Chapter Seventeen
“Are you recovered yet?”
Adam poked a stick into the fire pit and watched Jane wrap the blanket tighter around herself against the evening chill. “I didn’t hate the rapids part. The first one.”
“Tapashaw? Yeah, that’s great for beginners.”
She laughed and pushed back some hair that had dried during the hike. They hadn’t flipped, even though the river was a little wilder than he’d expected since the winds picked up.
“And I totally get why you call that rock formation the Middle Finger. Might have given you one when we tipped over so much my face touched water.”
He laughed. “We were fine. And you learned all the important tricks.”
“Look for the V in the rapids, keep an oar in the water, lean into the current, and have fun. Did I forget one?”
“Don’t panic.”
She laughed. “The one I can’t follow.”
“You did great.” When he finished stoking the fire, he picked up the bottle of wine and poured her another plastic glassful and took one for himself. Handing a glass to her, he said, “Not much white water in Miami, I guess.”
“No, but people do take rowboats through Fairchild Garden.”
“Sounds rough, Fairchild Garden.”
She chuckled. “There’s no waterfall of death, that’s for sure.”
“Nakanushee? It’s like a kiddie slide, Jane.”
She rolled her eyes. “For you, maybe. I saw my whole life flash before my eyes.”
“You did?” He put his glass on a smooth rock and pulled her closer, his gaze torn between the millions of stars that had finally made an appearance and the eyes that sparked as though they had stars of their own. “And what did you see?”
“I saw…” She inched back. “That was a trick question.”
“That was a direct question,” he corrected. “When you see your whole life, what are those seminal moments that stand out like snapshots in time?”
Her only response was a soft, shuddering sigh.
“Jane.” He pressed a kiss on her head. “I know every inch of you on the outside. I’ve kissed you, touched you, and made you lose control.”
A soft, throaty whimper was her only answer, so he turned his face to her. “C’mon,” he coaxed. “Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me one memory. Your earliest memory. The very first thing you remember as a child.”
She closed her eyes as if he’d struck her. “No.”
“And we’re back to that.” He planted a kiss on her forehead, her nose, her mouth. “It’s not a quid pro quo, like you say, but I’ll tell you mine. My earliest memory is my mother crying in the middle of the night when Zane was having an asthma attack. I woke up and heard all the noise, his wheezing, her voice rising in terror, my dad coming in and calming them both down. Then she just sat on his bed and cried like it all overwhelmed her. I remember thinking she didn’t like being a mother.”
“Then we have the same first memory,” she said softly.
He eased back, surprised that she was volunteering anything and even more surprised that she had the same memory. “Your first memory is your mother crying?”
“No, my first memory is what showed me my mother didn’t like being a mother. But I was too young to realize that. Two, when it happened, actually.”
Something in the way she said the words when it happened sent a cold chill down his spine. “When what happened?”
She stared ahead, her eyes on the dark horizon, but her heart, he imagined, focused inward. “When a very nice man broke the window of a hundred-and-ten-degree car I was locked in, got me out, and called an ambulance. My first memory was the scream of the siren and my own shrieks calling for my mommy.”
He tried to swallow. “Where was she?”
“Inside a house in Hialeah. Buying drugs.”
“Oh.” It was more of a huff of air than a legitimate response, because…oh. “Wow.”
“Yeah, it was the beginning of a pretty…” She tried to cover the catch in her throat with a cough. “Rough life.”
“What happened? Did they let her keep you? Did she go to jail? Who took care of you?”
“They tried to let her keep me, because that’s how it works, and the law attempts to be fair and give mothers a chance to…to…” She smiled wistfully. “Straighten up and fly right.”
“Did she?” He wanted her to say yes more than he wanted to take a breath. He couldn’t stand to think of this beautiful woman unloved and uncared for.
“No.” She took a deep drink of her wine, nearly finishing it before handing him the glass to set on his flat rock. “She was under county supervision, of course, but there were men and more drugs and one weekend I spent home alone in an apartment when I was four.”
“Good God,” he whispered.
“He didn’t seem so good to me,” she murmured. “But there is a system in place to help kids like me.”
“Did you go into a foster home? Up for adoption?” He was woefully uneducated on that system, but found himself hoping against hope the story got better.
“You can’t put a child up for adoption whose mother won’t sign away parental rights.”
“Even if she’s abusive?”
“She never hit me,” she said, oddly defensive of this heartless wretch. “But, yes, abusive. In Florida, anyway, the kids are separated from the parent by the county and put into homes.”
“Like orphanages?”
“Not like pretty stone buildings with adorable children singing that the sun will come out tomorrow, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She let out a soft, mirthless laugh. “Hollywood’s version of orphanages is so…aspirational. They’re just homes. Regular houses on the streets, next to other houses, in modest neighborhoods. You would drive by one and never notice it, except you might think the landscaping looked beat-up or the place could use a coat of paint.”
He tried to imagine living in a place like that, but couldn’t. Not that the Tucker family had been wealthy or even one hundred percent happy, but his home was clean and safe and the family in it was his.
She was quiet for a while, thinking. He stroked the back of her hair, comforting her, coaxing out more.
“Every time she would sort of get her act together, they’d give me back to her, and then she’d screw up again, and I’d go to another home. Never the same one, of course. The point is that your abusive mother can’t find you.”
“Who was in these homes?”
“They’re usually about five, six, maybe seven kids, same gender, close in age. There are county workers who come and go, but someone is there twenty-four hours a day, and local volunteers from churches or just nice, caring people would bring dinner every night.” She pulled her legs up, wrapping the blanket all around her as she curled into a ball and rested her chin on her knees. “I was in and out of, oh, five or six of them by the time I was eleven. That’s when she went off the deep end.”
Sounded to him like that had happened when Jane was two, but he just listened.
“She started stripping, and all that entailed.”
He didn’t even want to imagine what that entailed.
“I was listening the last time the social worker was over. She thought I was asleep, but I was listening.” Her voice was barely a whisper, reed thin, stretched by pain. “They were really having it out over me, and then I heard her say…” She closed her eyes, and he saw the first tear fall.
“Jane.” Pulling her into him, he embraced her whole balled-up body. “Shhh. You don’t have to tell me.”
“But you want to know everything.” Her voice cracked, and his heart did the same thing.
“Not if it hurts you. Not if the memories are going to shred you.”
“All memories shred me, Adam,” she told him. “The houses, the volunteers, the changing faces and neighborhoods and schools, everything shreds me. I so desperately wanted to be normal, loved, and whole. But I wasn’t good enough.”
“Jane.” He turned her toward him. “Your mother wasn’t good enough. You were just perfect.”
“No, not perfect. Not…” She swiped her hand over her teary cheek. “She said I was so ugly she couldn’t even use me.”
He just stared at her, bile rising in his throat as he realized what that she-devil would have used her own daughter for.
“Yeah,” she said, reading his expression. “I wasn’t even pretty enough for that.”
“Oh God.”
“The social worker freaked, too, and she fought for me. She got me taken away from my mother, into a system so I could stay in the homes, moving every couple years when I aged up, sent to strange places around Dade County where my mother could never find me. That’s the most important thing about those homes—the parents are the enemy.”
His whole being felt sick. Helpless. Absolutely disgusted by humanity.
“How did you cope with that?” he asked, a little in awe that she’d turned out so normal and sane.
“I found I had a skill for making things beautiful. Starting with my face, then my room, then the living area, sometimes the backyard. Eventually, I aged out of the system and went to a community college, worked as a receptionist in an architect’s office in Coral Gables, then put myself through school. Then started my business.” She slid him a look. “Then I got Sergio Valverde as a client, and here I am.”
She sucked in a tiny breath as she realized her slip, but he was the one who had to try not to react.
For one crazy second, he almost told her that he’d shared her secret, that he knew Sergio Valverde was a Bolivian drug lord the FBI was after, but they’d lost their asset. It confirmed her story…unless she was the asset.
He shoved the thought away. If he told her, would she be furious that he’d betrayed her? Either way, he had to tell Noah. But not now. Not tonight, for God’s sake. Not while she was tender and broken and leaning on him and…looking like a woman who needed love.
Because that’s what Jane Anne McAllen needed more than anything. Not sex, love. A person to be her family. A man to protect her. A professional rescuer who wanted to do nothing more than save her, keep her, and never have her leave a home again.
“Jane,” he whispered. “Why don’t you leave all that behind? Why don’t you get away from Miami and move here? As far away as you can get, close to nature, close to…” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Close to me.”
He felt her swallow and try to breathe. “I can’t leave Miami.”
“Why not?”
She closed her eyes, more tears flowing now. “In case she wants to find me.” She sobbed, shaking her head. “I know it’s stupid. I know it’s wrong. But deep inside, I feel like she might…want me.”
“Why don’t you look her up?” he asked.
“I have no idea where she is. She disappeared long ago. She could be dead or…anything.”
“Hire someone and find out,” he suggested. “You should have closure, or a chance to talk to her.”
“That’s not what I want,” she said. “I want her to want me. But I know she never will.”
And, he suspected, that made her think no one ever would. And that’s where she’d be wrong.
“Oh, baby.” He pulled her into him, fighting to contain the crosscurrent of emotions rolling through him. “You don’t need her. You need…”
She looked up at him, biting her lip. “I know what you’re going to say. But can’t you understand how I can’t trust anyone, ever? You, of all people, who knows what it feels like to be betrayed by your mother.”
“I got over it.”
“Did you?”
The volley hit its mark. “I could,” he said softly. “With the right person.” He looked into her eyes, at the stars reflected there, and the glimmer of…hope. He’d seen that look on a hundred drowning faces, that flash of Can you really do this? Can you save me?
“Do you think that’s me?” she asked on a raspy whisper.
“Yes, I do.” He kissed her gently, tunneling fingers into her hair, pushing the blanket back so it fell behind her. He kissed her throat and chest, pulling her closer. “You’re not that little girl anymore.”
She looked up at him, uncertain. “She’s still in there.”
“Let’s love her out of there.”
A fragile smile tugged at her lips. “You think you can do that?”
“Watch me.” Slowly, gently, he began to undress her, letting the night chill and his loving hands create a cascade of chill bumps on every inch of exposed skin. He warmed her with his touch, his mouth, and whispered promises. As their clothes hit the stone, so did that last wall between them.
He unzipped the sleeping bag and cocooned their naked bodies in the envelope of warmth, kissing, touching, exploring the whole time.
“You know everything now,” she whispered as he dropped down to taste one sweet breast and fondle the other. “Everything.”
He lifted his head to look at her, every last shred of doubt he had falling away. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thank you for trusting me.” She stroked his hair. “And for being patient.”
As heat rolled through him, making him ache for her, he felt anything but patient. But this was different. Making love on this mountain, under his stars, with his girl, was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, so he took it slow.
Every touch mattered, every kiss meant something. He inhaled the smell of her mixed with mountain air, dizzy with the effect. She tasted like his favorite place in the world and whispered in his ear like the wind on a breezy day. There was nothing but the two of them, getting closer to heaven with each desperate breath.
“Jane.” He said her name for the sheer pleasure of it as he sheathed himself and looked down at her. “My sweet Jane.”
“I told you, I’ve never been anyone’s before.”
“You’re mine now.” He lowered himself on her, using his hands to spread her thighs and lift her hips to him. “Will you be mine, Jane?”
As he slid inside her, she held his gaze, her eyes as dark as the sky above with just a little bit of glitter. And tears. The sight of those twisted him and made him stop midstroke.
“No more crying,” he said, touching her face and thumbing away the teardrop. “This is good. This is perfect. This is…” Love. “Real.”
“I’m falling,” she whispered. “I feel myself falling.”
“I promise I’ll catch you, Jane Anne McAllen. I promise I won’t let you fall.”
“I’m falling in love.”
He smiled slowly and moved into her, and out, finding an easy, sexy, perfect rhythm. “So am I,” he admitted as they both got closer to the edge. “So am I.”
They held on and fell together until they were spent, satisfied, and asleep under the stars.