Her conscience knew very well she should be perfectly miserable, mortified and ashamed of herself. Jake, annoyingly, was making the incident seem unimportant. Despite her reluctance, a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips-never mind her aching head, or a few choice lingering embarrassing memories from the night before. She leaned back, her hair falling in a loose curtain around her shoulders. She’d had no energy to put up the silky tresses, and though she’d managed to tuck a trim cranberry blouse into a gray flannel skirt, she hadn’t managed shoes yet. All of which was beginning to add up to irrefutable evidence that she was changing radically.
It was Jake’s fault. She knew when she’d committed a federal crime in her own eyes. It was his eyes that jumbled everything up. Outside the window, fog was settling on the highway, swirling in light gray wisps around the cars. In spite of herself, that small smile kept on coming.
Jake, catching her smile, inadvertently started chuckling. A few moments later, so did Anne. He brought out the worst, the absolute worst, in her…but there was no denying Jake was the only man on earth she didn’t mind seeing her in that condition.
“Your hips were trying to defy gravity when you really got into the rhythm of the song,” Jake told her.
“Isn’t the weather nice?”
“And if there’s anything else you don’t remember about the evening, I do believe Benjy took a few snapshots… I could get a print or two for you, honey. Maybe blow it up?”
“It’s going to be colder than a stone tonight,” she said flatly.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” he murmured.
“Pardon?”
“I said I have a definite cure for your headache, Anne. Just stay strapped in the seat belt for a few more minutes.”
Shopping for clothes was his cure for a headache. For miles, the highway out of Wallace held little more than a rugged turnoff for a small mining town here and there, yet suddenly Anne had the sensation of going down, and just as suddenly clouds were put in their proper place. Above her. Not below.
Still, the flash of a long, low blue lake to the left startled her. “Coeur d’Alene Lake,” Jake told her, “but we’ll get back to the water in a little bit, Anne. First, some civilization for a change.”
The city of Coeur d’Alene was a mixture of old and new. A bustling logging industry was centered at one end, and schools and homes and shopping centers nestled high over the lake at the other. Anne found herself staring at Jake as he pulled into a parking lot in front of a row of shops. He certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to let her know this kind of gracious living was even remotely close by. Yes, he’d mentioned that he stayed here, but she just assumed the lake meant more camping-out territory. Instead, the schools looked new, and the homes were attractively nestled in hillsides. Trees shaded the streets, and the lake was dotted with graceful sails. Feeling inexplicably lighthearted, Anne fell in step beside Jake as they walked toward the stores. “It’s a lovely town,” she commented.
“I told you you’d like it. It will be a wonderful place to raise children.” He qualified that statement immediately, “Illegitimate children.”
Her fingertips suddenly went cold. He hadn’t mentioned marriage for days, and now she was afraid he wouldn’t let go of the subject again. She stared in rapt fascination at a raw silk suit in the store window ahead of them. The thing’s strange stripes of muted orange and purple horrified her. “What do you think?” she asked Jake.
“About your having my children, on any terms you like?”
“I’d like to buy a pair of jeans, but there’s no need for you to go inside with me if you don’t want to,” she said firmly. “I promise you I won’t be long…”
She pushed through the revolving door of the next shop. Western wear was its theme. Jeans and cords were piled high on tables, surrounded by buxom mannequins in plaid or flannel shirts. Rapidly, Anne fingered through the nearest pile of cords, paying no attention to size. A shakiness seemed to have infiltrated her nervous system. Don’t push it, Jake…
“Tell me you don’t want children,” Jake said determinedly from the doorway. Both saleswomen looked up, and so did another wandering customer. Anne flushed. Jake was standing with his hands loosely on his hips, shoulders flung back, staring directly at her as if no one else existed in the world. There was nothing for it but to cross the room to seize him and drag him back to the pile of jeans…granted that he was willing.
“I have never once told you that I wanted children,” she clipped out in a furious whisper.
“But you do.”
Through a miracle of fate, she found the size eights. “Every woman who wants children doesn’t make a good mother, Jake. Some people probably think they’ll be perfectly wonderful, and other women turn out-”
“Like your mother,” Jake said flatly. He held up a pair of lobster-red jeans. Anne shook her head with exasperation, but Jake went on, “So that’s what scares you. Honey, you couldn’t be any less like her. How long have you been fretting about that one? You’ll be an outstanding mother, Anne. You’ll be there whenever your kids need you, with a cool head and a warm heart, willing to listen, involved and interested…”
She felt something catch in her throat. “I’ve never had any experience with little ones.” He lifted up a pair of turquoise jeans. Anne took his busy hands out of the clothes pile and put them back on his hips, trying to ignore the curious stares they were getting from other people in the store.
“What does experience have to do with anything? I figure by the fiftieth time, if only by chance, you’ll get the diapers on straight. Does that kind of thing really matter, anyway? I’ve never heard that psychologists with Ph.Ds in child development raise the happiest children.”
Anne gathered up a pair of soft gold cords, then brown ones. Jake reached the shirt racks before she did. “Well?” he demanded.
She draped two shirts over her growing pile, matching flannel plaids to blend with the jeans. “I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”
“Because we have to talk about things that scare you,” Jake said reasonably.
Only he wasn’t looking reasonable. He had that wolfish look again, the sheer male determination stamped in the stark silver of his eyes. Anne was well aware that he really didn’t care if anyone else was in the store. Or the universe. “Jake, I’m going to try these things on,” she said uncomfortably. “I won’t be long-”
“I love you, Anne. Would you kindly stop panicking for two and a half seconds?”
One saleswoman put her elbows on the counter and leaned forward to listen, clearly enthralled. She looked from Jake to Anne, evidently expecting a comeback the way she would expect the return of a Ping-Pong ball.
Color stalked up Anne’s cheeks. “I love you, too,” she whispered back to Jake. “That has nothing to do with anything!”
She pivoted in search of the dressing room, and escaped promptly behind a coarse white drapery. In seconds, she had stripped off her gray wool skirt and cranberry blouse. Mirrors reflected her oyster satin camisole on three sides; she fumbled for the gold cords and started pulling them on. Before she had them snapped at the waist, the drapes parted, and Jake let himself inside, ignoring her startled gasp.
“Did you mean it?”
“Jake, you’re going to get us kicked out of this store!”
“Nonsense, there’s almost no one else out there. The saleswomen understood. Did you mean it?”
“Did I mean what?” She snatched up a camel and brown flannel shirt and pulled it on, ten thumbs struggling with the pearl buttons.
“That you love me?”
Her hair got caught in everything, the hair that she had neglected to coil up sensibly that morning. “Conflicting lifestyles and potential divorce are the issues, Jake, and you know it. Not loving. You know I’ve always loved you-”
“No.” Jake turned suddenly quiet, ominously quiet, although he shoved aside her hands, efficiently brushed back her hair and dealt with the buttons himself
. “You haven’t always loved me. You accused me of acting only on sexual vibrations, but that, sweetheart, was a description of you. It was fun in the beginning, Anne. I enjoyed playing the aggressor who came back to storm the fortress and win the lady again-but it was you who let the physical chemistry block out a thousand other feelings…feelings that mattered. I waited a long time for you to see more, for you to see the man I am. I had a role in your life, but only as lover, Anne-because you didn’t want more.”
“That’s not true. You always took off-”
“And I always asked you to come with me.”
The shirt was a bit too snug. The jeans were a tad long. She stripped off both shirt and jeans, reaching for a pair of denim pants. She was shaken, and badly. He was her dark prince-she had given him that name, and it wasn’t pleasant to be accused of being insensitive to his feelings. Only he wasn’t accusing her of anything; his voice was gentle with understanding, and somehow that hurt more. “Jake, it isn’t that simple. A woman these days has her own life, her own work. Do you really think it would be easy for me to drop my life and take off on one safari after another?”
“You’ve got a good head for finance, Anne, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to working in a bank. You could be a broker or a CPA. I’ve been telling you that I need some financial advice, but you haven’t helped me at all. You could at least lift your wings-even if you don’t want to spread them.” The last seemed to come out in a mild roar; then Jake changed subjects so smoothly she almost missed the transition. “This outfit looks better. The first blouse pulled under your arms. This one-”
“You don’t really need my help,” she blurted out.
“The hell I don’t.”
“You know perfectly well you made up the whole thing about wanting a trust.”
“I don’t care what I made up. I need your help.”
She drew in the first deep breath she’d taken in several minutes. Jake’s critical eye was fastened on the mirror, taking in the pink and tan flannel molded softly over her breasts. The tan cords fit like an Italian kid glove. Unobtrusively, she stole a glance at her rear end in the mirror, and was not overly thrilled at what she saw. “These pants are too tight,” she said swiftly.
“They are not.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Bend over.”
Enough was very close to enough. She glared at him.
“Test them out,” he said patiently. “Bend over-see what happens.”
Nothing remarkable happened. Jake gave a short, boring lecture on the fit of jeans. Anne cut him off in midsentence. “Look. You must know that if I ever thought you really needed me, Jake, I would be there. It’s not-”
“Good. I do.”
The saleswoman was waiting for them with a sassy grin. Anne had the feeling the woman had heard enough to last her the rest of the day, and now Jake was arguing with her over who was going to pay for the outfit…at least until he pulled out his wallet.
A sheepish grin came over his face as he glanced up at Anne. “All I have is four dollars and thirty-five cents.”
She started chuckling as she paid the bill, and was still chuckling as they drove to the bank. Jake paid for lunch. Corned beef on rye with dill pickles. “We have to get you some shoes,” he said abruptly.
“I have tons of shoes.”
“Not the kind to wear with jeans.”
He purchased ankle-high boots in a soft deer hide, nothing Anne would have chosen for herself in a thousand years. Back in the motor home, she relaxed in the passenger seat and enjoyed the feel of new soft textures next to her skin. Jake kept casting her wayward grins.
Her heart was trying to work itself into a major anxiety attack over the subjects they had broached in the clothing store, but the momentum seemed to be lacking. Jake had dropped the topics like hot potatoes, just as if they had never been mentioned.
After they left Coeur d’Alene, the road wound along the water’s edge for miles. Wolf Lodge Bay, Beauty Bay, Gotham Bay, Silver Beach…the sparkling blue waters of the endless lake snuggled into coves at every turn. In spots, tall white pines and paper birch hugged the shore. Suddenly there was a row of unique cottages and homes; then red rock cliffs edged right down to the side of the road. The gold leaves of autumn were reflected in the mirror-still surface of the water. Ferns played on the forest floor, turned apricot for the season.
Jake pulled off the lake road and motioned below…another private cove, with three spacious homes set far apart on the wooded shores. “What do you think?” he asked her.
Anne had no problem. “Gorgeous.”
“Of the three houses, which is your favorite?”
She studied each one, treating the game with mock seriousness. The first was an A-frame with a glass front and a wooden balcony, very trim and attractive. The second was a three-story brick house, narrow and tall, built into the side of a ravine with balconies on all three floors and immaculate landscaping.
The third had forest-green wooden siding and was built low, half on the water, with ceiling-to-floor glass paneling in a huge room that jutted out over the lake. The green house wasn’t meticulously landscaped like the others. Sprawling trees and bushes created a privacy that the other houses lacked. A deck extended from the glassed-in room, leading out to a gazebo over the water, and one side of the house held a triangular stained-glass window that caught the sunlight on the lake and sent back rainbows.
“You like the brick one, I’m betting,” Jake said.
The more, conventional, conservative one. Anne shook her head. “Sorry, Jake, but I can’t always fit the mold. It’s the green one that draws me-”
He let out a loud, pent-up sigh. “Thank God.” He sent her a happy smile. “That one’s ours, honey.”
Chapter 13
“I’m almost certain I misheard you,” Anne said crisply.
“I’ve only owned the house for four months, Anne, and haven’t had the time to really do much with it. You’ll have to see what you want.”
Relaxed and easy, Jake parked the motor home not five minutes later. Redwood steps led down the steep slope between the driveway and the house. Jake took them ahead of Anne, pausing only when he realized she was standing in utter shock at the top of the steps. “Don’t you want to see it?” he inquired politely.
“Since when have you ever had the least interest in acquiring a house?” she blurted out.
“Never, particularly. I don’t really care where I hang my hat. But you do, don’t you, Anne?”
His words sent a shiver up and down her spine. Her new boots suddenly picked themselves up and took off down the stairs after him. “Jake-”
“The grounds require almost no care. There’s no lawn to mow, since the woods lead right up to the beach. That’s not the reason I bought the house, though. I couldn’t resist that glassed-in room over the lake.”
Not the usual motivation for buying a piece of real estate. Head swimming, Anne stepped through the doorway ahead of him.
The house was built in a basic square, with a kitchen island set kitty-corner in the center of the main living area. Its counter faced the glass-enclosed living area. Two low, well-stuffed couches in cantaloupe faced the lake as well as the stone fireplace. Near the hearth was an area that could serve as a living room, although at the moment there wasn’t a stick of furniture in it. Off-white carpeting ran through both rooms, thick and springy beneath Anne’s feet.
She kept moving, out of the living-dining area toward an open door. The master bedroom was next. Her practical side noted its built-in closets, the king-sized bed and ivory shag bedspread, the need for plants and pictures. Her less practical side kept focusing on the huge, jeweled window. The stained-glass design was a profusion of hyacinths in coral and lilac and ivory. The pastel softness cast a sensual glow of color and shadow on the entire room; Anne could imagine it at dawn and sunset. With her heart racing oddly, she found herself staring, mesmerized…
Then she realized Jake was standing
at the door. Anne bit her lip, and ducked under his arm. Too many feelings were flooding her mind; she wasn’t ready to face them yet. She turned the knob on a closed door and felt Jake’s hand clutch at her shirt, plucking her back from a potentially very wet, very cold, most unexpected dunk in the lake. “Our garage,” he said wryly.
A boat was bobbing in their “garage.” No huge ocean liner, but white and gleaming and large enough for a cabin.
“An absolute necessity,” Jake explained. “During Idaho winters, the roads are often impassable with snow around here. The lake’s so huge it rarely freezes over, and there are docks in Coeur d’Alene.”
“I see,” she said faintly, and kept on going.
Beyond his “boat garage” were two spare bedrooms that faced the woods. Both were decorated with nut-brown carpeting and apricot curtains, but they were without furnishings as yet. She found one last room as they finished their tour of the house. It was a study with three long, rectangular windows, half-filled bookcases, an oxblood leather couch and oak desk complemented by warm paneling and dark blue carpeting. In furnishings and mood, the room was completely different from the rest of the house.
“Your office,” Jake mentioned.
Anne’s already well-established case of panic went into high gear.
“You’re looking pale, honey. I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Not alcohol,” she said swiftly.
“Not alcohol.” Jake grinned, her favorite crooked smile. The one that had torn at her heart from the first, so many years ago. “Because they built the kitchen at an angle in the middle of the house, one of the bathrooms on the other side is a triangle. Check it out,” he advised as he sauntered off toward the kitchen.
She did. The tub was in one point of the triangle, a sunken affair, large enough for two to stretch out in…if both were shaped rather triangularly. Not funny, Anne… Melon tiles climbed the walls; gold fixtures reflected back from the mirror. So did Anne, or at least there was some strange woman staring back at her with vulnerable green eyes and a mane of ash-blond hair.
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