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Fourteen
Jake saw his companion flinch and knew he had his work cut out for him. Nikki’s body language was guarded in the extreme. Her chin was up, and her eyes were dark with anxiety. He saw her throat work.
“No, you’re not,” she said quietly. “You’ve been under a tremendous amount of pressure, and you’re trying to make a grand gesture. It’s not necessary to placate me in order to see your daughter.”
His temper flared. “That’s not a very complimentary assessment of my character. I know my past behavior hasn’t been exemplary, Nik, but I’ve changed. Or I’m trying to,” he added, in the spirit of honesty. “I love you.”
Tears spilled from her beautiful Irish-hued eyes, rolling down her cheeks unchecked. She swiped at the dampness with the back of her hand and reached for her purse and coat. “I can’t do this.”
“Don’t leave me, Nik,” he begged, his heart like shards of glass in his chest. “Don’t be afraid of this, of us. We lost it all once before, but our time has come. You have to believe me. Things are different now.”
She didn’t slide out of the booth, but she was close to bolting.
“What makes you think so, Jake? I don’t see it.”
He swallowed hard. “I spoke to Josh this morning. Before we went to court. I told him I had changed my mind about Black Crescent. That I was prepared to take over as CEO.” Even now, his stomach churned about his decision, but he wouldn’t let Nikki misinterpret his nerves. “Josh was thrilled and supportive,” he said.
Nikki seemed less so. She gnawed her bottom lip. Her restless fingers shredded a paper napkin. “You’ll be bored with it in a month. And you’ll disappear again.”
It was his turn to flinch. “Wow,” he said, stunned at how much she could hurt him. “You’re not making this easy.”
Now she was angry. “There’s nothing easy about us, Jake.”
“I heard you say ‘I love you,’” he muttered. “That night I made love to you at your house. You thought I was asleep.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. When she looked at him again, he finally saw how much his abandonment had cost her. “It was the sex talking.”
“Don’t be flip. Not now. I heard you say it, and I was too chickenshit scared to say it back. But I’m saying it now. I love you. I’m not leaving. I’m not running away. If it takes me ten months or ten years to convince you, I’ll do it. I. Love. You.”
“Stop,” she begged, her gaze agonized.
He clenched his hand on the table as he resisted the urge to pound something. “When we ran into each other in Atlantic City five years ago, it was like being struck by lightning. You were everything I had left behind, everything I had lost. That night we spent together was incredible. But you weren’t a teenager anymore. You’d lived your life far more bravely than I had. I was knocked on my ass and swamped with so many feelings I couldn’t handle it. I’m sorry I left you, Nikki. I’ve regretted it every day since.”
Nikki put her face in her hands, her shoulders bowed. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought she was crying again. When she finally looked up at him, her mascara was smudged, and her eyes were still wet. “How can I believe you, Jake? I want to, but I’m afraid. Afraid you’ll smash my heart again. I don’t know how many more times it can recover.”
Slowly, he reached for his wallet. “Maybe this will convince you,” he said quietly. He opened the leather billfold and extracted a piece of paper that was ragged at the creases. It was yellow stationery with a row of pink daisies at the top. He handed it to Nikki. “Do you remember?”
She stared at the note, her eyes wide. Though the letter was upside down from Jake’s perspective, he didn’t need to read it. He had memorized the contents years ago. Nikki had slipped the plea to him at her father’s funeral.
In the days before smartphones and texting, she had written, “Take me with you to Europe...”
Her hands shook as she traced the girlish handwriting with a fingertip. “I can’t believe you kept this.”
He sat back and sighed. “I tried to throw it away a hundred times. The guilt crushed me when I looked at it. Over and over.”
“You shouldn’t have felt guilty. It was outrageous of me to ask.”
“Was it, Nikki?” He cocked his head and soaked in her grace and her courage, painfully aware of how his life might have turned out differently. “I kept this, too.” He handed her a graduation picture, wallet-size. It was Nikki, smiling at the camera, her hair vibrant, her eyes filled with joy.
“Oh, Jake.” She teared up again.
He inhaled sharply and dropped the last of his protective cloak of secrets. “I love you, Nikki Reardon. I suspected it in Atlantic City. I think I knew it deep down the moment I came back to Falling Brook and saw you face-to-face. And heard I had a daughter. But I couldn’t accept the truth.”
“But you—”
He waved a hand, cutting her off. “I’m not finished. I’ve loved you in one way or another my whole life, Nik. Everywhere I traveled, I wanted to share new adventures with you. Sunsets and storms. People and places. You were always in the back of my mind, those big emerald eyes telling me how much you cared. I was wrong, Nicole Marie Reardon. I was a coward. I let inertia keep me on a path that led nowhere.” He reached across the table, across the miles and years of loneliness. “I love you. I adore you, in fact. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Emma.”
And finally, at long last, the sun came out.
