by BETH KERY
He looked at the position of the early morning sun in the sky and shook his head. “It’ll take too long for us to hike back up. We have to be careful not to leave a trail. It’ll take time, not only to get up there, but to sweep our tracks. We need to stay low in the cave for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow at dawn we can go again. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll scout around a bit. If there’s still no sign of Emmitt in the area, he likely took the false trail all the way to Poplar Gorge. It’ll be safe to start for Barterton.”
He regretted bringing up his uncle when he saw all the color drain from her face. “So you think he did take the false trail?” she asked hopefully.
“Maybe for a ways he did. It’s hard to tell. Even if he catches on, it’ll take him a while to do it. He’ll have to backtrack. Then he’ll have to hunt out the new trail.”
“Do you think he could? Even with as careful as we were?” She blanched, obviously recalling his admonitions for her lead feet yesterday. “You were careful, I mean.”
“I doubt it,” Jake said with false assuredness, disliking the return of her anxiety. He fumbled beneath the waistband of his briefs, his actions hidden by the river. A few seconds later, he triumphantly held up the bar of soap he’d stashed in his underwear.
“It survived the fall.”
She smiled. “Do we have time?”
He nodded. She dove toward him eagerly in the shallow water, stopping in front of him and mimicking his position. They both knelt on their knees, facing each other. His heart leapt when she reached for him with both hands, grinning.
“Nice, clean soap,” she enthused, feeling for the bar between his clutching fingers. She lifted his hand above the water, cupped it with both her hands, and moved aside his fingers to expose the soap. She began rubbing. Lather began to spread on their skin. He watched, spellbound, pleasure tickling his nerves. It felt so good, he held on to the soap desperately, not wanting her to stop touching him.
She reached suddenly, scrubbing his cheek. He started, and she laughed. He reached, returning the gesture and including her nose. Her eyes sprang wide in surprise, and then she was reaching with both soapy hands, raking them down his face.
“Hey,” he muttered in a put-out fashion, pinching his eyes closed. “You got it in my eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” she soothed. She heaved water in his face. He blinked water out of his eyes, bringing her into focus incredulously.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” he promised.
She laughed hysterically and dove into the water, but he was already after her. He caught her foot, and she squealed.
Their “bath” was a squirming, tickling, poking fight for the soap interspersed with Jake reminding them both to hush their splashing and laughter.
He wanted to stay with her in that water forever, hearing her muted snorts and hushed, sparkling laughter, feeling her smooth limbs tangle with his and her hands on him, pinching and poking sometimes, flickering and sliding against his skin at others . . . making him ache.
It was like he stole those delicious moments from another world, as if they existed in some magical in-between space where Emmitt Tharp couldn’t enter, or Harper’s parents.
No one. No one, but them.
The fourth time he took note of the sun’s position, he regretfully spoke, shattering their golden, fragile little private world.
“We gotta get back,” he said, his fingers in her long, wet hair, wiping away remaining suds. She splashed water on the side of his head, rinsing away soap from his ear. He sputtered and rolled his eyes when she splashed him again. “I’m serious, Harper.”
She sighed, deflated. Regret swooped through him. Suddenly, she brightened.
“Race you to shore,” she said in a rush before she heaved face-first into the water.
“Hey, wait. That’s not fair,” he called, but she was already showing off her smooth, strong crawl, impervious to his excuses. He watched, enthralled at the vision of her pale, kicking thighs and bare lower buttocks flashing just beneath the surface of the water. She was so pretty, yet so easy to be with. So incredible.
So untouchable.
How could he think that, he wondered numbly, when he’d just had his hands all over her? But that had just been them fooling around. Playing.
That wasn’t the real thing.
Instead of taking off after her, he treaded water until she stood on the sandbank. He needed the moment to bring his spiraling, uncooperative body under control.
When he stood and slogged toward shore a moment later, she waited at the edge of the water, wringing out her wet hair and wearing a golden smile.
“Too slow, sucka,” she teased.
“You got that right,” he grumbled, ducking his head to hide his dark look.
He had an uncomfortable thought that he’d always be too slow—too wrong—to ever fit into Harper McFadden’s world.
twenty-five
Present Day
Harper thought maybe she swam faster than she had for her varsity swim meet finals to get away from Jacob, but there was no real competition. He caught her ankle almost immediately, yanking her backward in the water. She broke the surface, snorting with laughter and wiping water out of her eyes.
“Too slow, sucka,” Jacob murmured. Seeing his smug smile, she splashed water in his face.
“Hey,” he said, brows furrowed in an expression of mock offense. He grabbed the arm she’d been planning on using to splash him again. Then he grabbed the other, bringing her closer to him. She squirmed, trying to get away and laughing at her failure.
“Stupid to resist,” he said, still grinning even wider now. She loved seeing that smile.
“Cocky bastard.” She deliberately bumped her forehead into his, clunking their skulls. She saw his eye go wide in disbelief before she took advantage of his loosened hold and heaved her body away from him. He grabbed her again on the shallow end, and she surfaced, choking with laughter.
“That look on your face,” she gasped as he hauled her against him.
“You could have really hurt me.”
“Oh, poor baby,” she crooned, rubbing his forehead as if to soothe him.
Their faces were only inches apart, their naked bodies sliding and pressing together. She circled his arms around his neck, her legs tightening around his hips. Water droplets clung to his long, dark lashes, highlighting his beautiful eyes.
“Where’d a nice girl like you ever learn how to do a Liverpool Kiss?”
“Liverpool Kiss?” she wondered, panting. “That thing I did with our heads? That’s just a basic lesson from Practical Single Woman Living in the Twenty-First Century.”
“Tough world,” he murmured, sliding his big hands along her hips, back, and waist. His eyes glittered. “Soft girl,” he growled, and something swooped in her belly.
“Don’t try to sweet-talk your way out of this,” she admonished.
“You’re the one who head-butted me.”
She grinned. The realization of just how ebullient she felt, even after the strange, stressful night, struck her. That he could make it all fade, all from a few minutes of horsing around in the water together. She shook her head dazedly.
“How do you do it?” she wondered quietly.
“Do what?” he asked, his deft fingers running up and down her spine. She shivered in pleasure.
“Make it all go away so easily . . . make me forget,” she mused, shifting her bare breasts against his solid chest and leaning back in his hold slightly, trying to get a better perspective on his face.
“Isn’t that what I told you I’d do?” he asked.
“Maybe that’s how you’re able to keep people at arm’s length so effortlessly.”
“You’re hardly at arm’s length,” he said with a heavy-lidded glance between their naked, pressing bodies.
“I mean your cha
rm. You make us weak-minded, spineless females forget about getting too close,” she mused, her tone light, but sarcastic, as well.
His gaze went sharp at that. Her heart seemed to skip a beat as he studied her face for a charged few seconds. His mouth tightened into a hard line.
“I see. It’s some kind of tangible evidence that you want. Some kind of proof that I’m willing to get closer to you . . . to take a risk.”
“I didn’t say that, I just meant—”
“Clint Jefferies was the man I talked about that I met when I was fifteen years old. The nice neighbor, as you put it. I certainly wouldn’t.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. She’d been longing for him to open up to her, even if just a little. She hadn’t actually expected he would, though.
“This was in South Carolina, right?” She saw his questioning frown. “You told me when we first met on that beach that you were from South Carolina,” she reminded him. He must have forgotten.
“Oh, yeah. I had foster parents that eventually adopted me. They were good people—kind—but they were already in their mid-to-late sixties when I went to live with them and weren’t in the best of health. It’s not that I didn’t come to love them, but I guess their interests or energy levels didn’t match up all that well with a teenage boy’s. It was no one’s fault.
“Clint had a summer home next to our house,” he continued. “He’d bought up five properties on the lake where we lived and built himself a summer playground and retreat. Clint was everything my mom and dad weren’t. Youthful. Dynamic. Energetic. My parents were modest and struggled at times for money, while Clint was very wealthy and not afraid to show it.
“Clint was good to me,” Jacob said, frowning in memory. “I won’t deny that. There were those who were very jealous of the way he took to me. He dazzled me. That’s the embarrassing truth. I was a stupid, naïve kid. I fell for his act, hook, line, and sinker. He took me under his wing, seemed invested in my success. I wouldn’t have been able to go to college, let alone MIT, if it weren’t for his support . . . and the fact that he gave me a job, of course, working around his property, even when he and his wife weren’t in residence. I was just a chore and errand boy, but he paid me well. Gave me opportunities and connections I’d never had in my life . . . never even dreamed of.”
He paused, a faraway look in his eyes, a slight frown on his mouth. Harper held her breath, worried he wouldn’t continue.
“My dad died of a heart attack when I was sixteen; my mom of a stroke just before my eighteenth birthday,” he stated flatly.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she whispered.
He nodded. “They’d left me their property and a little money, but if it weren’t for Clint helping me with the will and the legalities, I don’t know what I would have done. I started to rely on him more and more. I stayed at lot at his house instead of at my parents’, even on some nights while Mom was still alive. He helped me with things like applying for scholarships and giving me recommendation letters for the type of colleges I hadn’t even considered attending, like MIT.”
He grimaced, as though he found the experience of talking about his past unpleasant, but he didn’t move. He kept her clasped tight against him, his feet planted firmly at the bottom of the pool.
“I know what people say. I know they think I’m ungrateful, when it comes to Clint.”
“Did you sever things with him because of the Markham insider trading scandal?” she challenged softly.
He gave a dry bark of laughter. “Did you know that I’d just turned eighteen years old when I bought and sold that stock?” he asked quietly.
“I knew you were young, but not that young,” she admitted.
“I thought I was so smart. Turns out, I didn’t know shit.”
“We’re all idiots at eighteen,” she reminded him. Like last night at the opera, she was catching a glimpse into his inner world. It pained her to see the weight of his turmoil again . . . the weight of his past. No wonder he guarded it so vigilantly. She touched his face gently. He seemed to come out of the hole of his bitterness, making eye contact with her.
“I looked up to Clint back then. Put him up on a pedestal, thought he could do no wrong. The truth is”—he gave a cynical laugh—“I wanted a father figure so bad, I blinded myself to his faults. Until one night, he did something that tore off my blinders forever.”
She absorbed his bitterness, sensing what he didn’t say. Clint Jefferies had altered him. At least in part, Jefferies had made Jacob the secretive, suspicious, jaded man that he was today.
“He did a lot to help you,” she said, hating the self-disgust she saw on his face at the moment. “Jefferies was very accomplished. It’s natural that you’d admire him. He singled you out. Treated you like you were special, which you were. You’re one in a billion, Jacob,” she said, moving her fingertips on his clenched jaw, feeling his tension. “He did something really bad to shatter the trust you had in him, didn’t he? Did it . . . did it have to do with Regina?”
His eyes flashed at her. For a few seconds, she thought he wasn’t going to say any more.
“He hurt her,” he said suddenly, a snarl shaping his mouth. “He took advantage of her when anyone could see how vulnerable she was. But Clint isn’t the type to take care around a vulnerability. He’s the type to take advantage of it. Nurture it, even, because he gets off on it.”
Harper swallowed thickly. His southern drawl—the one she only occasionally heard sliding into his voice—had grown thicker as he spoke. His fury seemed to roll off him in waves.
“Jefferies was no better than a lot of dirtbags out there. It shouldn’t have surprised me as a kid, to see his true colors. I should have known better. That was a lesson learned: a lot of money and a big house and fancy manners . . . and yet he was just the same as—”
He broke off abruptly. Harper’s chest ached at what she saw in his eyes at that moment. Betrayal. Pain. Fury. Tears burned behind her eyelids. Had that naïve young man fallen in love with Regina, only to see his mentor, the man he looked up to, hurt her? Scar her? What had Jefferies done? Whatever it was had not only ruptured his relationship with Jacob, it had twisted the memory of it into a caustic thorn in Jacob’s side.
Harper’s mind went to rape. She cringed inwardly at the idea. Maybe she suspected it because she knew that Regina was still alive. If she’d died, the degree of Jacob’s fury might be close to what she saw right now on his face. Regina lived, however . . . and was clearly very troubled emotionally. It just seemed to fit, somehow.
“It was . . . it was something sexual, wasn’t it? What Clint Jefferies did to Regina?” she asked, dread weighting her voice.
She thought she read the truth in his eyes. A flash of nausea went through her.
“Never mind,” she whispered. She let her legs slide down his hips and touched her feet to the bottom of the pool. An image of the sophisticated, polished man she’d seen last night at the opera flashed into her mind’s eye. Jefferies was a wolf parading in a civilized man’s clothing. Why do men have to be such animals sometimes?
“I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m sorry for prying,” she said, miserable that she’d forced him to talk about a past that obviously still hurt him.
She started to turn away but he caught her hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked her pointedly.
A sharp pain went through her, that he would ask about her well-being when he’d been the one recounting something that still made him ache.
“I’m fine,” she assured. She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go up to bed.”
• • •
She showered quickly in the guest bathroom and came to bed wearing the black nightgown. Jacob probably didn’t want to make love, after what had just happened out at the pool, but she didn’t have anything else to wear.
Harper, on the other hand, experienced a sharp longing to
have his arms around her, to have him deep inside her . . . to have him take her places where only he could. That was just selfishness, though. She felt heartsore, thinking of Regina, thinking of Jacob . . .
Always thinking of Jacob . . .
The drapes had been drawn on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The large suite was dim and hushed. He was already in bed when she came out of the bathroom. He laid back on the pillows, elbows bent, hands behind his head, dense biceps bulging. His torso was bare. The pose highlighted his chiseled upper body, powerful chest, the mouthwatering diagonal from trim waist to broad shoulders, emphasizing his power even in a relaxed moment. He’d been staring up at the ceiling, but when he saw her coming, his gaze flickered down over her without moving his head. Her skin prickled beneath his stare. When she reached the bed, he rolled on his side and flipped back the sheet and duvet, inviting her in.
She slid between the cool sheets next to him.
For a charged moment, they just lay on their sides, facing each other. His face was shadowed, but she could just make out a few amber pinpricks of light in his hazel eyes.
“You’re like Regina.”
His lips had moved, and she’d heard his quiet, deep voice, but for a moment, she couldn’t compute what he’d said.
“What do you mean?” A horrible thought struck her, taking her breath away for a moment. “Do you mean . . . do you mean that Regina is the woman I remind you of?” she asked, aghast.
“No. God, no,” he said, his brows slanting. He reached and cupped the side of her head with his hand. “I mean that you’ve been hurt before by a man.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I could see it out there at the pool when I told you about Regina and Clint. You looked like you were going to be sick.”
She swallowed thickly. “It’s nothing,” she whispered.
“Tell me.”
She blinked at his intensity. “It’s nothing, Jacob. Nothing like what I’m imagining Regina experienced. I’ve never been raped, thank God,” she whispered fervently. “It’s just . . . men can be so . . .” She winced. “Evil sometimes to women.” She met his stare, guilt swooping through her. “I’m sorry. Not all men—”