but not so quietly that Jake didn’t still hear, judging by the muscle tightening in his jaw.
As the screen door slammed shut behind Sam, Sophia gradually became aware of the rest of her family. Nick and Drew had apparently been in the middle of a supposedly touch football game, judging by the grass stains on Drew’s jeans and the ball tucked beneath Nick’s arm. Her father stood at the grill Jake had abandoned and her mother and Nick’s daughter, Maddie, had been sitting beneath the gazebo off to the side of the yard.
At Sophia’s arrival, though, everyone charged en masse, giving Jake little time to reply and Sophia less time to prepare. She’d barely made it down the back steps when her mother and niece reached her, Vanessa hugging her shoulders while seven-year-old Maddie wrapped her skinny arms around her waist. “Sophia! It’s so good to see you. I’ve missed you.”
Wrapped in a cloud of cinnamon-scented warmth, Sophia swallowed hard. “Missed you too, Mom.”
Vanessa Pirelli pulled back, her green eyes taking quick inventory of her only daughter. Sophia instinctively stiffened as she waited for the questions to cloud her mother’s expression with worry. Was she okay? Was she in trouble? Had she fallen in with the wrong crowd again?
To Sophia’s surprise, and for the first time in years, disappointment failed to dim the light in her mother’s eyes. Not until her mother included Jake in her happy gaze did Sophia fully understand why. “Wasn’t it sweet of Jake to surprise you like this?”
“It’s a surprise,” she agreed, avoiding the “sweet” description when it came to Jake Cameron.
Her fault, of course, for letting the deception go on as long as she had. Was there some ugly, painful stone in her dismal love life he’d somehow left unturned? He was headed for disappointment. She’d spilled her heart to him already.
She’d foolishly felt she owed him the truth—that she was being unfair to start any kind of relationship without telling Jake about the child she carried. Turned out she didn’t owe him at all. He was already getting paid, and how unfair was that?
She felt Jake’s intense gaze on the side of her face, as if his golden eyes gave off as much heat as the man himself, but she refused to glance his way. Struggling for normalcy in front of her family, Sophia focused on her niece. She cupped the girl’s dimpled chin in her hand and exclaimed, “Maddie, I think you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last!”
“I’m starting third grade soon! I’ll be in Mrs. Dawson’s class,” the tiny, girlish version of her big brother said, her whole body practically vibrating with excitement. In Clearville’s small elementary school, first and second grades were housed together in the same classroom. Entering third grade was an enormous step.
“You’re one of the big kids now!” Sophia exclaimed. “Practically all grown up!”
“It’s amazing how fast kids change when you aren’t around to see it,” Nick drawled, shifting the football to his other hand to draw his daughter to his side.
Sophia had to give him credit; she might have actually believed the casual comment was nothing more than that if she didn’t know better. But she did. Her oldest brother still blamed her for taking off to Chicago and for the fallout she hadn’t intended to cause.
But any defense Sophia might have made collapsed at the combination of love, pride and well-disguised worry that mingled in his gaze as he looked down at his daughter. “She’ll be in college before I know it.”
Sophia’s heart clenched in sympathy for what Nick had gone through since his wife left, in guilt for her part in Carol’s desertion, and in a newly realized panic knowing she’d be feeling that same love, that same pride, that same worry soon for her own child. Like Nick, she too would be alone.
Sophia swallowed hard, and it had to be her imagination that Jake stepped closer as if sensing her thoughts and offering his silent support.
Crazy, she thought. If Jake could read her mind, he’d run the other way. Because she was still mad at him. Really, really mad.
Mad enough to haul off and hit him. Mad enough to throw herself into his arms, close her eyes, and pretend the Jake Cameron she’d met in St. Louis was the real Jake Cameron …
“Hey, Jake!” Her dad waved a barbecue fork in their direction. “How ‘bout you take over here and give me a chance to hug my little girl?”
“You got it, Vince. Be right there.”
Trying to keep her jaw from dropping at the warm welcome embracing Jake, Sophia shot him a sidelong glance he caught front and center. He stepped closer until she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. She’d lived with older and much taller brothers her entire life; she was used to their overwhelming breadth and height.
But with Jake, it was … different.
Intimidating and at the same time thrilling in ways she wished she could forget.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmured, his deep voice tripping over nerve endings and raising goose bumps across her skin.
Fury at her reaction as much as at his words reared, and Sophia sucked in a breath, sharp retort at the ready. But before she could say a single word, Jake caught the back of her neck, his fingers tunneling in her dark hair, and pulled her into a quick, hard kiss.
She barely had the chance to register his taste, to respond to the press of his mouth against hers, to relive the memory of the kisses they’d shared in St. Louis. Kisses that slipped beneath her defenses, exploited her weaknesses …
She drew in a second breath as she pulled back, still ready to blast him with her temper, still furious, but Jake had already stepped away.
“Jake, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to have you here.” Vanessa Pirelli’s warm smile left no room to doubt the sincerity of her words.
Seated across from Sophia’s mother, Jake worked on a smile of his own. The casual meal around the picnic table was nothing like the formal family dinners in the Cameron household. Her welcoming acceptance should have made it easier, but the whole experience of holding hands while saying grace, passing rolls across the table like lobbing softballs and carrying on four conversations at one time seemed like something out of a storybook.
And of course every story had its villain, a role Jake had been fully willing to accept when he showed up unannounced at Sophia’s home. But instead of hurling accusations, her family had greeted him with open arms—literally—leaving him feeling off-balance and unprepared. He’d been ready to face the Pirelli family’s anger; their approval was unexpected … and undeserved.
Still, he said, “I’m glad to be here, Mrs. Pirelli.”
Glad to see for himself that Sophia had a family who loved her, who would be there for her and her child in a way only family could be. She might not have told them about the baby yet, but it was obvious Sophia’s child would have three doting uncles and one set of grandparents to spoil him rotten and to be there for anything he needed.
“Oh, now, didn’t I tell you to call me Vanessa?” Sophia’s mother reminded him.
“Yes, ma’am, you did.”
His evasion didn’t get by the older woman, and her eyes crinkled in
