“She’s afraid of loving—it hurts too much.”
He said it so nonchalantly, like it was what anyone should expect, that it took Robin aback. What a sad, revealing thing to say. What an awful thing to say! But she knew exactly what Jake meant. “Isn’t it funny how alike we are, you and me?” she asked. “My dad has never really thought I measured up, either. It seems like I have been forever trying to . . . to please him, to get him to say, hey, Robbie, you’re a good daughter, or a good person. Or just something like, come on up and let’s go out on the boat. But he never does. And when I do hear from him, it’s usually to rant about something I’ve done wrong.”
“Wrong? What could be wrong? You’re a wonderful person, dedicated to your company, to him—”
Robin laughed at how pathetic that sounded, given the betrayal she felt at her father’s hand. If only Jake understood how she had given him everything, only to be told she was basically mere window dressing to him. “Trust me,” she said with a sardonic laugh, “I’m wrong. You want to know his current complaint? I don’t have any roots. I haven’t pursued the right things in life.” But the words, spoken with sarcasm, seemed to hang in front of her. They even sounded true. “I don’t know why I care,” she continued thoughtfully, “but for some reason, I keep trying to get him to like me.” She shook her head at the lunacy of that, then smiled. “I guess I’m just stubborn.”
“You really think your father doesn’t like you?” Jake asked, surprised.
She nodded. “I think he loves me in some weird way. But he doesn’t like me.”
Jake pressed his lips together, stared at her for a long moment, then said quietly, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re absolutely amazing.”
Robin gave him a grateful smile, cognizant that the way he was looking at her was making her heart skip, and tried to put a word to his look that she could cope with. “You’re starting to make me feel like I have something strange on my head,” she said, trying to make a joke of it, but Jake did not smile.
“I mean it. You are a beautiful, vibrant, accomplished woman. And genuine, someone who is way more down to earth than she thinks. I look at you, and I see someone I’ve been waiting for my whole life.”
Robin gasped; her heart was now somersaulting, and she wanted to protest, wanted to stop him before he took this too far, and waved a desperate hand at him. “Jake,” she whispered weakly, but he caught her hand and brought it to his chest, pressed it against his heart.
“I am falling in love with you, Robin.”
Her physical reaction was so quick and sudden that the wineglass she had been holding so loosely went crashing to the floor. Jake let go of her hand, grabbed the tray between them, and saved it and the wine bottle from toppling over.
“I’m sorry,” she said, flustered, as he put the tray on the floor. “I’m sorry.”
Jake didn’t seem to hear her—he grabbed both her hands by the wrists and pulled her on top of him as he fell back, landing on a cloud of pillows. “Me too, because I can’t help how I feel or that you have managed to open a door in me that has been nailed shut.”
She was skating on the edge of complete chaos—his words ripped through her like a scythe, opening ancient old wounds she didn’t even know she had. It was too much, too many emotions erupting inside her. This was a man who could speak like a poet, could make love like a real man, could make her laugh—she adored Jake, loved his company, loved to watch him work . . . But love? What did that really mean? Didn’t that mean there were expectations that were far too great for either of them?
Jake suddenly let go of her, and she flopped over onto her side like a rag doll.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he said. “I don’t know if it was the coffee, or the pink flamingos, or telling me how to bat, but somehow, you stuck one of those flimsy sandals in that door inside me and kicked it open without even trying.”
Robin buried her face in the pillow, afraid she would say something stupid—even more afraid he would stop.
“And there I was, trying to mind my own business, but suddenly, I can’t get you off my mind, I can’t sleep without dreaming of you, I can’t think without seeing you, I can’t wait to get here in the morning, and I can’t stand to leave at night. I didn’t know what the hell was the matter with me, but I can finally admit to myself and to you that I know what it is that has been clanking around in me. I am falling in love with you, Robin.”
“Oh God, I don’t know what to say,” she moaned into the pillow.
Jake leaned over her, kissed the back of her neck, then her shoulder. “Say, I love you, too, Hammerman. Say, me, too, or ditto, or you make me hot, you stud—”
“Oh, Jake,” she whispered helplessly.