Make Me

by BETH KERY

  “When the SEC investigated Jefferies for insider trading, they were doing so under the assumption that Jefferies had passed on information about FDA approval to Latimer because Latimer was Jefferies’s favorite and a protégé. It hadn’t become clear at the time of the SEC’s report that there had been a falling-out between Jefferies and Latimer—or Sinclair, as Latimer was known then. A month after that big, sexy bash at Jefferies’s vacation home, Jacob had changed his name from Sinclair to Latimer, had moved to Cambridge to attend MIT, and had millions of dollars in the bank from the Markham sale,” Burt finished smugly.

  “So you think insider trading between Jefferies and Latimer happened, but not because Jefferies was so fond of Jacob. You think Latimer blackmailed Jefferies into giving him insider information, or Latimer would expose potentially damaging information about something that happened at that sleazy party?”

  “It’s plausible, isn’t it?” Burt asked excitedly.

  Harper put her elbow on her desk and rubbed her eyes, thinking furiously.

  “It’s still very thin, Burt. You don’t have anything.”

  “I know, but there’s something there. I can smell it. Something that makes it worthwhile to keep digging, right?”

  “You never said what happened to Gina Morrow,” Harper said.

  “She checked out of the hospital two days after the party.”

  “And what else? There’s no other mention of her that you could find?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to find her, though,” Burt said

  A feeling of trepidation went through her. “I don’t suppose your friend gave you a copy of the official incident report regarding Gina Morrow and the party at Jefferies’s house?”

  Burt grinned widely and pulled a piece of paper from his notebook. It sailed onto Harper’s desk.

  “That was risky of your friend,” Harper said, staring at the faxed report.

  “She’s a very good friend,” Burt said with a knowing smile.

  “Not good enough of a friend to go public with her name, though. Get me another participant that will go on the record that Jefferies was throwing a hooker party, preferably involving underage prostitutes and illegal drugs.”

  “No one is going to admit to being at a party like that!”

  “Get me evidence of some kind of argument and falling-out between Latimer and Jefferies afterward that might indicate bribery as a motive for insider trading versus patronage on Jefferies’s part. And those things are just more simple building blocks to a story, Burt. At the moment, you’ve got absolutely nothing,” Harper said, standing.

  “There’s no way! There was never evidence of a falling-out between Latimer and Jefferies,” Burt said, flying out of his chair. “If there’d been evidence of that, it would have come out in the SEC investigation.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Come on, Harper. You have access to Latimer. You could just ask him why he refuses to associate with Jefferies.”

  “I’m not asking him anything,” Harper fired back. “This isn’t a newsworthy story, Burt.”

  “How can you say that when—”

  “I can say it easily. Because the fact of the matter is, unless we get a confession from Clint Jefferies or Jacob Latimer that they were involved in insider training, there is . . . no . . . damn story,” she said succinctly, tapping on her desk. “Do you think you can get a confession from Jefferies or Latimer?”

  “Of course not, but what about that police report? Doesn’t that mean anything?” He pointed angrily at the fax on her desk. Her gaze bounced off the piece of paper, and then zoomed back. She snatched up the report.

  “Charleston, West Virginia?” she said hollowly, reading part of the printed address of the police department at the top. Shivers tore through her.

  “Yeah. What’s wrong?” Burt asked, startled. “I told you Charleston. That’s where my friend finished school and where she works: the Charleston PD. Jefferies had a huge vacation home on a nearby lake there. He’s sold it since, but that’s where the party in question happened and where Jacob Sinclair worked for him. Why do you sound so surprised?”

  She struggled to find her composure.

  “I thought you meant Charleston, South Carolina, earlier, that’s all.”

  “Why would you think that?” Burt asked, puzzled.

  “Charleston, South Carolina, is a lot bigger town, isn’t it? I just assumed,” Harper eluded, waving her hand impatiently to distract him. In truth, she’d been put off the mark by the fact that Jacob had told her he’d grown up in South Carolina. Jacob had certainly never mentioned West Virginia. That would have stuck in her head, for sure.

  “Look, you’ve got a long, long way to go if you want a credible story,” she told Burt, clearing her thoughts with effort. “I won’t risk you implicating the paper in a lawsuit,” she said with a sense of finality, handing Burt back the police report. She knew on the outside that she appeared calm. On the inside, her limbs tingled unpleasantly and a strange ringing had started in her ears.

  Burt looked a little surly as he left her office, but at least he went without further argument. When he opened the door, she noticed Ruth leaning against a desk in the main newsroom, waiting for him. Harper had a distant, unpleasant thought that she was going to pounce on Burt in an effort to get him to tell her what he knew about Jacob.

  She shut her eyes, trying to still a sudden dizziness.

  West Virginia.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  But she’d been having all these weird, out-of-nowhere dreams and feelings of loss associated with her childhood . . . and now this?

  It’s Mom and Dad being gone that’s bringing it all up the surface, one loss making me recall another so vividly.

  But why now, when my parents have been dead for a year?

  According to this document, Jacob had spent at least part of his youth in West Virginia. She recalled vividly being in the pool with him in San Francisco. She’d mentioned him knowing Clint Jefferies in South Carolina, and he hadn’t denied it or corrected her. Yet he’d clearly known Jefferies in West Virginia.

  Cyril Atwater had told her that he was sure South Carolina had not been the state where Jacob had grown up. He had insisted Jacob had said he was from another state out east. She’d thought Cyril was mistaken at the time, but now . . .

  There was no doubt about it. Jacob had deliberately been keeping where he grew up a secret from her—Harper.

  8

  make me

  FOREVER

  thirty-seven

  That afternoon, Jacob received a surprise phone call from an old friend, Miranda Meyer. He’d known Miranda for a long time. She was one of less than a handful of people from his past that he accepted into his present. Miranda had been his caseworker in the Adopt a West Virginia Child program, and they’d managed to maintain a friendship ever since then.

  They caught up for a minute or two. Miranda followed some of Lattice’s business news and commented on what she’d read, and Jacob filled her in on some of the unreported background details. He congratulated Miranda for being promoted yet again, this time becoming the current cabinet secretary of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services.

  “That’s quite a climb up the ladder, from being a caseworker in the adoption program to the secretary of the whole department,” he told her.

  “You’re not the only one who was destined for greatness,” Miranda joked. “Never fear, though. The adoption program is still under my supervision.”

  “And so we get to the reason you’re calling?” Jacob said smoothly, leaning back in his desk chair. A call from Miranda of this kind wasn’t a common occurrence, by any means, but it did happen sporadically enough for him to be comfortable with it. Miranda’d had many jobs at the WVDHHS before becoming the department head, and she’d made it her business to
look out for Jacob while in each of those jobs . . . Jacob and Jake Tharp, that is.

  Jacob had learned early on in his career that information was key to success. He’d cultivated a number of important contacts in both the government and private sector. Miranda was different, though. They’d kept in touch over the years, but he didn’t think of Miranda like an informant. He didn’t pay or exchange key information for her efforts. She did what she did because she was a friend.

  “Yeah, you guessed it. Someone’s been calling about the Jacob Sinclair adoption again,” she said with a sigh. “A supervisor in the adoption department told me about it over lunch today—she’d gotten the information from one of her caseworkers.”

  “You usually e-mail when someone is nosing around,” Jacob said, staring out the windows onto a sparkling Lake Tahoe. “Any reason this time warranted a phone call?”

  “Aside from the fact that we haven’t talked since two Christmases ago? Not really, it’s just that the reporter calling and asking questions was from a paper right there in town with you. The Sierra Tahoe Gazette?” Jacob sat forward abruptly, his chair squeaking loudly. “You’ve told me Tahoe Shores is a pretty small town. I figured it might be someone you’re hobnobbing with there, and if so, that you’d want to know that they were digging for information on you behind your back.”

  “Did you get the name of the reporter?”

  “I did,” Miranda said and he heard some paper shuffling. “It was a Harper McFadden. She called this morning. Know her?”

  “Yeah. I know her,” Jacob replied, his voice sounding even despite the icy sensation that suddenly poured through his veins.

  After he’d hung up his phone, memories kept bombarding him. He recalled how sexy and fresh and uncontrived Harper had looked this morning following their hot, heavy, and hasty lovemaking, and her subsequent mad rush to get ready for work. She’d looked that innocent . . . that loving . . . just before walking into her office and digging around in a past that he’d told her again and again was dead?

  She’s remembering.

  He felt a little sick at confronting that unavoidable fact. He honestly didn’t know if he was supposed to be left angry, panicked, concerned, or grateful at that realization. It was bewildering, to view the world while standing at the still eye of a cyclone.

  Dr. Fielding had certainly alluded to the fact that there was a possibility she’d remember. He—Jacob—could be the very trigger that was prompting her memories.

  But that’s only true if you assume what Dr. Fielding says is true, the logical part of his brain reasserted itself. Did he believe that he’d successfully buried weak, ineffective Jake Tharp and had evolved into an independent, utterly self-reliant man? Yes, he did.

  Or at least he had . . . until Harper had walked back into his life.

  There was no telling what Harper would do with those volatile memories. How much did she remember, and when, exactly had she begun to recall?

  Or had she remembered all along, and knowingly reinserted herself into his life in order to get an inside position for this story?

  Most of him thought that idea was paranoid and ridiculous. The tiny remainder that doubted only added a small, but rich vein of fuel to his unrest.

  Something told him everything was about to blow up in face: his carefully buried past, his present, hard-won identity as Jacob Latimer . . . this incredible, dangerous thing he’d started with Harper.

  He’d been wrong to think he could handle getting involved with her. The only chance he had of keeping them both safe was to convince her that the only future they had together was to leave the past where it belonged. If he couldn’t accomplish that . . . he needed to seriously consider the fact that he was a harmful agent to her life.

  It was time to seriously consider the bleak possibility that he might have to cut all ties with the only woman he’d ever loved . . .

  . . . With the only woman he strongly suspected he’d ever be able to love.

  • • •

  Harper felt like she was watching herself from a distance that evening when she packed up and left the Gazette’s offices with the intent of returning to Jacob’s home.

  Elizabeth had gone through the protocol with her that morning on how to enter and exit the Lattice compound. Clarence, the stocky, friendly security guard who had spoken to Jacob from the woods on the first night she’d come to the mansion, was called in to enter Harper’s fingerprints and record her speaking into a voice recognition system.

  Upon Jacob’s orders, Elizabeth had also instructed Jim to drive Harper to work that morning and pick her up again in the evening. When Jim picked her up after work, he started to take her directly to the mansion, but Harper stopped him.

  “Can you take me back to my townhome, please?” she asked.

  Jim glanced back uneasily. “But Elizabeth said I was supposed to take you back to Mr. Latimer’s.”

  “I just need to pick up a few things at my place first,” Harper told him. “And my car. I don’t want to have to bother you about running me around.”

  “But I’d be happy to take you wherever—”

  “I know, Jim,” she assured, smiling at him when he looked at her anxiously in the rearview mirror. “But I’d prefer to have my car there, just in case. I’m pretty used to getting around on my own, you know.”

  She recognized that her insistence upon having her own vehicle at Jacob’s compound was her small way of asserting her independence. Her car was a tangible means to come and go as she pleased. Today’s meeting with Burt had stunned her. It was always hard for her to get a good perspective on Jacob, but after that meeting with Burt, everything had gotten worse. She got downright dizzy every time she tried to focus on what Jacob’s guardedness meant . . .

  . . . When she tried to puzzle out who Jacob was.

  What Burt had uncovered about Regina Morrow was shocking, but at least it made some sense, given the little Jacob had told her about Clint Jefferies taking advantage of Regina and hurting her. If Burt was correct in his suspicion about the nature of that party at Jefferies’s, didn’t that mean Regina had been a prostitute? How had Jacob known her? And had he been in love with Regina Morrow at the time he’d found her intoxicated and bruised up at his mentor’s party?

  It felt disorienting, entering the mansion that evening with no one there to greet her. In fact, a strange, surreal quality had settled on her consciousness ever since she’d seen those typed words on that report this morning.

  West Virginia.

  She had so many questions to ask Jacob, but knew she couldn’t. She felt blocked at every turn. For one, she couldn’t reveal that she’d been consulting with one of her reporters today in regard to a story about him. He’d think she’d betrayed him. Two, he’d made it very clear that his past was off-limits in their personal relationship.

  She’d spoken with him briefly on the phone earlier at work, and he’d told her where to find him when she returned to the mansion. She traveled through the enormous house like a sleepwalker, passing the familiar entrance to Jacob’s bedroom suite and continuing down the hall. She rapped softly on a pinewood door.

  “Come in,” Elizabeth called.

  Harper entered. Elizabeth’s portion of the office was large and airy. She had her own spectacular view of the lake and pine-covered mountains. Jacob’s assistant sat behind her desk, her demeanor striking Harper as contained, but tense. Harper suspected it was her own presence in Jacob’s private offices that made Elizabeth that way. Elizabeth continued to be polite and highly efficient in regard to Harper, but Harper still sensed her caution and a hint of disapproval.

  “Hi,” Harper greeted her.

  “Hello,” Elizabeth said, standing and coming around her desk. “He’s waiting for you.”

  She led Harper to a massive door and knocked. Harper heard Jacob’s distant, deep voice. Elizabeth held open the door
for her.

  “Thanks,” she told Elizabeth before she walked into Jacob’s office.

  It was an enormous space. Three of the walls consisted of book-lined shelves, while the fourth was floor-to-ceiling windows and doors with the spectacular view of Lake Tahoe through them. Jacob’s large, L-shaped desk was situated to the right of the room, so that he could easily look out at the panoramic view as he worked. He sat behind the desk. Harper was immediately aware of his stare on her as she walked into the room. Elizabeth closed the door behind her.

  Harper walked toward him, gazing about the handsome, incredible room.

  “You have quite the library here,” she said, forcing a smile. “All these beautiful bookshelves and incredible books.”

  He stood as she approached him, looking very appealing in a pair of dark blue pants and an ivory collarless shirt. His appearance struck her as new and magnificent in that moment . . . freshly amazing, like she’d never seen him before. Yet he was achingly familiar. He was so big and tall. Somehow, his sense of graceful power struck her as miraculous. His expression was impassive, but his eyes shone with feeling as he regarded her.

  She swallowed back a lump in her throat. He walked around his desk and rested his butt at the corner of it. When he held out his arms to her, her dazed, strange state fractured for a moment. She stepped between his legs, warmth thawing her when he wrapped his arms around her waist and brought her against him. Without saying a word, his mouth fastened on hers.

  His firm, hot kiss further scattered her disorientation. Her arms snaked around his waist. How was it possible to be dazed and confused logically, when her senses grew so sharp and brilliant beneath his touch?

  He smoothed back her hair with one hand, cupping the side of her head, and sealed their deep kiss. He continued to nibble hungrily at her lips.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you, too,” she replied, shivering at the sexy sound of his gruff voice. His sharp gaze moved over her face. He slid his butt a few inches off the desk, his feet planted firmly on the floor, and pulled her more tightly between his legs.