Inherited: One Baby!

She nodded against his warm, oh-so-solid chest. Being back in his arms felt so good, so right, as if she’d finally come home. Too bad that home was just a dream. The fairy tale the two of them once shared could never be recreated.

Those once-idyllic days had been back when they were lovesick teens. Married at eighteen, only a month after their high school graduation, their marriage lasted a whole five years. At first, it’d been idyllic. With both of them working long hours in their respective family businesses, they hadn’t given a thought to the future aside from what time they’d next make love. For nearly twelve months, that had been enough, but then Jake had wanted more.

The total package—meaning kids.

He knew what kind of mother she’d had. The whole town knew the sad cliché of poor little Candy Jacobs’s mother running off—never to be seen again—with a traveling carpet company rep she’d met at the interior design shop where she worked.

Even before that, though, Valerie Jacobs could hardly have been nominated for mother of the year. She didn’t bake cookies, read bedtime stories or attend school plays. She never cooed over scribbled drawings or A-plus spelling tests, and she certainly never braided her daughter’s hair or shopped hand in hand for the perfect Easter dress. Not that any of that would have even mattered to Candy had she provided the one thing every child craved above all else—love.

No, the worst thing about Valerie Jacobs was that she’d been devoid of feelings for anyone but herself—oh, and of course, for her lovers.

Candy’s dad had tried making up for her mother’s shortcomings with occasional pats on the head and hugs, but he was always busy at work, trying to keep her mother in the finery that only occasionally made her smile.

Years after the fact, Candy had learned that the man her mom had finally run off with hadn’t even been her first affair.

When her father died of a heart attack three days after Valerie’s abandonment, no one had been surprised. They’d just amended the gossip to include the fact that “that Jacobs woman” had quite literally broken her husband’s heart.

When Candy’s grandfather had taken her in, life had been a little sweeter. But the little girl who eventually grew up never forgot the kind of emptiness that lurked inside. After all, half of her blood was Valerie’s, which meant she was destined by DNA to be just as wretched a wife and mom. The only question was when the time bomb ticking inside her would finally go off.

Jake had known all about Candy’s mother. What he hadn’t known—because she’d never told him—was that Candy had no intention of repeating her mother’s mistakes. When Jake began pressuring her to have kids, Candy realized she had already made one disastrous error in ever daring to dream she’d make a good wife. Hurting herself and Jake had been one thing. But her most sacred vow, no matter what, she wouldn’t break. And that was to never, ever become a mother herself. No child deserved the lonely life she’d once led.

Jake softly stroked her hair, so softly that had Candy been a cat, she would have flopped onto her back and purred. Problem was, she wasn’t a cat. She was a flesh-and-blood woman who needed to get on with life.

Life without Jake.

Jake stiffened when Candy pulled away.

After sniffling, she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go all emotional on you. What I meant to say is that if you’d like a pizza, since I’m tonight’s hostess, I’ll buy.”

“Sure,” he said, tucking his hands into his jean’s pockets, warming them because after releasing her, bone-chilling loneliness licked the tips of his fingers. “That sounds good—only I’m paying.”

“Okay,” she said with a wooden nod. “I’ll go call.”

Alone in the comfortable kitchen with its yellow-gingham curtains, hanging copper pots and glowing oak cabinets, Jake felt lost. Out of his comfort zone. His world was modern and sleek. Filled with man stuff. Chrome and leather and women who didn’t even know a kitchen came with their mansions. He’d come here to ask Candy a simple question. What had gone wrong?

In spite of Candy’s confession that, at least in her mind, her reasons for divorcing him had been entirely altruistic, that didn’t mean their main dispute had changed.

He still wanted kids, she didn’t. Period. Not just end of story, end of their story.

If he were smart, he’d walk away.

But he wasn’t smart, he was in love—not with Candy—but Bonnie. And if that made him a fool for love, then so be it.

Gazing around the kitchen, taking in the handmade rag rug hugging the brick floor, the candid photos gracing buttercream-yellow walls, the beams of warm twilight shafting through the paned bay window to kiss the ladder-backed chairs at a round oak table, he realized with a lonely ache that this was the kind of home he’d grown up in.

This was the kind of home he wanted for Bonnie.

Oh, sure, he could have Palm Breeze’s hottest designer turn his house into a carbon copy of Candy’s, but what he couldn’t pay someone to reproduce was the everyday simplicity. The deep-down sweetness.

The scent of painstakingly rubbed lemon oil that did battle with burnt corn dogs and won. The happy gurgle of a fish tank bubbling in the far corner. And from outside the screened windows, faint stirrings of leaves in the trees. Waves lapping at the lakeshore. Kids playing Freeze Tag somewhere down the street.

After all that Jake had achieved, the fortune he’d amassed, this kitchen was the one thing that, in as long as he could remember, felt familiar. Like home. It irked him that just being back in this room, no matter how much in appearances it’d changed, inside, he felt the same way he had walking out for the last time. Like an empty, aimless shell of a man.

Dammit, but he resented Candy for going on with her life and this house without him.

This had been his house as much as hers. His dream as much as hers. And now, seeing how capably she’d managed without him, he felt like an intruder. A failure. And that scared him, for the only thing he’d ever in his whole life failed at was his relationship with her.

How ironic was it that his future with Bonnie depended on his past with his ex-wife?

Just like his dad, he’d always planned on returning home after a long day’s work not to an empty house, but to a home bursting with laughter and life. Kids, dogs, cats, hamsters—Once upon a time Jake had wanted it all, with Candy beside him, hugging him, kissing him, making love to him late into the night until they had to stop because one of their kids was banging on the bedroom door.

“Mommy? Daddy? Can I come in? I had a bad dream.”

Candy would giggle, pulling her simple cotton nightie over her head, past full breasts, slim abdomen and hips. Jake would hop out of bed and yank on his boxers before opening the door to scoop his sleepy rug rat into his arms. For the sake of his daydream he’d call the kid Mark, and he would smell a little sweaty and of cedar shavings—not unlike his pet hamster.

In his mind’s eye, Jake watched himself lug Mark to their bed where he’d wriggle—footie pajamas and all—smack-dab into the middle before promptly falling asleep, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. And then, in milky moonlight, Candy would reach out to him, her husband and best friend, grasp his hand and give it a light squeeze. Without either of them saying a word, Jake would know his every wish had quietly come true.

Back to reality, Jake swallowed hard.

What happened, Candy? What happened between us to make love not be enough?

“Pizza should be here in about forty minutes.”

He looked up.

Even doing something as simple as crossing the room, Candy had such grace. A long time ago she was everything he’d ever wanted and more. That long, silky hair, those even longer legs. When they made love, she’d had this way of wrapping those legs around him, urging him deeper, urging their souls closer, that had nearly made him weep with the sheer joy of being her man.

Now…

Whoa. Now, he just wanted out. Time to regroup.

The woman and her cozy kitchen were dangerous. “Forty minutes, huh? Whew, that’s a long time.”

“Yeah.” At the waist of her simple floral dress, she fumbled with her hands. “Uh, want to watch a movie or something while we wait?”

“No, Candy, I think what we should do is talk.”

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