Ember's Fire: A Hearts of Harkness Romance (The Standish Clan Book 2)

by Norah Wilson

  “We still have lots of years. It doesn’t matter.”

  She looked up at him, her face a picture of cautious hope. “Do you mean that?”

  “That we can make a future together now?”

  She nodded.

  “Damned right I do, with every bit of me. Every last corner of my heart.”

  “Thank God!” She slid her arms around him and hugged him tightly, burying her face in his shirt.

  He eased her away a few inches so he could tip her chin up and kiss those beautiful trembling lips. She lifted her arms around his neck and clung as he kissed her again. Their kisses grew more fevered and he waltzed her over to the bed. Pushing their backpacks and his briefcase to one side, he urged her down on the bed and came down beside her. He gathered her into his arms and hugged her tight. She hugged him back just as fiercely.

  He lifted a hand to brush a strand of red hair off her face. “God, I wanted so badly to come after you. You have no idea.”

  “I wanted you to.” She stroked a hand over his chest. “So many nights, I used to look out my dorm window, hoping to spot you making your way along the paths below. And I’d search for you in crowds. On campus, off campus... I had this whole fantasy.”

  “I’m so sorry. I should have—”

  “No.” She put a finger to his lips to stop him. “It’s still my fault. If I hadn’t bolted, there’d have been no reason for you to chase after me. Well, no further than the farm.”

  He leaned in and kissed her, tenderly. “No more blame. Terry and Bridget made it look bad. Damning. It’s in the past. All of it.” He brushed his knuckles over her still-damp cheek. “None of that matters now: not that you bolted. Not that you slept with Terry.”

  Ember went stiff in his arms.

  Then she pulled back, eyes intent on his face. “What did you say?”

  His body went still too as he heard the echo of his own words in his head: you slept with Terry. They felt alien now. Distancing. Wrong.

  A fucking lie.

  Dammit, why had it never occurred to him before that Terry might be lying?

  “I asked you a question, Jace.”

  He blinked her face back into focus. “Terry told me you and he were together before you left town.”

  “And you believed him?” She looked completely appalled. Furious. “When?” she demanded, sitting up in bed. “When did he say I slept with him?”

  “Before you went to Ottawa.” He sat up too. “The night before you left.”

  “The night we were supposed spend together?”

  “Yeah. ”

  Her narrowed eyes were like knives to his heart.

  “So that’s what you think of me? That I would break up with you and immediately sleep with your brother? That I’d save my virginity so long, then throw it away on Terry, of all people?”

  “Think about it, Ember,” he pleaded. “You’d just seen those supposedly incriminating pictures. You were in a rage. Why wouldn’t I believe you wanted to revenge yourself on me?”

  “With Terry? Are you freaking kidding me?” She practically yelled the words. “Yes, I was hurt. Furious. Betrayed,” she said in lower tones. “But since when have I ever gone for that sleep-with-anything-in-panties type?”

  “Ember—”

  “Oh my God, that’s why you didn’t come after me?” Her eyes widened. “That’s why you switched to another university for your undergraduate degree. That’s why you’ve been avoiding me all this while. Because you thought I slept with your disgusting brother.”

  He reached for her. “Ember, if you’d just—”

  “Don’t touch me!” She leapt up off the bed, grabbed her jacket, and jerked it on.

  Dammit, she was doing it again. She was going to bolt.

  “Ember, don’t,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please don’t run away. I’m sorry I let Terry sell me that pack of lies. I was still reeling from what you’d told me about those pictures. Heartsick that you’d left, that I’d blown it so badly and couldn’t even remember doing it.”

  She hesitated. Her hand was on her backpack, but she hadn’t yet picked it up.

  He got off the bed. The adrenaline coursing through his veins screamed at him to do something, to take control of the situation, to seize her before she could run. But he knew if he did that, it would only escalate her fury and he’d lose his chance. So, heart thudding in his chest, the width of the bed separating them, he used his words instead of his muscle.

  “Hear me out, Ember. Please. You have to understand that back then, it made sense when Terry said it. He pointed out I’d just fucked you over, throwing our love away for a piece of tail. Why wouldn’t you be thirsting for revenge?”

  Her shoulders dropped and she looked down at the carpet. “I was devastated, Jace. Humiliated. And yes, furious. But mostly just overwhelmed with pain, betrayal, loss. I had to get away. I couldn’t stand for anyone to look at me with pity. Or worse, satisfaction. There were people who’d have taken pleasure in seeing me get my comeuppance. People who thought I was too uppity or too nauseatingly wholesome. I couldn’t stick around for that.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, her green eyes turbulent. “But I sure as hell didn’t make a pit stop on my way out of town to bed your sleazy brother.”

  “I know.” He rubbed both his temples. “As soon as I heard myself say the words out loud just now, I knew.”

  She made a choking sound. “You should have known then, Jace.”

  “Yes, I should have. I should have trusted what I knew about you. But can’t you see how it was for me? I couldn’t even trust myself anymore. My own memory. My body. I loved you beyond reason. You were my soul mate, Ember. Yet I’d cheated on you, or so I thought. I couldn’t trust my own judgment about anything after that, and I let Terry convince me of those vile lies.”

  She let go of the backpack’s strap. “Damn that bastard! I’m not a violent person, but right now, I could cheerfully do violence to that brother of yours.”

  “Stepbrother.” Relief washed over him, making him almost dizzy. “He has a lot to answer for. And believe me, I’ll make sure he does.” He sank back down on the bed before he fell down. “I guess it’s a good thing he’s in the Bahamas. Otherwise I might wind up in jail for aggravated assault.”

  “Promise you won’t do that.” She crossed to his side of the bed and took his face in her hands. “Terry has already taken enough from you. From us. Whatever you do, don’t let him goad you into anything.”

  “I won’t.” He put his arms around her and pulled her to the edge of the bed, between his knees. “I love you, Ember.” He put his arms around her, pressed his face to her belly.

  She went still in his arms. Then he felt her hands on his head, in his hair. “I love you too, Jace. I’m not sure if I Iove you still or love you all over again, but I love you.”

  He pulled back so he could look up into her eyes. The depth of emotion he saw shining back at him made his heart soar. Then he remembered.

  “I have something else to tell you.”

  Unease flickered in her eyes. “Does it have to do with what happened back then?”

  “No.”

  “Will it ruin this moment?”

  “Maybe.” He felt a muscle in his jaw tic. “Yes, probably.”

  Another pause. “Will it destroy us again?”

  “No.” His answer came quickly. Maybe too quickly.

  Dammit, how could he explain?

  He’d bought her family farm. Yes, him—not WRP Holdings. He’d done it to protect it from Terry’s development plans, but he’d still be the guy who bought out her heritage. He’d have let Arden stay and work the farm, but with Titus gone, Scott following wherever his wanderlust led him, and Ember busy with a practice, Arden had flat out said he wasn’t up to doing it alone. The economics of hiring a foreman and a crew weren’t tenable, given the narrow margins in farming. He’d insisted he’d rather vacate the place. All perfectly understandable. But Ember wouldn’t see it that way. She’d see it as
Jace forcing her father out to pasture. “I mean, it shouldn’t. Not if you trust me.”

  She closed her eyes while she digested that. The seconds ticked by. When she finally opened her eyes, they were clear, beautiful.

  “Then I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What?” She could have knocked him over with a feather. “This from the gal who faces everything head on?”

  She took his face in her hands again, studying it. “I’m not planning on burying my head in the sand forever. Just for a little while.”

  “How much longer?”

  “A week?” She brushed a strand of hair off his forehead. “I have some time before I have to make a decision about my future, where I’m going to set up practice. I’d like to spend it with you.”

  “But—”

  She put a finger to his lips to silence him. “We’ve lost so much, Jace. But despite everything, we found our way back to each other. I don’t want to risk this happiness being ripped away. Can’t we take this time to be together? Shut the world out? I want to see what it could be like, just the two of us. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then what’s to stop us?”

  A honeymoon. That’s what she was asking for. His heart felt like it was being squeezed by a giant fist. If Terry’s vindictiveness hadn’t changed the course of their lives, they’d have had a real honeymoon. What could it hurt to grant her wish?

  It might even help. A carefree week together could strengthen these new tendrils of attachment into a more powerful bond, one that stood a better chance of surviving the news when the moratorium on the outside world ended.

  The trick would be to get the outside world to leave them alone.

  “What about your family?” he asked. “Won’t they be anxious about you?”

  “I can handle them,” she said briskly. “What about your job? Can you take the time?”

  “I’ll make the time. Though with Terry away, I’ll have to check for messages, return calls, stay on top of email, that kind of thing. But that’s maybe a couple of hours a day. Can you work with that?”

  She smiled victoriously. “Just watch me.”

  Chapter 25

  EMBER FOLLOWED close on Jace’s heels as he led the way down the third floor hall of the apartment building on Second Street.

  He’d offered to take her anywhere she wanted to go within reasonable flying distance. She smiled at the memory of his expression when she told him where she really wanted to go—his apartment in Harkness.

  Laden as they were—him with grocery bags and a backpack and her with a backpack and his briefcase—they’d ridden the elevator to spare Jace’s ankle, something he said he hadn’t done since he moved his furniture in. At the door to his apartment, he put down the grocery bags he’d been carrying, dug out his keys and unlocked the door. “Remember, it’s nothing special. A place to lay my head when I’m in Harkness.”

  She held up her free hand, palm out. “Understood. No judging.”

  He held the door for her, then picked up the grocery bags and followed her in, kicking the door shut behind him.

  “Just dump your knapsack and the briefcase anywhere. We’ll square everything away as soon as we deal with the groceries.”

  She obliged, putting them down beside a black leather love seat.

  He headed straight for the kitchen. With a quick, sideways glance at the sparsely furnished TV room, she followed. The kitchen was actually quite large, but it did contain a small dining table and two chairs, which ate into the usable space. The refrigerator and electric range seemed newish, as did the built-in dishwasher. He deposited the bags on the counter, shrugged out of his backpack, and started unpacking the food.

  “Wow, granite countertops?”

  “Nope.” He rapped his knuckles on it, producing a much hollower sound than granite would have. “Granite-look arborite or laminate of some kind.”

  “Looks nice just the same,” she said, doing a quick visual tour. “So, what can I do to help?”

  “How about checking the fridge to see if there’s anything in there that might kill us? I haven’t been around much.”

  The fridge was just as sparsely populated as the rest of his place, but he was right about the spoilage. She wound up dumping soured milk down the drain and chasing it with some orange juice that was well past its best before date. She also discarded some dried-out Chinese takeout, some salad dressing and a package of deli meat. Knowing he had new meat to go in the meat tray, she pulled it out and washed it with hot, soapy water before replacing it. Then, for good measure, she did the same with the vegetable crisper trays.

  Working together, they put everything away. He dealt with the cupboard staples while she squared away the refrigeration-required stuff. By the time she closed the fridge, it was bulging with fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs and juice. Oh, and the white wine Jace had bought at the market in Shamrock Falls, as well as a six-pack of local micro-brewery beer they’d picked up at the liquor store.

  She surveyed the kitchen with satisfaction. “We are going to eat so well.”

  “I still think you’re crazy.” He pulled her into his arms. “I can afford to take you out for dinner now and again, you know.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m dying to cook. I have so little time for it, day to day, so when I do get time off, I like to indulge.” She put her arms around his neck. “And don’t worry. I’m a pretty good cook.”

  “I never doubted that, after all those years of helping your mother pull off those big meals.”

  He bent to kiss her, a surprisingly sweet, chaste kiss, his lips sliding warmly over hers. Then he released her and stepped back.

  “Ready for the ten cent tour?”

  Ember’s phone vibrated in her pocket, but she ignored it. One of her brothers, no doubt. She’d purposely switched the ringer off, intent on checking for messages just once a day.

  “I’m ready.”

  He picked up his knapsack and they backtracked to the TV room, directly off the entry way. It was as sparsely furnished as she’d thought from her initial glance. A big flatscreen TV on the wall, with an entertainment center below it. A small leather love seat and a matching recliner. No coffee table, but an end table sat beside the recliner, its surface covered with newspapers and a pair of remote controls.

  “No video games?”

  He shook his head. “Not a gamer. If I don’t have work that I’ve brought home with me, I prefer to be outside. I’ve been thinking about getting a boat.”

  She frowned. “Didn’t your dad have lots of boats? A sailboat and one of those bass fishing boats?”

  “He did. A high-powered motorboat too. And now Terry has them. But I need something smaller anyway. Something I can put into the river by myself without a crew or a crane.” He looked around. “Seen enough of this room?”

  She laughed. There wasn’t much to see, considering there wasn’t a piece of art or bookcase or picture frame or knick-knack to be examined. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  He bent and picked up his briefcase. Before he could scoop up her knapsack, she beat him to it. Though they’d ridden the elevator, his ankle must be feeling it from carting all those groceries.

  The next room was probably intended to be a second bedroom, but it was furnished as a workspace. A U-shaped desk with stuff spread out on it and a big chair sprouting several ergonomic adjustment levers on its undercarriage. He dropped his briefcase on the desk.

  Unlike the TV room, this room at least had photographic prints on the walls. She wouldn’t call it art; it was more like commercial photography. Old buildings and decrepit houses and empty lots sectioned off by weed-covered chain link fences.

  “Your office away from the office?”

  “More like my other office. I do some WRP Holdings stuff from here, but mostly it’s for running my independent projects.”

  She scanned the photos on the wall again and spotted the big grey building they’d visited yeste
rday. “Like the boxing gym?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does your brother know about these projects?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t talk to him about this stuff. But it’s a small town. I imagine he’ll get wind of it sooner or later.”

  “Is your activity in conflict with the company?”

  Something flickered in his eyes, but was gone before she could decipher it.

  “Not this stuff.” He waved a hand to indicate the photos on the wall. “These are definitely not WRP Holdings style investments. Way too micro-level.”

  “I really like this room. It has a lot of positive energy.” She looked up at him and smiled. “A great vibe.”

  She wasn’t sure, but it looked like he was blushing.

  “Thanks. Shall we move on? Just two more rooms.”

  “Lead the way.”

  The bathroom was right down the hall from the office. Because it was so tiny, he gestured for her to go in, then stood in the doorway watching. She wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of cleanliness. As well as they’d known each other back then, she’d never been privy to those intimate details. To her relief, the place looked as clean and tidy as her own bathroom. The tub was small, but it had one of those curved shower curtain rails that hotels often used to make it more spacious for showering. She pulled back the curtain to find a sparkling tub surround. His shampoo, body wash and shaving cream sat in a neat caddy suspended from the shower head. Full marks for organization too.

  “Nice. Now can we tour the bedroom?”

  “It’s not much,” he warned as he gestured for her to enter the room directly across the hall. “Just a place to crash.”

  She stepped inside. If the TV room had been spartan, she didn’t know what to call this. The queen bed sat against one wall, but had no bedframe, no headboard, no footboard. Just a box spring and mattress. It was made up, though, with a duvet throw and queen-sized pillows. No pillow shams or bed skirting or anything fussy. The window was equipped with simple bamboo blinds. A single night table stood beside the bed.

  “No dresser?”