Battle Lines. (8 page)

“Come on.” He told her. “The day is wasting away. The sooner we get out there the sooner we can enjoy it.” He flashed a boyish grin at her.

“You gave me a choice, remember.” She reminded him.

“I didn’t say that I was going to let you take it. If you will recall, I just said that you have more than one choice.”

Amanda wanted to hit him. Hit him good and hard. Her palm itched at the thought. “Now we both know that your hand is never going to get anywhere near my face. So, stop thinking such bad, wicked thoughts and let’s go.” Oh how she hated this smug arrogant man.

Amanda turned to collect her mobile phone and keys and put them in the pockets of her jeans. Whilst her back was turned Jake told her. “I told you last night. Hate is the last emotion you feel towards me.”

She sighed deeply and spun round to confront him. He was far too quick for her. His arm snaked around her waist and she was pulled up against his hard body.

He danced around with her. So that she found herself standing on her doorstep and he was between her and her front door. Where she had been standing just a moment ago.

Then she heard the door close behind him and he let her go. Sidestepping her and walking to his car parked on the street beyond the small front garden. “Come on, let’s get the show on the road.” He called over his shoulder.

Amanda gritted her teeth and ground them together as she tried to pull back her temper. She really did hate him. Really, really.

Jake was already sitting in the driver’s seat of his car when she walked towards it.

What was she going to do about the situation she now found herself in? She wasn’t sure at the moment but, she would have to think of something. The trouble was that whenever she was around Jake she seemed to lose the ability to think straight. She lost the ability to talk properly too.

In fact, the only thing that she seemed not to have lost the ability for was falling neatly into Jake’s arms. She was doing a damn excellent job of that so far.

Amanda took a deep breath and sent up yet another silent prayer that would probably go unanswered. She tried anyway, wishing that, just this once, someone up there was listening to her. It wasn’t too much to ask for surely?

She did not think that she was asking for much, perhaps Jake could get struck by lightning or something. She smiled at the thought. That sounded like a good idea.

She made her way grudgingly down the garden path and to the car. She could feel Jake’s eyes on her, they were burning into her like a relentless flame.

She did not dare look up at him, her step would falter, of that she was sure. She reached the passenger side of the car and after a longing look back at her home she opened the door and lowered herself down into the seat of the car and closed the door on the outside world

The awkward silence of the interior swamped her as she fumbled with the seatbelt. The heady scent of Jake filled her nostrils, the heat from his impressive body reaching out to her within the close confines of the car.

Amanda clenched her hands together in her lap as she heard the purr of the engine and the car pulled away from the curb.

They had been driving along for ten minutes, in an uncomfortable silence. Jake was busy concentrating on the road ahead and Amanda did not mind that at all. It was easier than fighting with him.

Amanda stared blindly out of the passenger door window as the world flew past her in a blur. She wasn’t really interested in what was going on anyway. She just needed to keep her gaze away from Jake. It was a pity that she could not keep her thoughts away from Jake just as easily as her eyes.

“You know you shouldn’t feel too badly.” Amanda jumped at the unexpected sound of Jake’s deep voice.

“What?” She frowned as her head snapped round to look at him.

“You shouldn’t feel too bad about what happened between us.” He supplied for her. His eyes never leaving the road ahead.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” She stiffened. She really did not want to discuss anything personal. Not sitting this close in a car with him. That was just asking for a whole heap of trouble. Trouble, she knew, she could not handle.

“Last night.” He told her and then stopped, he turned to look at her and flashed her that all knowing wolf like smile of his before turning back to the road. “A kiss, is a kiss, is a kiss.” He shrugged a shoulder as he turned around a corner. “I think you will find that we are both mature adults. You enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So there’s no problem. The way you have been acting anyone would think we had been plotting to commit murder.” His voice dropped lower, imitating a menacing mysterious tone.

Amanda felt her heart give a lurch and her mouth went dry. But then she snapped herself out of it. Jake was so full of himself. Amanda had just come to the conclusion, no, she corrected she had always known that he was full of himself. Now she knew that he was very full of himself.

Did it ever occur to him that he might actually be wrong in his assumptions? That she had been thinking about something else entirely. That she had not given one single thought to last night and that… kiss. And as for his arrogant assumption that she had enjoyed it, well. Huh.

“Excuse me, but I did not, in no way at all, enjoy what you call a so called kiss.” She snapped at him.

“You didn’t.” Jake asked her.

“No, and I wouldn’t even call it a kiss.” She told him.

“You wouldn’t?” Jake said calmly.

“I think a shop dummy could have done better.” She threw at him angrily. The car suddenly screeched to a halt.

Amanda felt herself propel forward before she fell back hard into the seat with a thud that vibrated through her body.

Jake turned on her swiftly so that she did not have time to move away to block his approach. Not that there was anywhere for her to go.

Dumbly she watched him coming closer. Her heart pounding heavily in her chest. Her blood soaring in her ears from a mixture of shock, fear and excitement.

Then Jake’s lips captured hers in a firm savage kiss before she could even draw breath. She whimpered against the onslaught of his lips as they crushed painfully against hers. She felt his teeth sink into her bottom lip and she gasped out in alarm.

I will not respond to him. I will not, her mind chanted at her but already she could feel her lips parting, could feel herself kissing him back. Amanda tried to stop it, to reach out and push him away but nothing happened.

Amanda felt Jake’s tongue against the opening of her mouth, testing her response. She opened her mouth in invitation before she could stop herself and, he needed no second invitation. He delved his tongue inside her mouth.

Her flesh became flushed and hot. How easily she was able to respond to his touch, to his taste. Amanda was painfully aware that Jake enjoyed the fact that she so readily gave in to him.

Even now when her mind was screaming and shouting at her. Her body was responding. Her tongue matching his strokes. She was feeding just as hungrily from his lips as he was from hers.

His kiss became urgent in their demands. She heard the sound of the material of his shirt as his arm came across her to rest on her stomach. The muscles there clenched in response. The throbbing between her legs increased. The heat from his hands invaded her skin.

Before she could stop it, Amanda groaned against his warm erotic mouth. That wasn’t where she wanted to be touched.

“Show me baby.” Jake whispered into her mouth. Amanda’s hand shifted as if on automatic pilot. Willingly it covered Jake’s. “Show me what you want.” He urged her. “Let me give you what you want.”

Reality sunk in then like a bucket of ice cold water. And she gasped at her own stupidity. She had been about to move his hand down to…

“Get off me you pig.” She pushed him away as hard as she could. Obligingly he moved back into his seat without putting up any kind of a struggle.

Jake started the car engine, she could hear him softly chuckling to himself contentedly. If he had been a cat he would have been purring. See, she thought, how arrogant, how vile. That was why she hated him.

“You don’t hate me.” Jake told her quietly as the car started up again and they were driving.

“Yes I do.” She told him in a shaky voice as she wrapped her arms around her.

“You feel many things for me but hate is not one of them.” He said firmly. He was also a frustrating man, she decided.

“You are wrong.” She said.

“One of us is wrong, and it’s not me.” He said and then she fell silent. Was there any point in continuing this particular discussion? No there was not. She decided to leave Jake to his little fantasy. If he wanted to delude himself then that was his business, wasn’t it?

Chapter 8.

The house where she had grown up slowly came into view becoming larger as they drew closer to it. It was just as she remembered it. Nothing had changed. It was as though she had just stepped back in time.

“Just as you remembered it?” Jake asked her softly, rudely intruding into her private thoughts again. She wished he would stop doing that.

The car drew to a halt outside the large cottage, its white bricks had become faded over time. The once brilliant whiteness had aged to become an off white yellow, even beige in places.

She spotted the honeysuckle that had grown wildly and profusely in a thick heavy set bush that cocooned one side if the cottage. She remembered planting that shrub with Jake and her father. A smile curved her lips at the memory.

“Yes.” She said absently. “That honeysuckle sure grew up.” She said as she marvelled at the clusters of white and red flowers with their finger like petals.

“Sure did. Smells lovely this time of year.” Jake said softly. “Do you remember when we planted it?”

“Yeah. It was the hottest day that year. How could I forget?”

“You never did like the heat.” Jake agreed.

“Red hair.” She said and she heard Jake’s soft chuckle.

“I did notice that.” He told her. “Fair skin.”

“Prone to burning.” She added as she watched the blooms swaying in the cool breeze.

“And freckles.”

“Yuck.” Amanda said automatically. She hated them with a vengeance, and she had quite a lot of them.

“I have always wondered how long it would take me if I kissed every single one you have.”

“A lifetime.” She giggled, forgetting herself, forgetting where she was and who she was with.

“I’m okay with that.” He said. She felt him lean closer to her. His lips close to her ear. His chin grazing the top of her shoulder. “I would start with the one on your left little toe and work my way up.” He whispered.

Amanda felt that sexual kick deep inside again. How did they keep managing to steer the conversation to more personal intimate stuff? She held her breath for a minute. “Unless there’s another freckle that you would rather I start from. I have always like the one that sits just inside your belly button.”

“Jake.” She gasped in shock and felt the mortifying colour of embarrassment sweep over her skin. She turned her face toward his, her lips just stopping short of touching his. Damn he was way to close. “How…?”

“You used to wear those little tank tops during the summer. Remember. They never did cover your stomach.”

“It was the fashion.” She defended herself immediately.

“Thank god for fashion, is all I can say.” Jake said. Amanda turned her head away from him again.

“Yes but… that’s a tiny little freckle. How on earth did you ever spot that?”

“Where you are concerned there isn’t much that escapes my attention.” He replied.

“You need to get out more and find something else to focus your mind on.” She snipped at him, feeling uncomfortable.

“Why do you still wear that perfume?” he suddenly asked her.

“I… uh… I never found anything else that suited me as well as this one.” She forgot herself and answered him truthfully. She heard his lips curve into a smile.

“Careful Mandy, you are giving yourself away.” He taunted her.

Amanda bit down on her tongue. He was trying to goad her and she should not give in to it. Instead she focused on her childhood home.

Her attention drawn to the land that surrounded it. They lived a mile away on all directions from the nearest neighbour. Not stuck out in the middle of nowhere but reclusive enough to feel that you had escaped the world.

She knew that there were several acres of land that swept around the entire property and the cottage was quite extensive on the inside too. Eight or nine rooms downstairs, if memory recalled.

To the right of the house way off into the distance Amanda spied the top of the oak tree that she used to climb as a child. Well, she had fallen out of it more times than she had actually climbed it. If that were possible, and for her it was.

“The old oak tree.” She said as memories flooded her mind.

“It’s still there.”

“There was a lot of things we did under that tree.” She said, her mind casting back to picnics and lazy afternoons sitting in the shade reading, having fun, chatting.”

“Yes there was, of course there was only one thing you did in it.”

“I climbed it. I loved that.” She said.

“How could you. Every time you climbed it you fell out of it.” Jake ribbed her.

“That’s not fair. Not every time.”             

“Every time.” Jake said more firmly. Maybe she had.

“Yeah, you’re right.” She finally conceded. “Still there was all the picnics and stuff. We did spend a lot of time there. As a…” she stopped.

“Family?” Jake said softly.

“Yeah.” She said on a wistful sigh.

“We didn’t do everything under it.” Jake said.

“We didn’t? What else could you possibly want to do under it?” She asked him.

“You are so not ready for that answer.” Jake warned her.

“You are being an arse again.” She warned him.

“That’s as maybe but trust me. You do not want to know right now what I wanted to do under it. Want to do under it.” Amanda decided to leave that well and truly alone. Jake was right, she probably wouldn’t have liked the answer.

Amanda’s eyes quickly ran over the house taking in as much detail as she could, diverting her attention away from the conversation

But then, her attention was drawn to side garden. She could see a woman kneeling on the ground, weeding the flower bed with avid enthusiasm.

Her breath caught in her chest, it was her mother. Even with her back to Amanda she could tell who it was immediately.

Her hair was shorter these days and had lost its shinning ebony colour. Amanda’s heart fell in her chest. Of course her mother would be older. It had been ten years. Why did she keep forgetting that?

In her mind, they all still looked as they did the evening she had said goodnight to them. Before she had snuck out in the early hours of the morning whilst they had all slept.

Absently she wondered how that morning would have been. Them all waking up to her gone. She felt that painful lump in her throat again. It hurt but she deserved it.

Her mother must have been in a panic, sick with worry. She had never allowed herself to think about it. She had been too busy in the beginning just travelling around. Each day merging into the next.

Most of the time she hadn’t even known what day it had been. Living on the streets, time, days, and dates meant nothing. You learnt to sleep when it got dark. Move on when it got light and did whatever you could to scrape enough money to eat when you were hungry.

And if you couldn’t scrape enough by, well then, you didn’t eat. It was all so very simple. All so very hard. All so very frightening.

She pushed it away. She did not want to think about it. The bitter nights. The lonely days. The close calls with weird people, drug dealers, and pimps.

She watched her mother work, Amanda’s heart began to beat painfully, erratically in her chest as panic swept over her ready to consume her.

Second thoughts and doubts invaded her mind and attacked her conscience as the enormity of what she was about to do set in. she could not do it. She should not have come here at all. She shouldn’t have come back home.

She should have left well enough alone. She should have slammed the door in Jake’s face, called the police even to have him removed.

Her mother was better off without her anyway. Amanda only brought trouble and sorrow on her family. They were all much better off without her in their lives to keep screwing everything up.

“Mandy take a breath.” She heard Jake’s voice in her ear and silently she shook her head. “It’s alright.” His voice trying to soothe her. She could feel Jake’s hand on her shoulder. His warmth softening the tension that had knotted itself there. “You can do this.”

“No, I…I can’t… please.” She begged breathlessly. Please don’t make me do this. I can’t do this, please Jake. But the words did not make it to her mouth. She could not speak them. Tears blurred her vision as they escaped from their confines to slide down her cheek.

“She misses you. There isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t mention you, or thinks about you. She needs you.” Jake’s fingers came up to capture the tear that had made a path down her cheek. “You need her.” She felt his lips close to her skin by her ear.

“I… can’t…” her voice cracked, it was unbearably raw with harsh emotion. “Jake please… I really cannot do this. Please take me home.” She begged him.

“You are home.”

“No. where I belong.”

“You are where you belong.” He told her firmly. “Now anyway. This is always where you have belonged.” And Amanda felt as though he were no longer just talking about her home. “Right here is where you belong.” He said. And she knew that he wasn’t talking about her home. He was talking about being here with him, next to him. She shook her head. “This is where you have always belonged.”

“Jake please.” She tried again.

“It’s not going to be as bad as you think. She wants to see you. She is not angry at you.”

“She has every right to be angry at me.”

“But she is not.” Jake reiterated more firmly.

“I just can’t.” Amanda’s throat stung and she shook her head.

“Have some faith in yourself, I have. Trust me when I tell you that you can so this. There isn’t anything you cannot do if you put your mind to it.” That was easy for him to say, Amanda thought resentfully, he wasn’t the one that had screwed up and let everyone down. He wasn’t the one who had hurt her family. That privilege fell squarely on her shoulders and her shoulders alone.

“She is much better off without a worthless daughter like me.” She replied bitterly and then winced as she felt Jake’s fingers biting into her shoulder.

“There is nothing worthless about you. You do like to act as though you are stupid sometimes, I’ll give you credit there. But we both know that you are anything but stupid.”

“Look what I did.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.” He assured her.

“No, really look.”

“I am Mandy.”

“Who could do that to another human being? To cause that much sorrow and heartache, only an unfeeling, worthless spiteful person.”

“Mandy stop it.” Jake told her roughly. “I never want to hear you talk about yourself like that again.” Jake sounded angry and even hurt by her accusations, though she could not understand why, she was attacking herself not him.

The woman in the garden stood up and turned then. Their eyes made contact. Amanda’s heart stopped in her chest. Her mother recognised her instantly. Her face softened, she smiled at Amanda.

Amanda took in the small petite woman in a floral apron. Her hair framing a still exquisite face. Her cheeks rosy from the work in the garden. The small nose and perfectly shaped chin. Her mother had always been beautiful. Something Amanda wished she had inherited.

Running on automatic Amanda pushed open the car door, getting up out of the passenger seat and ran straight into her mother’s waiting arms.