CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Well, this should be interesting.
Jake walked into the dining room, surveyed Maggie’s family, and found them surveying him right back. He’d dealt with far worse as far as families went. One time in high school he’d brought home a girl and tried to smuggle her upstairs to his bedroom. His mother stood outside his door and screamed, “I know you’ve got your little whore in there!”
So a nice family like the Robys? No problem.
“You must be Jake.” Priscilla smiled up at him. “I hope you don’t mind us crashing in on you like this.”
Mason stood behind Cassidy’s chair, both hands on her shoulders. Next to Cassidy was her daughter, Lexie, who gazed at him curiously. Maggie’s father, Doak, sat at the head of the table. Doak wore a mechanic’s jumpsuit. Mason had said that Doak was a retired fire chief who loved working on cars. Jake remembered meeting all of Maggie’s people at the wedding.
Jake swung his gaze back to Mason and Cassidy, who couldn’t have looked more embarrassed and apologetic.
“I’m the guest here,” Jake said. “So that makes me the party crasher. You can’t fault Mason for wanting to eat in his own home, can you?”
Maggie crossed her arms. She leveled a poisonous glare at Priscilla. “Nobody told me you were coming.”
“Mom said she told you,” Cassidy replied.
All eyes turned toward Priscilla, who had the grace to blush. “My stars, did I forget to tell you? Well, no point fussing at me now.”
Doak shook his head. “Priss strikes again.”
Jake decided he liked Doak. Man of few words. Testicles firmly intact.
“Come sit down,” Priscilla said to Jake, straight to business. She pulled out a chair for him. If he took it, he’d be wedged between her and Doak, but across the table from Maggie. He gazed at Maggie’s wide dark eyes and pink lips. He thought what she might do with those lips and—nope, wrong time, wrong place, buddy.
Jake went around the table first and pulled out the chair for her. Everyone noticed it. Even Mason shook his head, as though this small courtesy confirmed what they all suspected.
Small towns. Jake had forgotten. Your business was everyone’s business.
He took the seat across from Maggie. Lexie was bouncing around her chair, gabbing about her new school in Dallas. Cute kid, but damn, she talked a lot.
“So Jake,” Priscilla said, “I hear you bought the Regal and you’re fixing it up.”
Jake exchanged glances across the table with Maggie. She had something that looked like a love bite on her neck. Jesus, did he put that there? All he wanted was to get her naked again and give her a repeat of this afternoon, only with condoms. What kind of moron went trail riding with the woman he was hot for and didn’t bring condoms?
If he didn’t pop soon, he’d probably have a goddamn stroke.
Priscilla was looking at him. They were talking about something, weren’t they? Jake racked his brain. Ah, yes.
“We’re working on two projects in Cuervo,” he told Priscilla and Doak, who was also listening, his blue eyes gentle and with only a little tiny bit of that Touch my daughter and I’ll kill you vibe. “There’s an empty lot just outside of town that we closed on last week. We’re thinking about building a techpark. An incubator.”
“An incubator?” Priscilla repeated. “Isn’t that for chickens?”
“No, Mom,” Maggie said. “It’s a place where tech geniuses get together to hatch ideas. A lot more lucrative than chicken farming.”
Jake looked at her, impressed “Not everyone knows what an incubator is.”
“Oh, Maggie’s always been whip-smart,” Priscilla said. “Of all my girls, she got the best grades. One time she came home with a C and cried herself sick. I didn’t think she’d make it to school the next day.”
“Is that right?” A smile tugged at Jake’s lips. “Were you a good girl, Magdalene? Home by curfew?”
“I wasn’t that good,” Maggie insisted. “I still had a personality, you know. And I almost never made my bed.”
Priscilla reached over and patted Maggie’s hand. “That was April’s bed, honey. You made her bed so she wouldn’t get in trouble. See? And you thought I wasn’t paying attention.”
Maggie looked so horrified by her own goodness, Jake had to laugh. As the older sibling himself, he’d had to cover for Dillon a million times. On Christmas one year, Dillon was playing in Loretta’s car. When he pulled the car out of park, it rolled down a small hill and smashed the front bumper on a tree stump. Jake took the heat for that—he had to. Dillon was too young to handle a beating. Remembering that just made him angry, so he pushed the thought aside.
“Where is April?” Maggie asked.
“On a date,” Priscilla said.
Mrs. Birch came in carrying a big glass bowl full of salad. She set it on the table and then distributed salad plates.
“So, Jake, tell us about where you grew up.” Priscilla lifted the salad bowl, scooped some lettuce onto her plate and then passed the bowl to him. “Do your folks still live in Texas?”
Jake knew Maggie had perked up at the question. But this was what he hated about social engagements and why he’d mostly done a good job of avoiding them. The conversation always got around to him somehow. People were nosy.
If he were back in Dallas, all he’d have to do was make a cutting remark or weaponize his silence. But he wasn’t on his turf right now. Different rules applied. If he wanted Maggie’s family to like him, he had to pretend to be a normal guy who didn’t freeze up in the presence of a personal question.
Mason, Cassidy and Lexie had their own thing going on at their end of the table. Mason couldn’t save him. Jake speared a few leaves of lettuce onto his plate. Even if he were a normal guy, he wouldn’t want to talk about his family. Not when everything was so raw and depressing and wrong.
But Priscilla and Maggie were looking right at him. If he came up with a lie or a distraction, they would detect it at once. Maybe he could offer them something safe, something small. “I don’t know my father,” he said. “Last I heard, he lived in Illinois.”
“Do you have sisters or brothers?” Priscilla asked.
Jake could feel his blood pressure inching up, but forced himself to remain calm. Maggie chewed slowly, listening. He could practically see her brain sifting and sorting, trying to piece it all together. Trying to do what they all tried to do, which was to figure him out.
He hated his private business being laid out for other people to see. He hated feeling as though they pitied him—or worse, judged him as he judged himself. Even thinking about his brother put him on edge. His brother the traitor. I did everything for you, you ungrateful little shit.
Something cold wormed its way inside his stomach and stuck there. All the pleasure of the afternoon deserted him. Instead of being charmed by Maggie’s family, he found himself annoyed by them, annoyed and needing to get the hell out.
Abruptly, he stood. “I have to make a phone call.”
Mason stopped talking to Cassidy and turned to see what was going on.
“Right this minute?” Priscilla asked, clearly bewildered. “We’re about to eat.”
Maggie looked as surprised as Priscilla, which made him angrier.
Jake walked out of the dining room and then out of the house. He went back to the horse trail and the comforting darkness.
Sometimes the darkness saved you. Sometimes the darkness ate you. Sometimes the darkness just lived inside you like a disease.
He stood there, the ranch with its warm, lighted windows behind him and the moonlit trail stretching out for miles ahead. His heart kept thundering, but not from the pleasure of getting away. It felt like a parched, shrunken thing. He kept pulling it in one direction while the damn thing kept dragging him in the other.
He had no business socializing with nice families like Maggie’s. Board meetings and conference calls and the occasional cheap, meaningless fling were more his speed. How stupid was he to think he could be…he hunted for the word…domesticated.
Jake was good with things, but he’d never been good with people. Not people who asked questions, who took an interest. He was now and would forever be just one thing: a loner.
He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. The smoke spiraled lazily into the night sky. He thought about earlier in the day when Maggie went galloping away in a cloud of dust.
He thought about her sitting in the house now, wondering why he’d been such a rude fucking asshole.
Screw it. Jake went to his car and fished the keys out of his visor. Time to clear his head. All this was doing was making him more pissed off.
His brother’s words came back to him. You got no chance of ever having a healthy relationship. Not with me, not with anyone.
Maybe Dillon was right. Sanctimonious fuck. But no point trying to change now. Jake started the car, backed up and took off.
* * * *
From the front porch, Maggie watched Jake’s taillights vanish down the road. She’d heard him start the car and then rushed out to see where he was going.
There was a hollow ache inside her chest that felt familiar. Almost like the day she came home from the grocery store and found Todd’s packed suitcases being hauled outside by her best friend, Avery, pregnant at the time and struggling to hoist the heavy bags into his truck. Todd was on the phone trying to enter a bronc busting in Abilene. He’d actually held up his finger, asking Maggie to wait.
Now Jake had taken off for no reason. And that ache in her chest was starting to burn. It was trying to tell her something. It was trying to warn her that even men who weren’t actively cheating on you couldn’t be trusted to stay.
Was this part of that “no guarantees” thing she’d signed up for? Because it felt like she’d been stabbed over and over again in the stomach.
The door opened behind her and Maggie tensed, thinking it was Priscilla come to ask more questions. Priscilla had meant well. She always did. A kinder, stronger, braver woman Maggie would never know. But it was hard watching her mother make excuses for Jake’s horrible behavior. Now instead of being angry with Priscilla for organizing this disaster, Maggie felt bad that her mother had been so rudely treated. He probably had a business emergency, Priscilla said after he’d been gone a while. I’m sure he’ll be back.
When it was Mason who stepped outside, Maggie gave a sigh of relief.
“Maggie, I’m really sorry,” he said, the gentleness of his tone washing over her. “When your mom called and guilted us into coming down to spend a day or two with family, we had no idea…well, that you and Jake had a thing going. We interrupted.”
Maggie swallowed down a lump in her throat. Lumps in the throat were for other people, not for her. “What makes you think I’m seeing Jake?” she asked. Bad enough that she felt this shitty. Maybe she still had a shot at hiding it.
“Don’t be mad, but you’ve got grass stains all over your, uh, where you sit. Also the…” He traced a circle around his own head to show her that her hair was a mess.
She slid her hands back and forth across the porch railing. “Guess there’s no convincing you I just took a tumble off Delilah, eh?”
“Jake already told me that he liked you,” Mason confessed. “We talked at the wedding.”
Maggie gazed over the silvery fields and told herself she should be angry about what had happened. Just because Jake had great sex skills didn’t make him good boyfriend material. Jake probably looked at sex as just another thing he needed to know how to do well in order to get what he wanted.
Even though there was a clenched fist inside her chest, an even bigger fist was pounding her over the head, reminding her that good-looking, sexy men were nothing but trouble. Only the stupid or the desperate—or in her case, the desperately stupid—walked into that same trap twice.
“I’ve known Jake for ten years,” Mason said. “He’s a genius at business. But I don’t know one damn thing about his family because he almost never talks about it.”
“Do you know anything?” she asked, hating that she’d even asked the question. If she were smart, she wouldn’t care. If she were smart, she’d go back inside and act like nothing had happened.
“Jake only told me one story about his family,” Mason said. “It was late, I’d had a lot to drink and maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember in the morning.”
Maggie’s pulses leaped. “What was it?”
Mason seemed to hesitate. She got the impression he was going against some kind of “bro code” by revealing information about his friend. “He told me his brother had been sick. Real sick. Meningitis or something bad. They were kids at the time. Jake was maybe seven.”
Mason sat heavily on a porch rocker. He leaned forward, steepled his fingers and then rested his chin on them. “His mother drank a lot. She didn’t think the brother’s condition was serious. But Jake knew better, so when his brother’s fever kept climbing, Jake called an ambulance. They came and took him to the hospital. Jake saved his life.”
Maggie tried to swallow over the ache in the back of her throat. Her sister April was a social worker, which meant that Maggie had heard all kinds of awful stories. She had a feeling she knew how this one ended, but waited silently. Dreading it.
Mason cleared his throat, clearly not relishing telling her the next part. “Jake’s mother was furious. She probably didn’t want any authorities nosing around, not even to save her own son. She beat the crap out of Jake. He woke up two days later on the couch. And you know what the sick thing is?”
She shook her head and waited for the flood of nausea to subside.
Mason’s tone was more bitter than she’d ever heard it. “Jake said moving him off the floor was his mother’s way of saying she was sorry.”
* * * *
Maggie drove home with a terrible weight on her shoulders. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jake covered in cuts and bruises, waking up on the couch. He would have been Sawyer’s age, a little boy trying to survive in a world where grownups were just bigger, more dangerous children. Nothing about that sat well with her.
She parked in her usual spot behind the bakery and then went upstairs. Gus was already clawing at the other side of the door, snorting and grunting. Without opening the door all the way, she felt around for his leash. Gus strained to get to her, so it was easy to hook the leash to his collar. He bolted down the stairs, yanking her after him, and then stood panting and wagging his tail, waiting for her to catch up.
Not even Gus’s antics could lift her spirits. Maggie continued to teeter between hurt and horror. She kept rubbing her hands against her chest, trying to ease the heaviness there. Earlier today, the world had been spinning too fast. Now it seemed to be crawling, and she couldn’t think of a way to make it move normally again.
Gus finished sniffing and peeing. She took him upstairs, fed him and then took a long shower. Her breasts were still tender. Knowing what she now knew about Jake made her desire for him that much deeper. Stronger. She wanted to drive away his darkness with the power of her hands, her lips, her body.
Tired as she was, sleep wouldn’t come. She fluffed her pillows, threw the covers off, then on, then off. Finally, she gave up, put on denim shorts, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Gus was snoring, so she slipped outside alone. Maybe if she walked for a while, her thoughts would stop rat-wheeling and she could breathe again.
Cuervo was so quiet at night. Crickets chirped sleepily from the bushes. Wild bergamot released its minty fragrance into the night air. The big water tower with the word Cuervo on it looked ghostly in the moonlight.
If Gus had been with her, they would have headed for the park. Tonight, she turned in the opposite direction toward the Regal.
As she got closer, she saw the metal accordion gate was open. Inside, lights shone. Her heart gave a painful thump. It had to be Jake. Who else would be working this late?
Instinct told her going in there was a bad idea. Jake was clearly working through something. Or not. Maybe he really was so wounded, he would never recover. Maybe she should be getting as far away from him as possible. But she found herself drawn inside like a sleepwalker, even though she had no idea what to expect.
She found him stripped to the waist and busting up a stack of wood beams with an ax. He’d attached half a dozen high-powered flashlights to a generator, which hummed loudly enough to mask her footsteps. Jake brought the ax in an arc above his head, the blade glittering at the top of the swing. When the ax came down, the wood flew apart. The muscles in his arms and back flexed and rippled.
Jake seemed utterly absorbed in his work. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. How unreal it was to see billionaire Jake Sutton chopping wood like a laborer.
He must have sensed her presence. He looked up, his chest heaving and wet. His eyes darkened. The space between them seemed to thicken with heat.
In that moment, she would have given anything just to feel his hands on her skin. Longing like she had never felt before turned her insides into a mass of quivering raw desire. She walked toward him, unable to stop herself.
Jake didn’t smile. His eyes brooded over her face. “If you came to bitch at me about bailing on your dinner party, I’m not sorry.”
She blinked. Readjusted. Put her guard up. “I see. So when somebody asks about your family, you always just take off?”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me or my family.”
Oh, so it was her fault for failing to read his mind or for not knowing what the hell had been eating him alive? Words came pushing out of her throat. Hot words that she had no control over. “You’re right. I don’t know. You do a great job of driving everyone away, Jake, including me.”
“What, do I owe you, princess? One romp in the woods and suddenly it’s share-time?”
Maggie heard a guttural roaring in her ears. How could he cheapen what had happened between them? “Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said, low and furious. “How dare you say those things to me!”
She didn’t know this Jake. She didn’t even like this Jake.
A mask dropped over his face. “I’m busy,” he said coldly. “I have work to do.” He rolled his shoulders as though trying to shrug her off. Then he swung the ax and buried it in the rotted beams.
“I’m not going away,” she said. “You think being a rude dick is going to scare me? You have no idea who you’re dealing with. You think you’re the only one who ever felt pain? Who felt rejected? I shot myself up full of fertility hormones three times a day for six months trying to get pregnant. I went through surgeries. And that whole time I was trying to get pregnant, my husband was out screwing my best friend. I loved that man. He was my world. And he got her pregnant instead of me.”
Now that the awful shameful truth was said, she couldn’t take it back. The words came out so fast, they were choking her.
For a second, Jake looked almost feral. “What makes you think I care?”
Maggie’s fingers flew to her lips. His cruelty hit her dead center, radiating out, making her nerves go numb. “I told you that because it was the worst moment of my life. The worst kind of betrayal. I told you that because if you think you’re the only one bad things happened to, you’re not only wrong, you’re blind, stupid and selfish.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. There were pieces of wood stuck to his sweaty chest. She wanted to yell, What the hell is the matter with you? What’s so terrible you can’t tell me? But it wouldn’t have done any good. With Jake, the next move was always his, and the best you could hope for was the strength to stand your ground.
She stared at him, heart booming.
“Go home, Maggie,” he said. “I’m a lost cause.”
“No.”
He tossed the ax on the pile of debris. “What do you want then? Is this the part where you try to tough love the asshole out of me? Where we kiss and make up and ignore the truth?”
She thrust her chin out. “Oh, so we’re telling the truth now? What truth?”
He threw his arms wide. “I’m not relationship material! This is all you get. Just this. You can’t change me. I’m damaged goods. Hell, maybe we all are. Maybe relationships are bullshit, and there’s nothing to hope for except compatible dysfunction.”
She preferred it when he was shouting. This Jake seemed so bitter. So cynical. She hated him right now—hated him because there was a grain of truth in what he said.
Maybe there was some part of her that believed if she made the world a safer place for him, he might realize how much he needed her.
And if Jake needed her, he would never leave.
Oh, God.
She stared down at her empty hands. Her vision blurred.
Jake seemed to hesitate, as though sensing he had gone too far. He took a step toward her. She quickly stepped back.
Coldness crept into her limbs, causing them to tremble uncontrollably. It felt as though she’d been trapped inside her walk-in freezer at the bakery. There was nothing but this awful cold, so harsh it burned.
Jake raked both hands through his hair with the violence of a man who wanted to pull it all out by the roots. “You shouldn’t have come, Maggie.”
“No, I was right to come.”
“I did you a favor,” he said, the cords in his neck straining against the skin. “Now you know the real me. Now you know what an asshole I am.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Maggie brushed her hands up her arms, trying to get warm. She had to go home. She had to find a way to make the trembling stop. “This isn’t you, Jake. This is some lame attempt at keeping me from actually seeing you.”
Maggie turned to go and then stopped. “Know what else is sad? I was falling in love with you,” she confessed. “You can throw that back in my face if you want to. I don’t care.”
For a fraction of a second, his expression softened. He started to say something and then fell silent.
“You see?” she said. “You’re so crazy about the truth? That’s what the truth looks like.”
She walked up the aisle, feeling the full weight of her unhappiness pressing down on her. Only the rows of shabby red velvet theater seats bore silent witness to her tears.