Various States of Undress (21 page)

He pulled out silverware and folded some paper napkins. There was complete silence behind him, aside from the crackling of the fire and the occasional cough. Why didn’t those women say something? Women were supposed to chatter, weren’t they? Or were they giving him the silent treatment to try and psych him out?

Like that would work—he’d had tons of training and there was no way Carolina and her geriatric buddy were going to get to him. He started whistling cheerfully and went to the refrigerator for a can of biscuits. They were kind of disgusting, but there wasn’t time to make the real thing and he didn’t have the ingredients anyway. He turned and smacked the can on the edge of the counter, chuckling in satisfaction when Carolina jumped at the popping noise. Meeting her glare with a grin, he flopped the cylinder of dough onto a paper towel and began separating it.

“What happened to your eye?” Regina asked suddenly.

Jake’s head shot up, and on instinct his hand flew to his face.

“Not you, genius,” Regina snapped. “Your girlfriend.”

Jake frowned. “She’s not—”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Carolina cut him off.

“Really?” Regina struggled up from the recliner and peered at Carolina. “Then what are you?”

Jake forgot about the biscuits and stared at Carolina. She sat on the sofa, a pillow hugged to her chest. Her lips were a flat line.

“I’m the daughter of the president of the United States of America.” Carolina said finally.

Regina chuckled softly. “Good answer. So what happened to your eye?”

“My camera beat the crap out of me.” Carolina gave Regina a rueful smile.

“It won’t be the last time it does that,” Regina said.

Carolina just nodded.

There was silence again, aside from Jake’s whistling, which had slowed down quite a bit—his lips were getting tired.

Finally, Regina let out a long sigh. “Will you two make up already? I feel like a chaperone at a high school dance.”

“We’re not fighting,” Carolina offered weakly.

Regina shook her head and got to her feet. “Ugh. I’m not sure baked ham is worth sitting through dinner with you and Strong and Silent over there.”

“Okay, okay.” Carolina threw the pillow on the floor and jumped up. “I’m sorry, Regina. It’s just that . . .” She paused, wincing, “that it’s none of your business.”

“Amen to that,” Jake said quietly. He shoved a pan of biscuits into the oven next to the ham. Straightening up, he set the timer and then ventured a glance at the old woman. Her eyes were glittering like pale blue chips of ice.

“Fine,” Regina said. “I’ll just say one more thing and then I’ll shut my wrinkly old mouth.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been a loner my entire life, except for the summer I turned thirty. I was up in Alaska, minding my own business, teaching a six-week university seminar on wildlife photography and out of nowhere . . . boom.” She threw her hands in the air. “I met the love of my life.”

Jake glanced at Carolina, who stood motionless, her lips slightly parted. “What happened?” she asked.

“He was one of my students. Or he would have been,” Regina answered. She went to the fire and sat on the raised-brick hearth, folding her hands between her knees. “I’d just been awarded a research grant and a one-year appointment to teach at the university he attended, and he was assigned to me as my student worker.”

“You were older than him?” Jake asked.

“No,” Regina answered, indignant. “He was five years older than me—a grad student. They come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and walks of life. Sometimes school is not just for the young and undecided.” She cast a meaningful look at Carolina, who merely smiled and walked over to sit next to Regina.

“What was his name?” Carolina asked.

Regina smiled back and threw her arm over Carolina’s shoulder. “Oh, sweetie. I can’t say it because I’d probably start crying. In fact, I need to change the subject soon, or I will anyway.”

Jake looked at her closely and saw a sheen in the old woman’s eyes. She glanced up, catching his gaze, and he looked away.

“We fell in love almost instantly and hid it from everyone. When the six weeks were up, I told him I had to give up the grant and the appointment because I didn’t want to compromise his career. He begged me not to do it, and I did anyway. End of story.” Regina twisted her lips to the side and nodded. “I just don’t want to see my story repeated, because it ended in lifelong regret.”

Carolina hugged her. “Couldn’t you look him up?”

“I did. He’s dead.” Her sharp eyes clouded with tears, Regina let out a shaky laugh. “Damned Internet. Always giving me information I never wanted to know.”

Jake’s heart twisted at the raw pain on Regina’s face and when the oven timer dinged, he turned to take out the food. “My God,” he muttered to himself.

“What is it, handsome?” Regina’s voice was full of forced bravery—she sounded a lot like Carolina did most of the time.

So Jake forced a smile in return. “Yuck. Canned biscuits always look like tiny brown hockey pucks.”

“Yum,” said Regina. “Let’s eat.” She walked into the kitchen.

Carolina laughed and after giving Regina a final squeeze, got up to drain the potatoes. She grabbed a potato masher and held it up. “Who wants to pulverize these?”

“Me,” answered Jake. He took the masher from Carolina and glanced down at Regina, who glared back. A second later, he offered it to her. “I’m not going to fight an old woman for a kitchen utensil.”

“You
wish
you could fight me,” she huffed, snatching the masher out of his hands.

He laughed. “Not really.”

“You know what my wish is?” She twirled the utensil in her gnarled fingers.

“What?” Jake replied.

“My wish is that you’ll be saying that exact same thing fifty years from now. To her.” She pointed at Carolina and then attacked the bowl of potatoes. “I hope my wish comes true.”

Me too
, thought Jake. But he didn’t see how. He’d already put in for a transfer of duty. In a few short weeks, he’d be guarding one of Carolina’s sisters. She didn’t know and the thought of telling her made his heart squeeze painfully. He needed to tell her. But not today.

Chapter Thirteen

A
N INCESSANT HIGH-PITCHED
chirping pecked at Carolina’s sleep-fogged brain, and she raised her head from the pillow to peer toward the windows. What was a bird doing out there? Yes, it was almost springtime, but did the damned thing have to be so loud?

Next to her, Jake woke with an intake of breath and fumbled on the nightstand. A second later, the chirping stopped.

“Jake Baxter,” he said in a perfectly clear voice.

Oh. It was just his phone. With a smile, she snuggled beside him and threw a thigh over his legs. He reached out to caress her back, but almost immediately went still. Taut. And then he sat straight up, in full-on Secret Service mode, rudely dislodging her.

“Jake,” she groaned, “
Why
do you have to—”

He put his hand over the phone and went eyeball to eyeball with her. “Shh.”

“Really?” She stared at him, stone-faced.

But then she saw the expression on his face—the tight jaw, the panicked eyes. When he nodded his head at her, she nodded back and made a zipping motion over her lips.

Jake swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up ramrod straight.

“Hello, Mr. President.”

Mr. President?

The bottom dropped out of Carolina’s stomach. Oh, God. Why was her dad calling
Jake
? Was there something wrong with one of her sisters? Her mom? Oh, God. She scrambled to her knees and tapped Jake on the shoulder.

He shook his head violently and leaned out of reaching distance. “No, sir. It hasn’t been a burden at all. I’m honored to serve.” He paused. “Yes, the replacement agents will rotate on tomorrow and I’ll take a break.”

Carolina scrambled to jump off the bed. She banged her shin and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from yelling out. But nothing could stop her from standing in front of Jake and flapping her hands in front of his face. “What happened?” she asked in a fierce whisper.

His answer was to glare at her, grab a quilt from the twisted pile of covers on the bed and throw it at her.

“Put it on,”
he mouthed.

When she just stood there, frowning, he dropped his head for a second and then lifted it, irritation and something else—something closely resembling mortification—written all over his face. He put his hand over the phone. “
Please
put it on.”

Her mouth dropped open again. “Is my dad on his way?” Fumbling, she found an edge of the quilt and pulled it over her shoulders.

Jake closed his eyes.

“Oh, holy shit! Is my dad
here
?” she asked, horrified. She jerked up on the quilt to cover herself, but it was tangled around her ankles.

“No!”
he mouthed and then cradled the phone to his shoulder to reach behind his bare body and grab handfuls of sheet. “Yes, sir. We’re perfectly warm—we’ve had plenty of fuel between us, and more to burn,” he said into the phone.

Carolina made a strangled noise.

Jake winced, but went valiantly on. “Now, the power draw of the generator does increase fuel consumption, but we’ve been using the fireplace a lot to offset that. I’d say we’re still at sixty percent on the propane.” He paused. “No, I . . . I haven’t checked the tank this morning. I’ll go do that right now,” he announced, standing up.

His sheet fell to the floor and when he bent over quickly to retrieve it, his head brushed against Carolina’s breasts. He stared at them, sheet in one hand, phone in the other. He lifted it to his ear. “Could you repeat that, Mr. President?”

Carolina put her finger under Jake’s chin and raised it. “You’re talking to my dad about propane,” she whispered.

Nodding, Jake twisted the sheet around his middle and without another glance at her, walked out of the bedroom.

“Holy shit,” she breathed out, sinking to the edge of the bed. Talk about a reality check. She and Jake both needed one, but she hadn’t expected it to come in the form of a call from her dad. But wait—why hadn’t her dad called
her
?

Maybe he was just calling to thank Jake. That was probably it. Well, that was nice, and despite Jake’s typical unruffled demeanor, a personal phone call from Patrick Fulton would probably make his day. Jake wouldn’t admit to it, of course, but it was something that would cross his mind in the future—sitting there naked, chatting on the phone about fuel tanks—with the president of the United States.

She snorted.

Oh, God. That freaked out look he’d had . . . poor Jake. But it wasn’t that big of a deal—the only person who knew he was naked was her, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone. Jake would calm down after a while—he’d probably even think it was funny. He had a great sense of humor, just one of the things she loved about him and she wasn’t about to let him forget this moment—not today, and not years from now when they reminisced about their time in the cabin.

Which they would do. Wouldn’t they? Or was her grip on reality completely gone, and she was nothing more than a needy, psycho Secret Service agent stalker?

She sighed and untangled the quilt from her legs, standing to reach for her nightgown, which was folded up on the top of the dresser. When she shook it out and stared at it, she sighed again. It was hideous—safety pins, mustard stain, ripped ruffle at the hem. It was a psycho nightgown. For a psycho.

She slipped it on and scuttled across the hall to the bathroom, glancing toward the living room as she went. Jake stood behind the back of the sofa, the bright morning sunlight from the giant windows streaming across his bare back. The sheet hung low on his hips and her breath hitched, but she shook off the desire that shot through her and darted into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Get a grip. Brush your teeth. Wash your face.

“I know, I know,” she muttered and squeezed toothpaste onto the brush.

You’re not a psycho. Not really. So quit acting like one.

“I’m normal,” she told herself in the mirror. “Perfectly normal.” With a nod, she bared her teeth in a smile, and then stared at herself, horrified. Toothpaste foamed around the edges of her lips. Her eyes were panicked and puffy, and a little pulse jumped erratically on her throat. She looked like a rabid animal.

But . . . so what? Jake didn’t care. Even if he’d never actually said the words, he loved her no matter what, and they would make it somehow. He didn’t care that—

“Carolina!” he bellowed just outside the door.

She jumped, dropping the toothbrush on the floor. “Yes?”

“We need to talk.”

With a groan, she picked up the toothbrush and washed it off. “You need to calm down first, Jake. God! It wasn’t that big of a deal. My dad calls people all the time . . . sometimes dozens of times a day.”

She finger-combed her bed-head hair and opened the bathroom door. “If you’d just—”

Jake stood there, tense with anger. His green eyes glittered, and the look on his face was one of pure loathing.

Her breath hitched again, but this time it was with a plummeting sense of apprehension.

“What’s wrong, Jake? Does my dad know about us?”

“What do you think?” He wheeled around and went into the bedroom.

Oh, God.

She followed, watching as he dropped the sheet, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and threw a T-shirt over his head. “What . . . what did he say?”

Jake laughed, the sound bitter. “I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming.” He looked at the ceiling. “Actually, I
did
see this coming from the very beginning, but decided to fool myself anyway. Fuck.” He spat out the last word violently.

Her hands flew to her heated cheeks, and she stepped forward. “Did he . . . did he fire you?”

“No. In fact . . .”—Jake stood up—“he gave me a commendation for taking
such
good care of you. There was never any mention of sex. We chatted about the weather, and then he changed the subject to something very interesting. Baseball.”