Page 32 of A Lonely Road (Spruce Hill #2)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jake

T o my surprise, Nora resigned herself pretty quickly to her father’s impending visit, though she did force me to endure half a dozen one-sided debates about whether she should spend her nights at the apartment while her father was in town instead of snug in my bed.

I let her carry out both sides of the argument, choosing instead to bide my time until she was ready for a distraction.

I’d be damned if I would let her scurry away from me just because she didn’t want her father to recognize that she was an adult woman with adult needs.

The night before her father’s arrival, I caught her chin in my hand and stared deep into those big brown eyes. “Nora, honey, everything is going to be fine. If he hates my guts, I’ll let you hold me while I cry my eyes out, but I’ll survive, because he’s not the one I’m in love with. You are.”

Though she hadn’t quite come out and said it back, I got a thrill from seeing how she responded to me speaking the words aloud, like she was softening under the warmth of my love for her. Instead of avoiding it for fear of scaring her off, I found that the more I said it, the more she melted.

This time, she slumped against my chest, pressing her lips to my throat as her arms wrapped tightly around my waist. I grinned when she shifted to peek up at me.

“You did that on purpose,” she accused, but her eyes were alight with pleasure.

“Did I?” I asked, trailing my lips along her hairline. “I’ll say it as many times as you need, as many times as you’ll let me. I’m head over heels in love with you, Nora.”

With no small effort, I convinced her to stop worrying.

Bolstered by a full night’s sleep—in my bed, since she’d finally accepted that self-consciousness couldn’t lure her away from our current routine—she seemed much more optimistic about introducing me to her father.

After a brief phone call the night before, we made plans to meet him for lunch at The Mermaid.

Little by little, most of her small wardrobe had ended up at my house.

While she debated what to wear, I tried one final time to imagine how this particular meeting was going to go.

Nora told me the last partner she’d introduced to her father had been her date for senior prom, and Captain John Cassidy had scared the poor kid into barely touching her the entire night, even when she’d begged him to dance with her.

Fortunately, I didn’t scare quite so easily. In fact, after the hurdles I’d already vaulted over, I was hard-pressed to imagine so much as batting an eye at her father, no matter how imposing he might be. Then again, her father had decades more experience than she did in frightening people away.

I was still mulling that over when I walked into the bedroom, just as Nora pulled on jeans and then a dark blue blouse.

“You, my darling, look beautiful,” I said, pausing to kiss the side of her neck.

Nora sighed softly and turned to look at me. I wore my usual bartending attire, hopefully looking clean-cut and respectable. A father’s dream for his only child’s partner, Nora had joked, but her father clearly wasn’t like most others.

She smoothed her hands over my chest in approval and said dryly, “You look wonderful. If I dress up any more than this, he’ll be expecting us to announce an engagement.”

I smirked but said nothing further, simply took her hand and led her out to the truck. Despite my assurances to the contrary, I was nervous about meeting her father. I just didn’t want to add to her own anxiety about it.

When I saw her hands clenching and flexing on her lap, I laid my own on the seat between us, palm up.

“Give me your hand.”

She blinked at me in surprise, but she placed her hand in mine without a word.

Instead of holding it, as I'd done so many times before, I pressed my thumb into the center of her palm and massaged it gently.

All of those tiny muscles inside began to loosen, little by little, easing under the warm press of my thumb.

“What are you doing?” she asked finally.

“Whenever you’re nervous or stressed, you fist your hands and open them, over and over. I thought this might help you relax a little.”

Nora’s breath caught on a quick inhale, then left her lungs on a sigh. “It does help.”

Though neither of us said it aloud, the misty expression on her face told me that those little acts of thoughtfulness, of kindness and love, also helped. I flashed her a grin and continued rubbing my way across the muscles of her hand until we pulled into the parking lot at The Mermaid.

“It’s going to be fine,” I said again.

Nora waited while I shifted the truck into park, then she caught my hand and kissed it. “I know it will be,” she whispered, “because I’m in love with you, too.”

The smile that broke across my face brimmed with such joy that it could have lit the interior of the cab.

I lifted my other hand to her cheek and slid over along the bench seat to kiss her, the kind of slow, deep kiss that filled my chest with wave after wave of emotion.

When we parted, I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against hers.

“Then I can handle anything,” I murmured.

The bliss was short-lived, however, because Nora suddenly gasped and jerked away, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit. ”

I turned and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with the same deep brown eyes as Nora staring at us through the windshield.

Captain John Cassidy lifted a single dark brow in our direction as Nora scrambled for her seatbelt.

She quickly hopped out of the cab, so I did the same, though I followed more slowly and met the two of them at the front of the truck.

“Hi, Dad!” Nora said brightly, her cheeks beet red.

I’d never seen her blush so deeply, though I was sorely tempted to try to make it happen sometime—in private, of course. She rose on tiptoe to kiss the man’s cheek.

“Hi, Bear. Are you going to introduce me?”

“Ah,” she stumbled slightly. “Dad, this is Jake Lincoln. My neighbor. Boyfriend. I mean, both, I guess. This is Jake.”

Good lord, I’d never seen Nora so tongue-tied—and I was utterly enchanted by it. I forced back the memory of the day she’d accidentally told me I looked hot, smiled politely, and offered my hand to her father.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Cassidy.”

“John will do fine, son,” her father said, shaking my hand.

The older man’s grip was firm and strong.

I caught the barest hint of a smile twinkling in his eyes, so like Nora’s, though his expression remained stern.

Beside us, Nora still looked completely frazzled, so I took her hand and watched as that simple connection steadied her.

When I glanced back at her father, I was dead certain he’d seen it, too.

“This is Jake’s restaurant,” she told her father as we walked toward the doors .

“It’s a family business, technically. My father started it when I was in high school, but my twin sister and I are the current owners,” I added with a smile.

Nora’s earlier jokes about me being perfect boyfriend material—polite, friendly, charming—would only help if it made up for the fact that her father had caught us making out in the parking lot.

Christ, she said she’d never so much as held hands with anyone in her father’s presence.

I wondered if she felt like she was back in middle school again, floundering under Captain Cassidy’s stern gaze, because I sure as hell did.

I would help her in whatever way I could, but her fluttering nervousness was throwing off my focus.

“The strawberry shortcake is to die for,” Nora added when she realized the conversation had stalled.

I caught sight of her father’s amused expression over Nora’s head and squeezed her hand reassuringly. Joanna, one of Nora’s favorite servers, greeted us with a megawatt smile and led us to a booth on the opposite side of the restaurant from Nora’s usual spot.

“This is a very nice place, Jake,” John said as we sat. “You must do good business here.”

Though it wasn’t posed as a question, I understood that I was under review. “Yes, sir, we do. My sister and I took over for my father three years ago when he retired and business has continued to improve steadily. My sister does our marketing, I deal with the finances. ”

“And tend bar on the side?” John asked. With a small smile, he added, “Word gets around in a small town like this, even to a visitor like myself.”

I grinned, though Nora shot her father a quick glare. “Yes, sir. I started bartending after I graduated from college, so it’s a good way to keep an eye on things here. Even when my full-time bartender is working, I generally help out a few times a week.”

“That seems a bit unusual,” he said, looking unimpressed.

“I enjoy it, and it gives me a break from staring at ledgers all day long. I like to be present, stay involved. It helps when we need to make adjustments, see how things are working out, assess business decisions. And it’s fun.”

John leaned forward and stared straight into my eyes. “Fun,” he repeated harshly. “Were you having fun the night my daughter was attacked?”

Every trace of good humor left my expression. “No, sir.”

“And instead of reporting the crime, you let him walk out of here?”

“My primary concern was Nora—”

“Well, my concern is this asshole continuing to harass my daughter.”

Before I could respond, Nora’s palm cracked loudly against the table top. “That is enough!” she hissed.

Both of us looked at her in surprise, but her furious gaze was focused on her father, much to my relief.

“I didn’t invite you to lunch to bully him about things outside of his control. ”

“It happened in his own restaurant,” her father countered.