“That it’s not only for warmth, but for safety. And that mountain lions don’t like it?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“That’s right,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head and peering toward the entrance of the second cave. “He’ll lose patience when he sees he can’t get to us. He’ll go hunt somewhere else when his hunger pains get the better of him.”
“Really?” she asked in a quavering voice, her nose still pressed against his chest.
“Really.” The bully cat shrieked again, seeming to rattle the whole cave. Harper shuddered.
“Jake—”
He stroked her hair, never taking his eyes off the back entrance. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got the fire. Trust me. Tell me about The Lord of the Rings.”
“What?” She sounded a little incredulous at his request.
“Yeah. Like a campfire story. We’ve got a fire. Tell me about it.”
He sensed some of her terror receding slightly at that. If he was urging her to tell stories around the fire, maybe things couldn’t be that bad. She started talking in a muffled, quavering voice about something called hobbits, which sounded to Jake like these easygoing, fat dwarves who lived in the woods. Just as she mentioned someone named Frodo, Jake saw it: the eyes of the mountain lion glowing at him from the cloakin
g darkness. The cat was about twenty-five feet away from their fire.
“What kind of a name is Frodo?” he muttered, still stroking her hair, subtly urging her to keep her face against his chest.
“It’s a hobbit’s name,” she scolded, sniffing. “Just listen to the story, all right?”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. She resumed the shaky telling of her story. He held her against him all the while, never flinching from the demon cat’s stare.
thirty
Present Day
She was bringing everything up to the surface. Jacob was frustrated as hell at her for that.
He was also wary, not to mention so damn curious, he thought he was going to lose it sometime soon.
Did she remember? Or didn’t she?
Sometimes, it felt like all he could do to keep himself from grabbing her and demanding she tell him the truth about what she recalled about the August before her seventh-grade year. What did she remember about a sociopath called Emmitt Tharp, about being kidnapped, of escaping with scrawny Jake Tharp? She’d say things sometimes that seemed like echoes from their past: her onetime phobia for dogs and knives, her wistful musings about someone from her past helping her get over her fear of heights, what she’d said tonight about the fire being for security, not just warmth. Those things, and so many other small mentions on her part, made him wild with speculation and curiosity.
And yet . . . he’d searched her expression each time, and there would be no connection he could discern in her eyes between whatever hint she’d dropped and him—Jacob—the man present with her there in the moment. It was as if everything he’d told her about him remaking himself new every day was the literal truth, as if Jake Tharp and Jacob Latimer really were two different beings . . . that there was truly no connection for him to find in Harper’s beautiful eyes. That rattled him nearly as much as the idea that she did remember him.
Maybe he really had killed off Jake Tharp in his single-minded mission to become Jacob Latimer. That concept used to reassure him. It’d been the only reason he allowed himself to indulge in a relationship with Harper. But increasingly, he searched for that connection not just because he dreaded it. He wanted her to remember Jake, to acknowledge that past connection and their shared history . . .
If only a little.
And that alteration in his attitude had him seriously on edge as they left Geb, and he opened the limo door for her. Because there was no a little in this scenario. She either remembered, or she didn’t. Either he resolved to promote Harper’s apparent amnesia, or he prodded her to recall more, tainting and altering his present-day world. Because it wouldn’t just be the sweet, poignant moments of their time spent together that would jump out of that Pandora’s box of memory. So many ugly, shameful secrets would spring out of the past as well, truths Jacob vigilantly guarded against. He’d figuratively killed off Jake Tharp so that Jacob Latimer could live and thrive.
And he’d been doing it so well, until she’d walked into his life again.
It wasn’t just his concern about what Harper would do with those memories in regard to his life, either. He was worried for her, and that concern rose every minute he spent in her company. If her father had truly been successful in making her forget a traumatic kidnapping and assault at age twelve, then Jacob should be doing whatever he could to make sure those ugly memories stayed buried. He knew all too well what effect Emmitt’s foulness had had on a victim less fortunate than Harper had been.
The conflict raged in him. The push-pull he experienced toward her mounted, the friction of it becoming unbearable.
The atmosphere in the private enclosure of the limo was almost as stifling and charged as it had been last night, after the opera, Jacob realized with a frown. They’d finished dinner soon after Harper’s comment about the fire and Jacob’s sharp questions and comments. They’d both skipped dessert and coffee, and had been polite enough with each other while Jacob took care of the check. Still, their former intimacy and warmth had vanished, only to be replaced by a growing, taut strain.
They rode in silence for twenty minutes. As Miguel, his driver, maneuvered them through tight Saturday evening traffic, he found himself unable to restrain his volatility any longer, however.
She sat on the seat across from him, staring out the window, the passing lights glimmering in the stones of the earrings he’d bought her. Her pure, striking profile was what drew his gaze, however, not the precious gems. He clenched his teeth.
God, he wanted her.