Читать книгу The Right Bed?: Your Bed or Mine? - Kate Hoffmann, Jule Mcbride - Страница 11

JAKE SKATED IN A SLOW CIRCLE, moving the hockey puck along the ice with his stick. Then, sprinting across the ice, he took a shot at the plastic crate he was using for a goal. The puck popped up and then disappeared into glittering snow just beyond the rink.

He skated to the edge and searched for the puck. When he finally found it, Jake tossed it back onto the ice and plodded through the snow in his skates. Glancing up, he saw Caley standing on the stairs leading down to the lake’s shore. He stopped and watched her for a long moment, drawing in a deep breath and letting it go.

He’d barely seen Caley all day and when he’d tried to talk to her at the inn early that afternoon, she’d been preoccupied and irritated. They’d made plans for an early dinner and she promised to meet him at the boathouse. But she was three hours late and Jake ended up eating with his parents and siblings.

Everything had been going so well. Maybe this was bound to happen. If it was going to come to an end, then better with a bang than a whimper, he thought. Yet, he wasn’t willing to concede defeat just yet. He still had two more days, the rehearsal tomorrow and the wedding the next day. He turned away from her and returned to skating, moving around the perimeter of the homemade hockey rink.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Caley shouted.

“No problem.”

She watched him skate for a while. “I’d like to explain.”

“You want to talk, get a pair of skates and a stick,” he said. “I’m playing hockey right now.”

“Come on, Jake. Don’t be mad. I had to work. There was a big crisis and they needed me on a conference call. Then I had to write up a strategy report and send that in. And I haven’t been answering my messages, so my boss had a few choice words to say about the responsibilities of a partner at John Walters.”

“Do you even like your job?” Jake asked. He faced her, skating backward, until he reached the edge of the cleared ice. He skidded to a stop and rested his hands on his hockey stick.

“Of course I do.”

“Do you?”

“It’s a job. I get paid a lot of money. I like the money.”

“So, that’s what it’s all about then?”

“No. I suppose there’s some satisfaction in it. Although I spend most of my time making my clients look good when they do bad things. It’s not the most noble job on the planet. But I’m good at it. It’s what I do.”

“Maybe you should try something new,” he suggested. He skated toward the goal again and took another shot. This time, the puck hit the inside of the crate and knocked it backward. When he turned back around, Caley was trudging back up to the house.

He skated to the other end of the pond, watching her retreat. He felt an empty ache tighten in his gut and Jake cursed softly. Maybe it had been a little too perfect to last. He’d managed to convince himself that he and Caley had something special, that they were meant for each other. But the more he pushed, the more she drew away. He’d begun to think that maybe there were other reasons why she was so anxious to get back to New York.

“At least I didn’t love her,” he murmured to himself. “Not the way I could have.”

But even as he said the words, Jake knew that they weren’t entirely true. What he felt for Caley was more than he’d ever felt for any other woman, more than he could imagine feeling for another. He didn’t want to think of the two of them in finite terms, a relationship with a beginning and an end. Caley was the kind of woman who could keep him fascinated for a lifetime, the kind of woman he wanted to love.

Hell, if she was going back to patch things up with her old boyfriend, then he didn’t stand much of a chance. Jake drew a sharp breath as a sudden realization struck. Was this her way of evening the score? He’d rejected her years ago and now she’d reject him. It certainly would put her back on top, Jake mused. And that was always the game between them, who could best the other.

Jake continued to skate along the edge of the rink, moving fast enough to make his lungs burn and his heart pound. He turned the notion over in his head, but it was hard to reconcile it with the woman he’d come to know over the past week.

Though Caley might want to balance the scales, she’d done that in many other ways. He had fallen hard and hadn’t done much to hide his feelings from her. In truth, he’d done everything in his power to make her see how much he cared.

“Will you talk to me now?”

Jake turned the corner and saw Caley standing at the end of the rink, using a hockey stick to balance herself on her skates.

“Play,” he said.

“I can’t keep up with you.”

“Try,” he muttered.

When he came around the rink again, Caley skated after him, grabbing him around the waist and hanging on until they both fell to the ice. She hit hard, slamming down on her shoulder and crying out in pain. Jake quickly knelt down next to her.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to talk to you. But you don’t want to listen.”

Jake helped her sit up and gently rubbed her shoulder. “All right. Talk. What do you want from me? I’ve pretty much put everything on the line here and for a while, things were good between us. Now it seems that everything is moving backward.”

“I don’t know what you expect,” Caley said. “Until a week ago, I was seeing another man. I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back into a serious relationship, especially with someone who lives halfway across the country.”

“It’s not halfway,” Jake insisted. “It’s about a third.”

“All right, tell me how it would work, Jake,” she said. “How would we do it? Would we spend every weekend together? Or would we see each other once a month? Would we talk on the phone every day? Would you go out with other women? Would I be free to date other men?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “We’d have to figure that all out.”

“I had a relationship with a man I never saw,” Caley said. “It didn’t work. And we lived in the same apartment.”

“I’m not him,” Jake said.

“I know. But that doesn’t make a lot of difference. You still have the capacity to hurt me the same way he did.”

Jake turned away, staring off into the distance, fixing his gaze in the direction of Havenwoods as he wondered at the wounds that ran so deep. Was he the cause of her insecurities about men? She was such a confident woman, yet she refused to risk her heart. He’d wounded her so deeply that she was still trying to recover.

Maybe he was the only one who could heal that hurt. Jake took a deep breath. “I’m in love with you,” he said, struggling to his feet. He pulled her up beside him, handing her her hockey stick. “Maybe I’ve always been in love with you. I don’t know. But I figured you should probably know. This is the last time I’m going to say it and whatever you decide to do with it, I’ll be all right.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then forced a smile, as she considered his admission. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she murmured. “There was a time when that’s all I wanted to hear. But back then, it was just a fantasy. Now it’s—”

They’d so carefully avoided any talk of the future, choosing to keep their relationship simple, sexual. And now he’d put all his cards on the table. Maybe he’d always known they’d be together. Perhaps that’s why he’d turned her down all those years before. Because, deep inside, he knew they’d be together again—they’d have a second chance.

“How do you know you love me?” she asked.

Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how. I just feel it.”

“Maybe you just need me,” she said. “There’s a difference, you know.”

Jake sucked in a sharp breath, the cold air clearing his head. “No,” he murmured. “That’s not it.” He grabbed her hands. “It’s more than that.”

“Don’t do this,” Caley murmured, forcing a smile. “It will only make things difficult in the end.”

Jake cursed beneath his breath. “So what? I don’t care. Maybe things should be difficult. Maybe it should be hard for us to leave each other. What’s so wrong about that? At least I can admit I have feelings for you.”

“I can admit that,” Caley said. “We’ve known each other for years. Of course we’d care.”

“It’s more than that,” Jake said.

Caley tugged her hands from his and shoved them in her jacket pockets. “I should get back up to the house. My mother is going crazy trying to figure out what’s happening with this wedding.”