Summer's Last Breath (The Emerald Series)

by Kimberly James

  Summer's Last Breath

  Kimberly James

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Also By

  About the Author

  Part One

  Chapter One

  I blamed it on the casserole.

  He might not have talked to me otherwise, and he surely wouldn't have touched me.

  I was talking about Jamie Jacobs, the guy who irrevocably changed my life. And not just my life. He changed the very shape of my heart.

  I'd been crushing on Jamie for going on a year now. Last school year, as a freshman, my eyes lit up like moon pies every time I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of him in the hall or in the cafeteria. My heart would beat wildly when I’d see him pulling in or out of the parking lot in his aqua-blue Bronco. He always rode with the top off, even in the winter. He'd pretty much introduced me to the concept of “sexy” and what it looked like in real life.

  And now here he was. At my house. In my backyard.

  When he walked through the back gate with Donovan and Lassiter, I seriously thought I’d have a heart attack.

  "Erin, you still there?" Ally asked from the other end of the phone I forgot I was holding. Ally was my best friend, and had been since kindergarten. We played on the volleyball team together, and shared most of our secrets with each other. My crush on Jamie wasn't one of those shared secrets. Not because I knew she wouldn't approve, but because the way I fantasized about Jamie being all mine was something I cherished as mine alone.

  I dropped the pink eyelet and lace curtain, letting it fall back into place in front of my bedroom window. My window overlooked the backyard, and I'd been checking it regularly for the last hour so I wouldn't miss the moment Jamie arrived.

  "Listen, Ally. I gotta go. Some of the guys are here and I need to get the casserole out of the oven."

  "You know you’re the luckiest girl on the planet, right?” Ally said. "All that deliciously packaged testosterone at your house at one time. How do you stand it?"

  "Well, considering their lives have literally been threatened if they so much as look at me, it's all wasted."

  "Yeah, but you can still feast your eyes on all that gorgeous flesh." Ally sighed dreamily through the phone.

  "Yeah, speaking of feasts, the oven's timer is going off. I really got to go. Bye." I hung up and threw the phone on my bed. I checked myself in the mirror above my dresser, something I'd never done before when the “guys” came over.

  Today was different. Today Jamie was with them and just because he was technically off-limits didn't mean I couldn't look good. I smeared on another layer of lip-gloss and coated my eyelashes one more time with mascara. I was going for older, more worldlier than my sixteen years. At nineteen, Jamie wore the look of experience. He looked like he would want things. Like he would expect things. Things a sixteen-year-old girl shouldn't even know about.

  Not that me looking older would change anything. Jamie was, and always would be, forbidden fruit. Besides being four years older than me—not an insurmountable obstacle—he was the newest recruit of my dad's experimental team—an obstacle that was insurmountably insurmountable. I wasn't kidding when I’d told Ally all the guys under my dad's command risked life and limb if they so much as turned their heads in my direction.

  Jamie was also the experimental part of the team. Meaning he wasn't exactly human. He was amazingly more than human. What better person to recruit to be on a SEAL-type team than someone who was literally born to be in the water?

  Jamie possessed the same amount of strength as the other four guys on the team combined. The second he submerged himself in the Gulf of Mexico, the pores in his skin opened up, allowing him to breathe water. He could swim for days, maybe weeks, at impossible speeds without getting tired. Today, when the inevitable happened, and Donovan and Lassie and Ross went for a swim in the pool, Jamie would be forced to sit on the sidelines. He could breathe salty Gulf water. Chlorinated pool water, not so much.

  I knew all this because I'd snuck into my dad's office one night where I’d riffled through the files he’d left out on his desk. Jamie's had been easy to find. It was thick, with pages and pages of documented and undocumented facts about his species—waterbreathers. I’d found the up close, clinical pictures of the gills behind his ears fascinating. I'd traced the crescent-shaped layers of skin over and over with my finger. I studied the pictures of the fine almost translucent webs between his toes, waiting to be repulsed, only to find myself more enchanted by the idea of him. I scanned microscopic pictures of his skin, smooth and hairless and oh so touchable. The more I’d read, the more obsessed I’d become. All my friends gushed and fan-girled over Harry Styles and Ian Somerhalder while my every fantasy was right here under my nose, so close I could smell him. And God did he smell good. Like the sun and the ocean and a warm salty breeze. My friends were welcome to the latest CW bad-boy cast member, or the hottest boy band member.

  I wanted a man.

  I wanted Jamie.

  Too bad I would never get him.

  * * *

  My parents divorced when I was ten. As far as I knew, it was amicable. Neither had cheated on the other. It was a simple matter of them not loving each other anymore. My mom was the one who moved out. I came home from school one day and she didn't live with us anymore. She didn't ask if I wanted to go with her. She just up and bought a flat above her interior design business in Rosemary Beach, a small coastal community a short drive away.

  It was a relief really. Given a choice, I would have chosen to live with my dad anyway. I'm pretty sure my mom knew that and moved out without a fuss to spare us both—me from having to hurt her by choosing to live with my dad, and her from having to live with that choice. I loved my mom. In a lot of ways, she was my best friend. But as far as having things in common and what suited my lifestyle, I was more compatible with my dad.

  Consequently, I'd learned to cook at an early age. I was good at reading cookbooks and following directions, and honestly, I enjoyed it. My dad didn't expect it from me. We shared kitchen duties equally, but on occasions like today, when his guys were over, I spent the majority of the time inside while he manned the grill. Six grown, and in most cases still growing, men who exerted way above average amount of energy could put away a large amount of food. Especially meat. And they wanted lots of it. Chicken and burgers mostly. Steak when my dad was feeling generous. He put together some shrimp skewers for today, and I wondered whether that was because Jamie was over. Another thing I learned from Jamie's file: his kind preferred seafood, which made sense.

  The potato casserole was my mom's recipe, handed down from her mom and her mom before that. It was a big hit amongst the guys and a staple on the Saturdays they came to hang ou
t. They would play pool and sometimes end up in a poker game. Other times they'd drag the Ping-Pong table out to have a mini tournament.

  I turned off the oven's timer, pulled open the door and was met with a blast of hot air. Someone, probably Lassie because he was the reigning champ, must have gotten the Ping-Pong table out, since I could hear the ball pinging back and forth just outside the French doors in the kitchen that overlooked the pool and patio area. What I didn’t hear was someone open the door behind me and come inside, so when I turned around and came face to face with Jamie, it took me by surprise. I froze, holding the casserole in front of me.

  Jamie. In my kitchen. Towering by the back door. Making our ample-sized kitchen feel small. His pale green eyes washed over me like the gentle lap of ocean waves. They warmed my skin and made me tingle all over. I should probably breathe, but that was impossible at the moment. Maybe he would catch me if I fainted and I would finally know what it felt like for him to touch me.

  The heat from the casserole dish dropkicked me out of my hypnotized state. The oven mitts were old and worn and the heat from the dish burned right through them. I yelped, and half dropped, half threw the offending dish on the kitchen island.

  "You all right?"

  My eyes shot to Jamie's face at the sound of his voice. I searched my memory, wondering if I'd actually ever heard him speak. He was so close I could see the darker green flecks in his eyes and the shine of his almost black hair. His brows descended over pale emerald eyes set in a face some might consider severe, with a hard, square jawline and sharp cheekbones so prominent under his close-cut hair.

  "Yes," I said, hiding my hands behind my back while fighting a grimace.

  "Let me see." His voice was like the ocean’s roar—deep and throaty, yet somehow soothing.

  "It's nothing," I said, not wanting to appear weak. Not in front of him, knowing what he was and the things he could do. He was the epitome of strength and struck me as someone who wouldn't be impressed with weakness.

  "Let me see," he said again, more sternly this time. I held my hands out, palms up. On my right palm was a red spot a little bigger than a quarter where the hot dish burned me.

  "The mitt must have a hole in it." Funny, it didn't hurt much. With Jamie standing so near, all I felt was the force of his presence, and the way it made my heart stutter and my breaths come slow and shallow.

  "Come here," he said.

  I followed him over to the sink like a well-trained puppy. He cupped his hand under mine and held it, the touch light as a cloud. I hoped he couldn't hear how my heart thudded at his nearness. His skin was so warm and his hand so big it dwarfed mine in comparison. With his other hand, he took a piece of ice from a bag sitting in the sink. How could hands I knew held superhuman strength be this gentle?

  My eyes roamed on their own accord. His feet were bare, the webs between his toes barely discernible. White boardshorts encased his powerful legs below a navy blue t-shirt that was beginning to fade. The cotton fabric molded to his chest in an enticing display, doing little to hide the finely honed muscle beneath. He wore a necklace, a thin leather cord strung with a single pearl of the palest green that immediately made me think of the ocean. I swallowed and looked up at his face. His eyes locked onto mine and wouldn’t let go. I don't think I'd ever been looked at that hard, with such deep, soul-searching penetration. His mouth cocked in a sort of half smile, and I knew I would never again in my whole life see a face as beautiful as his.

  "Smells good," he said, his large fingers still working the ice over my skin. "What is it?"

  "Wh—what?" I stammered. Did he mean me? Did he think I smelled good? It was hard to think with him this close. With my hand cradled in his. With those eyes so intent on my face.

  "What did you take out of the oven?"

  "Oh, that. It's a potato casserole. The guys like it." I shrugged away my disappointment. Food. It was always about food with these guys.

  The ice had done the trick. The burn no longer stung. Or maybe Jamie just had magic in his hands. He let his magic hands fall away and I resisted the impulse to grab them back. The loss of contact seemed to crack the intimate moment wide open, and Jamie took a step back as if he just realized how close we'd been standing. Close enough that his scent still hung in my nose.

  He lifted the bag of ice from the sink and said, "Cooler's empty,” as though he needed an explanation for why he was in my kitchen.

  Dying a little inside, I watched as he turned for the door, wondering how I could get him to stay.

  "You making brownies?" He nodded to a pan on the counter. I had been waiting for the potatoes to finish before putting the brownies in to cook.

  "Yeah, you like brownies?" A slight flush rose in my cheeks. Could I sound any more eager?

  He dabbed at the pan, scooping batter with the tip of his finger. If any of the other guys had put their no-telling-where-they've-been hands in my brownie mix, I would've knocked them upside the head with the oven mitts. As it was, my eyes were riveted on his mouth as he licked the batter off his finger.

  "I love brownies."

  And there it was again, that smile that did funny things to my heart and made my stomach feel like it could fly.

  Thank God Donovan's face appeared in the door before I said something really stupid like, "I love you."

  "Grill stuff’s ready," Donovan said as he walked inside, bringing a wave of humid air in with him along with the distinct smell of sweaty male. "You need me to grab something?"

  "Yeah, get the casserole," Jamie answered for me, a sharp command in his voice.

  "Here." I opened a drawer and pulled out another pair of oven mitts. A pair without holes. "Use these. The pan is hot."

  Donovan made a big show of smelling the cheesy potatoes after picking them up. He shot Jamie a look that could have been a warning and said, "You're an angel for making this. This whole pan, I call it."

  "Not likely with Lassiter here." I swiped the brownies off the counter and slid them into the oven, set the timer again, then went to the refrigerator and took out the salad I'd put together earlier. The guys weren't big on vegetables, but they'd eat it since I made it, so long as I provided a gallon of ranch dressing, which I grabbed with my other hand.

  Hands full, I used my foot to close the refrigerator door. Jamie was still there, standing by the French doors. He had such beautiful lips, full and pouty and completely masculine. I held my breath waiting for them to speak again.

  "I'm Jamie Jacobs,” those perfect lips said as if I hadn't said his name a thousand times over in my head.

  "Erin Shaw," I replied, my gaze steady on his.

  "Marshall's daughter. The untouchable." His eyes teased, but there was a challenge in his voice.

  "You touched me." I lifted one eyebrow, having to crane my neck to look up into his face as I made my way to the door he was holding open.

  He smiled at me, knowing and dangerous, when I walked by. Fire. I was playing with fire. Because while his words had sounded like a challenge, mine sounded like a dare.

  Chapter Two

  It took all of twenty minutes for the five of them to totally devour every scrap of food laid out, and another ten to clean off the table. Everyone pitched in, and since we had used paper plates and plastic utensils, it was only a matter of throwing everything in a trash bag. I held it open while my dad dumped the empty plates inside.

  “Thanks, Erin. For helping out. As usual, everything was delicious.” He wore a heather gray t-shirt with “Navy” written across the chest with a pair of athletic shorts. Pretty much standard issue for him. I sometimes wondered if his lack of style contributed to the crumbling of his and my mom’s relationship. I noticed the few men I’d seen my mom date all had that metrosexual look going for them. Not a reason in and of itself to dump a marriage, but it’s what I thought happened to their relationship: the slow build up of a bunch of little things that became this one big irreconcilable thing.

  “These guys are easy to please.” I
picked up the empty casserole dish and took it back into the kitchen to soak. When I came back out, Ross and Donovan were already in the pool. Lassie was in the process of taking off his shirt and Jamie had claimed a spot on one of the lounge chairs. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, one arm behind his head. He tossed the volleyball in the air with the other.

  “So, Native, what would happen if you got in?” Donovan stood in the shallow end of the pool, the water level hitting right above tapered hips and under his broad chest and shoulders. I knew he was just curious, but I was offended on Jamie’s behalf. Not that the question was out of line. The nickname they’d given him over lunch was what bothered me. Native sounded so derogatory. Not that it wasn’t true. He was a native in the truest sense of the word. But if Jamie wasn't bothered by it—and obviously he wasn’t—I had no right to be. I didn’t know whether it was from having read his file and knowing the way he had been so clinically analyzed down to a microscopic level, like he was some kind of laboratory specimen, but I had this protective streak growing where Jamie was concerned. A ludicrous idea if I ever heard one. Jamie didn’t need me, or anyone else, protecting him.

  “Considering the amount of food I just consumed, it wouldn’t be pretty.” Jamie tossed the volleyball to Ross just as Lassie cannonballed off the diving board.

  “Yeah, then stay right there dude. Ross here’s got a weak stomach. You wouldn’t want to start a barf fest.”

  Donovan was the youngest of the group—a freshly minted nineteen—and was clearly the social director. He was all about playing games and competition.

  “Hey, Erin. How about you and me take on these two wussies?” Donovan pulled the net sitting on the side of the pool into the water. I smiled at his word choice—“wussies”—knowing if I weren’t around he would have used a more colorful, offensive one. They definitely watched their mouths when I was around. I’d listened to them plenty of times from my room. It was usually, f’ing this, and f’ing that. I got the censored version of these guys.