Afterward, he collapsed over her before rolling on his side and holding her close.
“My beautiful Liz,” he murmured. “I want you forever.”
“You’ve got me, Jack.” She buried her face into his chest and felt his fast-beating heart. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Not after you handled me like that, she thought, eager to see what future sexy times together might bring.
“Please don’t,” he said. “No matter what happens, please don’t leave me.”
He kissed her forehead, and then his breathing grew heavier as his grip on her loosened. He was asleep. Elizabeth smiled and followed him into a peaceful repose, tucked into his arms, and it felt like the only place in the world she was meant to be.
22
It wasn’t a dream.
Jack opened his eyes the next morning, and Elizabeth was there in the darkness, her blonde hair falling across her pure bare shoulders, sleeping with a little smile, looking so damned wonderful he wanted to take her in his arms. To kiss her all over and tell her he’d never let her go.
But no. As long as he didn’t touch her, didn’t wake her, maybe he could find a way to undo the damage he’d done. Maybe if he closed his eyes and opened them again, she wouldn’t be there, and then he wouldn’t have betrayed her even more.
He clenched his eyes closed and kept them shut for as long as he could before opening them again, but when he did, she was still there.
It wasn’t a hyper-realistic fantasy. He’d had sex with Elizabeth. He’d had profound, needful, loving sex with her.
He chastised himself for letting it happen.
He wanted to wake her up and apologize and tell her that he’d been drunk and his inhibitions had been down, and he couldn’t be held accountable for responding the way any man would to a beautiful woman coming into his bed and offering herself to him.
But he knew it wasn’t that. A few drinks might have lowered his inhibitions, but he hadn’t been blind drunk. He’d known what he was doing. It had felt so right at the time, and it still felt right—waking up next to Elizabeth, with her naked in his bed.
This is how it should be, he thought. It should always be the two of us together in this bed.
Yet it was wrong, and it was his fault for being selfish with her. His father’s stupid criminal secret still hung between them, unbeknownst to her, and now it was to the point where if Jack didn’t tell her the truth, he might never be able to.
But to touch her. To brush her tousled hair off her shoulder and make room for his lips there. To kiss her forehead, pull her close. To wake her up with kisses and make love again, until the sun rose and lit the mid-morning sky.
Most of all, he wanted to protect her from anything bad ever happening to her again.
Elizabeth slept like an angel. Just looking at her made Jack’s heart swell with emotion. He could be her angel, in another life. He could be the one who provided for her so she could pursue her career dreams. He could keep a roof over her head, one that never leaked. He could be the one she came home to after a long day, and he’d have a fire going in the fireplace, and a glass of her favorite wine ready for her, and they’d tuck themselves under a cashmere blanket and unwind together after spending the day apart, linking hands and hearts. Coming together, always, for weeks and months and years and decades. Some years there’d be a toddler at their feet. Others, a few teenagers stomping through. And then it would be just them again, before the grandbabies came along.
This is what love is, he thought, watching her, too terrified to touch her. Inexplicably, after being satisfied for more than a decade with short-term dalliances, he looked at Elizabeth and saw forever. Wanted forever. He wanted to do right by her every day for the rest of his life—which was precisely why he couldn’t be in bed with her for one minute longer.
He slid from the bed carefully, making sure not to jolt the mattress and cause her to wake. He walked through the dark bedroom to the bathroom, where he closed the door before turning on the light.
He was supposed to have breakfast with Doc Bauer that morning to make up for having missed it after his rough shift, and while Jack didn’t want to leave, he thought it was for the best. He had thinking to do on how to proceed with Elizabeth, and having her right next to him was far too distracting for him to make clear decisions.
He got dressed and snuck back through the bedroom, but just as he was about to step into his garage and make his escape, he thought of Elizabeth and how she’d wake up to find him gone and wonder where he was. He took a moment to write a note to leave on the counter.
I had an appointment this morning. Would have woken you to kiss you goodbye but wanted you to sleep like the angel you are. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.
Jack.
He left the note and made it all the way to his truck before he had second thoughts. The note was misleading, not because it wasn’t true but because it implied the affection between them would continue. He worried that it made him seem disingenuous—leaving a note like that when he still carried a secret.
Going back inside, he ripped another sheet of paper from the notepad, and re-wrote: I had an appointment this morning. Didn’t want to wake you. That alone felt too abrupt, so he added, Thanks for last night.
And then he winced because it sounded brusque and awful, but it was the best he could do at the moment. And it was true—he was thankful for last night, in a wonderful-awful kind of way. If it were the only time he got to be with Elizabeth, then the memory of it would have to carry him through the years.
After breakfast with Doc Bauer, Jack headed to the gym. He kept his gym bag in his truck, and he was diligent about getting workouts in, but that morning it was more about avoiding going home until he knew Elizabeth would be gone to the Pickens’s for her caregiving duties. He also knew the mind-clearing effects of exercise.
After two hours of lifting heavy weights followed by half an hour sweating it out on the treadmill, Jack felt better. The residual headache from the previous night’s whiskey was gone, and so were his doubts about what he had to do.
He remembered his conversation with Tom the night before. About the options available to him.
Go for it with Elizabeth, keep the secret, and live a lie. I can’t live that way.
Forget Elizabeth and move on to someone else. Not even possible. Jack knew he could never forget Elizabeth, not now.
Which left the only thing to do, the only correct thing, which Jack guessed he’d known deep down all along. Tell her.
It would almost certainly mean Elizabeth would dump him, want nothing to do with him or his family, and that thought just about killed him. But at least he would know he’d done the honorable thing and that she had all the information. With that, she could go forward knowing that her father wasn’t a thief. She could move on and live a happier life, and Jack would be the one to give that to her, even though it meant being without her.
He thought of his siblings, too, Josh in particular. This revelation would throw his brother’s life into upheaval. He was clearly so happy with Hayley, and Jack expected that would continue, but once Jack came clean about his father’s crime, Josh’s good relationship with Bruce might be ruined.
There were complications, however. By revealing what he knew to Elizabeth, might it expose his father to possible prosecution? He knew the statute of limitations was passed for the initial crime, but had Bruce done anything while chief of police to further bury the theft, and could that now come back to haunt him? Was there any lingering liability?
Before he told Elizabeth, he had to know the full potential repercussions of what he was about to do, for both himself and his father. Immediately he thought of Theresa Harmon, the Armstrongs’ lawyer—what a bulldog she’d been at the scene of that accident, how she knew the Armstrong case inside and out, what an advocate for Elizabeth she’d been. Anyone who cared about Elizabeth like that was the kind of person Jack could trust.
He showered at the gym, and onc
e he was back inside his truck, sitting in the parking lot with the heater running full blast, he looked up Theresa Harmon’s office and made the call.
23
When Elizabeth woke to find Jack gone, she didn’t like it. She felt a touch of abandonment, softened by the note he’d left, but more than that, she’d missed the chance to tell him what their night together had meant to her.
Growing up, she hadn’t had much of a model of what a good relationship should be. There had been a lot of tit-for-tat behavior between her parents. He did this, so she’d do that. Not a lot of togetherness. No sense of partnership. Not many small kindnesses. Elizabeth often thought that even if her dad hadn’t gone to prison, her parents would probably have divorced at some point.
Elizabeth had dreamt of a relationship where she could indulge in small kindnesses to her heart’s content and have them reciprocated. Until Jack came into her life, she’d always been the giver in relationships. That’s just how it was when you mostly dated losers and jerks. But Jack had been kind to her from the first time they’d met, and his decency had fed her soul.
As she lingered in his bed, cocooned in his soft sheets, she resolved that every moment would be special between them. She’d make sure of it. They’d have proper hellos and goodbyes. A kiss, a warm hug, a stay-safe or a welcome-home. She’d get up early and make Jack breakfast before he went to work. He might rub her feet after a long nursing shift. There would be candles at the dinner table and slow-dancing in the kitchen and love notes left in jacket pockets.
She decided to start that very morning. She’d left her phone at her cabin and was already late to care for Charlene, so although she was in a rush, she made Jack’s bed and then drew a heart on the note he’d left her before going to her cabin and letting Rugby out to do his dog business. She took a quick shower and then headed over to Charlene’s.
It was hard to keep the secret smile off her face, and she caught Charlene looking at her keenly a couple times, but for now, she wanted to keep her night with Jack to herself. She knew Charlene would be ecstatic about it, but her relationship with Jack was like a precious tiny plant that had only begun to grow, and it needed to be sheltered from outside scrutiny.
At three-thirty, Elizabeth left to get ready for her bartending shift, just as Rob Pickens came in from working in the stables.
Unfortunately, her boss at the Sled Dog wasn’t nearly as fun and kind as Charlene Pickens. As soon as she walked in the door, Mark Volkoff shouted at her for being late—“Two minutes,” she snapped back—and then he launched into a complaint about how the vegetable delivery truck hadn’t arrived that day, so they were low on lettuce and onions and entirely out of tomatoes. Big loss, Elizabeth thought. Vegetables in Alaska that time of year were pathetic anyway, and most people knew better than to expect them to be otherwise.
She kept busy—and ignored Mark as best she could—by getting into her rhythm of pouring and cleaning and taking orders, including from a large table of students ordering copious amounts of beer and reindeer dogs. She’d cut back her hours in order to help Charlene and in the process found that three shifts per week were the right amount for her. She hoped to keep it once she started taking classes, although, from the way Mark had put up a fuss about it, she would probably end up working more.
About six o’clock, she felt the buzz of her phone in her back pocket and pulled it out. Smiling, she saw it was a text from Jack. She opened it right away.
Hi. Are you at work?
She texted back, Yep. At the Sled Dog. You want to come by for a drink? On me.
He wrote back right away. Better not. I’m on shift starting early tomorrow morning for forty-eight hours. But I was hoping you’re free on Thursday or Friday for dinner. There’s something I need to talk to you about.
Elizabeth stared at his message, a bit flustered. Dinner was good, but talking … well, in her experience, “I need to talk to you” usually meant a breakup was forthcoming.
But he wouldn’t wait so many days to end their fledgling romance, would he? Plus, she couldn’t imagine that was his intent, not after the night they’d just had. She was working on Thursday and was about to write back that she was free on Friday, but then she remembered she wasn’t.
On Friday afternoon she was flying to Oregon because the next day Nate was getting released from prison. She was going to pick him up and bring him home.
I can’t, she texted. I’m going to be in Oregon for a couple days. My dad is getting released from prison, and I’m flying down to be there when he gets out. But I’d love to have dinner when I get home!
Jack didn’t text back immediately. Elizabeth waited for his reply but eventually had to put her phone away to serve a fresh crop of customers who sat down at the bar. She also chatted with Rebecca Miller, co-owner of the North Star Café, who came in with Colin Schneider, the Sled Dog’s brewmaster, whom she’d met at one of Hayley March’s Singles Night events. Elizabeth was glad to see a couple brought together by her friend, and Colin was a sweet guy.
Elizabeth’s phone buzzed again, and she ducked into a corner to read the text from Jack.
Of course, good luck with your dad. Let’s meet up as soon as you’re back and I’m off work.
It wasn’t the declaration of love Elizabeth had been hoping for, nor did it have the kind of sweet nothings that she wanted to hear from Jack … like the things he’d said to her the night before. She flushed at the memory, feeling pleasant tingles of arousal at the mere thought of how things had been with Jack just hours ago.
The first time of many times.
Elizabeth hoped it was, anyway.
Three days later, on Saturday, Elizabeth stood beneath an umbrella outside the gate of the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon, the medium-security prison where her father had been residing for the past fifteen years. She’d been there many times before, but she was nervous in a way she’d never been before. That day was different. That day, Nate was walking out a free man.
Emmett, still a new employee at CoCo’s Emporium, had been unable to get the time off to make the trip to welcome their dad back to society. It was just as well; Emmett was now willing to try and rebuild a relationship with Nate, but there had been years of anger, simmering at times and boiling at others, and Emmett had never come to visit like Elizabeth did.
Elizabeth was, in many ways, the only one that Nate had on the outside, and she felt the responsibility acutely. She’d brought along new clothes for him. A new-used parka from the consignment store. A new wallet, filled with a few hundred dollars, comprised of the last couple weeks’ worth of tips, which she’d taken to the bank and exchanged for crisp twenty dollar bills. Back at the house, Emmett and Bruce Barnes had made good progress, and the roof was fixed, the carpets replaced, and the kitchen almost finished with new cabinets and fresh vinyl flooring. Elizabeth had bought all new bedding and even a new mattress for her father, but she was nervous to bring him home to Golden Falls just the same.
The truth was that Nate wasn’t an easy man. He’d had a domineering personality before he went away—he’d loved his children completely, no doubt about it, but his was the voice of authority in the household. You did what daddy said, and she just couldn’t predict how the relationship dynamics between her, Emmett, and Nate would play out once they were all back together in Golden Falls. She hoped he understood they were independent adults who’d had their childhoods ruined because of his criminal behavior. Forgiveness hadn’t come easily for either of them. For all intents and purposes, they’d lost both parents because of Nate’s actions: him to prison, and their mother to booze and boyfriends.
But Nate had paid his debt to society, and Elizabeth hoped more than anything that he’d be able to pick up the pieces of his life.
When she saw him come out of the prison building and walk toward the gate, head down against the rain, her heart surged with anxious excitement. She couldn’t bring herself to run to him, but she walked, and they shared a heartfelt, te
ar-filled hug.
“Welcome back, Dad!”
“Thanks for being here, honey.” He gripped her tightly and wouldn’t let go. “You have no idea how good this feels. To be free. To see you. To give my daughter a hug without being monitored.”
Nate pulled back so he could look into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“You never stopped loving me,” he said. “You stuck by me this whole time, and I’m so thankful for you. You’re such a beautiful person. It’s nice to know I’ve done one thing right in my life.”
Elizabeth smiled for his sake, but she disagreed that he deserved credit for anything in her life. Whatever she’d become, it was in spite of him, not because of him. Still, she had no intention of saying that.
“Hey, let’s get out of here, huh?” she said, patting his back and then stepping away so he could gather himself. “Our rental car’s right over here.”
“Let me breathe the air first.”
She watched as he faced away from the prison, toward brown-gray fields and the distant tree line, and took big gulping breaths of chilly, drizzle-filled air. The temperature was in the mid-forties, a heat wave as far as Elizabeth was concerned, but she worried about Nate being outside in just a denim shirt. She popped open the trunk and pulled out the parka she’d gotten for him.
“Here, Dad. You probably need this,” she said. “I thought maybe we could go out and grab something for an early dinner. I wasn’t sure what time you’d be ready today, so I’ve already booked us a couple rooms at a hotel outside of Portland for our flight home tomorrow morning. What do you think?”
“That sounds great, honey. It sounds perfect.”
The next few hours went smoothly enough. At Nate’s request, they stopped at a popular chain restaurant he’d always liked, where he ordered nachos for an appetizer, a cheeseburger and fries for dinner, and chocolate cake for dessert. He ate it with pure-heaven enjoyment. It’s the little things, Lizzie, he said several times. Never take the little things for granted.
From The Ashes (Golden Falls Fire Book 3) Page 16
