And if that wasn’t enough, it bothered him greatly that her money bothered him at all. Jake really, honestly, didn’t begrudge her a dime of what she had—he just wished she would appreciate it. Even her father’s threat of cutting her off had not seemed to make an impression—she continued to spend freely.
And just what was he going to do about the money thing? He could hardly ask her to denounce it all and live in true Manning fashion, contract to contract, month to month. But on the other hand, he could not seem to get used to the idea of her having so much more resource than him. Between Evan, her endless stream of money, and her questionable commitment to them—to Robin and Jake, The Couple—Jake was starting to wonder all over again if he was living in a dream—fantasy or nightmare.
He would have been very surprised to know he wasn’t alone in his bewilderment.
Robin was also figuring she had somehow managed to get herself locked in some parallel universe where she had actually fallen in love, money was an object, and she was struggling to understand a business she had once thought was hers by birthright alone. This was definitely not the world as she knew it.
First and foremost was this business of having gone off and fallen in love, the one thing she had always believed would never happen to someone who was alternately known as The Man-eater. But the night they had come back from the ranch and Jake had left her looking hurt and angry and really, plain disappointed, had undone her, affecting her in one of those buried places within her. She couldn’t sleep that night and spent the next day wandering irritably from room to room (as she was prone to do when he wasn’t around), pretty much hating her big empty house. Pretty much being mad at him. She thought he was a baby. She thought he was asking too much of her. How hard would it have been to let it go, to let her nurse the wounds her father had inflicted?
It was the tiny initials, the LH and DD forevermore, carved so carefully in the wood trim of the master bedroom that had finally cracked her hard veneer. She imagined that the tiny little inscription, but monstrously huge sentiment (if Jake’s theory was correct) was all that was left of two people’s lives, not this house, or the many things LH and DD might have had. Lockstep into eternity. How wonderful to be so completely devoted to someone that you would wish forevermore. And gazing at it, Robin had sunk down onto the window seat, had felt her hard heart shatter, brick by brick, until there was nothing left but the raw pink thing underneath, eager for someone to hold it. Not just anyone. Jacob Manning. Forevermore.
It was, as they say, an epiphanous moment. So epiphanous and gushing that Robin had sat on his front porch for almost two hours, waiting to say she loved him, that she needed him and his strength, his comfort, his affection. Worried that he might have dumped her and called Lindy in a fit of frustration. Fearing that she would have to retreat from this feeling and from his porch when the clouds started rolling in, but unwilling to give in, she had waited until the last possible moment.
When at last he had turned into the drive, she had silently cheered herself. Her perseverance had paid off! It was a sign from the Relationship Gods that she had finally done something right, that she did have it in her! But then Jake had gotten out of his truck, and she had seen the look on his face and felt that horrible rush of fear and regret all over again. But it was also the moment she knew that she really loved him, without reservation, loved him so much that it was reverberating throughout her entire body.
And she still felt that way, the feeling growing stronger each day.
Unfortunately, she had also discovered that opening the door to her heart did not make everything right with the world like it did in the movies.
First, there was the money thing. Or her sudden and serious lack of it to be exact, along with the new and intimidating sensation of getting an overdraft statement from the bank. Robin Lear, negative fund balance. Yikes.