”
God! Why did that look, that tone, make him want to loom over her, to step too close, crowd into her space and see how she dealt with it?
The urge startled him, because, really, where the hell had that come from? He’d never manhandled or acted threatening toward a woman in his life.
And looking into her fierce little face, he almost snorted. Mighty Mouse here would probably call the sheriff’s department if he even looked like he was about to make a misstep. And rightly so, considering she was a woman alone in her house with him—a stranger she didn’t know from Adam and mistrusted the little she thought she did know.
But wouldn’t that just be the cherry on his fucking cupcake if his half brother Max showed up to arrest him? It would probably make the bastard’s day to haul his ass to jail.
He drew a steadying breath. “I don’t require that you believe me, but in the interest of playing nice with others, I’ll give you a freebie.” He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and fished out a card, which he handed to her. “This is my assistant. Call her with your fax number and I’ll have her send you my latest bank statement.” He gave her a level look. “We have real issues to get through. Me stealing from my kid isn’t one of them.”
She folded her arms beneath little breasts. “What do you want from me?”
The reasonableness of her tone released some of the tension from his shoulders. “Austin clearly cares about you. I want you to be the conduit between us.”
She laughed in his face. “Why on earth would you think I’d do that?”
“Because while I’m willing to stay here for the next two or whatever months to let him finish the school year, in the end we will move to Manhattan.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “I’m going to be taking him away from everything familiar, and I don’t fool myself it’ll be a popular decision. If you care about him, you’ll make the transition easier for him. Or you can keep your mad on going with me and make it hard. I guess it’s up to you.”
She looked at him a long time. “All right. I’ll think about it.” Her extravagant eyelashes lowered until her eyes were mere coffee-dark glints shining between them. “For Austin’s sake,” she stressed. “Whatever I decide, I won’t be doing it for you.”
“No shit,” he muttered, but thrust out his hand to shake on the deal. Her narrow fingers were warm as she slid them across his palm, her grip firm.
He was caught unprepared for the spark of electricity that shot through him at the contact. But he buried his response, countering it with his all-purpose wry smile.
“Trust me, I didn’t assume otherwise for a minute.”
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER JAKE BRADSHAW LEFT, Jenny paced from the couch to the fireplace to the picture window, no sooner reaching one destination than lighting out for the next. The already small living room felt like it was shrinking decrementally by the minute.
She had no idea how much time had passed before her restless circuit finally ended back at the window. She stared blindly beyond the resort grounds to the peekaboo glimpse of The Brothers, the prominent twin peaks in the Olympic mountain range that the inn was named after. “Oh, God.” Thrusting her hands through her hair, she knocked her forehead once, twice, three times against the cool glass. “What the hell am I going to do?”
Nothing came to mind. And wasn’t that too whacked for words—she who had had a plan since her daddy was sent to the pen when she was barely sixteen? At the moment, however, her mind was nothing but white noise, her stomach awash in red-hot acid. And she couldn’t string two consecutive thoughts together to save her soul.
She needed Tasha.
Just the thought of her best friend made her stomach a fraction less messed up, and she dashed into the bedroom, snatched her purse from the top of her dresser where she always left it, and headed back toward the door.
On the way, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the inside of her open closet door.
“Holy crap.” She’d forgotten she was still wearing her cleaning clothes. Not to mention that she was devoid of so much as a hint of makeup and her do was totally pulled apart in front from her ten-fingered grab-and-bang. “That’s not pretty.”
Tossing her purse back on the dresser, she toed off her Keds and kicked them into the closet. She shimmied her jeans down her legs and wrestled her T-shirt off over her head. She was in no mood to go primp crazy, but surely she could do better than this.
It took her no time at all to pull on a nicer pair of skinny-wale cords, a thin red sweater and her three-inch Cuban-heeled black leather boots. She swiped a sheer red balm over her lips and gave her lashes a cursory pass with the mascara wand. Then, removing the rubber bands from her braids, she pulled a brush through her hair.
And called it good.
Two minutes later she was out the door, pulling on a military-style jacket as she headed for the boardwalk that followed the curving shoreline into town.
The wind whipped her hair around her head when she rounded the inn, and she pulled a knit beret out of her jacket pocket. Stretching its back opening, she caught up the bottom of her hair, tugged the gray angora front band into place and tucked in stray strands blowing around her face. The day was more blustery than cold, and the upside to the gusty wind was the clarity of the air now that the earlier clouds had blown away. The Olympics soared out of green layer upon complex green layer of foothills, rising a scant two miles away across the choppy, whitecapped water, their snow-blanketed peaks brilliant white against the clear blue sky.
Two blocks down the beach, the actual Razor Bay of the eponymously named town cut a deep, irregular half circle into the land. The boardwalk emptied onto Harbor Street, the face of the business district, with its brightly painted storefronts lining the long arc of the inlet. As Jenny walked away from the mouth of the bay, the winds dropped and the waters calmed within the protection of three sides of land.
Someone tapped on the window as she passed the orange clapboard Sunset Café, and she waved back at Kathy Tagart and Maggie Watson, who sat at a table on the other side of the glass. She strode past Razor Bay Jet Ski & Bicycle Rentals, darkened now as it was only open on Saturdays and Sundays this time of year. The neighboring aqua, blue and green building next door was Bella T’s Pizzeria, where she was headed.
Jenny whipped the door open, and the rich scent of pizza sauce wafted from brick wood-burning ovens to wrap around her like a security blanket. It was a little early for the dinner crowd, but an older couple she didn’t recognize sat at one of the window tables, and a group of teens, laughing and talking, crowded around two tables they’d pushed together near the game room. As she crossed to the order counter, the door to that room opened and closed, belching out the electronic beeps and clangs of the video-game machines behind it.
Tasha looked up from chopping something on a block below the sales counter—and broke into a wide smile. “Well, hey, girlfriend!” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon. Thought for sure you’d be spending your day off eating chocolate-drizzled popcorn and reading romance nov—” Her smile faltered and she lowered her voice as Jenny approached. “What’s wrong? Is it Austin?”
“No, Austin’s okay.” A bark of laughter that threatened to morph into something else escaped her throat. “Well, ‘okay’ might be stretching it a bit, considering his father is in town, and he’s determined to take Austin back to New York with him.”
“What?” Setting aside her knife, Tasha wiped her hands on the white waist apron circling her narrow hips. Then she shook her head. “No, wait, let’s go over to the far table where we’ll have a little privacy. You want a slug of red?”
“Oh, God. That would be soooo appreciated.”
“One glass of wine coming up then.” She selected a wide-bowled goblet and filled it higher than usual with the house cab. “Here you go, sweetie.” Pushing it toward Jenny with one hand, she poured a less generous portion for herself. Then she gave Jenny a quick but thorough once-over. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Breakfast, I guess.” She honestly didn’t remember.
Tasha was already turning away. “Let me make you a slice.”
“I’m not sure I can swallow anything,” she said, but her friend had already grabbed a section of dough out of the fridge, slid it onto a paddle and was ladling sauce onto it.
“If this is as bad as it sounds, you’re going to need fuel. I’ve got some of that Canadian bacon and pineapple you like, although how anybody can eat pineapple on—” She waved the old argument aside. “Take our wine over to the table and I’ll bring the food.”
“Fuckin’ A, dude!” A boisterous male voice suddenly rang through the room, making the elderly couple gape in shock at the table of teens.
Jenny didn’t even turn. Instead, she watched as her friend reached for the big-barreled gun she kept on the lower counter. Then she slowly pivoted as Tasha took aim at the offender and pulled the trigger.
The ping-pong ball that fired from the gun hit dead center in the back of the cursing teen’s head and bounced away to skip in decreasing hops across the linoleum floor.
“What the—” Slapping a hand to the spot, the boy pushed back from the table and whirled to face Tasha, his face a study in indignation.
But once he had her in his sights, he appeared to promptly lose his train of thought.
For the first time since she’d discovered Jake Bradshaw’s identity, Jenny experienced a trace of amusement. Tasha had that effect on the XY end of the chromosome pool. Jenny had always found it interesting because it wasn’t her friend’s body—Tasha was far from being built like a goddess. She was tallish and gangly, with average-size breasts and no hips to speak of. But with her gray-blue eyes, full upper lip and Pre-Raphaelite strawberry-blond curls, she had the more exotically striking than beautiful looks—and presence—of a model from a Michael Parkes painting.
It stopped males in their tracks every time.
The gaze she leveled on the teen at this moment lacked her usual warmth. “This is a place for families,” she said without raising her voice. “So clean up your language or get out of my shop. You only get one warning.”
He hesitated as if tempted to protect his machismo with the usual teenage, knee-jerk don’t-tell-me-what-to-do ’tude. Instead, he swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding the length of his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sorry, Tasha,” Brandon Teller called from his seat next to the boy who’d dropped the F-bomb. “This is my cousin’s first time here. He didn’t know the rules.”
“Now you do.” Tasha granted the boy a smile. “And admiring as I do a man who’s not afraid to apologize, I’ll tell you that you handled it better than many. Welcome to Bella T’s.”
When she and Jenny took their wine and food to a table on the other side of the room a moment later, however, she demanded sotto voce, “Seriously? When did I become a ma’am?”
She made an erasing gesture before Jenny could respond. “Never mind. That’s not what’s important. I want to see you eat some of that pie.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Try.”
So Jenny picked up the slice and took a tiny bite off its tip. She felt so sick at the thought of Jake taking Austin to the other side of the country, she was honestly afraid her stomach would rebel. But the pizza’s flavors exploded on her tongue and she found the crisp golden crust, flavorful sauce and hot, soft cheese a comfort.
Pizza to her was Tasha, and Tash had been her best friend since Jenny’s second day in Razor Bay High, when the other girl had put herself between Jenny and some kids who had thought it would be fun to torment her over the much-publicized statewide scandal from her father’s exposed Ponzi scheme.
She’d come to learn that Tasha’s mother made the strawberry blonde’s standing in school even lower than her own. But that only made Jenny admire her more, because most teens already on the fringe—and likely a good percentage of adults, as well—would have covered their own ass rather than put it on the line for a total stranger.
So she smiled at her friend as she reached for her wineglass. “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you? You did it, Tash—not only do you make the world’s best pizza, but you’re making this place a complete success.” Bella T’s had only been open for ten months, but it had taken off from the beginning, not just with the tourists during high season, but with the locals, as well.
Tasha gave her a lopsided smile. “Toldja a hundred years ago I was gonna.”
She had—the first time she’d made Jenny a homemade pizza in her mother’s single-wide. The same night she’d divulged her dream to one day own her own pizzeria.
From the beginning, the two of them had shared a mutual determination to move beyond their circumstances. But Jenny had been in awe that her new friend, who was only six months older than she, had a full-fledged, neatly typed business plan in her underwear drawer. She’d been living day to day, just trying to keep her grades up in school and her mother and herself off the streets with the after-school maid job at The Brothers that had brought her to Razor Bay. She so honest-to-God admired everything Tasha had accomplished and was happy for her success. Because nobody worked harder.
Now, in the unspoken agreement of good friends, they chatted about everything but what had brought Jenny here until they finished their meal. Finally, reaching for the half carafe she’d brought to the table, Tasha topped off Jenny’s glass and added a splash to her own.
“You look a little more relaxed,” she said. “So take a few deep breaths and try to give me the details without getting yourself all stressed out again.”
“Tall order,” Jenny said, and admitted, “I don’t know if that’s possible.” But she took the calming breath her friend advised and recounted everything that had happened from the moment she’d discovered who Jake Bradshaw was.
“Crap,” Tasha said quietly when she finished. “What are you going to do?”
She blew out a breath. “I don’t know. He’s ignored Austin his entire life—it never once even occurred to me he would show up. But not only has he,” she said with fierce indignation, “he’s here with a plan to disrupt Austin’s life by dragging him away from everything he knows! God, I just want to—”
She stared down at her hands and reached for another calming breath as she uncurled the white-knuckled fists she’d unconsciously tightened into her fingers. Then she looked up at her friend. Gave her a slight half smile.
“It would be nice if I could say I’m being altruistic here, that my concern is strictly for Austin’s welfare. But, God, Tash, I really thought I’d get permanent guardianship. I can’t bear the thought of him going that far away!”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve been in his life since he was, what, two years old?”
“Nearer to three and a half before I really got close to him.”
The other woman shrugged. “Close enough.” She reached across the table to give her hands a squeeze. “And maybe it won’t come down to that. You said Bradshaw is staying here until school’s out, right? Maybe he’ll get bored with playing daddy and go back before June.” She frowned. “Okay, that’s a shitty thing to wish for, too.”
“I know.” Jenny ground the heel of her hand against the headache beginning to throb between her brows. “It’s not like I haven’t considered the same thing. But it’s hard to forget how long Austin fantasized about having a father before he finally put that dream away.” She growled with frustration. “This is such a no-win situation. It’s pretty much guaranteed that one or both of us is going to wind up hurt.”
She leaned into the table. “But I’ve got to think like an adult. Because as much as it’ll kill me to lose Austin, I’m even more afraid that Bradshaw will win his forgiveness—will make him care—then do something exactly like what you said and stomp the kid’s heart to paste.”
The moment the words left her mouth, however, she thought of that glimpse she’d caught of...something. Something that had seethed in Jake Bradshaw’s pale green eyes when he saw Austin for the first time. She wasn’t sure what it had been, exactly. But it had caught her by surprise because she hadn’t expected a guy who’d ignored his son since birth to harbor such strong emotions.
Then she shrugged it aside. So what? It was probably just impatience at having to be here, at having to deal with her and Austin.
All the same, she sat up straighter. “If he’s telling the truth,” she said slowly, “Jake Bradshaw is going to have legal custody of Austin.”
“I’m not sure why he’d lie about it, since that’s something easily checked,” Tasha said.
“That’s my thought, too, because you can be sure I will check. But if it is so... Well, he’s right when he said that if I care about Austin, I have to help make the transition easier for him.” Acknowledging it made her feel like howling.
Tasha nodded. “I’m sorry, Jen. But I think you’re probably right. Look.” She leaned into the table. “You can’t do anything about it tonight, and I don’t like the idea of you going home to brood. You said Austin’s sleeping over at Nolan’s, right?”
“Yes. Part of me is so relieved that I don’t have to pretend in front of him. But you know me too well. Because as much as I’d love to tell you you’re wrong about the brooding, I have a feeling that rattling around the house alone is going to make tonight seem like a dog year.”
“So don’t go home. Things quiet down around here after seven. You can hang around here until then, or run errands or whatever and come back. Either way, I’ll have Tiff close for me tonight. You and I are going to the Anchor. There’s always some distraction to be had there. We can get stinkin’ or we can just feed the jukebox and knock ’em dead at darts. Whataya say?”
She really wasn’t in the mood for the local bar. But neither did she want to go home to take up pacing again. Plus, if she knew nothing else, she could rely on one thing: being with Tasha would help. “Deal. I think I’ll hang here until you’re ready. That’ll give me plenty of time to decide whether darts or getting stinkin’ is the best way to go.”
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE COULDN’T SETTLE DOWN. He’d driven around the area to refamiliarize himself with the spots he remembered and to check out the changes—surprised at how many of the latter there were. Back at the inn, he’d explored both his suite, which had taken all of five minutes, and the grounds of his former in-laws’ resort, which had at least used up a little time. He’d called room service to deliver his dinner, because he was too wired to sit in the dining room.
But now it was only six-thirty and the walls were closing in. He had to get out of here.
Grabbing his hoodie, he pulled it on, zipped up, then wrestled his sport jacket on over it as he headed for the beach. He’d walk into town. See if he couldn’t kill some more time.
He barely glanced at the rugged, panoramic mountain range across the water that stopped the tourists in their tracks. Head down in the wind, hands jammed in his pockets, he strode purposefully along the boardwalk, one of the additions that was new to him.
Moments later, he reached Razor Bay—only to discover they’d already rolled up the streets.
“Shit.” How could he have forgotten that? It used to be just one more reason added to the many that’d had him dying to get out of this backwater burg. There was bugger all to do in the low season. Hell, it only offered a limited selection of distractions during the high.
The Sunset Café, Bella T’s Pizzeria and a new Vietnamese sandwich place were still open, and those likely only because it was Friday night. At least in the summer both Harbor Street and Eagle Road were jumping until eleven.
Remembering Austin talking about his friend’s mom getting them pizza, he almost went into Bella T’s. He tried to convince himself that he had an urge to do so simply because the place was new to him and he was curious. But he wasn’t that good a liar. He knew damn well the fuel driving that machine was the off chance of seeing his son.
Even if Austin was in there this very moment—and what were the odds of that?—did he really want a public face-off with the kid? Jenny was right: he needed to give Austin time to get used to the fact that he was back in town.
He didn’t know why just thinking her name made a vision of his son’s guardian dragon pop into his head. But not only could he see her shiny hair, those big dark eyes and smooth olive skin, the damn mental picture was high-def.
He blinked the image away. Where the hell had that come from? She was so not his type.
He gave his shoulders an impatient hitch, looking for a more comfortable fit in his skin. The more he thought about it, the more his earlier idea—to have li’l Ms. Salazar help pave the way with Austin—seemed like the way to go. At the time it had merely been one of those throwaway ideas that sometimes popped off the top of his head. But it was a solid plan.
Of course, it was also predicated on her agreeing to it. And given her opinion of him, that was one big-ass if.
Suddenly recalling the Anchor, he headed for the narrow walkway that was cut between the General Store and Swanson’s Ice Cream Shack. The pedestrian shortcut led to Eagle Road, which paralleled the long curve of Harbor Street and comprised the rest of the town’s business district, and to the parking lot behind that. As Razor Bay’s sole bar, if you didn’t count the one off the lobby at The Brothers—which tonight he definitely did not—The Anchor was one place still bound to be open.
He spotted the white-framed mosaic sign he remembered the instant he cleared the tiled walkway connecting the two streets. It spelled out the bar’s name in sea-hued bits of tile on the bump-out over the marine-blue building’s three front windows. The same twin neon anchors from his youth flashed yellow and blue on either end of the sign, and what he’d swear were the same neon beer signs dotted the windows.
He felt an edge of anticipation and had to admit he was curious. He’d left town before he was old enough to be allowed in the bar. Back in the day, he’d tried to lay hands on some fake ID with the thought of going there, but it hadn’t panned out.
He snorted. Hell, even if he’d scored the best fake identification ever produced, it wasn’t as if there’d been a hope in hell he’d have gotten away with using it. Not in the Anchor. In a town this size, everyone pretty much knew who everyone else was.
Pulling open the door, he walked in.
Dimly lit, the interior sported dark wood-plank floors scuffed from years of foot traffic, and matching, if less beat-up, walls covered in black-framed photos that appeared to be black-and-white shots of midcentury Razor Bay. He wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at those.
A long bar with tall stools took up most of the back wall, and the two blackboards behind it, whose chalk menus were highlighted by art lights, showed a surprising selection of microbrewery beers and ales. A jukebox, pinball machine and a couple of dartboards took up a small slice of real estate down at the end of the front wall to his right. Tables and chairs took up the rest of the floor, and a few small booths occupied the wall opposite the gaming section.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but this was a bar pretty much like you’d find anywhere, if a touch more hip than he’d anticipated. But at least he could kill a little time here with a beer and those photos.
“Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in,” a deep voice drawled from one of the booths.
Jake froze midstride, and for a single hot second he was a fourth-grade boy again, forgetting for a moment that his dad had walked out on him and his mom, because he was finally on the much-coveted big kids’ fourth-to-sixth-grade upper playground at Chief Sealth Elementary. He’d had one perfect moment—until a boy two grades older came up to him, gave him a shove that almost knocked him off his feet and said, “Heard you got what you deserved. If your tramp of a mama hadn’t got herself knocked up, my dad would still be with me and my mom.”
It had been a shock on every level because how many darn families did his until-recently-adored father have? And Jake sure hadn’t started the new school year expecting to be pushed around by his previously unknown half brother. A brother, he’d learned over a course of several school-yard confrontations, whom their mutual father, Charlie Bradshaw, had totally ignored even when they’d lived in the same town—the way Charlie ignored him now that he’d moved on to a new family.
But the little flash down memory lane was just that—there one second and gone the next. Shaking off the mix of confusion and rage that dealings with Max Bradshaw had always given him, he strolled over. “Well, hey, big brother,” he drawled right back. “Long time, no see. I hear somebody thought it was a good idea to give you a gun. Tell me that doesn’t scare the shit out of the general populace.”
“Oh, most people don’t have a thing to worry about.” Max gave Jake a pointed look. “You, however—” His gaze grazed Jake’s chest as if visualizing a bull’s-eye.
It was never easy to tell when Max was serious and when he wasn’t, but Jake gave him the same cool look either case would garner. “So what number wife are you up to now? Three? Four, maybe? Any nieces or nephews I oughta know about?”
The words had barely left his mouth when he felt an odd regret. He and Max actually shared several traits, and when their father had waltzed out of town, they’d had a narrow window of opportunity to bury the hatchet somewhere besides in each other’s skull. After all, they were probably the only ones in Razor Bay who truly understood how the wreckage Charlie left behind affected the other. It had been a rare chance to take comfort in having someone who got it, someone with whom you didn’t have to pretend you didn’t give a damn that Charlie Bradshaw was a great dad as long as you were his current favorite, but that he forgot you even existed the moment he moved on. And they might have.
If hating each other’s guts hadn’t been so well ingrained by then.
Even in the dim light he could see his salvo cause something dark to flash across his half brother’s deep-set eyes. But the other man merely shrugged a big shoulder. “No wives, no kids. You’re the one who started early and followed in the old man’s footsteps.”
You opened yourself up for that one, Slick. But, ouch. It was a direct hit, and one that gouged at a long-festering guilt, more than a decade old.
Because as much as he’d like to blow off his half brother’s potshot as the usual sour grapes, Max wasn’t wrong. When Jake’s high school girlfriend Kari had gotten knocked up in their senior year, he had started out with good intentions, fiercely determined to man up in a way that his own dad never had. And for a while, he had done just that.
In the end, however, he’d turned out to be nothing but a chip off the old block.
The knowledge rankled now just as much as it had back then, so instead of acting cool and shrugging off Max’s remark the way he should have, he snapped, “You don’t know a damn thing about me, bro. You didn’t when I was nine and you turned the big kids’ playground into a battleground, and you sure as hell don’t now. When are you gonna get it through your head? My mom and I didn’t make the old man leave you and your mother, any more than whoever that other woman was made him leave us. When it comes to Charlie’s wives and kids, he’s got the attention span of a fruit fly.”
His half brother dug his knuckles into his forehead just above the bridge of his nose. Then, dropping his hand to splay atop the scarred table, Max looked up at him. And blew out a breath. “Yeah,” he agreed, his deep voice a tired rumble.
Jake took a seat in the booth across the table from Max. “You know what?” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t have the heart for this anymore. I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to make up for my past and hoping to hell I do a decent enough job to get to know my kid. I don’t have enough energy to fight you, too.”
Max gave him a puzzled look. “You do get that you’re handing me a whole shitload of ammunition, right?”
Jake shrugged. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do—it’s not like I can stop you. So fuck it.”
“Right.” Max shifted in his seat. “Fuck it. We’re not in high school anymore.” He leveled a look on him. “Don’t get the idea you’re ever gonna be my bud, little Bradshaw. But I can probably stomach being around you now and then.”
Jake had to swallow a grin at the “little Bradshaw” crack. That was a good one. He wasn’t particularly small: he missed the six-foot mark by a fraction of an inch. But Max was a good six-three and twenty pounds heavier. “Give me a minute,” he ordered. “I’m kinda overwhelmed here. I’m not sure I know how to handle so much enthusiasm coming my way.” He shook his head as he met the gaze of the man across the table. “The thrill of it all just may kill me.”
“We can only hope.”
A cardboard Anchor Porter beer coaster landed on the table in front of him and he looked up at a cheery, college-age blonde.
She gave him a toothy grin. “Well, hey there, new blood. Haven’t seen you before. Trust me, I’d remember.” Then she waved the mild flirtation aside. “Get you boys something?”
“Him another table,” Max said.
Jake flashed the waitress a smile. “My brother’s such a kidder.”
She did a double take. “Shut the front door! You two are brothers?”
“Half,” Max emphasized. “We’re half brothers.”
“Half, whole.” Jake shrugged. “What’s the diff? Blood’s blood, right?”
Max gave him a disgruntled glare. “Give it a rest, Jake...before I’m tempted to spill yours.”
“Whatever you say, my brotha.” He winked at the blonde. “Give old Bradshaw here another of whatever he’s drinking and I’ll have a Fat Tire.”
“One Bud tap and a Fat Tire coming up.”
“Budweiser?” Jake asked, turning his attention back to Max as the girl headed to the bar. “Seriously?”
Max rolled his muscular shoulders. “It’s a good American beer. And it doesn’t have a stupid name. Hell, I could’ve given you a fat lip for free.”
“And have, on more than one occasion. But it’s Fat Tire, philistine. I’m guessing you don’t get out of this burg very often.”
“Why would I want to? I’ve got everything I need right here.”
Jake shuddered. If he had to stay in Razor Bay a second longer than it took to make Austin trust him, he’d open a vein.
The waitress was back with their beer almost before their exchange ended, and he dug his wallet out of his hip pocket, paid for the order and dropped a hefty tip on her tray.
Max studied him. “It’s easy to tell you live in a big city.”
“Why? Because I tip?”
His half brother scowled. “I tip. Maybe not fivers for a four-dollar bottle of beer, but I tip. But I was talking about that metrosexual thing you’ve got going.”
“The hell you say!” He might like the amenities of a big city but, he’d never had a manicure or facial in his life.
“I do say.” Max gave him a feral grin. “You’re a pretty boy.”
“I’m ruggedly handsome.” He bounced a fist off his chest. “A manly man.” Then he shrugged. “Still, you’re right about the big city. I own a loft in Soho.”
“We talking New York City?” Max grimaced, then unknowingly echoed his own sentiments. “Christ. I’d open a vein if I had to live there.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been?”
“Nope. I’ve never had my balls waxed either, but I can tell you without a doubt that I wouldn’t like it.”
Unable to help himself, Jake laughed even as he hunched in a little over his own cajones. “Yeah, because the two things have so much in common. You ever been anywhere, Max?”
“Sure.” He hitched a shoulder. “California. North Carolina. Afghanistan. Iraq.”
“Of course. What else would a law-and-order type do but join the—what?” A laugh escaped him. “No, wait, this is a no-brainer. You couldn’t be anything but a jarhead. Or I suppose one of those Navy SEALS or Green Beret dudes.”
“Please. Like I’d join either of those pussy branches of the service. I was one of the few, the proud, boy.”
“And now you’re the sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Deputy of Nottingham. The sheriff’s about a hundred years old.”
But Jake was barely listening. Hearing a raunchy feminine laugh on the other side of the room, his head snapped up. That couldn’t possibly be...
His gaze cut through the crowd that was beginning to fill the watering hole, tracking the sound to its source. And discovered that—hell—not only could it be, it was. Jenny Salazar was at the bar, laughing with the bartender and another woman.
She looked different tonight. Not at all like the little girl he’d first mistaken her for. Her lips were red and soft looking. Her hair without those braids was longer than he’d realized, a shiny rippling curtain of dark against the red sweater she wore. And her—
“What the hell are you staring at?” Max twisted in his seat to look over his shoulder. Then with a nod he settled back. “Ah. Tasha. She has that effect on guys. Not sure why—it’s not like she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Still, she’s got a way of stopping the show.”
Jake tore his gaze away. Gave himself a mental smack to get his head back in the game. And discovered that even then he didn’t have any idea what Max was babbling about. “Who?”
“Tasha Riordan. The strawberry blonde? That’s not who you’re looking at? Who then—Jenny?” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t want to go there.”
That got his full attention. “I don’t? That is, I really don’t—my interest in her isn’t like that.” At least not much. He gave his head a shake. “But just to clarify, why don’t I? Is she yours?” He didn’t question too closely why the idea bugged him.
But his half brother seemed almost appalled by the idea. “No!”
“Okay. Some other guy’s?”
He shook his head.
“She’s a nun, then.”
Max gave him a what-the-fuck? look. “Here’s a thought. How ’bout you try not to be any more of an idiot than you already are.”
“I’m groping in the dark here, bro. She a lesbian?”
“Jesus. No. She’s just...sweet. Loyal. A good friend to everyone. Not someone for a guy like you to be messing with.”
“Yeah? Does she roll over and wag her tail when you scratch behind her ears, too?”
Max scowled, but Jake was too familiar with the expression to be intimidated. “What? She’s a woman, big B. You make her sound like an old dog.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No shit. I thought she was a kid when I met her this afternoon, but she herself disabused me of that notion right from the get. I take it she’s single, so I don’t see the problem if some guy—not me, but someone—wanted to slap the moves on her. So if she’s none of the things I’ve already mentioned, what does that leave? Terminal?” He shook his head. “No, the conversation I had with her didn’t leave me with that impression—she’s not inward looking enough. Leper?” He was enjoying his brother’s disgust at his guessing game, until a sudden thought turned his blood to ice and drop-kicked the smile right off his face. “Christ. Rape victim?”
“No. Where do you come up with this shit?”
He shrugged. “I’m a journalist. I’ve seen things.”
“I thought you were some hotshot photographer for National Explorer.”
“I am. Well, a photographer anyway. The hotshot part’s still a work in progress. But just because most of my work is told through the lens of a camera, doesn’t mean I’m not a questioning kind of guy.” Jake glanced over at the woman under discussion once again. She and her friend had migrated to a table. The friend, who had taken a chair facing him, did have something, he admitted. But it was Jenny, sitting in profile to him, who commanded his attention.
Well, of course she did. She held considerable sway over any relationship he might forge with Austin.
He looked back at Max. “I talked to her for all of maybe fifteen minutes this afternoon. So tell me about her. How does she fit into Austin’s life?”
“She’s like his sister.”
“Yeah, I got that. What I don’t get is, how did that happen? No way in hell they’re related. Kathy was an only child, and Emmett had one older sister who never married.”
Max shrugged. “She came here when she was fifteen—” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Sixteen?” He shook his head. “The exact age doesn’t really matter. She came here as a teen in the midst of a huge scandal. I was home on leave when she hit town.”
That caught Jake’s attention, but his brother immediately gave the air a negligent swipe with one big-knuckled hand.
“Not her scandal. It was her old man’s. He’d been all over the news because of some big swindle that crashed down around his ears and landed him in Monroe. Jenny came here with her mother.” Max’s face hardened. “Who, as far as I could tell, planted her skinny socialite ass in bed from the shame of it all, while her underage kid kept the two of them off the streets by doing housekeeping at The Brothers after school and on weekends.”
“And Emmett and Kathy just invited two strangers with a questionable past to move into their home?” In a way it sounded like something they’d do. But in other ways, it wasn’t like them at all, especially in light of Kari’s death, which couldn’t have been more than a year or two before that time.
Max shook his head. “That was a while later. When they first got here, Jenny and her mother rented the Bakers’ little place.”
“Christ.” He shifted uncomfortably. “That old rehabbed chicken coop?”
“Yeah. Where her mom just curled up and died. I’m talking literally. From what I heard, the woman couldn’t live with her loss of status and just willed herself to die. But it took her a while. By the time she passed, Jenny was a senior and had been working for the Pierces almost two years.”
“So—what? They just replaced Kari with her?” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he was the last person with any room for righteous indignation.
But somehow that didn’t stop him from feeling it.
Max gave him a look that suggested he was thinking the same thing. But he merely said, “The one time I went to their house to see Austin, I was strongly discouraged, so I’m hardly an expert on their mind-set.”
That sidetracked Jake. “You wanted to see Austin?”
“I thought I should meet my nephew.”
He simply stared at Max for a moment before admitting, “It never occurred to me you were his uncle. But you are, aren’t you?”
“Not as far as Emmett and Kathy were concerned,” Max said drily. “They said considering my background with you and the fact that the little dude didn’t know me from Adam, they didn’t see the point in my spending time with him—that he’d only be confused.” He shrugged. “They were probably right. I mean, you and I never acted like real brothers. Why should my relationship with your get be any different? But I always wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have pressed them a little harder. Done more. Hell, I put more effort into getting to know the boys over at Cedar Village,” he added, naming the home for delinquent boys on Orilla Road outside town.
Then he shook his head. “That’s not what we were talking about, though. Because one thing I do know about the Pierces is that they sure as hell mourned Kari. So I doubt replacing her with Jenny entered into the equation. I think they saw a hardworking girl who was the age their daughter had been when she died and who was struggling to make ends meet—and thought they could help. In the end, I believe they came to think of Jenny as the next best thing to a daughter.”
“What about her? What did she get out of the relationship, besides the obvious?”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like what you’re implying, bro.”
“She went from the Bakers’ chicken coop to the Pierces’ big Craftsman.”
“Where she refused every enticement to live a life of leisure.” Max looked him in the eyes. “And you know she could have. But Jenny kept working at the inn and, after graduating, put herself through college. With no help from the Pierces, from everything I’ve ever heard. She earned her promotions with good, old-fashioned hard work. And she moved out of that big Craftsman. Bought the little cabin she lives in from Emmett.” Max gave him a hard look. “So, you don’t want to be calling that kettle black, pot.”
Jake scrubbed his hands over his face. “I know. I know.”
“I’ll tell you what I think she got from her relationship with Emmett and Kathy. They were considerably older than her own parents, and I think she looked on them as sort of grandparents. You gotta know how they spoiled Kari—”
He nodded. God, did he ever.
“They did the same thing with Austin, but Jenny curbed it wherever she could. So the kid is less spoiled than his mother was. And she flat-out refused to let them spoil her.”
“Yeah, she’s a goddamn paragon,” Jake muttered, staring across the room at her profile.
“Pretty much,” Max agreed cheerfully. “A helluva lot more than you can ever hope to be.”
Jake abruptly became aware that the strawberry blonde was watching him watch Jenny, and even as he noticed, she leaned into the table to say something to her friend. Jenny turned to look his way, a friendly, interested smile on her face.
It turned cool as the evening wind when she saw him.
“Shit.”
Max glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at him with raised eyebrows. “And you call yourself a big-city sophisticate? Hell, even us rubes know if you stare at a female like a dog at a juicy bone long enough—”
“The hell I did!”
Max thrust an authoritative forefinger at him. “Dog.” The finger thrust in Jenny’s general direction. “Juicy bone.” He shook his head. “Jesus, kid. I’m embarrassed to acknowledge some of the same blood runs in our veins. It was only a matter of time until you were busted.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JENNY STROLLED INTO THE INN’S dining room the following morning, only to rock to a halt in the doorway when she saw Jake Bradshaw sitting alone at one of the window tables. How did he do that? How the hell did he manage to be everywhere she went?
Wasn’t it enough that he’d thrown a monkey wrench into her get-away-from-it-all evening with Tasha last night? Now he had to invade her dining room, as well? This was her time of the morning, dammit, her territory, her inn.
Okay, maybe the latter wasn’t hers in the legal sense, aside from the portion Emmett had so generously bequeathed her. But in all the ways that mattered, she claimed ownership. The Brothers Inn had been a major part of her life since she’d arrived in Razor Bay at sixteen. Hell, it was the reason she’d come to this town in the first place—the promise of a job when the pampered life she’d known had disintegrated in the wake of her father’s arrest and incarceration.
And ever since Emmett had promoted her to general manager, she’d made a habit of coming to the dining room each morning at the end of the breakfast shift to eat that much-touted most important meal of the day. She’d found it particularly beneficial since Austin had moved in with her. Breakfast at the inn was her way of easing into the day, a transition between getting the teen off to school and diving into her busy shift at the inn.
Striding across the room, she smiled at or murmured hellos to the few guests still finishing up their meals, before stopping at Jake’s table.
“What are you doing here?” Okay, so it was obvious, given the topped-off coffee cup at his elbow and the plate containing a smear of egg yolk, an untouched bunch of red grapes and a single crust of toast, which he’d pushed out of the way to accommodate the Bremerton Sun he was reading.
But it was the best she could do when she wasn’t allowed to say, You breathe, therefore you bother me—get the hell out of my dining room.
“Hey.” He looked up from the newspaper spread out on the table. Flashed her a million-dollar smile. “I’m having breakfast. You, too?”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and tapped the toe of a fabulous-if-she-did-say-so-herself Steve Madden Mary Jane. It reverberated a soft tattoo against the hardwood floor.
Jake’s smile faded. “Is it a problem that I’m staying here? Do you want me to leave?”
Yes! The moment Austin had left this morning, she’d put in a call to the Pierces’ lawyer to discuss her chances of keeping the boy with her now that his absentee father had stated a willingness to fight for custody. Already feeling ragged from the results of that conversation, learning that blood relatives are almost always chosen over a nonrelated contestant, she wished nothing more than for Jake Bradshaw to go far, far away.
And never come back.
But he’d made it pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen. And she knew the bastard had been right when he’d told her that either she could make things easier for Austin, or she could stick to her guns and likely make them a lot more difficult. So she sighed and dropped her arms to her sides.
“No. We don’t make a habit of turning customers away at The Brothers just because we don’t like their looks.” Hearing herself, she almost blew a pithy little raspberry, but managed to sink her teeth into her lower lip before she could follow through on the impulse. But, please. She doubted anyone had ever turned this guy away over his looks. “Or their history. Not if they aren’t currently doing anything wrong.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But it’s just a matter of time, eh?”
“You said it, not me.”
He laughed. “You’re not shy about trying to kick my teeth down my throat, are you? I like that about you.”
She gave him her politest GM smile. “Always happy to oblige.”
“I bet you are.” He kicked the chair across from him away from the table. “Have a seat.”
The response that rose to her lips was very un-GM-like, not to mention an anatomical impossibility. Austin, she reminded herself firmly. I have to consider Austin first and foremost.
She sat. “Thank you. I’m not sure I’ve ever received an invitation so suave.”
He grinned. “It’s my big-city polish.”
Dammit, she didn’t want to like anything about this guy, but she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from twitching upward in appreciation. Then the decision she’d made after a night spent tossing and turning slammed front and center.
And the smile dissolved.
“I gave your request a lot of thought,” she said. “And I’ve decided to do what I can to make Austin’s transition as easy on him as possible.”
He sat straighter in his seat. “Thank you.”
“Like I told you yesterday, I’m not doing this for you. And you might want to hold the thanks, anyway, because I don’t know if you’ll like my take on how you should handle things.”
“Lay it on me.”
“For starters, I wouldn’t tell him your plans to haul him back to New York yet, if I were you.”
His brows drew together. “You don’t think he should be prepared?”
A plate with scrambled eggs, toast and a ramekin of yogurt, blueberries and handmade granola was slid onto the table in front of her, and Jenny looked up at the waitress, giving her a smile. “Thanks, Brianna.”
“No problem.” The young woman turned Jenny’s cup over in its saucer and filled it with coffee. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thank you.” Glancing around, she saw that she and Jake were the only diners left—not that there’d been that many to begin with. “Go grab your own breakfast. And tell the crew to work around us if we’re still here when they’re ready to set up for lunch.” A chore they performed as soon as the breakfast crowd cleared out and they’d eaten their meals.
The girl shot her a grin. “Will do.”
She watched Brianna walk away, then turned back to Jake. “I absolutely believe Austin needs to be prepared,” she said, picking up the conversation. “But if you lead off with the fact you’re taking him from Razor Bay, he’ll shut down on you so fast it’ll make your head spin—and it will only take you that much longer to gain his trust. Look, you might be accustomed to packing up and taking off at a moment’s notice, but trust me, Austin is not.”
He studied her. “What makes you think I am?”
“Please,” she said with dismissive scorn. “There’s a wealth of stuff about you on the internet.”
“You looked me up?”
“Of course.” She tipped her head. “Do you find my assessment off the mark?”
He hitched one shoulder. “No, that’s pretty accurate.”
“So you’re used to living life on the fly. You’re also an adult. He’s a kid who’s lived in one place his entire life.”
“And is probably dying for a change.”
“Why, because you were at his age? That’s something you should definitely discuss with him, but aside from longing for a daddy when he was younger, I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed signs of Austin being dissatisfied with his lot.”
He started patting his chest and her eyebrows drew together. “What are you doing?”
“You slipped that knife in so sweet and slick, I want to be sure I don’t bleed to death before I even realize I’ve been shivved.”
She shrugged. “Put yourself in his place for a minute instead of trying to shoehorn him into yours. I know you’re getting up there in years but—”
A bark of laughter interrupted her. “Jesus, you’re a pisser.”
Jenny ignored him. “—try to remember back to when you were thirteen. How open would you have been if a man you’d never met suddenly inserted himself into your life and, without giving you so much as a moment to get to know him, told you he was gonna haul you away from everything you knew to a life different from anything you could imagine, clear on the other side of the country?”
“In all honesty?” He gave her an ironic smile. “I probably would’ve burned rubber packing my bag. But in the interests of that putting-myself-in-his-place thing, I agree that a different kind of kid might be pissed.” He gave a grudging nod. “I’ll keep my plans to myself until we get to know each other.”
“And I’ll work on trying to get him to spend some time with you.”
“Thank you.”
She shrugged and picked up her fork. She’d prefer to move to another table where she could eat her breakfast in peace, but for the sake of cooperation, she stayed put. But the sourdough toast and eggs in her standing Saturday order tasted like wood chips and glue.
He didn’t try to talk to her while she forced herself to eat every bite. For a while she appreciated it. But as the silence dragged on, she felt an antsy need to fill it with something.
Anything.
She shifted in her chair. Set her fork down and looked at him across the table.
Got hung up for a minute on his eyes.
Stop that! Dammit, what was it about him? She’d never been one to go all crazy over a handsome face. Yet with him—well, it was scary how unlike herself she felt when she looked at him too long or too closely. She was so not the bubbleheaded Ooh, what pretty eyes you have—what’s your sign type.
So why did she look at this man and feel darn near that vacuous?
Giving herself a mental head-smack now, she sat a bit straighter in her seat. “Why did it take you so damn long to get here after Emmett died?”
She almost crowed in self-approval, but managed to confine herself to a silent Thatagirl. Put him on the spot.
He leveled those glorious green eyes at her. “The phone call was made to my home rather than my assistant—”
“Maybe because no one knew you had an assistant,” she snapped.
He sighed. “Look, I stipulate that everything is my fault, okay?”
Jenny reined herself in, because these knee-jerk reactions weren’t helping. “I’m sorry,” she said and put real effort into sounding as if she actually meant it. She gave him the slightest nod. “Go on.”
“Said the queen to the peasant,” he said drily.
Shooting him her snootiest look, she twirled her hand to urge him to get on with it.
He only laughed. “It was a perfect storm of lousy luck. The housekeeper had been with me less than a month when I left on this trip, so by the time it occurred to her to contact Lucinda—that’s my assistant—the news was several weeks old. I was photographing the reefs and the Karangetang volcano in the Sangihe-Talaud Archipelago of Northern Sulawesi at the time. It’s remote, it’s freaking monsoon season, which our scheduler should have known before he set the damn trip up, and we only got access to a satellite phone when we came back to Minahasa about every third weekend or so.” He shrugged. “Even when I heard about it, I was obligated for an additional six days. Then it took time to get a flight to the Philippines and even more time to get a flight from there to Seattle. I don’t go to the most accessible spots in the world.”
“So even if you heard right away, you wouldn’t have been here any sooner?”
“I had a contract! Would you have left this inn in the lurch?”
“For Austin? In a New York minute.”
His expression went blank. “I genuflect to your superior parenting skills. But I’m trying here, okay?”
And since Jenny had caught a glimpse of genuine pain cross his eyes before he slapped on a poker face, she nodded. For the first time she really saw that he was, indeed, trying—and that maybe this wasn’t as easy for him as he’d made it appear up until now. “Okay. I guess the important thing is that you’re here now. But you’ve gotta understand that this isn’t going to be easy.”
“I know,” he said wearily. “Believe me, I get it that I’ve got a lot to make up for.”
She pushed her plate away, sat a bit taller and reached for her coffee cup, wrapping her hands around it in an attempt to warm her cold, cold fingers. Despite the lip service she’d given, a part of her must have secretly hoped this was something that would simply disappear if she wished hard enough.
Instead, it was growing more real, more concrete, by the second. She drew in a deep breath, then quietly exhaled. Replaced her cup in its saucer and pressed her hands, fingers splayed, against the cool wood of the tabletop to disguise the faint tremor they’d developed.
“Give Austin time and don’t bullshit him,” she told him quietly, “and he’ll likely come to love you. He adored the idea of you when he was little.”
Jake leaned into the table. Slid his own long-fingered hands across its surface as if to touch her. But he halted their progress when his fingertips were less than an inch from hers.
She hated that the near touch set up a series of quivers deep inside.
“And you’ll help me?” he demanded.
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
He nodded.
“Then I will.”
Even though it’d likely rip her heart right out of her breast to do so.
* * *
“BRADSHAW! GET YOUR head outta the clouds and pay attention!”
Austin literally jerked at the sound of Coach Harstead’s brisk bellow—and raised a baseball mitt-encased hand to acknowledge the reprimand. “Sorry, coach!” Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to refocus on the Bulldogs’ Wednesday practice.
God, it was hard, though. His so-called father had been trying to pin him down for the past week and a half, wanting to talk and bond and shit. Austin had been doing his best to avoid the guy, but surprisingly, Jenny, who he’d assumed would be the last person wanting him to spend time with the man, hadn’t been much help. She actually thought he should be—how had she put it?—open-minded.
My ass. Resettling his cap in front, he narrowed his eyes on the batter. His friend Lee was up. Dude was right-handed with a tendency to pull the ball, so ninety percent of his hits came straight to where Austin played shortstop, between second and third base. “Come to Mama,” he murmured.
Yet even as he concentrated on being ready for it, he wondered where his “dad” had been when he’d actually wanted a father. Nodamnwhere, that’s where. Or maybe, given the guy’s big-deal job, everywhere.
Everywhere except Razor Bay.
The crack of a ball off the bat focused his attention once again and, seeing Lee’s line drive arc to the left of him, Austin got himself in position. A second later he snagged the ball out of the air, feeling it hit his mitt with a satisfyingly meaty thwonk, and winged it to the second baseman to tag Oliver Kidd, who should have stayed put on first.
“Good work, Bradshaw!” Coach Harstead called. Then to the rest of the boys, he said, “That’s a classic example of the double play that frequently happens when you hit to shortstop. So let’s all work on not doing that, whataya say?”
Stoked over his play, Austin’s concentration improved for the rest of the practice. He actually felt pretty good by the time Coach called it quits. It was a nice little break from the stress he’d been feeling this week with his dad back in town.
Nolan came up and slapped him on the back. “Nice play with Lee and Oliver.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I did okay for once. Usually Coach catches me at my worst.”
“Nah. He knows you’re good. Maybe even all-star material—”
“Austin.”
He stiffened all over at the sound of Jake’s voice and, schooling his expression, turned to face him, giving a sullen shrug of acknowledgment. Making up his mind to play it cool, however, he tried real hard not to scowl.
But, jeez.
The guy didn’t resemble any of his friends’ dads. He was younger, for one thing. And even if he wanted to talk to him, it wasn’t like he’d have the first idea what to say. Jake had like a billion-dollar camera slung around his neck—and between the hot-shit globe-trotting photographs he took for some famous magazine and the way he looked—like an action-movie guy or something—well, it could be sorta intimidating. If Austin gave a rip about that kind of stuff.
Which he didn’t.
Jake turned to Nolan. “Your mother called Jenny,” he said. “She had to take your little brother to the doctor. It’s nothing for you to worry about,” he assured the boy, “but because she’s hung up, I’m here to give you two a ride.”
Crap! Still, there wasn’t a lot they could do about this plan—not when it had the parental stamp of approval. So by unspoken agreement, he and Nolan tumbled into the back of Jake’s Mercedes BlueTEC SUV that everybody and his brother had asked Austin about, as if he would be the first to know anything about it—not!—and visited with each other, ignoring their driver.
When Jake pulled into the driveway at Austin’s friend’s house a short while later, Nolan opened the back door but stopped to say, “Thanks, Mr. Bradshaw.”
Austin, who was damned if he’d thank Daddy Dearest for anything, simply nodded. “Yeah,” he said, climbing out of the SUV in Nolan’s wake. He met Jake’s eyes when he reached back in to grab his pack. “Tell Jenny I’m doing my homework with Nolan,” he said, and slammed the door shut. Then he turned and stalked away.
He refused to feel guilty over the flash of disappointment he’d spotted on the face of a guy he’d assumed didn’t need anyone.
CHAPTER FIVE
JAKE WATCHED UNTIL THE KIDS disappeared through the front door of Nolan’s house. “Well, that went fucking swell.” Blowing out a breath, he put the Mercedes in gear and backed down the driveway. Now what did he do?
He’d expected to get a little more out of the opportunity Jenny had presented him in the wake of Rebecca Damoth’s frantic phone call than to receive the invisible chauffeur treatment. Grumbling to himself to avoid acknowledging the hollow that had formed in his gut when his son resolutely ignored him, he drove aimlessly around Razor Bay.
He had to admire the irony. When he’d heard the news about Emmett and realized that this was his final chance to take responsibility for the parenting he’d abdicated so many years ago, what should have been a cut-and-dried decision wasn’t. He hated to admit it, but part of him had been seriously tempted to simply continue doing what he’d been doing. In the end, however, not a damn thing wasn’t an option. He was tired of the guilt. He might be able to shove it aside for blocks of time, but it always came back to haunt him.
Maybe he was like those chicks who were only drawn to men who treated them like shit. Because the more his kid ignored or tried to avoid him, the more fascinated he found himself.
Spotting the sign for the public access to the canal at the north end of town, he turned off the road into its long parking area and drove through the lot to the double-wide boat ramp, not stopping until his tires were a few feet shy of the water. The tide had turned but was only about halfway to high. He turned off the ignition and, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, stared out at the canal.
Not only was it midweek with most people at work, the day was gray as a bucket of day-old fish guts, the mountains obscured by liverish rain clouds too dense and weighty to push beyond the stratum of those stacked upon them. The parking lot didn’t contain a single vehicle with attached trailer, and Jake had his doubts that even the most intrepid, boat-happy sailor from Bangor—the naval station on the other side of Kitsap—would be hauling a boat down to the launch today.
He climbed out of the SUV, stepped off the paved launch and walked to the water’s edge.
It had been windy during the week and a half he’d been in Razor Bay, but today not so much as a breeze stirred. The skies looked as though they might open up at any minute, but for now they were dry. Squatting, he selected a few flat stones from the rocky beach then surged back upright, took a step back with his right foot and skimmed one across the water’s flat, mirrorlike surface. It skipped four times before sinking. He pulled another out of his jeans pocket and let it fly, as well.
He’d envisioned making at least a little progress with his son by now, but Austin avoided him like a case of the Asian clap. How was he supposed to get to know him if the boy was either impossible to find or faded like smoke in the wind the few times Jake could locate him?
It didn’t help that he was getting that closed-in feeling Razor Bay inevitably generated in him and, agitation building, he abandoned the lightweight skipping stones and culled some honest-to-God rocks—several with razor-edged oysters attached—from the beach. He hurled them, one after the other, as far as he could throw them. Each made a nice, solid kerplunk, sending up a decent splash as they struck the water.
That was where his satisfaction ended.
At the rate he was going, Austin would be thirty before he was ready to move with him to New York. Jake needed to get things moving at a faster clip than he’d managed so far.
Frustration at his failure to make progress bit deep. Dammit, he was accustomed to dealing with problems in a brisk, competent manner. He spent a good deal of every year in far-off places where situations without easy solutions regularly arose. Yet, when faced with dilemmas, he was the guy you could count on to dig in and find ways to fix them.
That wasn’t what he’d been doing here. And the hell of it was, whenever he bent his mind toward finding a way to break the ice with his son, instead of working with its usual efficiency, his brain turned into a barren moonscape.
Tires crunched over the scattering of pinecones that had dropped from the evergreen trees dotting the parking lot, but Jake had no interest in seeing who’d arrived. What did he care if someone decided to overlook the less than ideal weather conditions? Hell, as far as that went, why shouldn’t they? It might be a butt-ugly day, but the canal was calm for the first time since he’d arrived in this godforsaken town.
Hunkering down on the beach next to the paved boat ramp, he culled a new arsenal of the largest rocks he could find. The mood he was in, he’d welcome the opportunity to lob a boulder or two, but the beach wasn’t exactly littered with those.
He was aware in a disinterested corner of his mind that the vehicle hadn’t swung around to back a trailer down the ramp alongside his SUV. Instead, a car door opened and closed behind him and, as he rose to his feet to throw the first rock, he heard the gritty sound of shoes kissing sand-dusted pavement. Ignoring it, he hurled another rock, then another.
“Tourists pay big bucks for access to that water,” Max said from behind him. “They expect it to be there the next time they show up. So keep that up and I’m gonna have to write you a ticket for reef building within twenty feet of the shoreline.”
Hearing the deep tones of his half brother’s voice gave him the usual screw-you jolt of irritation—but laced this time with a new, unexpected thread of pleasure. He shrugged off the latter as a fluke, since his pleasure receptors and Max were a foreign pairing.
“Twenty feet?” he demanded, turning to face Max. “Please. I could throw these babies thirty in my sleep.”
Max’s mouth curved up on one side. “I’m guessing algebra wasn’t your long suit.”
“True.” His own lips quirked. “Business majors don’t need no stinkin’ algebra.” A degree he’d pursued in order to prove he was the financial achiever his father wasn’t. Not that Charlie Bradshaw hadn’t provided for his family—whoever that might have been at any given moment. But where he had been a middling salesman, Jake had an intrinsic knack with money. More important, he’d had an urge to be more successful than his father. To be better in every way.
The recollection wiped the smile from his face. Because look how well that had worked out for him. His precautions had failed, Kari had gotten pregnant and he hadn’t stuck around to be a father.
He wasn’t the least bit better than the old man. And in some ways was maybe even worse.
He eyed Max as he approached. His half bro wore a khaki shirt and black tie under a military-style black wool V-neck sweater with reinforced shoulders,
elbows and forearms. Velcro-closure cotton epaulets decorated each shoulder, a badge was pinned to his chest, and gold, black and green shield-shaped patches, each sporting a spread-winged eagle and the Razor Bay Sheriff’s Office designation, decorated the sweater’s upper arms. He wore jeans and a black web utility belt that bristled with the tools of his trade—not the least of which was a serious-looking gun. “You following me, Deputy Dawg?”
“Yeah, because I live in awe of the wonder that is you.” Max let the absurdity hang in the air a moment, then made a rude noise. “Get over yourself.
I heard the navy’s doing maneuvers out here this week, and I’ve stopped by every day to see if I can catch the show.” He gave Jake a comprehensive once-over. “What’s your excuse?”
Resurrecting as it did his many recent failures, the query made him want to snarl. Jake did his best, however, to shrug the mood aside. He intended to give Max’s question the brush-off, as well. Their relationship was a long way from either opening an emotional vein in front of the other. He didn’t share that kind of relationship with anyone.
So he was astonished to hear himself admit, “I’m trying to get to know my kid, but if he can’t outright avoid me, he acts like I’m see-through.” He looked over at Max. “Did you know he plays shortstop for the Junior League?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him play.” Jake must have looked as astounded as he felt, because Max said with cool authority, “I’m the deputy sheriff. It’s my civic duty to keep tabs on the kids in this town.”
Aw, man, he was so full of shit if he thought Jake bought that. But before he could call him on it, Max said, “He plays the same position as you, huh? I heard between baseball and your grades, you got yourself a full-boat scholarship to some fancy East Coast university.” He hooked his thumbs in the webbed belt. “It can’t be easy, following in your footsteps.”
Jake looked at him in surprise, then wasn’t sure why he was so bowled over. Both of them probably knew a great deal about each other. God knew that once upon a time he had kept close tabs on everything Max did, rationalizing that it was simply good business practice to keep track of the enemy. The truth was he’d always been unwillingly fascinated by this guy who shared the same blood but was a dedicated adversary.
“I doubt there was ever a comparison,” he said now. “I was out of the local sport scene for probably half a dozen years before Austin even attended his first T-ball practice. It wouldn’t have been like trying to fill your big shoes when they were practically still smokin’.” He waved the comparison aside. “In any case, from what I saw today, he’s good.” A headache sent preliminary scouts to see about the possibility of setting up camp in his temples. “That’s no thanks to my influence, either.”
Max gave him a level look. “So why did you walk?”
Jake stilled, his heartbeat a solid thudthudthud in his chest. “You really interested in knowing?” Who would have thought Max, of all people, would be the one to come right out and ask? No one else had since he’d been back.
“Not really.” Max started to turn away, but then stopped and gave his shoulders an impatient roll before meeting Jake’s gaze head-on. “No, that’s not true. I am.”
Girding himself, Jake remained silent for a moment. Then he drew a deep breath and blew it out. “For as long as I can remember, I wanted out of this town.” He looked out at the glassy water. “Kari and I made a lot of big plans to move somewhere cosmopolitan, and I spent our entire junior year plotting ways to make it happen that wouldn’t end up with me flipping burgers for the rest of my life.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Truth is, I had plans long before I met her. I’d been working toward that scholarship since Junior high. When it came through, I thought we were finally on our way.”
He looked over at Max. “Then, barely a month into our senior year, the fucking condom broke.”
“You stepped up and married her, though. And from what I hear, took a job at the inn.”
“Because I didn’t want to be another Charlie Bradshaw, y’know?”
“Hell, yes. We’ve got that in common.” Max studied him for a moment. “You must have loved her a lot.”
An unamused laugh escaped him. “Like that ever lasts,” he said dismissively. “She went almost overnight from the fun head cheerleader I knew to a cranky, complaining shrew who was convinced I’d ruined her life. Not that I was any better. I was miserable working the front desk at The Brothers, and it made me damn moody.”
“Then she died.”
“Yeah.” Digging his fingertips into a headache that now thumped full force, he turned his back on the water, feeling vestiges of the horror he’d experienced at the sight of the blood-soaked sheets when she’d started hemorrhaging. “They send people home from the hospitals too damn fast these days. If she’d still been there they probably could’ve stopped the bleeding. But they discharged her, and within the space of a few short hours, she was just...gone. And I found myself with sole responsibility for this wrinkly, leaky little creature I had no idea how to parent. When Emmett and Kathy offered to care for him while I got my degree, I jumped at the chance.”
And, eaten up with guilt, he’d hated himself for it. He had turned into the very thing he’d sworn he never would: a chip off the old block. Here his wife had died tragically young—yet had he been crushed? Had he stuck around? No, sir. He’d never wished her dead, but his dirty little secret was he’d been beyond relieved not to be stuck in a nowhere position in a nowhere town with a wife he’d fallen out of love with.
At least Charlie had loved him for a while. Jake hadn’t felt anything but panic when he’d looked at his son.
Max looked as uncomfortable hearing all this shit as Jake was at telling it. No doubt his brother was on TMI overload, and his gaze slid past Jake’s shoulder. Then he stood straighter. “Hey, what do you know?” he said with a casualness that was a little overplayed. “There’s a couple of cutters. The Trident’s likely not far away.”
Grateful beyond measure for the change of subject—for anything that would rescue them from this dangerous talking-about-feelings territory—Jake turned to look.
There was nothing to see except a couple of midsize navy boats cruising a half mile or so from the far shore, but he went over to his car all the same to retrieve his camera from the passenger seat. Back on the beach, he watched with Max as the boats navigated an obviously circumscribed area.
Nothing happened, and perhaps to fill the long silence between them, Max suddenly said, “I’m sorry about your mom. I heard about it when I was in Camp Lejeune.”
Jake nodded, his eyes still on the glassy water. “Thanks. Her having a heart attack wasn’t something anyone expected. She was only forty-six.” He turned to look at Max. “I’m surprised anyone here even knew about it—she moved to California the same time I started college.”
Max made a wry face. “Small-town connections, little Bradshaw. She kept in touch with Maureen Gilmore, who was friends with my mother.”
“Is your mom still in town?”
“No. She’s living in England, of all places.”
“Why of all places?”
“My mom is filled with a small-town prejudice against any town bigger than Razor Bay—never mind big cities in a foreign country. But she met a guy from London in the dining room of the inn one night, and that was all she wrote.”
The Ohio-class black nuclear submarine suddenly surfaced from the depths and they turned their attention to it. Nearly as long as two football fields, sleek as a shark and quieter than death, it was an impressive, ominous sight. “That doesn’t make me want to break into a chorus of ‘Yellow Submarine,’” Jake said, raising the Nikon D3 to his eye.
Max laughed. “No shit. But I never get tired of watching it. It’s like the Darth Vader of submarines. Strategic deterrence at its best.”
He lowered the camera long enough to shoot the other man a sardonic glance. “Spoken like a true soldier boy.”
“Wasn’t a soldier, sonny. I told you before, I’m a Marine.”
“Ex.”
Max snorted. “No such thing as an ex-Marine. Former, maybe, if you wanna be picky about it.”
“Whatever.” Jake shot a couple frames of Max, who immediately scowled at him. “So, tell me. I know there’s more than one of these subs stationed at Bangor—so why are they all called the Trident?”
A bark of laughter exploded out of Max. “For a guy with a bachelor of business from a fancy u—”
“I never actually got that degree,” he interrupted. “I interned with National Explorer my junior year, got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show my photography skills when their usual photographer was laid low with dysentery, and never went back to school.”
Max nodded. “Explains why you’re not the brightest bulb, I guess. None of the subs are named that. There’s eight of them out of Bangor, and except for the USS Henry M. Jackson, in honor of our late, great Senator Scoop Jackson, they’re all named after states. Alaska, Alabama, Nebraska—and who cares what all. Tridents are the missiles they’re packing.”
“Huh. Who knew?”
“Not you, obviously.”
A short while later the submarine submerged as quietly as it had come up, and Max abruptly morphed from fairly friendly for a guy who “wasn’t ever going to be your bud” to blank-faced deputy. He stepped back. “I’ve got work to do,” he said and pointed to where Jake’s SUV was blocking half an access that nobody was using. “Get that off the ramp,” he growled. Then without another word, he turned and strode up the slope in question to his rig.
Leaving Jake with an inexplicable smile on his face.
* * *
WORRY OVER HIS NONPROGRESS with Austin had replaced the unexpected moment of good humor by the time he got back to the inn. He headed straight for Jenny’s office.
He heard her voice before he reached it. “...forecasting staff needs for next week, and I need to set up a meeting with you before you leave for the day to discuss doing one of those Groupon or LivingSocial discounts. Reservations will get the immediate brunt of extra work,” she said, then laughed. “Well, if it does what I’m hoping, at any rate. What’s a good time for you?”
He stopped in the open doorway. Jenny sat facing the door, but twisted slightly to the left as she glanced back and forth between a weekly planner and a spreadsheet laid across the desk, the phone receiver wedged between her ear and a hunched shoulder. Light from the overhead fixtures and the lamp on her desk detailed the creamy curve of high cheekbones and picked out the sheen of her dark hair on either side of her center part. She’d tucked the long layers behind her ears, and they tumbled over the girly, not-quite-but-damn-near sheer fabric of her little black blouse, their blunt ends curving slightly in alternating lengths against the petite thrust of her breasts. He could almost distinguish the outline of a black bra beneath the top.
If he didn’t mind giving himself eyestrain.
“Five o’clock is perfect,” she said. “I’ll see you then.” Hanging up the phone, she leaned forward, made a notation in the planner, then turned her attention to the worksheet.
He could have sworn he didn’t make a sound, but her head suddenly jerked up and she looked straight at him, eyes startled and slender fingers spread like starfish on the oversize spreadsheet. And for just an instant their gazes melded with a spark that wasn’t solely on his side.
His whole body perked up.
He didn’t get it. He’d come away from his relationship with Kari with a carved-in-stone belief that there was no such thing as true commitment and a determination to never again put himself in the position of testing that belief. From the age of eighteen, he’d chosen women who knew the score. They understood they’d have a good time but that any relationship with him had a finite shelf date.
Jenny was so not the cool, casual-sex kind he usually went for. Yet she still had a way of making his hormones come to attention and lock on her like heat-seeking missiles.
Eye on the prize, Bradshaw! Shoving the attraction down where it belonged—in the subterranean depths of his mind—he stepped inside and for a second wasn’t sure where to start.
Her brow furrowed. “Are you okay? Can I do something for you?”
He walked over to her desk, spread his hands against its messy surface and leaned into them. His head drooped for a nanosecond before pride put some bone back in his spine. “He wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Who wouldn—?” Jenny blinked. “Austin?” The breath she exhaled wasn’t one of those exasperated, big sighs that females excelled at, but it wasn’t exactly a “poor baby,” either. “And you think this is my problem why?” she asked drily. “I gave you an opportunity. What you did with it was up to you.”
“I know.” Noticing a luscious, amazing whisper of scent rising off her—a female aroma he could’ve happily gone all day without detecting—he straightened and took a step back. “I do know that. Damn.” Using one hand to massage the knot of tension from the back of his neck, he tried to explain. “It’s just—they got in the backseat.” He could see she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Austin and Nolan, they got into the backseat like I was the damn chauffeur!”
The delighted laugh that rolled out of her lit her up like a little girl presented with a princess dress. But even as he was drawn to her unfettered enjoyment, even as he felt a spark of warmth take root low in his gut and high in his chest from the sound of her mirth, he found himself snapping, “It’s not funny!”
Amused appreciation for the boy’s tactics dropping from her face, Jenny’s laughter died even as her warm brown eyes sobered. “Yes,” she said quietly, “it actually is. It’s rebellious, yet polite, which has a certain creative charm. What isn’t funny is the fact that you ignored your son for thirteen years but expect him to get with your damn program in one week. Well, guess what, Bradshaw?”
She got up from her desk and circled it to the door. “It’s not all about you. So here’s an idea—quit expecting me to do your legwork for you, and try figuring out a few things for yourself.” She tapped the toe of one sexy high-heeled shoe against the carpet, her arms crossed beneath those cupcake breasts.
It couldn’t be any clearer she wanted him to leave, and his first impulse was to apologize for intruding and saunter past her as if her words hadn’t drawn blood.
Only...
She wasn’t wrong, dammit.
He hated to admit it, but avoiding the truth wouldn’t change the facts.
“Look, I don’t disagree,” he offered, stopping less than half a foot from her. “I’ve been expecting too much too soon, and relying on your efforts without putting enough of my own into the things I need to do to transition Austin from hating my guts to at least tolerating me. But it must be as painfully clear to you as it is to me that I’m crashing and burning here. So, if I promise to head back to my room—” even though the thought made him feel itchy and confined “—to put some serious thought into the matter, could you see your way clear to steering me in the right direction? Like...” What, genius? Then it came to him. Duh. “He played great in practice today, for instance, and I’d love to see him in action during his actual games. But I don’t know when they are.”
“I’ll make you a schedule,” she said, then hesitated. “And I suppoooose—” the word was drawn out with palpable reluctance “—it would be okay if you wanted to sit with Tasha and me at the next game.”
He grinned. “That would be great! Thank you.”
She gave him a little smile in return, free from the lack of enthusiasm she’d just displayed. For a moment he thought they might have an honest-to-God rapport.
Then Jenny stiffened. “Well. I need to get back to work. I’ll get you that schedule when I get a minute. Meanwhile—” she shot him an I-mean-business look “—get busy on more ideas. One-trick ponies only get you so far down the road.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m heading to my room to do that right this minute.” He supposed kissing her, even if only in gratitude for her help, probably wasn’t appropriate. He stepped back instead. “Thanks again.”
Her shoulders twitched. “Sure.”
Jake left her office, but only got as far as the hallway outside before he halted. He could not face going back to his room.
So, big deal, head outdoors. Or...
He snapped upright as two thoughts occurred to him. Not one, but two actual productive ideas. That made a total of three in the past few minutes.
He’d been concentrating too hard on the end goal instead of on the smaller steps that might get him there. Yes, he’d have to accomplish his first idea before he could think about implementing the second, but a faint, relieved smile quirked his mouth.
Because as he headed back toward the inn’s small lobby, he finally felt like his usual, competent self.
CHAPTER SIX
“HEY, WOULD YA LOOKIT THAT?”
Jenny glanced over as Austin paused in his Saturday-morning dishwashing chore, which he’d been powering through with his usual slapdash, water splashed everywhere, let’s-get-this-done gusto, to lean into the window over the sink. She plucked a plate from the drainer and raised inquiring eyebrows as she dried it. “What am I looking at?”
He rocked back on his heels, turning to her. “Blue skies!” he crowed and grinned, his face alight. “I don’t know where it came from, ’cause it was, like, all clouded over two minutes ago. But, dude!”
“Dudette!” she retorted.
The teen grimaced. “Sorry, Jenny. I forgot you don’t like me calling you that.” Then he laughed. “Know what else I’d almost forgotten?” He jerked his chin at the warm light outside the window. “What that looks like.”
“It’s certainly been a while since we’ve seen any sunshine.” And he was right, it was a huge mood elevator. She gave him a friendly hip bump. “I bet that’ll make your game more fun.”
“You got that right. This is gonna be righteous!”
The welcome break in the weather made them both a little giddy, and they joked back and forth as they finished cleaning the kitchen. Then as Austin squeezed the excess water from the sponge he’d used to wipe up the mess he’d made cleaning, he suddenly stiffened. “What the—? What is he doing in the Sand Dollar?”
“What?” Okay, so she’d heard him perfectly well. But hoping against hope that the “he” the boy referred to wasn’t actually the one person good sense reasoned it had to be, Jenny edged over to peer out the sink window, her heart beating a furious tattoo.
It only drummed harder when she saw Jake’s uptown SUV parked in the lot they shared with the most luxurious cottage on The Brothers’ grounds. Then she spied the man himself packing a big cardboard box up onto the covered front porch and through the open doorway into the dwelling.
The next thing she knew, Austin was charging out the back door. “Great,” she whispered and, tossing the tea towel aside, drew a couple of calming breaths before heading for the cottage across the way.
She climbed its three porch stairs in time to hear the anger infusing the teen’s every word as he yelled, “What are you doing here?” Walking into the Sand Dollar living room, she found him standing nose to nose with his father amid a plethora of boxes.
Found Jake placing his fingertips against his son’s chest and stepping back to put some space between them. Austin swiped them away with more force than was warranted, but the older man didn’t respond to his aggression. He merely glanced over at her, then directed his attention right back on the boy, his voice quiet when he replied equably, “Moving in.”
“Dude, I can see that! Why this cottage?”
“Because it’s the largest one available and I’m going to be here for a while. I need space to work—I left Indonesia in a hurry, and I’ve got close to a thousand photographs I need to download and go through so I can winnow out the best hundred. And whether I develop them or keep them digital, they’ll all need cleaning up before they’re ready for the National Explorer’s July issue.”
Austin snorted, but to Jenny’s relief, the explanation seemed to defuse some of his anger. “Big deal, how long can that take? You’ve got two friggin’ months.”
“No, I’ve got a hair over two weeks. They’re due the first week of May so the editors can select the ones they need for the edition. The exact number will change a dozen times while the layout’s being put together.” He stabbed a finger toward the ceiling. “There’s a little bathroom upstairs that I can use as a darkroom. I do less developing these days, but it’ll be handy for the ones that I do. And with the addition of some portable tables, the bedroom up there can be converted into a work space.”
“Whatever,” the boy said. “As long as you stay out of my way.”
“Yeah, well, about that.” Jake looked his son straight in the eye. “Not gonna happen.”
“Say what?” Austin started to bristle again.
Jake was contrastingly calm. “Like it or not, Austin, I’m your father.”
“I don’t like it!”
“Yet it doesn’t change the facts, any more than your displeasure would affect our green eyes or your ability as a shortstop, which you got from both me and your uncle Max.”
“Who?”
“Deputy Bradshaw.” Looking at the confusion on the teen’s face, Jake frowned. “Annnd...crap. You didn’t know he’s my half brother.”
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Susan Andersen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: He′s the last man on earth she should want…For a guy she′s fantasized about throttling, Jake Bradshaw sure is easy on the eyes. In fact, he seriously tempts inn manager Jenny Salazar to put her hands to better use. Except this is the guy who left Razor Bay–and his young son, Austin, whom Jenny adores like her own–to become a globe-trotting photojournalist. He can′t just waltz back and claim Austin now.Jake was little more than a kid himself when he became a dad. Sure, he′d dreamed of escaping the resort town, but he′d also truly believed that Austin was better off with his grandparents. Now he wants–no, needs–to make up for his mistake. He intends to stay in Razor Bay only until he can convince Austin to return with him to New York. Trouble is, with sexy, protective, utterly irresistible Jenny in his life, and his bed, he may never want to leave….