LITMIR.BIZ

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again and enough sexual electricity to power New York City passed between them. “Thank you for the offer. But I would rather sit with them.”

      Jake almost breathed a sigh of relief because this situation was bad. Being attracted to somebody almost ten years younger was awkward enough, but knowing she was the baby sister of a guy who usually got details of his sexual…escapades…that was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. She needed to sit at another table.

      “Don’t be silly,” Sadie insisted, pulling out a chair for Hannah. Then she all but blocked her younger sister’s path, preventing her from leaving.

      “Just sit,” Troy told Hannah, indicating the open seat with a nod of his head. “Sadie’s not going to let you get away, anyway. No sense fighting about this.”

      “Right,” Hannah said. Her gaze flitted to Jake’s again and the electricity sizzled between them. He tried to blink away the connection, but it was useless. He was suffused with heat. He didn’t have a clue why, but the way this woman looked at him seemed to turn him inside out.

      “Excuse me, Mr. Malloy?”

      Grateful for the interruption, Jake turned when the butler he had hired to supervise his party beckoned. From the corner of his eye, he watched Hannah succumb to the pressure of her sister and brother-in-law and take the seat across from his.

      “Yes, Roger?”

      “You have a guest.”

      Jake laughed. “It is a party.”

      Roger’s eyebrows rose. “Well, that’s true. But this one has a…package for you.”

      “Everybody here brought a package for me. We call them birthday gifts.”

      “Yes, sir. Very funny, sir. But if you would come out to the foyer, this could be explained much, much better.”

      Jake decided that was a great idea. He was sure that these few minutes away from Hannah would get rid of whatever kept causing him to feel all the wrong reactions to a woman he wasn’t allowed to want. If that didn’t work, he could simply stay away, pretend to be busy, until his head cleared and he could behave normally around her again.

      “All right.”

      Jake turned to walk to the French doors but before he stepped away from the table, Felicity Lockhart, his red-haired, sex-goddess ex-girlfriend, flew onto the patio. Her eyes blazed and she carried a tightly wrapped bundle—his six-month-old son.

      “Jake Malloy, we had a deal!”

      Just like in the movies, the entire patio became quiet. Though Jake’s first instinct was stunned surprise, he knew he could handle her. He always did.

      “Felicity, it’s very nice to see you.”

      She stomped her foot. “Don’t you say it’s nice to see me! You made a promise. Now you have to keep it.”

      “Okay,” Jake said soothingly. “Honey,” he added, slathering more balm on her bad mood. “Why don’t you let poor Dixon out of the blanket so he can breathe? Better yet, give Dixon to me.”

      Felicity shoved Jake’s son at him. Jake sighed with relief when he realized the baby was in a deep sleep. He cuddled Dixon against his chest before he faced his former girlfriend. “Where’s Amanda?” he asked, referring to the nanny for which he paid through the nose.

      “She’s in L.A.,” Felicity said quietly, as if she were calming down.

      “And why would she be in L.A. when Dixon is in P.A.?”

      “Because you promised me that if and when this day ever came we would not desert the baby to a nanny!”

      Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What day?”

      She flailed her arms as if exasperated. “I am on my way to do the biggest movie of my life!”

      “You got a job?” he asked incredulously, and realized too late that was the absolute wrong thing to do. Her blazing eyes heated two notches and her chin raised defiantly. It was the same expression she’d worn the whole time they’d argued about getting married. He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him, but he had been raised without his father and he wanted his son to know both parents.

      “It isn’t that I don’t think you have talent,” he quickly said. “Since Dixon was born, you just haven’t really seemed all that focused on your career.”

      Luckily, his mother scampered over. Tall and regal in her gray-sequined gown, with dark hair and dark eyes, Georgiann Malloy reached for the baby. “Hi, Felicity!” she greeted in an overly cherry voice. Like Jake, his mother was a student of human nature and she knew how to handle people. “Why don’t you give me the baby, and you two can go inside and talk about this privately.”

      “There is nothing to talk about!” Felicity shouted. “He promised and I am going.” With that she turned and stomped her way off the patio and through the French doors into the house.

      Jake’s mother made a move to run after her, but Jake put his hand out to stop her. “Let her go.”

      “But…”

      “Mom, I did tell her that I would take care of Dixon if she got a movie role and had to go on location.”

      “Yeah, but none of us ever thought she would actually get a movie.”

      “Well, she did and now I have a baby.”

      Hannah rocked back on her chair, her eyes wide with surprise, her brain shocked into numbness. Jake Malloy was a daddy?

      “He’s so cute,” Sadie cooed, rising from her seat to rush over and fuss over the baby. “Jake, I’m so glad we finally get to see your son!”

      “So am I!” Troy said. He also rose to look at the little boy Jake held.

      Jake smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, well, even I hardly get to see him since he lives in L.A.”

      “Yeah,” Hannah said, more to herself than to anyone else. Jake hadn’t really kept his son a secret. Troy knew about him. Sadie obviously knew about him. Yet, Jake hadn’t exactly made a public announcement, either. Could it be that perfect Jake Malloy wasn’t so perfect, after all?

      She smiled stupidly, feeling a relief of sorts that he was human. “This certainly puts Jake in a whole different light.”

      Hannah’s sister Caro laughed. “Stop that,” she said, patting Hannah’s hand in reprimand. Not quite as tall as Hannah, but sharing her blond hair, Caro was the sibling Hannah most resembled.

      “I didn’t mean that to be rude,” Hannah said. “It just came out wrong.”

      “I hope so,” Max Riley, Caro’s fiancé, agreed, catching Hannah’s gaze with his striking blue eyes. “I would hate to have to break the news to people that you aren’t the ‘nice’ Evans sister everyone believes you to be.”

      “The ‘nice’ Evans sister?” Caro and Hannah asked simultaneously.

      “Yeah,” Max said with a chuckle, as if it were common knowledge. “Maria is the mom. Sadie is the hottie. Caro’s the smart…yet, gorgeous one,” he said, sliding a meaningful glance in his fiancée’s direction. “And Hannah’s the nice one.”

      Hannah gaped at him. “Really?”

      “Yeah,” Max said.

      Hannah had a little trouble digesting the fact that she had been so neatly compartmentalized by her community, until she thought about her life. She was an elementary schoolteacher who had never left home. Not even for college. Her oldest brother, Dakota, had packed up for Massachusetts Institute of Technology and never returned, and she didn’t want to risk hurting her parents like that. So even though her other brother, Luke, and her three sisters had at least left Wilburn to go to college, she had commuted so she could continue to help her aunt Sadie with her day care, so she could go to every family gathering,

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