Keeping the Pieces

by Brenda Lowder

  Jennifer Hayworth was wearing a long-sleeved, tailored navy suit. Her legs in their pointy high heels were crossed, as were her slim arms, one manicured hand tapping an impatient rhythm. Her blond hair was twisted into an elegant knot, and a severe look of irritation tightened her former-beauty-queen features.

  She appeared to be waiting for Emma to speak, but Emma found she couldn’t. She had no desire to. Instead she stood uncertainly in front of her own home wondering how she was going to be able to walk around her mother and shut herself safely inside without interacting with her.

  Before she could try, Jennifer said, “Most daughters would give their mother a key so she wouldn’t have to sit on the porch like a stranger.”

  Emma doubted anyone would give her mother a key. It would be like ordering your own execution. Her mother would use it, and it would be just like it was when Emma was growing up and living in the same house with her—there would be interference and there would be criticism.

  “I doubt that,” Emma said, surprised to hear herself contradicting her mother.

  Her mom stiffened. Emma knew she was unaccustomed to anything except docile obedience from both her daughter and her husband.

  Well, see what you get, Mother? When you leave your husband and your daughter and your beagle for a hot affair with a man-child, things aren’t going to play out the same when you finally decide to come back.

  Emboldened by her own internal self-righteousness, Emma went on. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Mexico? With Draxton?” She pronounced Draxton’s name like a flesh-eating virus.

  Her mother flinched. “Perhaps we can discuss this inside.”

  Emma didn’t move. “What’s with the suitcase?”

  “My things are in it.”

  Emma folded her arms and let her frustration leak into her tone. “Why is it here?”

  Jennifer clasped her hands and seemed to examine the peeling paint on the post near the door. “I tried to go home but your father was out.”

  “So use your key.”

  Her mother’s face flushed. Emma blinked. She couldn’t believe how uncomfortable her mom looked. Her mother was always, always composed. It was one of the things Emma hated most about her. She always managed to be unruffled. Even when a show of feeling would be welcome, like when Emma broke her arm when she fell off the monkey bars in third grade. Or when Trevor Linwood dumped her the day before senior prom.

  Those were times when it would have been nice to get an emotional reaction from her, but her mother was cold and withholding. Emma had accepted that long ago.

  Now here she was showing emotion. On Emma’s front porch.

  Jennifer cleared her throat and avoided Emma’s gaze. “I tried my key. It didn’t work.”

  “It didn’t work?” Emma’s mind couldn’t compute the information.

  “Your father must have changed the locks.”

  Way to go, Dad. As shocked as she was, Emma couldn’t help but be a little proud of her father’s sudden show of backbone.

  Her mom twisted her hands before giving a slight head shake and lifting her chin defiantly. “I waited there for a while, but I didn’t know where he went. I didn’t hear Baxter at home.”

  “That’s because he took Baxter with him when he went to Mexico looking for you.”

  Jennifer’s eyes snapped to hers. “Your father went to Mexico? For me?”

  “That is where you went, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but your father hasn’t left that house for anything besides work in thirty years. I didn’t expect that he’d come after me.” She started tapping her high-heeled foot in a nervous rhythm.

  “Why not? You’re his wife.” Emma bent and picked up the handle to her roller bag. “Or did you forget that?”

  Her mother pulled back like she’d slapped her. Her foot stopped tapping. Emma expected to be on the sharp end of a stinging reply, but Jennifer swallowed and took a deep breath before saying, “Would it be all right if we went inside now?”

  Emma took the keys from her purse and let herself in. She held the door open for her mother to wheel her suitcase through. Once inside, Emma closed and locked the door out of habit, wondering as she did so if she was locking the evil in instead of locking it out.

  “Where’s your guest room?” Jennifer looked around the living room uncertainly.

  “Umm, guest room?” Emma was nonplussed.

  “You don’t expect me to sleep on the couch, do you? You’re a young woman living alone in her own home. You should have ample space for multiple guest rooms.”

  “You’re expecting to stay here? I thought you needed to make a call or something.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed in her direction. “I’m locked out of my home. Where else would you expect me to stay but with my only child?”

  “A hotel, maybe?”

  “Emma, I think you’re being very cruel.” Her mother said the words hollowly, as if she were chastising Emma for not playing with the left-out kid on the playground. Not as if she had any emotional investment in the meaning of the words. But like she was viewing Emma’s life from a remote distance. Like always.

  But it was her mother.

  “I do have a guest room. Two, technically. Here, follow me.” Emma walked in front of her mom, leaving her to drag her own suitcase through Emma’s living room and down the hallway. “Which you would know if you ever visited.”

  Emma had bought this house—her pride and joy—three years ago. Her mother had never been here. She didn’t help her shop for it or move in or decorate. She did none of the things that mothers were supposed to like helping their daughters do.

  “I’m sorry.” Her mother looked at her, and Emma had the disturbing feeling that her mother’s mask was going to slip, and Emma was going to see her cry. Emma’s leg muscles tightened. She was ready to bolt at the first sniffle. Her iceberg of a mother did not get to fall apart right now. Not when she was in Emma’s face making demands after throwing a lit match to the gasoline tank of their family. “I’ve been really busy.”

  “I can see that. A relationship with a teenager takes a lot of time. They have all that energy.” Emma folded her arms and leaned against the wall, studying her mother who looked away.

  “He’s not a teenager.”

  Emma ignored the rebuttal and opened the door to her best guest room. It was farther from her own bedroom than the second-best guest room which was Emma’s office and contained a couch with a fold-out bed.

  This room Emma was proud of. Diffused light filtered through soft white curtains, illuminating the walls in a gentle glow. A delicate white cotton quilt covered snowy cotton sheets with a twelve hundred thread count. Ruffled rose-pink and white accent pillows artfully decorated the bed, which was flanked by matching antique cherry wood tables each topped with a gold-shaded lamp.

  Emma watched her mother take it in. She wondered what she’d say, even as she told herself she was past caring what her mother thought. She didn’t need her validation anymore.

  “This is lovely, Emma.”

  Emma listened for the censure in her tone or the backhanded kicker she had yet to deliver, but her mother said nothing else. It wasn’t criticism she was feeling from her now; it was gratitude.

  Did her mom really have nowhere else to go?

  Sympathy stirred past the blame. “Well, I guess I have to call Dad and tell him to come home,” Emma said as she turned to go.

  Jennifer, who’d been unzipping her suitcase on the bed, froze mid-zip. “Tell him I said ‘hi,’” she said softly.

  “You’re not going to talk to Dad?”

  “I’ve…tried. He doesn’t pick up the phone when I call.”

  None of this sounded like the Jason Hayworth Emma knew. Her father had always been completely devoted to her mother. Obsessed, even. She was on such a high pedestal, she’d get nosebleeds. But now that she’d run out on him with a much younger man, he’d changed the locks on the house and stopped taking her calls? The father who had taken Baxt
er to Mexico to find her mother at all costs should have taken her back in a heartbeat. With no ego, no self-preservation, no self-respect.

  What the hell was happening in Mexico?

  Emma had obviously been too focused on her own complicated romantic situation at the cabin this weekend to think about her parents. And now their problems were looming large in her life. Her mother was staying in her house, for goodness sake.

  It was time to get involved in her parents’ love life.

  ∞∞∞

  Monday morning Derek found himself shocked that Honey was still there. He would not have been able to explain how it had happened. They’d come home from the cabin weekend, and she’d never left. And he had no idea how to oust her. His subtle hints and requests to drive her home had gone blithely unnoticed. On Sunday, he’d started being less subtle, but Honey still managed to misunderstand him. At his insistence that there must be things at home she needed, she had an ample shipment of her clothes and toiletries delivered. He didn’t even get to see by whom since they’d arrived when he was in the shower.

  He still didn’t know what to say to make her leave. It wasn’t that he regretted their getting together, but he hadn’t expected her to move in with him. It was too much, too fast. Way too much. Yes, he now had the woman of his dreams. Really, truly had her since she apparently didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  But now it was Monday morning, and he had to go to work, so he had an inarguable reason to get her out of his apartment.

  “Where are you going?” she asked when he got out of bed in the morning.

  “To work.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” she teased, looking up at him with half-closed eyes.

  “I have to.” He picked up his gym bag from the corner and put some clean clothes in it. “I, uh, could come back at eleven and drive you home.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He paused with his workout shirt halfway to his bag. “Why? Is someone going to pick you up?”

  “No. I can stay here while you’re at work.” She stretched and yawned. “If I let you go, that is.” She smiled up at him.

  Maybe he’d suddenly lost his sense of humor, but he didn’t think that was funny. He could tell she thought she was being cute. She missed the mark. Why was nothing she did cute anymore?

  She turned on her side and propped her head on her arm, watching him. “I’ll let you go on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you give me a back massage before you leave.” She turned over and presented her back.

  Derek sighed and gave her back a few half-hearted rubs. Before she could complain that he was stopping already, he leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

  She frowned. “Okay, you can go for now. But come back and pick me up for brunch.”

  “What?” He stared at her, nonplussed.

  “You said you’d be free at eleven. We could go to brunch then.”

  “Brunch?” he blurted. There was not a less masculine word in the entire English language.

  “Brunch,” she affirmed. “You can take me to this cute little restaurant I know in Decatur.” She looked up at him and fluttered her lashes.

  When he didn’t move, Honey curled her hand into his, scooping up the handles of his gym bag and releasing it so it fell on the floor. “Oops,” she said with a smile.

  Derek put a hand through his hair. Was this exchange a test or a grudge match? Whichever it was, he was figuring out that it wasn’t going to be in his best interest to win. Honey was a complicated woman. A fancy one who wanted brunch. But he’d known what she was coming into this, hadn’t he?

  He put his arms around her and pulled her to him. He whispered, “Brunch it is,” into her ear, then kissed her cheek. She melted against him.

  He gritted his teeth, determined to make this work. He was going to brunch. And he was going to like it, damn it.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Aweek and a half later it was almost eight o’clock at night when Cam pushed Emma’s office door open. She turned from her computer to smile at him, and he grinned like a little boy, bounding into the seat across the desk from her and putting his feet up.

  “So you ready to get out of here? It’s late.”

  Her heart did a little skip. “Am I ever. What were you thinking?”

  “A little dinner?” He cocked his head. “Or a lot of dinner. I’m really hungry.”

  Emma laughed. “A lot of dinner sounds great.”

  Cam slapped his thigh. “Wonderful. Let’s go.”

  “Give me five minutes.” Emma wanted to call her mom and check on her, see if there was any news about her dad. She hadn’t gotten any.

  “It’s a deal.”

  Cam sauntered out of her office, and Emma paused to admire the view as he left before grabbing the phone and dialing her mother’s cell. When her mom answered, she quickly asked about her dad, but there’d been no calls from him, and he still did not answer when her mother tried. But Jennifer was feeling better, having found a new reality show that she was really getting into. Apparently it had virtually no plot and some avant-garde filmmaking.

  “He works out a lot. And hangs around his house naked. And cries. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s got to be something like Sad and Naked. You know all those naked reality shows they have now. Naked and Dating, Naked in the Wilderness, Naked Getting a Home Loan.”

  “I don’t think that last one’s real, Mom.”

  “It was something like that. Something financial. Anyway, you’d like Sad and Naked. The main guy is seriously hot.”

  Ew. Emma did not want to hear her mom, who had chosen her father and then Draxton Ayers for goodness sake, ramble on about the kind of man she found “hot” on television. She cut her off. “That’s great, Mom. Listen, I’m going out to eat with a friend. There are some frozen dinners in the freezer. Or I could bring you something back.” She prayed silently her mother wouldn’t take her up on the offer. She didn’t want to have to bring her mom some takeout in lieu of heading over to Cam’s place and getting closer to him. Physically.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll find something here.”

  Emma released the breath she’d been holding, though she hadn’t really thought her mom would want takeout. Jennifer Hayworth ate very little in order to maintain her former beauty queen physique. And what she did eat was only fit for herbivores. “Great! See you later, Mom.”

  “Thanks, Emma.”

  The “thanks” threw her. Emma mumbled goodbye and hung up the phone, anxious to catch up with Cam. She hated that her mother was acting more human. It made her harder to dismiss. And harder to hate.

  She called her dad, but just like the last fifty times she’d tried, he didn’t answer. Was there any hope for her parents? Was there any hope for Cam and her?

  “All set?” Cam asked, ducking his head into the office.

  She got up, pulled him inside, and closed the door.

  He smiled. “What—” he started, but didn’t finish as Emma kissed him hungrily.

  “Hello, there,” he said, laughing.

  “What if we waited on dinner?” she said.

  Cam raised his eyebrows and smiled. “What did you have in mind?”

  Emma ran a hand up his chest and paused on his tie. “Just something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. So long that I don’t think I can wait all through dinner.”

  Cam held up a finger and ducked his head back into the hall. “Everyone’s gone…”

  “Perfect,” she said, pulling him back in and locking the door.

  He leaned down and covered her lips with his.

  She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the kiss. His arms went around her, pulling her close. She ran her hands up his back, edging her fingers up his neck and into his hair. He deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding against hers. She met his tongue with hers, exploring his mouth, the
n bit his lip playfully. He made a surprised sound, and she pulled back to look at him. He smiled. She smiled back then reached out and ripped his suit jacket off and threw it in the corner. It landed on the edge of the square container of the potted ficus tree.

  Cam’s eyes were wide, and Emma wondered if he was surprised and if this was going better than he’d expected. Or maybe it was exactly what he’d known would happen, showing up in her office so late. It didn’t matter. She’d won him, fair and square-ish. She was finally claiming her prize.

  She untied his tie and wondered distractedly if he hated wearing it and whether he’d chosen to buy this particular tie for himself or if Honey had bought it for him. She told herself to stop her mental yammering and focus. She threw the tie aside and didn’t look to see where it landed, but instead started on the top button of his shirt.

  She let him remove her suit jacket and put it on the chair, even though she wanted to caffeinate him, his movements too slow and careful. She unbuttoned her blouse, knowing she could do it in a tenth of the time he would take. She tossed it behind her. Cam’s eyes strayed to the French demi-cup white lace bra she was wearing. The pupils of his eyes got bigger and Emma kissed him hard, loving the smoldering look of desire that was turned on her. Her. Not Honey.

  “Push pause,” she said. She ran to the window and shut the blinds. No reason to give the whole city a show. She returned to Cam, looped her arms around him.

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. Even in her high heels she had to lean up—and he had to lean way down—to reach. She shucked the rest of her clothes off and then hurried to help him do the same.

  When they were both naked, she didn’t take much time to look at him, choosing instead to pull him to the small couch and kiss him ferociously. She was having sex with Cam, damn it, and nothing was getting in their way this time.

  Honey and Derek were already way ahead of them. They must have had sex dozens of times by now. Honey probably didn’t have anything better to do because of her fractured leg. They were probably doing it five times a day. Emma and Cam had a lot of catching up to do since they hadn’t even completed round one yet.