Jake (20 page)

              “This land is more clay than rock,” Jake said.

              “A lot of sand in the mix, too.” The forward guide had doubled back and was staring up at the climber, too. “I’m calling this in. The kid is going to kill himself.”

              Just then the kid slipped, or the ropes sawed—she wasn’t sure which—and he plummeted about twenty feet before catching himself. The wind shifted and spun him around like a toy top. He tried to gain purchase with his feet but when he made contact with the cliff, the earth crumbled and fell in a shower toward the sea.

              Ivy felt her stomach lurch. “He’s going to fall.”

              “Are there pools over there?” Jake asked the guide. He didn’t say it, but Ivy heard it—
or just rock
.

              “There are pools,” the guide confirmed. “But he’d have to be awfully lucky.”

              The guide called in the situation and their location, while she and Jake and several of the other kayakers watched the drama overhead. Jake borrowed the guide’s binoculars and got a close up, some of which he reported back to them.

              “Kid is probably fourteen or fifteen years old. Minimal climbing equipment. Tear in the sling rope. It’s threading where it’s cinched at the clip.” He handed the binoculars back to the guide and said, “He’s coming down and there’s not enough lead for him to make a soft landing.”

              Jake turned to Ivy then. “I don’t want to leave you,” he said, then glanced back up at the

climber who was dangling at the mercy of the wind. The kid, realizing he was out of his element, started calling for help. “I can’t leave him there though. Not alone.”

              “Go,” Ivy insisted. “I can take care of myself.”

              He shrugged out of his life vest and t-shirt and slid into the water. “I know you can.”

              She placed her hands over his where he gripped the fiberglass side of the boat. “Be safe yourself,” she said.

              He smiled but Ivy got only a glimpse of it, because then he was cutting through the water, head up and watching the rock formations. He treaded water in a couple of places, looking up at the boy, at the craggy rock. He found a place to pull himself up and a moment later he disappeared behind the cone-shaped rocks.

              “He a cop or something?” the guide asked.

              “Better,” Ivy said. “He’s a Marine.”

              Her boat was bumped from behind and Ivy turned to see the mom with her young daughter. “I hope he can do something,” the woman said.

              “If there’s something to be done, he’ll do it,” Ivy assured her.

              She returned her attention to the teen, who was looking down now—at Jake? Ivy could hear his voice, muffled by the wind and distance, but clearly Jake was giving some kind of instruction and the boy was listening. He stopped the tight spin on the rope, using his feet to bounce off the side of the cliff so that he began moving in a wide arc. But that was as far as he got.

              The rope snapped and the boy fell to earth with a long bellow that was all terror. The fine hairs on Ivy’s neck shivered. She gasped and felt her eyes tear. She heard the mom speaking to her daughter, comforting words. She heard the murmuring of other kayakers. And she waited. Where was Jake? The minutes lengthened and the tension inside her threatened to choke her. The guide saw nothing with his binoculars. And then Jake appeared, first just his head and shoulders as he negotiated the rocky crags. Then it became clear that he was carrying the boy, who appeared unconscious.

              “Are there any doctors with us?” Ivy asked, looking at the faces in the group. No one spoke. And then,

              “I’m a nurse. ER, so I’ve seen and fixed plenty.”

              Ivy picked up her paddle and scooted to the middle of the kayak where she knelt and began to pull her way toward the man.

              “I’m a respiratory therapist,” she told him. “I’ll be able to help you some. Get on.”

              Later, on shore and listening to Jake give his account to the police officers who’d shown up at the scene, she realized the lengths to which her man had gone to save the teen. He didn’t have much time, but had managed to cut through the boy’s fear and get him to swing on the rope and release at a point where he’d likely hit water.

              “He was coming down,” Jake said. “It was when, not if. Soon, not later.”

              And the boy did hit water, what Jake described as a deep but small pool no bigger than a city bus. Jake didn’t wait for the teen to surface. The fall had been from a height of forty to fifty feet. With speed and mass to consider, he’d figured the kid had hurt something breaking through the surface and Jake had gone in after him. He’d pulled him out and rolled him to clear his lungs.

              Ivy had worked with the male nurse to stabilize the kid on one of the kayaks, and then she had slipped into the water, letting Jake take her place. The men rowed the boy to shore and Ivy had followed a short time later, taking the nurse’s spot on his kayak.

              Jake had spotted her before she made land, and had waded into the Cove to meet her, pulling the kayak ashore. He hadn’t released her hand since.

Chapter Eighteen

              Jake glanced at Ivy from across the bistro table. They were sharing a Greek salad and panini sandwiches. They each had a longneck and sat outside on the small patio, letting the sun restore their body’s heat. She hadn’t talked about the boy, not since he’d told her the paramedics were optimistic. And maybe that was okay—Ivy worked on the critical care ward at Children’s. She was used to seeing trauma. Still, tension seemed to make her limbs stiff, her movements less fluid. And she wasn’t eating.

              “You okay?”

              She looked up. “Sure.”

              “Liar,” he accused lightly. “You want to talk about it?”

              She shrugged. “He didn’t look so good, did he?”

              He’d seen worse. He’d seen dead, and not in any nice way. Ivy had probably seen the same, but for her it was surrounded by medical equipment and professionals.

              “He had a broken leg for sure.” And had been in shock. It’d made his skin pale to an

effervescent white, making the blue of his lips and fingertips stand out all the more. “I bet he’s conscious by morning.”

              She nodded. “I’ll check on him when I get in.”

              She worked tonight. Jake didn’t need to report to base until Tuesday morning. He thought about how he would kill time waiting for her. Go to the gym and work off some of the tension with weights. He had some reading to do in preparation for his training at Quantico in December. He owed his sister a phone call.

              “Call me then,” Jake said.  He would like to know how the kid was doing, too. “When are you seeing your sister again?”

              “Next weekend. You want to come?”

              She issued the invitation smoothly, but he noticed tension lift her shoulders.

              “Are you sure?”

              She tilted her head to the side as she considered the situation. It made her dark hair fall across her shoulder. It caught the sun and cast a red glow.

              She nodded. “I always stay with my sister,” she said. “But we could get a room on the strip. I’ve always wanted to stay in one of those luxury hotels with the spa baths--"  she waggled her eyebrows at him, “—and champagne delivery.”

              “Done,” he said, but her frown didn’t disappear entirely.

              “There is something else,” she began, her voice hesitant. “Holly is in recovery mode.” She went on to explain about the crash, her sister’s injuries, the long months of rehabilitation.

              “You were in the car?” He felt his gut tighten. He didn’t want to think about Ivy in danger, scared and hurting and pushing herself beyond her limits to do all she could to keep her sister alive.

              He’d hated to leave her alone on the water earlier today, too. Though she was with several other people, guides included, she was his responsibility and he trusted no one with her safety. 

              “I’m sorry, Ivy,” her told her. “That was a bad situation to be in.”

              “But I did good,” she said and he could tell she was surprised by her reaction. “Confidence was new to me. At that point,  I’d done a number of healthy things for myself—divorced my husband, I had just graduated from the medical program and had my first real job— I was finally standing on my own two feet, you know? And then bahm! I thought it would knock me back a step or two. Instead, I became a woman of action that night. I did what I could and it was enough.” She smiled although she was a little teary.

              “And you saved your sister’s life.”

              “Yes. And we got another chance, to be sisters. I won’t throw that away.”

              “Of course not.” He thought about his own sister and how infrequently he saw her. She called him more than he did her—he excused that with the phone being a woman’s thing. But he could do better. The visit over Thanksgiving would be a good start. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go alone this weekend?”

              She gave it some thought, her brown eyes turning inward, then shook her head. “No. I’d like to spend the weekend away with you and my sister is needing me less. She told me so.” Ivy shrugged and tipped her head back to regard him. It was a slightly challenging look and Jake found himself smiling into it. “Are you ready to meet my family, Jake?”

              “Born ready,” he told her.

              And it was true. Jake wanted to move deeper into Ivy’s world. He wanted to make the connection with the people and things that were important to her. And he would love to sink into one of those big tubs with her, let his hands slide over her soapy body. He totally planned to sip champagne from her navel and a few other places.

              Jake was running late. He’d done all he’d planned to do while Ivy was at work—called his sister, put in a couple hours at the gym on base, kicked back at home, reading the manual on new strategies for military leaders—and then decided to pick up breakfast for the both of them before meeting her at her apartment as they’d discussed.

              Only he decided fresh was better than anything delivered through a window and he’d stopped at Whole Foods for fruit, made-to-order omelettes, cheese, and bread that was still hot from the oven. By the time he was knocking on Ivy’s door, he was a good forty minutes behind schedule.

              She answered the door wearing very little lace and nothing else. He could see the dusky peaks of her breasts through the material, even the indention of her navel and the downy curls beneath.  His stomach muscles tightened. His cock filled and pressed against the fly of his jeans.

              “I thought you changed your mind.” Her smile said otherwise. “I was just about to climb into bed.”

              “Then I’m just in time.” He stepped over the threshold, into her personal space, and felt her thighs brush against his legs. It did crazy things to his pulse. “Damn,” he said, “I can’t get enough of you.”

              “So why are your frowning,” she asked. She rolled onto her toes, pressing her soft curves against his torso, and smoothed her fingers over the creases in his forehead. “You know I’m a pretty sure thing, soldier.”

              He held up the bag. The warm, yeasty aroma of the bread and the sweet onion from the omelettes drifted around them. Ivy fell to her heels and pressed a hand to her stomach, which growled in anticipation.

              “I am hungry,” she laughed. “And that smells heavenly.”

              “So do you.” He loved the citrusy smell of her shampoo, the way it mixed with her warm, female scent. He lowered his face to the slope of her neck and ran his lips over the tendon there, all the way up to her ear. “You taste even better,” he murmured. His cock throbbed and he pulled her hips to his, hoping the soft pressure of her belly would ease some of his pain. But that plan failed miserably when she undulated against him. His hand spread over the lace barely covering her ass and he dipped his fingers easily into her sweet apex. She was just warming up. He circled her clit and thought about how easy it would be to open his fly and slide right into her.             

              But then her stomach protested again and Jake stepped back, wondering where the super human strength came from. His hands capped her slim shoulders and he said, “I’m going to feed you first.” Even if it killed him.  He picked the bag up from the floor, not remembering when he’d dropped it. Of course, he’d be hard pressed to remember his own name at this point. He strode to the small table next to the bay window and began removing Styrofoam containers of food. Ivy came up behind him, didn’t stop until her body was flush against his back, and slid her hands down  his legs. She caressed upward, trailing her nails over the inside of his thighs, until she palmed his pulsing cock and gave it a teasing squeeze.

              “Ivy, honey.” He placed a hand over hers to stop her. “I haven’t come in my pants since I was fourteen.” He turned, but kept a few inches between them. “It wasn’t pretty then. It’d be even worse now.”

              She chuckled but drew back her hands and placed them on her hips. “Okay, so feed me, Jake. But then I’m going to return the favor,” she enticed, her voice sultry and full of meaning.

              The image of her over him, her sweet body swaying above his mouth and her taste so thoroughly on his lips, spun out in front of him. It made his whole body clench and he nearly dropped the container he was holding. Ivy watched his reaction. Her eyes flared with awareness. Damn, he would like to have her again like that. Know nothing else of the world except her taste, her smell, the cries that bottled in her throat and escaped with his name on her lips.