Present Day

Harper awoke with a small sob. Again, tears dampened her cheeks. She remembered more details of her dream than she had earlier today, but it was still murky. Mostly, it was the swelling emotion in her chest that lingered.

It took her a moment to find her bearings. She saw the glow from the distant yacht bridge and felt their subtle rocking in the water. The star-strewn sky curved above them, a half-moon lighting the surroundings to a surprising degree. Memory hit her in a rush. They’d fallen asleep after watching the fireworks.

“Jacob?” she murmured. She flipped over onto her belly on the sofa.

“Harper?” He stirred at her movement, his fingers falling out of her hair, his knee bending and rubbing against her shoulder. She rose up over him, planting her hands next to his head and settling her body beneath his spread legs. He felt warm and solid and wonderful. His hand rose again to her head, but his eyes were still closed. “It’s okay, Harper. Everything’s going to be all right,” he said groggily.

A pain went through her at his automatic, unconscious response. Again, that feeling of sharp longing sliced through her. She thought of how Jacob took care of the troubled Regina Morrow, and gave children of his town a moment of carefree summer fun with the fireworks; how he sponsored the women’s shelter Harper had gotten Ellie into, and how he protected neglected or abused animals with the local shelter. He did all those things—and probably countless other acts of kindness and generosity that she didn’t know about.

And how the first thing he did, even in the midst of sleep, was assure her—Harper—that everything was all right

Even so, people like Ruth Dannen and thousands of others made sly, nasty comments about his character.

A huge, powerful feeling of love and compassion rose in her. She pulled her sundress up to her waist and yanked the blanket up over her shoulder and part of her head, tenting them partially. She leaned down and rained small kisses on his jaw, finally settling on his mouth with a fevered kiss. It took her a moment to awaken him, but knew she had when his firm lips started to move beneath hers and his hands grasped her upper arms.

“Harper?” he mumbled against her mouth even as his lips plucked at her hungry ones. “What are you doing?”

“Making love to you,” she whispered, turning her head to get a better angle on his mouth and penetrating his lips with her tongue. He tasted divine. Their kiss turned hot and wet. He tried to shift her off of him onto the wide couch. She instinctively understood he wanted to come down over her, hold her down, make her a fixed target to ensure she received every ounce of pleasure he conferred.

“No,” she whispered, gripping his hips with her knees and keeping herself in place. “I’m making love to you.”

“It’s a mutual thing,” he replied wryly, tangling his fingers in her long hair.

“It is, but it isn’t. You give and take. You take from me, and I offer it willingly. But you hardly ever let me just give,” she murmured, plucking at his lips hungrily. His hips flexed up slightly against his weight, and she felt his arousal. Relief swept through her. Given his preferences in bed, she’d worried he might be turned off by her aggressiveness. “Just relax, Jacob. Let me make you feel good.”

“You always make me feel good.”

“I have something to give. Let me touch you, Jacob.”

Her plea seemed to hang around them, swirling in the cool night air. Had he sensed that she meant more than touch him physically? She thought maybe he had, given the tension level of his body. He didn’t reply or move. Slowly, cautiously, she began to move her hands, sliding them across his muscular shoulders and powerful chest. Tears stung her eyes for some reason. She was reacting purely on feeling in that moment. He was so amazing to her. So miraculous.

She sunk her head, her lips moving feverishly across his skin.

“Harper, honey,” he said, and there was an edge to his tone as she delicately licked and then sucked at a small, flat nipple, making it stiffen. His fingers dug in her hair aggressively. By the time she kissed and ran her tongue along the side of his ribs, small bumps had raised along his skin. She flicked her tongue and he growled softly. She closed her eyes. It was sublime, feeling his body react so completely to her touch, feeling his power coil and tighten, starting to strain to break free.

A moment later, she knelt over his thighs and held the base of his cock in one hand, caressing the shaft and fat crown with the other. She stroked him for a while, admiring him in the soft starlight. She flicked the thick rim beneath the head with her fingers, and he made a rough sound. She looked up and saw that he’d come up on his elbows, and was watching her through narrowed eyelids. His face looked hard and shadowed, mysterious and beautiful in the glow of the stars. Holding his stare, she came down over him and squeezed her lips around the flaring head of his cock.

He held his breath, watching her take him into her mouth. Why were her cheeks damp from tears? The moment felt so fragile to him. Harper herself seemed like something from a dream, her graceful limbs and stunning face nuanced by moonlight. Her mouth wasn’t made of smoke and shadow, though. She clamped him hard with her lips. She sunk down on him, and he shuddered as pure pleasure rippled through him. Her mouth was hot. Sultry. And her suck . . .

“Harper,” he whispered harshly, one hand cupping the back of her head. She took him deep again, her mouth pulling at him. Not just his cock. She drew on something deep inside him. Her head bobbed forcefully for a moment. He winced in pleasure. Christ, it felt good. And she was so beautiful. He couldn’t take his eyes off the vision of her giving . . . and giving. He briefly fantasized about standing and bringing her to a sitting position, holding her head while he pierced her beautiful mouth . . .

. . . But the experience of being the target of her desire held him spellbound, as well. His paradoxical need created a friction in him: the need to dominate fighting with the desire to accept what she was giving him, to accept love rather than take it.

To acknowledge instead of demand.

A sweet, agonizing moment later, she rose over him, lifting her dress to her waist with one hand. She started to come down over his naked cock. He paused her by tightening his hold.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed. “I want you in me this way. Now. I’m like you, Jacob. I’ve always been very careful about making sure I was safe. Only for a moment. Please.”

“You don’t have to beg me,” he said incredulously. There was an intensity to her tonight that he couldn’t quite comprehend. Her cheeks were no longer wet, but her eyes looked mysterious and deep in the moonlight.

He helped her by guiding her hip. She sunk down over him, sheathing him in her sleek body. He saw ecstasy tighten her face, and knew her pleasure matched his. She paused in his lap and whipped the dress above her head.

He held her to him, the pleasure cutting at him. The feeling. She began to rise and fall over him. She looked so beautiful, naked and bathed in the glow of the stars and moon. Need tore at his throat. Desperation. He pulled her to him, clenching his teeth hard at the sensation of her erect nipples pressing against his ribs. He gripped the hair at her nape in his fist.

“What is it?” he hissed tensely against her mouth. “What happened, Harper? Tell me. Why were you crying when you woke me up?”

“I don’t know,” she said brokenly, and she looked every bit as desperate as he felt. “I had a dream.”

“What dream?”

“About a boy,” burst out of her throat. “A boy I knew a long, long time ago. Why am I dreaming of him now? Why do I keep thinking of him?” she murmured, and it was as if she asked herself. Her face crunched tight.

Wild emotion rushed through him at the vision of her pain. It was like a knife in her side. In his.

“Make me forget, Jacob,” she whispered. She began to move her hips, pumping his cock in and out of her body. He gripped her head tighter.

“Come here,” he said, his mouth slanting. He’d seen her pain, and it’d driven a stake of urgency into him.

She’d dreamed of Jake. Surely she’d meant Jake.

Surely she’d remembered me?

The thought both panicked and excited him. He didn’t know on what side of the ledge he existed anymore, only that he felt like he was constantly falling off it, free-falling into Harper’s sweetness.

He kissed her voraciously, using one hand to guide her strokes over his body, mounting their frenzy of need. From every direction, he felt pummeled. Maddened. Because even while he gave her what she needed, he couldn’t have said for himself what desire was sharper inside him: for her to remember or for her to forget, for her to acknowledge him for who he was, or for her to remain veiled, safe, and protected. Did he want her to recognize the vulnerable boy he’d buried long ago? Or did he want even more to continue drowning in the sweetness of her loving him for whom he’d become, forever ignorant of whom he’d been . . .

Forever blinded to what they’d meant to one another.

The morning dawned crystal clear and luminous out on the vast, blue expanse of Lake Tahoe.

After they’d made love on the top deck last night, Jacob and she had gone down to the bedroom and slept the rest of the night in each other’s arms. Harper awoke before Jacob, studying his face in repose for a moment in the light of dawn. Her chest grew tight when she recalled their emotional, charged . . . bewildering lovemaking last night beneath the stars.

She wasn’t sure what had happened. It all seemed so confusing: the dream, her uncontrollable eruption of feeling, his passionate, soulful response. What really bothered her was how she kept recalling that dream. His face was emerging from the shadows with startling clarity.

Jake.

Jacob had promised her an affair that was about forgetting, about staving off grief and loss. But strangely, she was remembering more.

Is this what it meant to really fall in love? she wondered numbly as she stole from his arms a moment later. Did it mean that you felt everything more clearly, the sad along with the amazing? Maybe so. She’d considered herself to be in love several times in the past, but that pale feeling had nothing to do with the vibrant, powerful emotions Jacob evoked in her.

She was making them breakfast with the eggs and a freshly baked loaf of bread that Lisa had packed for them in the hamper when he found her. She turned upon hearing his tread on the stairs, her heart in her throat.

He touched her almost immediately after he entered the galley, taking her into his arms and kissing her deeply. She was glad to realize that their newfound closeness and intimacy remained, despite her uncertainties and vague embarrassment about her emotional display last night. Maybe he sensed her uncommon shyness or some shared strain, and was determined to melt it. Knowing him, and his bullheaded determination to have nothing separate them physically, that was probably it. If so, it worked in spades, Harper realized dazedly a moment later when he lifted his head from their kiss, and she very reluctantly left his arms to finish making the eggs.

By some silent pact, neither of them spoke of what had happened last night under the stars. They spent a nice morning on the top deck basking in the bright sun. He read some files from his briefcase and Harper consumed a book Cyril had given to her about writing screenplays, her feet resting in his lap.

“Is it good?” Jacob asked a while later, nodding at the book she read, setting aside his file and grasping one of her feet instead, massaging the muscles deeply.

She sighed in pleasure and lowered the book. “It is. I’m excited to start writing.”

“Excited is good. Very good,” he murmured, his deep, mellow voice washing over her and prickling her nerves to life. “I have some of Cyril’s movies at the house. Do you want to watch a couple, when we get back?”

She nodded eagerly, warming as she saw that small smile she loved shaping his mouth before he picked up the report again. This time, even with his attention focused on his reading, he continued to massage her until she drifted off into a sun-warmed sleep.

They anchored the yacht at about two that afternoon. Harper was a little sad to leave the water and their temporary escape from the rest of the world. It’d been heaven being out there on the water, just the two of them.

When they returned to the mansion, Elizabeth stood at the top of the terrace, ready to greet them. So . . . Jacob’s faithful assistant had come back to his side. Harper wanted to ask Elizabeth about Regina Morrow’s well-being, but recognized it wasn’t her place. Harper could tell by the urgent, strained look Elizabeth gave Jacob even before they’d exchanged hellos that she wanted to confer with him privately.

“Why don’t you go up and shower and I’ll meet you upstairs in a minute?” Jacob asked Harper.

“Sure,” Harper replied, her smile assuring both Jacob and Elizabeth she was fine with that plan. In truth, she’d held on to a small hope that Jacob would tell Elizabeth that she could speak openly about Regina in front of Harper. That wasn’t the case, though, Harper acknowledged grimly as she went through the terrace doors. Apparently, there were still secrets regarding Regina that Jacob wasn’t ready for Harper to know.

But in all fairness, what Jacob had said in San Francisco in regard to Regina was true. Regina obviously had a lot of emotional and mental health issues. As a friend, Jacob couldn’t in good faith go around blabbing about her problems to someone like Harper, who was a stranger to Regina. But Jacob had also admitted Regina was a former lover, and that he cared for her deeply.

It’s only natural that the hush-hush, charged aura surrounding Regina Morrow bothers me a little.

Maybe because of her conflicting thoughts, she was overly sensitive about reading Jacob’s mood when he joined her in his suite a while later. If he seemed a little subdued at first, his preoccupation passed quickly enough.

His attention was all for her.

He showed her for the first time how a wood-paneled wall in the sitting area of his bedroom opened to an entertainment center. They agreed to be lazy for the rest of the day, watching two of Cyril’s movies, talking . . . making love. They became so involved in the latter that they forgot dinner. When Harper’s stomach rumbled loudly at one point while they were entwined in bed, Jacob rose despite Harper’s protests. They ordered Thai food and ate it in bed naked. She thought it was the most delicious meal she’d ever eaten in her life.

“Back to work tomorrow,” Harper murmured later against Jacob’s bare chest. She loved to press her lips against the crisp hair there, feeling the heat of his skin and the density of muscle beneath. The lights in his suite were out, but star shine poured through the open, circular bank of windows. She turned her head slightly, brushing her mouth against him and inhaling his scent. “It seems like a month since I was at the newsroom, not three days.”

He didn’t reply. She rested her cheek on his chest, sensing his preoccupation.

“Are you thinking about work, too?” she asked him after a pause.

His hand cupped her shoulder. “No. Harper, there’s something I didn’t tell you about this weekend. I guess I should now.”

She came up on one elbow, peering into his shadowed face.

“What’s wrong? It sounds serious.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s serious.” He exhaled and rolled over on the mattress. He switched on a lamp. “Maybe it’d be easier if I just showed you.”

He rose from the bed. Harper watched him walk over to the sitting area, the dim lamplight gilding his ass and muscular back. He withdrew a newspaper from his briefcase and walked back over to the bed. Harper recalled him looking at what appeared to be the same paper in the back of the limo yesterday morning, when they’d returned from San Francisco. It was a copy of the Chronicle, a minor detail she’d noticed, having worked for that paper for a good part of her professional life.

When she held up her hands to receive the paper, he paused before giving it to her.

“Don’t be mad at me for not showing you yesterday. It was selfish on my part, but I was mostly thinking of you. I didn’t want anything to come in the way of you enjoying the rest of your holiday. Besides, there was nothing you could have done about it at that point, anyway.” He shrugged and gave her the paper. “There’s nothing you can do now, either, except to be prepared for any flak when you return to the Gazette tomorrow.”

Her brows creased in concern at his buildup. She sat up in bed, the sheet tucked around her breasts. He came down next to her.

“Page twenty-three,” he said.

Harper whipped through the pages. A moment later she was staring openmouthed at a fairly large photo of Jacob and her leaving Geb on Saturday night in San Francisco. They both looked serious. Jacob’s hand was at the small of her back. The caption read, Lattice owner and CEO, Jacob Latimer, and his escort for the evening, former Chronicle reporter and current news editor of the Sierra Tahoe Gazette, Harper McFadden.

“Escort for the evening. Charlie Nelson.” Her lip curled in bitter disgust when she saw the name of the photographer.

“You know him?”

Harper nodded grimly, skimming the rest of the brief article, which was mostly about Jacob. She rolled her eyes and folded the paper with haphazard forcefulness before tossing it aside irritably.

“I never saw any photographers that night. Makes sense that it was Charlie. That swine makes it a practice to hide behind garbage cans, where he belongs.”

“Do you think it’ll be a problem for you at work?” Jacob asked.

“It’ll certainly make it more difficult to deny that I have any inside track to you or Lattice with Ruth, not to mention Burt, one of my reporters who’s been nosing around.” She noticed his somber expression. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it. Because they know that you and I are seeing each other doesn’t change a thing. If anything, it should send a clearer message that what’s . . .” She hesitated in describing their relationship, realizing it was a glaring question mark. How exactly did one describe Jacob’s and her involvement—especially after their intense, amazing long weekend together? “What’s happening between us is private and not a topic for public consumption.”

“They’re going to be curious. They’re going to ask a lot of questions. Do you think your editor in chief is going to give you a hard time?”

“Sangar? No. He’s a pussycat compared to Ruth, or even Burt Chavis.” Her gaze flickered over his face. Her heart squeezed a little at how sober he looked. “Are you regretting getting involved with a reporter again?” she asked softly. His eyebrows arched a question, and she sighed. “Cyril told me you were still having doubts about seeing me because I was a reporter.”

“I’m managing those doubts pretty well. Wouldn’t you say? Just like you’re managing yours, about being with me?”

She gave a bark of laughter and rubbed her eyes, suddenly feeling tired. “Damn Charlie Nelson. I’m going to call him tomorrow and let him have it.”

“It’s okay, Harper,” he said, coming down in the bed and urging her to recline with him.

“It is?” she asked incredulously as he twisted around to shut off the lamp.

She felt his shrug against her chin as his arms encircled her a moment later.

“At least you won’t have to tiptoe around the topic at work anymore.”

She rubbed her lips against his skin distractedly. “No more sneaking into the newsroom’s bathroom, now that the spotlight has been turned on.” She squeaked in surprise when he was suddenly rolling her on her back and coming down over her.

“I’m not promising anything. Being with me is risky business.”

She laughed and encircled his neck with her arms. “The reward has far outweighed the risk so far.”

“I could say the same about you,” he replied huskily before he covered her mouth with his own.

The next morning, Harper got up extra early with Jacob to jog. Much to her amazement, Elizabeth was already at the mansion, waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. She informed them she wanted to orient Harper to the compound’s security measures so that Harper could return there anytime she chose without difficulty. Harper gave Jacob a surprised glance, but could tell by his relaxed expression he’d been the one to give the direction to his assistant in the first place. Knowing that he’d expressed to Elizabeth his trust in her by giving her total access to his home gratified Harper.

After her orientation, she and Jacob jogged on the beach during a glorious sunrise.

“Do you want to take a few of the dogs out for some catch?” Jacob asked her upon their return.

Harper checked her watch and nodded, liking the idea.

He ended up doing most of the ball throwing to three or four of the adult dogs, however, while Harper sat in the sand with her legs spread, watching him and playing with Milo, the puppy that’d had his foot amputated by some sadistic sociopath.

“He likes you,” Jacob said as he walked toward her a while later, and the golden sun blazed over the tops of the mountains. Warmth went through her at the magnificent vision he made, wearing running shorts, his dark blond hair damp at the nape from jogging and play, his simple gray T-shirt molding his muscular, fit torso in the most distracting way.

“Do you think so?” she asked hopefully, petting the puppy’s ears and scratching his back.

“I know so.” He reached for her hand and pulled her into a standing position while Milo nuzzled her ankles. “What’s not to like?” He leaned down and brushed her cheeks with his lips, as if he couldn’t resist feeling the heat that had risen in her cheeks at his compliment. Then he transferred his mouth to hers, and Harper lost time for a moment.

“I’m going to be late for work,” she murmured against his lips.

He grabbed her hand. “If you’re late, what difference does it make if you’re a little or a lot?” he asked.

He led her to his bedroom.

She wasn’t terribly late by the time she got out the door. She was flustered, happy, and extremely sex-flushed. The chances of her appearing cool and contained in front of her colleagues following the Chronicle photo with Jacob were pretty much nil.

She realized she couldn’t have cared less.

After Harper left for work, Jacob put in a call to Dr. Larry Fielding in Napa. The psychiatrist immediately began talking about Regina’s recent relapse and what he planned to do in regard to her treatment.

“She’s very depressed,” Dr. Fielding told Jacob. “I’ve moved up her outpatient therapy to four times a week, so I can better assess if she’s suicidal.”

“Shouldn’t she be in the hospital?” Jacob asked.

“Possibly, but as you know, I can’t admit her involuntarily unless she expresses active suicidal ideation or shows signs of being unable to care for herself. I’m going to add an antidepressant to her mood stabilizer. That’s another reason I want to see her several times a week, to assess how she reacts. She’ll also continue with the outpatient group, so they’ll be able to monitor her, as well.”

“As long as she goes,” Jacob muttered as he paced back and forth in front of his office windows.

“You’ve done everything for her that you can,” Dr. Fielding said patiently. “God knows it’s light-years more than most people would do.”

But it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

“Jacob, you’re not her savior. She has to want to save herself,” Fielding said as if he’d read Jacob’s mind—which he probably had.

He closed his eyes and stopped pacing. “I know. I know that.”

“With your head, you do. I know you’re still working on believing it in your heart.”

Jacob began pacing again, determined not to go down the familiar path with the psychiatrist again. He’d made a lot of progress in accepting his limits in regard to helping Regina. And in point of fact, he hadn’t called Dr. Fielding primarily to ask about Regina. Elizabeth had already filled him in on her status yesterday when they returned to shore. And he hadn’t even experienced a slight urge to call about Regina when he’d been spending those idyllic hours with Harper on the yacht.

“There’s something else I want to speak with you about,” he told Dr. Fielding. He’d been increasingly anxious about Harper ever since she’d awakened him the night before on the yacht with tears on her cheeks saying she’d dreamed of a boy . . . ever since she’d been so urgent to have him make her forget that dream. “Remember how I asked you about a person who had a trauma, and then underwent hypnosis for treatment?”

“Yes, I recall you asking me some questions. You wanted to know if it was possible for hypnosis to make someone completely forget their trauma, if I recall.”

“And you said that someone could be distanced from a trauma, but that it was unlikely it would be completely erased from their mind? Under what conditions would a person like that, a person who had been free of any anxiety about their trauma for years, start to have nightmares again . . . maybe even start to remember the trauma in more detail and think about it more?”

“Jacob, it’s hard for me to say without knowing the specifics and the individual in question—”

“I realize that. But just give me an example of why a person who’s been cured of anxiety and phobias might start to have bad dreams about their original trauma again.”

Dr. Fielding sighed at his persistence. “Well, nightmares are associated with rising anxiety, of course.”

“That’s what I assumed,” Jacob said, frowning as he thought about Harper.

“It could be any number of reasons why the person is starting to re-experience memories and anxiety. Perhaps he or she is going through a particularly stressful time, either psychologically or physically. Perhaps a trigger enters their life that wasn’t there before.”

Jacob halted his pacing and stared out the window unseeingly. “A trigger?”

“Yes. Something that calls to mind the original trauma.”

“Like a person, for instance? Another person involved in the original event?”

“Yes, possibly a person.”

“But what if this person looked completely different than the one associated with the trauma, and the person I’m asking about didn’t even recognize him.”

The psychiatrist made an exacerbated sound. “You’re asking me to make wild speculations based on very vague information.”

“Please, Larry.”

Fielding groaned. “Okay. So, you want to know if a subject who suffered a trauma might show signs of relapse when they come into contact with a person who had originally been part of the traumatic event, even if they don’t recognize said person? Am I getting all this straight?”

“That’s right.”

“I suppose it’s possible, theoretically speaking. There are qualities to a person beyond their physical appearance that might signal the unconscious mind.”

“Like what?” Jacob asked tensely.

“Many things . . . anything that promotes a feeling of familiarity. A mannerism, a tone of voice, background information, ways of relating. A feeling of knowing someone is a very subtle phenomenon. It’s not just about physical appearance.”

“But the person I’m referring to is completely different than he was.”

Dr. Fielding gave harsh laugh. “No one can become completely different, Jacob. I’m sorry if you think I’m being annoyingly intellectual, but I’ve based my life’s work on that belief. We all carry some kind of trace or some kind of scar of our past. Our histories echo into our future. And if we accept that to be true: then whomever you’re referring to might have a response to that trace. The question is, to what degree? And will it be a positive or negative response to that echo?”