A Sweet Life-kindle Read online

  Finally, she found her voice again. “You said no.” The words, the memories, came before she could clamp down on them. “You said you wouldn’t play dolls with me if someone was holding a gun to your head. You scared me.” And thrilled her in equal measure. Even then, she’d known he shouldn’t be talking about guns to a five-year-old girl, but Jake didn’t play by anyone else’s rules. Whereas, Sophie had rarely played outside those rules…until Chase’s wedding, when she’d chucked the rules in for desire.

  And love.

  “I only said that stuff to you because I hated the way I felt when you looked at me. The way I still feel every time I’m with you. Hell, Sophie, I feel it every time I even think about you, like I’ve finally found something, someone, who matters. Only, I’ve never had the first clue how to hold on to you. Or how to be worthy of you.”

  How long had she wanted to believe she mattered to him? To believe in impossible love becoming possible?

  Jake’s arms came around her as he sat on a kitchen chair and pulled her onto his lap, the wet towel squishing between their bodies. “I know I screwed this up. Big-time.” He brushed a trail of moisture from her face. “I’m an idiot, remember?”

  “No,” she had to say, “you’re not. You’re anything but that, Jake.”

  But it was as if she’d never spoken. “Let me make it up to you.” He stroked her hair, pulled her closer. “Please don’t be mad at me. Don’t push me away. Even if I deserve it.”

  Loving and hating someone at the same time was crazy. Sophie knew that. But she’d never been able to stop the way she felt about Jake.

  All at once, the week full of highs and lows, of excitement and fear, of joy and anger, came crashing down on her. She didn’t want to think about the ramifications of what he’d just done by talking to Zach, couldn’t even begin to process what it would mean to really and truly have Jake’s love.

  All she wanted was to feel.

  “I need you.” Her throat was thick with emotion. “Make love to me.”

  Maybe, she thought as she tossed the towel to the floor and frantically fumbled with his belt buckle, it would be easier to believe him if they were skin to skin, connected by flesh and heat and pleasure. Maybe then she’d be able to actually hold on to his words of love instead of feeling like they were simply skidding past her, flying out of reach before she could catch them.

  “Sophie, you know I want you. I always want you.” But instead of helping her strip his clothes off, he put his hands over hers. “But we don’t have to do th—”

  “Please.”

  She didn’t want to hit the pause button, couldn’t stand it if he tried to be rational rather than just taking her. She yanked his zipper down and pulled his shirt from his pants a beat before he finally gave her what she wanted and unzipped her skirt to push it down her hips. She shoved his jeans down to his thighs, then kicked off her shoes. His fingertips grazed the bare skin of her stomach, pulling her sweater over her head right before she yanked open the buttons on his long-sleeved shirt. A heartbeat later she was straddling his hips and sinking down onto him, her eyes closing as she took him inside.

  Yes, this was exactly what she needed right now. Pleasure to replace her confusion. Ecstasy to replace the fear.

  And yet, she remembered too late that sex with Jake had never been simple, had never just been about pleasure. They’d always been such a perfect fit, their bodies utterly in tune with each other even during that first stolen night in Napa.

  But this time it wasn’t just attraction that joined them, it wasn’t just the spark of arousal that made everything feel so good. It was the possibility that the magic between them was more than skin-deep, more than just hormones and unavoidable passion.

  “Sophie.” Jake groaned her name, and she was caught in his dark gaze as he stilled her frantic movements over him with strong hands on her hips. “You’re so beautiful.” He moved a hand to cup her breasts, tilting up to run his tongue over each nipple. “I love you. So, so much.” A flood of pure desperation pulled them closer together, wrapping around them as Jake buried his face against her chest and they shuddered against each other.

  ***

  When Jake led her into the shower a few minutes later, she got a chance to see the full extent of the damage he’d incurred from his fight with her brother. In addition to the horrible bruises all across his jaw and over one eye, the ribs on his right side were turning black and blue.

  “I can’t believe Zach did this to you.” She gently cleaned the cuts with a soft washcloth and soap, hating the way Jake winced at the sting.

  “You’re his sister. He feels like he’s let you down by not protecting you from a guy like me.”

  Anger welled up inside her again, not just at Zach for what he’d done to Jake, but at her entire family. “Why don’t any of them realize I can take care of myself?”

  “Don’t fault them for loving you.”

  But she was shaking her head. “Is it really love if there isn’t trust there, too?”

  Jake went completely still. “Sophie, I—”

  He cut himself off, and when she looked up at him, she saw his eyes flashing with emotion he’d tried to hide so many times before.

  But then his hands were on her hips, and he was turning her away from him before saying, “I’ve always wanted to wash your hair.”

  She knew what he was doing, avoiding yet another conversation they needed to have. About trusting each other not to do things like go to her brother behind her back. But his fingers massaging her scalp felt so good that she simply didn’t have the strength to make him stop.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She was already a step ahead of him, her eyes having closed the moment he’d started washing her. Suds and water ran down her shoulders, over her body, as he cleaned every inch of her skin, his touch so gentle, so sweet. Especially over her stomach.

  “You’ve grown bigger already.”

  She couldn’t miss the reverence in his voice. Maybe another time she could have made another pregnancy fetish joke, but not now, not when his joy was so pure. So honest.

  “I can’t wait to watch you grow even rounder, even softer.”

  Her stomach growled loudly, and he turned off the water, wrapping her in a towel. “Sounds like it’s time to feed you again.”

  “I have some eggs and cheese in the fridge.” She felt like her voice was coming from a mile away, like she was standing on the outside of her bathroom looking in at the two of them.

  Jake lowered his face to hers and kissed her so softly it was more of a breath than a kiss. “I’ll get working on dinner while you get dressed.”

  After he pulled his jeans back on and left the bathroom, she stared at herself in the foggy mirror. The blurred, partial image facing her was a perfect manifestation of how she was feeling.

  She’d just gotten exactly what she’d always wanted. Jake McCann had told her—repeatedly—that he loved her. She should be ecstatic. She should be leaping around her apartment in bliss.

  What was wrong with her?

  She felt like a block of cement had taken up residence in the pit of her belly, right between the two fetuses she’d seen on the ultrasound screen just a few days before. She hadn’t felt quite right all day, actually, had chalked it up to morning sickness.

  Jake looked up with a smile as she joined him. “Perfect timing.”

  She took a seat beside him at her kitchen island, where he’d set the full plate. She picked up her fork, speared some of the eggs and blew on the steam rising even though the thought of food made her feel like puking.

  “Sophie? Are you all right?”

  Jake had moved beside her, was looking at her with deep concern etched across his face.

  She tried to smile to reassure him, but all she could say was, “I’m just tired. Really, really tired.”

  “Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have dragged you all over the city yesterday.”

  She didn’t resist as he picked her up and carr
ied her into the bedroom. Her limbs felt terribly stiff and heavy, exhaustion taking her over head to toe at almost the exact moment her head hit the pillow.

  ***

  Jake sat in a chair in the corner of Sophie’s darkened bedroom and watched her sleep, each breath she took pulling and tugging at his chest as if he were breathing with her.

  He had sworn he’d never let himself feel this way, that he’d never let himself care about someone this much, that he’d never ask for help again. He could still remember the day he’d come home to ask his father for help. He was in fourth grade and it was getting nearly impossible to fake his way through class every day.

  “I can’t read.”

  His father had looked at him with disgust. “It’s your mother’s fault. The stupid bitch couldn’t even give me a kid with brains.”

  Jake had turned and run from their apartment before he could shame himself even more with tears. It was easier, after that, to skip out of class on reading days. Until the day he’d been put on a project with Zach Sullivan. The cocky little jerk had everything and Jake had hated him on sight. He hated Zach even more when he flat out told Jake they weren’t going to skip the book report they were supposed to be doing together.

  Jake remembered how cool he’d try to play it. “Books are for losers.”

  Zach had seen right through him. Maybe there had been other people who had guessed, but none of them had dared call Jake on it. Not flat out like Zach had. “You can’t read, can you?”

  Jake threw the first punch, but Zach was barely a beat behind him. The two boys had done a pretty good job of smashing each other up before the teacher had pulled them apart. Zach’s mother came to the office to take her expelled son home. But they’d heard the secretary say that no one was coming for Jake, and before he could figure out how to get out of it, Mary Sullivan had both of them in the backseat of her station wagon. A few minutes later they were sitting in front of a huge plate of cookies with tall glasses of milk. The book they were supposed to do their report on—The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe—sat on the table between them, along with a thick blue dictionary that had clearly seen plenty of use.

  “Let me know if you need any help, boys.”

  Mary Sullivan hadn’t yelled at them, hadn’t smacked Zach or called him stupid. She didn’t smell like booze, either. Jake couldn’t believe anyone like her existed, couldn’t stop himself from fantasizing about what his life could have been like if he’d had a mother like that.

  After Mrs. Sullivan left the room, he’d been coiled into a tight ball of nerves and bravado, expecting Zach to smirk and rub in his stupidity, but all the guy did was shove a chocolate-chip cookie into his mouth and open the book to start reading it out loud, spitting chunks all over the pages.

  Zach never brought up his reading problem again, but somehow they always ended up working on reading projects together after that.

  He’d met most of the Sullivan crew later in their backyard when they were playing touch football. Lori swept into the middle of the group at some point, demanding the attention of her big brothers, wanting to know who the new boy was.

  He couldn’t imagine having six siblings. How great it would be to have someone to play with all the time. And then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her, Lori’s twin. The other little girl should have looked just like Lori, but he would never get them confused. Not even when they were five years old.

  She was sitting in the corner of the yard beneath a large oak tree, with a big book open on her lap. But she wasn’t looking at the book.

  She was looking at him, her eyes big as she stared at him.

  He’d never seen anyone so still. So calm. Or so pretty. Sophie Sullivan had looked like a princess from one of those movies he sneaked in the back door of the movie theater to see sometimes.

  Sophie shifted on the bed just then, as if she were reaching for something. For him. She frowned in her sleep before putting her arm around a pillow and hugging it close to her.

  Trust.

  If there was anyone he wanted to trust, it was Sophie. But after a lifetime of hiding the truth from everyone, keeping secrets was what he did best.

  Never share.

  Never trust.

  Never give anyone another chance to say you’re nothing but the stupid son of a whore and a drunk.

  But this time, Jake knew, everything was different…because he couldn’t stop himself from loving Sophie. And he’d never wanted anything more than for her to love him back.

  Which meant he would have to tell her soon, have to warn her that their children might not be able to do the one thing that came so easily to her.

  Moving restlessly in the chair, his eyes caught on the book sitting on her dresser nearby. What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

  Reading it tonight would be torture, but that fact wasn’t going to change. There would always be too many words, and he’d always have to work like hell to try to get them to make sense in his head.

  But if anything was worth the pain and suffering of making his way through an entire book, it was Sophie…and the children they’d have in the fall.

  Picking up the book, Jake used every trick to keep his brain focused, moving from one word, to one sentence, to one paragraph, to one page. As the minutes turned into hours, and he turned the pages one after the other—and the endless warnings and risks of pregnancy rained down upon him—Jake actually found himself wishing he was that ten-year-old kid again, who couldn’t read at all.

  Twenty-Two

  Sophie had slept the night through, but she didn’t feel rested. Her eyes felt gritty, her mouth dry. She knew the reason. Jake hadn’t slept with her, hadn’t wrapped his big, warm body around hers and held her close. Even in her sleep, she would have known if he’d been there.

  But he had never come to join her in the bed.

  Where, she wondered, had he gone? Back to his house to rethink the love he’d offered her the night before?

  She was so lost in her dark musings that she almost didn’t notice Jake sitting in the corner of her bedroom. She sat up in bed so quickly that everything spun for a few moments. “You’re still here?” Her throat sounded as raw as it felt.

  “I’ve been here all night.”

  He was wearing his jeans from the night before, and his hair was standing up on end as if he’d been pulling at it. He looked tense, horribly so.

  Despite the fact that she felt like she was coming down with the flu, she pushed aside the covers and was about to get on her feet to head across the room to him when he said, “Have you had coffee since you’ve been pregnant?”

  She frowned at the strange question. “Yes.”

  His mouth tightened. “Have you been around cats?”

  Why was he treating her like this? Like she was a defendant on the witness stand. One who had done everything wrong.

  “Yes.”

  “What about heating blankets or hot tubs? Have you used either of those?”

  Obviously, his random questions must be related. But to what?

  “Why are you asking me these things?” Everything was hurting now, worse than it had before. She leaned back into the headboard, pulling a pillow up over her lap to hold on to.

  He lifted something off his lap. It was the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book. “I just spent the entire night reading this.”

  Oh, no. The doctor had warned them about the book, but Sophie hadn’t thought much of it. Now she saw she should have known Jake would do this. He was so protective of her—and the twins she was carrying—that he’d let all of the book’s warnings spiral completely out of proportion.

  But before she could say anything to calm him, he was up out of the chair, holding the book open. “You’re getting a new doctor. I can’t believe she told us sex is fine. Right here it says twins need tons of extra care when you’re pregnant.”

  “Jake,” she said in what she hoped was a patient but not condescending voice, “my mother had eight kids. Everything
’s been going great so far with my pregnancy. That’s all worst-case-scenario stuff. I know what to be careful about.”

  “Then what about this? ‘Deep penetration can cause bleeding.’” She could see the panic on his face as he thought back to every time they’d had sex. “If you knew that already, then why the hell have you let me keep taking you like an animal? I couldn’t have been in any deeper last night. Or in the pool.”

  Knowing he was worried, she tried not to lose her temper again. “Show me where it says that.” He only wanted what was best for her, she tried to remind herself, but he looked bigger, tougher, than ever as he got up off the chair and held the book open in front of her.

  But when she read the passage he was referring to, she was too tired to keep her irritation with him at bay. “Occasionally. It says deep penetration can occasionally cause bleeding and not to worry about it unless it happens!” Exhaustion turned to pure frustration as she shot out, “Can’t you even read? Or do you just make up words to suit your bossy purposes?”

  A wave of nausea mixed in with her frustration, but even as she worked to ride out this horrible new onset of morning sickness, she could feel the air in her bedroom cool by a good dozen degrees.

  In all the years she’d known Jake, she’d never seen him look like this—so cold, so distant.

  “Funny, here I was working out a way to tell you,” he said in a hard voice, “but you’ve already figured it out.”

  She could hardly breathe with him looking at her like that. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can barely read!” he growled. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Her brain raced as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. Jake McCann had always had her heart, from the first moment she’d seen him playing football in the backyard with her brothers. He’d been larger than life, even with that dark shadow following him, calling to her to clear it away with sunshine. With love. But until this week, when he’d insisted they spend time together, she hadn’t known just how hard his childhood had been, or the details of how he’d built his amazingly successful business from scratch.