That Thing Called Love (22 page)

“Seriously?” Jake stared at Jenny. “You’re honest-to-God calling her the
fun and games
director?”

“Okay, fine. She’s our summer activities coordinator.” She shot him a speaking glance from between narrowed lashes. “If you have to be so damn literal about it.”

Harper laughed, and Jake noticed it totally negated his first impression of her. That cool-princess vibe disappeared beneath a truckload of warmth.

“She can call me whatever she wants,” the woman said in a blues-singer-smooth contralto. “I’m just excited to get to work here. It’s a great area. Hi.” She offered her hand to first Jake, who was nearest, then Max. “It’s nice to meet you both.” Letting go of Max’s hand a moment later, she patted his forearm where he’d pushed back his uniform sweater, snatched her hand back rather quickly, Jake thought, but then gave Max a megawatt smile.

“Goodness. If all the men in Razor Bay are as big as you two, there must be one heck of a growth hormone in the water.”

Jake laughed, but to his surprise, Max not only didn’t crack so much as a smile, he merely gave the woman he’d all but been drooling over a clipped nod.

“Ma’am,” the idiot said, as if he’d just written her up and was handing back her license and registration along with a spanking-new parking ticket.

Harper’s we-are-not-amused princess vibe made a red-hot reappearance, and Jenny, shooting Max a look as perplexed as Jake felt, said hastily, “Well, listen, I’m going to see if Tasha showed up with the rest of the town so I can introduce her to Harper. Then I’ll be back to give you a hand with the photos.”

“It was nice meeting you, Harper,” Jake said. His socially inept brother gave her another, if this time fractionally less stiff, nod and said again, “Ma’am.”

Jake watched the two women walk away. Then he turned and smacked the back of Max’s head with his palm. “
Ma’am?
What the fuck, man?”

Max shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his muscular shoulders hunched. “I know. I’m not very good with women like that.”

A bark of laughter escaped Jake. “Ya think?”

“Fine, all right?” Max said sullenly. “I
suck
when it comes to them. You happy now?”

“Why?”

“Well, let me think—because you live to see me cut off at the knees?”

“No, you ass—why do you suck with women like her?” And just what did his big bro consider
women like her,
anyway?

Max shrugged, but Jake had a sudden flash of his brother’s perpetually unhappy-looking mother. When they were kids, he’d been pleased as punch to see someone giving Max a rash. It had never occurred to him to wonder what her problem was—or how it affected Max. Now he did.

“You used to do okay,” he said. “I remember you strutting around with Judy Ziegler tucked under your arm. Man—” he shook his head, remembering
“—she had like the best tits of any girl in school.”

“And the T-shirts and sweaters to showcase ’em.” Max cracked a reminiscent smile.

One that was all too brief. “I don’t have a problem with the flash girls,” he said. “They make it easy by doing all the talking—even if it is all about stuff that you don’t really care about. That’s a trade-off, since they don’t seem to mind all that much if you’re not real good with the chitchat shit.”

His gaze sought out Harper across the field, where she stood with ramrod posture talking to Jenny and Tasha. Jake watched Max’s frustrated interest as he watched her.

“The silver-spoon girls are different,” his brother said without taking his eyes off the apparently fascinating Ms. Summerville. “They freeze me up every time.”

An altercation broke out over in the stands, and Jake witnessed the relief scudding across Max’s expression.

But his brother merely said gruffly, “Damn that Wade. When’s he going to get it through his head that Mindy is well and truly married to Curt? Five’ll get you ten he came straight here from the Anchor, too.”

“And that never helps.”

“No shit. I’d better go intercept him before Curt decks him and I’ve got to arrest the pair of them.” He strode off, happy, no doubt, to be out of the “feelings” biz and back in his natural element.

Jenny returned a few minutes after Max’s departure and promptly began organizing the boys—and Bailey, whom the coach and team had insisted on including—first for the team photos, then their individual ones. In the lags between shooting the latter, some of the adults he’d already photographed for the album stopped by to exchange pleasantries.

Jake found he was enjoying himself every bit as much as he did on professional shoots.

He didn’t know why that should make him uneasy when he thought about it again later that night, after Jenny had slipped from his bed to go back to her own. But as he lay there, hands stacked behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, he acknowledged it did. So he switched his focus to Jenny, wondering when they could get together again and what he’d do to her when they did.

But that just made him scowl. Because for some damn reason, her apparent contentment with the strictly sexual arrangement they had going itched under his skin like a bad rash. He refused to dig too deeply into the reasons why.

Hell, she was giving him exactly what he demanded in a relationship. And if
this
one felt different from the rest—well, he knew better than to trust all these emotions roiling beneath his surface. Bradshaw men just didn’t do the happily-ever-after thing. They didn’t settle down—and after his didn’t-last-a-month-beyond-the-I-do’s with Kari, he for one had never been tempted to profess undying love to any woman.

Yet, okay, he was tempted with Jenny. And he could almost, maybe, see himself professing.

Realizing where his woolgathering had taken him, he felt his heart pound as a cold sweat filmed his skin.
Think of something else, think of something else.

Okay, how about this? Today at the ballpark, for practically the first time ever, he hadn’t wished he was anywhere but in Razor Bay, Washington.

Somehow the realization didn’t do a damn thing to calm him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“I
GUESS
YOU
’
VE
PROBABLY
kissed, like, a million girls in your life, huh?”

Jake looked up from the line he was untangling. He and Austin had been lazily trolling the canal in one of the inn’s small aluminum outboard boats. Austin had chosen it because, he said, it was better than his Bayliner for fishing, a sport at which Jake didn’t exactly shine. His kid knew what he was doing, though, and had taught him a trick or two, a fact that seemed to tickle him no end. “Nowhere close. But I guess you could say I’ve kissed my fair share.”

“Yeah?” Austin grunted. “So, how old were you the first time?”

His overly casual gaze made Jake’s newly developed dad warning system go off in silent alarm. Oh, man, he thought as he baited the hook with a fresh herring and dropped the now straightened-out line overboard. It had to be the girl, Bailey, that Austin had been spending so much time with. He fit the pole in its holder, rinsed his hands in the frigid canal and met his son’s eyes. “I don’t remember exactly. Around your age, I think.”

“You were probably pretty dope at it, huh? Knew ’zactly what to do?”

He snorted. “You kidding me? I wasn’t what you’d call a natural. The fishing you’re teaching me? I’m better at it than I was at kissing.”

Austin winced. “Oh, man. Not good.”

“Tell me about it. We bumped noses, our teeth clashed. But funny thing—Mary Beth Brimmyer didn’t seem to notice my less than smooth moves.” He gave his son a wry smile. “Probably because she didn’t have any more experience than I did. Still, we both enjoyed ourselves. And little by little, with each other, and over time with other partners, we improved.” He bounced his fist off his chest. “I’m like
king
of the good kissers these days, if I do say so myself.”

Some of the tension went out of Austin’s shoulders. “How did you make your move the first time?”

A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Oh, I was suave, kid. You’d do well to take notes on this.”

His son sat straighter in his seat, and Jake continued, “We went to a movie in Silverdale. My mom drove us, which was kind of lowering, but—hello!—thirteen.”

Austin made a
whatcha gonna do
face.

“I bought Mary Beth popcorn and a Coke and waited for the theater to go dark and the movie to get under way. Then I made my move.”

“How?”

“I did the prestretch warm-up so I could get my arm up in the air. You know, like this—” Faking a yawn, he raised his hand to his mouth and brought his elbow up. “Then, just as I was starting to straighten it out so I could casually drop it over her shoulder, I caught her right in the ear with the pointy end.” He tapped his elbow. “Made her spill half her popcorn.”

“No way.”

“’Fraid so. Learn from my mistakes, buddy. Make sure to get that sucker behind her head before you make your move. Practicing with a soccer ball placed at the right height might not be amiss.”

“Dude.”

“I know. Geeky. But think about the embarrassment it might save.”

Austin’s grin did something to Jake’s insides. But, as had been happening more and more frequently lately, along with the warmth in his heart came an accompanying low-grade panic.

“I’ll have to give that some thought,” Austin said. He picked up his pole and fiddled with it. “So,” he said to the reel. “You gonna live here from now on?”

Shit.
Jake gave his own pole a hopeful look, but it was still just sitting in its holder, line slack and in no apparent need of adjustment. In no need of attention of any kind.

His son, however, was a different matter, and Jake pulled himself up in his seat. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known this moment was coming. And he sure as hell couldn’t fob it off on Jenny. It wasn’t her job to break the news that he intended to drag Austin out of town with him when he went.

His kid, his responsibility.

“Turn off the motor for a minute,” he said quietly.

“Huh?” Austin had clearly comprehended, however, because even as he made the inquiring sound, he twisted the throttle of the little seven-horse to shut it down. The boat drifted gently, riding its own wake when the soft swell caught up with it.

Jake took a deep breath, then let it out. “I have a life I need to get back to in New York.”

“Oh.” The boy swallowed. “Sure.”

The disappointment in his eyes nearly brought Jake to his knees and he hurried to say, “But I want you to come with me.”

“Yeah?” Austin’s eyes lit up. But then he scowled. “What the heck am I supposed to do in New York?” he demanded, and Jake’s heart sank.

Still, he said calmly, “Are you kidding me? There is
so
much to do there. That city never sleeps.” Which, okay, wasn’t exactly a selling point, considering there was no way in hell he’d let his thirteen-year-old stay out all night.
You can’t think of anything better than that?

Before he could, Austin, with a mulish slant to his mouth, said flatly, “All my friends are in Razor Bay.
Jenny’s
here—and so is the girl I wanna kiss.” He sat up so abruptly the aluminum boat rocked. “My Bayliner! What am I supposed to do with my boat in
Manhattan?
”

The teen said “Manhattan” as if it was Sodom and Gomorrah, but Jake said neutrally, “I’d have to think about that, but there are lots of other great things to do. NYC is home to a superior baseball team for starters.”

Austin calmed some. Nodded. “That’s true. The evil empire’s won something like twenty-seven World Series and forty American League pennants.”

Jake gazed at his clasped hands between his spread thighs for a moment before raising his head to look at his son. “I know what I’m asking of you isn’t small spuds. Leaving everything you know will be a huge adjustment. But I’m hoping you’ll find the trade-off—”
Me
“—worth it.”

“Jeez, I really don’t wanna live in New York,” Austin said, and this time Jake’s stomach thudded right to the bottom of the aluminum boat. He watched his boy as he gazed out toward the mountains, then at two eagles circling and swooping overhead, then finally back at him.

Austin gave him a diffident smile. “At the same time, you just came back into my life like yesterday. And I want to be with you. So, I suppose if I have to put up with New York City to get that—well...” Looking uncertain yet resolute, he squared his shoulders and met Jake’s gaze head-on. “Then I guess I will.”

That low-grade panic he’d been struggling with bloomed into the real deal. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
What the hell is your problem, man? You’re not happy no matter which way the kid jumps. Is this how it’s going to be from now on—damned if you do, damned if you don’t?

But, oh, Christ, it wasn’t that at all. It was reality setting in. What the fuck had he been thinking? The kid was placing his future happiness in his hands, and no way in hell was he cut out to be a dad! The fact that it’d been in the back of his mind all this time to install Austin in his house with a hired companion while he went back to trotting the globe for weeks at a time simply proved it.

Somehow, though, he managed to pull in a couple of shallow breaths and paste a pleased smile on his face.

“Great,” he said—and just hoped to hell it didn’t sound as weak to his son as it did to him. “That’s...great. It’s settled then. That’s what we’ll do.”

* * *

J
ENNY
WATCHED
A
USTIN
push his corn around his plate. He held his homemade taco in his other hand, but had only taken two bites out of the thing—and usually tacos ranked in his top-ten favorite dinners. He’d been quiet last night, too, now that she thought about it.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked, rising half out of her chair to reach across the table and feel his brow. Her concern ratcheted up another degree when he not only didn’t yank impatiently out of reach, as was his usual reaction to her mothering moments, but actually leaned slightly into her touch the way he had when he was a little guy. Oh, damn, oh, God. He
was
sick.

His forehead, however, felt perfectly cool. She slowly sat back in her chair and gave him a steady look.

Setting his fork and taco on the plate, he looked up at her. “Did you know that Dad’s moving me to New York City?”

The few bites she’d eaten took an oily roll in her stomach. Oh, God. This was no longer a coming-soon-but-at-least-not-here-yet-so-I-can-ignore-it issue. The queasy feeling dug itself what she feared might be a permanent pit in her belly, and she set her own taco back on her plate.

It was official—she was losing both of them. She’d thought she’d known that, yet apparently she hadn’t fully believed it until this moment. She gave him a jerky nod of acknowledgment. “I did.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you never said anything to me?”

“I didn’t, no. And I told Jake not to, either, when he first told me his plan. I thought he should give you time to get to know him before he sprung a life upheaval of this magnitude on you.”

“Yeah.” He sagged back in his seat. “That was probably a good idea.”

“Are you...okay with it?”

“Like I told him, I’m not thrilled to be moving away from home—especially not to a big freaking noisy city where I’m not going to know anyone except him.” His newly wide shoulders hitched. “But I want to be with him, Jenny. I want to know what it’s like to have a dad.”

She nodded slowly. “Of course you do. That’s completely understandable.” She leaned across the table and gripped his hand.
I will not cry, I
will
not cry!
“But I’m going to miss you like crazy.”

He gave her a stricken look. “I’ve been trying real hard not to think about that. Crap. Crap!” Shoving away from the table, he surged to his feet. “I can’t go. I’m gonna have to tell him that I just can’t go.”

She, too, rose to her feet and circled the table to put her arms around him, her heart hitching as he trembled against her. “Shh. Shhh, now. Yes, you can go. It’s not like either of us is going to drop off the face of the earth. We’ll talk on the phone all the time. We’ll email and text and, and...Skype, even. I can learn to do that. And you’ll come back to see everyone, to dazzle us all with your big-city sophistication. And maybe I can come visit you, too.”

One by one, his muscles relaxed against her, but he kept his head bent, his face buried in her updo. “Yeah,” he muttered, nodding against the crown of her head. “Yeah.”

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see. Once you make a few new friends, I think you’ll probably start to enjoy yourself. Manhattan has a lot to offer.”

“I’ll miss my boat.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how much it costs to moor one in the East River or wherever one does that, but maybe there’s a way to take yours with you.”

“It wouldn’t be the same, though. I know these waters like the back of my hand. Everything there is gonna be new and confusing.” His noise wrinkled. “And noisy.”

Oh man, she so agreed. But she sucked up her own misgivings and said firmly, “Well, I can’t argue about the noisy part. But as for the new and confusing? It won’t be for long, big guy. You’re smart and a fast learner, and if I know you—which I do, buddy—you’ll own that city in no time.”

And she would just have to keep how desperately empty her own life was going to be with him and Jake clear across the country to herself.

She could and would do that. Even if it killed her.

* * *

“C
OACH
, I
GOTTA
DO
something. I’ll be back in five minutes.” Austin didn’t give Mr. Harstead time to say “fine,” “forget it” or “WTF, Bradshaw.” He was a man on a mission, and he vacated the baseball field to head straight over to Bailey, who was reading a textbook on the bleachers, which she had to herself for once.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure.” She closed her social studies book and looked at him expectantly.

“Not here. Come with me.”

One of the things he really liked about Bailey was the way she never seemed to feel the compulsion to talk something to death before she’d move an inch, like so many girls did. She just gave him an agreeable smile, set her book down next to her backpack, then rose to her feet. She loped down the risers.

Stopping in front of him on the grass, she smiled. “What’s up?”

He took her hand and led her around to the back of the bleachers. “Under here.”

She blinked but followed gamely enough as he bent and sidestepped through the cross braces. When she straightened beneath the highest risers, he lurched forward and grabbed her. He lowered his head to hers.

They bumped noses, but he reminded himself his dad had done the same thing the first time
he’d
kissed a girl, too, and he adjusted for the miscalculation. Then his lips found hers. And they were soft and warm and...
wow.

Just about the dopest thing in the world.

Bailey’s hands came up to his shoulders and he tensed, bracing himself to be shoved away. But she curled her fingers to grip them instead. And she kissed him back—even opening her lips a little beneath his.

He touched his tongue to her bottom lip and her mouth opened a little bit more.

“Bradshaw!”

They jumped apart at Coach’s bellow. “Crap,” he whispered and licked his bottom lip, picking up a faint taste of Bailey. Man, he’d made up his mind to do this today because his window of opportunity for a chance with her had narrowed with his dad’s announcement. But now that he’d kissed her he was
really
conflicted about moving away. “So, uh, would you like to go to a movie with me Friday night if I can get Jenny or my dad to drive us? I know it’s not a lot of notice but—”

“I’d like that,” she said, then winced when Coach Harstead yelled his name again.

“It’s a date, then. I’ll give you a call after I talk to Jenny and Dad.” He leaned forward and gave her another quick kiss on the lips. Then he turned and loped away.

And couldn’t have erased the big grin on his face to save his life.