Jake (California Dreamy) Read online

  Jake lay back on the pillows and pulled her close. He had fallen in love with Ivy. The thought curled around his heart. It was a warm fit, like slipping into a glove. A perfect fit. He drifted off thinking about the obstacles they would face and the best ways to overcome them. And he didn’t doubt that either would happen. He was a military man. He would deploy again and they would face long stretches of separation, but they had the tools they needed to remain a strong couple. If they continued to talk to each other. If they prioritized. And compromised. All of which they’d been pretty good at so far.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him. He’d insisted on taking their time, finally having the time to put into a relationship, to let it develop naturally. Inside a week, Ivy had pinned his heart. But life was crazy like that.

  He knew she was sleeping when her body relaxed deeply into his. He stroked her back because he loved the feel of her skin, could feel through its softness her vitality, and he wanted her truly settled in before he drifted off.

  The dream moved sinuously around his brain, not fully developing until Jake was sound asleep. He was back in Afghanistan. The desert wind swept across the flat plains, kicking up sand and debris. He slipped his goggles into place, but hated even the slight limitations it placed on his peripheral vision. He was holding rear, his men scrambling ahead, leading the hostages they’d reclaimed. If they made it back to rendezvous as planned, the entire execution of the mission would come out at twenty-two minutes. Years of training tested in the time it took to boil eggs.

  The radio squawked in his ear, the static an annoying rub. He’d counted heads, listened to the voices of his men through the transmissions, but looked back anyway. Someone was missing. But how could that be? The building, primitive and slapped together out of plywood and plaster, shuddered in the wind. The windows had screening stapled over them—his men had punched out two of them in order to pull the three hostages to safety. There was a desolate kind of quite to it now, even though Jake knew there were armed guards in an interior room and two posted outside, one at the front door, the other at the side door. The hostages had been chained to a metal post and there had been little chance of them escaping on their own; the guards had grown complacent and it had worked to Jake’s advantage. Not a single shot had been fired yet.

  He saw a shadowy movement behind the third screen—the one they hadn’t removed. Jake felt his heart kick into high gear. Had they forgotten someone? Intelligence reported and confirmed three hostages. The two men and the single woman they had recovered matched their physical descriptions, the photos they were given, and each had confirmed their identities to Jake as they were pulled from the structure.

  The figure in the window was female. He could tell from the delicate features otherwise obscured by the mesh screening. He saw a waving motion, and the glint of metal around her wrists. Yes, another hostage. Jake didn’t know who, only that he couldn’t leave her behind. He alerted his men by radio and ordered them to continue onto rendezvous. He was going back alone. With each step toward the structure, dread grew heavier in his gut. He was struck by the shape of her body, what little was visible, and realized a familiarity. By the time he ripped away the screening he’d already known—it was Ivy and she was calmly waiting for him, believing he would save her. He holstered his pistol and grabbed her with both hands, but before he could lift her through the window, he heard the air burning with gun fire and felt the searing blitz of a bullet burrowing into his skull.

  He woke with a startled cry. Knew immediately that he was in Ivy’s apartment, in her bed, and she was still cradled against his body, warm and secure. He stared at the ceiling and breathed deeply through his nose, willing his heart to steady, the tension to release his muscles.

  The mission hadn’t gone down like that. Not at all. It had been by the book, except for Arturo taking gunfire. Two men had slipped through the windows, cut through the chains securing the hostages to the post, and had lifted each of them to freedom. Jake had helped them to their feet, sought confirmation of their names, and passed them onto each of three waiting soldiers who guided them to rendezvous. Then Jake had taken the hand of the last man inside in order to pull him to safety—Arturo. Thirty seconds inside the building. Jake had stood post while his men scattered into the hills, a crab-like scuttle that increased their safety. Jake had followed, but by that time, the escape had been discovered, the alarm sounded, and Jake had trouble shaking the insurgents. They had fired in a haphazard pattern, not having a single, sure target, and Arturo had been picked out randomly. It could have been any of them. Training had made the mission a success. Luck had kept all of them, except Arturo, alive.

  Could Jake ask Ivy to buy into that? The always not knowing if he’d come back to her? It wasn’t a matter of whether Ivy was strong enough for that kind of life; she was a woman of

  courage. But was it fair?

  He felt her hand flutter against his chest. She lifted her head from his shoulder and gazed into his eyes, hers still soft with sleep.

  “Bad dream?”

  She trusted him when she had plenty of reason not to. An ex-husband who beat her, a father who’d left her. Could he put her though a service chaplain arriving on their doorstep and a flag-draped coffin? It pained him to even think about it. He felt himself wince and Ivy’s hand came up, her delicate fingers soothing his brow.

  Jake folded her hand into his and held her gaze.

  “There are no promises when you’re military,” he said. He watched awareness grow on her face, sharpening her features.

  “There are no promises in life period,” she told him.

  “I’m a greater risk,” he pointed out.

  “I knew that going in.”

  And maybe she did, but it took on bigger significance when the military moved into your life. It wasn’t something that could be explained. It had to be lived to understand it completely.

  Jake cupped her head and drew her close for a kiss and then he settled her in his arms and stroked her hair back from her face. Her eyelids fluttered and she wrapped her arm around his waist and drifted back to sleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Ivy woke, Jake was gone. He had saved what he could of the food, placing the fruit and cheese in the refrigerator and dumping the omelettes in the trash. She sat on the edge of the bed and wondered about Jake’s disappearance. He’d had a bad dream. He’d spoken to her about military life. He’d told her he could promise her nothing. But that was not true. He could promise his love, if not his longevity. He could promise his protection, if not be at her side every day.

  She thought about the long term with Jake. Marriage. Kids. Because, yes, she wanted it all. She wanted it with Jake. She wanted a son who shared his features and a daughter who spoke with his confidence. And if he, like her father, one day never returned—could she do that to her children?

  It had devastated Ivy. But her father had left voluntarily. He had run from his responsibilities. That wasn’t Jake and that wasn’t their situation.

  But the rigorous honesty with which she lived her life demanded that she acknowledge the sting in her heart when she thought about the if –if her children became fatherless.

  It would hurt. But it would hurt no matter how Jake was taken from their lives. People died every day. She could marry a plumber who died in a fishing accident. Or a doctor who was

  killed in a car crash. These things happened.

  She felt uneasy about it, but anyone would, right?

  She was still contemplating a future with Jake, knowing she couldn’t bear to think about there not being one, when she heard a key slide into the lock at the front door. She hadn’t given him a set, but knew it could be no one else.

  She stood, adjusting the robe around her shoulders, and waited for him to enter.

  He was carrying a sack of food from Tio’s. His jaw was covered in five o’clock shadow and his eyes were reflective. He had pulled inside himself. They were back to an uneasy distance.

 
“The omelettes weren’t salvageable,” he explained. “And you’re starving.”

  She was. It’d probably been a good ten hours since she’d eaten.

  “You’re good at taking care of me.” She smiled.

  “When I can,” he said.

  “And when you can’t I can do it myself.”

  He nodded, but she could tell that he didn’t like it. “Don’t distract me,” he said, but he came toward her and dropped a light kiss on her lips. “You’re eating this time.”

  “And then maybe we could go for a run?” They needed a change of scenery. And to expend some energy in a way that didn’t include ripping off each other’s clothes.

  But he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and they hadn’t yet gotten to the point of leaving

  their things at each other’s place. But he said, “I have some workout gear in my truck.”

  “Always prepared,” she remembered, “but no Boy Scout.” Was it really only eight days ago that they had met on the side of the freeway?

  He remembered, too. “My life isn’t that simple.”

  “I know.” She took the bag from his hands and walked to the table. “There’s some bottled water in the fridge,” she said.

  She sat down and waited for him to get to the table.

  “I’m going to clear the air and then we’re going to move on. Okay? Because it’s really hard for me to wallow in the silences.” She didn’t wait for him to agree. “Yes, you’re in a risky profession. You go off to war with guns and get shot at. But so do police officers. Firemen and any type of first responder have a tough job that spills over into their personal lives. No, I don’t want my children to lose their father. It devastated me. It’s an ache that can still sneak up on me sometimes, but that’s because he chose to leave. A totally different set of circumstances. Still, it bothers me to think about it concerning our children. I don’t know how I’ll deal with the worry—you’re right no one can know it until they live it. But I want that chance.”

  There. She’d bared her heart. She’d put it all out there and he could mull it over at his own pace. But at least she’d said it. And now they could move on. She opened the bag and pulled out several containers.

  “What did you bring me?” She peered at him over the bag, and only then realized that Jake was stunned silent. His eyes were flared, even his nostrils. His skin had paled, making his dark whiskers stand out.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. Maybe she’d been too blunt, but a few days ago the silences had stretched out for hours, stretching her emotions, too, and she just couldn’t do that again. And when she was nervous she was bold. So she’d blurted out so she could get it out.

  “Our children?” he asked. His voice was shaky. Ivy had never heard him falter before.

  “You started it,” she said, feeling slightly defensive. He had spoken about promises this morning and how military life provided very few. That was talking about their future, wasn’t it?

  “Ivy?”

  She heard him call her name, but chose to ignore it and busied herself opening a Styrofoam carton. Okay, so they’d never talked kids and big back yards, but they had murmured a few words about a future together. Kids were the future. She wanted them. But maybe he didn’t. The uncertainty made her hands tremble.

  “Yum, cannolis. That must be dessert.” She closed the lid and moved on to the next box.

  “Ivy.” This time he reached across the table and took her chin in his hand. He tipped her face up so that she had to meet his gaze. “You have something to tell me?”

  She could feel the tension radiating off him and didn’t understand it. It flustered her, made her voice thin, her hands pick at the stack of napkins she’d dropped on the table. And it didn’t help that his eyes were sharp, penetrating, as though he could pull answers from hers.

  “Tell you? I just told you a whole lot,” she said. “I told you everything.” While he, meanwhile, had said nothing. Not that she had expected him to. Nor would she pressure him. He liked taking his time. He was thoughtful. He examined every aspect of a situation before committing or commenting. Fine. It was a quality that made a strong leader, which she had no doubt he was. But sometimes it really sucked, like when it came to intimate relationships and one in the couple was waiting for confirmation.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  Ivy sat back, slipping from his hold but maintaining eye contact.

  “You’re kidding, right?” The words seemed to explode from her lips. “We’re one week in. We wouldn’t even know something like that. Not yet.” So that was the reason for the wide-eyed stare. She’d scared him, and something about that made her feel like she was sinking through a bottomless well. She blinked back tears and struggled to take the emotion out of her voice. “Don’t worry, Jake. We were careful. Every time. I’m on the Pill.”

  She disconnected then. Lowered her head and set about finding the main course of their lunch, not that she could eat anything at this point. She tried to remember that they really hadn’t known each other long. She thought back to their conversation at dinner, before they’d ever made love. He had teased her about feet and fetishes and the fact that they still had a lot to learn about each other. She should have listened to him then, even if it didn’t feel right. Even if it felt, in her heart, like she’d known Jake forever.

  “Ivy—“

  “Forget it, Jake.” She opened a container and found tostada salad. “I thought it would be better if we talked. It’s hard for me not to, especially when you get so tied up inside yourself. But it was a bad idea.” She looked at him across the table. It was odd—communication was supposed to draw you closer to the one you loved—so how could they talk and Jake still hover somewhere out of reach. And why couldn’t she just respect that distance was what he needed from time to

  time?

  Because she felt threatened. As though, with Jake’s silence came recriminations. Regrets. A complete reversal in where they were headed. But maybe that wasn’t so. Her own words came back to her, we’re one week in. Love doesn’t come without its adjustments. She needed to remember that. And maybe the silences she found so unsettling were rooted in the silences of her childhood. Huge troughs of silence that should have been filled with words of love.

  Ivy was good, now, at figuring herself out. At taking stock and fine-tuning her direction. She could do it here and now, too.

  It wasn’t pulling away from each other, not exactly, but it was pulling back and regrouping—exactly what Jake was doing—and it had its merits. And so she took her first shaky steps toward that place where maybe she could find objectivity, even if it felt like she was really hiding.

  “You want half?” She looked up from the salad. Jake was sitting back, watching her.

  “What just happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One minute you were all fired up, and now you’re—not.”

  “I’m following your lead,” she told him. “Learning patience.” And relying on that hard-won confidence she’d cultivated in herself. She really didn’t have to know everything, she could trust—in herself and in Jake. In the future. “And listening to my own words. We’ve only known each other a week,” she pointed out.

  “Eight days,” he corrected. “And if we’re counting hours like their dates, we’ve been going out for six weeks.”

  She felt a frown crease her forehead. “How do you figure?”

  “Forty-plus hours together. An average date being three hours, then we’ve had nineteen so far, spread out at 3 a week. . .”

  His words trailed off. Ivy liked his thinking.

  “Well, we’ve spent some of that time sleeping.”

  “Counts,” he insisted. “There is nothing sweeter than falling asleep with you in my arms, Ivy. Or waking with you curled up next to me. You settle me, and I like that.”

  She wasn’t so sure about his choice of words. She liked to think they lifted each other up. Jake certainly brought out the best in her.


  He reached across the table and smoothed the knot of tension between her eyebrows. “It’s a good thing, Ivy. With you, I have a peace I’ve never felt before, and a sense of purpose, of my life being something bigger than it was.”

  Wow. Now those were good words. And even if he hadn’t said it, she could read love between the lines. It would make waiting for his declaration a lot easier. And wait, she would, with a measured distance—if she could manage it.

  She closed her hand over his and moved it down to her lips where she placed a kiss in his palm. Then she released him.

  “Let’s eat.”

  She divided the salad, moving half to a paper plate she’d found in the bag, and handed it to him.

  “There’s a shrimp fajita in there, too,” he said and glanced at his watch. “You’re working at seven?”

  She nodded. “And tomorrow I have a split shift to pick up at three.”

  “I’ll be on base from six tomorrow morning until six Friday morning. More maneuvers,” he explained. “What time do we leave for Vegas?”

  She shrugged. “I usually nap, but leave before the bottle-neck on the 15. Maybe one o’clock?”

  “You want me to set up the hotel?” he offered, but Ivy wanted to do it. He was always looking out for her and she wanted to do something nice for him.

  “I’ll surprise you,” she said.

  “I have to report early Monday morning,” he told her. “Next week is seven to four for me. You have any nights off?”

  She’d work a standard split on Tuesday and Thursday. “I’ll be off at seven those nights.”

  “Let’s catch a movie,” he suggested.

  Another regular date. She liked those. “What do you want to see?”

  They decided on a thriller starring two of Ivy’s favorite actors.

  And lunch continued with similar talk and only light touches. Jake stayed long enough to