Chapter Six
Jake dialed Carter’s phone number and—surprise, surprise—got his voice mail.
Again.
If not for the commitment he’d made to start Emma’s repairs this morning, Jake would’ve used all the bonus miles he possessed to be on the first plane out to California . . . so he could personally deliver the guy a well-deserved ass kicking.
In the absence of that possibility, Jake had to settle for the next best thing: leaving a voice mail strapped with some terrifying verbal shrapnel. “If you don’t quit dodging my calls within the next forty-eight hours so we can discuss whatever the hell possessed you to buy Megan’s library, swear to God, I’ll sic Haley on you.”
That was a damn serious threat, and they both knew it. Haley was the baby of the family, who never hesitated to guilt her three big brothers to within an inch of their sanity whenever she deemed it necessary. Typically when one or all three of them were being stubborn asses to one another, as only brothers can. Come to think of it, if memory served, she was the one who first got Jake to start taking Carter’s bimonthly calls to begin with, way back when she’d still been a kid in high school.
Her powers had only grown since.
Truthfully Jake had half a mind to sic Haley on Carter anyway. Especially after the lovely chat he’d had with Paul last night when he’d tried to turn down the library job, as he’d promised Emma he would. Not only had the amused foreman been expecting the call from Jake; he’d had a Carter-supplied response already prepared. Evidently unless the directive came straight from SME Enterprises, Paul was instructed to expect Jake to show up to start the library project no matter what.
When Jake next called Carter’s office to raise some hell over that, the similarly amused assistant had informed him that regrettably, he was “out of the country,” in search of a “snowman in Jamaica.” It was abundantly clear Carter had told his assistant to use air quotes in her reply.
The jackass.
If Jake weren’t annoyed enough to spit nails right now, he’d be grudgingly impressed that Carter was upping his game to professional dickhead level. Jake had no doubt that the reggae jingle Carter had replaced the voice mail greeting of his personal phone number with was going to be stuck in his head all day long.
As if today weren’t going to be difficult enough.
Jake tossed his cell phone onto the dashboard and dropped his head against the steering wheel, noting a distinct irony here, what with his taking this job at Emma’s bakery and all. In his own defense, he’d always been inexplicably unbridled where she was concerned.
Some things never change.
Emma certainly hadn’t. She was just as much of a force to be reckoned with as he remembered. Strong and opinionated. Captivating. And still as sweet as ever. Hell, seeing her big, bleeding heart peek through when he’d briefly mentioned his time in juvie and his parents splitting up had been like seeing a damn gorgeous ray of sunshine after a storm.
Jake understood now why Paul’s threat yesterday had been cesspool-serious. If anyone could get an entire town to love and want to protect her, it’d be Emma Stevens. She’d always had as much beauty on the inside as she did on the outside, not to mention all the smarts, creativity, and grit that he’d known would take her far in life.
Seeing her now as the stunning adult she’d grown into, he wasn’t at all surprised she was running her own thriving business. Kicking ass and taking names.
And, Jesus, she was still the prettiest female he’d ever laid eyes on.
The quintessential girl next door, Emma had that bewitching mix of an angel’s face with the smile of an unapologetic imp. Along with expressive, laughing blue eyes he recalled her describing as “light-denim blue” once, which had prompted a debate between Jake and Haley, and extensive research with Haley’s giant 120-count Crayola box.
They’d eventually landed on the shade of cornflower blue as the closest fit to Emma’s eyes. After that, all summer, whenever he’d see Haley coloring with that particular shade, he’d immediately think of Emma and get all smiley and distracted beyond saving. At least according to his brother Daryn’s relentless teasing that Jake was in looove.
In all fairness, honestly, how could a guy not smile when thinking about her? Between those mischievously animated eyes and that sun-streaked golden-brown hair she always wore in a long ponytail or French braid down her back, Emma had been the very definition of the spunky midwestern farm girl, complete with the lovable charm that could tempt any red-blooded guy to grow country roots right alongside hers.
Jake was man enough to admit that he’d spent most of last night thinking about her and the now-foreign idea of roots of any sort where his future was involved. Hadn’t been able to get a wink of sleep as a result. And as a guy who needed at least a few solid hours of shut-eye to be functional, he was paying for it this morning. Brain-fuzzed and tired, he wasn’t so much drinking his a.m. coffee as he was pouring it down his gullet midyawn.
At least he’d come well prepared on that front. Having left his house at 2:00 a.m. to get here, he’d brought three travel mugs of coffee for the drive over, and that was in addition to his usual monster thermos he never went a day without. The rugged Antarctica-worthy thermos was nearly as big as a paper towel roll, and a legit revolution in coffee drinking as far as he was concerned. With an old-school cap-as-a-mug design and new-school space technology, the thermos bottle was a serious piece of engineering that Carter had gotten as a joke for Jake a few Christmases ago—the first and only Christmas that Haley had managed to get all four siblings together to exchange presents.
True story: Jake had nearly wept when he’d unwrapped it. Even went batshit crazy enough to semihug Carter, if the rumors, and damning photographic evidence from Daryn’s phone, were to be believed.
Now Jake never left his house without it. Normally he needed only his two pots of coffee in the morning before he headed out and that trusty thermos to help him survive the day. But today was not most mornings. Hence the additional travel mugs.
Not wanting to be late, not being able to stay away, not trusting himself to spend an entire night dreaming about the woman—take your pick. They were all applicable reasons why he’d arrived two hours before the 7:00 a.m. start time he’d told Emma, and why he’d been parked outside the bakery slowly emptying first his travel mugs and then his thermos ever since.
It was still only a little after six, and, although the thermos usually lasted him at least until nine, he was down to his last capful. Damn.
“You’re going to burn a hole in your stomach lining at this rate,” groused a sharp voice from just outside his truck.
“Holy shit!” Jake quickly counted his blessings that the heat in his truck had been barely functional this morning. Because if it had been working, he wouldn’t have been wearing his late winter coat. And the testicle-scalding cup of coffee he’d managed to spill in his lap would’ve done some real damage.
He rolled down the window and practically came nose to nose with Emma. “You did that on purpose.”
She didn’t back down one iota. “You betcha. I always offer intestine-preserving advice to the creeps who park outside my home in silence for hours.” In a very put-upon you’re-welcome tone, she added, “I would’ve used my bullhorn if not for the early hour.”
Despite wearing a full cup of coffee he really could’ve used, he found himself fighting a smile of his own. “Still as sassy as I remember.” When she proceeded to look damned proud over that observation, he forgot all about the two areas of conversation he’d told himself to stick to for the next few weeks—carpentry and the weather—and asked curiously, “Are you planning to make my life a living hell the entire time I’m here?”
“Only if you don’t keel over drinking that tar you call coffee.” She shoved a to-go cup of something hot in his hands. “Door’s open. I’ll see you inside when you finish that.”
With that, she headed back to the bakery with a walk that was classic Emma all the way. There was no hip swinging or anything seductive about her strut, but she may as well have shimmied and shook her way across the street for the instant effect it had on him . . . or, more specifically, certain coffee-warmed parts of him, which, again, made him thankful he was wearing a coat.
Hell’s bells, Emma had for damn sure wreaked havoc on his teen hormones back before she’d developed the gentle hourglass figure he’d somehow missed the full impact of yesterday. Seeing it in all its glory today, paired with the hot-as-Hades poise of the strong woman she’d become, she was now easily the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
And criminy, could the woman wear the holy hell out of an apron.
Good lord, don’t go there. This entire line of thinking was twenty different kinds of wrong. Listening to NFL-Sunday-game-day-coverage-during-church kind of wrong.
Before he had a chance to tar and feather himself over that, however, he glanced up—yes, up, meaning his eyes had still been on her long, honey-brown ponytail swishing from side to side against all those soft curves. What he found was her peeking back at him over her shoulder, with the corner of her mouth twitching up in a crooked grin.
An actual full grin. He took a mental snapshot just in case it was one of those freak occurrences destined to never happen again.
Only she didn’t stop smiling.
Frankly he hadn’t come prepared for such a thing. The foot-stomping, tell-it-like-it-is woman he’d locked horns with yesterday was who he’d expected to find today. Who he’d thought he knew what to expect from, at least.
This Emma, on the other hand, was a wild card he didn’t have the first clue what to do with. With her criminally sexy apron and soft, mysterious smiles, this Emma reminded him of those tempting, sweetly charming cigar girls in old Hollywood films from the Roaring Twenties. But in a far more wholesome way. Like an insanely pretty milkmaid. God help him.
What on earth had happened between yesterday and today to cause this big of a change?
Right. Like he had enough blood flow going up north to be able to do something as involved as thinking right now. Hoping the coffee she’d just handed him was fresh enough to scald some sense back into him, he lifted the cup to his lips with every intention of downing the whole thing in one swig.
But he stopped himself just in time.
Jake eyed the drink in his hand warily. He’d almost forgotten that included in Emma’s many charms was her wicked sense of humor, which she sometimes used for evil and not good. The harmless but still epically hilarious pranks she and her dad used to help the neighborhood kids plan had been the stuff of legends.
For all he knew, she could’ve just handed him a steaming hot cup of laxatives.
Given their history, it was entirely possible.
That said, a part of him had faith that the woman watching him right now from the bakery was still the sweet girl he’d once seen try to cheer up a sad puppy she’d been dog-sitting for a family friend. She’d attempted everything from pretending to be a fellow puppy to doing a hysterical dog-and-cat sock-puppet show complete with all-original canine and feline music.
The one thing that had finally worked?
Her climbing up a big ol’ tree in her backyard and bouncing on a bunch of branches to shake out as many leaves as she could, which she’d raked up to make a summer version of a giant autumn leaf pile so she and the puppy could take turns running and leaping onto it.
That had probably been the day Jake began falling head over heels for the girl, as she kept raking up the pile and flinging herself onto it in tandem with the grinning puppy.
Fast-forward to today—it wasn’t possible that his sweet puppy-cheerer-upper had matured into a woman who’d give him a freshly brewed mug of laxatives, was it?
Here goes nothing.
He took a deep breath, then swallowed a trusting gulp.
And immediately began sputtering in disbelief.
Decaf? She’d given him decaf?
With milk and what tasted like ten tablespoons of sugar, from what he could gather when he popped the top off and looked at the offensive concoction.
Decaf coffee with milk and sugar wasn’t very far behind boiling laxatives in his book.
And somehow the chuckling wildcat in the bakery had figured that out. Whether by Sherlock deduction because of his bounty of coffee containers or pure witchcraft, he wasn’t sure.
All he knew was that it was on. Messing with a man’s coffee was just plain mean.
Hooking and holding her simpering gaze, he manned up and proceeded to guzzle down the entire cup. Every last drop. Stood his ground and drank that heinous drink as if it weren’t a violation of everything he knew to be good in this caffeinated world.
The entire time Emma just stood there sassing him in silence with her innocently blinking smile and a hot mug of coffee of her own, which she raised to him in a toast.
He’d bet dollars to doughnuts she wasn’t drinking decaf.
Dammit, this little stunt of hers may have been more successful than the leaf-raking thing at jump-starting his rusty, dusty heart.