“What is it?” Kimberly asked.
Lindsay’s face clouded. “I can’t tell—otherwise it won’t be a surprise. It’s for Christmas!” She glanced at Lyle for support. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
Lyle nodded from his wheelchair. “That’s right, angel. Maybe you’d better leave it over here for safekeeping until Christmas. Your mom might sneak a peek otherwise.”
Lindsay’s eyes rounded. “Would you?”
“Of course not,” Kimberly laughed, tousling her daughter’s silky hair.
“Good.” Lindsay scampered into the spare bedroom and returned, carrying a crudely wrapped bundle that was half as big as she was.
“This is for me?” Kimberly asked, astounded.
“At Christmastime.”
“I can’t wait,” Kimberly murmured, eyeing the package and feeling as if her heart might burst.
After coffee and cinnamon rolls, Jake shoved his chair away from the table. “I’ve got to get going.”
“But you just got here,” Arlene protested.
Jake grinned. “I know, but I’ve got a dog who probably thinks I’ve abandoned him, and there’s the matter of a bet that has to be settled.”
Kimberly felt her cheeks flame. “I guess we’d better be on our way, too,” she said hastily before anyone could question Jake about his bet.
“No reason to rush off,” Lyle interjected, but his wife, as if reading the signals between Jake and Kimberly, put a hand on Lyle’s arm.
“We’ll see you later,” she said, her bright eyes shining. “Monday morning.”
After donning their coats and gloves, Jake, Kimberly and Lindsay, carrying her ungainly present, trudged past the melting snow-family to Kimberly’s house. Jake insisted on carrying Lindsay’s overnight bag over one shoulder while he held tightly to Kimberly’s hand.
Lindsay slid on her boots down a small hill. She whooped with delight as she landed on her rear.
“Looks like she’s a skier already,” Jake remarked, laughing.
“Will you take me some time?” Lindsay asked eagerly.
Jake glanced to Kimberly. “I suppose we could arrange that.”
“At nighttime?”
“Maybe,” Kimberly said cautiously.
“Arlene said you went night skiing,” Lindsay explained.
“Oh, she did, did she?” Kimberly asked.
“Uh-hum.”
“What else did she say?”
“Just that you and me and Jake would probably be doing a lot of skiing.”
“Once a matchmaker, always a matchmaker,” Kimberly murmured.
“She told me all about you, too,” Lindsay said, eyeing Jake. “You’re a . . . turn key.”
Jake smothered a laugh.
“An attorney,” her mother corrected.
Lindsay’s eyes were filled with questions, her cheeks rosy from the cold. “What’s that?”
Kimberly struggled for the right words. “He’s a man who’s going to help us, honey,” she said.
“We don’t need help.”
“Sometimes everyone needs help.”
“Not me!” Lindsay said, then squealed when Kimberly pulled her daughter to her and kissed her soundly on the cheek.
“Do it again!” Lindsay commanded, but Kimberly shook her head.
“That’s enough for now.”
Lindsay didn’t seem convinced, but didn’t argue.
Once they were inside Kimberly’s house and Lindsay had placed her package under the tree, Jake lingered near the door. “You’re coming over, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I promised, didn’t I?” she quipped, though her stomach did a nervous flip. After the passion of the night before, she chided herself for her anxiety, but the thought of spending most of the weekend at his place was unnerving.
“You could catch a ride with me.”
“I know, but I think I’ll bring my own car. Most of the streets are plowed.”
“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
“No way.”
“Good.” He reached into his wallet, found a business card, then wrote his home address on the backside. “Call if you get lost.”
“In Lake Oswego?”
“It can be confusing.”
“Don’t send a search party out for a while.”
Flashing her a smile, he glanced at his watch. “You’ve got two hours.”
“And if I’m late?”
Grinning wickedly, he slid a glance over her body that made her pulse leap. “Then I’ll exact my punishment in ways too numerous to count.”
“You are a dreamer,” she retorted as he opened the door and strode briskly outside. A few minutes later she heard his Bronco roar down the driveway.
Still considering the night before and all the ramifications of a love affair with Jake McGowan, she carried Lindsay’s overnight bag to the loft and unpacked.
She heard Lindsay’s footsteps rush up the stairs. A few minutes later, blue eyes gleaming, Lindsay peeked around the rail. She stared at her bag.
“Are we going somewhere?”
“To Jake’s house.”
Lindsay eyed the bag suspiciously. “Overnight?”
“Oh—no.” Laughing, Kimberly tossed Lindsay’s dirty clothes into a hamper. “I was just unpacking from last night.”
“Oh.” Lindsay worried her lower lip in her teeth. “I like him,” she announced. “Even if he’s a . . . whatever it’s called.”
Kimberly felt a surprising sense of relief. “I like him, too,” she agreed. I like him far too much.
“Do you like him more than Daddy?”
Sighing, Kimberly sat on the edge of Lindsay’s bed, hauled her daughter onto her lap and hugged her close. “I like him differently than I like your dad,” she said slowly. “Your dad and I . . . we just don’t get along.”
“You don’t love him.”
That was true.
“And he doesn’t love you,” Lindsay said soberly.
Kimberly sighed again, surprised at the wisdom of her child. “No, he doesn’t, not like he used to. But he loves you very much,” she said, cringing as she considered her life. She was certain Robert didn’t know the meaning of the word “love,” not even where his daughter was concerned. She squeezed Lindsay and planted a kiss on her forehead. “And I love you so much I could burst!”
“I know that.”
Thank goodness!
“Do you love Jake?” Lindsay asked, twisting around so that she could stare straight into Kimberly’s eyes.
“I like him a lot,” Kimberly hedged.
“I know, but do you love him?”
“Can’t I just like him—you know, as a special friend?”
Lindsay frowned as she considered. Finally she shook her blond curls. “I don’t think so,” she murmured.
I don’t, either, Kimberly silently agreed.
“So—do you love him or not?”
“I guess I do,” Kimberly admitted, not wanting to lie again. “I love him, but it’s a different kind of love.”
“Oh, I know. All that mushy stuff.”
Kimberly rolled her eyes as she set Lindsay back on the floor. “Let’s just think of him as a good friend. And keep this to yourself, will you?”
Wrinkling her nose, Lindsay grinned. “I won’t tell anybody!”
Kimberly hoped her daughter could keep a secret. “Good, I’ll hold you to it.”
“I promise,” Lindsay vowed. “Are you gonna marry him?”
“No!” she nearly shouted, then seeing Lindsay’s vexed expression, added, “love is complicated.”
“No, it isn’t. If you love someone, you marry them. That’s what Shawna Briggs says.”
“Oh, does she?” Kimberly said with a smile as she thought of Kimberly’s friend in kindergarten.
“Yep. And she loves Josh Barton and she’s gonna marry him.”
“Well, I hope you get invited to the wedding.”
“I will,” Lindsay announced with a
ll the self-confidence of her five years.
As Kimberly unpacked, she tried not to think of anything as foolish as marriage to Jake, yet the idea refused to go away. Jake wasn’t the marrying kind, she told herself. He’d gone as far as saying so. And there was still so much to learn about him.
“Come on, let’s get changed,” she said to Lindsay when the last of her clothes were placed in the drawer. “Then, if you want, we can go visit Jake at his place. Would that be all right?”
Lindsay grinned from ear to ear. “He has a puppy, doesn’t he?”
* * *
Jake did indeed have a dog. A big, bounding, white wolflike creature that barked and whined as Kimberly eased her car down the slippery drive.
Jake’s house was small, little more than a cottage. Pearl gray and nestled in a thicket of tall Douglas fir trees, his home looked like the vacation property it had originally been. Snow was piled in droves against the windowpanes. A blanket of white weighted the drooping fir boughs and covered the ground.
Smoke curled from a river-rock chimney, dispersing in a cloudless blue sky.
“Oh, look!” Lindsay cried happily as Lupus placed his paws on the passenger side of the Mercedes, his nose against the glass.
“Lupus!” Jake was standing in the doorway, waiting.
Kimberly’s heart soared at the sight of him. He’d changed into a plaid wool shirt, tan cords and running shoes. Without a thought to jacket or boots, he loped down a path that had been made through the snow.
“I’d about given up,” he said, helping Kimberly out of the car.
“You said two hours.”
“And you pushed it.”
“It took us a while.”
Lindsay scrambled over the handbrake and out the door on the driver’s side. Lupus scurried around the car, discovered her, wiped her face with his tongue and barked excitedly. Lindsay squealed with delight, and the chase was on. Through the drifting unplowed powder, dog and child bounced, laughing and yipping.
“Soulmates,” Jake observed dryly.
Kimberly was laughing so hard, tears sprang to her eyes. “He’s beautiful,” Lindsay called, and Kimberly laughed again.
“That’s the first time he’s ever heard that,” Jake said, taking her hand. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
While Lindsay and Lupus cavorted, Jake took Kimberly’s arm and led her down a snow-crested path through the trees.
Behind the house, the ground sloped down to the shore of Lake Oswego. Icicles clung to the docking, and the icy water of the lake lapped against the bleached wood. The water was calm and stretched far to the opposite bank.
“It’s gorgeous here,” Kimberly said, her breath misting in the cold air. The privacy of Jake’s backyard was insured by the trees, a fence and, of course, the lake.
“You should see it in the summer.”
From the front of the house, Kimberly heard Lindsay’s laugh and Lupus’s loud yip.
Though the temperature was below freezing, she felt warm inside and didn’t protest when he folded his arms around her and pressed chilled lips to hers. She responded immediately. The fire within her needed little stoking. The pressure of his mouth moving sensually over hers was all it took to turn her liquid inside.
Willingly she wound her arms around his neck and felt his hands, bare and cold, slip beneath her jacket to rub anxiously against her sweater.
“I missed you.” His voice was low and rough, and though he whispered, the words seemed to ring in the still air.
“It only took me a couple of hours to get here.”
“Too long,” he groaned, his mouth fitting perfectly over hers. She felt the pads of his fingers through her sweater, his warmth permeating the thick weave.
Lifting his head with a ragged sigh, he stared into her eyes. His hand slid from under her jacket to entwine in her hair. “Promise me when this is all over, you’ll go away with me.”
“What?” She didn’t understand, but stared deep into his eyes, mesmerized by his gaze.
“When the custody battle’s over, I want to take you away from here. Maybe we’ll go to Mexico, or the Caribbean. Someplace we can be alone for a long time.”
“And . . . what about Lindsay?”
“She can come, too.”
“So much for being alone,” she said, but her voice sounded breathless. He was moving too fast. Kimberly couldn’t think straight. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
“Think about it.”
Lindsay and Lupus plowed through the snow toward them.
“Come on inside,” Jake offered. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Lindsay, already flushed in the face, positively beamed. “What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
She raced to the back door.
“Take off your boots—” but it was too late. Kimberly’s command was lost in the winter air as the screen door banged shut. Lindsay let out a cry of delight, and Lupus whined pitifully at the back door.
“You didn’t!” Kimberly cried, glancing at Jake as if he’d lost his mind. But he was grinning from ear to ear as they mounted the back steps and walked into the kitchen. “Look, she can keep it here, if you’d prefer.”
“And you’ll keep it for her?”
Kimberly was prepared to see Lindsay clinging to the neck of a puppy and was ready to give Jake a piece of her mind. But instead Lindsay was entranced with a furry brown-and-white guinea pig huddled in one corner of the cage.
“Can I pick him up?” Lindsay asked, her eyes as bright as the frightened rodent’s.
“If you’re careful.”
“I will be.” She reached into the cage, scooped up the nervous animal and held him close to her.
“A guinea pig? You bought her a guinea pig?” Kimberly couldn’t believe it. “Why?”
“It was cheaper than a cocker spaniel,” he deadpanned.
“Thank God.”
“Every kid needs a pet.”
“I suppose.”
Lupus was whining and scratching at the back door. Once the guinea pig could be pried from Lindsay’s hands and was safely back in his cage, Jake let the dog inside. He scrambled across the linoleum and leaped up, trying to lick Lindsay’s face.
“He’s jealous,” Jake said with a laugh. “Now, how about some mint cocoa?”
A few minutes later, while Lindsay was dividing her time between dog and rodent, Jake and Kimberly sipped hot chocolate in front of the fire. Leaning next to him on the couch, her feet stretched out to the warmth of the flames, she felt as if she’d finally come home.
“So, when do I start paying?” she asked.
“You are,” he said and slipped one arm comfortably around her shoulders.
She leaned her head into the crook of his neck and closed her eyes. Being with Jake was perfect. Listening to the sound of Lindsay’s muted chatter, soft Christmas music, the crackling fire and the steady beat of Jake’s heart, she felt more content and safe than she had in a long, long while.
CHAPTER TEN
Lindsay fell asleep on a blanket near the fire. Her thumb slid between her lips, and she sighed.
The guinea pig came to life, digging in the shavings and his cage on the desk, and Lupus, ever vigilant, kept his eyes trained on the furry little creature.
“I think I’d better take Lindsay home,” Kimberly said quietly. “She’s had a long day.”
Jake grinned. “Very long.”
Snuggled with Jake on the couch, sipping the last of mulled wine, she didn’t want to move, couldn’t imagine returning to her own house without him.
He brushed his lips across her cheek. Touching the underside of her chin, he forced her to look at him. “Stay,” he whispered, and his silvery eyes wouldn’t let her go. “Spend the night with me. I mean, that was part of our bargain—two days and ... as many nights as you want.” His voice was low and velvety. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
She giggled. “Has anyone ever told you that
you have an incredible ego, Mr. McGowan?”
“Too many to count,” he said with a teasing grin. “Come on, live a little.”
“I—shouldn’t.”
“Sure you should.” His eyes gleamed. “I’ve got plenty of room for both of you.”
“You mean all three of us,” Kimberly teased, motioning to Lindsay’s new pet. The guinea pig found his exercise wheel and started running.
Jake chuckled, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He disappeared into the back bedrooms, only to return with a quilted baby blanket in which he gently wrapped the sleeping Lindsay.
Bemused, Kimberly followed him down the hall to a small bedroom where L-shaped bunk beds fitted into one corner and a matching dresser was pushed against the wall. The room, painted white, was stark and bare except for the two pieces of furniture, and Kimberly guessed no one had ever occupied it. And yet it stood ready for a child. What child? Certainly not Lindsay.
Tenderly Jake laid Lindsay on the bottom bunk, brushing a strand of her hair from her face and pulling the blanket close around her chin. Kimberly’s heart turned over. Never had she seen Robert deal with Lindsay with such care—such obvious love. This man treated her as if she were his own. If only . . . she thought, projecting ahead. But she couldn’t let herself think of a future in which she and Jake and Lindsay became a family. There were too many hurdles to vault first. And there were things about Jake, secrets he hadn’t confided to her.
Jake reached to the dresser and snapped off the light. “See,” he said, standing, his voice husky. “She’ll be fine.” Lupus trotted into the room, curled in a ball near the foot of the bed and, placing his nose between his front paws, sighed loudly. Jake chuckled. “She’s even got a guard dog.” He patted the white shepherd fondly, and Lupus’s tail thumped the floor.
Kimberly smiled inwardly as they walked back to the living room in silence. The fire had nearly died. Jake busied himself rearranging logs in the grate while Kimberly stared for the first time at the bookshelves lining the wall. Law books, textbooks, computer manuals and a collection of science fiction and mystery paperbacks filled the overflowing shelves.
In frames on the walls were Jake’s diplomas and a graduation picture. But the photograph that caught her eye was a small snapshot in a handmade frame on a corner of the mantel. A dark-haired boy, around three years old and dressed in a blue jogging suit, a football tucked under his chubby arm, smiled back at her. His blue eyes were serious, his grin a little forced. She didn’t have to be told he was related to Jake.