Undercover Attraction (32 page)

Jenna nodded slowly. "Okay. As long as you
help me find an apartment or something when I am able."

Jacob nodded.
Never
, he thought.

He helped her dress after the nurse removed
the IV, in her comfortable pajamas that she had gotten that day at
Victoria's Secret, smiling to himself when she still blushed at her
nudity in front of him.

He had already had Amy order her new clothes
to replace the ones lost in the explosion. Now that he thought
about it, he would probably be buying bigger sizes over the next
few months as well.

He also had replaced her computer, and
anything else he thought was easily replaceable. The memories and
photos weren't as simple, though. They couldn't be replaced as
easily as buying something.

Jacob began taking all of the gifts and
flowers down to his Tahoe, then pulled around to the front to pick
up Jenna as the nurse wheeled her out.

She had a bit of difficulty fitting her
casted leg into the front seat, and they had to slide the seat back
in the furthest position to get her comfortably in.

She winced when she had to bend, putting
pressure on her ribs and abdomen, despite the tightly wrapped
bandages.

He figured that her ribs would take the most
time to heal. He knew he wouldn't be letting her up and about for
quite a while, was determined to make her lie stationary on either
the bed or the couch.

The ride to his house didn't take long, and
as he pulled into his driveway, Amy was standing out to meet Jenna,
Alex hovering close behind her.

Amy helped Jenna in as Jacob and Alex
unloaded the backseat, carrying in flowers and gifts that would
fairly have his house scented like a botanical garden.

He watched as Amy settled Jenna on the sofa,
and Chuckles hobbled from the kitchen, meowing, making a straight
line towards Jenna. Amy bent and picked the cat up, setting him
next to Jenna on the cushions, and he and Alex stepped out to give
them privacy, as he heard Jenna start sobbing and Amy soon follow
suit.

The two women were probably each other's
best chance to get over the trauma they had suffered. Well, they
would never fully forget it, but maybe they both could help heal
each other enough to move on.

He and Alex sat on the patio, each drinking
a beer, sharing the events of the past few days from each of their
perspectives, until the sky darkened as the sun fell.

They found Jenna and Amy where they had left
them, now both asleep on the couch, their heads leaning against
each other's on the sofa. Chuckles nestled between them,
comfortably snoozing away. Both of the girls' eyes were swollen and
their noses red from crying.

Jacob and Alex stood in the doorway, just
staring at them for endless minutes. They were sure that the women
had just taken the first steps towards healing their battered
souls.

#

Jenna was an irritable ill person. For the
first day or two that she had been at Jacob's home, everything
seemed simple. She spent every second with Amy, even slept in the
same room with her instead of in bed with Jacob, but now both she
and Amy had stopped waking in the middle of the night with
nightmares as frequently.

Amy helped Jenna bathe, dress, and complete
all of the other mundane feminine tasks that she felt uncomfortable
letting Jacob help with.

Now that Amy had gone back to class during
the day, Alex trailing along behind her, Jenna simply became a
grouch. Jacob tried to remember all she had been through, in fact
couldn't even fathom everything that had happened, and kept telling
himself that Jenna was entitled to be a bit grumpy for a while. He
tried to tell himself that pregnancy hormones were making it worse
for her, and she didn't even know it.
Yet.

She hated lying on the couch all day doing
nothing. She hated sitting on the patio doing nothing. She
complained about the medications Jacob forced her to take each day.
She was even having trouble with the casts because they were
becoming itchy.

Jacob easily resolved her problems by moving
her back and forth throughout his house, letting her do trivial
things like fold a few clothes- which she complained about because
her casted arm wouldn't let her fold them correctly- and chop
vegetables when he cooked- which also couldn't be done easily
because of her arm.

Her temper had become short, and he didn't
know what to do about it. He had decided last night to take her out
of the house for a while to a simple diner for lunch today.

Jenna had vehemently refused for a bit,
stating that Amy might come home early, and she would have to be
there for her.

Jacob had simply explained that Alex called
him each time they were coming back from campus, and that Alex was
always with Amy, even during class. Alex had, in fact, cleared his
presence with the school board for the remainder of Amy's school
year, just in case she needed him there that long.

It had taken him an hour to talk Jenna into
lunch, but she had finally relented, and he had tucked her into his
SUV and then carried her into the diner.

She had felt embarrassed by all of the
stares when people saw him carrying her about, but Jacob had
quickly made her forget it by telling her they were just jealous
she had him to do so.

The food was fairly good, and they shared a
nice lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches, loaded hash browns, and
for dessert, Jenna ordered a chocolate lava cake smothered in
whipped cream and powdered sugar. This she ate slowly, making sure
she had licked every minute scrap from the spoon, giving Jacob all
sorts of carnal ideas for later.

She noticed him squirming in his chair and
raised an eyebrow, licking the next spoonful even slower, doing
things to the spoon with her tongue that made him fervently wish he
were in the place of the silverware.

Jenna knew she was teasing him, probably
inviting more than she could handle at the moment, but she couldn't
help it. The expression on Jacob's face made it so worth it.

She knew that she had begun to irk him, with
her temper flaring often, and her complaining bringing lines of
stress around his mouth frequently, but she didn't know how to make
it any better.

Being taken care of had never been her
strong point. She instead wanted to be active in her own life, and
while being trussed up in two casts and numerous bandages, she felt
as if life were passing her by. She had even begun to notice
something going on between Amy and Alex, had asked Amy about it,
but gotten a strict denial.

She wished she could just do something other
than occupy the sofa and flip channels, but with her injuries,
Jacob was too scared to let her move around hardly at all.

That was adding to her irritability. But the
majority of it stemmed from a dream she'd had while in the
hospital.

She vaguely remembered being in a dark, cold
place, and Jacob's voice would always bring her back. She
remembered words of love, and was having a hard time deciding if
Jacob had really told her repeatedly that he loved her while she
lay in the hospital, or if it had been just a dream.

If it had been real, he hadn't hinted at the
words since. And she longed to hear them while she was conscious.
Longed to know whether or not he felt every bit as strongly for her
as she did for him. But so far, nothing had escaped his lips other
than occasional of affection.

And Amy. Oh, God, the guilt for what had
been done to Amy beat at her every bit as viciously as Don's hard
shoes had. She knew if she had just told Jacob's partner where the
disc was instead of trying to play hero, Amy would have been
okay.

But she hadn't. And her sister had been
beaten and raped because of that. Jenna hated that fact. The whole
point of being a big sister was to protect your younger siblings,
and she had thought she had taken her duty seriously until now. No,
now she realized she was to blame for her little sister's
torture.

She hadn't protected her. She hadn't kept
Amy's carefree, laughing innocence safe at all.

And she didn't know how Amy had forgiven her
so easily. In fact, her sister hadn't wanted to talk about it at
all, saying that it was still too fresh in her mind, and that what
happened to her was nothing compared to what happened to Jenna.
Jenna tried to tell Amy that in no way was her misery any less
important her own.

Jenna also tried to get Amy to join a
support group, volunteering to go with her, but Amy had adamantly
refused, claiming she would eventually get over it once she threw
herself back into her normal routines.

She didn't want to push her sister, but she
had seen what being a rape victim could do to someone as young as
Amy, both through personal experience and in a few of her students
on campus. The emotional scars never healed and even now, years
later, Jenna had just begun to let herself open up again to another
person.

Jacob
. Just the thought of him made
her feel as if she could survive anything. He made her stronger,
made her want more out of life, made her believe happy endings were
possible.

And she wanted him to love her.

She remembered mouthing the words just as
she had fallen when his partner had tried to make her escape, his
eyes had widened, emotion clouding them in that one second they
held each other's gaze before he had reached out to catch her. But
she didn't know what it meant. Was he happy? Not? Did he
reciprocate the feeling, or just feel a passing sort of affection
for her? She kept telling herself that it wasn't a dream in which
he had repeatedly whispered that he loved her, but as the days went
by and the time lengthened, she found it harder to believe.

He was watching her, his eyes a stormy gray
as he thought about the same thing. He was tired of waiting to hear
the words from her, and decided to take matters into his own
hands.

Jenna would be staying in his bed tonight,
despite her excuses that she needed to stay with Amy. Alex was
there for Amy. Jacob was there for Jenna.
Simple as
that
.

If she didn't say it back to him after he
made his declaration, then, well, he would just have to try his
hand at seduction.

#

Three days later, Jacob was smiling to
himself. His plans had been made. He was proposing to her today.
The few short weeks that he had known Jenna had felt like a
lifetime, and he knew now that he loved her beyond words.

And, lucky him, she loved him back.

After they had eaten at the diner, he had
brought her home and loved on her, babying her in every way,
showing her he could take care of her no matter how bad off she
was.

That night, she had argued when he carried
her upstairs to his bed, instead of Amy's, but Amy had planned to
sleep downstairs to watch some kind of movie marathon with Alex, so
Jacob had won.

He had gently kissed her face, and despite
his body's urges to make love to her, he had simply held her,
letting his warmth soak into her.

Once she had relaxed back to how they had
been before the trauma, he had asked her if she would ever be the
same.

She had sobbed for a long while as he held
her against his chest, and finally told him the entire story of her
time in the warehouse. His heart broke for what she had been
through, but he had stayed silent, knowing that she needed to get
it all out.

At the end of her story, she had felt
desolate, choking on the words as she said, "And I told you I loved
you, but you don't feel the same."

That had brought a gentle smile to his lips,
and he turned her in his lap to face him, kissing her cheeks, eyes,
nose, murmuring that he did feel the same.

Then he had held her tightly, as they kissed
and told each other how much, and argued about who had fallen in
love with the other first.

Now, he peeked outside onto the patio.
Everything was perfect. He had enlisted the help of Amy and Alex,
who had ran errands for him to make this night perfect.

Hundreds of yellow roses filled every spare
inch of the patio. A small round table sat in the center, with two
chairs, a hurricane lantern with a softly glowing candle as the
centerpiece. A single rose sat beneath his chair, as if it had
fallen there, with a sparkle shining at one of the stems of
leaves.

He had ordered dinner from one of the finest
restaurants in Vegas, and had Alex pick it up as Amy had helped
Jenna take a quick bath and dress. At the same time, Jacob had been
carefully dressing, then trimming the thorns from the yellow rose
that sat beneath his chair.

And he had picked a brilliant night; the
stars shined brightly against the navy sky, twinkling in glee, as
if they knew what Jacob was about.

He heard Alex coming down the stairs with
Jenna, and quickly sat in his chair.

Jenna looked beautiful. Amy had dressed her
in a loose fitting sky-blue dress that fell to her knees, with
spaghetti straps, a high waist with a glittering brooch at one
side, and one high heeled white pump. Amy had also lent Jenna some
of her better jewelry. A single strand of pearls encircled her
throat, with pearl drops dangling from her ears and a pearl watch
at her wrist.

Jenna felt like a princess straight out of a
fairy tale. One who had been trampled by the prince's white
stallion… The casts on her arm and leg did not mesh well with
elegance.

She also felt funny dressing up for a dinner
on the patio, but Amy had been strict, telling Jenna that Jacob
wanted a
nice
dinner, not a jeans and t-shirt dinner. When
Jenna had asked Amy and Alex why they weren't dressed up, Amy had
replied with a pout that they weren't invited.

Alex carried her through the living room,
and she reached out to open the patio door, becoming breathless at
the sight. Yellow roses were everywhere, and her eyes became blurry
at the realization that Jacob had paid enough attention to notice
they were her favorite.