Page 68 of Raging Fires

A smile tugged at her lips. “Is this our second date? Wow, Jake, you really know how to impress a girl.”

He grinned. “Nah, this is a family day—just you and me and the Tobester, bonding.”

“Okay, I’ll make a deal. I’ll go if you agree to never use the word Tobester again.”

“Done.”

She smiled at him. “It sounds nice.”

And it was nice. Not as nice as spending the day in bed with Kelli, but he was taking it slow. Ten yards at a time got you six points just the same as a long bomb. And you got to stay on the field longer.

The only problem was how long he could live on this knife’s-edge of hunger for her without losing his mind. He didn’t mind the chase. In fact, the challenge was fun, the anticipation almost as pleasurable as it was agonizing.

He was the one who’d come up with the dating idea, but, unlike Kelli, he wasn’t trying to make up his mind. Jake knew what he wanted. And since what he wanted was right there next to him all the time, smiling at him, laughing, close enough to touch and tempting as hell, it took major control to not push. But he’d learned a lot more about that the last few years, and he was going to stick to his plan. Because it wasn’t just that he wanted Kelli. He wanted to know Kelli wanted him.

***

Kelli wasn’t sure what to make of the new Jake. They had just knocked around with Toby at the park, then got burritos at a food trailer, and it had all been… fun. They’d laughed and talked, no arguments, and Jake hadn’t even tried to kiss her. He’d just taken her hand as they walked, and that felt comfortable. It felt right.

Which was a little unnerving. She’d grown used to the way things were, the bitterness and remembered pain that being around Jake had brought back up in her. Would this have been how they were if she hadn’t left him? Would he have turned back to the old Jake if she’d given it more time?

Only he wasn’t the old Jake, not really. He still made her laugh; he could still turn on the charm. But there was something older and quieter to Jake now. It gave her a little pang to see the hint of vulnerability that came into his eyes every now and then, the touch of sadness and regret. She couldn’t help but hurt at the loss of some of his old happy-go-lucky personality, his easy confidence. Kelli had loved that boy so much, and part of him was gone.

Yet it was those very changes that gave the man more depth, just like the new lines beside his eyes made him more handsome. He was Jake, and he was someone new as well, and he made her feel all jumbled up inside. It was annoying, really, but she liked it too.

Jake started coming into the bar in the evening. If Justin came in, Jake would hang out with him for a while, and one evening Asa joined him. Sometimes Jake ate dinner with Kelli; other times when she was behind the bar, he sat on one of the stools and flirted with her. And, man, he could still make her melt inside, just flirting with her; that certainly hadn’t changed.

Even when he left the bar early in the evening, he came back to walk her home after the Blue closed. And on the porch, he’d kiss her good-night. After that first night, he hadn’t done any more than kiss her a time or two, which was still enough to leave her pulsing with lust and unable to go to sleep for an hour afterwards. Kelli wasn’t sure why he didn’t try more seduction; it was always Jake’s way to test the limits. Frankly, she was a little disappointed that he hadn’t.

One evening as they strolled back to the house, hands linked, a practice that felt so normal Kelli couldn’t even remember when they had started doing so again, Jake said, “Tomorrow’s your day off, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I was thinking about us doing something tomorrow. A real date-date.”

“You have anything in mind?” Kelli asked.

“I was thinking we could go climbing tomorrow morning.”

“Not you too,” Kelli groaned. “Tyler kept going on about rock climbing and all the wonders of risking your life while getting sunburned and sweaty.”

“Not actual outdoor rock climbing. I’m talking about an indoor climbing wall. Way different. No sunburns. No snakes hiding in the rocks. And you’ll be with me, not Man-Bun. It’ll be fun.”

Kelli smiled. It probably would be fun. Most things were with Jake. Even ax-throwing might have been fun if she’d been with Jake. “Okay.”

So the next morning, Kelli found herself facing a tall concrete wall studded with odd, bright colored pieces jutting out from it in a helter-skelter way. There were four more walls that were much the same, though two of them curled back over the floor at the top. Kelli pointed to one of them. “Is that for spiders?”

Jake grinned. “You just have to ignore that you’re hanging up there parallel to the floor.”

“So is this what you do when you leave the house?” Kelli asked.

“Sometimes. I like it, and it works on my core strength and upper body. And it’s not listed in my prohibited activities clause, like sky-diving or motorcycles or racing cars. Padded floor. There’s not much chance of me breaking anything.”

It wasn’t crowded in the middle of a weekday, but there were several guys, who greeted Jake with cheerful high-fives, and a couple of women, whose smiles were much more flirtatious. A worker hustled out from behind the central desk and whisked Kelli off to find her a pair of climbing shoes. This was followed by thirty minutes of instructions, a great deal of which was on how to fall, which did little to reassure her, and a waiver she had to sign which really didn’t reassure her.

“Call me if you need something,” he told her. “But you’re in good hands with Jake.”

“That’s questionable,” Kelli muttered as the man went back to his desk.