Make Me

by BETH KERY

  She nodded.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Harper,” he said, his eyebrows slanting.

  She blinked, realizing she’d been drinking in the vision of him standing before her. How could she do anything but, when he was so beautiful to her? He turned away, looking grim. Harper was glad for that, because she was far from happy at the idea of being separated from him, too, even if it was just for an afternoon.

  • • •

  Harper was thrilled when Marianne escorted Cyril into a salon and she saw he was accompanied by Ellie Thorton. Ellie was the young woman she’d mainly focused on for her article on San Francisco’s homeless youth. Ellie was smiling broadly at the surprise, and looked to be brimming with newfound good health. She’d put on a much-needed ten or fifteen pounds since Harper and she had first met, when Ellie was barely surviving and her “home” was San Francisco’s underground and alleyways. Her dark brown hair was cut in a cute bob that almost entirely hid the burn scar on the side of her face—the product of a sadistic, drug-addicted “friend” of her mother’s. Ellie had carried the scar since she was six. Her clothes, although not expensive, looked adorably chic on her slender figure. Harper shouldn’t have been surprised. Even when Ellie lived on the street, she’d managed to demonstrate her individuality.

  “You look fantastic,” Harper said, beaming after Ellie and she hugged tightly. They’d kept in regular touch since they’d met, but recently only by e-mail and the occasional phone call. “How is college?”

  “Great. My advisor says I should try to apply to San Francisco State University next fall. She says almost all of my junior college credits will transfer. And guess what she thinks I should study?”

  Harper grinned at her enthusiasm. “Fashion? You’re a natural for it.”

  Ellie laughed. “No, journalism.”

  “That’s perfect. You’ll be a natural for that, too.”

  She greeted Cyril and they made their way to a seating area in the luxurious salon of Jacob’s home.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with the idea of the film, Ellie? You said in the last e-mail that you’d called Roger Findlay?” Harper asked after they’d sat and got caught up. Roger was one of Harper’s old friends from college who did a good deal of film production contract work.

  “Yeah, Roger’s been great about walking me through things. That sample contract you sent over might as well have been written in Russian,” Ellie told Cyril. Cyril just smirked back at the girl, and Ellie laughed. “Actually, Cyril’s been great, too. He’s been really patient with me.”

  Cyril had been surprisingly modest and quiet during the two women’s reunion. Harper had a feeling Ellie and Cyril would probably end up getting on famously. They were both scrappers, after all, both fierce individualists. Maybe Ellie herself was one of the reasons Cyril had identified so strongly with Harper’s original story.

  Does that mean that Jacob identified with the tragedy of Ellie’s youth, as well? He’d been the one to originally suggest it to Cyril. Was his gravitation toward Ellie’s story a clue as to what his childhood was like?

  It would make sense. Harper thought of Ellie’s scar, and her own. Jacob and Cyril weren’t the only ones to feel a kinship to Ellie Thorton.

  A spike of sharp longing went through her unexpectedly as she listened to Cyril talk about potential filming locations, and Ellie chimed in occasionally. She’d been separated from Jacob for a half hour, and already she missed him. Was that because it struck her hard in that moment how little she really knew about him?

  Was it because she suspected she’d fallen in love with him?

  Harper jumped into the topic of filming locations, determined to get her mind off the confusing topic of Jacob. She heard the salon doors open briskly. She looked around distractedly, half expecting Marianne.

  Instead, Jacob stalked into the room, his gaze flickering across Harper.

  “Cyril.” He nodded at his friend.

  “Jacob,” Cyril said, clearly as surprised by his unexpected appearance as Harper was. Jacob put out a hand to Ellie. “Jacob Latimer. Welcome.”

  “Ellie Thorton.” They shook, Ellie looking a little starstruck. Harper wasn’t surprised. He looked impossibly handsome and compelling. His unexpected entrance seemed to ramp up the energy level of the room a hundredfold.

  “You don’t seem half as scary as I thought you’d be,” Ellie breathed.

  Cyril snorted with laughter. Jacob’s back was to her so Harper couldn’t quite discern his reaction to Ellie’s forthrightness.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he replied levelly, but Harper thought she heard a thread of humor in his deep voice.

  “I didn’t think I was going to get a chance to meet you today. I wanted to thank you,” Ellie said, looking up at him feelingly.

  “You wanted to thank me for letting you three meet here?”

  “No,” Ellie said, never breaking her rapt stare on his face. “For Randolph House.”

  Harper blinked in amazement. Randolph House was a women’s shelter on Mission Street.

  “Harper helped get me in,” Ellie continued. “The staff there built me up while I was there, got me ready to go back out on the streets, this time to start a life, not just survive. I know you prefer to remain anonymous, but I overheard one of the supervisors talking to your lawyer once on the phone. I know that you provide the majority of funding for Randolph House. That’s why I’m thanking you.”

  Harper’s stunned stare zoomed over to Jacob’s back. She wished she could see his expression. He merely straightened, smoothing his tie as he turned in partial profile to her. “Well, it’s a good thing Harper guided you there. I’m gratified to hear firsthand that it helped someone.”

  “Not just helped. Randolph House changed my life. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. He started to back up toward Harper’s chair, and she wondered if he was embarrassed at being unexpectedly called out for his charity. His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Her skin tingled beneath his touch. She gazed up at him, perplexed. “I’m so sorry for interrupting your meeting,” he told Cyril and Ellie. “This will only take a second. I realized I’d forgotten something important.”

  He leaned over Harper’s chair and kissed her full on the mouth. She started in surprise, but then the heat, flavor, and pressure of his kiss took over. In seconds flat, she was kissing him back hungrily.

  When they surfaced for air, she realized dazedly that Ellie and Cyril were holding a determined conversation in the distance, clearly trying to focus their attention elsewhere than on the kissing couple in the room.

  “You’ve always got a secret up your sleeve, don’t you?” she murmured very quietly against his lips, referring to Ellie’s revelation about Randolph House.

  “I wasn’t keeping Randolph House a secret. I had no reason to tell you about it, that’s all,” he murmured dismissively before dipping his head and kissing her again.

  “I’m hoping I won’t be in trouble for this?” he breathed out a moment later.

  “For what?”

  “Interrupting because all I could think about was tasting you one more time.”

  “Why would you be in trouble for that?” she whispered, choking back a laugh.

  His mouth twitched. “I don’t know. I’ve never done it before, so I wasn’t sure.”

  He kissed her once more and stood. Ellie and Cyril glanced over at them cautiously.

  “It’s all right. The coast is clear,” Jacob said before he politely bid them a good and fruitful afternoon. Harper noticed that a slight smile lingered on his lips as he walked away, as if he thought his behavior a little funny, but was pleased, anyway.

  The doors shut behind him. Harper had only the pleasant pressure remaining on her lips from his kiss and Cyril’s comically stunned expression to assure herself that it’d all really hap
pened.

  twenty-eight

  Ellie had a shift waitressing at her restaurant early that afternoon, so she had to leave soon after their lunch, which they ate poolside. Marianne heard the girl saying she was planning on walking to a bus stop, and insisted that a driver would take her—a proposal that seemed very agreeable to Ellie.

  “So. You and Jacob,” Cyril stated with a significant glance once they were alone on the terrace. They sipped coffee in the idyllic setting while the Pacific provided them with a cool, pleasant breeze.

  Harper raised her brows. “What about Jacob and me?”

  “Don’t play coy with me. It’s beneath you.”

  Harper laughed. “You don’t know me well enough to know if it’s beneath me or not.”

  “I imagine Jacob would think it’s beneath you. He hates false modesty and artifice.”

  “I’m not so sure Jacob knows me all that well, either,” Harper murmured. Or maybe he does, but it’s a mystery as to how he does. She noticed Cyril’s incredulous look.

  “I’ve never seen him act this way around a woman. Never,” he stated flatly. “For a man who is usually so guarded, to become so transparent—”

  “I’d hardly call him transparent,” Harper scoffed, setting down her coffee cup.

  “Compared to what he’s usually like, he’s positively see-through.”

  Harper laughed it off. Cyril had only seen Jacob and she together a few brief times, after all. But then, she began to really absorb Cyril’s statement and all of its ramifications.

  “I wish I did know more about him,” she mused after a moment. “Do you know much about his childhood?”

  “I assume it was crap,” Cyril stated bluntly. “I’m not sure what happened to his biological parents, but he was in the foster care system. He didn’t get adopted until he was nearly an adult. He hardly ever talks about it, and doesn’t respond well to hints and prods for him to do so.” He rolled his pale blue eyes. “Trust me on that score.”

  “I know that he got a scholarship to MIT and served in army intelligence for several years.”

  “His history is much better known once he got closer to adulthood. It’s his origins that are murky. I’m not sure how he’s managed to keep prying eyes out of his deep past, but then again . . . he is Jacob Latimer. He can do almost anything, including sweep his past clean.”

  “Sweep his past clean,” she repeated slowly. “That’s an interesting thing to say.”

  “Interesting, maybe, but not uncommon. That girl who just left us is the exception, from my experience,” Cyril said, making a gesture toward the terrace doors where Ellie had just made her exit. He held up a package of clove cigarettes with a questioning look. Harper nodded her agreement for him to smoke.

  “What do you mean about Ellie being the exception?”

  “Most people want to deny a difficult past. It’s unusual, for a person to be as forthcoming and refreshingly honest as Ellie is,” Cyril mused as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. He took a draw, his expression thoughtful. “Most want to transform into someone new. Forget. I do my fair share of intentional forgetting every day.”

  “You sound like Jacob.”

  He shrugged, smoke expanding around his mouth. “We couldn’t be more different, and yet we’re two of a kind, as well.”

  “Did you know him in South Carolina? Jacob?” she prompted when he gave her a blank look.

  “No, I met him at Tahoe Shores when we became neighbors.” He flicked some ashes onto a china saucer. “Does it really matter? That you know about his past?”

  Harper considered before answering.

  “It doesn’t in the everyday, practical sense, no.”

  “It would serve no purpose.”

  “It would help me to see him better, though . . . to see beneath the legend and the enigma. To understand him better.”

  To love him better.

  She winced. Jacob was the most elusive man she’d probably ever meet in her life. Was she a masochist, or something? There was no surer guarantee of pain than falling for him. Trying to disguise her sudden transparency, she reached for her coffee and took a sip. She had a sneaking suspicion Cyril had somehow divined her mortifying thought.

  “I don’t think it would help at all. It might just make him feel exposed, even betrayed, if you insisted upon knowing about every detail of his history.”

  “Yes. There is that risk,” she agreed, squinting out at the sun-gilded Pacific Ocean. Her heart felt heavy. There was definitely that risk with Jacob, as shut off as he was. The strength of his armor had to be commensurate to the pain from which he guarded himself, didn’t it? That was a forbidding thought.

  Cyril stubbed out his cigarette.

  “Why did you mention South Carolina earlier?”

  “Because that’s where Jacob was born and grew up. He told me, on the first day we met.”

  He shook his head. “He didn’t grow up in South Carolina.”

  “What?” Harper asked, startled from her ruminations. “South Carolina, born and bred,” she repeated what Jacob had said on that beach.

  Cyril shook his head. “No. He mentioned where he grew up a few times in passing, but it wasn’t South Carolina.”

  “Where was it?” Harper asked, leaning forward in her chair, the back of her neck prickling with curiosity. Why would Jacob have said he grew up in South Carolina that first day if he hadn’t? Cyril must be mistaken.

  Cyril’s brow creased as he thought. “That’s just it, I can’t recall precisely. As I said, he’s rarely mentioned it. And I’m British, you know. I get your states mixed up sometimes, especially some of the eastern ones. Virginia, maybe? Maryland? Somewhere in the backwoods. He’s joked once or twice about being the country bumpkin, how he never got on a plane until he was eighteen or on an elevator until he was fourteen, things like that. But no, it definitely wasn’t South Carolina. I have a friend who moved to South Carolina, and I’ve visited there, so I would have remembered that,” Cyril said firmly.

  “Is Latimer his adoptive parents’ name?”

  “I’m not sure Jacob would approve of me talking about all this with you,” Cyril stated.

  “I see,” Harper said, feeling awkward.

  Cyril exhaled. “Look, I don’t think you have evil intentions toward Jacob. It’s pretty clear you’re as taken with him as he is with you. It’s just . . . he’s mentioned to me before that he is concerned about the fact that you’re a reporter. He’s not overly fond of your tribe. With good reason, if you ask me. They’re always poking around him, looking for a story . . . sometimes making them up when they can’t find anything worthwhile.”

  “I’m an editor,” Harper corrected. “And I’ve told Jacob repeatedly that I’m not doing some kind of undercover exposé on him. I would never sleep with someone to get a story. That’s despicable.”

  “And if you got wind of a story when you were already involved with a man? What then?”

  “That’s not why I’m asking these questions! I’m asking because I want to know him better. Is that so bizarre?”

  Cyril threw up his hands and leaned back in his chair. “It all comes to the same thing, though. It doesn’t really matter one way or another why you’re asking me questions about Jacob—”

  “I disagree,” she interrupted forcefully. “How can it not matter? Are you saying there’s no difference between asking because I care, and asking because I plan to use the information against him?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Cyril said, his pale blue eyes flashing. “Because either way, Jacob wouldn’t want it. Don’t you see? He doesn’t want anyone stirring up his past. I have the feeling at times that it’s like he’s buried that part of himself. Laid it to rest, just like you would a loved one. Who he was pains him, somehow. To bring it up now, to start digging around and poking at the skeletons in the clos
et, it’s like trying to raise the dead. Besides,” he continued in a more subdued tone. “It’s not as if plenty of other reporters haven’t tried to resuscitate the bones of his past. They can’t find much of anything, beyond Clint Jefferies,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And all of that is just sensationalism and empty speculation, not facts.”

  Harper didn’t reply. She suddenly felt very hollow. Sad. Surely Cyril was right. Who was she, to question Jacob’s past? Jacob clearly didn’t want it, so why should she?

  Because you don’t like seeing his pain. If the past held the origins of his pain, he’d never really heal if he constantly avoided those wounds.

  A sharp feeling of loss went through her unexpectedly. Her thought had sounded like something her dad would say. And yes, Harper agreed in theory. But more than that, it was as if in denying his own past, Jacob was denying her something. And for whatever crazy reason that meant something to her.

  It made no sense, of course. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She was drawing too close to the fire of Jacob Latimer. The allure of him, the mystery, was confusing her.

  She looked up when Cyril patted her forearm.

  “You look bereft, you’re making me feel horribly guilty. I’m just being practical, Harper. Jacob is my friend,” Cyril said softly. “I’m glad to see him let down his guard with a woman. He looked happy when he walked into that room earlier and kissed you. Happy, right there in the moment. Trust me. That’s a rarity. That’s what counts. The present moment. I’m just being honest when I say that if you insist upon learning more about his past, it’s not going to make either of you happy.”

  Harper nodded, taking a deep breath. She understood Cyril’s point. She did. But something told her it was more complicated than that. Jacob was more complex than that. She heard the terrace door open and turned in her chair. Marianne had come to clear their dishes. There was no more talk between Cyril and her about Jacob’s carefully buried past.

  • • •

  Sometime during the hours she spent with Cyril that afternoon, he finally managed to get her to officially commit to writing the screenplay with him. Harper found herself not only getting excited about the prospect, but invested in it. She also began to really like her future writing partner. Cyril was a perfectionist by nature and very demanding, but also savvy, energetic, brilliant, compassionate . . . not to mention completely irreverent. It was hard not to be affected by his enthusiasm for the project. By the time he left at six o’clock that evening, Harper was exhausted, but inspired.