Oh, man. Jennifer hated it when Deb proved just what an unfeeling, blind idiot she could be. “I didn’t think of it that way,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” Deb said, nudging Jennifer. “Why don’t you go talk to that mother? It’s her first time here.”
Jennifer stepped forward, smiling slightly when the blonde looked up.
“Hi,” Jennifer said. “My name is Jennifer. That’s my son, Spencer.” She pointed to Spence as he tried to reach his foot in between two kids to get to a yellow circle.
“I’m Laura,” she said with a smile, revealing teeth so white they looked like pearls. Her long hair fell in the perfect waves that only women in hair commercials had.
“That’s my daughter Madison—” she pointed to the girl on the mat “—and this is Angelina.” Laura gave the girl beside her a squeeze.
“Mind if I—” Jennifer indicated the free chair and Laura quickly moved her purse out of the way. “I understand you are new here.”
Laura nodded. “You?”
“Oh, I am helping Deb run the place for two weeks,” she said. “I’m friends with the couple who operate Serenity.”
Laura nodded. “We just moved here to be closer to my sister. She doesn’t have any children and since school hasn’t started, I thought this might be a good way for the girls to meet some kids.”
You’ve never heard of a swimming pool? Jennifer thought, but didn’t say. Empowerment classes for the children of abused parents seemed like a strange place to try and set up playdates, but what did she know?
Laura leaned closer and dropped her voice. “I didn’t read the class description before I signed up,” she whispered. “Otherwise I might have gone to the pool.”
Jennifer smiled, wondering if mind reading was something people did in the South. “Well, then I am glad that you aren’t—”
“Abused?” Laura whispered, casting a quick glance to Angelina, who was watching the Twister game and ignoring the women. “Good God, no. I married the gentlest man on the planet.”
Well… Jennifer thought of Doug, his hands, his heart. Not the gentlest.
“Either way,” Jennifer said, “we’re glad you’re here.”
“You know, we are, too.” Laura gave Angelina a jostle. “Maybe it will help this one come out of her shell.”
“I don’t live in a shell,” Angelina was quick to say and Laura leaned down, kissing the crown of her head.
The phone Jennifer had tucked in her pocket rang. The sudden shrill noise caused half the kids on the mat to tumble sideways.
She met Deb’s excited eyes across the room and scooted out the door, the phone in her hand.
In the hallway she read the caller ID—unknown caller. Made sense. Wealthy benefactors wouldn’t want their numbers out there for the world to know.
She took a deep breath and lifted the phone to her ear while hitting the talk button.
“Hello,” she said. “Serenity House.”
“Jennifer!”
Jennifer collapsed against the wall at the unexpected sound of Samantha’s voice. “Hi, Sam. You know you’re not supposed to be calling.”
“J.D. went to go get drinks so I’ve got about five minutes before he catches me.”
“Is this how you relax?” Jennifer asked, incredulous, but not totally surprised. “You’re on a beach. I can hear the waves.”
“How am I supposed to relax? I’ve had this pit in my stomach all day. Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
Jennifer thought about the pipes and the AC and being sued and calling the magic number. And she considered J.D. and how excited he was about this vacation he and Sam were on. How badly both of them needed it.
“Nothing’s happening,” she said. “The place is practically running itself.”
“Are you lying?”
Jennifer laughed, knowing if Sam were in the room she’d know right away that she was. “No,” she lied. “I’m not. Everything’s fine.”
“What about the—crap. Here comes J.D.”
The line went dead.
Deb’s head poked out the door. “Well?”
“It was Sam,” Jennifer said and both she and Deb deflated a little. “Maybe it won’t work this time,” she said, voicing her worst fears. “Maybe we need to figure this out on our own.”
Behind Deb there was a yell and a thump and Deb glanced that way. “We’ll talk more at dinner,” she said. “Right now my son is biting one of those blond girls.”
Deb vanished and Jennifer walked toward the office and Sam’s Rolodex with the vague hope that there would be some regular phone numbers in there that might help.
Starting with a good lawyer.
After dinner, Jennifer put two mugs of tea on the kitchen table and sat in front of the Rolodex and phone she’d placed there. Deb was putting Shonny to bed in one of the three bedrooms off the kitchen and when she came back it was time to face facts.
It was 8:00 p.m. Their knight had stood them up.
Spence was in the common room watching Spider-Man for the tenth time. The bright lights of the movie illuminated the dusk-filled rooms.
Night was falling all around Serenity House and at this hour of the day she really missed the city. She really missed the noise that let her know she wasn’t totally alone.
The dark silence that closed in around the community center was, she was embarrassed to admit, a little scary. It was just so dark. So quiet. So…foreign.
Shaking off her city-girl nerves, Jennifer pulled out the numbers of the four plumbers and two lawyers she’d found earlier.
Deb walked into the room. “What did you find?” She dropped into a chair.
Jennifer didn’t know how the woman did it. Raised a toddler on her own while doing everything she did at Serenity, all at an age when Jennifer was staying out late, drinking martinis and falling in love with her husband.
She shied away from the memories, immediately setting up a distance that made it seem as if those events had happened to someone else. So that thinking of them wouldn’t hurt.
“Do you know these plumbers?” she asked, pushing the cards toward Deb.
Deb craned her neck and scowled. “Crooks. Every one of them.”
“You have some other suggestions?” Deb was quiet and Jennifer sensed her frustration. “He hasn’t called,” Jennifer reminded her. “And we can’t keep doing the dishes in the bathroom.”
Deb smiled. “What about—”
There was a crash at the front door. And another.
“Mom!” Spence cried, running into the kitchen. Daisy went ballistic.
Adrenaline surged up Jennifer’s spine and she scrambled from her chair, grabbing her son and throwing him behind her.
“What the hell is that?” she asked Deb, who was staring, wide-eyed at the front door.
“No clue,” she breathed.
The heavy pounding practically shook the house. Daisy’s barking took on a fevered pitch.
“Go—go upstairs,” she told Spence, trying to push him toward the door to their apartment, but he wouldn’t let go of her.
Fear scurried along her nerve endings and at every knock on the door she jumped. Twitched. Wanted to leap right out of her skin.
“Well, good God,” Deb said, standing. “They’re going to wake up Shonny.”
Jennifer, despite her fear, knew she couldn’t let Deb go answer that door alone.
“You stay right here,” she said directly to Spence’s pale, panic-stricken face. “No matter what. You don’t move.”
He nodded and Jennifer whirled and grabbed a knife from the block on the counter. She caught Deb’s eye and expected her to tell Jennifer that she was overreacting.
The pounding started up again and the windows shook.
“Good idea,” Deb said, holding out one of her casts. “Give me one, too.”
Jennifer gave her a knife and they stepped—side by side—from the bright kitchen into the darker common room. Jennifer felt her heart bea
t in every inch of her skin. It was all she could hear.
The Spider-Man theme song was a surreal musical accompaniment and Jennifer hit the off button with a shaking finger as they crept past the TV.
“Down, girl,” Deb whispered and Daisy stepped back as they approached the door. Her ruff was at attention and the barking downgraded to a truly terrifying growl.
“You good?” Deb asked as she put her hand on the doorknob.
Good for what? Jennifer wanted to ask. A knife fight? No. Definitely not.
Instead, she clenched her fist around her knife and nodded.
Deb crossed herself and yelled through the door.
“Who’s there?”
“My name is Andille,” a deep voice answered.
Jennifer rested her head against the door, as her body sagged with a new surge of terror. She had hoped it wasn’t a man. A man pounding on a door like that couldn’t be a good thing.
“I am looking for Jennifer Stern.”
Panic zinged through her and she lifted her head only to meet Deb’s big eyes.
“Any reason you’d have a man named Andille pounding on a door for you?” Deb asked. Jennifer shook her head, her mouth too dry to speak.
“Look,” the deep voice named Andille said, “I’m not here to hurt anyone or steal anything. So, it would be a real favor if you could open the door.”
“I don’t know any Andille,” Jennifer said. Through the heavy wooden door they heard someone groan. Andille grunted, there was a thunk and another groan.
Daisy barked and Deb quickly shushed her.
“Could you open the door?” Andille said, his voice strained and growing angry.
“Andille,” she said reasonably, or as reasonably as one could, terrified and yelling through a door, “I mean no offense, but there’s no reason for me to open this door.”
Something slid and crashed against the portal. Another groan.
Jennifer and Deb both jumped back. Daisy lunged forward.
“Lady,” Andille said. “You called us.”
Deb and Jennifer both paused, stock-still as if pinned in place by utter bewildering astonishment.
“No,” Deb whispered, shaking her head.
“I only called one person today,” Jennifer said.
“You think that guy is our knight?” Deb asked, jerking her thumb toward the outside.
Confusion spiked the fear cocktail in Jennifer’s blood and for a second she thought she might giggle. Or cry.
“Daisy,” she commanded. “Back. Sit.” The dog reluctantly obeyed but Deb put her body between the dog and the door just in case.
“Only one way to find out,” Jennifer said, pretending to be far braver than she actually was. She reached for the door and slowly turned the knob. Once the catch was free the door swung toward them as if there were a big weight pressed against it.
A big weight about the size of a full-grown man.
“Whoa, whoa there,” Andille said, grabbing the man who was sliding backward into the common room. Jennifer stepped out of the way, dragging Deb with her and holding up the knife in between her and Andille.
Andille, who was roughly six and a half feet of night condensed, handled the smaller, seemingly unconscious man back into an upright position.
“Is he hurt?” Deb asked, her eyes narrow and watchful behind her glasses. Jennifer got the real impression that Deb could handle herself in a knife fight.
“No,” Andille said, a brilliant white smile splitting the dark skin of his face. “But he will be tomorrow.”
“Is this Serenity?” the smaller man asked in a slurred voice, his head bent sideways on his neck, a flop of blond hair over his face.
At the sound of the blond man’s voice, Daisy’s growl resumed, her lips lifting from her long fangs.
“Sure,” Andille murmured, eyeing Jennifer’s knife and Daisy. “But it’s not quite like I imagined it.”
“Good.” The man pushed himself upright, away from Andille, and Jennifer realized he wasn’t that small. Without the contrast of Andille the giant, the guy was terrifyingly big all on his own.
The man swept his blond hair off his forehead and both she and Deb leaned away from him, nearly overcome by the smell of alcohol radiating from his pores.
“Ladies,” he said, sweeping his arms out, “I am here to solve your problems.” He smiled and Jennifer nearly dropped her knife.
Even in the darkness he was recognizable. His eyes so blue, his hair so perfect and golden blond. His cheekbones, those lips. The dimple, even. He was perfection. As handsome as handsome could get.
He was last year’s sexiest man alive, the man on the cover of half a dozen tabloids, the man whose behavior on this day, of all days, defiled his mother’s memory.
“You’re the benefactor?” she whispered.
Ian Greer, drunk as a skunk and son of the former president of the United States, nodded and stumbled across the threshold of Serenity.
3
A full body buzz started under Jennifer’s skin and she couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t stop it. It was so powerful it nearly lifted her off her feet, blew off the top of her head and her mind went in about twenty directions at once.
This, her instincts howled, is a story.
The urge to know more, to dig deeper, gripped her so hard, so fast, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t pull the sword to cut off this sudden and thrilling fascination.
Ian Greer. Here. Drunk. On the day of his mother’s funeral. Claiming to be the millionaire silent benefactor of a community center in rural North Carolina.
Really. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Her giddy instinct was to let him in, sit him down, ply him with more booze until the whole story spilled from his gorgeous chiseled lips.
But Deb was here, and children, and Jennifer was supposed to be taking care of Serenity, which was in danger of falling down around their ears. Not hunting down stories.
“Wait a second,” Jennifer said, standing in the way of Ian Greer’s progress. It was weird. Really one of the most surreal moments in her life but she was stopping Ian Greer—sexiest man alive and the hottest news story in America right now—from entering the shelter.
“You can’t just walk in,” Jennifer said. “Not without an explanation.”
Deb stepped up beside her, holding her knife like Andille was a steak, and Jennifer, who wasn’t scared anymore—not really—wanted to tell Deb to relax.
“I’m sorry,” Andille said, snagging Ian’s jacket and pulling him back outside. Ian balked, catching himself on the doorway. “We can get a hotel,” Andille insisted. “There’s got to be one around here somewhere.”
“There isn’t,” Ian said and Jennifer and Deb shared a quick astonished look. The guy was right.
“There’s a Motel Six about forty miles west of here,” Deb said.
“See,” Ian said, facing Andille. “I told you nothing ever changes around here.”
Andille sighed and closed his eyes as if gathering his strength.
From the direction of the bedrooms Shonny cried out for Deb, who went ramrod-straight at the sound. She exuded a mother-bear instinct that was pretty terrifying. Daisy caught Deb’s vibe and went back to attack mode.
“Come on, Ian,” Andille said, watching Deb warily. “Let’s go. We can talk in the morning. We’re waking up children.”
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Ian said, as if he were offended by the notion. But his whole aura of injured pride was ruined by the fact that he couldn’t stand up straight. “We’re here to help. Because you called.”
Ian was right. The situation was ridiculous but it wasn’t dangerous. “Go,” she urged Deb. “We’ll be fine and you don’t want Shonny to come looking for you. And take the dog.”
Deb cast one more measuring look at the men.
“Deb,” Jennifer insisted. “We’re fine.” Reluctantly Deb left to comfort her son, taking the growling beast with her.
“I’m sorry about the kni
ves and the dog,” Jennifer said, turning back to the men. “But you’ve taken us by surprise. I mean…you’re Ian Greer.”
“I am.”
He stared at her, his ice-blue eyes impenetrable. Drunk as he might be, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Which was utterly disconcerting. As was his sudden taciturn silence. The guy was drunk, for crying out loud. First rule of interviews—drunks babble.
“You’ve…been drinking.”
“I have.” His lips quirked and her temper flared. This wasn’t a joke. And she wondered if maybe Ian Greer, besides being drunk and disrespectful, wasn’t a little dumb.
“Well,” she said, “oddly enough, the son of the president of the United States doesn’t often show up on my door claiming to solve all our problems.”
Her new guess was that Ian Greer couldn’t solve any problems. She had a sinking feeling that his arrival here had less to do with their phone call and more to do with his constant search for publicity. It was so ludicrous that Ian was the benefactor. Perhaps his father was? And he’d intercepted the call? That made more sense.
His eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you asking?”
“How do we know you’re who you say you are? To us.” He didn’t answer and so she put it out on the line. “And this isn’t some stunt. Of yours.”
Ian blinked at her and for a second it seemed like the fog cleared and he was really looking at her. Really seeing her. And she saw him. Through his fancy suit and messy hair she saw him. Her skin buzzed and burned. He wasn’t dumb. Or as drunk as he seemed.
He was in a lot of pain.
It was there, buried deep in those blue eyes.
“Three years ago there was a legal issue regarding a man who kidnapped his wife and child from Serenity,” he said, his voice a low, rough growl that swept up her spine and across her skin, making everything feel too tight. She was transfixed by his words, his sudden intensity, the ice blue of red-rimmed eyes. “I settled out of court. A year before that I gave you the money to fix the roof. Three years before that I funded the classroom addition. I’m the person on the other end of the number you dialed. I’ve been that person for fifteen years.”
And Then There Was You (Serenity House Book 2) Page 3