Loving You (3 page)

Squinting into the sunshine, he asked, his voice low and suddenly weary, “Why isn't the boy's mother suing me? Why'd she leave it to the kid?”

“You didn't read everything?”

“No.”

“Margie Baker died two years ago.”

Nick's chin hit his chest. “Damn.” Bracing both hands against the edges of the window, he leaned forward,
shaking his head as that little piece of news drilled through his brain. A woman he couldn't remember had given birth to a child he hadn't known about, and now, eleven years later, the shit had finally rolled downhill.

Lifting his head again, he stared out at Main Street and squinted into the late-afternoon light. What was left of the sun slammed against his eyes, and Nick told himself that was the reason his head was suddenly pounding. It couldn't be sympathy for a kid he hadn't even known existed yesterday.

Still, a twinge of pity stirred inside him and he wondered, whether he wanted to or not, what kind of kid would have the balls to sue his own father.

And at that sobering thought, he stiffened, resisting accepting the cloak of parenthood, even in his own brain.

Pity aside, he wasn't going to stand still and let this kid ruin his life. It was all a mistake. It had to be. Hell, anybody could claim to have been with him—and Nick wouldn't have been able to confirm or deny it. Suddenly disgusted with himself, he realized it was no wonder he'd lost Stevie. He'd been with so many women back then, no one face stood out from the crowd. And what did that say about him?

But no way was he a father. He'd been careful. Even back then. Hell, he'd bought condoms by the gross in those days. Taking a deep breath, he let it out again slowly, reassuring himself that he was no doubt in the clear. The fact that condoms weren't a hundred percent effective didn't even blink on his internal radar screen. He'd done the right thing. He'd protected himself, and the women he'd been with, from disease and from pregnancy, damn it.

The poor kid, whoever he was, was grabbing at straws. Looking for a famous father to rescue him. Well, Nick couldn't blame the kid for trying to look out for himself. Nick had been doing the same thing for years. But he wasn't going to be the fall guy here. He was nobody's meal ticket. He wasn't going to accept responsibility for a child that wasn't his.

So what he had to do here was meet the kid, face-to-face, get him to admit it was all some sort of sick joke, and then end it—hopefully before the newspapers got wind of this story. There were just too many so-called journalists who'd
love
the idea of toppling yet another former—God, he hated the word
former
—sports hero.

“What're you thinking?” Jackson asked.

Nick nodded to himself as his thoughts jelled and he settled on his plan. “I'm thinking,” he said softly, “that maybe this is something I should take care of myself.”

“That's probably not a good idea.”

“Jackson,” Nick said, and pushed away from the window to turn and face the man behind the desk. “You take care of the legal side of this and let me handle the kid myself.”

Shaking his head, Jackson stood up, came around the desk, and crossed the room to stop in front of Nick. “You can't just confront this boy—he's a minor. You'll have to go through his foster mother.”

Foster mother
.

Shit.

Those two words painted a mental image Nick really didn't want. Visions of a kid with no one and nothing to call his own roared through Nick's brain and he had to fight down another stab of pity. Jonas Baker had lost
his home, his mother, his world. Nick had grown up surrounded by more love than he'd been able to handle at times. With two parents, two brothers, and a kid sister to make his life a living hell. And he wouldn't have had it any other way.

The idea of a kid being on his own was so alien to Nick that he had a hard time picturing it. But just because Nick could feel for the kid didn't mean he was going to take the rap for this. It wasn't his fault. This wasn't his son, and Nick had to prove it.

One thing he didn't plan on doing was having the threat of paternity hanging around his neck like a noose for the rest of his life. Nope. There were enough Candellano grandchildren already. And if there were going to be more, they wouldn't be coming from him. He liked his role of favored uncle just fine. He could see his brothers' and sister's kids, play with them, spoil them a little, then run like hell for the peace and quiet of his own place.

Being a father just wasn't in his game plan.

Now all he had to do was convince this boy that he had the wrong guy. “Fine,” he said, feeling more in control than he had since the moment that process server had slapped the papers into his hand. “I'll talk to the foster mother, then the kid.”

“I still don't think this is a good idea.”

“I'm not going to just sit around and wait, Jackson.”

His brother-in-law stared at him for a long minute or two, then finally nodded. “All right, fine. Go see the woman.” He turned and walked back to his desk. Grabbing up a pen and paper, he scribbled the name and address down, then handed the paper to Nick as he came up beside him.

“She lives just outside Santa Cruz.”

Nick glanced at the paper. “Mimi Castle.” He chuckled as visions of a chubby blonde with poodles in tow leaped into his mind. “Now
there's
a name.”

“If she refuses to let you see the boy,” Jackson warned, “drop it, Nick, and leave it to me.”

A woman? Nick thought. Refusing him something? That'd be the day. He gave Jackson the million-dollar smile that had once graced toothpaste commercials. The same smile that had been known to melt female hearts at a hundred yards. “Trust me on this, Jackson,” he said. “Mimi's gonna love me.”

*   *   *

By six-thirty, all Tasha wanted was a long soak in a hot bath and about ten hours of sleep. But she still had too much to do.

She shifted wet clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, then yanked the knob on the old washer to start up another load. Water streamed into the chipped tub, and while she waited for it to fill, Tasha stared out the window at the darkness.

Beyond the yard, lamplight spilled out of her closest neighbors' windows, almost a half-mile away, looking like bright patches of yellow fabric in an all-black quilt. The ocean wind danced in and out of the trees, and a leafless tree limb scraped eerily against the windowpane, sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard.

She shivered, reached for the detergent, and tossed a scoopful into the already agitating water. Then she threw the clothes in, slammed the lid down, and moved into the kitchen. No time to stand around and idly watch the night pass. There was just too much to do.

Once the last of her customers left, Tasha had to deal with the rest of her life. Laundry, cooking, cleaning,
making sure Jonas did his homework and hit the showers. There never seemed to be enough time for everything, and not for the first time, she wondered how Mimi had made it all look so easy.

She stopped short and smiled to herself. “She was Mimi, that's how,” she muttered. And that said it all, didn't it? Mimi Castle had been one of a kind. Unique. From the long rope of silver hair she'd worn in a braid that dangled to her waist, right down to the hot pink polish on her toes. Age hadn't meant a thing to Mimi. If she liked something, she wore it and would cheerfully tell anyone who didn't like it to “shove off.”

At seventy, Mimi had still been a force of nature. She started every morning by draping herself in her beloved turquoise jewelry—from earrings and dozens of necklaces and armbands to the concho belt she habitually wore around her waist. Her long skirts usually dusted the tops of her worn leather moccasins, and the wildly flowered peasant blouses she favored combined to create the perfect picture of an elderly hippie.

Her lined face was perpetually wreathed in a smile that welcomed the world and warmed the heart. She cried over telephone commercials and laughed loud enough to rattle the dishes.

And Tasha missed her desperately.

Only seventeen when she'd first encountered Mimi, Tasha had been on the streets, homeless, for two years. She'd run away from a home where her parents had chosen Jack Daniel's over their only child. And despite the fear and loneliness that accompanied a life on the streets, it had been better than what she'd run from.

And then there was Mimi. Mimi had taken her in, offered her love and a home. The older woman hadn't been Tasha's foster mother—officially—but for ten
years she'd been more of a
real
mother than Tasha had ever known before.

And the ache of missing Mimi never went away.

Tasha reached into the hot soapy water, found the sponge, and on autopilot wiped the first of what looked like a hundred dishes. The hot water seemed to soak into her bones, her blood, and warmed her through. Bubbles frothed against her skin and she watched them slide away under the stream of hot water gushing from the tap. There was something peaceful, nearly comforting, about the act of washing dishes. Maybe it was remembering those plates on the table and the conversations you'd had over the meal. And maybe it was just a mindless task that left you free enough to wander whatever mental freeways you felt like traveling.

“God, Mimi, what am I supposed to do?” she asked, then held her breath, almost waiting to hear an answer. When none came, she sighed and kept talking. Even if Mimi couldn't reply, Tasha knew she was listening. “Something's up with Jonas.” There. She'd said it. She hadn't wanted to even think the words, but bringing them out in the open, if only to the ghost of a woman she wished were still here, actually felt pretty good. As if once the words were said, things couldn't get worse.

“Now
there's
a direct challenge to the gods,” she said softly. Though how things could get worse, she just didn't know. “And maybe you don't
want
to know, Tasha,” she told herself, and got back to the matter at hand. “Mimi, he's hiding something. I don't know what it is, but he won't talk to me about it. If you were still here, you'd find a way to make him spill his guts inside fifteen minutes.”

Mimi'd always had a gift for getting people to open up to her. There was always such understanding, such
acceptance, shining from her eyes, a person just knew he could trust her.

Trust.

It all came down to trust, didn't it? Tasha had believed in Mimi, trusted her, despite the fact that she'd learned the hard way to trust
no one
. Then Jonas had come along and the three of them became a family. A unit—indivisible. Or so they'd thought, until a sudden heart attack six months ago had split up the Three Musketeers forever. Mimi had been the heart of them. She'd been their center. The glue that held them all together.

And without her, Tasha was just as lost as poor Jonas.

“Hey!” Jonas shouted from the living room. “There's somebody at the door!”

“Well, see who it is,” she called back, and shook her head in disgust. What was it about almost-teenagers? He'd used up more energy calling for help than it would have cost him to get off his butt and answer the door himself.

“My show's on,” he wailed.

“Fine.” His show. Heck, he shouldn't be watching TV anyway. He should be doing homework. Turning off the water, Tasha grabbed up a dish towel and dried her hands as she walked through the house. As she walked past Jonas, she flicked the end of the towel at his head.

“Hey, no fair.”

“Go do your homework,” she said.

“Right after the show, Tasha,” he said, tipping his head back to look up at her. A slow, crooked grin curved his mouth and it had the effect he'd hoped for.

“Okay, ten more minutes.
Then
homework.”

Someone on the porch knocked again, three solid thumps that sounded more like a battering ram than a set of knuckles, and Tasha hurried on. Grabbing the cold brass knob, she gave it a turn and yanked the door open.

Tall, dark, and gorgeous looked back at her. In the yellow glow of the porch light the man's brown eyes gleamed almost like amber. His dark brown hair was wind-ruffled and just the slightest hint of a five o'clock shadow bristled on his lean cheeks. His nose looked like it had been broken at some point in his life, but somehow it added character to his face without making him look menacing.

Of course, how menacing could any man look while wearing loafers with little tassels on them? A
GQ
hit man, maybe? The stray thought had her half-smiling as she asked, “Can I help you?”

Okay, Nick thought,
not
what he'd been expecting. If this was Mimi Castle, then foster mothers had been getting a bad rap for way too many years.

She wasn't very tall. Probably would hit him in the middle of his chest. Thick, wavy hair the color of dark fire framed her face, and sharp green eyes watched him. A truly incredible mouth curved in a secretive smile that almost distracted him from the rest of her. She might be short, but not an inch of her was wasted. Her long-sleeved T-shirt clung to her breasts, then scraped down along her rib cage and tucked in at a narrow waist. Her jeans were worn and faded and dipped low enough at her waist to display her belly button and about an inch of pale skin. Bare feet and silver toe rings completed the picture of easy sensuality.

She was almost enough to make him forget why he was there. Almost. But if she was Mimi, then Jonas
couldn't be far away. Better to get this done and over, misunderstandings cleared up. Then maybe he and Mimi could have dinner or something.

“Hello?” she said, waving one hand back and forth in front of his face. “Earth to intruder.”

“Huh?” He inhaled sharply. “Oh.” Chuckling, he shook his head and gave her his most endearing smile. That slightly crooked grin that had always smoothed rough paths before him.