And beyond a wall of windows she could see a balcony and cityscape.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Is this Susan’s influence?”
Jakob lifted his eyebrows. “No. She kept our condo. I bought this place after the divorce. This is all me.”
Oh, no.
“I’m glad you like it.”
Amy dropped her bag on an end table and began wandering, looking more closely at the art quality photos and a few paintings, which she suspected were all originals. They were more modern than she might have expected, lines and jewel colors rather than pictorial. She lightly ran her fingertips over the stained-glass shade of a tall lamp and then along the nubby back of one of the chairs. She became aware Jakob had leaned against a kitchen island that looked as if it had been rescued from a 19th century country store. He was watching her.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m green with envy,” she admitted.
He smiled. “Not all women would like it.”
“No, it’s not feminine. But it’s peaceful.”
“Yeah.” He looked around. “Home feels like a refuge.”
He showed off his amazing view from a wide balcony, but it was too chilly to stay outside, so they settled in the living room. The sofa was big enough, her feet might not have touched the floor, so Amy kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged.
“You interested in Bryan?” Jakob asked.
She hesitated, knowing if she were smart she’d say, Sure, why not? “No” was what came out. “Well, I’d like to interview him. And he did seem nice enough.” She frowned at him. “It sounds like he’s a friend of yours. I’d think you’d be encouraging me. What’s he doing, going through a woman a night?” she asked.
He looked at her for long enough to make her uneasy. She couldn’t figure out what that pensive expression meant. “You and I have been spending a lot of time together,” he said finally.
Amy nodded, inexplicably wary. Her pulse raced.
“I’m having a good time.” Jakob seemed to be picking and choosing his words. “I don’t like the idea of you suddenly being busy every night.”
What did that mean? They were such good buddies, he was hoping she didn’t find a boyfriend for a while? Frustrated, bewildered and flattered all at the same time, she nodded again, as if she understood.
His eyes had narrowed slightly. “You said I scare you.”
She did her best to hide an involuntary flinch. “Scare wasn’t a good choice of words. You confuse me. Unsettle me.” Her voice was rising, the tension in it making her sound mad. “I don’t understand why you’ve gone from despising me to wanting to be such good friends that I’m supposed to save all my evenings for you.”
“But you also said you like what’s happening with us.”
“I do!” Her hands had begun to tremble a little. She balled them into fists. “But it doesn’t make sense.” That came out sounding more like a wail than she wanted to admit.
He made a sound that was too rough to be a laugh. “I’ve...taken myself by surprise, too,” he admitted.
She wanted to beg him to tell her that he really liked her, that he wasn’t pretending. But if he said yes, if he convinced her he meant it, well, that was confusing, too, because why now and not all those years ago?
“I’ve never despised you,” he said, his voice deep and low. “It was...more complicated than that.”
What if this was something she didn’t want to hear? That would ruin everything? She said it, anyway. “You had issues.”
His laugh—well, it was a laugh, but not a very happy one. “Oh, yeah.”
Amy sucked in a breath. They were staring at each other across the living room, and how could she stay silent? “You said I had to ask. Well, now I am. What did you mean?”
A muscle spasmed in his jaw. He hesitated for so long she wasn’t sure he was going to answer after all, even though she had the sense he’d spent the past week consciously herding her into a corner where she had no choice but to ask.
“Are you sure you want to know?” he said finally.
“No.” She scowled at him. Irritation was a good fallback for her. “But you keep hinting, so I know you want to tell me.”
He was still sprawled in a loose-limbed way, but Amy was pretty sure he wasn’t relaxed at all. His eyes were dark with some kind of emotion and his mouth had a grim line.
Jakob sighed and sat up, his gaze never leaving her. “I was jealous as hell when you were little.”
“I know that,” she said, puzzled.
“But then we moved to Arizona and there were longer stretches between us seeing each other.”
“Partly because you did your best to have someplace else to be when I was coming,” she couldn’t resist reminding him.
His mouth twitched in self-mockery. “That’s because somewhere about the time you were twelve or thirteen, I got to noticing you were a girl.”
A wrecking ball hitting the side of the building wouldn’t have torn her gaze from his. Oh, my God, oh, my God. Was he saying what she thought he was?
“True confessions. I may not scare you, but you scare me.” His voice had gotten even deeper. The vibration sent tingles through her. “Noticing you that way scared the crap out of me.”
“You...were attracted to me?” came out squeaky.
“Yeah.” He ran a hand over his face. There was a faint rasping sound. “I did my damndest not to admit it to myself. The safest thing was just not to see you at all. If I couldn’t manage that—” there was a hint of apology in his stormy eyes “—then next best was making sure you hated my guts and thought I hated yours.”
“That’s...” Amy shook her head, dazed. “I can’t believe...I was so sure...”
“I worked hard at it.”
She kept shaking her head as if she couldn’t get it to stop. She was as stunned, if in a different way, as she’d been when she understood from her mother’s diary that her father wasn’t the man she called Dad. It was as if somebody had spun her round and round and now she was left staggering and trying to orient herself. Up, down. Left, right. “But...”
“But what?”
“If you knew I wasn’t really your sister...”
“I didn’t know. I guessed. Probably if I hadn’t overheard as much as I did, I never would have thought of you that way. Trouble was, once the concept that you weren’t my sister at all got introduced in my head, I didn’t look at you the same. When we were younger, it translated to ‘If she’s not my sister how come she has to spend weekends and why do I have to be nice?’”
She huffed. “Nice.”
He shrugged. “I guess I decided I didn’t have to be.”
“I noticed.”
“Have I said how sorry I am?”
Amy gave a little laugh, although so many emotions were churning inside she couldn’t have named one. “I think you’ve apologized for a few of your meaner escapades.”
“Once a guy’s hormones kick in, all he can see are tits and asses and the way a girl walks and purses her lips and smells.” He shrugged. “But one thing I knew was that I should never, never—” and he sounded deadly serious “—have noticed any of those things related to my sister. It freaked me out, big-time.”
“Yes.” Her voice croaked. “I can see why.”
“So—I convinced even myself that I wasn’t noticing. I hated having you around and you were a stupid girl who Dad was too nice to, which was why I got hot and bothered when you wandered into the kitchen in the morning in your pajamas. It couldn’t possibly be because the fabric was really thin and I could make out the shadow of your nipples.”
In automatic self-defense, her arms crossed in front of her to cover her breasts.
Jakob’s laugh was choppy. “I dreaded your visits.”
<
br /> She was still staring at him, that mongoose-to-a-snake thing. “I had no idea.”
“I made real sure you didn’t.”
“I don’t even know what to say.” So true. “You just turned my world on end.” It made her realize that he had loomed way larger in her life than was reasonable, considering how little they’d actually seen of each other. And now this.
“In a good or bad way?” His voice was husky, his gaze...searching?
Suddenly Amy knew how she felt. Blistering, steam-coming-out-of-the-ears furious. And yes, she hurt underneath, but she wouldn’t think about that until later.
She scooted forward so her feet were on the floor. In the worst way, she wanted to launch herself at him and punch and kick and scratch.
His expression changed.
“I needed somebody to love me.” It came out low and shaking with intensity. “Anybody at all. Instead, I grew up knowing I wasn’t worth anybody’s love. My own mother didn’t want to touch me. My father was polite and pleasant, when he was stuck having me for a weekend. And my brother? Every time I saw him he did something vile to me to make sure I knew I wasn’t welcome. I should have hated your guts, but I didn’t. I kept hoping...” Her voice broke. Even angrier at having exposed her own naked vulnerability, she jumped to her feet. “If I’d had you, it would have made a difference. And now I’m supposed to say, ‘Oh, cool, you really liked me after all’? Well, it’s not cool!” She was screaming—like a fishwife, Mom would have said. And shaking all over now.
Jakob sat silent and seemingly stunned.
She fumbled her way back into her shoes and looked around for her bag. “I want to go home. I can catch a taxi.”
He stood, moving more stiffly than usual. “You know I’ll take you.”
“Fine.” She stomped over to the door and waited, not willing to look at him.
He let them out; they rode the elevator down to the garage in silence. Amy felt like crying by the time they reached his SUV. But she wouldn’t do it, not in front of him, not when he was the cause of this caustic grief that was eating its way through the lining of her stomach and taking a bite out of her heart muscle.
Jakob started the engine while she was still fastening the seat belt. He didn’t put it in gear. “I suppose it’s too little, too late to say I’m sorry.” He looked straight ahead.
The anger was still there, but beneath it, beneath even the hurt that could have been grief, something else stirred. She was in too much turmoil to even try to identify what it was.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No.” He still wasn’t moving. His face looked harsh in the artificial lighting that cast stark shadows. “I never thought it was funny.”
Why wasn’t he backing the Subaru out, pushing the button to operate the parking garage gate?
“I have to think about this,” she said.
After a moment he nodded. “Will you tell me one thing?”
His tone was so strange she couldn’t help but look at him. He kept staring straight ahead, but not as if he actually saw the silent depths of the garage or the couple dozen parked vehicles.
“It depends,” Amy said tightly.
“Did I shock you?”
Was he stupid? He thought she’d gone off the deep end because she was mildly surprised at this revision of their history? “Yes!”
He finally turned his head. His face was colorless. She wanted to believe the unnatural pallor was from the lighting down here. His eyes burned into hers, even though she wouldn’t have been able to make out that they were blue if she hadn’t already known.
“Does it repulse you to know your brother looked at you that way?” He sounded as raw as she felt.
She had to tear her gaze away. “You’re not my brother.” Oh, damn. Her voice was shaking again.
“No. But if I’d found out I was, do you know how I’d have felt?”
“No.” She closed her eyes. “Yes.” Drew a shaky breath. “This is why you wanted to go to the opening of the time capsule with me.”
“I suppose it is,” he said after a moment.
Her sinuses burned and she wished she understood what she felt.
Jakob waited for what had to be a minute. When she didn’t say anything else, he finally nodded, put the Outback into Reverse and released the emergency brake.
They didn’t talk during the short drive.
CHAPTER TEN
AMY LET HERSELF into the house as quietly as she could. She was desperately hoping she could sneak up to her bedroom and avoid conversation. When she saw that her mother was waiting for her, all she could think was Please, no. Not now.
Michelle sat on the living room sofa in a pool of lamplight. A magazine lay beside her as if she’d set it aside as soon as she heard the key in the lock.
“Did you have a nice time?” she asked.
A nice time. Amy could quite easily have become hysterical.
“Yes, we had a good dinner. Jakob showed me his condo. It’s gorgeous, riverfront, in what was an old brick warehouse.”
Mom nodded. “I wanted to talk to you before you went to bed.”
What could she do but force a smile, drop her purse on a side table and take a seat in one of the not-so-comfortable armchairs in the living room. “That sounds serious.”
“I’m leaving in the morning.”
The rush of relief and hope made Amy ashamed. Nonetheless, she couldn’t squelch it. She needed to be alone.
“Ken must be missing you.”
Michelle’s head bowed. “Yes, he says he is. But I’m not going back to Australia, not yet.”
What? “Then...where are you going tomorrow?”
Her mother lifted her chin again and met her eyes. “I plan to visit Wakefield College. I’ve never been back, you know.”
Amy felt stricken, which was astonishing given how much anger toward her mother she had hoarded. No, not only Mom—I’m mad at everyone, she realized.
Even through all of that, worry rose to the surface. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Michelle ignored her. “And then I plan to turn around and go to the coast. Go home.” A ripple of some emotion passed over her face. “When my father passed away, I was in such a hurry to sell the house, I moved all of their nicer furniture and anything personal to a storage unit and...left it. I’ve been paying on that unit all these years.”
“I...didn’t know that.” One more thing she didn’t know about her mother. Apparently evidence of the rape wasn’t the only thing Mom had tried real hard to bury.
She had never seen an expression so fragile on her mother’s face.
“It has become apparent to me that there is quite a lot I haven’t dealt with. You were right when you said I never talked about my childhood or young adult life. What I need you to know is that most of that wasn’t a conscious decision. The only secret I knowingly kept from you was the circumstances of your conception. I couldn’t see how that would do anything but hurt you. I wasn’t aware that I was managing to hurt you every day anyway.”
Her chest was being painfully squeezed, boa-constrictor tight and tighter. “Mom...”
Her mother shook her head firmly. “You’ve been honest. Please don’t deny what you really feel.”
Amy subsided, although she was having trouble drawing a breath.
“If nothing else, it’s ridiculous to waste so much money to keep a storage unit forever. Particularly since I doubt there’s much in it I want to keep. I may simply give it all to a local thrift store, or—who knows?—perhaps I’ll hold a sale, if the storage facility permits that.”
Her mother, putting little price stickers on everything, smiling and accepting a dollar for this, ten dollars for that. Holding a garage sale. Not possible.
“I’d like to
come with you,” Amy said, not sure if she meant it but knowing this was something she had to do.
Michelle shook her head. “Thank you for offering.” She even smiled, so tentatively it was nothing Amy recognized. “If this trip was purely practical, to clean out the unit, I would accept. But I want to drive around town, perhaps take walks, go through the things my parents left and think. It’s past time, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“Will anything change?” Amy couldn’t help asking.
The strain on her mother’s face aged her. “I don’t know. I hope it will. I have always held a great deal of myself back. Intimacy of any kind has been very difficult for me. I fooled myself into thinking that was my business and only mine. Clearly, that’s not the case. I do love you, and I love Ken. He’s been very patient, but I need to open myself to...” She hesitated. “Feeling, I suppose, even when that isn’t comfortable.”
“Oh, Mom.” Amy’s voice cracked.
“I intend to get an early start. You needn’t get up with me unless you’re already awake.”
“Are you sure you don’t want company? I’d like to come if you’ll let me.” Saying it this time felt sincere. Yes. This is something I want to do for her.
Michelle’s smile was softer than any Amy remembered, either, but she was also shaking her head. “This needs to be a personal journey.” She actually laughed. “I sound as if I’ve started reading self-help books, which I promise I haven’t.”
Amy laughed, too, if shakily. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’m off to bed, then.” Her mother rose to her feet. “Good night, Amy.”
She stood, too. “Good night. Um...if you change your mind...”
“I won’t, but thank you.” Mom nodded with her normal briskness and started for the staircase. Hand on the banister, she paused. “I’m guessing I’ll be gone at least a week, perhaps as much as two. I’ll keep you informed.”
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