He hesitated briefly before saying, “Neither did I.”
A grin lit up her face. “So you really did miss me.”
“More than you know,” he murmured with an answering grin.
“I probably shouldn’t say it, but same here. I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
“I probably shouldn’t say it, but I’ve hardly slept at all.”
“So you’ve been thinking about me,” she purred.
“More or less constantly. And for your information, it’s annoyed the hell out of me.”
“So I maybe should compensate you in some way—you know—for your annoyance.”
His smile was wicked. “We could talk about it.”
“Talk?”
“Whatever. You decide.”
“I already have,” she murmured. “Come.” She put out her hand. “We’ll go fill Chris in on all the sordid details, and then we’ll deal with our mutual annoyances and/or desires. ”
His hand closed over hers as she moved away. “Deal-making. Sounds good.” He grinned. “FYI, I’m gonna be a pushover on these negotiations.”
“For some reason I thought you might be.”
“Does my impatience show?”
She laughed. “Like flashing neon. Which reminds me— on other more practical matters—we’d better get Janie’s splashy Hockney painting out of the barn. She doesn’t think Leo will notice it’s gone, but I’m not so sure.” She turned to him. “Do you have room at Deer Lake for a bigger than life-sized painting?”
“It’s an old place. The ceilings are pretty high. We’ll figure out something.”
“If it’s old, does it have those nice porches?”
“Wraparound screened porches, babe. Does that make you happy?”
“Yeah. And you coming back makes me happier.”
“I’m glad.”
She shot him a look. “Is this a karmic moment of complete harmony?”
“It sure feels like it.”
“Yeah it does,” she murmured, swinging his hand, deciding this wasn’t the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Most definitely.”
Thirty
Jake’s aunt’s place on Deer Lake was what would have been called a cottage at the turn of the century. The large, two-story Victorian house was poised on the heights overlooking the lake, the grass newly mowed, the flower gardens immaculate, the siding freshly painted in a typical turn-of-the-century color: pale blue with white trim.
“Someone’s definitely paying to keep this place maintained, ” Liv murmured as she stepped out of Jake’s car. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks. It looks the same as ever,” he said with a noticeable satisfaction. “I spent some happy summers here as a kid. Come on in, we’ll give Aiko a call and tell her how good everything’s looking.” He nodded at Matt, who was running toward the lake, Janie and Roman in hot pursuit. “I know
someone
who’s gonna like it here.”
“You think?” Janie had complained they’d had to literally drag Matt out of the water whenever they wanted to come back from the beach.
“I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet on that one. Let’s get the place open before Chris and Amy get here. We’ll find a place for that painting.” Chris and Amy were bringing the Hockney painting and Janie’s considerable luggage in the back of their pickup truck.
After unearthing the key from under some gingerbread trim on the back porch, Jake opened the door and walked in. The kitchen was huge, and with the exception of new appliances, it appeared largely untouched since the house had been built. A large wooden table, used as a work surface from the evidence of hard wear apparent on its maple top, held center stage. Surrounded by chairs, it must have served for informal dining as well.
“I love old houses,” Liv murmured, thinking of all the people who must have gathered around that table over the years. “I bought my farm largely because of the house. Think of the memories.”
“Including mine,” Jake agreeably said. “I like that nothing ’s changed. I like that it’s been in the same family all these years. My uncle’s grandfather built it in 1904. The date’s penciled on a closet wall upstairs.” He held out his hand. “Come. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
“A workman left his signature on a timber in my barn, too,” Liv said, following Jake into the dining room. “Every time I see it I feel connected to the history of my place. Wow—is that a real Remington sculpture?”
“I don’t know—maybe—actually, I think it is.”
Apparently the original owner had a couple of nickels to rub together, Liv decided. Not that a lake cottage of this size didn’t give one a clue.
They moved through a dining room with a built-in buffet and sideboard that were fashionable at the turn of the century and entered an enormous bow-shaped room that conformed to the curvature of the lakeshore. A wall of windows offered glorious, panoramic views of the lake.
“How lovely,” Liv said, with a modicum of awe. The cabin she’d spent summers in as a child would have fit in this room. Not to mention the furniture looked like something out of an old
Country Life
magazine: soft sofas and easy chairs covered in subtlely faded chintz that probably was made to look that way from the beginning; fringed footstools; embroidered dog pillows here and there. In other words, posh.
“The upstairs isn’t so decorated,” Jake said, recognizing the note of wonder in her voice. “It’s more summer camp stuff.”
He took her upstairs to see the bedrooms on the second floor.
“Summer camp it might be,” Liv noted, as they returned to the ground floor. “But it’s definitely not Girl Scout camp on Fenske Lake.” The decor reminded her more of a Martha Stewart summer camp: the kind with painted metal beds, white wainscoting, linen curtains, homespun bedspreads, woven rugs, and wicker furniture, all color-coordinated with the paint on the walls. “Everything’s so perfect. It looks as though it’s hardly been used.”
“Actually, it has been. But my aunt had all the bed linens and curtains redone ten years ago or so, and lately, there haven’t been many guests.”
“If I have to be away from my vines,” Liv said with an approving survey of her surroundings, “I certainly can’t complain about the accommodations.”
“Hopefully, this won’t be a lengthy stay. Leo should be calling soon.” Jake shrugged. “He can decide to settle or not, and I’m guessing he’ll settle.”
“I don’t know if I’m that optimistic. Still, Roman knows the man better than we, and
he
seems to think Leo will panic.”
“Fucking a. Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess. So what—two, three days?”
“Sounds about right. Which doesn’t give us much time for a vacation,” he said with a grin.
“I hope your idea of a vacation and mine are the same,” she murmured, smiling back.
“I guarantee they are.”
“Such assurance.” But her voice was sportive rather than displeased.
“Let’s just say, I’ve gotten to know you. And since I braved armed desperadoes to be with you,” he said, grinning, “I’m figuring we might as well have a good time. Sit down, relax; I’ll go get us some food. Then no one has to go anywhere for however long.”
“So we could, like, stay in bed and we wouldn’t starve.”
“You read my mind, babe. Let me call my aunt, and then I’ll hit the road.”
“I’ll come with you. There’s no way I can relax anyway—what with wiseguys on the prowl and the enticing prospect of lurid sex with you revving up my psyche.”
Jake looked up from dialing the phone, one dark brow cocked. “Lurid?”
She grinned. “I meant it in the very nicest way.”
Jake gave her one of those amused, whatever-you-say-babe looks, then said, “Hey, Aiko, guess where I am?”
After Jake’s aunt in Seattle was thanked for her hospitality, Jake made a quick call to Eduardo. He didn’t explain why he needed him to come to Minneapolis; he only said, “Something’s come up. I need help. Bring out the usual crew tomorrow.” And he hung up.
Apparently the two men weren’t the chatty type, or maybe the usual crew was always held in readiness for such eventualities, Liv decided. But any further speculation had to wait, for the moment Jake put down the phone, he said briskly, “Let’s go tell everyone we’re going for supplies.”
The rest of the party had settled in down by the lake. They were given a heads-up on the run to the grocery store and offered their pick of bedrooms, save for the one at the head of the stairs that had been Jake’s as a child. “It shouldn’t take us long at the store,” he finished.
“Tet me tandy,” Matt shouted from where he was digging a hole in the sand. “An ice ceam!”
“Just a little,” Janie noted. “Any kind. He doesn’t care. And maybe a bottle of champagne. You know”—Janie smiled—“to celebrate Leo’s denouement.”
By the time Janie was finished adding to her list of necessities, Jake was nodding his head and thinking,
If I can remember it all
. But he only smiled and said, “We’ll be back soon,” waved, and he and Liv walked away.
“I really like that bedroom of yours—the porch, all those windows, the view.” Liv was lying back in the car seat, her bare feet up on the dash, the breeze from the open window ruffling her hair, bliss inundating her senses.
“That was my room as a kid. What can I say—it brings back fond memories.”
How darling. How sweet. How perfectly adorable
, she thought, thoroughly awash in Pollyanna feelings when she should be uptight about wiseguys and her languishing vineyards. Instead of succumbing completely to Jake’s intrinsic darlingness, she should be worried about losing her grape crop—
not
drifting in some I’m-in-heaven parallel universe. “I’ll bet you slept on that bedroom porch when it was hot,” she murmured, imagining the darling boy—or maybe the even more darling teenage heartthrob—sleeping there on a hot summer night.
“Yeah. Without air you had to.”
His matter-of-fact response was transposed by her euphoric mind-set into a tantalizingly macho reply. Blunt, pithy, incisive,
all
male. A tiny quiver of desire warmed her senses at the thought of the coming night. “Could we sleep on the porch tonight?”
He grinned. “If you promise not to scream.”
She gave him a sulky look. “Be reasonable.”
“Seriously. Sound travels across the lake—especially at night. I don’t want the cops coming to check on us.”
Such brusque manliness only stirred her desires. Like, me Tarzan, you Jane. Like she was getting weak with longing just thinking about his hard-muscled virility and amazing stamina. Not that it would do to concede to such yearnings when they were only minutes away from the grocery store. “Tell me,” she said on a small, suffocated breath. “How did an aunt from Seattle happen to settle at Deer Lake?”
He shot her a look, her voice patently restive.
“I was just wondering,” she said lamely, unable to think of a more clever response when she was semifrenzied. “I mean, really, I want to know,” she managed to say with a slightly more decisive inflection.
“Aiko and my uncle were married while he was an exchange student in Japan,” Jake offered, careful to speak in a mild tone of voice. If she wanted what he thought she wanted—from a practical point of view—he’d rather wait until after shopping. “When they returned to Minneapolis, she opened the first Japanese restaurant in the city. A few years later, my uncle Joe had a job offer in Seattle. They moved, Aiko opened a restaurant there, my mom came over on a visitor’s visa, met my dad, and that’s pretty much it. You’re from around here, right?”
Talk to me, babe,
he thought.
I’m too tall to even think about fucking in this small car
.
Be mature. Act like an adult,
Liv cautioned herself. Sex right now was out of the question anyway. Not that her body was completely willing to acquiesce, but she tamped down her lust with effort and gave Jake the short version of her life. She described her family: her mom and dad who’d retired to a lake nearby, her sister, Lila, and husband, Larry, who owned a dairy farm nearby, and their two kids who would be three and four next year. “So everyone’s close. And we all get along, which is nice. I can’t remember—do you have siblings?”
He had always been super easy to talk to. He was a good listener who asked pertinent but not overly inquisitive questions, and before too long, Liv had relaxed once again against the pricey leather seat. Jake should be a therapist, she thought; their conversation was soothing, tranquilizing, evoking warm, cozy feelings apropos family and childhood memories. It was pleasant and odd at the same time, because she’d never before felt like bringing a guy she was sleeping with home to meet her family, and now . . .
Wonder of wonders—Jake Chambers was a possible.
Not that she was about to mention her unusual feelings.
No point in scaring him off.
Especially before they slept on the porch.
Although it didn’t help her strength of purpose that their grocery shopping turned out to be one of those déjà vu experiences—like they’d done it a thousand times before. Nor did it help her tenuous self-control when he’d lean over from time to time and kiss her. He didn’t even care if people were looking. The first time he did it in the produce aisle, she’d panicked, her eyes flaring wide, and he’d only said, “Relax. No one knows us.”