Читать книгу A Weaver Baby - Allison Leigh - Страница 11

The last thing J.D. expected to see were two brown-haired heads sticking up over the side of her pickup bed when she came out of the Chinese restaurant. The brown paper bag of take-out she held slid right out of her nerveless fingers, landing with a plop on the pavement next to her feet.

It was Friday evening at the end of a very long, miserable week; she’d just spent over an hour fighting rush-hour traffic into the city, and the only thing she’d been looking forward to was a meal that required no work, and then bed. Maybe not even in that order.

“Zach. Connor.” Her voice was excruciatingly pleasant, as if she greeted Jake’s twin sons in the back of her pickup truck every day of the week. “What are you doing?”

“Going for a ride,” Zach replied with a “duh” sort of tone.

“That wasn’t very bright of you when you had no way of knowing where I was going.”

“You’re going home,” Zach returned just as quickly. “Arentcha?”

J.D.’s lips tightened a little. Jake had brought his sons back with him less than a week ago, and in that space of time, they’d managed to cause all manner of mischief around the place—from painting the legs of one of Miguel’s favorite broodmares fluorescent pink, to parachuting out of their upstairs bedroom using bedsheets.

It was a testament to their true creativity that they hadn’t managed to break their legs in that particular endeavor.

This, however, was the first time they’d directly involved J.D. in one of their stunts.

“Does it look like I live here?” She gestured at the busy little restaurant behind her where she’d just retrieved the food that was now sitting on the ground.

Connor frowned a little. “She’s not home,” he whispered to his brother. “And I gotta pee.”

“You always gotta pee,” Zach muttered. He sat up on his knees and folded his arms over the side of the truck, looking at J.D. with vivid curiosity. The hot, humid evening had caused messy tendrils of his brown hair to stick to his rosy cheeks. “I told Connor that you wouldn’t know we was back here, and I was right.”

A roadster waiting for her parking spot tooted its horn, and J.D. absently waved it on. “I have to call your father.”

Zach rolled his eyes. “Jake won’t care. He knows you’ll take us back.”

“Oh? Why are you so sure of that?”

“’Cause he said you always do what’s right.”

Her jaw tightened so much that it hurt. “Does he?” She wasn’t entirely certain how Jake would have come to that conclusion. “Get out,” she ordered, and watched while they scrambled out of the truck bed.

She felt like an idiot for not having noticed them back there before now, and supposed it was a measure of her preoccupation that she hadn’t.

The two boys came to a stop next to her.

Connor stooped to pick up the bag of food and peered inside. “I bet they’re fixing dinner by now.” He held the bag toward J.D. with a slightly more sheepish look on his face than the one on his brother’s. “You’re lucky it didn’t all spill out,” he told her. “Are those egg rolls?”

She ignored his hopeful look and took the bag from him before yanking open the truck door. “Yes. Get in.”

She waited until the boys were inside, then set the bag on her seat while she dragged out her cell phone and the business card that he’d given her. But all she got was his voice mail. She left a message, but then also dialed the house at Forrest’s Crossing.

Despite the hour, it was Mabel who answered. “I’m sorry, Ms. Clay,” Mabel told her in the same stiff voice she’d used two weeks earlier when J.D. had refused to tell the woman exactly why she’d needed to meet with him, “but Mr. Forrest isn’t available for calls.”

J.D. turned her back on the boys, only to turn around again just as quickly to keep her eyes on them. For all she knew, they’d decide to go joyriding in another person’s vehicle. “He hasn’t left town again, has he?” She’d have heard so from Toby, the new groom, who seemed to take great delight in following the activities of their wealthy boss.

“No, he’s in town.”

“Then this is a call he might want to take,” she advised flatly. “Regarding his sons.”

“Perhaps you misunderstood. Mr. Forrest is not available.”

Her hands tightened around the phone. “Mr. Forrest’s sons are with me in the city,” she returned through her teeth. “They were hiding in the back of my truck. Somehow, I think he’s going to want to know that, Mabel. Just in case he gets to wondering where they are when they don’t sit down at the dinner table!”

“Good heavens.” The woman’s tight voice softened a fraction. “But I’m afraid he really isn’t here. He ran out to the plant a few hours ago.”

J.D. pressed her fingertip to the pain that began throbbing between her eyebrows.

The two boys were sitting in the truck watching her with wide eyes and listening with wider ears. She pulled out the container of crispy, fat egg rolls and handed them to Connor, along with the napkins.

Then she turned away from the children and lowered her voice. “In that case, you’d better tell his aunt.” Someone had to care where these boys were. “It’s the middle of rush hour. It’s going to take me more than an hour to drive them back home again.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her right away. The twins were really hiding in your car? This is going to upset Mr. Forrest,” the woman fretted.

Considering it was the twins’ first week at Forrest’s Crossing, J.D. privately thought Jake might have been wise to forgo matters at Forco for a few more days. Forrest’s Crossing might have been a little safer.

Instead, the very day he’d arrived with them, she knew he’d left town that night and hadn’t returned until just a few days ago.

Even though she knew she should, she hadn’t found a moment to speak with him privately again.

“I’m leaving the city right now,” she said. Then caught the way Connor was wriggling in his seat. “Well, after a quick pit stop, anyway.” She didn’t wait for some response from Jake’s personal secretary, but ended the call and tossed the phone onto the dashboard.

Then she waved the boys out of the truck. “Come on. You can hit the bathroom inside.” She locked up the truck after them and followed them back into the busy restaurant, pointing the way to the restrooms down a narrow hallway.

They came out within minutes, craning their necks around as if to take in every inch of the busy, congested little restaurant. The hunger in Connor’s expression was perfectly obvious, and she silently bid goodbye to the food waiting in the truck. “Did you wash your hands?”

Zach made a face. “We’re not kindergartners.”

That was plainly obvious. Even at nine years old, the Jake miniatures seemed tall for their age. “No kidding. Did you wash your hands?”

Connor snickered a little as he nodded.

Zach—obviously the more blasé of the two—just rolled his eyes before finally nodding.

She gestured toward the exit again. “Then let’s go.”

There were even more cars lined up in the full parking lot when they reached her truck again, and the moment the boys were buckled into their seatbelts and she pulled out of the spot, another car pulled in. “You might as well eat the rest.” She gestured at the bag sitting in the console.

They didn’t need any more urging and they practically tore apart the bag in their eagerness.

“When did you have lunch?”

Connor lifted a shoulder. He was wearing a red T-shirt and cargo shorts. Zach, busily unwrapping a plastic fork and spoon on the other side of him, wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt with some unreadable logo on the front.

“We didn’t,” Connor said. He didn’t wait for a plastic utensil, but picked out a piece of sweet-n-sour pork with his fingers and popped it in his mouth before handing off the container to his brother and fishing in the bag for another.

They were gulping at the food so fast she regretted not stopping long enough to buy them something to drink. As it was, she didn’t even have her usual bottled water with her. And her air-conditioning was barely keeping up with the heat billowing up from the nearly grid-locked interstate. “Do you always call your dad Jake?”

Connor looked inside the paper bag as if he were hoping that more containers would magically appear inside of it. “Adam is our dad.”

Zach jabbed his fork into the sweet-n-sour pork. “Was,” he muttered.

Which had J.D.’s heart squeezing.

Was it any wonder they were now finding some mischief? “I heard about what happened,” she said quietly. “I’m very sorry.”

Connor’s head ducked, focusing harder on the rice.

“No big deal,” Zach said.

J.D. gave them a glance before turning her attention back to the traffic crowding it’s way along the interstate. Both boys were focusing intently on their food.

“I think it would feel like a very big deal to me,” she told them.

“That’s ’cause you’re a girl.” Zach looked out the side window. “Guys don’t get all upset like girls do.”

“Ah.” She tucked her tongue between her teeth.

“Can I turn on the radio?” Connor asked. He was clearly ready to change the subject.

“Sure.”

He leaned forward and fiddled with the dials and buttons and within minutes, he and Zach were squabbling over what station to listen to. J.D. just let them go at it.

They might be boys, but as far as she could tell, they didn’t sound a whole lot different than she and her sister Angeline had sounded when they’d been kids.

She and Angel had argued together just as much as they’d laughed together. And when J.D. had landed in Georgia, Angeline had soon followed. Only instead of mucking out stalls and hot-walking blood horses, her sister had become a paramedic. They’d rented a small house together in a quaint old neighborhood and that’s where J.D. had stayed after her sister moved back to Wyoming and became Mrs. Brody Paine.

She sighed faintly. She still missed Angel.

Now, more than ever.

The pain between her eyebrows deepened.

The sun was nearly set by the time she pulled up in the stately drive outside the mansion.

Jake’s lethal-looking sports car was parked in front of the marble steps and J.D. didn’t have to wonder if he’d received her voice mail or been informed of the boys’ activities, because he was standing on one of the steps. Obviously waiting.

J.D. pulled to a stop behind his car and gave the boys a sideways glance. “Judging by your dad’s expression, I’d say he cares quite a lot about what you’ve been up to.”

Even from the distance and the dwindling light, they could see the dark expression on Jake’s face.

And the twins looked as if they’d just as soon spend eternity sitting in her cab to getting out and facing the music.

She had a small bit of sympathy for them on that score. She was none too anxious to face Jake right now, herself. And given that, the smile she sent into the boys’ disgruntled faces was a little less sharp than it might have been. “Out you go.”

“He looks kinda mad,” Connor said.

Zach huffed and snapped off his seatbelt. “What’s he gonna do? Send us back home to boarding school? He’s already said that’s what he’s gonna do.” He shoved open the door and slid out onto the ground, all bravado and cockiness.

Connor followed a little more slowly. “Thanks for the food.”

Bemused, she could only nod.

She could have put the truck into gear and driven away, but instead, she hovered there long enough to see the boys trudge up the shallow, wide steps toward their father. She could see them speaking, but couldn’t hear the words.

A moment later, the boys were stomping through the ornate front door and J.D. was wishing that she’d resisted her lingering hesitation and just driven away, because once Jake’s focus was off his sons, it turned like a laser toward her.

Something sharp jangled through her.

She swallowed around the constriction in her throat and rolled down the window when he came down beside her truck.

He ducked his head so he could see through the window and she could see the rough shadow forming on his angular jaw and smell that faint, lingering scent of him that her memory had been hanging on to with fiendish delight.

“You’re not really sending them home to boarding school, are you?” she blurted.

His brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

The words were out there, so she couldn’t very well take them back even if she wished she could. At the very least, though, she might have phrased the question more tactfully. “Zach mentioned you planned to send them back home to school.”

“And you clearly disapprove.”

The growing heat in her face owed nothing to the hot day. “I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business.”

Before she could stop him, he’d pulled open her door. “I don’t know. They chose your truck to stow away in. Maybe that makes it your business. So yeah. Mabel’s already made the arrangements. They’ll be back terrorizing the halls of Penley next week.”

Knowing it wasn’t her business wasn’t enough to keep her from protesting. “But, Jake, they’re still upset about the accident. They should be with family. If you’re worried about them missing school, enroll them here. Or hire a tutor or something!”

“They’ll be better off at Penley than here with me. And they’ll be able to visit their mother if they’re back at school. Tiff’s housekeeper will cart them back and forth.”

She tried to imagine it and failed.

And Jake obviously read her expression all too accurately. “Tiffany’s the one who enrolled them. She wants them near her, now,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with a boarding school. I went.”

“Did you like it even when you weren’t grieving?”

The arrow seemed to find its mark and his face tightened. “At least they won’t be pulling more stunts like this.”

“They’re upset and acting out.”

“They always act out,” he returned. “Upset or not.”

“Don’t you wonder why that is?”

“Yeah.” He looked annoyed. “And when you have kids of your own, maybe we’ll sit down and solve all the mysteries that come with them.”

She swallowed. Hard. What did she know about raising a child? Her nerves jangled and she brushed her hands down her dusty jeans. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize they were in the back of my truck right away. I don’t know why I didn’t.” Yes, she did. She was too busy thinking about her own particular problem than to notice anything else. She flushed even hotter under his steady gaze.

“And I’m sorry they inconvenienced you. Come in the house.”

“No, really.” She tried to pull the door shut again. “I should be getting home.”

“Plans?”

Her lips flapped uselessly. She couldn’t seem to come up with a lie to save her soul. “Not…really.”

His gaze went past her to the spent Chinese-food containers. “Connor said they ate your dinner. The least I can do is feed you in return.” He reached right in and pulled her keys from the ignition and took her elbow. He tugged her inexorably out of the cab and weak-willed woman that she was, she went.

But when her boots clomped on the marble steps, she held back again. “I smell like stable.” The last—and only time—she’d been inside the mansion had been two weeks ago. And she’d made darn sure she hadn’t smelled like horse sweat and manure first. She wasn’t a beauty-queen type by any stretch. But even she had her pride.

Then she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut, because Jake lowered his head until she could practically feel his soft inhalation.

“Smell okay to me,” he murmured. His gaze—much too close—caught hers. “So, what’s the problem?”

She swallowed hard and carefully took a step away from him. “No problem. No problem at all.”

Of course that was one big, fat lie considering she was nearly eight weeks pregnant.

With his child.