"I still haven't fixed the mailbox she hasn't owned up to knocking down last week." Colonel Jed walked away from the car. "After this, we'll call it a day."
Jake finished underneath the car, then rolled out and waited for his father to return. After a few minutes, he started to worry about what might be keeping Colonel Jed and he headed around the house to the front. He braced himself for the worst as he neared the driveway. There was no telling what damage his sister had done to his beloved beat-up truck during a three mile drive to the automotive store.
Jake rounded the corner of the house and stopped in his tracks. His truck wasn't there, but a car was.
Not just any car, but a shiny silver Jaguar.
Emily
.
She was here. Today. At his parents' house.
"There you are, Jacob," Saint Lily called from the porch. "I sent your father to look for you."
Jake slowly turned to his right. The bright sunny day faded into oblivion as he met Emily's wide eyed gaze. The circles under her eyes were still there, but her cheeks weren't as hollow. Good, she's been eating, he thought and started towards the porch.
Emily watched his approach like a deer stares at a pair of oncoming headlights.
Jake halted at the bottom of the steps and surveyed her from toe to head. He recognized the sandals from their last encounter, but not her short sundress which was covered in tiny…
flowers
?
Jake blinked.
Flowers
? Emily was wearing a dress with flowers on it? Impossible. She hated…
daisies
? Jake squinted at the fabric. Well, hell. That's a daisy if ever he saw one.
The screen door banged shut, yanking Jake from his musings, and Colonel Jed stepped out onto the porch.
"Jacob, Emily and her mother stopped by to…."
Jake didn't hear the rest of Saint Lily's sentence. He looked to Emily's left and was shocked to find a pair of wary indigo blue eyes staring back at him. His surprise increased ten-fold when Emily's mother put a protective arm around her daughter's shoulders, giving her a subtle squeeze.
He shook himself out of his trance. "How d'you do, Mrs. Stafford."
Emily's mother gave him a cool smile. "I am doing very well and, please, call me Amé."
"Amé it is." Jake slowly ascended the steps. He paused beside Emily and glanced down at her. It took all of his willpower not to gather her into his arms and erase the heart wrenching vulnerability from her expression. "Hello, Emily."
"Hello," she whispered.
Jake couldn't take it another second and he tore his gaze from her, then rubbed his hands together and said, "If you'll excuse me, I'll just go wash my hands."
"When you get back, Jacob," Lily called after him, "I want you to show Emily the rose garden."
"Oh no," Emily protested. "We were just about to—"
Jake looked at his mother. "The what?"
"The rose garden."
Jake frowned. The only rose bush on the property was a single, pathetic looking bush out back next to the workshop. As far as Jake knew, one plant did not a rose garden make. "Mom, we don't—"
Saint Lily cut him off with a stern look.
"Oh,
that
rose garden." Jake rolled his eyes, still at a loss as to why she wanted him to show Emily an almost dead plant, and opened the screen door, then paused. "Why?"
Colonel Jed snickered. "Ours is not to question why," he mumbled under his breath.
Jake glanced at his father. "Ours is but to do or die?"
Colonel Jed smirked. "Blindly following orders is something we Grayden men excel at."
Jake nodded. "You have a point." He looked to Emily. "Give me two minutes." Then he disappeared inside the house.
Emily watched her step as Jake led her around the house. Her knees trembled and it was all she could not to trip over her lead feet. Nervous did not even begin to explain how she felt. She wasn't sure she could go through with this.
But she had to.
If not for herself, then for the sake of her unborn child. She still found it hard to believe that she was pregnant. And even harder to believe that she
liked
the idea of it. In less than two months, her entire life had been uprooted, reorganized, and haphazardly pasted back together.
And it felt good. It was scary, but Emily knew, no matter what, that she could face the unknown quantity of her future and survive.
But she didn't want to just
survive
. Emily wanted to
live
.
Jake halted and Emily almost ran into him.
"Behold. My mother's rose garden."
"Oh." Emily lifted her head, expecting to see a gardener's paradise, and instead saw one spindly bush with a single, lonely leaf drooping from a branch. "It's… sick."
"It's dead."
"No." Emily shook her head and reached out to console the poor leaf. "It's—" The words died on her lips. A soft breeze rippled through the warm afternoon air and tore the leaf from the branch. She watched in horror as the leaf floated to the ground in a lifeless, graceful arc.
"Definitely dead."
Tears pooled in her eyes. "It is not dead." She swallowed against the painful lump in her throat. "Not yet."
"I beg to differ."
"It is not dead. It's just planted in the wrong spot. If you move it from the full sun to partial shade, then—"
"Emily."
"—it'll be okay." She threw out her arm, indicating a large, healthy looking tree. "That tree over there would give it enough protection and—"
"Emily."
"—you can save it. If you want to," she finished in a weak rush as he took a step closer to her, then reached for her.
Jake cupped her chin and tilted her face up. There were circles under his eyes and he looked as exhausted as she felt. "It's not that easy."
"It can be," she whispered.
An unnamed emotion, which Emily wished with all her might was hope, flickered across his face. It disappeared all too soon and he blinked. "Why are you here?"
"Because…." Emily drew a blank. The speech she'd practiced for the past four days melted underneath the afternoon's sun. This was Jake. She didn't need pretty speeches with Jake. She could tell him anything and everything.
Emily took a deep breath and plunged in, feet first. "Give me another chance."
A sad pain flashed in his eyes and his hand dropped to his side. "I can't," he told her in a resigned voice.
Emily stared blankly at him.
I can't
. She couldn't think and she wanted to crumble to the ground and sob like a baby. He said he couldn't take another chance on her. She wasn't worthy of another chance.
Jake didn't want her. She'd hoped that he might at least…, but no. He didn't want her.
A cold numbness seeped into her stomach, quelling the unbridled butterflies that Jake had awoken with his touch. The fight went right out of her and she drew in a shallow breath, then forced the torrent of emotions his word provoked deep into her gut.
Later, when she was alone and surrounded by vast quantities of chocolate, she would deal with the emotions.
But not now.
Right now, she had to get away. Before she crumbled to her knees and humiliated herself by begging him to change his mind.
"I see." Emily's vision blurred and she started to turn away, telling herself that she would walk and not run back to the car. "I'm sorry for bothering you. It won't happen again."
She was five steps closer to the car when Jake said, "That's it?"
Emily stumbled to a halt.
"You're just gonna give up and walk away?"
She swung around.
Jake shook his head and muttered something under his breath, then moved towards her. "Quitter," he said as he brushed past her.
Emily watched in stunned silence as Jake disappeared into the tool shed. Quitter?
Quitter
? He called her a…
quitter
? How dare he call her a quitter when he was the one who was giving up on her. She was not a quitter. She was a fighter.
Quitter
? Like hell. The longer Emily stood there and counted all the reasons why she was not a quitter, the more she seethed. Her brows drew together in furious lines and she savored the rush of blazing anger his analysis of her character incited.
Anger was something she knew how to handle.
Rejection was not.
Emily stormed across the yard towards the wooden outbuilding. "I-am-not-a-quitter," she announced as she entered the dimly lit workshop.
"Could've fooled me." Jake picked up a shovel, then stepped around her and went out the door.
Emily's hands clenched into tight fists and she pivoted on one heel, then marched after him. Angry did not even begin to describe the way she was feeling. "I wouldn't have been able to build my own company if I—"
"That was Lee," Jake interrupted.
"Lee-is-me," Emily practically shouted at him.
"Is she?"
"Yes," Emily hissed.
Jake stopped near the tree and hammered his boot down on the shovel, driving it into the ground. "You want to know what I think?"
"What," Emily snapped.
Jake took his sweet time answering. He appeared to be engrossed in digging a hole. A hole for what, she didn't have a clue and she didn't really care. "You created the Lee persona, because Emily couldn't deal with dancing." He stopped shoveling and looked at her. "Is that deep enough for you?"
"That is insane."
Jake pointed to the ground. "No. The hole. Is it deep enough?"
Emily glanced at the hole. "Not nearly."
Jake frowned at her. "How much deeper do you want it?"
"Deep enough to shove you in it."
Jake gave her a wry smile. "You do know how to make a man feel wanted." He picked up the shovel and carried it to the rose bush, then drove the shovel in the soil.
Emily trailed after him and glared at his wide, powerful back. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't want you."
"All or nothing, babe."
"What the devil does that mean," Emily demanded.
"Hold this." Jake thrust the shovel's handle at her, then knelt down and tugged the bush and its roots from the ground. "Well, would you look at this. There's hope for this pretty little thang yet." He stood up and transferred the bush to its new home.
Emily exhaled a sharp breath and dragged the shovel behind her as she trudged after him. "Jake, what did you mean by all or nothing?"