She winced, defeated, as if he’d just kicked her to the curb. Honestly—he didn’t know how to deal with her. She was actually pretty brave. From what he could see, she had big plans and was making a courageous, bold and disciplined journey to reach them, much like he was.
“Look,” he said, “your main concern is that I not pass on what just happened to your uncle, right? Because you don’t want him to think less of you for it. Am I close to the truth?”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she said softly.
“What question?”
“I want to know how you were dumped.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. It’s a power issue, Jacob.”
“A...what?”
“If you know my deep dark secrets and I don’t know yours, then we’re not on equal footing. I never should have spoken so loudly inside that coffee shop.”
“So...you’re more concerned about being vulnerable than about losing the so-called love of your life? Interesting.”
Her lip quivered.
Damn. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Cripes, he was handling this all wrong.
He laid his head back and looked at the skylight. Watched the rain come down. The truth was, he just couldn’t give anyone any more of himself. What was private with him, he kept locked away. He had to solve this standoff with Isabel some other way.
Abruptly, she opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
“Isabel?” he called. “Where are you going?”
“My luggage, please,” she said, leaning into the open door. “I’m going to phone for another driver. You and I obviously can’t work together any longer.”
He threw open his door and got out of the SUV, then jogged around the front until he was beside her on the wet sidewalk. The rain was cold on his head and face. “You want me to talk? You want to know how I’ve been in your shoes?”
She nodded, gazing into his eyes. “I do.”
They were both getting wet. Fat raindrops were spilling onto her cheeks. He wanted to brush them away.
“I...was supposed to get married,” he said. “Instead, on our wedding day...she arrived late and made this little speech to everyone as if she were doing me a favor to have shown up to the altar at all.”
“You were left at the altar?” she asked.
He focused on the raindrops running down her cheeks. One on her nose. Her top lip.
“Were people there?” she asked gently. Her tone was the musical Scottish voice he’d heard in the coffee shop. Her true accent. The voice she’d shown for Alex, and he hadn’t cared about it.
“Jacob?”
“All of my friends were sitting in the church. My colleagues from the NYPD, their wives and girlfriends. My mother. My stepfather. My half siblings. My stepgrandmother and stepaunts.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “How did you ever face them all afterward?”
He let out a breath, remembering. “For a long time, I didn’t. I focused on getting into the Secret Service. I worked long hours so I could stay away.”
Which probably wasn’t helping him much now, but he didn’t want to go into that.
“Bottom line, Isabel, don’t let the bastards get you down. Don’t give Alex the satisfaction of having the power to damage you. Because you’re not damaged. You’re strong and you’re independent and you’re doing the right thing with your life. Things don’t happen by accident—he put himself into that situation where he was open, just as Rach—just as my ex did. And then blamed it on fate. On me. On whomever. On everybody but her...”
He caught himself. Whoa. Where was this coming from?
But Isabel’s eyes were bright. And now her hand was on his arm. Just lightly. Not the way she’d hooked him back in her residence hall, but as though she were giving him comfort.
What was happening?
“I’m fine,” he said. It seemed he was saying that so much lately, what with the psychologist at work and the—
“When did she leave you?” Isabel asked.
Because she was sincere, quiet and respectful, he let out a breath and answered her. “Five years ago.”
“Have you been alone since then?”
Fix-ups didn’t count, not really. He nodded. “I have goals. You have your goals, well, so do I.”
She nodded, too, her eyes even brighter. “The thing that hurts most is that Alex knew what my goals were. We’d made an agreement. He was going to wait for me to come home.” She fell silent.
“How long were you and Alex together?”
“He...was the boy next door,” she said simply. “He knew me since...before everything. Before our family business took off, I mean. Before my father died...”
“It hit you out of left field, didn’t it?”
“If that means it flummoxed me, then yes—yes, it did.” She blinked rapidly.
“You don’t have to put on a brave face for me,” he said. “If you want to scream, go ahead.”
“I never scream.” She smiled brightly. “I don’t believe in drama.”
He did. Sometimes it was necessary.
“What did you do at that church with everyone looking at you?” she asked.
“Another story for another time.”
“Did you vomit all over the floor in public?” Her lips twitched. She was going to laugh, and that was a good sign.
He smiled, too, sort of. “Let’s just say that like you, I was in no good shape.”
“What did you do to get in good shape?”
What she really was asking was, how could she get in good shape?
For purposes of getting her on the road to Vermont, he told her a partial truth. “I stopped by a liquor store, got a whole bunch of empty boxes and then drove back to our—to my apartment, and packed up everything she had. Clothes, makeup, cooking stuff—whatever, and I left it out in the hall. Then I had the locks changed.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you ever hear from her again?”
In Jacob’s experience, when people left him, they really left him. He felt cold for a moment, but shook it off. “Nope.”
“She didn’t come back to you? Tell you she’d made a mistake?”
“No.” He looked at her. “Is that what you’re hoping for?”
“Me?” She shook her head fiercely. “I have very few real friends, Jacob. Few people I can trust.” She sighed. “You were right. He showed me his true colors.”
She folded into herself. But Jacob knew that her heart was broken.
Jacob’s heart had been broken, too. Worse than the embarrassment. Worse than the jealousy or the anger or the betrayal—it was the secret inner sadness, the empty pit of abandonment that nobody ever talked about. It was the stark reality at the end of the day, when you came back to your apartment and you were alone. Because the only people you’d trusted had taken your heart and tossed it away.
“Don’t feel sad for me,” Isabel said. “I’ve just decided I am going to this wedding. I’m going to show Malcolm that he still has a competitor for this job. He’s not the shoe-in that everybody thinks he is.”
She leaned over and kissed Jacob on the cheek. “Let’s get back in the car and drive to Vermont, please.” She smiled. “But I’m not sitting in the back. There’s no need for that anymore.”
As she turned and climbed inside, Jacob stood there in the rain, touching his cheek where she’d kissed him.
He should be happy. He’d gotten what he wanted from her—they were going north—but at the same time he’d lost something in the process, too. Some level of protection that she’d just stripped from him.
He wondered if he could get it back before it was too late.
CHAPTER FOUR
FLIPPING
HER SEAT warmer to the highest setting, Isabel enjoyed the warmth that seeped into her bum. She sighed, wriggling her thighs and stretching her toes.
Thirty minutes outside New York City, past the congestion and stops, the drive was more freeing to her than she’d expected.
She felt mostly awe as the SUV hugged the curves of one of the massive motorways she’d read about. They passed the hugest lorries she’d ever seen, most of them left in their dust. Jacob roared at a steady clip in the left lane, usually the slow lane for her—but everything was flipped backward for her, with the driver on the left-hand side of the car.
This was a five-hour drive away from the rut, the loneliness, the stalled disappointment that her life had become.
She gazed through the sparkling clean glass. Welcome, success. From now on, everything would be new again, including her.
They threaded through some pretty parkways that would connect to another major route, Route 91 in Connecticut, and then all the way north to Vermont. For too long, Isabel had been cooped up in the city, bound to her work. She had barely left her campus or residence hall, unless as part of her studies.
Two years ago, during student orientation, she’d been part of a group that had toured the stock market and watched the famous ringing of the bell, and another week, had walked through Central Park. She’d even toured the museums one rare Sunday.
But since classes had started, she’d never veered from the work it took to earn her degree. This was a fresh way to start over with a renewed attitude.
“How is it that you know your way around the countryside so easily?” she asked Jacob.
“This is Connecticut.” He shrugged. “I have family here.”
“You grew up here?”
He gave a tight nod. “I did.”
Such a different world. A different life. They shared a common language, but the States seemed so much more complicated and larger than what she was used to.
Louder, faster, more crowded. Their course through Jacob’s home territory changed to a gently rolling two-lane motorway with no lorries, only cars, and then again to a larger motorway. Jacob stayed in the left lane most of the drive north. He used a GPS, as she liked, though he kept the radio off. He drove carefully, not recklessly, but he didn’t fear speed traps.
They saw several pulled-over motorists with police officers in cars, issuing tickets.
“Yeah, that’s Connecticut,” Jacob mentioned with a smile.
“We tend to follow the rules in Scotland. Nobody likes to get fined.”
“That’s not a problem I have very often, being in law enforcement,” he replied.
She’d almost forgotten his profession. With each passing mile, rather than feeling anxious over going someplace new, someplace she was unsure how to act in, she felt calmer in his presence.
“There’s a rest stop up ahead,” he said. “I’m going to pull in. There are facilities and vending machines, but if you’d rather sit down to eat, there’s a better place about an hour up the road.”
“You know this route to Vermont well. Do you drive it often?”
He smiled slightly, as if to himself. “I haven’t been in Vermont since college, on a ski weekend.”
“We have skiing in Scotland, too,” she remarked.
He glanced at her. Those two frown lines were between his eyes again. “Do you live in Edinburgh?”
Was he asking if she was a city girl? She did live in the city, but during this drive through Connecticut, seeing all the trees again and the rolling hills, she was getting a bit homesick for the country.
“I have a flat in Edinburgh. I work in the corporate headquarters for my family’s company. But I grew up in the Highlands.”
Near Inverness. She felt a stab of nostalgia for the deep blue lochs, the glens, the relative ease with which one could drive past castles from east to west, North Sea to Irish Sea.
Jacob was staring at her.
“How much longer until Vermont?” she asked politely.
He laughed. “We’re not even in Massachusetts yet. We have two more state lines to cross.”
She took it to mean they had a lot more time to spend together in their cocooned, rolling world. That made her smile. And she didn’t have to fake it.
* * *
JACOB HAD PLANNED out the route already, days ago. He knew where each stop was that they would make. Nothing would be left to chance. This was how he worked, how he was trained.
And yet, he’d never had a protectee like Isabel.
She’d thrown him off balance yet again.
For one thing, she sat up front with him. For the past hour, she’d been toying with the satellite radio. She was putting on music that messed with his head. ʼ70s on 7, the station was called.
All kinds of old pop music that had played in their apartment back when he was a kid—just him and his mom, together in New York City. Sometimes even years later, alone in the new house in Connecticut with Daniel—Jacob’s stepdad—she would cry silently over those old songs when Daniel wasn’t around. She never told Jacob why, but he didn’t need to ask.
There were some things he wasn’t ever supposed to ask. They only caused sadness and silence. Daniel was a calm, levelheaded guy. He hated conflict in the home, and Jacob’s mom shared that aversion.
Jacob ran his hand through his hair. He was thinking all these things just because they were driving through the state where he’d lived in his teens. He’d learned every inch of this place like the back of his hand, but especially the tristate area: southern Connecticut, New York City metro and northern New Jersey.
They were traveling away from what he knew and toward the unknown—Isabel’s family wedding.
There was still so much he didn’t know about the Sage family. Normally, he would take the opportunity to quiz Isabel about her uncle, her cousins, the kidnapping—everything he needed to know for his job. Somehow, though, she had a tendency to answer him in such a way that he ended up being the one in emotional danger.
Just when he thought he had her figured out, she shocked him into realizing he was in completely new territory.
He glanced over at her. The woman was...well, she was obviously beautiful, but it was her vulnerability that he found most interesting—the real Isabel, not the one who was so poised on the surface. He didn’t know much about how most women thought—he’d only lived with Rachel for those few weeks—but watching Isabel in action, he’d been reminded of that bathroom drawer of makeup that he’d emptied once Rachel had decided to take up with her investment banker.
Isabel had fixed her smeared mascara back at their first rest stop. Brought in that huge bag of hers and had reemerged, poised again as if nothing had happened.
There was a lot she kept hidden behind the polite smile she showed the world. The crazy part was that he really did want to protect her. He wanted to keep her safe from ever crying again, especially over that idiot who’d flown in from Scotland just to dump her.
But at the same time, it would be reckless to forget she was the enemy of sorts.
She was part of the family he meant to discover more about, and without their knowing he was doing it or why. That would bring complications. He had to be careful. The only reason Isabel hadn’t ditched him so far was that he’d been on his best behavior.
He scowled to himself. He wasn’t usually so friendly and open to people, not by a long shot. He did his job with a minimum of words. Silent protection. And he did it well; nobody got hurt or killed on his watch. He didn’t accomplish that by being buddies with the VIPs.
But Isabel wanted Jacob to be pleasant, right along with her.
“Will we be seeing some of that famous New England foliage?” she asked him as they passed north into Massachusetts.
“No. I think we’re too late for that.”
&n
bsp; “A pity. I regret that I never made time to see it. It’s supposed to be brilliant.”
“Ah...” Jacob rarely made time, either. “The leaves turn red and yellow in the city, as well, but you’re right, there’s nothing like the vividness of the mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire.”
“Then I’ll have to make plans for another year, maybe.” She smiled sleepily at him. “I’ll have to come back and do it right the next time I’m here.”
He doubted she’d ever be back.
He let out a breath. She had a scent that filled his SUV. Shampoo, or soap, or some kind of shower gel that just...smelled good.
Made him want to move closer to her, though he would never actually do it.
She had long limbs, too, long legs that filled the bucket seat, crossed at the ankle of her tall leather boots. She had slender fingers, the nails clipped short, unpainted. He liked that.
As he glanced over at her, she toyed with a pendant on a thin chain that hung over her turtleneck, her eyes drifting closed. Long lashes lay against her cheek. She’d tied back her hair in a ponytail, and it rested against her shoulder, making her look relaxed and untroubled.
“Jacob?”
“Yeah?” He snapped back to reality. The road was lulling him. She was lulling him. Building a rapport with Isabel Sage wasn’t on the agenda any longer, and it was time he shook that off.
All he needed was to get her safely to the inn and pass her to the bosom of her family. Then he could start phase two of his operation: arrange his meeting with John Sage.
“We’re almost there,” he mumbled.
“Could we please stop and eat dinner together first?” she asked. “I’m getting rather hungry.”
He sighed. A reasonable request. “Yeah, sure, there’s a good place just ahead.”
A few minutes later, an hour away from their destination, he pulled the SUV into the dirt parking lot of a roadside restaurant.
Once inside, he ordered from the counter and brought back hamburgers, French fries, a root beer for him and bottled water for her—all to their booth in the back.
Scotland for Christmas (Harlequin Superromance) Page 6