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Maybe she should have said no when he’d offered to help her, no strings attached. But he’d said almost plaintively that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He’d offered to set her up in a small unit in one of his many apartment buildings, support her while she finished high school, send her to college. He’d begged her not to say no—and she hadn’t. Should she have denied him the opportunity to be the Good Samaritan he wanted to be? Denied herself the miraculous help that had finally fallen her way?
After growing up under John’s damaging influence, she’d soaked up Tom’s kindness. And he had been kind, if not as altruistic as he’d seemed. He’d been true to his word, too. For a while. Long enough for her to grow fond of him, feel indebted to him. He’d helped her—no strings attached, just as he’d said—right up until she turned eighteen.
He’d been there at her high-school graduation. And had come immediately the day he’d received the news that John was dead. He’d apparently hired a detective agency to keep track of John and had told her as soon as he’d heard. John Archer had been killed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver.
John was dead. If there was anything in her life, besides Ashley, for which Jamie was thankful, it was the death of her stepfather. Which was probably just another immoral decision she’d made. To be happy that a man had lost his life.
Jamie stood and took her exhausted body to bed, her mind finally quieting with fatigue. She had no more answers now than she’d ever had, and she was beginning to suspect that she’d never have them—that, in fact, her questions were unanswerable. Maybe it didn’t matter how she’d become the woman she used to be, the woman she’d renounced.
Maybe there’d been choices and maybe there hadn’t.
But she’d been wrong to think she could escape that woman.
“ASHLEY ASKED ME yesterday if her daddy died fighting for our country.”
Jamie’s stomach, already queasy, protested as she glanced across at Karen. The two were sharing a cup of coffee during Jamie’s morning break before Karen left to get the girls from school.
She said the first thing that jumped into her mind. “Why didn’t she come to me?”
Karen shrugged, paying unnecessary attention to the sugar she was stirring into her coffee. “I asked her the same thing.”
“And?”
“She said you might get sadder at her.”
“Sadder at her?”
Karen shrugged again. And continued to stir.
“She thinks she makes me sad?”
Karen glanced up, her blue eyes warm with compassion. “Kids are pretty perceptive.”
“But Ashley hasn’t made me sad a single day of her life!”
“Apparently, she doesn’t think so.”
“She hardly even makes me mad.”
“You do have amazing patience with her.”
Jamie pushed her coffee away, sick at the thought that Ashley might be growing up the way she had, shouldering the blame for everything that happened, or might happen, in the lives around her.
“Obviously I need to be more careful, as well.” Jamie flipped the spoon she’d used to stir her abandoned coffee. “She must read my moods like a book.”
“She’s one smart little girl. Imagine, a four-year-old figuring that her father was a war hero.”
And suddenly they were back to where the conversation had begun, Ashley inventing excuses for the absence of her father. And Karen wondering how true they were.
Funny how life had a way of regurgitating on you all at once. First yesterday’s phone call. And now this.
“I thought I’d have a few more years before she started asking questions.”
“Wished was more like it, huh?” Karen asked with understanding, in spite of the fact that Kayla’s father was very much a part of their lives. A software consultant, he traveled frequently, but when he was home, he belonged one-hundred percent to Karen and Kayla.
“Ashley’s father isn’t dead.”
The bald words fell into Karen’s sunny kitchen to lie, completely exposed, on the table between them. Karen had never asked about Jamie’s past. Jamie had never offered a word. This particular silence was an understood part of their friendship. A pact Jamie had needed in order for the friendship to exist-a pact she’d just broken.
And she had no idea why. She couldn’t tell Karen about that time in her life. Not if she wanted to hang on to the life she’d made for herself since.
“He didn’t want her?” Karen stirred furiously, staring at the coffee sloshing over her cup.
“He doesn’t know about her.”
“Oh.”
“We were only...together...once.”
Karen laid her spoon in her saucer and looked up at Jamie, her eyes still glowing with tenderness. Not with the condemnation Jamie knew she deserved.
“The baby that resulted simply wasn’t an issue. Wasn’t part of that night.”
“How can you say that if he didn’t have the opportunity to make her a part of that night?” Karen asked softly.
Jamie remembered, very clearly, the wad of bills on the nightstand.
“Let’s just say it was an unspoken rule. Any consequences were mine alone.”
“The bastard!”
“I went with him willingly.”
“And I know you well enough to be absolutely sure that he’d touched your heart. You cared for him and thought he cared back. You never would’ve done it otherwise.”
Ironically, concerning that one time, Karen was right. But Karen’s loving support was like bitter ashes in Jamie’s mouth. Because there’d been other nights, lots of them, when Karen would have been dead wrong.
PUSHING his wire-rimmed glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Kyle Radcliff took the cement steps two at a time. The Archer woman was meeting him in his office in five minutes. And he wasn’t there yet. The semester was just starting, and already his resolution to stay on top of things had vanished. The one thing he could never seem to get right was time management. He bought planners—every kind known to man—he made schedules, he wrote lists. And he still ended up chasing his tail.
But could he help it that a couple of his students got into a debate about Twain’s obvious disdain for the pseudoaristocratic antebellum South, as demonstrated in the thoroughly adult classic, Huckleberry . Finn? The relationship between biography and literature, between a writer’s life and time and his or her work, had always fascinated him. Kyle could no more have walked out on that discussion than burned his original copy of the novel. Some things just took priority.
But he needed Jamie Archer’s help. With the move to Larkspur and now into his new home, some numbers needed to be crunched. Fast. He certainly didn’t have time for a battle with the IRS any time in the near future.
Practically skidding around the corner on the second floor of the English building, Kyle slowed when he noticed the empty hallway outside his locked office door. He’d beaten her there.
He was whistling as he juggled his leather briefcase, along with the couple of texts that hadn’t fit inside, to unlock his door. If his luck held out, he’d even have time to check over the paperwork he’d thrown in a manila folder before he’d left home that morning. Just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Now, where was the blasted thing?
Five minutes later, Ms. Archer still hadn’t arrived, but neither had Kyle found the folder he was looking for.
“I know it’s here,” he mumbled, tossing aside the class planner he’d forgotten to take with him to his American lit class. Not that it mattered. He could conduct his classes blindfolded and textless if he had to.
Finding a couple more folders beneath his personal daily planner, he glanced through them. Nope. One was filled with maps of literary tourist spots on the East Coast The other was his gas-receipt file. Or what would be his gas-receipt file, if he’d ever get around to putting them all in there. He really needed to stick labels on his folders. That’d save him a lot of time. If he could only find the time to do it.
He’d been through every folder on his desk twice, and none of them contained the tax receipts and W-2 forms he needed to give his new accountant. Looking up at the clock on his office wall, he frowned. They’d said 9:30. It was almost 9:45. He wasn’t going to be able to wait much longer.
“The satchel!” He practically sang the words as he remembered where he’d put the tax folder. He’d shoved it in his satchel on the way out to his garage that morning, then promptly forgotten about it when faced with the more important matter of whether or not he’d heard a forecast of snow. He hadn’t driven his beloved mint-condition 1957 Thunderbird in more than a month. Not that he’d taken out the ‘64 T-Bird lately, either. No, he’d only risked the new and easily replaceable ’98 Bird with the maniacal winter drivers of Larkspur Grove.
A quick search proved him correct—the tax papers were in his satchel—after which Kyle paced back and forth in front of his desk for another couple of minutes, waiting. Richard P. Adams. He was the critic who’d written so convincingly about Huck’s moral growth. Two minutes later, Kyle was seated at his desk poring over a text, anxious to meet again with his debaters.
As he reached for a pen, Kyle’s gaze fell on the corner of an envelope that had come in yesterday’s mail. Jamie Archer. Tomorrow, 10:00.
He read the note a second time, and, of course, remembered that he’d called her and asked to change their meeting from 9:30 to 10:00 when he’d realized how close he’d be cutting it to get from class back across campus to his office. He just hadn’t remembered to make a note of the time change on any of his calendars.
In an attempt to make being a slave to his planner a habit, Kyle dutifully zipped open the leather book and flipped to the tabbed page marking that week. He was immensely relieved to find that he had changed the time after all. Hey, maybe he was getting the hang of this time-management thing.
He’d covered a full sheet of the yellow legal pad on his lap, when he heard a light knock at his door.
“Come in,” he called, his head bent as he hurriedly finished the note he’d been writing.
In his peripheral vision he saw a slim figure enter the room. Judging by the way she hovered on the threshold of his office, like an intimidated freshman, he quickly determined that Ms. Archer was the shyest accountant he’d ever met.
“Finished!” he said, looking up with a welcoming smile. He tossed the legal pad on his desk.
Half in and half out of his chair, intending to offer his hand in greeting, Kyle froze. And stared.
“I can’t believe it.” He didn’t realize he’d said the words out loud until he heard his voice mirror his thoughts. “It’s you....”
Based on the shock in her lovely gray eyes, she’d been no more prepared than he.
“You’ve changed.” He said the first thing that came to mind. Her face was older, more mature, though beautifully so. She’d filled out a bit, but only in her breasts and hips. Her hair wasn’t permed anymore, either, and it was a little darker, falling in soft curls down her back. She wasn’t wearing near the amount of makeup she used to wear. And her clothes were completely different, merely hinting at the beautiful body beneath rather than broadcasting her assets. But he’d have known her anywhere. Those eyes had been haunting him for years.
Kyle came around the desk quickly, grabbing her arm as she turned to leave.
“You obviously aren’t as pleased to see me as I am to have finally found you again,” he said.
She still hadn’t spoken a single word. Just stared at him like a trapped bird. Her reaction puzzled him—a lot. The last time he’d seen her had been in that Las Vegas hotel. She’d been sleeping in his bed, a half smile on her face.
What on earth had gone wrong?
“Do you have any idea how many Jarnies I’ve chased down trying to find you?” he asked, smiling at her. Putting people at ease was something he did well. One of his few natural talents.
Had he suddenly lost his touch? She was still staring at him like he was a dead man come to life.
“Wouldn’t you know it.” He continued to hold her arm, though not so tightly that she couldn’t get away from him if she wanted to. “The first time I hear the name and I don’t wonder if just maybe... And it’s the one time it turns out to really be you!”
Okay, so maybe he was rambling. But he couldn’t believe he’d finally found her. The woman of his dreams. Literally.
“I—” She broke off, swallowed, tried again. “You looked for me?”
“Of course!” Kyle couldn’t believe she had to ask. They’d shared some pretty emotional moments, not to mention the best sex he’d ever had.
“Why?”
“Why what?” He was still holding her arm, but only because she felt so good. So warm.
“Why did you look for me?”
Kyle grinned at her, cocking his eyebrows a time or two. Trying desperately to find the warm, funny woman he’d spent the best night of his life with. “Need you ask?”
His answer must have disappointed her somehow. She looked away, down at the floor. He could almost feel her gathering her strength. He just had no idea why she felt she needed it.
“I’d never talked to a woman as openly as I talked to you that night,” he said, forgoing light and easy for complete honesty.
That was better. She was looking up at him again, a question hovering over the panic in her gaze.
“I’ve never met anyone since then that I wanted to repeat the experience with.”
“Talking, you mean?”
Well, the sex, too, but... “Yes.”
Feeling the muscles beneath his hand relax, Kyle took his first full breath since he’d glanced up and seen her standing there. Phew. He’d finally said something right.
“I should probably go,” she said, nodding toward the door. But she still didn’t pull out of his light grasp. Kyle found her passivity rather odd.
“We haven’t even discussed my records yet.” He had to keep her there. At least long enough to be sure that he’d see her again. That she wasn’t going to just disappear the way she had the last time he’d been with her.
“Surely you don’t still want me to do your taxes.”
He frowned, truly puzzled. “Why not?” He could understand a certain reluctance to follow him home and climb with him into his unmade bed—though there was nothing he’d like more at that moment. But what was so alarming—or intimate, for that matter—about taxes? IRS agents would be going over them pretty carefully and he’d never even met them. Not even once....
“Well...because...surely you don’t.”
Now probably wasn’t the time to ask her out to dinner. “Of course I do. Dean Patterson says you’re the best.”
She took a full minute to digest that remark. Or at least Kyle figured that was what she was doing while she stood there silently gazing at him. During the brief time he’d known her, she’d been a woman of few words, a woman who kept most of herself locked away. But by the end of that night, he thought he’d been admitted inside—though just inside—the locked corridors of her mind. He’d been looking forward to exploring those corridors much more fully.
And then she’d vanished.
Jamie’s next comment had nothing to do with taxes. “You cut your hair.”
Ridiculously pleased that she’d given him that much notice, Kyle shrugged. “Made me look older.” He’d worn a ponytail the night she’d met him.
“Looking older’s important?”
“Maybe not, but when you’re in the classroom and you want to discourage any interest from nubile college girls, it can’t hurt.”
Obviously uncomfortable with his vaguely sexual reference, Jamie simply looked away.
“It would have to be business only.”
She’d said the words so softly he barely heard them, but his heart jumped with hope just the same. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”
Her gaze met his solidly then, filled with strength, with conviction. “That’s the way it has to be.”
He refused to be disappointed so quickly. “You’re married?”
“No.”
Then he could wait. “If you say it has to be just business, just business it is,” he told her, forcing himself to release her arm as he headed back around his desk. So it was going to take longer than an hour or two to unlock her defenses this time around. He’d waited more than five years. He could be patient.
Holding out his tax file, he said, “It should all be in there. You can reach me here or at home if you have any questions. Both numbers are on the inside jacket.”
Nodding, she took the file and flipped it open.
And for the first time since she’d walked back into his life, he caught a glimmer of a smile.
“What?” He was grinning from ear to ear. She’d almost smiled. He was climbing already.
“You want me to submit a bunch of maps to the IRS?”
He wouldn’t bother telling her what he really wanted. Not yet. At least not until he got as far as a full smile. He handed her the correct folder, instead. And was still grinning as he hurried across campus to his next class. He’d just found the woman he was going to marry.
CHAPTER FOUR
KAREN SMITH LOVED her husband. But she didn’t want to have his baby. Not again. Not alone.
She didn’t think he wanted her to have his baby, either. Which made telling him that she might be pregnant almost impossible.
She paced her living room, where the girls sat watching cartoons, little legs straight out in front. Their closeness comforted her, even if the irritatingly high voices on the cartoons did not. Jamie was due any minute. Her appointment with the new client from the university had been more than an hour ago.
Jamie was so damn lucky. She had it all. A career. A home. And Ashley. Oh, and a planner with appointments and meetings written in for practically every day. Karen didn’t have enough to keep track of to need a planner.
Jamie had a life. And probably because of that, she was the most unflappable, centered person Karen knew.
Karen, on the other hand, got up every morning, sent her baby off to school, cleaned, ironed and cooked, only to start all over again the next day. Cleaning the very same things. Ironing the very same clothes. Cooking the very same meals. No challenging decisions. No real thinking at all.
The fact that she loved doing household work made it even worse. That meant she really might be the boring, frumpy person her husband probably thought she was.
She ran her fingers through her short blond curls, the ones she’d styled so painstakingly that morning-as she did every morning—and her eye fell on the picture of Dennis perched among a collection of family portraits on the side table. God, she loved him. So much. He wanted her to spend more time with him. Maybe even travel with him a bit now that Kayla was getting older.
She’d love that.
Almost as much as she’d love a career. Something that was hers alone. Less because she actually needed to go out and do a job than because she wanted her husband to see her as a person, not just a housewife. She wanted to feel the way she was sure those women who worked with Dennis must feel. The way Jamie must feel. Confident. Intelligent. Important.
Though even the thought of having a career was laughable. What could she do? She’d married Dennis right out of high school. She had no skills, no training.
But she could change diapers. Oh, yeah, now there was something she could do....
The girls giggled and Karen nearly jumped out of her skin. They were so sweet, so innocent and precious, caught up in the ridiculously unbelievable antics of an animated cat and bird on the television screen. Her heart swelled with love as she watched their cheerful faces.
“You guys want some orange juice?” she asked.
“Yeah!” They chorused, never taking their eyes from the screen in front of them.
Glad of something to do, Karen headed for the kitchen to collect the two plastic cups with lids. Purple for Ashley. Yellow for Kayla. She filled them with juice, and while she was at it, she poured a glass of water for herself. Determined to be the type of wife a husband craved coming home to, she’d lost the weight quickly after Kayla’s birth. Especially since coming home was something Dennis did so infrequently.
And now, no matter how much she dieted, she was going to get fat again. Panic returned in force and she carried the drinks back into the living room—to the two little girls who thought she was great just as she was.
“Thank you, Mama,” Kayla said, sliding her chubby fingers into the handle of the cup.
“Thank you, Miss Karen.”
Ashley’s sweet smile almost brought tears to Karen’s eyes. But as she stood she caught a glimpse of her svelte figure in the mirror above the fireplace. How could she hope to keep Dennis interested in her while she was at home swelling up like an elephant and he was out doing business with remarkable, fashionable, intelligent women like Jamie? How was she ever going to compete?
How was she going to make it through another bout of midnight feedings, colicky crying and dirty diapers? Kayla meant the world to her; she’d give her life for her daughter in an instant. But she still felt trapped.
And might very well have another baby on the way. Washing down a sob with a sip of water, Karen turned back to the front window.
She just had to keep it together for a few more minutes. Then, once Jamie got there, maybe she could work up the courage to take the home pregnancy test she’d purchased that afternoon.
JAMIE STAYED UP late again that night. Doing Kyle Radcliff’s taxes. She wanted him gone from her life as soon as possible. She didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to remember the hours they’d spent talking. And more.
And she couldn’t think about Karen’s news, either. Hated the insidious envy that had been eating at her all evening as she pictured, again and again, the color change in that little vial this afternoon. Her friend was going to have another baby. Another legitimate baby. A privilege Jamie could only imagine. An impossible dream.
The Karens of this world had husbands. Their children had fathers. Jamie had men like Kyle Radcliff.
She knew what he’d wanted from their association five years ago. What he eventually got. And paid for. Anything else was irrelevant.
“Mommy?”
Or was it?
“Ash?” Jamie pushed away from her desk as the little girl scurried into the office, rubbing her eyes with a pudgy fist. “What’s wrong, baby?”
The footed bottoms of her pajamas scraping along the carpet, Ashley covered the distance between them and crawled onto her mother’s lap. “I waked up.”
Stifling the grin that rose easily to her lips as she gazed at the earnest face of her young daughter, Jamie gathered the child close and gently rocked her back to sleep. But, holding the tender weight against her heart, she couldn’t help wondering if she was waking up, too. From the wonderful dream world she’d created—back into the nightmare that was her life.
She couldn’t let that happen. Not at any cost.
And certainly not for a man who, with a look, a smile, a couple of eloquent words, could make her forget.
Especially not for him.
“PROFESSOR RADCLIFF? Jamie Archer here.” The heavy beating of her heart was due to the speed with which she’d made it from the garage to her office after dropping the girls off at school. Nothing more. With Karen’s news still fresh in her mind the next morning, Jamie was in a hurry to immerse herself in business. Or so she told herself.
“Jamie!” The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.” He paused. “And what’s this ‘Professor’ bit? I’m ‘Kyle,’ remember?”
Yeah. She remembered. “I’m missing some receipts.”
“Okay.”
His voice cooled a bit. And Jamie hated herself for being disappointed.
“I’ll see if I can find them. What do you need?”
Reading from the list she’d prepared before falling into bed early that morning, Jamie told him.
“I don’t know if I even have all this stuff, but I can check this afternoon,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll bring them by this evening.”