Forever Jake

2

JAKE MET the confused vulnerability in Robin’s expression and had to steel himself against a wash of memories. The last time she’d looked at him that way she’d been naked in his arms, forcing him to use every single scrap of strength and valor he possessed to keep from making love to her.

In an instant he was transported back in time, to the beach, to the night before graduation. He swore he could hear the rush of the river, smell her lemon perfume, and feel her wet, silken skin heating under his fingertips.

The screen door opened with a bang.

“Robin?” Connie, Robin’s older sister and a frequent visitor to Forever, stepped onto the porch. “Oh, hi, Jake. Finished work for the day?”

Jake forced his gaze away from Robin and cleared his mind of the bewitching memories. He’d never been back to that beach. Not once.

He took a sharp, bracing breath of the evening air. Personal ads, marriage proposals—just when he thought life couldn’t get more surreal, Forever’s mystery woman turned out to be Robin Medford.

“I’m all done.” He answered Connie’s question.

“Jacob Bronson?” Robin seemed to come back to life. She laughed lightly, tucking her sandy-blond hair behind one ear with a trembling hand. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

Well, wasn’t that just a boost to a guy’s ego? He’d been fantasizing about the woman for fifteen years, and she didn’t even remember him. Perfect.

“Grandma wants you to stay for dinner, Jake,” said Connie.

He supposed he should be gratified that at least one sister knew who he was. Connie pushed the sleeves of her multicoloured sweatshirt to her elbows and crossed her arms. Though she was only four years his senior, she had a habit of treating him as if he were one of her children.

“I don’t want to intrude.” He seized on a perfectly legitimate excuse to make himself scarce. Robin’s presence meant the entire Medford clan was together for the first time in several years. They probably wanted to be alone. Jake sure wanted them to be alone.

He’d have to be a very masochistic man to voluntarily sit across the dinner table from her. The woman didn’t even remember the kisses that had rocked his adolescent world and resonated for a decade and a half.

“Don’t be silly,” Connie said breezily, opening the door wider and gesturing for them to enter. “You’re practically family.”

With a small smile, Robin gracefully rose from the chair. She didn’t echo her sister’s invitation—probably because she didn’t care whether he stayed or not.

As she strolled toward the kitchen door, her wavy hair bounced and the worn denim jeans molded to her sexy thighs. His fingertips tingled with a tactile memory of those curves. He wrapped his hands into fists. From what he could see, her body hadn’t changed a bit.

He forced himself to curb the hormonal reaction. She hadn’t changed since graduation, not in looks and not in character. To her, he was still Jacob Bronson, class geek. And the Ice Princess was just as remote now as she’d ever been.

It was time to take a serious look at that stack of letters from the personal ad. Derek was right. Jake should hurry up and find a suitable wife. Then he could exorcise Robin from his psyche once and for all.

It was the logical thing to do—the safe thing to do. But as the woman of his dreams disappeared around the corner, all thoughts of logic and safety evaporated. And he knew if he didn’t get the heck out of Dodge this minute, he was in big, big trouble.

He glanced swiftly at Connie, hoping she hadn’t noticed the way his gaze lingered on Robin’s rear end. He raked a hand through his hair. “Sorry, Connie, but I can’t—”

“Grandma is not going to take no for an answer, Jake. You work too hard. Now get over there and find yourself a decent shirt. If you’re not back in five minutes I’m sending the boys after you.”

He shook his head. “Really, I—”

“I’ll send them over,” she threatened with a resolute lift of her chin. “And Grandma will be upset with you.”

He yielded to the inevitable with an inward sigh. “Yes, ma’am.” He definitely didn’t want to upset Alma May so close to her big birthday. And Connie’s boys, at eight, six and four, were capable of doing serious damage to the inside of his house.

The thought of pacifying his housekeeper after another round of the three musketeers was more than a little daunting. Sexy Robin versus an upset housekeeper. Definitely a no-win situation.

Connie’s indomitable stare tipped the balance to Robin’s side. Fine. He’d stay for dinner and make the best of it. Maybe if he worked her out of his system up front, he could cope with the rest of her visit. Then maybe he could get on with the rest of his life.

IT WASN’T HAPPENING. With Robin directly across the dinner table, he was definitely not working her out of his system. In fact, as her moist lips parted in another affectionate smile, she was rapidly working her way right back in. Sure, all that charm was directed toward her nephews, but Jake’s psyche didn’t seem to care.

He thought he’d had it bad in high school, but right now his lust meter was about to blow off the charts.

“Were they real lions, Auntie Robin?” Connie’s youngest son’s eyes widened.

Robin’s straight white teeth flashed in the candlelight. “They were real, Bobby,” she answered. Her finger absently traced the gold rim of her saucer as she recounted a recent trip to Kenya. “A mommy lion, a daddy and two cubs.”

“Were you scared?” Next to Jake, Bobby put down his dessert spoon and leaned forward.

“A little bit,” said Robin. Her blue-green eyes danced in a way that made Jake’s skin tingle. Their depth and clarity reminded him of the Forever River.

“But we were inside the truck. So we were safe.”

Connie cleared her throat. “Any other adventures you can tell us about before bed, Robin?” she asked pointedly. “I don’t suppose you’ve been to an amusement park lately.”

Robin picked up on her sister’s warning tone and smoothly switched gears to a less nightmare-inciting subject. “As a matter of fact.” She flipped her long hair back out of the way and started to remove her sweater in the warm room. “I haven’t been to any amusement parks. But I’ve always wanted to go down a water slide.”

Her confession brought an instant high-cut bikini visual to Jake’s mind and he shifted in his chair.

“We went on water slides last summer,” said Bobby on a near squeal.

“You did?” She did a credible imitation of surprise. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”

As Bobbie and his brothers chatted on, Robin finished removing her sweater and hung it on the back of her chair. Jake’s vision narrowed to a tunnel, and the boys’ voices faded to a faraway roar.

Her smoothly tanned shoulders and long graceful neck were revealed by a sleeveless white tank top. A gold locket danced against the scooped neckline as she moved. And the clingy fabric of the shirt delineated her breasts.

Jake’s memory kicked in, and he couldn’t help visualizing her breasts in excruciating detail. Sure it had been pretty dark, but he’d seem them once. Pale, full, coral-tipped, tight from the chilly water droplets that clung to her supple skin.

Oh, yeah. He’d seen them once. And that was more than any other man in Forever could lay claim to.

Not that Jake would ever lay that claim. He’d never even contemplated laying that claim. Well, except the one time. And he figured he could be forgiven for that particular impulse.

It was the day after they’d gone skinny-dipping. At the dinner following the convocation ceremony in the school gymnasium. Robin had sat there on a folding chair, as cool and composed as the Ice Princess she was reputed to be.

She’d swept her hair up, and wispy curls framed her face. Her makeup was subtle and flattering, and her snug black, spaghetti-strapped dress showed off high, pert breasts and softly rounded hips. She was the stuff teenage dreams were made of. At least she was the stuff Jake’s dreams were made of.

As he’d watched her from across the room, he’d willed her to glance his way, to make some small gesture to say he was no longer persona non grata in her eyes. He just wanted a small sign that she’d appreciated his chivalrous behavior.

He’d sat there alone in the ill-fitting worn suit he’d pilfered from his father’s closet. He entertained wild fantasies that she’d approach him, speak to him, privately thank him for calling a halt the night before, and let it be known they were friends.

But she hadn’t. And for one crazy second he’d been tempted to swagger over to Seth and Alex and the rest of the boys to recount it all.

She wouldn’t have denied it, couldn’t have denied it. Everyone in town knew that Robin’s neck turned bright red whenever she told less than the truth. He could have elevated his social status to the stratosphere with a few well-chosen sentences.

It was a big temptation for a misfit eighteen-year-old boy. But the thirty-two-year-old man was inordinately proud of his silence.

Across the dinner table, she laughed at something the children said. It had been the most noble moment of his life. Too bad she didn’t even remember.

“YOU MUST REMEMBER what that overpowering maternal urge feels like.” Robin pegged one of her nephew’s T-shirts on the clothesline behind her mother’s house. She ran her hand lovingly across the damp fabric of the tiny garment. Soon, she told herself. Soon she’d have tiny clothes of her own to wash.

“But I was already married,” said Connie. “I had somebody to support me and help me.”

“I don’t need anybody to support me.” Money was not an issue. “My promotion at Wild Ones will keep me in one city, and the salary is enough for anything we might need.” Including teeny, tiny clothes.

“I don’t just mean financial support.” Connie draped a voluminous bedsheet over the line. “I mean emotional support.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a very independent person.” Her job as a location scout for Wild Ones Tours took her all over the globe. She traveled alone, checking out potential adventure tours for the company to promote. She enjoyed the freedom.

“Well, you’ve never independently paced the floor at 2:00 a.m. with a crying baby in your arms.”

“I once stayed up for forty-eight hours straight, pacing nervously while I listened to lions roar.” She could handle sleep deprivation and emotional fatigue.

“It’s not the same thing.” Then Connie grinned. “Though it might be good training.”

“See?” Robin added a peg to an end of the bed-sheet, smoothing out the wrinkles with the palm of her hand. “I’m completely ready.”

“But the lions went away after forty-eight hours. Babies stay for years.”

“I know that.” Robin had considered her plan from all angles. She loved babies. She loved children. She was not going to end up a decrepit old maiden aunt to Connie’s boys just because she hadn’t met the right man during her child-bearing years.

“I’m only suggesting you wait a bit. You never know what’s right around the corner in life.”

“I’m thirty-two years old. The window of opportunity is closing. Have you read the statistics for child-bearing past thirty-five?”

“Women have babies as late as forty now.”

“It’s a much higher risk.”

“You read too much.”

“How old were you when you had Sammy?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“See.”

“But I was married.”

“This isn’t 1950. Women do not have to define their lives by their marital status.” Robin believed that. She really did. Sure, she’d like a father for her children. But she’d worked in more than thirty countries around the world, she’d met men of all shapes, sizes, ideologies and personalities. She’d never once found one she wanted to spend her life with.

She wasn’t getting married simply to be married.

“What are you going to tell Grandma?” Connie pegged up the last pillowcase and lifted the empty laundry basket, settling it at her waist.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Robin bit her lower lip, fixing a small wrinkle in the pillowcase. “I’ll probably make up a temporary boyfriend.”

“So she won’t know you had casual sex?” Connie quirked her eyebrows.

Robin hesitated. She wasn’t at all comfortable lying to her grandmother, but she was even less comfortable telling her the truth. “There’ll be nothing casual about it. It will be deliberate and effective.”

“Let me guess.” Connie turned and started for the short staircase. “You’ve read a book on this, too.”

“Of course.” Robin followed. “I’ve researched fertility and conception.” She had a basal body thermometer in her suitcase. She’d done her first temperature test run last month, and was doing another this month. She could identify her fertile time to within twenty-four hours.

Connie laughed. “I just hope you make sure your baby reads the same books you did. They tend to ignore the experts and do whatever the heck they want.”

“I read that, too.”

“Of course you did.”

“I’m ready for this,” Robin assured her sister. “I’m probably more ready for this than most married women.”

Connie sighed. Then she turned and lowered herself to sit on the stairs, setting the basket on the dry grass beside her.

“You know, you don’t always have to grab life by the throat and shake it until it gives you what you want.”

“That was a ridiculously obscure statement.” Intrigued, Robin sat next to her big sister.

“You’ve always been like that.”

“Like what?”

“Once you set your sights on the goal line, you don’t look to the right or to the left. You just blast along like a steamroller.”

“I’m efficient. I get things done.” There was nothing worse than wandering willy-nilly around an idea for months on end. Once you made a decision, you implemented it. Simple as that.

Connie leaned over and picked a blade of grass, twisting it in her fingertips. “Take Wild Ones, for instance. You decided working as a location scout for an adventure travel company was a great way to see the world.”

“It was.” Robin wasn’t getting her sister’s point. Her career with Wild Ones was an ongoing success. As an example of mistakes in life, it was rather pathetic.

“They needed pilots. You became a pilot.”

“So?”

“They needed translators. You learned Portuguese.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at. What’s wrong with learning Portuguese? These are all good things.”

“Everything you did, for years and years, was focused toward the goal of becoming a perfect Wild Ones employee.”

“I still don’t see this as a problem. So I’m focused? So I’m determined? It’s taken me a long way in life.” A gust of wind blew Robin’s hair across her face, and she swept the strands behind her ear.

“But you never give life a chance.”

“A chance to do what?”

“You never trust that there are people around you who might make good things happen. Good things that you never even knew you wanted. All I’m suggesting is that you slow down for a while and give fate a chance.”

Fate? Robin had tried fate once. Fifteen years ago in the Forever River. But Jacob Bronson had stopped her, thank goodness.

She still shuddered at the possible consequences of making love with Jake. She might have become pregnant at eighteen. Or worse, she might have imagined she was in love with him and stayed in Forever. She would have missed out on her education, her career, her life.

No. Fate couldn’t be trusted in the driver’s seat.

She blinked at Connie. “You want me to wander willy-nilly through life and let fate blow me around like a dried leaf?”

“It’s worked for me. I never would have met Robert if I hadn’t missed that plane to Seattle.”

“That was luck.”

“Call it what you want.”

“I don’t know, Connie. I can’t imagine myself hanging around international airports hoping to meet the man of my dreams.”

Connie chuckled. “All I’m suggesting is that you go with the flow once in a while. Let the wind take you.”

“Like a dried leaf?”

“You’re not a dried leaf.” Connie sighed and put an arm around Robin. “Just don’t get so focused that you miss an opportunity right under your nose.”

“I’ll try.” Robin’s gaze relaxed on the honey-warm logs of Jake’s new house. She and fate did not have a good track record.

“But whatever you decide,” said Connie. “You know you’ll have my full support.”

Robin’s chest constricted. She blinked quickly. “Thanks.”

“Mom!” Bobby shrieked from inside. “Sammy broke my truck.”

“Did not.”

“Did, too.”

“Did not.”

“In the meantime, think long and hard about having those kids.” Connie shook her head as she trotted up the stairs.

THE BOYS’ ARGUMENT subsided, and distant laughter drifted over from Jake’s property. Robin brought his house back into focus. Jake and three other people, two men and a woman, strolled past a neat row of square, quarter-acre horse pens.

She watched his confident, long-legged stride, and thought about fate. Had fate brought him to her that night in the river? Was it fate that had made her want him or fate that had made him stop?

Would she have become pregnant? Would she have fallen in love?

She shook herself. It was irrelevant, really. Since they couldn’t go back to find out.