All There Is (Juniper Hills Book 1)

by Violet Duke

  What was that saying about gifts in the present?

  He blinked through his pain-med fog and gave up trying to be all philosophical. Instead he just slid his fingers through that soft, glossy hair of hers, marveling over seeing it spread across his hospital bed, out of the ponytail or French braid she usually had it in.

  He still remembered the one and only time he’d seen her hair down back when they were teens. She’d been sitting out on her back porch taming all that naturally sun-kissed caramel-brown hair into a long braid that went down to her waist.

  He’d waited until she was done before going over to introduce himself.

  Funny how it had taken fourteen years and a concussion for him to see it wild and free again. Again, totally worth it.

  The nurse and doctor on duty came in shortly after to confirm the concussion theory and give him a quick once-over. All the while, Emma slept on.

  “She didn’t leave your side once,” said the nurse softly as she brought him some much-appreciated water for his parched throat. “She’s a fierce little sweetheart.”

  Yeah, that sounds about right.

  Two more nurse check-ins and one muted basketball game later, Emma woke with a start.

  She gasped. “Your eyes are open.”

  Even through the pain, he managed to smile at her reverent murmur. “So are yours. Been waiting to see those beautiful baby blues for a while now.”

  She blinked and looked out the window.

  “How long have you been awake? Should I call the nurse?”

  “Settle down, sweetheart. She came in already. They actually managed to check me out while you were sleeping—apparently you gave them a lot of practice doing that yesterday. Something about you being glued to my side all day and all night?”

  She pointedly ignored his question and returned with one of her own. “Why don’t you have any contact info for your siblings? We tried to look through your phone to find them, but there weren’t any listings for a Daryn or a Haley.”

  “Haley doesn’t have a phone. She’s kind of like a modern-day gypsy. She buys prepaid phones whenever she travels, which she is right now. Sometimes she’ll settle down for long enough to get a more expensive prepaid phone with Internet and stuff, but that only happened twice in the past five years. Other than that, if I need to get in contact with her, I usually just call her apartment super.”

  “What about Daryn?”

  “Daryn’s in my phone. Did you look his name up correctly?”

  “There was only one Daryn, and I checked his number three times.”

  He frowned. “That’s odd.” He flipped through his call log and saw that she had in fact called the right Daryn. “It’s this one. Did he not answer?”

  “Nope. A girl answered. She was a little peculiar sounding. Superintense. Asking me all sorts of questions. She told me there was a Daryn that used to live there but didn’t anymore, so to never call back again.”

  Jake sighed. “You had the right Daryn. That woman you talked to is his . . . friend, for lack of a better term. It’s complicated. Basically, when she’s off her meds, she gets a little confused. I’m sure Daryn didn’t even know she had his phone; I’ll be sure to tell him.”

  At her unwavering scowl, he squeezed her hand gently. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m still mad at them. They’re your siblings. They should’ve been here the whole time. They should’ve been at a phone where I could call them and tell them about what happened to you. They should’ve rushed their butts over here so you could hear their voices, and—”

  “Hey, hey. Calm down. It’s all right. Now you know it wasn’t their fault. Trust me—they would’ve come down here if they’d known. They would’ve been glued to the seats next to you.”

  That seemed to work at slowing her breathing. “I just . . . didn’t want you to be alone.” Unshed tears filled her eyes. “What if you—”

  “But I didn’t,” he interrupted quickly. “I’m fine. And I got to wake up to see a real live angel sleeping beside me. So I think I’m better than fine.”

  “Good news,” boomed a voice shortly before the curtain in front of his door slid open. “We’re probably going to be able to discharge you today.” The loud, friendly nurse he’d met earlier when she’d come in to do some blood tests scribbled something on his chart and checked his blood pressure. “Just got your blood work back; all your numbers look great. The doctor will be by to chat with you in a bit, but in the meantime, I’m just going to go over some discharge info with you.”

  She began ticking through her list. “You’ll need to take it easy for the next twenty-four hours. No going back to work, and no driving for the next forty-eight hours. I know you’re a carpenter, but no returning to any sort of heavy lifting or strenuous work until next week. Period. Do you have someone to drive you home?”

  “He’s going to stay in my apartment with me,” replied Emma without even a moment’s hesitation. “So I’ll drive him.”

  He raised a shocked brow at her but kept quiet as the nurse proceeded to tell Emma about his home care for the next two days. Emma listened carefully and took notes on her phone the entire time.

  The sweet woman was going to have his head woozy all over again.

  As soon as the nurse left, Emma plumped his pillows and said matter-of-factly, “My sofa pulls out into a bed. It’s actually really comfortable. I can sleep there, and you can take my bed.”

  “I’m not kicking you out of your own bed, sweetheart.”

  “No. You need the bed. You need to rest.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you. I’m sure you have a ton of things to do with your bakery reopening just around the corner.”

  “No arguments. You’re staying at my place, and that’s all there is to it.”

  He grinned. “Is that so?”

  Her lower lip trembled. “This is all my fault, Jake. I told you to go to the library because I couldn’t deal with everything we’d talked about after Gloria left. If I hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t be in here right now and—”

  “Stop.” He gave her a hardened look. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that. This was an accident.”

  God, the irony.

  “But you got hurt because of me.”

  “Emma, I’m not sure about how the world works, and I’m not nearly as existentially grounded when it comes to life and fate as my sister, Haley, is, but I do believe that even if I hadn’t gone to the library today and gotten hit by a beam when I did, then I would’ve maybe . . . I don’t know, fell on my ass in a public restroom and knocked myself out on a filthy toilet.”

  Her lips twitched. “Don’t try to make me feel better.”

  “I’m being serious. Either way, I would’ve ended up here with head trauma—I’m pretty sure that’s how the universe works. This means you very likely redirected my course away from being found ass-up with my head in a toilet by a big, tatted biker dude named Python.”

  A reluctant giggle escaped her lips.

  “This had nothing to do with you, honey. I didn’t have to be in that part of the library helping with the beam. I actually shouldn’t have gone over to assist at all since I’m not even on Paul’s crew. That was my own dumb fault.”

  Emma didn’t reply, but he could see she still wasn’t letting it go.

  So he went with the obvious move.

  “Anyway, I maintain that I’m not going to stay at your place unless you let me have your sofa.” At her mutinous pout, he tossed out, “If that’s not cool with you, I can always just catch a cab all the way back to my lonely apartment. Or maybe see if I can try to find which state Haley’s in right now—I’m sure it’s not far. And if all else fails, I’m sure Daryn and his—”

  “Fine! I won’t give up the bed.”

  Ah, that temper of hers. Worked every time.

  She chewed on her lip for a bit before suggesting softly, “I do have a king-size bed that’s kind of ginormous. There’s no reason we can’t both sleep in it.
”

  Holy hell.

  “That’s probably better,” she reasoned. “Because if something happens, I’ll be right there. If you’re all the way over on the sofa, I might not get to you in time to help.”

  He’d been up to her apartment repairing the subfloor after the flood. She was right; those twenty or so steps from her bed to the sofa were a pretty long and treacherous trek.

  “I mean, it’s just for one or two nights. I was pretty much lying half on top of you last night in this bed and it was no big deal.”

  “True.” Was she really expecting him to object to having her in his arms? Silly rabbit.

  “And from what I gathered, you don’t snore.”

  “And on my part, I could probably just get some earplugs,” he teased.

  She whacked him. “I don’t snore!”

  He chuckled. She actually did. Just a tiny bit. Kind of like a soft kitten purr. But he kept that to himself.

  “Okay,” he conceded magnanimously. “I’ll sleep in your bed with you, since you insist.”

  A riled-up little pout scrunched her nose.

  “One thing, though, in case you find yourself half on top of me like you did last night, could you maybe sleep on my chest instead of my stomach?”

  She gasped and ran her hand along his abs. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Is it painful? Is my head heavy?”

  Something was getting a little painful. And heavy, for that matter. Maybe a solid seven or eight on the scale of one to blue.

  Thank goodness the meds they’d given him earlier were starting to kick in. If they were effective with head issues at command central north, they had to work some on command central south, right? A tiny bit sluggish now—though only physically because mentally, he was clearly razor-sharp—he grabbed her hands to stop her from continuing to pet his abs in apology.

  About two seconds too late.

  “Oh!” Emma jumped back, staring at the front of his hospital gown as if it were going to bite her. But not necessarily in a bad way. He made a drowsy mental note to revisit that.

  “Yeah. That’s why I figure it’d be better if you sleep on my chest. So it won’t be as . . . hard on me.” He grinned muzzily.

  She rolled her eyes in amazement. “You are such a perv. How can you even get it up when you were basically knocked out cold for almost two days?”

  “I don’t get this way on my own, missy.” His voice felt thick as a fast-approaching sleepy haze started to fuzz all around him. Shifting his head to that perfect pocket he’d found in the pillow earlier, he blinked at her as the room got blurrier. “Whenever you’re around, I’m never far from the corner of hot and bothered.”

  He’d been hoping for a blush, but her pleased smile was even better.

  Eventually he had to close his eyes for a bit again. Having Emma around definitely helped with the pain, but he had to admit, his head felt as if it were twice its normal size. Without thinking much about it—or anything for that matter—he intertwined his fingers with hers, finding a nice little pocket fit there, as well.

  After finding that comfy docking station for his hand, his subsequent blink turned into a failed mission; it simply felt like way too much work to lift his eyelids back up.

  Before he knew it, he was out like a light.

  The next time he woke, the sun was coming in stronger through the window blinds, and Emma had her head against his chest. Wide-awake.

  “Hello,” he murmured, rubbing his calloused thumb across her soft cheek.

  For some reason that made her look up at him and gift him with a smile so radiant it warmed the entire room. “Hi.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two nights later Emma climbed into her comfy king bed . . . and immediately felt Jake snuggle in behind her under the covers.

  While this broke at least a dozen different boundary rules, she couldn’t help but smile. “So you aren’t even going to pretend to stay on your side of the bed tonight?”

  “Really, don’t we pretend enough as it is?”

  Her brows shot up to her hairline. He was in it to win it tonight. “Well played.”

  “Thanks.”

  She felt that sexy grin of his against her shoulder and instantly her resolve dissolved like sugar in water. Seeing the man’s rugged beard when he smiled was bad enough. But feeling that masculine pelt rubbing against her skin was worse. Panties-catching-on-fire worse.

  They really shouldn’t be doing this. Pretending not to have a shared past was one thing. Playing house and sleeping—just sleeping—in the same bed was a whole different, far more dangerous thing. She had to be strong. “Maybe you should take the futon sofa tonight.”

  He made a rumbling noise in his throat that sounded like a cross between an incredulous scoff and an indignant grunt. “That lasted all of twenty minutes last night.” The next sound was definitely more of a grumbling rumble. “Twenty minutes we could’ve spent cuddling.”

  Had it been that long?

  “Okay, it was more like ten minutes,” he amended.

  She grinned.

  “Ten minutes before you broke down and threw yourself at me,” he clarified, lips brushing against the back of her neck with every word.

  Took her a while to get all the tingling to simmer down enough for her to fully register what he’d just said.

  “I did no such thing!” She elbowed him in the stomach.

  He scored her earlobe with his teeth.

  She fitted every inch of her back against his front and gave him a full-body cat stretch.

  He groaned, long and low. “Damn, woman, you fight dirty.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  “Lesson learned.” The two words were whisper-weapons wielded against her skin, joined by the sliding of his calloused hand over her belly. But he didn’t stop there. His warm, rough fingers continued its journey and splayed out wide, his thumb just barely skimming below the hem of her tank top. Not enough for her to call him on it. But definitely enough to distract her beyond saving.

  “Touché,” she muttered.

  His lips curved up and slid over her hair in a barely there kiss. “Go to sleep. The longer you stay up, the longer I do.” He shifted his hips against hers to demonstrate his point.

  Why was this a bad idea again?

  In slow increments, she let her body relax and melt against him like molasses. Dammit, why did he have to be such a perfect fit? She’d never, in her whole life, slept better than she had last night in his arms. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get addicted to it. Start craving it. Needing it.

  She might never be able to sleep without his arms around her again.

  Maybe that was the evil genius’s plan all along.

  “You do know that after the doctor clears you, we’re going to go back to how things were prior to you sleeping in my bed, right?” she asked, trying her best to keep them both hitched to the reality of the situation before she went and did something crazy.

  Like break down and throw herself at him.

  Because truth be told, last night if he hadn’t made the first move and slipped under the covers to pull her into his arms, she would’ve joined him on the futon and done the same.

  He just broke first.

  When he ignored her question and continued to draw in slow, deep breaths to try to get to sleep, she pressed on. “Jake, you know this is just during your recovery—”

  “Shhh,” he interrupted.

  She snapped her mouth shut. And then turned to him in disbelief. “I can’t believe you just shushed me.”

  “It was either that or kiss you silent.”

  Was it wrong that she was wholly disappointed he hadn’t chosen the latter?

  “Are we not going to talk about it?”

  “We can definitely talk about it,” he murmured, his voice no longer teasing. “Or rather, the Jake and Emma who didn’t just meet the other week can.”

  Fair enough. She turned over and put her hands over his when he wrapped his arms around
her.

  Even though he didn’t push, she felt the tension still vibrating through his frame.

  “I would’ve kissed you back if you’d kissed me,” she admitted quietly.

  “I know, sweetheart.” His arms finally started relaxing around her, before flexing to pull her in closer. “That’s why I shushed you instead.”

  For Jake, resting and recuperating for two whole days—the first time he’d really slowed down in working memory—had been great. Especially the part where he’d been able to hold Emma in his arms each night.

  But by the next day, he had to return to reality, and his apartment, for one very basic reason. His siblings had all seemingly lost their damn minds.

  After eventually learning about Emma’s call from the hospital, Daryn had apparently been searching for Jake ever since. The only problem was that Jake just plain hadn’t noticed his cell phone was dead until yesterday; it was not as if he got a lot of calls usually. When he finally did notice, he’d of course gone out to his truck to recharge the phone, and that was when he heard the eleventy million voice mails from all three of his siblings.

  Yes, he was now officially including Carter in that bunch.

  But that was a can of wormlike emotions he was saving for a rainy day to open.

  By the time he got to the last message, he heard his baby sister threatening to order an APB out on his ass if he didn’t call one of them back. Taking a shot in the dark, he’d called his own apartment first. Sure enough, he’d found a hysterical Haley there to answer.

  Next came his call to Daryn to cancel the panicked missing persons report they’d filed.

  Then Jake spent most of the three-hour drive home back on the phone with Haley, who launched a full-tactical interrogation about Emma, interspersed with verbal slaps upside his head for—irony of ironies—going off the grid without a way for anyone to contact him. After that, he and Haley had a fun night eating takeout and catching up while he repaired the two gaping holes she had made in the drywall next to his front door to break into his apartment. He didn’t ask for details on why his baby sis knew to do that, or how she managed to accomplish it without any obvious tools; suffice it to say that for a girl who lived the modern hippie-gypsy lifestyle, she’d always been viciously protective of her brothers.