CHAPTER NINETEEN
What the hell just happened?
Jake found himself puzzled and awestruck by it. But he was so happy.
For starters, he’d never let any woman sleep over before. It had all been drive-by sex or sex at her place or sex at hotels. This morning, he’d woken up with Maggie warm and delicious in his arms. He couldn’t stop touching her. Breathing her.
The second first was a home-cooked breakfast, which she made while wearing his T-shirt. A good thing, too, because his cooking sucked. He’d been so turned on by the sight of her long smooth legs, what the hem of his shirt barely covered, they didn’t even make it all the way through the meal.
But the hardest first, the one that cost him, was what happened after they’d wound up in bed again.
In his post-coital haze, he’d told Maggie damn near everything there was to tell about his ugly past. He had to. He knew that if he told her the truth, he stood a chance of putting the past firmly behind him. If he lied—or lied by omission—not only would it become a part of his future, but a part of their relationship.
So with Maggie’s head on his shoulder, he swallowed his pride and gave her a rough sketch of the basics.
He told her what it was like growing up in a trailer park with his mom and his brother. The times the water got shut off because the bill wasn’t paid, and he and Dillon walked the quarter mile to the gas station, often in the dark, to fill plastic water jugs at the bathroom sink.
He told her about making Ramen noodles in a coffeemaker. How often Cheez Whiz and crackers were all they’d had for dinner. Then, feeling her body tense, he told her even darker truths about the drunken fights his mother had with her boyfriends. The night one of her boyfriends came staggering into the bedroom Jake shared with Dillon. The panic and fury he felt knowing what that mean-eyed sonofabitch was there for. How he’d sprung out of bed, slapped on the light and started shouting.
He’d been ten years old then. He stole an ax out of a neighbor’s yard and kept it under the bed from that moment on. He and Dillon slept with a chair wedged under the door handle, sometimes huddled in the bunk bed while their mother screamed and glass shattered and the neighbors did nothing because there were times when they fought like that, too.
Jake made it clear to Maggie that he didn’t want sympathy. He just wanted her to hear him out. He wanted her to know why he was the way he was. But the whole time he told her, he was shaking inside. And God, how he fucking hated that.
He knew she could never understand, not even if she wanted to. He’d seen her family—the way her dad adored her, how devoted her mom was to all the girls. No one drank. No one came home from school, found their mom passed out, and an ambulance idling out front. Maggie could never really know what it was like to live in squalor and in fear.
He clasped her hand, which she’d rested gently on his chest. His mind told him that Maggie was the last woman in the world who might think less of him for having come from trash, but his heart shriveled in fear. He felt as though admitting the truth, saying it out loud, was the starkest form of betrayal. That the hand of God would smite him—not only for confessing to a weakness, but for pulling back the curtain on his drunk, bitter, foul-mouthed mother.
But Jake wasn’t someone who left things half done. He took a deep breath and told her the rest.
There were beatings. Until he was thirteen, he did the best he could to endure them. Then one day when Loretta went after Dillon, Jake stopped her the only way he could: grabbing her shoulder and flinging her away from his little brother. She’d crashed into a wall.
She feared him after that. Her fear became a slew of abusive, horrible words. Words that were her only weapon. Even now, Jake knew those words had hurt him in ways her fists never could.
“Aunt Pearl and Uncle Marty had a farm with horses,” he said. “The best moments of our childhood were spent there. They tried to get custody of me and my brother, but you know how that goes. After Loretta won in court, she wouldn’t let us see them for two years.”
Maggie slowly drew circles on his chest. For once, he was glad he couldn’t see her face. He could feel her muscles stiffen during certain parts of the story. He knew how hard it was to hear this shit.
“That’s why I promised myself I would do everything within my power to never be poor again,” he said. “I will never live like that. I will never put another human being through the crap I went through.”
His shoulder was wet. She was crying. He didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s feelings. But now that he’d done the right thing and told her, they could put all this shit behind them. They could go on with their lives and their relationship. Maggie could never accuse him of not opening up to her. He’d done more than open up. He’d sliced open a damned vein.
“Thank you for telling me,” Maggie said softly. She turned his face toward hers and slowly, tenderly kissed him. There was heat to the kiss, and he found himself being pulled under deeper than he’d ever been before.
The rawness in his chest felt a little scary. It took him a second to realize what it was. Love. He loved her. As much as the truth baffled him, it also filled him with a sense of protectiveness and the need to make her happy. That need was so overwhelming, it almost drowned out the fear of having it.
But he couldn’t take the final step and tell her that his mother was dying. He couldn’t risk having Maggie think less of him for refusing to go see Loretta. She’d never forgive him. To Maggie, it was family first, no matter how awful that family might be. He knew that.
Then as the kiss went from sweet to scorching, he let the thought go and sank into all that blissful heat.
* * * *
“Let’s go to Paris,” Jake said. “I just bought a hotel there and I think we should go check it out, don’t you?”
Maggie shoved herself up against the headboard of the bed and pulled the sheet along with her. Paris? It was hard to think clearly. They’d barely come up for air this morning. She hadn’t even seen his house properly and—Paris?
Before last night, it would have seemed like one more crazy sexy dream. Now it felt as though anything were possible. Still, there were logistical issues that she was too muddled to work through right now.
“I can’t go to Paris,” she said. “I have a bakery to run, remember? Those cakes aren’t going to bake themselves, you know.”
He rolled over on his stomach and grinned up at her, that boyish grin she knew was especially for her. “So ask that woman who works for you.”
“Coralee?” Maggie bit her lip. Could Coralee look after the bakery? Did she even want to?
“Call her.”
Maggie thought about romantically lit cobblestone streets, quaint restaurants and outdoor cafés. The Seine glittering in the moonlight. That bridge with all the locks on it. How many times had she watched Gene Kelly in American in Paris? How many years had she wanted this?
The whole thing was nuts, of course. But then, so was last night. So was coming to Dallas. So was dating Jake. And look how stupidly happy it had made her so far.
She grabbed her cell phone and speed-dialed Coralee’s number.
Coralee picked up on the first ring. “There’s a UFO cake in the pantry!” she crowed. “It’s the best cake I ever laid eyes on. I don’t care who you made it for. I wanna buy it.”
“What were you doing in the pantry?” Maggie asked. “Today’s your day off. The cake was supposed to be a surprise.”
“You mean it’s for me?” Coralee gabbled something unintelligible to whoever was in the room with her. Maggie assumed it was Ed. “Good. ’Cause I already took it home with me. I came in this morning to see if you needed help with the inventory. Then I laid eyes on that cake and I just been in a state about it ever since.”
“Why didn’t you call? I could’ve told you it was yours. If it has an alien on it, of course it’s yours.”
Jake raised one eyebrow, obviously trying to understand what they were talking about.
“Well, to tell you true, I heard you might be…busy,” Coralee said in an undertone. “Leastways, that’s what folks here is sayin’.”
Maggie suppressed a groan of annoyance. There was only one place they could have heard that—Priscilla.
“How’d you figure that out with the glass and all?” Coralee wanted to know. “I went out this morning and got me a whole mess of glow sticks on account on this one’s out already and—”
“You’re supposed to eat the cake, Coralee,” Maggie said, “not stare at it.”
“The hell you say! Ed tried to tuck into it and I near about tore his head off. Speakin’ of which, so cute the way you got his arms all stretched up like that. Ed says it’s just like being there.”
Maggie laughed, which drew a puzzled look from Jake. Then she asked Coralee if she wanted to look after the bakery for a few days.
“You mean by myself?” Coralee exclaimed. “The baking and everything?”
“Well, yes.”
Coralee gave a whoop that was probably for Ed’s benefit and then the line went dead. What do you know? Maggie thought. If she’d known how happy it would make her, she would have baked Coralee a cake and taken a vacation months ago
“Are we really doing this?” she asked Jake, who was still rummaging. “I don’t even have my passport.”
He stuck his head out and winked. “You’re with me. You don’t need a passport.”
“Seriously?” She sighed, thinking about the time she and a few friends went to Mexico, how long they stood in line with sunburns and needing a restroom. “I didn’t bring enough things to wear.”
“The hotel is right in the heart of Montmartre. We can get whatever you need. Let me just call Emma and then we’re out the door.”
While Jake made his phone calls, Maggie showered, dressed and then wandered through the house.
She’d never seen anyplace more beautiful. Everything was glass and marble, but there were textures, too, that warmed the masculine space—nubby throw pillows in a rainbow of colors. Spiral-shaped lamps. For someone who’d been raised by wolves, Jake sure had gorgeous taste.
Strange how she’d been holding her breath ever since this morning. The things he’d said had affected her deeply, but there was this other part that had taken a while to sink in. He was the strongest man she’d ever known. But what part of himself did he have to sacrifice in order to rise above? What if he could never get it back again?
She went upstairs and blinked in awe when she saw a kitchen the size of a church, flanked by stained-glass windows. From the breakfast room, she spotted a helipad with a helicopter on it. All this Jake had earned himself. None of it was given to him. He’d taken nothing—less than nothing—and created beauty.
When Todd was wooing her, he picked her up in his old beater truck with the rusted bumpers and the rifle rack drilled to the back of the cab. They’d go up to Hunter’s Point to make out. Todd was a million lifetimes ago, a dream that died before it had a chance to live. Now she was walking through a different sort of dream and her eyes were fully open.
But like all beautiful dreams, it might only exist for a minute. When it died, would she have the grace and the dignity to let go?
Jake popped into the kitchen. “Are you ready?”
She spun around, surprised because she hadn’t heard him come up the stairs. His skin glowed from a recent shave. The soft blue Henley he wore played up the color of his eyes. Just looking at him made her ask herself what she would do when he was gone. How would she deal with the memory of this moment when he stood here, sexy as hell, ready to take her to Paris?
Jake put his hand out for her. His hand was warmer than hers. Stronger. She was comforted by that.
He had a driver take them to the airport. Once again Maggie felt like royalty when she crossed the tarmac and then climbed the stairs. How strange that being in love was a happy kind of dying. It made you feel as though the world was created just for the two of you, that you had a secret no one else could know or understand.
On the flight over, Maggie fell asleep with her head on Jake’s chest. She dreamed—not of Paris, but of him.