Little Secrets. Maureen Child

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СКАЧАТЬ right into Jack. Every muscle in Jack’s body tensed until he deliberately relaxed, caught the kid by the shoulders to keep him from falling and said, “You should watch where you’re running.”

      “Sorry, mister.” The kid jerked his head back, swinging his long blond hair out of his eyes.

      “It’s okay,” Jack said, releasing both the boy and the sharp jolt of adrenaline still pumping inside him. “Just watch it.”

      “Right. Gotta go.” The boy took off, headed for the beach and the pier at the end of the street.

      Jack remembered, vaguely, what it had been like to be ten years old with a world of summer stretched out ahead of you. With the sun beating down on him and a sea breeze dancing past, Jack could almost recapture the sensation of complete freedom that everyone lost as they grew up. Frowning at his own thoughts, he concentrated again on the crowd and realized it had been a couple of months since he’d been in Seal Beach.

      A small beach community, it lay alongside Long Beach where he lived and worked, but Jack didn’t make a habit of coming here. Memories were thick and he tended to avoid them, because remembering wouldn’t get him a damn thing. But against his will, images filled his mind.

      Last December, he’d been on R and R. He’d had two weeks to return to his life, see his family and decompress. He’d spent the first few days visiting his father, brother and sister, then he’d drawn back, pulling into himself. He’d come to the beach then, walking the sand at night, letting the sea whisper to him. Until the night he’d met her.

      A beautiful woman, alone on the beach, the moonlight caressing her skin, shining in her hair until he’d almost convinced himself she wasn’t real. Until she turned her head and gave him a cautious smile.

      She should have been cautious. A woman alone on a dark beach. Rita Marchetti had been smart enough to be careful and strong enough to be friendly. They’d talked, he remembered, there in the moonlight and then met again the following day and the day after that. The remainder of his leave, he’d spent with her, and every damn moment of that time was etched into his brain in living, vibrant color. He could hear the sound of her voice. The music of her laughter. He saw the shine in her eyes and felt the silk of her touch.

      “And you’ve been working for months to forget it,” he reminded himself in a mutter. “No point in dredging it up now.”

      What they’d found together all those months ago was over now. There was no going back. He’d made a promise to himself. One he intended to keep. Never again would he put himself in the position of loss and pain and he wouldn’t ever be close enough to someone else that his loss would bring pain.

      It was a hard lesson to learn, but he had learned it in the hot, dry sands of a distant country. And that lesson haunted him to this day. Enough that just walking through this crowd made him edgy. There was an itch at the back of his neck and it took everything he had not to give in to the urge to get out. Get away.

      But Jack Buchanan didn’t surrender to the dregs of fear, so he kept walking, made himself notice the everyday world pulsing around him. Along the street, a pair of musicians were playing for the crowd and the dollar bills tossed into an open guitar case. Shop owners had tables set up outside their storefronts to entice customers and farther down the street, a line snaked from a bakery’s doors all along the sidewalk.

      He hadn’t been downtown in months, so he’d never seen the bakery before. Apparently, though, it had quite the loyal customer base. Dozens of people—from teenagers to career men and women waited patiently to get through the open bakery door. As he got closer, amazing scents wafted through the air and he understood the crowds gathering. Idly, Jack glanced through the wide, shining front window at the throng within, then stopped dead as an all too familiar laugh drifted to him.

      Everything inside Jack went cold and still. He hadn’t heard that laughter in months, but he’d have known it anywhere. Throaty, rich, it made him think of long, hot nights, silk sheets and big brown eyes staring up into his in the darkness.

      He’d tried to forget her. Had, he’d thought, buried the memories; yet now, they came roaring back, swamping him until Jack had to fight for breath.

      Even as he told himself it couldn’t be her, Jack was bypassing the line and stalking into the bakery. He followed the sound of that laugh as if it were a trail of breadcrumbs. He had to know. Had to see.

      “Hey, dude,” a surfer with long dark hair told him, “end of the line’s back a ways.”

      “I’m not buying anything,” he growled out and sent the younger man a look icy enough to freeze blood. Must have worked because the guy went quiet and gave a half shrug.

      But Jack had already moved on. He was moving through the scattering of tables and chairs, sliding through the throng of people clustered in front of a wide, tall glass display case. Conversations rose and fell all around him. The cheerful jingle of the old-fashioned cash register sounded out every purchase as if celebrating. But Jack wasn’t paying attention. His sharp gaze swept across the people in the shop, looking for the woman he’d never thought to see again.

      Then that laugh came again and he spun around like a wolf finding the scent of its mate. Gaze narrowed, heartbeat thundering in his ears, he spotted her—and everything else in the room dropped away.

      Rita Marchetti. He took a breath and simply stared at her for what felt like forever. Her smile was wide and bright, her gaze focused on customers who laughed with her. What the hell was she doing in a bakery in Seal Beach, California, when she lived in Ogden, Utah? And why did she have to look so damn good?

      He watched her, smiling and laughing with a customer as she boxed what looked like a couple dozen cookies, then deftly tied a white ribbon around the tall red box. Her hands were small and efficient. Her eyes were big and brown and shone with warmth. Her shoulder-length curly brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the base of her neck and swung like a pendulum with her every movement.

      Her skin was golden—all over, as he had reason to know—her mouth was wide and full, and though she was short, her figure was lush. His memories were clear enough that every drop of blood in his body dropped to his groin, leaving him light-headed...briefly. In an instant, though, all of that changed and a surge of differing emotions raced through him. Pleasure at seeing her again, anger at being faced with a past he’d already let go of and desire that was so hot, so thick, it grabbed him by the throat and choked off his air.

      The heat of his gaze must have alerted her. She looked up and across the crowd, locking her gaze with his. Her eyes went wide, her amazing mouth dropped open and she lifted one hand to the base of her throat as if she, too, was having trouble breathing. Gaze still locked with his, she walked away from the counter, came around the display case and though Jack braced himself for facing her again—nothing could have prepared him for what he saw next.

      She was pregnant.

      Very pregnant.

      Her belly was big, rounded and covered by a skintight, bright yellow T-shirt. The hem of her white capris ended just below her knees and she wore slip-on sneakers in a yellow bright enough to match her shirt.

      He saw and noted all of that in a split second before he focused again on her rounded belly. Jack’s heartbeat galloped in his chest as he lifted his eyes to meet hers. He had a million questions and didn’t have time to nail down a single one before, in spite of the crowd watching them, Rita threw herself into his arms.

      “Jack!” She hugged him hard, then СКАЧАТЬ