6. Ember
SIX
EMBER
The next three days passed in a similar fashion.
Jack and I went into town in the morning after dropping Darby off.
We grabbed hot drinks, took a walk, or window shopped the few businesses that were still open.
We made pleasant conversation with all the nosy people who came over to speak to us.
Women looked me up and down, confused, judgmental.
I learned that Jack was an expert at making people feel like they were the center of the universe. Men puffed their chests when they spoke to him. Women blushed and tittered. Age didn’t matter; everyone glowed under his attention.
I felt like a fool for being one of them.
After our morning outing, I’d go home and work from my little dormer bedroom until it was time to come out for dinner, with only some short breaks for food, fresh air, and the bathroom.
After one dinner of half-burned frozen pizza on Tuesday, I decided I’d cook for them while I was here.
It was no big chore; I loved cooking and I was good at it. For once, I had people to cook for.
On Wednesday, I met Gabi, the mother of Darby’s best friend. While we ate breakfast, there was a knock on the kitchen door.
Jack opened it to reveal a woman in her thirties or early forties, wearing slim jeans, a tight turtleneck, and high-heeled boots. Her glossy brown hair was blown out in big waves, and she flashed a bright smile at my husband. My temporary, sort-of, almost husband.
“Jack,” she purred. “So good to see you.” Her eyes darted to me, then to Darby. Her smile widened to the point of almost looking strained at the edges. “Hi, girl. Ready for school?”
“Yeah,” Darby announced. “I’ll just get my shoes and my bag.” She ducked out of the room, and the three of us were left alone.
The woman looked at me. “I’m Gabi.” She gestured at Jack. “Our daughters are best friends.”
“That’s nice,” I replied.
“How are you settling in? I have to say, Jack, I never thought you’d agree to your grandmother’s plans. You, married? I think you’ve broken every heart in Hancock County!”
Jack gave her one of his false, charming smiles. They were easy to spot now. He crossed over to where I stood and slung an arm around my shoulders, tugging me closer. “What can I say? Maybe Grandma’s right about the whole thing.”
I knew I was stiff, and I did my best to soften against him.
My arm went around his back, and my hand curled into his shirt.
He smelled like spice and man, with a hint of sweet berry from his smoothie.
He was warm—he was always warm—and I didn’t want to admit how nice it felt to have the weight of his arm around me.
Gabi’s smile looked a little wooden as she flicked her gaze between the two of us. “Well, I’m delighted that you two seem to be getting along so quickly. We’ll see if it lasts,” she added with a laugh. “Right, Jack?”
Jack went still and stiff beside me, but neither of us had the time to answer before Darby returned. She looked at Gabi, then at the two of us. It looked like she had to fight hard not to roll her eyes.
“Bye, Dad. Bye, Ember.”
“Bye, kiddo,” Jack replied, disengaging from me to give his daughter a hug.
She wiggled her fingers at us—at Jack, mostly—and walked out the door.
There was a short, tense silence, and I looked at my husband. “You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”
His head jerked toward me. “What? Jealous again, Ember?”
I gave him a flat look. “I’m not the one who was jealous in that interaction.”
He sighed. Grimaced. “Gabi and I had a little fling when the girls were little. It barely lasted a month. It was a long time ago. We’re both over it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We are!”
“You might be,” I replied. “Just out of curiosity, how many more interactions will I have like this? Have you slept with every single woman in town?”
“Christ, Ember.” He shoved a hand through his hair.
“So that’s a yes,” I said. There was something amusing about his discomfort, but the whole interaction stung a little. It was a good reminder of what was going on here. We were playing house, we were faking it in public, but that was it.
When we went into town, I held Jack’s hand and reminded myself it meant nothing.
On Thursday, Darby and Jack went to get their second rabies prophylactic shot. No one passed out, which Darby cheerfully announced when they got back home. I told her I was glad, and she laughed while her dad grumbled.
On Friday night, I heard the noise of work in the kitchen, and I figured Jack and Darby were doing their own thing. That was fine; there were some leftovers from yesterday I could heat up when they were done. I turned back to my computer and kept working until there was a knock on the door.
With a touch of a key, I put the screen to sleep and called out, “Yes?”
“It’s me,” Jack said through the door.
My traitorous heart took off, which annoyed me.
“Come in,” I said, and butterflies swarmed in my stomach as Jack appeared in the open doorway.
His hair was mussy but his eyes were bright.
At the end of the day, his stubble was grown out from the clean shave he gave it in the morning.
Very sexy. If you were into that kind of thing. Which I was not.
“Dinner’s ready.”
“Oh,” I said, a little shocked. “Do you…want me to eat with you guys?”
Jack frowned. “Yes?”
“I heard you and Darby downstairs, and I thought… I didn’t want to intrude… I figured…”
Jack leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, making his arms strain against the sleeves of his T-shirt. He was all easy grace and male strength. It was hard to look at him sometimes. His brow arched as his lip twitched. “Ember. Are you hungry?”
Right on cue, my stomach growled. I’d skipped lunch.
His smile widened. “Come down and eat.”
Heart thundering, I got up from my chair and followed him out the door.
The light from the wall sconces gilded his hair as we went down the steps, my eyes straying from the strands to his broad shoulders.
I remembered how it had felt to have his hand on my thigh in the car and his thumb on my lip in the street.
I remembered the brush of his lips across my knuckles when we’d faced his grandmother at the start of the week.
My body’s reaction was unfamiliar. I was a cerebral person. I analyzed. I logged. I assessed. I didn’t feel like this. I didn’t sense and react and overreact.
Jack bowled through that identity like it was made of tissue paper and set my body on fire. He was a big, glaring risk that I couldn’t quantify. I had no frame of reference. I didn’t know what he was capable of doing to me—to my heart, to my mind—other than the fact that it was big, and it was bad.
And yet.
And yet I padded down the steps behind him, and I sat in the chair he pulled out. I nodded at Darby, who set a plate full of roasted chicken, veggies, and potatoes in front of me. The scent of thyme and lemon rose with the steam from my food, and my stomach grumbled again.
“Thank you,” I said, and we sat down to eat. “This looks really good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Jack mock grumbled.
“It’s the one thing Dad can cook.”
“Hey!”
“Okay, it’s one of three things Dad can cook,” Darby amended.
I speared a baby potato and threw her a questioning glance. “What are the other two?”
“Mac ’n cheese and steak,” she said, falling into her own chair across from me. “We have microwave veggies with the steak.”
“I also make stew,” Jack protested as he sat down to my right.
“Yeah, but half the time it turns out gross,” Darby shot back. “Last time the slow cooker exploded.”
Jack’s eyes slid to mine. “It was old,” he explained.
“I see,” I answered, lips twitching.
“You’re making me look bad in front of Ember,” Jack said, reaching over to ruffle Darby’s hair.
Darby yelped and ducked out of the way. “I’m only telling her the truth!”
I watched as Jack let out a full-throated laugh, still reaching over to mess with his wriggling daughter’s hair.
She giggled and squealed, seeming so much younger than she usually did.
Then Jack hooked his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer so he could kiss her temple.
She grumbled, pushing her hair back, but I could tell she was happy.
They were so beautiful together. I’d grown up with a single dad, but it was nothing like this.
There was none of the warmth, closeness, and teasing that I saw between the two of them.
I ached for the child that I’d been, but I couldn’t help being happy for Darby.
And it made me look at Jack differently.
Here, with Darby, he wasn’t the charmer.
He wasn’t putting on an act so his daughter would like him.
His laughter was genuine, and the way he looked at her was so full of tenderness it made my chest ache.
“Eat your dinner,” Jack said to his daughter with a fake scowl. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed again. He turned to me, nodding to my plate. “So?”
“It’s good,” I said when I’d finished my bite of chicken. “Can’t wait to taste the mac and cheese.”
His eyes narrowed. “I feel like you’re making fun of me.”
My giggle surprised me. “I’m not, I promise.”
“It’s okay if you are,” Darby said. “I do it all the time.”
“Quiet, you,” Jack said, and I could tell he didn’t mean it. He lit up whenever his daughter spoke, or laughed, or existed in his vicinity.
Darby told us about the highlights of eighth grade, a time of my life that I’d mostly blocked out of my memory.
Jack had spent the day in the field, trying to find footage of whoever was smashing up their cameras and security equipment around town.
Another client had been hit—the hardware store was without its security feed for the whole night and half the day.
“And you haven’t been able to find any clues?”
“Only that it seems to be the same guy. He covers his face and is always on foot.”
“Strange,” I said.
“Especially since they’re hitting all kinds of businesses without even doing any break-ins. We can’t find a connection between them at all.”