Instead, Kristen stood silent so long that the crowd hushed in curiosity. She gazed down at them like royalty, then leaned over to the microphone. “I apologize to everyone here, but I’ve decided to revise the bouquet toss tonight.” She grinned as laughter broke out. “I know, I know, big shock that I’m changing a tradition. But there’s one person in particular that I hope will be as happy as I am one day soon, and I can’t run the risk of her missing out on this opportunity just so someone else can have it. She does that too much as it is.”
Anna stared in growing horror as Kristen hopped off the dais and trotted over to her in all her bridal splendor, her hands outstretched with the bouquet. Slapping a smile on her face just in time, she accepted the flowers as Kristen pulled her into a tight embrace.
Spontaneous applause erupted around them, and Anna hugged Kristen back hard. Unaccountably, tears welled in her eyes as Kristen pulled back to look at her.
“Jake seems really nice, Anna,” Kristen said with a soft smile, her eyes warm with affection. “And I can tell you two love each other.” She squeezed Anna’s arm. “I think you guys should go for it.”
Chapter 18
The wedding reception officially closed down at ten P.M., and unofficially opened up again at a local club, where Kristen had arranged for several taxis to stand at the ready to whisk guests safely back to the house. She and Scott were headed for a hotel to spend their first night of wedded bliss together without a houseful of guests, and Anna watched them go with a wistful tug in her heart. Jake was right there beside her, and as she turned to him he was shrugging out of his jacket.
“You’ll need this for the ride back to the house, unless you’d rather take a cab? Or …” He paused, frowning. “Are you ready to leave the party yet?”
“More than ready,” Anna said. If for nothing else than it meant that they could leave Todd behind. He’d been glaring at her the whole night, for no discernible reason. He’d had interested female parties draping themselves over him at every turn. But instead of focusing on his immediate prospects, he’d preferred to scowl at Anna dancing with Jake, Anna walking with Jake, Anna staring moony-eyed at Jake. She knew she probably looked like an idiot, but she didn’t care. It was her weekend, her vacation, her fantasy boyfriend come to life. She let Jake put his suit jacket over her shoulders, relishing the feel of it against her skin. It was a nice quality—she hadn’t seen the label, but it felt heavier than she would have expected, with richer materials. “Where did you get this?”
“On a recommendation from another guy whose bike I worked on,” Jake said. He handed Anna her helmet then secured his own, turning to swing his leg over the bike and start it up. He leaned the rumbling machine over for her to clamber on. “Watch your—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got this,” Anna said. She had the skirts of her dress wrapped around her arm, but she secretly hoped the gown got ruined on the drive back to the guesthouse. The entire ensemble made her feel like an overstuffed cake decoration, a pudgy ballerina made out of blue frosting and sugar. They took off, and she let the material play out in her hands and stream behind her, classic runaway bridesmaid. With the wind whipping around her, she felt a tiny burst of happiness unfurl within her, completely at odds with the new melancholy that had started stabbing at her ever since the bouquet non-toss. The forced silence of the ride back to the guesthouse meant she was left alone with her thoughts—and her thoughts were not happy ones. Work was starting to encroach on her. The Japan call was less than twenty-four hours away. The end of the weekend was looming, and she felt like it’d only just gotten started.
Anna pinched her lips together in a hard frown against Jake’s back. Her tendency to forget about the moment and think only of the future was really beginning to piss her off. Why am I worried about what is going to happen tomorrow, when there is still so much of tonight left?
They reached the guesthouse without incident, and she slid off the bike, letting her gown settle into place around her as Jake cut the bike’s engine. She moved to hand him her helmet, then hesitated, and he nodded. “Might as well take ’em in,” he said. “Not all of the people in that house are Kristen’s close friends, I suspect, based on the number of cars.”
They swiveled their glances to the house, and sure enough, the place was lit up like a Christmas tree—everyone trying to get in the last of their partying, before it all ended the next morning. “I thought they would all be at the bar.”
“The booze here is cheaper, even with the free ride home.” Jake thinned his lips. “Let’s get in and get you out of those things. I wouldn’t mind hanging on the beach for a while.”
“The beach!” Anna’s mind immediately jumped to what had happened the night before—a scene she couldn’t even fully believe, and she’d actually been there.
“The beach. But relax, sweetheart. I just want to hang somewhere else till things quiet down.”
“Of course! That sounds awesome.” Anna buried her disappointment as she turned away toward the house. What did she care whether or not she and Jake made love again tonight … and why was she so willing to do it on a freaking public beach, anyway? Since when had she become a nymphomaniac?
They navigated through the house, which was pulsing with sound as the party swung into full gear. Changing into comfortable clothes for the beach was a short process, and this time, Jake grabbed a blanket and a bottle of wine from the supplies on the back veranda. He peered at the cap then laughed, shaking his head. “Unbelievable,” he said. “No corkscrew needed. Every one of these are screw tops.”
“Kristen is a planner. It’s what she does,” Anna said. Someone else who lived with one foot firmly planted in the future, just in case the bottom dropped out of the present. No wonder they got along, even if Kristen had never quite hit the same experience of “bottom” that she’d had. Anna didn’t trust herself to say anything more after that little thought, so she picked up a second blanket, as well as a pair of the plastic wineglasses from another bin. The wind was calm tonight, and she felt her tension ooze out of her as they wandered down the long veranda, hand in hand. They’d walked to the beach just last night, but that had been different. She had been different.
Now the urgency she felt building inside her was not so much sexual as emotional. Except she didn’t trust emotional tonight. Sex, she could handle, and sexual need, she could stuff down. But her heart felt uncomfortably full, and what she wanted was to do things like … talk. Like share stories and hold hands and find out what Jake’s favorite restaurant was and who his childhood nemeses were and what he dreamed about at night. All of that stuff somehow mattered now, when it’d never mattered before with any of her boyfriends. She’d just never wanted to know, never let herself want to know. But tonight, she did. And all of this emotional stuff was new for her. New and awkward.
They walked up the beach this time by mutual accord, and everything seemed quieter, more intimate, the dark drifting down over them in a comforting drape that made conversation unnecessary. When Jake stopped, Anna could still see the beach house in the distance. They were closer in than the night before, and somehow that made her feel safer too, more secure. They spread out one of the blankets and Jake uncapped the bottle of wine, driving it into the sand.
“Now, come here, you,” Jake said, and Anna let him pull her down to her knees. He laid her back on the blanket and brushed his lips against hers, the movement turning from a casual kiss into something more almost immediately. She sighed beneath him, opening her mouth further, and he responded by stretching out over the length of her, pressing his body to hers. She took his weight and reveled beneath it. Jake Flynn was a long stretch of muscle from shoulder to heel, and the fact that he was here, with her … Well, she didn’t have to feign a completely feminine moan of pleasure as he deepened the kiss yet further.
He felt amazing. All of this was amazing. Just enjoy it! she ordered herself. Take it in, feel it all, savor every last moment of it.
Jake looked down at her, prop
ped up on one elbow as he traced the curve of her face with his other hand, brushing her hair out of her face. “More comfortable now?” he asked.
She met his gaze and smiled. “Definitely,” she said, though in truth she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t in the middle of a hookup here. This felt more like a date. A date that she wanted to matter more than it did. Which was so stupid. Why could she not chill out? Why could she not—
“And yet, you’re still thinking too much.” Jake’s words were teasing, but his expression was infinitely tender.
Anna’s lips twisted into a small grimace. “That’s what I do, I guess.” Only, again, she didn’t want to do that anymore, to be that person all the time. Certainly not tonight, with Jake right here and all the rest of the world so far away.
As if he were reading her thoughts, Jake drew a soft finger over her forehead, soothing away her cares. “Truth or dare, Anna,” he whispered.
Her gaze snapped to his. “What do you mean?”
“Last night, you picked dare. What’ll it be tonight?” When she didn’t answer right away, Jake leaned forward. His mouth was just inches from hers, his eyes intent. “I’d like it to be truth, if I get a vote.”
Anna lifted her chin up, but that thing was happening to her heart again, that shaky feeling that made her want to run away, to work, to bury herself in projects and deadlines and things to do. Instead she breathed out one strangled little word: “Truth.”
“What happened after your dad died, Anna?” Jake asked, his voice infinitely tender. “What made you become so driven?”
Anna’s eyes went wide. She’d expected him to ask her about her past, but not quite like this, not with those words. “What do you mean?” she said, hedging, going for casual and failing miserably. “Nothing happened, really. We had some trouble with money. A lot of people do. We just … you know. We weren’t prepared.”
“But didn’t you have family who could help? Aunts, uncles?”
Anna felt her defenses shudder a little bit. “My mom has a brother, yes. He couldn’t help us. It was a bad time.” It was always a bad time. That was something else she’d learned in the months following Dad’s death, when there hadn’t been enough life insurance to do more than bury him, and Mom hadn’t found work, hadn’t realized things were as bad as they actually were. Then her mother’s pride and Anna’s own ignorance combined to make matters even worse. The words seemed to bubble up inside her unbidden now, and she could no more stop them from flowing out than she could stop her own breath. “We were doing fine, I thought. We were doing okay, anyway. We’d stopped eating out, but whatever. I couldn’t get new clothes but that was no big deal. Mom was looking for work, she said. Everything was fine. When she asked me to maybe consider getting a job I …” Anna pressed her lips together, hard, and looked toward the water. The sound of the waves rolling endlessly in and out was drowned out by the pounding in her ears. “I told her no. I told her I was busy, that none of my friends needed to get jobs. That I thought she should be the one to get the job because I was the one who was going to school. It didn’t take long for things to get bad, really. Looking back, I probably could have seen it coming. But … I didn’t. I just didn’t.”
Jake didn’t say anything, and Anna plunged on, almost desperate now to be heard, for these words to finally be shared. “Turns out, my dad had missed some bills. A lot of bills. The big ones, especially. He’d never wanted to say no to anything Mom and him wanted to do. He had a job, but apparently it wasn’t enough. I’m sure he thought he’d turn it around. I’m sure he planned on fixing everything. But then he died completely out of nowhere and Mom finally realized …” Anna drew in a shaky breath. “Whatever. We couldn’t stay in our house, in the end. The bank just … we had to leave. And then we couldn’t get an apartment with Mom not having a job. So, we … we lived out of our van.” She was whispering the words now, unable to speak any louder, having hidden the truth, the dirty secret, for so long. “My mom’s old gym let us shower there. God, that was a blessing. Every day we could go in and chat like members, and they would just let us pass. It was still hard, even though they were nice. Probably because they were so nice. Because they were doing us a favor. But we’d take a shower and hang out in the locker room, anything to make the feeling of normal last longer. We had enough money left for groceries and gas. I went to school. She looked for work. After my uncle told us he just couldn’t help, Mom … that was hard on Mom. After that, we didn’t tell anyone how bad things had gotten, just hoped no one would notice. And every day …”
Anna hadn’t realized she’d stopped talking until Jake’s quiet voice nudged her. “How long, Anna?” he asked.
“Oh, not that long, really,” she said. There was something in her eyes now, and she couldn’t see the ocean anymore. “Two months, I think. Seemed longer then, of course. Everything did, especially when no one could know. I was at school when Mom finally got work. A doctor’s receptionist called her about someone going on maternity leave. Our cell phone was a few weeks from being shut off. The lady remembered Mom from when she’d been in for a checkup, just after Dad’s death. Before we realized we couldn’t afford to see the doctor, unless it was an emergency. Anyway, she called Mom and just like that, a job. With that and an employer recommendation, we got an apartment. Not a great apartment, of course. It still sucked.” Her smile couldn’t quite hold its shape. “But it sucked less, you know? It sucked less.”
Jake held on to Anna’s hands, the wine beside them forgotten as they stared out at the ocean. He should feel anger rising inside him at the indignities that Anna and her mother had suffered, but his heart felt curiously hollow, as if he’d been the one crying, not her.
“Thank you for telling me that, Anna,” he murmured, and she seemed to come back to herself.
“God, sorry.” She lifted her fingers to wipe the tears from her eyes, then leaned forward and busied herself with the wine bottle, her hands still shaking.
“Don’t be.” Still, he kept his attention on the water so she’d feel less self-conscious, and he searched for some lighter focus for their conversation. “So, you just have tomorrow’s brunch thing to get through, right?” he finally asked. “Then you’re in the clear in terms of social commitments, and it’s back to work with your heavy-breathing ex?”
As he’d hoped, Anna chuckled. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s almost the end of the weekend, so Todd will be in full-on work mode by six A.M. tomorrow morning. The Japan call doesn’t happen until midnight, but he’s dragged half our team into the darn thing to show our commitment to our new partners. My role will take all of five minutes—just a standard introduction that I don’t even need to make. I’ve got backup materials in case the call gets more complex than I’m expecting, but really, it should be pretty low-key.” She shook her head. “And yes, tomorrow morning we have a very basic brunch where I suspect wedding gifts will be opened, then we’re home free.” Her face twisted into a smile as he glanced over at her. “Well, I guess Boston isn’t really your home, is it? How are you doing on the brownstone?”
“Almost done, actually,” he said. And it was true. He only had one more room to clean out, his grandmother’s bedroom. He’d put it off for one simple reason—the thing was chock-full of baubles, knickknacks, all sorts of crap that the woman couldn’t bear to part with on her own, but had no real need for. She’d asked him to collect a few treasures for her over the past few months, now that she’d had a chance to consider what she truly missed, but the rest was fair game for the recycling bin, according to her. He’d believe that when he saw it. After all, wasn’t she coming down from Vermont next week? That wasn’t quite the mark of someone willing to let go. “A few more weeks, maybe, and we can get it on the market.”
“And then what? You’ll take your trip, then go back west?”
“Nah.” Jake shrugged. “Durango was great, but now I’ve been there. I want to try someplace new.” He realized that she had neatly turned the conversation to focus on him again, bu
t the wine was good and the breeze gentle, and the roll of the ocean was working its magic on him, as well. “I really could cut out for quite a long trip, see where that takes me. I’ve got some money saved up from the last couple of jobs that isn’t doing anything but collecting dust. Maybe I should just go all in.”
“All in,” Anna echoed. She also was looking out toward the ocean. “Like what, Mexico?”
“Maybe, but again, I’ve been there a lot. Europe could be cool. It’s summer there too, and I’ve never ridden through it. Figure about four months, working my way south. It would still be warm. Then who knows, maybe down to Australia, maybe back to the States for the holidays.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Hell, maybe I’ll even spend some time with the family. That’d be a first in a while.” Something about Anna’s story had made him think of his mom—even his dad. What would it be like to see them again?
Anna nodded, but her voice sounded a little strained when she spoke again. “But could you really leave your job for that long?” she asked. “Don’t you have people waiting for you to work on their bikes?”
Jake shrugged. “I’m not so big that I’ve got people camped out in front of my house. When I’m available, I don’t lack for projects. When I’m not, there are other places people can go. It’s a good balance.”
“For right—you know, yeah,” Anna said. He shot her a glance. She’d changed her mind midsentence, seemed to intercept her own conversational ball and bat it the other way. He wondered about that. Whenever Anna thought too much …
Then her next words brought him back to the present. “Are you happy, would you say?” she asked. And then she was looking at him and not at the ocean, her large, blue eyes serious in the moonlight. “Do you like the way your life is turning out?”
“Yeah, I’d say I am,” Jake said. “I’ve never really considered it, but yeah. It’s a good life. I’m a happy guy.”
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