I press my front against her back, and she leans into me, molding her body to mine. “And I’ve been lying here waiting for you all night. Is Hank asleep?” I whisper, as I kiss the side of her neck. She shivers in my arms, and I see goose bumps rise on hers. I take the baby monitor from her hand and lay it on my dresser.
“Yes,” she whispers, and then she spins in my arms. “He’ll sleep for a few hours.” Her hands wrap around my neck as she pulls my face down to hers.
I lift her shirt over her head, and then pull her sleep shorts down so she can step out of them. She holds onto my shoulders until I stand back up. Then I scoop her up and hitch her hips around my waist. “Unfortunately, the first time isn’t going to take a few hours. It’ll be minutes. Seconds, even.”
“Oh, thank God,” she says. She holds tightly to my shoulders until I lay her on my bed. I stare down at her perfect body, made even more perfect by the birth of children, the passage of time, and my absolute love for her. “I don’t want to wait, Jake,” she says. She rolls over and her bare bottom lifts ever so slightly. “I don’t want that stare-into-my-eyes kind of sex, Jake. I want quick and raw and hot.” She buries her face in her arms and her round bottom clenches. “Fuck me, Jake.”
I reach into my nightstand drawer and retrieve a condom. “Yes, ma’am,” I say. I start to tear the package open with my teeth, and a tiny little knock sounds on my door.
Katie squeals and rolls to the edge of the bed, and then she drops down onto the floor with a thump. She tugs my covers until they fall onto the floor with her.
“Shit,” I grit out. I pull my shirt back over my head and put my pajama pants back on, and then I crack the door ever so slightly.
Trixie stands in my doorway. She has a blanket clutched in one fist and her thumb is stuck solidly in her mouth. “There’s a noise under my bed,” she says around her thumb.
I drop down to crouch in front of her. “What kind of noise?”
“It’s the blue raccoon. He wants to steal my covers.” She holds up her blanket. “See?”
“Do you need some blue raccoon spray?”
She nods and tucks her blanket next to her cheek. “Yes, please.”
“Go back to bed,” I say. “I’ll be right there.”
I close my door, drop to my knees on my bed and crawl across to look down at Katie. “You okay down there?”
She uncovers her head and blows a lock of hair from her eyes. “Yes. I’ll just wait right here.”
I chuckle and scurry back across the bed. “I’ll be right back.”
I go and tuck Trixie back in bed, give Sally a pat on the head, spray some blue raccoon spray, and then lean down next to Trixie’s bed. I pull the covers up under her chin. “All better?”
She nods and snuggles deeper into her pillow. “Yes. All better.”
“Sleep tight,” I say.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” she replies.
I check on Alex, shove his foot back onto the bed, and leave their door cracked behind me as I step back out.
“Hey, Jake?” Trixie calls.
I turn back.
“I love you,” she says quietly.
My heart clenches. “I love you too, Trix,” I say. I pull the door almost shut, leaving about an inch of space.
I fell in love with Katie’s kids about the same time I fell in love with her.
But first things first.
I have a naked woman hiding behind my bed on the floor. And I really want to get back to her.
I close my bedroom door and crawl across the bed again. Then I cross my hands and lay my chin on them. “You still awake down there?”
She throws the covers down from her face again. Her eyes skim my chest. “Why do you have clothes on?” she asks.
“Well, there was an issue with a blue raccoon and I had to go deal with it. But now I’m back. Where were we?” I tap my temple and pretend to think about it. “Were we playing cards?”
“Jake,” she says, nearly choking on her laughter. “If you don’t come down here and fuck me soon, I’m going to...”
I smile and stare down at her. “You’re going to what?”
“I’m going to come up there and fuck you,” she says.
And that is all it takes. The erection I lost when Trixie knocked is back in full force.
I roll onto my back, kick my pajama pants off, pull my shirt over my head, roll a condom down my length, and wait.
Katie huffs and gets to her feet. She stands beside the bed with her hands on her hips. She stares at my junk. “You know,” she says, “this is the first time I’ve actually seen your dick.”
I lift my arms to rest the back of my head in my hands. “You’re impressed, right?”
She crawls across the bed on all fours. “I’d be more impressed if you were inside me.”
She straddles my hips and rests her palms flat on my chest, so that her weight is balanced on her hands.
“That can be arranged,” I tell her.
She leans down and kisses me, and then she reaches between us and takes me in her fist. She pulls my dick away from my belly, until it’s standing straight up, and then she sinks slowly down on top of me. I watch as she takes me inside, using my thumbs to spread her open, and as I disappear inside her, I have to shut my eyes to keep from coming.
Her hair has come loose from its braid and it’s hanging down around her creamy shoulders. Her full breasts bounce a little as she sinks down and then rises up.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. I hold on to her hips, squeezing tightly.
She stops moving. “What’s wrong?” she asks, her brow furrowing.
“We have to slow it down a little,” I warn her. “I’m going to come.”
“Oh,” she breathes. Then she grins, and I swear I love her a little more right then. She starts to ride me, her pussy wrapped tight around my cock. “You totally should, Jake. Then we can do it again.”
I pull her down so she lies on my chest, hook my arm around her, and flip us both over. I hitch her leg up by my hip, and then press it to her chest. “Is this okay?” I ask. I don’t wait for her answer as I push fast and deep inside, until I’m buried to the hilt.
Katie cries out, and buries her mouth against my arm to muffle those tiny little noises. Her eyelids flutter closed and her mouth falls open, and God, she’s so fucking beautiful.
She’s tight and hot and slippery inside, and I pull out and push back in, burying myself deep in her again. She rocks forward in the bed with every stroke, holding tightly to my forearm with one hand as she pulls me into her with her other hand on my ass.
“Open your eyes,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “I can’t.” A tear rolls down her temple.
I stop and let her leg fall down around my hip. I bracket her face with my hands, but she still won’t open her eyes and look at me. “Did I hurt you?”
She shakes her head, but another tear escapes.
“Then why are you crying?” I ask.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she says.
“Try me.” I press my lips to hers and she kisses me back. I’m still buried deep inside her, and her walls give me a little squeeze. “Look at me, Katie. Talk to me.”
“Just finish, Jake,” she says. “Just finish. I’m fine.”
I will not just finish. “If you think I’m the type of man who will just finish while you’re crying, you don’t know me at all.” I pull out of her and fall onto the bed. She rolls to face me. I kiss the tip of her nose. “Is this about him?”
She smiles softly at me and shakes her head, nibbling on her lower lip. “No, it’s not about him.”
Suddenly, I don’t know which him we’re talking about. “Your husband?” I ask tentatively.
She shakes her head. “No.” She wipes her eyes. “I just never thought…” She sniffles and stops talking.
“Never thought what?”
“I never thought I’d be lucky enough to fall in love a second time. I mean, re
ally… How many people find it twice?”
“You think you found it twice?”
She nods. “I love you, Jake.”
I kiss her lips softly. “I love you too.”
She wipes her nose. “I’m sorry I cried. I was just feeling so damn grateful, and so full of it.”
“Well, you were full of something,” I say. I hitch her leg up over my hip and my dick settles in her cleft. I rock forward until it brushes her clit.
“Do you think we can keep this?” she asks.
“Define this.”
“This…feeling, this… I don’t know how to explain it.”
I roll her onto her back and settle between her thighs, nudging gently until I can slide inside. Her legs fall open wide, cradling me against her. “Yeah, I think we can keep it. It’s real. It’s not going anywhere.”
“You promise?” she asks, and tears well up again.
“I swear it.”
She holds her eyes closed tightly for a moment, and then she opens them and stares into mine. “Make love to me, Jake.”
I slam into her, and she takes me to the hilt. I kiss her to quiet her, and she whimpers against my lips with each deep stroke into her body.
“I’m going to…” She gasps. Her lips fall open and her sweet breath warms my chin. “Oh, God, Jake,” she says and then she comes apart around me. She squeezes me tight, shuddering as she takes me in, and when she relaxes around me, I come too. Deep inside her, with her, on top of her… God, it’s just her.
“Jesus,” I say, as I let my weight fall on top of her. She pulls my lips to hers and kisses me. “That was amazing.”
A knock sounds on my door, and I drop my face into Katie’s neck. “Oh, my God,” I whisper. “Not right now.”
“Jake,” a voice calls out. “Do you know where my mom is?”
Katie shoves my shoulder. “That’s Gabby. Move.”
Katie covers my naked body, grabs my robe off the door and shrugs into it. She opens the door for Gabby, and when she turns back to look at me a moment later, her face goes completely white. “Jake,” she says, “Gabby thinks someone is outside her window.”
I try to shake the post coital laziness from my brain, dispose of the condom, and get dressed. Then I get my gun out of the locked box I put in my closet last week, and check to be sure it’s loaded.
“What are you doing, Jake?” Katie asks.
“I’m going to see who’s outside.”
Katie grabs my arm. “Don’t go outside.”
“It’s fine, Katie,” I tell her. I kiss her quickly. Then I let myself outside.
I walk quietly to the window, and get out my small flashlight.
And my blood runs cold. All the flowers under Gabby’s window have been stomped flat. Someone has been here.
Aside from Pop, there’s only one other person in the world I would trust to protect my family. Despite everything that happened, he will protect them.
I hurry to Fred’s cabin and knock on the door. He opens it a crack, and I say, “I need your help.”
Together, Fred and I search the campground, the lake area, and part of the woods.
While we search, I tell Fred the story of Cole and explain what’s going on.
“He’s gone,” I tell Fred. “At least for tonight.”
“He’ll be back,” Fred replies. “What are you going to do?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea.”
“Well,” Fred says, “when I go quail hunting, I don’t just sit there and wait for them to fly up so I can shoot them. I flush them out.”
“What do you mean?”
“What does Cole want more than anything?”
A shiver runs up my spine. “Katie.”
“So, you plan the biggest wedding you can, set a date, put announcements in the papers here and at home, and then you wait. Flush him out. He’ll show up. He won’t let her marry you. Not without a fight.”
Katie walks up behind me. The moonlight shines on her face. “Hey, Katie?” I say.
“Yeah, Jake?” she replies. She latches on to my arm.
“We need to get married.”
“What?” Her brow furrows.
“It’s the best way to catch Cole.”
Her eyes avoid mine. “Oh.”
“We’ll set a trap. And you will be the bait.” Surely she understands why this is necessary.
“No,” she says quickly. Then she walks away.
44
Katie
Jake follows me, calling my name as I walk back to the big house.
“Katie! Would you stop?”
He breaks into a run, but I’m moving faster. He grabs my arm and jerks me to a halt.
“Let me go,” I snarl at him as he tries to pull me to him.
Jake stops and stares down at me. “Katie?” he asks, his voice going soft. “Are you…angry with me?”
I cross my arms beneath my breasts and look toward the lake. The sun is about to rise. Jake has spent the whole night searching for Cole, and now his night is ruined. It’s daytime. “Why would I be angry with you, Jake?”
He scratches his head. “Honestly, Katie,” he says, “I have no idea. But if you’ll just tell me, I’ll apologize.”
I poke my finger into his chest so hard that he lifts his hand to rub it. “That was the worst proposal ever,” I say, and then I start to cry.
I’ve had to hold it together on my own for so damn long. And now…now I can’t. I just can’t. I sink down on the front porch steps and drop my head into my hands and sob. Jake sits down tentatively beside me and waits quietly. He tries to put his arm around me, but I scoot to the side and shrug him off.
“Okay,” he whispers, “I’ll just stay over here.” He scoots as far away on the step as he can, pressing his side against the handrails.
Finally, when I can speak, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and say to him, “You know, when all this started, I thought I deserved it.”
“Nobody deserves—” But I hold up a finger and he bites his lips together.
“I was very happily married. I had everything. I had three beautiful kids, and a husband who loved me. We had a happy home in a nice place. We made enough money to support our family. We loved and we lived and we laughed.” I snort out a crazy little snicker. “And then it all ended. Like a bath that’s warm and bubbly and wonderful, it suddenly went cold. The water ran cold, and then it ran out. And then it was me and my kids and we were trying to survive. Just trying to survive.”
I get up and start to pace.
“I was military, Jake,” I say. “I know how to fight and how to shoot a gun. I could have taken Cole out so many times, but if I did, I’d lose my kids. My kids would be alone, so I couldn’t do that. It absolutely kills me that I had to tuck my tail and run.”
I walk back and forth in front of Jake, and chew on my fingernails between words.
“He thought he had me so many times. He thought I was beaten, and having to pretend to let him win…that killed me too. But by the time I realized how crazy he is, I was already pregnant, and I had another life to protect. I couldn’t knee him in the nuts or bang him over the head with a frying pan. I couldn’t poison him or do any of the other things I really, really wanted to do to him. I spent one night with him, the condom broke, and then wham! I was tied to him for the rest of my life.”
Jake scratches his nose.
I gesture to Jake, and then resume my pacing. “And then there you were, a white knight in swim trunks. You showed up, and you made me do the one thing I didn’t want to do!”
Jake sits quietly.
“You want to know what that one thing was?” I ask him.
“Am I allowed to talk now?” he asks.
“Shut up,” I mutter. “You made me fall in love with you! How could you do it? How could you do that to me, Jake?”
Jake swipes a hand down his face. Is he wiping away a smile? I stop in front of him and glare at him. The smile vanishes.
I gesture
to the air around us. “This place,” I say. “It’s like stepping back in time. Before Jeff. Before Cole. Before my life went to shit. Only it’s not the past, because I have the evidence of my happy life, my kids, right here with me. It’s like the past meets the present.” I slap my hands together so hard that Jake jumps. “But we can’t be happy, because Cole is still out there. He’s waiting to mess it all up.”
I run a hand across my forehead. “You know, I haven’t cried over Cole one single time since all this started, and then you asked me to marry you for the sole purpose of dragging Cole out into the open. How dare you!”
Jake finally looks up and into my eyes. “What?”
“You, the white knight, you showed up and you made me want all the things I hadn’t wanted since Jeff died. You made me love your football arm with Alex and your doing diapers with Hank and your talking with boys about Gabby and your blue raccoon spray with Trixie. And then there was the support you offered and the crazy-good kisses. And I didn’t stand a chance! Not a chance in hell! How could you do that to me, Jake?”
I flop down onto the porch step and heave out a sigh.
“And then there was the sex,” I say. “Oh my God.” I bury my face in my hands.
Jake’s brows lift, but he says nothing.
“It was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Jake grins, but still he says nothing.
“It was…amazing. You are amazing. You are the man I love. And you want me to marry you so that we can flush a madman out of hiding? Are you serious?”
I lean back, exhausted.
Jake sits quietly for a few minutes. He says nothing.
“You can talk now,” I finally mutter.
“So…” Jake says slowly. When I don’t interrupt him or tell him to shut up, he keeps going. “You do love me.”
I nod my head, unable to speak for the huge lump that’s suddenly in my throat.
“That’s good.” He plucks a piece of grass out of the flowerbed and rolls it between his fingers. He nods his head toward the lake. “Come and walk with me. The sun’s coming up.”
We walk hand in hand in silence down to the dock, and he sits down, dangling his feet over the water. He pats the space next to him, and I sit down beside him. He’s quiet. The lake is still in the early morning. The sky is painted with streaks of orange and pink.