Kitabı oku: «The Bride Said, 'Finally!'», sayfa 2
And still did, unfortunately despite everything. But he didn’t want to get into that now, and certainly not with Jenna on what was supposed to be their night. Jake slowed the truck as he approached the turnoff, some fifteen miles outside of Laramie. The native limestone country inn was set back from the highway in a grove of live oaks. It was softly lit from within. The grounds were landscaped and very private. Glad to see the owners had followed his instructions to a T and cleared everyone else out, including the staff, before they arrived, Jake parked in front and cut the motor. “I hope you don’t mind. I selected the place.”
“Obviously not in Laramie,” Jenna added, her accusatory look reminding him of all the times they had seen each other on the sly when they were teens. Too late, Jake realized how it seemed to Jenna. She was wrong if she thought he was ashamed to be seen with her. Quite the contrary. “I wanted something more private, so we could talk without interruption,” Jake explained. “So I rented the inn for the evening.”
“You mean the dining room?” Jenna ascertained.
Jake shook his head, “The entire inn.”
Shock widened Jenna’s eyes, then turned them an icy blue. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
Once again, to Jake’s dismay, Jenna obviously suspected his intentions were not at all chivalrous or forthright. “You really are pulling out all the stops,” she said, clearly displeased.
Jake got out of the truck, his hopes of a lovely intimate dinner with the only woman he had ever loved fading fast. He knew he’d made mistakes in the past where Jenna was concerned. Whether she was ready to admit it or not, she had done the same by him. Nevertheless, he was getting tired of defending himself, and having her look at him as if all he were trying to do here was take her to bed. He circled around to open her door. “I have money. I’m not afraid to put it to good use. Getting you on my side—and Alex’s—is very good use.”
Reluctantly, Jenna allowed Jake to escort her up the front steps and across the porch. “Speaking of Alex, you really should be home with her this evening.”
“Funny.” Jake held the door and guided her through the wide front hall to the beautiful dining room to their left. The long table for sixteen had been pushed against the wall. It was covered with a linen tablecloth and a variety of silver chafing dishes. A smaller table had been placed in front of the huge stone hearth, and was beautifully set for two. In deference to the summer heat outside, and the air-conditioning inside, there was no fire. Instead, a dozen lit candles were artistically arranged in the grate. Vases of freesia and baby’s breath—Jenna’s favorite—abounded. Soft music from their youth filled the room.
“And yet,” Jenna continued, looking at Jake as if he were anything but a good guy to have around, “you’re here with me.”
Jake uncovered their salads and poured the wine. “In order to get you to help out Alex and me.”
Jenna accepted the wine with a nod. “Texas is full of designers.” She kept her eyes on his as Jake sat down opposite her.
“But only one of you,” Jake countered, trying to imagine what it would be like to have Jenna back in his life again, not as the grief-stricken teen she had been when they parted, but the strong, self-assured woman she had become.
“Why me?” Jenna whispered, suddenly looking as torturously unhappy as he had felt all these years without her. “Why now?”
Jake wasn’t about to apologize for doing what should have been done years ago. “Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you.” Because all this time I thought I had hurt you enough and I was doing you a favor by staying away. And then I saw you on TV and realized I would never love anyone the way I loved you.
For a moment, Jake thought Jenna felt the same way, but the feeling faded, and the sweetly nostalgic look in her clear blue eyes faded and turned to ice once again. “That’s a shame,” Jenna said crisply. “There’s nothing worse than wasting energy or time. Which is exactly what this is.” She started to rise.
Jake caught her wrist and pulled her back down into her seat. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to haul her into his lap and kiss her soundly. But—for Alex’s sake, for the sake of them—he kept his mind strictly on the business at hand. The business that would have Jenna and him spending time together and getting to know each other again. “You haven’t heard my proposition,” he pointed out calmly, releasing her only when he was sure she wouldn’t try to flee.
Not looking at him, Jenna speared a piece of lettuce with her fork, lifted it to her lips. “I don’t want to hear your proposition.”
“Sure now?” Jake taunted as he too dug into his crisp, delicious salad. “It could do wonders for your design business.”
Jenna paused. So it was true, Jake noted, with equal parts satisfaction and disapproval. Her design business did mean everything to her.
“I’m listening,” she said eventually.
Jake reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and pulled out a neatly drawn-up business agreement. “I’m offering to provide the financial backing via J&R Industries to make and distribute a clothing line bearing your name.”
Jenna put down her fork and studied the paperwork for an extraordinarily long time. “And the catch is…?” Jenna said eventually.
Jake polished off his salad and took a sip of wine. “Alexandra needs a wardrobe.”
Jenna narrowed her eyes at him and observed with a faint note of disapproval in her voice, “Why, when she seems to have one she is perfectly happy with?”
Jake shook his head, cutting Jenna off. “She needs to look like a little lady,” he said firmly. “The sooner, the better.”
Jenna arched a delicate brow and went back to eating her salad. “Says who and why?”
Famished, Jake broke open a roll and lavishly spread it with butter. Reluctantly, he imparted, “Melinda is concerned about Alex’s tomboyish phase. She thinks it proves I’m not capable of rearing Alex on my own.”
Jenna paused, her fork halfway to her lips. “But you have custody, don’t you?”
Jake took another sip of wine. “Sole custody since she was two, yes.”
Jenna’s brow furrowed. Finished with her salad, she also reached for the bread. “Isn’t that unusual?”
Jake shook his head. “Not when the mother doesn’t want custody. And Melinda didn’t. All she wanted in the settlement was money. Which, as you and everyone else in the Lone Star State knows, she got.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenna said. “For Alex. I know how tough it is to lose a mom when there’s no helping it. To have that happen when it doesn’t have to be that way, well, it’s got to be tough.”
Jake sighed and got up to retrieve the main course, blackened redfish, scalloped potatoes with jack cheese and French beans. “When Alex was younger, she didn’t seem to mind the fact that her mother lived in Europe and rarely jetted over to see her.” Jake filled the plates and brought them over, one at a time. He sat down opposite Jenna and dug in. “The truth is, even when we were still married, when Alex was a baby, Melinda never paid much attention to her. So when Melinda moved out—well, Alex couldn’t miss what she’d never had. I wasn’t about to leave her home alone. And though my parents would have taken her, that wasn’t an option, either. I didn’t want Alex adopting some of their snobbish attitudes. So she traveled with me on business. Everywhere I went, Alex went—with Clara usually coming along and doubling as driver and nanny, depending on what I needed at that moment.”
Jenna regarded Jake with the inherent kindness that was so much a part of her personality. “And Alex was happy with the arrangement?”
“Very.” Jake exhaled. “But when she went to school this past fall and all the other kids in her kindergarten class had moms fussing over them and picking out their clothes, it hit her hard. And suddenly, she just started refusing to wear dresses—not that she’d ever really liked them. But at least when I needed her to brush her hair and wear a dress so I could take her to some fancy restaurant, I could get her to do so.”
“But no more?” Jenna guessed, as the CD player switched from a Trisha Yearwood album to one of Garth Brooks’s.
“No more. I guess Alex figured if she couldn’t be like everyone else and have a mom and a dad living at home with her, she’d just be different. And that was when Alex went full-bore into this tomboy stage. I thought it was a phase and just didn’t push it. But now Melinda has heard about Alex’s increasingly disheveled appearance from mutual friends. She’s embarrassed, upset. Thinks it reflects poorly on her. Next thing I know she’s threatening to sue for custody and planning to leave Italy—where she’s been living the past couple of years—for good.”
Jenna looked at him quizzically. “You don’t want Melinda to come back to the States?”
Jake sighed, knowing it sounded lousy of him, but also knowing if he was going to drag Jenna into the middle of this mess, he owed her the plain, unvarnished truth. “If I thought it would do Alex some good,” Jake hedged. “If I thought Melinda would be any kind of loving mother, or positive influence in Alex’s life, I’d be lobbying for it in a red-hot minute.”
Jenna’s eyes softened compassionately. “But you don’t think that’d be the case.”
Jake sighed. “Bottom line, Melinda doesn’t have a maternal bone in her entire body. She cares about money and appearances and finding another husband whose only goal in life is to make her happy, and that’s it.”
“So in coming to me you’re trying to head Melinda off at the pass.”
Jake nodded, more sure than ever now—from Jenna’s sympathetic reaction to his dilemma—that he had been right to come to her. “Unfortunately, clothes aren’t all she needs.” Jake looked at Jenna seriously. “Alex needs a crash course in being a lady before her mom gets back.”
Jenna made a face, no longer quite as eager to help out or get involved. She went back to polishing off her redfish. “Can’t you get your mother to help with that?”
Jake shook his head, knowing that as much as he loved his mother, and he did, that she was long on lecturing and interfering and short on patience. “My mother is not the one for the job,” he said firmly. “You are.”
Jenna looked at him as though he had lost his mind. Finished with her entrée, she got up to see what else was on the side table. Jake stood up, too.
“Think of it this way,” he said as Jenna helped herself to very small slivers of chocolate cake, praline cheesecake and warm peach-and-blueberry cobbler. “You’d be doing something for me I desperately need.” Jake settled on just the chocolate cake. “I’d be doing something for you that you desperately need. We’d be helping each other.”
They returned to the table in silence. Jenna shook her head in silent censure, even as she enjoyed her dessert. “After the way you treated me—” she said, as if unable to believe his gall.
Tired of taking all the heat for what had happened between them, Jake angled a thumb at his chest. “Hey! I’m not the one who got cold feet and refused to elope at the last minute!” In fact, he still felt if Jenna had just gone off with him then, they would be married today.
Jenna rolled her eyes as she got herself a cup of coffee. “We were caught, suitcases in hand, by your parents!”
Jake discounted that with a shrug. “We still could have gotten away,” he said levelly, pouring his own cup of coffee. “What would they have done? Chased after us?” He mocked her with a lift of his brow. “I don’t think so. That’s way too undignified for my folks.”
As for the rest of the complications, they had thought about everything. Jenna was underage, but she was also just a couple of weeks away from her birthday. As long as she went willingly with Jake, and they didn’t cross any state lines, and waited until Jenna was legally of age to actually consummate the marriage, then they wouldn’t be breaking any laws. Of course, if they married without the permission of her guardian their marriage would have been technically invalid. But they had that covered, too, deciding if they just waited until after Jenna’s birthday to return to Laramie that no one would kick up a fuss about what was more or less a “done deal” for nearly three weeks. They recognized that his family’s lawyers could easily take care of any legalities, even if it meant another quickie ceremony.
Jenna sighed. “Okay, so maybe there wouldn’t have been a car chase or some big scene at the justice of the peace, even if your parents had managed to figure out exactly where we were going as well as physically head us off before we got there.” She waved a lecturing finger beneath his nose. “But your folks still would have tried to convince you to have our marriage annulled when we returned and my big sister probably would have done the same thing.”
“So what?” Jake argued right back. “If we had already been married, a baby potentially on the way, my parents and Meg both would have backed off, if only to avoid an even bigger scandal than just us running off and getting married.” He knew Meg. She cared about Jenna and wanted her to be happy. And he knew his folks. No way would they want any grandchild of theirs born out of wedlock, or Jake taking advantage of a young innocent girl. In fact, it was their training on that fact that had kept Jake from ever making love to Jenna in their younger days. Even at the very end, when she’d been willing, he had insisted on waiting until they were actually married. And, truth to tell, as much as he still wanted to make love to her, he still didn’t lament that fact. He was glad he had treated Jenna with respect, glad they had waited until they were old enough and or the time was right. The truth was, as much as they had wanted to be married then, they hadn’t been ready for it.
“Your parents didn’t approve of me, Jake. Not from day one. They didn’t even want us being friends.” She looked at him steadily, all the hurt she had felt, then and now, in her clear blue eyes. “Over the long haul, a marriage between us never would have worked and you know it.”
Jake reached across the table and covered Jenna’s hand with his own. “All I know is that we let our relationship go,” he confessed huskily, “and I’ve spent every day since regretting it.” He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life the same way, and if he were right in his assessment of her feelings, Jenna didn’t, either.
Jenna jerked her hand from his. She pushed away from the table angrily and vaulted to her feet. “If that were true, you would have come after me then. You would have called, tried to see me. Something. Anything—”
Remembering how miserable they both had been, Jake pushed to his feet, too. “I wanted to,” he said roughly, going after her.
“Then why didn’t you?” Jenna squared off with him, tears glistening in her eyes.
Jake clasped her shoulders. “Because I couldn’t,” he told her with a weariness that came straight from his soul. “Not without destroying your life. And that of your sisters.”
Chapter Two
Jenna stared at Jake in raging disbelief. What did he think he had done in abandoning her, if not ruin her life?
“My parents said if I pursued you in any way, they’d use our reckless elopement as proof that Meg was not a proper guardian for you and your younger sisters. They said that in even asking you to marry me, as young as you were, given what had just happened to your folks, that I was taking advantage of you in the worst way. You and I might view the situation romantically, but it was quite possible Meg and the police would view the situation as my parents did—as simply running away. They reminded me that if the authorities stepped in to help locate you that you could have been deemed a juvenile delinquent just for attempting to marry without your guardian’s permission. And that I could be put in jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, whether Meg agreed with the court’s decision or not. They said if I wasn’t strong enough or mature enough to walk away while you and your sisters put your lives back together that they would do ‘the right thing’ for me. They promised to do everything in their power to see the courts removed Meg as your guardian, split you and your sisters up and put the youngest two—Dani and Kelsey—in foster care.”
Jake shoved a hand through the tousled layers of his inky-black hair. “You would, of course, have been legally free after your eighteenth birthday to do what you wanted. But for Dani, who was sixteen-and-a-half at the time, and Kelsey, who was fifteen, it would have been devastating.” Jake paused, his eyes filled with a mixture of regret for all the time they’d lost and compassion for what they’d been through. “I couldn’t do that to you. There was no doubt in my mind my parents would follow through on their threat. They really thought they were doing the best thing for you and your sisters. And knowing how devastated you all were by the sudden loss of your parents, I began to think maybe my folks were right, that I was wrong to take your youth from you like that, that you deserved the same chance to go to college and be a normal teenager that I’d already had.” Jake shrugged, pain sharpening the handsome lines of his face. “So I walked away from you, and didn’t look back.”
Doing her best to absorb all he had told her, Jenna felt for a chair and sat down. Jake slid a chair over and sat down in front of her, so they were sitting knee to knee. “You should have told me what was going on,” Jenna said, trembling.
Jake leaned forward and took both her hands in his. “How would that have helped you?” he asked softly. “To be told you needed to choose between being with me and the continued welfare of your sisters? Do you think that would have made you feel better to be put in a situation like that, after all you’d already been through?”
Jenna sighed. Of course it wouldn’t have. If he’d told her, made her choose, it would have torn her apart, and caused even more stress and heartache for her and her sisters.
Jake shook his head, recalling. He searched her eyes as he continued filling her in. “I wanted to fight my parents—you don’t know how much—but at the same time I had to be realistic about the odds of success. I was only twenty-two. I had not yet inherited the trust fund from my grandparents. I didn’t have the means or influence at that point in my life to help keep you and your sisters together on my own. Plus, you know the age thing, the fact I was four years older, finished with college, and you were still in high school had always been an issue. It’s not much of an age difference now, of course, but back then…well there’s a big difference between being in high school and being in college.” Jake sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “As mature as you were, there were times when I did feel I was pushing you to grow up too fast, so the two of us could be together the way we felt we were meant to be. So I felt guilty for ever asking you to elope with me. I felt like I’d been really unfair to you.”
Jenna saw the regret shimmering in his eyes and knew this was true. “I knew you were incredibly vulnerable, that you weren’t in any state of mind to even be thinking about taking such a monumental step. But at the same time I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to help you then, how to make it better, except by loving you.”
“Which you did,” Jenna said softly, recalling how good and warm and safe he’d made her feel in the first dark days after her parents had died. Jake had been there, holding her when she cried, attending the funeral with her, helping her take it one day, one moment at a time. Even now, she didn’t know how she would have made it through those first dark days if he hadn’t been there.
Jake swallowed hard. His hands tightened over hers. “But when we were caught, suitcases in hand, and when I saw your doubt, when you called it quits before we’d even gotten all the way out of Laramie, and said you had changed your mind, you didn’t want to elope with me, I knew you probably did need to be with your sisters more than me. That you needed the chance to grow up, free of any serious entanglements or pressures from anyone else—the chance I’d already had.”
Jenna recalled the euphoria she’d felt as she packed a bag, sneaked out of her house and met up with Jake in the Laramie High School parking lot, well after midnight. Then the humiliation and dismay when she realized his parents had followed him to the secret rendezvous. She only had to look at Patricia and Danforth Remington’s faces as they stepped from their Mercedes to know they were dead-set against her marriage to their only son. “Of course I had second thoughts,” Jenna defended herself hotly. It had been natural to back out of the elopement at that point. Withdrawing her hands from Jake’s grasp, she pushed back her chair, got up and began to pace. “I’d just lost my parents. I wasn’t going to willfully separate you from yours, which was what a hasty marriage to you would have done. So yes, of course I called it off.”
Jenna swallowed around the growing knot of emotion in her throat. “When you said you’d call me as soon as you could, I believed you, Jake.” She hated to think how many hours she had sat by the phone, just waiting for it to ring. How many nights she had gone to sleep with it in bed beside her. “I didn’t expect you to walk away from me forever,” Jenna murmured as she went to the window and turned her back on Jake. She’d thought—hoped—they’d continue to see each other and wait a few years. Hoped with time his parents would come to know her and realize how much she and Jake loved each other and change their minds, even endorse the marriage. She shook her head as she stared out at the dark Texas night. “I thought you’d come back for me as soon as you got things straightened out with your parents,” she confessed in a low, choked voice. “I thought we’d figure things out together.” Arms folded in front of her, she whirled around to face Jake. “Instead, I never heard from you again—not one word, not ever, until today!”
Jake grimaced and stood. “I thought I was doing what was best for you and your sisters in walking away. I thought I was being selfless and gallant. If it helps to know—I’ve regretted it ever since.”
Jenna glared at him, her heart thudding in her chest. “Not enough, apparently, to stop you from getting married to Melinda that same summer,” she shot back.
Jake stepped closer. “It was a mistake, a rebound thing. Although,” he amended with a frown, “I didn’t know it at the time.”
Jenna, who’d eventually had her own rebound fling, equally disastrous, understood that. But just because she understood it didn’t mean she was willing to trust him again. Now or ever. “It still doesn’t answer my question, Jake.” Hands on her hips, she regarded him contentiously. “Why did you come to me for help with Alex? Why now?” Why hadn’t he left well enough alone? Yes, she was hurt, but it was a hurt she had recovered from. This new hurt was something else indeed.
Jake blew out a weary breath. He looked deep into her eyes and said firmly, “Because I want us to be friends again.”
“Friends.” Jenna studied him carefully, knowing with the two of them it had never been platonic. “Or more than friends?” she asked bluntly.
Half of Jake’s mouth slanted up in a slow, sexy smile. “You choose.”
Jenna lifted her brow and, her eyes holding his all the while, challenged dryly, “You sure don’t ask for much, do you?” Even if, in his dark blue sport coat, casual khaki slacks, light blue shirt and tie, he was as sexy as ever in that distinctly blue-blooded Texan way.
Jake closed the distance between them and clasped her hands between the two of his. “Tell me you don’t want the same thing and I’ll go away,” he whispered, his warm callused palms caressing the backs of her hands. “But if you do—if you have it in your heart to repair our relationship and at the same time help me with my little girl—” Again, that slow sexy smile that always turned her knees to water. “I’ll owe you, for a long, long time.”
WASN’T THIS what she had wanted? For him to come crawling back to her on his hands and knees? Okay, six plus years had passed, but he was still back. Eligible—handsome as ever. And he was offering to make all her business dreams come true, to boot. So what was wrong with this picture? Why, despite everything, did his incredibly presumptuous proposition look and sound so good to her? Why was she suddenly so willing to forgive him for taking her heart and stomping it to pieces? It wasn’t like she was still in love with him—or would ever love him again.
Jenna looked him square in the eye, determined to let him know where they stood before things progressed any further. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”
Jake merely grinned at her, as if to say: I wouldn’t make bets on that if I were you. Shrugging, he held her gaze and retorted dryly, “I didn’t expect you would. It may surprise you to know that making love with me is not usually part of my business deals.”
“Let me guess. But in our case, you’d be willing to make an exception.”
His deliciously mischievous grin broadened all the more. Jake rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, allowing finally in a deep, sexy murmur that sent shivers coasting up and down her spine, “We never did have that wedding night.”
Jenna flushed despite herself as she reminded him, “We never had the wedding, Jake.”
“Then, sure.” Jake spoke as if now were a different matter entirely.
“We won’t now, either,” Jenna continued flatly. Figuring this had gone on long enough—much more of it and she’d be fantasizing about his return to her life in a romantic sense, too—Jenna pushed past him. Wishing all the while, as she glared at him, that he didn’t have the power to rile her so. She didn’t need this kind of all-encompassing emotion in her life. She didn’t need him. And if she had her way, and she planned to, she never would again, either.
Looking as relaxed as she was upset, Jake paused to drop an envelope on the table, then swaggered after her as she turned to head for the door. She was nearly there when he clamped a hand on her bare shoulder. Ignoring her resistance, he gently guided her around to face him. Looking down into her face with an intensity that took her breath away, he taunted softly, “You’re telling me you don’t still feel it?”
Jenna swallowed hard and forced her knees to stop trembling. Darn it all, why had she worn such a sexy dress, anyway? She could have worn something casual that wasn’t the least bit provocative. She could have worn something not designed to make him eat his heart out for all he’d given up. “Feel what?” she asked instead, ignoring the way his gaze kept drifting to her lips and the exposed swell of her breasts.
Jake hauled her against him. “This.”
The next thing Jenna knew Jake had wrapped his arms around her back and lowered his lips to hers. His kiss was hot and so sensual it took her breath away. Furious, Jenna made a muffled sound of protest. But then she was surrendering to the emotions swirling through her at breakneck speed, threading her hands through his hair and kissing him back with every fiber of her being. Loving the taste and feel and scent of him, so dark and male and sexy. Loving the way he had always kissed her, as if he didn’t care how many roadblocks she threw in their way, as if he meant to possess her, heart and soul. Damn, but she had missed this, missed him and the special…and yes, powerful way he made her feel. Jake deepened the kiss even more and stroked his tongue intimately with hers, as if she were the only woman in the whole world for him.
JAKE HADN’T MEANT to kiss her while they were at the inn, maybe not at all that night. He’d wanted to take things nice and slow this time. Show her how much he still cared about her, and always would, before asking anything remotely intimate or physical in return. But when she looked at him like that, as if she were just daring him to love her, he never had been able to resist, even if his hot-blooded pursuit of her was likely to incense her. He wanted to feel the softness of her body cuddled against his. He wanted to taste the honeyed sweetness of her lips, feel the sensual twining of her tongue as it wrapped around his, inhale her sexy perfume, and thread his fingers through the thick red-gold waves of her hair. He wanted her to tell him—by the passionate nature of their embrace—how she felt about him. Even if she wouldn’t admit it out loud.
JENNA KNEW if they didn’t stop soon they would end up in one of the beds upstairs. That was exactly what she had wanted when they had been together before—the ultimate culmination of their love in the most physically intimate union a man and woman could enter into. But she also knew this was no way, and no place, to lose her virginity.
Furious that Jake had managed to evade all her carefully erected defenses—again—Jenna splayed both her hands across his chest, tore her lips from his, and pushed him away.
Stumbling backwards, Jenna glared at him. “You haven’t changed one bit,” she sputtered angrily. Darned if he hadn’t turned her whole world upside down, and with just one measly, heart-stopping kiss!
Jake grinned and rubbed his jaw. He looked like one thoroughly satisfied male, pleased as punch that it had taken her a good five minutes to summon up the will to make him stop. “The kiss was that good, huh?” he teased.
Even better, Jenna thought wistfully, not above admitting—to herself, anyway—that she had the same physical desires and needs, not to mention emotional yearnings, as every other woman in Texas. But she couldn’t let her desire for Jake sway her. So what if the two of them together had passion unlike anything she had ever felt before or since? So what if he alone had the power to make her tingle from head to toe and want him with every fiber of her being just by being in the same room with her? Physical desire still did not equate happiness. Jenna looked him up and down disparagingly. Seeing the depth of his desire, she returned her gaze to his face. “You still think everything and anything is there for the taking. You only have to want it badly enough for it to happen.”
