For the Longest Time (20 page)

He probably just came over to say something stupid. His friends are probably close by, laughing.
Instinctively, Sam curled her knees into herself, a physical defense against the expected verbal attack. But Jake just kept
watching her with those bright gold eyes, a look on his face she'd never seen before. It was something like . . . awe.

“Did you seriously draw that?” he asked. His voice was soft and warm, the kind of voice you'd use to try to coax a wild animal into letting you near it. She was no wild animal, but she supposed she might look like a strange creature to him.

“Yeah,” Sam said, nervously tucking her hair behind her ear. She had no idea what he wanted, or what she was supposed to say. Part of her wished he would just leave. The rest desperately wanted him to stay.

“That's amazing. I mean . . . that looks, like, professional.” He laughed softly, incredulously, shaking his head. “I didn't know you could do that.”

Big surprise.
“Well, I can,” Sam replied, knowing she sounded defensive. Of course she could draw. She'd always been able to. He might know if he'd ever bothered to look. She thought the snap in her voice might send him off, but instead she found herself watching in shock as he sank slowly down beside her.

“Um . . . can I see it again? Do you have any more stuff like that?”

She arched an eyebrow, completely at a loss as to how to deal with this. Where was the punch line, here? Was it her?

“I, ah . . . Why do you want to see?”

Her frown didn't seem to deter him, but then she'd watched him enough to know he was stubbornly good-natured everywhere but on the lacrosse field.

“Do you like comics?” he asked. “Because that looked so much like something I saw down at Four Eyes Comics. It was—”

“On the wall. Yeah,” Sam said, “I was trying to draw it from memory.” She could hardly believe he'd recognized it. Or that he spent much time in Four Eyes. But his expression, almost painfully earnest, said he did.

“I didn't know you could do that,” he said. “I've never known anybody who could do that. Seriously, can I see what else you have in there?”

She didn't know why. But something about the way he asked told her that this time, just this once, it was safe to come out of her defensive crouch and share. Sam swallowed hard, enveloped by the light scent of the cologne that all the guys wore but that smelled so singular on him. She tried to keep her hand steady when she moved to open her sketchbook to the first page.

“Um . . . well . . . okay.”

“Cool,” he said, settling in so close that his leg brushed hers, eyes alight with interest. And that was when she knew that Jake Smith was different. He was as special as she'd imagined he might be. And he wouldn't hurt her. He wouldn't . . .

Sam's eyes flew open in the darkened room, and she sucked in a breath. It took a few seconds to wake up enough that she knew where—and when—she was. Then reality sank in, along with a deep sense of relief. She'd forgotten just how starry-eyed she'd been, all those years ago. The memory, fresh now, was bittersweet. She couldn't forget what had come after.

Sam shifted around, turning over to see Emma's pretty face relaxed in sleep, her dark lashes entwined, lips parted. As Sam watched, she started to snore softly. That made her smile, made her remember just how far away all of that wonder and pain at sixteen was.

She'd thought she'd seen the beginning and the end of
anything she might ever have to do with Jake. But here she was, and everything was different.

Everything except the feeling, all that fear and excitement and longing tumbled together at the very thought of him. That had remained. And it threatened to become a great deal more.

Her smile faded, and Sam snuggled down into her pillow, closing her eyes. For one night, she didn't want to wonder whether the past was simply repeating itself. She didn't want to remember the past at all.

She just wanted some peace, and some sleep. And though peace eluded her, after about an hour, Sam slipped gratefully into dreamless darkness for the rest of the night.

E
mma was still passed out in a pile of blankets when Sam fumbled her way downstairs the next morning, nursing a mild headache from the bottle of wine she and Em had shared and feeling like her mouth had been used as a truck stop during the night. She'd piled her hair on top of her head in an extremely sloppy bun before coming down, just to avoid drinking her hair along with her coffee, and had thrown her enormous old cardigan on over her tank and pajama pants. The AGA kept the kitchen warm, but the rest of the house could get drafty, and there was a breeze that moaned around the rafters this morning, looking for ways in.

Andi was up and moving, though not in much better shape than her daughter. They grunted good mornings at each other as they worked around each other for their daily infusion of caffeine. Sam perched on a stool and stuck her face in her mug while Andi found a spot across the island and started to scroll through the morning news on her tablet.

The kitchen was blissfully quiet. Not completely clean, considering the empty pizza box she and Emma had left out beside the wineglasses, the empty bottle, and
a bowl that had nothing left in it but a scatter of popcorn kernels. But quiet.

She was on her second cup and just beginning to think about finding clothes when there was a soft knock at the door. Suddenly, she was wide awake. Her eyes darted to the microwave clock. Seven thirty.

“Oh God.” She looked at her mother, who seemed like she was trying very hard not to smirk as she kept her eyes fixed on the tablet. Somehow, Sam doubted it was the news story she found funny. “Mom, did you know he was coming this early? Mom?
Mother
?”

“I'm old,” Andi said lightly. “I forget things.” She then primly picked up the tablet and walked out of the kitchen. “I'm going to get dressed. Could you get that, honey?”

“You're not old. You're fifty-four. If you're really that senile I'm putting you in the home.” There was no response but an amused chuckle.

Gritting her teeth, Sam picked up her mug and shuffled toward the front door. After their talk last night, Sam supposed this could be intended as some sort of lesson. Like, “He cares about you, and you will see this when he sticks around even after he finds out you look like you dug your way up from hell instead of rolling out of bed like everyone else first thing in the morning.” More likely, though, it was just her mother's twisted sense of humor.

Her irritation evaporated when she saw the shadow of him through the wavy glass of the sidelight. Everything she'd felt yesterday morning, when she opened her eyes and discovered that she'd spent the entire night with him wrapped around her, blew right through her
like a hurricane. She'd been telling the truth in that message last night. She really had missed him.

Her dream said she'd been missing him for a lot longer than that.

Nerves tangled in her stomach, an unpleasant echo of what she'd relived in the night. Could he possibly know what all of this was doing to her? He had to have heard it in her cheesy message last night, in her nervous little “Okay, bye” at the end. Would he have been weirded out by that? Had she sounded weird? Could she be any more ridiculous right now?

Hoping the answer to all of the above was no, she started to reach up to smooth her hair, decided she didn't want to know exactly how much of a lost cause it was, then unlocked and opened the door.

Jake looked up, and the smile he gave her nearly melted her on the spot, banishing everything but the pleasant buzz of having him here, right now, with her. He looked better than anyone had a right to at this hour in faded jeans and a tee and flannel shirt, both layered beneath a battered jacket that had seen better days. His hair was adorably mussed, his hazel eyes more green than gold today against the faded olive of his jacket. She couldn't miss the smudges beneath his eyes, or the weariness in them. But because it was Jake, he tried to cover his exhaustion with a tease.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you have a moment to talk about the saving power of kittens?”

He made her laugh. Even at seven thirty in the morning. It didn't do much for her multiple theories on how she was maintaining boundaries that were appropriate for a new relationship, and how she was still very much in the safe zone. Because she was basically evil before
eight unless you were on her short—very short—list of special people. Even then it could be iffy. And yet here she was, grinning like an idiot as he slid his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“You look cute,” he said. “You have Rainbow Buddies on your pants.”

That gave her pause. She'd forgotten what she was wearing. “Emma bought these for my birthday last year.” Which was not an excuse for actually wearing them. Like, a lot. She looked down at the fat little multicolored unicorns gamboling all over her pajama bottoms and tried to come up with a better explanation for them.

It was early. She wasn't finished with her coffee. There was no explanation.

“I didn't even know they made those for adults,” Jake said.

“Well,” Sam said, “now that I know you like them so much, I'll get you a pair.”

He nuzzled her behind the ear, which he seemed to have figured out was one of those places that caused her brain to stop working properly. “As long as you take them off me, I can deal with that.”

She giggled, realized that she had emitted a sound that could only be described as a giggle, and then shoved at him so that she would stop making silly girly noises. “How are you so awake? And how's your mom? Is she doing okay?” Then she looked down at the hard-sided pet carrier sitting by his feet. “Oh, the kitties! Here, just come in. Do you want coffee?”

He chuckled, his brows knitting together in mild disbelief as he shook his head. “I guess now I know how to wake you up. Which part of that am I supposed to answer first?”

His solution seemed to be not to answer any right away. Instead, he picked up the carrier and brought it in. She led him back to the kitchen, which was still deserted. Despite the lure of the new kittens, Sam expected that her mother would take her sweet time coming back. At some point while she'd been gone, Andi had come around to liking Jake. Not that Andi was particularly inclined to dislike many people, but she knew very well that he'd hurt her daughter. Now that she thought about it, Sam realized that would have meant Jake had a much higher bar to clear before getting into her mother's good graces. It said something for him.

“It smells good in here,” Jake said, setting the carrier on the island. “I think I'll take you up on the coffee.”

“Sure thing. Just one second,” Sam said. She opened the mewing carrier, quickly extracted Loki, and barely managed to shut the door before there were several escapees. “Hey, baby!”

He'd gotten bigger again, a sleek, well-fed kitten with big green eyes and an even louder voice than she remembered. She kissed his nose, rubbed her face against his cheeks, and cradled him while rubbing his oversize ears and furry neck. Loki bore it admirably while she fussed over him, purring loudly and giving her a slow, sleepy “I love you” blink as she cooed nonsense at him. Finally, though, he began to wiggle, so she stuck him on her shoulder where he sniffed her hair and then gave her cheek a kiss with his sandpaper tongue.

“There,” Sam said, smirking at Jake. “Now I can get your coffee.”

He rubbed a hand through his hair and laughed. “If there really were Henry witches,” he said, “you must have inherited some kind of black cat whisperer gene
from them. Even when he's nice with other people, he's not
that
nice.”

“See? Being a Harvest Cove Henry has benefits. People don't know what they're talking about.”

She grabbed a mug from the cupboard as there was a flurry of loud thumps coming down the stairs. Sam looked up just in time to see Emma, her hair doing a full-on Einstein, stop halfway down the back stairs. She looked at Jake, eyes widening.

“Nope,” she said, then turned and hurried back from whence she'd come.

“Your sister's here?” Jake asked. “I thought she had her own place in town.”

“We had a sleepover,” Sam said, setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of him and then bringing the cream and sugar. “I wanted company.”

“That explains the pizza carnage,” Jake replied. “I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, Sam. The time got away from me. I didn't know what was going on. Greg—that's mom's boyfriend—was really upset, and my damn phone fell into a black hole somewhere. I can't think where it went. I'm going to have to replace it if nobody finds it by tomorrow.”

“Your mom's going to be all right, though?”

“We think so. It was a TIA, like a mini-stroke. Greg said her speech got kind of garbled and then she just went completely unresponsive, just sitting there without actually being there. Scared him. Me, too. At least we were off the boat by then so I could haul ass to the hospital. I'm going back up this morning after I leave here. They think she'll be discharged today.”

“I'm glad.”

“Me, too.” He doctored his coffee, then took a sip,
closed his eyes, and swallowed. “This is so much better than what I have at my house.”

“Now that I've been in your kitchen, that doesn't surprise me.”

He uttered a soft “Hmph” before taking another sip.

She didn't want to ask. She couldn't give a damn about Shane Sullivan and his big mouth, though Fitz seemed nice enough. But Cici's visit had been playing on a more or less permanent loop in the back of her mind since yesterday, and between throwing down the gauntlet with her and the disappearance of the phone, Sam finally gave up and just asked the question.

“So . . . how was boating?” by which she meant,
Did you see Cici and did she slobber all over you?
But she was trying to retain a little nuance. And she could swear he looked just a little uneasy before he answered.

“Fine. We had fun. Tucker played ship dog. We had some beers and talked football. After that I took Tucker home and we all went and sat at the Tavern. Pretty lazy afternoon.”

We all
. Yeah, Cici had found him. Irritated, Sam pressed him, and more bluntly than she might have otherwise. “Just the three of you?”

He dropped his eyes again, just for a second. But it was incriminating enough.

“No, well, pretty much everyone showed up. I was accused of being a hermit. Thea took stupid pictures that she'll put online somewhere. In other words, exactly like every other time I've gone to the Tavern, which is why I don't always go.”

No, he wasn't going to tell her that Cici had been there. She didn't understand why, apart from maybe a desire to keep her from feeling the way she was feeling
right now anyway. He didn't want it to be a big deal. Maybe it wasn't to him.

And there was no earthly way she could bring it up without ruining the morning, since any sentence that began with, “Hey, I saw Cici Ferris yesterday,” was not going to end with anything good. Jake likely didn't know about the long-ago discussion that Cici had decided to have with her, but he couldn't have missed the animosity before and after.

She didn't think Shane had ever told him either, which was interesting. He'd definitely been there. Not actively participating, but there. He still looked at her more like she was a bizarre, slightly distasteful insect than a human. She'd never figured out why. He'd grown up right down the road. They'd even ridden bikes together a couple of times until his parents had put a stop to it.

Her mother had said for years that the Sullivans were kings and queens among assholes. Jake must see something in him, but she couldn't imagine what.

With Cici, it wasn't as hard to figure out.

“So,” Sam said, forcing herself to change the subject. “I see you brought all the available fur balls.”

“As promised,” Jake said, and he seemed to relax again. “Marin kept one of the other girls. The solid gray one. You sure you can con Emma into this? She's always seemed like kind of a tough customer. I know grown men who are terrified of her.”

“They're wise, then. But remember, as a younger sister, I know all the weaknesses. I think she's in hiding now that she knows you're here, so we'll wait for my mother and then I'll go work my magic.”

Jake breathed out a laugh. “Almost makes me wish I wasn't an only child. Almost.”

She remembered him musing about that before, a very long time ago. Back then, she'd thought he sounded lonely. Well, maybe not exactly lonely, but finding and retaining a circle of people who functioned as surrogate siblings had sounded like it required more work than she would have wanted to expend. Friends could walk away. It was a little harder with blood.

Which meant she was going to have to try to get along with . . .
them
. That was the next big hurdle, and she knew it. The thought of being with the entire group of them at once had her heart rate picking up instantly, but it was going to be the price of trying to date Jake. Stomping her foot and demanding that he choose between her and his friends was a bad cliché, and not her style anyway. They were all adults now. How bad could it be?

She recalled Cici's venomous stare, and decided that she didn't really want to think about that, either.

“Work today?” he asked.

Sam nodded, grateful for the distraction. “Short day on Sundays, and Mondays we're normally closed.”

“Still like it?”

“Definitely. Zoe didn't mention she was looking for more of a right-hand woman than an employee, but it's good. It's everything I enjoyed about the gallery in New York minus the ugliness in the work environment. I'm pushing her to start taking a day off too, but she says she wouldn't know what to do with herself.”

“I bet she'd love to get you painting again.”