by Zana Bell
Except that it clearly wasn’t. As the night began to lighten, he finally faced the unpalatable truth. Somehow, during the past couple of weeks, she’d sneaked in and planted her Texas flag in his heart. And he didn’t know what the hell to do about that.
Unable to lie still, Jake pulled on surf shorts and prowled into the kitchen. He glanced out the window and did a double take. Parked next to his Jeep was a jaunty red convertible. Light spilled down the steps of the sleep-out.
The grass was wet with dew as he padded over in bare feet, thoughts and emotions turbulent in contrast to the harbor waters, which were flat and tinged pink under a blueing sky. It was going to be another hot day.
“Sass?” he called softly as he came up the steps to the sliding doors, which were open. The sight inside stopped him dead. Sass, hair pulled back in a ponytail, was standing over the last of some pages coming out of her travel printer.
“Where have you been? What time did you come home? Why didn’t you wake me?”
She spun around, and for the briefest second he thought he saw something like joy flash across her face. But it was immediately replaced by her smile—her professional smile.
“Hey, Jake. I’ve been down in Auckland, checking out an idea of mine, chatting to experts. I came home at 2:00 a.m. and I didn’t want to disturb you guys.”
You guys. She was lumping him in with the boys. He’d been turning himself inside out all week and she’d been off doing her thing, clearly not sparing one thought for him. The idea burned. Then he saw a fat pile of papers sitting on the table. The front page in bold, black type read “The Aroha Bay Resort.” The hairs on his arms rose.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a draft of the report. I’ve just finished it.” She straightened, her hand going protectively to the pile. There were smudges of fatigue under her eyes.
He could feel his lip curl into an ugly smile. “I see that. So you’ve made your decision.”
“Yes.”
Her voice was steady, but she gave a little half shrug that might have been apologetic, might have been dismissive.
It didn’t feel real—but at the same time it felt all too horribly real. He stepped into the sleep-out, narrowing the distance between them. “You’re going to recommend the resort go ahead, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “You know my report is confidential. I’ve made that clear from the start. But, Jake, once you read it I think you’ll find—”
He raised his hand to stop her. “Don’t explain. Don’t justify. It’s a resort. Enough said.”
Anger and a new sort of pain he’d never experienced curdled his stomach. She’d warned him that he’d mix their relationship with resort issues, but he hadn’t listened, stupidly confident he could stay detached—the way she clearly had. He was such a fool. He closed his eyes, suddenly cold with the knowledge that Sass was about to destroy his world and there was nothing on earth he could do to stop her.
But, by God, he would try.
SASS ONLY GLIMPSED his hurt and betrayal before his eyes opened, burning with fury. His jaw—that lovely, pugnacious jaw she’d feathered with kisses—hardened as he squared his body for war. She’d known this moment would come, but still felt nauseous. All week she’d been functioning well on an intellectual plane, taking joy in seeing the way forward. Away from Jake, it was all so obvious. But in unguarded moments and alone at night she’d been unable to avoid despair. An uncompromising opponent, he’d never forgive her.
When he’d arrived on her doorstep, wearing only surf shorts, with his hair sleep-rumpled, her heart had bucked. In another universe she would have leaped at him, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, relishing the power of the man as he held her close to his solid chest. But she’d chosen a different universe this week. That could never happen now. The only way through was to keep everything calm, everything rational. Emotions had no place here—not anymore. Still, she had to try once more to reassure and convince him.
“Jake, it’s not what you think it is. I’ve listened to you, read your book, seen the terns. Believe me, I understand how you feel, and it hasn’t been easy, balancing that against ABORD. I’ve given everything I’ve heard due consideration…” She faltered, seeing his expression.
“Really?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “When exactly did this consideration take place? When we were out surfing? Bird watching?” He seared her with a look. “Making love?”
“That’s unfair, Jake.” Her voice was calm even as her hands shook. “I gave everyone a fair hearing and then on Sunday night I saw a solution. I’ve been meeting with other parties down in Auckland, checking out if my idea could work. And it can, it really can if you give it a chance.”
“You listened but it’s no coincidence that your recommendations should so neatly serve your company’s best interests,” he said. “All the time you smiled and seemed so nice.” He laughed. “You even got to enjoy the entertainments laid on by the locals.”
She could still turn this around. She could. She was the queen of negotiation. Honesty was always her strongest weapon. “Jake, I wasn’t playing. What we had was—”
“Don’t say real!”
She put a hand on his arm. “Special. Unexpected. God knows I was never looking for it. Didn’t want it, even.”
“Thanks.”
“But I couldn’t resist.”
He stared down at her, eyes as cold as glass, and shook off her hand. “Neither could I, but I wish I had. I can’t believe that after everything, we’re still going to get some bloody Jungle Paradise and to hell with everyone down here. You, Sass Walker, are going to betray us all.”
And just like that, her temper flared. Jake had succeeded in goading her as no New York lawyer ever had.
“Don’t you dare talk to me about disregarding other people,” she said, vibrating with anger. “I’ve done nothing but listen all week, which is more than you have ever done, Jake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that.” She took a step closer. “Have you ever listened to ABORD, really listened? They’re nice people who just want jobs, opportunities. Not everyone is born with a whopping great silver spoon in their mouth and the talent to do anything they choose.”
He folded his arms across his bare chest and stared down his nose at her. “The local economy is hardly my fault.”
“No, but you could play a part in trying to improve it. Money may not be a big deal to you, but it’s huge to most people. Don’t you see that it’s only because, deep down, you know you’ll always be rich that you can give away fortunes? Look where you live. Most people don’t have this luxury. Or the luxury to give away their money.”
He flinched but said through gritted teeth, “Don’t throw my family’s wealth in my face just because you have some trailer park complex.”
His words lashed her. “You bastard! You are so blindly selfish it’s amazing you’ve managed to find your way around the world at all. I mean, just look at Aroha Bay.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She gestured to the peaceful dawn tide behind him. “You want to keep it unspoiled, right? But I don’t see you moving yourself and the boys back into town, tearing down this house and letting it all go back to nature. What you mean is you want to keep it as it is where only you guys get to enjoy paradise. Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy, everyone is entitled to a week in paradise. Everyone. That’s what holidays are all about. For a short time, people get the chance to live the dream you wallow in day after day.”
Her words hit him like bullets. He recoiled but was plainly furious now. “What about the terns?”
“I know.” She felt anguish, but was on the road of no return now. “But, Jake, we are talking about seven birds. Seven! You yourself cannot guarantee they’ll be around in a few years’ time. All we can do is try to protect them.”
“Yeah, right, by building a resort.” He seized her by both arms. “
You are going to go ahead, aren’t you, despite the birds—despite the boys. Despite me, for God’s sake—despite us.”
For a second she felt ripped apart. His grip was tight but she knew he must be exerting monumental self-control not to crush her.
She looked into his face, white with fury, and knew with cold certainty that if there ever had been an “us”, there wasn’t any longer. Texan through and through, she went in, guns blazing.
“Don’t you dare try playing that card. What we had was never about this.”
His fingers tightened and he pulled her closer. “It was all about this.”
“Not for me.”
His bare chest was only centimeters away, but she tipped her head to eyeball him.
“What’s really going on here, Jake,” she added, “is that you can suddenly see you might lose.”
His eyes blazed as he abruptly released her and took a step back. She could tell he was only just holding violent emotions in check, but couldn’t stop herself from going in for the kill.
“Yes, you, Mr. Champion. You can’t bear the thought of not getting your way. Are you really fighting my company or are you fighting your father? You know all your privileges have come from deals exactly like this one, and you hate that. Most of all, you hate that when you look at your father, you see yourself staring right back.”
“What about you? You spend all your time on crap like this—” he snatched her report off the table and waved it in the air “—because you are too bloody scared to take a real look at your life. You think if you pin everything down into lists and routines and reports, you can make yourself invulnerable. Don’t open yourself up, and life doesn’t get messy. Well, news flash. Life’s all about messy!”
He threw the report at the wall and it exploded, white pages flying in all directions. She cried out, but Jake wasn’t finished, and he rounded on her again.
“You say I’m like my old man. Well, let me tell you, Sass, that you are your father’s daughter.”
His words hit like a blow to the face.
“That’s crazy, you’ve never met him. Hell, I haven’t seen him since I was twelve years old. How can you say—even think—something that idiotic?”
“Think about it. He’s not the only one who walked out on your family. You criticize me for only taking on short-term commitments, but at least they are commitments. You’ve locked yourself away so there’s no room for any commitments at all—apart, of course, from your company. The company you’ve been trying to be the perfect daughter to all these years, only they’ve never noticed.”
“How dare you!” She bunched her fists at her sides, but he wasn’t finished yet.
“The only outlet you allow yourself at all in your uptight, battened-down world is your damned smoking. I bet you took it up as the one defiant action in your whole conforming life, and here you are, twenty years later, still acting out like a teenager.”
“Shut up. Shut up!”
“You ran out on your family when things got tough and now you’re running out on me.” He stopped short as enlightenment dawned. “Oh my God, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what this rush is all about. We got close, I got too close—and now you’re running, using work, as always, as your goddamn excuse.”
His words stripped her down to bare fury such as she’d never experienced since the day her father had left. There was no one she had to protect anymore; no little brothers to have to pretend to that everything was okay and not some nightmare that would never be right. She could yell at Jake like she could never attack her mother. She wouldn’t lose her job over this….
Red-hot anger erupted after decades of repression, and she launched herself at him, fists pounding, nails scratching, feet kicking as she hurled cuss words she’d never realized she even knew.
He grabbed her by both arms, pinning them to her sides, and pulled her to his chest, kissing her. She bit his lip, tasted blood with almost savage pleasure. She raked his bared chest with her fingernails. He tore off her blouse and bra as, locked in combat, they fell onto the bed. His shorts, her skirt fell away as over and over they rolled, punishing each other. Claiming each other.
Sass’s anger was mixed with desperation, sorrow and pure, mindless passion. As Jake pushed into her, she was beyond any rational thinking, and when he began his pounding rhythm she rose to it, spurring him faster and more furiously, as though to burn every last conscious thought from her mind. She locked eyes with him, hating him for having made her love him, loving him for unleashing all her rage, her pain. He was never going to speak to her again, but he’d remember her. Then she was caught up, swept away in pounding waves of pleasure she’d never experienced before.
“Say it,” Jake gasped, eyes blazing into hers, “damn you, say it.”
And so she finally came in a tumultuous surge, crying his name out, over and over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAKE LEFT IMMEDIATELY
after tugging on his shorts. He didn’t look at her. Didn’t say a word. Shaken, Sass crawled off the bed. Slowly, she began picking up the pages one by one, clutching them in a fist against her bare breasts. She would have to print out other copies. And she would. What had just happened didn’t alter her opinion. In the end, she wouldn’t allow the other considerations to interfere with business.
She lay the crumpled sheets on the desk, flattening them out with one shaking hand, then headed for the shower.
As the hot water poured over her head, she finally abandoned herself to her grief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried other than at the movies. It was with relief that she let tears roll down her face. They mingled with the scalding water and were erased. After a while, she reined herself in and began scrubbing. She rubbed her scalp, then her arms, her legs, her stomach, her butt and her breasts until she was tingling and raw. But nothing could distract her from the treacherous warmth that still infused her. Jake, damn him, had woken that part of her she’d never believed existed, and then he’d gone, just like that. She heard again and again in her head the slam of the screen door as her father had abandoned them, leaving her mother a sobbing wreck for his daughter to pick up.
The water was running cold by the time Sass stepped out of the shower. She dressed very slowly, with care, in her white skirt and turquoise blouse. The collar would hide the two bites already emerging on her neck. She scraped her hair back into a bun. Her eyes in the tiny mirror were red, and she applied eyedrops, then mascara. Her mouth was swollen so she didn’t bother with lip gloss. What did Jake’s back look like? she wondered. His neck? Where had that bloodlusting harpy come from? Outside her window she heard the tumbling song of some bird as it perched on the flax bushes.
Then she heard running outside the shed.
“Sass!” Mike yelled. “Phone for you. It’s America.”
Her heart lurched. Surely, surely, it wasn’t Kurt phoning to gloat.
“I’m coming now. Tell them to wait.”
Sass ran across the lawn in bare feet and dashed into the TV room, where Mike handed her the phone.
“Hello, Sass here.”
“Sass?”
Her knees sagged when she heard the warm Texan twang. Of all the people she wasn’t expecting.
“Adam? Is that really you?”
“I’m so glad to finally get you. I’ve been trying for hours. Is your phone dead?”
“I’m out of cell range.”
“In the end your office put me in touch with this guy, Rob Finlayson, and he gave me this number. It’s about Mom. She’s been hospitalized. They say it’s bad.” His voice cracked. “She may die.”
Sass swayed and suddenly, miraculously, there was a hand under her elbow, supporting her to a chair. Jake. He had pulled on a T-shirt, all trace of anger gone. There was only concern in his expression now.
“What is it?” she said into the phone.
“Pneumonia. She’s really let herself go this past year.”
“Why didn’t you get in touch wit
h me sooner?” Sass sounded shrill even to her own ears.
“You know Mom. She has her pride.”
Yes, Sass knew. That’s why they’d lived in a trailer park rather than go back to her grandparents.
“She couldn’t bear for you to see what she was turning into.”
Sass closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. Jake placed a hand on her shoulder and she rubbed her cheek against it.
“She’s asking for you,” Adam said. “Can you come?”
“Of course. First flight I can catch. Tell her that. Tell her to hang on. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can.” She could hear the note of indignation. “I’m not entirely useless.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Her fault. All those years of nagging at him, niggling away. “I’m sorry it came out that way. You’ve done great. You’re there for Mom and you’ve found me at the bottom of the world.”
He laughed. “You’ll have to tell me what the hell you’re doing down there, but I gotta go now. The doctor’s waiting to talk to me. You’ve got my number, right? Phone me with flight details and I’ll pick you up.”
Tears blurred her vision. “On your motorbike?”
“Nah, I remember how you travel. I’ll borrow a car for all your suitcases. See ya soon.”
Sass lowered the phone. Jake just stood, hand on her shoulder. With an effort, she rose and his hand fell away.
“My mom’s ill. I’ve got to get home.”
He nodded. “Where are you flying to? I’ll get you a flight while you pack.”
She liked that he didn’t sympathize. That would have started her crying. “Houston. Money’s no problem. I’ll pay anything, okay?”
He nodded again and gave her a gentle shove toward the door. “Go. I’ve got this end covered.”
BECAUSE IT WAS HARD TO see through the sheen of tears, Sass didn’t pack with her usual care. She half-folded some garments, crammed others. She even sat on one suitcase to make it close. Finally everything was somehow shoved away and her bags stood in a line. The sleep-out was strangely impersonal again, after being home for a fortnight. Only the rumpled bed indicated habitation. There was a footstep outside and Jake appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the sunlight.