Chapter 15
Fifteen
The mattress beneath her was hard, much harder than the bed in Tallulah’s bedroom in Matchfield. She lay very still, the world whirling around her. She must be seasick. The pitch and roll of the bunk beneath her was powerful, and she gripped the sheet beneath her for some kind of ballast.
At least the cabin didn’t smell like cigarette smoke—that would have been the final straw to her churning stomach. For the first time in days she couldn’t smell stale smoke.
He was sitting by the window, as he had been when she first woke up, and she wondered what he’d do if she suddenly threw up. You could tell a real hero if he didn’t flinch from a woman becoming violently ill.
“You need me to get a bucket and hold your head?” His voice was odd in the darkness, both tender and amused, and Susan took a deep breath, trying to still her roiling stomach. It came as no surprise. She already knew she loved this man desperately.
“Jack?” she murmured, her voice odd, lighter, breathier.
The bunk beneath her stopped pitching. It was wider than a bunk, wider than the twin bed in Lou’s bedroom. She felt him cross the room, standing over her, and she was suddenly afraid to open her eyes.
“Jake,” he corrected her. “Jake Wyczynski, remember?”
Her eyes flew open. “Oh, my God,” she croaked.
His grin was crooked. “No, Jake Wyczynski,” he corrected her again. “How are you feeling? You’ve been dead to the world—Mary was wondering whether she was going to have to call off the wedding. Frankly, I think she would have been more than happy to do so.”
She looked up at him, dizzy and disoriented. It had been a dream. Of course it had—she’d known it all along, even while she was in the midst of it Maybe.
“Where is my mother?” Her voice still felt strange to her, light and cool, not warm and husky.
“Alex convinced her to go out for dinner, and I promised I’d sit with you. It’s a good thing you decided to finally wake up—she was going to call the paramedics if you hadn’t surfaced by tonight.”
“Who’s Alex? And what day is it?”
Jake didn’t even blink, but Susan wasn’t so confused that she didn’t recognize the faint shifting expression. “It’s Friday night, kiddo. You’re marrying your true love at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
She pushed herself up in the bed, shaking her head slightly to clear it No long dark tresses swinging around her face, and without thinking she grabbed her chest. Thirty-four-A once more. Damn.
Of course Jake didn’t miss a thing. “I didn’t touch you,” he drawled. “I like my woman awake and willing.”
She looked up at him. He towered over the bed, a tall man with a lean, rangy body.
His hair was far too long, pushed back from his deeply tanned face, and lines fanned out around his light blue eyes.
He was wearing old jeans and a khaki shirt and for the first time she realized he was wearing a small gold hoop in one ear.
He looked like a pirate. He looked like Jack McGowan.
He looked like the man she loved.
She was still out of her mind, she decided briskly, throwing back the covers. “What about the wedding rehearsal? The rehearsal dinner?”
“You didn’t want a rehearsal dinner, remember?
You said there was too much stuff going on this week already, and you wanted the night before the wedding to be peaceful.
And your mother stood in for you during the rehearsal.
She said you were tired and needed your rest Obviously, since you’ve been asleep since Wednesday afternoon. ”
“Obviously.” She looked down at her familiar/unfamiliar body.
She was wearing an oversize cotton T-shirt and panties, and she supposed she should find a bathrobe or something or wrap the sheet around her, but she couldn’t bring herself to bother.
Jake was a grown-up—he would hardly be overcome with lust.
“I need coffee,” she said. “Good coffee that doesn’t come in a can.”
“Hey, I can arrange that. You take a shower and get dressed, and it’ll be waiting for you.”
Her head was pounding. She reached up to thread her fingers through her hair, shocked at the thick, close-cropped length of it And then she looked up at Jake. “You still didn’t tell me who Alex is.”
There was only the faintest softening in Jake’s cynical expression. “I think you can guess, Susan. He’s your father. He came back for your wedding.”
The day had definitely gone from bad to worse, Susan thought standing under the shower as she tried to wash the fog from her mind. Her small breasts felt unfamiliar beneath her soapy hands, her skin felt odd, prickly, and for the first time she didn’t feel cold. She felt hot edgy, confused.
Somewhere she’d managed to lose three days, and now she was back, just as if nothing had ever happened. Back with Jake Wyczynski, a man almost as unsettling as the dreams that had plagued her.
Or was it a dream? Had she slept for days, or had she really traveled back in time, into her Aunt Tallulah’s body?
There was only one way to tell. If it were true, then she’d manage to change history.
Aunt Tallulah hadn’t died in a train wreck on her way to her honeymoon, she hadn’t married Ned Marsden.
She’d run off with the man she’d always loved, and maybe she was still alive somewhere, having the time of her life.
It felt good to wear a thin wisp of a lace bra again, good to slip into baggy jeans and an oversize T-shirt. By the time she wandered out into her mother’s kitchen, the smell of French Roast coffee was strong in the air.
He handed her a mug without speaking, and it was just the way she liked it, black and strong and sweet. She didn’t bother asking him how he knew she took her coffee with sugar only. There were other, far more important questions plaguing her.
“Your mother’s waiting for you in the living room,” he said. “And I think I’ll make myself scarce. I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to wear for your wedding. Assuming it’s still on?” There was a faint question in his voice.
“It’s still on,” she said grimly, wondering if she was out of her mind. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to come.”
“You’ve said that before. I’m ignoring you. I promised Louisa I’d come, and I keep my promises.”
“I thought I told you the last time I saw you that I didn’t want you coming to the wedding?”
“Funny you should mention the last time you saw me. I don’t remember that we did much talking.”
She could still taste him. His mouth against hers, slow, deliberate, a kiss that could destroy a lifetime of well-laid plans.
“Really?” she said in a light voice. “I’d forgotten.”
He didn’t say a word, his expression of disbelief was enough. “Don’t waste your time, kid. Go talk to your mother. She wants to see for certain you’re all right.”
“Is she alone?”
“Yup. She sent Alex away when I told her you were up. You gonna give her a hard time?”
Susan took a deep breath. Four days ago the answer would have been an unequivocal yes. Now life was no longer the certainty she’d counted on. Mary Abbott had been her best friend, her confidante, her savior. Both in this life and in the past. “That’s my business, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “You’ve got some wedding presents from your godmother to catch up on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She didn’t want him to leave. Standing in the kitchen, barefoot defiant she didn’t want him to leave her.
She wasn’t ready to face her mother. She wasn’t ready to face her life.
Instead she wanted to throw everything away and run off with him.
Crazy, because she’d worked so hard to get what she wanted, and Jake was just the kind of man she’d always avoided.
“Sure,” she said carelessly. “I’ll be the one in white.”
“Will I get to kiss the bride?” It seemed like a smart-ass, casual question, and maybe Susan only imagined the thread of tension beneath the light tone.
“You already did,” she said.
“I could do it again.”
She looked up at him, startled. She wanted him to. Desperately. She moved, almost imperceptibly, and he reached out his hand, almost touching her, when Mary appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Susan?” she said in her soft voice. “I’ve been so worried about you, sweetie.” She swept her into a deliciously scented embrace, smelling of her classic Chanel. The last time she’d hugged Mary she’d smelled of chocolate.
“I’m fine, Mother,” she said, pulling away just a little to look down into her mother’s eyes. The same warm brown ones, but far wiser than they had been at age nine. “I was just very tired.”
“I’d say that was an understatement,” Jake drawled, back in his corner of the kitchen.
Mary was looking up at her with an odd expression on her face. “Go away,. Jake,” Susan said. “I need to talk with my mother privately. After all, I am getting married tomorrow.”
“Honey, if you don’t know the facts of life yet I’ll be more than happy to save your mother the trouble of explaining them to you.”
“You’re annoying, you know that?” Susan said severely.
“I try to be.”
“You succeed beyond your wildest dreams.”
“Susan!” Her mother admonished her. “Why in the world are you treating Jake like that? He’s been absolutely wonderful, running errands, calming my fears, sitting by your bed for hours on end.
I don’t know what I would have done without him.
I can’t even begin to tell Louisa how grateful I am, and you should be grateful, as well. ”
Jake grinned, pushing away from the kitchen counter. He didn’t touch her as he passed her. He didn’t need to. For some reason his very presence, the heat from his body, was palpable. “I don’t know how grateful your daughter is.”
She wanted to kick him, but she didn’t have the right shoes on. And she’d already done it.
No, that was Tallulah. Lou had kicked Jack McGowan, a perfectly reasonable move since she was madly in love with him. Whereas Susan had no logical reason to kick Jake Wyczynski. Apart from the fact that he was terminally infuriating.