“There’s no big mystery. My siblings and I were born and raised in San Francisco. I have an identical twin brother named Luke—”
“My God, there are two of you?” She sounded truly shocked.
Grinning he nodded. “But don’t worry. He’s always been the quiet, more serious one of us.”
“In other words, your exact opposite.” She looked thoughtful. “Is he married?”
“As a matter of fact, he just got married a few months ago. He and his wife, Haley, are expecting their first child in about six and a half months.” To his surprise, Jake found that he liked sharing details about his family with Heather. “And we have a sister, Arielle. She’s ten years younger. She got married last month and is five months pregnant with twin boys.”
Heather was silent so long, he thought she might have fallen asleep. “I’m so happy that Mandy is going to have aunts, uncles and cousins.” She paused. “What about grandparents? Are your parents still alive?”
“No, our mother was killed in a car accident when Luke and I were twenty.” He took a deep breath. No matter how long it had been, he still missed the woman who had give him and his siblings life.
“I’m so sorry. What about your father?”
He snorted. “We only met our father once. After he made our mother pregnant with me and Luke, he took off and she didn’t see him again until we were almost ten. That’s when he showed up, stuck around only long enough to make Mom pregnant with Arielle, then took off again.” It was his turn to pause. “We recently got word that he was killed in a boating accident a couple of years ago.”
“Who finished raising your sister after your mother died?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“Luke and I were in college and managed to work out a pretty good system. He would work one semester and take over most of Arielle’s care while I went to school. Then I’d lay out the next semester, get a job and I’d be responsible for her while he attended classes.”
“My God, Jake, that had to have been so hard for both of you.” She turned her hand, palm up, to clasp his. “Did you try to get in touch with your father to see if he would send money to help out with your sister?”
Stopping the car at the entrance to Hickory Hills, he used the remote Clara had given him to open the wide iron gates. “We tried, but it proved to be impossible. We didn’t even know his real name.”
Her mouth dropped open. “He lied about who he was?”
Jake nodded. “We didn’t find that out and who he really was until we were told he was dead.”
When he drove the car through the gates, he pushed the button to swing them shut and as they traveled the long oak-lined drive, he decided to omit his newly discovered grandmother’s name. Emerald Larson was Mandy’s great-grandmother but he still wasn’t comfortable with the fact or with the way she manipulated her grandchildren.
“Mandy does have a great-grandmother,” he said, watching Heather from the corner of his eye. “We learned about her at the same time we found out about our father’s death.”
She smiled. “It’s nice that you finally found each other.”
“More like she found us.” He shrugged. “She knew how wild and unsettled her son was and after he died, she had a team of investigators search to see if he had any children so that she could set things right with all of us.”
“That’s when she got in touch with you and your siblings?” Heather asked, seemingly fascinated with what he was telling her.
“Among others.”
He could tell from her expression that Heather was thoroughly shocked. “You mean…he fathered more children than just you and your siblings?”
“It turns out our father took the biblical passage where it says ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ to heart.” He smiled as he parked the car in the circular drive in front of the mansion. “He also fathered three other sons by three different women in the ten years between fathering me and Luke and Arielle.”
Her eyes grew even wider. “Wow! He certainly was…um, active.”
“To say the least.”
Jake got out of the car and as he walked around to open the passenger door for her, he couldn’t help but see the parallel between the way he’d been living his life and the way his father had. And he wasn’t overly proud of it. But he was different from his father in one very important way. Jake was going to be there for Mandy where his father had failed his children in every way possible.
When Heather got out of the car to stand in front of him, he didn’t hesitate to put his arms around her. “I know it seems like I’ve been living my life a lot like my father did, and maybe to a certain extent, I have. But let me assure you, I’ll always be there for Mandy…and for you.”
“Jake—”
“I mean it, Heather. I’m not the irresponsible jerk my father was.”
Deciding that enough had been said about his notorious father and atypical family, he let his gaze travel from her silky hair swept up into a stylish twist, down the length of her black strapless cocktail dress, to her impossibly high, black heels. In L.A. they had a colorful phrase for those kind of shoes and he seriously doubted that she realized some women wore them to send a message that they were open to a night of unbridled passion.
Groaning, he raised his head to rest his forehead against hers. “Do you have any idea how sexy you are? How beautiful?”
Before she had the chance to speak, Jake teased and coaxed her mouth with his own until she granted him the access he sought. But he was completely unprepared and not at all disappointed when Heather took control of the kiss and touched her tongue to his.
At first tentative, her shy stroking sent electric sparks to every nerve in his being. As she gained confidence and engaged him in a game of advance and retreat, the sparks touched off a flame in the pit of his belly that quickly had him wondering if he was about to burn to a cinder.
The reaction of his body was instantaneous. He hadn’t become aroused this fast since his teens.
With his knees threatening to buckle and his head swimming from a serious lack of blood to the brain, he reluctantly broke the caress. If he didn’t put an end to the kiss, and right now, he was in real danger of making love to her right there on the steps of the veranda.
“Honey… I can’t believe… I’m going to say this.” He stopped long enough to draw some much needed air into his lungs. “Unless you’re ready to go upstairs with me—to my room, my bed—we’d better call it a night.”
He watched her passion-flushed cheeks turn a deep shade of rose a moment before she shook her head. “I’m sorry… I…not yet.” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, then took a step away from him, then another. “I mean…no. That’s not going to happen.”
When Heather turned and fled up the steps, across the veranda and disappeared into the house, Jake reached up to unknot his tie and unbutton the collar of his shirt. Then, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets, took off at a brisk walk back down the long drive toward the entrance gates.
He couldn’t believe how the evening had turned out. He wasn’t in the habit of divulging personal information to the women he dated. It kept things from becoming complicated when he went his way and they went theirs.
But Heather was different. For reasons he didn’t care to contemplate, he wanted her to know all about him. And he wanted to learn everything about her. What had inspired her to choose her career? Did she have siblings? Were her parents still alive?
Shaking his head, he fell into a steady pace as he started back toward the house. He had no idea what had gotten into him. Yet