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Two
Jake watched through the windshield as the gorgeous redhead and the bouncy little girl walked toward the car. He felt queasy. A host of other emotions swirled in his chest.
The brief ride from Nikki’s house to this pleasantly ordinary brick building had been silent. Nikki’s knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel.
Now he tried to study her dispassionately. In the midst of his clinical visual survey, the memories hit him hard and fast. Nikki naked. Sprawled across his hotel bed. Smiling. Warm and sated from their lovemaking. Her pale, pale skin like porcelain.
It had been one night. One extraordinary night almost five years ago. And now he was a father? Why hadn’t Nikki told him? Or was this all just a misunderstanding? Even as he tried to rationalize her behavior, he couldn’t get past the anonymous emails that were eventually passed on to his brother.
Despite Joshua’s insistence that a baby existed with Lowell blood, Jake was by nature a suspicious man. Being betrayed by his father had taught him not to trust easily.
The rear car door opened, and Nikki helped the child into her car seat. Though Emma had been chattering excitedly, she fell silent when she spotted the stranger up front. Her eyes were green. That meant nothing. The color could have been from her mother as easily as from Jake’s DNA. But the girl’s blond hair was nothing like her mother’s.
Jake wanted to say hello. The word stuck in his throat. Instead, he gave the kid a quick nod and turned back toward the front. He wanted to stare at Emma. To examine her from head to toe. To see if there was anything of him in her. But he didn’t want to make the child uncomfortable. No point in both of them feeling weird.
Back at Nikki’s house, Nikki lowered her voice as she parked the car. “I usually give her a snack, and then she’ll go play in her room for half an hour or so. You and I can talk then.”
Jake nodded brusquely, not entirely sure what he wanted to say. Crazy revelations were popping up in his life like rodents in an upsetting game of whack-a-mole. His father was alive. Nikki had a kid. The child was Jake’s? It was too much to process.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as the unlikely threesome walked across the lawn into the house. Once inside, Jake escaped into the small living room with a muttered excuse. Even at this distance, he could hear mother and daughter in the kitchen debriefing Emma’s day at school. When Nikki finally returned, she looked tired, but resigned.
She took a chair across from him and gracefully curled her legs beneath her. Her steady green-eyed gaze and long, wavy red hair made him clench his fists as an unwelcome wave of desire swept through him. He remembered burying his face in that hair. Inhaling the scent of her shampoo. Feeling for a brief moment in time as if everything in his world had finally popped into sharp focus.
In his early twenties, he had loved her with a ferocity that was equal parts lust and devotion. He’d been waiting for her to grow up. His nightly fantasies had featured Nikki, and no one else. But just when his desire had almost come to fruition, both of their worlds had been torn apart.
Running into each other in Atlantic City a decade later had been a shock to his system. The very best kind of shock. Even now, his hands tingled with the need to touch her. But, in the end, he had been wary of the new Nikki, unable to handle how together she was, how grown up. She hadn’t been a frightened teenager anymore. She had moved on. And she knew exactly who she was.
The new Nikki had been even more appealing than the girl he remembered. But the changes spooked him, as did the depth of his feelings, so he ran. The same way he had so many times before.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll ask you again. Is it true? Is Emma my daughter?”
Nikki paled, making her skin almost translucent. “You weren’t making sense earlier. I don’t know why you’re here. What does your brother have to do with this?”
“Don’t be coy, Nikki. You sent Zane DNA results and notes that threatened Joshua. But Josh eventually concluded that he couldn’t possibly have fathered a four-year-old child. So that left me. His twin. Why did you try to blackmail my brother and not me?”
As he watched, Nikki’s lower lip trembled, and her eyes glistened with tears. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, and I don’t appreciate your accusations. If that’s all you have to say, Jake Lowell, you can get the hell out of my house.”
A tiny voice intruded. “You told me not to say that word, Mommy.”
Both adults jumped. Emma stood in the doorway, visibly distressed.
Nikki swiped a hand across her face, drying her eyes. “You’re right, baby. Mommy goofed. I’m sorry.”
Jake left his seat and crouched beside Nikki’s daughter. “Hi, Emma. I’m Jake...a friend of your mother’s.”
Emma stared at him solemnly, her gaze filled with suspicion. “Then why did she tell you to leave?”
The irony didn’t escape Jake. Were all four-year-old kids this aware of social cues? He cleared his throat. “We were having an argu—”
Nikki stood abruptly, halting his explanation with a chopping motion of her hand. She ruffled her daughter’s hair. “Em, would you like to watch a Peppa Pig episode on my phone?” Nikki gave him an exasperated look. “I don’t allow her much screen time, but it would give us a chance to finish this conversation.”
Emma’s face lit up. She smiled at Jake, distracted by the promised treat. “They’re called ‘Peppasodes.’ Get it?”
Jake grinned for the first time, his mood lifting despite the situation. The child’s charm and obvious intelligence delighted him. “I get it, munchkin.”
He stood and gave Nikki a measured glance, trying not to notice the way her soft, fuzzy sweater delineated her breasts. He wanted to hold her, to relearn the contours of her body. The sexual awareness threatened his focus. “I have another idea. If you can get a babysitter on such short notice, I’ll take you to dinner.”
Now Nikki’s face showed no emotion at all. Her gaze was level, and her arms wrapped around her waist in a defensive posture. After a couple of heartbeats, she took her phone from her pocket, tapped a few icons and handed it to Emma. “You may take it to your room, sweetheart. Fifteen minutes. No more. I set the timer.”
