Sweet Child of Mine. Jean Brashear

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СКАЧАТЬ so. He made his living reading people—in court, in depositions, in the confidences they shared with him. He also knew the value of silence. “I’ve got pretty broad shoulders and a willing ear to spare.”

      When her gaze flickered over him, measuring those shoulders, Michael felt an answering response, and the strength of it surprised him. Well, all right, it wasn’t like he’d never looked at her as a woman. But most of the time she was a pain in the behind, always involved in some cause or other, always trying to push for the city to pitch in, always impatient with the pace of bureaucracy.

      But he had noticed she was female. She was slender though definitely curved in all the right places. You couldn’t look at her with those big violet eyes and those knockout legs and not know she was all woman. If she’d use that delectable mouth for something besides arguing with him over every line of the city budget as though the only important causes were hers—

      He caught himself staring at that mouth and turned away quickly, calling out his order to Ruby.

      “No date tonight, Mr. Mayor?” There it was, that tone she used, that snotty tone that made him—

      She didn’t want to talk about whatever it was that was making her cry, so she must be out to pick a fight.

      He wasn’t going to cooperate. “Nope. No date. Doesn’t look too good for the head of the emergency management team to be playing while the Titanic sinks.”

      Her eyes went wide, and she shifted in the booth. “Oh God, the kids—”

      He stopped her with one raised palm. “It was a joke, Jorgenson. All right, a lousy one, but I’m a little punchy. We’ve been putting in some long nights lately.”

      Suddenly her eyes softened. “Blake’s exhausted.”

      “I’ll bet you are, too. You’ve been at the hospital every day and all that driving back and forth to the ranch trying to keep the kids calm has to be wearing you out. You should be home asleep, you know. You won’t do them any good if you wind up in a bed beside them.”

      She studied him for a long moment. “Careful, Longstreet. I might get the idea that you’re a decent guy.”

      He shrugged and grinned. “I even have a mother who thinks I’m pretty terrific. Go figure.” He watched her closely. He took one more stab, keeping his tone light. “So if it’s not the ranch, is it some deep, dark secret that I can exploit the next time you’re haranguing me at the council meeting?”

      She made a halfhearted attempt to rise to the bait. “Can’t help you there. Sorry.”

      The waitress walked up with his food, and Suzanne fell silent.

      Michael didn’t speak either but tucked into his meal, savoring the first bites of Ruby’s meat loaf from heaven. After he’d satisfied the initial hunger pangs, he looked at Suzanne again, observing the slim fingers clutching the coffee cup until her knuckles turned white.

      He went on impulse. “Give me a dollar.”

      Her head jerked up again. “What?”

      “Give me a dollar.” He spied the change beside her cup and grabbed it. “Never mind. Thirty-seven cents will do.”

      “What are you doing?”

      “You just hired me as your lawyer. Now I can’t reveal to a soul anything you tell me. So spill it, Suzanne. Something’s eating you up and you need to talk about it.”

      She stared at him as though he’d lost his mind.

      Then the tears spilled over.

      “I’m going to lose my son. For the second time.”

      Two

      “You what?” Michael’s deep green eyes widened. The shock of sun-streaked brown hair that always fell over his forehead bounced as his head reared up. “You have a son? Where is he?”

      “He’s in Sacramento with his father. Well, not his—” Yes, Jim Roper was Bobby’s father, the only one he’d ever known. “He’s with his father.” She lapsed into silence.

      She expected a volley of questions, but instead Michael waited her out.

      She reached for the saltshaker on the table in front of him, sliding it around in aimless circles until she realized what she was doing and jerked her hand back, trapping it in her lap. “I—” She glanced up once, then down quickly, but he didn’t look impatient. Instead he sat there, fork still, simply watching her with only concern in his eyes.

      “Your food will get cold. Go ahead and eat,” she said.

      “My food can wait. Talk to me, Suzanne.”

      The gentle tone was something she’d never heard from him. They’d always been too busy striking sparks off each other, arguing vigorously in one meeting or another.

      She realized that she’d never been alone with Michael Longstreet before. There was a stillness about the man that seeped beneath her skin, a patience that made her realize how much she needed to talk to someone.

      “I had to give him up for adoption.” She kept her eyes on her coffee cup. “I didn’t want to, but it was the right thing to do. I was sixteen. I couldn’t have cared for him the way he deserved.” She couldn’t risk a glance upward, couldn’t bear seeing if his expression disapproved. No matter how often she’d told herself she’d done the right thing, it still hurt. She’d still wanted her baby back, sometimes so much she thought she couldn’t last into the next breath.

      Anyway, it was done. It was over—or it had been over. But not anymore.

      “A few months ago I received a call from Jim Roper, the man who adopted my baby. Bobby—”

      She looked up then and couldn’t help a smile. “His name is Bobby. He’ll be ten soon.” And oh, how she wanted to celebrate his birthday with him. Wanted to bake him a cake with her own hands and blow up balloons and do all the things she’d wanted to do every March 28th of the last nine years.

      “What happened to his biological father?” Michael asked.

      She glanced away. “He didn’t want a baby. His future was too bright, he said. Too much of his life ahead of him. He offered me money for an abortion and made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with a child he doubted was his own.”

      A low curse issued from Michael’s throat, and she gathered the courage to look back. She saw his eyes darken with outrage, but on his face she saw more than that, a swirling of strong emotions she couldn’t define. “I’d never been with anyone else. Fool that I was, I actually thought we were in love, this rich man’s son and the daughter of a plumber.” A rich man’s son like the one who sat before her.

      Michael didn’t miss the accusation in her voice. If only she knew. He’d made the opposite choice from her rich boy and married the waitress his parents tried to buy off, knowing his parents would cut him off without a penny. Feeling righteous because he loved her so much.

      His foolish pride had ultimately cost his wife and unborn baby their lives.

      Michael СКАЧАТЬ