Straight from the Heart Read online

  “I have to admit, it does feel good to sit here.” He grinned, his old good humor returning. “It felt even better when you had your hand on my thigh.”

  Heat blossomed again under the surface of her fair skin. “That won’t happen any more,” she said stiffly as she signaled and pulled into the driveway of a sturdy two-story house painted white with colonial blue shutters and trim.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I mean it, Jace,” she said soberly. “I’m not getting involved with you again.”

  “You’re already involved.”

  “Professionally.”

  “That’s a hard line to draw when you’ve already been to bed with someone.”

  The shot was right on target. She should have congratulated him on his marksmanship. Instead she turned the car off and yanked the keys from the ignition. The look she gave him walked a thin line between hurt and hatred. Her voice trembled with emotion. “Consider it drawn.”

  She swung her long legs out of the Honda and started up the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Jace hauled himself out on the passenger side and leaned against the roof. As he started to call out to her, the front door of the house opened and a miniature human cannonball launched himself off the front porch with an exuberant shout.

  “Mom! Mom, guess what!”

  Jace’s jaw dropped. He felt as if he’d just been hit in the stomach with a medicine ball. Mom? Becca was a mom?

  Justin’s freckle-dusted face and gap-toothed grin was all Rebecca needed to see at the end of the day to revive her flagging spirits. Forgetting Jace Cooper, she dropped down to the sidewalk on her knees and held her arms out. Immediately they were filled with wriggling boy.

  “Guess what what?” she asked, giggling as she hugged and was hugged in return.

  “Peter Cleary brought a dead rat to school, and Jessica Jorgenson threw up at lunch.”

  Rebecca made a face and tousled the boy’s dark hair. “Sounds as though you had quite a day.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, rocking back on the heels of his miniature high-top sneakers. He propped one hand on his hip and shoved the other into the deep pocket of his favorite camouflage pants. “Mrs. Petrie let us have extra time at recess, and I got a star on my spelling paper.”

  “That’s super!” she said, giving him an extra hug. “I’m so proud of you! How did the arithmetic go today?” she asked carefully, knowing Justin was less than enthusiastic about first-grade math.

  He made a face and glanced over her shoulder, his blue eyes widening as his gaze landed on Jace. Addition and subtraction were instantly forgotten. In an exaggerated stage whisper he said, “Who’s that man by our car?”

  Speech evaded Rebecca as she suddenly remembered Jace’s presence. The joy she’d felt at seeing Justin suddenly jelled into a knot of tension in the middle of her chest.

  Justin turned a very adult look of reprimand on her. “Don’t ever give rides to strangers, Mom.”

  “Ah—um—Mr. Cooper isn’t a stranger, honey.” She pushed herself to a standing position and reluctantly led Justin by the hand to make what was bound to be an awkward introduction. Stopping a few feet from the car she said, “Mr. Cooper is an old—” The word “friend” stuck in her throat. Friends didn’t simply abandon friends the way Jace had. “—person.”

  Justin tipped his head in speculation as he looked up at Jace. “You’re not so old,” he said candidly. “Grandpa’s old. You’re just kind of old—like Mom.”

  “Thanks,” Rebecca said sardonically.

  “Thanks,” Jace mumbled, still dumbfounded by this living proof that Becca was a mom. He held his hand out. “Jace Cooper.”

  Pleased at being treated like an adult, Justin grinned and accepted the offer. “I’m Justin. I’m six.”

  The boy had Rebecca’s black hair and rectangular face. His grin was filled with mischief. A smattering of rusty freckles dotted his cheeks and impudent button nose. And his eyes were a deep, bottomless blue.

  Rebecca could practically hear the wheels turning in Jace’s brain. It didn’t take a mind reader to know he was making comparisons and doing some basic math. His still-startled gaze darted from Justin to her.

  “Justin,” she said, drawing her son back and steering him toward the house, “will you please go tell Grandpa I’ll be a little late for supper? I have to drive Mr. Cooper around the block to Mrs. Marquardt’s house.”

  “Can I come along?” Justin asked automatically. He was always ready for an adventure.

  “No, sweetheart. Go on now. I’ll be back in a little while.” Her gaze lingered on him as he scampered up the steps and dashed into the house, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “Becca?” Jace questioned.

  Emotions warred inside her. Without turning around, she could picture Jace’s expression. He didn’t have to say anything more than her name for her to know the question that was burning inside him, between them.

  “Rebecca?”

  Wearing her pride like a cloak, she turned and looked him square in the eye. “He’s not your son.”

  3

  “What do you mean, it’s none of my business?” Jace asked indignantly.

  “The statement is generally considered self-explanatory.” Rebecca kept her eyes focused forward. She turned at the corner and gunned the engine more than was necessary for the Honda to negotiate the slight incline. The sooner she dumped Jace off, the sooner this conversation would be over. She’d had all she could take for one day. She wasn’t about to discuss Justin with this man who had dropped back into her life as suddenly as he had left it.

  “If I fathered a child, I have a right to know.”

  “I told you, you’re not Justin’s father.”

  Jace’s temper rattled the lid on his control. Quelling the urge to reach over and shake the truth out of her, his blunt-tipped fingers bit into the armrest. “Then who the hell is, and where the hell is he?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Rebecca turned in at the drive of a Victorian monstrosity with peeling brown paint. The place had a definite air of neglect about it. The lawn was trimmed, but the flower beds were brown patches of dirt studded with dried skeletons of plants. Cats scattered in all directions at the car’s approach.

  Jace barely glanced at his new residence. His attention remained riveted on the woman beside him. He remembered the tilt to her chin, the tightness around her lush mouth. Wild horses wouldn’t drag the answer from her, but he would try. “Dammit, Rebecca, now see here—”

  “No. Now you see here.” She turned in her seat and jabbed a slender forefinger at him. “You can’t question me about my personal life because my personal life doesn’t concern you. You gave up all rights in that area seven years ago, Jace.”

  She climbed out of the car and opened the back door to lug Jace’s duffel bag out of the backseat. It wasn’t exactly light, but neither were the patients she lifted every day. Slinging the strap over her shoulder, she backed away from the car and shut the door before a big black cat could slip inside.

  Jace hauled himself out of the compact, his concentration divided between his throbbing knee and getting the truth out of Rebecca. He couldn’t decide which would be worse—finding out he had sired a son seven years ago and no one had bothered to tell him, or finding out Rebecca had given birth to another man’s child.

  Without a word to him, she turned and started up the winding sidewalk to the front porch of the imposing house. He hobbled after her, dodging a pair of tiger-striped kittens who seemed to think crutches were great fun to play with.

  “I know you’re not married, and I don’t think you’re divorced,” he said, catching up to her. “So what’s the story? Either Justin is my son and you’re flat-out lying to me, or you met some other man when you were on the rebound.”

  Rebecca paused at the foot of the steps and gave him a look as she adjusted the shoulder strap of the duffel. “All My Children could have used you during the writers’ strike.”

  “
What happened, Becca?” he asked, clomping up the wooden steps with a kitten latched onto one of his crutches. “You got pregnant. What did the bastard do, leave you?”

  She rang the doorbell. Her words were quiet, but they delivered all the sting of a slap. “You found that easy enough to do.”

  Self-loathing lashed out like a whip inside him. She was right, but he wanted to believe he would have done the right thing by her had he known. “Rebecca, if you were pregnant, if you’d told me—”

  “What?” she asked on a half-laugh, more than willing to let him squirm. “You might have sent me your forwarding address? Or maybe I would have rated season tickets to all the Kings’ home games?”

  The door swung open, and Muriel Marquardt squinted up at them, merry brown eyes twinkling behind a pair of rhinestone-studded glasses. She was all of five feet nothing and had the build of the Pillsbury Doughboy. With her blue-tinted hair and cotton print apron, she was the image of the All-American grandmother.

  “Ooooh, Rebecca, how nice to see you!” she exclaimed in a piping little voice. She scooped a fat gray cat off the hall table to her right and cradled the pewter-colored feline in her arms like a baby, absently stroking its white belly with a dimpled hand.

  “Hi, Muriel!” Rebecca shouted. “I’ve brought your new boarder.”

  “You bought a new four-door? But I liked that little car you had. It was so cute. What did you buy, a sports car? I’ve always pictured you in one of those foreign jobs with the top down.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “No. I’ve brought the man who’s renting a room from you.”

  “Jace Cooper, Mrs. Marquardt,” Jace shouted. He offered her his hand. Her cat reached out a paw and batted it at him.

  “Mr. Cooper!” Muriel’s face lit up even more in recognition. She cuddled her cat to her ample bosom. “Don’t mind Chester. He’s such a card. Justin and his little friends have been trying to teach him the high five. Come in, come in.”

  She shuffled back from the door and started down the wide hall. A trio of calico cats hopped out from behind a dilapidated potted palm to follow her. At the sight of the strangers, two of them scooted under a library table.

  The house was as imposing on the inside as it was on the outside. Barely a drop of the fading sunlight penetrated the ancient brocade drapes. Dark, ornately carved woodwork dominated the walls and added to the gloom. The furniture looked sturdy enough for elephants to stand on.

  “You know,” Muriel mused aloud, “I hadn’t given much thought to renting, but I think it just might work out. This old house has been so empty since my Winston passed on.”

  “Her husband passed away about a year ago,” Rebecca explained as they followed the woman down the hall, passing a large, dust-covered electric organ. “She’s more or less shut herself up in this house ever since.”

  “Without ever opening a window,” Jace muttered, making a face. The aroma that hung in the air was one unique to musty old houses filled with cats.

  “Frankly, I’m surprised anyone was able to talk her into renting a room. Who—”

  “What’s she like?” Jace interrupted as they continued toward the back of the house.

  “Oh, she’s sweet, a little absent-minded and hard of hearing.”

  “No kidding,” he said dryly. “Does she like cats?”

  “Here you go, Mr. Cooper,” Muriel said, standing to one side of the doorway. As she swept her arm in invitation, Chester did a back flip to the floor. “I decided you might as well have two rooms since I have plenty more to roam around in. There’s a bathroom just down the hall, and the back porch is right out through that door.”

  Rebecca passed through the small sitting room to the bedroom and dropped Jace’s bag on the sturdy mahogany-framed bed. Definitely not Jace’s style, she thought as she glanced around at the heavy green drapes and the antique fringed lampshades. The place looked like a funeral parlor from a Vincent Price movie.

  Back in the sitting room, Chester had taken a place on a burgundy fainting couch and lay sprawled on his belly, glaring at Jace with unblinking yellow eyes. Jace had backed up to the window and was trying to raise it as he spoke.

  “This is fine, Mrs. Marquardt. Very nice.”

  “You don’t smoke, do you, Mr. Cooper? I can’t stand smoking. It stinks a place up so.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t smoke.” As he turned he bumped his bad leg against a low table and winced.

  Rebecca leveled a no-nonsense look at him and pointed to the next room. “To bed. Now.”

  Jace grinned and winked at Mrs. Marquardt. “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

  Muriel’s eyes rounded in shock like bright little marbles. “Rebecca! You young ladies nowadays are too assertive. There’ll be no hanky-panky here.”

  “Jace is a patient of mine,” Rebecca explained.

  Blue-tinted curls bounced as the landlady shook her head. “Well, there’ll be no playing doctor in my house.”

  “You don’t understand. He just had knee surgery. He should be lying down.”

  “Oh. Fine.” Her face brightened with understanding, and she smiled like a cherub. “Just so you’re not with him, dear.”

  Rebecca shot Jace a glare as he settled on the chenille spread with his back against the head-board and patted the spot beside him invitingly. To Muriel she said, “There’s no danger of that.”

  She helped Jace ease a pillow beneath his knee and gently loosened the Velcro-ended straps that held the brace tight. “Muriel, do you have any ice?”

  “Mice? With all these cats around? Heavens no! Why, I can’t remember the last time I saw a mouse.”

  “No, no. I—C—E. For Mr. Cooper’s leg.”

  “Oh! Why didn’t you say so?” Muriel scurried out with Chester at her heels.

  “When did you quit smoking?” Rebecca asked. She had pleaded with him endlessly the summer of their romance to give up the habit. Jace had seemed certain he was somehow immune to the adverse effects. “That should have made the national news under ‘Believe It or Not.’”

  “It’s part of the new me.”

  “So far I don’t like the new you much better than the old you.”

  “You will, Becca,” he said softly. “I promise you will.”

  She dodged his earnest blue gaze. The tensions of the day were ganging up to renew the pounding headache she’d had earlier. The last thing she needed to hear was another version of Jace’s pledge to hound her. “That’s no promise, that’s a threat.”

  “Whatever you want to call it, I intend to make good on it.”

  Rebecca didn’t comment, turning her attention solely to his knee. “Fifteen minutes with the ice, then you can go to a warm compress,” she said, carefully examining the freshly scarred joint. “I don’t like to see this much swelling. If it hasn’t gone down sufficiently by morning, we may have to have Dr. Cornish aspirate the fluid accumulation.”

  At the thought of having a needle become intimate with his much-abused knee, Jace’s face drained of all color until it matched the silvery ends of his hair. “Don’t tease, Becca. You wouldn’t really have him do that to me, would you?”

  She gave him a cold, hard look. “As much as I would love sticking you with a few needles myself, I would not instruct a doctor to do so unless it was strictly necessary to your treatment. I resent the implication that I would take advantage of my professional position to get revenge on you for our personal relationship.”

  “At least you’re admitting we have a personal relationship.”

  “I have to go,” she said, backing away from his bed. “Dad and Justin are waiting supper for me.”

  “Becca.” Jace reached out and caught her wrist before she could get away. Her pulse bucked and jumped under his fingertips. “I appreciate your help. I didn’t mean to imply you’d be anything less than professional; you’re too damn good at your job. It’s just that I’m scared spitless of needles.”

  Saying the word made him cringe and shiver. During his
stay in the hospital following the accident and then following his knee surgery, he’d been poked with enough metal to qualify him as a human pincushion.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” he said softly.

  His voice was like cool silk on her raw feelings, but Rebecca didn’t welcome the sensation.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she murmured. She tried to extract her hand from the warmth of his. His expression was sweet enough to turn around the most sour disposition. It scared her that she had to keep reminding herself not to trust him. “I told you before, I don’t feel anything for you.”

  Jace tightened his hold on her wrist. “And I told you before, I don’t believe you.”

  “What do I have to do to make you believe me so you’ll leave me alone?” she asked, hoping against hope that there would be some simple, definitive test she could pass with flying colors. However, she wasn’t the least prepared for the test he offered.

  “Kiss me.” The two words rang with challenge, and beneath the challenge ran a smoky layer of desire. Beneath desire lay memories.

  Instantly Rebecca’s gaze dropped to his mouth. Her heart thudded as Jace tugged her closer.

  “Kiss me, and then tell me you don’t feel anything, Becca.”

  What choice did she have? If she walked away, he would take it as a sign to go ahead with his pursuit of her. And if she kissed him…she swallowed hard.

  Really, she told herself, there was no reason she shouldn’t be able to do exactly as he instructed. She didn’t want Jace Cooper in her life. This was the perfect opportunity to prove that to him.

  Ignoring the sense of impending doom that weighed down on her chest, Rebecca sank to the bed. Her hip brushed his as she leaned toward him. Jace speared his fingers through her ebony hair and angled her head as he lowered his.

  At the first brush of his lips across hers, she was lost. Sensation swallowed her up. New sensations and memories twined around her like silken ribbons, pulling her away from her cold resolve and binding her to a deeper truth—no man had ever made her feel the way Jace did.

  His mouth was like liquid heat on hers. With lips and tongue he caressed, seduced, coaxed, and demanded. And she responded. Desire breached control like smoke would slide through the bars of a prison cell. She couldn’t hold it back. She couldn’t stop her trembling hands from reaching up to touch the hard planes of his whisker-roughened cheeks, couldn’t stop the soft moan that floated up from the depths of her soul.