Game Changer

by Beth Orsoff

  Chapter 108

  Jake

  He was afraid Caroline was going to offer to concoct some sort of love potion to make Samantha fall for him again, but her proposal was much more pedestrian. She suggested several over-the-top romantic gestures she guaranteed would win her back. He’d nixed them all. Caroline was convinced it was because he didn’t really want to get back together with Samantha, which was exactly what he wanted her to think. She’d gotten way too involved in his personal life. He wanted their relationship to return to boss and assistant, instead of hapless male and dating coach.

  And the longer he waited to contact Samantha, the less he wanted to. If either of them should be apologizing, it should be her. The fact was, he hadn’t cheated. He had nothing to apologize for.

  “You’re really not the marrying kind,” Mark said when Jake insisted for the umpteenth time that he was not going to apologize for something he didn’t do. They were shooting baskets in Jake’s living room while they waited for the pay-per-view boxing match to begin.

  Mark tossed Jake the basketball, and he dribbled at the mock free throw line aka the edge of the dining room table. “Should I take that to mean Rita makes you apologize for things you didn’t do?”

  “All the time,” Mark replied.

  He didn’t even seem upset about it. Poor sap. Jake dribbled the ball a few more times, then took his shot. It bounced off the rim of his newly acquired home basketball net and nearly clipped the TV.

  “And that’s why Rita won’t let me play in the house,” Mark said as he retrieved the ball from where it had rolled under the coffee table.

  Rita had a point, Jake thought, but he’d never admit it. Instead he said, “Why don’t you try standing firm for a change?”

  “Over an indoor basketball net?” Mark said as he tossed him the ball.

  “No, doofus.” Jake took another shot. This one was all net. Yes! “Over not apologizing for things you didn’t do.”

  “Because I like getting laid.”

  They both laughed.

  Mark continued. “Sometimes she’s just in one of her crazy moods. But other times, and if you ever tell her this, I’ll deny it—”

  “Bro, I’m on your side.”

  “Sometimes, when I think about it afterwards, I realize she was right.”

  “And would that be before or after she’s sucked your cock?”

  “Usually after,” Mark said, and they both laughed again. “But it’s still true.”

  They stopped laughing when they heard the knocking on the front door. On the off chance it might be Samantha or some other crazy ex wielding a weapon, Jake peered through the peephole before he opened it. This time it was only his downstairs neighbor.

  “Sorry about the noise,” Jake said, cradling the basketball in his arm. “We were about to stop.”

  “I’m leaving anyway,” his neighbor said. “I just came by to give you this.” Then he handed Jake an unsealed cardboard box. “I didn’t realize it was addressed to you until after I opened it. I don’t know how long it’s been here. I was out of town for a month and just got back last night.”

  “No worries,” Jake said and was about to shut the door when he realized there was no return address on the shipping label. “Was there a receipt with this? I can’t tell who it’s from.”

  “Nope,” his neighbor said. “And there’s no note inside either. Just a wooden box.”

  Jake didn’t need to look further. He knew exactly what was inside the carton and who it was from. Fuck!

  “What’s wrong?” Mark asked, staring at his friend’s stricken face.

  Chapter 109

  Samantha

  I wasn’t over him, but I was getting over him. Thankfully it had been a short relationship, so it wasn’t like every storefront, restaurant, and palm tree evoked a memory. I’d banished the lingerie I’d worn that weekend to the back of my underwear drawer and mailed him the jewelry box. I considered the possibility that he might call me after he received it, but he hadn’t. And I was okay with that. Or at least I was getting okay with that.

  Whitney was helping. She sent me daily reminders of the similarities between Jake and Marco. But after the first few days, the comparisons grew weak. Yesterday’s was a text that said, They both have dark brown hair.

  Seriously? I’d texted back. That’s the best you can do?

  Cut me some slack. Late night with the neighbor.

  They’d been dating for over a month. He’d already asked her to move in with him when her house-sitting gig ended in a few weeks. She was considering it, over my objections. But the fact that she was only considering it, instead of saying yes right away, was progress, as far as I was concerned.

  And Michael was dating again too (he’d let that slip during one of our brief conversations regarding the divorce—no doubt he wanted me to pass that tidbit along to Whitney, which I did).

  And Jenna, as usual, was juggling several men. None of them were quite right, she admitted, but in combination they met all of her needs, so she was satisfied.

  I was the only one who’d been forced into celibacy again.

  “Not forced,” Jenna corrected. She’d called me from the car while she was stuck in traffic because, according to her, I was the only friend she could count on to be sitting at home doing nothing on a Saturday night. “You’ve chosen this life,” she continued. “I’ve offered to set you up with Shane’s friends and Rick’s. You’re the one who said no.”

  With good reason. Shane was her latest boy toy—a twenty-three-year-old drummer—and Rick was his band’s manager/drug dealer. If I’d learned anything from my brief relationship with Jake, it was that he was right about me not being a one-night-stand kind of girl. I got way too attached. And I didn’t consider Shane, Rick, or any of their friends to be long-term boyfriend material.

  Jenna was filling me in on her plans for the evening when I was temporarily blinded by someone’s headlights shining through my living room window. “You didn’t just pull into my driveway, did you?”

  “No, I’m on the one oh one. Why?”

  “Never mind.” I assumed it was someone making a U-turn in my driveway. I lived on a narrow street so it happened sometimes. But these headlights didn’t leave. These headlights stayed pinned to my living room wall and were soon joined by footsteps, which grew louder as they approached my front door. I peered out from the edge of the living room window, but all I could see was a large man in a dark suit. “Jenna, someone’s here,” I whispered as if he could actually hear me.

  “Who?”

  “I have no idea but he’s huge.”

  Chapter 110

  Jake

  He wasn’t sure she would come. He wasn’t even sure she’d be home tonight. But Rita had convinced him that he should try. “You know, if you’d ever done anything this romantic for me,” she’d said, “I might never have broken up with you.”

  If she hadn’t, he would’ve. She’d just beaten him to it. But he kept that memory to himself. Rita had done him a huge favor by convincing her parents to accept his offer for their beach house, which was thousands of dollars less than the sixteen other offers they’d received but was the absolute highest he could go without having to sell his condo too. It was no time to be truthful. “Then you never would’ve met Mark and lived happily ever after,” he said.

  “Right.” She laughed.

  Buying the beach house had been one of Caroline’s over-the-top ideas. He’d dismissed it at the time—he wasn’t going to buy a beach house just to impress Samantha! But when he’d received the jewelry box, he’d panicked. He’d known he needed to do something crazy and out of character if he had any hope of winning her back.

  “The alarm code’s three-six-nine-four,” Rita reminded him. “And if you break anything, it’s on you. You shouldn’t even be in the house until after the closing.”

  “Surely after all these years you know you can trust me?” he said.

  She laughed again.

  “A
nd thank you for all of your help with this. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “You can thank me at your wedding. I’m already writing my I-once-dated-the-groom-and-if-I-liked-him-we-wouldn’t-be-here-today speech. I’m going to roast you, by the way.”

  “Of course you are.” He hung up before she could give him a sample.

  He thought he’d relax when he received the text from the driver informing him that Samantha was on her way, but that only made him more nervous. You’d think he’d put a ring in the jewelry box he’d instructed the driver to deliver to her door, instead of a note asking her to meet him tonight. Then he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway and practically leapt to the window.

  Showtime.

  Chapter 111

  Samantha

  Initially I refused to open the door for the burly stranger standing on my welcome mat declaring that he had a package for me. Messenger services didn’t deliver on Saturday nights, and their employees didn’t drive Town Cars. It wasn’t until the man handed me the jewelry box he’d been hiding behind his back that I knew it was safe.

  I offered him a drink while I ran upstairs to change, but he refused. Luckily I’d showered and blown dry my hair earlier in the day, so it didn’t take me long to get ready. I still wasn’t sure exactly what I was preparing myself for (Mr. Burly wasn’t talking), but I knew I’d be seeing Jake at the end of the drive, so I wanted to look my best.

  When he pulled onto the 101 North, I thought maybe we were headed for Santa Barbara. And even when we exited the freeway at Malibu Canyon, I still wasn’t sure. Although it was the same route Jake had driven when we’d spent the weekend at the Solomons’ beach house, I knew the house had been sold. So I was surprised when Mr. Burly pulled the Town Car into the Solomons’ gravel driveway.

  Chapter 112

  Jake

  He was waiting for her on the north lawn. She was walking arm in arm with the driver. Jake hadn’t asked him to do that, but he thought it was a nice touch and added an extra twenty to his tip.

  “Thanks, Gus, I can take it from here,” Jake said as he slipped him the money.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jensen,” he replied as he palmed the bills. “You two have a good night.”

  Jake waited until the driver was out of hearing range before he said, “And thank you for coming. You look beautiful, by the way.” He hadn’t been explicit in his note. He’d just asked her to go with the driver to meet him. He hadn’t suggested that she dress up, but the fact that she had—she was wearing a sexy, low-cut sundress and high heels—proved that she still cared about him too. He hadn’t blown this. Not irreparably.

  “It was definitely a surprise,” she said. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”

  Chapter 113

  Samantha

  I hadn’t seen or heard from Jake in over a month, and now he was standing before me looking as handsome as ever in a dark suit, his thick hair ruffling in the breeze and his intoxicating scent tempting me every time the wind blew. It took all of my self-control not to reach out and touch him. But I restrained myself.

  And the longer we stood there, the more I wished I’d thought to bring a ponytail holder with me. I’d left my hair down because Jake had once told me that he liked it better that way, but the wind kept blowing it into my eyes and mouth.

  I also wished he’d answer my question. He was just standing there staring at me with a devilish grin on his face. Finally he thrust his hand out. “Hi, I’m Jake Jensen. And you are?”

  I laughed. “You’ve forgotten me already? Wow, way to make a girl feel special, Jake.”

  He cocked his head to the side as if he was examining me. “You remind me of a woman I met once at a wedding. Or it might’ve been at a club the night before. You don’t have a twin, do you?”

  I laughed again. What the hell, I’d play along. “Not a twin, no, but a doppelganger. I’ve never met her, but I hear she’s quite the party girl.” I leaned in and whispered, “Loose morals.”

  “Really?”

  “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I’ve heard. I’ll tell you all about her if you buy me a drink.”

  Chapter 114

  Jake

  “I’d love nothing more,” he said, “but I need a moment.”

  He’d arranged for them to have dinner outside, but that was before the wind had picked up. With her hair flying in her face, she wouldn’t even be able to eat. He stepped a few feet away from her and reached for his phone. “Change of plan,” he whispered to the caterer, who was waiting for them on the lower deck with a bottle of chilled champagne. “Move it inside.”

  “Good decision, Mr. Jensen. This isn’t an ideal night for dining under the stars. Any place in particular?”

  “You choose,” Jake said. “Just make it romantic. I’ve got a lot riding on this.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “You’ve got ten,” Jake replied and ended the call.

  “Problem?” Samantha asked when he’d joined her again.

  “Not at all. How about a walk, then I’ll take you inside for that drink?” And since he didn’t want to be outdone by a limo driver, he offered her his arm.

  “Aren’t you the gentleman?”

  He had no intention of being a gentleman tonight, but he winked at her and said, “Always.”

  “Always?” She laughed.

  God, he’d missed that laugh.

  “Then you must have a doppelganger too,” she continued. “And yours even has the same name as you.”

  “How odd,” Jake said as he placed his jacket around her shoulders. He didn’t need to ask if she was cold. It was obvious from the way she was hugging her arms.

  “Thanks,” she said as she pulled the jacket tight around her.

  “My pleasure. One of many to come this evening, I hope.”

  She smiled. “Are you sure you don’t know that other Jake Jensen? I suspect you two have a lot in common.”

  “Only by reputation. I hear he’s a cad.”

  She laughed again. “Oh, that he is. He makes women fall in love with him and then dumps them the next day.”

  His eyebrows rose involuntarily, and he forced them down again. “Fall in love with him? Really?”

  Even in the moonlight, he could see she was blushing.

  “Not that I know this from personal experience,” she said.

  “Of course,” he replied. But she was too late. He’d heard her admission and he wasn’t going to forget.

  “I’ve just heard he’s a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy,” she continued.

  “Does he at least love them well before he leaves them?”

  She blushed again and looked away.

  He stopped walking and put his hands on her shoulders so she had no choice but to face him. “On behalf of all the Jake Jensens in the world, I’d like to formally apologize. That other Jake Jensen was a moron. I intend to do better. Much better.”

  Chapter 115

  Samantha

  I wanted to believe him. I almost did believe him. But I didn’t want to get my heart broken again. It hadn’t yet mended from the last time. But God, I missed him. And not just the sex, although I definitely missed that too. I missed talking to him and flirting with him and pretending we were going to be just friends when both of us knew that wasn’t true. And therein lay the problem. When it came to Jake Jensen, all of the Jake Jensens, I couldn’t be casual. I liked them too much, even the ones I shouldn’t.

  “Jake, I don’t think I’m the kind of girl who can date a not-the-marrying-kind kind of guy. I need to know if I’m with someone that he’s with me, and only me.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “People don’t change, Jake. They are who they are.”

  “And I’m Jake Jensen, the man you just met this evening, not that other jerk you dated briefly then dumped.”

  “Actually, he dumped me.”

  “Either way, you’re better off without him.”
<
br />   I laughed. “That’s exactly what Whitney said.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Then we both turned serious. “Doing this with you again … it would be a huge risk for me. And I’m generally risk-averse.”

  “Not again,” he said. “This is Jake Jensen two point oh. A whole new version.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I know what that other guy lost, and I don’t intend to make the same mistake.”

  Then he kissed me, and all the reasons I shouldn’t give Jake Jensen a second chance fell out of my head.

  Epilogue

  Jake and Samantha

  “The only problem with pretending we’d just met that night,” Samantha said, “was that I couldn’t sleep with him.”

  “You could’ve slept with me if you wanted to,” Jake said. “You—”

  “Trust me, I wanted to.”

  “—chose not to.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re confusing me with Slutty Samantha again.”

  “She wasn’t slutty; she was in touch with her sexuality. And she could do amazing things with her feet.”

  Samantha punched him in the arm. Hard. “So I came up with a work-around.”

  Now Jake was the one to roll his eyes.

  “Well it worked, didn’t it? You got laid, didn’t you?”

  “That I did,” he said and leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  “Then what are you complaining about?”

  He slid his fingers across his lips as if he were zipping his mouth shut.

  “So I came up with this work-around where I kicked new Jake out and old Jake came back. But old, old Jake. The nice one. Not the asshole who’d dumped me.”