She knew she was in serious trouble.
Serious, horrible, embarrassing trouble, in the space of a few hours.
Over “Cap” Capelli from high school, and two adorable seven-year-old girls.
Chapter Four
Joe dropped her back at Spruce Bay almost immediately after dinner. Mary Jane insisted on that. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, Joe.” He hadn’t let her help with cleaning up, and she’d had to content herself with rinsing off a few plates and putting them in the dishwasher.
He didn’t argue about dropping her home, and on the drive they talked about the car.
Cars.
Hers and the one belonging to Capelli Auto.
“I’m sorry we don’t have a second car to offer you,” he told her.
“I’m glad you don’t, because I wouldn’t take it. I’ll organize a rental. And I will cover the deductible on the insurance.”
“We’ll talk about that.”
“We’re talking about it now, and it’s decided.”
“Well, no, because it’s possible you have some bargaining power,” he said. “There might be something from you that I want, that I would be more than happy to exchange for the deductible on the insurance.”
Was he talking about—
“I mean,” he went on very quickly, “the pony camp thing.”
So, no. He wasn’t talking about her selling him her body. Just to be clear.
What is wrong with you, Mary Jane?
As if she didn’t already know.
“You gave me the impression that pony camp would be a special deal with the owner, is what I’m saying,” Joe explained. “So if you can help me organize that, put in a word, or arrange a meeting, or whatever it takes, then it’ll hugely help with the girls this summer, and you certainly won’t owe me for the car thing.”
“I’ll call Penelope tomorrow, and talk to the Richardsons about it, too.” She’d told Joe about them, and their kids and nanny.
“And call me as soon as you know if we can work something out?”
“Of course.”
“I’m sorry, I’m nagging you about this as much as the girls would, but at the moment Dad and I are running the garage and looking after the girls between us, and I can already see that it’s going to be too much for Dad.”
“Of course. They’re adorable, but full of energy.” It sounded inadequate. All she really knew about kids came from the ones who stayed at Spruce Bay. Some of those could be pretty obnoxious, and it was a testament to the yearning in her heart that she still wanted babies, lots of babies, even when she’d seen that they didn’t always stay cute for long.
Joe’s girls were definitely cute. What was this really about in her heart? The man or the girls? If they had a mother… If she was only away for a few days, and it was only by chance that she hadn’t come up in conversation…
Maybe this man and his family were completely out of bounds, and even if they weren’t…
I’m scaring myself, feeling like this so fast.
“He’ll be stubborn about it if I just try to send them off to some kind of commercial day care,” Joe was saying. “He doesn’t think that’s good enough. But a pony camp would be their dream come true, and after—” He stopped and muttered something under his breath. “You don’t need the detail.”
“No, it’s fine.” She would take all the detail he wanted to give her. She would listen with all her heart.
Not good. Very, very bad.
She waited to see if he would say more, and when he didn’t, her disappointment was yet another danger signal on a rapidly lengthening list. She wanted to know everything about him, and she wanted to hear it from him, in his dark, husk-and-syrup voice, and that was scary.
Crushy. Desperate. Something to beat herself up over, not to embrace.
They emerged from the tree-lined Spruce Bay entrance drive and reached the parking area in front of the office, where he halted, leaving the engine idling. “Thank you so much for everything today,” she told him, deliberately formal. “For the car, and coming to pick me up, and then dinner. If I can arrange the pony thing, it still won’t be nearly enough.”
“Fuggedaboutit,” he said, like a character in a mafia movie, and not for the first time she found herself wondering why he’d never succeeded as an actor, the way he’d once been so sure he would. He had the looks, the voice and more charisma than any woman could possibly want.
“I’ll call you about the pony thing as soon as I have some information,” she said.
“Great.”
“Right. Bye, then.”
She was so determined not to linger in the car that she scrambled out of it with embarrassing haste, and he drove off at once, with just one final wave. After he’d disappeared back into the trees, she stood there for too long, feeling dreamy and unsettled and full of longing and absolutely, completely furious with herself.
The furious part was pretty familiar, and she knew how to handle it. When your thoughts kept steering onto a track that you didn’t want, you just had to keep busy enough that they went away purely through being crowded out of existence.
She bustled through the office door and found Nickie fiddling with her manicure and talking on her phone, slouched back in the swivel chair with her knees drawn up and bumping the desk. “She wants to? Are you serious?” she was saying in teenager shriek.
So, not talking to a guest, then.
When she saw Mary Jane, she quickly ended the call and smartened up her body language, as if she thought she was about to get yelled at. It was almost more annoying than if she’d kept on talking to her friend, because it gave the impression that she considered Mary Jane to be a dragon of a boss.
“Busy?” Mary Jane asked lightly.
“Cabin 12 flooded their bathroom, and Room 4 couldn’t get their air-conditioning to turn on.”
“That’s probably because the air-conditioning couldn’t work out if it was supposed to be blowing hot air or cold,” Mary Jane drawled. The new reverse-cycle appliances installed during the re-fit could do both. Even though it was a little chilly out now, the cabins had been warmed by the sun most of the day. They should have been cozy but not too hot, and certainly not too cold.
“I know, right?” Nickie rolled her eyes and smiled, and Mary Jane didn’t feel like such a dragon anymore. “I actually had to ask them what they wanted it for, heating or cooling, because the room felt like the perfect temperature to me.”
“So you got it going?”
“We set it at seventy-five degrees and it decided to do some heating. When we get some real summer, they’ll probably want it set at sixty-two. Do you want me to clock off now?”
“Just stay for another five minutes while I run over to the restaurant and see how they’re doing over there. But unless there’s been a disaster you should be fine to go after that.”
“Thanks.” She smiled and looked at the time on her phone. “What time tomorrow?”
“Let’s say noon?”
The office phone rang at that moment and Nickie picked it up. “Spruce Bay Resort. This is Nickie speaking. How may I help you?”
Mary Jane went over to check in with Daisy, but service was winding down over there, and everything had gone smoothly. Daisy insisted she wasn’t required. With a team of staff who knew what they were doing, by this time, the restaurant ran almost independent of the rest of the resort. “Take a break, Mary Jane.”
“How about you?” Mary Jane suggested. “Don’t you want to get home to your husband? Put your feet up?”
Daisy dragged some steam-misted blond hair away from her pink cheeks. “I’m good. I’ll be out of here in half an hour.”
“Don’t know where you get your energy.”
Daisy grinned. “I’m told I should enjoy it while it lasts, because once the third trimester kicks in I’ll never ever have it again in my whole entire life.”
“Ooh, who have you been talking to?”
“A very wise woman in the wai
ting room at the doctor, who’s pregnant with number five.”
“Wow.” Mary Jane ignored the stupid pang of envy and regret that kicked at her stomach the way Daisy’s unborn baby would soon start kicking at hers.
That was going to be me. Expert mom; big, beautiful family; devoted and thoughtful parenting.
It wouldn’t have been every woman’s ambition or choice, but it had been hers, and it hadn’t happened.
Heading back toward the office after saying good-night to Daisy, she remembered the early days with Alex, twelve years ago, when she’d begun thinking about marriage. She’d been twenty-two years old when they got together, and twenty-three when she’d decided that he was The One.
She had thought that he would propose pretty soon—the relationship had felt serious to her, important and good and what she was looking for—and she would be married at twenty-four. Maybe wait a couple of years, then have a baby at twenty-six or twenty-seven. She would easily fit in six by the time she was in her late thirties. Six seemed like a good number, enough to fill an eight-seater minivan.
She’d seen herself as a mix of earth mother and soccer mom, the kind of mother that other women looked at with respect, with the kind of kids who were happy and well adjusted and passionate about the things they loved.
She’d thought that she would cook and bake, grow her own vegetables, make her home beautiful with hand-crafted pieces and lovingly restored antiques, take her kids to music lessons and sports, read to them every night. She’d seen wife, mother and homemaker as an important and interesting career that would absorb and fulfill and challenge her at every turn.
“I don’t know how you do it with that many!” everyone would have said. And she would have had some wise, earthy reply. “You just have to stay organized and keep your sense of humor.” Or, “I picked the right father for them. That was at least half of it.”
But of course Alex hadn’t been the right father. He hadn’t been the right anything.
He hadn’t proposed on schedule, and eventually she was the one who’d brought it up. “Alex, do you see us getting married anytime soon?”
He’d told her there was no hurry. Weren’t they happy the way they were? They had plenty of time, why not live a little before they got serious? And then he’d distracted her with shared travel plans for a trip to Cancún, which she’d interpreted as a sign of commitment.
A year later, when she’d turned twenty-six and had at one point a few years earlier thought she might already have been a mom by then, she’d tried again. What about kids? Did he want kids?
When the time was right, he’d told her. There was no hurry, was there? She had another seven or eight years before she had to start worrying about her biological clock, right? Why settle down now, when they were having so much fun?
Yes, but she would never be able to fit in six kids if she didn’t have the first of them until she was in her mid-thirties! It just wouldn’t work!
Of course she hadn’t shared this objection with Alex. She didn’t want to scare him off with talk of a big family. Maybe they didn’t need to have six, she’d decided. Four would do. Or even three, if he really felt strongly about it.
More time had passed. She was approaching thirty and they still weren’t formally engaged. Sometimes she’d wondered if he loved her at all, because he would get distant and distracted, but if she challenged him on it and they fought, he would draw her back in with a romantic gesture and an apology. Flowers, jewelry—he’d been very good at all those easy gestures.
But then a month away from her thirtieth birthday, they’d had a huge fight and before it could get to the gesture-and-apology phase, she’d hit him with a point-blank question. Were they getting married, or not?
Not.
She could still remember the words he’d used.
“Let’s be honest. It’s never really been headed in that direction, has it?” he’d said, all friendly and matter-of-fact about it, acting as if they’d always both been on the same page and she’d never thought it was a serious relationship, either. As if they’d never discussed it, or children, before. But they had! He’d fobbed her off, let her think a whole lot of things that weren’t true.
Lied to her.
She’d been so shocked. She’d told him it was over—had thrown the announcement in his face like a bucket of icy water, and then she’d waited for him to come crawling back. Waited six weeks, before she’d realized it wasn’t going to happen.
Less than a year later—and maybe this was the thing that had hurt the worst—she heard that he’d married someone else. She could so easily have gone stalkerish at that point, obsessively looking for evidence that Alex and his new bride had begun seeing each other while he was still involved with Mary Jane herself.
But she hadn’t done that, and this gave her some pride. She hadn’t done anything wrongheaded at all.
Once she’d known the relationship was really over, she’d been very firm with herself about moving on. She traveled twice every year, when Spruce Bay was closed for its off-season breaks. She kept herself fit and active, well-read and well-informed. She looked after her body and her mind. She worked to make Spruce Bay the best place it could be. She kept up her friendships, and a good relationship with her sisters and mother and father, now retired in South Carolina. She lived her life as fully as she could, even though it was totally different from the life she’d wanted and planned.
Nearly five years later, she was over him but maybe still not fully over it—the sense of deception, the loss of a dream life that had seemed so realistic and possible, the feeling of having wasted more than seven years on someone who was apparently only keeping her in his life because she was convenient until a better prospect came along.
She would be thirty-six in October.
And hunky Joe Capelli had two adorable little girls with no mother in sight.
Those two things are not connected!
Back in the office, she sent Nickie home, then sat down at the computer to check email. The phone rang a few minutes later, and she could tell by which light came on that it was from one of the housekeeping cottages. “Hi, Mary Jane, this is Vanessa in Cottage 7. I’m wondering about getting some more towels.”
“Sure, Vanessa. Let me bring some across. How many do you need?”
“Um, four?” came the hopeful answer. “Sorry, there’s nothing like horses for getting you filthy.”
I could talk to her right now about the pony-camp thing, and then call Joe tonight to tell him the news…
Once again, she realized how easily she could turn this into something too important, so she strapped on the self-discipline and simply delivered the towels with a few friendly words to Vanessa and Phil. The pony-camp thing could wait until tomorrow.
Chapter Five
“Did the lady find a pony camp for us?”
“Her name is Mary Jane,” Joe reminded his girls.
“Did Mary Jane find a pony camp for us yet?”
“Probably not yet, since it’s not even seven o’clock in the morning, and I only dropped her home at eight-thirty last night, and there’s not going to be a pony camp at all if you keep nagging me like this.”
“We won’t nag,” Holly and Maddie promised at once, but Joe didn’t believe them for a second.
He felt the temptation to nag, himself, because if he couldn’t get a pony camp worked out, then he’d have to opt for something else, and fast. Maybe a teenager, looking for child-minding? That was probably the most affordable and flexible option, but Dad didn’t want them using paid child care at all.
For now, they just had to get through another day. He told the girls, “This morning you’re going to do some school.”
“School?” Holly said.
“But it’s summer!” Maddie came in.
“It’ll be fun school,” he promised, improvising. “I’m going to set you some activities, and you’re going to sit quietly and do them all morning, while I’m at the garage. Then Grandad’s g
oing to bring you over there, and we’ll all have a picnic lunch somewhere, then you’ll come back here and watch TV—quietly—while Grandad has a nap. Okay?”
Apparently it was okay. Now he just had to think of the fun school activities, while he prepared the picnic lunch.
Well, they could finish their novel. The story was approaching a pretty critical point. Happy Horse had lost three of his friends and was neighing as loud as he could to find them.
Joe could commission them to do some drawings to decorate the garage office. They could read a book and do some craft projects inspired by the story. He could set them up with glue and scissors and old magazines for a collage.
He was probably kidding himself to think that this would last all morning, but it should give Dad some kind of a break before he had to step in and take them to the playground or outside to throw a ball around. Maddie and Holly loved being outdoors and being active, and were so tireless about it. He needed to find the right outlet for all that energy.
Joe discovered that he had begun to yearn for pony camp as much as the girls were…
The morning passed in a rough approximation of his plan, and when Dad arrived at the garage with his pair of beloved granddaughters in tow, he didn’t look nearly as wrung-out as he had yesterday afternoon. They went and enjoyed their “chicken-salad sandwich and cookie picnic” in the park, and Joe let them run around on the playground equipment and the rocks until he risked getting back late to meet a client who was picking up his car.
Dad and the girls left while he was putting the client’s credit card payment through, and as they walked to the minivan, he could hear them pestering to go back to the park on their way home. “Plea-a-a-se, Grandad! We didn’t get to go on the swings.”
“All right, but only for fifteen minutes, okay?” came a weary male voice. “Grandad needs a rest after that.”
With the client there waiting, Joe couldn’t rush out and tell the girls to leave their poor grandfather alone because Grandad needed to go home for his rest right now, not in a very elastic fifteen minutes. And then the phone rang and it was Mary Jane. He felt insanely relieved to hear her voice.
It Began with a Crush (The Cherry Sisters) Page 5