Gimme Some Sugar

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “All in all, Ms. di Matisse, you’re actually a very lucky young lady.”

  Carly snorted, both at the irony of being lucky and the fact that she’d bet a thousand dollars the doctor standing at the foot of her bed was younger than she was. “I don’t feel very lucky,” she said, the words more soft joke than snappy rebuke. What she did feel like was someone who’d been lying on a lackluster mattress for nine hours with the headache from hell, trying to hash out some kind of a plan for her wounded body, a career that had been thrown in the blender, and her utterly jumbled sense of trust and belonging.

  She didn’t even want to get started on her shattered heart.

  “Well, your nose isn’t broken and there’s no damage to your orbit. Your MRI shows nothing out of the ordinary, so other than the swelling and discomfort, I think you’re in the clear.”

  “Does that mean she can go home?” After spending all night in a recliner two sizes too small for his linebacker-esque frame, Adrian’s voice carried equal parts aggravation and hope. He’d flat-out refused to leave Carly’s side, despite all her pleas for him to go home and get some sleep. Which had turned out to be a good thing in the end, because although she hadn’t realized it at the time, she had needed him to help her sort things out.

  As well as plan.

  The doctor typed something into her electronic chart, and the sound yanked Carly back to reality just in time to see him nod. “You’ll need to take it easy for the next couple of days at least. And by ‘take it easy,’ I mean, stay home and rest. A concussion is no laughing matter, so you’ll have to limit yourself a bit. I’ll send the nurse in to go over your release orders with you, but I don’t see any reason to keep you here.”

  Carly exhaled in relief as the doctor tucked her chart under one arm and made his way to the door. “Thank you.”

  She’d had jailbreak on her mind as soon as the sun had risen two hours ago. God, what she wouldn’t give to slip into the comfort of her own bed right now, to dive beneath the sheets and never come out.

  Never mind that those sheets smelled like freshly cut wood and sweet possibility that would never again see the light of day.

  “You still want me to call Bellamy and Gavin and have them meet us at your place?” Adrian asked, looking at her warily even though they’d been over things no less than a hundred times.

  She nodded with calm certainty, even though it rattled her head like black-eyed peas in a jar. “Yes. They deserve to hear the truth about what’s going to happen, and they deserve to hear it from me.” She paused, watching him carefully. “How about you? You’re good to go?”

  Adrian’s eyes met hers, his smoky hazel gaze telling her all she needed to know. “Let’s get the hell out of here, what do you say?”

  Carly waited until Adrian had clicked her door quietly shut to go make the calls to their kitchen staff before she picked up the phone by her bed.

  “Yes, hello. I’m trying to reach one of your guests, Mr. Richard Buchanan.” She paused while the operator looked up the room number, hesitating for just a second before saying with absolute certainty,

  “Tell him Carly di Matisse is calling, and that it’s urgent.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like shit, buddy.” Shane crouched next to a mass of tangled cucumber vines, propping his forearms over his thighs as he offered up a steaming travel mug of coffee.

  Jackson took it, but didn’t drink. “Great. I look like I feel, then.” He squinted through the dappled morning sunlight, his eyes dry and tired in a way that marked a serious lack of sleep and a night fraught with gut-wrenching stress.

  “Have you been out here all night?” Shane sat down beside Jackson in the soft grass, his dark glance flickering with concern and brimming with questions.

  “Yeah. Do you . . .” Jackson stopped, fully understanding that he had no right to ask the question burning through his mouth, but the words barged out anyway. “Do you know how Carly is? I mean, when I called the hospital a couple of hours ago, Autumn said she was fine. Sleeping, and stuff. But has Bellamy heard anything this morning?”

  Shane’s brow lifted. “You had your sister check on her in the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah. She was on shift in another department,” Jackson admitted. Christ, he wanted nothing more than to be the one to check on Carly, to make sure she had everything she needed and keep her safe.

  But he’d been the one to cause all of her pain. How could he possibly protect her unless it was to stay away?

  She’d trusted him, and he’d crushed her heart.

  There was no taking something like that back.

  Shane cleared his throat and regarded Jackson with a wary expression. “So, ah, you want to let me in on what’s going on here? Your girlfriend spent the night at Riverside Hospital with a concussion, and you’re sitting in the middle of your mother’s tomato cages looking like death warmed over. I’m trying to figure it out, I really am, but . . .”

  “I didn’t hurt her on purpose, I swear to God.” Jackson’s words clawed their way out, emphatic and pained. “I was trying to walk away from her, to keep her safe, but . . . I didn’t, and even though the whole thing was an accident, I still can’t fix it. Oh, hell, Shane. I fucked this up so bad that there’s no way to fix it.”

  He gave Shane a short version of events, and damn if the words didn’t lose any of their ability to make him sick with the retelling.

  “I knew there was a good explanation, Jax, and I believe you. But maybe you should be saying these things to Carly, rather than bouncing them off me out here in the great outdoors, huh?”

  “I can’t,” Jackson countered, frustration jolting through him. “I’m just going to hurt her again, and I’ve done that enough.”

  Shane made a noise of disdain, but Jackson barreled on. “I mean it. I’ve been sitting here all night, trying to come up with the words to erase it all, but I can’t. In the end, I’ll still have hurt her without being able to ever make it right.”

  “You love her, right?” Shane asked, and Jackson didn’t hesitate.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how about a good, old-fashioned sincere apology?”

  The suggestion yanked Jackson to complete attention. “Do you think she’ll listen?”

  “I think you should hurry, unless you want to do your groveling long-distance,” Shane said, frowning into the display on his chiming cell phone.

  “What?”

  “See for yourself. Bellamy just sent me this.” Shane deposited his cell phone into Jackson’s unsteady hand.

  Am @ Carly’s for a team mtg to discuss job in NYC.WTF?

  Jackson’s mouth went dry as he remembered the job offer from Carly’s old boss, but his pulse ripped through him as he scrolled through the rest of Bellamy’s text message.

  She’s leaving tomorrow.

  Feed her. FEED HER.

  In that instant, everything snapped into place with gut-wrenching clarity. Carly took care of everyone she loved by feeding them, and damn it, he loved her enough to take care of her right back. It wasn’t about feeding her, literally.

  It was about loving her unconditionally.

  It was about telling her the truth.

  This time when his instinct howled at him, Jackson listened without thinking.

  “Please tell me you drove your Mustang, because I need to get down Rural Route 4. Like now!”

  “Have you thought out how you want to do this, dude? Because Adrian is going to . . . ohhhkay, maybe not.” Shane trailed off as Jackson wasted no time putting a purposeful knock dead center in Carly’s front door.

  “I’ll get past Adrian,” Jackson said, and meant it. Right about now, he’d get past ten Adrians to get two minutes of Carly’s attention. He had something to say, and he was goddamn well going to say it.

  Even if she still went back to New York tomorrow.

  Sloane swung the door open, her voice immediately choked with surprise. “Oh,
holy shit! What’re you doing here?” She boomeranged a glance over one shoulder before slipping outside to the porch.

  “I came to see Carly, and I’m not leaving until I do.” Right. Apparently being in love with someone meant getting pretty bossy. Jackson filed it squarely under the I-don’t-give-a-shit heading.

  “It’s not that easy, Jackson. She’s, um. Kind of busy.” Sloane narrowed her eyes on him. “Plus, Adrian’s here and he wants to kill you. And I really don’t mean that metaphorically.”

  Something ripped free in Jackson’s chest, and he put it in words right there on the front porch. “I know about her meeting, Sloane. I know Adrian’s here, and I know she’s going back to New York. But I need to talk to her before she goes, and I don’t care if I’ve got to do it in front of everybody in that fucking room.”

  Sloane cocked her dark head, the strangest smile perched on her lips. “I always knew you were her swan. By all means, come on in. But I’m so not kidding about Adrian. Watch your back, would you?”

  “I think between the two of us, we can at least hold him off,” Shane said, a hard flicker passing over his eyes as he gave Jackson an I-got-your-back stare.

  “Okee dokey. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she murmured, ushering them inside.

  From down the narrow hallway, Jackson could hear the indistinct murmur of voices locked in discussion, although it was impossible to make out the words. For a second, the realization that he was about to barge in on a professional meeting with Carly and her staff filtered into his consciousness, and it tugged at his rational thought, begging him to slow down and at least think about things.

  Nope. Being in love with Carly was about as far from rational thought as Jackson was going to get. As he entered the room, he realized he liked it that way.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have something I need to say to Carly.”

  Every head in the living room whipped around, and Adrian launched himself from his seat next to Carly so fast that all Jackson could see of her was one jeans-clad leg and her bare foot.

  “Like hell! Sloane, are you out of your freaking mind, letting him in?” Adrian shot a withering glance at Sloane, and the guy Jackson vaguely remembered as the suit from La Dolce Vita interjected a startled hey! But rather than back down, Sloane jammed her fists into her hips and replied with a stare that matched Adrian’s dagger for dagger.

  “Watch it, Holt. I’m not an idiot. If he gets frisky, I’m sure you’ll take care of it,” she snapped.

  “Oh, I’ll take care of it, all right, but I don’t need an excuse.”

  Adrian stepped forward with clear intention, and Bellamy levered herself up from the couch, reaching for the clearly pissed-off sous chef, which in turn sent Shane into a defensive motion at Jackson’s side.

  Jackson made a last-ditch attempt to keep things semi-calm, stepping in the midst of everyone but still unable to see Carly herself. “I just want to talk to her. I don’t care if I have to do it right here, with every damn one of you between us.”

  “Adrian, stop.”

  Carly’s voice echoed, haggard and quiet and so completely sweet in Jackson’s ears that it almost shot his knees out from under him. She nudged her way forward, weaving through the people in the living room, and the sight of the angry purple bruise marking her cheekbone ripped through every ounce of Jackson’s soul.

  But he wouldn’t leave. Not this time. Not unless she told him to.

  Carly set her lips in a firm line and looked up at Adrian, who was the last person between her and Jackson. “If it’ll make you feel any better, we can do it Jackson’s way, with you standing between us. But I’d actually like to hear what he came to say.”

  “Carly,” Adrian started, then shook his head. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?” Something strange blanketed his expression, a cross between realization and resignation, and Jackson eked out a breath of relief at her answer.

  “No, gnoccone. Not this time.”

  “Thank you,” Jackson rasped. A tender thread of hope pulled deep in his belly, but he stood firm, afraid to recognize the fragile what-if. “Look, I know I don’t have any right to ask you to hear me out. Believe me, I know that. But I owe you an explanation. And an apology. And . . . well, everything.”

  A sliver of emotion streaked over Carly’s face before disappearing into her unreadable façade. “You don’t owe me anything, Jackson. You were right. What we had was a heat of the moment thing, and I turned it into something it wasn’t.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jackson fired back emphatically enough to make Adrian visibly stiffen, but no way was he backing down now. “You turned it into every amazing thing that it was, only I was too much of a thickheaded idiot to see it.”

  Before he could stop it, the story of what his mother had told him last night in the garden started flowing out, filled in with the details of the childhood memories that still made bile churn deep in his belly.

  “So when I overheard you telling Adrian about the job in New York, I thought I could just let you walk away, and then you’d be safe. Only what I said ended up hurting you so much, and . . .” He hitched to a stop, sucking in a breath at the memory. “I never heard you come up behind me. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth. I turned around with the intention to say good-bye, but you were too close, and even though I hit you by complete accident, it doesn’t change the fact that I did it.”

  “I know this was an accident, Jackson,” she whispered, gesturing to her face.

  “Well, there’s more you should know.” He took a step toward her, locking his eyes on hers and pouring all of his emotion into the connection. “I thought letting you go home was the best way to keep you safe, that apologizing wasn’t enough. And it’s not, but I have to say it anyway. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I’d do anything to take it back, Carly. You don’t have to forgive me, or say anything. But I never meant to hurt you, with what I said or what I did.”

  “Did you mean any of it?” Carly’s expression never wavered, and his heart did its very best to hammer its way out of his ribcage.

  “God, no. I love you. I’m totally, completely in love with you. If that means I have to move to New York to be with you, then that’s what I’ll do. Hell, I’d move to Timbuktu to be with you. I love you so much.”

  A chirrup of surprise crossed her lips, and Jackson realized with a stab of anxiety that she was crying. Oh, no. No, no.

  And then the faintest, most gorgeous smile he’d ever seen in his entire life turned the corners of her lips up, and he rushed forward just in time for her to fling her arms around his neck.

  “I love you, too.” She buried her uninjured cheek in his shoulder, and the smell of honeysuckle and pure hope was so good, he wanted to drown in it. “I’m sorry that all of this happened, too, but I love you, Jackson. I love you.”

  “Alrighty, people. Nothing to see here. Move along, now.” Sloane wiped her face with the back of her hand before shooing everyone toward the front of the bungalow, and it was only then that Jackson remembered the five other people in the room. Everyone complied save Adrian, and Jackson eased back from Carly as the big guy crossed his arms over his chest with a hard stare.

  “If this ever changes, we’re going to finish what we started, you and I.”

  Jackson nodded. “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I’ll get used to you. Eventually. Just don’t fuck it up.” Adrian lifted an eyebrow at Carly in one last wordless exchange before walking through the door.

  “I won’t,” Jackson murmured, bending low to kiss the top of Carly’s head. “I know it’s going to take a while to earn your trust back, Carly, but I meant what I said. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He paused. “I guess I should probably let my family know I’ll be leaving.” The thought of moving away from Pine Mountain sent a pang through his gut, but it was nothing compared to the thought of living without Carly.

  She drew back with a quick curve of her lips. “It’s only a coupl
e of days, Jackson. Although I’d love it if you’d come with me anyway.”

  “What are you talking about? Bellamy’s text said you were leaving for New York tomorrow,” Jackson stammered.

  “Oh, I am. You see, a lot has happened in the last couple of hours. Once Richard Buchanan officially fired Travis and offered me the job at Gracie’s, Travis knew he had no leverage left in our divorce and that he’d been beat. He agreed to sign the paperwork to make it official as soon as possible. Which, as it turns out, is the day after tomorrow. So that’s why I’m going to New York, but I’ll be back Tuesday night.”

  “But . . . but what about the job at Gracie’s?” Jackson’s blood chilled. “Do you not want me to move with you?” Oh, hell. Maybe that was too much for her. After all, trust wasn’t earned overnight.

  “Oh, no. I mean, yes.” She stopped, rolling her eyes and then wincing at the movement. “What I mean is, while I’d love for us to move in together, I’m not leaving Pine Mountain.”

  All the oxygen in Jackson’s lungs turned to sand. “What?” he gasped. “But the meeting . . .”

  “I wanted Bellamy and Gavin to know I’d been offered the position in New York, in case they heard it through the grapevine. But I also wanted them to hear straight from me that I had turned the job down,” Carly replied.

  “Why would you do that?” Jackson breathed, not sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “Because ever since Travis left me, I’ve been terrified to trust. But what I didn’t really get until last night was that I had to trust myself first, before I could put my faith in anybody else. So I finally listened to my gut, but it just told me what I’d known all along.” She stopped and gave a tiny shrug before continuing. “I belong here now. Pine Mountain is my home.”

  Jackson’s inner voice burst to life, and he grinned as he pulled Carly close. “You know what my gut is telling me?”

  A rare giggle escaped from her throat. “That you’re hungry?”

  But right then and there, Jackson finally got what all the fuss was about, and he answered honestly.