Carly bit her lips, unable to come up with words to express her thanks, but Selma’s loan and nickels and dimes from car washes and bake sales couldn’t compete with Anna Saunders’ resources. She could never live with herself if she let Selma risk her business.
Selma leaned across the table and took her hand.
“Let us help you, Carly. You’ve worked here for almost four years and waited on almost everyone in town. I’m sure everyone will want to help when they hear what’s happening—if they haven’t already.”
Their faces blurred and wavered when Carly’s eyes filled with tears. “Things I did when I was young will come out in court. I was a runaway. I used another girl’s identity.”
“You never lied to us, Carly Nolan. And we all know that you’re the best mother a kid could ever have. When was thinking with your heart ever wrong?”
Geoff slipped an arm around Carly’s shoulder as Selma squeezed her hand. And Joe, dear gentle Joe, had tears of his own in his huge, dark eyes.
The fullness in Carly’s throat made it hard to swallow, impossible to speak. As she looked at each of her friends, friends willing to risk everything to help her, she realized that the family she had always dreamed of, the family that she was certain she would never have, had been right beside her all along.
She’d just been too afraid to open her heart wide enough to let them in.
43
EXCEPT FOR THE KITCHEN CUPBOARDS, JAKE FINISHED PAINTING the inside of the house and then, taking his frustration out on the place, he tore out the worn, stained carpet and had it hauled away.
Without area rugs or furniture, the place echoed the sound of the sea like a hollow seashell.
After leaving Carly a few messages, he started to feel like a stalker, so he decided to give her some space and stop calling, trying instead to concentrate on the preliminary background information on Anna Saunders that Kat faxed him.
Days passed quickly. Nights were another matter altogether. Lying on his makeshift bed, he imagined he caught whiffs of the citrus scent of Carly’s shampoo and would mistake the music of the waves for the soft hush of her sighs.
He would prowl the big empty place, the bare wood floor cool beneath his feet as he padded out to the deck to stare up at the stars.
By Friday afternoon he was all set to drive into Twilight to pick up sandpaper at the small hardware store on Cabrillo when a FedEx truck pulled into his driveway. He signed for the flat envelope, recognized his grandfather’s lawyers’ return address.
He grabbed a bottle of apple juice out of his cooler and carried the papers onto the deck to sit in the sun.
True to his word, his granddad had left almost all of his estate to various charities, among them Rancho Los Cerritos, one of the historic sites dating back to the early settlement of California.
As he scanned the pages, Jake suddenly realized that despite everything the man had always said, his Granddad had left him a very generous inheritance. There was also a sealed envelope addressed to him by his grandfather’s hand.
Dear Jake,
By now what’s left of me is floating beneath the waves between here and Catalina. I can’t say I ever did anything to deserve your love, but I always believed that love was for children and fools anyway.
Looking back, I can see I was never an easy man to get along with. Maybe if I’d have been a better father, my son wouldn’t have felt the need to turn his back on me and get himself killed. If I’d have been a better grandfather, maybe you wouldn’t look back on those summers spent with me as an obligation you endured for your mother’s sake.
Regret is a waste of time. I was what I was. You, being who you are, always realized that.
Consider the sum I’ve left you unexpected income. Like your father before you, you’re one of those men who believes in dreams.
Maybe you can use the money to make one of them come true.
His grandfather’s initials were scrawled at the bottom of the page.
Jake reread the letter before he let it drop to the redwood deck with the rest of the document. He leaned back, eyes closed, turned his face to the sun hoping he would never become so embittered that he lost sight of his dreams and realizing he’d come perilously close before he’d met Carly.
Now he had enough money to buy this house, if he could get it for under market value.
If he still wanted it.
He’d rented the place because of Manny, but also to be close to Christopher and Carly for a few weeks in order to get to know them. He hadn’t realized how easy that would be, or how quickly he would come to care for her and Rick’s son.
Back then he had no real intention of making a permanent move, but now that the possibility of doing just that had been given to him, Carly wouldn’t even pick up the phone.
Damn it, Carly. You’ve refused to run from Anna Saunders anymore. When will you stop running from what’s in your heart?
An hour later he walked out of the hardware store just as Carly stepped out of the diner across the street. Their eyes met, and for an instant she froze, then she turned and walked toward the corner.
He stepped off the curb without looking, forced a passing motorist to slam on the brakes and honk. He smiled and mouthed, “Sorry,” before he jaywalked to the other side of the street.
Carly was already out of sight. He jogged past the diner. By the time he turned the corner and saw the old Ford wagon parked at the curb, Carly had started the car.
He opened the passenger door and slipped inside.
“What are you doing?” She pulled back, leaning against the driver’s side window and staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“You really should learn to lock your doors.”
“No one else is trying to get in.”
“All I want is a minute of your time.”
“I know what you want, Jake, and time has nothing to do with it.”
He tried smiling. “I don’t give up easily. If I did I’d have never found you in the first place.”
She sighed. “Is this pigheadedness the reason your wife divorced you?”
“I divorced her—shortly after I came home earlier than I’d planned one night and found her in bed with the doctor she worked for. He was married, too.”
“Jake, I’m sorry . . .”
“Don’t be. Marla was literally the girl next door. I’d loved her since I was five, but she never even noticed me until we were juniors in high school.” He could shrug off the hurt now. “We went off to college together, she became a nurse. I got a degree in criminal justice. The day after graduation, we were married.”
Carly had fallen silent, intent on every word.
“I was young and naïve back then,” he admitted. “Marla was the only girl I’d ever loved, and I took my wedding vows seriously. I wanted to start a family and have kids right away, but the time never seemed to be right for her. I was earning my hours of experience working for Alexander and Perry, a top P.I. firm, so that I could eventually take the licensing test. We were saving money, trying to scrape together enough for a house and for me to start my own business someday.”
He paused, looked down at the bag of sandpaper he’d forgotten was in his hand.
“I was away a lot, especially weekend nights when I was assigned to marital surveillance—busting cheating spouses. While I was out snapping photos of other people’s trysts, I never had a clue my own wife was balling her boss—until I finished up early one Saturday and thought I’d surprise her and take her to a movie.
“I walked in and found them on the butcher block in the kitchen.” He laughed. “He was inventive, I’ll give him that.”
“What did you do?” Carly was gripping the steering wheel as if she half expected him to tell her that he’d killed the bastard.
“I turned around and walked out. Never went back. Know where I slept that first week? At Rick’s place. He was a real partyer back then. The envy of all his married friends. He had a bachelor pad on the beach in Newpo
rt. We called him a trust-fund brat Hugh Hefner.”
“Jake, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Hey, don’t be. It’s ancient history.” It was a relief to realize his old heartache was completely gone. He hadn’t been looking to replace it with a new one, but he was afraid it was already too late.
It had taken him eight years to forgive Marla. It might very well be forever before Carly forgave him for lying to her.
He longed to take her in his arms, ready to make love to her right there on the street.
“Listen, Carly. If things aren’t going to work out between us, I know I’ve only got myself to blame.”
She reached up, pushed her hair back off her face before she closed her eyes and sighed.
“My life is so complicated right now, Jake. I . . . I don’t know what I’m doing or saying half the time anymore.”
“Kiss me, Carly. Just once. Just so I can prove a point.”
“No.”
“What are you scared of? Finding out I’m right? You kissed me that first time, Carly. Kiss me again.”
He leaned across the seat, slipped his hand beneath her hair and pulled her close. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, but instead of protesting, she reached for him, pulled his head down until their lips met.
He covered her mouth with his, kissed her deep, cherishing the taste of her lips, the feel of her silken hair draped over the back of his hand, her warm skin beneath his palms.
He ended the kiss before she could. In the hushed stillness broken only by the sound of their ragged, uneven breathing, their eyes met. Dazed, she stared back.
Before she could say anything, before he could do anything to ruin the moment, he got out of the car and closed the door behind him.
44
JAKE’S KISS LEFT HER MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER. CARLY tried to shake it off as she drove to the school where Chris waited with a knot of children on the edge of the play-ground. When his teacher saw her, she waved, and Chris came running to the car.
“How’d it go today?”
“Great! Matt and me are probably the most famous kids in the whole world.” His concerns had been short lived when he and Matt found themselves Twilight Elementary celebrities.
She almost wished the other kids had “looked at them weird” instead.
“Don’t go getting any ideas for an encore, all right?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t even think about running away again just to get attention.”
“Oh, Mom.” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry. As if she could turn it off and on.
After dinner and an endless round of Monopoly, Chris was finally tucked in and fast asleep, and she was alone with her thoughts.
There was no way she was going to be able to sleep, so she forced herself to pick up a brush and work on the painting that she hadn’t touched since Chris and Matt ran off.
Hours flew by as she lost herself in the piece. The sunset sky that Jake had requested was one of her best, the colors so vibrant and alive that it could have been a photograph.
The ghostly image of a woman had taken shape. Dressed in the style of a Spanish don’s widow, she was seated on an ornately carved wooden bench near the edge of the bluff. A long lace mantilla draped her from the crown of her head to the hem of her gown. The cascading lace appeared to drink in the fading sunlight, bringing the image to life. An open fan lay on the bench beside the woman.
Her shoulders were bowed, her hands rested limp in her lap. There was such a mournful hopelessness in her posture that the scene almost made Carly weep.
The woman’s features were in profile, her face barely visible because of the lace mantilla. The final touches on her eyes, nose, and mouth would complete the work.
Carly stepped back and knew without Geoff having to tell her that the piece was good. She had poured all of her frustration and turmoil, her fear and her hopes into it. Everything that she had translated onto the canvas had come from the heart.
She felt the lone woman’s loss and dejection and had positioned her to look as if she were staring into the setting sun for answers.
There was a haunting stillness about the painting that spoke not only of the end of a day, but of the end of everything the woman had ever cherished.
Not until she had cleaned her brushes and covered the painting did her mind finally let Jake in.
The memory of his spontaneous parting kiss still burned. She reached up, absently touched her lips. The scent of turpentine still lingered on her hands, so she walked to the counter where she kept a bowl of fruit.
She washed her hands in lemon and soap and rubbed lotion into them. Again and again she tasted Jake’s kiss until she was filled with sweet longing.
Before she knew what she was doing, the phone was in her hand. She punched in his number, waited, praying he wouldn’t answer. On the second ring, she heard his voice.
“Montgomery.”
He sounded groggy, as if she’d awakened him. She glanced at the clock on the stove. Twelve forty-five. She had no idea it was so late and was tempted to hang up but couldn’t bring herself to. She could hear him breathing.
“Carly?”
“Jake, I . . .”
“What’s wrong? Is Chris all right?”
Naturally he would think it was an emergency. It was almost one in the morning.
“I’m sorry, Jake. I shouldn’t have called.”
“Is everything all right?”
She started to say yes, that everything was fine, but the words stuck in her throat.
“Carly?”
“Oh Jake,” she whispered. “You hurt me. I was angry and scared. I wanted to hurt you back.”
She heard the floor creak on the other end of the line, then the rustle of fabric. The phone hit the floor. He cursed, scrambled to pick it up.
“I’ll be right over,” he said. A promise? A warning?
She imagined him shrugging into his jeans, struggling with buttons, tearing through a pile of clothes for a shirt.
“It’s one in the morning, Jake.”
“It wasn’t too late for you to call. It’s not too late for me to come over.”
Before he drove into Seaside Village, he made a U-turn and backtracked. Once inside the mobile home park, he cruised the circular loop three times looking for a surveillance car. Alexander and Perry already had what they wanted. No one was tailing him now.
So as not to awaken Etta, he killed the engine and the lights and coasted into the parking space in front of Carly’s.
Soft, muted light shone behind the drawn curtains.
Clearing the porch steps, he raised his hand to tap on the door, but she opened it before he could make a sound.
A small lamp on the table beside her rocker and a scented candle on the trunk in front of the sofa drenched the room in a soft, yellow glow and a heady citrus scent. He stepped inside and without taking his eyes off her, closed the door and flipped the lock.
Then he took her in his arms. She came willingly, fell into his embrace, lifted her lips for his kiss. The need in him was overwhelming. Carly answered his kiss with one as charged as his own.
When the kiss ended, Jake looked down into her eyes and then her sweet mouth that tempted him to kiss her forever.
“Christopher?” His voice sounded ragged, torn, even to him.
“Asleep.”
“Is he a heavy sleeper?” He glanced toward the hallway.
“Always.”
He held her tight, ran his hand down the front of her jeans, cupped her, pulled her up against him. She moaned, lifted her hips, encouraged him to knead her with his hand until she was writhing against him.
“Oh, Jake,” she whispered against his mouth. “I need you so much. I tried to tell myself it was over. I tried to forget that night, to forget what might have been, but I can’t. I just can’t.” She shuddered, clung to him.
He tasted her tears, kissed them away. He trailed kisses down her throat, to
her shoulder, nipped her through her thin knit shirt. He brushed her tangled hair back off her face, his senses alive to the silken feel of her long blonde hair against his palm.
“I want you,” he whispered. “But I have to hear you say that you believe me. I never, ever wanted to hurt you.”
Her glorious eyes widened. Deep and green as the ocean, he thought he might drown in their depths.
She went very still. His heart sank.
Gently he tried to pull away.
“No! Don’t.” Carly tightened her arms around his neck. Her nipples tingled against his chest. Her breasts flattened as he pulled her closer. Her heartbeat matched the slow, steady pounding of the waves against the shoreline.
He wanted forgiveness, assurance that she believed he never meant to harm her or Chris. She wanted to believe. She needed for it to be true as much as she wanted him.
She took a deep breath. A collage of all the things he had done to show that he cared came back to her.
Life doesn’t hand out a lot of second chances.
“I believe you,” she whispered. Not only did her heart want to believe him—her body gave her no alternative.
He picked her up, carried her out to the studio, the only place in the house that was totally hers, the place she claimed for herself, for her work.
Gently he lowered her to the deep, cushioned sofa covered in yards of tropical fabrics in all the colors of the rainbow.
Her senses came alive as he raised her shirt over her head and tossed it aside. She reached for him, tugged his T-shirt out of the waistband of his Levi’s, skimmed it up past his taught abdomen and ribs, threw it on the floor beside her own.
His hands were all over her, urgent, hot, needy.
Tonight was nothing like the first time. Tonight their need was inflamed by the memory of what they had already tasted, what they had already shared.
Carly’s hands worked frantically to open his Levi’s. He had already unzipped her jeans, hooked his thumbs into the waistband along with her panties and was pushing them down over the swell of her hips. She raised her hips, aiding him. The cool night air slipping in through the open window teased her skin into gooseflesh. She shivered. Jake drew her into his embrace.
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