by Violet Duke
Of course, this wasn’t the same situation, not by a long shot, but hell if it didn’t make his insides burn to hear Emma saying such similar things. This was on him, and they were going to square things right the hell now. “Emma, it kills me to hear any of this ‘it’s not your fault’ line of thinking, especially from you. You’re way too strong for that. Always have been.”
She stared at him as if he’d grown an extra eyeball or two. “What?”
With an ache in his chest over her lost expression, he attempted a less subtle tactic. “If a man, any man—even me—is hurting you, whether he means to or not, it’s never your fault, sweetheart. Don’t you let any sorry sack of shit make you feel that way. Call me to kick his ass if you don’t feel strong enough to. I’ll beat the living daylights out of him like he deserves.” He paused. Then added awkwardly, “Again, even if that sack of shit is unintentionally, well, me.” Reel it in, buddy. This was going down as the strangest intervention talk in the history of time.
A look of understanding dawned on her features, and a gentle hand squeezed his forearm. “Jake, that’s not what I meant.” She laced her fingers with his to stop him from interrupting her. “Jeez, I forgot what an amazing person you are.” With an affectionate head shake, she said quietly, “Thank you for saying all of that. I know it couldn’t have been easy or remotely comfortable.” Another hand squeeze. “But, Jake, when I said ‘It’s not you’ earlier, I meant that literally. As in you, the man standing before me, isn’t the one causing me to feel . . . what I said. It’s the Jake from fourteen years ago. The one who was there with me when Peyton died. He’s the one I can’t disentangle from all the pain of the past. Not you.”
He frowned. “But he and I are the same person.” Funny how this conversation came up so many times. With his siblings, with his former mentor. He was constantly reminding folks that he took accountability for his past. It had made him who he was today. Defined him.
“No, you two are most definitely not the same person.” She gave him a look that was as empathetic as it was unyielding. “You are not a product or some repentant evolution of your mistakes. I don’t care what the court system, or your parents, say. Trust me—I know.”
This was the second time she’d alluded to being blamed for something that had happened that night. And he had to know why. “Honey, talk to me. What happened with your stepmom?”
Just like that her expression turned to stone, and a mile of dense brick and mortar now stood between them. “Let’s just say I know what it’s like to have someone equate you with the worst thing you ever did . . . look at you and see only the person who took a loved one from them.”
He clenched his jaw so hard he may have cracked a few molars. “Emma—”
“No. No feeling sorry for me. My stepmom and I haven’t spoken since Peyton’s funeral. It’s better that way.” She transformed then, right before his eyes. Her voice got stronger, her coloring less pallid. “I know you and I aren’t in the same boat; heck, we’re not even in the same harbor. But Jake and Emma from Riverside share an anchor to a tragic past that Jake and Emma from Juniper Hills don’t have to.” She looked . . . freed just from that notion alone. “I know it sounds crazy, Jake, but in the same way that I know in my heart that my stepmom and I would probably be such great friends if we met for the first time today—you remember how close we used to be—I know in my soul that you and I could, as well. Be friends, that is—”
“If we met for the first time today, too,” he finished for her.
“Yes.” A tremulous smile broke over her lips. “If Megan has taught me anything, it’s that leaving one foot behind in the past will just keep us stuck somewhere we don’t want to be.” She gave him a slow, what-more-can-we-do single shoulder lift. “I just want to unstick our feet from our pasts. Or at least try. But only if you want to. Have a fresh start, that is.”
The blow to his solar plexus came so swiftly, he wasn’t able to brace for it.
“Jake, juvie will just be a short blip in your life. Barely anything worth remembering. You can have a fresh start afterward; walk away from this mess and have a clean slate.”
With his father’s dead-wrong words echoing in his ears so loudly he couldn’t breathe, Jake found himself forcibly shaking his head to get the looped playback to stop.
Emma’s face went from stricken to sad. “Oh . . . okay. I shouldn’t have assumed—”
Shit. “Emma, no. I wasn’t shaking my head over what you said. Of course I’d want us to try to have . . . a fresh start if we could. If it were possible.” And not just fiction fathers tell.
Ah, bloody hell. The spark of hope lighting her eyes pretty much sealed his fate. There was a very good chance he was going to agree to this ill-advised plan of hers.
“I tried it last night,” she confessed, breaking into his brain’s long list of objections on the topic. “I tried thinking of you, Jake Rowan, as this man I’d just met yesterday. And it worked. It was actually easy not to associate you with the Jake Carmichael from my memories. I didn’t have a single triggered nightmare last night. Actually, on the contrary, I . . .”
She blushed, fast and fierce.
“What?” He frowned. “What were you about to say?”
“Nothing,” she replied quickly.
Yeah, that was all kinds of suspicious. “Tell me.”
“No.” Her chin lifted mulishly. “You know, you’re more demanding than I remember.”
“And you’re more evasive. Tell me what was supposed to come at the end of that.”
She flushed a deeper crimson and muttered something about his ironic choice of words.
He was completely lost. But not ready to give in. Stewing in the silence, he replayed the entire conversation for one more maddening second. Then another. Until . . . Holy sin on a saddle. Every male atom in his body woke up and howled when he finally got it.
“Stop reading my mind,” she huffed.
Damnations, he probably wasn’t hiding his thoughts well. Though he highly doubted any jury of his peers would blame him. The woman had basically just said that last night she—
“I can already see you’re making this way dirtier than it was!”
Now who was the mind reader? Man alive, she was a sight to see with red-hot cheeks and daggers in her eyes. Both for him. “To be fair, honey, if you don’t tell me something I can compare my thoughts to, how am I supposed to—”
She whacked him good and hard on the arm. “You’re not just bossier—you’re also pervier than you used to be.”
He grinned. “Right back atcha, babe.”
Whoa. If looks could kill, he’d be worm food right now. This was way too fun. How in the hell did they even get here? He rubbed the back of his neck, surprised he wasn’t feeling evidence of whiplash.
Suddenly her expression shifted to surprise. Which led to satisfaction. Then finally unfiltered triumph.
Never a dull moment with this one. “What’s the impish smile for, sugar?”
She gave him a big told-you-so brow quirk. “You just proved my point.”
Aw, hell. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. The adult versions of us get along great. We have chemistry. And fun.”
“What we have is a past you want us to ignore.”
Her lips turned down at the corners, then transformed into the very definition of a sad smile. He never got that description until now. All at once, he wanted to go back to the playful banter. Between Jake the carpenter and Emma the baker. Maybe she was right about this.
“Do you want to know what I think about sometimes, even though I know it’s silly and probably more damaging than good?” she asked, her voice at a confessional decibel.
Knowing she was getting to the closing argument of her case, he just buckled down and nodded for her to continue.
“Every once in a while, I wonder what it would have been like for us if that night had never happened, if Peyton hadn’t died. I wonder sometimes if you and I would’ve ended
up together. If we’d have grown up to become one of those disgustingly happy high school sweethearts with the fairy-tale wedding, successful careers, and the house-dog-and-kid combo. With proud parents to babysit for us.” She peered into his eyes as if he had an answer.
He didn’t. God knows he’d wondered the same things countless times over the years.
“That night interrupted a happy road we were headed down, I think,” she said softly, slowly, as if trying to describe an image no one had ever really seen before. “We can’t go back on that road now. It’s done, destroyed. But we can start a new one. Can’t we? Why can’t we?”
Hell if he knew. Right now he wasn’t sure he knew anything. “So you want us to literally put our past behind us to see if we’d end up on a happy road together again?”
“Not exactly.”
He’d honestly never been more mentally exhausted in his life.
Her lips twitched to the side. “I don’t mean to frustrate you. When I said no, I was clarifying that I’m not completely insane. I know we can’t actually ditch our past altogether. Not really. But I thought, at least for the next few weeks, we could travel to an . . . alternate reality. Just for a bit. One where we can start over. Be friendly. Explore the chemistry. And have fun for a change.” She sighed. “I can’t remember the last time I had fun like Jake and Emma from Riverside used to have. Can you?”
Sure he could. It was the day of the fire. When they’d had one of their marathon talks over the fence, then somehow ended up having a friendly water fight with their respective garden hoses. She’d started it, of course. His having riled her to that point being wholly irrelevant.
Instead of bringing them back to that memory, though, he asked a question he was fairly sure he could guess the answer to. “What happens after the bakery’s all done, sweetheart?”
She flinched but replied without missing a beat. “We return to reality. To our real lives.”
And there it was. That right there was exactly why this was a god-awful idea. There was no way in the world he’d be able to do this without getting burned.
Wholly inappropriate pun intended.
He sighed, unable to do anything but stare at her guileless, hopeful face for a beat.
Finally he held out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Stevens. I’m Jake Rowan. Grouch. Obstinate hater of decaf. Carpenter extraordinaire. At your service.”
Her slow-growing smile plain shook the ground under him even before reaching full wattage. “Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Rowan. I’m Emma Stevens. Determined work in progress. Wholehearted fan of the uncomplicated. Baker badass. Ready to make you work.”
The moment their hands touched, he watched her eyes widen and those shiny pink lips of hers part on a telltale hitched breath.
His own reaction wasn’t that far off. Jaysus. Would this happen every time they touched?
Don’t kick over that rock, man.
She quickly took back her hand. “So, yes. Anyway, nice meeting you, too. Thanks again for bidding on these repairs. Guess I’ll just leave you to it. I’ll be upstairs in my apartment working out a plan so I don’t go bankrupt while the bakery is shut down the next few weeks.”
While her tone was light and airy, he could hear the genuine worry there. “Emma, if I can find ways to save on costs, I promise I’ll try.” He’d already given her a rock-bottom price, but if it would take away some of that anxiety in her eyes, he’d do his best to make the impossible possible. “I don’t know. Maybe I can figure out a plan so I can get done quicker.”
“Really?” She gazed up at him as if he’d just invented a way to replace the holes in Swiss cheese. And just that easily, he was halfway to offering to work 24-7. For free.
But then she went and said something to make him stop thinking about work altogether.
“Holy Christmas nuts, I’ll name my firstborn after you if you’re able to finish earlier.”
He tensed. And very nearly growled.
Well, that was damn primitive. Who knew he was the kind of guy who would get all testosterone pumped at the prospect of procreation? To be fair, it was probably mostly because of the woman bringing up the topic. Still. Down, boy.
“Or I could bake you some cookies,” she swiftly amended, worrying her lower lip with her teeth in response to whatever she saw in his expression. “I, uh, make great cookies.”
“I remember,” he rasped in a voice two sandpaper grades away from a rough scrape.
Only a few minutes into their agreement, and already he was breaking character. But no way was he going to pretend she hadn’t once baked him the best cookies he’d ever tasted.
“Okay, cookies it is,” she rushed out, her lightly freckled ears looking nearly sunburned as she took a few steps back. “Just holler if you need anything down here.” Her sentence had barely gone airborne before she was spinning around and running off to the stairwell near the front of the bakery that led up to her apartment at the top of the landing.
Christ almighty. Jake let out a shuddering breath. He’d heard that every man had his inner Neanderthal just walking around inside him, but he’d never actually met his until he saw Emma backing away from him.
Something in him had wanted to prowl after her something fierce. And take over biting that lower lip for her so he could taste for himself if she’d in fact been drinking fully caffeinated coffee earlier or not.
Get your head out of your ass, man. Just grab your sledgehammer and do some demo work. It’ll take your mind off that walking temptation upstairs.
Best piece of advice he’d given himself all day. He went straight over to the biggest area of damage in the kitchen with every intention of doing just that. Until he looked up through the gaping hole in the ceiling . . . right into Emma’s apartment above.
Now, it was one thing to know she lived up there; it was another to see her up there, just going about her business outside work—an aspect of her life he wasn’t an invited part of.
But absolutely wanted access to.
One day. If this whole Jake and Emma 2.0 plan didn’t completely combust in their faces.
Emma halted in the middle of sitting down at her dining table when their gazes collided. She waved down at him, chuckling. “Guess you won’t have to holler too loudly. I forgot the plumber had to pull up the floors in this section of my apartment to do some of the pipe repairs.”
“I’ll fix those, too,” he offered. “No charge. It’s a small area. I’ve got extra plywood with me, so I can come up and replace your subfloor right now if you want. Give you back your privacy. Plus, that’ll keep all the construction dust from getting up into your apartment.”
“That’ll be great, actually. If you can take care of that for me, I can lay the hardwood floor over it later. I know I have extra planks from when I first installed ’em.”
Lordy, that was hot. Where Jake was concerned, a DIY girl was a damn sexy one.
Hell, would nothing about the woman turn him off?
He got his answer two seconds later when he saw her reach over to pull out some simple hardware-store flooring essentials from a nearby drawer . . . and he was forced to get creative in covering up his immediate reaction to seeing her with tools in hand.
Scrubbing a calloused hand over his face, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Paul or any other men from his crew weren’t outside checking on him. Thankfully the street was deserted for the time being.
Last thing he needed was to have to explain to a bunch of construction guys he’d soon be working with why he was presently wearing his tool belt sideways like a loincloth.
Chapter Eight
Luckily Jake was able to get Emma out of his head long enough to make a big dent in the repairs. At the midday mark, he was actually ahead of schedule, thanks in part to Emma having done a bunch of grunt work he hadn’t expected. From pulling saturated baseboards to drilling air holes into the toe kicks of all the cabinets, she’d done her flood-fix homework for sure.
Not just that bu
t she’d even left Post-its everywhere, mentioning things like which walls housed junction boxes she knew about, or where the dedicated electrical circuits were. Seeing as how there were dozens of notes on the walls for him, it was safe to say she’d worked all night checking building blueprints and crawling behind appliances to match outlets with breaker box switches, essentially mapping out the circuits to make his life loads easier.
It was hard not to become a little taken with a woman like that. Ask any guy in the trades. A girl willing to get some dirt and sawdust on her hands for them was a keeper.
A theory she proved indisputably a little later when she plopped a generator at his feet.
Though using bigger construction equipment after a flood was never totally safe, typically as long as the water levels didn’t get too high, most building owners didn’t bother with the added expense of a portable generator for contractors to plug into for repairs. But Emma did.
With a romantic little Post-it Note to boot:
Don’t get electrocuted.
A downright love sonnet as far as he was concerned.
So really, by the time he found the homemade Reuben sandwich she left on his toolbox come lunchtime, it was like seeing a bow-tied bouquet of power tools for him; he was smitten.
Of course, the Reuben turned out to be the absolute best he’d ever had. He expected nothing less from the goddess. For lack of a strong enough description, it was pornographically good. Sex-noises-while-you-eat good.
That’s when the woman really went and blew his simple, simple mind.
Emma, being Emma, made it crystal clear that his illicit alone time with the Reuben and the downright scandalous sounds he was making between bites weren’t going unheard. Not by teasing him or anything overt. Nope. She referenced it in style. By slipping out and returning bearing gifts in a brown paper bag, which she left next to his plate before he started the second half of his sandwich.
