by Violet Duke
She started to make her way over to him. They may never get past what happened that night, but, if anything, no one deserved to be alone when the memories of it returned.
Because they always returned.
What they’d all gone through in that fire . . . no one could possibly understand. Sure, therapists and other well-meaning folks could say until they were blue in the face that they understood and that there were “proven methods” that would help make it better. But in her experience, none of that had been half as effective as having someone who’d lived through it, too, simply sit beside you and stare life down alongside you. Someone you trusted to pull you out if you found yourself falling into the shadows that followed you.
Emma wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him, or if they’d even talk at all. All she knew was that she wanted to be there beside him if he needed her to be.
Only it looked as though Megan had the same idea.
Emma hung back and watched as her sister went over to cheer Jake up. She was a tiny bit jealous, yes, but mostly just grateful when Megan was able to get Jake smiling again.
God, he had a great smile.
With that Superman chin and those green eyes that could downright dance in the light when he was laughing, or practically smolder when Emma would catch him looking at her—
Huh, sort of like he was right now. Waaait a minute. Why was Megan looking at her, too? In that unsettling, brow-raised, I’ve-got-an-idea look.
Uh-oh.
“I’ll go get it,” Megan announced to Jake loudly before ducking off to the kitchen.
Emma made her way over and leaned against the deck railing next to Jake. “Get what?”
“This!” called out Megan proudly as she practically bounced on a pogo stick all the way back from the kitchen. “See, Jake. I told you, great, right?”
Oh good lord.
Megan was waving around the gift Emma had knitted for her—or attempted to, at least—two Christmases ago. An indescribable work of art with more knots than knitting stiches and no discernable shape whatsoever.
They liked to affectionately call it the yarn blob.
Emma watched Jake’s eyes twinkle with humor even though he said not a word while Megan went on and on about how much she loved the weird little thing.
Megan carefully turned the blue shower-puff reject in her hands, grinning at it the way parents grinned at kids when they drew them artwork that no one else in the world could figure out. “Emma made this for me. Haven’t decided on a perfect use for it yet, but I will.”
Emma couldn’t stop herself from smiling over Megan’s utterly guileless positive energy. Her sister was hands down the purest soul she knew, with about enough hope and faith to power Santa’s sleigh every Christmas. And then some.
When Emma had first given the blob to her, Megan had tried so valiantly to fit her teapot into the misshapen thing, all the while sighing over it as if it were the most beautiful thing she’d ever received. Where Megan was concerned, it really was the thought that counted—she’d take a nonusable home ec disaster made from the heart over an expensive store-bought gift any day.
Megan’s eyes softened at the corners as she patted the yarn blob. “Emma is actually the one that got me started with knitting years ago, back when I was in the hospital recovering from my burn injuries. She set up an online store for me and helped me sell scarves, hats, and all sorts of kids’ clothing all through high school.”
Emma shrugged. “I had to. I was getting calls left and right about folks wanting to buy everything you made.”
Smiling, Megan looked over at Jake as if getting ready to let him in on a secret. “That may have been the case later on, but in the beginning, Emma used to spend hours peddling my knitted pieces all over the hospital, making sales pitches to nurses and folks in the waiting rooms. She even got the maternity ward to agree to buy fifty red-and-green newborn caps during the holiday season for all the babies born the last two weeks in December. Just so I’d have enough money to buy a Christmas gift for my dad that year.”
Emma didn’t need to look up to know Jake was staring intently at her. Focusing her attention on the beer bottle label she was now carefully peeling off as if she were performing brain surgery, she smoothly redirected the conversation away from that first year she’d hounded everyone and anyone in the hospital who made the mistake of not ducking when they saw her coming. Not just because she hated being in the spotlight, especially over this, but more so because it inevitably made her remember how helpless she’d felt at the time, watching her little sister live out her childhood alone in a hospital. “So what prompted you to go looking for that ugly thing I knitted for you anyway?”
Megan gasped in genuine offense. “It’s not ugly!”
Yes, it really was. But Megan tended to look at the world through a totally different lens than the rest of them, so Emma just smiled and amended her statement, “Okay, not ugly. But certainly not useful.” She lifted a self-deprecating shoulder at Jake. “It’s supposed to be a teapot warmer.” But what it had ended up looking like was a sad doily with a beer belly.
“I swear I followed all the directions in the knitting book.” In the beginning, at least. When she quickly found herself unknotting the possessed yarn blob every two minutes or so, the bad-bad book went bye-bye. “Worked on the thing every night.”
“And that’s why she’s the best sister ever,” Megan declared with an I-told-you-so smile at Jake.
Emma looked at her sister incredulously. “This is your evidence of that?”
“Yup,” replied Megan resolutely. “Because no matter what you have going on, or how tough things get, you always think about me and what you can do to make my life better, happier. You were fresh out of college when you decided to move us out of Riverside after Dad died because you thought I could become the yarn queen of the Midwest out here, remember?”
Emma blinked in surprise at the reminder of how they’d found themselves in Juniper Hills to begin with. At first her only goal had been to be on the other side of the Missouri River. New state, new start. “I saw how much you liked it here that day we’d stopped by to buy some of that fancy yarn you were looking for.”
“Exactly. You were twenty-three years old with a sixteen-year-old sister you had to suddenly support with the measly life insurance Dad had. And instead of taking on that daunting task in the town you grew up in and had friends you’d known your whole life, you decided to pick up and transplant us here . . . for me. You kept a roof over my head and managed to build a successful bakery from the ground up all by yourself.”
“We were a team,” maintained Emma firmly. “I didn’t do any of it on my own. You were working by then, too, remember?”
Megan shook her head. “Hardly. You practically tackled me if you saw me doing anything but studying and knitting back then.” Turning to Jake, she explained. “After my recovery, I tried going back to school, but we eventually decided to homeschool, and I graduated at sixteen. So I’d been taking college courses online at the time—”
“On a full ride,” interjected Emma proudly, happy to be moving the discussion away from the sad aftermath of the fire to the way her incredible baby sister had managed to take life by the horns and show the universe she wasn’t going to let it kick her around.
“It was a scholarship for students who’d overcome adversity,” Megan clarified modestly.
“Which you clearly deserved seeing as how you were on the dean’s list all through college.” Emma beamed at Jake. “She kicked ass in every single class she took.”
“Not in Life Survival 101 like you did,” countered Megan in a lavishly proud tone of her own. “You aced that better than anyone your age could’ve.”
“Again, I couldn’t have done it without your help, Meg. I mean that.” In all honesty, seeing Megan accidentally discover her calling working part-time at the library had fueled Emma like nothing else could’ve. Failure simply hadn’t been an option.
Megan si
ghed and turned back to Jake. “She does this all the time. She never lets me thank her for all she did for me.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Emma mumbled in response to Megan’s excessive praise, while paying inordinately fascinated attention to the microscopic surgery she was nearly done performing on her beer bottle.
Success!
Emma finally got the entire label off without tearing it at all. Clearly, the frustrating years she’d spent trying to reuse old stickers as a kid had not been in vain.
She reached for the empty water bottle next to Jake to try her newfound skill on a different patient—it was either that or meet his probing gaze, which she hadn’t felt budge throughout this entire conversation.
“Yes, it was so a big deal,” maintained Megan with a meaningful look at Jake. “Told you she’d disagree with us.”
Us? So that’s what they’d been talking about earlier with all the smiling?
Thankfully, Megan’s boss and coworkers provided a much-appreciated diversion when they came by with their good-byes and thanks to Megan for hosting.
A few minutes later, when Emma and Jake were the only two still left outside in the backyard, he leaned over to gently pull the now-naked bottle from her hands. “I always knew you’d grow up to be something special, Emma Stevens.” It was a soft murmur that might have gone unheard if not for that low growling voice of his that Emma’s ears were now hardwired to pick up, sort of like dogs with that special whistle.
They heard Megan shut the back door to the kitchen with a resounding click in her not-so-subtle attempt to give them some more privacy. First the demonic dating app and now this. Her little sister was turning into quite the meddling matchmaker.
Jake backed up to put a few feet of space between them. “We probably shouldn’t stay here in the dark like this, before your sister gets the wrong idea about us.”
Was it? Right now being near Jake felt anything but wrong.
When Emma made no move to back away from him, or agree with his statement, for that matter, he settled back against the nearest tree and surveyed her, looking as surprised as he did intrigued. In the comfortable silence that followed, she allowed herself the luxury of getting her fill of the man. Lord almighty, he was handsome as sin. And so beautifully brawny. Heaven help her. His heavily muscled forearms were centerfold-arm-porn worthy.
Staring at the anatomical work of art now, this close to her, Emma finally noticed that he wasn’t wearing the rugged wristwatch he’d had on at the bakery earlier today. It took her a second to figure out why the sight of his naked wrist was having such a marked effect on her.
Back whenever he used to talk to her over the fence separating their two yards, he used to always drape his arms over it. Casual-like. In the beginning, looking up at the top of the fence, all Emma could see of his six-foot-tall frame were his arms. Until she’d dragged a big rock over to stand on so she could at least be eye level with him.
One day she’d slipped off the rock and smacked her face into the fence. In addition to an egg-shaped lump on her forehead, she’d gotten a tiny little scratch on her cheek from his watch. It was hardly even a scrape, but it had upset Jake something fierce.
After that he’d never worn a watch during their chats again.
Seeing him now with a deep watch tan that indicated the man hardly took his watch off, Emma was finding the whole breathing thing a bit difficult. The logistics of blinking were also lost on her as she wandered deeper into the darkening forest-green depths of his gaze.
She was quickly finding that his eyes were like that mood ring she’d had when she was a kid that didn’t actually measure mood so much as it did heat. Earlier, when they’d been alone and she’d told him he made her nervous, his eyes had gone from sage to hunter green.
Right now? His eyes were nearly black.
Okay, maybe he had the right idea of putting some space between them.
Emma backed up a few steps until she bumped into the grill.
“Careful!” He shot forward to pull her arm away from the still-cooling cooking grates. Running his calloused fingers over her skin gently, he inspected every inch of her arm, voice laden with concern. “Did you burn yourself, baby? Come over to the light so I can see.”
Her heart rate went double time. “I’m okay, Jake. It was hot, but not enough to burn me. Stupid of me not to watch where I was going.”
After giving her arm another thorough once-over, he exhaled with relief. “Stay here. I’ll move the grill back onto the deck.” The man then picked her up by the waist and deposited her on the seat farthest from the grill, putting a cold bottle of water against the one area of her arm that was now just a tiny bit pinker from coming into brief contact with the grill.
Seriously. Swoon. Whisperer.
As Jake efficiently wiped down the grill with a cool rag, he asked curiously, “Why on earth did Megan buy such a big grill? I kid you not—I saw her rolling it closer to the table on the grass earlier, and she nearly got run over by the thing.”
Yeah, Emma had seen the same thing. Chuckling softly, she explained. “I tried to get her to pick a smaller one, but she’d just been named head librarian and she wanted to buy something ‘extravagant’ with her pay raise.”
“Your sister always been this live-on-the-edge?” he asked, deadpan.
Shoulders shaking with more light laugher, Emma got up to start moving the chairs back up onto the deck. “An outdoor kitchen is living on the edge for her. She’d bought the grill, three picnic tables, enough seating for a dozen, and that big fire pit around two years ago with the goal of throwing her first party—”
Oh my.
Emma stopped talking and just watched—rubbernecked really—as Jake used his burly mountain-man arms to grab the edges of the big grill and pick it up like it weighed no more than a waiter’s tray. After he tucked the grill in the back corner on the deck, he did the same with the wide picnic table that had taken three of them to haul down earlier.
“So was that first party a hit?” he asked, oblivious to the focus of her attention. “Was the big-ass grill worth it?”
Dragging her eyes away from the display of muscles flexing across his broad back, Emma climbed up the steps, bringing the last of the chairs with her. “I don’t know—you tell me. Did you enjoy yourself tonight?”
Jake looked back at her, startled. “This was her first party?”
Megan opened the door then and joined them on the deck, answering Jake’s question with a shy attempt at humor. “Yes. I’ve just been prepping for it for two long years is all.” Chewing on her bottom lip, she asked quietly, “Was it okay?”
“Best barbecue I’ve been to in ages,” replied Jake without any hesitation at all. “And I’m a Midwest boy, so you know I take my barbecues seriously. Ask Emma.” He winked. “Those sex noises I was making when I tasted your ribs and baked beans, I wasn’t faking them one bit.”
“He wasn’t,” Emma confirmed wholeheartedly. “Those were all completely authentic.”
At Megan’s pointed double-brow raise, Emma replayed the exchange and felt her face go up in flames. “Not that I know what Jake sounds like during sex!” she all but shouted to clarify.
Even Jake looked ruffled. Unlike her traitorous cheeks, though, his natural pelt of sexy beard hid any visible embarrassment. “Um, yeah, what she just hollered. There has been absolutely no sex having between us. Yesterday Emma just heard what I sound like when I eat something I can’t get enough of is all.”
Lordy, even that sounded dirty.
Clearly Jake thought so, too, because he smoothly averted his eyes and busied himself with surveying the yard for an escape portal of some sort.
Apparently he found one in the hanging lanterns Megan had put up in the trees. Pointing at the ladder, he started shuffling sideways in that direction. “I’m just going to . . .” He didn’t even bother finishing his sentence before he darted off into the yard, effectively deserting Emma to deal with Megan’s amused looks on her own.
She scowled at Megan. “Don’t you dare start.”
“Wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Megan reassured her, eyes twinkling.
“Stop making this perverted.”
“I will if you will.”
Jake cleared his throat loudly from the now-dark yard. That hadn’t taken long. “Okay, lights are taken care of. You know, since my truck’s parked out on this side of the street, I’ll go ahead and see myself out, let you girls have your bonding time to talk about . . . stuff.”
Emma gave him the evil eye after hearing the ill-disguised laughter in his voice and the suspicious shaking of his shoulders.
He gave Megan a wave and a warm smile, “Again, great barbecue. Thanks for inviting me; it’s been a while since I’ve been out with friends.”
Then with one final good-luck look Emma’s way, he took off.
The traitor.
He was so getting more decaf tomorrow.
“Hey, he left one of the lanterns on,” remarked Megan after Jake’s truck disappeared down the street. She went over to go turn it off while Emma finished tidying up the deck.
At the first sound of Megan’s mirthfully delighted laughter, Emma quickly went over to see what had her sister eagerly taking out her phone to take a photo.
“Look, Emma—look what Jake did.” She made a ta-da motion with her hands, directing Emma’s attention to jolly little Gnomeo sitting directly under the hanging lamp he’d left on.
At least she thought it was Gnomeo. The gnome had undergone a bit of a makeover.
Megan giggled and snapped another photo.
It appeared that somehow during the night, Jake had been able to accomplish what they hadn’t been able to over the years—he’d discovered the perfect use for the yarn blob. The fuzzy blue teapot warmer reject was now sitting atop the garden gnome’s head, tilted over one bushy ceramic eyebrow and poofed up just so. “He looks like he’s wearing a bright-blue beret,” chuckled Megan. “I love it! And oh my gosh, look—Jake even twirled the black beer label you removed earlier and stuck it under Gnomeo’s nose to make a curly French mustache.”