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There were so many things Jake wanted to say to Clay. Instead, he started with something small. Then work his way up. “She was upset last night. What did you do?”
“It’s really none of your business, Jake.” Clay’s attention kept straying toward the ridge. They couldn’t see Bailey yet, but Jake had watched her head from his bedroom window not even ten minutes earlier.
“No? Forget where you’re standing?” Jake knew this man almost as well as he knew himself. They’d been friends for almost three decades now. He knew what Clay wasn’t saying. “You’re afraid. Of her. Of what she makes you feel.”
“I’m not a damned coward.”
“I’m not saying you are. Hell, Clay. You’re human. If you had to know this time was coming. Man was not made to go through life alone.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying that women like her come into our lives the moment we’re not truly ready, and they take over every thought we have. Even in our dreams...” Jake wasn’t certain he was still speaking about Bailey and Clay. He’d had some pretty intense dreams himself last night. Dreams that involved a certain physical therapist. Unlike Clay, Jake had never been a coward where women he wanted were concerned. “We can push them away and spend the rest of our lives alone. Or we can get off our asses—metaphorically, for guys like me, of course—and go after what we want. You can’t spend the next forty-something years alone. That won’t exactly be fun.”
After he and Bailey had talked, Jake had done some hard thinking of his own. He wasn’t attracted to Bailey. Not intensely enough, anyway. He loved her. But he would never be in love with her.
But Jake wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of his life alone, either. He wanted that intense flame that burned between lovers—like he saw with his sister and Cam.
“You know where I come from.”
“You’re not your father, Clay. Any more than I’m mine.” Jake shot a look toward the ridge, as a familiar blond head popped up over the first boulder. Bailey was climbing up to the top. She’d be able to see for miles up there. He watched as she settled on that rock, facing east. “Any more than she is hers.”
“And if I hurt her?”
That was Clay’s biggest fear—and Jake knew it. Understood as only someone who had seen the world Clay grew up in. The first time Clay had ever argued with a girlfriend, Clay had ended the relationship immediately.
Afraid of himself.
He’d mellowed a bit through the years with women—thankfully. Clay would never physically hurt a woman. Jake knew that better than probably Clay did.
But Clay was so terrified of loving a woman it was keeping him from having any damned kind of life at all.
“Then I’ll kill you. I told her that last night after I kissed her.”
Clay jerked his head toward him. Jake smiled. Clay was so predictable sometimes.
"Hell, yes, I kissed her. And I damned well enjoyed it." He had. He and Bailey had laughed for ten minutes over it. Jake smirked at the man who had been his closest friend since he'd been eight and the two of them had ganged up and beat the shit out of that little punk who had been tormenting Micah Hanan. The three had been fast friends ever since. He felt more than comfortable giving the ass the run around.
He had suspected how Clay felt about Bailey since the day Clay had carried her to the ambulance in his own arms. No one had missed the photos that had been plastered everywhere of the pair. Jake certainly hadn't. And the look in Clay's eyes when he talked about her—it was enough to tell its own story.
But Clay was too afraid to act on it.
"Why wouldn't a guy enjoy her? She's perfect. Everything a man would be beyond lucky to get into his life." He meant every word he said. Any guy would be lucky to have Bailey in his life, his bed.
It just wasn't going to be Jake. He'd known that the instant his lips had touched hers. She just wasn't meant for him.
And he wasn't about to poach on his best buddy's girl. Even if his buddy was too stupid to recognize the gift in front of him.
"And you got her right where you want her. Out there just down the hall. Taking care of your kid. Taking care of you. Your daddy probably gives her whatever she wants the instant she smiles. And why wouldn't he, you, do that? Bailey’s exactly where she belongs now. It’s probably only a matter of damned time."
At the clear torment in Clay's words, Jake's smile faded.
The idiot really was tearing himself up over something that just wasn’t true.
Clay always had been stubborn as a mule when he got an idea in his head. Especially a wrong one. Sometimes it took a sledge hammer to get that idea out of his head. Jake had often been that sledgehammer.
"Why the hell won't you just do something about how you feel? Tell her. Take her to the Barratt in Finley Creek and keep her there for three days. Keep her naked the whole time. Make her understand how you feel about her, damn it." Even as he spoke, Jake knew Clay wasn't going to do it. Clay had spent years hiding how he felt about women from him and Micah. Some weird belief having to do with Clay’s father, and Clay just not being good enough for some women. The fear he’d hurt the woman who mattered most.
But this...was the idiot hiding how he felt about her from himself, too?
Jake bit back a sigh of irritation. He was going to have to do something about Clay’s latest idiocy. Before his friend screwed everything up for him and Bailey. "What are you waiting for, Clay?"
"Shut up, Dillon. It's not ever going to happen."
"Why not?" Clay was the best man Jake knew. He'd been there for Jake countless times. During some of the darkest days of Jake's life. That hadn't changed.
Bailey was exactly the kind of woman Clay needed to show him that life wasn’t quite as dark as Clay had always thought it was. More than that, Clay loved her. For not the first time, Jake mentally cursed Clay’s parents for what they’d done to Clay.
"Because it's just not. I'm not the kind of man Bailey needs. You are. Treat her the way she deserves to be treated." Clay stood abruptly.
Idiot. Total and complete idiot. No surprise. A woman like Bailey could scramble every brain a man had. "I'm not involved with Bailey, Clay. I never have been. Something for you to keep in mind. Talk to her. Really talk to her. You might be surprised by what you figure out. If you think I’m good enough for her, then why the hell aren’t you?"