His Ex's Well-Kept Secret(9)

How could she still be so attracted to him? Why was she desperate to  feel his lips on hers, his hands on her bare skin? Yet she wanted  nothing more than to stand on her tiptoes and rest her lips against his.

Once more, just once...

"That night? Did we-?"

She couldn't allow him to finish the question. She didn't want to lie to  him, so she stopped his words the only way she knew how: she pushed up  onto her toes and slammed her lips on his.

Jaeger pulled away, looked at her in surprise, blinked once, then  grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her back into him. Piper  sighed when his mouth moved against hers, expertly, seductively. Without  thought, she moved closer to him, her hands lifting to hold his strong  neck, her fingers playing with the waves at the back of his head.

She sighed. This was what she'd been missing, dreaming of-enjoying  Jaeger's broad hands on her hips, his erection pushing into her stomach.  Piper made a tiny noise in the back of her throat, and Jaeger dialed  the kiss up from immensely enjoyable to combustible. His tongue swept  into her mouth and his hand on the top of her butt pulled her into him,  so close a piece of paper couldn't have slid between them. His mouth  created havoc on hers, and she felt herself falling into the magical  space she'd visited eighteen months ago.

Jaeger was kissing her-his hand was holding the curve of her butt, his  other hand was holding the back of her head-and he was kissing her with  equal parts skill and desperation.

Then Piper felt one of Jaeger's hands sneak under her shirt, dance over  her skin, and she shivered. His fingers moved slowly up her rib cage and  flirted with the sides of her breasts. His thumb swiped her nipple  through the lace of her bra, and God, he felt so incredibly good...                       
       
           



       

The front door opened. Ceri's "We're home" had Piper jerking away from  Jaeger. Whirling around and stepping away from Jaeger, she looked across  the living room to the front door, to where Ceri stood, Ty on her hip.

Something was wrong, Piper thought, instantly morphing from lover to  mother. She narrowed her eyes. Ty had his head on Ceri's shoulder and he  looked a little pale, almost listless. Ignoring Jaeger, Piper hurried  toward them. Ty saw her and held his arms out, leaning forward, a silent  plea for her to take him. Piper gathered him into her and held his head  against her shoulder. "Hey, baby boy. What's the matter, huh?"

Ceri bit her bottom lip. "I think he might have an earache. He's bumping  his hand against his ear. He doesn't have a fever, but he's not  himself." Ceri looked at her watch and grimaced. "I need to go, but call  me if I can help or if he gets worse."

"Thanks, Ceri."

Ceri closed the front door behind her as Piper held the back of her hand  to Ty's forehead, to his cheek. Ceri was right, he didn't have a fever,  but his eyes seemed dull. She cuddled him close and rocked on her feet,  inhaling his little boy smell, feeling his breath against her neck.

"Love you to the moon and back," she murmured, her hand rubbing circles on his back. "My beautiful, beautiful, boy."

"Everything okay?"

The deep voice drifted over, and Piper spun around. Jaeger pressed his  shoulder into the door frame of the den, his face inscrutable. Her boy  got all his beauty from his father, she thought again. Piper rested her  cheek on Ty's head. "Ty isn't feeling too well."

"So he's yours and doesn't belong to the kids downstairs?"

"Yep." Being Ty's mommy wasn't something she could keep secret, even if  she wanted to. Being a mother, Ty's mother, was her biggest achievement.  Everything-her master's degree in art history, her pre-Ty career,  traveling the world looking at great art-paled to insignificance beside  the importance of raising her son.

"So, who was the young guy?"

"Ceri and Rainn are twins. Ceri is my nanny, but Rainn also helps out.  They live in the apartment downstairs," Piper replied, pulling a curl  from Ty's fist. "In between being a nanny, she works as an illustrator  for children's books. Rainn is studying medicine. I give them a kick-ass  subsidy on their rent and they look after Ty when I need to work. They  have six brothers and sisters, all a lot younger than them, and their  parents also take in foster kids. They've taught me more about babies  than I've learned from books."

Piper looked at her watch. She needed to feed and bathe Ty. She and Ty  had a schedule, and Jaeger's presence messed with her routine and  with-well-her head.

She'd just kissed the hell out of her baby's daddy in her den. What was wrong with her?

Uh, sexy guy, good kisser, been a long drought?

She needed to give Ty her full attention. He was, thank God, the easiest  child on the planet, but he was rarely sick. She felt a surge of panic  hit the back of her throat. He was just a little off-color right now and  if he became sicker, she could handle it. That was why God made drugs  and doctor's offices. She was in Brooklyn, dammit, not in a shack in  outer Mongolia.

Piper picked up a soft toy from out of Ty's playpen, handed it to Ty and closed her eyes.

Needing some space and distance between her and Jaeger, she patted Ty's  bottom. "I need to change him." She darted a look at Jaeger and silently  cursed when she saw he was as cool and composed as he always was, like  he hadn't had a wild woman sucking the life out of him just a few  moments before. "Can you let yourself out?"

Jaeger's eyes bounced between her and Ty, and he eventually nodded his head. "Yeah." He gestured to Ty. "I hope he'll be okay."

"He'll be fine," Piper said. Piper looked at her feet before forcing her  eyes back to Jaeger's. She glanced at his mouth, sighed and wished he'd  kiss her again.

No kissing Jaeger, she told herself. This was a complicated situation as  it was. She didn't need to add a truckload of sexual tension to the  growing pile of craziness.                       
       
           



       

"Look," she said, "I think we need to forget that kiss, pretend it never happened."

Jaeger slowly shook his head. "Not an option. There are too many things  I've already forgotten. I'm not adding kissing you to that list."





Four

In his West Street penthouse, Jaeger rolled out of his empty bed and  padded to the kitchen, glancing at the Hudson River through the massive  windows that were a key feature of the apartment. This place was  ridiculously big for one person, but he liked returning to light and  space and quiet after his trips abroad.

A lot of light, space and quiet, Jaeger thought. Thanks, Uncle Connor.

Connor had left everything he owned to his four adopted children,  including property and equal shares in Ballantyne International, with  its many subsidiaries, the most important of which were the exclusive  jewelry stores around the world. Their childhood home, a brownstone on  the Upper East Side, was also jointly owned by the four of them, but he  and Beckett retained their own residences. Beckett had offered his place  to family friends from London visiting the city for a month, so he was  temporarily living in Jaeger's apartment. Jaeger didn't mind. It wasn't  like he didn't have the room.

He liked this apartment, but its designer perfection was wasted on him.  He was hardly here, and it felt sterile and cold. He preferred Piper's  relaxed bohemian style, a mishmash of old and new furniture, interesting  art and the ordinary household items indicating people used the space,  lived and loved there. An open book, a corked wine bottle, magnets on  the fridge, a playpen in the corner...

God, she had a kid.

He'd met her yesterday, so he couldn't exactly ask, but Jaeger wondered  who Ty's father was and whether he was in the picture. Were they  together when he and Piper had dinner in Milan? Piper didn't seem like  the type to cheat on her man, but Jaeger knew how wrong he could be when  he made assumptions.

He'd thought Jess would live past six weeks, never imagined she'd be a  victim of sudden infant death syndrome. He'd assumed he and Andrea  needed time to grieve and they'd find their way back to each other.

And he'd never believed that he could forget a chunk of his life.

God, he'd been so lucky. What if he'd forgotten more? What if he'd had  no memories of his parents, his childhood, Connor... God, no memories of  Jess? As it always did when he thought too long about his amnesia,  panic bubbled and boiled. It was a couple of months of his life lost,  but to Jaeger, it was symbolic of everything that went away.

Like his parents, Jess, Connor...those memories were inaccessible.

His body had healed quickly, but his mind hadn't. He coped with the  uncertainty by minimizing risk, particularly in his personal life. No  relationships, no kids, no connections. He was never going to bring  someone new into his life, since life had this habit of whisking away  the people he loved.