Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The dinner had been perfect—too perfect, Faith realized as she set down her wine glass and studied Jake’s face across the candlelit table.
He’d remembered every detail she’d ever mentioned, from her grandmother’s china pattern to her favorite flowers.
The man had literally rebuilt her kitchen around her dreams.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Jake said, his voice warm with affection as he reached across to trace her knuckles with his thumb. “I can practically hear the gears turning.”
“I’m just…overwhelmed,” she admitted, gesturing at the transformed space around them. “This is beyond anything I imagined. You’ve given me back my home.”
“You deserve it,” he said simply, then stood and began clearing their plates. “The house has good bones. It just needed someone who could see its potential.”
Faith watched him move around the kitchen with easy confidence, noting how he seemed to know instinctively where everything belonged. “You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this space.”
“I wanted to get it right,” he admitted, loading dishes into the dishwasher. “I just want you to be happy here. Whether that’s with me or…” He shrugged, but she caught the flash of vulnerability in his eyes. “Whether that’s with me or not.”
Faith’s breath caught at his quiet honesty. Her hand moved unconsciously to her chest, as if she could hold together something that was already coming undone. Here was a man who had spent weeks rebuilding her home, asking for nothing in return except the chance to make her smile.
Jake returned to the table with two mugs of coffee, setting one in front of her. “I have something for you,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket.
He pulled out a heavy package, setting it gently beside her coffee cup. “It’s not much. Just something I thought you might like.”
Faith unwrapped it carefully, revealing a vintage cookbook— The Joy of Cooking from 1953, the cover worn soft with age. She opened it to find handwritten notes in the margins, recipes modified and annotated in faded blue ink.
“It was my great-grandmother’s,” Jake said with a grin that was pure mischief.
“She taught my grandmother to cook from this book. Ruth insisted you have it, despite the fact that—and I quote—‘that girl wouldn’t know a skillet from a saxophone.’ She also mentioned something about the way to a Murphy man’s heart being through his stomach, so apparently you have some learning to do. ”
Faith laughed, a genuine sound that filled the kitchen with warmth. “Your grandmother has quite the confidence in my potential.”
“She’s an optimist,” Jake said, his eyes dancing with humor. “She figures if you can diagnose relationship problems on national radio, you can probably figure out how to boil water without burning down the house.”
“That’s generous of her,” Faith said, tracing the handwritten notes with gentle fingers. “But Jake, this is a family heirloom. I can’t?—”
“You can,” he said, moving around to stand behind her chair. His hands settled lightly on her shoulders. “Look at the inscription.”
Faith flipped to the front page and found elegant script: “To Mary ‘Ruth’ Murphy, may your kitchen always be filled with love and laughter. –Margaret Murphy (Mom), Christmas 1953.”
“Ruth wants you to have it,” Jake said, his voice soft near her ear. “She says maybe you’ll want to try your hand at it someday. And if not, at least the kitchen will remember what it was built for.”
Faith set the book down carefully and turned in her chair to face him. The thoughtfulness behind the gesture, the way he’d shared something so personal and precious, undid every defense she’d carefully constructed.
“Thank you,” she whispered, then rose to her feet. “Jake, I?—”
The words caught in her throat as she found herself standing inches from him, close enough to see the flecks of silver in his blue eyes, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his skin.
“Faith,” he said softly, his hand coming up to cup her cheek. “I’ve been wanting to do this all evening.”
When his lips met hers, it was gentle at first, a question rather than a demand. But when she melted into him, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, the kiss deepened into something that made her forget every reason she’d built her walls so high.
When they broke apart, Faith rested her forehead against his, breathing unsteadily. The moment stretched between them, full of possibility and promise.
“I’m still in love with you,” Jake whispered in the soft glow of the kitchen candlelight. “I want you to know that, whatever happens. This ache in my chest hasn’t gone away.”
Faith’s throat tightened with emotion. She wasn’t ready to say the words back, but she reached up to cup his face, trying to convey what she couldn’t yet speak aloud.
The explosion shattered the moment with the violence of an earthquake. Glass tinkled against hardwood somewhere in the house, and car alarms shrieked their electronic protests from the street.
“What the—” Jake was already moving, instinctively pulling Faith behind him as debris rattled the windows.
Faith struggled to process what had just happened, her hands shaking as adrenaline flooded her system. “Was that a gas line? The neighbors?—”
Jake was at the window, his face grim in the orange glow filtering through the curtains. “It was the trailer.”
“What?” Faith rushed to his side, then gasped at the sight below. Where Jake’s mobile office had sat in her driveway, flames now licked at the sky. Debris scattered across her front lawn like deadly confetti, and neighbors emerged from their houses in various states of undress.
“My work,” she breathed, thinking of the laptop and files she’d left inside. “Everything’s gone.”
Jake studied the destruction with the trained eye of a contractor who’d seen his share of accidents.
“The gas line’s intact,” he said slowly, pointing to where the connection should have sparked secondary fires.
“And the electrical feed is still live—see the sparks? If this had been a utility accident, we’d see a different burn pattern. ”
Faith felt ice settle in her veins. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the explosion came from inside the trailer.” His voice was carefully controlled. “Faith, you should have been in there tonight. You always sleep in the trailer. I can’t think what could’ve caused it. An electrical short wouldn’t have done that.”
The words hit her like a physical blow. Someone had intended for her to be inside when it exploded.
“He found me,” she whispered, her face draining of color.
Jake went very still. “He? Who’s he, Faith?”
The sirens were getting closer, red and blue lights painting the walls of her kitchen in garish colors. Faith wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the warmth from Jake’s body.
“Faith.” His voice was deadly quiet. “Who is he?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know his name. Just…someone who’s been leaving notes. Messages.”
“Notes.” The word came out flat, dangerous. “What kind of notes?”
“Jake, we should go outside. The fire department?—”
“The notes, Faith.” He stepped into her path, his blue eyes blazing with an intensity that made her step back. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The betrayal in his voice cut deeper than she’d expected. “It’s not what you think?—”
“What I think,” he said, his voice carefully controlled, “is that someone just tried to kill you. What I think is that you’ve been keeping secrets from me, and now you could have died because of them.”
“It wasn’t like that?—”
“Then what was it like?” He raked his hands through his hair, and she could see him fighting for control. “How long has this been going on?”
“I didn’t want to worry you?—”
“You didn’t want to worry me?” His voice was tight with barely controlled emotion. “Faith, someone just tried to kill you. How is keeping me in the dark protecting anyone?”
Faith flinched at the pain in his voice. “You don’t understand. I’ve dealt with things like this before. Overzealous fans, people who get fixated?—”
“Fans don’t usually try to blow people up, Faith.”
The truth of that statement settled between them like a chasm. Outside, the sirens grew louder, and Faith could hear voices shouting instructions.
“We need to go outside,” she said quietly. “The police will want to talk to us.”
Jake studied her face for a long moment, and she saw the exact moment he pulled back, when the walls went up in his eyes. But instead of anger, she saw hurt. Deep, wounding hurt.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “They will. And Faith? We’re going to talk about this. All of it.”
* * *
Detective Marcus Webb looked like a man who’d been pulled away from his evening plans.
Tall and broad shouldered with salt-and-pepper hair that suggested he was somewhere in his fifties, he had the kind of weathered face that spoke of years spent dealing with the worst humanity had to offer.
His tie was slightly askew, and there was a coffee stain on his white shirt that told Faith he’d probably been working late when the call came in.
But his dark eyes were sharp and alert, missing nothing as they moved between Faith and Jake.
Faith sat across from him at her kitchen table, acutely aware of Jake’s rigid posture beside her. They weren’t touching now, the easy intimacy of earlier replaced by a careful distance that felt like a physical ache.
“Dr. Hartwell,” Webb began, his pen poised over a notebook, “I understand you’ve had some unusual contact from fans recently?”
“Some,” she said carefully. “Nothing that seemed threatening at the time.”
“At the time,” Jake repeated, his voice flat. “Meaning it seems threatening now?”
She shot him a look that he ignored, his attention fixed on the detective.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Webb said, seemingly oblivious to the tension crackling between them. “When did you first notice unusual attention?”