Bring On The Night

“Look, Mom, there are cows!”

“Yes, there are, Henry,” she replied as they neared a pasture where more Herefords grazed.

“There are horses, too, Henry. I’ll let you ride one this evening,” Jonah said.

“You will?”

Henry’s voice was filled with so much eagerness and anticipation that Kate looked back at him again. His eyes were wide and sparkling. “I get to ride a horse,” he said to her in awe, and she was saddened. Had she cheated Henry badly by keeping his father from him?

She had never thought about Jonah as being a super father, because she’d never thought about him being present enough to be any kind of a dad to a child. He had seemed so wrapped up in his military life that she had never expected him to be deeply interested in a family. Had she been wrong? And had she denied not only Jonah, but Henry as well?

“Look, there’s a barn!” Henry exclaimed.

Jonah took out a cell phone and called someone, and in seconds she realized he was talking to one of his ranch hands, telling him that he would be staying the night on the ranch and he had brought guests.

She listened as Henry bounced in the seat with excitement, and Jonah made arrangements for a gentle horse to be brought up to the corral.

She ran her hand across her head. This was a bonanza for her and for Henry in so many ways, yet at the same time she was putting her heart and her future in jeopardy. She looked at Jonah and drew a deep breath. Handsome, commanding, he was too many appealing things. If he turned out to be a loving, attentive father for Henry, she knew he would be just that much more irresistible to her. And she knew full well that he was still the same risk-taker he had always been, the same man who lived life on the edge and didn’t mind wading into a fight to help someone even when doing so put him in jeopardy.

When Jonah led them into a house large enough to be a mansion, Henry’s eyes were wide. He became quiet, and she was certain that he was awed by the enormous new home where they would live. She was a little awed herself.

“Wow! Mom, are we going to stay here?” he asked in his childish voice.

“Yes, you are,” Jonah answered before she could.

Her astonishment grew when they strolled into a large kitchen with a living area at one end of the room. Elegant glass-fronted oak cabinets, above a limestone floor and state-of-the-art, built-in appliances, looked wonderful to her. An adjoining eating area held a rectangular oak table and ten ladder-back chairs. A china vase filled with silk flowers was centered on the table. The house reflected the wealth of the previous owner, and she could hardly believe that it now belonged to Jonah.

“This is huge,” she exclaimed. “You’ll need a maid to keep it.”

“Actually, one comes with the place,” Jonah replied quietly.

“Jonah, this is fabulous! What an enormous inheritance.”

“Yeah, I was shocked, too, Kate. All we did was accomplish our mission.”

“You saved the man’s life.”

“That’s what I was supposed to do. All three of us have been in shock over our inheritance.”

Henry had gone to the window to look outside, so was out of earshot when Kate turned to Jonah. “You’re handsome and now you’re wealthy, Jonah. Women are going to be interested in you. Won’t we be in your way here?”

“Nope. If we need to make adjustments or other arrangements, we can,” he said, gazing steadily back at her. When he did, she could feel the air ignite between them.

In spite of all the arguments, their opposing views, his fury today and her determination to remain detached, the sparks were still there, as volatile and hot as ever. Her own gaze was locked onto his dark, enigmatic eyes. She couldn’t catch her breath or look away, and although she hated it, she had to admit that part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him endlessly.

At the same time, another part wanted to resist with every ounce of her being. She didn’t want to look at Jonah and be set ablaze with desire, or touch him and ignite a firestorm of longing. Yet there was no mistaking what she was caught up in and unable to stop any more than she could stop breathing.

It was obvious that he was feeling sparks, too, and fighting his emotions as much as she was, because a muscle worked in his jaw and his fists were clenched again. Breaking eye contact, he turned abruptly, and she let out her breath.

“How can we live under one roof?” she asked softly.

“Damn easily,” he snapped, turning back, and this time his eyes flashed with a different fire. She knew instinctively that anger was his protection from the sparks that danced between them, just as shock had been her barrier the first hour with him. Swiftly, her shock at seeing him was wearing off, now that he knew the truth concerning Henry, and she had no shield except logic and determination, which was a weak buffer against the appeal that Jonah held for her.

“All I have to do is look at my son and I know I want you here,” Jonah said. “You’re part of Henry. It would hurt him to be taken from you, Kate. If it didn’t hurt him, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

Jonah’s words cut into her like a knife, yet she knew she deserved them, and she could understand his hurt and anger. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Henry walked around the room, looking at everything and then returning to Kate’s side. “This is a big house.”

“Yes, it is.”

“C’mon, Henry,” Jonah said, hoisting Henry to his shoulders. “I’ll show you around.”

Henry clung tightly to Jonah, and for an instant Kate wondered if he was frightened. But then she saw his grin and realized he liked being on Jonah’s shoulders. When he had been a toddler, her father had carried him that way. By the time Henry was three years old, her father hadn’t been able to do so, and Henry probably didn’t even remember that he ever had.

She saw that Henry was going to take to Jonah completely. Her son had missed having a father, and now not only was Jonah concerned about him, he could also enrich his life as well as become a role model for him.

She trailed after Jonah and Henry as they entered an opulent family room with rough, hand-hewn beams across the sixteen-foot-high ceiling. The furniture was dark wood, with the chairs and sofas covered in brown leather. The plank floor gleamed with polish, and a massive slate fireplace filled one end of the room. The pavilion-style space had a great view of a swimming pool and surrounding terrace.

“Oh, my!” Kate exclaimed, looking at the beautiful, sparkling water behind a black, wrought-iron grill. “I’m glad there’s a fence around the pool,” she said. “Henry doesn’t swim.”

“Don’t worry, Kate. He’ll be all right and the fence is sturdy,” Jonah said.

She turned her attention to the family room. “The house looks old, but they must have done it over in recent years,” she observed, gazing at a built-in entertainment center and a bar at one end of the room.

“It looks that way,” Jonah replied. “None of us knew John Frates very well, and our total knowledge of him involved his being a hostage.”

She crossed the room to a credenza. “Someone liked elegant antique furniture,” she said. “This period piece is beautiful.”

“The lawyer told me they had a decorator do the house. You can pick a bedroom, Kate, and select one for Henry. There are twelve bedrooms and eight bathrooms in this place—one bedroom downstairs and the rest upstairs. I’ve already decided to take the master bedroom.”

“That’s fine, Jonah. It doesn’t matter,” she replied. Only it did matter. She needed a bedroom a mile away from him.

He swung Henry to the floor and she watched the flex of taut muscles in his arms and back as his shirt stretched tightly across his shoulders.

“We’re going to live here, Mommy?” Henry asked in a subdued voice, and she wondered if he was overwhelmed by the house.

“Yes, we are for a while.”

He looked at the window. “There’s a swimming pool,” he said quietly, casting a worried glance at Jonah.

“Yes, and you’ll get to go in it sometime, when one of us is with you,” she said. “Right now, let’s look around the house so we’ll know where things are.”

He stayed close by her side as they went through a formal living room, and Jonah watched him, thinking he was too quiet for a little boy and wondering if his shyness was because of his new father’s presence.

The moment Kate stepped inside the living room, she gasped. “Look at this, Jonah! That looks like a marble Chippendale chimney piece. My word, I wonder where he got this and what it cost!” she exclaimed, crossing the room to look at the ornate mantel.

“You’d know more about that than I do,” Jonah remarked dryly, watching her hips sway, desire still burning in him in spite of all his efforts to fight it.