Intimate (34 page)

Jake took both her hands in his. “Have you gone to see your mom since she was incarcerated?”

Kaz nodded. It wasn't a pleasant memory. “Yeah. Once. She told me never to come back, that she was sorry I'd ever been born. I guess that's closure of a sort.”

“What about your dad?”

She leaned back, secure in the grip he had on both her hands. “He's wonderful, in his own way. I know he loves me, but he doesn't quite get why I enjoy the modeling. He thinks I'm too smart to be a prop.”

“You are, but you're a lot more than a prop. Damn, Kaz, I've never worked with a model as intuitive as you are. You can read the mood, project the emotion I need. You know exactly how to move, what way to look, how to give a photographer absolute gold with every shot. That's a very rare quality.”

She laughed, well aware she loved him way too much, that he was quickly becoming so important to her that, when he finally moved on, as she figured he eventually would, she would be devastated. “Did you ever think that maybe the photographer had a little bit to do with this model's ability to project emotion?”

He kissed her. “One can only hope.”

And then, suddenly, without warning, he was down on one knee in the freshly plowed vineyard. He held her hands against his heart and looked at her with so much love, Kaz felt her legs go all wobbly.

“I love you, Kaz. So damned much. I've been trying to think of how to say this, but I get all caught up between what sounds really cool and romantic, and what I feel.” He kissed the backs of her hands and then raised his head. His dark eyes glittered in the moonlight, and the intensity in his gaze made her shiver.

“Kaz, sweetheart, we haven't known each other for very long, but you have to admit, it's been pretty intense. I've got to go with what I feel. You make me whole. You give me purpose, and I love you so much I can't imagine any kind of life without you in it.”

Her legs weren't the only thing shaking, and she knew they wouldn't hold her. It was so much easier just to let them fold, until she was kneeling in the dirt, at eye level with a man she wanted to spend her life with. “I love you, Jake. So much.”

“Will you marry me, Kaz? Are you willing to spend your life with an ex-con with way too many issues?” He laughed, but it was a harsh, painful sound. “You know that if you say yes, it probably means you need therapy.”

“Oh, Jake. It only means I need you. Are you sure? You were so dead set against—”

He put his finger over her lips. “I was only against relationships because it would have meant telling you the truth. I figured the truth would make you turn tail and run.”

“I'm not running. Not from you.” She looked into eyes as dark as hers and thought of waking up next to him for the rest of their lives, crawling into bed with him every night, knowing that, no matter the jobs they did, they'd be coming home to each other.

She slipped a hand free of his grasp and cupped the side of his cheek. His beard was rough beneath her fingers because they'd forgotten to buy razors and he hadn't shaved.

Yesterday, at just about this time, she'd been tied up in the barn and wondering if she'd live to see the next day.

She hadn't had much hope of anything then. Certainly not this. “What else could I possibly say to you but yes? I love you, Jake. So much, but I thought it was too much to dream that you might love me back.”

“Will you wear this, Kaz? Will you let me tell the world you're mine?” He reached into his pocket, and the next thing she knew, he was slipping a ring onto her left hand.

It was an absolutely perfect fit. Sort of how Jake fit with her. “If I can tell everyone it works both ways. You're mine, Jake. All mine.” The ring had a gorgeous stone that looked almost black in the moonlight. She laughed and took a wild guess. “Don't tell me … pigeon's blood, right?”

When he smiled and nodded, she hugged him. “It's beautiful! I want to go inside so I can see it.”

She stood and tugged Jake to his feet.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

“I want to go inside where I can see you.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. Then he took her hand and led her through the old vines to the cottage.

Jake's cell phone was blinking. He'd left it charging while they'd had dinner with Nate and Cassie, and he was perfectly willing to ignore the call until he saw who it was from.

“Why would Mandy be calling?” He called her back and waited a moment. When she answered, he flipped it on speaker so Kaz could hear.

“What's up, kiddo?”

“There's a man here, Jake. He looks like you, and he says he's your brother, Ben. I wanted to make sure that's who he is, since he needs a place to stay the night. We were going to give him Kaz's room, if that's okay. He said he's been trying to find you, that Marc Reed put him in touch with us.”

Jake stared at the phone for so long that Mandy said, “Jake? You still there?”

Kaz leaned close and said, “I think he's just surprised. He hasn't seen Ben in years. And yes, please tell him to go ahead and use my room. Clean sheets are in the closet. We'll be home tomorrow, but not until after the commute traffic winds down. Hopefully, by noon.”

They chatted a moment longer, but she didn't mention Jake's proposal. That was something they would share together. Tomorrow.

After Jake faced the brother he hadn't seen in almost twenty years.

 

CHAPTER 21

Kaz was still talking to Mandy when Jake went into the kitchen, hoping like hell Nate had left the bottle of Maker's Mark he'd bought during last season's crush. There, shoved to the back behind a bottle of cheap gin and an unopened six-pack of tonic water, was about half a bottle of that good Kentucky bourbon. He pulled the bottle out and poured some into a cocktail glass, moving on autopilot so he wouldn't have to think about Ben.

Except that was all he could think about.

Why the hell had Ben come back? Why now? Jake leaned against the kitchen counter and took a big swallow of the whiskey. The bite was strong enough to make his eyes water, so his next swallow was more of a sip, and it went down a lot easier. As soon as he swallowed, his thoughts raced back to his brother. It had been almost twenty years since he'd seen the guy. Twenty years since Ben had walked away on a lie and left his little brother to do time in a hellhole of a juvenile detention center.

“Jake?”

He raised his head and took another swallow. Kaz took the glass from his hand and set it on the counter. He reached for it, but she wrapped her fingers around his and said, “Later. After you talk to me. Then, if you want to drink yourself stupid, have at it.”

She tugged his hand and dragged him back into the front room.

He managed to grab his glass on the way out.

Pulling him down beside her on the couch, Kaz turned and stared at him. There was no condemnation in her eyes. Curiosity, yes, but compassion wasn't what he'd expected.

He set the glass on the table beside the couch.

“What are you thinking, Jake? How do you feel about seeing Ben? Because you don't have to if you don't want to. No one can make you talk to him or even see him. That's your call. I need to know how you're feeling about the fact he's shown up like this, so I have some idea how we're going to deal with it.”

Again, not what he expected, but he liked the way she included herself in his problem. If Ben's reappearance in his life even was a problem. “I don't know.” He shook his head slowly, surprised by his confused feelings—feelings he'd not ever really analyzed. “Ya know, the first thought I had was ‘thank goodness he's alive.' I've been worried after not hearing from him for so many years that he might be dead. I doubt my parents would have told me, but I always read the reports of battleground deaths, hoping against hope that Ben's name wasn't listed.”

He stared at his hands hanging loosely between his knees. “I've missed him. I was so angry for so long, but then I started remembering the good stuff, the way we were before my mother got so caught up in shaping us into sons she could love. Ben's the oldest, so he was her first project, and he resented her from the beginning. Swimming wasn't his thing, but Mom swam competitively in college and got a bug up her ass that it was an acceptable sport, so Ben would be a champion swimmer.”

“Was he good?” Kaz reached for his right hand and held it in both of hers. “Did he like it?”

“Hated it.” He laughed, remembering the arguments between Ben and their parents. “He was good enough at the junior level, but he wanted to play Little League and be a regular kid. He used to talk about teaching high school—he was really good at math, and he figured he could be a math teacher and coach high school sports. Unfortunately, that was frowned on by both parents. Our dad because it wasn't a powerful corporate position, and our mother because she couldn't brag about her son the math teacher nearly as well as she could her son the Olympic champion. So Ben just bailed on all of it. He went to college and was doing okay working toward a business degree, with Dad figuring he'd go into finance and Ben knowing that he could use the degree to get him into the credential program for teaching.”

“So he was still in college when the accident happened?”

“I'm not sure. By then, he'd quit coming home and had cut off all communication with the family. I don't know for a fact, but I think Dad might have stopped paying for his college. My training was really expensive, and we were never short of money to pay for top coaches.”

He thought about that for a long moment, how he would have felt if his parents had openly favored Ben instead of him. He wouldn't have liked it. So much of his thinking about what had happened had changed. At first, when he'd barely gotten settled in detention, he'd been really pissed at Ben for not coming forward when it was obvious the charges against Jake weren't going to be dropped.

Over the years, though, Jake had started seeing things differently. He'd begun to realize what a jerk he'd been and where he'd been headed. He didn't like what he remembered of that egotistical, spoiled teen. He'd had so much promise, but he hadn't cared. He'd been a screwup in school, and the only friend who'd stuck by him had been Marcus Reed.

His phone rang again. He glanced at the name and answered. “Think of the devil, Marc. How's he look?”

“Rough. I hope I didn't make a mistake, sending him to Kaz's house, but damn, he looks like hell. He's really gaunt, fresh scars, like maybe he's healing from shrapnel wounds. I don't know how he found me, but he showed up at my office today. He said he had to see you, that it was time. What the hell does that mean?”

He'd never told anyone the whole truth. No one but Kaz, but she was right. It was time to stop hiding from it, but not until he'd cleared the air with Ben. “There's more to what happened that night of the wreck, stuff I've never talked about, but before I can tell you, Marc, I need to see Ben. Find out where he's been all this time, why he did some of the things he did. Then you and I need to sit down and talk about some stuff. I wasn't always honest with you, and it's time to clear up a lot of crap. You, of all people, deserve the truth.”

“Whenever you're ready, Jake. You know I'll be here.”

Marc's soft words almost unmanned him. He blinked back the sting of tears, the tightness in his throat. “A lot of the time, Marc, you've been the only one who was. And I will never, ever forget that. Later, okay?”

“Later.”

He stared at the phone a moment before ending the call. Then he turned it off. If anyone tried to reach him, it could go to voice mail. He honestly didn't know if he could handle anything else. Not tonight.

He turned and took Kaz in his arms, holding her tightly against his chest, resting his chin in the sleek waves of her short hair. “I proposed marriage to you tonight, and you accepted.” He laughed, a short, sharp bark with absolutely no humor in it. “If you want to back out, no foul. You can even keep the ring.”

She leaned back in his arms and stared long and hard at him. “I hope you're joking, because I'm in for the long haul. And what you're suggesting is an insult.”

He had to swallow a couple of times to get his voice to work. “You're an absolute treasure, Marielle Leigh Kazanov. I still can't believe you love me, even knowing—”

“Knowing what? That what you and your brother did was dead wrong? That people suffered—two people died because of what you did? It was wrong, and it was a horrible mistake, and it will always be part of who and what you are, but smart people learn from mistakes.” She leaned close and kissed him. “You were a stupid kid, Jake. Most teenaged boys are.” Then she backed off again so she could look into his eyes. He felt the intensity of her stare, as if she looked through him. Inside him.

“Thank goodness,” she said, stroking her hands over his shoulders, “those stupid kids can grow up to be intelligent, caring men. What happened that night was terrible, but you and I both know that Ben didn't run over that poor woman and her little boy with malicious intent. It happened because Ben had been drinking and you were both too young and dumb to handle it well, but not because either of you were mean or hateful. You got locked up because you loved your brother enough to keep your mouth shut, even when it meant a hell of a long time away from everything you knew. I just hope Ben's worthy of that love. I wonder what he's here for, what's finally brought him looking for you. I really hope it's because he wants to make amends.”

“I wish I knew. Hell, I don't even know what I feel anymore.” He brushed Kaz's hair back from her eyes and then tucked her back under his chin again. “A month ago if you'd asked me how I felt about my brother, I probably would have said nothing good, that I hated him for not speaking up. Now though?”