Her Secret, His Child

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Handing her the manila folder he’d unearthed, Kyle said, “You’d better take a glance at those, make sure everything you need is there.”

And while she looked, he looked, too. Dressed in a pair of loose-fitting slacks and an equally loose cotton blouse, she could have been trying to hide her glorious body. But unfortunately Kyle found her modest clothes more of a turn-on than the formfitting skimpy red dress she’d worn the night he met her.

She could wear a tent, and he’d be turned on. He knew what secrets the voluminous clothes hid. Knew them intimately. Every inch. Every taste. Every smell...

“These are all plane tickets and hotel receipts, but what about mileage, parking and meals?” she asked, frowning as she once again thumbed through the slips of paper.

Meal receipts? Who saved meal receipts? And where would he save them? His organizer was already bursting at the seams. “Surely they aren’t going to amount to enough to matter.”

“Of course they will.” She glanced up—and then quickly back down. “They’re one-hundred percent deductible as a business expense.”

“What happens if I don’t have them?”

“We can claim up to a certain amount without them. You lose the rest.”

Her expression was so serious he couldn’t help grinning. “Gosh, and I’m such a big eater, too.”

Jamie’s face was straight as she looked back up at him, taking him in from the glasses across the bridge of his nose to his jeans and bare feet. “I wouldn’t know,” she finally said.

“You would have, though, if you’d hung around long enough to find out,” he said softly. He’d promised himself to move slowly, to stay away from accusation.

But patience wasn’t one of his strong suits.

“Hung around?” Her blue eyes were confused. “Where?”

“In the hotel room.”

Head bowed, she studied the receipts she held. “I did hang around. All the way till morning.”

“Dawn was more like it.”

“It was long enough.” She raised a hand to lift the hair off her shoulders. He thought her fingers were shaking. “When I woke up, you were gone.”

“Only to get breakfast.” Kyle took her hand, held it as he stepped behind her. “I came back with two sacks of goodies and had no one to share them with.”

She was trembling. He could feel it as she turned slowly to face him. “You came back?”

Gazing down into the only pair of eyes that had ever taken his breath away, he nodded. She thought he’d abandoned her? Was that why she’d run away? Was that all the past five years had been about?

“Why’d you come back?” she asked.

“You had me under your spell.”

“The sex was good.”

So she’d felt it, too! Kyle breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d nearly driven himself crazy the past twenty-four hours wondering what he’d done wrong, what he’d done to scare her away.

He moved closer to her, rubbing his thighs against hers. “The sex was great.”

“What about electric and phone bills?”

“What?” His body was on fire, his head filled with visions of...

She pulled away from him, flinging out her arm to encompass the room, her voice cold. “You have a home office. Electricity and phone are deductible for that portion of your home.”

Kyle would have said goodbye and good riddance then and there if he hadn’t noticed the slight trembling at the corners of her lips. She wanted to pretend that what they’d shared wasn’t special. That it meant nothing. But it was; it did. Deny it all she wanted, she still felt the connection.

Somehow, somewhere, he had to come up with the patience to wait for her to be as happy about that fact as he was. But first, he was going to find out why she was so adamantly against taking up where they’d left off. She’d given herself to him that night five years before. Not just her body, but the person she was inside.

Their conversation had been unusually frank. He’d attended Tom Webber’s party at the invitation of an old college buddy, to avoid thinking about the woman he’d buried that day. The mother he’d never loved. More emotionally vulnerable than he’d realized, he’d told Jamie things he’d never told anyone before—or since. Dreams, hopes, emotional stuff a man spent most of his life avoiding. He’d told her how lonely and empty his childhood had been. Without needing any of the details, details he’d been loath to give, she’d known exactly how he felt—because she’d grown up lonely, too. Was still alone, inside, where life really happened. He’d always loved reading, had always escaped into books. So had she. She wanted to be a mother—and have a house with a white picket fence. He hoped to write a classic someday.

But more than the words they’d said were the things they’d understood without words. They’d connected in a way he’d never known was possible, an intimate, intuitive way.

The sex had been an unexpected bonus. She’d given herself to him joyfully. Willingly.

And Kyle didn’t turn his back on what was his.

THE NOTE FROM Ashley’s teacher was a total shock. It came home with Ashley two days later, just after Jamie had hung up the phone from leaving a message for Kyle Radcliff. His taxes were done. All she needed was his signature in the appropriate places and she could mail them—and him—right out of her life.

“Miss Peters wants you to have this,” Ashley said, running into the house. Karen and Kayla were right behind her.

Jamie’s eyes met Karen’s over the girls’ heads. Opening the envelope, she frowned; Karen just shrugged and mouthed the words, “Don’t know.”

Ms. Archer, Jamie’s hand trembled as she tried to read the letter she held.

I’m sorry to have to report that your daughter, Ashley, had some trouble at school today involving one of her classmates. Please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss...

“Ash?”

“Yes, Mommy?” The little girl left the toy she’d been showing Kayla and came over to Jamie’s desk.

“You have some trouble at school today?”

Ashley shook her head, auburn curls bouncing with the force of her denial.

“Miss Peters said you did.”

“Pro’bly means that dumb Nathan,” Kayla muttered, not looking up from the different-sized squares she was fitting one into the other.

Karen’s raised eyebrows and shake of her head were the only help Jamie got from that direction.

“What happened with Nathan?” Jamie asked her daughter, taking Ashley’s hands in her own.

“He says dumb stuff ‘cause he’s dumb.”

“That’s not a nice word to use, Ash, especially when you’re talking about someone else.”

“But it’s true, Mommy, he is dumb.” Ashley’s pretty gray eyes were somber yet completely sincere.

“And I’ll bet you told him so, didn’t you, Ash?” Karen asked, still standing in the doorway. Her gaze was compassionate.

Ashley nodded and Jamie let the little girl go. Ashley’s thumb promptly found her mouth.

Jamie would have her talk with Miss Peters first, and then, when she had the full story, she’d have a heart-to-heart talk with her daughter. Ashley needed to learn to be a little more accepting of other people’s shortcomings.

“How about some lunch?” she asked.

Karen nodded, but her smile was forced. “I made some chicken salad this morning,” she said. “How’s that sound?”

“Great.” Standing, Jamie ushered the two energetic children next door.

But as she helped Karen make sandwiches and pour juice, Jamie felt increasingly worried about her friend. Karen had been looking a little lost ever since she’d taken the pregnancy test. She wasn’t bubbling with excitement yet. Not the way Jamie would be if she were in her shoes. She decided Karen was probably just anxious for Dennis to come home so she could share her news. He was going to be thrilled.

Of that Jamie was certain.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WE’D LIKE YOU to make things a little easier on him.”

Pulling off his glasses, Kyle peered up at the coach standing in the doorway of his office. For a Monday, the day was going stereotypically true to form.

“You want me to doctor his grade.”

Coach Lippert, the head coach of Gunnison’s football team, slipped his bulky frame into the room and closed the door.

“Brad Miller’s good. Better than good.”

Kyle nodded. He could appreciate that. Talent was a valuable commodity. As was integrity.

“He’s star material. Scouts are already looking at him. Another year at the university and he’s sure to get the offer of a lifetime.” Coach Lippert came closer, leaning his beefy hands on Kyle’s desk.

“I hope he gets it.”

“He’s already on academic probation. If he doesn’t pass your lit class, he’s out.”

“I’ve offered to tutor him.”

“Come on, Professor.” Coach Lippert pushed away from the desk. “The boy shows up for every class. He attempts all the homework. And he’s still failing. You really think a little tutoring’s gonna help?”

Kyle shrugged. “I can only give him the grade he earns.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” The coach paced in front of Kyle’s desk, his shoulders bunched until his neck disappeared beneath a face getting redder by the minute. “Your tests are mostly essay questions, they’re subjective. You control the grades.”

“On the basis of preset criteria.”

“But it’s your opinion as to whether or not he meets those criteria.”

“To date, Brad Miller hasn’t met any of them. If he reads this stuff at all—” Kyle held up a copy of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn “—he doesn’t comprehend a single sentence.”

“It’s a little late in the boy’s life to be diagnosing reading disorders, Professor. All he needs is one more semester. Two at the most, and he’s home free. Without football he doesn’t have a hope in hell of making something of himself.”

“Most of the essay questions are also discussed in class. If he can’t figure out what a novel or a poem’s about, he could learn it in class.”

The coach slammed his palm against Kyle’s desk. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

“I’ll tutor him. Every afternoon if you like.”

“He’s got a workout schedule!”

“I guess he needs to decide what’s most important.”

“To Brad Miller, football is the most important. It’s all he knows. And that’s what bugs you, isn’t it?” There was a sneer on Coach Lippert’s face as he headed for the door. “You’re so caught up in your fairy tales you can’t stand it that someone else doesn’t love your imaginary people as much as you do.”

Steepling his fingers across his chest, Kyle half smiled. “I can’t stand it that a poor boy has an opportunity to get a fully funded college education and is gaining nothing more than what he knew before he came here—football.”

With a few choice words, Coach Lippert wrenched open the door, then slammed it behind him.

Kyle picked up his glasses and carefully positioned them across the bridge of his nose, glad no one could see how his hands were trembling.

NERVOUS, JAMIE knocked on the door of Ashley’s classroom early Monday morning. The kids were all in another room for story time, and Miss Peters had suggested this might be a good moment for her and Jamie to talk.

“Come in, Ms. Archer.” A warm smile on her face, Miss Peters ushered Jamie over to the art center. “Hope you don’t mind sitting on a table,” she said, perching on the corner of one herself. “The chairs are all a bit small in here.”

Attempting a grin, Jamie sat. Even at table level, her knees were hugging her chest.

“Ashley told me about Nathan,” she said in a rush, determined to meet the situation head-on. “And I’m really sorry she’s so rigid in her expectations. But I’ll work with her.”

“So you know she slapped him?” The compassion on Miss Peters’s face was the only thing that kept Jamie from sliding right off her seat.

“Slapped him?” she squeaked out. “You mean as in hitting another little child?”

Jamie’s heart caught in her throat as Miss Peters nodded.

“Is he hurt?”

“Not really,” the preschool teacher said. “She hit him hard enough to leave red fingerprints on his face, but they were gone by lunchtime.”

“I can’t believe it!” Jamie felt light-headed, confused. Scared. “I’ve never hit Ashley in her life.”

“I wasn’t sure...”

Eyes open wide, Jamie stared at the other woman. “Never!” After the way she’d grown up, Jamie could hardly bear to speak harshly to her daughter, let alone spank her. Had never needed to. “Ashley’s been a model child,” she added. “Loving. Almost too good.”

“I must say I was quite surprised.”

“What’d you do to her?”