by Dana Marton
“I don’t care about my blood pressure. If I was going to blow a gasket today, I would have blown it already.”
After they drank their coffee, Derek carried away the empty cups. When he came back, he handed out a round of manly hugs. As Jess got hers, he whispered into her ear, “I gave those two decaf.”
And for some reason, that was the thing that made her heart melt. That he was there, taking care of them, in every way, even the very smallest.
By the time the surgeon walked out to tell them Chuck had pulled through and he was in recovery, the retro aluminum clock on the stark-white waiting room wall showed past noon. The nurse wasn’t going to let anyone see him, but Zelda fought for the right. She lied, for the first time that Jess had ever seen, and said she was Chuck’s wife.
Jess, Derek, and Kaylee made do with peeking through the glass.
Chuck was still and pale, sleeping off the anesthetics. They waited until he woke. Kaylee sneaked in for a quick kiss. Chuck said a few words—strictly forbidding anyone to worry, and telling Kaylee to get back to school.
She told him the Versquatchers were hot on the trail of something big, and if he didn’t get out of the hospital lickety-split, he was going to miss making first contact.
He told her over his dead body—an unfortunate choice of words under the circumstances. He said he was the president of the club, and if anyone was going to chat with a sasquatch, it’d be him. He gave them a weak smile before he faded out again.
The nurse came by to check on him. “You should go home,” she told the three outside the room’s window, sympathy in her eyes. “Come back tomorrow. He’ll be in much better shape by then.”
Leaving felt wrong, but they were just in the way standing there by the glass.
Derek popped his head into the room, and when Zelda looked up, he said, “I’ll run the girls home, then come back to check on you in a couple of hours. Want me to bring anything?”
She shook her head, her eyes dazed, and went back to holding Chuck’s hand, patting it, and offering words of encouragement. Jess thought she caught, “I love you, you stubborn, stubborn man.”
Almost enough to make her smile, despite the circumstances.
Derek closed the door, then put one arm over Jess’s shoulder and another over Kaylee’s. As he turned to leave, they both leaned on his solid strength and went with him.
At the elevators, Jess pulled away. “I want to pop in and see Mom. She needs to know.”
“We’ll go together,” Derek said.
Kaylee linked her arm with Jess without a word.
They all went up, just the three of them in the elevator. The mirrored panel showed them standing close to each other, a unit, clearly belonging together. Jess couldn’t take her eyes off their reflection. Having people around her like this, as if they were family, after all these years of going it alone, filled her chest with a warm sensation that spread out into the rest of her body, all the way to the tips of her toes.
As they entered Rose’s room, she looked up from the gardening magazine she was reading in bed. She frowned as her gaze bounced from one to the other. “What’s wrong?”
“Chuck had a heart attack.” Jess went to sit on the edge of the bed. “He’s out of surgery. So far so good. Zelda is with him. We’re going to head home.”
Her mother clutched her own heart and asked a dozen questions, patting the bed next to her so that Kaylee would sit there too and get a long, hard hug. By the end, they were both crying.
“If anyone can pull through something like this, it’s Chuck,” Rose said finally, her right hand gently cradling the girl’s face. “He’s a tough old bird.”
Everybody nodded.
Rose looked at Jess. “Remember when your father set the old sugar shack on fire by accident? How Chuck ran right in to pull out some new equipment we just bought on credit? That man is tough enough to walk through fire. He’s going to come through this.”
Jess moved closer and gave her mother a hug. In light of Chuck nearly losing his life, little else mattered. Past grievances suddenly seemed insignificant.
“I don’t remember the fire.” Kaylee drew her eyebrows together as if desperately trying.
Jess could almost smell the smoke. “You were too young. You were home, sleeping. I watched from my window. Mom forbade me to go outside. Chuck was like some movie hero, coming out through the smoke and fire. Seriously. If that night was a movie, that shot would have been the one on the posters.”
A small smile softened the look of worry on Kaylee’s face. But the smile didn’t last long, no matter how hard the adults tried to cheer her up.
After the visit with Rose, when Derek, Jess, and Kaylee were in his truck ready to leave, he paused with his hand on the key in the ignition, and looked over Kaylee’s head, at Jess. “What can I do to help? Want me to run the sugar shack? It’s been a while, but I remember what needs to be done.”
He made the offer as if nothing was more natural, as if he wasn’t on deadline, as if Jess had a right to his assistance and support. Except, she had no right to expect any help from him.
She said, “Thank you,” anyway. And then, “We’ll figure it out between the two of us.”
Kaylee piped up as they got on the road. “Can I come back with you when you come to check on Zelda and Abuelito later?”
When Kaylee’d been younger, she had called her grandfather Abuelito, for the Spanish word for “grandfather,” abuelo. Jess hadn’t heard the word from her since returning home.
“Me too,” she told Derek. “I’m going to send Zelda home and stay the night.”
Kaylee opened her mouth as if to protest, but Jess said, “You have school tomorrow. Chuck will have my skin when he comes home if he finds out I let you skip. You need your sleep.”
Zelda did too. She couldn’t spend the whole night in an uncomfortable plastic chair at the hospital. She needed to keep her feet elevated or they’d start hurting.
On the way home, Derek stopped by Chuck’s place so Kaylee could pick up her things and move them over to the Taylor farm. Chuck’s house was a log cabin he’d built from a kit, with his own two hands and the help of some friends, on land he’d bought from Jess’s grandfather. That cabin was his pride and joy. He was as proud of it as he was of the maple syrup he made. But still not nearly as proud as he was of Kaylee.
At the Taylor farm, Kaylee settled into Rose’s room while Derek and Jess checked on the sugar shack together. They reassured the workers and assigned two to the vats.
On the way back to the house, Derek took Jess’s hands on the front stoop. His palms had calluses. How could someone have calluses from typing? Then again, the farmhouse and the gardens that went with it still had to be kept up. He probably did plenty of physical work.
“I’m glad you came home,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re here too.” She was a strong woman, independent and capable, but it was still nice not to be alone when trouble hit. And Kaylee also needed all the support she could get for the next couple of weeks until Chuck recovered.
Jess didn’t resist when Derek drew her into his arms. He held her gaze and gave her time to pull away. When she didn’t, he kissed her.
The soft pressure of his masculine lips on hers sent a wave of need through her. Her mind kept insisting that anything between them would be way too complicated, but her body said nothing ever had been simpler.
She and Eliot had been circling each other for more than a year now, and the timing had never been right. With Derek, her body said, Timing? What timing?
As if there was no right timing for Derek, the need between them simply was. That elemental desire had always been there, and would always stay there.
Then his arms tightened around her, as if he might pick her up and carry her inside, right up the stairs and into her bedroom. Everything inside her said, Yes.
She had one of those alternate-universe experiences again. And this time, she didn’t want to come back to reality. She di
dn’t bother pretending that she didn’t want the kiss. Forget want. She might even have needed it.
The last time she’d had a boyfriend was so long ago she could barely even remember. She’d gone out a couple of times with a guy who rented in the same apartment building. But Shaun definitely wasn’t Derek. Nobody was. Nobody had ever come close. Jess kissed him back.
Oh God.
One kiss she could have pretended had been an accident, a mistake. But two kisses meant something.
Meant what? That no man’s lips had ever felt as good on hers as Derek’s?
Derek was the man who literally knew everything about her past. For the past decade, she’d thought meeting him again, having to look into his eyes, would be so awkward that it would kill her. But oddly, being with him wasn’t awkward at all. He knew everything there was to know. No explanations needed. It was incredibly freeing in a way.
She was going to fall for him all over again, dammit. The thought stole what little breath his thorough kiss hadn’t taken. Her entire body heated and tingled.
“Eew! Get a room.” Kaylee stood in the open door behind them. “Corruption of the morals of a minor. You can go to jail for that.”
Jess blinked. She’d been so lost in the kiss, she didn’t even hear the door open.
Derek grunted. “Ever heard of giving people privacy, smart-ass?”
Jess pulled away from him as a hot blush crept onto her face. “I’m going to drive into Taylorville. I’ll be back in an hour at most.”
Space was what she needed, she told herself. Lots of space, and time to think.
She left Derek and Kaylee at the house and went to buy Chuck a couple of new pairs of pajamas, a new robe, a new toothbrush and toothpaste, and a couple of other little things that would make his hospital stay more comfortable. On the way out of Taylorville’s only department store, she walked by the bookshop, Lorelei’s Lit Lair. Two women in their midthirties stood in front of the window, staring.
About a hundred copies of Derek’s new book, Dark Woods, filled the display, a life-size cutout of him in the middle. Not that the Lorelei chick had an obvious crush on him, or anything, Jess thought and instantly felt territorial.
In a sharp navy-blue suit, tall and wide-shouldered, exuding confidence and charisma, he looked every inch the bestselling thriller author. He looked staggeringly handsome. He looked like the man her heart might never be able to forget.
Why hadn’t he told her that his book was being released today? Had he forgotten in the middle of Chuck’s emergency? He probably had a million things to do to promote the release.
“You coming to the book signing?” one of the women, a blonde, asked the other.
Her equally striking brunette friend responded with, “What are the chances he’ll be in the fire hall’s bachelor auction?”
“I’d say zero. They’re not having one this year.”
The brunette moaned with disappointment. “He’s so hot. I want to steal that cardboard cutout.”
“Lorelei will chase you down and beat you with a reading lamp.”
On impulse, Jess walked past them and stepped into the store. She grabbed a copy of Dark Woods from the giant display in the middle, giving the woman behind the counter the evil eye on the off chance that she was Lorelei. Possible-Lorelei seemed confused by the surly attitude, her expression alternating between welcoming and concerned. Good. Let her wonder, shameless hussy.
Jess held the book to her chest on her way out. She wanted to know what the book would tell her about the author, this new Derek she was falling for all over again.
That night while she was at the hospital, sitting with Chuck as his “niece,” Jess began to read the story.
Her first impressions were: moody, dark, brilliant.
As Chuck slept, Jess read. The story began with a college romance. Boy in lust with the girl next door, a reckless love affair. Tryst in the woods. A stranger with a gun.
Suddenly sweat was rolling down Jess’s back. Her heart thundered.
She read as the masked man tied up the young lovers. When the naked girl in the book shivered, so did Jess. The boy tore at his ropes, half-mad. Save her! Save her! Save her! But he couldn’t.
Jess slammed the book shut. She rubbed her hands over her face, wiping away her stupid tears.
Around her, the hospital room was silent and peaceful. Chuck breathed evenly, his face smooth and relaxed in sleep.
Jess felt as if a tornado was swirling around her. She felt stricken. She felt as if she was going to throw up. Dark Woods was her story. Hers and Derek’s.
Derek—the man who’d just hours ago kissed her as if she meant everything to him—had taken the most private, most painful part of her life and put it out there for everyone to see. For his career. For freaking money!
Words could not express the depth of the betrayal that threatened to drown Jess. She felt as if Derek had not just sold her story, but sold her.
How could he?
At times in the past, she had blamed him for what had happened to her. But she’d always known that she wasn’t right to fault Derek. What had happened in that horrid camper wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help it that the kidnapper had chosen Jess as the primary target and Derek as the audience.
Resenting Derek had been wrong. And now that they’d met again, and Jess saw the man he’d become, she had let go of that old resentment.
But the book! Her stomach clenched as if she’d missed her cue and didn’t block a punch right, and got hit full force during a stunt. She had trouble breathing.
Dark Woods was a betrayal she could never forgive.
Had she ever thought she could fall in love with Derek all over again?
Never.
Chapter Fifteen
Friday
“IT’S TOO LATE to cancel,” Derek’s editor said over the phone. “Per your original request, we were only doing the abbreviated book tour to begin with, keeping you on the East Coast. Just a straight line down: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington. You’ll have to do at least that much.”
“Sorry. I can’t. I’ll keep the signings in Burlington and the indie store in Taylorville, but that’s it. I can’t travel.”
A couple of seconds of silence stretched on the line. Then Diane asked, “Do you know what the difference is between editors and Somali pirates?”
“No?”
“You can negotiate with Somali pirates.”
Derek could almost appreciate the humor.
“So . . .” she said after a while. “Please tell me you’re not sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“No. But I appreciate the offer, Diane.”
“You’re not going to turn into one of those recluse authors who are impossible to promote, are you? Like go and live in a cabin in the woods?” She sucked in a quick breath. “Oh God. Vermont. You’ve already moved to a cabin in the woods!” She groaned. “James Patterson lives in New York. Just saying. I think you should think about a move. Be in the middle of the action.”
Derek leaned back in his chair. “I’ve already been in the middle of the action.”
“Right. War. Sorry. I’m . . .”
“Don’t worry about it.” He smiled at the honest distress in her voice. “I know what you meant.”
He looked through his office window, toward the Taylor place. Somewhere inside the farmhouse, Jess was probably cleaning and organizing for her mother’s eventual homecoming.
“I like it here,” he said. “I’ll do all the online promo possible for this book, and then I’ll do the full promo circuit with the next book. I promise.”
“Our PR people could have gotten you on the morning shows.” The mournful tone crept back into Diane’s voice.
“Under different circumstances, I would have loved to do them. I appreciate all that you do on my behalf. I really do.”
A long-suffering sigh on the other end. “At least tell me you’r
e not going to be late with the next book.”
“So far so good, but I can’t promise.”
“Hit the number one spot on the New York Times list and they all become prima donnas,” Diane muttered on the other end.
Derek laughed. “If I’m late with the manuscript, I won’t be too late.” And because he really did appreciate her, he added, “How about I throw in some bonus content? Cut scenes on the website, or a little short story for the end of the book?”
“And that’s why you’re my favorite author.”
He wasn’t anyone else’s favorite at the moment. Jess had been avoiding him all morning for some reason. She wouldn’t talk to him past courtesies on the ride back home from the hospital when he’d picked her up and dropped off Zelda again. Jess had barely looked at him when he’d offered to drive Kaylee and her back to the hospital after school. She would take care of it, she’d said.
Diane was asking, “Are you sure you can’t do the book tour?”
“I’m sure.”
“Is this about a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Dare I hope for a shocking relationship with a prostitute that’ll be picked up by the tabloids and give us a ton of free publicity? Hollywood is remaking Pretty Woman. We could do some newsjacking.”
“I’m sorry to be a disappointment.”
Diane scoffed. Then she asked, “Is it true love?”
“Yes.” How little he had to think about it surprised him.
“Fine.” Diane drew a long breath on the other end. “Balance sheets be damned. Do what you need to do. Full speed ahead, sailor, and release the torpedoes. Or whatever they say in the navy.”
Derek couldn’t help a smile. “Thank you, Diane.”
By the time he hung up with his editor, the clock on the wall showed noon. Zelda had told him she had lunch in the fridge and he should go up to the house and eat, so he went downstairs and drove over.
He knocked but received no answer. He opened the door and walked inside. The school bus hadn’t come yet, so he didn’t expect Kaylee there, but he couldn’t see Jess either. Then he stepped farther in and realized that the lump on the couch was Jess, and not just a rumpled quilt.
