In Your Wildest Dreams Page 23

  "Homemade?"

  "Mrs. Lindman's specialty."

  "I'm sold," he said, and together they collected a plate of cookies before Stephanie disappeared into the next room, returning with two glasses of milk.

  As they made their way back to her room, it occurred to Jake that this was one of the first times he'd actually cared very much about something to eat... in a long while. Sure, he went through the motions, ate whatever was handy when his body let him know he was hungry, but only lately had he truly started enjoying food again— beignets, shrimp étouffée, the greasy good po'boy he'd eaten the other day with Tony, the pizza with Shondra, and now his mouth was practically watering for cookies.

  They soon sat in Stephanie's bed, sharing them. "I hope Mrs. Lindman doesn't mind crumbs in her bed," he said.

  "Why? Are you thinking of kicking me out and inviting her in?" She'd delivered it without missing a beat, face totally straight.

  He lifted his gaze. "Anybody ever tell you sometimes you got a wicked sense of humor, Stephanie Grant?"

  She shook her head and smiled. "No, actually."

  He quirked a grin. "Must be somethin' else I bring out in you."

  From there, conversation flowed easily. Jake asked her about little things he found himself wanting to know: what movies she liked, what music she listened to, her favorite flavor of ice cream. Stephanie soon regaled him with stories from her suburban upbringing—tales of slumber parties and hanging out at the mall, and the night she'd walked out the front door to go to her first formal dance only to be caught in an out-of-control lawn sprinkler.

  "Shoulda grown up on the bayou, beb." Jake laughed. "No sprinklers there."

  After that, they moved on to friends, Stephanie admitting she'd had close friends in high school and college, but had mostly lost touch with them now. She asked Jake how he'd met Tony, and he explained that they met on their first day at the academy and had hit it off fast despite their differences. But then he quieted—just wanting to hear more about her.

  For some reason, though, Stephanie's animated smile immediately disappeared to be replaced with a thoughtful stare.

  "What?" He shouldn't have asked, of course, and knew it the moment the word left his mouth, but there it was—an invitation to whatever serious thought suddenly swirled in her mind.

  "I was just thinking that it feels like you know so much about me, and I still know so little about you."

  He swallowed uncomfortably and hoped she didn't see. "You know plenty about me. You know about the bayou house and Manière, you know about my dad leavin', you know things about my mom. Hell, now you even know I'm harborin' a runaway. Fact is, chère, you know more about me than most people." These days anyway. Once upon a time, he'd been an open book—it had only been the last couple of years that he'd changed into someone so quiet and gruff.

  "All that's true, but I still don't know the one thing I've wanted to know about you since the night we met. I still don't know why you're not a cop anymore."

  He flashed a look of warning. Same look he generally gave Tony during his lectures, his mother during her attempts at comfort. Same look he'd given Stephanie every time she'd ever asked him about this.

  But she didn't back down. "Look, I've opened myself up to you in ways I never even knew I could. And I just... want to know what you're flunking about when you get that faraway look in your eye."

  Could he tell her? he wondered. Could he get the words out—all of them?

  Most people who knew him already knew what had happened, and they also knew not to bring it up. Even so, it was the reason he'd avoided everyone from his past as much as possible the last two years—because he couldn't face it, and dealing with people who knew the whole damning story somehow meant facing it. And he just didn't know how to—still. It was easier to wallow in guilt by himself.

  Even his mother and Tony knew better than to ever say it out loud. Both were bold enough to skirt around it, talk about what they thought should happen now, how he should move on—but they never spoke the ugly truth aloud.

  And neither did he. Never had. He'd never had a reason to.

  Yet Stephanie's gaze bore into him, and again he asked himself: Can I tell her? Can I get through it? Do I dare ? It was a world away from haywire sprinklers.

  He swallowed again, this time past the lump that had grown in his throat. He glanced down at the sheets, the crumbs, the little flowers in the checked print, the remaining cookie on the plate in his lap. "I used to be married."

  She hesitated, and he supposed that piece of news alone was enough to catch her off guard. Finally, she said, "Really?"

  "Her name was Becky."

  "Was?" He heard the dread in her voice and thought, Ah, chère, you don't even know the half of it.

  "Was," he confirmed, lifting his gaze to hers just briefly. To those blue, blue eyes. But he discovered he couldn't look at them right now, so he lowered his back to the bedcovers, slouching down until his head met the pillow. "She died."

  "I'm ... sorry," she murmured, her voice gone soft and pained for him. But how sorry for him would she feel when she found out why Becky had died?

  "It was my fault," he said in more of a rush than he meant to. He stared at the white ceiling, wishing the lights were out like earlier, that he could look for angels in the room to distract him from the truth.

  "H-how? How was it your fault?"

  "I was workin' undercover," he began, thinking, Get through this. Do it quick, then it can be over. "Tryin' to infiltrate a local drug ring. She didn't want me to do it," he remembered aloud, swallowing again past that damn lump blocking up his throat. "Thought it was too dangerous. But I was ... so fearless. Thought I was the king of the fuckin' world or somethin'. I told her I had to do it—it was my job. I thought I was gonna save people, all the people who'd buy the drugs I was gonna get off the street.

  "The plan was that I'd pose as a low-level, independent dealer, then get hired on by the organization. Our target was the kingpin, identity unknown, except to his closest associates. The guy goes by a code name—Typhoeus.

  "I'd spent a couple months at it and was gettin' somewhere—buildin' trust, movin' up the ladder—when I got pulled out. Tony was workin' the case from the outside and got wind they'd found out I was a cop.

  "I was pissed about all the wasted time and effort, but once I was out, we figured that was the end of it. We hadn't gotten Typhoeus, but we'd come at him from another angle sometime down the road.

  "Then one night..." His stomach clenched and he felt close to retching, just thinking back to it.

  Stephanie reached out to hold his hand, and he took a deep breath and tried to go on. "One night I took Becky out to dinner. We went to Arnaud's, in the Quarter—her favorite place. My idea, my little way of celebratin' that the job was over, celebratin' for her, 'cause it made her so damn happy. And while we were at dinner..." He stopped again, cleared his throat because something was clogging it up even more. "At dinner she told me she was pregnant. We hadn't been tryin', but we hadn't been not tryin', either. Still, it came as a shock. In a good way. A better-than-I-expected way."

  Damn it, this was so hard. He closed his eyes against the emotions. Don't feel. Don't feel. He'd been telling himself that for two years, though, and what good did it ever do?

  "On the way home, we stopped at a light on Canal Street and another car pulled up beside us ... and by the time I saw the gun, it was too late."

  Next to him, Stephanie flinched. "What?"

  "Guy shot her," he said, his mouth feeling numb, his mind too. "Was goin' after me, but she got in the way."

  "Oh Jake." Stephanie's voice wrenched with a pain he knew all too well. "Oh God, Jake."

  "She just looked at me," he said, remembering it like a dream. "And I kept sayin', 'It's gonna be all right, honey, it's gonna be all right,' but there was so much blood, Steph...." He glanced up at her, somehow needing to feel her presence now. "So damn much blood. In my heart, I knew it was useless. I was tryin
' to get to my cell phone, callin' 911, at the same time tryin' to cover up her neck—that's where the bullet hit her—tryin' to cover the hole, stop the blood, but it was everywhere."

  He let out a shaky sigh. "That's what I remember the most. All that damn blood. Like it could soak the entire world. And her eyes were so panicky—she knew she was dyin', but I just kept lyin' to her, and I guess I was tryin' to lie to myself, too. Just kept tellin' her it would be all right. But it wasn't all right."

  He went quiet then, his body going hollow, his limbs too light. Somewhere during the story, Stephanie had sunk down next to him, so that when he turned to her, their faces were only inches apart. "She was dead by the time the ambulance came," he whispered. "And it was my fault."

  Stephanie shook her head profusely, her eyes racked with sorrow. "No, Jake, there was nothing you could have done. You can't blame yourself."

  "I do blame myself. For bein' a cop. For takin' an assignment she asked me not to take. For bein' so goddamn arrogant as to think I could take my wife out to dinner like normal, knowin' I'd just been made for a cop by a drug ring, too stupid to realize Typhoeus would want to make an example outra me. I shoulda laid low." He sighed. "Shoulda done a lotta things different."

  She ran comforting fingers back through his hair, and her touch... helped.

  That was a hard thing to grab onto and acknowledge, because it was the first time anything had ever helped.

  But it didn't take away the sting of the truth. He'd brought about Becky's death; if it wasn't for him and his job, she'd be alive today, and they'd have a kid, and life would be fine. Better than fine.

  The thought wrenched his stomach even harder when he remembered he was lying naked in bed with another woman. A woman he kept having some damn intense feelings for, whether or not he chose to admit it to himself.

  He'd just never thought he'd care about anyone else in that way. He'd thought sex now would be an occasional one-night stand, or a one-hour stand, for all he'd cared— he hadn't wanted anyone new in his life. He couldn't believe he'd let someone into his life.

  He couldn't believe how good the sex was, how often she made him smile, how much she lightened his heart. And that made him hurt for Becky—it brought that same familiar sense of betrayal closing in.

  "You made her happy," Stephanie said.

  He lifted his gaze. How did she know? "Yeah, I did. I made her damn happy. Then I got her killed." He looked away. "So now you know—why I act like a bastard half the time, why I don't give a shit about anything, why I quit the force. Because I spend most of my time feelin' guilty about her, and about our baby." He shook his head, incredibly tired. "My life felt like it pretty much ended with hers."

  "You don't."

  "Huh?"

  "You don't act like a bastard so much. Maybe when we first met, sometimes, but not lately."

  He gave a short, somber nod against the pillow. It was true, he supposed. Like caring about food again. The food thing was small, but the not-acting-like-a-bastard part was bigger. He'd been happier lately.

  "You'd have liked her," he said without planning it, the notion just entering his head. He could see the two of them being friends.

  "I'm sure I would have."

  "She was a lot more... genteel than me. Raised in a big house in Métairie, rich parents, country club—but she was the most down-to-earth person you could ever meet. And she kinda... pulled me up, made me believe I could be more than I thought I could."

  "What do you mean?"

  He cast her a glance. "Despite my mamère, I grew up pretty tough. When I was a teenager and started gettin' in trouble—fightin', raisin' hell—Mamère said I should use the roughness in me for good and become a cop. She made me promise on her deathbed that I would, so I did." He stopped, swallowed, remembering the guy he'd been in those in-between times—after Mamère, before Becky. Trying like hell to be good, but still bad to the bone inside. Too angry over his father, his mother, the loss of his grandma.

  "So I was already a cop when I met Becky, but she made me a good cop. Until then, it'd been a job, a way to feel important, shove my weight around. But Becky turned me into a better man, somebody who wanted to help people and believed I could. Truth is, I guess Tony had a hand in that, too. But it was mostly Becky. Wantin' to prove to her I could be the person she thought I was."

  "And now?"

  "Now what?"

  She touched his arm. "/ see that man in you, Jake. Even when you do act like a jerk, you still help me. But I'm just not sure...."

  "What, chèreV

  She let out a sigh. "I guess I'm still a little puzzled about why you traded in being a cop for tending bar at Sophia's. I mean—you're so much more than that, and at Sophia's, you're only ..."

  He didn't make her finish, didn't make her tell him what a worthless existence he led now, because he already knew. "It's because I don't care anymore. Don't give a damn, about anyone or anything. Because carin' only gets you kicked in the couilles."

  "Always?"

  "For me, yeah—always. You care about somebody and they either die, or they die inside—like my mother, or they let you down. Carin's a lost cause."

  Her sigh said she thought he was wrong, but she hadn't been where he'd been—she didn't know. They stayed awkwardly silent for a few minutes, until she said, "How did you end up working at Sophia's anyway?" He suspected it was an attempt to alleviate the tension now permeating the air.

  He could go for that, too. "My friend Danny, who manages Sophia's—he knew me when I was a cop, and he knew I was down and needed an easy way to pay the bills."

  "So no one at Sophia's cared that you used to be a cop and now you're serving drinks to people who are doing something illegal?"

  "Nobody knows. To everybody on the third floor, I'm just a bartender named Jake."

  "They didn't recognize you from—" She stopped abruptly, then let out a heavy breath, not quite meeting his eyes. "Well, I'm guessing Becky's death made the news."

  He couldn't quite meet hers, either, now that they were back to this. "The media was good enough to keep my face out of it—they'll do that for cops sometimes in especially hideous situations. And I had a beard and longer hair at the time, for the undercover work—just hadn't gotten around to takin' it off."

  From his peripheral vision, he caught the inquisitive tilt of Stephanie's head. "And there's nothing inside you that cares about the girls at Sophia's, nothing that thinks what happens there is wrong?"

  He turned to look at her again, surprised. He'd just spilled his guts to her about causing his wife's death, and she was questioning him about the girls at Chez Sophia? "What are you gettin' at, chèreV

  She lifted her gaze. "When I first met you, you didn't seem like someone who would care about that sort of thing. But now ... now I can't help but think that, deep down, you do. You must. You're too good of a man not to."

  He blinked, wondering if she'd caught him in a tie, another tie to himself. He pushed the question away. "Losin' Becky taught me one thing, beb. It's that you can't save anybody, take care of anybody. It's useless to try."

  "You're taking care of the runaway girl," she said softly.

  He shrugged, sorry to be reminded. "I shouldn't be, if I had any sense. Because in the end, it won't matter—I won't be able to help her. She needs more help than I can give."

  "Every night you keep her off the street matters, Jake." He just shook his head, feeling resolute, and wondering exactly when he had started this business again of taking care of people, of thinking any good could really come from it.

  "And you're helping me, too, with Tina."

  Ah—that's when it had started. With Miss Chardon-nay. "Only so you wouldn't get yourself—"

  "I know," she cut him off. "In trouble. But you're helping me in other ways, too." She reached out to touch him, her hand skimming across his chest, down his stomach. "I've never had this with a man before. You know that."

  They'd had this discussion a number of times, yet s
omething in the words made him feel a little panicky just now; he suddenly heard them a whole new way. "Never had what exactly, chèreT

  "Great sex."

  Relief filled him. Thank God that was all she said, nothing more.

  And that was exactly what they had.

  Even if his heart argued there was more to it. Even if it beat harder than it should right now, each pulsation reminding him that—like it or not—he had feelings for her. Feelings that assaulted him in his dreams, and feelings that were assaulting him just as brutally outside the dreams.

  Overwhelming guilt pummeled him with a brand-new fear, one he'd only admitted to himself this very second. What if he was falling in love with her? With another woman he couldn't allow to depend on him too much. Another woman who wasn't the woman he'd promised to love and take care of forever. Another woman he'd let down in the end if he allowed his feelings to go any further.

  "Thank you, Jake," she said.

  He met her eyes, hating in that moment how damn pretty they were, the way they always drew him in. "For?" "Telling me."

  He shouldn't have. He scarcely knew why he had. Because you're falling in love with her. No. No fucking way. "We should sleep," he said. "All right," she whispered.

  He made sure not to touch her as slumber took him. Safer that way. Safer for him. Safer for her. This couldn't be love. He wouldn't let it.

  Chapter 19

  Sun glancing through the curtains forced Stephanie's eyes open. She knew without even peeking over that Jake lay next to her—she felt his massive strength; she drank in the musky, manly scent of him.

  When he'd first told her he'd been married, her first reaction had been instant—and insane—jealousy. To think he'd had a wife. That deep connection, vowing your life to someone. It had made her feel like nothing, a tiny blip on his radar screen.

  But when he'd told her the rest of it, her heart had broken for him. Dear God, no wonder he'd seemed so angry when they met. And to think he held himself responsible for Becky's death.