Flirting With Forever (16 page)

After Jake opened himself up to me, there was no going back, and I didn’t want to. There was enough commonality to bind us together and enough differences to excite the hell out of us. He didn’t play any of the games that Jim had played with me when we were dating. Jake forced me to grow and ushered me into a new life. His worldview wasn’t necessarily my worldview, and he was good with that.

I woke up that morning to find Jake already up with his jammer on. Think gorgeous Olympic swimmer or magnificent water polo guy with a massive beautiful chest and long arms with gifted hands. “I need to swim,” he said. “Do you want breakfast first?”

“I don’t expect you to baby me.” I couldn’t hide my smile. Well, maybe a little. “I’ll come with you.”

The steps down to the lakefront were steep, like if you fell down them, you might never get up again steep. “Oh, hell no,” he said as I started down the stairs with the shaky coordination of a toddler.

“I’ll be fine.” The last word was a squeal that stretched into seventeen syllables as he scooped me up and carried me down to the beach. My head still hurt, but I bit my lip and laid my head against his chest as he walked down the steps and into the lake with me. The water was warm for June, but not too warm. I moved about slowly, treading just fast enough to keep my head above water.

“You’re better today.” He dove under the water and came up smiling, his thick chestnut hair slicked back.

“Yeah.” I touched the stitches above my eye. “But I feel like Frankenstein.”

“You’re gorgeous.”

There was a part of Jake’s body that was like a compass, always pointing toward the water, always begging him to swim. I could feel him wanting to take off, swim all the way out to the mouth of the cove and back. Instead, he held me, suspended above the water.

How long could a man like Jake stay with someone like me? My head throbbed hard. I felt desperate for him to touch me the way he had when I wasn’t hurt and it was just us, playing house in a different hotel room every night.

“Did you call Erin today?” I asked smiling up at him.

“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m staying with you until you’re better. Longer if you’ll have me.”

“I can get around by myself. You should go back, Jake, sort things out in New York.”

“I said I quit.” His eyes met mine, daring me to argue with him.

I looked away. “Then go back and close out your apartment.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Tara?”

I didn’t say anything. He carried me back to the house, moving in slow motion, setting me down on the shower seat. He took off his jammer and got into the shower with me. He used his hands to wash every inch of me, taking special care not to touch my wounds. I watched his hands, his beautiful face. His eyes dared me to tell him that I didn’t love what he was doing to me, dared me to tell him to stop.

“To answer your question, I’m not trying to get rid of you, but I need you to go.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jake was naked and delicious. And angry.

“Jim needs—”

“What the fuck, Tara? That guy hurt you.”

“It was an accident, you know that.”

“I’m not talking about the accident. He gutted you. You owe him nothing.”

“He’s having surgery day after tomorrow. I’m bringing him here to recuperate.”

“And you told him you’d do this for him?”

I reached for him, but he pulled away. “Do you believe I love you?”

“That has nothing to do with this, Tara.”

“Do you?”

“I can’t believe you’d even ask.”

“I know this is hard for you to understand, Jake, but I need to make peace with the last fifteen years, and this is the best way I know how.”

“You just had a fucking concussion, you’re in no shape to take care of anybody, Tara. Don’t do this.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I thought the couple buying the house wanted to close next week.”

“I had it pushed back. They gave us more time to close.”

“
Us.”

“Jake, I want to close out this part of my life so I can start fresh with you.”

“That’s bullshit. We are new. What do you really want, Tara?”

“I want you to trust me.”

He was on the next flight out to LaGuardia.

‡

M
arsha came over
with food and wine the night Jake left. I returned the favor the following night, inviting her over for dinner and dessert. I’d driven for the first time, 4.2 miles to the grocery store and 4.2 miles back. I went in the morning and by the time I got home, I had to take an NSAID and a pain pill and lie down. Maybe Jake was right, maybe I wasn’t up for this.

Just before seven, I seared two tuna steaks and made a salad along with some raw carrot and ginger soup. I found the recipe in an old Gourmet Magazine issue that came out during the raw food craze. I opened a bottle of white wine Jim paid a fortune for years ago. It would be the equivalent of giving Marsha a new Lexus or chocolate, and it made me happy I could do something nice for her.

“Jake call?”

“He’s still angry at me, but yes. He called several times like he’s still taking care of me.”

She complimented me on the food, especially the soup, but there wasn’t much to it other than pouring the carrot juice, avocado, and ginger into a blender. “You seem better, Tara.”

“I am, but I’m still tired. The NSAIDs make my stomach feel crappy. It’s rough if I don’t take them.”

She grinned and her face went flush, definitely not a hot flash. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh, God, what is it?”

“I was standing in our backyard when Jake carried you up to the house from the lake. I wish you could have seen the muscles in that man’s back and his arms. He’s gorgeous, and he loves you so much, Tara.”

I know, I missed those muscles. “I love Jake, too. He knows that.”

“I just don’t want to see you going backwards, especially when you get into your old groove of taking care of Jim.”

“Things will be different this time.” I had every reason to believe that. I had.

Jake Randall, at least I hoped I did.

“This wine is really good.” She pulled the bottle out of the cooler to check out the label. “Holy shit. You opened Jim’s Screaming Eagle sauvignon blanc? That stuff is like $2500 a bottle.”

“There were two in the cooler. This one is mine.”

It was killing
Jake not to call Tara the morning of the surgery to see if she was okay, but he figured she’d be with the bastard until they took him down to the operating room. He was so pent up, he went to the pool, swam for two hours, and had just gotten dressed when Tara called him from the surgical waiting room.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked.

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too. I hate to think of you being there by yourself.”

“Marsha and Mike are here. The surgery’s supposed to last four to five hours, so it’s going to be a long day.”

“And you’ll see him when it’s over?”

“Yes, Jake, I guess we all will.” He could hear in her voice that nothing had changed between him and Tara, but still it scared him a little that Jim obviously had her sympathy. He hoped that was all the bastard had. “I talked to Erin this morning.”

“She called me, but I didn’t pick up.”

“I know this is making you crazy, Jake. That’s not my intention.” Jake didn’t say anything. “Erin promised me she’s going to drag you out of your apartment if you don’t meet her at that little Mediterranean place you said you liked on Columbia Street.”

“I’d pay big money to see Erin try to drag me anywhere. What time?”

“Eightish.”

“So you’re setting me up with Erin?”

“No. I just—”

He’d said it to tease her, but he could tell Tara didn’t like the thought of him with a date any more than he liked the idea of her with her husband. “Relax, Tara. I know what you meant. Call me when this is over?”

“I love you, Jake.”

“I love you too.”

Mazzat’s was between
his Brooklyn apartment and Erin’s, and Jake was ready to celebrate. Jim had come through the surgery fine, and he and Tara were that much closer to being together.

“You look like shit, Jake Randall.” Erin hugged him, the top of her head hitting him dead center of his chest. She dropped her huge purse in the chair beside him and sat down across from him.

“And you’re still on crutches.”

“Yeah, the doctors had so much fun operating on my foot, they wanted to do it again, so I said what the hell.”

The waitress brought the menus and Erin picked a bottle of wine. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“Jake, have you ever known me not to be?”

“Order whatever you want, it’s on me.”

Erin smirked and perused the menu. “But I’m the one with a job.”

“I didn’t come for you to give me shit or to ask for my job back.”

“Of course not. But you owe me, Jake Randall, I’m on my second surgery, just so you could get the girl.” He was glad to see Erin, she was one of the few people who was a better smartass than him, only she pulled it off as witty and cute. “Seriously,” she said, “you do look like shit.”

The waitress came and Erin ordered in her cute non-smartass way, basically asking the kitchen to deconstruct everything. Jake was waiting for her to ask them to make sure the different foods didn’t touch. “So, Randall, are we celebrating or drowning our sorrows?”

“I hope we’re celebrating.”

She caught him up on what was going on at the office. The woman who’d taken his old job had already quit because she couldn’t take the divas. Erin was doing well in her new position and had hired a new assistant since her old one got promoted when she did.

“Remember how furious you were when I called you that Sunday?” She sat up extra tall, which wasn’t saying much, trying to imitate Jake. “This Tara Jordan chick sounds like a train wreck. I’m going to miss my vacation. Really, Jake, you were such a baby.”

“Best fucking phone call of my life.” Second only to the one last night when Tara couldn’t sleep either.

“So tell me the scoop. I heard some things when you canceled the rest of the tour, but I want to hear it from you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m a card-carrying romantic, what do you think I want to know? Did she fall for you instantly?” He fucking blushed, Erin was howling. “What did you do, Randall?”

Jake started telling the story that affirmed what a very lucky guy he was.

“Oh, my God, you went through her suitcase? You are an idiot, but I bet Tara’s too nice to say anything.”

“She had plenty to say. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. But when she pushed back, I pushed back harder until I saw she wasn’t a diva. She really was meant to do this, Erin. You should see her out there. She loves it and the fans love her.”

“Tara’s a good girl who was raised up right,” Erin actually drawled the last few words.

“It still freaks me out when you do that Southern thing.”

“I keep my accent in check north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but when I need to pull it out, I can bless your heart with the best of them.”

After dinner, Jake ordered coffee, and Erin asked to see the dessert menu. “Gotta warn you, Randall. I’ve got a huge sweet tooth.”

“Like I don’t already know that. Like the world doesn’t know that.”

The restaurant was noisy; Jake checked his phone to see if Tara had called. She hadn’t, but then she had told him earlier that she was exhausted and was headed to bed early so that she could be at the hospital first thing tomorrow for the bastard. Erin pulled her phone out, scrolling down until she stopped short. She stared at the screen for a long time, pale. She shook her head and looked at Jake.

“What is it, Erin?”

She showed Jake a bunch of pictures of him and Tara. Tara had taken them with her phone. “It’s bad, Jake. It’s all over the Internet.”

“Shit.”

Everything had happened so fast the night of the Charlotte show, Jake had been thinking like Tara’s boyfriend instead of her publicist. He’d gone back later and gotten her computer and her phone. Her purse. He didn’t see her iPad, he’d just assumed it was in her purse.

“Look at this.” Erin enlarged the print on what looked like a photo of a handwritten page. Jake had been writing their story on a yellow legal pad. He’d intended to give it to her when he got to the part when he proposed. Tara had never asked to see the pages, and he didn’t think she’d looked at them. If she had, she hadn’t said anything. But she’d photographed some of them—descriptions of what the public would consider the more provocative parts, but they were simply the retelling of their story, the times they made love. “TMZ says there’s more and they’ll lead with the story tomorrow. The other news outlets are all over this, Jake.”

Jake wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but Erin started punching in a number. “Who are you calling?”

“Sylvia.” Erin gave him a look that said she was trying to stop the bleeding. He knew Erin cared about Tara, but she also had a vested interest in protecting Tara’s brand that had grown exponentially and had become very lucrative to Penguin. “It’s me, Erin. We have a problem. Take a look at the links I just sent you.” She didn’t say she was with Jake, which was probably smart since Sylvia was still pissed at him.