The Storm Inside (32 page)

But overall, things had been fantastic. Jake paid off the rest of his lease and officially moved the rest of his things into my house. We redecorated the bedroom, but decided to keep the bed. We liked that big, sturdy bed… and he’d taken over Jennie’s old room as his home office.

And as for me, I’d finally let go of everything I’d been afraid of. Fear was my enemy and it was holding me back. I think I’d come to find a little fear was healthy, but too much paralyzed me. I never wanted to be paralyzed again.

So I’d started looking forward to the future, wondering where it was taking us. Jake’s company was growing by leaps and bounds and my job was as secure as they come. We were happy in our house and with our friends. We’d started making lists. Our travel list looked a little different than the one we made in college, but I was looking forward to it just the same. It felt like the world was at our feet.

But I’d been wrong that night in the car when I thought all of our major hurdles had been crossed. There was one more. One you couldn’t prepare for and there was no way to predict how things would go. All you could do was suck it up, find your courage, and plunge into the deep end.

If Jake had been nervous, he’d never let it show.

I, on the other hand, had been a mess.

It was just all too familiar. Driving up my parent’s driveway in the Orange Beast, I felt like I was a teenager bringing her boyfriend home.

They’d been kind to us, at least. When we got there it was just June home for the weekend and my mom busy in her art studio. Dad was nowhere to be found. So while June and Jake goofed off, I went in search of my father.

I was frantic to find him at that point because I just wanted to get it all over with. This discord between the man I loved and the family I loved was driving me crazy.

I found him in his ‘man room’.

I should point out that it was raining outside. Monsoon raining. It had started about five minutes after we arrived and looked like it wouldn’t be stopping until sometime the next day.

This is important in understanding what I found when I walked in to the ‘man room’.

I found my dad standing on his pool table.

My dad loved his pool table and the last place I would have ever expected to find him was
standing
on his precious pool table.

And not only that, but there were golf balls (not pool balls) on the green surface, a putter in his hand, a pipe hanging from his lip, and a mostly empty glass of scotch on the corner.

“What are you doing?” I asked incredulously. Maybe retirement was making him into one of those crazy, eccentric, old men I’d heard about. Not that he was an old man yet.

He glanced up from his ball and grinned at me, speaking through his teeth with the pipe firmly lodged in place, “Daughter! You made it before the rain, good.”

“What are you doing?” I asked slowly, closing the door and leaning against the frame.

“Putting,” he replied like
I
was the crazy one.

“On the pool table?”

“It’s going to rain all afternoon. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Not putt on the pool table?”

He scoffed, “Losers say crap like that. Speaking of losers…”

“Don’t start dad. I am not in charge of the players.”

He pulled out his pipe and started waving it around as he spoke, “No, I’m talking about your boss. You tell Josh to stop sending me all those damn emails. Do I look like someone you email? Tell his ass…” Dad hopped down and walked toward me, “quote me, tell him this exactly,
Pick up the damn phone and call me like a real human being.
If he emails me again I’m driving up there just to beat him up with his laptop.”

“Dad.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders, still strong even years after leaving the field. He had a baseball player’s body through and through. “What? Quote me, Eve. I mean it.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes. He was an old fashioned guy from another era. And worse yet, he didn’t have to keep up with electronics, so he didn’t.

“Are you going to be difficult the whole weekend?”

He locked eyes with me. He was holding his breath. He was really struggling with his feelings toward Jake. I understood it intellectually, I was his daughter and Jake had hurt me. It was his job to make sure that didn’t happen again.

It was hard because we all loved Jake. It was hard to separate out all the things we were feeling.

“No. I just want you to be happy.”

I forced a smile onto my face. We talked for a few minutes, moving to his big, comfy, brown leather couch. He picked my brain about the team, I asked him about mom. Dad and I had always been closer; I think it was because our personalities were similar. It didn’t take many words to say what needed saying and we were both just fine with silence when we were done.

The door opened and Jake strode in, he really did look a little like a kid again: eyes bright, energy high as he crossed the room looking to shake my dad’s hand.

“Mr. Daniels, it is good to see you again, thank you for allowing me to visit this weekend.”

My dad rolled his eyes and shook his hand, “Fine, you were right, Eve. I can’t keep this up all weekend.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Jake. “I’m gonna go ahead and get it all out right now if that’s alright with you?”

Jake slid his hands into his shorts pockets and nodded, “Give it to me.”

Dad nodded, “You hurt her again, I’ll kill you myself. I won’t ask questions, I won’t see straight, I’m just gonna kill you, dump your body in the gulf, and pretend you never existed. We clear?”

Jake nodded slowly, but before he could reply, Dad went on, “You need help, you ask for it. We’re your family, and we take care of our own. That includes you.”

Jake froze and a little color drained out of his face. I think he was a little shocked to hear a statement that bold from my father, of all people. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

My dad rolled his eyes again and sighed, “Stop that ‘sir’ crap, too. It’s Joe.”

Jake nodded again, “Alright, Joe.”

“Scotch?”

Jake chuckled and followed my dad to the bar, “Sounds good to me.” Then he turned and winked at me. That was when I knew for sure things were going to be fine between Jake and my father.

And now we were on vacation with everything right in our world. It felt so good I was a little afraid to enjoy it. But then again, we’d worked pretty hard to get where we were. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and just enjoy every second of my time with Jake.

The taxi ride across the island was bumpy and I enjoyed snuggling into Jake for comfort. We were only an hour’s plane flight away from home and yet everything felt different. The tropical air had a different scent, it was more floral, less citrus. And the people vibrated at a different frequency. Their speech was staccato, fast and loud. Everything seemed to move at that higher frequency.

Our hotel, the British Colonial Hilton, was the same one we’d stayed at last time. It was a little quieter and a bit more romantic than the colossal Atlantis we looked at across the water. We’d stayed there in the past, too. It was fun there, always something new to do.

But we were here to relax.

Mostly, anyway. There was a snorkeling expedition, or two, or three…

But the rest of the time we relaxed on the beach, letting wandering waiters bring us delicious cocktails and hamburgers. Jake took me back to the Graycliff and we enjoyed a dinner on the porch. He bought a ridiculous number of cigars. He’d brought a small humidor with him just for that purchase.

And now we were back on the beach, our bellies full, our skin tan, and the moonlight reflecting off of everything around us.

I was starting to wonder if Jake’s suggestion we take our money and run off to live on an island was a brilliant idea. If this was my one life with Jake, I didn’t want to waste another second of it. Things like work and traffic seemed so pointless when there was sand between your toes.

He pulled me into his arms, my eyes catching on that gold chain again. He never wore it when we were swimming or on the beach. And he always seemed to have it tucked away out of sight. I didn’t even know where he was hiding it in the hotel room.

“Darlin’, I’m so glad we’re back here. This trip has been amazing.” His lips brushed against mine and his kisses took my breath away. It didn’t seem possible he could still make me weak in the knees, but he did.

“I don’t want to leave,” I confessed.

He smiled his wicked smile, “We don’t have to, you know. Offer still stands to find us a nice little house on a nice little island. We could raise some adorable water babies, have a lot of sex on the beach…”

I laughed and shook my head, “You’re such a cocky bastard.” It always came back to sex with Jake.

But he stopped joking, suddenly becoming very serious. So serious I stopped.

I couldn’t breathe when he looked at me like that.

Then, while looking deep into my eyes he whispered, “Marry me.”

I felt those two little words in every molecule of my body.

Marry me.

He pulled me closer, his arms wrapped tightly around me, “Will you do me the honor of being my wife? I want to give you everything I have. All of me is already yours forever, you know that, but I want to give you my name.” His beautiful eyes sparkled with so much promise. “I want us to officially be a family, you and me, forever.”

His name.

It was one of those moments where the world around us just stopped. For a few minutes nothing mattered but Jake and there was nothing I wanted more than to be his wife. “Oh, yes…” I whispered.

He smiled, looking at me ever so mischievously, and reached into his shirt for the gold chain.

On it was a ring.

He’d been wearing an engagement ring our entire fucking vacation.

“You had that this whole time? What have you been waiting for?” My voice was so high it didn’t sound like me.

He bounced his eyebrows and his dimple showed up as his grin widened.

“The perfect moment.”

“Why is this the perfect moment?” I asked wondering what hadn’t been so perfect about just about any other second of every day since we got here.

Why had he been holding out on me?

He slid the chain over his head, unclasping it and sliding the ring down until it fell into the palm of his hand. “Sometimes, my love, waiting is worth it.” He shoved the chain into his pants pocket and took my left hand in his. “Ten years ago I wasn’t ready to be the man you deserved. I was a fool but I couldn’t help falling in love with you. I will never be able to tell you how much I appreciate that you waited for me. And what we have now…” he shook his head and his eyes were bright, “the future we can build from here is so much more than it ever would have been. Sometimes,” he got down on one knee, “waiting is so, so worth it.”

He looked up at me and his eyes were shining, but his smile was wicked. He was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. It reminded me so much of the night I fell in love with him.

Maybe it was always that smile of his. I think it might be how I always think of Jake: wicked and sure, with a dimple put there just for me. He was exciting and safe and he was all mine.

“Eve Maria Daniels. Will you marry me?”

He slid the ring onto my finger; it fit perfectly. The diamond glinted back at me in the moonlight, set in a beautiful antique gold filigree. I stared at the ring on my finger and all that it meant. Finally, after all of these years, Jake and I were going to get married.

We were going to be husband and wife.

“Yes…” I whispered because that was all I could do. I didn’t want to be a crier, but really… this was too special not to. I let the stupid tears do their thing.

Jake closed his eyes and squeezed my hand, pulling it to his lips. He tenderly kissed it, sending a shiver up my arm. Then he stood and pulled me into one of the dirtiest kisses I could ever remember. His tongue reached places I didn’t know he could go and still feel good. His hands roamed, eventually finding their way up to my hair. And when I didn’t think I could kiss him another moment without passing out, Jake pulled back and pressed our foreheads together.

“Damn, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I replied. The crying was done, I was grinning like a fool now.

Then he scooped me up, I squealed, and he carried me back up to the hotel. In the lobby he waved over the concierge, “She said yes!”

The man nodded quickly, clapping his hands and ordering someone off toward who knew where. Obviously Jake had set up a plan for my positive response. The concierge ran to the elevator, pressing the button for us and holding the doors when they slid open. “Congratulations! Congratulations Mr. and soon-to-be Mrs. Spencer. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Mrs. Spencer,” he whispered in my ear. It sent another one of those delicious shivers down my spine and straight between my legs. I knew what we were going to do once we got to our room and by the look in my fiancée’s eyes, it was going to be wild and fun.