Material Girl (35 page)

They left the Easter gathering with Robin promising an exuberant Vickie that she would come again. Cole followed them out, wearing his new space shoes, and carrying the remaining painted eggs, trailing Robin. He waited until Jake took the bag from him and went around the other side to put it in the truck before speaking to Robin in a near whisper. “There's a dance at the school next week,” he said, looking at his feet.

“Oh yeah? Are you going to ask Tara?” Robin asked.

Cole shrugged, scuffed the toe of his shoe on the curb. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“I think you should. I bet Tara would be thrilled if you called her.”

Cole seemed to think about that, then shrugged again. “She'd think it was really sweet if Dustin asked her. Not me.”

Robin buffed Cole on the shoulder and made him look up. He had beautiful brown eyes and long dark lashes, just like his uncle. “Don't be so sure about that. I'm a girl, and I'd want you to call.”

He flushed, grinned sheepishly, and looked at the ground again as Jake came around from the back of the truck.

“Are you ready, Robin?” he asked, opening the door for her. Cole shoved his hands in his pocket and stepped back so Robin could climb into the passenger seat. She winked at Cole, mouthed the words do it, then said, “Have a good week at school, Cole!”

Jake shut the door, gave Cole an affectionate hug. “Be good and mind your grandma.” He walked around the front of the truck to the driver's side. “See you,” Robin called as Jake turned the ignition, and noticed as they drove away how Cole just stood there, watching them leave. A person couldn't see that kid standing there without feeling something, and Robin's heart winged out to Cole so fast that she couldn't snatch it back.

At her house, they opened a bottle of wine (finally!), had a glass in the backyard on the wide, thickly padded loungers (her latest impulsive purchase), and gazed up at the stars. It reminded Robin of a time in the long distant past when she and her sisters would lie with their mother on a quilt in the backyard and look up at the stars. You know why the stars are there? her mother would ask. To show you how high you can dream.

Maybe she hadn't dreamed high enough. Maybe she had been so busy pretending to dream that she hadn't let herself actually reach for the stars.

“You know what I'm thinking?” Jake asked after a while, taking her hand.

She shifted her gaze to him, saw his lopsided grin. “That this wine would taste better in bed?” she asked, grinning, too.

He laughed, brought her hand to his mouth, and kissed her knuckles. “That's what I like about you—you can read a man's mind.”

“Oh please—like there's anything to read,” she quipped and let Jake drag her across the loungers onto his lap so he could kiss her passionately.

They made wild, buzz-induced monkey love, right there under the stars, finding fulfillment at the same moment,

blissfully drifting into sweet oblivion in one another's arms. After a while, Robin stirred, buttoned her blouse, and woke Jake. They sleepily stumbled inside; Robin went in search of the wine bottle while Jake fell into bed. She returned with saltines and cheese in a can.

“Excuse me for a minute, I need to step outside and see if the world has actually stopped spinning,” Jake exclaimed, pointing to the cheese substitute.

“I'm branching out! And it was the only thing they had at the convenience store the other night when I got back from Burdette.” She put the tray between them, sat cross-legged, facing him, and sipped her wine as Jake squeezed a mountain of processed cheese onto a saltine and popped it into his mouth.

“Your family is nice,” she remarked.

He frowned, sort of dubious about that.

“But I don't think your mom particularly likes me.”

Now Jake smiled. “Nah, she likes you okay. She's just hard to get to know.”

Yeah, well, Robin hadn't gotten to the age of thirty-four without developing a woman's intuition about some things. Knowing when someone flat-out didn't like her was one of them, and she vigorously shook her head. “It's more than that. She thinks I'm messing with you.”

Jake helped himself to another cracker, sans cheese, and munched thoughtfully. “Maybe. That's because she doesn't think I'm smart enough to know if I am being used. I don't know if you noticed, but my mom doesn't think too highly of me.”

“You're kidding!” Robin exclaimed, genuinely surprised. “How could she not be totally proud of you? How could anyone not think you are the most capable man in the world? Jeez, if I had a son like you, I'd be prancing all over Houston !”

With a grateful smile, Jake reached up to tenderly stroke Robin's cheek. “You can be a real sweetheart, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.”

“I'm serious.”

Jake chuckled at her earnestness. “I'll let you in on a secret—my mom has never thought I measured up. I've never been able to do much of anything to please her. I pursued baseball and I was wasting my time. I started college and I was too old. I try to take Cole to live with me, and I am irresponsible. Honestly? Sometimes, the things she says—I think she believes I abandoned her like my dad did. And my Uncle Dan tells me I look a lot like the old man did at my age.”

That piqued Robin's curiosity; she watched Jake take another cracker and pop it into his mouth. “Do you know where he is?”

“Dad?” He snorted derisively. “Haven't heard from him since he ran off, more than twenty years ago. He's probably dead. I'm sure Vickie will eventually get around to telling you the whole ugly story, but mat whole deal… it's what's wrong with Mom. It colors everything.”

“What do you mean?” Robin asked, confused.

“She's afraid of loving—it hurts too much.”

He said it so nonchalantly, like it was what anyone should expect, that it took Robin aback. What a sad, revealing thing to say. What an awful thing to say! But she knew exactly what Jake meant. “Isn't it funny how alike we are, you and me?” she asked. “My dad has never really thought I measured up, either. It seems like I have been forever trying to… to please him, to get him to say, hey, Robbie, you're a good daughter, or a good person. Or just something like, come on up and let's go out on the boat. But he never does. And when I do hear from him, it's usually to rant about something I've done wrong.”

“Wrong? What could be wrong? You're a wonderful person, dedicated to your company, to him—”

Robin laughed at how pathetic that sounded, given the betrayal she felt at her father's hand. If only Jake understood how she had given him everything, only to be told she was basically unimportant, mere window dressing. “Trust me,” she said with a sardonic laugh, “I'm wrong. You want to know his current complaint? I don't have any roots. I haven't pursued the right things in life.” But the words, spoken with sarcasm, seemed to hang in front of her. And shit if they didn't sound true. “I don't know why I care,” she continued thoughtfully, “but for some reason, I keep trying to get him to like me.” She shook her head at the lunacy of that, then smiled. “I guess I'm just stubborn.”

“You really think your father doesn't like you?” Jake asked, surprised.

She nodded. “I think he loves me in some weird way. But he doesn't like me.”

Jake pressed his lips together, stared at her for a long moment, then said quietly, “For what it's worth, I think you're absolutely amazing.”

Robin gave him a grateful smile, cognizant that the way he was looking at her was making her heart skip, and tried to put a word to his look that she could cope with. “You're starting to make me feel like I have something strange on my head,” she said, trying to make a joke of it, but Jake did not smile.

“I mean it. You are a beautiful, vibrant, accomplished woman. A genuine woman, someone who is way more down to earth than she thinks. I look at you, and I see someone I have been waiting for my whole life.”

Robin gasped softly; her heart was now somersaulting, and she wanted to protest, wanted to stop him before he took this too far, and waved a desperate hand at him. “Jake,” she whispered weakly, but he caught her hand and brought it to his chest, pressed it against his heart.

“I am falling in love with you, Robin,” he said solemnly.

Her physical reaction was so quick and sudden that the wineglass she had been holding so loosely went crashing to the floor. Jake let go of her hand, grabbed the tray between them, and saved it and the wine bottle from toppling over.

“I'm sorry,” she said, flustered, as he put the tray on the floor. “I'm sorry.”

Jake didn't seem to hear her—he grabbed both her hands by the wrists and pulled her on top of him as he fell back, landing on a cloud of pillows. “Me too, because I can't help how I feel or that you have managed to open a door in me that has been nailed shut all my life.”

She was skating on the edge of complete chaos—his

words ripped through her like a scythe, opening ancient old wounds she didn't even know she had. It was too much, too many emotions erupting inside her. This was a man who could speak like a poet, could make love like a real man, could make her laugh—she adored Jake, loved his company, loved to watch him work… But love? What did that really mean? Didn't that mean there were expectations that were far too great for either of them?

Jake suddenly let go of her, and she flopped over onto her side like a rag doll.

“I don't know how you did it,” he said. “I don't know if it was the coffee, or the pink flamingos, or telling me how to bat, but somehow, you stuck one of those flimsy sandals in that door inside me and kicked it open without even trying.”

Robin buried her face in the pillow, afraid she would say something stupid—even more afraid he would stop.

“And there I was, trying to mind my own business, but suddenly, I can't get you off my mind, I can't sleep without dreaming of you, I can't think without seeing you, I can't wait to get here in the morning, and I can't stand to leave at night. I didn't know what the hell was the matter with me. But I can finally admit to myself and to you that I know what it is that has been clanking around in me. I am falling in love with you, Robin.”

“Oh God, I don't know what to say,” she moaned into the pillow.

Jake leaned over her, kissed the back of her neck, then her shoulder. “Say, I love you, too, Hammerman. Say, me, too, or ditto, or you make me hot, you stud—”

“Oh, Jake,” she whispered helplessly.

“Say you adore me, say you love me,” he pressed.

But the words seemed lodged in her gullet—she couldn't force them out. Robin buried her face in a pillow. “I can't,” she muttered helplessly.

“Oh God,” Jake muttered somewhere above her, and she felt him draw away.

Robin sat up. “No—it's… I'm just not ready, Jake,” she pleaded with him.

“Yeah, I see,” he said, swinging his legs off the side of the bed.

“No!” Robin cried. “I do adore you. I just… I want to— I need to go slow…”

Jake didn't say anything for a moment, just gazed sadly at her. At last, he lifted his hand and stroked her cheek. “Okay,” he said and gently pushed Robin down onto the bed. He kissed her softly. “Okay,” he said again, as if to convince himself that it was okay, and kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, and then her breasts, pushing aside her blouse to explore her entire body with his mouth. Robin moaned, both from pleasure and pain. Pleasure at the expertise with which he brought her to the brink of a violent climax; pain from knowing that the man who did this to her had fallen in love with her, and that she didn't know how to return it, or what to do with it, other than to lie there, let him say it, let him show her. And when she came, she unconsciously called out his name as tender gratification rained down and covered her, creating a shroud beneath which she lay, feeling just barely alive as she tried to catch her breath and what was left of the bearings instilled in her a long, long time ago. Bearings that were fast slipping from her white-knuckled grip.

Jake was up before the light the next morning. He hadn't slept very well and had envied Robin her zombie sleep, with arms and legs sprawled everywhere. An A-bomb wouldn't have waked her. But Jake couldn't sleep, troubled by his stupid admission, blurted out like a teenage boy in love. Gaga, Mom had called it. Jesus, what he wouldn't give to be able to deliver himself a good swift kick in the ass. What had he expected her to do with his poetic declarations? Announce her own undying love? Ask him to marry her?

You're a fucking idiot, man.

He was already working when the crews showed up and started banging around the house, trying to figure out how he had come to fall in love with a woman who was so far above him in economic and social stature as to be unreach-

able. It wasn't that he was intimidated by her wealth, exactly, or thought Robin above him in some way. It was just that it didn't seem… practical. Robin knew it, but oh no, he had gone and fallen deep into the magic and believed it. For a man who accounted for every nickel he made, Jake didn't think there would ever be a time he would feel good about spending money wantonly like she did, no matter how much money he had.

But then again, he harbored the insane notion that if he could just concentrate on getting his architect degree—he was so damn close, after all—that he could, conceivably, make the kind of money Robin was used to. He could support those things she was accustomed to, like fancy restaurants, trips abroad, even shopping sprees. Although he might eventually have to put his foot down about the shoe thing (nobody, and that meant nobody, should pay more than fifty bucks for a pair of shoes!).

It was that singular, faint hope of a potential future with Robin that made Jake even more determined than ever to finish school and expand his business, and it felt with every swing of the hammer against the brick wall that he was one step closer. And when Robin came out of her room that morning, dressed in a short skirt and a sheer blue blouse the color of her eyes, sporting a shy, dimpled smile, he was suddenly swinging the hammer with abandon, trying to remember when, if ever, he had been so captivated by a woman. And every time he looked at her—or caught her looking at him with the expression of confusion—or was it torture?—he felt an even bigger fool.