“Where’d a nice girl like you ever learn how to do a Liverpool Kiss?”
“Liverpool Kiss?” she wondered, panting. “That thing I did with our heads? That’s just a basic lesson from Practical Single Woman Living in the Twenty-First Century.”
“Tough world,” he murmured, sliding his big hands along her hips, back, and waist. His eyes glittered. “Soft girl,” he growled, and something swooped in her belly.
“Don’t try to sweet-talk your way out of this,” she admonished.
“You’re the one who head-butted me.”
She grinned. The realization of just how ebullient she felt, even after the strange, stressful night, struck her. That he could make it all fade, all from a few minutes of horsing around in the water together. She shook her head dazedly.
“How do you do it?” she wondered quietly.
“Do what?” he asked, his deft fingers running up and down her spine. She shivered in pleasure.
“Make it all go away so easily . . . make me forget,” she mused, shifting her bare breasts against his solid chest and leaning back in his hold slightly, trying to get a better perspective on his face.
“Isn’t that what I told you I’d do?” he asked.
“Maybe that’s how you’re able to keep people at arm’s length so effortlessly.”
“You’re hardly at arm’s length,” he said with a heavy-lidded glance between their naked, pressing bodies.
“I mean your cha
rm. You make us weak-minded, spineless females forget about getting too close,” she mused, her tone light, but sarcastic, as well.
His gaze went sharp at that. Her heart seemed to skip a beat as he studied her face for a charged few seconds. His mouth tightened into a hard line.
“I see. It’s some kind of tangible evidence that you want. Some kind of proof that I’m willing to get closer to you . . . to take a risk.”
“I didn’t say that, I just meant—”
“Clint Jefferies was the man I talked about that I met when I was fifteen years old. The nice neighbor, as you put it. I certainly wouldn’t.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. She’d been longing for him to open up to her, even if just a little. She hadn’t actually expected he would, though.
“This was in South Carolina, right?” She saw his questioning frown. “You told me when we first met on that beach that you were from South Carolina,” she reminded him. He must have forgotten.
“Oh, yeah. I had foster parents that eventually adopted me. They were good people—kind—but they were already in their mid-to-late sixties when I went to live with them and weren’t in the best of health. It’s not that I didn’t come to love them, but I guess their interests or energy levels didn’t match up all that well with a teenage boy’s. It was no one’s fault.
“Clint had a summer home next to our house,” he continued. “He’d bought up five properties on the lake where we lived and built himself a summer playground and retreat. Clint was everything my mom and dad weren’t. Youthful. Dynamic. Energetic. My parents were modest and struggled at times for money, while Clint was very wealthy and not afraid to show it.
“Clint was good to me,” Jacob said, frowning in memory. “I won’t deny that. There were those who were very jealous of the way he took to me. He dazzled me. That’s the embarrassing truth. I was a stupid, naïve kid. I fell for his act, hook, line, and sinker. He took me under his wing, seemed invested in my success. I wouldn’t have been able to go to college, let alone MIT, if it weren’t for his support . . . and the fact that he gave me a job, of course, working around his property, even when he and his wife weren’t in residence. I was just a chore and errand boy, but he paid me well. Gave me opportunities and connections I’d never had in my life . . . never even dreamed of.”
He paused, a faraway look in his eyes, a slight frown on his mouth. Harper held her breath, worried he wouldn’t continue.
“My dad died of a heart attack when I was sixteen; my mom of a stroke just before my eighteenth birthday,” he stated flatly.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she whispered.
He nodded. “They’d left me their property and a little money, but if it weren’t for Clint helping me with the will and the legalities, I don’t know what I would have done. I started to rely on him more and more. I stayed at lot at his house instead of at my parents’, even on some nights while Mom was still alive. He helped me with things like applying for scholarships and giving me recommendation letters for the type of colleges I hadn’t even considered attending, like MIT.”
He grimaced, as though he found the experience of talking about his past unpleasant, but he didn’t move. He kept her clasped tight against him, his feet planted firmly at the bottom of the pool.
“I know what people say. I know they think I’m ungrateful, when it comes to Clint.”
“Did you sever things with him because of the Markham insider trading scandal?” she challenged softly.