He could feel her gaze on the side of his face. "Who'd you lose?"
"Gal I was gonna marry. Her name was Michelle. Micky."
"She died?"
"Yeah. Shot in a holdup. Two years ago."
"God. That's awful." He let it go. Then she said on a sigh, "Okay, yeah, I suppose that makes sense. That you can't make someone feel normal again. And it's not like Jenna never smiles or anything. But it's just…like…like she's got the wrong bulb in or something. It's just not as bright as it used to be. And I'm sorry, but it's really beginning to bug me."
They rode in silence for the next mile or so while Hank tried to sort out his jumbled feelings. Why should Jenna's happiness mean diddly to him? But it did, never mind that he was being hypocritical as hell, since hadn't he basically retreated from life after Michelle's death? Still and all, it was different for him.
Wasn't it?
He frowned at that for a second before letting the thought go, only to grab on to the next one like a trapeze artist a bar, that he was proud of this child sitting beside him. His daughter. Underneath the attitude and the smart mouth and all those scary, baby-female hormones was a kid with the guts to admit that maybe she'd made a mistake, a kid who clearly loved the woman who'd raised her and wanted the best for her.
A kid he was beginning to respect a whole lot. It was kind of a shock, since he hadn't expected it, but it was a feeling he liked just fine. Whether he could ever let go enough to love again, he couldn't say. But respect…well, that was something he could work with.
Hank wiped a hand across his mouth and said, "Has it been so terrible so far? Working for me?"
"I haven't done anything yet," she said.
"Just answer the question."
She seemed to think this over for a bit, then said, "Well, no. But—"
"But?"
"I still don't like that you smoke."
Hank grimaced. "Okay, I won't do it around you. How's that?"
"Well, okay, but I don't see how that's going to do you any good, is it?"
Hank stole a peek at her face. "Did your uncle smoke?"
"God, no," she said, her tone implying Uncle Phil would never have done anything that stupid. "But my grandfather did. So did my mother. Although it wasn't the smoking that killed her." She glanced over. "You know about my mother? That she killed herself?"
So much for her not knowing the whole story. "Jenna might've mentioned something about it." He paused, then said, "That must've been hard on you."
"It was weird. I hardly ever saw her, so it's not like I miss her, not exactly. But the idea that somebody I knew would kill herself…"
When her voice trailed off, Hank asked, "You fixin' to cry?"
Blair shook her head. But he could see she was fighting not to, all the same.
"Hey, how's about we stop at Ruby's, get some lunch?" he said, which got a "Sure, whatever," in reply. A moment or so later, he said, "You know something?"
"What?"
"You're a pretty tough kid." He looked over at her skeptical expression. "No, I mean it. Not many kids could come through what you have without falling apart. I bet you've been a real help to your aunt."
The knot between her brows relaxed, as did her mouth, which curved up just slightly at the corners. "We're all each other has," she said simply.
And it was all Hank could do not to say Well, now you both have me, which just about scared the blue blazes out of him.
* * *
Jenna glared at the proofs, ready to rip them into shreds. That's it—she was calling Annemarie and telling her it had all been a big mistake, she'd return the advance first thing in the morning because no way in good conscience could she foist something this banal off on her readers. And had she not felt this way with every single book, she might even have followed through on it. But honestly—by the time she got to this stage, she'd read the damn book so many times it just looked stupid. The funny parts weren't, the mystery wasn't and the dialogue made her gag. Next time she turned in a manuscript, it was going to have a note attached that said, "Do whatever you want with this as long as I never have to look at it again."
Except she was far too anal to actually do that.
Tempted to thump her skull to get the blood moving again, Jenna glanced at her watch, startled to discover it was well past noon. And that she was still niece-less. Getting to know one another was all well and good, but this was Blair they were talking about. Much as Jenna adored her niece, the child had been known to cause major eye-glazing from time to time. And besides, Jenna was about to bust from curiosity.
She left everything right where it was on the dining table and hiked on down to the office, where she found a handdrawn map and a note that said anyone interested could find Hank there, unless he'd gone to Claremore for a bit, in which case he'd be back soon, just leave a message on the chalkboard—a new addition, tacked beside the office door, a piece of chalk dangling from a string attached to it—and he'd take care of it as soon as he got back.
There were no messages. But then, there were no cars in the lot, either. Including his truck.
Well, she thought as she lit out for the spot indicated by the map, at least his heart was in the right place. But if she trekked all the way to the back of beyond and they weren't there, she was going to be seriously ticked. Well, mildly ticked, anyway. At least she would have had a half hour away from the Book from Hell.
A flash of something through the trees as she approached turned out to be sunlight glinting off Hank's truck, parked in what one might charitably call a driveway. The man himself was sitting on the lopsided steps of the porch, smoking. As she got closer, she could see he was speckled from head to toe in paint. Kind of a peachy color, from what she could tell. Bags from Ruby's littered the porch steps, rudely reminding Jenna she'd forgotten to eat lunch.
The pup, who'd been dozing in a patch of sunlight near the house, popped up onto his feet and gallumphed over to her, making Hank jerk his head up. When he caught sight of Jenna, his mouth twitched up at the corners, just for a second. Jenna's initial assessment was that this was one shell-shocked hombre.
Dodging the manic dog, who was hell-bent on wrestling her sneakers into submission, she stopped at the foot of the steps, her hands shoved in the pockets of her shorts. "Why do I get the feeling this is one of those 'If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy' kind of things?"
His laugh collapsed before it got all the way out. He drew on the cigarette for all it was worth, letting the smoke out in a slow, steady stream before steadily, and unnervingly, meeting her gaze. A humidity-laden breeze ruffled his hair, several strands of which flopped across his forehead. Much to her consternation, her skin started buzzing. "The good news is, most of the downstairs is painted."
"Peach, I take it?"
"Calypso Parfait, if you wanna get technical. Which has got to be the dumbest name for a color I've ever heard."
"Not your choice, I take it?"
"Oh, no."
Jenna laughed and sat beside him. Well, on the other side of the step, anyway. Far enough away to avoid being sucked into his gravitational field. "You took her into Claremore?"
"Yep."
"By yourself?"
"Yep."
"You are a brave man," she said, and he chuckled, which made her feel things she didn't want to feel. "Where is she?"
"With Libby. She came by about a half hour ago—"
"So somebody else followed your map?"
"—so somebody else followed my map. Anyway, she was all hot to help, but after fifteen minutes I sent them away before they giggled me half to death."
His expression brought a giggle to Jenna's lips as well. "You'll get used to it."
"They say after a while you hardly even notice the hair shirt, too," he said, which upgraded the giggle into a full-blown laugh.
He looked at her, smiling enough to crinkle the skin at the corners of his eyes, and for just a moment…
"Other than the giggli
ng, how did it go?" she asked, realizing too late she'd have to be on another planet to avoid this man's gravitational pull.
He stubbed out the cigarette, folded his hands between his knees and gave a nod. "Not too bad, actually. Gonna take a while for us to feel our way around each other, but we talked some." Once again, those dark eyes of his shifted, linking with hers. Once again, her skin started buzzing. But the way his expression had softened, the wonder in his voice, threatened her already tenuous equilibrium far more than a few staticky skin cells. "She's a good kid."
"Yes, she is," Jenna said, then stood up, planting her clammy hands on her hips as she surveyed the house. "So…what is this place?"
She guessed from his silence that she was doing a lousy job at pretending he wasn't getting to her. "Where I'm gonna live," he said. "Once I get someone else to help run the motel. Come on—" he pushed himself to his feet as well, grabbing his drink off the step "—I'll give you the grand tour."
She followed him inside, blinking against the glare of the walls. "Wow. Sure wakes you right up, doesn't it?"
"I figured giving her a say in the colors might help that easing-in thing you were talking about."
Oh, great. Now the buzzing shifted into a gentle glow inside her that had nothing to do with the blinding walls, especially as it was still very much there after they'd climbed to the second floor, which was still in assorted shades of dingy gray. Like the downstairs, ten seconds and she'd seen it.
"Bedroom, bedroom, bath," Hank said. "Oh, and a storm cellar out back. In case of tornadoes."
Hmm. Tornadoes. She went over to the window in the larger of the bedrooms and peered down into the overgrown backyard. With the woods so close, it was like being in a tree house. "You get them often?" she said, trying her damnedest to sound nonchalant.
"Here?" he said behind her. Actually, right behind her. "Last time a twister touched down in Haven proper was back in the forties…. Funny thing is, you can live in Tornado Alley your whole life and never see one of the damn things. But the threat's always hangin' over your head." One hand wedged into his back pocket, he propped the other one flat against the smudged window frame, squinting against the bright light as he, too, looked down into the yard. "You just never know." He paused, his mouth gone taut. "It's not gonna get easier, is it?"
Still back there with the tornadoes, Jenna was confused for a moment. Then the light dawned. "Oh, you mean about Blair?" She crossed her arms, forcing her attention back outside, praying he'd stop watching her so intently. "'Fraid not. If anything, the older they get, the more complicated they get."
Her skin heated as she felt his gaze lingering on the side of her face.
"It's been rough, hasn't it?" he said, and it was everything she could do not to shut her eyes against the seductive potency of his gentleness.
"At times," she said stiffly, startled when a tear popped out of nowhere and slithered down her cheek. But not nearly as startled as she was when the pad of Hank's thumb followed the tear's path.
"Don't," she whispered, pulling back, stunned at her body's immediate betrayal from a single, simple touch.
Wordlessly, Hank walked away, his footsteps ominously loud in the empty room. He grabbed an old broom lolling in a corner, turned it upside down and swept down a nest of cobwebs out of a corner.
"I'm sorry," she said, afraid she'd maybe wounded his ego. "I—"
"Nothing to be sorry for," he said mildly, glancing at her for the space of a heartbeat before attacking another clutch of cobwebs. "Blair had a lot to say about her uncle. Sounded to me like you were right on the mark about that mutual admiration thing they had going."
Still shaken, all she could manage was a clipped, "Yes."
"Guess your husband was a pretty good guy, huh?"
Jenna felt as if she'd fallen into an emotional river, desperately trying to hang on to a slippery rock so she wouldn't be swept away. Except she'd been holding on to that rock for what seemed like an eternity, and she was so cold, and tired, and alone.
Folding her arms over her middle in a vain attempt to corral her suddenly loopy feelings, she said, "The best. In fact…"
Broom frozen in midswipe, he turned. "What?"
"If it hadn't been for Phil, I wonder how well I would've done with Blair."
The broom came down, whoosh against the floorboards. "Meaning?"
"Meaning I worried about her too much."
He reached for his drink, which he'd left on the windowsill, took a long pull from the straw. "Why?"
"I don't know, really. Maybe because I was petrified she'd be like her mother. Maybe because…she was my only shot and I didn't want to screw it up? But Phil never seemed to go through the trauma-trauma-melodrama that I did about things. He was always so damn calm. About everything. He always seemed to know what to do, what to say."
"Sounds scary."
She smiled. "I'd never thought of it that way. I was too busy being grateful that at least one of us seemed to know what the hell they were doing."
He set his drink down again, propped the broom back against the wall, then came closer, his hands jammed in his pockets. "For God's sake, Jenna—your husband's been dead for, what, three years? So unless Blair's been raising herself, seems to me only one person's eligible to take the credit. So I don't get it."
She could feel her heartbeat thudding at the base of her throat. He was close enough for her to feel the heat and energy pulsing off his body. Or maybe she was just imagining it. What she wasn't imagining was her rapidly loosening grip on that rock. "You don't get what?"
"You." He moved even closer, his eyes burning into hers. "Why you don't trust your instincts. Why you can't see what a great job you've done with Blair. Why you seem so confident one second, so scared the next." He angled his head, then slipped one hand from his pocket, where it hovered at his hip, his fingers fisting, relaxing…fisting again. "Why you're shaking," he finished, his voice barely more than a rumble.
A soft sound that was half sigh, half sob, escaped her lips as she fought the urge to walk into his arms.
And lost.
Chapter 9
On a sharp intake of breath, Hank gathered Jenna close, his eyes squeezing shut as the sweet smell of her plowed through his senses, as her hair, softer than a dream, snagged on his rough fingertips. She tightened her arms around him, not crying, just holding on, and tenderness and vulnerability and—oh, yeah—damn-I'm-in-trouble-now desire knotted in his gut, only to explode into a million white-hot shards a split second later. For more than two years, it had been all about control, about not letting himself get close enough to touch, or feel, or care about another woman who got him right where he lived. But guess he wasn't the unfeeling sonuvabitch he'd tried to turn himself into after all, huh?
But he didn't want to feel. Not like this. Not again.
Ah, hell. Déjà-vu time. It'd only happened once before, this bam-between-the-eyes, no-sense-fighting-the-inevitable feeling that told him now, as it had with Micky, that he was a goner. Except there had been no obstacles that other time, not really. But there sure as hell were obstacles now. Plenty of 'em. Not the least of which was the lady herself, who might be letting him hold her in a moment of weakness, but who was bound to come to her senses in a second or two and realize she was only using Hank as a surrogate for her dead husband.
Except then she lifted her face, her expression downright beseeching, and before he could think about all the pros and cons and rights or wrongs, he lowered his mouth to hers, taking what he had no business taking, giving what he had no right to give. He fully expected her to pull away, her eyes wide with regret and confusion at her own behavior, stumbling over her apologies for her momentary lapse of good judgment.
So when she didn't, when she instead grabbed his shoulders and held on tight, when her lips went soft and yielding and hungry under his, he didn't quite know what to make of any of it, other than the fact that he was having a damn good time. Such a good time, in fact, that heaven knows where thi
ngs might have led had not somebody chosen that precise moment to yell out, "Hello? Anybody here?" from the foot of the stairs, scaring the daylights out of both of them and blasting them apart like somebody'd set off a firecracker a foot away.
"Just a sec," he yelled back, noticing that although they hadn't been kissing long enough for Jenna's lips to get puffy, she was bright red from her neckline clear up to the roots of her hair.
"You might want to stay put for the time being," he said, then painfully made his way down the stairs. Fortunately his jeans were snug enough to contain things—which unfortunately was contributing to his discomfort—so he could at least face Danny Andrews and SueEllen Tibbs without embarrassing either them or himself.
They were holding hands and grinning, too young to know the pitfalls life held in store for them. And God bless them in their innocence, Hank thought, something like envy trickling through him.
Under spiked blond hair, Danny's grin grew even wider as he thrust out his hand. A good-lookin' kid, Hank thought as they shook, even if he still had a ways to go before he finished filling out.
"I hear you're lookin' for someone to help manage the place?" he said, and Hank grinned himself, thinking that Maddie sure knew what she was about.
"You hear right," he said, and was halfway through explaining what the job would entail and about the apartment and all when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. All three of them turned around to watch Jenna's descent, which she was managing as regally as a queen arriving at a royal ball. Two little coins of red on her cheeks was all that was left of her blush, but she still avoided Hank's eyes, which irked him even more than he thought it would, even though he wasn't surprised.
She smiled and acted friendly enough when introduced, only to pull a fast one on him by excusing herself and skedaddling out of there like Cinderella before the clock struck twelve, knowing damn well he couldn't come after her.
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