Not good enough...
It was what her father had always said to her.
So she’d stayed with less, chosen safety, and told herself it was sensible, right, for the best.
Jake stepped back from the counter, stood very straight and tall, a man who’d fought and lost but not without dignity, not without courage and fire and belief in himself.
“Ask whatever you want of me and I’ll give it to you,” he said flatly. “But let’s leave it for a few days. When you come back to work will be soon enough. I’ll listen to your plans then. I’ve lost any taste for them right now.”
He nodded to her. “If you’ll excuse me...”
Without waiting for a reply, not expecting one, he moved out of the kitchen and headed for the front door. For several seconds, Amy was completely paralysed. The click of the knob being turned snapped her out of it.
“Wait!” Her voice was little more than a hoarse croak. She rushed to the far edge of the kitchen counter, desperately calling, “Jake, please wait!”
He stood at the end of the short hall, his back turned to her, his hand still on the doorknob, his shoulders squared, but his head was thrown high as though in acute listening mode.
He was waiting. Not inviting any more from her, but prepared to hear why she wanted to stop him from going. If she didn’t get it right, he would go. She knew he would.
“What is it?” he rasped, impatient with her silence.
What could she say? Amy only knew she had to stop him from walking out of her life. Then the words came, sure and true.
“I’ll marry you. I will. If you’ll still have me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TENSION racked Amy as she watched Jake’s shoulders rise and fall. It had to be a deep, deep breath he was taking and she had no idea what emotion he might be fighting to control.
Then he turned.
Slowly.
Amy held her breath.
He looked at her as though he didn’t know her, scanning for a recognition which should have been there, but had somehow slipped past him. “Why, Amy?”
“Because...” The grave she’d dug for herself was so huge, so deep, she quailed at the task of climbing out of it. Her stomach contracted in sheer panic. Her mind skittered all over the place, finally grasping a hook Jake had given her. “What you said is true. I’ve lied and lied and lied, to stop myself...to stop you from getting too close to me.”
His face tightened. His eyes gleamed yellow, hard and merciless. “That hardly makes marriage desirable for either of us,” he bit out derisively.
Her hands fluttered out in desperate appeal. “I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
“Try!” It was a harsh, gutteral sound, scraped from wounds too freshly delivered for him to accept any evasion from her.
Amy knew it was a demand she had to meet, yet where to start, how to make him understand? She hadn’t understood it herself until he’d started putting it together for her.
“No backward steps now, Amy,” he warned.
“You once asked me about my family,” she plunged in, her eyes begging his forebearance. “I glossed over it, Jake.”
Impatience exploded from him, his hands cutting the air in a sharp-scissor motion. “What can your family possibly have to do with us? You told me they’ve been out of your life for years.”
“Control,” she answered quickly, frantic to capture his attention and keep it. “With your upbringing, you couldn’t imagine what my childhood was like...the constant emotional abuse from my father...having to wear it...trying not to be crushed. When I left home at sixteen, I swore never to let anyone have control over me again...not...not in an emotional sense.”
“You expect me to accept that? After all the emotion you spent on your ex-lover?” he hurled at her in disgust. “Was it five years of nothing? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“It wasn’t like that!” she cried.
“You’re not making sense to me, Amy.”
“With Steve...there was never any talk of marriage between us. He called us free spirits. I felt...safe...with him.”
“Safe!” Jake jeered.
“Yes, safe!” she snapped. “If you don’t want to hear this, just go,” she hurled back at him, driven to the end of her tether.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this story for anything,” he retorted scathingly. “Do go on.”
Amy paused, taking a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart was thundering. The pulse in her temples was throbbing. There was no escape from this pain. It had to be faced, dealt with. Then the choice of what to do would be Jake’s.
“If you want to understand anything about me instead of leaping to your own coloured judgements, then you’ll listen,” she told him as forcefully as she could. “If only for the sake of your child, you should listen.”
The mention of the baby visibly pulled him back from the more personal issues between them. He took on an icy demeanour. “I’m listening.”
They were so cold those words, Amy shivered. Nevertheless, she stuck grimly to her course, determined now to lay out the truth, whatever the consequences.
“To get back to Steve. He came from a damaged family, too. It effects people, Jake. You want someone—no one likes being alone—but you don’t want to be owned. Because that’s threatening.”
He frowned, assessing what she was saying.
Encouraged, Amy rushed on to the vital point. “You threatened my sense of safety, Jake.”
It startled him. He cocked his head on one side, considering this new perspective, his eyes still reserved but intensely watchful.
“You had the power to get at me, no matter how guarded I was against it. I guess you could say Steve was my bolthole from you.”
Another jerk of his head, seemingly negative to Amy’s view.
“Call me a coward if you like,” she offered, feeling a heavy load of self-contempt for all the running away she’d done. “I was a coward with you.”
“No.” His eyes flashed hard certainty. “You always stood up to me.”
“That wasn’t brave. It was the only way to retain control,” she pressed, trying to reach him on what she saw as the crux of everything. “I lost it the night you came here. I didn’t listen to what you were saying afterwards. I was fighting to regain control, fighting your power to...” She paused, trying to get it right for him. “...To take over my life and do whatever you wanted with me.”