Fake It

by Jennifer Chance

  She smiled to herself, listening to Jake’s steady breathing. He was a rolling stone as well, and yet he had offered to change his plans for her. Granted, they’d been having sex at the time, so maybe he hadn’t been thinking straight. That had to be the case, because really, it was sort of insane to even imagine—

  “Hey,” Jake’s sleep-roughened voice rasped in the early-morning stillness. “I don’t suppose you’re thinking too much again, are you?”

  Something hard pinged in Anna’s heart. Had it really been just one week ago that they’d boarded the plane for Charleston? It didn’t seem possible. “Never that,” she said, coming up on one elbow. “You want me to get coffee? Or are you the only one who can figure out how to work that machine down there?”

  “We’ll both get it,” he rumbled, and her smile deepened. He was barely coherent, his hair everywhere, and he stumbled to the bathroom as she pulled on her suit trousers again. She opted for one of his T-shirts instead of the suit jacket and cami top, though. She looked like a lunatic, but Jake’s eyes roamed over her appreciatively when he returned, and he kissed her lightly even as she slid by him to make her own bathroom run. Her hair was a disaster, but she finger-combed it out as best she could, then grabbed the rest of her clothes and met him on the landing. In the early light, the brownstone looked like a lost jewel. It desperately needed to be updated, but there was something so … homey about it. It would be a shame to see it all go.

  “Coffee,” Jake said. He kissed her again, still groggy, then moved ahead of her, leaving her to watch him lumber down the stairs like a great bear stumbling toward spring. She’d never seen him this relaxed, but then again, she’d only been seeing him a week.

  And after this weekend, she probably wouldn’t be seeing him again.

  She had ordered herself to just stop thinking entirely by the time they reached the kitchen. Jake got to work on the coffee, and Anna wandered over to the large window overlooking the alley, where Jake had situated his kitchen table.

  Jake looked up, then padded over. “Oh, that’s right—you forgot something in the saddlebags. I kept it for you.”

  He fished around in a dish on the table and came up with a tiny pearl earring. Anna’s eyes widened. “Oh!” she said. “Thank you. I didn’t even realize it was gone.”

  “You’ve had a busy week,” he said, smiling. He kissed her on the forehead and moved back to the coffee, his yawn so loud it could have rattled pans in the next county.

  “You’re just not a morning person, are you?”

  Jake just grunted. She swung her gaze out the window, her mind already on the day’s plans, and frowned. A large suburban-style SUV was rolling down the narrow alleyway, barely missing the cars parked along the small lane. A car that size in their back alley was odd enough, and Anna had never seen it before. But what was even worse, was …

  “Um, Jake?”

  It was pulling into Jake’s driveway.

  “Jake, do you know anyone who owns an SUV?”

  The clatter of coffee cups behind her jolted her, right along with Jake’s heartfelt groan. “Aww, shit,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to be here till—”

  The doors on the vehicle sprung open as if of one accord, and Anna’s eyes popped as people poured out of the car—easily a half-dozen kids in this one, plus two adults—just as another SUV turned onto the lane. It was smaller, but not by much.

  She watched as a tiny woman with a shock of black hair hustled around to the right side of the SUV, helping a frail older woman out of the vehicle, who proceeded to shush her and bat her hands away. Anna felt her eyes go wide. “Jake!” she said. “Please tell me that’s not your grandmother! I’m barely dressed!”

  Jake gave her a helpless smile even as the children became a small battering ram at his back door, ringing the doorbell over and over again. “Um,” he said. “Guess who’s just become my long-term girlfriend for the next twenty minutes or so. And we just went to a wedding together, so …”

  “So what?” Anna demanded. “What does that mean?”

  The unmistakable sound of the garage door opening sounded beneath them, and the patter of feet dashing up the stairs rang through the house. “Great-gran’s house!” was all Anna could make out, until a roil of children burst through the kitchen door and raced around and practically through Jake, nearly taking him down in their rush to see the rest of the brownstone. She barely had time to turn around and smile bravely before Jake’s grandmother bustled in, the dark-haired woman right behind her. Neither of them appeared surprised to see her, and the younger woman’s face broke into a broad smile. “You must be Anna!” she said. She opened her arms wide, and Anna found herself in the surreal situation of hugging a woman she didn’t even know, even as the tiny old woman looked around as if seeing the house with new eyes.

  “Why hasn’t this thing sold yet?” she demanded.

  Jake leaned against the kitchen doorway, half-listening to the sounds of his running nieces and nephews as they explored their great-grandma’s brownstone, more or less under the supervision of his older sister and her husband, who’d been gracious enough to bring everyone into the city after his text asking for help. He didn’t even know the kids, other than by name. They only knew him from the Christmas and birthday presents he sent. Not surprisingly, they’d been the smallest bit hesitant with him—until he’d shown them the motorcycles. Then it was all over.

  In the meantime, after hugging and fussing over him for far too long, his mother had cornered Anna with homemade pastries and Jake’s coffee, and the two of them were talking about recipes and baking techniques. Anna hadn’t even been able to get home to change, and she was still wearing his old Husqvarna T-shirt as if she always entertained in his cast-off clothing. She hadn’t even gotten her sandals back on yet. But Anna hadn’t gotten through life as well as she had by hiding when calamity struck. Putting up a good appearance was what she did best.

  Now she glanced up at him as if she’d felt his eyes on her. She smiled, and his heart rolled over hard. She looked just right. Sitting here in this kitchen, talking to his mom. Her phone chose that moment to beep, and she glanced down at it.

  “Uh-oh,” she said apologetically. “It’s work calling.”

  “I thought you had the day off?” Jake asked, too happy in that moment to care too much. This was Anna. It’s what she did.

  “I do. I’ll call them back later, but I need to get going anyway. My own, um, family are coming up today.” He didn’t miss the hesitation in her words, and he wondered about it.

  “Then we will all have lunch.” The grandmother was over at the stove, peering into cabinets. “Of course, I have nothing left to cook with, so I don’t know what we will have.”

  “We’ll handle it, Mom,” Jake’s mother said, and gave him a smile. “Jake, honey, why don’t you walk Anna—”

  “Come back for lunch with your family, with our family. We’ll all be family together.” The grandmother turned around and speared Anna with a glance. “You cook, you bake. That’s good. He doesn’t know how to cook anything but coffee.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you,” Anna said, but she faltered just a little. It was impossible for her to think of herself as part of anyone’s family, Jake realized. Not even as fake family. “And Jake, you don’t need to walk me.” She darted a glance at his mother, who was watching them both shrewdly. “It’s just a few houses down,” Anna said. She was already standing, edging away, the first signs of embarrassment reddening her cheeks. Her phone rang again, and she frowned more deeply this time.

  “Unless somebody died,” she muttered. She still ignored it, choosing instead to be gracious as she said her good-byes to everyone. Despite her protests, he walked outside with her. She slipped on her sandals when they reached the bottom of the stairs and smiled up at him.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” she said.

  “My mom said she’d be bringing Gran, but I texted her a few days ago, asking them to all come down,” he said, surpri
sing himself with his own honesty. “I guess I wanted you to meet more of my family. I didn’t realize you were leaving so soon, though. I’m sorry if I overstepped. And they weren’t supposed to come in until tomorrow. It’s just that I haven’t seen them myself in a long time and I thought maybe …” He rubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “No, they’re nice,” Anna said. “It must be amazing to have a family that large.”

  A crash sounded somewhere in the big house just as they stepped out into the bright sunlight. “Large and destructive, you mean.” Still, he reached for her hand, because it seemed the right thing to do. “They like you.”

  She smiled faintly. “Well, c’mon. I’m an unknown woman caught sleeping with their son and brother in his grandmother’s brownstone. What’s not to like?”

  “I certainly liked that part,” he said. They walked in awkward silence until they reached the back of her brownstone, and they’d barely turned into the back drive when she stopped.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “You have to be kidding.”

  Jake squinted up to see a tidy sedan squeezed into the back parking space of Erin’s brownstone. The car door was open, and Anna looked around wildly. “My mom is already here?” she said. “I’m in a T-shirt and business trousers, clearly walking back from spending the night somewhere, and my mom is already here? You have got to be kidding me!”

  “You want to give me my T-shirt back?” Jake asked, and she looked up at him, wildly.

  “You don’t understand! My mom—”

  “Anna!” A pretty, older blonde woman emerged from behind the door, her face wreathed in smiles. She came quickly up to them both and hugged Anna, leaning back to look up at her daughter. “I always forget how tall you are,” she said.

  “Mom.” Anna smiled, but this wasn’t the cool composure she’d shown with his own family. “Um … this is Jake Flynn, my—”

  “Her neighbor,” Jake said, grinning as he held out his hand. He had no idea how he looked to Mrs. Richardson, or whatever her name was now, but mothers typically liked him better as a neighbor than a “good friend.”

  “Your neighbor, yes. Erin’s told me all about you. I wish I had such friendly neighbors when I lived in the city.” She smiled, and Jake saw where Anna got her dimples. “Rick’s inside with the baby, but I didn’t want to spring all of that on you at once, Anna. We got an early start, and once we were rolling, the baby was napping and stopping the car seemed like a bad idea. She’s two,” she went on, as if that explained everything. “Erin said you would be back soon but I didn’t want to call you. I know we’re not due in until noon.”

  “A lot of that going around,” Jake put in, giving Anna more time to recover. “My family just arrived a few hours ago as well, ahead of schedule.”

  “Yes, Erin has been telling us about your family, too, Jake. They sound absolutely wonderful. How nice for your grandmother to have you to help her prepare the home for sale.” She cast a look at Anna. “And she’s also been regaling me with stories about the trip you two are planning. Anna, I’m amazed you’re able to get the time off, but I’m so happy that you’re able to get away. You work too hard, sweetheart. It’s the people you need to hold on to.”

  “The trip?” Anna said weakly, swiveling her stare between Jake and her mother. “What trip?”

  Then her phone rang again.

  Chapter 28

  “I’m so sorry,” Anna said to both Jake and her mother, fitting the phone to her ear. “That’s the third time in fifteen minutes work has called me, and I don’t recognize the extension this time. I have to assume that the world is ending.”

  “Take it, take it,” her mother said with a worried frown. “I hope everything’s okay.” She looked up at Jake as Anna turned away, but not before Anna could hear her next words. “She works too much. She always has. So when are you two leaving?”

  What had Erin been telling her mom about Jake … and what was this about a trip? Had her landlady suddenly gone insane? Was it time for an intervention?

  She realized the person on the other end of the line was now listening to dead air, and she roused herself to speech. “Hello, Anna Richardson,” she said, using her best unruffled business voice, as if she wasn’t walking down the middle of her driveway, rocking a T-shirt, sandals, and suit trousers.

  “Anna, this is Todd. I’ve been trying to reach you.” His voice was cold. “I assumed you were ignoring my call, and it looks like I was right.”

  “Yes, I know you were trying to reach me, Todd, but it’s Friday and my family is in town. Which you know, because I told you they would be, at least fifty times. So how can I help you?”

  “I need you here,” he said, and suddenly she realized that his voice was tight with panic. “All hands on deck. The Zenryou deal just got thrown a major curveball. They want to expand our operations to include three satellite sites, and we don’t have enough staff to cover it. We’re bringing in new personnel, but they need to hit the ground running by Monday, and I need you to train them.”

  “Train them,” Anna said dully, not believing her ears. “Over this weekend.”

  “Yes, over this weekend. Your bonus is going to be out of this world, Anna, so don’t worry about that. Everyone is up to their eyeballs in work, and money is flowing like crazy to get this deal done. We’re pulling in everyone who’s even remotely qualified, and we’ll pick from the best of the lot at the end of the weekend. When can you be here?”

  Anna looked over at her mother, talking to Jake. Jake, who didn’t ask her to be anything but herself—her real self, though she didn’t even know who that was anymore. Jake, who didn’t get his sense of security from the piles of cash in his bank account, or from the roof over his head, but from the knowledge that he would succeed no matter where the open road took him. Jake, who felt everything so deeply, so viscerally, that he couldn’t always be trusted to say or do the right thing … but he could be trusted to do something. To move. To act. To live every moment as fully as he could. Jake, who was walking toward her right now, sensing something was wrong.

  “Anna!” Todd was steamed now, or maybe just a little bit desperate. But Anna let the phone drop from her ear, her hand flopping to her side as Jake walked up to her.

  “Hey, there,” he said, brushing the hair back from her face. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s great,” she said, almost automatically. She opened her mouth to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. She just stood there, staring at him, feeling her world crash down around her again. She seemed to be making a habit of that. First when she’d missed out on her road trip with Jake, and now this. She hadn’t even made it to lunch before work had swooped in to ruin her plans. Why did she think it wouldn’t ruin every plan they ever made?

  And if she left now, went in to work, she would miss yet another chance. Only this chance would be worse.

  Not because her family would be disappointed—though of course they would be. And not because Jake would finally see, without any doubt, that work ruled her life and that’s all there was to it. He would take off, without question. And so he should. Their paths would diverge and they’d never come across each other again.

  But that’s not why it would hurt so much.

  It would hurt so much because … because she wanted to do something different this time. Finally, inescapably, she wanted to just … not do the smart thing. She no longer wanted to be the girl who studied all night when her high school and then college friends were partying. She no longer wanted to be the girl who worked around-the-clock when her post-grad friends were finding ways to forge relationships, pursue hobbies, hell, even get married, like Kristen and Scott. She didn’t want to max her 401(k) right now, she wanted to max her life.

  In the distance, her mother’s husband emerged from the house. Her little baby sister tottered out beside him, screaming at the top of her lungs, while Rick looked sheepish and her mom went to relieve him of parental duties. Back
at Jake’s brownstone, his entire family waited, pounding through the house, filling it with laughter and noise and screaming. And then there she was, heading off to a foreign country by herself, with nothing but technology and deadlines and coworkers for friends. With her most reasonable romantic option for the next several months a guy whose idea of foreplay was texting about quarter-end bonuses.

  Jake shifted in front of her, trying to read her expression and not exactly knowing what he was seeing. Which made sense, since Anna didn’t know what she was thinking anymore. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know where Erin got it into her head about you taking a trip with me. I didn’t say anything to her about it, I promise—”

  “I know, I know,” Anna said, her voice small and tight. “She probably just got the wrong idea. I called her the other day, when we were on the road. I … I was kind of excited, I guess.”

  “You were?” Jake’s smile was soft, and Anna’s world tightened down on her, narrow as a pinprick.

  “Yeah, I was.” Now her words were barely a whisper. “I don’t know how to be like you, Jake. I don’t know how to be carefree, to just go out on the open road into a future just waiting for you. Not look back, not worry. I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Hey.” Jake tilted her chin up. “You don’t want to be like me, Anna. I get so filled up with anger, emotion, whatever, sometimes, I don’t know how to let it out. I roll too fast, I crash too hard. I get why you may not want to be around that, I really do.”

  “How can you even say that?” Anna shook her head. “You act like you’re this out-of-control guy, but you’re not, Jake. You just feel everything so much more than everyone around you. You pick all your battles to make things right.”

  He let out a wry laugh. “Well, I didn’t always make things—”

  “Then you made them less wrong. You stood up for something. You tried. Maybe you didn’t always know when to stop, but you knew you had to start—and you did. You took that step. You’re a good man, Jake Flynn. You have to see that. I see that, and I barely know you.”