She led Harper to a massive door and knocked. Harper heard Jacob’s distant, deep voice. Elizabeth held open the door
for her.
“Thanks,” she told Elizabeth before she walked into Jacob’s office.
It was an enormous space. Three of the walls consisted of book-lined shelves, while the fourth was floor-to-ceiling windows and doors with the spectacular view of Lake Tahoe through them. Jacob’s large, L-shaped desk was situated to the right of the room, so that he could easily look out at the panoramic view as he worked. He sat behind the desk. Harper was immediately aware of his stare on her as she walked into the room. Elizabeth closed the door behind her.
Harper walked toward him, gazing about the handsome, incredible room.
“You have quite the library here,” she said, forcing a smile. “All these beautiful bookshelves and incredible books.”
He stood as she approached him, looking very appealing in a pair of dark blue pants and an ivory collarless shirt. His appearance struck her as new and magnificent in that moment . . . freshly amazing, like she’d never seen him before. Yet he was achingly familiar. He was so big and tall. Somehow, his sense of graceful power struck her as miraculous. His expression was impassive, but his eyes shone with feeling as he regarded her.
She swallowed back a lump in her throat. He walked around his desk and rested his butt at the corner of it. When he held out his arms to her, her dazed, strange state fractured for a moment. She stepped between his legs, warmth thawing her when he wrapped his arms around her waist and brought her against him. Without saying a word, his mouth fastened on hers.
His firm, hot kiss further scattered her disorientation. Her arms snaked around his waist. How was it possible to be dazed and confused logically, when her senses grew so sharp and brilliant beneath his touch?
He smoothed back her hair with one hand, cupping the side of her head, and sealed their deep kiss. He continued to nibble hungrily at her lips.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I missed you, too,” she replied, shivering at the sexy sound of his gruff voice. His sharp gaze moved over her face. He slid his butt a few inches off the desk, his feet planted firmly on the floor, and pulled her more tightly between his legs.
“What’s this I hear about you telling Jim you wanted to get your car?” he asked. The bright evening light off the lake made his agate eyes seem to glow. His hands lowered to her ass. “Are you planning on an escape, Harper?”
“Hell, no,” she drawled, ducking forward to kiss his mouth again, diverting both him and herself from the fact that his teasing about her car had come a little too close to the truth. He caught her to him and deepened their kiss, pressing her against him tightly in a way that made it clear to her just how much he’d missed her. This time when he sealed their kiss, he straightened and stepped away from her. Harper tried to contain her disappointment as she watched him walk around his desk. Her gaze dropped down over his lean, powerful body. Despite both her reanimated and new doubts, her desire for him was cutting as it’d ever been.
Possibly even sharper.
He lifted an envelope from his desk and handed it to her. Harper took it with a questioning look, but he merely gestured that she should look for herself.
She unfolded several pieces of paper. They were lab reports and a written note from Dr. Amorantz. She looked up, her breath frozen in her lungs. Jacob wore a small, enigmatic smile.
“We’re both as healthy as they come. Nothing else between us,” he said, and there was something in his tone of voice, a quiet but profound victory.
She swallowed with difficulty and smiled.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Aren’t you glad that he cleared us for sex without protection?”
“Of course I am,” she managed thickly.
“Then what is it?” he asked, coming around his desk with that predator’s stalk she loved, but which also intimidated. She floundered for something to say. Her gaze flickered anxiously across the bookshelves behind him because she was having difficulty meeting his stare.
She froze with her mouth open, staring at very fine, gilded copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings directly behind his desk. Suddenly he turned, following her stare to the bookcase.
“Jacob,” she said abruptly, recognizing the break in her composure and rushing to fill the vacuum. He glanced back at her narrowly. “I was wondering about something. You uh . . . you did say that you grew up in South Carolina, didn’t you?” she asked in a rush. She was desperate, for some reason. It wasn’t possible that he could see down into the heart of her, but she still got that impression sometimes that he could.
That he was doing it, right at this very moment. She waited for him to reply, her heart starting to throb in her ears.
“That’s what I said, yes,” he replied, stepping toward her, his face a mask.
“Oh. Did you mean for your entire childhood?” she asked, and despite her efforts at appearing light and calm, her voice broke.
“Why?” he asked, coming to a halt just inches in front of her. She couldn’t seem to break his boring stare.
“I just wondered,” she said with fake casualness, shrugging. “Someone at work today used the term ‘born and bred.’ They said they were born and bred in Tahoe Shores, and they meant they’d never left it until they went to college. So I was just wondering if you meant the same thing when you said the same about South Carolina . . .” She faded off lamely. His stare seemed to drain the oxygen from her lungs.
“I’ve told you that I don’t want to talk about my past. I don’t want to focus on it. But you can’t seem to let it go, can you?”