Secret Child by Ann Major

Author:Ann Major
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“No, leave it on,” she said. “I sort of like it.”

“Since when did you ever like… Well, I don’t.”

Liar. She could tell it was one of his favorites. It opened him up to her.

He spun the dial.

Jack wished he could remove himself, erase himself, as he had that first year in prison. Then the music and the woman wouldn’t be able to get to him.

Nothing’s changed.

“My, my. Aren’t we grumpy? You remind me of a five-year-old. My specialty…”

Since when? he wanted to thunder.

But she laughed, and the silvery sound pulled him out of himself. Did he only imagine she sounded short of breath? Leaning toward him, her lips sipped from the same place on the coffee cup where his own mouth had been.

What the hell was wrong with him—to notice her lipstick smudges on a white cup? He hated her.

He had sex on the brain, the way his mother used

to.

Suddenly he wished he’d bought airline tickets. They had too many miles to be stuck alone in this tiny cab together. But flying with her after she’d hit him in Paris had seemed risky.

“It’s going to be a long trip.” He leaned forward, hunching over the steering wheel, staring moodily at the flying white center stripes and black asphalt

“Are you always this scared around girls? Or is it just me?”

“I’m not scared.” Like hell, West.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s happened since I’ve been gone?”

She met his dark glance shamelessly.

“Do you really want small talk? All right then. I served five years of hard time because of you. I chopped cotton from dawn till dark with my ankles chained to other men’s. When I wrote a letter, it’d take me fourteen days to get a single page done ’cause every night I was so damn tired all I could write was a line or two. I got stabbed. I nearly died, damn it. There were days I wished I could die. Like the night I nearly got raped…while you jetted around the world!”

Chantal’s eyes were brilliant in her white face. “And the tattoo…”

“Oh, that. That was a gift from a buddy. I don’t mind it so much. He saved me from those other guys.”

“Jack…” Her voice was soft with remorse.

He gripped the steering wheel harder. “Shut up.” Jack turned the volume louder, so that the disk jockey’s voice drowned her out when she tried to speak.

Five minutes later he spotted a roadside cafe. He jerked the wheel hard to the right, sending the pickup slewing into the parking lot. The horn of an eighteen wheeler behind them blared wildly. Brakes screamed when Jack stopped.

More coffee spilled. This time all over her thighs. She cried out. “You drive like a maniac. And you’re rude and mean.”

“Because you drive me crazy.”

“This trip was your idea.”

He flung open his door. “Get this. You and I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.” She was dabbing at the coffee with a paper napkin as she slid out. “You want me to come home with you, to live with you as your wife, but you don’t want anything to do with me.

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