Page 62 of Raging Fires

“Beer?” he asked as he walked toward her, a plate in each and.

“No. But a big bottle of water would be terrific.”

He set down the plates on the table in front of her and went back to the bar. She watched him walk away, an activity which had long been one of her favorite things. He had such a tight butt, and the way those long legs lazily ate up so much distance just lit her up like a torch. She dropped her gaze when he came back with the bottles. That view of him was equally sexy, but he would be able to see her expression.

Kelli sat up and looked at her sandwich for the first time. It was just as she liked it, slathered with mayo and the turkey topped by lettuce and a slice of tomato, a pickle spear by its side. Tears stung her eyes, which was dumb. How could making a sandwich be endearing? She cleared her throat and said, “Thank you. This is lovely.”

“Service with a smile.” Jake set down the bottles, tossed a couple of packages of chips on the table and pulled out the chair across from her. As he picked up his sandwich, she saw the little bandage wrapped around his left thumb.

Kelli nodded toward the bandage. “You get that slicing the tomato?”

“Yeah. Good thing I don’t make my living as a chef.”

Kelli swigged down about half the bottle of water, then she attacked the sandwich. They were silent for a few minutes, wolfing down the food. The work and adrenaline from the show always left her ravenous. Jake finished his meal first and just sat for a while, picking at the label on the bottle. Then he let out a sigh and sat back in his chair.

This was going to be his big reveal about this morning. Kelli could tell the signs when he was pushing himself to say something that left him vulnerable. To help him out, Kelli asked, “So where’d you go this morning? Before the Great Lime Hunt, I mean.”

“I took Tobes to the park and threw the Frisbee for a while.”

Kelli nodded encouragingly. Letting go of his anger by doing something physical was Jake’s style, and so was being helpful in a kind of silent apology. But surely throwing a Frisbee hadn’t been enough to bring that calm he’d shown up with this afternoon, nor was he usually willing to talk about the earlier argument. There had to be something more.

Jake drew a breath, and she knew that the important part was coming. “Then I went to Pops’ grave.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

This morning’s visit hadn’t been the conversation that Jake would have liked to have had with his grandfather, but it was the closest thing to it that he could get. And there had been a sort of peace in sitting there to think about things. Now he just had to admit it all to Kelli.

“I thought about what happened with us. I mean, really thought about it,” he told her. He kept his gaze on the bottle on the table, but he glanced up at her through his lashes to see how she was taking it. His stomach felt like it had a hundred little worms in it, and he wished now that he hadn’t gulped down his food. “It’s—I—you know I have trouble admitting things. I tell myself I would have won the game if I’d just had more time, if I’d delivered that one bomb better or if I’d paid attention to that safety cutting across the field to intercept the pass. And then I’d work on those things the next week. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t accept that I’d failed. That I wasn’t good enough.”

“I know.” Kelli’s voice was soft, and she reached across the small table and put her hand on his. Maybe she did it just because the way he was picking at the label irritated her, but it made it easier to talk, anyway. This was going to work out. He’d make it work out.

“I never lied to you,” he went on. “But I lied to myself a lot back then. I was full of myself—I’d reached my dream, the thing I’d been working for all my life, and we had gotten married like I’d wanted to since I first saw you. I was celebrating, buying cars and the house and all, and buying you all those things you didn’t want and giving people money. I was being a jackass; even I knew that. But it wasn’t all because of my ego and wanting to impress people. I was scared, too. What do you do when you’ve gotten everything you aimed for? Where would I go from there? Where could I go? Football is all I know. And what if I wasn’t really as good as I thought? What if I failed? I couldn’t tell anybody—Pops was so proud of me, and I couldn’t look weak like that in front of you.”

“Oh, Jake. I wouldn’t have thought you were weak.” Tears were standing in her eyes now, which made him feel warm and also weirdly guilty, as if he was manipulating her to get what he wanted. Which he wasn’t. Except maybe he was, because he was trying to convince her and where exactly was the line there? As if he didn’t already have enough trouble figuring out how he felt.

“Well.” He shrugged. “That was the way I felt. So I had to act like I was the best, I couldn’t let anybody see I wasn’t totally confident; that’s a sure way to lose.”

“Jake, life isn’t like a football game.”

“Yeah, I found that out. Little too late though. You were already gone. And I was… I don’t know, lost, I guess. I was mad as hell at you. I was furious because it hurt so much. But I couldn’t be all emotional about it. And I couldn’t blame myself. I couldn’t admit I had failed at marriage—only two years and I’d already ruined it. So the problem had to be you. I couldn’t live thinking that I’d destroyed everything.”

“And since you couldn’t take it out on me, you took it out on everyone else,” Kelli said.

“Pretty much. I was going to show you. I was going to party every night. Throw a bunch of women in your face. ‘See how much they want me?’”

“Well, that worked.”

“Not for me. I was just drunk and lonely and angry. I torpedoed my career, and then I blamed you for that, too. But it was all me. I think I was punishing myself. I punished Pops and Gran. I tried to punish you.”

“You succeeded,” she assured him, but there was no heat in her voice. “You just weren’t around to see it.” Kelli leaned back in her chair, studying him. “What made you turn it all around? Change what you were doing?”

“Well, it was kind of a long process. I guess it started with my agent.”

Kelli shot up straight. “Ichabod Crane? Ichabod Crane gave you good advice?”

Jake let out a laugh. “No, not Sean. I forgot you called him that. No, Eric dropped me. That’s when I knew I’d really hit the bottom. But Emma Stanley took me on. She used to work at Sean’s agency, and she was familiar with me. She said she would rep me, but only if I cleaned up my act. She’s a tough lady; you’d like her.” He flashed a grin at Kelli.

“So she’s the one who got you to change what you were doing?”