The Best Man's Baby (11 page)

“No way are we doing this here. This time we make it to a bed.” He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms circling his neck and holding him to her as he unclasped her bra, walking toward her bedroom.

She pressed her cheek against his strong chest, hearing the pounding of his heart, and knew her defenses were slowly crumbling. When he laid her gently on the bed Claire knew something was different. She felt it in his touch, in the restrained passion. She knew he was trying to take it slow. She felt his control slip as she tugged his jeans off, as he pressed her against the pillows. Her last coherent thought as Jake drove her over the edge was that this was where she belonged.

With Jake.

Chapter Eight

Claire felt Jake’s finger trail along her exposed arm. She smiled into the pillow. She had no idea how long they’d been asleep, or if Jake had slept at all. She curled her toes at the sight of his warm smile as she looked over at him. Her eyes wandered over his bare chest and she felt a tremble of desire hit her. He was a beautiful man. The faint lines beside his eyes crinkled as he smiled at her and leaned forward to give her a soft kiss.

“I thought women wanted to cuddle after, and it was the guy who fell asleep,” he said, with a laugh against her mouth.

“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish grin.

“Yeah, you just pushed me away and started snoring,” he said with barely restrained laughter.

“I did not—”

He nodded, giving her a sympathetic smile.

“I
don’t
snore.”

He leaned over and gave her another kiss. “Sure you don’t.”

“Have I been sleeping long?”

“Just three hours,” he said, his smile deepening when she bolted up in bed to look at her alarm clock. He was right. “And I’m dying of starvation,” he said, pulling her over to him. She managed to take the sheet along with her as she settled into his side, her head resting on his strong shoulder.

“Let’s order dinner in,” he said as his hand wandered over her body. She felt herself curling her body into his.

“What do you feel like?”

“Thai?”

Suddenly Claire felt her stomach roll. She shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“What you just said. I can’t even repeat it,” she croaked, her mouth turning dry.

“Thai?” She nodded against him, her stomach getting precariously close to spilling over. And then she pictured herself eating a bowl of pad thai and had to clench the sheet.

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. It makes you sick, I get it now,” Jake said, kissing her bare shoulder, waves of nausea getting replaced with waves of…Jake.

“Figures you would use that word when I’m barely able to muster out a retort.”

“Really? You seem to be doing pretty good at vocalizing your opinion.”

She rolled onto her back and he gingerly braced one arm over her, leaning on his elbow. She looked into his eyes, the memory of what they’d just shared reflected in his smile, in his eyes.

“How about Greek food?”

Claire laughed. “You have a one-track mind.”

“No, two-track, but I thought we should refuel before we attempt that again.”

She reached up and kissed him without giving it a second thought.

“Okay, so Greek it is,” he said, quickly rolling over and hopping off the bed. He had to walk across the room to get his jeans. Claire watched him, her breath in her throat at the sight of his sheer male beauty. Her brow furrowed though as he quickly called the restaurant and shrugged into his jeans at the same time. After telling them to just deliver the last order on file, he walked back to the bed. He looked bothered by something.

“Do you want something to eat before the food gets here?” he asked, shirt still off, sitting beside her. And then it hit her. The preoccupation with ordering food right away.

She tilted her head to the side, not peeling her eyes from his face. “You think I’m not eating?” For the first time in her life, Claire watched Jake blush.

“Claire—”

Did he actually think she was purposely not eating? That she wouldn’t eat because she was afraid of gaining weight while she was pregnant?

“You don’t have to worry about me not eating, Jake. I would never do anything to hurt our baby. All that was a long time ago.”

“I’m worried about you.”

She felt a warmth seep through her veins as he climbed onto the bed beside her, his hands cupping her face. His thumb stroked her cheekbone and she tried to stay focused. “You don’t have to worry about me. The girl Dr. Hopkins was talking about doesn’t exist anymore.”

He stared at her, his expression neutral.

She gave him a somber smile and scooted away from him, needing a little distance. He settled on the edge of the bed, not taking his eyes off her.

“I told you I was going to explain everything,” Claire said, drawing her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around herself protectively. “When I was growing up I was never skinny like those kids who are just naturally super-skinny. And it didn’t really ever bother me. When I was small I didn’t know that a lot of the things my mother did were abnormal. I’d catch the occasional whispered ‘fat,’ but I never associated it with myself. Then when I went through puberty, everything came crashing down around me. My parents started arguing constantly, and my mother became obsessed with my weight. Everything that passed my lips was measured for portion size, calories, and fat. Then she would start making comments about my body shape.” She paused for a moment, clearing her throat from the embarrassment that was starting to creep in.

“Things got worse at home. My dad hated the pressure she was putting on me. He found that her focus on the superficial went against all his beliefs. And then I’d feel guilty for causing their problems, so I kept gaining weight. My mother couldn’t figure it out. I started getting made fun of at school and had no friends. I had always been on the shy side, but once I became overweight I retreated into my shell completely. Then Holly moved to Red River, and thank God for her. If it weren’t for her, I don’t know where I’d be. High school was the worst time of my life.”

…

Jake watched quietly as Claire tucked the sheet around herself and grasped the edges until they were up to her chin. He fought the impulse to rip the sheet away and make love to her until the memories of the past were gone. He wanted to take her memories and wipe the slate clean and start over again. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she stared straight ahead, her flawless complexion pale. He waited for her to continue, not sure if there was more.

“High school went from bad to worse. You could never imagine all the names that rhyme with Claire,” she said, her mouth turning up into a half smile that made him feel sick.

“Oh, but the one that stuck, that was priceless, was Éclair,” she said with a laugh that sounded so damn sad he wanted to go back to high school and pulverize the bastard who had come up with that name.

“The
worst
part was I didn’t even like éclairs. But I had a best friend, and I just tried to survive. Then one day, when I was sixteen, I was in the girls’ locker room, gym class had just ended and…” She cleared her throat, frowned, and stared intently at the wall ahead. “Since the fall dance was that night, and my mother insisted I try to look thinner, I had been wearing this really frumpy, really embarrassing girdle-type thing. I had taken it off for gym class and when I got back to my locker it was gone. I started panicking. I knew someone had taken it. And sure enough, when Holly and I left the locker room, there it was in the hallway, being tossed around by some of the jocks and the popular girls in my class.”

“I need names,” Jake said harshly. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. She stopped speaking. He pushed himself off the edge of the bed and paced up and down the room, flexing his hands, hoping the movement would help him burn off some of his anger.

“What?”

“Names,” Jake repeated, more to himself than to her. “I need names and addresses.”

Claire’s soft laughter interrupted him. He looked over his shoulder at her, the sheet still tucked around her, but she was smiling.

“Your sister-in-law beat you to it, I’m afraid,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Holly?”

Claire nodded. “She marched to Aman—” She stopped for a second. “This girl’s locker—”

Jake’s heart came to a grinding halt. “What was her name?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Claire whispered, shaking her head, her dark eyes confirming what he already knew.

“You said Amanda. The Amanda at the barbecue?”

Claire shrugged and looked away. He really didn’t think her story could get worse, but it had, and he realized now he had hurt her even more than even he was prepared for.

“It doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago. Anyway, Holly, in front of everyone, whips open this girl’s locker and takes out a bra and then starts pulling out all this padding. Long story short, the principal came along and the three of us got detention for three weeks. She couldn’t stand me. I was the focus of all her extracurricular efforts. I would have éclairs put in my locker or smashed on the front of it. Of course I couldn’t
eat
them,” she said with a choked laugh. Jake tried to find the humor in it, but he couldn’t. And then he thought of her the night of the barbecue, knowing she was pregnant, thinking he didn’t care about her at all, watching him with Amanda.

“So anyway, that day after gym class was kind of the last straw for me. I started experimenting with losing weight and it became obsessive. I saw a teen psychologist specializing in eating disorders, but it was an ongoing issue for me for a few years. I know this sounds silly and trivial—”

Jake shook his head, trying to find his voice. “Not at all.” He was trying to come to terms with everything she was telling him, and he felt guilty for his own part in making things harder for her.

“I know it’s something someone like you could never understand,” Claire said with a little smile.

“Someone like me?”

“Oh, come on, Jake, look at you. You have always been the image of male perfection.”

“Claire—”

“I would look at you…” She took a deep breath. “I would look at you and wish I were your girlfriend. I kept track of every single girl I ever saw you out with, and I compared myself to them, and I always thought I was never as pretty or as thin, and that you’d never go out with someone like me.”

Jake swallowed hard. His throat ached with emotion for her, and his throat burned with words he wished he could speak because she was wrong. He knew what it was like to be an outcast, to be on the outside looking in for his entire life.

Claire was infiltrating all the parts of him he had closed off. She was still sitting there on the bed, the sheet wrapped around her body like armor. He saw the pride etched in every inch of her beautiful face, and he saw the vulnerability, and it made him ache with a pain he didn’t know he could feel for someone else. He saw her as she’d been when she was young, the shyness, the embarrassment, the sadness. He wanted to erase it. He wanted to go back to when she was in high school and save her from it all. He wanted to go back and save both of them.

“We always have that little piece of who we were when we were growing up inside of us. You can’t completely lose it. Those experiences have made us who we are. If we have a daughter, I want to teach her she can be anything in the world, that she can do anything. I want her to be so strong she doesn’t care what the number is on the scale. I want to spare her everything I went through.”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t think there could be a better mother than you. I don’t think there could be a better role model than you. Every time I think I’ve figured you out, you floor me. I’ve never known anyone like you, and if you think any woman I’ve ever been with could compare to you, you’re wrong,” he said, approaching the bed, needing to close the distance between them. He needed to show her with his words, with his hands, with his lips how much she meant to him. He saw the doubt flicker across her eyes, noticed the stiffness in her shoulders.

She opened her mouth. He cut her off.

“Things have happened to me, and I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but if you somehow got it in your head that I didn’t look twice at you because of the way you looked you’ve got it all wrong. I’ve wanted you for a long, long time.”

She shook her head, her eyes locked with his. He nodded with a small smile. He glanced down at her lips, the lips he couldn’t seem to ever get enough of. His stomach tightened as her eyes dropped to his lips and her mouth opened slightly.

“What things?” she whispered.

He felt like she was peering into his soul and for a half second he entertained telling her, but how could he tell her something no one in the world knew, not even his brothers? And how could someone who’d always done everything by the book understand some of the choices he’d made? But this wasn’t about him. This was about Claire.

“It doesn’t matter right now. You have to believe me when I tell you no one has ever even come close to you. I have never cared about anyone as much as I care about you. And I know it looks like I’ve been with a lot of women, but there really haven’t been that many. I didn’t go to bed with each of those women you saw me with, and I don’t want you to ever compare yourself to anyone.”

She shook her head. A hint of a smile touched her lips and Jake felt a jolt in his stomach. It was like a light switch; she smiled and he lit up.

“I think you’re trying to be nice to me because I’m going to be the mother of your child. Do you remember the night at Ella’s first birthday party? You barely even looked at me.”

“Red dress, stopped at your knees, clung to every sweet curve you own. And I thought the dress should have had a slit in it, but the cleavage more than made up for it,” he said gruffly, satisfied when her mouth dropped open and her face turned beet red. “I ignored you because I knew you had feelings for me.”

“I didn’t have
feelings
for you. It was a sort of attraction.”

“Fine, whatever. But if you want to know the truth, I didn’t think your father would approve,” he said, watching her face grow serious.

“My father? My father likes you.”

Jake shrugged. “Sure, but not as the man for his daughter.”

“So then why did you—”

“So then I had too much to drink at the wedding too, and I’d never held you in my arms before so it had been easier to resist you until then. But that night, there was no way I couldn’t touch you or make love to you.”

“I think that’s an excuse.”

“Why would I make an excuse?”

“Because I think the real reason is I’m not the type of woman you’re used to dating.”

He really needed some sort of map to follow Claire’s train of thought. “What’s that supposed to mean?”