Raising the Soldier's Son(11)

“You know. Spider bites. Tummy aches. The usual.”

She grinned. “You wanted to be a small town doctor, huh? Missing the glamour of your New York hospital rotation?”

“Not one bit, I assure you.” He thought back to those maddening sleepless weeks, the devastating injuries he’d helped patch back together. The ones he couldn’t. He’d take common colds over gunshot eleven year olds any day.

Jeanie wandered over, a plate of ribs in her hand. “You want anything, Beth?”

“No, thanks, Jeanie.” She couldn’t eat. She could hardly speak. Her stomach seemed to be filled with butterflies, her face aching with the smile that was stretched across her cheeks.

They looked like a couple, sitting there, chatting about their weekends. Two friends, casually shooting the breeze. But Kirk was attuned to every nuance of Annabeth’s body. He saw the way her legs were crossed beneath the table, and the Doctor’s legs stretched out to lightly touch them. He saw the way she was so relaxed with him. So encouraging. He could have punched something.

“You don’t own her, you know.” Emma, leaning against the bar, was watching him with all the shrewd powers of observation he was employing to study Annabeth.

He’d liked Emma, back in school. She’d always been Annabeth’s tail, following her around. Annabeth hadn’t been like the other girls on the cheer squad. She hadn’t cared that Emma was small and pale, that her interests lay in the arts, and the academic. Annabeth had never been into that high school crap. She might have been homecoming queen and a popular cheerleader, but she’d been sweet and kind too. He sighed. She still was.

“The same can’t be the said for me,” he muttered darkly. “You just gonna stand there, or can I get a beer?”

Emma raised her brows, moving to pull him a drink from the ice cold taps. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

That Beth owned him now every bit as much as she ever had. He sighed restlessly. “Nothing. So what’s going on with them, anyway?”

“What do you think this is, Kirk? We’re, like, friends or something? That I’m going to talk about my best friend with you?”

“I admire your loyalty, Emma. But you don’t need to protect her from me. I’m not here to hurt her.”

“Yes, you are. You can’t help hurting her.”

He hoped, rather than knew, that Emma was wrong. “You’re going to have to put up with me for a while. I’m sticking around this time.”

It was a reasonably impulsive decision, borne out of the discovery that he had a son.

“Yeah, right,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

Kirk brought the foaming drink to his lips and drank it gratefully. His eyes stayed on Annabeth and Dan. She was listening intently to something he was saying. Her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but he could sure as hell see the way the doctor was looking at her. Eyes that were practically drinking her up. He recognized the expression. It was very familiar to him.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she stood, and walked, smilingly, back to the bar. She visibly startled to see Kirk sitting on a stool. “Oh! You’re still here?” Her cheeks suffused with color. “I didn’t know.”

“Yes. I’m still here.” His eyes held a challenge and an accusation, and Annabeth looked guiltily in Dan’s direction.

There were only a handful of patrons left at The Whistlestop, as well as Emma, who Annabeth suspected was not going to be easy to shake. “You wanted to know about Wade?”

Kirk tried to calm his temper. It was a hang up from his tour. Rage, swift and sharp, sometimes came over him. The Navy had taught all the returning officers techniques to deal with it. He took a long, slow breath, and focused on Annabeth’s eyes. They were watching him, thoughtfully, curiously.

“Yeah. I want to know about Wade,” he agreed with a nod.

“Okay.” She threw Emma a self-conscious smile. “Let me just get Muddy a drink and I’ll be right back.” She moved down the bar and topped the last of the regulars up.

Emma, following behind, send Annabeth a mutinous look. Annabeth couldn’t help but laugh in response. “Oh, Em. Come on. We’ve already talked about this. You don’t need to worry about me so much, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, throwing her slender hands up in exasperation. “I’m telling you, he’s bad news for you.”

“You might be right. But he’s Wade’s father,” she whispered pointedly. “He wants to know about his son. And I’m going to tell him. You can come sit with us, if you’re worried anything’s going to happen?”

“Like your chaperone?”

“Sure, if you want to pretend we’ve slipped between the pages of a Jane Austen novel,” Annabeth teased with a wink.

Emma was torn. On the one hand, she wanted to keep her friend from making any stupid mistakes with Kirk. On the other hand, she was too furious at him to sit down and act like everything was okay. Like he hadn’t broken Annabeth’s heart callously and intentionally; like he wasn’t poised to do it all over again. She eyed her friend dubiously. “You can handle yourself, I suppose.” It was a grudging admission. “Just… try to remember what that time in your life was like. I know he’s gorgeous and charming, and that you’re probably still a little bit in love with him. But no good would come of it. Be careful.”

A warning that was about an hour too late, Annabeth thought with a wistful twist of her lips. Still, she didn’t feel regret. Just sensual pleasure. She looked back down the bar. Kirk was watching her. His eyes were possessively surveying her body, and it felt as though he was actually touching her skin. She felt goose bumps cover her arms, a warm heat trickled down her spine. His gaze was magnetic. It pulled her to him. Slowly, without looking away, she walked behind the bar, back to Kirk.

“Hey,” she whispered, leaning against the countertop, so they were as close as they could be without arousing suspicion.

“Hey yourself,” his eyes raked her face, landing on her soft, parted lips and lingering there.

Her skin flushed, her stomach clenched, and her moist heart was slicked anew with need. Her voice, when she spoke, was breathy. “So, what did you want to know?”

“Everything,” he said simply. “What’s his full name?”

She took a sip of his beer. “Wade Kirk Sparks.”

“You’re surname?”

She nodded. “No one knows about you. Except Emma.”

“Not even the good doctor?”

“No. No one.”

“Your dad?”

She rolled her eyes and spoke deliberately slow. “No. One.” She put his beer back down. “My dad wouldn’t have cared that you were in the middle of a war zone. I’m pretty sure he’d still have flown over and kicked your ass.”

Kirk slanted her an amused smile. Horace Sparks might have had the heart of a lion, but he had the stature of a mouse.

“Tried to kick your ass,” she amended, feeling immediately disloyal.

“So who does everyone think is the father?”

She shrugged. “Most people have been polite enough not to ask.”

Kirk’s masculine face showed his emotion. Guilt lanced him, sharp and hard. Clearview was a small town. The gossipmongers would have had a field day, whispering about her fall from grace. Annabeth Sparks had led a charmed life. Beautiful, interesting, intelligent; always destined to go far. And she’d dropped out of college and returned home, pregnant and alone. Yes, she must have suffered at the hands of community ninnies. And that was his fault too. He shook his head. “If I’d known…” his voice was a hoarse whisper.

Beth didn’t want to go down the path of ‘if only’. It could only lead to more hurt. Remembered pain. Recriminations that served no purpose in being rehashed. “But you didn’t.” Her smile was over-bright. “Wade loves ice cream. Especially strawberry. And Oreos. I only let him have them once a week, on Sunday afternoons, but I suspect Cassandra feeds them to him behind my back.”

“Cassandra, your old babysitter?”

She nodded. “The very same.”

Kirk could have listened to her talk about Wade all night. All the silly things like his favorite colors and how much he loved the beach. They didn’t scratch the surface though. Not really. Kirk left The Whistlestop with a pain in his chest for the life he could have been leading, if only he had loved Annabeth less.

CHAPTER FIVE

“But I only like the drumsticks, mama.” If Wade’s lower lip jutted out any further, he was at risk of being mistaken for a porch.

“I know they’re your favorite. But mama’s, er, friend is coming for dinner tonight, and you know it’s good manners to offer our guest food first.”

“I don’t want to have dinner with someone else. Especially not if he’s gonna nab all the best bits.”

Annabeth concentrated on stirring the gravy to hide the smile that was playing about her lips. “Honey, he might not want the drumstick. I want you to use your good manners tonight, okay?”

“No.”

Annabeth shook her head wearily. Doctor Dan had assured her the ‘terrible twos’ would pass. But they’d lasted through Wade’s third year, and now into his fourth. Horace had marveled at his grandson’s fiercely determined streak. “You were a pushover, Beth. I don’t know where he gets this from.”