Then he got the fuck out of the house, throat now burning, gut tight, shafts of piercing pain driving through his brain.
He pulled out his phone and texted Chace, I’m out. You lose him?
No. I’m on him. He’s taking a meet. I’ll send a car.
Copy, Deck typed in.
New guy. Don’t know this guy. Got pictures, Chace texted back.
Good, Deck replied but didn’t share about the ring. He’d do that in person tomorrow when he could state plain to all involved how they were going to proceed.
He shoved his phone back in his pocket and moved through the woods.
He stood and waited, hidden by a tree, and only came out when Jeff Jessup rolled up in his SUV.
Jessup took Deck to Chace’s Yukon and while he did, Deck did not invite discussion. Jessup, not stupid by a long shot, didn’t push it. Jessup also had a very pretty wife and a new baby so he didn’t have time to shoot the shit. Deck knew the man just wanted to get home.
Jessup dropped him at the Yukon and Deck swung into Chace’s vehicle. Chace and Deck would switch trucks tomorrow.
Deck drove home.
When he got there, he pulled out the files, flipping through, finding it.
A picture taken for an insurance company.
He got out his phone and pulled up the shot of the ring.
He looked between his phone and the picture.
McFarland had given Emme a stolen ruby ring.
Dumb fucking moron.
And they had the dumb fuck but they had him with fruit from a poisonous tree. He’d got the photo searching Emme’s home without a warrant and Deck not yet being deputized.
It was inadmissible evidence seeing he got it essentially while breaking and entering.
They couldn’t use it.
“Fuck,” Deck hissed.
With no choice but to wait until the next day, he put the file back, got ready for bed and slid between the sheets.
He did not find sleep.
This was not unusual. Since he was a kid, he slept deep but he never slept long. For as long as he could remember, he needed four hours a night, no more. It drove his mom and dad ’round the bend. Elsbeth hated it, bitched about it all the time and refused to entertain the idea of keeping him close so he could read, or do other things, when he woke early. So when he woke, he left her in bed and spent his early awake hours elsewhere.
But he wasn’t finding sleep that night because this was the norm.
He wasn’t finding it because, thirty miles away, Emme, his fucking Emme, was lying naked in a bed in a ramshackle mansion that looked good but needed a shit ton of work that, on her own, would take a fuck of a lot longer than a decade and a half, a bed where she’d been fucked by a criminal, a stolen ten-thousand-dollar ring sitting on her nightstand.
“Fuck,” Deck clipped and rolled.
An hour later, still not finding sleep, he knifed out of bed.
Not knowing why, he went to the kaleidoscope on the mantel. He nabbed it, its box and took them to his bedroom.
He put them on his nightstand and stared at its shadow in the dark.
Five minutes later, he found sleep.
Chapter Five
Where I’m Takin’ Us
I looked out my office window, down to the yard, my eyes to the bustling activity, and I did this tapping my phone on my desk.
I should be working but I wasn’t thinking about work.
I was thinking about Jacob.
More precisely, I was thinking about calling Jacob, had an overwhelming urge to do so.
I was also trying not to do so because I had a boyfriend, even though he was a boyfriend I wasn’t all that sure about. He was sweet, he was into me, but he was just… off.
Then again, I didn’t have a lot of experience so what did I know?
Additionally, after my dinner with Jacob last night, within an hour, I’d called him after ten at night and now it was only eleven thirty the next day.
I didn’t want him to think I was psycho, and calling him would imply psycho behavior. Further, when I called him last night, I’d asked him to dinner, which was dinner two nights in a row with a woman he hadn’t seen in nine years, a woman with a boyfriend, and that was semi-psycho.
Okay, maybe it was totally psycho.
I didn’t want Jacob to think I was psycho.
Ever.
But I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to connect with him on the phone. I’d missed him and I liked having him back. I liked it a great deal.
I also missed him a great deal.
And I needed to ask him something. Further, he was the only one I could ask.
I looked from the yard to my phone. My mind telling my thumb not to do it, my thumb not listening, I found Jacob’s contact and hit go.
I put it to my ear.
“I’m a psycho,” I whispered and luckily finished whispering two seconds before Jacob’s voice sounded.
“You okay?” he answered.
He kept asking that mostly, I figured, because I kept calling when I didn’t need to so he probably thought something was wrong.
Or that I was a psycho.
“I need to know if you don’t eat anything,” I lied.
Actually, it wasn’t a lie. Although I remembered a lot about Jacob (most everything, in all honesty), I couldn’t recall if there was something specific he didn’t like to eat.
I could recall how beautiful he was, how tall he was, how strong he was. I could recall how smart he was and how funny he was. I could recall how cool he was with me. I could also recall how much I missed him. But I couldn’t recall if he didn’t like chicken.
But that wasn’t the only thing I needed to know. I needed to know something else too.
Much like last night, when he didn’t make me feel like a psycho, in fact, the opposite and sounded like he was happy to hear from me and would be willing to talk all night, he again sounded like me psychotically calling him yet again in a precursor to stalker way was no big deal.
“I don’t eat it, I’ll pick it off.”
“You can’t pick it off if I cook with it in it or if the mainstay of dinner on the whole is what you don’t eat,” I informed him.
“You makin’ Indian food?” he asked.
“No. Don’t you like Indian food?” I asked back.
“Love it,” he answered.
“Then why’d you ask if I was making Indian food?”
“ ’Cause I hoped you were.”
I burst out laughing.
No, Jacob definitely didn’t make me feel like I was being a psycho.
When I quit laughing, I told him, “Sorry, honey, I don’t know how to make Indian food.”
“Shame,” he muttered, a smile in his deep, attractive voice, and if I was on an infrared scanner, specific parts of me would have shown up hotter.
You have a boyfriend, Emme! I told myself.
For a while, I answered myself.
Jacob is also your ex–best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Emme! I reminded myself.
So? I asked myself.
I shoved those thought aside, thoughts that, if anyone knew I was talking to myself in my head might prove I was indeed a psycho, and pointed out to Jacob, “You haven’t actually answered the question.”
“I’ll eat what you cook, Emme. Cook what you like.”
He was such a nice guy.
He always was.
Nice. Tall (very tall). Handsome (unbelievably handsome). Smart (so damned smart). Funny. Interesting. Gentlemanly. And a repeat of nice because it was worth a repeat since he was just that nice.
I liked all that about him. I liked that he wore his dark hair way too long. I liked that sometimes a thick hank of it fell over his forehead and into his eye. I liked that he was who he was and didn’t wear designer jeans or put gel in his hair. I liked that, even considering he was extortionately intelligent, in fact, a genius, he never made anyone feel less than him because they weren’t as smart. I liked that he never a
cted superior or arrogant and with all that was him, looks, body, brains, he was one person who could. And I liked that he liked to do what he liked to do, he did what he liked to do and wouldn’t get pushed into doing something he didn’t want.
Like Elsbeth tried to do.
He’d lost her to that and he’d accepted it. I knew it killed. He’d loved her to distraction. But he refused to be the man she wanted him to be and instead was the man he was.
She should have seen she had it all even if he didn’t make bucketloads of money and thus couldn’t give her the life she was used to getting from her daddy. Country clubs, tennis lessons, vacations in villas in Italy and beaches in Thailand, fabulous homes kept by maids and fabulous meals cooked by cooks.
She didn’t see all she had.
Stupid.
“Are we done?” Jacob prompted when I fell silent.
We were. Or at least we should be.
But we weren’t.
“Okay, well, I could obviously talk to you about this tonight but it’s preying on my mind so much I can’t get any work done. So do you have a second?” I asked.
“For you, anytime, babe,” he answered.
Really, such a nice guy.
I took in a breath and started, “Okay, you’re a guy—”
There was laughter in his voice when he interrupted with, “Glad you noticed.”
Oh, I’d noticed. Any woman who was breathing noticed Jacob Decker. Hell, it was possible he could walk through a graveyard and his very presence would call up the dead females as zombies rabid to get just an undead glimpse of him, he was that noticeable of a male.
“Shut up, Jacob, and listen, will you?” I asked, a smile in my voice.
“Right. Out with it,” he invited, a smile in his.
“So, you’re a guy and say you’ve got a girl. You’ve known her for a while but you’ve been dating her for a short period of time. You like her and she knows this. You also know that she’s holding herself back like she did the fifty times you asked her out before she finally said yes.”
I paused.
Jacob said nothing while I did and when I didn’t continue, he prompted patiently, “Right, Emme, got that part.”
I knew he did. I knew he knew I was talking about Dane. I didn’t know why I was beating around the bush. I just felt I had to, maybe to protect Dane, maybe to protect me from Jacob thinking I was an idiot.
“Okay, you got that part, so you’re a guy, say you’re that guy and no vows of love have been exchanged. No commitments, not even to exclusive. Would you, um… say, buy her an expensive gift to maybe get the ball rolling in your relationship?”
This question was met with silence that stretched so long I had to call his name.
When I did, he spoke.
“What kind of expensive gift?”
“A very expensive gift,” I told him.
“What kind, Emme?” he pushed.
I closed my eyes, opened them, looked to the yard, saw Dane was now there talking to a customer and I looked away.
“A ruby and diamond ring,” I answered quickly.
This was met with more silence that lasted longer.
I spoke into the void and I did it semi-babbling. “Jacob, honey, I don’t know. It’s weird. I mean, it isn’t an engagement ring or anything. More like a cocktail ring. Which is weird in and of itself because I run a lumberyard. I wear jeans to work. They’re nice jeans but it’s not like I go to the opera on weekends and hobnob with society. But more, the ruby is very big and you don’t have to be an expert jeweler to know it’s expensive. Like very expensive. Even the box it’s in is really nice.”
I was quiet a moment then my voice dipped low.
“It’s kinda creeped me out.”
I was quiet another moment then my voice dipped lower.
“It’s actually kinda made me make my mind up about Dane.”
Through this, Jacob said nothing.
“Jacob?” I called.
“And what’s your decision about Dane?” he asked.
I shook my head like he could see me and didn’t even consider how weird this was, talking to Jacob about this, talking to him like there wasn’t nearly a decade between meeting him in town yesterday and the last time I saw him.
Then again, I’d talked through a lot with him, none of it really personal because, back then, I really didn’t have a life. But the personal part of my life, when he was in it, he knew. What movies I went to. What candidates I was voting for. The specifics (in detail) of where I was going on my next vacation and what I intended to do. That all was personal to me and very few people knew it, except family, my few friends and Jacob.
So it seemed natural, having him back, having him happy to see me, having him say it straight then act on the fact that he wanted us to stay connected this time.
We just, both of us, slid right into where we used to be.
Like real friends. Like the friends we once were.
So I answered, “I talked to him this morning, said I needed a bit of space but I wanted him to come over on the weekend. Then I’m breaking up with him.”
A moment, before, “How’d he feel about the space comment?”
“He didn’t seem pleased,” I gave him my understatement.
“I bet,” Jacob muttered, knowing it was an understatement.
We were conversing but he wasn’t giving me anything.
So I pressed for it.
“Okay, I laid that out and you haven’t said anything. You’re a guy. Is this something you’d do? The ring thing. I mean, is he being sweet and I’m just being weird?”
“Guy’s a dick and he’s a moron and he’s into you, Emme, too much. That feels wrong, smothering, creepy, you get the fuck out,” Jacob answered.
There was no way to misinterpret that and he was right about the last part. The first parts, I felt it necessary to say something.
“He’s actually not a dick or a moron, Jacob. But he is kinda into me, well… too much.”
That also was an understatement.
“Thought I was somethin’ else when he met me yesterday, called you on it right in front of me. Didn’t shake my hand, tried to break it. That’s a dick. That’s a moron.”
I didn’t know about the hand-shaking thing but I wasn’t surprised. That seemed a Dane thing to do.
But when Dane went weird about Jacob, that ticked me off.
Then again, Dane going weird around guys tended to happen a lot so I tended to get ticked off a lot which was one of the reasons why, even though he was usually sweet, not hard on the eyes and it felt nice that he was way into me, I wasn’t so sure about him.
That and him being… off.
I put my elbow on my desk and my head in my hand, mumbling, “Oh God, now I have to break up with him.”
“Do it on neutral ground then walk away. Or have me over, open your door to him, tell him it’s over, close the door. He knocks again, I answer.”
I blinked at my desk. “You’d do that?”
“Fuck yeah, Emme. Guy’s a moron and a dick. No tellin’ what he’ll do. So you break the news on neutral ground with people around and then get the fuck away from him or you do it when I’m over.”
“I can’t… I mean.…” I stammered. “I can’t believe you’d do that, honey. That’s so nice.”
“Today’s Thursday,” Jacob declared. “I got a lot of shit to do, put him off ’til Sunday and I’ll be sure I’m around.”
So, so nice.
But, this brought me to my next problem. I’d done what my father would call shitting where I lived. This was one reason I’d put Dane off since he’d asked me out the first time about three days after I got back to work after I’d been hospitalized. Now I had to work with him after I broke up with him. Work with him as in be his boss.
“Emme? Baby?” Jacob called.
Thoughts of breaking up with Dane exited my head instantly.
Baby.
What was that?
Jacob had said
that several times since we reconnected and each time he said it, it felt like a physical touch. A good one. An affectionate one.
A sexy one.
Jacob had never been sexy toward me.
Ever.
He was my then–best friend’s boyfriend, of course. But he’d never even flirted in a casual way.
He’d called me “babe” before, a lot (even though Elsbeth didn’t like it). He’d also called me “honey” sometimes (and Elsbeth didn’t like that either).
But baby?
“Emme,” he growled, his voice rougher and getting impatient.
He’d also never growled at me.
It was hot.
I didn’t need to think of Jacob as hot, or not hotter than he naturally exuded simply being Jacob.
“I’m here. I’m freaking but I’m here,” I told him.
“It’ll be okay,” he assured, growl gone, his deep voice was again smooth.
“I work with him, Jacob.”
“Yeah, that probably wasn’t your usual smart,” he murmured.
I closed my eyes, plopped back in my desk chair and groaned, “Ugh.”
“You’re an adult, he’s an adult. You both suck it up and act like adults. I know you can do that. He can’t, you find a reason to fire him.”
I shot up and cried, “Jacob! I can’t do that. This is his livelihood.”
“He shoulda thought of that before he asked out the boss then creeped her out.”
This was true.
I straightened my spine and declared, “Okay, I’ve just decided I’m taking this one step at a time. I’ll tell him to come around Sunday. I’ll break up with him. I’ll ask him if we can behave like adults at work. And then I’ll call you for another strategy session if he’s unable to do that.”
He had another smile in his voice when he replied, “Sounds like a plan.”
“Yeah,” I agreed then I called his name like we weren’t talking on the phone.
“I’m here, Emme.”
My voice had dipped low again when I shared, “This is cool, having this back. Having you back. Thanks for making it easy and taking us right back to where we left off.”
That got me nothing and that was unusual. Jacob could be verbally and physically affectionate, and after I said what I just said, the Jacob I knew would say something gruff or funny, but whatever it was, he’d say something to make me know he liked what I said.
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