Wild, Hungry Hearts

by Unknown

  Someday.

  “What’s this?”

  His deep voice jerked her out of her dozy reverie. Shit. He was staring at her inner thigh…clearly at the tiny tattoo. He started to lean down, his gaze narrowing. Esme jumped like someone had put a red-hot poker to her backside. Her hand jerked up involuntarily, landing in his abdomen. He made an oomph sound.

  “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry Jude. But could you—” With her hips, she indicated what she needed. He withdrew from her completely, straightening. Esme glimpsed the concern on his face before she sat up on the couch, thighs clamping shut. She saw him open his mouth, and did some quick improvising. She grabbed her calf muscle.

  “Muscle cramp,” she said through gritted teeth, rubbing her lower leg and wincing.

  “I’ll get you some water,” Jude said before he faded off into the darkness. In his absence, she hurried back into her underwear, jeans and bra. He returned a moment later, carrying a plastic cup of water. He’d probably gotten it from the clubhouse’s kitchen, although how he done it without any light, she had no idea. In the dim firelight, she saw his gaze run over her partially clothed state. He didn’t look pleased, but thankfully, he didn’t comment on it.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the cup. “You must be dehydrated.”

  “Maybe,” Esme mumbled, sipping the water.

  He sat down next to her. “Things got pretty intense. Your muscles probably aren’t used to taking so much hard, sustained power.”

  She glanced over at him and saw that that he was teasing. She just shook her head, hiding a smile, and took another gulp of the water. “I should have known your usual cockiness would be evident in the arena of sex, as well,” she murmured.

  “Only because that’s the arena where it’s most deserved,” he said, looping his arm around her waist and smacking a kiss on her cheek.

  They walked side-by-side back through the hushed, moonlit neighborhood. Jude was feeling vaguely irritated and unsatisfied. He’d been plunged back into the cold night way too quickly for his liking. He’d much prefer to be sprawled out on some comfortable mussed bed, a fire blazing in the fireplace, and a naked Esme pressed tight against him, enjoying the lull between another round of sex.

  He at least wanted to hold her hand. Esme, however, had both of hers jammed into her pockets. If he tried to grab one, she’d probably complain about some neighbor seeing them. God forbid.

  You keep telling her this is the right thing to do, but what do you know about how this is going to turn out? Childhood-friend Esme was predictable. But the woman that currently walked next to him, head down and frowning in thought…the Esme that he’d grown to sexually crave to an almost uncomfortable degree?

  That Esme was a whole new level of the unknowable.

  “What are you scowling about?” she asked. He glanced over at her, his gaze lingering at the image of what moonlight did to her delicate, yet fierce face.

  “I was just wondering the same thing about you.”

  “I’m not scowling,” she insisted. His bland glance made her realize she was frowning even more than before. She laughed softly at herself. “I was just wondering when we’ll get fresh powder at Squaw or Mt. Rose.”

  “Right. That’s what you were thinking about,” he said under his breath sarcastically. But what right did he have to prod her about her private thoughts? He’d just been having some of his own that he’d rather keep secret, after all. “There’s a decent base now. Stephen was telling me this morning at breakfast. Mostly manmade shit, though.”

  “You’re an old man now, with responsibilities,” she murmured, the hint of a smile on her lips. “The days are gone when you’d dare the manmade, icy crap.”

  “Damn straight,” he replied levelly, unfazed by her goading. The last thing he needed was to break his leg on some ice-snow.

  “So…you and Stephen are okay? After last night?”

  He gave her a surprised glance at her tentativeness. “Yeah. What’d you think? I was going to hold a grudge? Because I just found out he was my uncle?”

  After twenty plus years?

  He looked away instinctively from Esme. She knew him well enough to recognize his bitter thought. Okay, maybe I am holding a tiny grudge.

  “I don’t know how you’re feeling about it, to be honest. In fact…”

  “What?” he asked, glancing over at her.

  “I think I owe you an apology.”

  He came to a stop in the Esterbrook driveway. “What do you mean?”

  She halted too, facing him. “I was so focused on my reaction to Mom and Stephen’s announcement last night, I didn’t even ask you how you were feeling about the fact that Stephen is Grandpa Joe’s son,” she admitted. Her eyes looked enormous and shiny in the moonlight as she stared up at him soberly.

  An uncomfortable feeling burned in his chest. How did he feel about the fact that he’d had a substitute father-figure right there next to him while he was growing up? No one had bothered to think he and Z might be consoled to know that Stephen was, in reality, an uncle, Grandpa Joe’s son and their own father’s half-brother?

  “It doesn’t really matter how I feel, does it? Anymore than it matters what you, and Sadie, and Ursa think of Stephen and your mom getting married.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied after a pause. “I think it’s different, Jude.”

  He shrugged and started walking again. “Where are we going, anyway?” he asked when she fell in beside him. He heard her resigned sigh, and knew she understood he’d sidestepped her. But he wasn’t in the mood to discuss Stephen being his uncle, or a twenty plus year family cover-up.

  “There’s something I want to show you,” she said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He entered the Esterbrook garage with Esme. She flipped on a light, and he looked around with interest.

  “I haven’t been in here since—”

  “You talked me into stealing that six-pack of Heineken out of Dad’s fridge.”

  He gave her a give-me-a-break look. “I talked you into doing it? Damn, you know how to rewrite history, girl. You showed me exactly where it was and then dared me to take it.”

  Her laughter at being confronted with the truth was delicious. He grinned widely, transported by the image of Esme abandoning herself to amusement. She pointed at him and snorted.

  “I dared you to chug most of them, too.”

  “And I was stupid enough to do it. I owe my first hangover to you,” he muttered, shaking his head with pretend disgust as he watched her dry her eyes. “And you claim I corrupted you.”

  She sniffed and walked further into the garage. “You think I’m buying your innocent act? You’d probably been fornicating with Jessica Silicone earlier that day. I’m not the one who despoiled you. Ta da,” she said abruptly, making a grand waving gesture and stepping aside.

  “Hey.”

  He grinned widely at the once very familiar blue and gold snowboard. He hadn’t seen it this board in…what? Twelve years? Since the winter before he’d gone away to college. He’d gotten a new one for Christmas when he’d come home for winter break his freshman year, and this one had been shelved. Touching the bindings, a haze of happy memories swept through him.

  He glanced at Esme in puzzlement. “What’s my old board doing in your garage?”

  “I just brought it here. I bought it at the hospital fundraiser this afternoon. You’ll never guess whose hands I had to wrench it from in order to save it.”

  “My snowboard was at the fundraiser?” he asked, now even more confused.

  “Yeah. You know how we all volunteered there? I guess Stephen cleaned out a bunch of stuff from the garage and donated it.”

  “Stephen donated it, without even asking me?”

  “He donated the stuff days ago,” Esme explained. “Before you even got here.”

  “Still. He should have asked,” Jude said, unable to disguise his irritation. Who did Stephen think he was, giving away his personal possessions?


  “Well anyway…I figured you’d want it,” Esme said. Distracted as he was, he noticed the slight uncertainty in her tone. He realized he’d been scowling again, thinking of Stephen.

  “Course I’d want it. Who did you say you had to wrench it from?”

  “Shelly DaRosa!”

  “Seriously?”

  Esme nodded. “I snatched it from her just in time. She was in prime form, mouthing off about how horrible Mat was because he left her while she was supposedly sick as a dog to have dinner with us. I honestly don’t get it,” she said, clearly frustrated.

  “Why Mat married her?”

  “Why he married her. Why he stays with her. Mat’s one of the smartest, handsomest, most decent guys I know, and yet—” She shrugged helplessly.

  “He’s completely wasted on Shelly. You don’t have to convince me of how weird it is. I’ve given up trying to puzzle it out after all these years.”

  “And you swear he’s never let you in on the mystery? Not even a clue? You know…guy to guy?”

  “I’ve told you a million times he’s completely mute on the topic. And he’ll damn well freeze you out with a look if you try to broach anything serious associated with Shelly or his marriage.”

  Esme sighed. He ran his hand along the snowboard. “Thanks for saving it from Shelley, Es,” he said. “I have a lot of great memories on this board.”

  “I know. So do I.”

  He glanced over, his attention captured. He couldn’t look away from her unguarded, wistful expression on her face or her small smile.

  “Remember the junior snowboarding championship at—”

  “Mammoth Mountain? The year of the blizzard?” he finished for her.

  “Yeah,” she laughed, shaking her head, looking lost in the memory. “You’d come in second the year before, and everyone said that year was yours. You practiced for it nonstop. You drove me nuts. I think you slept with this board attached to you.”

  “But that snowstorm turned unexpectedly into a blizzard. The competition wasn’t cancelled though, because the bad weather was focused mostly to the north of Mammoth—on us, in other words. Everyone was flocking in from Los Angeles and San Francisco, but we were—”

  “Stuck,” Esme said. “Everyone said we’d be crazy to try and drive it. Mom. Dad. Grandpa Joe. But—”

  “Stephen wouldn’t listen,” Jude said, suddenly growing somber at that part of the memory. He stared at his old snowboard, but saw a very different scene: a barely visible, white blizzard wasteland outside the front windshield and Stephen behind the wheel, calm, focused and utterly resolute in his mission to get Jude to Mammoth safely, and in time to compete.

  “Your dad loaned us his brand new Lexus SUV for the trip,” Jude recalled. “He must have really trusted Stephen.”

  “He must have,” Esme said. Jude glanced over at her, and saw there were tears in her eyes. “He let me go with you all.”

  “Yeah. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t trust Stephen completely.”

  Esme gave a little laugh and wiped an escaped tear off her cheek. “Stephen got us there. You, Z, him and me. Even if it was one hell of a scary ride. You did a total throw down at the finals. You were amazing.” She gave the board a fond pat. “This old baby got you that championship trophy.”

  “It and Stephen.”

  “It and Stephen,” Esme agreed thickly.

  He wasn’t being fair to Stephen. Esme was reminding him of that, even though she wasn’t trying to. She was prodding him back to reason by reminding him of his past…to everything Stephen had grown to mean to them.

  Without looking over at her, he snaked out an arm and pulled her against him. He planted a kiss on the top of her head, inhaling the citrus and coconut scent from her shampoo.

  “Stephen loves you, so much. You know?” she said in a muffled voice.

  He let go of his board and turned, pulling her fully into his arms so that they were face to face.

  “Yeah. I know,” he replied gruffly.

  “Why do things have to get so complicated sometimes?” Esme asked in a small voice.

  He snaked his hand under her coat and outlined her delicate spine with his palm, then mapped it with his searching fingertips. She shivered, and he absorbed it, pulling her closer against him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, still stroking her. She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. He found himself cradling her jaw with his hand, silently admiring her exquisite face for a moment. Only Esme could express the gamut of emotions without altering a single muscle. She glowed feeling.

  She made him feel so alive.

  “Maybe it’s us,” he said, his thumb stroking her satiny cheek.

  “Maybe what is us?”

  “Maybe it’s us that makes things complicated. When in reality, they’re as simple and straightforward as they come.”

  He dipped his head, and touched her mouth with his.

  The next day, Sadie, Esme, Ursa and their mother piled into the car and drove to Reno for a little Christmas shopping. Their primary mission was a wedding dress, however. Esme had never seen her mother laugh or blush so much while they shopped for it.

  “It’s like forty years fell off her,” Esme whispered to Sadie as they left the bridal shop in Reno.

  “Yeah,” Sadie agreed as they watched Ursa and Ilsa in the distance, laying out not only Ilsa’s new elegant gown, but also the three girls’ impulsively purchased matching dresses. Buying the bridesmaid gowns had been Ilsa’s idea, and none of her girls had been able to say no in the face of her excitement and enthusiasm. “I’ve never seen Mom so happy,” Sadie murmured.

  “I wonder if Dad ever did.”

  Esme immediately regretted saying it. Sadie gave her an anxious, repressive glance. They followed the sound of their mother’s laughter to the car.

  On the trip back up through the mountains, Esme got a text from Jude.

  “Oh no,” she said quietly to Ursa, who sat in the back seat with her.

  “What?” Ursa asked.

  “Z’s left.”

  “What?” Ursa demanded, louder this time.

  Esme briefly held her finger to her lips and glanced meaningfully to the driver’s seat, where Ilsa was chatting cheerfully with Sadie, their voices partially muffled by the radio. Ilsa would find out soon enough, but Esme was hesitant to be the one to ruin her mom’s euphoric mood. She rapidly texted Jude a question then handed her phone to her little sister.

  Ursa read Jude’s message: STEPHEN AND Z HAD A BLOWOUT AFTER BREAKFAST. Z TOOK OFF WITHOUT HIS SUITCASE. Ursa’s expression darkened. The text notification went off. After Ursa had read the new message, she handed the phone back to Esme. Esme saw that Jude had responded to her questions: WHAT ABOUT THE WEDDING? IS HE COMING BACK?

  DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT, Jude had written. Esme sensed the grimness behind his brief reply. Esme tried to catch Ursa’s eye so that they could share a communal expression of worry about Z, but her sister was staring out the window.

  They got home before dusk. No sooner had Esme hung up the new gown and put away the gifts she’d bought in Reno when she heard her text notification go off again. She already knew it would be from Jude before she picked up her phone.

  FEEL LIKE TAKING A TRIP WITH ME?

  YEAH. WHERE TO? TO FIND Z? She replied without hesitation.

  YEAH. TO CALI. WE’LL FIND Z AND GET THIS SETTLED. STEPHEN AND YOUR MOM WILL BE CRUSHED IF HE’S NOT THERE FOR THE WEDDING.

  SEE YOU AT THE LODGE IN 10, she texted before she whirled into action, packing a small bag.

  Ilsa and Ursa followed Esme to the front door while Esme talked to them over her shoulder.

  “We’ll just be gone for a night, two max. We’ll be home for Christmas Eve, for sure.”

  Ilsa had taken the news about Z somberly, but seemed thankful and hopeful that Jude and Esme planned to go after him. Ursa had hardly said a word since Esme had announced her and Jude’s plans, but she wore a pinched expression that worried Esme. When
Ilsa went to get Esme a hat and some warm gloves—snow was called for in the forecast—Esme placed her hand on her sister’s shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  Ursa had been a sickly child due to a rare endocrine disorder. She’d been smaller than Esme and Sadie had been, and was prone to headaches, joint stiffness and pain, muscle cramping, and weakness. She’d been fourteen by the time the disorder had been correctly diagnosed and treated. After that, Ursa had blossomed both physically and emotionally. But the family still tended to think of her as “delicate,” and that’s why Esme was worried by her extreme paleness and pained look.

  Ursa nodded, swallowing thickly. “Will you do me a favor? When you see Z?”

  “Of course,” Esme said, brushing back a strand of her sister’s dark gold hair.

  “Tell him that I hope he comes back. For Christmas…and the wedding. Tell him that I told you specifically.”

  Esme paused in the action of tucking a tendril of dark gold hair behind Ursa’s ear. Tears shone in Ursa’s leaf-green eyes. “Of course I’ll tell him, but what is it? What’s wrong?” Esme whispered urgently.

  Ursa glanced around at the sound of their mom approaching. “It’s nothing. We had a disagreement. Z and I. You’ll tell him what I said?” she whispered.

  “I promise,” she said, kissing Ursa’s cheek for extra reassurance. She didn’t exactly understand Ursa’s intensity. But as a sister, she got that whatever it was, it was important.

  Columbia, California was a historic gold rush town located in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Esme read a description of it to Jude as they got onto Highway 88 and left the lake behind them.

  “The town sounds darling, but kind of touristy,” Esme told Jude, who was behind the wheel of his rental SUV. “It hardly seems like the kind of place where Z would want to live.”

  “He doesn’t live in the town itself. He’s out in the country. Somewhere.”

  Esme set her phone in her lap and studied Jude’s profile. Something about his tone made her suspicious. “But you do know his address, right?”