Click

by Anne Conley

  “Do you think you could keep Drew while we’re gone?”

  “I’d be ecstatic to have him.” Jake chuckled. He would do whatever Drew needed. “This guy’s okay to be around Drew, right? What do you know about him?” To his knowledge, Drew had only met the man once.

  Abby sighed. “Honestly, I think this trip will be the determining trip in whether or not we keep dating. I’m hoping to learn a lot more about him over the holidays.”

  “Well, just be careful,” Jake hedged, knowing this was just the beginning.

  For Miriam, New Year’s had been a lonely affair. She’d actually made the four hour drive to her brother’s new place for the holiday just so they both didn’t have to be alone. It was a lovely visit, but she was anxious to get home. He’d known something was wrong with her, so she’d told him everything. She told him about the job, about Jake, all of it.

  Telling him hadn’t helped her to know any answers to her own questions, but it had felt good to get it all out in the open. Nick was always good to force admissions out of her that she wasn’t ready to admit to herself.

  She really just wanted everything to go back the way it was. It hadn’t been any less complicated, but it was a complexity she was familiar with. She had no idea what was going to happen now, and that scared the ever-loving shit out of her.

  Nick let her behind the bar so she wouldn’t be molested by random rednecks at ball-drop. But it was still the most bizarre New Year’s she’d ever had—mostly because she was she was so far out of her comfort zone. But it was probably a good thing. She wasn’t alone, and Miriam needed her brother.

  The next morning, when it was time for her to leave, Nick hugged her hard. “I love you, Mir. Go back and talk to this guy. He deserves that much at least.”

  She nodded, her throat thick. He did deserve it, but she didn’t know how to talk to him at this point. There was just so much to say, and so much unsaid. She hadn’t known Jake long but so much had happened, they had history, and it was a strange one.

  Sniffing through the thickness, she replied, “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning, Mir. If he’s worth anything, he’ll understand and see past the bullshit and love you in spite of it. I do,” he offered with a grin. “If he doesn’t, just forget about him.”

  As if she could.

  She didn’t talk to Jake. Instead, she went back to work, pushing through everything, attempting to make the mundane of her routine work for her. Late one night, after walking the new housekeeping staff through their job and seeing them out, she found Simon at his desk with a bottle of Scotch.

  “What are you still doing here?” she asked, bewildered. Simon had been looking rougher lately, his usually fastidious appearance becoming sloppy. Tonight, his jacket and tie were off, his shirt was mostly unbuttoned, and his hair stuck out wildly.

  “I could ask you the same. I thought you needed less of a load. I hired the housekeeping company, yet you’re still here.” His eyebrows quirked at her pointedly before he poured himself another finger of the amber liquid.

  Miriam’s stomach roiled at the distinct odor of alcohol permeating the room. Simon noticed and looked squarely at her. “Are you going to tell him?”

  Her jaw dropped, an uneasy feeling that the men in her life were trying to run things for her creeped up on her. “How did you know?”

  “Nick called,” Simon said simply.

  Sitting, she managed to stay calm despite the raging hormones inside her. “My brother called my boss.” They were conspiring to run her life, make her decisions, plot her actions, and it pissed her off. But instead of blowing up, she just looked at Simon.

  “Why can’t you give up control, Simon? Why do you feel the need to meddle with everyone’s business? I know this is the perfect front for your micromanegerial tendencies,” she gestured to the office around her, “But don’t you think you’d be happier if you’d just let things go? A little?”

  He attempted to hide his shock by swigging the liquid in his glass, but she saw it anyway. “I can’t control things, I don’t know why you think that’s what I’m doing.” He leaned back in his chair, abandoning the empty glass for the half-full bottle instead. He cradled it in his arms, his long fingers wrapped possessively around the neck. “I used to be that way, Miriam. I used to try to control everything, but now… This… This is me trying to find answers to questions.” His arms parodied her previous gesture and waved around the office. “But I still don’t have the answers. None of them.”

  His eyes were incredibly sad, and Miriam couldn’t tell if the glassiness was from tears or alcohol.

  “What can I do, Simon?”

  “Go find Jake.” His chair swiveled, and Simon stared out the window behind him, dismissing her.

  With a sigh, she rose from her own seat. “Simon…” She walked around the desk and bent for an awkward hug around the beastly leather chair. He seemed to relax into her hold, and she smelled the alcohol as it seeped from his pores, a sour smell that turned her stomach again. “Okay. I’ll talk to him.”

  Jake sat at his desk, looking through pictures, trying to decide on the layout for the book. He sifted through hundreds of photos, looking for the perfect ending to the book about the people of Austin. He needed something that spoke of the resiliency and strength and spice Texans were so proud of. He just wasn’t feeling it.

  So, when a knock sounded at his door, he welcomed the distraction, stretching weary muscles as he rose from his chair.

  Opening the door, he felt the air rush from him as he stared at Miriam. He hadn’t seen her in over a month, choosing to obey her wishes even if they didn’t make any sense to him. He knew he’d fucked up and he was simply paying the price for that.

  But opening the door, the sense of resigned sadness seeping from Miriam made his heart clench. It was like a giant fist was squeezing him, taking all of his air, filling him with a renewed sense of purpose. But he didn’t know what sort of purpose it was.

  “Can I come in?” she asked quietly, almost shyly.

  “Of course.” He stepped back, allowing her to enter, and when she came in it was like she breathed new life into his house. Her scent wafted through his nostrils and his body reacted.

  She looked around his living room, noticing the camera on his coffee table. When she turned back to him, she was fiddling with the buttons on her blouse.

  “What are you working on? Am I interrupting something?” She was looking at his desk in the corner with pictures spilling across the top.

  “I’m just trying to finalize the layout for my People of Austin book. It’s missing something, and I don’t know what.” He was just trying to fill the awkward silence. Jake had no idea why she was here.

  Her fingers moved with more purpose across the front of her shirt. “Get your camera.” Miriam nodded toward the coffee table.

  Wordlessly, he clutched his camera, holding it in front of him like a barrier, as if that would protect him from the pain she could inflict.

  “You take pictures that tell a story?” Miriam asked, unbuttoning her blouse. Jake swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. “Take my picture, Jake. Tell my story.”

  “Okay.” He looked at Miriam through the viewfinder, focusing on her as her hands tentatively moved. She unbuttoned each button, one by one, and he captured the slow reveal of tantalizing skin, one creamy smooth inch at a time, wondering why she was here.

  Before opening her shirt, she turned around, and lowered if over her shoulders, exposing a part of a burn scar. He zoomed in and took a picture, the heady feeling that she was allowing him in like this totally consuming him.

  “I was married, too,” she began. “When we were first married, Vince was perfect. He was attentive, and we had a great time together.” She lowered her shirt a little more, and the middle of her back showed another burn mark. He pulled the camera zoom back, to get both burns together, and realized it was the shape of an iron, as if somebody had used her back for an
ironing board to press something. “Then he got sort of nasty, verbally abusive. Telling me I was too fat, or too skinny, or didn’t dress like a woman. It didn’t matter what I did, it was never enough. Not enough makeup, too much makeup. He was super critical of everything I did. So, when I got pregnant, I thought I had finally done something right, for once.” She dropped her shirt on the floor and looked over her shoulder at him.

  She gave him a sad smile, and he clicked a round of shots of her beautiful face over her shoulder before she turned and walked deeper into his house, Jake following. He was grateful she opened up to him, but still didn’t understand what this was about. Not willing to stop her, though, he continued taking pictures.

  “It was a difficult pregnancy and Vince changed. He was there for every part of it, cheering me on, telling me what a great mother I was.” Her voice went quiet when she got to his bedroom. “When the baby was stillborn, he grieved, and at first I thought his blaming me was just a part of the grieving process.” She stood at the edge of his unmade bed before unzipping her jeans. When her words registered, Jake felt an impotent rage boil up inside him. Her husband had done this to her because they lost a baby together. What sort of man took his grief out on a woman?

  She lowered her jeans, bending over, and Jake snapped a couple of pictures of her delicate backside in black lace panties. When she crawled into his bed, wrapping the sheet around her torso, her legs sticking out the bottom of it, Jake resisted every impulse he had to follow her, choosing instead to snap more photos of the scene unfolding in front of his lens.

  “But then he started the physical abuse. Hitting and pushing. Nothing I couldn’t handle. But when he woke me up with the iron one night to bring him a beer, I realized I had to get out. It was midnight, Jake. And instead of walking into the kitchen to get himself a beer, he waited for the iron to get hot to burn me with it.”

  Abruptly changing the subject, she sat up. Jake kept clicking away, focused on her face as she spoke. She was painfully beautiful with her red hair and enormous green eyes. Her pale skin showed off the fading scars from the cuts of her attack, and Jake’s helplessness overtook him. He tamped it down, though, as she was telling her story. The rage consuming him that somebody could be so cruel to her only fueled him as he furiously snapped pictures.

  “I’ve had three mammograms in the last two years. Three, Jake. And I’m thirty-three. That’s three times I had to wait weeks for appointments and readings, going through the indignity of having my breasts smashed between two plates while some sanctimonious nurse cloaked in sympathy tried to make me feel like I was cursed for being a woman. The medical profession tries to soften the blow by decorating the office with flowers and potpourri and giving us pink hospital gowns. If there were eight women in the waiting room, I would try to guess which one of would have it. Praying it wouldn’t be me, I wondered when or if I got my all-clear, which of the other women got it. Three times I had to wait to be told whether I had the disease that killed my mom and my aunt. Three times I had to learn whether I would have to undergo painful treatments that would make me unrecognizable to everyone I love.”

  She dropped the sheet from her torso, and Jake couldn’t stop the tear leaking from his eye. He lowered the camera, wanting to hold her, to comfort her, but she gave him a stern look and he raised the viewfinder back to his eye, snapping away.

  “I had elective surgery to remove the breasts that would probably eventually kill me. My most visible asset as a woman is gone. I’ve had a hard time with that, even though I chose not to have reconstructive surgery to get implants.”

  Jake remembered the night when they’d made love, how she hadn’t let him see her. Or touch her breasts.

  “Lie down. Drop your head off the end of the bed and raise one knee.” He was going to make her see what he saw when he looked at her, instead of whatever she thought she saw in the mirror. He hadn’t ever taken any boudoir portraits, but there was a first time for everything. When she complied, what lay before him was a goddess. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, clicking away. And she was. The pink scars didn’t deter from her femininity, they enhanced it, along with the red hair spilling off the side of the bed and the black lace panties she wore. Her delicate fingertips trailed across the skin of her belly, down to trace the edge of her panties while her eyes were locked on his.

  “You’re the only man who’s ever made me feel like the woman I want to be,” she whispered back. “But I’m scared.” A tear pooled in her eye and tracked down her temple.

  She rolled over onto her stomach and arched her back, sticking her delectable rear in the air while Jake stifled the groan emanating from his chest, snapping more shots. Her lips pouted, and she sucked on her index finger. “Like now. I’ve never felt as sexy as I do the way you’re looking at me.”

  “You’re so fucking sexy,” Jake growled at her. He didn’t know what she wanted from him. “I want to do more than look.”

  “Then keep taking my picture, Jake.” The smile on her face was small, but it radiated a confidence he hadn’t seen on her when she first walked into his house.

  “Hands and knees.” Jake’s voice was strained, almost as much as his dick against his zipper. Christ, she had no fucking idea what she was doing to him. She pushed herself up on her hands and leaned back so her face was on her knees in a quasi-yoga pose. He circled her, snapping pictures while she breathed hard. He could see her back arching with the effort. “Spread your knees, keep those pretty toes together…” He snapped more pictures, “Yeah. Perfect. Now, roll over onto your back, head on the pillow.”

  He couldn’t stop himself. Jake climbed on the bed, crawling over her body until he straddled her waist, clicking pictures as he went. She pulled her hands up the back of her head and let her red hair cascade over the pillow.

  “Perfect.”

  With the camera in front of his face, Jake was still snapping pictures as he watched a scene play out through the viewfinder. He trailed a finger down her face and clicked as her eyes closed to the sensation. Her skin was so smooth. Down the curve of her delicate neck, his finger traced the line of a vein under her translucent skin, remembering the night he’d touched this same area, feeling for a pulse.

  He shuddered at the memory.

  Allowing his finger to keep tracing, he adjusted his grip on the camera until he was at her chest, where the pink scars were.

  “Can I touch them?” For some reason, he needed to ask. She had opened this much of herself up to him, given him a precious gift, and he didn’t want to do the wrong thing. Not now, when he had her here.

  “Yes,” she breathed at him, closing her eyes. The gesture squeezed a tear out of the corner of her eye.

  After snapping a picture of his dark hand covering her puckered scar, he declared the photography work finished for the time being and set the camera on the bedside table, dropping his head to the scar.

  He kissed it. Looking back up at her for approval, he saw more tears on her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Jake.”

  He sat up to see her better, still straddling her hips. “What do you mean, Miriam?”

  She opened her eyes, and the glassy green orbs beckoned him. “I’m pregnant.”

  Jake was sucker punched. He collapsed back on his heels, grabbing at her hand and clasping it. He thought he might be smiling, but wasn’t sure if that was the right response. She was still crying, loud hiccupping sobs, each one tearing at his gut. He pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her slim frame.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled honestly into her hair, trying not to get lost in its scent. “Do you want me to be happy?”

  She sniffed into his shirt, still sobbing. “Honestly? Yes. I do want you to be happy.”

  Holding her face between her hands, Jake pulled her back so he could see her. “Are you happy with it?” Please say yes. God, he didn’t know what he would do if she didn’t want it.

&nbs
p; “It’s going to be a difficult pregnancy. It’s not supposed to happen,” she sniffed.

  “But are you happy to be pregnant?” He searched her eyes for the truth, not certain she would give it to him.

  After an interminable amount of time, she bit her lip, her face crumpling into more sobs with a furious nod. “I’ve just never dared hope for it, but I’ve always wanted a child.”

  It had taken all her guts to come to Jake today and bare herself, both literally and figuratively. She’d told him everything, and he was reacting just the way she needed him to. Could she keep going? Could she tell him what she needed from him?

  He was still holding her face in his hands, wiping her tears with his thumbs, the soft caresses doing more for her than all the best-wishes in the world.

  “I’ve very happy you’re pregnant with my child, Miriam,” he said softly, and the simple words made something inside her take flight. They gave her the courage to say what was in her heart, the words she’d wanted to say for a month.

  “I’m sorry for making you leave the hospital,” she sniffed, trying to contain the tears still streaming down her face. “I want more with you. I always have, I just didn’t know how to be what you needed. Now that I’m pregnant, I want you to be a father to the baby.” An uncontrolled burst of laughter fell out of her mouth. “Not just a baby daddy. I want you in our lives. I want to know your son and be a part of your lives, too.”

  There. She’d said it. Miriam didn’t use the word ‘love’ because she had no way of knowing if these roiling emotions inside her were love, but she missed Jake furiously and couldn’t help but think she had made the biggest mistake of her life pushing him away.

  His eyes still searched hers—the blue pools glittered like sapphires as they bounced back and forth between her eyes—then fell on her lips. When he swiped a tongue across his own lip, she knew if he didn’t kiss her she would die.

  He didn’t speak, and she wished he would say something. The longer he went on, waging whatever war he was fighting in his head, the more she thought she might have just put herself out there for his rejection.