Hearts on Fire Read online

  “Your wedding quilt?”

  It was faint—oh so faint—but Becca detected it. The sudden pink tinge to Jack’s cheeks.

  “Yes. How much of your time is that taking? I’m just curious, that’s all.”

  “Probably twenty, maybe twenty-five hours. Your mom wanted outline quilting—meaning it just follows the seams. So I don’t have to spend time marking the quilt top.”

  “Becca, you don’t have to do that. Seriously.”

  She shrugged. “If I weren’t quilting yours, I’d be working on another one. It’s all the same to me. I enjoy quilting.” She sipped at her wine. “Really, don’t feel bad about it. But don’t startle me again or you’re going to end up with little dots of blood all over it.”

  The waitress brought their meals.

  “So what happened at the nursing home today?”

  “Kitchen fire,” he replied. “Some damage to that part of the kitchen. But we had to evacuate everyone and then get them all back inside after the fire was out.”

  “How many people was that?”

  “Fifty, roughly. One of the little old ladies copped a feel on my ass, though.”

  Becca clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from spitting white wine all over the table. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Although I thought about sending her Matt’s way.”

  “You sure it wasn’t just an accident? Maybe she lost her footing and grabbed for something and …” Becca pressed her lips together to keep from laughing too hard. “Your ass was handy.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can tell the difference between an accidental grab and a grope. I can demonstrate it for you later, if you’d like.”

  Becca looked down at her plate. The idea of Jack’s hands on her ass was not exactly an unpleasant one. But that was a place they couldn’t go.

  “How’s your mom doing?”

  He shrugged and popped the last bite of salmon into his mouth. He swallowed, then said, “Well, she’s not getting better. There’s only one direction for this to go.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. “Her spirits are good. Better than mine would be, for sure. But it seems like just breathing tires her out.”

  The waitress removed their dinner plates and returned with dessert menus. Jack gave Becca a questioning look.

  “Maybe we could split something,” she suggested.

  When the fancy dessert dish came out, they dug into the scoops of creamy amaretto gelato. Becca reflected that this was probably the nicest date she’d ever been on. Her nicest date and it was in her hometown. Didn’t see that one coming. Dates with Brandon had been sports bars or Chinese restaurants, a movie or hanging out with his friends while they watched sports on TV. It wasn’t that the Blue Crab Bistro was over the top fancy or anything—and compared to the tuxedo he’d worn to the hospital gala, Jack’s shorts and golf shirt were very casual.

  But it was nice.

  Jack was nice.

  Becca had just swallowed another cold spoonful of gelato when an older, fiftyish woman approached their table.

  “You are the spitting image of your mother,” the woman said to Becca.

  Becca frowned involuntarily. She looked nothing like her mother.

  “You’re Penny’s daughter, right? I went to school with her here, before my family moved away.”

  Jack was frowning now, too. But Becca knew what was going on. Penny was her biological mother. Michelle’s younger sister.

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “What is Penny up to these days?”

  Becca felt Jack’s calf brush hers beneath the table, a gesture of support. From the expression on his face, he looked ready to jump into the conversation, too.

  “She passed away when I was a toddler, actually,” Becca said quietly. “I was raised by my aunt and uncle.” Aunt and uncle. She had never really thought of Michelle and Dan Trevor that way. They were simply her parents. They had adopted her, in any case, so legally that’s what they were.

  “Oh my word.” The woman laid a hand on Becca’s shoulder. “I am so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t remember her.”

  “So sorry!” The woman rushed off.

  Becca was quiet for a moment.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked.

  She nodded. “I’ve never had that happen before. And I don’t know why. Obviously, there are people in St. Caroline who grew up with my mother. No one’s ever brought it up, though.”

  “Maybe they respect your parents too much to do that. Your real parents.”

  She gave Jack a wan smile. “They are my real parents.”

  Chapter 22

  Jack reached down and suavely unclicked Becca’s seatbelt, then slipped his arm between her and the seat back, gently pulling her over to his side. His other hand reached up and around the back of her head. No gentle pulling was required for this. Before he knew what was happening, Becca’s own hands were on his head, her fingers threading into his blonde hair, her lips crushing his with a fierceness that sparked a tiny moment of fear before it was washed away by a tidal wave of lust.

  The gear shift pressed into his thigh as he tried to get her closer. Suddenly the gear shift gave way and they were in the back seat of the SUV, still kissing. Damn, he was good. He’d gotten them out of the front seat and into the back without even breaking the kiss. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even really doing the kissing. He was being kissed. Ravished wouldn’t be an overstatement. His lips were being ravished, plundered, the whole nine yards. Bet Mattie’s lips had never been plundered by a woman.

  Becca’s lips were hungry on his, nipping and sucking, her sweet breath tasting of amaretto and sugar. So much sugar. She was pushing him onto his back and the windows were fogged up with all the heat they were generating. He let her push, let her plunder … hell, he’d let her do whatever she damn well pleased. Because this felt so damn good. Amazing. He’d never been this turned on with a woman. Never. The urge to break her kiss and move on to second base was overwhelming, but for once he was in no hurry. No hurry at all. He was perfectly content to just lie here and let her ravage him. His hard-on wasn’t going anywhere, of that he was certain.

  Her lips left his and kissed their way down his jaw. He turned his head slightly to allow her unfettered access to his neck. Just before he closed his eyes in ecstasy, he saw it. That damned sock monkey. What the hell was it doing in here? He glanced around to confirm that they were, in fact, in his car. Yes, they were. He closed his eyes. Maybe he was hallucinating. Yeah, that was it. Ninety-nine percent of the blood in his body was now concentrated in one spot, leaving nothing for his brain. That would cause hallucinations, right?

  He opened his eyes again. The sock monkey was gone. But so was the back seat of his SUV. And Becca. The only thing that remained from that insanely hot make out session was the brain to penis blood ratio tenting the sheet he was lying beneath on Matt’s sleeper sofa. He shifted his hips. It was hot as hell in his brother’s cabin. Matt had no central air conditioning, just those window units that made enough noise to wake the dead.

  He lay there, letting his mind drift back to the dream. No, more like trying to force his mind back to the dream. If only he could fall back to sleep and resume things right where they’d left off. Right where he was about to get laid by a plundering, ravaging Becca Trevor.

  None of that had happened last night. Not in his conscious mind, anyway. After dinner, he had driven Becca home, walked her up to the front porch of her parents’ house—like a gentleman!—and chastely kissed her. Okay, so it hadn’t been totally chaste. He held her close, kissed her long and good, enjoyed the feel of her slender body beneath the lightweight fabric of her dress. They were on the front porch of her parents’ house, so he couldn’t go any further than that. Dr. Trevor probably wasn’t a shotgun-toting kind of father—and Becca was twenty-five years old anyway. But he could maybe stick J
ack with a needle shot of tranquilizer or something.

  Still, he had walked back to his car with his body’s blood distribution in the exact same state it was now.

  Why Becca Trevor? Why was she having this effect on him? Was it just because he hadn’t gotten laid in eons? Was it because they were both just home for the summer? They could have a no-strings-attached summer fling and then walk away unscathed? He didn’t know, and the sound of his brother turning on the shower distracted him from the need to find an answer.

  He kicked off the sheet and sat up. He was trying to help out his brother around the cabin, in exchange for living here this summer. Making coffee in the morning was an easy enough trade—and moving around the kitchen, dumping yesterday’s grinds in the trash and pulverizing fresh beans, had the added benefit of returning his blood ratio to normal levels.

  Becca heard her phone buzz with a text. She leaned back toward the nightstand to glance at the screen. Jack. She poked the quilting needle into his wedding quilt to secure it, then reached over and picked up the phone. She swiped at the screen. Had a great time last night. And yesterday morning. She touched a finger to her lips, which still felt just-kissed twelve hours later. And there was still a hot, tingling spot on her stomach where his erection had pressed into her. She wasn’t surprised that he was too much of a gentleman to do anything about it. Brandon, on the other hand, would have tried to persuade her to sneak him into her parents’ house and upstairs to her room. He would have whined and nagged, and then gotten mad when she refused. But Jack had simply said “goodnight” and walked back to his car.

  A part of her was still a little disappointed by his impeccable manners. A larger part of her was beginning to feel even more disappointed that dating Jack Wolfe was something that couldn’t go anywhere. Not long term. She texted him back. Me too. A split second later came his reply: We should do it again sometime. She was about to type We should, then thought better of it. Don’t lead him on. She set the phone down beside her on the bed and went back to quilting his wedding quilt. Somewhere out there in the world was a very lucky woman who was going to get this quilt one day—and the man who came with it.

  It just wasn’t going to be her.

  That was yet another reason to rue the stupid choice she had made on the night of the graduation party. She finally had a good, decent man—a good, decent man who was wicked sexy, too—interested in her, and he was totally off limits. Story of my life. Everything thing good is just the flip side of something else bad.

  Her phone buzzed again. She dropped her eyes to the screen, expecting to see Jack’s name. But it wasn’t, and her breath caught at the sight. Shari Weber. The woman who had adopted Jacqueline Michelle. The last time Becca had heard from Shari directly was years ago. The adoption had been open, but she didn’t want to insert herself into a family she didn’t belong to. They were “friends” on Facebook—nothing more than that. She tapped open the message.

  Hi Becca, hope all is well. Went by your apartment today but you don’t live there anymore? Can you give me a call?

  She sat there for a moment, staring at the message. What reason could Shari possibly have for wanting to talk to her? Becca tapped on the tiny phone icon and listened to it ring.

  “Becca! Hi! How are you?”

  “Good. I’m good.” She stared at the tiny stitches running across the top of Jack’s quilt.

  “You moved? I went by your old place.”

  “Um, yes. I’m staying with my parents. For the summer.”

  “Oh? On the eastern shore? My parents love that area.”

  “They do? That’s good. That’s nice.” Becca wondered where this was going.

  “Well, I wanted to have this conversation face to face but over the phone will have to do, I guess.”

  Becca began to get a bad feeling. “Is … nothing’s happened to …” She couldn’t even force out the words. Please let nothing have happened to Jacqueline Michelle.

  “No, no. Jackie is fine. Wonderful, in fact.” Shari paused. “It’s me something has happened to. I was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. It was in remission, but now it has come back.” She paused again, to let the words sink in.

  Becca wasn’t sure what to say, just like she wasn’t sure what to say to Jack about his mother. But Shari continued.

  “I’m not getting better. The doctor says I have probably a few more months.”

  Becca could barely breathe. Shari was dying? And …

  “What about …” She remembered to use the name Shari had. “Jackie?”

  “That’s why I’m calling, Becca. I need to make arrangements for her. My parents love Jackie and Jackie loves them. But they’re both seventy-five years old. My father has had one heart attack already. I’m afraid they might not be around another ten years to see her through high school. They’re afraid they won’t be. I have a cousin and a few friends I could ask to be Jackie’s guardian and adopt her. I’m confident one of them, at least, would say ‘yes.’ But my first choice would be you.”

  Becca pressed her free hand hard into the mattress as her body wavered. The idea that she might faint floated through her mind.

  “Me?” Her voice came out as barely more than a squeak. The woman who gave her up the first time?

  “Yes. You are still her mother.”

  “But I—”

  “Becca, you impressed the hell out of me seven years ago with your strength and your steadiness. You didn’t waver, not even once. I never told you this, but I had an adoption fall through five years earlier. The girl changed her mind when the baby was born. I was heartbroken and it took me those five years to get up the courage to put myself through that again.”

  “But I gave—”

  “You gave her up because you were too young.”

  Shari didn’t have to finish that thought. You’re not too young now.

  “I see a lot of you in her,” Shari added. “She has a backbone of steel.”

  “I look at her pictures sometimes, on your Facebook page. But I didn’t realize you were sick.”

  “I don’t post anything about it online. It’s not how I want people to remember me.” She was quiet for a long minute, and Becca sensed she was trying to get her emotions under control. “You don’t have to make a decision right this instant. But it would put my mind at ease to know that she was with you.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “She knows that I’ve been sick. There was no hiding that. She doesn’t know the full seriousness of it yet, though. I want to try and make arrangements for her care before I do that. I don’t want to add that uncertainty on top of all this. I want her to know that she’ll have a place to go, someone to take care of her.”

  Becca stared at the stitching swirling round and round on the quilt on the bed. The stitches mirrored the thoughts in her brain, questions and barely-articulated fears circling too quickly for her to grab onto any one of them. Adopt Jacqueline Michelle? A child she hadn’t seen in person since the day she was born? Be her mother? As often as Becca had thought about what her life would have been like if she had kept her baby, she was having trouble picturing it now.

  “At least consider it, Becca. Please.”

  She forced her eyes to track the stitches on the quilt, follow them one by one across the fabric. Her mind began to still.

  “I think Jackie and I should meet before any decisions get made,” Becca ventured. “Maybe I can come out to Ohio for a weekend.” She could get time off from Skipjack’s. Mike might not be happy about it, but he’d do it. Her mother would give her time off, too. But she would have to explain why she needed to return to Ohio. She closed her eyes, unable to picture that conversation either. Was she even seriously considering this?

  One step at a time.

  “Why don’t we come there?” Shari offered. “My father went to the Naval Academy. He and mom love that area. The four of us can come, and Jackie can see the town.”

  “Do you have the energy for a trip li
ke that?” She thought of what Jack had told her about his mother. It seems like just breathing tires her out.

  “With my parents along to help, I can do it. I’ve stopped chemo. I don’t want to spend the rest of my time sick from that.”

  “Where would you want her to live?” There were so many questions to be answered, if this were to happen. And Becca wasn’t even sure the idea was a good one, for her or for Jackie. What did she know about being a mother? “I wasn’t really planning on coming back to Ohio.”

  “Wherever you want to live, Becca. I know I can’t dictate what happens after I’m gone. My parents are close to her, but they understand that she might not be in Ohio for much longer. The cousin I have in mind lives in Chicago so …”

  Chicago. Becca couldn’t imagine being a kid in a huge city like that. She couldn’t even really imagine being a kid in Columbus, Ohio. Childhood to her meant St. Caroline. The water, the shore, boats, crabs. That was silly, she knew. Plenty of people grew up in cities. Still … St. Caroline had been a good place to grow up. And the thought of a seven-year-old girl being raised by seventy-five year olds … you’re really considering this. Even though it would blow her world to bits. What would her parents think when they learned they had a grandchild? What would her sisters think of her? The Wolfe family?

  Jack?

  Jack. She’d have to tell him.

  “Are there any weeks that are better than others?” Shari’s voice yanked Becca back into the moment. “Sooner being better than later, obviously.”

  “Any week is fine.”

  Jack will be furious. He’ll never speak to me again. Which is what I deserve.

  “I’ll talk to my parents then and let you know. Thank you, Becca, for being willing to consider this. It would ease my mind so much to know that she was back with you.”

  They ended the call, and Becca let the phone drop onto the bed. I’m not ready to be a mother. What if Jackie doesn’t like me? What if she doesn’t like St. Caroline? So many questions, so many concerns. She was crazy for even thinking about this. Shari’s cousin was probably a better option. But how can I not consider it?