Open Skies (11 page)

“OK, so. What’s the story?”

And Jake started to talk.
**
It was almost five o’clock in the evening now. It had been a long day and Julie was almost sick from exhaustion.

After the conversation with Mattie that morning, Julie had holed up in her office, too mortified to face anyone, too humiliated to even go out for lunch. She should have been hungry by now, seeing as she’d had nothing but coffee and grapefruit for breakfast, but her stomach was still clenched in to a giant knot. She was just waiting for most people to leave for the day and she’d go back to the cabin and start packing. The taxi was booked for nine o’clock the next morning; her flight back to New York was at six o’clock. It meant a long wait at the airport, but she found that preferable to staying here one minute longer than she had to.

Her head pounded and her hands shook. She’d been dizzy off and on all day, and even thinking about the blue room hadn’t helped much. Her anxiety was choking her, making it hard to breathe. She felt like panic was just seconds away – she felt like it was inevitable.

When she heard the knock at the door, she jumped. Her nerves were all on the outside of her body, and every little sound or movement was magnified.

“Julie?”

Oh, shit. Jake. Just about the last person in the world she could handle seeing right now. She stayed quiet.

“Julie, it’s Jake.” Pause. “Look, I know you’re in there. I was wondering if I could talk to you? Just for a minute?”

She cleared her throat. “I’m busy Jake. Now’s not a good time.”

“It won’t take long. And I’m not here to argue. I promise.”

She stared at the locked door in despair.

“Please, Julie. Five minutes.”

She sighed and got to her feet unsteadily. A wave of nausea washed over her and she held on to the desk for a second, waiting for it to pass. “OK. OK, I’m coming.”

She walked across the room, trying to ignore the dizziness. She unlocked the door, backed up, headed back to the desk quickly. She sat down and felt much better. Then she looked up at Jake.

He was standing in the middle of the room, looking uncertain.

“What can I do for you, Jake?”

He came a bit closer. “Well, the thing is… I heard from Mattie that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“And – and she also told me about this morning. That some of the things that we’d all assumed about you – that these things weren’t true.”

“Actually, pretty much everything you assumed about me wasn’t true.”

“I know.” He fell silent again.

“So. What do you want?”

“To apologize. To ask you to reconsider leaving. To – to stay. Let us all get to know you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re Dave’s daughter.”

Julie wasn’t hearing him much anymore: it was getting harder to breathe and she fought to stay calm. “No, I’m not.”

“But you
are
, Julie. In ways you don’t even know yet. Did you know that Dave designed all these buildings?”

“What do you mean?”

Jake gestured around the room. “He had a talent for architecture and interior design. He did this office, every cabin, the restaurant, every single room in the staff quarters and in the Big House.” He cocked his head at her. “I’d guess that’s where your design abilities come from. Wouldn’t you?”

Julie stared at him in horror. The one thing that she thought she could claim for herself – something separate from her mother or father or upbringing or childhood – was her gift for design. She had fought for it, worked to learn it, slaved to excel at it. And now, Jake was standing there telling her that it wasn’t hers, after all, that it came from the heartless bastard who had abandoned her?

Jake was still talking. “Your father was an incredible man. Kind, smart, hard-working. He treated us all with respect. He’d be ashamed of how we’ve all treated you, I know. Maybe you can give us another chance? We’ve all talked about it together, and we want you to stay. We’d all like you to stay.”

His words were hammering against her, and she had no way to get away from them. She was trapped here, in this office, and she stood up, thinking about trying to escape out the door. The room seemed to be getting smaller and darker and Jake’s voice was very far away now. Oh, God. The black spots were appearing in front of her eyes. And now the real danger sign was happening: everything around her was blurring and wavering, turning watery around the edges. She was going to lose it, lose all control. She closed her eyes.

No, no, no! Blue. Get in to the blue room. Breathe in the blue. It’s OK.

Jake looked at Julie. Her eyes were closed and she was very pale; she was holding on to the desk tightly. Puzzled, he walked a bit closer to her. “Julie?”

Blue. Blue. Oh, God, too late. Too late. I’m going to fall down, I’m going to fall down.

The black spots exploded behind her eyelids. A shaft of glass sliced in to her skull and she gasped from the pain. Her body was gone, she couldn’t feel her feet under her. She was freefalling, going down, down, down.

In to darkness.

**

“Julie? Julie? Can you hear me?”

Large hands were in her hair, stroking her cheek.

“Julie?”

She slowly came back in to her body, started to feel the space around her again. She was lying down, her head on something soft. Her hair was loose – she could feel it falling over her shoulders and cheeks. The hands smoothed it back.

“Julie?”

She took a deep breath, found that she was able to breathe freely again. Her head hurt. With an enormous effort, she opened her eyes.

She was in her office, lying on the leather sofa, a cushion under her head. Jake was kneeling on the floor next to her, his hair tumbled over his forehead. He was gazing down at her, his face tight and lined with worry.

Confused, she blinked up at him.
What the hell?

“Jake? What happened?”

He looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t know. You just – you just fell down. I caught you before you hit the floor, thank God.”

She stared at him for a second and then remembered.
Oh, God!
She tried to sit up and the black spots reappeared. She closed her eyes.

He gently took her shoulders and pushed her down again. “Easy now. Just lie still.”

Julie felt the tears start – she couldn’t believe how humiliated she felt. Here she’d been trying to show everyone how in control she was, how she couldn’t be pushed around or treated like some gold digging schemer, and now she was lying flat on her back on a sofa, like some pathetic damsel-in-distress. And in front of
him
, of all people.
Jesus.

Jake saw the tears glistening in the corners of her closed eyes, and had the sudden urge to wipe them away with his thumb, to pull her close and hold her while she trembled. This surprised him, the desire to touch her, to comfort her.

Julie opened her eyes then and Jake stared in to them, shocked at what he saw there.

She was scared. Confused. Vulnerable.

He never thought he’d use those words to describe Julie Everett – but there it all was, deep in those tear-filled green eyes. Hurt. Bewilderment. Fear. Uncertainty.

He’d seen that exact look in those exact same eyes not so long ago and the memory pierced him, made him gentle.

“Do you need a doctor?” he asked her in a soft, low voice.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Has this happened before?”

She looked down. “Yes. But not recently. Not for a long while, actually. Well over two years.”

He leaned back on his heels. Her hair had fallen out from the severe little pulled-up style she’d had it in, and red curls now tumbled around her face. It made her look younger, somehow, and softer. He was swept by a wave of longing to touch her face.

“Why does it happen?” he asked.

“It happens when – when I feel overwhelmed by things.”

“Overwhelmed?” The thought that this calm and collected woman could ever feel that way seemed impossible.

She nodded. “Yes. When I start to feel like things are spinning out of my control. I panic when I can’t stay in control.”

Now
that
made sense to Jake. He’d never met a more tightly-wound human being in the whole of his life.

“But you can’t be in control of everything in life,” he said. “Nobody can be.”

“I can try.”

He paused. He realized that he had just been given a big piece of the puzzle that explained Julie Everett’s personality. Maybe – just maybe – she was afraid of being seen as weak or vulnerable.

Julie was trying to sit up again and he put his arm around her shoulders and helped her. Her face was terribly pale and her hands were freezing and that scared him a bit.

“How about I get you a shot of whiskey?”

She managed a small smile. “That sounds good.”

He got to his feet and went over to the largest bookcase and opened the cabinet at the bottom. He rummaged around and then produced a bottle and a cut-glass tumbler.

“I didn’t know that was in there,” she said.

He poured out a finger of whiskey and brought it over to her. “Haven’t you gone through all the cabinets and stuff in here?” He handed her the heavy tumbler.

She wrapped both hands around it. “No. Not yet. I haven’t been able to face it quite yet.”

“Drink that.” He nodded at the whiskey. “You’ll feel better.”

Obediently, she drank a bit. She coughed and her eyes ran and a burst of color returned to her cheeks. “Argh. That’s vile.”

“Not a whiskey drinker?”

“No. I’m a white wine kinda girl.”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, figures.”

She was quiet. She took another sip and shuddered.

He sat on the sofa next to her and studied her face. She looked much better, but still not fully herself. She looked tired, he saw now, and sad.

“What do you mean, you haven’t been able to face it?”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“What you said a minute ago, about not being able to face it yet. Face what?”

“Just what we were talking about when I – before I fell. About David Reid.”

“Yeah?”

She shrugged. “Well, now you know that the man that you all knew was a stranger to me. You all thought so highly of him – but for me, he was the bastard who abandoned my mother when she was pregnant with me. He just left her to deal with everything on her own. For my whole life, I never knew one damn thing about him. And then out of the blue, I find out that he’s left me a ranch and a hotel in his will.” She looked up at Jake and a touch of her coldness returned. “I just don’t know if I want to get to know him the way that you all do. What if I start to go through all his things – here and at the Big House – and I get to know him, and I start to like him?”

“You don’t want to like him?”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that part out.” She was quiet for a second. “To tell you the truth, Jake, I’m having a hard time with that part.”

Jake stared down at her, suddenly understanding a lot more about Julie than he had done ten minutes before. He hadn’t really thought about things from her side: he’d never thought how hard it might be for her to be here, surrounded by people who loved and respected her father. Who loved and respected the man who had cast her mother aside, cast Julie aside.

It can’t have been easy for her mother to struggle through as a single mother; Mattie had hinted that Julie and her Mom had had a tough time of it. Jake knew a thing or two about being raised by a single mother, about how hard it was to find the time and money for even the basics. Dave had been a multi-millionaire by the time he was thirty – why hadn’t he made contact with his daughter then, supported her financially, gotten to know her? No wonder Julie was angry. No wonder she was struggling here.

He leaned back, regarded her with new eyes. “Julie, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me about your mother?”

She looked up sharply. “Why?”

“Because I’m wondering what your childhood was like, without a father. Without Dave.”

“It was hard as hell. What did you expect it to be like?”

She was back now, that hard, cold, detached Julie. But he knew now what lay beneath the surface, how soft she could be. He was determined to see that woman again. He wanted to get to know her, he was surprised to discover. He wanted to know the real Julie, the one buried so far down that she’d only shown it by mistake, when she was forced to do so in a moment of weakness.

“I’d expect it to be hard.” The gentleness in his voice startled her. “But I still want to know. I want to know you, just a bit. Can you tell me?”

“Not now.”
Not ever.

“But do you think you might?”

“Maybe.”
No.

As Jake sat silent, Julie glanced up at him. The look she saw on his face surprised her. His usual scowl was gone, and his eyes weren’t narrowed in suspicion and dislike. His handsome face was open and thoughtful, and his gray eyes weren’t hard. Was that an actual spark of humanity in them?

Their eyes met and Julie suddenly felt her breath stop. When he wasn’t glaring at her, when he was looking at her with warmth and kindness, he was drop-dead gorgeous. She hadn’t fully realized how damn good-looking he actually was. She became aware of the closeness of his large, hard body, of his knee pressed against the curved softness of her thigh, of his hands on her arms. It felt good to be so close to him, she was shocked to discover. She wanted to be closer. She’d never felt such a strong attraction to any man in her life, and the fact that she didn’t know him at all hardly seemed important. She just wanted him to touch her.

Flustered and desperate to break all physical contact with him, she put the tumbler on the table and got to her feet. The sudden movement started her head spinning again and she swayed.

Jake grabbed her. “Julie! You OK?”

Eyes closed, she held on to his forearms, waiting for the dizziness to pass. God, he was like steel under her fingers. A small sound escaped her throat – part desire, part fear.

Jake heard it and wrapped his arms around her shaking body. “Are you hurt?”