Warm and sated from their lovemaking. Her pale, pale skin like porcelain.
It had been one night. One extraordinary night almost five years ago. And now he was a father? Why hadn’t Nikki told him? Or was this all just a misunderstanding? Even as he tried to rationalize her behavior, he couldn’t get past the anonymous emails that were eventually passed on to his brother.
Despite Joshua’s insistence that a baby existed with Lowell blood, Jake was by nature a suspicious man. Being betrayed by his father had taught him not to trust easily.
The rear car door opened, and Nikki helped the child into her car seat. Though Emma had been chattering excitedly, she fell silent when she spotted the stranger up front. Her eyes were green. That meant nothing. The color could have been from her mother as easily as from Jake’s DNA. But the girl’s blond hair was nothing like her mother’s.
Jake wanted to say hello. The word stuck in his throat. Instead, he gave the kid a quick nod and turned back toward the front. He wanted to stare at Emma. To examine her from head to toe. To see if there was anything of him in her. But he didn’t want to make the child uncomfortable. No point in both of them feeling weird.
Back at Nikki’s house, Nikki lowered her voice as she parked the car. “I usually give her a snack, and then she’ll go play in her room for half an hour or so. You and I can talk then.”
Jake nodded brusquely, not entirely sure what he wanted to say. Crazy revelations were popping up in his life like rodents in an upsetting game of whack-a-mole. His father was alive. Nikki had a kid. The child was Jake’s? It was too much to process.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as the unlikely threesome walked across the lawn into the house. Once inside, Jake escaped into the small living room with a muttered excuse. Even at this distance, he could hear mother and daughter in the kitchen debriefing Emma’s day at school. When Nikki finally returned, she looked tired, but resigned.
She took a chair across from him and gracefully curled her legs beneath her. Her steady green-eyed gaze and long, wavy red hair made him clench his fists as an unwelcome wave of desire swept through him. He remembered burying his face in that hair. Inhaling the scent of her shampoo. Feeling for a brief moment in time as if everything in his world had finally popped into sharp focus.
In his early twenties, he had loved her with a ferocity that was equal parts lust and devotion. He’d been waiting for her to grow up. His nightly fantasies had featured Nikki, and no one else. But just when his desire had almost come to fruition, both of their worlds had been torn apart.
Running into each other in Atlantic City a decade later had been a shock to his system. The very best kind of shock. Even now, his hands tingled with the need to touch her. But, in the end, he had been wary of the new Nikki, unable to handle how together she was, how grown up. She hadn’t been a frightened teenager anymore. She had moved on. And she knew exactly who she was.
The new Nikki had been even more appealing than the girl he remembered. But the changes spooked him, as did the depth of his feelings, so he ran. The same way he had so many times before.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll ask you again. Is it true? Is Emma my daughter?”
Nikki paled, making her skin almost translucent. “You weren’t making sense earlier. I don’t know why you’re here. What does your brother have to do with this?”
“Don’t be coy, Nikki. You sent Zane DNA results and notes that threatened Joshua. But Josh eventually concluded that he couldn’t possibly have fathered a four-year-old child. So that left me. His twin. Why did you try to blackmail my brother and not me?”
As he watched, Nikki’s lower lip trembled, and her eyes glistened with tears. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, and I don’t appreciate your accusations. If that’s all you have to say, Jake Lowell, you can get the hell out of my house.”
A tiny voice intruded. “You told me not to say that word, Mommy.”
Both adults jumped. Emma stood in the doorway, visibly distressed.
Nikki swiped a hand across her face, drying her eyes. “You’re right, baby. Mommy goofed. I’m sorry.”
Jake