Emma pushed the unwelcome thought away.
This wasn’t about her—this was about Jeremy and what was best for him. Wasn’t it?
She walked back to the table, careful to avoid Jake’s eyes.
“I think I’ll take Shadow for a walk,” Jeremy announced. “Who wants to come with us?”
“We should all go.” Jake slanted a look at her. “After we help your mom clean up the kitchen.”
Emma stiffened. She didn’t
want
his help.
She didn’t want to go for a walk, either. All she wanted was a few minutes alone to untangle the knot of emotions balled up inside of her.
“You two can go ahead without me. There isn’t much to clean up.” Emma sucked in a breath and held it, hoping Jake would take the hint.
“Jeremy, will you please take Shadow outside?” he asked. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Sure.” Jeremy slapped his palm against his thigh. “Let’s go, Shadow.”
The dog launched to its feet and beat him to the door.
Emma could hear Jeremy’s laughter as it closed behind them. She should have gotten him a dog a long time ago, but she had always talked herself out of it.
“Supper was delicious, Emma.”
“Thank you.” She turned on the water and let the sink fill, acutely aware of Jake picking up the dishes and stacking them on the table behind her.
“No, thank you.” His husky voice, and the fact they were alone, created a level of intimacy between them that should have made Emma uncomfortable. Especially after what she’d just learned.
It felt so strange to have him there, in her kitchen. Sitting at the table. Sharing a meal with them.
Emma had seen the understanding dawn in his eyes when Jeremy had offered him the chair at the head of the table. He must have assumed the look of shock on her face stemmed from the fact that she didn’t want him to sit in Brian’s chair. To take his place at the table.
But that hadn’t been the reason. The truth was, Emma had suddenly realized that Jake’s presence in her home, in spite of her misgivings, didn’t feel wrong at all. In fact, somehow, it felt…right.
“No dishwasher?” Jake’s voice rumbled close to her ear.
“No.” A shiver danced its way down Emma’s spine. “It isn’t necessary for you to help me, you know.”
Jake smiled. “I’ve already been in hot water a few times tonight… What’s one more?”
In spite of the fact that she was struggling to find her next breath, Emma fought a sudden urge to smile. She covered it with a stern look as they switched places at the sink. “So you admit that it wasn’t an accident, showing up with a stray dog?”
“I’ll admit it was good timing.” Jake rolled back the
sleeves of his white dress shirt and began to wash the plates. “I had a dog and you had a ten-year-old boy who needed one.”
Emma averted her gaze from the corded muscles of Jake’s forearms. He’d locked his gun belt in the trunk of the car, but still wore his uniform shirt and badge. That—and the story about surviving a gunshot—provided vivid reminders of what he did for a living.
“You make it sound so simple.”
Jake’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Sometimes we complicate things.”
And sometimes things got complicated without a person even trying, Emma thought. Like the feelings that Jake’s presence in her home stirred up inside of her.
Feelings she didn’t
want
to feel.
“Let me know the days you want to take Jeremy to work on the raft.” She began to wipe down the counter-top to put some distance between them. “Like you said, Reflection Days starts next Friday, so you don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know.” She felt the force of Jake’s smile. “That’s why I thought we’d build it here.”
Chapter Fourteen
“’M
ornin, Jake. What got you out of bed so early on a Saturday morning?”
Jake, who’d been staring at a mind-boggling display of dog leashes and collars for the past ten minutes, turned at the sound of Phil Koenigs’s voice.
A smile slid across the officer’s weathered face when he noticed the yellow collar clutched in Jake’s hand. “Don’t tell me you ended up with that troublemaker? Aren’t you supposed to delegate responsibility?”
Because it was Saturday, and they both happened to be off duty, Jake couldn’t very well reprimand his second in command for insubordination. Although the grin on the officer’s face definitely qualified.
“I did. And I found him a good home.”
“No kidding.” Phil glanced at the box of biscuits and the Frisbee tucked under Jake’s arm. “Then what’s all this for?”
“A guilt offering.” Or a bribe. Jake didn’t care what it was called as long as it changed Shadow’s status in the Barlow home from temporary to permanent.
“So where did you drop him off? The county shelter?”
“No, I gave him to Jeremy Barlow.” Jake hooked the yellow collar back over the metal arm on the display and picked out a red one instead. “How big do you think he’s going to get? Medium, large or supersize?”
“Emma took him?”
The strangled question pulled Jake’s attention away from the collars.
“That’s right.” He glanced up in time to see a strange expression shift the broad planes of the officer’s face. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” Phil muttered.
From Jake’s standpoint, there was more to it than surprise. Aisle three in the local lumber store seemed as good a place as any to find out what it was. This wasn’t the first time Phil had displayed obvious discomfort when Emma’s name came up.
“I’ve been spending some time with Jeremy through the mentoring program at Church of the Pines.”
“Heard about that,” Phil said shortly. “I just have a hard time believing that Emma agreed to it, is all.”
He wasn’t the only one, Jake thought. But that didn’t explain why the senior officer couldn’t seem to look him in the eye.
“Do you have a problem with Emma?”
Phil seemed troubled by the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jake drawled. “Maybe because you and the guys were drawing straws to decide who had to drop off a bouquet of flowers on the anniversary of her husband’s death.”
“It’s more like Emma has a problem with us,” Phil said. “I wish she would have moved away after…you know.”
The admission stunned Jake. “Because it’s difficult to see her still grieving?”
“Not only that.” Phil shifted his weight as if adjusting the burden of guilt he bore. “We never did catch the person on the motorcycle that Brian was pursuing.”
Jake let out a slow breath. “I’m sure Emma doesn’t hold you or the other officers responsible for not making an arrest.”
Phil didn’t look convinced. “Brian and I worked together on third shift at the time. He came over the radio and said he’d just clocked a motorcycle going ninety miles an hour. I told him to let it go. Department policy states that for safety reasons, we aren’t supposed to pursue anyone at those speeds.” A shadow passed through his eyes. “Brian always was a bit of a cowboy but I never thought he’d take off after the cycle anyway. When dispatch tried to call him a few minutes later, he didn’t respond. The accident reconstruction team figured Brian lost control on a curve and rolled the squad car. He died on the way to the hospital. Maybe it would have given Emma some closure if we’d made an arrest. Maybe she thinks we should have tried harder. Or gotten help for Brian sooner.”
The undercurrent of anguish in Phil’s voice made Jake wonder if the officer was imagining that Emma blamed him—because he blamed himself.
“You did the best you could. In a situation like that, you can second-guess yourself until you go crazy.” Jake spoke from experience, even though he wasn’t always successful when it came to taking his own advice. No matter how many times Andy reminded him that he couldn’t take responsibility for Sean’s decisions, there were times Jake questioned whether the outcome
would have been different if
he
had done something different.
“It happened six years ago and there are still nights I lose sleep thinking about it.” Phil grimaced. “Even if Emma doesn’t hold us responsible, I think it’s hard for her to see the badge and not be reminded of everything she lost. She’s very protective when it comes to her son. I guess that’s why I was surprised she agreed to let Jeremy spend time with you.”
Now that Jake knew more of the details surroundings Brian’s death, he couldn’t believe she had, either.
“There you are! I should have known you’d found someone to talk shop with.” Phil’s wife, Maureen, rounded the aisle, the warm look in her eyes belying her scolding tone. “Good morning, Chief. You’re up bright and early on a Saturday.”
“Hi, Maureen.”
Phil looked relieved by the interruption. After a few minutes of small talk, he put his hand under his wife’s elbow and guided her away.
As Jake drove to Emma’s house, the conversation with Phil kept cycling through his mind.
The truth was becoming more and more difficult to deny. He didn’t want Emma to see a badge when she looked at him.
He wanted her to see
him.
“We need your help, Mom.”
Jeremy dashed into the outbuilding, where Emma was painting the legs on the mosaic table Abby had ordered.
When Jake had promised he would help with the raft, she hadn’t expected him to show up at nine o’clock the next morning. At least he hadn’t caught her sitting at
the table in her pajamas, bleary-eyed while she waited for her first cup of coffee to take effect. She blamed the fact that she’d slept a little longer than usual on the amount of hours she had tossed and turned throughout the night.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to dislodge Jake from her thoughts. And when he’d walked into the kitchen, looking way too attractive for her peace of mind in a pair of faded jeans and a butter-soft chambray shirt, Emma had bolted.
She’d been hiding ever since.
Fortunately, the table she was making for Abby provided a legitimate excuse to avoid the barn, the location Jeremy and Jake had claimed for their raft-building project. At least until now.
Emma rocked back on her heels. “What do you need me to do?”
“Time us,” Jeremy said, holding up a stopwatch. “We’re not sure how long it’s going to take to put the frame together.”
“I suppose I can do that,” Emma murmured. “Let me wash up first and I’ll meet you over there.”
“Okay.” Jeremy darted away, Shadow hot on his heels.
Apparently Jake had been right about that, too. A dog and a ten-year-old boy were made for each other.
Emma turned on the faucet and washed the paint off her hands. She was stalling, there was no point in denying it.
The fact that she wanted to see Jake made her
not
want to see him even more. And that kind of topsy-turvy thinking was proof of the effect the man had on her!
“Mom!” Jeremy’s voice drifted through the open window. “Are you ready yet?”
“On my way.” But only because she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Emma entered the barn and almost bumped into Jake, who was kneeling on the dirt floor. He rose to his feet and dusted his hands against his jeans.
“Sorry we had to interrupt you, but it’s going to take both Jeremy and me to put this thing together and we needed a timekeeper. Shadow is very smart for a canine but I don’t think he can help us out.” Jake flashed that teasing smile, the one Emma had seen the day he’d slapped on the battered Stetson for story hour. The one that never failed to send her heart on a roller coaster ride to her toes.
Emma’s fist closed around the stopwatch as she resisted the urge to reach out and brush a swatch of tousled dark hair off Jake’s forehead. In plainclothes, it was all too easy to forget what he did for a living.
Too easy to forget that, by his own admission, he’d been injured—no, not just injured,
shot
—while working undercover.
Jeremy hadn’t seemed upset by the knowledge. Emma, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to put it out of her mind.
Jake had talked about how God had led him to Mirror Lake at the same time and she wondered how he reconciled what had to be a horrific experience with his strong faith in a loving God.
In order to hide her troubled thoughts, Emma pretended to study the eclectic array of parts scattered on the floor at their feet. “Tell me when you’re ready and I’ll start the clock.”
“We have ten minutes to assemble the raft,” Jeremy told her. “But the longer it takes, the less time we have
to paddle out to the flag. We need to figure out how to reduce the time.”
“Jeremy thinks we can do it in six,” Jake added. “I think he’s right.”
The grin on her son’s face reflected a confidence Emma had never seen before—at least not until Jake Sutton had entered their lives.
“Do you think Mom will be surprised when she sees what we did?”
“No doubt.”
No doubt whatsoever, Jake thought as he surveyed their work with a critical eye.
Once she had finished timing them, Emma had promptly retreated to her workroom again.
That had been two hours ago, and Jake hadn’t seen her since.
He and Jeremy had spent the next hour working out some snags in the raft’s original design before taking a short break. Taking Shadow for a walk around the house had given Jake an opportunity to take a silent inventory of a few of the more pressing repairs that needed to be finished before winter set in. He might not have much experience when it came to home handyman stuff, but he was willing to try.
If he could convince Emma to
let
him.
At the lumberyard that morning, Jake had picked up a few extra boards along with the supplies needed for the raft. Jeremy, eager to test out the brand-new junior tool set Jake had given him, didn’t mind putting aside that particular project for a while.
“I’m finished with this one.” Jeremy rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Are you hungry?”
Jake could take a hint. “Are you ready for lunch?”
Jeremy leaped to his feet. “I’ll get Mom.”
“Your mom said something about finishing up a table for Miss Porter. How about we make lunch for her today?”