Wild Man Creek (10 page)

Jack lifted his shot and threw it back. With shot glass in hand, he pointed at Denny’s drink. “You’d better drink that, son.”

Denny lifted the drink, but paused. “Look, I get it if you say this isn’t the happiest day of your life.”

Jack scowled. “Drink,” he said. When Denny put down the glass Jack said, “Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Any man, me included. I’m just having a real hard time with the facts, with knowing what kind of man I was, that I’d scare a woman off telling me she’s pregnant because I can’t be bothered with the responsibility. And I’m having a real goddamn hard time thinking I had the kind of relationship that would bring me a son and… And I can’t remember her.”

Jack leaned on the bar. “Accidents happen all the time, Denny, but I gotta be honest with you—I was careful. Not stupid careful—I was always armed with protection. When you talked to your mother, did she say anything like that we
knew
there was a problem? Like a blowout or something?”

“I couldn’t get into that with her, Jack. She was my mother. And she was sick.”

Jack felt his chest go tight. Here he was thinking about himself when this kid had discovered one man was not his father and another was—all when his mother was dying! And he was thinking about whether his condom had a hole in it? “What kind of cancer, Denny?”

“Breast, then it spread. She was so young, she didn’t get checked, didn’t get good medical care. It was an aggressive cancer. We spent five years beating it back then it would pop up somewhere else, then more chemo, then a few good months that looked promising, then— Thing is, she couldn’t beat it. And she wanted me to have the
truth before she died.” Denny swallowed. “We don’t have to tell anyone, Jack.”

Jack just shook his head. “That’s not the important thing, Denny. It’s not about keeping it a secret….” He shook his head. “There are some truths about me, son—one of ’em is that until I met Mel, I hadn’t met a woman I was tempted to settle down with, to start a family with, but I never thought of myself as cruel. Maybe I’ve just been lying to myself about that. There must have been a reason your mom wasn’t brave enough to look for me, to tell me about you….”

“Lots of reasons,” Denny said. “She never blamed you. She was with a guy who thought I was his and he wasn’t a nice guy. He never even married her. I can’t think of a thing my mom ever did that was bad or wrong, but he slapped her around anyway. She was too scared of him to tell the truth, to break free and try to find you. By the time he was out of the picture, too many years had passed.”

“It never once occurred to me to tell a woman that even if I didn’t feel like being married, I could be responsible…” Jack’s voice faded out.

“Soldiers, Marines, they do things like that,” Denny said. “I did that. I was with a girl right before Afghanistan and I told her I didn’t want to be worrying about attachments while I was—”

Jack put a hand over his forearm. “Denny, even if I couldn’t have been a husband, I could have been a father. I should have been supporting you, knowing you, teaching you. Not easy for a Marine, a single Marine at that, but I would have liked to have tried. At the least, I could have been there for you when you were losing your mother. I could have been waiting for you to come home from war.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry I didn’t know. But I know now.”

Denny smiled. “Hey. I don’t expect anything. I just wanted to know you, that’s all. Really, I didn’t think I’d be this lucky, to find out you’re a guy I actually like, a guy I’d want for a friend even if there wasn’t any other connection. But Jack, you don’t have to do anything. I like things the way they are.” He grinned boyishly. “I don’t need a kidney or anything. I can support myself just fine.”

Jack poured another couple of shots. “I usually limit myself to one, but it’s a big night. You should move back out to the guesthouse if you want. Rent free, of course.”

“What I want is to take care of myself. It’s what I’d want to do even if you’d been around the past twenty-four years. In fact, from what I know of you so far, I bet it’s what you would have raised me to do.”

Jack lifted his glass. “You’re probably right about that.”

Right at that moment Preacher came into the bar from the kitchen. “I’m gonna have to learn to wash up faster if I want company for that shot,” he said. “You’re getting ahead of me.”

“Let me pour you one,” Jack said. “Wait till you hear the news. Uncle Preacher.”

Mel sat cross-legged on the king-size bed, her laptop pushed to the side, while Jack paced and talked, telling her the story Denny had told him. He would periodically stop pacing, bend at the waist and lean both hands on the bed and add something emphatic. Dramatic. Then he’d pace again.

“Unbelievable,” she finally said. “Then again, not. There’s even a slight resemblance. But then, I took Rick for your son when I first met him. How many more of them do you think are out there?” she asked.

“Do you think you’re being
funny?
”

“Um, not really,” she said. “I thought I was being a little concerned.”

“Listen, I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say that this is the last thing I expected to hear. I was seriously very, very cautious. I got an A in biology. I didn’t take chances.”

“Till you got to me?” she asked.

“Frankly, yes! You were entirely different! I was completely in love with you! I wanted to be with you forever! I totally lost my mind!”

“Could you please not raise your voice? First of all, I didn’t do this to you and second, the kids are sleeping.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“Jack, condoms aren’t a hundred percent. Sometimes there’s a malfunction—a little hole, a leak, a tear. And, as we’ve proven, you’re pretty potent. Are
you
worried you’re going to be getting more news like this?”

“Not so much that.” He sat down on the bed. “Mel, I can admit to playing it kind of loose when I was young and there was the occasional real short-term relationship…. Not as many as you might think. But either I’m getting old and losing my memory or I was only with Denny’s mom once or maybe twice. Mel, my girlfriends, such as they were, might not have always been memorable, but I don’t remember Denny’s mom at
all.
She looks kind of familiar, but I can’t tie her to a single date, event, conversation, anything. And yet, she told Denny all about my family! Not the kind of stuff I share with a girl I’ve been out with once or twice.”

“Denny was around over the holidays, Jack. I’m sure you talked about your family all the time.”

He shook his head. “She told him I had a little sister still in grade school. We must have been close—when I
was twenty, Brie was only ten. And she took me being in the Marines real hard.”

“Maybe you were drunk,” Mel said with a shrug.

He straightened. “As a well-known fact, personally and across the board, I didn’t have much sexual success when drunk. I did, however, have blissful memory loss.”

“Maybe it’ll all come back to you. But Jack, are you sure this information is accurate? I mean, maybe the person who’s not remembering real well was Denny’s mom. Although…”

“Although…?” he prompted.

“I have to say, my experience is that women generally know who got them pregnant, unless there were multiple partners in a very tight period of time. Men seem to be more prone to blow off the average encounter while most women take these things very seriously.”

“I know this,” he said. “I know men and women look at things like sex differently and, I admit, I can’t remember the phone number of every woman I slept with, but that letter said she was
in love
with me. That she fell
hard.
It happened a time or two—that a woman’s feelings for me were stronger than mine for her, and when that happened, I had to move along before someone got hurt real bad. I have four sisters. I listened to them wail and cry over some dipshit boy who led them on then disappeared, just took what he could get and didn’t call again. I wasn’t going to do that to a girl, so I bit the bullet and broke it off. And when I had to do that it wasn’t easy and I remember
every one.
”

Mel pulled a face. “I have to give you credit for that, Jack. It’s rare. Most guys would rather leave the country than have an honest conversation about their feelings.”

“Don’t overpraise me. I’m not sure I did a good job of it, but I did fess up that I wouldn’t turn out to be a good
boyfriend, that there was no future in me. Hell, I loved the Marines—there really wasn’t room for one other woman in my life.”

“Except your sisters,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, well I was stuck with them,” he said. “Do you have any idea how much I don’t want to tell my dad about this?” He covered his face with his hands, leaning elbows on his knees.

“Well, Jack, given the fact you don’t remember Denny’s mom or the period of time he was conceived, before you tell the whole family and the whole town, I recommend you get a little evidence more concrete than a posthumous letter. You two need to do a little blood test. Make sure you’re related.”

Jack looked devastated. “Aw, Mel, I can’t do that to the kid. Think of all he’s been through. And I’ve known him coming up on six months now and he’s a good young man. Can I really question his dying mother’s confession without hurting him?”

“If you’d gotten this letter a year after he was conceived asking for your involvement and support and didn’t remember being with the mother, wouldn’t you, in the kindest possible way, say you were completely willing, but a blood test would be in the best interest of everyone involved?”

“That would be obvious after only a year,” he said. “The man is twenty-four. He’s lived for this moment. I’ve already disappointed him for a couple of decades. I don’t want to question him even more.”

“I appreciate that and I like him very much. But, Jack, it’s not all about Denny. There’s you, too. And then there’s David and Emma….”

“David and Emma don’t care whether there’s a blood test….”

“They might if they ever need a bone marrow transplant.”

“If there’s ever a medical situation, believe me we’ll jump right on that blood work.”

“Well, this is your situation,” Mel said. “I’m just along for the ride and I have no trouble accepting Denny as your son. Honestly, I have no trouble accepting Rick as your son, though you don’t share a single chromosome—I think of him as a son, too. I was ready to adopt a baby that wouldn’t be ours biologically and I never doubted for a second that we’d love him as much as our own biological children. Jack—keep an open mind. Your relationship with Denny doesn’t have to change. Even though you didn’t bring him up it’s obvious you care about him—no blood test would change that. But it would lend evidence to the claim.” She shrugged. “Could give you both enormous peace of mind.”

Jack was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “I’ll keep it in mind. But I know now is not the time.”

J
illian knew she’d see Colin again before too long. She had been thinking about him, knew he was more than a little curious about her, just as she was intrigued by him, but she didn’t expect him to walk right in her back door at six-thirty in the morning. She was standing at the kitchen sink in her pajamas, filling egg cartons with dirt from a big bag of potting soil. She wasn’t wearing sexy pajamas but they were a bit revealing. She was braless and the curve of her breasts was clearly visible. And she was a tiny bit glad.

“Good morning,” she said. “Don’t you knock?”

He lifted his arms—one brown paper grocery sack in each. “No free hands.”

“You could have knocked. You could have used the toe of your boot.”

“I’ll try like hell to remember that. Have you had breakfast?”

“I was just about to eat some Froot Loops.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Poison. I’ll make breakfast. What are you doing?”

“Making seed cups. Preacher’s been saving me his egg cartons—they’re perfect.” She brushed the dirt off her
hands into the bag. “I’ll move this bag of dirt and get dressed.”

“Not on my account—you look good.” He put his grocery bags on the work island. “I’ll move the dirt to the back porch for you. How do you like your eggs?”

“Benedict?”

“Second choice?”

“Steamed. Medium. Firm whites, plenty of yellow yolk.”

He smiled at her. “You’re trying to trick me. You think I can’t deliver. I’m a pretty good cook. Breakfast is my specialty.” His eyes dropped to her breasts and he seemed to sway slightly; he almost moaned. “Go ahead, get dressed. I’ll get busy in the kitchen.”

She was smiling as she went into the little bedroom off the kitchen and closed the door. Well, they were even now. She’d been caught glancing at his crotch and he’d taken a survey of her chest. She couldn’t miss the reaction—he had paled, and if she was not mistaken, he had subdued a shiver. Since her breasts were completely adequate and still quite perky she assumed he liked them just fine. She never thought of them as anything special but, in the grand scheme of things, they were nicely shaped and large enough for a man’s hands.

Jillian had been thinking about Colin a lot lately because she was undeniably attracted to him. This wouldn’t have happened in her old life. She’d been too busy while employed at BSS, putting in her sixty-to-eighty-hour weeks. It had been hard to get her attention at all under all the excitement and anxiety of her high-pressure job. Probably one of the only reasons Kurt had burrowed into her romantic life was because they spent so much time working together.

But here, mostly alone, in this completely alien envi
ronment, not only did Colin appeal to her in a very basic and earthy way, the idea that they were both transients and wouldn’t be in the same town longer than a few more months was a definite upside as far as she was concerned. She was a long, long way from trusting a man again, but she had discovered, since meeting Colin, that she wasn’t all that far from wanting one.

By the time she pulled on some jeans, a bra and a T-shirt, and had combed her hair and applied a little lip gloss, she could already make out the good smells coming from the kitchen. She followed her nose and sat on one of the two stools at the kitchen island. He was busy at the stove and when he glanced over his shoulder at her, she smiled and said, “Do you suppose we could try something very old-fashioned? Like planning ahead?”

“We could try,” he said. “But if that was a rule, I wouldn’t be here now. And you’d hate that. Plates?” he asked.

She pointed to the cupboard above the stove. And then she just watched in fascination while he moved around her kitchen. She liked the way his butt filled out his jeans—his legs were awful long. So were his arms, she noticed. His hands were big, but he was surprisingly graceful. He fried bacon and sausage together, steamed the eggs, warmed the croissants, pulled a package of smoked salmon from his grocery bag along with a jar of capers and a container of cream cheese and put those in the center of the work island. He opened drawers until he found utensils; he folded paper towels for napkins. And right before sliding the eggs and meat onto plates he quickly, and thinly, sliced a red onion onto a small plate. And voilà! He was sitting down across from her.

“Not bad,” she said.

“Not bad? You are cruel! Considering what I had to work with, this is a feast! Picnic-style, but a feast!”

She laughed. “You’re right. Plus it beats the hell out of Froot Loops.”

“Do you really eat those things?”

“I love them,” she said with childlike passion, her mouth full of smoked salmon rolled around some cream cheese and capers. “You forgot the tomatoes.”

“I’m waiting for the Russian Rose,” he replied, and then he winked. “Seriously, a moment of truth, this is all I can cook well—breakfast. I make a mean omelet, too. I can turn a steak or hamburgers on the grill, but the rest? It’s a complete mystery to me.”

“If you’re going to cook one thing then why breakfast?” she asked.

“I love breakfast.”

She put down her fork. “Have you been married?”

“No. Why?”

She picked up her fork and dug into her eggs. “I just had this picture in my head of some sweet wife getting up at 4:00 a.m. to make perfect eggs before sending you off to your helicopter. And I kind of hated that vision.”

“I’ve never found a single woman in all my years of looking who would do that for me, so I did it for myself. And why would you hate that?”

She shrugged. “I always put in long hours. I really wanted a wife.”

He leaned toward her. “Jillian, honey, the whole world wants a wife. But we’re gonna have to make do. Now, what’s on your agenda today?”

“Moving all the seed cups from the porch into the greenhouses! Dan Brady—our friend from the bar—is going to come out later and show us how to install some lights. I won’t use chemical fertilizer on the seedlings,
but I’m not above artificial lighting if it helps. I have a little golf cart kind of thing on order with a flatbed in the back—the kind landscapers and gardeners use—and it should be here today or tomorrow. That’ll get me between the gardens and greenhouses and this house. And, if you look closely at the front garden, you’ll see the veggies are coming up! Shoots from the carrots, leeks and scallions—little blossoms from the lettuce. There’s a lot to do.” She scooped up some sausage, egg and croissant and said, “You know, this may be your only talent, but you’re very good at it.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. Then the other corner. Then he showed her his beautiful, straight, sexy teeth and said, “It’s not my only talent, Jilly.”

Oh, yes, she
wanted
him. She didn’t necessarily want to keep him, but she wanted him. Her cheeks grew so pink, she could feel them burn.

“Oh, right,” she said. “There’s also flying and painting.”

He grew instantly somber. And quiet.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “I think I hit a raw nerve there.”

He chewed and swallowed before he said, “I wasn’t ready to be done flying yet. The accident pretty much forced me out of the Army.”

“What about civilian flying?”

“I wouldn’t pass a physical now,” he said. “But while I’m in Africa, I plan to look around at some of the flying over there. Might be a place to give it a go.” He shrugged. “Maybe they don’t look so closely at things like titanium rods and elbow screws.” He didn’t mention that it might be a bit more than the rods and screws that could keep him from passing a physical in the U.S. There could be a little issue about drugs and depression…

“It’s not just big game that has you running off to
Africa,” she thoughtfully observed. “You crave ad venture.”

He shrugged and ate. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “A little action, maybe. Something that demands a little more of me than cleaning the paint off the brushes.”

“Are you bored?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“Is that why you’re hanging around my back porch?”

That brought a grin out of him. “I get a kick out of you, that’s all.”

“You sure it’s not because I’m the only single woman within pitching distance?” she asked, lifting a shapely brow.

“That’s not it,” he said. “In fact, you’re not the only single woman around here. There are tons of single women in this area. Maybe not right on this mountain, but I have a car. And I like to eat out.”

“Bet you don’t realize how much we have in common.”

“Enlighten me,” Colin said.

“Well,” Jill began, putting down her fork and blotting her lips with her napkin, “I was also forced out of my job, more or less. It was a major coup for one of my subordinates. I’m sure you’ve seen similar things in the military. Getting rank must be competitive.”

He was speechless for a moment. “You were fired?”

“No, I was replaced. I took a leave. It was down to him or me and I wanted to stand and fight, but my boss, mentor and very good friend recommended I take a little time off rather than resign or face the threat of termination. I hired a lawyer to negotiate my exit.” She tilted her head. “Such is the executive experience.”

“Sounds mystifying to me.”

“Yeah, it probably does. Harry, my mentor and boss,
had many philosophies he shared with me over the years. Always have your eye on where you’re going next, train your replacement, know when you’ve reached the peak of your performance level and, probably the one he used when he counseled me, sometimes the needs of the company supersede the needs of the individual employee even if the employee is getting screwed.”

“You call that good advice? Go away quietly when you’re getting screwed?”

“No, Colin—go away
successfully.
And if I’d been better prepared and taken Harry’s advice, I would have known exactly where I was going next. I didn’t take that advice seriously—I had always toyed with the idea of my own marketing consulting business, but hadn’t devoted any real brainpower to it. I thought I’d take a few weeks to consider my options, but then I got sidetracked.” She smiled.

“How’d you get forced out by a subordinate?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Part of my settlement included a confidentiality agreement.”

“I won’t tell.”

“And neither will I. My old boss, Harry, started several successful companies, taking them all public. He was once forced out as a president and CEO—he never took those things personally. He said you know you’re important when an entire board of directors gives you the boot. His response to that was to get a good exit package and start a new company that was stronger and bigger. If you’re going to swim with the sharks and get the big bucks, your position is always touch-and-go.”

“Well, there’s something we don’t have in common—big bucks.”

“You said you were independently wealthy.”

“Not as independently as you apparently are—I’m a retired Army Warrant Officer. My income was never large and doesn’t seem to have the potential to be, but there’s a check each month and it gets me by.”

“You should rethink that potential thing. I looked up wildlife art… I researched it on the web. Some paintings and prints draw impressive sale prices. So—you can get mad at the crash, come out swinging a paintbrush and do better than you could with the military.”

“The best revenge is to live well?”

“Yeah. And I am—thing is, I didn’t plan this. Even if I can’t make it go, I’m having a lot of fun.” She looked briefly upward. “I didn’t start all this with the idea of fun in mind. I just wanted to garden. And, right now, this feels really good.”

Colin removed the plates from the table and took them to the sink. “That’s what I’m not having as much of out of the cockpit. That felt really good and just painting full-time is a poor substitute,” he tossed off. “You need furniture, Jillian,” he said, while thinking about how nice it would be to sit with her on a sofa for a couple of hours.

She joined him at the kitchen sink. Sometimes their hands briefly touched as they passed plates to each other. “I need a golf cart, some lights and, before too long, I’m going to need a good indoor irrigation system for the greenhouses.”

“Where will you go when you leave here?” he asked.

“Totally up in the air,” she said. “But if I can grow stuff I’ll be in the market for some rural property priced right with the best climate and soil conditions. Anything can be moved, Colin. Plants can even be relocated. Jack promised me six months, but he might be inclined to give me a little more time if things are going well. We’ll see what happens over the summer.”

He turned to her while drying his hands on the dish towel. “I have my plane ticket to Africa already,” he said. “I booked early to get a good price on first class—I’m too damn tall to make that long flight in coach. September 1.”

She smiled at him. “Then we also have that in common—we’ll be making the most of the summer. And, um, Colin? I haven’t told anyone else that I was forced out of my last job. Not that it matters, but a lot of people wouldn’t understand. They’d think I’m just a loser.”

“We’re even again—Luke doesn’t know I have a plane ticket.”

Colin really didn’t get it. Jillian wasn’t his type at all. He had always been drawn to women who looked like they wanted sex, and soon. Women who dressed to draw attention to their breasts, legs, hips or butts. Not slutty-looking women, though he didn’t discriminate—he liked them, too. More like the soccer mom who was wearing her “out to be seen” dress-up clothes that fit nice and snug. Not to mention plenty of accessories and makeup. Colin developed his style with women early in his flying days; he was smooth—flirty and sexy and ultimately successful. He had never had a shortage of female company, that’s for sure. One of his favorite things was to wash lipstick off his favorite organ in the morning-after shower, something that hadn’t happened often enough in the recent past.

But this woman was different. Jillian was a whole new being. Right above some very delicious-looking breasts was a fresh, wholesome, beautiful face with large dark eyes that burned in his memory for hours and a smile that knocked him out. And in that head? Some very sexy, unbelievable intelligence. Man, she was
way
too smart for him. When she talked about corporate strategy, she turned him
on. When she talked about growing her fancy seeds, she turned him on. When she ate her eggs and croissant, she made him want to tackle her and lower her to the ground and start peeling off her clothes.