From This Day On

He presumably had grown up.

“Sure,” she said cautiously. “When did you have in mind?”

* * *

JAKOB HAD THE NEXT EVENING in mind, as it turned out. Either he didn’t have an active social life right now, or a cancellation had provided an opening in his schedule.

They’d agreed to meet at the restaurant, and he beat her there. Amy was glad she’d checked it out online and therefore dressed appropriately. It wasn’t the kind of place she usually dined. Her all-purpose little black dress fit in fine, though, and the four-inch heels lent enough sway to her hips, she was vaguely aware that a couple of men turned their heads when she passed. Good. She’d been determined to look her best for this reunion. Jakob might be her brother, but she sure as hell didn’t want him looking at her with disdain the way he had the last few times they’d seen each other.

The maître d’ led her straight to a window table where Jakob waited. He spotted her when she was on the other side of the room and rose to his feet, watching her as she came.

The minute she set eyes on him, she felt sure a cancellation explained the fact that he had been free to have dinner with a mere sister tonight. This was a man who could have all the women he wanted, whenever he wanted.

He got his height and looks from their father. Amy hadn’t. She’d forgotten how Jakob dwarfed her. Or maybe not—perhaps her subconscious had prompted her to wear the tallest heels she owned.

Jakob was also ridiculously handsome, his features clean-cut, his nose long and narrow, his cheekbones sharp enough to cast a shadow beneath. He had dark blond hair that was probably a little longer than business-standard, but lay smooth except for a curl at his collar. His eyes had been a breathtaking shade of blue when he was a kid, but had become more of a blue-gray by the time he reached adulthood. He looked as Scandinavian as his name suggested.

She did not. Amy had inherited her mother’s brown eyes and hair that was neither brown nor red nor anything as interesting as auburn. Mom was a brunette, but apparently a great-aunt was a redhead so it ran in the family. Nobody had curls like Amy’s, though. That cross was hers alone to bear.

“Amy.” Jakob smiled and held out a hand. Not his arms, thank heavens—nobody in their family hugged, and she didn’t want to start with him.

“Jakob.”

They shook, his big hand enveloping hers. It felt warm, strong and calloused, which was interesting considering he presumably sat behind his desk most of the time.

Or maybe not. He’d always been the outdoorsy type, and given his business—sporting goods—he likely tested some of the products himself. Lord knows there were plenty of mountains within a day’s drive for him to climb and forests for him to hike into.

She was reluctantly aware that he had, if anything, gotten better looking with the years instead of softening around the middle or starting to gray or whatever, the way you’d expect. He was thirty-seven, after all, which ought to be edging past his prime. Part of her had been hoping for the teeniest hint of jowls, a few broken blood vessels in his nose...something.

No such luck.

The maître d’ seated her and then presented a white wine to Jakob, who approved it. Left alone with their menus, Jakob and Amy looked at each other.

The experience was more than strange. They hadn’t been alone together—focused solely on each other—in almost twenty years. She had hardly seen her brother after he’d left for college, when she was fifteen. At Christmas once or twice, maybe. One summer, she remembered, he’d worked in Tucson and, oh, gee, just never managed to get home while she was there. The summer after that, Colorado. Amy hadn’t gone to her dad’s the summer before she herself started college. Not seeing Jakob had been fine by her. Better than fine.

Now she thought, He’s a stranger. I don’t know him at all. Never knew him.

“I’m not sure how we managed to avoid each other so completely for so many years,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

“Determination and motivation.” Amy sipped the wine then glanced at it with surprise. It had as little in common with the kind of wine she usually drank as she did with her brother the stranger.

His mouth crooked. “I was a shit to you when we were kids, wasn’t I?”

“You were.” She found herself smiling a little, too. “I don’t suppose you were exactly thrilled when I came along.”

“You could say that. I don’t remember much about it. I was only three when you were born, after all. But I was already dealing with the shock of suddenly having a new mother who didn’t seem very interested in me, and next thing I knew she wasn’t fat anymore, and there you were, squalling and ugly and I could tell my daddy was totally in love with you.”

Well, Dad got over that, she thought tartly, downplaying the hurt.

“It’s a wonder older siblings ever like the younger ones,” Amy said reflectively.

“You so sure they do?”

They shared a grin.

He nodded at the menu. “Better decide what you want to eat. Our waiter is looking restless.”

The restaurant specialized in steaks but had a few alternatives. She chose salmon, baby potatoes and a Caesar salad. Once the waiter had departed, Amy looked at Jakob again.

“So what’s the deal? Why did Dad call you about this time capsule opening?”

“I have no idea.”

Amy felt sure he was telling the truth. Or mostly the truth.

“I’m not sure he knew,” Jakob continued. “I suppose that’s what caught my interest.”

“Were you supposed to distract me so I wouldn’t go?”

“He didn’t come out and say so, but that’s the impression I got.”

“What could she possibly have put in it that Dad doesn’t want me to see?” She’d only asked herself the same question a couple dozen times in the past two days. “It’s not likely to upset me even if Mom did something completely scandalous when she was a student. Even if that something scandalous got her kicked out of Wakefield.” Now, that was a new thought, one that explained why Amy’s mother had deleted the college from her personal history.

No, wait. If that was true, why would her mother have updated the college records with her married name and current address?

Because on some level she wanted official forgiveness or at least the legitimacy of being treated like any other former student? And maybe, it occurred to Amy, the reason Mom had been able to keep Wakefield a big secret was that, in fact, the college never had sent her any mailings. This could be the first, necessitated by the fact that she had been included in the time capsule thing. They might have gotten her information from some other alum with whom Mom had stayed in touch, say.

“You know,” Jakob said, “I’ve barely seen your mother since I was—I don’t know, nine or ten?”

She nodded. “By then you were already making yourself scarce when Mom and Dad traded me back and forth, weren’t you?”

A truly wicked grin flashed. “Yeah, but sometimes that’s because I was behind the scenes setting up my latest prank.”

She glared at him. “The snake in my bed was the worst.” A memory stirred, much as the coiled snake had. “No, I take that back. The time you hid in the closet dressed all in black with that monster mask was the scariest.”

“Yeah.” To his credit, he looked chagrined. “Dad was seriously pissed that time. He put me on restriction for a month. I was the star pitcher for my Little League team, and I had to drop out.”

“Which made you hate me even more.”

“Possibly.” He sounded annoyingly cheerful.

It felt really odd to be reminiscing with her former tormenter. The bitterness she’d always felt seemed to be missing. In fact, she realized at one point during the middle of the meal, it felt odd to be reminiscing at all. Had she ever talked about her childhood with anyone, besides the superficial level that was exchanged with new friends, college roommates and whatnot?

No.

Jakob, she figured out as they talked, hadn’t exactly had the ideal childhood, either. First his mother was killed in a car accident, then his father married a woman who had no interest in mothering the little boy. Grand entrance: cute baby sister who entranced Dad. A divorce, another change of school. Then yet another move, this one to Arizona, followed by his father’s third marriage when Jakob was seventeen.

“I’d forgotten you were still living at home when your father remarried again,” Amy said thoughtfully.