Читать книгу Daddy By Decision - Lindsay Longford - Страница 10

“I dub thee Sir Mommy.” The metal toy sword tapped Jessie’s left shoulder, then her right.

Her son’s excited eyes met hers as she opened them blearily. “I’m a knight of the realm, am I, love bug?”

“Yep.” He stood up, wrapping the rag-tattered afghan around him. A plastic, economy-size peanut butter bucket wobbled on his head. The strap under his chin kept it from falling off. “Me and Skeezes is kings.” He pointed. The dog’s shaggy eyebrows supported a paper plate cut into points. Red and blue and black scribbles decorated the plate. Sparkles drifted onto the floor, onto Skeezix’s coat.

Jessie yawned. “Nice hat. Skeezix, you’re the next GQ cover.”

“Skeezes is wearing the crown.” Gopher frowned. “See?” He lifted the unevenly cut cardboard. “Rubies and jewels. Oxen—” he frowned again “—and turkey-something.”

“Onyx and turquoise?”

Releasing his chubby grip on Skeezix’s crown, Gopher nodded, sparkles floated and Skeezix sneezed.

“How silly of me. I should have known. You’re a warrior king?” She tapped the top of the bucket. Snagging the strap under his chin, she tugged him toward her. “Well, this knight of the realm expects a big old smackeroo kiss from the warrior king, so pucker up, warrior king.”

Gopher’s soft lips puckered up, and he planted a warm, wet, sweet kiss on Jessie’s mouth. The bucket smacked her in the forehead, Skeezix planted his version of a smackeroo, and the doorbell rang.

Collapsing on top of her, giggling and woofing, child and dog wrestled her off the sofa. “Wow. Now that’s what I call a kiss, sugar. Haul Skeezix off me, will you?” Jessie fumbled for her glasses that had twisted off and lay buried somewhere under dog and child and cushions. “Hey, guys, anybody see my glasses?”

The doorbell rang again, two short, commanding peals.

Gopher held up her glasses. “Ransom, ransom!” Shrieking toward the door with the dog following him, he galloped around unpacked boxes and stacks of paint cans. “Ransom!”

“Never, says I, me buckeroo!” Chasing after him, Jessie leaped over a roll of wallpaper that appeared out of nowhere, staggered, and bounced off Skeezix’s flank. Sliding to a halt, she extended her arms in an effort to block Gopher’s feints and dodges.

“Runrunasfastas you can—” he paused for breath “—can’t catch me! I’m the gingerbread man!” He lowered his head and barreled toward her.

Four and a half was a delightful age, old enough so that she could see the person her son would be, young enough for goofy kisses and games. But four and a half was hard on a thirty-five-year-old body, she thought ruefully as he slipped through her grasp like beads of mercury.

On a prolonged note, the doorbell shrilled. “Hold your horses. We’re on our way,” Jessie grumbled, lunging for her speed-demon child. Grabbing Gopher around the waist, she threw him over her shoulder and pulled open the door as the bell sounded again. “Good grief,” Jessie muttered. “Keep your pants on, buster.”

“Yep, good grief,” Gopher repeated. “Keep your—”

“Enough, sugar.” Jessie blew a strand of hair out of her face.

Fanny wiggling in the air and nose pointed toward the door, Gopher lifted his head. “Hey, mister. You got your pants on. Why din’t you hold your horses?”

“Sorry.” Jessie laughed as she scooped her hair behind her ear. Late-afternoon sun shone into her eyes, made the man in front of her a lean shadow. Peering up and clasping her son’s bottom with one hand, Jessie inhaled. She didn’t need her glasses to recognize trouble when it came knocking at her door. “Hello, Jonas Riley.”

“And a very pleasant afternoon to you, Ms. Jessica Bell.”

“My mommy’s not a bell,” Gopher informed him. “She’s a McDonald, like old McDonald and me. Only we don’t got any chickens and cows, but we got dogs, Loofah and Mitzi and this is Skeezes—” he pointed “—and I like your hat and—”

“That’s enough, sugar,” Jessie repeated, letting her talkative terror slide to the ground. “Hand over my glasses, please.”

“Nope.” Gopher stared up at her, his bare toes curled under. “Ransom first.”

“George. Glasses. Now.” Jessie stared him down until he reluctantly handed her her eyeglasses.

“Unfair to Gopher!” he cried, the soft mouth that had been so generous with a smackeroo now turning upside down with temper and a finely tuned sense of injustice. Snatching the afghan off the floor and wrapping himself in it, Gopher stomped away in high dudgeon, Skeezix torn between following him and staying at the door. “Very unfair. I captured booty. I earned a ransom,” he shouted as he stormed through the swinging door to the kitchen, Skeezix trotting behind him, tail wagging like an automatic dust cloth. “And I am the king!”

“Tough,” Jessie called after him. “But that’s life outside the castle. Sometimes even the king has to yield to a higher power.”

“Unfair!” The door swung shut on his words.

“Live with it, sugar.” She inhaled deeply, gathering her nerve, and faced the man she’d never expected to see again, much less twice in less than forty-eight hours.

“Well, golly gee, Miz Kitty, you sure run a tight ship. No ransom? Just off to the dungeons for the mutinous troops? I reckon I’m shaking in my boots.”

Jessie looked down at his boots. “They could use a shine. And they don’t look as if they’re moving, much less shaking.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, Jessica.” Five years vanished like smoke as that smooth, silky voice skimmed over her, tweaking her nerve endings, moving through her until her knees went weak.

“Apparently so.” Poking the ends of her glasses through her hair and over her ears, Jessie surveyed him. “Because you sure look like a derelict without a nickel to his name, not the hottest lawyer in the South and a man with more money than’s good for him. Although—” she scrutinized him with a slow up-and-down glance “—I have to admit there’s something about the cowboy getup that suits you.” Meeting his gaze, she gestured with her chin toward the jeans and shirt he’d worn each time she’d seen him. “Grown attached to that outfit, have you, Jonas?”

He slapped his hat against his leg. “Turned into a snob, have you, Jessica?” Back and forth, the hat whisked a slow, regular rhythm against his thigh, his muscle bunching and flexing under soft denim as he shifted his weight. “Going to invite me in?”

No question about it, Jonas was trouble.

With one arm blocking the entrance, Jessie tipped her head up and shaded her eyes. She’d be double-damned if she’d invite him in. “I’ll have to admit it’s nice to see you again, Jonas, but I’m terribly sorry I didn’t recognize you last night—” She nodded in assumed bafflement. “If I had, we could have had a fabulous—”

“Fabulous?” A streak of amusement flashed in his eyes as he interrupted her. And in that moment she knew as if he’d spoken out loud that he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“—time catching up on our lives, but you’ve caught me at a really awkward moment. Gopher and I were just leaving—”

“Was not.” Gopher wound an arm around her leg and looked up at the man standing in the doorway. The plastic bucket tipped to the back of her son’s head. “You’re letting all the cold air out, mister. Mommy doesn’t like me to hold the door open.”

“Makes sense.” Jonas studied her son’s round face. “Gopher, is it?”

“George Robert McDonald,” Gopher said and stuck out his hand. “You kin shake my hand.”

Jonas did.

“Want some lemonade, mister? I made it. Sort of. I squozed a lemon. It’s good lemonade.” He leaned forward confidingly. “But kinda sour.”

Jessie sighed. Coffee and Gopher would do her in every time. “As George so politely noticed, you’re letting all the cold air out, Jonas. You might as well come in.”

“Reckon I can’t refuse such a graciously extended invitation now, can I?”

“You could,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Pardon?” A quizzical expression clouded his face. The picture of innocent confusion, he didn’t fool her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important.” Jessie motioned him into the living room and stooped down to Gopher’s level. His body language shouted his fascination with the dusty cowboy. “Sugar, why don’t you take Skeezix out into the backyard?”

“Don’t want to.” He smiled beguilingly. “Want to visit.”

“Not now, Gopher. Keep Skeezix company while he has a nice run in the yard. He needs some exercise.” Reaching into her dress pocket, she pulled out a doggy treat and tucked it into her son’s grubby hand. “Give Skeez a snack. Take the grapes in the fridge for yourself.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Jonas’s boots move out of sight. The air stirred in back of her with his movement, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in the sudden chill. She could hear him move toward the windows, around boxes. The brown paper on a roll of wallpaper crackled as he nudged it. He was a man who could enter a room and make it his own. Whether or not the effect was intentional, she couldn’t decide, but she’d seen him work his magic in a courtroom, and now, in her living room, all the energy and light centered on him. Standing up, she turned so that she could keep him and Gopher both in sight.

Watching Jonas peruse the stacks of boxes, run his thin, clever fingers over a pile of her books and settle in a dining chair he flipped around, Jessie sighed. The man claimed territory effortlessly. Give Jonas Riley a proverbial inch and he’d take the mile. Well, she’d let him past the front door, so she had no one to blame but herself. This was her space, not his. She got to set the ground rules.

And she definitely did not want to rehash old times.

“Making yourself comfortable, Jonas?” she asked politely.

His folded arms rested on the curved back of the chair. “Thank you, yes,” he replied, equally polite, nodding to her.

Holding the dog treat in one hand, Gopher hopped on one foot toward Jonas. “So, mister, you got horses and cows like old McDonald?”

“Yeah, a few.” Steady on Gopher, Jonas’s gaze was serious. “You like horses? Cows?”

“Yeah.” Gopher hopped another step.

Even the damned dog couldn’t leave Jonas alone, Jessie noted grouchily. Skeezix sniffed Jonas’s knee and then rested his head against his thigh, regarding him soulfully.

Jessie wanted to pull her hair. “Gopher, say goodbye to Mr. Riley. He’ll be leaving shortly.”

Two pairs of blue eyes met her own.

“Will I?” Jonas smiled, and her toes tingled, curled. His gaze dropped to those ten traitors.’

“Oh, yes,” she said, shooting him a level glance she regretted as soon as she had. “Maybe you have time for reunions, but I don’t. Come on, Gopher.” She took her son’s hand firmly in hers, and led him to the kitchen door. “Scoot, sugar. But stay inside the fence.” Shutting the door behind him, she went to the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of lemonade.

Backing up, one palm flat against the fridge door to shut it, she collided with Jonas. His hands cupped her elbows, steadying her. Face burning, Jessie slammed the door and stepped sideways, away from the heat flashing from his body, hers, she couldn’t tell and didn’t care. She brushed his support away. “Good grief, you make yourself at home, don’t you?”

“Sorry,” he said, backing away as fast as she did. “I thought you knew I was behind you.”

“How would I know that? You crept in here like a thief,” she said crossly. Her hip tingled where it had brushed against his thigh.

“Crept? In these? Not likely.” He held up a booted foot. The thick-heeled boot spanked loudly against the linoleum floor as he put his foot down. The floorboards creaking under his boots, he took four noncreeping steps and shot her a glance over his shoulder.

“All right. Maybe you didn’t sneak up on me. But I didn’t hear you. I thought you were still in the living room.” Cradling the cold pitcher closely to her, a barrier, she opened the cabinet and pulled out two glasses, banging them on the table. Even in the air-conditioned house, steam rose from the cloudy ice cubes she dropped into the glasses. Lemonade hissed over the cubes as she poured. She pulled out a chair. “Sit.”

“That work with Skeezix?” Jonas sat, stretching out his long legs to the side. Rattling ice in the glass, he saluted her with it. “So, Jessica Bell, why did you pretend you didn’t know me?”

“Why do you think I recognized you?” Taking her time, she sat down.

“Didn’t you?” Sharp, determined, his eyes fastened on hers.

“Wouldn’t I have said so if I did?”

“Don’t know. Would you have?”

“Of course. Anything else would be—weird.” She smiled brightly.

“And you’re the last person I’d ever call weird. However—” He touched her nose and she snapped her head back.

“What on earth are you doing?” She rubbed her nose fretfully.

“Checking to see if that elegant nose is growing.”

“For goodness’ sake, why on earth would I pretend not to know you?” She sipped delicately from the glass and hoped he’d buy the act. “And why would I lie about something like that?” She leaned forward, curious in her own right “At any rate, Jonas, why were you at the hospital? I hope it’s nothing serious?” That much was true. She placed her glass carefully on the table. “Is everything all right?”

“Don’t want to answer my questions, so you’ll ask your own? I remember you used to do that.” He rolled the chilled glass across his cheek. “We’ll play it your way, then, Jessica. As you said earlier, nice seeing you again. How are you?” His gaze held hers as he pressed the glass against his forehead, and once more she saw the hint of exhaustion in the lines around his mouth and eyes.

Compassion moved her to say, “Better than you, apparently, Jonas, to judge by the looks of you. What happened? Did all of your investments fall out the bottom of the market?”

Setting the glass down and not answering, he looked at the table and stood up. Striding to the window, he nudged aside the curtain and watched Gopher chasing Skeezix. “Nice kid. Full of beans.”

“He has his moments.” Remembering some of them, Jessie smiled.

Glancing over his shoulder, Buck caught that smile, the way her face softened, and his breath hitched in his chest. “I thought you were dead set on never getting married or having a family, Jessie. You said you didn’t have time for a family. All you wanted was to make partner in the firm, be the next lawyer to have her name in gold leaf on the door. But you got married after all, huh?”