Chapter Six
Naomi was dreaming, back in that delicious dream starring her and Jake and silk sheets and warm morning sunshine and not a stitch of clothing.
A part of her knew it was only a dream, but she ignored that part. She didn’t want to wake up and face reality. She wanted to focus on the way Dream Jake’s big, calloused hands smoothed up and down her thighs, his fingers teasing closer and closer to where she ached for him as their mouths met in a kiss that took her breath away. They kissed like there was no tomorrow, no yesterday, nothing but this moment and how perfect it felt to be in each other’s arms.
“You destroy me,” Jake murmured into her mouth as he lowered his hips, trapping his swollen length between them.
“Never.” Naomi’s arms tightened around his neck as his palms cupped the back of her thighs, urging them apart. “I want to make you feel better.”
“And I want to make you come,” he said, his voice sin and salvation all wrapped up in a sexy rumble that made her shiver as he positioned himself and pushed inside.
He thrust to the very end of her, inch by delicious inch, until she was filled with Jake, her body vibrating around his as he made love to her the way only Jake ever had, with all the reverence and heat and just-barely-contained-passion that had always made it feel a little dangerous to be in bed with him.
No matter how kind and good Jake was, there was something wild locked away inside of him, something primal that Naomi wasn’t sure she could handle if it were completely unleashed. But that had always captivated her as much as it had intimidated her. Even at fifteen, at the height of her fickle faze, when she couldn’t stick to a hair color for more than a month at a time, she had stuck with Jake for three years. No matter how curious she had been about what it would be like to be with someone else, ending things with Jake had been unthinkable.
That’s why she’d run away from Summerville and her high school sweetheart all in one fell swoop. If she’d stayed, she would never have let Jake go.
Even when she was young and stupid, something intuitive inside Naomi had known that Jake was the one, the one she would never be able to quit, the one whose kiss would always set her on fire, whether it was their first or their one thousandth.
As Dream Jake faded away—banished by the beeping of the garbage truck outside her bedroom window and the sound of Maddie and Mick fighting about who used the last of the coffee in the kitchen downstairs—Naomi lay in bed, her body still aching from the dream. She huddled under her down comforter, hiding from the chill in her childhood bedroom, wishing she could hide as easily from the truth.
Because the truth was that Jake wasn’t simply an obstacle she had to overcome to find her hometown happily ever after; he was part of the reason she’d come home. She hadn’t wanted to admit it—even to herself—but as she’d left her parents the keys to her Miami condo and headed north to Summerville, it was thoughts of Jake that made her drive a little faster. It was his face lingering in the corner of her mind that made her eager to return to a place where she would have a chance with the one who got away.
“He didn’t get away. You threw him away,” Naomi mumbled to the motionless ceiling fan, rubbing at her eyes in frustration. “And now you’re making both of you miserable.”
Jake had looked like he was in physical pain when he’d left the fair Friday night, and Naomi had barely slept during the three nights since. And when she did sleep, she dreamed only about Jake—Jake telling her to get the hell out of his life, Jake happily married to someone else and so deep in love that he couldn’t remember Naomi’s name when they passed each other on the sidewalk, Jake making love to her until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think of anything but how much she needed him. Only him.
Strangely, the last one was the hardest to handle.
After the year she’d had, Naomi knew how to cope with waking up feeling like shit, with tears in her eyes, tightness in her chest and a black hole of sadness at the very heart of her. She didn’t know how to handle waking up with her skin flushed and hot and her body aching all over with wanting.
Her dormant sex drive had awoken with a vengeance, and it was slowly driving her insane.
She’d tried taking care of things herself, but her girl parts were having none of it. They had no interest in Naomi’s sleek little vibrator or the detachable shower head in her bathroom; they wanted Jake’s big hands and Jake’s bruising kisses and Jake’s cock, which they insisted was the best cock in the entire world and that Naomi was an idiot for letting that cock out of her sight—or out from between her legs, for that matter.
On that point, Naomi was inclined to agree with her girl parts. At age eighteen, she’d had no frame of reference, but now, as a thirty-three-year-old woman who’d had dozens of lovers and intimate contact with at least twice that many boy parts, Naomi could say unequivocally that Jake had the best cock ever—perfect length, perfect shape, perfect plump head that flushed a lovely plum color when it was happy to see you. It was completely adorable, in the sexiest way possible.
And she would probably never see it again.
The thought was enough to make her groan and roll over, burying her head beneath her pillow.
Not only did Jake hate her so much he’d fled her presence fifteen minutes into their first date, she strongly suspected he’d been avoiding her ever since. Meanwhile, Naomi had been spending every spare second that she wasn’t peeling wallpaper or scraping tile staring out Icing’s window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But despite her efforts, she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jake, save for a brief flash of his profile as the fire truck peeled out of the station’s driveway Sunday afternoon on the way to a call.
As soon as the sirens faded away, Naomi had made Aria contact her husband, the chief of police, to figure out what was going on. She had been terrified that Jake was going to die fighting a horrible fire before she had a chance to tell him that he was right about everything—right about her being too stubborn for her own good, right about her needing to write the script and win him over, and right about her wanting more than peace between them.
She didn’t want peace, or even friendship. She wanted lingering glances and passionate kisses. She wanted Jake’s hands all over her and her mouth all over him and his deliciously perfect cock hot in the palm of her hand.
She had it bad. So bad it would be funny if she weren’t so miserable and the entire situation weren’t impossible. Jake hated her. Forever. No epilogue, no sequel, story not to be continued. The end.
Naomi groaned again, the miserable sound loud enough to vibrate the springs in her mattress.
“What’s going on?” Her brother’s voice was muffled because of the pillow over her head, but Naomi could tell he was in her room. “It sounds like a rhinoceros is dying in here.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to knock?” Naomi growled from beneath her pillow. “What if I’d been happily masturbating in here?”
“Then I would happily be throwing up on your carpet right now,” her brother said cheerfully, plucking the pillow from Naomi’s head, earning himself another growl. “But you’re not happily doing anything. You’re moping again.”
“I am not moping.” Naomi scrunched up her nose and glared at her baby brother, who was looking awful chipper for a man who hadn’t had his morning coffee.
“You are so moping, and that’s no way to spend our one day off,” Mick said, tossing the pillow across the room and reaching for Naomi’s comforter. “Come on. Get up. Get dressed. We’re going out.”
“I don’t want to go out,” Naomi protested, clinging to her blanket with both fists.
“Yes, you do. We’re going to The Horse and Rider for Bloody Marys.”
Naomi’s nose wrinkled. “What time is it?”
“Eleven thirty.”
Naomi was so surprised by Mick’s answer that she inadvertently loosened her grip on her covers, giving Mick the opportunity to rip them off with a flourish, exposing her to the chill.
She hadn’t slept this late in years, not even in her darkest days after losing Grace. Naomi had been up until midnight crunching numbers with Maddie, and then spent another two hours answering business email that had piled up while she’d been deep in the throes of “do it yourself renovation” with her siblings, but still…she couldn’t believe it was nearly noon.
“It will be twelve by the time we get there,” Mick said, crossing to the window and throwing open the thick curtains, revealing a gorgeous winter day with sunshine and blue sky the color of a robin’s egg. “And that’s a perfectly respectable time for Bloody Marys.”
“Let’s aim for twelve-thirty,” Maddie called out as she hustled by outside in the hall. “I need a shower. I still have plaster in my hair from yesterday.”
Yesterday—after part of a wall had crumbled on top of her head, spilling melted chocolate all over Maddie’s new jeans in the process—Maddie had declared that they all needed a day off. Monday had been selected as the unanimous choice because, as Maddie said, “God knows Monday needs to have something going for it.”
Aria, whose sinfully hot husband, Nash, had recently switched to having Sundays and Mondays off, had leapt at the chance to spend a day messing around in Atlanta and going to the Aquarium with her family. The three Whitehouse siblings, on the other hand, had vowed to spend their day on the couch watching television.
“What happened to television all day?” Naomi asked, reluctantly sitting up and running a hand through her tangled hair.
“Maddie was going to make us watch dumb stuff,” Mick said.
“I was not!” Maddie shouted from the bathroom. “PBS has some really good shows on it now.”
Naomi made a sour face, and Mick nodded in agreement.
“She cancelled Mom and Dad’s cable to save money,” Mick said. “And she used the last of the coffee.”
“I did not!” Maddie shouted over the sound of the shower starting up. “Stop lying, Mick. At least until I get out of the shower and can defend myself.”
“She totally used the last of the coffee,” Mick said in a softer voice. “And there’s no way we’d make it through six hours of PBS without falling asleep. So we’re going to do Blood Marys first, swing by the store for bad snacks, and then come home and watch all the Indiana Jones movies. I found the DVDs in a box of my old stuff.”
“Yes,” Naomi said with a proud nod. “Now that’s the kind of thing I like to hear. Good problem solving, little bro.”
“Give it to me,” Mick said, holding up a hand for Naomi to high-five, which she did with a laugh.
“I’m going to throw on clothes,” Mick said as he backed toward the door. “Meet you downstairs in fifteen?”
“Aye aye,” Naomi said, saluting as Mick disappeared into the hall.
Maybe this day might not be so bad after all. She wasn’t one for drinking in the morning, but luckily, she’d already slept until almost noon. And she couldn’t deny the thought of spending the day slightly buzzed and watching Indiana Jones with two of her favorite people was exciting. And maybe—once the three of them got good and liquored up—Naomi would work up the courage to talk to Mick and Maddie about her feelings for Jake.
So far she’d been too chicken to fess up to her brother and sister. Since breaking up with his long-time girlfriend, Bridget, Mick had avoided all boy-girl talk like the plague. And way back in the day, Maddie had cornered Naomi and flat-out begged her not to break up with Jake. Maddie had always had a good head on her shoulders, even at fourteen.
Naomi knew her sister was doubting her instincts right now—having your husband suddenly declare he’s gay after years of marriage would screw with anyone’s head. But even though Maddie had been blindsided by her (now) ex-husband’s revelation, Naomi still trusted her sister’s judgment. Maddie had a sixth sense when it came to people. She knew the good from the bad, the keepers from the ones you should throw back in.
Serge, her ex-husband, was a great guy, and he had loved—and still loved—Maddie with all his heart…just not in the romantic way he’d pretended while sorting out his sexual orientation. In many ways, Maddie had made a good choice the first time around, and Naomi knew her sister would find another amazing man someday soon.
But in the meantime, maybe Maddie could help Naomi figure out if there was any hope at all for a fresh start with Jake.
“There’s always hope,” Naomi said aloud as she swung her sock-clad feet to the floor, glancing over at her wall of inspiration.
She’d hung the giant corkboard when she was sixteen, after taking her fifth junior chef champion cooking title at an international competition in London. The board represented her future, and she’d filled it with quotes from all the people who inspired her. She was determined to be the next Julia Child by the time she reached twenty and had faith in the wisdom of those who had come before to show her the way.
She’d achieved all her professional goals, though not always on the schedule she’d mapped out—she was twenty-five before she landed her own show, and twenty-eight before her name became synonymous with good food and great entertaining. But even though she’d scaled to the top of her career mountain, she still kept an inspiration wall at each of her houses, even in her tiny ski cabin in Colorado. They helped her find her center and always lifted her up when she was feeling down or confused.
This morning, she found the perfect quote within a few seconds—
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow—Albert Einstein.
She’d been living for today and hoping for tomorrow, but had she really been learning from yesterday? She had a history with Jake, and somewhere in that history were surely clues that could help her work toward a future with him. The clues were there, and she was going to find them come hell or high water.
Her optimistic attitude held through getting dressed and piling into the car with Mick and Maddie, through finding a parking spot in the bustling, pre-Christmas frenzy of downtown, and hustling down the street into the cozy darkness of The Horse and Rider.
But as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dim light in the honky-tonk, her confidence took a hit so severe not even the cheery Christmas lights threaded through the swinging wooden gates that separated the tables from the empty dance floor could lift her spirits.
There, milling around a long buffet next to the bar, was most of the Summerville Fire Department, minus Jamison—a detail for which Naomi silently gave a prayer of thanks. The firefighters were laughing it up over subs, buffalo wings, and a massive veggie plate, as a harried waitress rushed around refilling drinks.
Jake held a half-empty glass of beer, the liquid inside so dark it looked like it would put hair on his chest if he didn’t have plenty already. Which Naomi knew he did—the perfect amount, enough to be manly, but not so much that it crossed the line into Sasquatch territory. His chest hair was as perfect as the cock she couldn’t quit thinking about.
She shifted uncomfortably, wondering if the erotic images dancing in her brain were showing on her face. Of course, even if she were hiding her thoughts from the general population, the moment she made eye contact with Jake, the jig would be up. Jake had always known when she was thinking frisky thoughts. “Sex eyes,” he’d called it, swearing that the expression on her face read like an engraved invitation.
An invitation that, in the past, he’d never been able to resist.
But Naomi knew he’d resist now. He’d probably resist so strongly he’d run out the back door and she’d never hear from him again.
She couldn’t do this. She definitely had to leave. She couldn’t face Jake until she had her libido under control and a plan to win a second chance with him firmly in place.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she said, snagging Maddie by the arm and Mick by a handful of his old Summerville High School homecoming sweatshirt.
“But they have the best Bloody Marys,” Mick said, more loudly than Naomi would have preferred.
“They have good ones at Mark’s Place, too,” Maddie said, turning back to Naomi with a wide-eyed look that made it clear she’d seen Jake. “Come on, Mick, we—”
“Mick Whitehouse!” The masculine voice came from across the room by the firefighters’ gathering, causing Naomi to cringe.
They’d been spotted. Rats!
“What’s up, man?” the voice—which belonged to a youngish-looking firefighter with a buzz cut and shoulders as broad as Mick’s—called out. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Ben! I didn’t know you were still in town,” Mick said, bounding across the room like an overgrown puppy.
A big, dumb puppy who had just sentenced his older sister to several minutes—or, god forbid, an afternoon—of suffering, depending on how long Mick planned on playing catch-up with his friend.
Naomi slowly shifted her gaze to meet Jake’s, knowing he must have seen her by now. She braced herself for the worst, but when her eyes met his across the room, he didn’t grimace or sneer or freeze her out with the power of his cold, immovable “I feel nothing” face.
Instead, he held her gaze for a beat and then…he smiled.
It wasn’t a big smile or a particularly warm one, but it was a smile. A small, beautiful, confusing-but-appreciated gesture that gave Naomi the courage to pull in a deep breath, take Maddie by the arm, and cross the room to join the SFD’s holiday party with hope for the future.