Make Me Forever

by BETH KERY

  He watched as her eyelids finally grew too heavy to support anymore, and she succumbed to exhaustion. As much as he wanted to believe the things Harper had said about her parents and the future, he was Jake Tharp.

  He hadn’t been taught to believe in miracles.

  * * *

  That was how Harper’s distraught parents first saw their daughter following the nightmare of her kidnapping: fast asleep, bandaged, pale, and obviously traumatized . . .

  . . . And held fast in the arms of the nephew of the monster who had stolen her from them.

  Chapter Three

  Present Day

  “Jake Tharp? It is you, isn’t it?”

  His rough breathing ceased completely at her whisper. Harper, too, held her breath, the handful of words seemingly hanging suspended in the air between them. Suddenly, he rose from the bed, naked and beautiful.

  “Jacob?”

  She saw a muscle flinch in his cheek as he went to the corner of the bed. One by one, he released her restraints and loosened the rope from her limbs. By the time he’d gotten to the fourth one, he still hadn’t responded to her question. She watched him methodically go about his task, his face and body rigid, his cock still formidable and slick from their combined essences. It was that vision—the very image of a viral, powerful male—that made impossibility crash wholesale into reality.

  Harper flew off the bed.

  “Harper?”

  She ignored him, hurrying into the bathroom and finding the two soft robes they’d used occasionally in the past week alongside each other on hooks. When she returned, he took the proffered robe wordlessly. She hurried into the garment, needing armor, no matter how fragile that protection was. She was relieved that he shrugged into his robe, as well. They faced each other. For a stretched moment, she just stared at his face, absorbing every detail. He looked very hard to her in that moment . . . indescribably miraculous. His agate eyes moved over her face.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked quietly. “Harper?” he prompted when she didn’t immediately respond.

  Bitterness sliced through her unexpectedly like a knife at his quiet, cautious tone.

  “How could you not have told me?”

  His mouth pressed into a hard line.

  “How could you not have told me?” she repeated wildly.

  He flinched slightly at her shout. “I thought maybe it was best for you not to remember. Your father had cured you of your anxiety about what had happened . . . about Emmitt—”

  She started forward, stumbled, and started to go down to the floor. Jacob leapt forward, catching her. Her cheek bumped against his solid chest. She gasped for air. It’d been hearing him say that name from her past . . . Emmitt. She hadn’t realized it until then, but part of her had remained unconvinced until that very moment. But the truth had just slammed into her consciousness with one word, smashing any chance of denial to bits. She wasn’t deluding herself. She wasn’t going mad. He’d just said Emmitt’s name.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God, I thought you were dead.”

  “What?” His hands tightened on her upper arms. “Harper? What did you say?”

  She looked up at his handsome, hovering face incredulously. A man’s face. Jake’s face.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My parents. After we went back to Georgetown, my parents told me you were dead,” she stated numbly.

  * * *

  “Harper, come over here and sit down,” Jacob insisted when he took in the paleness of her face and the glazed quality of her blue-green eyes. Was she about to have a reoccurrence of the panic attacks she had as a girl?

  He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her over to a couch in the seating area of his suite. He urged her to sit. She had the strangest expression on her face as she stared up at him. He came down next to her on the couch. She never took her eyes off his face.

  “You’re really Jake Tharp?” she asked weakly.

  He frowned. “Harper, are you okay?”

  “What? Yes.”

  “You don’t feel like you’re going to have a panic attack or faint or anything?” he asked concernedly, brushing some strands of copper-colored hair off her face. She caught his hand with her own, halting him against her cheek.

  “Answer me. Are you Jake Tharp?”

  He studied her closely. She looked distressed and shocked, but not to any degree out of proportion to the situation. Certainly, she didn’t appear to be any more shocked than he felt at hearing that she’d believed him to be dead all these years . . . and that it was her parents who had told her that bald-faced lie.

  “I was Jake Tharp.” He felt a shudder go through her. He cupped her face. “I haven’t been him for a long, long time, though, Harper.”

  “And you knew it was me, didn’t you? From the beginning?” she asked incredulously.

  His thumb brushed across her scar. Again, he absorbed her trembling.

  “I knew it was you,” he said. “I’ve followed your career. I knew where you lived.”

  A tear skipped off her cheek and wet his forefinger when she shook her head. “How could you not have told me? Why didn’t you come and see me, if you . . . if you knew where I was?” she asked brokenly. Her disbelief and hurt sliced through him.

  “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me. When we did run into each other here in Tahoe Shores, it seemed pretty clear you didn’t remember me. There was no recognition on your face. You never mentioned being kidnapped as a kid. You didn’t recognize me, did you? When we first met?”

  “No. How could I? The Jake I knew was barely five foot two and skinnier than I’d been. You’re six feet plus and as strong as a giant. Why would I think of Jake after first seeing you?”

  A feeling of mixed grim satisfaction and inevitability went through him at her words. “But you were curious, weren’t you? You had to keep digging for the truth? You contacted adoption services at the Department of Health and Human Resources in West Virginia today.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

  He dropped his hand from her face. “I know that you called West Virginia adoption services today and were asking questions in the adoption department about my adoption. I’m friends with the department head. Back then, when I was a kid, she was my adoption caseworker. She told me about you calling soon after she learned about it from one of her managers. Miranda has been pretty protective of my case over the years.”

  “I never called there.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but took in her blank expression of shock.

  “Who did, then? Miranda told me that a woman called, and she gave her name as Harper McFadden. That’s what brought this whole thing up with you today, right?”

  She swallowed thickly. He found himself touching her again, cupping the side of her head, moving his fingertips along the column of her neck. He couldn’t stand seeing her so discombobulated and knowing the reason why was him.

  “One of my reporters—Burt Chavis—came to me today. He’s been wanting to do a story on you, preferably one on the insider trading scandal and Clint Jefferies. He wanted my permission as his editor to pursue it.”

  He stiffened. “Did you give it to him?”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Jacob,” she said. Despite his prickle of annoyance at being told that a local reporter was indeed intent on reanimating his ghosts, he was glad to see the familiar flash of fire melt Harper’s shocked expression. “I told him that what he had was unsubstantiated and weak. I also told him that I’d never use my relationship with you to gather insider information.”

  He winced. “All right. Fair enough. Who do you think did call the adoption offices in West Virginia, then?”

  “That’s what I started to say—Burt Chavis came to me with some inform
ation that was weakly relevant to a story, and Ruth Dannen, our features editor, overheard him broaching the topic with me. I think they might have teamed up after Burt left my office today. Ruth wasn’t very happy when I shut her out of the conversation. She accused me of protecting you because I’m sleeping with you.”

  “So you think Ruth could have called the adoption offices, asking about my case and pretending to be you?”

  “I think there’s a pretty good chance, yes. One thing is for certain: It wasn’t me,” Harper said so steadfastly he believed her. Her gaze flickered over his face. “Don’t worry. I’ll confront Ruth about it. And as long as your adoption records are kept sealed tight, I honestly don’t think that story has legs to run on.”

  “So how did you connect Jake Tharp to me? I thought that with time and your dad’s hypnosis, you’d completely forgotten me. And back then—when we were kids—you never answered my letters—”

  He started in shock when he felt a violent shudder go through her.

  “Oh my God,” she exclaimed, her hand covering her mouth. For a second, he thought she was going to be sick.

  “Harper, it’s going to be okay—” he began, alarmed. She threw herself at him, cutting him off, her arms encircling him. Emotion swelled in him. She hugged him so tight. It was the way she used to hug Jake Tharp.

  The sweet, desperate way she used to hug him.

  “I never got them. I never got any letters, Jake. Never. Oh my God,” she repeated, her hands running anxiously over his back and shoulders. She leaned her head back and abruptly shoved at his chest. He gaped in bewilderment at her blazing expression. “I’m so mad at you! How can you think I wouldn’t remember Jake Tharp?”

  “I just thought . . . maybe it all didn’t mean to you what it did to me. You had a family who adored you, a safe home.” She moaned, shaking her head furiously, but he continued to try to make her understand. “And when you told me about your dad treating your phobias and panic attacks with hypnosis, I thought maybe he’d encouraged you to forget the whole trauma . . . and Jake. I thought I was forgotten with all the rest of it.”

  “I would never forget you,” she nearly shouted, touching his shoulders and then his hair. “After they told me you were dead, your memory haunted me even more. I felt like you were dead because of me. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t begged you to risk your life and save me, you’d still be alive. The world just felt like this big, horrible, unsafe place when I thought you were dead . . . knowing it was my responsibility that you were.”

  “No, Harper, listen to me,” he insisted, grabbing one of her anxiously moving hands. He worried she was about to spiral into a panic. “You didn’t cost me my life. You gave it to me. Don’t you get that? Defying Emmitt and fighting him was the defining moment of my life. I would have never had the courage to do it, if I didn’t have you to do it for.” He hesitated. “You know he’s dead, right?”

  He could tell by her blank expression she didn’t.

  “He died in prison two years ago from a heart attack.”

  She hugged him again, and for a strained moment, neither of them spoke. He clutched her tight to him, feeling the indescribably sweet beat of her heart against his.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she gasped after a moment. “You look so different. You are so different . . . and yet, you’re not. I felt so close to you from the beginning, even though I couldn’t figure out why. I’ve been thinking more about Jake—about you—than I have since I was a teenager. I kept dreaming about being with him . . . you. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me—”

  He pulled her tighter against him when she shook with emotion. For a wild moment, they were those two ragged kids all over again, so desperate to touch each other, so needy to affirm their bond and to know that they weren’t alone in a vast, scary world. He just held her while she cried, trying his best to absorb her grief, her disbelief . . . and yes, her joy. He sensed her stunned happiness in the way she continued to touch him frantically, as though she were trying to reassure herself of the reality of him. It was her anxious touch that tore at him more than anything.

  “I don’t understand . . . and I want to so badly,” she said wetly. “There was never any car accident?”

  “Car accident?” he asked, leaning back and peering at her face, puzzled.

  “They told me that you’d been killed while you were in a car accident with a friend of your grandma Rose’s. That’s what they said. They told me when we went back to Georgetown, after Emmitt’s sentencing.”

  He stared at her, stunned. “I was never in a car accident. I was transferred to a temporary foster home in Charleston after Grandma Rose died that October. But I was never in an accident.”

  He’d seen her glaze-eyed expression before. She was in shock. Maybe he was, too, come to think of it.

  “Your parents must have told you I was dead because they were worried about you. It was after you went back with them to Georgetown that you started having those panic attacks, right? Maybe your dad thought that if you got letters from me, or if we insisted on seeing each other, it would remind you of your kidnapping. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t be able to heal if I was in your life.”

  “No,” she whispered, shaking her head adamantly. Another tear bounced down her cheek, and he dried it with his thumb. “I didn’t start having those panic attacks until after they told me you were dead. I was inconsolable, Jake. Jacob. That’s why I turned into such a mess.”

  She squeezed him tight again. He hugged her back, struggling to wrap his head around the fact that Harper McFadden not only had never forgotten him, but that she’d mourned his loss even more than he’d suffered hers.

  Chapter Four

  She couldn’t believe her parents had done it. They’d witnessed firsthand how attached she’d grown to Jake Tharp. They knew how she owed him her life, and how close they’d become on their escape from Emmitt. The contrast of her love for them, her grief over their sudden deaths, and her disbelief that they’d intentionally lied to her about Jake left her feeling ripped wide-open.

  And increasingly, angry. Not just at her parents. At Jacob.

  He must have noticed her inconsolable state, because he abruptly stood and announced that he was going to have Lisa bring them something to eat.

  “You’re pale. I think we need some fuel if we’re going to continue this conversation,” he said grimly, picking up the house phone.

  “I don’t want anything to eat,” Harper insisted, thinking the idea of calmly eating a meal in these circumstances was annoyingly bizarre. Jacob ignored her, however, turning his attention to talking to Lisa and requesting that some herbal tea and a light dinner be sent up to his suite. Harper responded to his stubbornness by gathering up her clothes and going into the bathroom to change. She already felt vulnerable enough in front of Jacob. Jake! Being dressed would help to ground her. She was relieved to see when she returned from the bathroom that he’d re-dressed, as well.

  Did that mean he felt as exposed as she did?

  “I’ll never forgive my parents for lying to me about it,” she said after the dinner tray had been delivered and sat on the coffee table in front of them. She hadn’t touched either the poured chamomile tea or the salad and fresh-baked bread. She stood and began to pace in front of the fireplace. Jacob remained seated, watching her soberly as he held a cup of steaming tea in his large hand. “All that grief I felt. All that guilt for feeling like I contributed to your death—”

  Jacob set down his cup loudly.

  “They did it because they loved you so much. Surely you can understand that they’d want to completely cut away that experience from your life.”

  “How can you defend them?” Harper asked, spinning to face him.

  “I’m not saying what they did was right. But I understand why they did it. If I was a parent, and I had your father’s particular skills, I
might have done the same thing.”

  His somber defense of her parents’ actions only frothed her fury.

  “You’re defending what they did because you’re like them.” He gave her a startled glance, and she realized she was shouting. She couldn’t seem to stop herself, though. The lid had just popped off her emotions. “You tried to cut Jake Tharp out of your life, just like my parents tried to slice him out of mine. You killed off that little boy and buried him like he was some kind of shameful secret.”

  “Harper—”

  “No, I’m telling the truth and you know it! You say you didn’t tell me that you were Jake Tharp because you worried it’d re-traumatize me, erase all the good work my dad did in treating me,” she said sarcastically. “But the truth is, you didn’t want me to remember Jake Tharp because you’re ashamed of him.”

  “What if I am?” Jacob bellowed suddenly, flying to his feet. She started back in surprise. “I was helpless and weak. I was Emmitt’s whipping boy. Do you think I want to remember that? I spent my life trying to be the opposite of Jake Tharp. You have no right to criticize me for wanting that. Not privileged, rich, adored little Harper McFadden.”

  “You jerk. Privileged, adored little Harper McFadden thought Jake Tharp was the bravest, smartest, nicest person she’d ever met in her life,” Harper yelled, stepping toward him aggressively. She checked herself when she saw his face stiffen, as if she’d slapped him or something. She wanted to rage at him, and she wanted to cry, and she wanted to never stop hugging him . . . and she didn’t know what she wanted. “Why are you looking at me like you’re surprised?” she demanded, clamping her eyelids shut to get a hold of herself. “I loved you, don’t you get that? I asked my parents if they’d become foster parents and let you come live with us! I had your room all planned out. I couldn’t wait to show you the museums in DC and give you my copy of The Lord of the Rings to read and so many other things.” Tears gushed out of her eyes as the poignant memories rushed her. “And you have the nerve to stand there and tell me that both you and my parents were right to stage Jake Tharp’s death? Well, fuck you, Jacob Latimer.”