Smart Girls Think Twice (28 page)

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I asked him but . . .” Now Emma was the one who blushed.

“He distracted you with sex,” Lulu filled in. “Yeah, I do that with Oliver.”

“You do not!”

She kissed him with a lot of tongue. “Yeah, I do.”

“Can we get back to Jake?” Emma said.

“You have to swear you won’t tell another soul.”

“I swear.”

“If you were Leena or Sue Ellen, I’d have you swear on some designer bag, but I don’t know what to have a smart girl swear on.”

“Swear on your laptop, Em,” Oliver told her.

“Fine. I swear on my laptop.”

“You didn’t put your hand on it,” Lulu pointed out.

Emma glared at her.

“Okay, okay. Jake came to Rock Creek to find his birth mother,” Lulu said. “And he found her. Zoe.”

“Your mother?”

“That’s right. You can figure out on your own that since we share the same biological mother that makes us half siblings.”

“Yes. I can figure that out.” Emma could also figure out that Jake didn’t trust her enough to confide in her about his real reasons for being in Rock Creek. Which clearly indicated that he felt no emotional connection with her. She was merely the brainy girl he’d nailed, nothing more. “I’m . . . happy for you both.”

Then she burst into tears. Like her sisters, Emma was not a pretty crier. But she was a quiet one. Usually. Not now. Now the pain just came pouring out in big honking sobs that had Oliver looking panicked and Lulu looking confused.

“Why are you so upset that Jake is my brother?” she asked Emma.

Oliver thought a moment before snapping his fingers. “I’ve got it! She’s crying because Jake didn’t tell her any of this himself. Am I right, Em? Did I get it right?”

Emma nodded and reached for a handful of tissues to mop up her face. She felt like an idiot.

She’d shed enough tears over Jake.

“Yes!” Oliver punched his fist into the air and did a brief happy Snoopy dance. He stopped the instant he saw the look on Lulu’s face.

“That dance may be appropriate when you master a song on
Guitar Hero III,
” Lulu said,

“but not when your friend is clearly suffering.”

“Right.” Oliver nodded. “Inappropriate behavior. Got it.”

“Actually, I’m not sure that dance is good in any situation, but who am I to judge?” Lulu shrugged. “Dancing is such an individual expression.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Emma had her self-control back and was determined to hang onto it no matter what new revelations came to light.

“Don’t be sorry about my dancing,” Oliver said.

“I was referring to my total meltdown,” Emma said.

“Don’t worry about it.” Oliver awkwardly patted her shoulder. “I had the same reaction when my brother didn’t get the Comic-Con tickets he promised me.”

“So what happened with you and Jake to make him take off the way he did?” Lulu asked Emma.

“I told him a publisher wants to buy my book proposal about risk takers.”

“Uh-oh.” Lulu shook her head. “And Jake thought you were using him, right? You weren’t, were you?”

“No, of course not. But he wouldn’t listen to me.”

“He’s stubborn. Like me. But you can’t give up on him.”

“Sure I can,” Emma said.

“No. You have to at least try and get him back. My granddad always tells me to follow my dreams, to shoot for the stars, and if you miss, you may land on the moon.”

“Yes, but there’s no oxygen on the moon,” Oliver pointed out. “If you landed there without the right equipment, you’d die. And what about gravity or the lack thereof?”

Lulu gave him another look.

“Right. I was thinking scientifically again.” Oliver hung his head. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry, just help me convince Emma to go after Jake,” Lulu said.

Oliver frowned. “How can she do that? We don’t have any idea where he went.”

“Right. Wait.” Lulu snapped her fingers. “I have his cell phone number. You must have it too, Emma. You should call him.”

“No way.” Emma shook her head so hard her vision blurred. “Not in this lifetime! It’s over.

End of discussion.”

Of course, it wasn’t the end of the discussion since an hour after Lulu and Oliver left both her sisters showed up on her doorstep. Word traveled fast in a small town like Rock Creek.

“The rat bastard,” Sue Ellen growled. “How dare Jake dump my baby sister and skip town!

How about I have Donny dump septic sludge on his Jeep?”

“Or I could have Cole dump camel poop on his Jeep. I think I read someplace it smells really bad.

I’m not sure where he’d get any around here, but I’m sure he could come up with something.”

Leena had just gotten back from her honeymoon and looked fit and tanned from her time in Bermuda.

“Jake and his Jeep have already left,” Emma reminded her sisters.

“Right,” Sue Ellen said. “The rat bastard.”

“Don’t call him that,” Emma said.

“Why not?

“Because it reminds me of something he said.”

Sue Ellen was infuriated. “He called you a rat bastard?”

“No, he said he didn’t give a rat’s rectum.”

Sue Ellen’s anger cranked up another ten notches. “He said he didn’t give a rat’s rectum about you? He’s worse than a rat bastard! What’s worse than a rat bastard? Come on, help me out here.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Emma said. “He said he didn’t give a rat’s rectum about winning.”

“The bleeping buzzard. How does that sound? Worse than a rat bastard?” Sue Ellen asked.

“Are you listening to me?” Emma said.

“Of course I am. Wait, I think the baby just kicked. That or it’s indigestion from the pepperoni and Cheerios I ate for breakfast.” Sue Ellen burped like a trucker. “Yeah, it’s indigestion. False alarm, folks.”

“How can we help you, Emma?” Leena asked.

“Don’t tell Mom. Or Dad.”

“Well, Dad isn’t a problem since he’s still in the hospital. Cole and I visited him first thing this morning. Mom is something else again.”

“Yes, she is.”

“She’s going to hear it from someone. She probably already has.”

As if on cue, there was a knock on Emma’s front door. “Emma, open up. It’s your mother.

You don’t have your head in the oven, do you? Don’t do anything stupid.”

Emma opened the door before her mother said anything else to fuel the gossip fires.

Maxie rushed in and hugged Emma. “Oh, hon, I just heard that Jake dumped you. I brought some hair coloring so you could wash that man right out of your hair.”

Seeing the desperation on Emma’s face, Leena said, “Emma needs some time alone right now.”

“But I just got here.”

“And now you’re leaving. With us. Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”

Maxie continued protesting even as Emma’s sisters led her out. Emma closed the door after them and leaned against it.

“What doesn’t destroy me strengthens me” was one of her favorite quotes by Nietzsche.

Emma wondered if he’d ever been dumped . . . and then threatened with hair coloring.

Probably not.

Jake drove as far as the state border with New Jersey before he realized that Newark Airport might not be the closest exit route. Maybe he should have driven to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh and caught a flight from there.

Today was the first of July. No snow in these parts but plenty down in the Andes. It was time for him to test his strength and get back on a snowboard again. Time to prove to himself that he still had what it takes, if not to race competitively then to face his fears.

Let Emma put that in her damn book. He’d e-mail her a picture of him back on the slopes with a couple of snow bunnies at his side.

Aw, hell. Who was he kidding here? He wasn’t facing his fears, he was running from them.

He was smart enough to know that it wasn’t just the book deal that freaked him out. It was the fact that he’d somehow fallen for Emma. As in fallen in love. L-O-V-E. A freaking four-letter word to him. Because the few people he had loved ended up dead.

Just like Emma had almost ended up dead when that pickup had headed right for her. It might have taken a few days for it to sink in with him but eventually it had. And then there was the big family gathering with Lulu saying how the thought of losing Zoe made her feel closer to her mom.

He was glad for them both.

But having Emma nearly killed didn’t bring him closer to her. Instead it scared the shit out of him. Made him want to head for the hills. Hop on the nearest flight and not look back.

Her book deal had given him the perfect excuse to do just that.

She hadn’t set him up. She didn’t have a devious bone in her body. He, on the other hand, had plenty. He had devious down to an art form.

Not that he’d deliberately used the book thing as an excuse to dump her. He wasn’t that much of a bastard. He’d honestly been stung by her news that she was doing a book on risk takers. And he had honestly wondered if she had used him.

But now that he had some time to think on it, he no longer believed that.

All this thinking made Jake hungry. He needed a burger. He pulled off the expressway at the next exit and got a Big Mac, large fries, and a soda. He saw the Dr Pepper logo on the dispenser and flashed back to Emma’s face. “Aw, hell.”

Go back
, a voice inside his head told him.

Go to Peru
, another voice said.

His inner argument escalated as he ate his Big Mac.

Go freaking back!

Go to freaking Peru!

What should he do? He should probably just eat his burger and stop all this conflicted thinking stuff. Easier said than done.

His choice should be clear, but it wasn’t. Heading for the slopes with a snowboard had always been the answer for him in the past. Risk was addictive. He knew that. He’d lived it.

And nearly died doing it. But the urge was still there. Part of him wanted to hit the slopes ASAP.

The other part of him wanted to return to Emma. Emma, who could be both fragile and fierce.

She might look like she needed protection but he knew that she could kick ass if she really needed to. She’d kick his ass big time if he went back.

He’d hurt her badly, and that was the thing he regretted the most. He’d lashed out at her in a blind panic, like an animal caught in a trap.

But it was a trap of his own making, not Emma’s.

Maybe he should just hit the road and keep going. Maybe she was better off without him.

What did he have to offer her? She was a smart woman with a bunch of degrees. He’d never attended college. She came from a loving family. Strange maybe, but loving. He’d grown up in foster care learning to depend on no one but himself.

But Jake had a family now. That still felt weird to him. He had no experience with long-term relationships or with family stuff. What if he messed up?

Hell, he’d already messed up with Emma.

What if he didn’t know how to make amends? What if she refused to have anything to do with him anymore? What if she kicked his sorry butt from PA to Peru? What then?

Only one way to find out.

Emma wanted to cancel the presentation she’d promised to give at the community center about her research, but then everyone would think she was a mess because Jake dumped her.

That was unacceptable. So she showed up two hours early to make sure she got everything prepared. She had a room with a blackboard. The smell of chalk was reassuring to her, reminding her of her job back in Boston.

Her hand was steady as she wrote “Keys to Small Town Successes” and then “1) Adopt a Can-Do Attitude” on the blackboard.

Yeah, right. That can-do attitude hadn’t helped her avoid getting her heart battered by Jake.

He’d not only walked out on her, but he’d also left town. He’d probably done her a favor, showing her what he was really like before she fell even more in love with him than she already was. She just needed to change her frame of reference here.

She tested the words, saying them out loud. “It’s a good thing.”

“What is?”

She pivoted to find Jake standing in the doorway.

“You dumping me.” She was so proud of how steady her voice sounded even if her heart was racing a mile a second. “It was a good thing.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He entered the meeting room, closing the door behind him. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and trust me, I’ve done plenty of stupid things.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“I came back.”

“I can see that.” She turned her back on him and continued writing on the blackboard.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“Not really, no.”

“I’ll tell you anyway.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not interested.”

“You want me to grovel. I get that. I really messed up. I hurt you.”

“I’m over it.”

“I’m not.”

“Your problem, not mine.”

“Can you put that chalk down a minute and talk to me?”

She kept writing.

“Please?”

She turned and threw an eraser at him. It hit him smack in the middle of his black T-shirt leaving a puff of white chalk powder before falling to the floor. “How dare you! How dare you come back here and try to act all charming like nothing happened.”

“I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

“Forget it. You’re not going to nail this brainy girl ever again.”

“You scared me.”

“Yeah, right,” she angrily scoffed. “The man who’s not afraid of anything. The extreme sports guy who only feels alive if he’s courting death.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“And I’m telling you I don’t give a . . . a rat’s rectum.”

“Will you at least let me try and explain.”

“No, I don’t think I will. Aren’t you afraid I’d print your explanation in my supposedly tell-all book about you?”

“No. I trust you.”

“Well, I
don’t
trust you. How could I after what you’ve done? And how can you say you trust me when you never told me your real reason for coming to Rock Creek? It wasn’t to build a sports resort. It was to find your birth mother. Lulu told me. Don’t worry. She swore me to silence about it.”

“I only discovered Zoe was my birth mother a few days ago.”