Cathy Gillen - The Bride Said, 'Finally!'

Doing her best to absorb all he had told her, Jenna felt for a chair and sat down. Jake slid a chair over and sat down in front of her, so they were sitting knee to knee. “You should have told me what was going on,” Jenna said, trembling.

Jake leaned forward and took both her hands in his. “How would that have helped you?” he asked softly. “To be told you needed to choose between being with me and the continued welfare of your sisters? Do you think that would have made you feel better to be put in a situation like that, after all you’d already been through?”

Jenna sighed. Of course it wouldn’t have. If he’d told her, made her choose, it would have torn her apart, and caused even more stress and heartache for her and her sisters.

Jake shook his head, recalling. He searched her eyes as he continued filling her in. “I wanted to fight my parents—you don’t know how much—but at the same time I had to be realistic about the odds of success. I was only twenty-two. I had not yet inherited the trust fund from my grandparents. I didn’t have the means or influence at that point in my life to help keep you and your sisters together on my own. Plus, you know the age thing, the fact I was four years older, finished with college, and you were still in high school had always been an issue. It’s not much of an age difference now, of course, but back then…well there’s a big difference between being in high school and being in college.” Jake sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “As mature as you were, there were times when I did feel I was pushing you to grow up too fast, so the two of us could be together the way we felt we were meant to be. So I felt guilty for ever asking you to elope with me. I felt like I’d been really unfair to you.”

Jenna saw the regret shimmering in his eyes and knew this was true. “I knew you were incredibly vulnerable, that you weren’t in any state of mind to even be thinking about taking such a monumental step. But at the same time I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to help you then, how to make it better, except by loving you.”

“Which you did,” Jenna said softly, recalling how good and warm and safe he’d made her feel in the first dark days after her parents had died. Jake had been there, holding her when she cried, attending the funeral with her, helping her take it one day, one moment at a time. Even now, she didn’t know how she would have made it through those first dark days if he hadn’t been there.

Jake swallowed hard. His hands tightened over hers. “But when we were caught, suitcases in hand, and when I saw your doubt, when you called it quits before we’d even gotten all the way out of Laramie, and said you had changed your mind, you didn’t want to elope with me, I knew you probably did need to be with your sisters more than me. That you needed the chance to grow up, free of any serious entanglements or pressures from anyone else—the chance I’d already had.”

Jenna recalled the euphoria she’d felt as she packed a bag, sneaked out of her house and met up with Jake in the Laramie High School parking lot, well after midnight. Then the humiliation and dismay when she realized his parents had followed him to the secret rendezvous. She only had to look at Patricia and Danforth Remington’s faces as they stepped from their Mercedes to know they were dead-set against her marriage to their only son. “Of course I had second thoughts,” Jenna defended herself hotly. It had been natural to back out of the elopement at that point. Withdrawing her hands from Jake’s grasp, she pushed back her chair, got up and began to pace. “I’d just lost my parents. I wasn’t going to willfully separate you from yours, which was what a hasty marriage to you would have done. So yes, of course I called it off.”

Jenna swallowed around the growing knot of emotion in her throat. “When you said you’d call me as soon as you could, I believed you, Jake.” She hated to think how many hours she had sat by the phone, just waiting for it to ring. How many nights she had gone to sleep with it in bed beside her. “I didn’t expect you to walk away from me forever,” Jenna murmured as she went to the window and turned her back on Jake. She’d thought—hoped—they’d continue to see each other and wait a few years. Hoped with time his parents would come to know her and realize how much she and Jake loved each other and change their minds, even endorse the marriage. She shook her head as she stared out at the dark Texas night. “I thought you’d come back for me as soon as you got things straightened out with your parents,” she confessed in a low, choked voice. “I thought we’d figure things out together.” Arms folded in front of her, she whirled around to face Jake. “Instead, I never heard from you again—not one word, not ever, until today!”

Jake grimaced and stood. “I thought I was doing what was best for you and your sisters in walking away. I thought I was being selfless and gallant. If it helps to know—I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Jenna glared at him, her heart thudding in her chest. “Not enough, apparently, to stop you from getting married to Melinda that same summer,” she shot back.

Jake stepped closer. “It was a mistake, a rebound thing. Although,” he amended with a frown, “I didn’t know it at the time.”

Jenna, who’d eventually had her own rebound fling, equally disastrous, understood that. But just because she understood it didn’t mean she was willing to trust him again. Now or ever. “It still doesn’t answer my question, Jake.” Hands on her hips, she regarded him contentiously. “Why did you come to me for help with Alex? Why now?” Why hadn’t he left well enough alone? Yes, she was hurt, but it was a hurt she had recovered from. This new hurt was something else indeed.

Jake blew out a weary breath. He looked deep into her eyes and said firmly, “Because I want us to be friends again.”

“Friends.” Jenna studied him carefully, knowing with the two of them it had never been platonic. “Or more than friends?” she asked bluntly.

Half of Jake’s mouth slanted up in a slow, sexy smile. “You choose.”

Jenna lifted her brow and, her eyes holding his all the while, challenged dryly, “You sure don’t ask for much, do you?” Even if, in his dark blue sport coat, casual khaki slacks, light blue shirt and tie, he was as sexy as ever in that distinctly blue-blooded Texan way.

Jake closed the distance between them and clasped her hands between the two of his. “Tell me you don’t want the same thing and I’ll go away,” he whispered, his warm callused palms caressing the backs of her hands. “But if you do—if you have it in your heart to repair our relationship and at the same time help me with my little girl—” Again, that slow sexy smile that always turned her knees to water. “I’ll owe you, for a long, long time.”

WASN’T THIS what she had wanted? For him to come crawling back to her on his hands and knees? Okay, six plus years had passed, but he was still back. Eligible—handsome as ever. And he was offering to make all her business dreams come true, to boot. So what was wrong with this picture? Why, despite everything, did his incredibly presumptuous proposition look and sound so good to her? Why was she suddenly so willing to forgive him for taking her heart and stomping it to pieces? It wasn’t like she was still in love with him—or would ever love him again.

Jenna looked him square in the eye, determined to let him know where they stood before things progressed any further. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Jake merely grinned at her, as if to say: I wouldn’t make bets on that if I were you. Shrugging, he held her gaze and retorted dryly, “I didn’t expect you would. It may surprise you to know that making love with me is not usually part of my business deals.”