Chapter Twelve
S age woke up soaking wet in the middle of the night.
It took a moment for her to get her bearings.
Despite her family’s concerted efforts to get her to change her mind, they’d dropped her at the farm yesterday afternoon and hadn’t left until they’d tucked her into the waterbed last night with a glass of warm milk.
She was about to raise her hand to her forehead and check if she had a temperature but the fact that her hand was floating in a puddle of water ruled out a fever.
She rolled over and nearly drowned herself. “Jake, the waterbed sprang a leak!” She tried to lever herself up to pound on the wall to wake him up but couldn’t reach around the headboard. “Help!”
The bedroom light came on. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the brightness.
Once they did, her gaze found Jake, who was standing in the doorway.
He had on a pair of black boxers, but he might as well have been naked for how she responded to him.
She tried dragging her gaze from all that muscular, bronzed beauty, but her eyes ignored her.
“Sorry. I’m not objectifying you. My eyes are ignoring my brain. It’s possibly a side effect of burnout.” She raised her hand. “I need help.” She frowned. “Jake?”
“Huh?”
“What do you mean, huh ? Is this payback for my family hanging out here half the day and night?” Her eyes widened. “Wait! Did my grandmother pay you to sabotage the waterbed so I’d leave?”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, then turned and walked away.
“Jake! This is not funny. I seriously cannot get out of the bed. You can’t just leave me—” She broke off when he walked into the room with her robe, which she’d left in the bathroom last night. “Why would you—” She glanced down at herself and knew exactly why he’d brought her robe.
It had been hot last night, and she’d worn a white V-neck camisole and ruffle shorts to bed. The sleep set was soaked and see-through, as in she might as well be naked.
He threw the robe at her. It landed on her head but also covered everything down to her knees.
Jake didn’t wait for her to put it on. He simply scooped her up and out of the bed with the robe still on her head.
He didn’t set her on her feet as she expected but carried her down the hall, depositing her in the bathroom.
“Take a hot shower,” he said, then walked out, closing the bathroom door behind him.
“It wasn’t my fault!”
Seconds later, he opened the door and tossed her flannel sleep pants and a sweatshirt onto the counter. “I didn’t say it was.”
“Then why are you acting like you’re mad at me? I mean, besides me waking you up in the middle of the night and flooding the bedroom.”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, holding her gaze.
Noting his slightly flushed cheeks, she said, “Oh.” Then she caught a glimpse of his tented boxers. “ Oh. ”
“Yeah, oh .” He shook his head and walked out of the bathroom.
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that or how she was supposed to feel about it.
She imagined Jake felt like she did about her reaction to his mostly naked body.
Except she wasn’t letting herself think too closely about her feelings for a mostly naked Jake.
It was a strategy she decided to stick with.
She also considered having a cold shower but went with hot instead.
She had no idea how long she’d been lying in the bed’s stagnant water.
She stayed in the shower longer than was necessary and walked out of the bathroom to a loud, high-pitched whine.
She followed the sound to her bedroom. Jake glanced over as he sucked up water from the hardwood floor with a shop vac. He’d changed into sleep pants and a sweatshirt too. It looked like they’d be cranking up the air conditioner for however long they lived together.
He turned off the shop vac. “Exactly how long were you lying in the water before you called me?”
“Seconds, why?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. It’s not something I’d lie about.”
“You must sleep the sleep of the dead. It’s most likely been leaking all night.”
She looked at the blue liner lying flat in the wooden frame. “So that’s it. The bed is done?”
“Afraid so.” He looked up from wrapping the cord around the shop vac. “Why do you look like you just lost your best friend?”
She lowered herself onto the chair in the corner.
“I can’t kick Max off the couch, and I can’t kick you out of the other bed, so my family wins.
I’ll have to move into my aunt’s apartment.
” She could move back into her condo, but the idea of doing so and not going in to work every day made her sick to her stomach.
Granted, she pretty much felt sick to her stomach whenever she thought about her suspension.
“You don’t have to move into your aunt’s apartment. There’s another bed at Alice’s place. I’ve gotta pack up the last of her stuff today and move it in here anyway.”
“Right. I forgot the closing on the house is tomorrow. But FYI, you’re not doing it by yourself. I’m helping you pack up the rest of the house.”
“FYI, you’re under doctor’s orders to rest. Carmen’s orders too. So that’s what you’re going to do, because your grandmother scares me.” He carried the shop vac across the room and shut off the light. “What are you doing?”
“Sleeping on the chair.”
“You can’t sleep on the chair, Sage.”
“Trust me, I can. I sleep at my desk at least three times a week.”
“And you wonder why you’re burned out.” He walked back and took her by the hand. “Come on. You’re sleeping in my bed.”
“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jake.” She dug in her heels to slow his forward motion.
He tightened his grip on her hand, left the shop vac in the office, and then walked with her to his bedroom. “I didn’t say you’re sleeping with me in my bed. I said you’re sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping on the couch. Max doesn’t mind bunking with me.”
He walked into the room and held back the covers for her. The mattress was still warm from his body. It smelled like him too. “This isn’t the same bed you slept in as a teenager at Alice’s, is it?”
“No. She ordered it for me last month.”
“Why would she order you a new bed?”
“Go to sleep, Sage.”
She sat up. “No. You’re keeping something from me, and I want to know what it is.”
“You need your sleep. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“I can’t go to sleep now.”
He snorted. “You’re not going to blackmail me into telling you.”
“No. I mean I actually won’t be able to get to sleep now. I already got my allotted”—she glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand—“four hours.”
“Are you telling me you only sleep four hours a night?”
“Not when you’re looking at me like that, I’m not.” She patted the pillow beside her. “Lie down. It’ll be like you’re telling me a bedtime story. Who knows, I might fall asleep.”
She shouldn’t be encouraging him to lie in bed with her after the last time, but they’d been drunk and sad and had turned to each other for comfort. She ignored the voice in her head pointing out she was sad and looking for comfort tonight too.
The warning voice had a point. Sage hated waking up at night alone in her bed. It had gotten worse since she’d left home. Her insomnia had kicked in then.
He turned off the light and walked to the bed. “Are you saying my story will be so boring it’ll put you to sleep?” he asked as he stretched out beside her.
“Probably.”
He grinned. “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.”
“I don’t have a story.”
“Yeah, you do. You’re going to tell me what keeps you up at night. I don’t think it’s only work.”
No wonder the man was such a good investigator. She turned on her side, facing him. “Fine.”
“I’m holding you to it, you know. And my story will take all of a minute.
” The moonlight coming through the window illuminated the amusement in his eyes and the chiseled angles of his handsome face.
“You know how you always call me a slacker for working part-time as an investigator at the law firm?”
“I didn’t call you a slacker.”
“But that’s what you thought. Admit it.”
“Okay, maybe I did. But come on, Jake. You have to admit working a few hours a night when you’re young and healthy and smart is a little slackerish.”
He laughed. “That’s not a word. And it’s a little judgy too. I admire the guy you thought I was. Free-spirited, hitting the road whenever the spirit moved him, living life in the slow lane.”
“Are you saying the guy I think you are isn’t who you are?”
He smiled. “I worked part-time because I was going to school, Sage. I got my law degree. And I didn’t come here to mooch off Alice like I know you thought I did. She asked me to move here and join her practice.”
Sage opened and closed her mouth, the shock rendering her speechless, but then it hit her that Alice had known and kept it from her. She felt like an idiot and launched herself at him. “You jerk! All this time you’ve been laughing at me.”
He rolled her under him, holding her hands above her head. “I wasn’t laughing at you, and I asked Alice not to tell you.”
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“Because I wasn’t sure I could do it. Actually, I’d pretty much convinced myself I couldn’t. I wasn’t exactly an honor roll student.”
He’d been lucky to graduate from high school at all. But it hadn’t been because he was a slacker or thought he was too cool for school. He was dyslexic and had ADHD. At Alice’s behest, Sage had tutored him, so she knew how difficult law school must have been for him.
“I know I could be a brat when we were growing up. Don’t raise your eyebrow at me. You were a jerk too. But did you really think I’d be anything but supportive, Jake? We’re not kids anymore.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was about me.” He shrugged. “Your opinion mattered to me, I guess. I was okay with Alice knowing if I tried and failed, but not you.”
“Alice must have been so proud of you,” she whispered, then raised her gaze to his, barely able to see him through the shimmer of her tears.
“Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not being condescending.
But I… I’m proud of you too.” She raised her head off the pillow to kiss his cheek but pressed her lips to his mouth instead.
She tasted her tears on his lips, but maybe they were his too.
It wasn’t fair that he’d worked so hard, achieved so much, only to have Alice die before they made their dream of working together come true.
She freed her hands from his and brought them to his face, kissing him softly before pulling back.
“We’re not selling the practice.” Last week, she’d told him to sell everything.
She’d been too overwhelmed to even think about keeping the practice and the farm, and Jake hadn’t said a word.
“I want you to have it, Jake. It’s what Alice would want. ”
He wiped her tears away with his thumbs. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Things look different in the cold light of day.”
“I won’t change my mind. I want this for you. It makes me happy thinking of you carrying on Alice’s legacy.”
“Thank you.” He pressed a warm kiss to her lips. “But I still want you to sleep on it.” He rolled off her, and she shivered, missing the weight and the heat of his hard, muscular body. He folded his arms behind his head. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
“I can’t follow that. It was epic. Mine is just…” She shrugged. “Stuff from a long time ago that I should have gotten over but haven’t. It’s actually a little embarrassing.”
“It was embarrassing telling you that your opinion mattered so much to me that I didn’t want you to know I was in law school in case I failed. You owe me.” He rolled onto his side, facing her. “Spill.”
She sighed. “Fine. If I wake up in the middle of the night at my condo, or I guess I should say when because it happens all the time, I can’t go back to sleep.
I’ve tried everything, but nothing works, so that’s what I do, get up and work.
Or I work so late that I fall asleep at two or three in the morning. ”
“You said it’s because of something that happened a long time ago. What happened?”
“Ugh, I don’t want to tell you. I’ve never told anyone this.”
“Not even your mom or Willow?”
She shook her head.
“I’m surprised. You guys seem really close.”
“We are, and that’s the problem, I guess. I didn’t tell them when the Big Bad happened, and it would just upset them if they knew.”
“The Big Bad?”
“This has to stay between us, Jake. You can’t…
” She sighed. “I think I know how my mom feels now. Anyway, you’ll hear about it all when Cami’s book comes out.
” She gave him the shorthand version of her family’s history and then said, “Cami took Willow when she was four. I was five at the time, and we’d shared a room since we were babies.
Cami ran away with her and kept her for three weeks.
It was awful, and it was hard, and I missed her so much, especially at night.
No one talked about it with me. I’d overhear things but I really didn’t know why my sister had suddenly disappeared or if she’d died or why everyone was so angry and so sad. ”
“No one told you what happened?”
“No. I’m sure they were trying to protect me. And I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to upset them any more than they already were.”
“What about when Willow came back? They didn’t talk about it with you then?”
She saw the look in his eyes, and she shook her head. “It wasn’t their fault, Jake. They had no idea that I was struggling.”
“Yeah, but I imagine they talked about it with Willow. Couldn’t they have included you in the conversations?”
“My mom took Willow to a family therapist, but other than that, the subject was closed in our family. And when I say closed, I mean closed. Willow and I had no idea Cami was her mother until last summer. They kept the secret for a quarter of a century. Which tells you how deeply I repressed the memory, because I hadn’t made the connection between Willow going missing and my insomnia until last year. I’d completely blocked it.”
“That is seriously messed up,” he said, then drew her into his arms. “Thank you for telling me. It explains a few things.”
She leaned back. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.” His lips twitched and he kissed her forehead. “Now let’s try to get some sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow. Or I should say later today.”
“Uh, Jake, you’re supposed to be sleeping on the couch with Max.”
“You think I’m going to let you sleep alone after you told me your story? Not a chance,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“That’s really sweet of you. But I don’t think it’s a good idea that we sleep together again. Remember what happened last time?”
“It’s not the same. We’d just lost Alice, and we were emotional and drunk.” He snuggled her closer. “Now go to sleep.”