Read Online A Lover's Secret by Bethany Bloom - Free Book Online Page B

Okay.”
    He was silent a moment, then: “And, Jess? Do me a favor.”
    “Okay.”
    “Don’t change your clothes. Don’t change anything about
yourself. Come exactly as you are, right this very minute. I want you just as
you are.”
    Her stomach lurched, and there was a soft click on his end
of the line.
    She stood, then, knowing that if she didn’t leave the
basement right this very moment, that she might somehow change her mind, and so
she swept toward the stairs. The white oriental lily on her desk quaked as she
rushed passed. Two of its petals drifted down and landed with a soft phwip on the shiny oak surface of her desk. The petals were wilted, withered around
the edge and dusted with pollen, the finest dust, like powdered mica, aglow in
the blue light.
    Jess raised her face to look at the old woman, then, where
she lay, breathing softly, covers tucked beneath her chin. She was taken,
suddenly, by her grandmother’s peacefulness; overwhelmed with love for this
little wrinkled person in her oversized pajamas, cuddled into her covers just
so.
    Jess took a sharp breath, and she kissed the tips of her
fingers and held them up, extending them out toward Grandma. Then she turned,
and she launched herself up the basement stairs, three at a time, hurling
herself toward something. Something new.

Four
    Elizabeth
    Elizabeth stood, blinking, at baggage claim. The fluorescent
lights and the dry, recycled air always made her eyes feel sticky. And why did
the sirens need to be so eerie… every time a carousel would begin to turn? Whoop,
whoop. Like something dreadful was about to happen.
    The other passengers from Jake’s flight were here. Full
flight, by the looks of it, but no Jake. A small girl shuffled past, scanning
the waiting crowd. A middle-aged man in a gray suit rubbed his bald head and
watched the suitcases circle again and again. A tall couple pressed their
bodies together. One by one, the passengers on Jake’s flight tugged bags off
the carousel, kissed loves ones, and shuffled off into the night. But no Jake.
    What if something had happened to him? It would be her
fault, certainly. She would be to blame. She was the one who had let him go…who
had let him shove right past her, and now he hadn’t returned, as he promised he
would.
    She knew he was erratic. Of course, she knew he was
unpredictable. That was understandable. But, damn it, she trusted him. He knew how important this was. To him, to her, to everyone. To the entire
project.
    Elizabeth’s phone felt tiny in her hand. She tipped it to
check once again. No messages. He hadn’t gotten on this plane. Of course he
hadn’t.
    So now she would have to go to him. She glanced at the face
of her phone once again, then checked the monitors showing departures. The next
flight was in just a few hours. The middle of the night.
    She chuckled to herself and adjusted the straps of her
overnight bag. Of course she wasn’t really surprised. Jake almost never did as
he was told, and she had been more or less expecting this eventuality, or she
wouldn’t have packed a suitcase. She wouldn’t have come to meet him at the airport.
She wouldn’t have needed to see, with her own eyes, whether he got off the
plane.
    Then again, never had the stakes been this high. She
couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why he didn’t care. She had gone down
this road a few times…with men just like him.
    No, that wasn’t true.
    No one was just like him . No one was like Jake
Lassiter. For one, she had never been in love with one of them. That was one
hundred percent against the rules, but Jake Lassiter was just, different .
Elizabeth smiled to herself. She hadn’t yet met a woman who would tell you that
he wasn’t. If there was anyone to break rules for, it was Jake.
    Elizabeth rubbed her temples as she clicked along to the
ticket counter. The next plane didn’t leave for awhile, but there was no sense
going home to an empty house to wait. No, in a few short hours, she