Pure Seduction Frank, Ella (little readers .TXT) 📖

I gasped and clutched at my chest, then whirled around to see Jake sitting on one of the couches in the dark. He was supposed to be at Caleb’s tonight, and the shock of seeing him there automatically erased my relaxation from seconds ago and replaced it with motherly concern.

“Jake?” I switched on the light to make sure he was in one piece, and when I couldn’t see anything out of the norm, my breathing calmed and my heart began to beat again at a normal rhythm. “What are you doing home? I thought you were spending the night at Caleb’s?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

The judgmental tone was so unlike Jake that it immediately made my hackles rise. I straightened my shoulders, and when Noah’s jacket slipped down my arms, I quickly reached for it, knowing the dress I had on underneath was not something Jake was used to seeing me in. Something that wasn’t lost on him.

“Whose jacket is that?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“Excuse me? I’m the adult in this house, and I believe I asked you a question. What are you doing home? You told me you were spending the night at Caleb’s.”

“So? I changed my mind. You wouldn’t care if you weren’t trying to sneak in in the middle of the night.”

Right, that was it. I knew the two of us needed to talk after today’s blow-up at the baseball field, but I was just about done with this new attitude. I stalked across the room and jabbed him in the chest.

“Listen to me, young man. I know we’re pretty casual around here and have a different kind of relationship than most. But that doesn’t give you the right to be disrespectful or rude. What’s gotten into you?”

Jake narrowed his eyes and looked me over in a way that made me cross my arms over my chest. That niggling feeling from earlier started again in the pit of my stomach.

“What’s gotten into me? You’re the one acting completely different these days.”

Wow. He was clearly pissed off, and that was something we needed to discuss. But no matter how angry he was, or how much he did or didn’t know, I wasn’t going to stand here and be talked down to by my teenage son.

I turned around and stalked off toward my bedroom.

“Go to bed, Jake. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

“I don’t want to talk about it then.”

I could hear his heavy footsteps behind me as I flicked on the kitchen light and spun around. “Well, that’s too bad. I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Whose jacket is that?”

Knowing this was not going to end unless I told him, I placed a hand on the back of the kitchen chair and braced myself. “The jacket belongs to Noah. We had dinner tonight.”

Jake scoffed. “Dinner, huh? Is that why you’re creeping around at—”

“I’m not creeping anywhere,” I shouted, much louder than I’d intended. But at this stage I was finding it difficult to temper my annoyance.

“You’re not? Looked like it to me.”

“I don’t care how it looked to you. Plus, you aren’t even supposed to be home.”

“Which is why you went in the first place. You wouldn’t have to be home at a respectable hour.”

“Just who do you think you are? The dating police? It’s not a crime that I decided to finally go out, you know? And weren’t you the one telling me I should?”

Jake’s jaw clenched and the expression that crossed his face could only be described as furious. “That was before. I worked it out, Mom. Your little secret.”

And there it was. My stomach dropped as my suspicions were confirmed. The certainty of those words cleared up any question of why he was so angry.

As I stared across the kitchen at my son, my heart beat so hard that it was a miracle it hadn’t flown out of my chest. Then Jake took a step forward, and I steeled myself for whatever he was about to say next.

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

I sucked in a shaky breath and gripped the back of the chair. Jake glared me down, waiting for a response. But all words had left me. I didn’t know what to say. The lie I’d told so many times reared its ugly head and demanded that I finally tell the truth.

“Mom.”

“Jake—”

“Answer me. It’s him, right? Noah? He’s my dad.”

My eyes blurred as the enormity of those words being spoken out loud for the first time hit me with the force of a shock wave. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“I’m gonna take this bullshit silence as a yes. Is that why he left? Because of me? The rumor was he was a one-night stand. Something you never denied. But it’s not true, is it?”

No, it wasn’t. I stood there trying to think of a way to explain my reasons for doing what I’d done, but came up with nothing.

Jake snatched his coat from one of the chairs and headed for the back door.

“Jake…” My voice cracked as I watched him storm out without a backward glance. As the door slammed closed behind him, the silence that followed mocked me.

Oh God. God. What had I done?

A racking sob left me as tears fell down my face. I barely managed to pull the chair out before I collapsed into it.

I wiped at my cheeks, but it was no use—the tears kept coming as I was thrust back into a different time and place, when the only option available was to take what the devil had offered…

28

Laurel

I STOOD OUTSIDE the black iron gates of Chamberlin Winery, and had never felt more intimidated in my life. The hot August sun was beating down on the back of my neck, but it still wasn’t enough to make me head inside and out of the sweltering heat.

I was nervous. No, nervous wasn’t the right word. I was terrified. But there was no way around what I was here to do, and I’d promised