The Cinderella List (18 page)

H
e wasn’t going to let her get away with anything this time. At six o’clock, Jake made sure he was at the round pen where Marlo was working. They needed to be done with this.

“Thank you for staying. It’s important to me that I understand why you are upset with me.”

“I’m not upset with you, Jake. I’m upset with
me.
”

As he looked at Marlo, he fought the urge to be lost in those wide, blue eyes. She was an amazing-looking woman and she seemed completely unaware of the fact. That only made her even more beautiful. He tipped his head toward one of the Range Rovers. “Get in.” When she hesitated, he took her by the elbow and propelled her toward the vehicle.

“I don’t have much time,” she warned him, as she tried to drag her boots in the dirt. “I have a date tonight.”

“No, you don’t. You’re a lousy liar, Marlo.”

“I’m not lying. It’s not exactly with a man, but I do have a date with a movie on television that I’ve wanted to see.”

“Rent it. If you like, I’ll rent it for you.” Jake put the vehicle into gear and they sped off, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel
behind them. He drove halfway down the lane without speaking, before turning off onto a small dirt road that led toward a grove of trees at the far end of a pasture.

“Where are we going? I’ve never been on this road before.”

She sounded nervous, Jake noted. Good. She’d certainly made him nervous lately. He wanted this woman in his life like he’d never wanted anyone before, and she seemed unwavering in her determination to keep him at arm’s length.

“To a spot I spent a lot of time at as a kid. No one ever knew where I was, so they couldn’t bother me there.” He seemed to be driving directly toward a thick stand of pine trees, but as he neared, instead of slowing down, he put his foot on the accelerator.

Marlo covered her face with her hands and involuntarily ducked as branches slapped at the windshield. When she looked up, they had entered a meadow that was an almost perfect circle inside the ring of evergreens through which Jake had driven. It was a beautiful little glade, hidden, green and silent.

Jake swung out of the Rover and lifted a few hunks of wood out of the rear end of the vehicle. He walked over to a stone fire ring and tossed the wood next to it. He watched her as she looked around like a timid doe in the forest.

“What is this place?”

“I told you, it was my hideout when I was a kid. I still drive in here every once in a while to make sure the path in isn’t overgrown and to see if anyone else has found it yet, but nothing has ever been touched. I suppose people don’t realize that inside this tree cluster there is a clearing like this.” He looked at her and added softly, “You’re the first person I’ve even brought in here.”

“Surely not, there must have been buddies or old girlfriends.” She paused and swallowed before continuing. “Or Sabrina.”

“No, just you.” Without saying more, he picked up kindling—twigs, birch bark and dry pine needles—and he made them into
a small pile in the center of the fire ring. Then he took small sticks and built a tepee around the kindling ball. Methodically, he then took medium-size sticks and formed a square just outside the tepee formation. Finally, he added some large chunks of wood and a few more small sticks to the structure.

Being an Eagle Scout had been useful in a lot of ways. He’d never earned a badge for taming a vapor, however, and that was how Marlo seemed to him these days—present but absent, close but distant, and most puzzling, both chilly toward him and warm. She was a long-legged bundle of contradictions and inconsistencies that he wanted to unravel.

There was a lot riding on this, he realized, probably his whole life.

He was so intent on his work that it allowed Marlo time to study him. She could see the muscles of his back moving beneath his shirt and his broad shoulders tensing and relaxing. So focused was he on his project that he barely seemed to notice when dark hair fell into his eyes and he carelessly wiped it away. Then he took a book of matches from his pocket, struck one and held it beneath the tepee of sticks he’d built. It lit immediately.

“Impressive,” Marlo murmured from the bench where she’d sat down. “Now, would you like to tell me why you called this meeting?”

He dropped down beside her on a rough-hewn bench.

“Help me understand you. I have to be educated about what’s going on between us. Apparently, I’ve done something very wrong, and I’m not sure what it is. I know you’re avoiding me, but I can’t figure out why.”

She started to stand but he put his hand on her arm and wouldn’t let her up.

“What are you running away from?” Frustration etched across his face.

“You! I’m running away from you!” Couldn’t he see that this was tearing her apart?

“Why? You treat me like I have leprosy—no touching, no getting nearer to me than is absolutely necessary, no unnecessary interaction. What have I done?”

Seeing his bafflement, Marlo poured out the long, tedious story of her former engagement, ending with Jeremiah and his other woman, the kind of woman she’d vowed she’d never be. “I care about you more than you could ever know, but you are getting married.”

“I am?” Jake’s frustration turned to puzzlement. “Who says I’m getting married?”

“Sabrina, of course! I’ve heard your father and Alfred talk about it, as well. What kind of a woman do you think I am?” Tears filled Marlo’s eyes. “I was engaged once. I’d planned to marry—and another woman came along and ruined it all. There’s no way on earth I’d do that to Sabrina. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

“No, I don’t know.” She was startled by his tone. “Your vision is obviously skewed by your own past experiences, skewed and wrong. I’m not engaged to Sabrina. I never was and I never will be.”

“But she said…she
told
me she was going to marry you!”

“Everything you’ve done is because you thought I was marrying Sabrina? Backing off, discouraging every encounter? Why didn’t you just
ask me
if it was true?”

“Because it all seemed so clear,” she ventured timidly. “Sabrina should know.” Shouldn’t she?

Exasperation washed over him like a scalding shower. He liked to think he was always a gentleman and in control of his
temper, and he’d been particularly careful to read Marlo’s signals and move slowly, but this woman knew how to worm into every weakness he had.

“Why do you back into everything, Marlo? You’d save yourself a lot of time and heartache if you’d go at things head-on.”

“But Sabrina said…”

“That someday she and I would be married, I suppose.”
Sabrina strikes again.
It was his own fault for not putting a stop to her flights of the imagination years ago. It had seemed innocuous at the time—and useful. With Sabrina always playing sentry, he was never bothered with women he didn’t have time to get to know. While he’d been building the architectural firm, there hadn’t been time for dating. And when he added the work at Hammond Stables, there was barely time for sleep, let alone women.

“Marlo, that’s her fantasy. Sabrina has been in love with me since she was a child. She started ordering bridal magazines when she was sixteen. I’ve never paid any attention. I love her, but I’m not
in
love with her.”

Marlo thought back to her conversation with Sabrina in the hospital.

“She loves you. She told me so. And I was afraid that, the way you were acting toward me, that you were turning out to be a man like my former fiancé.” Tears flooded her eyes. “I couldn’t be a party to that.”

“It’s not the romantic kind of love she’s fantasized about,” Jake said calmly, as if he’d thought this out long ago. “It’s the way Sabrina thinks and talks, but if push came to shove, even she would admit that it’s the family kind of love between a brother and sister that she cares about now. When I was seventeen and she was eleven, she called my high-school girlfriend and told her to ‘stay away or else.’” He rolled his eyes. “It took me weeks to
straighten that one out.” He ran his fingers through his hair, obviously annoyed. “It’s happened more than once over the years.

“She’s had the idea in her head because Alfred and my father always joked that a Hammond/Dorchester dynasty would exist if the two of us married. Somewhere along the line, the three of them began to take it seriously—and the more seriously they took it, the less attention I’ve paid. That conversation is a broken record that has played in the background of my life ever since Sabrina was born.”

“Why didn’t you put a stop to it?” Marlo’s face was a mask of puzzlement.

Jake had the urge to massage away her frown, but didn’t touch her. He was already in hot water and he didn’t need to be scalded. “I did, a few times. They’d be quiet for a while but then it would start up again. I just let it go, because the bottom line is that Sabrina and I won’t marry and she knows it.”

“But she told me…”

“She’s jealous and overprotective of what she considers her territory,” Jake said wearily. “Me.” He’d never felt so caught off-guard or guilty in his life. “I really had no idea that she’d put you on notice, too.”

“Why would you let her do this? You know what’s best.
Make
her see clearly! It couldn’t be that difficult.”

He looked at her steadily. “Have there been times in your life when you’ve seen your sister do or embrace something that you believe to be misguided? Is there anything you wanted to force her to do but couldn’t, not without destroying something special in the relationship? Just because Jenny doesn’t behave the way you want her to, do you love her any less?” He knew he’d struck a nerve, by the expression on her face.

Brady.
“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Sabrina is the closest person I have to a sister. Big brothers
tolerate the guff their little sisters give them. My father and Alfred have always encouraged Sabrina. Those two are the ones who really want us to marry. They actually think that it would be ‘good’ for Sabrina and me.” Jake shook his head sadly. “The fact is that it would be good for them, not for Sabrina and me.

“I can handle myself, but their expectations haven’t been fair to Sabrina. There is a fellow named Randy Wills who’s been in love with Sabrina almost as long as she’s been infatuated with me.

“After Cammi’s stroke, Sabrina practically lived at the hospital. Her relationship to Cammi is much like mine was to her—protective and tolerant, an adult sibling to a tag-along in the family. Randy was at the hospital with her almost every day. You may even have seen him there.” Marlo nodded thoughtfully as he spoke. “I don’t think Sabrina thought much about it at first, but she’s begun to realize that he is what she needs in a man—not an independent, overworked, platonic friend like me.”

“What made things change? Other than Randy’s attentiveness, I mean.”

He watched the tension in her begin to relax. He looked straight into her eyes as he spoke.

“This week, Sabrina told me that if an eight-year-old child could have her life change in an instant, then there are no guarantees for her either. She’s decided to quit playing the game Alfred and my father have encouraged, and live life on her terms.” Jake smiled fondly. “She’s a great girl, Sabrina. Confused, possessive and easily influenced, but her heart is good. She’s funny, clever and a great dinner companion. Randy’s going to have a good—if exasperating—life with her.”

“So, just like that—” Marlo snapped her fingers “—it’s over between you and Sabrina?”

“There was never anything to be ‘over’ between us. She just
didn’t want to let go of the fantasy. It’s been a game for her all along. I’m guilty of not putting a stop to it. Frankly, I had no idea how seriously she took her job as gatekeeper for my life. No woman has ever taken Sabrina to heart like that before.”

“Maybe that’s one of the problems with this world,” she murmured under her breath.

“Of course I didn’t take care of Sabrina as well as I thought I did, keeping her close to me, humoring her whims.” Jake’s dark eyes were beseeching. “Can you understand this, Marlo? Is your family so perfect that no one ever does anything wacky or confusing?”

“Are you kidding? How can I criticize anyone else for doing something foolish or extreme? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me or anyone for that matter, that I even backed into love.”

“Love?”

She hadn’t meant to let that word slip from her lips, but it was out, and there was no retreating now. “I met you, fell in love with you, thought you were engaged and ran away.”

“I tried to tell you a dozen times how I felt about you, Marlo. You wouldn’t even let me get the words out of my mouth. It was as if you were moving through life with Plexiglas walls around you. I didn’t push it because you were so edgy. I’ve worked with jumpy horses and know better—I didn’t want to frighten you away completely.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said softly, “by staying away.”

“Maybe you were.” He picked up a stick and poked at the fire. It flared up and began to burn more brightly. “If you’d been the kind of woman who ran after me, I probably would have high-tailed it in the other direction.” A sheepish grin appeared on Jake’s features. “I’m still old-fashioned enough to want to be the pursuer, rather than the pursued. Even my father has begun to see that. He’s
begun to like you a lot, you know. He’s even begun to change his mind about ‘this Christianity business’ because of you.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I was actually about to rethink that notion of being the pursuer, the knight in shining armor who’d sweep you off your feet, when I discovered just how hard you were to catch.”

Marlo’s head reeled with what he was saying, with the possibilities it presented. Still, she didn’t move toward him. He didn’t like being pursued, but she did. It would make them both happy if he were the seeker and she the treasure.

Jake snapped his fingers and jumped to his feet. “I have some things in the car for you.” He went to the Ranger Rover and came back with a box and an envelope.

He put them on the ground in front of her. “Open the letter first. I have no idea what it says.”