The Return Page 5

  What the hell did one say to a man you’d never really liked who was likely to die any day now?

  “Yeah.”

  Assuming that was his last word, she turned to leave.

  Froze when he blurted out, “Wait, girl.”

  She turned around.

  “Jacob.”

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Jacob.”

  “What about him?”

  “Can you...?” Maybe the conversation was too much for him. He was trailing off, like he didn’t have the energy to even finish a sentence.

  “Can I what, sir?”

  “Make sure he’s okay. Not sure if he is or not.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me, girl. Make sure he’s okay.”

  Ria swallowed so hard it hurt her throat. She shifted from foot to foot to give herself a moment to figure out what to say. “I think he’s okay. He seems like he’s done pretty well for himself.”

  “But is he happy?”

  Her throat was aching now. Almost unbearably. “I... I don’t know.”

  “Find out.” Mr. Worth’s face twisted as he readjusted positions in bed. He must be in some sort of pain. “You were always the one who made him happy. So find out for me.”

  “I... Um... Okay. I’ll... try.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say. She wanted to say that she was the last person in the world who should be put in this position. But the man was dying. He was clearly in pain. He didn’t have much time left.

  She simply didn’t have the heart to tell the man no—to tell anyone no—in those conditions.

  “Good. Thanks.” He turned his head away and closed his eyes.

  And that was clearly the end of the strange encounter. Ria left the room, feeling shaky and torn.

  What the hell was she supposed to do? She and Jacob weren’t close anymore. He’d hurt her more than anyone else ever had.

  But Mr. Worth clearly felt guilty about something connected to Jacob, and Ria couldn’t help but wonder what it was.

  Plus she hated the thought of Jacob being unhappy. No matter what he’d done, she’d loved him a lot, and those feelings linger, far longer than we ever want them to.

  She was saying goodbye to Martha when she heard a pounding sound from somewhere below her. “What’s that?”

  “Jacob. Working in the basement. Place is a mess. He’s been trying to fix some things up.”

  “Oh.” She paused, feeling like she was torn in two.

  “You wanna say hi to him? You can go on down.” Martha wasn’t a lady who smiled very often, but her eyes looked almost sympathetic now. Like maybe she could see how torn Ria was.

  The last thing Ria wanted was another awkward conversation with Jacob, but there was a compulsion inside her that she couldn’t deny.

  It was pulling her. Hard.

  Pulling her toward Jacob.

  So she finally nodded. “Okay. I guess I will.”

  JACOB HAD BEEN WORKING in the basement of the old house for most of the day.

  Not only was it stuffed full of decades’ worth of junk, but it was also in woeful disrepair. It leaked in all four corners of the basement. Support beams were rotting, and the cracks in the cement floor were appalling.

  This was far more than a one-man job, but Jacob had nothing better to do with his time, so he figured he’d start on some of the most basic repairs.

  It was late afternoon and he was replacing one of the beams when a voice from behind him startled him.

  “Jacob.”

  He knew the voice. Knew the sound of her saying his name. Heard it sometimes in his sleep.

  Whirling around with his heart in his throat, he saw Ria standing a few steps up from the bottom of the stairs.

  He dropped his hammer with a loud clatter. The beam he was working on started to fall too, but he clumsily managed to grab it and hold it in place.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Ria’s pretty face twisted as she registered his shock. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. Here, let me help.”

  She hurried down the last few steps but didn’t count on the mess on the basement floor. Her foot landed on an ancient newspaper that had fluttered off the four-foot-tall pile of them nearby. She slipped. Wobbled as she tried to keep her balance. Then went down, landing hard on her butt.

  “Shit,” Jacob muttered, hurrying over to her in alarm.

  The beam he’d been holding crashed down onto the cement.

  Ria had cried out as she slipped. Then she winced at the crash from his dropped beam. She looked stunned and pained as he reached her and knelt down beside her on the floor.

  But then she seemed to process the ridiculous debacle. He saw the succession of expressions on her face. Heard a choked-off laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” he muttered, his heart still pounding from the fear of watching her fall and his cheeks warming at the ridiculous figure he must have made. “You could have really hurt yourself.”

  “I didn’t. I just slipped on a stupid newspaper.” Her shoulders shook with repressed amusement. “You didn’t have to drop everything—including the ceiling supports—and rush over to save me.”

  “It was just a beam. I think the ceiling will hold.” He was relaxing now. Almost smiling at the warm amusement and ironic resignation spilling out of her eyes. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Just bruised my... pride.” Despite her words, she winced visibly as she tried to get up.

  He watched her closely as he helped her to her feet. Then he stiffened as he saw a trail of blood running down her leg. “You’re bleeding!”

  She looked down at herself, clearly trying to process what had happened to her. “Am I? I don’t know— Oh.” She pulled her skirt up slightly to reveal a cut on the side of her slim thigh. “It’s from that old bed frame. Must have hit it as I went down. What’s it doing in the middle of the floor like that?”

  “I have no idea. The whole place is a hazard. It needs months’ worth of work. I’m really sorry you got hurt.”

  He was sorry. And worried about her. And also ridiculously gratified that she was talking to him like this. Naturally. For real.

  And his body was also noticing the delicious lines of her bare legs.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Getting turned on when she was obviously hurt.

  “I’m okay. Just need a couple of Band-Aids, I think.” She slanted him a little look that was still so familiar, even though he hadn’t seen it in years. “And maybe an ice pack for my ass.”

  He choked on a laugh and put an arm around her to guide her back to the stairs. “Let’s go fix you up.”

  RIA’S BUTT WAS REALLY hurting. She’d landed hard. And now that the shock was wearing off, the cut on her thigh was starting to sting as well.

  But she was also buzzing with excitement at the feel of Jacob’s arm around her.

  Which was ridiculous.

  She shouldn’t be feeling that way. She didn’t like the man anymore. Yes, he was hot. Of course he was hot. He was even hotter than she remembered with his broad shoulders, big arms, and scarred, tanned skin. That cleft in his chin. The way his jeans molded the thick muscles of his thighs. There was no one in the world hotter than him.

  But you didn’t get excited about a man you didn’t like.

  Right?

  Surely that wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

  She went upstairs and down the hall with him until they ended up in the kitchen. She sat in the chair he indicated and accepted the wad of damp paper towels he offered her before he left to get some bandages.

  She mopped up the blood on her thigh, relieved that the cut wasn’t very deep. It wouldn’t need stitches or anything.

  When Jacob returned, he knelt on the floor and, without asking, applied antibiotic cream to the cut before he covered it with three Band-Aids.

  She watched him, her breath caught in her throat. He was so close she could smell him—effort and soap and the still-familiar scent of Jacob. There was a sheen of sweat on
his skin. She could see it glinting in the artificial light of the room. He was breathing quickly. His shoulders rose and fell as he worked.

  She was shaking and she didn’t know why.

  “Does it hurt really bad?” Jacob asked after a minute, more gravel than normal in his voice.

  “No. I’m okay.” She wished she didn’t sound quite so breathless.

  He looked up at her face, still kneeling beside her chair. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was the mess in our basement.”

  “Again, not your fault.”

  His eyes looked steel gray at the moment. Strangely soft as they gazed up at her.

  She could no more restrain the impulse than she could keep the sun from rising. She reached out and let her fingers trail along the line of the long scar on his jaw. “How did you get this?”

  He sucked in his breath audibly at the first touch of her fingers. He held himself very still. “It was a line on a fishing boat. In a storm.”

  “It looks terrible.”

  “It could have killed me.”

  “Really?” Her chest ached at the thought. At the idea of there being no more Jacob Worth in the world. “I’m glad it didn’t.” The pads of her fingers were still gently stroking his scar.

  “Are you?” There was some sort of tension in his body. She could feel it radiating off him, toward her.

  It was all she could do not to cup his face and lean down into a kiss.

  She wanted to so badly. Right now, at this moment, he felt like the Jacob she’d known and loved before, despite the hardness of his body and the scars on his skin.

  But he wasn’t that Jacob. Eight years had passed.

  And she wasn’t a silly girl anymore. She wouldn’t let herself be dragged into more pain from nothing more than a man’s body and a certain softness of a pair of hazel eyes.

  With a quick intake of breath, she dropped her hand. “Thanks. For bandaging me up, I mean.”

  He obviously understood the shift in her tone. He stood up and backed off. “Of course. You need an ice pack?”

  “No. I’m fine.” She stood up, smoothing down her skirt and suddenly wishing she had more clothes on. She needed some more layers of protection here.

  “Why are you even here?” Jacob asked. “Did you need something?”

  “Oh. No. Your grandfather called me over to talk about flowers at his funeral.”

  Jacob clearly had no idea about this plan. His face was utterly shocked. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I have no idea why, but that’s what he wanted. Didn’t want anything too pretty or over-the-top.”

  “Sounds like him.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I didn’t want to stop by and not say... say hi.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she could hardly tell him that his grandfather wanted her to find out if he was happy or not. “So that’s why I went down to the basement. Sorry it ended up such a mess.”

  “Not your fault.” He searched her face for a moment before dropping his eyes. “Did you want... I mean, you could... stay for dinner if you wanted.”

  Her heart jumped dramatically. She had to breathe a few times before she found the strength to reply, “I better not. I’ve got stuff to do this evening.”

  “Okay.”

  She risked a glance at him. Couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not.

  As a boy, he’d been easy to read. She’d always been able to tell what he was thinking. And the adoration in his eyes had been obvious to her, even before they’d started dating.

  But she couldn’t read him anymore. He’d closed himself down. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t her business anymore.

  He wasn’t the boy she used to know, and she needed to keep reminding herself of that fact.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said at last.

  “Yeah. See you.”

  She got out of there before she did something stupid.

  Five

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Jacob’s grandfather took a turn for the worse.

  Despite the decline of his body, his mind had remained sharp. Alert. But on Saturday morning, he seemed really out of it, and he got worse as the day went on.

  Jacob was worried enough that he didn’t leave the house all day. He worked some more in the basement, but he and Martha checked on the old man regularly. It wasn’t until four thirty in the afternoon that his grandfather woke up enough to have a real conversation.

  When Jacob looked in and saw he was awake, he got him the fresh glass of water he requested and then sat down to keep him company for a while.

  His grandfather asked about Martha. Asked about the progress on the basement. Asked about the weather. Then he fell into silence for a while.

  Jacob felt a weird twisting of dread in his stomach. Like his grandfather might fade away at any moment and never come back.

  “You see your girl yesterday?” he asked out the blue.

  Jacob was so startled by the abrupt question that he jerked in his chair. “What?”

  “Your girl? You see her yesterday?”

  “Ria, you mean?” Of course that was who the old man meant. Jacob had never had another girl. Not in any way that mattered. “Yeah, she stopped by the basement to say hi yesterday after she talked to you.”

  “Still a spark there?”

  Jacob sat for a minute to think about that question. Yes, there was still a spark between him and Ria. More like a damned bonfire. Yesterday it had taken all the control he had not to drag her down onto the floor and screw her senseless. He’d wanted to so much he’d been shaking with it, but the lust had been compounded by so many other emotions. Ones that were much more complex. Bittersweet. Dangerous.

  He finally said, “That was over a long time ago.”

  “Didn’t have to end things with her, you know.”

  Jacob stiffened. “Are you serious? You kicked me out because I was too soft, and I know perfectly well that the softness you had the most problem with were my feelings for Ria. And now you’re acting like you didn’t get exactly what you wanted?”

  “Nothing wrong with having a girl. Just wanted you to toughen up some.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “I know that. But you don’t look happy.”

  There was a long silence before Jacob finally said softly, “I’m not.”

  “That’s not what I wanted.” His grandfather was winded, like it took effort to take every breath. “Just wanted you to stand on your own two feet. My dad did the same to me.”

  “And did that make you happy?”

  His grandfather met his gaze. The look was poignant, aching. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  When his grandfather started to wheeze, Jacob stood up in alarm, wanting to do something to help but having no idea what to do. Instead, he had to wait it out.

  Recovering, his grandfather gasped, “If you want her back, just go get her. She’s not taken yet.”

  “It’s too late. She’s not going to forgive me for leaving her the way I did. I get that you feel bad about what happened, but it’s too late to change things. What happened with her isn’t all your fault anyway. I made my own decisions. I didn’t have to leave her, and I did.” It took effort to say that since Jacob still felt the pressure of bitterness in his chest when he remembered how he’d been treated.

  But he’d never lied to himself in this.

  He’d been hurt. Very badly. But that didn’t mean he had a right to turn around and hurt Ria in the same way.

  And that was exactly what he’d done. Everything had hurt too much, so he’d run from it—hoped that distance would make it hurt less. It had been a boy’s move. A coward’s move. Pain wasn’t something you could run away from.

  But he’d tried. He’d left Ria behind with everything else, and he could never take it back.

  “I’m sorry, son,” his grandfather rasped.

  Jacob turned his head away with a little jerk. “I know y
ou are.”

  “I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I tried my best. I messed up, but I tried.”

  Emotion was rising inside him so intensely and so suddenly that Jacob had to clench his hands to keep them from shaking. “I know you did.”

  “Get her back.” The feeble voice was fading now. The hazel eyes were closing. “If you still want her, get her back. Do better than I did.”

  Trembling helplessly, Jacob jumped to his feet and reached out to check his grandfather’s pulse. Faint, but still there.

  He’d fallen asleep or passed out or something, but he wasn’t gone yet.

  After a few minutes, he went to find Martha, asking her to sit with his grandfather for a while. She was happy to, so he grabbed a six-pack of beer out of the refrigerator and started to walk.

  He ended up a few miles away, in a spot he hadn’t realized he was heading toward. A secluded nook outside town on a hill but protected from the wind by surrounding boulders. It was the perfect vantage point to see a small lake. He and Ria had found the spot in high school, and they’d gone there often to be alone. Ria would always bring a blanket for them to sit on. Sometimes they’d bring a picnic.

  They’d had sex in this spot the evening of graduation. Their one and only time.

  He didn’t know why or how he’d ended up there, but he sat down on the damp grass, his back against one of the boulders, and he started to drink.

  RIA WAS HAVING A VERY bad day. She’d spent the night tossing and turning and thinking about Jacob, sometimes burning with a desire for him that wouldn’t go away and sometimes crying over how it had felt when he left her.

  The shop was open for four hours on Saturday morning since they often got good business then, so she was busy enough in the morning to ignore the state of her emotions. But the afternoon was empty, and the only thing that was filling it were anxious thoughts of Jacob.

  She was supposed to be helping Belinda reorganize the kitchen cabinets in their parents’ old house—which they still shared—but she wasn’t very good company, and finally Belinda demanded that she just leave until she was in a decent mood.