Chapter Nine
“Hi, Jake. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Jake stood there numbly, wondering if Megan’s foreign-sounding words, like her bafflingly genuine smile, were simply getting lost in translation as a result of his grief-fogged senses. Had to be. Because there was just no way in the world Megan Stevens was actually standing there smiling at him and offering a kind greeting.
Jake shifted his gaze over to Emma, expecting her candid honesty to burst through his foggy bubble. But what he found instead was a look of reassurance, bordering on comfort, as she said encouragingly, “Megan saw you outside the bakery yesterday and has been wanting to meet you ever since so she could talk to you about the library job.”
All righty then. It was official. His confusion was now complete. Clearly he’d lost his ever-lovin’ mind. Or somehow ended up in a parallel universe with the Stevens sisters.
He stood there in silence, not wanting to hinder his brain’s ability to glean some important observations from this strange new world to navigate him around somehow.
Huh, would you look at that. Megan’s hair is darker than Emma’s. More a light mahogany to Emma’s golden pecan. Last year he’d installed wood floors in those exact colors.
That’s it, brain—work with what you know. Wood exists in other universes, right?
Just when he was starting to think this was all a weird daydream he simply needed to snap out of, the Megan before him morphed right back into that terrified little nine-year-old girl he’d felt scream as her body got charred to a crisp as he’d carried her out of the fire.
Instantly his muscles locked up as he felt the furnace around them closing in . . .
“Jake.” Emma’s concerned voice finally managed to pull him out of his spiraling memories. “Jake, you okay?” The sisters exchanged a look.
Seeing the supreme worry in Emma’s expression was the only thing that helped bring him back to reality. “Sorry, guess I blanked out there for a bit,” he replied finally, his voice sounding as if he’d swallowed some gravel. “Early morning.”
He kept his eyes on Emma like a lifeline. The disappearance of Megan’s smile did make him feel less discombobulated, but nothing could really make it any easier to face her.
The silence stretched on. So he moved to sit back down. A bit rude, true, but if it helped put a swift end to this awkward reunion, he’d try anything.
Of course, the universe wasn’t that kind.
Megan immediately deposited herself in the seat across from him. “As I’m sure Emma already told you, I’m the head librarian here in Juniper Hills, so I’m strongly invested in the upcoming library remodel. Paul told me there was a chance you might not be working on the project, after all. I just wanted to chat with you a bit and hopefully get you to reconsider.”
He glanced back over at Emma in what he hoped was well-concealed but very clear alarm. She answered with a sharp chin jerk, motioning for him to turn his focus back to Megan.
He did . . . and swore he was watching one of those slow-motion zooms on Megan’s wide, softly pleading eyes. He could almost hear the accompanying emotional violin music.
This did not look good for him.
Thoroughly unclear on what Emma expected him to say to her sister—considering their agreement and all—Jake just went with vague and evasive. “Like I told Paul last night, I just don’t think I’m the right carpenter for this job.” There. It’s me and not you. A classic.
It took a few seconds of everything in the diner sounding jackhammer loud for some reason before Megan then proceeded to shock the hell out of him by drilling him with a stubborn stare and a voice steely with feet-dug-in-the-dirt determination. “I disagree, Jake. I’ve seen your work. You’d be a great fit for the project.”
“You’ve seen my work?” Suddenly he wondered if Carter had been in direct contact with her. His brother wouldn’t possibly do that—would he? That was too much, even for him. “You’ve been working with the folks at SME Enterprises on the remodel?”
“No, Paul is handling all that; he’s the one who showed me your portfolio. I haven’t actually met anyone from SME. But I didn’t expect to with a company that size. Thankfully”—she gave a smiling shrug—“it’s like they read my mind for the design of this remodel.”
Yeah, funny how that worked out.
“Anyway”—she was back to her fierce-fairy face—“like I said, Paul showed me samples of your work, and I think you’re phenomenal. The kids’ rooms at the farm and the indoor playroom for the foster home a few years back were my favorites.” The imploring eyes returned. “Please, won’t you reconsider? You’re the perfect carpenter for this remodel; I’m sure of it.”
She was dead-on that this was the ideal job for him. But an agreement was an agreement, and Jake always kept his word. The one time he didn’t had nearly destroyed him.
He wasn’t going to do that to Emma again.
Plus, there was that whole thing with him not being able to look at Megan without thinking of the pain she’d gone through, the years stolen from her childhood. The scars she still lived with. Emma was right; his working on the library was a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaking of which, why wasn’t Emma defusing the situation? Megan was like a speeding train running him over, and Emma wasn’t saying a thing. Was she punishing him?
Just then Megan finally paused long enough to take a breath and rev up for what looked to be another long spiel—this time with visuals, judging by the way she was pulling out her phone. He took that opportunity to steal another glance over at Emma.
Only to find her trying to communicate with him in some telepathic language. For ten frustrating seconds, all he got from her were loaded head tilts, pointedly wide eyes, and brows arching in time with the three quiet, ardently high-pitched squeaks that escaped her. Last came the intense stare he interpreted as her trying to beam her thoughts into his head.
He felt as if he were in Star Wars talking to R2-D2.
“Emma, could we talk in private?” If she said no, there was a very real chance there would be cartoon whoosh marks in the air trailing his escape soon. “It’ll just be a minute.”
Megan looked from him to her sister before standing. “I’ll be over in the front with the Constantini kids.” She dropped a puppy–pit bull look on him. “Don’t run off.”
The second she was out of earshot, Jake turned to Emma and hissed, “What the heck is going on here? I’ve never been so lost in my entire life.”
Emma fell into the seat next to him, looking positively uncorked. “Totallymyfault. I’d planned on discussing this with you today when you first came in, but I got distracted digging up that old bag of decaf I never use, and then I had to go pick up the portable generator, and of course the whole sex-noises-while-you-eat thing made it impossible to think about anything else for a really long—” She flushed and clapped a hand over her mouth.
He couldn’t decide if he wanted to gently pry her hand away from her lips so she’d keep going with this rushing-river-of-consciousness glimpse into her mysterious mind, or if he wanted to in fact stem the word flow by doing something crazy like dragging her onto his lap and kissing the hell out of her. Decisions, decisions.
“Anyway.” She directed all her focus on flicking a tiny cookie crumb off his table. “I meant to tell you that Megan and I had a talk about you after you bid on the repairs yesterday.”
Should’ve picked option B when you had the chance.
Emma shook her head as if a little stumped herself. “Let’s just say she reacted the exact opposite from the way I did about you being here. She didn’t care one iota that you were the same Jake from Riverside. And later, when she realized you were also the carpenter whose work Paul had shown her, your past projects were all she could talk about for the rest of the night.”
“But you didn’t know she’d react that way.” Reeling from the info that Megan knew who he was and still wanted him to work on her library, his polite filter fell a bit as he asked the most obvious—to him—question. “She could’ve very well freaked out like you did; wouldn’t that have been counterintuitive to your plan for us to have a clean slate and pretend we just met?”
“I know it sounds self-sabotaging, more so since Megan didn’t even recognize you after all these years, especially with the beard. But I swear that wasn’t my intent. Yes, I want us to have a fresh start, but that’s between us. You and Megan—that’s between you two.” She made a motion as if she was going to touch his arm but then pulled back at the last second. “I saw your face when you saw her scars just now.” Empathy swamped her expression. “That couldn’t have been easy. Truthfully, yesterday, when I said you shouldn’t work on the library, I’d really only been thinking about Megan. Awful as it sounds, I hadn’t even considered how hard just being around us would be for you, as well. You went through that fire every bit as much as we did—”
No. Hell, no. This was getting dangerously close to another apology. For the worst possible reason yet. He wasn’t having it. “It’s fine, Emma. I was just caught off guard.”
“It’s more than that, and we both know it. I’d understand if you wanted to rethink—”
“I’m not quitting on your repairs.” Even he was shocked at how forcefully that came out.
“Are you sure?” She looked genuinely concerned.
Another emotion he didn’t deserve from her. Not about this. “I’m sure.”
Megan rejoined them. “What are you sure about?” she asked as she smiled back at the family of what looked like a dozen kids she’d been chatting with.
“Hey, so how are those Constantinis?” Emma said evasively with an overenthusiastic wave at the kids, now tossing balls of yarn near the register while their mom paid the check.
Was it just him, or were there a lot of random yarn balls in this town?
Megan gave her sister a dry, your-shtick-needs-work look. “They’re doing good. Still bummed out every afternoon, though.” Turning to Jake, she explained. “The Constantini family used to come to the library for books every day since they could walk over from their house. But with the temporary satellite library in the pop-up office space on the other side of town now, they haven’t been able to come by because their dad doesn’t get home with the car until supper.”
She bounce-bounce-pivoted excitedly back to Emma. “And guess what? I brought up your ‘library on wheels’ idea to see if it’s something they’d want, and they went nuts.”
His sudden awareness of at least fifteen—no, twenty—baskets of yarn around the diner momentarily forgotten, and the entire overload of emotional luggage from the past ten minutes temporarily put in a locker in his brain, Jake asked curiously, “Library on wheels? How would that work?” And can I play, too? Already his imagination teemed with mental sketches for building a cool wooden cart of books, sort of like in old horse-drawn merchant times.
“Don’t laugh. But I was picturing something like an ice-cream truck,” confessed Emma. “Only with books instead. Megan could pick a selection and drive to different areas of town a few afternoons a week since a lot of kids here help their folks out on farms or their family shops after school and can’t get to the library before it closes. This way the books can come to them.”
Megan nodded. “Isn’t she a genius? She does something similar with the free Christmas cookies she makes for everyone in town, but in a fun take-some-and-pass-the-rest-along way.”
Bright badges of pink immediately painted Emma’s cheeks. “Not everyone.”
Yeah, he’d bet good money it probably was everyone. The woman was just so dang sweet. “Need any help moving things past the idea stage?” he offered.
Lordy, he’d stepped in it now. When two sets of DNA-matched eyes looked back at him in delighted surprise, he had to wonder if it was something in the water here that was overriding his factory settings of never making promises before knowing all the facts. Maybe it was all the juniper trees. “If you want, I was thinking I could make maybe a traveling book buggy wagon with a trailer hookup so you wouldn’t have to haul boxes of books out of your car at every house, especially out in farmland. It’d be sort of like Emma’s ice-cream-truck vision.”
An eye-crinkling, hands-on-cheeks, five-out-of-five-dentists-approved smile spread across Megan’s face. “I love that idea! Oh my goodness. See? This is why you have to work on the library remodel.” She shot her two index fingers up in the air quickly. “Before you say no again, I want you to come to a barbecue I’m having for my library coworkers tomorrow. This way you can meet all of us first before you lock in your final answer.”
His lips twitched over seeing Megan with the same 90 percent innocent, 10 percent devious smile that Emma had. “Meaning you’ll be kind enough to feed me while you all gang up on me?”
“Yep.” Her smiled turned sixty-forty. “I won’t take no for an answer. It’ll be out in my backyard tomorrow evening. Ten of us total, including you and Emma.”
Okay, time to get real. Emma may have said she wanted him and her sister to figure out their own 2.0 reunion plans, but as far as he knew, their agreement was still intact. Which meant that even though it was plain un-midwesternly to say no to a barbecue, it was probably safer if he—
“I think a cookout is a great idea, Megan.” Emma smiled. “What can we bring?”
Say what now?
Leave it to Emma to send him back out to the desert again with a toy compass that was really just one of those board game spinners you flick to stay in the game.
“But isn’t it early for a cookout?” Now he was just grasping at straws to get his bearings.
Megan gave him a “nice try” head tilt. “Don’t know about you folks in the city, but here we haven’t had any slush on the ground since mid-March. With the grill and fire pit going, it’ll be the perfect temperature for a nice barbecue in your honor. Everyone’s excited to meet you.”
Wow, she was a persistent one.
Emma the ever so helpful chimed in again, shooting Jake an I-know-your-weakness brow quirk. “If you don’t come, you’ll miss out on Megan’s cooking. FYI, she cooks the way I bake. In fact, the corned beef from that Reuben sandwich you ate is actually her recipe.”
Well, that was a well-aimed blow. Now conflicted as well as hungry again, he stared at her in temple-throbbing silence while another big family stopped by to chat with Megan.
“You should just give in and say you’ll come,” whispered Emma. “Because if I know my sister, and I do, there’s no way she’s backing down.” The smile that softened her eyes as she watched Megan get up and go play yarn toss with the kids was the picture of pride.
“So you want me to take the library job?” Just trying to get clear as mud on this.
“Good gracious, no. I still think it’s a terrible idea. But Megan wants you to take the job. And I’ll always fight to get Megan whatever she wants.”
“Including me.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll call Paul and accept the library job.” Simple as that.
“No!”
He sighed. Would he never understand this woman on the first try?
“Megan inviting you, or anyone for that matter, to her home for a barbecue is a huge freaking deal. You can’t tell because she’s in semi-lioness mode right now over the library project, but Megan is usually painfully shy thanks to the scars and not being social for years. So you have to come. Or she won’t have a reason to go through with the barbecue.”
Jeez, then of course he was going to go. No question about it. But he was curious . . . “If I say no, would it be safe to assume you’d dog me and make me crazy until I change my mind?”
Her lashes fanned her cheeks as she nodded somberly. “Like a rabid Chihuahua.”
Why did he like the terrifying idea of that so much?
“Oh, just say yes. We can go together.” Her eyes danced even as her freckles pinked up over the brassy edict. Man alive, no one did cute, sexy, and bossy like Emma did.
She leaned in and added in a regretful tone, “Listen, if you’re hesitating because of our agreement, I take it back. I’m sorry.”
His amusement disappeared. He really hated hearing her say those words to him.
“I just mean I shouldn’t have made the stipulation,” she clarified. “Of you turning down the library job. I was out of line.” She brushed another microscopic crumb off the table. “Sometimes I can get a teeny bit overbearing, particularly when it comes to protecting Megan.”
You don’t say? “Hey, if the type A cape fits . . .”
She gave him a sighing head shake. “The struggle is real I tell you.”
Chuckling, he reassured her, “You weren’t out of line. You were being a good sister.”
“A protective sister,” she corrected swiftly.
What a strange thing to argue. It was almost as if she took exception to the compliment. Which was just crazy. But in the spirit of Jake and Emma 2.0, he didn’t pry. For now.
Instead he asked the only question he had left on the matter. “You sure you’re going to be okay with me being in your town for an additional few months after I finish your repairs?”
“I am. Actually . . . I think I’d be more than okay with that.”
Well, hell. He tried not to read more into that.
“But remember,” she whispered as if they were exchanging trade secrets. “You still have to come to the cookout, and let Megan ‘convince’ you then. Oy, I can’t wait to see her face.”
Good lord, they just didn’t make ’em this sweet anymore. “Sounds like a plan.”
She beamed.
“So is that it? That the last of your orders for me for the time being?” he teased.
Her hands perched themselves on her hips in flagrant indignation.
Ah, damn. He liked watching her get ruffled. “I bet there’s at least one more in there. You’ve already got something in mind for me to bring to this shindig—don’t you?”
She pursed her lips, looking both torn and miffed, the latter probably on account of his grinning at her like she was a fuzzy kitten batting a string.
“Now that you mention it, how about you bring beer?” she suggested casually. “Megan doesn’t drink the stuff, but everyone else probably will, right? Since it’s a barbecue?”
Her framing all that in question form was a noble effort.
That he just had to mess with. “How about wine instead?” He was totally bluffing, of course. He never drank the stuff. And he had a strong hunch that Emma didn’t, either.
She scrunched her nose as if he’d just asked her to sniff a four-letter word.
See? His recon had been thorough. From what he’d gathered by being in her home and bakery all day, the only wine Emma had was of the cooking variety, and she didn’t even own a single wineglass. But she did have a connoisseur’s collection of brews in her pantry, along with about four different kinds of beer glasses and a few ice-cold frosty mugs chilling in her commercial fridge.
It was all a thing of beauty, really.
“Wine is good for you,” he argued innocently. That was a health fact, wasn’t it? “Sort of like . . . decaf coffee.” His grin broadened when her eyes narrowed to slits. “I can bring a nice robust red and a crisp white to pair with the food.” Now he was just pulling crap he’d heard on TV. Wasn’t there also a pink wine? He bet she’d really get annoyed with a pink wine. And exactly how sparkly were those sparkly wines?
Emma didn’t last long at all. “Oh, will you just bring beer,” she growled. “Craft or microbrews are what most folks here drink. Bottled. Local ales or dark lagers if you can.”
He wasn’t sure what he was finding a bigger turn-on, all the dirty talk with the beer or the fact that she was using that bossy, riled-up tone of hers. Probably both.
Truth be told, Jake had always thought of himself as a fairly uncomplicated guy. But evidently he had very complicated tastes and triggers. Case in point, against all that was sensible and sound, it appeared he was becoming a bit of an addict when it came to getting a rise out of Emma, and making those sexy freckles of hers firecracker hot. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. It was like being near those bright-red buttons you weren’t supposed to push lest the world combust or something. That “or something” was undoubtedly going to make the next few months the most ill-advised and straight-up volatile ones of his life.
A part of him felt as if this was something he’d been seeking for a long time.