A Woman's Heart (12 page)

"Not a mistake I'd make again." His expression sobered. "Are you and that lawyer an item?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going together, dating?"

"No," Jann said, suddenly wishing that they were. Maybe with the possibility of a real family, a real home, her position as Alex's mother would be strengthened.

"He's interested in you," Peter said, his eyes narrowing shrewdly.

She shrugged. She hadn't dated Mitch seriously for the same reason she dated few men more than once. She couldn't risk that sort of bond in her life right now, couldn't risk the kind of pain it was sure to bring.

"So what's your type if it isn't Mitch?"

"I don't have a type." Crossly, she noted that her heart was racing again, and that all it had taken was a look from Peter's eyes.

"Tall, short, blonde, or dark?"

"My type is men who don't ask questions they have no business asking."

"Everything about you is my business."

"What do you mean?"

"For the moment you've got my baby. I want to know who you are."

"The same holds true for me." She looked at him appraisingly. "Do you have a girlfriend?" Although, surely if he did, he wouldn't have kissed her.

"What makes you think I'm not married?"

The beating of her heart seemed to stop with a thump. Impossible to imagine him forever joined to another woman, one, who if Peter won, would become the mother of her child.

What sort of woman would she be? Dark like Peter or blonde in striking contrast? Would she be petite and in need of protection, or tall and slimly elegant? And would her voice echo Peter's flawlessly enunciated Boston accent?

Then Jann felt relief as the realization hit her. "If you were married you would have said so. If you were married you wouldn't have kissed me."

"Plenty of married men kiss other women," he replied, in a voice so bitter it cut the air between them.

"Not you," she said, with a certainty that stunned.

"What makes you think so?"

She shook her head, unwilling to speak her thoughts out loud, that when this man married it would be a union that would last forever.

"You still haven't said if you have a girlfriend or not." She needed to turn the conversation away from talk of wedded bliss.

"Applying for the position?" he asked, a grin streaking his lips.

"Never!" The very notion rendered her dizzy. "But answer my question."

"No girlfriend at the moment."

He looked the sort of man who wouldn't be alone long, who had only to click his fingers to render the female of the species weak. But he was not the sort of man she could ever allow herself to fall in love with.

"Why this sudden interest in my love life?" he asked.

"I'm just trying to figure out who you are."

"Have you come to any conclusions?"

"Some."

"Tell me," he ordered, touching her arm. Then he wished he hadn't asked her. It shouldn't matter what this woman thought. He couldn't let it matter.

"Claire told me you were away traveling a lot of the time," Jann replied, not answering his question at all.

"Off and on," he said. Two could play the evasive game. "What about you? Do you like to travel?"

"I would love to give it a try, but I've never been any place but here."

"Where would you like to go?" He tried not to notice the way her face lit up, with a glow independent of the flickering candle on their table.

"Anywhere," she breathed.

"Miami?" he asked. "The French Riviera?" That's where his mother had gone, before she'd become enmeshed in the counter culture sweeping America, before telling Peter's father that their marriage vows were old-fashioned and that she was a free spirit.

"No," Jann answered definitely. "I want to go somewhere more interesting, somewhere out of the way."

Her eyes were glowing now, also, in a way he'd never seen.

"Like South America or Africa," she continued dreamily. Then she looked at him curiously. "Have you been there?"

"Yes." He fought to banish the sudden image of her striding through an African village, of being surrounded at a riverside by a splashing group of black-eyed children. "You'd love it," he said.

"Like you do?"

"Yes."

"If travel means so much to you, then why do you want Alex? How will a baby fit into your life?"

"I'll make him fit."

She laughed. "It's been my experience," she said, trying to form the words between hiccups of mirth, "that babies make you fit them, not the other way around." Then her expression sobered. "What's a bachelor like you going to do with a baby?"

"Don't worry about how I'll do it. Just trust that I will."

"I don't trust you, any more than Claire did."

"Then you'll have to learn." Hurt spiraled through him at the mention of his sister, how she'd never know now just how much he had loved her, and how their connection as children would never extend to adulthood.

"I don't have to learn anything," Jann replied stubbornly.

"I'd like to take Alexander out tomorrow," Peter said, changing the subject.

"That's not a good idea."

"What do you mean?"

"He's getting too used to you."

"He trusts me, you mean." Sharp pleasure went through him at the thought, was dulled only in the knowledge the woman opposite didn't feel it too.

"Used to you," she repeated, her lower lip trembling as though she feared his words were true. "I don't want him getting used to someone who will soon disappear."

"I wouldn't worry about that."

For a long moment she looked at him then said with a sigh, "I guess he can go. But not without me."

"I wouldn't dream of taking him without you." Peter felt strangely lighthearted. Was it due to the notion of sharing the day with Claire's child, or the fact that Jann would be there as well? It had to be the first, for the second was impossible.

"Where will we go?" she asked.

"I was thinking perhaps a picnic."

"A picnic!"

"You know, cold chicken, chocolate cake, a bottle of wine."

"I know what a picnic is."

"Then say yes. It'll be fun."

"Fun?"

The expression on her face told him he was suggesting the unattainable, that nothing had been fun since he'd put in his claim for Alex. Perhaps she didn't feel what he felt when they were together, and if that was the case, then he should feel relieved.

He couldn't risk caring for a woman like Jann, a woman who lived on a boat and took pictures for a living. She might claim she loved Alex now, but how would she feel in six months when the child was bigger, more demanding?

When he got in the way of her independent life?

As he and Claire had got in the way of their mother's new life. The muscles in his jaw tightened. He had to take Claire's baby. Anything else was unthinkable.

"When will we go?" Jann asked.

"I'll pick you both up at ten."

"I'm busy in the morning. Better make it the afternoon."

She was wearing her stubborn look again.

"And I don't need anyone to pick me up," she went on firmly. "Alex and I will come for you."

"You have no car," he objected.

"I have access to one when I need it," she replied airily. "We'll pick you up at noon."

Chapter 8

"Please, Capt'n," Jann wheedled. "You know you promised I could borrow your van if I ever needed it."

Capt'n's gray brows beetled fiercely at her. "That was before you stripped out second gear, girl."

"John Miller!" Ruby exclaimed. "Just listen to yourself blaming Jann for that gear." She snorted in disgust. "You know very well you stripped it yourself. You were so busy cursing out the driver in front of you, you paid no attention to your own business." She turned to Jann. "His teeth were grinding together so fiercely it was impossible to tell which noise was louder, the one coming from his mouth or the one from the transmission!"

Jann stifled a giggle by planting a kiss onto Alex's hair.

"Damn it, Ruby," Capt'n protested, "I thought we agreed to forget about that."

"Lend Jann the car and we might," Ruby placed her hands on her hips and stared at him sternly.

"Harumph." Capt'n turned his back on her and slapped a streak of brown stain across
Windward's
wooden deck. "The keys are hanging inside the door," he added gruffly.

"Thanks, Capt'n," Jann said, plopping a swift peck also on his weathered cheek.

"Now, girl..." He rubbed his cheek, trying, without success, to erase the smile lifting his lips. "Just be careful with it," he blustered.

"Aye, aye, Capt'n," Jann said, shifting Alex to her other arm and saluting smartly. She took the keys from Ruby's outstretched hand and pressed a kiss onto her cheek. "Thanks, Ruby," she whispered.

* * *

The doorman was too well trained to even blink when the Capt'n's van sputtered up between the marble pillars of the hotel entrance. But before the doorman could reach the door, Peter had wrenched it open.

"You have got to be joking," he said.

"Joking?" Jann opened her eyes wide. "About what?"

"This death trap you call a vehicle."

"This is a vintage Volkswagen." She lovingly stroked the vehicle's steering wheel. "It was at Woodstock."

"Attending a rock concert decades in the past does not speak well for reliability," Peter contested grimly.

"Volkswagens are like wine," Jann countered. "They improve with age."

"Or turn to vinegar and this bucket of bolts appears to be doing the latter. I won't allow my nephew to ride in a car that's about to break down."

"So how did you get around in New Guinea," she asked. "From the documentaries I've seen on television the mode of transport there appeared to be pick-up trucks." She leaned toward him and smiled. "With the most people possible jammed in the back."

"That was then. This is now."

But she could see his lips were twitching. Stifling her own grin, she twisted the knob on the glove compartment, and reached inside.

"Would this help you feel more comfortable?" She pulled out a gold medal and dangled it in front of his face.

Slowly, Peter reached for it. "First," he read aloud, "in the First Annual Cross Oahu Race." Disbelief flickered across his face. "You expect me to be impressed by speed?"

"Isn't that the standard most men go by?"

"Not this man," Peter muttered, peering into the back where Alex cooed peacefully at him from behind the plastic steering wheel attached to his car seat.

"John worked for an entire year on this car," Jann went on. "The engine runs like a dream. Not a sputter, not a knock, nothing that shouldn't be there is there. He's an engineer for God's sake."

"That doesn't mean he's a mechanic!"

"He's more of a mechanic than you or I!"

Peter glared at her, then the earlier twitching of his lips turned into a laugh. "All right," he capitulated, climbing into the front beside her, "we'll risk your chariot."

* * *

The food, at least, looked wonderful, Jann decided, glad she had insisted on providing the picnic. Peter had paid for the dinner the night before, squelching her protest that they split the cost. At least now she would no longer be beholden to this man who could control her fate.

She pulled out some ripe bananas from the bottom of her shopping bag and laid them on a spot not already taken up. She'd bought too much, she decided with a sigh. A common occurrence whenever she went to the market.

The fresh fruit and vegetables always called to her like sirens called sailors, and proved irresistible in their glistening coats. She'd bought a pineapple as well as the bananas, and mangoes, too, from old Sarah's fruit stand, and still-warm baguettes from Francoise's stall.