Just so much. Period.
He hadn’t known much of anything when it came to feelings twenty years ago. He’d known hunger and fear. And perhaps worry: a chronic, painful anxiety for the other helpless creatures that were forced to depend on a very undependable, violent man. If it weren’t for a few of the dogs and Grandma Rose, he would have run away from his Uncle Emmitt in an instant. They were the only things that kept him tethered to that grimy, threadbare existence. In the case of Grandma Rose, Emmitt would surely have let his mother die from neglect if it weren’t for Jake’s reminders and cautious, subtle urging for visits, food, and money for medical care.
But he had left them all behind that summer of his thirteenth year. He’d abandoned the animals, a few of which had been his only friends. He’d forsaken Grandma Rose. He’d offered his life.
All of it, he’d risked for her.
It’d all come to nothing. She hadn’t kept one of her promises. She hadn’t written, even when he’d written dozens of letters and left various forwarding addresses. Of course, her solemn pledge to convince her parents to allow him to visit her in DC, her insistence that she’d find a way for them to be together again, had never played out. He hadn’t been surprised about the visits. He’d been a hell of a lot more familiar with the cruel realities of life as a kid than Harper had ever been. The suspiciousness and fear he’d witnessed in her parents’ eyes when they’d looked at him as Harper and he clung together on that cot in the tiny Barterton police station had driven that harsh truth home.
Those stupid, humiliating letters. A good majority of them he’d gotten back marked return to sender. Why hadn’t he burned the damn things a long time ago?
So she didn’t even remember him. Well, thank God for that.
But what if she did? What if her lack of recognition had been a performance?
Not a chance, he discounted abruptly. He doubted anyone could fake that blank expression in her eyes when she’d first looked up at him on the beach.
Of course that handful of days and nights hadn’t meant to her what it had to him. She had been a cherished, prized child, adored and protected by her parents. Their time in the West Virginia wilderness together, their desperate flight for their lives, had faded into a dim, distant nightmare once she’d been returned to the haven of her parents’ arms.
He’d faded from her life. Why did that fact hurt, when he wanted so much for it to be true? When he was so relieved that it was true.
He’d last seen her in the courthouse on the day of Emmitt’s sentencing. She’d walked away within the anxious circle of her parents’ arms, Harper looking over her shoulder while her parents urged her forward. Away from the nightmare . . .
She’d walked away tonight, too, despite the dazed fascination in her eyes, the yielding he’d felt in her body, the heat in her kiss. It was for the best.
It definitely was for the best. Why did he have to keep repeating that fact to himself?
He knew why.
Because damn, she’d grown up beautiful. Stunning. It didn’t surprise him. She’d been beautiful, even at twelve years old. Her fresh luminosity had undoubtedly been what had first snagged Emmitt Tharp’s dangerous attention. Even though she’d been a year younger than Jacob when they’d first met, she’d begun to develop. She’d looked older than him. To skinny little Jake Tharp, she’d been the ideal of perfection. Of cleanliness. Of a beauty so rare, it must by its very nature elude his grimy grasp.
He’d been ridiculously na?ve. It was laughable in retrospect.
Still . . . Jacob didn’t even smile as he stared out at the shimmering water. Somehow, seeing Harper McFadden was one of the most sobering things that had happened to him in a long, long time.
Her hair was a shade darker now, but the copper color was just as singular as it had been back then. He recalled how he’d stared at it with slack-jawed wonder when he first saw it as a boy. On the beach yesterday, when he’d had his first jolting encounter with her after two decades, she’d worn it in a high ponytail. Tonight, her hair had fallen in loose, sexy waves down her bare back. As he’d passed a window in his office, he’d caught a glimpse of it out on the terrace. The vision of her from the back had stopped him in his tracks. For a few seconds, everything had gone still and silent as he stared out the window, and his past and present had collided.