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She’d had that with him, once, her whole life spread out before her. She could do anything, be anyone. She hadn’t made good on that promise, but he had, hadn’t he? “How’d you get the money to buy this place?” she blurted out.
    He didn’t even turn to look at her. “Didn’t you Google me?”
    This not-angry new Jake was something she hadn’t yet seen. She pressed her lips together, unwilling to lie to him. Of course she’d Googled him, but the search results had returned nothing of substance. All she found was that he was a well-known real estate developer. There was nothing to fill in the blanks between then and now. He’d either done a good job of keeping himself out of the press—or he’d paid someone to do it for him.
    “I know you didn’t find anything,” he said, “so I’ll tell you. I did it the hard way.” He paused. “I earned it.” The implication being she hadn’t. “You want to know how,” he stated.
    “Yes.” She did. Desperately.
    “I worked my ass off,” he said, matter-of-factly. “For years I didn’t sleep, barely ate, just kept my eye on the prize. I took risks. Big ones. They paid off.”
    “So you got lucky?”
    “Luck was only part of it. The other part was me not wanting to fuck up.”
    “Didn’t you—weren’t you afraid you’d lose everything you earned if you kept taking risks?”
    Jake shook his head. “I started with nothing, and I figured I had nothing to lose by gunning for it. It’s hard, just keeping it all going. But that’s what you have to do. Don’t leave any energy for the way back because there isn’t a way back.” He was still looking out at the meadow, obviously talking more to himself than to her.
    Then he shifted to face her, his eyes steely, hard points, and she felt it—all his power and drive, the restlessness that propelled him forward. It was sexy, ruthless, intoxicating. This wasn’t what she thought he’d turn out to be, and she admired him—everything he’d done, everything he’d been through, achieving so much more than anyone ever thought possible.
    But thinking of him like this wasn’t at all smart because nothing could come of it. She knew how he saw her—like some relic from the past whose only use was to bridge the gap between the old Briarwood and the new.
    “I told,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. What the hell really happened to you?”
    She forced herself to meet his gaze. “My dad made some bad financial decisions. Trusted an advisor he shouldn’t have. We lost almost everything. And so did many of our friends. They mostly hate us. But it was my fault, too. I wasn’t prepared for…well, for this, I guess. I had no backup plan because I didn’t think I’d ever need one.” Her parents had put her in lockdown after that
fiasco
with Jake—her father’s word. And at some point while she’d been dutifully following orders, doing everything her parents asked of her just so they wouldn’t be so
angry
anymore, she’d lost her passion, her reason for being.
    “You didn’t get married?” He was still watching her intently.
    “No.” There’d never been a good enough reason—or a good enough man. “Did you?”
    “Too busy,” he said brusquely. “So you were left with no husband, no money, and no friends?”
    “That pretty much sums it up.” She’d become a cipher, subsumed into her parents’ expectations of who they thought she should be. In the end, the loss of her lifestyle just underscored what she already was—nothing. She glanced over at Jake, and his eyes had gone soft. As if he might actually be sorry for her. She didn’t want to see his pity. Couldn’t bear it, actually. “It’s okay,” she told him. “Things are different now. I’m trying to make them different.”
    All at once, his face went hard again.
    “I have a meeting,” he said, rather abruptly. And just like that, he was gone, back the way he’d come through the woods.
    A sick feeling settled in her stomach.
God,
he