Dangerous Kiss Page 17

  “Mmm-hmmm. And what about the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  He crossed his arms. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Jake Allen Warrick. You haven’t been able to fool me ever.”

  The light changed and Jake followed the minivan into the intersection. He drove in silence for another three blocks with his father staring a hole into his head. Damn, he never should have told Velma about Claire. Of course she’d told his dad. But it was too late. Claire didn’t need someone like him. Knuckles whitening, he gripped the steering wheel tight and tried to ignore the pain eating him up inside.

  “I’m still waiting for an answer.” His dad coughed into a white handkerchief.

  “Did Velma tell you?” He honked his horn at the slow-moving minivan. “I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

  “Doesn’t matter how I found out. What I want to know is what you’re going to do about it.”

  “Nothing. It’s over.”

  “Bullshit.” The old man spat out the word. “Do you love her?”

  Remembering his declaration of love when he’d thought all was lost in Harvest, anger and regret burned through his veins. “She’s better off on her own.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Tell me the truth, do you love her?”

  Yeah, he did, for all that it mattered. “No.”

  “You know what’s worse than lying? Being too chicken to go after what you want. Be careful, son, it looks like there are feathers sprouting from your ears.”

  Caught at another red light, he whipped around in his seat to face his old man. “Oh yeah? That’s worse than being too blinded by love or lust or whatever the hell happened to you with my mother to see you were chasing after someone who didn’t want you? Who never wanted me? Are you so bitter that you want to see me make the same stupid, bullheaded mistake you made?” His hands shook with rage. “Claire told me she’d be all right on her own. I’ve already lived through the fallout of holding on to someone who doesn’t want me. I don’t need to do it again.”

  His father sighed, looking every bit like the exhausted cancer patient he was. “At one time, your mother did love me. We loved each other. But I got caught up in building Absolute Security, took her for granted. I felt her slipping away little by little. It started with her reading the paper at dinner instead of asking me how my day went. Then before I knew it, she was sleeping in your room, claiming she worried about how much you were coughing at night.” Pausing, he glanced out the window. “I could have stopped it from going so wrong, but instead I ignored the ugly mess of our marriage. So did she, with the help of Jack Daniel’s. And then by the time she walked away from us, it was too late to save even your relationship with her.”

  A heavy silence fell. Jake tried to process his old man’s revelation that opened so many long-buried scars.

  His father closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. When he opened his eyes, tears glistened, making their blue depths sparkle. “What happened between your mother and I, well, I’m sorry for it. But you can’t let the mistakes she and I made dictate how you live your life.”

  “I’m not.” Jake returned his gaze to the road and he crossed the intersection.

  “So I’ll ask you again—do you love her?”

  Clenching his jaw, Jake glared at the road, refusing to acknowledge his dad’s question. She didn’t want him. Fine. He’d be damned if he tried to force himself into her life where, as her brother had rightly pointed out, he didn’t belong. He pulled into the old man’s driveway and turned off the engine.

  “So that’s it? You’ll just walk away with your tail tucked between your legs?”

  An angry heat sizzled though his body. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Damn straight you are. You’re giving up.” His father slung open the door and got out. “If you love her, you fight for her. And if you aren’t man enough to do that, then I sure did a piss-poor job of raising you.” He slammed the door and stomped to the house.

  Claire sank back into her pillows, her bedroom curtains shut tight, blocking out the midday sun. The pair of pain relievers she’d swallowed would soon dull the ache of her quickly healing bruised ribs so she could drift off into another unsatisfying nap.

  Surrounded by a box of tissues, her silver cordless phone, the remote control, her cellphone and an empty carton of chocolate-brownie-chunk ice cream, she stared at the flickering images from a procedural cop show playing on the small television next to her dresser. It was the fifth episode she’d watched of an all-day marathon. She couldn’t remember a single moment of the earlier episodes. The heartbroken funk swamping her had rendered the show white noise.

  Swiping at the dark stain dotting her yellow tank top, she decided it must be from last night’s ice cream snack. Or had it been the hot chocolate from the previous morning? Who knew? She’d been wearing the same top and black yoga pants for three days. What did it matter what she wore? It wasn’t as if she were going to work.

  Rubbing salt into her wounds, she grabbed the week-and-a-half-old local paper from the nightstand. A huge full-color photo on the front page showed flames shooting from Harvest’s roof while firefighters sprayed it with water. The headline above it read, Arson Destroys Restaurant in Historic Building.

  In a flash of anger, she crumpled the paper and hurled it across the gloomy room.

  There was no more Harvest for her to go to and forget her shredded heart. Nope, she was only going from her bed to the bathroom to the fridge. Burrowing deeper beneath the blankets, she closed her eyes, hoping for a dream that didn’t involve watching Jake walk away.

  She’d called him at his office the day after he’d left. His father’s hospitalization had been a cautionary move for a respiratory infection. They’d released him the morning after Jake arrived in Denver.

  He’d made a vague promise to call again soon and hurried off the phone. It was over. The certainty of it washed over her like a tidal wave, its undertow pulling her out into a sea of misery.

  Still, she waited by the phone, willing it to ring. It had. Her mom, brothers and Beth had checked in on her on a regular basis. They’d rung her doorbell and pushed their way inside, but she’d shooed them away, secretly expecting Jake to call. But he never did.

  A few greasy strands of unwashed hair snuck out of her ponytail and tickled her cheek. Annoyed, she tucked the strands behind an ear as her heavy eyelids slid closed. Maybe she should take a shower. She would, as soon as she woke up.

  Before she even had a chance to settle into a REM state, bright light burst into the room.

  “Clarabell Anne Layton, I have had quite enough of this. I hereby declare your pity party officially over. Get out of bed and into the kitchen. I’ve got a non-chocolate, non-ice cream lunch waiting for you.” Her mom, Glenda, stood in front of the window, having yanked up the blinds. A motherly look of exhausted patience clear on her face as she walked across the hardwood floor and to the bedroom door.

  Claire flipped the pillow over her head. “Mom, let me be.”

  “You have five minutes to get your butt into the kitchen or else I’m sending your father in here to watch the game. He forgot his hearing aid at home, so the TV will be blaring loud enough to rattle your teeth, but if you’d rather stay in here, so be it.” Her footsteps tapped out the door. “Your time starts now.”

  Claire groaned into the mattress. Her mom would send her dad in, no doubt with a bag of plain potato chips. He’d mumble at the television and elbow her to watch an instant replay.

  “I have homemade macaroni and cheese baked with breadcrumbs on top,” her mom hollered from the kitchen.

  Stomach growling, Claire sat up and swung the covers off. Candy wrappers that had been laying on top of the blanket flew across the room. Her ice cream spoon clattered on the floor. Yeah. It was time to get out of bed.

  In the kitchen, Onion dogged Glenda’s feet as she took the glass casserole dish from the oven, pivoted and lowered her heavy load onto a trivet on the island. Th
e dog’s fat, pink tongue lolled from the side of his mouth as he sniffed the melted cheese aroma hanging in the air. There was no mistaking the greedy hope shining from his eyes. Good luck. Her mom was notoriously stingy when it came to feeding people food to dogs.

  Glenda spooned some steaming macaroni and cheese into a white bowl. “Well, go get a fork. It’s always better when the cheese is still melty.”

  Claire did as told and sat down on a wooden stool by the island. Her shoulders slumped, she dug into the cheesy goodness. Its warmth radiated outward from her stomach, a welcome relief to days of junk food. She didn’t look up from her bowl until she’d polished off its gooey contents.

  Her mother’s no-nonsense glare froze her to the hard seat.

  “I know you’ve been through a lot, young lady, but moping around your house smelling like a gym sock isn’t going to fix anything.” Glenda quirked an eyebrow. “So what’s the plan?”

  Claire sighed. She’d been trying to figure that out for days now. Which disaster did she want to deal with first? Harvest? Jake? Right now it hurt too much to try to tackle either heartache. “I don’t know, Mom.”

  Glenda opened her mouth, but snapped it shut when the phone started ringing.

  Grateful for the reprieve, Claire slid off the stool and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “I’m looking for a…uh…Claire Layton.” The man’s cough rattled through the line. “She in?”

  “I’m Claire, who’s this?”

  “Francis Warrick, Jake’s dad. I want to know what the hell you did to my son.”

  Blood pounded in her ears at the audacious statement from a man she’d never met. “What I did to him?” she stammered.

  “Oh hell, that came out all wrong,” he wheezed. “But he won’t tell me a damn thing, and he’s acting as mean as a cat that got poked in the eye with a stick.”

  He was miserable, too? Maybe she had been wrong. Her heartbeat sped up. “So you figured you’d just call me up and use your silver tongue to get the scoop, huh?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not known for my people skills.” His chest rattled as his laughter set off a coughing fit.

  The sound pained her. “How’re you feeling, Mr. Warrick?”

  “Like shit, but that’s the way it goes.” He paused. “Look, we don’t know each other, but my boy’s a mess. If you two can’t fix this, I might have to off him just to give myself some peace during my last days on this earth.”

  Claire had no idea what to say. His words sent hope burbling up from her toes, straightening her spine and energizing her weary body. Jake missed her. What other explanation was there? “Mr. Warrick…” Excited possibilities swirled around in her head, but no more words came. The silence grew as static crackled though the line.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve said my piece.” He cleared his throat. “So think about what I’ve said. Goodbye.”

  Staring down at the silent phone, uncertainty floated in her chest. She loved him, but was that enough? He’d walked away so easily from her.

  Questions she couldn’t answer rocketed around her head as she hung up the phone. No matter what she did, she risked heartbreak, but only one choice came with big rewards.

  Claire pivoted to face her mom. “That was Jake’s dad. He said Jake is a wreck.”

  “Of course he is. There’s something about falling for a Layton that will really throw you for a loop, make you rethink your life.” Glenda covered the casserole dish in plastic wrap and slid it into the refrigerator.

  Curiosity piqued, Claire walked back to the island. Her parents had had the perfect romance, from the stories her mom used to tell after one too many eggnogs on their Christmas Eve wedding anniversary. “But, you’ve always said it was love at first sight.”

  “That doesn’t mean it was all smooth sailing.” Glenda leaned against the refrigerator, a soft smile curving her lips. “I was about to graduate college and become the next Barbara Walters when I met him. We were waiting for the Greyhound bus to go home from school for the Christmas holiday. I noticed him standing in line at the ticket window. He was so tall, with honey-brown hair.”

  The man in question, now with hardly any hair, whooped and clapped in the living room. The game must be going well.

  “Well, it was a long, boring ride, and I figured a cute boy would liven it up. I finagled it so we’d sit next to each other. Eight hours later, I knew I was not going to be the next Barbara Walters. I was going to be the next Mrs. Layton.”

  “Just like that you gave up your dream? Don’t you regret that?”

  Her mom sat down on the stool next to Claire. A dreamy look of nostalgia eased away the deep grooves in her forehead. A small smile tugged at the corners of her pink lips. “I didn’t give up anything. I gained everything.”

  “But…” Claire’s words evaporated when her mother shook her head.

  “It may not have been New York, but I sat behind the WOMD news desk for twenty years. I loved that job until the day I retired. In place of a big city, I got your father, your brothers, you and a lifetime of happy memories.”

  Glenda slapped her palms on the island, pushed herself up from the stool and exhaled a deep breath. “What you think you want from life isn’t always what you really need. You just have to be smart enough to figure out the difference between a Brett and a Jake.” She swiped Claire’s empty bowl from the island and carried it to the sink. “The question is, do you have the gumption to get your stinky self into the shower and then go track down that fella?”

  Claire gazed out her kitchen window at the empty spot where Jake had parked his SUV the night of the storm. Stubbornly, she’d fought against it, but she’d known that night. Just like it had happened with her parents, something had clicked into place when she met Jake. She could trust him with her life and her heart.

  Jumping down from the stool, she dashed across the kitchen to the sink and sidled up behind her mother, wrapping her arms around her in a bear hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Her mom shimmied out of her grasp. “You’re welcome. Now go take that shower before I keel over.”

  The yellow low-gas light blinked to life on Jake’s dashboard as he pulled into the convenience store. He’d cut it closer than he’d have liked, but he’d been in such a hurry to hit the road, he hadn’t filled up the tank before leaving Denver.

  The phone on the black leather passenger seat began vibrating as he turned off the engine. Scooping it up, he saw the old man’s cellphone number on the caller ID. “So what’s the word?”

  He held his breath. His whole plan rested on surprising Claire and catching her off guard. He feared she wouldn’t answer the door if she knew he was on the other side.

  “Hello to you too.” The old man paused. “She’s home. Told her you were as surly as a mean drunk on a four-day bender.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you ask me to act as an intermediary. You want soft and lovely, find someone else,” he rasped. “You want the truth, you come to me. And you’ve been a pain in the ass.”

  Shaking his head, Jake smiled despite himself. “Thanks for making the call. I’m sorry, Dad, I know the timing of this is all wrong…” What type of son would leave his father after he’d just gotten out of the hospital? “Maybe it can wait.”

  “Only if you want me to crack you upside the head with my oxygen tank,” the old man grumbled. “Oh hell, I’ll still be dying tomorrow, but I can’t promise that girl will be willing to give you another chance tomorrow. You’ve got today.”

  A tank full of gas later, Jake got back on the road. He had a forty-minute drive to figure out how to make Claire take him back.

  Claire swiped her pruney fingers across the bathroom mirror, clearing away the steam that had fogged it up. She’d taken longer than she’d wanted, but then again, she’d had three days’ worth of pity party to scrub away. Inhaling the vanilla scent of her body butter, she quickly rubbed it into her smooth legs, eager to
finish and get to Denver. Squeezing the extra wet out of her hair, she decided to let it air dry a bit before blowing it dry.

  After making sure the fluffy white towel was secured in place around her body, she stepped out into the hallway. Onion lounged in the middle of the hall, a paw peddling the air as he slept in the too quiet house.

  Claire peeked around the corner. Her dad wasn’t asleep on the couch. The television wasn’t on. “Mom. Dad. You here?”

  Walking over to the bay window to check for their car, she spotted a note on the coffee table. Bingo night. Drive safe. Love, Mom and Dad. She let the note fall back to the table and turned to get dressed. A knock at the door stopped her. Mom must have forgotten her lucky bingo markers.

  A smart remark about bingo addiction ready on the tip of her tongue, she yanked opened the door. Her heart stopped.

  Jake glowered at her from the front porch.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Claire’s breath caught and her heart went into overdrive. Coiled tension rolled off of his hard body in waves that crashed over her exposed skin. Knees weakened, she leaned her shoulder against the door, its plywood covering scratching her shoulder. Neither said a word as the air sizzled around them.

  Something she couldn’t pinpoint simmered in his slate-blue eyes as he tugged on the edge of his wrinkled blue T-shirt. It looked as if he’d slept in the cotton shirt that was partly tucked into the waistband of his snug jeans. He shoved his hands into his pockets and locked his gaze on her.

  “You’re stubborn, pushy and impulsive. I have a life of my own in Denver. It’s a good life.” Despite his quiet tone, the low timbre of his voice hinted at his frustration. He closed the distance between them until his heat seeped through her towel. “I didn’t want to want you.”

  His harsh words punched a hole in her heart. Closing her eyes, she bit down on her bottom lip and fought the tears pooling behind her lids. If it wasn’t for the door holding her up, she would have sunk into a puddle on the floor. A hand under her chin tilted her face upward, sending unwanted sexual sparks through her body.