Her Secret, His Child

She wasn’t sure where this was leading, but she was suddenly scared. Too scared to run. Too scared to move when John took a step closer.

“It was raining that night,” he said.

His voice was still soft, but Jamie trembled anew when she heard the lilt of victory in his tone. He advanced another step.

She was confused now, doubting herself. And if she’d had anything to do with the illness that had finally taken her mother’s life, she didn’t care if John hit her. She didn’t care if he killed her.

“Your mother was exposed to that rain when she had to walk the half mile to a phone, then wait there for me to come bail her out of her troubles again,” John said. His hands were still in his pockets, but the muscles in his forearms were bunched.

His dark hair left menacing shadows on his forehead.

“The next day, as you know, she came down with a cold that led quickly to the pneumonia that killed her.”

Jamie stared at him. Horror made her sick, weak. Surely she couldn’t be blamed for the rain! Or the run-down state of her mother’s car.

“If you hadn’t been at the library, forcing Sadie out in the first place, she’d never have been exposed to that rain at all.”

“But...”

“Or if you’d found another way home, a friend maybe, like most teenagers do, rather than relying on your mother all the time, she wouldn’t have been out in that rain.”

“But...” Desperate to end this nightmare, to be certain she wasn’t to blame for her beloved mother’s death, Jamie meant to tell John that if he’d only kept her mother’s car in better shape, Sadie wouldn’t have had to worry about the rain. But she never got the chance.

“Or—” he took another step “—if you’d called sooner, before seven, when she left to pick you up, none of this would have happened.”

He was right. Dammit, he was right. She’d been so caught up in her reading that she hadn’t noticed the time. Her mother always got her from the library at 7:30; it was a standing arrangement. Jamie should have called earlier, saved her the trip.

John took another small step, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket.

Jamie shrank back.

SHIVERING, Jamie clutched her stomach with both arms, her gaze darting frantically around her cheery kitchen, trying to connect with the present, to bring herself back. To hold on. But the memories just kept right on coming, right on hurting....

“YOU’RE LUCKY I’m willing to keep you, considering what you’ve done.”

John’s soft voice penetrated Jamie’s numb mind. So filled with guilt was she that for a second or two she almost believed him.

She saw his hand coming toward her, braced herself for a blow to the side of her head.

And felt a gentle caress, instead. His hand stroked from the top of her bent head, moving slowly down to her chin, lifting her face to look at him. And suddenly Jamie knew fear like she’d never known before.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her cheeks when she encountered the hot fire of lust in her stepfather’s eyes.

“You took my companion from me,” John whispered. “A man has needs, natural, powerful needs.”

Unable to make a sound, shaking convulsively, Jamie just stared at him in horror. God. No. Not this. Let him beat me to death. Let him stick a gun to my head. But not this.

“Wouldn’t look right for me to search out another woman to take to my bed, not so soon after your mother.” His caress continued slowly downward, along the length of her neck.

She stood frozen beneath his touch, completely unprepared.

“So you see how lucky it is that I don’t have to search. You took her from me.” His hand reached her collarbone, his fingers sliding inside the neckline of her sweatshirt.

Jamie flinched. And just that quickly, the caress became brutal, a vicelike grip bruising her collarbone as John pulled her closer.

“The very least you can do after depriving me of my wife is to take her place yourself.”

“No!” Her scream tore past the constriction in her throat. She was burning up. Sick. And freezing, too.

“Yes.” John bit the word out through clenched teeth as he planted his other hand firmly on her breast.

A part of Jamie just evaporated as her stepfather’s big hand kneaded her soft flesh roughly, touching her where she’d never been touched before. Where he should never have been touching.

His eyes gleamed, almost glassy with lust. Still holding her in a bruising grip, he moved his hand to her other breast. “Oh, yes, I’m going to like this,” he murmured.

And almost before she knew it was happening, he’d pushed up the hem of her sweatshirt, ripping her bra in his hurry to get to her naked flesh.

“Nooooo!” Jamie screamed. She yanked away from him, not caring if he broke her neck with his violent grip.

“Get back here, you little bitch!” He grabbed her hair, his fingers tangling in the tightly wrapped curls, wrenching her back to him. “You owe me, and I’m going to have you.”

Only if he killed her first.

Filled with a strength she wasn’t aware she possessed, with a purpose that hadn’t been there seconds before, Jamie suddenly knew exactly what to do. John was too busy groping her again, too caught up in his crazed lust, to be wary. With one perfectly aimed swipe she kneed him squarely between his legs.

And ran for her life.

CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING BACK, Jamie wasn’t sure just when she’d made the wrong turn, which decision had been the one that catapulted her from a damaged childhood into a hellish life. Though she desperately didn’t want it to be so, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she’d always been tainted; maybe there’d never been any question as to what course her life would take.

Lord knows, she’d tried to be moral, to do what was right. She’d tried to make the proper decisions, to search out the best choices available to her. There just hadn’t seemed to be much to choose from.

Leaning her head against the kitchen cupboard, she closed her eyes, wishing that sleep would come. The night was already half over. And there she sat, a full nine years after she’d last seen John Archer, still alone, still frightened.

Had it been wrong to run? Slowly shaking her head, Jamie couldn’t believe that running wasn’t her only choice. She’d run to Las Vegas. Because it was close. And because she knew enough about the city to realize that if there was any place in the United States that she had a chance of not being found, it was in the city that never slept. Where “no questions asked” was an accepted standard.

She’d left her purse on the front table when she’d come in from the funeral that day and had grabbed it again on her way out. She had enough money for a couple of nights’ cheap lodging, but other than that, she was broke. She’d tried to get a job immediately. Had spent two days answering every want ad she could find. She was a high-school dropout, though, and the most anyone offered her was a fast-food position that didn’t pay enough to cover rent and expenses—let alone any extra to cover the education she’d need to better herself.

Jamie studied the uneven grain in the cupboard across from her. Maybe she should have known when she’d visited the community college, passed the entrance exams without her diploma and applied for scholarship money that she was reaching too high. The guidance counselor she’d seen had tried to tell her, suggesting Jamie go home to John, apologize, ask him to take her back until she finished high school. She was told to save her money and move out when she’d established herself, became “independent”

Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong, Jamie thought now. She hadn’t listened.

But she couldn’t possibly have returned home as the counselor had encouraged her to. Nor could she have begged her stepfather to take her back. What he’d asked of her had been wrong. Very, very wrong. And illegal.

The possibilities floundered in her weary mind, a cacophony of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. Still, she’d known even then that she couldn’t have gone to the authorities for help. After thirteen years of silence, of John’s generous example to the community, of his breaking down her own credibility, who’d have believed her? And what if they had? Could she really have faced her stepfather across a courtroom? Could she have told a roomful of strangers, of reporters, what he’d done to her?

But more, could she have hidden herself from John? After thirteen years of living with the man, of witnessing his diabolical abilities, she knew that even the witness protection program wouldn’t have been able to keep him from finding her if she’d turned traitor on him. And that was exactly how he’d see it; what was self-protection to her would seem betrayal to him.