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One look at her face, though, and erotic thoughts fled. This was Tabitha. And the unfamiliar light in her eyes, as though she was bursting with secrets and ready to fly off her rocker in some kind of desperation, or so his imagination told him, called to him in an entirely different way.
He handed her a glass of wine. Held his up and waited for her to tip hers to it, as they always did.
“To our goals,” he said. She clinked her glass against his, but didn’t repeat the toast. She sipped instead. Then she curled up on the sofa, her feet tucked into that cute butt.
He sat on the other end of the couch, glass in hand.
“It’s him, Johnny.”
She sounded...different then she had before. The whole desperation thing?
Again, what did he do with that!? His job was to encourage her, to keep her spirits up so they didn’t pull her permanently under. To let her know she wasn’t alone.
And to be Chrissy’s dad sometimes.
Hers was to help him make a success of Angel’s food truck.
He had another three months of sabbatical. There was no reason for her to panic, yet. To think her time was running out.
“A lot can happen in three months,” he said.
Her nod was a relief. Until she said, “We need a plan, though. Time’s not the issue. Neither is the truck, since we’re doing better than either of us imagined and sold more here in one day than we have anywhere else. We can come down every week on my days off. It’ll save having to get permits in other counties, finding new spots... You’ll be able to build a real following.”
The food truck was his last concern at the moment. But he liked the practical way her mind was working, so he nodded. “Fine with me.”
Her smile warmed him as he took his next sip, and he told himself it was really the wine that had affected him. But he wasn’t exactly buying the explanation. Two days in a row now, he’d been getting the hots for Tabitha.
Stranger things had happened than a perfectly healthy guy being attracted to an absolutely gorgeous woman. Except that he’d been traveling with her, living next door to her, sharing dinners and suites with her, for months without thinking about taking her to bed.
“We need a plan,” she said again, her expression needy, confident and expectant all at the same time.
A plan for sleeping together and remaining friends until their exit date? He’d set aside a year of his life to honor Angel. He couldn’t sleep with another woman.
Trashing his first “plan” thought, he took a moment to come up with another.
Tabitha had been different ever since she’d seen that online picture of the boy at The Bouncing Ball the previous week. She’d run over to his house, coming in without knocking—which they did when they were expecting each other. But this time there’d been no warning. He could’ve been standing in the kitchen naked instead of in his pajama bottoms...
He might have said something, too, if he hadn’t noticed the tears in her eyes, the trembling of her hands as she held out the picture she’d just printed.
Yeah, she’d been different ever since.
And so had he.
This whole thing of his...it was her fault. Her barging in on him in his pajamas.
“What kind of plan?” he finally asked when nothing useful was forthcoming.
“Detective Bentley won’t be able to compel a DNA test based on what we’ve got. We need to find a way to get more. Alistair can follow up on the name Jason, but without a last name...”
Alistair Montgomery was the PI Johnny had hired. The guy was willing to do whatever Johnny asked as long as he got paid for it. But following up on a common first name? In San Diego?
Not liking where this was going, he felt everything slow down as he watched her. “What exactly have we got?”
“Jason—Jackson. Single dad. A year. Liver disease. A picture that matches the age-progression photo.”
She listed everything as though going over facts that were a given, as though hoping they’d see what might be missing. He wondered how long it would be before she figured out he was missing from this collection of hers. Or rather, his buy-in... The picture might closely resemble the age-progression, but he wouldn’t call it a match.
“Liver disease?”
“Mark’s mother died of it,” she said, and he remembered her having told him that. After he’d first met her and she’d been telling him her story. That last visit, Mark’s mother had just died, but she hadn’t known that when she dropped Jackson off at the home Mark shared with his mother. They passed off in the driveway...
He nodded. “That’s right...” He drew the word out, as if he was getting it now, while frantically trying to figure out how to support her, be a friend, encourage her, without lying.
“So, any ideas?”
He wanted to empty his glass in one long gulp. He held on to it, instead, saying nothing.
“Come on, Johnny, you’re always the one with the plans. What can we do, legally? What rights do I have?”
She was serious. Stone-cold, go-to-your-grave serious.
Brain in full gear, he ran the facts through his mind. A little boy, Jason. A missing one, the same age, with a similar name, Jackson. One appearing in San Diego about the time the other disappeared from Mission Viejo. Single dads. A mother and a wife dying from the same disease at the same time.
It was enough to give false hope to a desperate woman—he could see that. But it was circumstantial at best. And not even enough of that to compel law enforcement to do anything.
“I admit that there are similarities.” He started slowly. He couldn’t dash her hopes. Not because of any role he was playing in her life, but because...he just couldn’t. This was Tabitha. And he couldn’t do that to her. Even with cause.
“It’s him, Johnny, I’m sure of it.”
He wanted to believe her in the worst way.
Tried. But couldn’t.
Still, what did he know about mother’s instinct and such? Or any pull from the gut that was nonsexual in nature?
He loved his folks. Had loved Angel, too, although his feelings for her had been more of a warm fondness than any great passion. They’d grown up in the same circle. They’d probably gravitated to each other because they were the only ones in their group of rich kids at their private school who hadn’t had siblings. Or divorced parents. Or both. Their parents had always thrown them together, wanting them to marry. She’d made no secret of the fact that she was deeply in love with him. And he’d truly loved her, although he just didn’t seem to be the type of guy who got passionate about anything.
Hence, his quest to see Angel’s passion through.
In any case, he’d loved her. Still loved her. But his feelings were just...there.
There wasn’t the kind of bone-deep need in them that Tabitha clearly felt for her son. He’d never felt that way about anyone, in any situation. He’d probably understand it better when he had a child of his own, but until then...
“We have to figure out a way to get DNA samples,” Tabitha was saying, sipping wine with more passion than usual.
“Unless Jason’s father gives consent, you’d need a warrant,” he stated the legal facts. And if Jason’s father was Tabitha’s Mark, the chances of him giving consent were nil.
But...what would it hurt to help her try to get the sample? Let the science tell her the boy wasn’t hers?
The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. They’d buy some time. He’d be able to help her one hundred percent. And someone else could be the bearer of bad news—at which point, she’d still have his support and they’d keep looking.
“Do you think we should ask to speak with Jason’s father, then? That we should just ask Mark, or whatever he’s calling himself these days, to prove that Jason isn’t Jackson?”
He didn’t immediately respond to her question. If he went along with this, helped her as though he believed, maybe he could prepare her for the possibility that the test, once they found a way to compel it, could come back negative.
Yes. He liked this idea. It was a good one.
With that thought, he drank some of his wine. He could delve into the legal problem at hand. Be a partner to Tabitha again.
“That’s not a good idea,” he finally replied. “We don’t want to force his hand and have him run off again.”
“I know. But now that we’ve found him, maybe if we just confront him...”
He looked her straight in the eye. “Do you think he’s going to give up his son at this point and let himself be carted off to jail?”
She held his gaze for a moment. Long enough to make him feel good all over. To forget, for just a second, what they were doing there. And then she said, “No, of course not.”
He nodded. “So we need to keep being Chrissy’s parents, keep our undercover identities, and see if there’s any more we can find out. We need something compelling enough that when we go to the police, they can do more than just question Mark...which would only tell him it’s time to run again—which is why I think we need to stay physically away from the daycare. If that boy is Jackson, you don’t want Mark to come walking in and find you there. What we need is to somehow get enough of a lead to help Alistair. A last name would be a great place to start. He could look into this Jason’s father.”
She nodded, then took a sip of her own wine. In his opinion, the wine was excellent. She seemed to think so, too. He stood up to get the bottle to top off both their glasses.
“You don’t think we should go to the police yet? Call Detective Bentley? Or have someone here in San Diego at least do a wellness check on Jason?”
Her pleading glance made him sit closer to her as he shook his head and rejoined her on the couch.
“First of all, Mallory—whom you obviously trust—didn’t give the slightest hint that there’s anything wrong. Unless there’s some reason to suspect something’s wrong, more than we currently have on Jason, they won’t be able to do any more than tell him someone asked for a wellness check. They’d more than likely see that he’s well.”
“Couldn’t we have them ask him for a DNA sample, just to settle this?”
“If they’d even agree to do that, which is highly unlikely with only circumstantial evidence, I can almost guarantee you his answer would be an unequivocal no. And then, if it is Mark, he’ll definitely be tipped off.”
“Wouldn’t that be like an admission of guilt?”
“You’d think so, but no. People guard their privacy, especially these days. But what it could do is make Mark nervous...”
“...and that we don’t want. Not while he still has Jackson. Not only because he could run again, but because we have no idea if...”
The stark fear in her gaze burned a hole so deep in him, he felt places he hadn’t known existed. “You’ve said all along that he’s gentle and kind. Patient. Great with kids,” he quickly reminded her. He didn’t know whether a man who was unhinged enough to kidnap his son because his own mother had died would be capable of hurting the boy. He just knew that Tabitha’s clutching that fear served no good purpose.
“He is.” She nodded once again, her smile filled with the kind of thanks a man wanted to hold on to.
He wanted to hold on to her. To pull her into his arms and keep her there. For a little while, anyway. Then he’d let her go. Before violating their friendship, making things messy, which would lead to an earlier end to their relationship than planned.
He didn’t want that.
Tabitha wasn’t anything like the other women in his world—and had absolutely no interest in becoming one of them—a woman who lived in the society he’d been born to. And he couldn’t see himself as anyone other than Johnny Brubaker, top legal counsel for his father’s holdings until the old man retired, if he ever retired, at which point the holdings would belong to Johnny. It had all been loosely mapped out before his birth.
“I think what we need to do first is fill out that application and see if we can get Chrissy enrolled at The Bouncing Ball.” Legal pitfalls bounced all around him. Over him.
“Don’t we need a two-year-old girl to do that?”
“She’s not the one who’ll be looked at. We will be.” He’d already perused the application. It was general stuff. Their jobs. Addresses. “We can use your home address and then the address of the commissary I rented here for the week...” Food truck laws in California required a street address for the business, one that passed health code regulations for storing and preparing food, and included a place where the truck could be parked. “I’ll rent it for the rest of the month. We can explain that we’re moving here and that Chrissy’s at home with...my mother.”
For the first time that day, Tabitha’s features relaxed. She looked like herself. Because they had a plan.
He thought about his mother...and Tabitha...and started to squirm inside again.
Tabitha knew his family had money, that he and Angel had gone to private school with limousine transportation to and from. She knew he’d been legal counsel for his father’s business. She didn’t know how rich they were and that he’d been groomed to be lead counsel for a team of about twenty. And his parents had no idea how or where he was currently living. There was no way he was inviting them to the little place he’d bought. They’d worry about him more than they already were. They’d agreed to give him his year to grieve Angel, to leave him alone as long as he called regularly.
And he couldn’t very well just show up at the mansion with Tabitha, unless he gave her some kind of heads-up.
It wasn’t like his family owned a business that she could just look up on the internet and learn all about them. More like, his father invested in many diverse interests, from patents to oil rigs, but only with his own capital. He wasn’t an investor for others. Sometimes he invested in failing companies and brought them around. It was always about the next challenge to him. Just as it had been for his father before him.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Johnny,” she said, “But if you need me to wash your clothes for you for the rest of your sabbatical, I’m game.” Her grin was like a hundred others she’d given him over the months and the world righted itself.
Then he caught a glimpse of a random drop of moisture on her top lip. He couldn’t look away. And knew he’d pay a high price for what that minute drop of wine made him want to do.
Chapter Four
Tabitha stared at Johnny’s bare feet. He had nice feet. Toes aligned. Tanned. Nothing knobby about them. Good enough to be a foot model, if he’d been so inclined. She’d told him so once.
He’d quirked his eyebrow at her and continued whatever conversation they’d been having at the time.
“Did you go barefoot a lot growing up?” she asked now, still thinking about him saying they’d say that “Chrissy” was with his mother as they sat together on the couch in their suite sipping wine. She understood why she hadn’t met his family, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wonder about them.
Other than this year away, his entire life revolved around them. He worked for the family. Had married his parents’ best friends’ daughter. Lived close enough to them that he’d made it to his own bed with his own two feet after getting blistering drunk in his father’s den, with his father, on the night of his wife’s funeral. He had more aunts, uncles and cousins than she had acquaintances. And he was an only child.
She didn’t know that man. But as their time together grew shorter, she wanted to know him. Felt she needed to know him.
She was ready to recover her son. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to lose the friend she’d found in Johnny. Wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that.
And yet she realized she had to be. She was a loner. Other than her small circle, anonymity was her comfort.
He hadn’t answered her question. He was watching her, though. Probably wondering why she was talking about feet when they’d been discussing their plan to get Jackson back.
“I like it that you go barefoot,” she told him, needing to have a moment of non-Jackson conversation. To breathe. “You’re so...smart. And together. It’s not surprising that everything you touch turns to gold. You have life so figured out, it actually works the way it’s supposed to—well other than Angel, of course...” She paused, and then added, “But your whole life has been a plan...and yet your feet...they’re free. You’ve got things together enough to leave room for freedom.”
If there’d ever been babbling, that was it. Award-winning wine was potent.
“I’d never gone barefoot in my life, other than at the beach, the pool or in the shower, until I moved next door to you.”
Wait. Was he saying he was barefoot because of something she’d done? That she’d released something inside him?
Impossible! But...maybe?
The way he was looking at her...he seemed to need her to understand something important. And she wanted to. For months she’d been wanting to. Their time together was going to be gone soon and she didn’t know him well enough.
Didn’t know what he felt when he got all quiet on her.
Didn’t know how he really felt about her. Other than as the other participant in their time out of real life to reach their goals.
“It started with your sabbatical?” she asked. “Going barefoot, I mean.”
“The carpet in the house is white,” he reminded her.
Cream-colored, but...yes. And the soles of his shoes would mark it in a day. So practical. So...Johnny. Maybe she knew him better than she thought.
“So our plan is to put in an application at The Bouncing Ball to gain access to more information in the hope of finding something that will link Jason and his father to Mark and Jackson?” she asked, her mind back on track. “We can enroll over the internet, so we don’t have to go back where Mark might see us, and maybe get a parent list? At the very least we need Jason’s last name.”
They needed to stay on track. It was just so hard, being alone in the world except for her coworkers, who’d once been closer friends than they were now. She’d shut them out to focus fully on her search for Jackson. Losing her son made her feel so powerless. So helpless.
“That’s the plan,” Johnny said, willing, as always, to let go of any moment that might verge on discomfort.
With her, anyway. In his real life he was a high-powered corporate attorney.
A man she didn’t know.
Setting down her glass of wine, Tabitha thanked him for being the best friend she’d ever had and said good-night.
She wanted to stay. To ask him tough questions. Real questions. To touch his heart, let him know how much he’d touched hers.
To ask if there was any way he’d be willing to consider a longer-term agreement.
His easy smile followed her across the room as he lifted the bottle they’d been sharing and poured himself a little more wine.
With the half wave that was her usual “see ya,” Tabitha closed her bedroom door, buried her face in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.
* * *
In fresh jeans and a clean purple Angel shirt, Tabitha brought along a fresh state of mind as she worked beside Johnny the next morning in the prep kitchen he’d rented for the next month.
He grilled the pork and steak while she seasoned and cooked all the beans. Everything would be refrigerated, then reheated as needed throughout the day.
“I don’t think we should cut back on the beans,” she told him. “We almost ran out yesterday.” Their weekly plan—a spreadsheet he always provided that was taped to a cupboard between them—indicated one gallon can less of each. He’d based that on foot traffic research he’d done on the beach area, which he’d averaged for Tuesdays.
What she wanted to tell him was that she had an idea for a new plan. She’d thought she’d do it on the drive over that morning, but he’d been hell-bent on a particular cup of coffee from a particular place—his favorite—and she’d figured he deserved a morning when coffee was the most important thing on his mind.
Lord knew, between the two of them and their individual needs, those kinds of mornings were few. At least, when they were together. What he did when they weren’t working she couldn’t say.
Because she didn’t ask.
“We should still cut back,” he said. He stopped what he was doing to send her a warm smile, as if to soften the blow of his refusal to accept her opinion on the needed quantity of beans. Johnny almost never paused when he was chopping. Especially beef. Seeming to remember that, he glanced at the knife in his hand and returned his attention to the board on the counter in front of him. “It’s Tuesday,” he said, by way of explanation.
In the six months they’d been actually out food trucking, as opposed to getting things set up, he’d run out of food exactly twice. So she went along with one fewer can of beans.
“I think instead of applying for Chrissy, we should tell Mallory Harris the truth.” That wasn’t quite how she’d planned to present her idea, but there it was.
She didn’t look at Johnny as she added the bag of his premixed spices to the pan of black beans, adjusting the heat underneath them as she stirred. She listened to him chop, thankful for the even, rhythmic beat of blade against board.
“You’re the one who always wants to do things on the up-and-up, to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. And finally having found Jackson, I don’t want to do anything that might make me seem less than...”
She barely registered his lack of chopping before she felt his hands on her arms. “It’s okay, Tabitha.” His easy tone settled the tension building inside her while his hands distracted her from the reason for that tension.
Johnny’s touch...it always did that to her. Distracted her. And reassured her.
“You don’t have to sound so defensive or feel like you need to convince me. Finding Jackson—how we do it, that’s your call.”
It was part of their agreement. He called the food truck shots. She called her own.
And suddenly she didn’t want to. Not without his input. Not now that they’d found Jackson. Her son was so close, yet not really within her reach.
“I want to tell her,” she said again. “She seems to truly care. The way she talked about her hours, working late at night after everyone leaves, and if she’s there during the day, which by what she said she is... I get the feeling that The Bouncing Ball is way more than a business to her.”
“Again, I’m not arguing.” He’d moved back to his board but wasn’t chopping. They had a prep time limit, one he was going to miss if he didn’t get going. Which could mean they’d lose their prime parking spot.
“I think she’ll help us,” Tabitha said, a spoon in each hand as she stirred both pans of beans. It had only taken her a week to get her prep responsibilities down to a science. When she glanced at him, he quickly looked from her to his board.
He’d been watching her.
“What?” she asked, watching him now. Stirring beans didn’t require constant vigilance like wielding the knife did.
He shrugged and she suddenly wondered what those shoulders looked like in a suit coat. Probably not as good as they did in the tight-fitting polo shirt. They’d be as strong, though. As supportive.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. Please. I’m asking because I need to know.” About Jackson. And the next move in her quest.
“Mallory’s first loyalty will likely be to Jason’s father. She clearly had sympathy for him and appears to hold him in high regard.”
“You’re basing that on what?” she asked. The side of his clean-shaven face told her very little, except that he wasn’t smiling.
“The warmth in her voice as she mentioned him, for one.”
“You think she has a thing for him?” She hadn’t gotten that impression at all.
“No. She just seemed...fond of them as clients and might try to protect them.”
“You think she’ll tell him?”
“I think it’s a possibility you should consider.”