His eyes had darkened. “Damn. I want to grab you again.”
She wanted him to, too. So much she quit breathing, only yearned. And he was right—until two days ago she hadn’t even dreamed that she could feel this way about him.
“Man.” He bowed his head. “Give me a minute.”
This was surreal. The most handsome man she’d ever met was so hungry for her—her!—he looked as if he’d give up eating and drinking and breathing to have her. She wanted to believe in what she was seeing, what he had said, but it was hard. It seemed to violate everything she’d ever known about herself.
The poor sad girl no one loved. The misfit in her own family. Smart but freckled and skinny as a young teen, so not cool.
Stunned at how completely negative and even pathetic that all sounded, she cringed inwardly, but made herself continue.
Later, once she’d reached adulthood—sure, guys had liked her, but...
The but brought her to a stop. A listening sort of stillness. She thought things like that a lot and never examined them. Because of Jakob, she’d started to.
So...about those guys. Had she never been totally convinced they really wanted her? Was it possible there were a few along the way who did?
Had she always doubted them, the way she was doubting Jakob right now?
Yes.
“Maybe we should call it an evening.” Jakob’s voice jolted her from her self-absorption.
She tuned back in to see that he was studying her, those troubled lines apparent again.
“No!” Amy was startled by her own vehemence. “Please,” she said, more softly. “Will you stay and...and talk to me?” She glanced ruefully at her plate and then his. “We never do very well with the meals I cook, do we?”
He gave a grunt of almost amusement. “Food’s never at the top of my mind when we’re alone. Restaurants are safer.”
She shivered with longing again, but still felt that unease. “If you’d rather go...”
“No.” His smile might be crooked, but it felt real. “I’d like it if we could talk. Maybe cuddle, too.”
And so that’s what they did. Jakob helped her clear the table and put away the leftovers. He eyed the pie she’d set out on the counter with interest and said, “Maybe in a little while.”
He settled with a sigh at one end of her mother’s sofa and lifted an arm in invitation. Amy plopped down on the middle cushion and leaned tentatively against him. His arm wrapped her shoulders and drew her closer. After a stiff moment, she surrendered. He felt so good.
He started talking about work in a way he hadn’t before, even admitting to some mixed feelings about further expansion.
“Opening the store in Flagstaff ate up most of my summer. And now there are problems in Santa Fe.... I got into this because I love the outdoors and I want to equip people right so they have the best possible experience when they put that pack on their back or go sea kayaking or whatever. The result is, I have less and less time to get away myself.”
Amy twisted a little to see his face. “And then I came along right when you had a break and instead of heading for the mountains you’ve been taking care of me.”
His shoulders moved and he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than get to know you. Give you support when you need it. And hey, you had good timing.”
She made a face, even though he couldn’t see it. “For my breakdown, you mean? Just think of the fun things you could have been doing instead of coaxing me to eat and take a shower.”
“I’ve had fun.” His chuckle was a rumble against her cheek. “Maybe not that part, but...otherwise. Haven’t you?” He sounded a little more careful.
Amy smiled, remembering the hike and the day in Astoria and even the weekend in Frenchman Lake, before she saw what her mother had left in the time capsule. “Yes, I have. These few weeks have been...weird. You probably won’t believe me, but I’m usually on a pretty even keel.” Too even, she thought in sudden perturbation; she never let the loneliness overwhelm her, but she had also blocked any real happiness. “I can’t remember ever being so down or so up before.”
“Carnival ride?”
Amy made a soft sound of agreement. “A dozen, at least. So many I’m dizzy and maybe ready to puke after all that cotton candy, but also feeling...” Alive. Aware. Deeply happy. Should she admit all that? Or to the underlying apprehension that soon the rides would go silent and the carnies would turn out the flashing lights and it would all be over?
How was it possible to be so happy and so unhappy all at the same time?
Jakob was waiting.
“...good,” she finally said.
His arm tightened in a hug. Somehow he knew how confused she was. Usually she didn’t like having anyone try to look deeper, but for the first time in her life she was grateful he could.
“Let’s make a date,” he suggested. “You ever been in Portland during the Rose Festival?”
“No.” Of course he knew she’d gotten her degree at Reed College here in Portland. The famous Rose Festival was held in June. “School let out in May and I always got jobs elsewhere.”
“Every year there’s a fancy carnival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Fireworks, too, and dragon boat races, and parades.”
“A parade of ships.” She’d seen pictures and thought it looked cool.
“Right.” He was smiling, she could tell. “What do you say?”
“I’m short. You’ll have to find me a good spot to watch any parade.”
He laughed. “Deal.”
“Then it’s definitely a date.” Amy was proud of her breezy tone, when really her strange mood had her feeling melancholic. June was eight months away. What were the odds they’d still be spending time together that far into the future? Would he think of her when the Rose Festival did roll around, maybe with a pang for something that didn’t quite happen?
I could try believing, she thought, but wistfully, because of course it wasn’t that easy.
“You working on anything?” he asked after a minute, and she told him about how she’d discovered the Willamette Valley farm that was producing olive oil.
“Olive trees thriving in a wet, cold climate?” She shook her head. “They planted the orchard...oh, almost ten years ago now, and they mill the oil themselves. Yesterday I talked to a chef who raves about it. I don’t usually write about food or restaurants or wineries. This, though, struck me as...quixotic.”
He got that right away. “Tilting at windmills.”
Amy laughed, taking satisfaction in the article that had been taking shape in her mind yesterday and today despite all her personal turmoil. “Right.”
“You called Bryan yet?”
She’d done that today, too. “Yes. We’re having lunch next week.”
Jakob didn’t move so much as a muscle. “Date lunch?”
“Business lunch.”
His chest rose and fell with a breath, and she realized that’s what had been missing. “He ask you out?”
“No, and I would have said no if he had.”
“You’re not interested, huh?”
She shrugged.
Of course he couldn’t just accept that. “Because of what I told you about him?”
Amy straightened away from him. His arm fell back to his side and there was surprise on his face. “No. I think you made it all up anyway because you were jealous.”
“Uh...” His grin had to be sheepish. Humor crinkled the tiny lines fanning from his eyes. “I might have exaggerated.”
Amy sniffed.
“Well, then?”
“Well then what?”
“Tell me,” he coaxed. “I want to know why Engel doesn’t do it for you.”
His charm was on fu
ll display, but she also realized he was a steamroller. Well, duh. Nobody built a business the size of his without a more than healthy quantity of determination and sheer doggedness and probably a good dose of inquisitiveness, too.
“You know why,” she said grumpily. “I told you.”
Heat seemed to flare in his eyes. “Tell me again,” he said, voice a little huskier.
“You were there.”
He took her hand in his and used it to tug her forward. “And no guy ever measures up.”
Oh, so true. “Humph” was her commentary.
He laughed, low and triumphant, and then kissed her.
Completely unable to resist, Amy rose to her knees so she could lean in and kiss him back, with all the fervor she had never known she could feel.
* * *
THE WEEK THAT followed was so amazing, Jakob kept having this sense of unreality. That was Amy’s small hand gripping his. Amy sternly correcting whatever wrongful political opinion he had just expressed. And, yeah, when he kissed her, sometimes he had to lift his head just to look down at that pixie face and believe it was her melting in his arms.
A teenage crush hadn’t been a lot to base a relationship on, however powerful and lingering it had been. What he was finding was how much he liked the here-and-now Amy, who was one of the strongest personalities he’d ever known.
Volatile, too. Pugnacious, quick to take offense, fiery in defense of any underdog, all of which reminded him of the five-year-old who’d slugged it out with a boy. Hiding his amusement was sometimes a challenge. He was tempted to ask how often she ended up with a black eye.
She was quick to laugh at herself, too, though, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than her two versions of a laugh—one a surprisingly uninhibited guffaw, the other a giggle that sounded so young and always left her looking surprised.
Her happiest moments always seemed to end up shadowed, as though happiness could never be uncomplicated for her. The momentary dimming of her expression had a way of tangling him up inside, because he was partly to blame for some of what haunted her.
He loved her willingness to try anything, from different foods to offbeat movies to whatever outing he suggested. With Halloween upon them, they went to a pumpkin farm and got lost in the corn maze, then carved two jack-o’-lanterns for the front steps of her mother’s house. He came over for dinner and helped her dispense candy to the neighborhood children allowed to trick-or-treat. They went on an art gallery walk one night, ending up at a brewpub, where she wrinkled her nose and admitted she didn’t like beer but drank a bottle of the dark, yeasty ale, anyway. A couple of early evenings after work, they ran together, making use of parts of Portland’s extensive trail system.
And they made out, like a pair of fourteen-year-olds wary of the real thing but really, really horny. She made him laugh even when he wanted her so desperately he didn’t know how he could wait. Her vulnerability had him tender despite the fact that he was spending more time aroused and unfulfilled than he had since...hell, since he was sixteen and she was staying in the bedroom across the hall from him.
He frequently found himself remembering those hot summer weeks when she’d come to visit, the most miserable of his life, but he kept trying to slam the door on the memories. She was here, this was now. He’d lie in bed at night—alone—confirming to himself that he’d have asked her out the minute he met her, even if they had no history. He didn’t want their relationship to be about times he couldn’t go back and change, about the way he’d hurt them both with his cruel efforts to make her hate him.
All the common sense in the world failed to shut down the memories, though. He had a couple of shockingly vivid and erotic dreams in which they were teenagers and he’d slipped into the guest room—which, in the way of dreams, looked nothing like the extra bedroom as he recalled it, but he knew that’s where he was, anyway. After the second one, he woke up so aroused he groaned and flung an arm over his eyes. Why wasn’t he dreaming about the Amy he’d kissed good-night only a few hours ago? What was his subconscious trying to tell him?
On Friday she had lunch with Bryan Engel. Jakob was restless and irritable as he brown-bagged it at his desk. He had no reason to be jealous, but was, anyway.
He knew what the trouble was. A few days ago he’d suggested he talk to his father, be upfront. He’d seen her shock.
“We don’t have to do that yet, do we?” she asked. No, be honest—begged.
What could he say? “Of course not. But sooner or later, we do.”
She had nodded, but doubtfully, and he filled in the blanks.
They had to tell their parents only if the relationship was still ongoing.
Any and all doubts were on her side, and that’s why he was irrationally, stupidly jealous.
Didn’t it figure that was the one evening they hadn’t made any arrangement to get together.
Amy called him midafternoon, though. “Your friend Bryan has done some of the coolest projects!” Her delight obvious, she enumerated those projects at some length while Jakob seethed. “And since he’s been trying to fly below the radar—his words, remember?—he’s saved himself for me. All for me!” she crowed.
Despite himself, her pleasure in the lunch smoothed the rough edges of his mood.
“And I know he never would have talked to me if it weren’t for you,” she concluded. “So thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Glad I could be useful.” Smiling now, if reluctantly, he even meant it.
“Just think how amazing articles about you and him would be. Bookends. No, Portland’s sexiest and most compassionate bachelors! Damn it. If only I could interview you.”
“You can interview me anytime, babe,” he drawled. “Seems to me you did some...interviewing last night.”
She blew a raspberry that made him laugh. “If only we didn’t have the same last name.”
That wiped the smile off his face. She was quiet a little longer than was natural, too.
“I take that back,” she said, sounding more subdued. “But you know what I mean.”
“I know.”
“I should let you go,” Amy said, brisk again. “I taped the interview, and I need to type it up and start thinking about who else I need to talk to.”
He gritted his teeth. Would he sound desperate if he asked her to dinner?
“I know I’ve been monopolizing your time. You might be busy tonight. But I’d be glad to try cooking again if you want to come over. Although I may not forgive you if you spurn my food again,” she joked.
“I don’t know. Us alone again.” His blood heated even as he tried to respond in the same spirit. Alone again. Accompanied by a deep, primitive drumbeat, the words sang to him. “But I’m tough. I guess I can handle it.”
“Any requests?”
You. He cleared his throat. “We could just order in since you’ve had a busy day.”
“No, I don’t mind cooking.”
They agreed on a time, and she was gone. Jakob’s bad mood was erased as if it had never been. No carving tools and slimy pumpkin innards heaped on the table between them this time. Alone together!
Don’t rush her, he warned himself.
Even so, he was as blasted eager when he bounded up the steps to Michelle’s front porch as he’d been that other, ill-fated time. Didn’t care that it was pouring rain and he was getting soaked. There were no more secrets between them, they’d been having fun together, she hadn’t said much in days about her mother or her biological father. She seemed to be okay. If she was still as disturbed as she’d been, she would say something to him, wouldn’t she?
She was on the phone again when she opened the door. She peered past him at the rainy night and mouthed, “Bryan.”
“You were fantastic,” she said, heading for the half bath under the staircase. When she
returned with a towel, she was still talking. “Yes, I’m sure I’ll have more questions for you once I talk to people at the nonprofits you’ve helped.” She thrust the towel at Jakob, who ran it over his wet hair. “Uh-huh.”
Jakob kissed her forehead and she made a cute face for him. He took off his shoes and left them by the door, then padded after her to the kitchen. Spicy smells greeted him. Chicken tacos, he diagnosed, seeing the corn tortillas and small bowls of salsa, sour cream and chopped cilantro.
Sudden silence behind him made Jakob turn. Amy’s gaze was on him as she listened to whatever his friend was saying.
“That’s very flattering,” she said, then was apparently interrupted.
A wave of raw possessiveness had Jakob’s body going rigid.
“No, I do mean it, but I’m involved with someone already.”
He relaxed slightly, but the adrenaline was still doing a number on him. He was really glad Engel couldn’t see Amy right this minute, wearing knee-high boots over snug, thin pants topped with a drapey, thigh-length sweater. Then it occurred to him that Bryan probably had seen her like this; no reason she’d have changed since lunchtime. No wonder the bastard had asked her out—and was still talking.
“Actually,” she said after a minute, “he’s here right now.”
Jakob held out his hand. She shook her head vehemently and backed away. He held her stare and waggled his fingers. After a moment Amy gave another huge, exasperated eye roll and handed over the phone.
“Hey, Engel,” he said. “It’s Jakob.”
He knew flabbergasted silence when he heard it.
“I thought she was your sister!” his friend choked out.
“Stepsister, and our parents divorced when she was six and I was nine. We hadn’t seen much of each other in years when we discovered we both lived in Portland.”
“I could have sworn you said...”
“You heard wrong.”
“Well, damn.”
Jakob laughed. “Sorry,” he said insincerely.
Bryan grumbled some more and was still at it when Jakob gave the phone back to her. She didn’t say much, but laughed a couple of times and finally closed the phone and laid it on the counter.
From This Day On Page 20