Choices Page 4

  My phone was silent for a long while, and I stared at it, wondering what he’d do.

  “I might leave her.”

  Oh, no.

  “You make the choices you have to make for yourself. Don’t make any changes hoping you’ll have something with me, though. I’m not available.”

  ***

  I drove off the ferry so slowly people walking off were faster, but I made it. Once the car was back on firm ground, I exhaled and parked. Then I walked out to stand on a lookout next to the terminal and watched as they started loading up for the return trip. It seemed so mundane, and I wondered why I’d made it into such a big deal.

  The air was cold, but it felt fresh and clean against my cheeks. The tangy scent of the ocean soothed me, and my lips twitched with a smile. I hadn’t dared to tell Jacob I was on my way because I might have chickened out, but now I’d call him. There were a couple of hotels on the island, and it was off-season so I could easily get a room and –

  “Nina?”

  I turned and started laughing when the man I’d just been thinking about stood right behind me.

  “I made it across the vast ocean,” I said happily.

  His face softened with a smile as he spread his arms out.

  “It’s so good to see you,” he said.

  We hugged, and I felt my whole body relax.

  “I fucked up a little,” I whispered into his jacket.

  “We’ll go home and open a bottle of red,” he said calmly, and I tilted my head back to look up at him. “It can’t be that bad, so I’m sure we can sort your shit out,” he added with a grin.

  Right then, I knew that yeah. We could totally sort my shit out.

  ***

  Matthias

  Matthias was on his way to a meeting when his younger brother's name flashed on the screen. Jake knew that calling daytime meant interrupting him, so it had to be urgent, and he picked up immediately.

  “Dad has met someone.”

  Matthias stopped and blinked a few times. Jake’s mother had passed away five years earlier, and they’d all been devastated, but life moved on. If their father wanted to have some female company, then why was that any of their business?

  “So?” he said and started moving toward a conference room some doofus had given the name Antarctica.

  “You have to go there, Matthias.”

  What?

  “I’m not –”

  “She’s younger. A lot younger.”

  “You met her?”

  “No. Dad had dropped me off at the ferry, and I was standing by my car, waiting to wave at him like we always do, but he didn’t wave back. There was a woman at the lookout, and they hugged.”

  “Well, he hugs people.”

  There was a short, stunned silence on the line, and then Jake cleared his throat.

  “He hugs you?”

  Well, shit.

  “No,” Matthias admitted.

  “The look on his face was... It wasn't a polite hug and peck on the cheek. It was a full-body hug, and I didn't see her face, but she was blonde-ish, and she leaned back to look at him. He grinned at her, and it was... I haven’t seen him smile like that since Mom passed.”

  Crap.

  “You sure?”

  “What if it’s someone who’ll take advantage of him? I can’t go back there, Matthias. I just visited, and if I suddenly show up, he’d know I was there to snoop. You have to go.”

  Fuck.

  “I have to –”

  “Bro, seriously? The company will not go down because you take a Friday off.”

  Jake had a point, and most of the meetings he had planned could probably be handled by someone else.

  “I’ll go tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Tonight.”

  “What?”

  “You can park on the mainland. One of the old guys out there will take you over.”

  Well, shit. Jake was usually a pretty laid-back and calm guy, but now he sounded upset for real, so Matthias figured he should go check things out.

  “Okay,” he heard himself murmur. “I’ll tell Dad I have some papers he needs to look at or something. It’ll take a little while to clear my schedule, but I’ll head out in a couple of hours.”

  Chapter Four

  The jackal

  Nina

  Jacob lived in a small house with an open space downstairs where the kitchen was in one end and living room at the other. I assumed his bedroom was upstairs but didn’t have time to ask because he walked me straight through the house, over a courtyard, and into another house.

  “Guesthouse,” he said.

  “I thought I’d –”

  “If you say you’ll get a room at one of the hotels, I’ll push your car into the ocean.”

  I closed my mouth and stared at him.

  “Okay,” I said weakly when he kept looking calmly at me.

  “I have a guesthouse because I like to have guests,” he shared. “My boys have lives, so they’re not here all the time, and almost everyone else I enjoy spending time with lives on the island, so they have their own homes.” He nodded toward a door at one end of the room. “Your room. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

  “Okay,” I repeated, which he didn’t hear, and I watched his back as he marched over the yard and disappeared into his own house.

  The room he’d indicated was bigger than I expected and done in shades of blue. It looked welcoming but also somewhat masculine, and I wondered if one of his sons had decorated it.

  We talked about everything that had happened in the past weeks while we had dinner, and I shared how I had messed things up. Jacob scowled when he heard about my text-flirtations, and I bit my lower lip, wondering if I should perhaps have kept my mouth a little bit shut about that whole thing.

  “What an asshole. I hope I never meet him,” Jacob said sourly.

  “What?”

  That was not the comment I’d expected.

  “He knew you had been hit with the divorce, and leaving your daughter at college, and then losing your dog. So, he knew you were vulnerable and a little lonely, and he moved right in.” Jacob reached for his beer and gave me a hard-faced nod. “Asshole.”

  “I was one too,” I admitted. “I just needed...”

  “You needed a shoulder, and he offered his dick. Yes, you were perhaps a little foolish, Nina, but you were not an asshole.”

  I thought about that, and he drank some beer while I did.

  “At first, I didn’t realize what we were doing. I really didn’t, Jacob,” I said quietly, “And then... it was fun, and I hadn’t had fun in a long time. It was just a few weeks, a month maybe, but I should have stopped it a lot sooner.”

  “Sweetheart, don’t beat yourself up about it. He was a dick, and yes, you played along, but you did put an end to it before anything really happened. Just forgive yourself for being human and move on.”

  His eyes were calm and steady, and I felt how the guilt for being a fool slowly drained away. I’d fucked up, but I wouldn’t do it again.

  “If he’d wanted to meet me in real life,” I said slowly. “I would have said no.”

  “Of course.”

  “I feel like an idiot. Milquetoast, buddha-man, and then sleaze-bag.”

  “Wh –”

  “I’m off men.”

  “Bu –”

  “I mean it,” I snapped and pointed at him. “I suck at that whole thing, so I’m going on a dating hiatus.” It felt surprisingly good to have made that decision, so I added firmly, “Indefinitely.”

  Jacob tried to talk me into giving men another chance, but I insisted that I was done with that part, and he gave in eventually. Then we talked about the island, and how Jacob had moved back to his old family home when his wife passed away five years earlier. He promised to show me around the next day, and that we’d have dinner at the hotel where the chef apparently was another man returning to his home when life got rough.

  I was so, so happy that I’d made it t
o Jacob. The way he somehow just got me was such a relief. I had Layla, but she’d been happily married since college, so she listened and commiserated with me but couldn’t provide much practical advice. My parents were fantastic, but they were off on a trip to somewhere unknown, and it also felt a bit juvenile to call mommy when things got rough.

  I went to bed feeling mellow from the beer and a tiny glass of whiskey, and my small vibrator helped me to relax even further, so I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted until a soft sound penetrated my foggy mind, and the bed moved. Then a warm body crawled in under the sheets, and I scrambled away from it, shrieking loudly. A deep voice bellowed something unintelligible, and I heard how the intruder moved.

  “The fuck?” he grunted, and the room was suddenly flooded with light.

  I gave up another scream and wrapped my arms over my very naked breasts.

  Then my mouth fell open, and I stared at the man standing in front of me, wearing only a pair of dark gray boxer briefs.

  “Matthias?” I squeaked.

  “Nina?”

  He did not in any way squeak, but he sounded perplexed, which I could empathize with. My befuddled brain wondered if perhaps letting him feature in my fantasy just before falling asleep had –

  Oh, dear Lord.

  Before I could stop myself, I turned, and yes.

  My vibrator was where I had placed it, which was on the bedside table.

  “Huh.”

  That sound clearly conveyed that he was looking at what I really wanted him to never have laid his eyes on. I took two steps and quickly shoved the embarrassing appliance under my pillow.

  “Get out,” I hissed over my shoulder.

  “What are you –”

  “Get out,” I repeated and clarified, “I need to get dressed.”

  He was silent for a second, and then he murmured, “Of course.”

  I heard the rustle of clothes, and then the door was closed silently behind him.

  “Fuck,” I wheezed and ran over to my duffel. “Shit, shit, shit,” I added as I dug out clothes.

  When I walked into the small living room, Matthias sat in one of the big chairs, wearing jeans and a tee.

  I was wearing yoga pants, a tank top, and a blush that probably could be seen from the moon.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Visiting my father,” he retorted. “What are you doing here?”

  “Jacob is your dad?”

  “Yeah. You’re visiting him too, I assume?”

  “Jacob is your dad?” I asked again, stupidly.

  “Yeah, Nina. Jacob is my dad.”

  We stared at each other, and I pulled a hand through my hair, trying not to wince at the thought of what I must look like or the fact that he’d just seen me in a pair of peach-colored lace panties and nothing else.

  “I’m visiting him too,” I said when the silence became uncomfortable.

  “I got that,” he said. “Why aren’t you sleeping in the big house?”

  The big house? I felt my lips twitch with a surprised smile when I heard him describe the marginally bigger but still tiny house that way.

  “Jacob gave me this room,” I shared. “I guess he thought it was better.”

  “Guess the old man can’t get it up anymore,” he mumbled.

  What did that have to do with anything?

  “That is none of your business,” I snapped, and he winced.

  “Right,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ll use Jake’s room tonight.”

  “I’m in your room?”

  “Yeah, babe,” he said with a crooked grin. “You are.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I can...” I waved my hand toward the door to the other room to indicate that I could relocate.

  “No need,” he said, heaved himself out of the chair and grabbed his bag.

  “Goodnight?” I said, which came out as an unfortunate question.

  He turned, and humor lit up his eyes.

  “Pretty sure it won’t be as good as yours,” he said, suddenly grinning in a way that looked really good on him.

  Before I could get my befuddled mind to come up with a cheeky retort, or any retort really, he’d walked into the other room and closed the door softly.

  ***

  I woke up early, but Jacob was already in the kitchen when I walked in, and he held a mug out toward me with his brows raised.

  “Thanks,” I said and took the mug full of pitch-black coffee with a content sigh. “Your son arrived last night.”

  “Which one?” Jacob asked, brows high on his forehead.

  “Matthias.”

  “Matty is here?”

  Matty? The boyish nickname didn’t fit the calm man who seemed to be roughly my age, which meant he was fifty-something. It was kind of cute, though.

  “Uh-huh,” I mumbled and leaned a hip on the kitchen counter as I raised the cup to inhale the sweet scent of regular coffee.

  I had a fantastic espresso maker at home, and I loved the soy lattes I made in the mornings, but this? Regular coffee, no milk? It sent me right down memory lane because it was what my parents always had. It smelled of home and laughter and growing up, and of a time when things were a whole lot easier.

  “Did he wake you up?”

  “Yes,” I said and tried not to blush.

  Which I did.

  “What?” Jacob asked and raised a brow.

  “You gave me his room, and he got there really late...” I grinned wryly at him and added, “Bet he didn’t expect to find a half-naked woman in his bed.”

  Jacob burst out laughing and put an arm around my shoulders.

  “Yikes,” he muttered. “Sorry about that, sweetheart. Didn’t expect him here.”

  I tilted my head back and laughed with him because it had been embarrassing, but it was also funny.

  “Sorry,” Matthias grunted from the door. “I’ll leave you alone. Just gonna grab –”

  “Matty,” Jacob said with a wide grin. “No need to leave. To what do we owe the honor of your company?”

  I took a step to the side and wondered why Matthias was scowling. Perhaps he wanted to have some time alone with his dad?

  “I’ll just...” I said and waved toward the door.

  “No,” Matthias said. “I’ll just grab some coffee. Didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast.”

  “Our breakfast?” Jacob asked and narrowed his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Matthias said with a shrug so full of fake casualness I almost started laughing.

  “Matthias,” Jacob said.

  I stopped moving toward the door and turned to stare at him. He suddenly sounded hard, and almost... angry?

  “Yeah?” Matthias repeated and raised his chin.

  “I am old, but I am not a gullible fool. And even if I were, it wouldn’t be anything for you or Jake to concern yourself with.”

  My mouth fell open, and I wondered if I’d somehow dozed off and missed half an hour of conversation.

  “Fuck,” Matthias muttered. “Dad, we never –”

  Jacob raised a hand and was clearly about to start yelling, so I decided to intervene.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked loudly, and they both turned to look at me.

  “No,” Jacob said and sighed as he turned to his son. “Christ, Matthias. Why would someone like Nina do an old fart like me?”

  Do?

  As in... do?

  I turned to stare at Matthias, and he winced.

  “You think I’m sleeping with –”

  I cut myself off and closed my mouth with a snap.

  “I’m gonna guess that you aren’t,” he said quietly.

  “No,” I said, and turned toward Jacob. “Why the... what?” I asked, collected myself, and added, “Perhaps I should leave?”

  “Nina,” he said gently. “Please stay. My idiot son will eventually pull his mind out of the gutter.”

  His eyes slowly filled with humor, and I suddenly felt laughter bubble through my throat. />
  “That would be good,” I said, couldn’t stop a small giggle, and added, “I really don’t want to, um... do you, Jacob.”

  “Good to know because I don’t want to have relations with you either,” he said calmly. “What I do want is breakfast.”

  Then he turned toward the fridge, and I looked at Matthias.

  “I can’t believe you thought your father and I were having an affair,” I said and felt my lips twitch.

  He grinned and pulled a hand over his short-cropped and mostly gray hair.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Dad has always liked pretty women, so it wasn’t such a stretch to think that you were...” his grin became a smile as he finished, “Having relations.”

  I laughed with him and tried to act casual about his comment about my looks. I had looked okay when I was younger. I didn’t have much curves, and my breasts had never been impressive, but I had great hair and legs. My eyes were a pretty greenish color, and with some artfully applied makeup, I’d edged toward being gorgeous.

  Now I was fifty-one, and I didn’t look like an old hag, but I looked my age, so it felt sweet to hear him say that he thought I was pretty.

  “Where’s Pippin?” I asked.

  “My daughter looks after him.”

  “Did she get that internship?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said with a smile. “She –”

  “Do you two know each other already?” Jacob asked.

  “Yeah,” Matthias said casually. “We met a while back.”

  Jacob barked out loud laughter when we explained how we'd met but didn't share why he thought it was so funny.

  After breakfast, he informed us that he had something he labeled shit to do and told Matthias to show me the island.

  ***

  It was a lovely weekend.

  The weather was gorgeous, and so was the island. Matthias took me on a long walk around town, and then another one uphill to where we had a fantastic view. He was a little winded when we got up there, which made me feel bad because we could have gone on a shorter hike. He fake-glared at me when I apologized, though, and told me he was middle-aged but not five feet under yet.

  We ended up spending a couple of hours in the sunshine before making our trek back down again, and I had such a good time. Matthias admitted with a wince that he probably was a bit out of shape, which, according to him, was since he worked too much.