Silver and Spice

Chapter 5

The next morning, at the bank, Anne pushed the button for the elevator and glanced at her watch. Three minutes after ten. No one was going to shoot her for being late for the first time in six years, but all the same she was a bundle of nerves. Not only had she forgotten to set her alarm clock, but this was the second night in a row that she hadn’t slept very well. Undoubtedly by coincidence, Jake had been in town two days.

Smoothing the jacket of her gray wool suit, she stepped out of the elevator. Marlene was waiting with the usual pile of notes to hand to her…and she was wearing an odd half-smile that made Anne pause. “Having a good day?” she asked curiously.

“Very good.” Marlene chuckled. “I have a feeling your day is going to be just as good, Miss Blake.”

Another coworker gave Anne a strange look. Rather distractedly, Anne smiled a greeting at her, shifting her leather briefcase under her arm as she strode toward her office. She opened the door, and her jaw dropped.

Violets were everywhere, spilling all over her desk, on the small table between the two visitors’ chairs, on the low credenza against the wall, even on the carpet. The stems of the small purple blossoms had been wrapped in gray silver foil, and their fragile scent filled the air. She heard the faint giggling of her female colleagues just behind her, yet the sound seemed to come from a mile away.

She dropped her briefcase onto a chair, one of the few surfaces not covered with flowers. A white envelope was propped up in the center of the purple profusion on her desk. With trembling fingers she picked it up: To Idaho, princess.

There was a sudden hush behind her. In a daze, Anne half turned to see Mr. Laird’s unusually florid face in the doorway, his eyes riveted to the incredible transformation of her office. “Anne, the entire place has been in an uproar for the past hour.” His lips pursed and then softened. “They started arriving a half-hour ago. The tellers downstairs aren’t even trying to add two and two. You’ve always been a puzzle to them, Anne, never giving a hint you had a private life, and now this…” Mr. Laird threw up a hand. “And for heaven’s sake, you’re five minutes late for a meeting in the conference room. Had you forgotten? And as for these being delivered to the office, frankly, it’s not at all appropriate.”

“It certainly isn’t,” Anne agreed readily. Mr. Laird was so right. Jake did terribly inappropriate things. Aroused women on wooded country roads, left them standing frustrated in doorways, invoked memories so that they couldn’t sleep…and sent violets.

“Are you coming?” Mr. Laird inquired crisply.

“Yes.” Of course she was coming. As soon as she blinked back the sweet, unexpected blur of moisture in her eyes.

Anne heard the persistent thumping on her front door just as she was arranging the last container of violets on her bookcase. Her nerves leaped in response, knowing it was Jake even before he crashed through the door in jeans and sweatshirt. “Hi,” he said blandly. He took a small but lethal bite from her neck, touched her nose and sauntered in tennis shoes past her to stare into the living room. “I’m disgusted. Really disgusted. I hoped there would be more. I don’t know what on earth’s wrong with the florists in this town that they don’t stock more violets.” He pivoted back to look at her, hands loosely on lanky hips. “Aren’t you proud of me?”

The thank-you speech she’d rehearsed all afternoon went the way of a whirlwind. “Proud?” she asked blankly.

“A gentleman always sends candy and flowers to a lady. They’re very appropriate gifts.” He prodded her with a get-with-it gesture. “I nearly forgot.” He dug into his pocket, and produced two chocolate bars, a little crushed. “The candy part. Want some?”

“No, thank you.” She touched her fingers to her temples. “God, you’re exhausting, Jake. Would you kindly go back outside the door, say hello, let me give you an appropriate thank-you for the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen? Then we can go on from there like normal people.”

He considered, and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.” Sheer mischief lit his eyes as he surveyed her gray designer suit, white blouse, black pumps and the jet combs holding her hair in an impeccable twist. “Did you have a DAR meeting today?”

“Did you clean out a basement?”

“If you’d been doing what I have, you would undoubtedly have dressed in jeans, too,” he protested, and cocked his head. “Well, actually, you probably wouldn’t have dressed in jeans, sweetheart, but most people-”

“Are you going to stand there and insult me long enough for me to make coffee, or is this just a quick social visit?” Anne questioned politely.

“I wasn’t insulting you. I’ll bet lots of people clean their ovens dressed to go to a church bazaar.”

“You’d go to the President’s inauguration in a frayed shirt.” Trying not to laugh, she moved swiftly into the kitchen and started to pick up the coffeepot, but he followed and stopped her by capturing her wrist in his hand.

“I want you to go outside with me for a minute or two. I’m not ashamed to be seen publicly with you, even dressed as you are,” he added virtuously.

“Thank you so much.”

“Are you going to be angry if I tell you I called Laird to make sure we could leave by Friday?”

“Yes.”

“And I called your grandmother,” Jake added as he closed the door behind them and nudged Anne toward the parking lot in back of the building. “I called Jennie partly because I’ve always loved her, and partly because I decided that it was the chivalrous thing to do.” At Anne’s horrified expression, Jake grinned. “Chivalrous. You know, like candy and flowers and no sex. Now, Anne, don’t look like that. I didn’t say one word to Jennie about marriage, because we’re not talking about marriage anymore. I just told her that we’re going to Idaho, that my intentions were more or less honorable, that I would take good care of you, and that Gramps would be delighted to hear the sound of her voice should she need anything at all over the next couple of weeks.

“Jake!” Her grandmother had always taken to Jake…reservedly where Anne was concerned, however. Anne had the sinking feeling of being pulled down into quicksand. She was all too aware that Jake must have given her grandmother the same kind of expectations he’d given Gil. Great-grandchildren-type expectations. It wasn’t funny. Neither was the motor home standing at one end of the parking lot. All white, waxed and polished.

“Uh-oh.” At Anne’s level stare, Jake managed to fake a look of dismay. “You were planning on a quick jet trip with return passage all paid for, weren’t you? That certainly would have facilitated an easier, more rapid escape whenever you wanted to call off the adventure and run home.” He shrugged. “Anne, I’m trying to play by your rules.” He started ticking off his actions on his fingers. “I left you at the door last night, all chaste and safe. I sent you flowers and brought candy to you. I got your grandmother’s permission to court you, just as if we were living in the eighteenth century. Now, I can’t think of everything.”

It was one of those times when Anne had a rough time working up any sympathy for him. She reached for the door of the motor home, then stepped up inside the door, turning back for only a moment… “Try to behave yourself for a full five minutes now, will you, Jake? Give it everything you’ve got.”

The cerulean carpet was as thick and springy as a sponge beneath her feet. Rapidly, Anne’s eyes trailed the length of the motor home, from the plush captain’s chair and overhead berth in front, to a blue velour couch and matching chair, to a tiny but remarkably complete kitchen, fitted with everything from a microwave oven to a pull-out pantry. Thoughtfully, she stepped farther in, absently opening the refrigerator to find eleven cans of beer and three apples. Cupboards revealed three varieties of canned spaghetti, canned stew and vitamins. She threw Jake a telling glance.

“We can’t all thrive on yogurt,” he said mildly. “Just look at the rest.”

She did. He must be keeping the tux he’d worn to Link Cord’s party at his grandfather’s, because it wasn’t here. The closet was empty; the drawers of the bureau were stuffed with jeans and sweaters. A double bed in back had a double sleeping bag on it. A door opened to a corner bathroom, tiny and spotless. Another door opened to what must have been intended as a shower cubicle, but instead, it housed charts and maps with pins stuck into them, a pull-out desk and an assortment of strange tools. Picks? Chisels? She didn’t ask for the details.

Her mind had shifted to racing gear the moment she’d stepped into the motor home. Jake, by contrast, had suddenly turned quiet, watching her. When she finished exploring, she wandered back to the front, having to maneuver around Jake’s tall figure…and assisted totally unnecessarily by his hands around her hips. It was a small, natural intimacy, not contrived, just…Jake. Yet it disturbed her. As if she weren’t already disturbed enough.

He popped the lid on a can of beer, which he raised in her direction. She shook her head. “Bertha’s not a toy, Anne.” A motor home named Bertha? Anne thought. “Coeur d’Alene’s loaded with all the comforts of home, but I have to have a more accessible place to stay when I’m working out of the mining district.” Eyes locked on her face, he sat back on the couch with one leg loosely crossed over the other. “Idaho isn’t exactly loaded with Holiday Inns. Not in the Silver Valley.”

Facing away from him, Anne explored the rest of the cupboards. She found a lone tea bag, tentatively tested the faucets for water, and had a disposable cup in the microwave oven seconds later.

“There are enough beds for everyone to sleep lonely,” he said dryly. “The berth is just as comfortable as the double bed. I meant what I said, Anne. The sleeping arrangements are up to you.”

Anne said nothing. After a minute, the signal on the microwave pinged, and she was suddenly very busy, searching for a spoon, stirring her tea, finding a place to toss the tea bag…

“I can’t read your mind, dammit. Sit down.”

He’d given up the lazy drinking of his beer and was hunched forward on the couch, clearly unsettled all of a sudden. Anne calmly took her tea to the blue velour chair, sat down, crossed her legs and faced Jake calmly, certain that he couldn’t see the panic inside her head. And she was panicking.

“Do you really have that many objections to our traveling this way? It’s only for a few days, Anne, three at the most, two with the best of weather. At the end of the two weeks, I’ll send you home on a luxury jet, if you still want to come back to Michigan.”

“The motor home’s fine, Jake,” she said quietly.

It wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. The motor home-Bertha-was just a detail, bringing an awareness that they were going to be on top of each other. There would be no privacy, no easy escape-things she’d counted on when she’d agreed to go with him.

She sipped her tea. Truthfully, his whole campaign lacked subtlety. Skip the motor home. He’d encouraged both Jennie and Gil to anticipate cooing over great-grandchildren. He’d started a no-touch policy so they could get to know each other in a nonsexual way. In principle, she approved of the no-touch policy. In reality, her body very definitely expected attention when Jake was around; her body wasn’t getting it. Her hormones were already furious, a totally unnerving situation.

And, of course, there was Jake’s money. The money she never knew he had. Well, Jake could take his assets and chew them up in little pieces. That was his business, and Mr. Laird would just have to get an ulcer at the sight of the Rivard multiple assets going down the drain as far as the Yale Bank and Trust went. Except that one look at that cashier’s check and her eyes had lit up at the thought of all the potential long-term gains for Jake, a nest egg she might be able to force on him before he had the chance to blow it on silver mines and heaven knew what else.

And last, the violets.

Anne dismissed the violets. They were very definitely part of the campaign, but no woman with breath in her body could have resisted the violets. It was the rest. She added up his actions on the master calculator inside her head. “I’ll take the upper berth,” she remarked idly.

“Fine.” Jake looked relieved that she was talking.

“You’ve been walking all over me, Jake,” she announced.

A flash of surprise lit his eyes, very quickly masked by those short black lashes of his. “We’ve been testing the waters,” he agreed, and changed the subject. “I didn’t buy you the violets so you could put them on your bookcase.”

She took another sip of tea, trying to force the alien feeling of panic out of her bloodstream. “No?”

“You want to know what I really had in mind?”

Anne was not without intuition. “No.”

“I had this dream last night. Of you naked in a tub of hot water. Surrounded by violet petals…”

She jumped up from the chair, tugging her prim gray suit into place. “Actually, the motor home is an excellent idea, Jake. Because at the end of two weeks, you’ll be happy to hire a private plane to take me home. That’s what this trip is about! Different lifestyles. Your adventurer to my stick-in-the-mud. Which is very funny…only not exactly. You’ll see, when I replace your beer with yogurt, when my neatnik habits get to you, when day after day you have to live with the differences between us… Over the long term, we just won’t work. And love by itself isn’t worth a ripe plum. I learned that early. Married people have to speak the same language, share the same values, want to live the same way…” She shook her head. “To prove that to you, and maybe even to prove it to myself one last time, I’m willing to go to Idaho with you. But I really don’t think it’s going to take even two weeks for us to drive each other mad.”

For some unknown reason, tears were trying to well up in her eyes. Hurriedly, she turned away, and in two steps had reached the door. The handle refused to give for a minute, but she managed to open the door on the second try. She took a step down and strode off, only vaguely aware that her next-door neighbor was pulling grocery bags from the trunk of her car, which she’d parked behind the motor home.

“Anne?” Jake’s voice came from behind her.

All regal pride, she turned with the utmost patience.

“I’m leaving the motor home here, so you can put your clothes and things in place.”

“You can’t park here. The condo rules-”

“I fixed that.”

She sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”

Jake had his hand on the door. His silver wolverine eyes held hers, and she felt all the fascination of captured prey. “Run your tub full of very hot water, Anne,” he tossed after her thoughtfully. “I want you completely naked, darling. Leave all the lights off. Just darkness, just those petals floating all around you, clinging to that ivory skin of yours…”

He slowly shook his head, obviously in reverent appreciation of his fantasy, then closed the door. Thankfully, Anne noted, with him on the inside. She suddenly found herself staring at her neighbor, who was just as intently staring back at her, wide-eyed.

“He’s a total stranger,” Anne said weakly. “I’ve never met that man before in my life.”

Her neighbor nodded.

Mesmerized, Anne stared at the ocean of slow-waving corn that rippled on all sides from east to west, north to south. There was nothing else. Just the black strip of road, a blue sky that kept on coming, and the endless cornfields. It wasn’t a view she’d expected when they’d started out at two that morning.

“You haven’t said a word in an hour,” Jake remarked to her from the driver’s seat.

Absently, she fingered the lace ruffle at the throat of her pale blue blouse. “I’ve either fallen in love with Iowa or I’m suffering from culture shock.” Glancing at Jake, she smiled ruefully. “I just keep looking out there… Somewhere down those side roads are the people who feed this country. Survivors. And suddenly I feel like a parasite.”

“Because you work at a bank?” His brows shot up.

“Because I just sit at a bank, and usually think of corn as a commodity that fluctuates on the market. Of course, banking is exactly what I want to do, but I never considered how far removed my life really is from…I don’t know…real work.”

He shook his head. “You do real work, foolish one. You make it possible for that farmer out there to buy his farm, to keep operating through the bad years, to build up a heritage for his kids.”

His instant defense of her work surprised her; she’d always thought Jake felt more amusement than respect for anyone who worked at a desk. “That was almost a nice thing to say,” she ventured casually.

Jake shot her a crooked grin. “You love what you do, and you’re good at it. Did you think I never noticed?”

“Good Lord, I think that was another nice thing to say.”

Jake chuckled. “Maybe you could blend both worlds, and open up your bank vault in bib overalls.”

Anne smoothed her mauve wool skirt and thought, We have to stop having these nice, easy conversations. She’d chattered to him all morning, laughing over absolutely nothing, forgetting completely that it wasn’t just Jake next to her, but Jake-who-came-back-threatening-marriage-this-time. “Do you want a snack?” she asked suddenly.

“Restless, Anne?”

“Terribly,” she lied, as she got up, ducking under the overhead berth to head to the back of the motor home. “I warned you I wasn’t a very good traveler, Jake, much less a camper. I can’t imagine where we’re going to find a place to stay in country like this tonight.”

“Fildekirky, Iowa,” Jake called back to her.

In spite of herself, she chuckled at the sound of the name, and started opening cupboards.

“If you find a doughnut back there…”

She brought him a bag of dried pineapple slices, which would be much better for him than a doughnut and would still satisfy his sweet tooth, then returned to the miniature kitchen to make herself a cup of peppermint tea. It still amazed her that she could get up anytime she liked and make a cup of peppermint tea while driving.

A moment later, she took a sip of her brew, glancing around before going back to sit by Jake. The motor home, she decided, was a symbol of the impermanence of Jake’s lifestyle. It represented the unbridgeable distance between them…but she seemed to be falling in love with the darned thing. Everything was so meticulously neat; there was a place for everything, home comforts begging to be taken advantage of.

She’d had three days to rearrange everything, of course. Her yogurt had joined his beer, fresh fruits and vegetables supplemented his canned goods, sleeping bags had been replaced by percale sheets on both the double bed and her berth. Next to his paper plates and plastic forks were china and sterling. Her wardrobe provided a contrast to his; traveling suits to his jeans, high-heeled shoes to his tennies.

She’d deliberately gone overboard, right down to the brands of toothpaste she’d chosen, in an effort to impress Jake that their values were terribly different even in the little things. Taking a minute to reapply lipstick in their tiny bathroom, Anne took in her reflection, from the high-throated blouse and modest violet skirt to the prim coil of hair at the nape of her neck. The image was honestly Anne, soft fabrics and gentle colors and classic styles. She was not flamboyant and never would be; she was not at all the kind of woman she expected Jake to end up with.

Fleetingly, her soft jade eyes met their reflection in the mirror; her expression was oddly distressed at that moment. Surprisingly, she was happy to be with Jake. She had always been all too happy to be with Jake, at least until he’d brought up the subject of marriage. She knew that yogurt versus beer wasn’t the issue; rather, the crux of the matter was their different systems of values. Her craving for roots and stability and order… Lord, you’re boring, she told the mirror wryly.

And the man hadn’t touched her since she’d agreed to the trip. His restraint was making her nervous. She’d heard what he said about proving they had something more than sex between them, but Jake’s blood had certainly never run tepid before… You’re supposed to be boring him, she reminded herself. You should be happy he’s keeping his hands to himself.

Still, though, a little kiss wouldn’t cost him much, her libido grumbled. Would you stop that? Grabbing a newspaper, she walked back to the captain’s chair next to Jake, wearing her most formal, boring smile. “I’m going to read aloud to you from the Wall Street Journal so you won’t get restless,” she announced to him cheerfully. “Do you want to hear about common stocks or blue chips first, Jake?”

His crooked grin had a little too much Chesire cat in it for Anne to feel comfortable. She decided on blue chips. Most days, they even bored her.

The dot on the map for Fildekirky was an overstatement. Anne, buried under campground directories and road maps, was by now heartily sick of cornfields. Once she’d directed Jake to the expressway exit he wanted, her nerves quieted down with an expectation that never materialized.

“This is it?” she asked him unbelievingly.

A shabby little diner sat on one corner, a gas station on another. Three pickup trucks took up the restaurant’s parking lot, such as it was. A mongrel dog wandered along the middle of the main street. Late afternoon sun was pouring down in long yellow rays on the silence.

“I had a feeling your love affair with Iowa wouldn’t last,” Jake said lazily. “Not that you can judge any state by the view from its highways. Tomorrow will be quite different, Anne, but I have a feeling the campground will surprise you. I’ve been here before.”

The campground did surprise her. There were trees.

Gingerly, Anne stepped out of the motor home as Jake sauntered into a wooden A-frame building to check in. She felt like a toddler just learning to walk as her feet touched solid ground.

The A-frame and huge maples blocked her view of the actual campground. She’d already decided the trees were imported. Across the road were another five trillion acres of farmland and nothing else. At least there was a huge green tractor to relieve the monotony, but she had no real hope for the view behind the thick row of bushes and maple trees.

She glanced toward the door of the A-frame. Jake was taking forever. Smells assaulted her nostrils, the scents of rich brown earth and green leaves, not unpleasant. Rubbing at a kink in her neck from all the traveling, she wandered around one side of the building. A cool breeze had picked up the hint of a September night; a few of the maple leaves had started to turn gold and russet. The campground owners had planted a wild profusion of marigolds and asters, their perky colors splashing over the stone walk as she meandered farther. The place wasn’t totally uncivilized…

A fat white duck suddenly waddled in her direction, squawking belligerently. Startled, Anne glanced up. Her eyes widened in surprise. A narrow creek wandered like a serpent between shaded campsites; in the middle of the creek was a strange redwood structure that looked like a miniature fort mounted on wooden stilts with a rustic ladder leading up to its entrance. The place was almost pretty; the ambience had clearly been created to provide a quiet night’s rest for a stranger…barring the ducks.

White duck had friends. All of them seemed to catch sight of her at the same time, and instantly waddled forward to welcome her. There seemed to be thousands of them… Well, four dozen, anyway. Fat ducks, skinny ones, some white and some brightly feathered, all quacking unlyrically. Laughing helplessly, Anne bent down to pet one, and found a dozen yellow beaks very gently trying to devour her hand.

“It sounds good, but don’t believe a word you hear,” Jake suggested dryly from behind her.

“They’re obviously hungry.” She blinked. The squawking cacophony reached a dangerous decibel level. “Jake, they’re terribly hungry…”

“We’re just an hour ahead of the usual camper trade. By eight o’clock, those ducks will be so full they’ll sink if they try to swim, and Rochester-the owner of the campground-will pocket mucho dinero for every wee handful of feed he sells.”

“Oh? He sells the feed?” Anne questioned absently, her hand still stroking the silky feathers of the closest duck. She glanced up a moment later to find Jake studying her with one of his half-baked grins.

“Anne, don’t you think you’d better free yourself from your admirers before they nibble your immaculate nylon stockings to shreds?”

Anne threw him a speaking glance and waded through the ruffled feathers and outraged quacks to head for the door of the A-frame office. The screen door clapped shut behind her as she entered. Inside was a dizzying array of products for sale, from milk to Penthouse magazine, from ivory chess sets to canned soup. Behind the long counter, she noticed travel guides, diapers next to spark plugs, sunglasses next to aspirin. A short, cigar-smoking man stood waiting; a plaid shirt was stretched tightly over his watermelon-sized stomach. “Well, hi, little honey.”

“Hi.” She spotted the cardboard box filled with cellophane-wrapped packages of duck feed. Fifty cents for a handful. Robbery, sheer robbery. Instinctively, Anne clutched her purse in tight fingers for a second. She never even allowed pennies to collect in the bottom of her purse; it wasn’t in her nature to let herself be taken in by the owner of a tourist trap. On the other hand, it wasn’t in her nature to let the poor ducks be victimized, either.

“One or two, ma’am?”

Her voice seemed to come from a distance as her left hand forced her right hand to release its hold on her purse. “I’ll take all of it,” she told the man grimly.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“If they eat all of what you have in that box in a day, I’ll take it all,” Anne enunciated clearly.

Jake burst out laughing when he saw her emerge from the building laden with little cellophane packages, but the ducks bore down on her like an attacking little army. “Darn it! Don’t you say one word,” she ordered Jake.

He reached her side in seconds and dived for the two bags she dropped, at the same time shooing away the persistent white duck who wanted her skirt hem for dinner. She tossed a cascade of mixed corn and other grain to the ground. The ducks dived for it with their beaks, their fat, feathered bottoms wiggling furiously in the air. Anne heard herself helplessly giggling, but there wasn’t time to enjoy the scene. Suddenly, dozens of beaks were poised expectantly in her direction again. Jake reached in front of her with another bag. She started laughing again as she tossed another handful of grain on the ground. “You don’t have to tell me this is ridiculous. It just went against the grain to know the poor creatures had to wait for a bunch of tourists to dole out their dinner. It’s cruel, Jake…”

“Went against the grain?” Jake groaned.

That started more giggles. The white duck sat on Anne’s foot. She ripped open three bags at once, and then had to swoop down and chase one brightly feathered bird who was taking off with an empty cellophane package in its beak, like a prize. When all the bags were empty, she held up her empty hands. “That’s all,” she told the ducks. “You guys are supposed to be full.”

Full or not, the ducks were irritated. They waddled off to splash one by one in the S-shaped creek beyond the maple trees, with a loud chorus of disgruntled quacks. “Did you hear that?” Anne brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, put her hands on her hips and suddenly whirled to face Jake indignantly. “They’re maligning my character. After going through all th-this…”

Her tongue seemed to trip. Jake was no longer smiling. He was staring at her, his silver-gray eyes intensely warm on hers. Boldly warm, vibrant. She caught her breath in sudden confusion. “I-I know it was…foolish,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t know what got into me. That man is a thief. Lord, I don’t even know anything about animals, let alone ducks.”

“Yes, you do. You had a puppy once, don’t you remember?” Jake crumpled the empty cellophane packages and tossed them into the closest litter bin, then brushed against Anne’s shoulder as he led her back to the motor home. “You and that puppy were inseparable. Then, when your mother married what’s-his-name, you had to give the pup away. The next time I saw you, I tried to give you a kitten. Have you forgotten that, too, Anne? But you wouldn’t take it. You said you’d never again accept anything that could later be taken away from you.”

“Well…” She remembered, unwillingly; that hadn’t been the happiest time of her life. She gave a short, quick, cover-up laugh as Jake started the motor home to drive them to their campsite. “You have a good memory, Jake,” she said lightly. “I couldn’t have been more than seven, and you were no more than ten at the time.”

“You adored that puppy. And you’re right, I was exactly ten, but I can still remember wishing your mother would fall into a deep, dark pit.” Jake flashed her a crooked smile so fast she thought she’d imagined the flecks of steel in his eyes, and the unexpectedly bitter comment about her mother. “You were very pretty when you were seven.”

She couldn’t help chuckling. “You like pigtails, do you?”

“What I like, Anne,” Jake said quietly, “is your laughter.”