Chapter Twenty-Three
EVERYTHING REALLY DID look better in the light of day, or maybe it was just the view of Jessica sitting on the back patio wearing Jamie’s soft cotton tee, bare from the waist down save for her panties. Her long legs were tucked beneath her as she sipped coffee, her eyes on the manila envelope between them. The sight of it made Jamie’s muscles cord tight, but Jessica was relaxed as could be as she lowered her cup from her lips and lifted her eyes to him.
“It’s not going to open itself,” she said with a mischievous smile.
She knew he didn’t want to open it. They’d talked about this after they’d finally pried themselves from each other’s arms, briefly, at least. They’d showered and made love again beneath the warm spray of the shower, and they’d discussed the envelope again as they’d dressed—Jessica in one of his fresh T-shirts and him in a pair of faded jeans. She said she didn’t want to wear her skirt. Not yet. I like the feeling of being back at the Cape, where we could just be ourselves. We can deal with the real world after eight o’clock.
He liked that idea. He liked it very much.
While Jamie called his office, Jessica had retrieved the envelope from the car. He’d protested, not wanting it inside the house, but she’d carried it out back, barefoot and smiling.
“I have nothing to hide, Jamie. Let’s see what he’s found out about me.”
She was teasing him again, egging him on. He had no doubt that she had nothing to hide—he only wished he’d followed his instincts days earlier. But maybe this was what was meant to be.
“The last few days are like a bad memory I’d rather forget. Besides, if I see what’s in it, I’m going to get mad at him all over again and fire him.” He reached for her hand, the memory of the night before coming back to him. Watching her give herself over to him again, even after everything they’d gone through, all that he’d admitted, she still trusted him without hesitation.
He kissed the back of her hand, knowing he’d never do anything to jeopardize her trust again.
“Jamie, Mark did this because he loves you. I know that now. I understand that, and I can look at it knowing that and not be bothered, the same way that I know that you doubted me because of what you knew of people other than me. We can’t hold on to anger and frustration, or it eats away at us.” She set her cup down and smiled, then furrowed her brow. “I think, anyway. I’m not one hundred percent certain about this, but that’s how I’ve always dealt with my mother’s overbearing personality. She lives vicariously through me, and I know that, so I put up with it. Well, at least I did, until this summer. I’m done putting up with it, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to hold a grudge or be angry when I see her. She loves me. She did what she thought I’d want, or what she thought would be best for me, and I can hardly blame her for doing what she felt was right. I get that now. It’s the same with Mark.” She pushed her hair from in front of her eyes. “I think I’m going to tell her how I feel. Clear the air, and let it all be water under the bridge so I can move forward. She’s my mom. I love her. I think you can do the same thing with Mark, can’t you?”
Jamie shook his head in disbelief, then cupped her cheeks and planted a kiss on her luscious lips. “You are remarkable. You’re the one he treated so badly, and you’re sticking up for him.”
“No. I’m definitely not sticking up for him. I’m seeing things more clearly, that’s all. When you love someone, you do things that feel right at the time. Sometimes that means hurting someone else—with words or fists.” She looked down at his hands, her eyes serious and contemplative. “And other times, you hurt them in other ways, like leaving the Cape, hoping not to cause any more trouble for them.”
Jessica moved into his lap and rested her forehead against his. “And if you’re lucky, the person you hurt realizes why you did those things, and you work through them and come up with guidelines and understandings that create a safety net around the two of you.”
“Like the three-date rule?” He kissed her again.
She rolled her eyes. “That was the one rule I’m glad we broke.” She looked away, twisting the ends of her hair in her fingers, and sighed. “You know what?”
“I know lots of whats, but probably not the what you’re asking about.” He patted her butt, drawing her eyes back to his.
“That is very true. For a woman with almost no relationship experience, I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
“Yeah, you are.” He took her in a delicious, greedy kiss. How could he leave the envelope unopened after everything she’d said? Maybe it was time they cleared the air and put this all behind them. “Before we open this, I just want to be clear. You don’t want me to fire Mark? After everything? After this?”
She shook her head. “Would you stop being friends with him if he’d been right about me?”
“No, but…”
“Jamie, you have to admit, I have a strange situation with my name, and we did move very fast, and that night, heck, even now, you don’t know where I live.” She handed him the envelope. “But I have a feeling you’re about to find out.”
His chest constricted as he tore the top of the envelope and withdrew the papers. He held them against his chest. “This is your last chance. I can burn them. There’s a fire pit right across the patio. One match…”
She took the papers from him and read the cover letter clipped to the front. Her hand covered her mouth. “Oh, Jamie.”
He closed his eyes. “There are matches in the kitchen.”
“No, Jamie. You have to read this.”
He opened his eyes. “Read it to me.”
She shifted her eyes to him, and when she spoke, her voice was filled with compassion, and sorrow, and all the emotions Mark had written and been unable to say.
Jamie,
If you ever repeat this to anyone, I will take you down slowly and painfully.
Jamie shook his head. Mark. Idiot.
She continued reading.
You know I’m always right. Of course you do. I’m laughing, and know you are, too. It appears that in this instance, I jumped the gun. I know I went against your wishes by checking into Jessica’s background, but you also probably knew I would. We’ve known each other too long for you to expect otherwise. It’s why we make a great team. In these pages you’ll see that Jessica is everything she’s claimed to be, but I’ve found that she’s far more than you led me to believe, or maybe more than you were aware of. All that stuff aside, I’m truly sorry for the pain I caused you both. I know this is big. Huge. You love her enough to hit me, man. I owe you one for that, by the way.
Jessica paused and reached for Jamie’s hand. Their eyes connected, and he nodded, wanting to hear the rest of what his friend had to say. She cleared her throat before continuing, obviously as touched by Mark’s confession as he was.
I know you might fire me, and I wouldn’t blame you, but before you pull that card, remember this one. The dragon and the warrior, through thick and thin, and all things in between. Brothers until the end. Eyes to the sky, Dragon II.
Jessica set the papers on the table and sighed. “See? I guess he knows, or he’s learned, more about relationships, too.”
“Eyes to the sky.” Jamie shook his head with the memory. “We made that up when we were in college. Every time one of us did something stupid, or we broke up with a girl, or blew off a class, we said, Eyes to the sky. Eyes to the sky. We never even really defined what it meant. The closest we could come to defining it was to say that whatever we did, whatever mistakes we made, we’d keep moving forward, push ourselves harder to reach whatever it is we were going for at the time. Grades, graduation, business deals.” He laughed with the memory.
“What does dragon and the warrior mean?”
“Silly nicknames. You know, college stuff. I was the warrior, the one who braved cleaning up Mark’s reputation and moving forward with my life despite losing my parents, that kind of stuff. And he…” He shook his head with the memory. “He was always a bit of a snake when it came to women. So we called him the dragon, but that didn’t seem strong enough, so I dubbed him dragon II, like the biggest and ugliest of all—” Jamie’s eyes widened. “Holy cow. Baby. Baby, you’ve got to get up.” He patted her hips to hurry her from his lap.
Jessica stood. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything is right.” He took her hand and dragged her inside. “Come with me. I can’t believe it. That idiot solved the bug in our search engine.”
Jessica tried to keep up as he dragged her through the living room and the dining room, and into his office. “Sorry. I’ll explain.” He booted up his computer and handed her a throw blanket from a chair. “I keep it cool in here; you may need this. When I was in grad school, I put a little Easter egg in the code for the search engine.”
She sat on the chair across from his desk and covered her legs with the blanket. “What does that mean? I’m picturing bunnies and chocolate.”
“That’s because you’re the cutest person on earth.” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he cut through miles of cyber security to access the original code. “An Easter egg. A drone. A little piece of code that I created in grad school and totally forgot about until that darn letter.” He glanced up at her with no hopes of suppressing his relieved smile or the rapid beating of his heart. “This is the thing we’re looking for on OneClick that’s pulling up military equipment when kids type in the words dragon two.”
She gathered her hair over one shoulder and nodded, but her confusion was still evident in her eyes.
Jamie continued working. “We were kids, and to a computer geek, this type of stuff is fun.” He glanced up again to catch her smile. “I put this piece of code in the program and totally forgot about it. It was a joke, you know, that one day, just by the law of large numbers, eventually it would rear its head again and we’d laugh.”
“Law of large numbers?”
“Yeah, you know. A principal of probability and statistics. As the sample size grows—or in this case, the number of people searching for certain words—its mean will get closer and closer to the average of the whole population. The more people searching, the more the bug appears.”
He looked back down at the monitor. “And it’s been so long that when it happened, we didn’t laugh, because I totally forgot about it. I have to call Mark and tell him. I can’t believe this. It might have remained there forever, and there’s no way our coders would have known where to look.”
“Dragon Two? Isn’t that the name of a kids’ movie?”
He was too excited to slow down. “You’re right. That’s exactly why it’s coming up now. A million people are searching the terms Dragon or Dragon Two on a daily basis.” He scanned the screen and typed faster. “I’m sorry, babe. I shouldn’t be working when we only have an hour or so left before our real world time starts, but this is vital.”
She came to his side and rubbed his shoulders while his fingers flew over the keyboard. “I love that you have a strong work ethic, and I love watching you work. I don’t want to take you away from any of this, Jamie.”
He slowed long enough to pat her hand, look up at her beautiful face, then went back to work. “You won’t. I can’t believe it took all of this for us to find this drone.” His hands slowed. “It took all of this.” He spun in his chair and wrapped his arms around her waist. “As much as I hate to think about it because of what happened to my parents, maybe things really do happen for a reason.”