Chapter 4
4
“Cerberus?” Ella looked from the dog to Jake to the dog.
“Uh huh,” he confirmed, squatting to give him a pat.
The dog looked up at her, wagging his tail in apology, as if even he knew the name was rather ambitious. She may not have been expecting three heads but she’d been expecting more than a skinny Jack Russell cross.
She couldn’t have been more surprised had it been a Chihuahua called Satan.
“This is the watchdog with the menacing personality?”
Cerberus gave a well-timed pathetic tremble as Jake nodded again. “Underneath this flea-bitten exterior lurks the dark heart of a ninja dog.”
Crouching beside Jake, she scratched behind a soft, floppy ear. “Ninja dog, huh?” Cerberus angled his head to allow Ella more access and gave a shudder of ecstasy which made her smile. “What do you say, boy? Want to come live at my house?”
Cerberus whined his agreement and Ella sighed as she ran her hands down the length of his body. “Okay, then.”
“Thank you.”
The soft words were heartfelt and Ella glanced at Jake. Which was a big mistake. Their heads were close and, out of the neon gloom, his features were sharp and defined.
As a teenager Jake had been good-looking. But as an adult, with that careless smatter of face scruff, his broadly angled face and a set of acre-wide shoulders, his attraction had matured into a lethal weapon.
He was a man now.
A man who, two years ago, had taken her to his bed and systematically reduced her to a pile of quivering goo.
Of its own accord, her gaze dropped to his mouth and her breath hitched as she remembered how masterfully he’d kissed her that day. The thrill of it tingled through her lips even now and the air in the alley became heavy with anticipation.
Ella shut her eyes on a shuddery breath, trying to block him out, but she was close enough to feel the warm puff of his breath, to smell beer and lime. Close enough to just lean in and take. If she wanted. But she didn’t… right?
Oh God. This was bad.
Hastily, she stood, her trembling legs barely holding her upright. “Come on, Cerberus.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s go home.”
Without a backward glance, Ella headed out of the alley assuming, like most strays she knew, the dog would happily follow. The last thing she expected was Jake falling into step beside her. “What are you doing?” she asked, stopping abruptly.
Jake also stopped. “I’m walking you home.”
Oh hell, no. “It’s only a few blocks. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going to let you walk home alone in the dark.”
“It’s not dark yet,” Ella quibbled. Not really. “And anyway, I’m not alone, am I? I have the hound from hell, ninja dog with me.”
They both looked at Cerberus, who wagged his tail and trembled at the same time. Rolling his eyes at the pathetic combination, Jake said, “I insist,” and started walking again.
Ella refused to move. She didn’t want him to accompany her. She didn’t want to spend time with him. Frankly after two years of mediocre sex, a week of hot dreams and whatever the hell that was just now, she was so horny she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t try to jump him before they even left the alley.
“I’m a big girl, Jake. I don’t need a chaperone.” If anyone needed a chaperone it was him.
He stopped, walked back to her, grabbed her arm and pulled. “Just come on.”
Ella resisted the tug, her skin buzzing where he’d touched her. “What about the bar?”
“I’ll text Pete and let him know I’ll be gone for a bit.”
Ella dug her heels in. “He’s kind of young to have that sort of responsibility, isn’t he?”
“Don’t worry about Pete. He can handle himself.”
Reluctantly, Ella let herself be dragged along, shaking her arm free as soon as they exited the alley. She took some deep, steadying breaths of the warm August air and mentally congratulated herself on not slamming Jake against the bricks and having her way with him.
They ambled along the sidewalk, Cerberus trotting perkily between them, the techno beat from the bar gradually fading. “So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.
Ella, who was pretending she wasn’t walking beside God’s gift to the female anatomy, was grateful for the silence. “Talk is overrated.”
He laughed. “You sound like my kind of woman.”
“Yeah. I figured you for wham, bam type.”
More laughter. “Well, you’d know, sweetheart.”
Muscles deep inside her performed a wild tango at his ungentlemanly reminder. They walked in silence for a moment or two, Cerberus trotting between them, Ella concentrating on the rumble of commuter traffic.
“So what’s the story with you and Rosie?”
Ella didn’t answer for a while. Where did she start? How did she put almost two decades of friendship into words?
“It seems like you’ve known each other for a long time.”
“Nineteen years.”
“She was in Trently?” He frowned. “I’m sure I’d have remembered her.”
“She came halfway through twelfth grade.” He’d moved to Kansas City to further his football career by then.
“Has she always been… alternative?”
Ella grinned. “Always. She grew up in a circus. Like… a literal circus. Her family have been circus people for generations. So she was never going to be beige.”
He laughed. “I bet Trently wasn’t ready for that.”
His laugh was delicious. Rich and warm, oozing over her like warm toffee. It gave her goosebumps despite the sultry evening and those muscles did their thing again. The way they were going she’d have the tightest pelvic floor around.
At least she’d be able to get a job as an exotic dancer firing ping pong balls out of her business if they shut her school down.
“Trently most definitely disapproved.”
He looked at her speculatively. “So you befriended her?”
“Yes.” Actually, Rosie, recognizing a fellow misfit, had invaded her personal space and refused to leave. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“You were always such a…” He shrugged. “A loner.”
Ella snorted. “Do you think that was through choice?” She stopped walking and Cerberus glanced at both of them, giving a low whine. “None of the good moms of Trently wanted their precious little girls playing with Rachel’s daughter.”
And loneliness had been far preferable to rejection.
“None of them wanted their daughters playing with Jake Prince either. Fortunately for me,” he grinned, “teenage girls and their mothers often don’t see eye to eye.”
Yeah, she hadn’t forgotten just how popular Jake had been back then. Ella huffed out a laugh but it rang with hollowness.
“Ella,” he murmured. “The mothers of Trently were a mob of prissy, small-town, narrow-minded bitches.”
She knew he was right but, oh, how she had longed to go to Sarah Charlton’s eighth birthday party along with all the other girls in her class.
Or any of the other birthday parties.
Cerberus whined again as if he could sense Ella’s mood.
“I know that. Now.” She reached down and patted the dog’s head. “But as a kid, I just wanted to fit in. To be like the others.”
“That’s what I liked about you. You were different from the others.”
Surprised, Ella glanced at him. He’d liked her? A bunch of silent distant acknowledgments, some brief, perfunctory exchanges and one dance that had culminated in the world’s most chaste homecoming kiss? “We barely said boo to each other.”
“Yeah, but you never judged me because my father was a drunk who blew our cash at the track every week.”
“Well…” She frowned as she straightened. “That would have been completely hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Trently thrived on hypocrisy.”
Yup. Truer words had never been spoken. She forced herself to walk again, and Jake and Cerberus fell into step.
“For what it’s worth,” he murmured after several beats, “I really liked your mother, too.”
She slid him the side eye. “You knew Rachel?”
He just nodded and she silently berated herself. Of course he knew her mother. Everyone knew Rachel.
Ella remembered the first time she realized what her mother did and why they were ostracized. She’d been in fifth grade and overheard some teachers talking. She remembered the shock as if it was yesterday, trying to comprehend how the woman who danced with her to ‘Blue Moon’ every morning and had home-made, choc-chip muffins waiting for her after school, was the same person these adults were talking about.
She’d always known her mother wasn’t like the other moms but she’d liked that. Rachel had been the prettiest mom at the school and Ella had been secretly proud. She used to sit and watch her put on her make-up every morning, totally entranced, longing for the day when she would be old enough for red lipstick and pink cheeks.
Of course, the fact that Rachel was always in her silky dressing gown, day and night, should have been a clue. As a kid, Ella had just loved the cool slippery feel of it against her face and the way it smelled of perfume and powder. It had seemed so sophisticated. So adult.
Later she’d grown to hate it and all it represented.
“Yeah, well,” she said derisively, shaking off the memories, “she tended to have that effect on anyone with a Y chromosome.”
“No.” Jake shook his head. “She always had the time of day for my dad. A lot of people didn’t. It meant something.”
They paused at a traffic light and Ella was struck by the sincerity blazing in his eyes. It was startling to hear someone defending Rachel and she felt like a child again, desperately wanting Trently to know her mom the way she knew her.
The light changed and the moment passed. When they got to the other side, Ella turned right, away from the main road and into the quiet suburban back streets of Deluca. She hadn’t known where she’d end up all those years ago daydreaming about escape from Trently but the rich, cultural tapestry and sheer anonymity of Inverboro, sprawled along the shore of Lake Michigan, had been a balm to her soul.
She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
“So you and Rosie have been friends since twelfth grade?”
Ella nodded as Jake expertly steered the conversation back on track. “We hitched out of Trently together the night of the prom, ended up here, at her aunt’s place. Rosie always jokes she’s probably the only kid in the world who ran away from the circus to join home.”
He laughed. It filled the warm air around her and cocooned her in a comforting embrace. “So, you didn’t flee with the principal that night?”
“No. Contrary to popular opinion, Mr. Edmonstone and I were not having an illicit affair.”
“He liked you though.”
“Yes. He did. He was the most inspirational person I had ever met. He told me about all the places he’d been and the people he’d met. He encouraged me to aim high. To get out of Trently and make something of myself. Go to college. Travel. Expand my horizons. He was a good teacher. The kind of teacher every student should have. I owe him a lot.”
“He was a pretty decent guy,” Jake agreed. “I wasn’t much of a scholar but he never gave up on me.”
As Jake had spent more time outside Mr. Edmonstone’s office than he’d spent inside a classroom, Ella figured he spoke from experience.
“He sure as shit didn’t seem like some creeper who’d run off with a student.”
Anger simmered in Ella’s belly; she was still pissed at the rumor. “How were we to know he’d choose exactly the same night we were high tailing it out of Trently to pull a disappearing act too?”
And that Trently would put two and two together and come up with five. Because Rachel .
Ella slowed as they approached the old 1930’s brick bungalow sitting cheek by jowl to the ones either side, lights ablaze. It had been her and Rosie’s refuge when they’d first arrived from Trently and been their beloved home ever since.
It sat in a street of similar buildings , the vast majority having undergone renovation as this area of Deluca had become more and more gentrified. Theirs had not, but it had good bones even if it could do with a lick of paint. It did stand out, however, being the only one with a fence.
With so many strays to contain, it had been a necessity.
Clearly already picking up on the furry occupants of the house, Cerberus sniffed at the gatepost with great interest.
“That’s a lot of house for two,” Jake said.
Ella smiled. “Two of us, Rosie’s two eccentric great aunts – Daisy and Iris – several stray animals and a teenage boy.”
“Oh yes. How is Cameron?”
Ella’s hand tightened on the gate. “He’s fine,” she dismissed maybe a little too quickly.
“He’s what, fifteen?” Jake grimaced. “I remember what I was like at fifteen. Full of hormones and rage. That’s a tough age.”
“He’s… it’s… challenging at times.”
Now there was the world’s greatest understatement. Ella felt like she’d been beating her head against a wall for the last two years. She was somewhere between concussed and popping a blood vessel. Even the thought of having to confront him over his latest episode of truancy was bringing on a headache.
A warm hand slid over hers. “Hey,” Jake murmured. “Don’t forget he also grew up in Trently.”
Ella looked at his hand, surprised at how much strength it loaned her. She was trying hard, really hard, to remember. God knew she’d cut him enough poor-kid-grew-up-Rachel’s-kid-too slack to last a lifetime.
But she was nearly at the end of her rope.
Her brother was so hostile and she didn’t understand how blowing off his education – his one true chance at leaving his upbringing behind for good – was going to make anything better.
“Do you want to come in?”
The husky invitation was out before she had a chance to fully consider the wisdom of it. Which spoke volumes about her reluctance to be the big sister right now. She might have been snippy and irritable with him at the bar and he came burdened with their own complicated history she’d rather not think about but, standing here contemplating the fraught conversation in her future, she’d take whatever delaying tactic she could get.
Even if it was Jake.
He didn’t say anything for long beats which, perversely, only made her more desperate for him to agree. “It’s usually utter chaos around here,” she admitted with a nervous half-laugh, “but if you’re game…”
Cerberus yipped an encouraging bark and they both glanced at him as he gave an enthusiastic tail wag/whole body wiggle.
Jake petted the dog. “I’m always game.”
Relief flowed cool as Lake Michigan in December through Ella’s system and she pushed the squeaky gate open. “Virgin sacrifices first.”
He grinned. “Should I be afraid?”
“Very. Daisy loves fresh blood.”