He dug out his wallet and handed Megan two fifties. “Really appreciate it.”
“I’m happy to help. I tried not to say anything that might confuse her,” she added. “I don’t know if you realize it, but the whole town has been rooting for her to pull through. She’s come to symbolize Royal. We’re all just thrilled that she’s on the road to recovery.” Megan looked at her watch. “Oh, I’ve got to go—a transfer of kittens is coming in. You call me if you need anything else, okay?”
“Thanks,” Jake said, showing her out. And he did appreciate it. But he still would feel weird about having to call someone for help—someone who wasn’t Skye, that was.
Man, he was not used to this depending-on-other-people thing.
“Jake?” From behind, Skye’s voice reached out and caressed him. “What do you think?”
He knew even before he turned around that he was in trouble. He could hear it in her voice—she knew she looked good.
I. Can. Not. Sleep. With. Skye, he repeated as he pivoted.
Even knowing that she was going to look better didn’t prepare him for what he saw. Megan had gotten her hair smooth and in a neat little ponytail. He couldn’t even see the shorter hairs. The clothes were close-cut and flattered her slender figure. And...
And she was wearing makeup. Of course she was. Megan would have come prepared, damn it.
“Well?” She managed to do a little turn to show him how the tight pants cupped her bottom. His hands started to itch. Would it be so wrong to help himself to her body, instead of helping her through a rep?
Yes. Yes, it would. He ground his teeth together and forced his hands to stay at his sides as she finished her turn.
“You look amazing,” he told her—and he was not glossing over the truth this time.
“I feel so much better,” she told him. “I need to write Megan a thank-you note.” Her brow wrinkled. “Can you remind me to do that?”
“Sure.” Then, helpless, he watched her take hesitant strides to where he was standing. She wobbled a little, but she kept her balance and didn’t collapse into his arms.
She was going to kiss him and, because he wasn’t looking at the Skye who’d served him with divorce papers—hadn’t been talking to that Skye for the last day—he was going to let her. He was powerless to resist this Skye.
Her arms slid around his neck. Yes, she leaned into him a little more than she might normally, but she seemed so far from the woman he’d had to carry into the house yesterday that he couldn’t mentally reconcile all the different versions of Skye in his mind.
As she pulled his head down to hers, all he could think was that this was his blue-eyed Skye. His.
He sagged back against the door as he surrendered to her kiss. The weight of her body against his took what control he had and smashed it to small, unrecognizable bits. He knew—knew—there were valid reasons why he shouldn’t be kissing her, shouldn’t be encouraging her to kiss him some more, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what those reasons were.
Not when she nipped at his lower lip. Not when she opened her mouth for him. And not when she rubbed against him, her body setting his on fire.
He couldn’t help it. His hands slid down her back until he was palming her bottom. Small and firm—just like she was—just enough to hold. Perfect for him. Perfect.
“Jake,” she whispered as he directed his kisses lower—down her neck, toward her exposed collarbone. “Don’t stop. Don’t—”
The bell rang. Again.
This was getting to be a pattern.
They both jumped. “What is with that damned doorbell?” Skye demanded. Then she looked at him and smiled. “Lipstick. Pink is not entirely your shade.”
The doorbell rang again. Jake scrubbed the back of his hand over his face and steadied Skye on her feet before he answered the door.
And there, on the stoop, stood his mother. She seemed smaller than he remembered, the lines on her face a little deeper.
“Jacob Holt! Oh, my baby...I can’t believe you’re here!”
Next to him, Skye gasped as Gloria Holt rushed into the house and swallowed Jake up in a massive mama-bear hug.
“Uh—hi, Mom,” he said, struggling to breathe through the grip she had him in.
“And Skye!” Gloria released Jake and turned to Skye, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
The next thing either of them knew, Gloria had wrapped her arms around Skye. “My word, it’s just so good to see you up and about. We’ve been worried sick about you, sweetie.”
“You...have?” Skye asked.
“Easy, Mom,” Jake said, trying to pry his mother off of his wife.
“Son,” David Holt said, as he came through the door next, his arms full of paper grocery sacks. Which meant there wouldn’t be any awkward hugging from the older man. At least, not yet.
“Dad,” Jake said. “Let me help you out.”
“I got it,” his dad said gruffly. Yeah, some things hadn’t changed. “Skye, it’s good to see you up and around.”
Skye gave David a worried smile. “It is?”
“Oh, dear, you don’t remember, do you?” Gloria clucked. “You look so much better than you did in that hospital.”
“You came to see me in the hospital?”
“Why, of course we did! I made it in two or three times a week to spend time with Grace and I’d come sit with you and read to you.” Gloria looked wistful. “I’ve been praying for you to come back to us.”
“You have?” This time, Skye was less worried and more confused.
“Mom,” Jake said with a warning in his voice. “We’re taking it slow and easy here.” Because this crash course in Holt reintroductions wasn’t going down easy. Skye was beginning to look panicked. Since his dad wouldn’t let him help with the groceries, Jake stepped back to wrap his arm protectively around her waist.
“Oh—yes. Of course. I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“You read to me?”
“I’ll just put these away,” David said, neatly sidestepping a conversation that might contain emotions. What a surprise, thought Jake.
“I sure did.” Gloria watched her husband until he was safely in the kitchen. “I know David isn’t the best with expressing his feelings—”
Jake choked. Yeah, that was one way to put it.
“But,” Gloria went on, “when they found you pregnant and they managed to save you and Grace—well, you gave us a granddaughter. We’re family now, honey.”
Then Gloria swallowed them both up in another monster hug. Jake was afraid she was crying.
“Anyway,” Gloria said, stepping back and dabbing at her eyes, “when Jake called this morning, I jumped at the chance pick up some groceries. Honey, you just look wonderful. I’m so glad you’re both here together.”
“Mom,” Jake said again, glaring at her. “Slow. Easy.” Stop talking before you screw something up, he mentally added.
Because the last thing he needed was his parents to inadvertently set Skye off.
“Of course, dear,” she said, patting his arm. “I brought a casserole—chicken enchiladas. Your favorite, Jake!”
“That sounds...good,” Skye said, sounding a little better.
“I’ll get the last bags,” David Holt said as he passed by them. “Your mother bought enough to last you weeks.”
Gloria was still standing there, beaming at the two of them. Well. Aside from his mother’s habit of talking enough for both her and her husband, this actually wasn’t bad. His parents were acting how Keaton had said they would—warm and welcoming to a Taylor daughter.
But Jake needed to get his mom to stop talking. Now.
“Let me get Skye back to the couch,” he said to Gloria. “Then I’ll come help put away the groceries.”
“Oh, I can—” Jake cut her off with a look that he hoped like hell said, Go into the kitchen, please. “Ah. Yes. Groceries. Then we’ll have lunch!” She headed into the other room.
Jake walked Skye over to the couch.
“They seem nice?” she said.
And he couldn’t help it. He loved this woman. He wanted...he wanted so much with this Skye. But what would happen when she got those two years back? “I think they’re really trying,” he said with a quick kiss. “Lunch?”
She leaned back with a dreamy smile on her face. “Lunch sounds good,” she called after him as he hurried to the kitchen before his mother could do something else that put everything at risk.
“How is she?” Gloria asked in a quiet voice as she opened the cabinet doors to find a place to put a box of spaghetti. “She looks a lot better.”
“She is better—but the doctor said that we can’t overload her with information right now. She’s lost about two years and I’m not supposed to tell her what she’s forgotten. She’s supposed to remember it on her own.”
His mother paused, another box of pasta in her hand. “What did happen in those two years, Jake? Heavens, those four years?”
Great. Wonderful. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse. Time to go with the supershort version. “We got married. I started a company. We lived in Houston, but I traveled for work. Skye had a freelance graphic design business.”
His mother nodded her head thoughtfully. “Is that where you’ve been for the last four months? On a job?”
Jake shut his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to find the calm. He would not get into a fight with his mother. A fight would upset Skye and, after all, his parents were trying to help. He could cook for Skye now. That was a good thing.
“I was in Bahrain,” he told her. “In the Middle East, working on IT for an oil-production facility.” Then, because his mother was obviously not buying this as a good-enough reason for the radio silence while Skye had been hospitalized, he added, “I was contractually bound to stay there and finish the job. Skye knew that. She didn’t want to go to Bahrain. We had agreed, but she’s forgotten all about Bahrain and I really don’t think reminding her of it is the best thing for her mental well-being right now so please, for the love of God, go easy on her. As far as she remembers, the fight at Claire’s is still kind of fresh in her mind.”
His mother just regarded him with that all-knowing look that had always spelled trouble back when he was a kid sneaking out past his bedtime to meet Skye. But she didn’t nag, thank heavens. Instead, she said, “All right, dear. I’ll keep it light. Can I talk about Grace?”
“Yes, but I haven’t taken Skye to see her yet. I was going to let her get a day of rest under her belt first. It’s fine if you talk about Grace, but don’t ask about the pregnancy. Skye doesn’t remember any of it and I don’t want to stress her out.”
Just then, David Holt came back in with another armful of groceries and the covered dish Gloria had been using for church socials since probably before Jake had been born. David glanced at the two of them and said, “Everything okay in here?”
“Fine,” Jake said. And that? That was a lie. Not a gloss, not a half-truth. A flat-out lie.
Nothing was fine now. He was living with a woman who didn’t remember falling out of love with him. He was standing in a kitchen in Royal, Texas, talking to his parents. Less than two miles away, his brother was probably singing Jake’s daughter to sleep.
Jake had no idea what was going to happen next month, next week, tomorrow—hell, at the rate he was going, the next ten minutes were going to be chock-full of surprises. At this point, even Bigfoot ringing his doorbell wouldn’t be that astounding.
“Sweetie,” Gloria said, sounding...nice about it? “I know this has probably been a lot.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, wondering if he was actually on the verge of apologizing to his parents. His parents, for God’s sake. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried sick about Skye and trying to figure out how to take care of her and Grace and not lose my business in the process.”
“Are you all talking about me or what?” Skye called out from the living room.
“Sorry,” Jake called back. He saw that his dad had carried in a variety pack of tea. “Thirsty? We have tea now.”
“Please,” Skye called back. “You know how I like it.”
Jake went to find the kettle, but somehow, his mother beat him to it. “Go on,” she said, shooing him out of the kitchen. “You two have a lot to catch up on. I’ll get lunch ready and we’ll all eat together.”
Great. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but on the other hand, the longer his parents stayed here, the less opportunity there’d be to find Skye so...tempting. “That sounds good.”
Jake went to sit next to Skye. “How is it in there?” she asked in a worried voice. “Are they mad at us?”
“No, babe,” he said, taking her hand in his. “I think...” He sighed. “I think they’ve changed. Grace helped.”
“So they’re not upset? Really? Oh, Jake—that’s great!” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I always hoped we’d be able to come back, you know.”
He was going to get an ulcer at this point. He did, in fact, know that. Skye hadn’t said much about it their first two years together, but after that?
Yeah, she’d started voicing that hope. She wanted to be able to come home, see if maybe their families would be able to accept that she and Jake were married. And Jake had had no interest in even testing the waters. He wouldn’t say it was the issue that drove a wedge between them, but it was still a spike that got hammered into that wedge.
“I know,” he told her, mostly because he couldn’t think of a better evasion. He wanted to go through the list of reasons why he didn’t want to stay here—but he didn’t want to upset her, especially not after dressing down his mother for the exact same reason. “We’ll...we’ll visit. When you’re better and Grace is stronger, we’ll—”
“But Jake,” she said and he knew he was doing a lousy job of tap-dancing around the truth of the matter. “I thought we might, you know, be able to move back here. To come home. This would be a great place to raise Grace...” Her brow wrinkled. “When can I see her?”
“Let’s get through the night,” he told her. “This is your first day home, after all—I don’t want you to overdo it. If you feel up to it tomorrow, I’ll call Lark and we’ll go over.”
These were all perfectly reasonable responses. So why did he feel so bad about saying them?
Hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.
He knew even less when Gloria came out carrying a plate loaded with her famous chicken enchilada casserole and a napkin for Skye. Jake got his own plate and they all sat around and ate and chatted as if the past two years hadn’t happened—not to mention the last decade.
His mother was warm and effusive—she managed to keep the conversation light, as promised—and his father let his mother do the talking. There was something comforting about it. No one accused him of betraying the Holt family name to consort with a no-good Taylor. No one tried to convince him to drop Skye for “a nice girl.” It was almost...normal. It was how it should have been all those years ago.
Which was great, but also another obstacle he was going to have to deal with sooner or later. Because this was exactly the sort of family interaction Skye had wanted more and more, and if she thought this was the new normal, she was going to demand it long after she recovered.
And Jake...
He wanted his wife back. The wife she was being right now—not the quiet, resentful woman she’d morphed into over the past couple of years.
Would he even consider moving back to this town? To just acting as if the past had blown away in a tornado—like they were doing right now?
“I’ll
get these things,” Gloria said, gathering up the plates after they’d finished the meal.
“I’ll help,” Jake offered.
For a moment, he thought his mother was going to refuse his help, but then she and his father exchanged a look. David gave her a little nod and she said, “Why, that’d be nice. Will you two be okay?”
“Sure,” harrumphed David as he dug out his phone. “I can show Skye pictures of Grace, if that’s okay.”
“That should be fine...” Jake said nervously as he followed Gloria into the kitchen.
“You have pictures?” Skye gasped.
Suddenly, this seemed like a bad idea. He knew he couldn’t filter Skye’s world for forever, but...well, his father had always been a man of few words. Surely he wouldn’t set Skye off, would he?
Gloria already had the dishes in the dishwasher by the time he got in there with his own. Jake wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say—were they still keeping it light? “Thanks again for getting groceries. How much were they?”
Gloria waved him off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Mom, I’m going to pay you back. That was at least a hundred bucks’ worth of groceries. I didn’t expect for you to foot the bill.” Already, his irritation was growing. He should have stayed in the living room.
She leaned against the counter, a stern look on her face and her arms crossed over her ample chest. He knew he wasn’t going to win this argument. “It’s a small price to pay to make up for how we treated you two,” she said in a matter-of-fact kind of way.
“What?”
“We shouldn’t have forced you to choose. I guess that, deep down, I knew that if you’d stayed on the ranch with us, you’d have come to hate us for driving Skye away. We wasted a lot of time trying to keep you two apart and it never did us a lick of good.”
Jake stood there, gaping at her. “Really?”
From the living room came the sound of a happy Skye going, “Awwww! Look at her tiny hands!”
His Lost and Found Family Page 9