Baby It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren

Author:Susan May Warren
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Historical
ISBN: 9781609362157
Publisher: SUMMERSIDE PRESS
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Saturday, December 24

The way I figure it, you have a day to show her who you really are. Forget about Alex. Be Jake.

The words rumbled around in Jake’s head all night, shifting with the wind. He finally told Gordy that he’d tend the fire. It didn’t do either of them any good to sit and brood in front of the crackling frames while the blizzard voiced the howl inside him.

Jake had finally fallen asleep in front of the hearth, as he might have as a child. When he awoke, the flames had settled in a bed of glaring coals. The morning streamed in the windows, lighter, although the wind still buffeted the panes, rattling them as if trying to break in.

Jake stirred the coals with the poker then added the last of the logs. Be Jake.

He could murder Alex for writing all those pieces of his life to Violet, but in truth, wouldn’t he have made up a life for himself, if he could? Replace all the dark places with something bold and heroic? Alex had grown up sleeping on a cot in his mother’s tiny room in the Ramseys’ attic. He’d had no father, a legacy of poverty. He’d been the servant.

No, Jake didn’t blame him for wanting to be the owner’s son.

He’d bet, however, that Alex never mentioned the asthma that sidelined Jake most of his childhood.

Stop worrying about the guy you aren’t, and be the guy you are. Gordy’s words edged into his mind.

The man should hardly be giving out romance advice when it had taken him twenty-seven years to tell the woman across the street that he loved her.

Yesterday had felt downright agonizing, watching Dottie and Gordy long for more. Poor Gordy—he just didn’t know how to woo her.

Or maybe…maybe the farmer had been doing it for years. It didn’t go unnoticed with Jake that Gordy seemed to know Dottie’s house and her barn better than she did. And, from the way they talked, he’d spent as much time with Nelson as she did.

Dottie and Gordy shared him, each clinging in their own way to him. And now, with his absence, they just didn’t know how to bridge the gulf.

Maybe, despite his own failures, Gordy had a point.

Perhaps, today, he’d simply be Jake. Without a past. Without a future.

Just, Jake. And if he could woo Violet just a little, she might forgive him for his lies.

He heard banging in the kitchen and looked up. Dottie, probably, because she’d vacated the velvet sofa. Gordy had made a bed on the floor, near the radio, making another bed close by for Arnie. Violet had curled up on the chaise lounge.

A chill brushed the air. They needed a hotter fire to leverage warmth back into the room.

Perhaps he should stop worrying about being anyone—himself or Alex—and just focus on surviving. He got up to fetch more wood.

As he entered the kitchen, an acrid odor tinged the air. It smelled of burning sugar, reminded him of Svetlana’s old-fashioned homemade candy.

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