by Peggy Webb
He was the one working out, and yet she was the one who felt as if she’d run the better part of the Boston Marathon.
“Can you believe it, Gwendolyn? That gorgeous hunk is going home with us. How did I get so lucky?”
Jake heard Emily before he saw her. Heard her and smiled.
He put on a burst of speed, and when he rounded the corner and saw her in the sun filtering through the trees, he thought, This is the way it ought to be. This sizzle of excitement. This heart-in-throat joy. This sense of wonder.
“How did we get so lucky?” he said, then closed the distance between them and scooped her into his arms. Her smile dazzled him. He felt ten feet tall because it was for him. Only for him.
“You heard?”
“Yes. The canopy of trees creates an acoustic effect. Voices carry out here.”
“I guess I ought to be embarrassed, but I’m not.”
“Good. I especially liked the ‘gorgeous hunk’ part.”
“Well, you are. Compared to you, I’m a toad.”
“You’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known.”
Then, to show her he meant what he said, he kissed her, one of those long, lingering kisses that felt as if his soul had just flown out of his body and gone to nestle with hers. To his astonishment he discovered that being close to her gave him the same sense of exhilaration as standing on the highest peak of a mountain.
Other climbers talked about conquering mountains, but he knew better. You could no more conquer a mountain than you could conquer a good woman. Nor should you want to or even try, for to conquer was to take away the very thing you desired. That sense of challenge. Of achievement. Of vaulting freedom.
And most of all, of hope.
Emily was hope wrapped in his arms, and he held on to her, held her with tenderness and passion and awe.
“I wish we could stand in these woods and do this forever,” she said at last, leaning back and beaming up at him. “But the relatives will be arriving soon.”
“I should change, then.”
“Not on my account. It’s Edna Sue I’m worried about.”
“A maiden aunt?”
“No. A man-eating cousin. I don’t want her after you.”
He chuckled. “Are you trying to protect my reputation?”
“No. My motives are purely selfish. I want to be the only one eyeing your delicious body.”
“Delicious?”
“Oh, yes. I can tell by looking. I can’t wait to find out if I’m right.”
This sort of refreshing honesty was new to Jake. Actually, it was all new to Jake. In his thirty years, he’d had very little time for women. From the time he’d discovered that he wanted to be a climber, the higher places had consumed him. A mountain was a selfish mistress, unforgiving and intolerant. She demanded a man’s full attention. And sometimes more. Sometimes nothing less than his life would satisfy her.
That thought gave Jake pause. Just what did he think he was doing here, asking a woman like Emily to start a relationship that would never gain his full attention? She would always have to share him with a mountain. Worse, every time he went on a climb she would be left to wonder if he’d come back.
He was in a high-risk profession. One that could kill.
The gallant thing would be to stop before he ever got started with her. If his instincts were correct—and they’d never failed him yet—once he got started with Emily it would be impossible to stop. Something bigger than both of them would take over.
“Emily—”
“Shh.” She put her fingers over his lips. He could tell by the look on her face that she had guessed where this was leading. “Don’t talk. Don’t analyze. Please. Let’s just do it.”
“You’re Michael’s daughter, all right.”
“He taught me that life’s a wild, bucking bronco. The trick is to climb aboard and not get thrown off. Mother believes the same thing—she just says it differently. She says to jump and the net will appear.”
Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him softly on the lips, then gave him one of the most wicked grins he’d ever seen on a woman.
“Let’s get this party over with so we can cavort in the woods.”
“Emily Westmoreland, I like you better every minute.”
When Jake put his arms around her and led her back to the house to meet her relatives, he knew he’d crossed the Rubicon.
Emily had never in her life been one to agonize over events—past, present or future. But here she was, dressing to meet the relatives, and she was so nervous she was actually asking the advice of a skunk?
“So what do you think, Gwendolyn? Shorts and a T-shirt or the yellow sundress?” Gwendolyn sniffed around the clothes, then retreated to a spot in the sun beside the window. “That’s what I thought. Yellow. Grandmother Beaufort will have a heart attack. It’ll be the first time I’ve ever worn anything except shorts to a family reunion.”
The fact was, Emily didn’t give a flitter what Grandmother Beaufort thought. She was dressing for Jake, pure and simple, and the minute she saw him, she was glad she had. His eyes lit up.
“You look wonderful,” he said, then leaned down to kiss her.
He was still kissing her when her brother walked into the room. Now what? She couldn’t act casual, as if this was something she did every day. She didn’t, and Daniel knew it. She couldn’t introduce him as someone she’d brought to the reunion. She hadn’t, and Michael would make that clear.
It was Jake who saved her. He slid one arm around Emily as if it were something he did every day, then held out his hand to her brother.
“You must be Daniel. Your father has told me so much about you I’d know you anywhere. I’m Jake Bean.”
“The climber. I’ve heard of you. Welcome to Belle Rose.” Daniel laughed. “Though I see my sister has already done that.”
It was all smooth, effortless and completely natural. Emily thanked God for good manners and Southern upbringing and the best brother a girl could ever have. But more than that she thanked Him for Jake Bean, this perfectly wonderful man who came boldly forward and claimed her as his own.
“She has, and it was certainly the best welcome I’ve ever received,” he said.
“You two stop talking about me as if I’m not here.” Emily gave her brother a bear hug, and he ruffled her hair.
“If I were you, I’d keep him away from Edna Sue.”
“Don’t worry. I plan to.”
“And maybe Aunt Janice.” To Jake he said, “She’s the nosy type. She’ll ask you anything, no matter how personal.” He turned to Emily. “Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Back in the kitchen, checking the food.”
“Knowing them, I wouldn’t bet on it.” Daniel laughed. “Nice meeting you, Jake. I’ll see you later.”
With a wink and a smile, Daniel exited through the French doors, which led down the hall to the kitchen.
“Well…” She breathed a sigh of relief. “That turned out all right.”
“I like your brother. Does it embarrass you that he caught us kissing?”
“No. I just didn’t want it to be awkward for you.”
“It wasn’t, and it’s not going to be. Even if your whole kit and kaboodle of relatives catch us kissing.”
“You really mean that?”
“I do.”
“You’re not just saying that to be polite?”
“One thing you’ll learn about me, Emily. I never say things merely to be polite. I say what I mean and mean what I say, and I don’t give a hoot about convention.”
Chapter Six
May 12, 2001
My children continue to amaze and delight me. Edna Sue took out after Jake, as we all knew she would. And when Emily started turning red in the face, we all knew she was going to light into her like a duck on a june bug. That would have set Mother ringing her bell like crazy, then boring us all with one of her long-winded lectures about decorum.
“Do something, darling,” I said to
Michael, and when he pulled that blues harp out of his pocket and did a riff, and Daniel cut loose singing “Life Ain’t Nothin’ But a Party,” I thought Mother was going to have a conniption fit. “Lord God, Anne, your house sounds like a juke joint,” she told me, and I said, “Good. I don’t want any of my children to die an unlived life.”
I love that phrase. Read it somewhere. I forget now. Another sign of aging, I fear.
Anyhow, back to the reunion. It was wonderful to see the way Jake acknowledged that he was with Emily. Nobody had any doubt. When he didn’t have his arm around her, he was reaching out to touch her. Small things. A fingertip brushing across her cheek, a caress along her bare arm, a brief clasp of her hand.
It was wonderful to behold.
I worry about all my children, but Emily the most. Probably because she is the youngest, but in my mind she is the most vulnerable. Daniel is solid as a rock and will always be all right, and Hannah…well, all I can say is God help the person who tries to trifle with her.
But in spite of Emily’s fierce independence and her brave and free spirit, she is vulnerable. There is a little girl inside her who needs taking care of.
Jake sees that, I think.
When they left together this afternoon, I said to Michael, “I just hope he will understand and cherish her,” and of course, Michael knew what I meant. He always does.
“He will, Anne.”
Then in typical fashion my darling husband carried me to our bed, and with the haunting strains of “Moonlight Sonata” playing on the radio, he lay down beside me and caressed me. Simply caressed me. Overwhelmed by the wonder and the beauty of it all, I pressed my face into his chest and cried.
And Michael understood that, too.
Of all the women in the world, I am the most blessed. So blessed that I’m almost afraid it’s not real, that if I blink even once, it will all be snatched away.
Chapter Seven
Emily glanced in her rearview mirror for the hundredth time to be certain she hadn’t lost Jake. She hadn’t. He was still back there in his car, following her home.
She gave the V for victory sign, and he honked.
“I can’t believe this, Gwendolyn. I’m actually taking this marvelous man home with me with the express purpose of doing deliciously wicked things with him. Can you believe that?”
Gwendolyn sighed. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Probably she was wondering why Emily had suddenly taken leave of her senses.
The woman who was driving home wasn’t the same woman who had driven to the family reunion. She was some other woman, a brave, adventurous woman who had shifted her focus 180 degrees.
Lord, what was she doing? What if he didn’t like the way her cabin looked? Had she put her dirty socks in the hamper, or had she left them lying on the bathroom floor? What if he thought she was a slob? What if she snored? What if he hated the way she looked in the morning?
And worst of all, what if she disappointed him? Face it, she wasn’t the world’s most experienced woman. In fact, her experience had been limited to Jimmy Clark, who’d tried to show her the wonders of the flesh in the back seat of his old Chevy. Emily hadn’t thought it was wonderful. In fact, she’d thought it was silly and had told him so. She’d laughed so hard he lost his ardor, and instead of sharing rousing sex, they’d ended up sharing a hot dog at Scooter’s Drive-by Deli.
Lord, who did she think she was? This wasn’t Sex and the City. It was real life. She was Emily Westmoreland, a woman who knew her way around the woods, but didn’t know the first thing about men.
“I can’t do this, Gwendolyn.”
She put on her blinker and pulled into the turnaround, one of many on the Natchez Trace. When Jake pulled in behind her, Emily felt so foolish she couldn’t even face him. Instead, she turned away and pretended to be studying the Indian mounds in the distance.
“This was once a scared burial ground.”
“Emily, look at me.” She felt his hands on her shoulders.
Oh, God, could she stand it? How could she look into his incredible face and say, “I can’t do this.”
Gently he turned her around. “Now, tell me what this is all about.”
What could she say? I thought you might want to see this historic sight? Lord, when did she get to be such a coward?
“I’m scared,” she said, looking directly into his eyes.
“Me, too.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
She unclenched inside, unfolded her wings and floated upward.
“Well, then—” she smiled at him “—what are we waiting for? Let’s get back on the road.”
She was fixing to float to her car when Jake cupped her face and smiled down at her. She thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he gave her the world.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Emily. I promise you.”
Sighing, she leaned against his chest while he caressed her hair. It felt so good that it seemed to her she’d been there forever, that somewhere, sometime, somehow she’d known him. That she’d been merely biding her time until she could find him again.
“Let’s go home, Jake,” she said.
As he followed her home, Jake thought about the promise he’d made. Could he keep it? It was a hero’s promise. That was how Emily always made him feel, as if he were ten feet tall and invincible.
In reality he was a flawed man, quaking inside, and though he wanted to make everything perfect for Emily, perfection was rarely within the grasp of mere mortals. He would have to leave that to the gods. The most he could expect was simply this: to do his best and hope it was enough.
When Emily turned on her blinker again and he followed her through the darkening woods to the small patch of brightness where a bare bulb glowed over her front porch, Jake felt the rightness of this moment, as if he’d been running all his life trying to get to someplace he didn’t even know.
At last he knew. He’d been headed toward Emily, and finally he was home.
“Welcome home,” she said, then took his hand and led him inside. They kissed in the dark, and without a word she led him into her bedroom. The glow of the moon picked up a patchwork quilt, the gleam of a brass headboard, a rocking chair with an open book in the seat, a silky robe hanging over the door. Little things. Lovely things.
Their clothes fell into a heap on the floor, and Jake lay down with her on the bed. He couldn’t stop touching her, kissing her. And when he entered her, he knew the whole universe was contained in that small room in her cabin in the woods.
Chapter Eight
Never had anything felt so perfect to Emily, so absolutely right. From the moment Jake entered her, she knew theirs was no ordinary union, but a miracle given only to those lucky enough to find true love. What was happening in her bed was more than a mating of bodies; it was a mating of hearts and souls. It was magic.
It took them hours to discover each other. And when they were finally sated, she realized the magic was still there, that even the simple act of falling asleep in his arms was a small miracle.
“Night, Jake,” she murmured.
“Sweet dreams, Emily.” Jake was instantly asleep, arms wrapping her tight, not letting go, not ever letting go.
And that was the miracle. The last thing you do at night and the first thing you do in the morning is hold the one you love.
Emily placed her hand over Jake’s, taking his measure, loving the way her hand seemed small as a child’s and his was big enough to cover and protect. She listened to the even sound of his breathing, reveled in the rise and fall of his chest against her back. She loved the way falling asleep in his arms felt, like being wrapped in a cozy blanket.
“This is the way it should be,” she whispered, but Jake didn’t stir.
Emily smiled in the dark. God, she was going to love this man as much as her mother loved her father. Even more, if that were possible. The miracle of that love was filling her up, flowing through her bones, singing through her blo
od.
Everything she’d believed to be true about her own life was shifting, slowly but irrevocably. Emily, the independent, was metamorphosing into Emily, one of a pair, the other half of a perfect whole. And it felt so good. Oh, it felt so good.
“So this is what you do.”
Jake was standing in the midst of her menagerie of animals in the compound behind her cabin. A doe with a partially healed haunch shied away behind the trees; a pair of raccoons, completely healed from the wounds inflicted by steel traps, peered at him from the brush; a red-tailed hawk tried to lift toward the sky, his broken wing flapping helplessly in the dust.
“Yes. These are my children, Jake.”
“Your children?”
“They stay with me while I train them to go back into the world.”
“Have you ever had any failures?”
“Not yet, though I’m beginning to lose hope for Gwendolyn. She’s getting fat and content and shows no sign of wanting to return to her home in the forest.”
“Maybe we should introduce her to a nice male skunk. What do you think?”
Thinking of all the things she and Jake had done under the covers last night and again this morning, Emily got hot from head to toe.
“Well, it worked for me.”
Jake roared with laughter. “Are you calling me a skunk?”
“No, but you are definitely male. Exuberantly male.”
He put his arms around her from behind and nuzzled her neck.
“Does that mean the lady likes me?”
“The lady definitely likes you.”
And more, she thought. Ever so much more. But instinct told her it was neither the time nor the place for such confessions. Or was it?
Had her mother waited? After all, she’d said she recognized Michael as her true love almost from the minute she laid eyes on him. When had she told him? Or had she waited for him to tell her first?
