by Sarah Adams
My smile is wide and cocky. “The way I look?”
“Now who’s being coy?”
I laugh fully and realize I could sit here and talk to her all night. That thought scares me as much as it excites me. “I like brownies—extra fudgy and with chocolate chips, slightly under-baked.”
Her blonde brow raises. “Really? Okay, I can respect that. I love chocolate.”
Are we really having this conversation? It's so casual and sweet and unimportant and…exactly what I’ve been missing in my life lately.
“What’s your favorite color Skittle?” I ask.
She lays her head on the back of the swing and pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her fists. “Red. Do you have any siblings?”
“Four sisters.”
“Four! Goodness gracious! Are you close with them?”
“Very. I couldn’t have gotten through this year without them.” I can feel the conversation drifting toward the therapist’s couch again, so I steer it away. “How about you?” Somehow, I can picture her fitting in with four sisters.
She shakes her head. “It’s just me and my parents. And before you ask me that question, no, we do not get along.”
“Really? Why not?”
She chuckles a little, but it doesn’t sound like the happy kind. “They want me to be someone I’m not. They have very clear expectations for me and who I should be. From the day I flung my toddler beauty pageant crown in my mama’s face, I’ve been letting them down.”
“I’m sorry. That’s gotta be hard.” I can’t imagine anyone ever being disappointed with this woman. I mean, she trains service dogs for a living, for crying out loud.
She smiles softly, and her green eyes pin me in my seat. We are locked in a stare as the porch swing continues to sway us back and forth, and I never want this game to end. Except, it does when Evie’s eyes fall to my lips. Did she look there intentionally? My stomach swoops, and I’m wondering how friendly it would be to tug her over to me and find out if her lips taste like strawberries. I’ve been dwelling on that important question since I saw her apply a pink lip balm earlier.
“Can I ask you something that’s a little out of line for the business friendship we have?” she asks, her voice breathy and nervous.
“Sure. I’m all ears.”
She smiles tentatively, and I wonder if she’s going to ask me out. Is that something women do these days? It’s pathetic how old that thought makes me feel.
“Will you consider letting Sam go to the slumber party with her friends?”
And just like that, I’m a popped balloon—air rushing out of me as I fall and land deflated on the ground.
In the tiny span of time between her potential and actual question, my mind took a hundred different turns, none of which I can voice out loud because I’m too much of a gentleman—or at least I pretend I am.
“The slumber party?” Now I’m just stalling, feeling like I need a minute to reel my thoughts back in.
“Yeah. Sam told me about the slumber party at her friend Jenna’s house. She really wants to go, and I think that it would be good for her.” She bites the bottom corner of her lip, and I realize that she’s nervous. She’s afraid I’m going to resort back to my caveman ways and beat the ground, telling her to get out of my house.
I’ve got news for her: I’m not going to be that guy again. I’m done being the jerk around her, so I smile and purposefully relax more into the swing. “She gave you her doe eyes, didn’t she?”
Evie’s face lights up. “The biggest eyes I’ve ever seen! I think she even managed to let a single tear pool in them. How does she do that?”
I laugh. “She’s an impressive human being. But honestly, Evie…I don’t know about the party. I don’t think I’m ready for her to do something like that.”
“But Sam is.” Her words feel like a hammer to my chest. “She and Daisy are doing great together. Trust Daisy to do her job. She’s going to take care of Sam if she has a seizure, and she’ll alert Jenna’s parents, and they can call you.” I don’t respond right away, so Evie reaches out and lays her hand across my forearm that has been draped over the back of the swing. “You can’t keep her in your pocket forever, Jake. Just because your daughter has epilepsy, it doesn’t mean that she has to be treated like a toddler for the rest of her life. She’s going to need to grow up and learn to live with her disability. Trust me.”
I do trust her. Or at least…I’m starting to.
I puff out a breath, trying for once not to overthink anything. “All right. I’ll let her go.”
Evie smiles wide and squeezes my arm. I swear I’m going to lean across the swing and kiss her. I have to. Every inch of me is aching for it.
Honk. Honk.
Evie and I both jump, and she pulls away, springing to her feet and grabbing the dogs’ leashes like we were just caught after curfew doing something we shouldn’t. I wonder if she could read my thoughts a moment ago, because she seems suddenly reluctant to meet my eyes. Would she hate a kiss from me?
GET IT TOGETHER, JAKE. You can’t kiss her! You’re not ready for this, remember?
“I think you’re making the right decision about the party,” Evie says as she’s running down the porch stairs in a full gallop. “I’ll see ya tomorrow!”
I’m watching her leave my house, and honestly, I hate it. I want her to stay. It’s stupid. I’m being stupid. But just before she gets in the Uber, a thought hits me, and I call out to her. “Evie, wait.”
Charlie and Daisy jump in the backseat, and Evie pauses before getting in to look at me. “That’s what Sam was trying to get you to ask me earlier, wasn’t it? When she pushed you into the kitchen? She wanted you to ask me about the slumber party, but you knew I’d say no, so you covered by inviting yourself for dinner.” I state this like I’m at a murder-mystery dinner and I’ve just solved the case.
A smile grows on her lips, confirming that she threw herself under a bus to protect my daughter’s chances of happiness. “Night, Jake.”
“Goodnight, Evie.”
Tomorrow can't come fast enough.
Chapter Twelve
Training Camp Day 3:
JAKE: Thanks for braiding Sam’s hair tonight before you left. I can never get it right.
EVIE: Not a problem. I like braiding hair. Maybe I’ll quit the service-dog business and go to hair school.
JAKE: Can you wait to do that until after you’ve finished working with Sam and Daisy?
EVIE: Bossy much? But okay. We only have two days left anyway.
JAKE: Yeah…two days.
Training Camp Day 4:
EVIE: Dinner was great. Thanks again for inviting me to stay. I swear I really do have food at my apartment.
JAKE: It was nothing. Made sense for you to stay since training went late.
EVIE: Which makes it even nicer of you to offer.
JAKE: Stop it. You’re making me blush.
EVIE: I don’t believe it. I need photographic evidence.
JAKE: Are you trying to get me to send nudes?
EVIE: What? NO. Now I’m blushing.
JAKE: I need photographic evidence.
EVIE: …
Training Camp Day 5:
JAKE: Last day of training today.
EVIE: Yep.
JAKE: Sam’s going to miss you.
EVIE: Sam can come see me anytime she wants.
JAKE: Good to know. Come hungry today. I’m going to feed you pancakes before you guys start your session.
EVIE: Do you talk this dirty to all your female friends?
JAKE: Just you.
Chapter Thirteen
EVIE
My intentions were noble when I set out for the bathroom. I swear it. Put a Bible under my hand and I will—okay, well, that’s taking it too far because clearly my intentions were as noble as sin.
I’m standing in the middle of Jake’s bedroom, looking around with hungry eyes. I’m a jewel thief inside of Tiffany’s, and I don’t know wh
ere to start.
Jake was on a work call when I left him, and Sam was in the living room. I walked toward the downstairs bathroom, innocent as the day I was born, until I was out of Jake’s eye line. Then, I shut the bathroom door from the outside—I obviously missed my calling as a spy of some sort—and then hurried down the hall where I suspected Jake’s room to be.
I don’t know why I feel the overwhelming need to be in here. I think it’s because Jake still feels like a mystery to me, and I’m hoping that if I have this inside look at his personal life, I’ll stumble across the secret to who he is. During our last five days of training camp, Jake has been kind and friendly. But that’s it. Nothing more. Nada. His attention is zeroed in on Sam or work or Daisy. He smiles at me. He asks if I want anything to drink. But that’s it.
I wouldn’t think anything strange about it if it weren’t for the texts I get like clockwork every night. I’ve never been so glued to my phone before. It always starts with something innocuous and then quickly dips into flirtatious. It’s like he has another Jacob Broaden stuffed in a closet somewhere and only lets him out after 8 PM.
I open his closet, and unfortunately, no one jumps out.
Now, I realize that I am a borderline stalker woman right now. It’s creepy that I’m tiptoeing around his room, running my fingers across his rumpled gray bedspread, and smiling that he doesn’t bother to make it before he leaves in the morning. I really want to pick up his shirt laying across his bed and smell it…but I said that I was only BORDERLINE creepy, and I stand by that, therefore I refrain.
The ugly truth is, I saw the signs saying Beware: Crush Ahead, but I blew right past them. Jake has stolen all of my brain space.
He is all I think about, and it’s really making me nervous. I don’t want to fall for him. I still feel like he’s too far out of my league. So, I guess, by me tiptoeing around his room like this, I’m sort of just torturing myself with what I’ll never have.
My eyes narrow on a book beside his bed, and my greedy little fingers snatch it up. What does a man like Jake read before he goes to bed?
TWILIGHT?! No. You’ve got to be kidding me. This one life choice of his has me rethinking everything. There’s no other explanation for a thirty-three-year-old man reading a book about teenage vampire love: he’s a psychopath.
Yes, I realize that’s rich coming from a woman snooping around a man’s bedroom.
“Find anything interesting?” Jake’s voice sounds behind me, and I snap the book shut and spin around to face him, holding the book behind my back.
I’m caught red-handed. The jewels are behind my back, and it’s incriminating enough to send me to prison for the rest of my life. I don’t dare speak. I have the right to remain silent. I’ve seen enough cop shows to know that anything I say will be held against me in a court of law.
“Whatcha got there?” He’s smiling, and I’m turning into a tomato.
“I was looking for the bathroom.”
“In my bedside table?”
He’s stalking toward me, and I’m quaking in my tennis shoes. Where’s Charlie when I need him? Attack, boy!
Jake stops just in front of me, so close that I can feel the heat rushing off of him in waves, and I have to tip my head up to look at him. It’s doing nothing to help my flaming cheeks. I don’t think he’s ever stood this close to me before, and I’m wondering if maybe this is 8-PM Jacob Broaden, freshly escaped from whatever cell he’s normally kept in.
He reaches around me, his arm brushing against my shoulder, and I think I accidentally shudder. No, I know I do because he notices and smirks. Hello, 8-PM Jake.
After retrieving the evidence from behind my back, he chuckles. I can’t look away and neither can he. He’s holding the book between us now but doesn’t bother to look down at it. “Were you about to call Child Protection Services to have Sam removed from my guardianship after seeing this?”
“The number is halfway typed in my phone.” I don’t like how wobbly my voice sounds. But how else am I supposed to sound when I’m face to chest with a superhero that just finished fighting crime? Because that’s clearly what Jake is. It’s the only logical explanation for all the muscles.
He smiles. “Sam said she wanted to read it, so I thought I would read it first to see if it’s appropriate for her.”
“A likely story.” I can’t let him know that I think he’s probably the best dad I’ve ever seen before. The way he loves and cares for Sam only adds to my attraction for him.
“It’s not at all an appropriate book for her.” His eyes drop to my mouth. “Too much longing and wanting.”
Between Edward and Bella, right? Because my mind is screaming that he’s talking about us, and I have no idea what to do with that information. I want Jake to like me; I want him to want me. But I also don’t dare believe that he really does. I don’t have anything to offer him.
“By the way, your boss is here,” he mentions casually as if that isn’t the most startling information I’ve heard all day. It has the same effect on me as a hypnotist snapping his fingers.
My head rears back. “Joanna?!”
He nods, but his eyes are still trying to tell me something. “That’s why I came to get you. But I figured I should let you have a few minutes to creep around my room first.”
My cheeks heat again. “You knew I was in here the whole time?”
His smile grows. “I don’t mind. Snoop anytime you want.”
“Why would you be okay with that?” It’s a dare as much as it is a truth.
He’s quiet for a minute, and then he looks over my shoulder as if he can’t look me in the eye when he answers. “I guess I…want you to get to know me.”
“Oh.”
His eyes hook mine again. “So we can be real friends. Not just work friends.”
Oh.
Again with this friend crap?! I try not to let my dejection write itself across my face, but it’s probably no use. I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings. He’s probably reading a Post-it on my forehead at this very moment that reads, Hi, I’m Evie. I want you to like me romantically, but you don’t, so I’ll probably cry on my car ride home.
“Do you know why Joanna is here?” I’m ripping the Post-it off and changing the subject. “She never comes to my training days anymore.”
He shrugs his big shoulders, and I’m mesmerized by how the fabric of his shirt pulls tight. “I guess you’re in trouble.”
Not likely. If I had to guess, I would say that Joanna is going to be the one in trouble at the end of this day.
I try to step around Jake, but he cuts me off. Maybe Jake isn’t the only superhuman, because I halt my body so fast that I almost knock myself backward. Thanks to my reaction time, neither of us are touching, but that doesn’t help all the chills racing across my body.
“Wait. I want to know what you think of my room.” His voice is playful, and this is seriously throwing me off.
He’s like a bully that pulls my hat down over my eyes in the hallway and then keeps spinning me in reverse circles so I’m never able to catch my bearing. Business. Flirting. Stoic. Friends. Flirting. Quiet.
But he’s very clearly not going to let me leave this room without an answer, so I sigh and take a long, exaggerated look around the room (as if I didn’t already do a thorough investigation a few minutes ago).
“It’s nice,” I say and then get ready to leave.
“No, no, no. Tell me what’s going on in your head. What do you think? What stuck out to you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He smiles. “Because…I don’t know. I just do.”
“Okkayyy. I like the vaulted ceilings.” Ceilings are neutral, right?
“What else?” His smirk says this is some sort of game to him, but I haven’t figured out the rules yet. Or the objective.
“You’re being weird.”
“Says the uninvited woman standing in my bedroom.”
“Right. Well…I guess I like that you do
n’t make your bed.”
He chuckles, deep and full, and I’m pretty sure that if my hand was on his chest, I would feel the force of it. “I knew that’s what you’d like most. I wanted to see if I was right. And I was.”
I narrow my eyes. “No you did not! How could you possibly have known that?”
He shrugs again. “I guess because I picture your place being messy.” He’s pictured my place?
“Should I take offense to that?”
“Not at all. I just mean that you…you’re not uptight. Life moves too fast for you to take time to put your things away. It’s refreshing.”
Oh good. The claw of heat is creeping up my neck again, and I’m about to be full-on strawberry. “I haven’t confirmed that my place is messy.”
He looks down at me and lifts a brow. “Is it?”
My shoulders slump. “Yes.”
He smiles, and those shoulders of mine are perking right back up. I need to get out of here. He’s being strange, and I like it way too much. It makes me wonder if maybe his house is so clean because he needs someone else to help him and Sam live in it a little more. Someone like me.
“I need to see what Joanna is doing here.” I push past him, and this time he lets me go.
Chapter Fourteen
JAKE
I let Evie leave my room and have a few minutes alone with her boss before I join them. Okay, fine, it was me who needed a few minutes alone to process. Evie was in my bedroom. And she looked perfect there. Too perfect. This room had never felt so bright before.
I watched her in the doorway for a minute before she noticed me, and I felt desperate to know what was going through her head. Did she like this space I’ve set up for myself? Or did she think it was dull?
She touched my bedspread. What does that mean? I’m pretty sure it can only mean one thing. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve been around a woman who wasn’t my wife, but I’m thinking that snooping through a man’s room and casting longing looks at his bedspread can only mean one thing: she’s attracted to me.