Dawn of Forever (Jack & Jill #3) (18 page)

Luke and Lake took the juice and thanked her.

“Have a seat.” Ryn nodded to the table. “I have muffins, bacon, and hash too. Unless you’re vegetarians like Jillian.”

“No, we’re not,” Luke grinned at his sister as if there was some sort of inside joke.

“So you’re from New York too?”

Lake squinted her eyes a bit.

“Yes. Yes we are.” Luke took a sip of his juice. “So are you and Jackson …
together
?”

“I know what you’re thinking. I’m older and he’s …
younger
and—”

“No.” Luke saved her from her impending rant of insecurity. “I was just thinking the guy I used to know never had women making breakfast in his kitchen.”

Ryn nodded. “He told me he wasn’t much of the relationship type before …”

“Before you?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Boy, that sounds conceited, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it like I think I’m something special or anything.”

“You’re beautiful. Age doesn’t matter. It would seem he’s lucky to have found you. I’m sure you make him a better man.”

Both Ryn and Luke stared at Lake. Those were mature words coming from a young woman. Ryn couldn’t imagine Maddie saying something like that.

“Thank you.” Ryn smiled, the kind she could feel across her whole body. “It would seem you showed up this morning just to make my day.”

Lake laughed, nudging her brother’s leg under the table. “Hear that? I’ve made
someone’s
day.”

“So what brings you two to Omaha? I hope not to see Jillian. She’s out of town and we’re not sure when she’ll return.”

“Do you know where she is?” Luke asked.

Ryn set two plates filled with food in front of Luke and Lake. “I don’t. Did you know she lost someone close to her recently?”

They both nodded.

Ryn frowned. She didn’t like the truth behind AJ’s death, but with each passing day she understood it—understood Jackson—a little more.

“I think she needed some space, some time to grieve and try to make sense of everything.”

“Have either you or Jackson heard from her?”

“I haven’t and I don’t think he has either. She left her phone behind so there’s no way to contact her until she decides to call home.”

They all turned as the front door opened.

*

Nothing ruined a
long night of sex with Ryn like an unfamiliar car in the driveway that said he would not be having his way with her in the shower. The Martha-Stewart-moved-in-here smell that greeted him when he opened the front door almost made up for the lack of shower sex he would’ve had.
Almost
.

“Hey, I see you didn’t slip on the ice and break your neck.” Ryn kissed him on the cheek as he toed off his running shoes.

“Whose car is in the driveway?” Jackson followed Ryn around the corner.

“Ours. It’s a rental.” The damn thorn in his side smiled.

He and Ryn were good. Jackson embraced his new identity, his new life. Why did the past insist on resurfacing? Only on the rarest of occasions was Jackson at a loss for words, but at that moment he had nothing. He felt stranded in the middle of a mine field, not daring to move a single step. What had they told Ryn?

“So you’ve met my
friends
.” He forced a smile at Ryn. “And you’re feeding them my breakfast.”

“Yes.” She set a plate of food down on the table and motioned for him to take a seat. “And there’s plenty of food.”

“We thought we’d make the trip from
New York
to check on Jillian. She can’t be doing well.” Luke held his gaze to Jackson’s, probably trying to read his mind.

“What a wasted trip. I’m sure Ryn told you she’s not here and we don’t know when she’ll return.” Jackson eyed Lake. He’d only met her a handful of times. Each one of those times he deemed her to be doable. Jessica threatened both testicles if he so much as looked at Lake for more than two seconds at a time. He didn’t look at her that way anymore. She reminded him of Maddie—too damn young and immature.

“You brought your sister along. Interesting choice.”

“How so?” Luke asked.

Jackson shrugged. “Safety reasons. Plane hijackings. Slamming into a semi on the icy roads. Any number of things could happen. I would have left her at home. That’s all.”

“Well my dear sister is stubborn.”

“I know the feeling.” Jackson dove into his breakfast. Reason nine hundred and ninety-nine why he would never let Ryn go: the woman had mad skills in the kitchen. Too bad the Jones siblings had to distract him from fully enjoying it.

“I had hoped since we talked on the phone that you would have reconsidered looking for your sister.”

Jackson shook his head, mouth full, taste buds in heaven. “She’ll come home when she’s ready. Sorry you wasted your time coming here just to hear me say the same thing I told you on the phone.”

Luke stared at his food. The guy’s brain never shut down.

“Where is your restroom?”

“Down the hall on the left.” Ryn smiled at Jackson, eyes big as if she worried answering that simple question somehow crossed a nonexistent line between her house and his.

Jackson grinned at her. He liked how she’d made herself at home. If his plans for the future worked out, they wouldn’t need two homes.

“Thank you. Excuse me.” Luke walked past Jackson, his expression filled with words he held back from Ryn’s ears. For that Jackson was thankful.

“Are you in college, Lake?” Ryn asked.

“No. I was before the accident, but I haven’t gotten back on that horse or any other for that matter. I volunteer at the hospital, working with young amputees.”

“I heard about your accident. Sorry to hear about your leg.” Jackson felt the need to say something, but he wasn’t good with emotions and the words that went with them.

“Thanks.” Lake stared at her plate. “It’s never a good time to lose someone you love.” Lake looked at Ryn. “My boyfriend died.”

Ryn reached her hand over and rested it on Lake’s. “That’s terrible.”

Lake nodded. “But if it had to happen I wish it could have been on a different day. Any other day.”

“Oh?” Ryn’s brow furrowed.

“We were on our way to a wedding.” She looked at Jackson.

He tried not to react, but his jaw muscle twitched anyway.

“Luke’s wedding.”

“Oh no. Your poor family.”

“Yeah, he didn’t get married that day.”

“But he did eventually, right?”

Lake shook her head. “I was in a coma so the wedding was postponed.”

Jackson looked away the minute he saw tears pooling in her eyes.

“His fiancée died in her own tragic accident before I came out of my coma. I woke up to no leg, no boyfriend, and no Jessica.”

Jackson flinched at the mention of her name.

“Life isn’t anything if not heartbreaking and unpredictable.” Ryn wiped away a tear of her own.

“I’d better make sure Luke didn’t flush himself down the toilet.” Jackson stood, eager to leave the hot mess of emotions at the table.

The bathroom door was open with the lights off, but the door to Jillian’s room was shut. He cracked it open. Luke sat on the bed, holding Jillian’s sweatshirt to his face. He didn’t startle or show a shed of guilt for being in her room, smelling her clothes.

“You love Ryn?”

Jackson shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “I do.”

Luke laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day. I honestly questioned if you were capable of it.”

“Jude wasn’t. But I’m not him.”

“You have to do that don’t you?”

“Do what?”

“Separate yourself from the man you were and the life you left behind. It’s the only way to keep your sanity, isn’t it? She did it too. Jessica couldn’t love AJ, but Jillian did.”

“I never claimed to have my sanity, even now. This life is easier. Everything that plagued Jude is dead.”

“The anger plagued you. You were always angry. Jessica knew it, but she didn’t know why. Are you saying your parents made you angry?”

“Listen, Doc, I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me. I’m not the one sniffing my ex’s clothes.”

“If someone took Ryn from you today and you were without her for almost a year, you’d be sniffing her clothes.”

Jackson wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. He was a little pissed at her for washing his sheets after they got wet from sex after their shower. He wasted no time getting her naked and rolling around in his bed again. “I don’t know where she is. I’m not lying.”

“But someone does. Knox knows, doesn’t he?”

The brilliant doctor didn’t have a clue. Some things in life had no explanation. Some people lived without accountability. Knox was one of them.

“He tracks her phone. She doesn’t have a chip inserted into her neck or anything like that. If he were concerned about her whereabouts, then he would have had her followed. She took a plane to Portland for a funeral. He called me after she left, wondering why she was still in Omaha. I told him she forgot her phone.”

“You lied?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She needed time alone without anyone following her, and I didn’t want Knox thinking she went AWOL.”

“I have to find her.”

“You won’t.”

“Then you find her.”

Jackson shrugged. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Luke glanced around the room. “Look through her stuff. Find a clue to where she might be. Maybe she went somewhere with him before he died and she’s gone back there to feel close to him. Maybe she said something to his family at the funeral. Maybe—”

“Stop with the fucking maybes. I spent years anticipating the behaviors of other people, guessing their next move, where they would be, where they might go. But she’s not predictable like that. She could be in Maine or Florida, Indiana, Alaska … hell she could be staying at your fucking hotel for all we know. She’s carrying cash, nothing to track.”

“Call Knox. Tell him she’s gone AWOL. Make him find her.”

Luke had lost it. He wasn’t hearing anything Jackson said. “Sure. And if by some miracle he finds her reading a book on the beach in the Keys, he’s going to be fucking pissed for the wasted man hours and so is she.”

“She’s not on a goddamn beach in the Keys. Something’s wrong!”

“How do you know? Huh? How the hell can you possibly know something is wrong?”

Luke dropped his head, clenching his hair. “I just …
know
.”

Day

T
he below average
January temperature greeted Jessica with a maddening gust to her hair as she emerged from the building. The number of women in her self-defense class nearly doubled from the previous weeks. The holidays sucked the life out of attendance.

“Mrs. Jones?”

She turned around, wrestling with her ponytail whipping her face like a fly on a horse. Luke stood leaning against the passenger’s door to the GTO with Jones shoved into the backseat. Her fiancé looked GQ handsome in his black wool coat with the collar up protecting his neck from the frigid wind.

“Mrs. Jones? Really? Not until next weekend.” She walked into his waiting arms and just like that she was home.

“I’m just trying it out in public. Seeing how it sounds when I holler it in the middle of the busy sidewalk.”

She clenched his lapels, looking up with complete adoration. “And how does it sound?”

“Incredible. Didn’t you see those people looking around like a celebrity had been spotted or the queen was in town?”

“I must have missed that.” Suspicion pulled at her eyebrows.

“Are you getting cold feet?”

She slid into the car as he held open the door. “No, my socks are a wool/cotton blend.”

He looked at her with his typical I-don’t-want-to-grin-but-I-am smile as he fastened his seat belt. “The wedding. Are you getting cold feet about the wedding?”

“Nope.” She twisted her body, petting Jones on his chest.

“Are you sure?”

“I swear.”

Luke laughed as he started the car. “You swear, huh?”

“Yep. I swear on my uncle’s grave I’m not getting cold feet over marrying you.”

He pulled away from the curb. “That’s not very comforting.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t have an uncle. Your dad’s an only child and your mom has a younger sister who lives in Canada.”

“Exactly, I’ve only seen my aunt once in my life. She basically divorced the family when she moved to Vancouver with her rich lover. My mom didn’t even send her an invitation to the wedding. Fucking Cathy got an invite, but not my aunt, which is fine. I don’t really want either one of them there. But in my dreams I had this amazing uncle who was a NASCAR driver and he let me drive his car around the track as fast as I wanted and whenever I wanted. When I was younger he took me for ice cream—twist cones dipped in chocolate. He tragically died after winning Daytona. An RV in the parking lot backed over him. So when I say I swear on my uncle’s grave, it means a lot.”

Luke stared at the road ahead, taking a right into the parking garage. As soon as the car was nestled into its parking spot, he unlatched his seat belt and readjusted his body to face her. She’d seen that look on his face a million times. It was the one that said I love you, but you need help. You need an emergency session with Dr. Jones.