Page 37 of The Sweet Life

She shouldn’t be encouraging him to lie in bed with her after the last time, but they’d been drunk and sad and had turned to each other for comfort. She ignored the voice in her head pointing out she was sad and looking for comfort tonight too.

The warning voice had a point. Sage hated waking up at night alone in her bed. It had gotten worse since she’d left home. Her insomnia had kicked in then.

He turned off the light and walked to the bed. “Are you saying my story will be so boring it’ll put you to sleep?” he asked as he stretched out beside her.

“Probably.”

He grinned. “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.”

“I don’t have a story.”

“Yeah, you do. You’re going to tell me what keeps you up at night. I don’t think it’s only work.”

No wonder the man was such a good investigator. She turned on her side, facing him. “Fine.”

“I’m holding you to it, you know. And my story will take all of a minute.” The moonlight coming through the window illuminated the amusement in his eyes and the chiseled angles of his handsome face. “You know how you always call me a slacker for working part-time as an investigator at the law firm?”

“I didn’t call you a slacker.”

“But that’s what you thought. Admit it.”

“Okay, maybe I did. But come on, Jake. You have to admit working a few hours a night when you’re young and healthy and smart is a little slackerish.”

He laughed. “That’s not a word. And it’s a little judgy too. I admire the guy you thought I was. Free-spirited, hitting the road whenever the spirit moved him, living life in the slow lane.”

“Are you saying the guy I think you are isn’t who you are?”

He smiled. “I worked part-time because I was going toschool, Sage. I got my law degree. And I didn’t come here to mooch off Alice like I know you thought I did. She asked me to move here and join her practice.”

Sage opened and closed her mouth, the shock rendering her speechless, but then it hit her that Alice had known and kept it from her. She felt like an idiot and launched herself at him. “You jerk! All this time you’ve been laughing at me.”

He rolled her under him, holding her hands above her head. “I wasn’t laughing at you, and I asked Alice not to tell you.”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because I wasn’t sure I could do it. Actually, I’d pretty much convinced myself I couldn’t. I wasn’t exactly an honor roll student.”

He’d been lucky to graduate from high school at all. But it hadn’t been because he was a slacker or thought he was too cool for school. He was dyslexic and had ADHD. At Alice’s behest, Sage had tutored him, so she knew how difficult law school must have been for him.

“I know I could be a brat when we were growing up. Don’t raise your eyebrow at me. You were a jerk too. But did you really think I’d be anything but supportive, Jake? We’re not kids anymore.”

“It wasn’t about you. It was about me.” He shrugged. “Your opinion mattered to me, I guess. I was okay with Alice knowing if I tried and failed, but not you.”

“Alice must have been so proud of you,” she whispered, then raised her gaze to his, barely able to see him through the shimmer of her tears. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not being condescending. But I… I’m proud of you too.” She raised her head off the pillow to kiss his cheek but pressedher lips to his mouth instead. She tasted her tears on his lips, but maybe they were his too. It wasn’t fair that he’d worked so hard, achieved so much, only to have Alice die before they made their dream of working together come true.

She freed her hands from his and brought them to his face, kissing him softly before pulling back. “We’re not selling the practice.” Last week, she’d told him to sell everything. She’d been too overwhelmed to even think about keeping the practice and the farm, and Jake hadn’t said a word. “I want you to have it, Jake. It’s what Alice would want.”

He wiped her tears away with his thumbs. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Things look different in the cold light of day.”

“I won’t change my mind. I want this for you. It makes me happy thinking of you carrying on Alice’s legacy.”

“Thank you.” He pressed a warm kiss to her lips. “But I still want you to sleep on it.” He rolled off her, and she shivered, missing the weight and the heat of his hard, muscular body. He folded his arms behind his head. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”

“I can’t follow that. It was epic. Mine is just…” She shrugged. “Stuff from a long time ago that I should have gotten over but haven’t. It’s actually a little embarrassing.”

“It was embarrassing telling you that your opinion mattered so much to me that I didn’t want you to know I was in law school in case I failed. You owe me.” He rolled onto his side, facing her. “Spill.”

She sighed. “Fine. If I wake up in the middle of the night at my condo, or I guess I should saywhenbecause it happens all the time, I can’t go back to sleep. I’ve tried everything, butnothing works, so that’s what I do, get up and work. Or I work so late that I fall asleep at two or three in the morning.”

---