She leaned farther forward, shutting the open album.
"Should I go?" he said softly behind her, removing his hand. But in spite of the shrill little voice shrieking Hell, yes inside her, she shook her head.
"Good," he said. "Saves me the trouble of arguing with you."
A laugh sputtered from her lips as she thought how much she'd come to genuinely care for this man. And how nice it was just to have a friend again. Of course, there was the minor problem of her wanting to jump the friend's bones, but, as with most things, this too would pass. At least, she fervently hoped so.
She picked up a photo of Hank's parents, one taken when they were already middle-aged. His mother, Mary, her hair a tangle of short gray-and-auburn curls, had bright eyes and a brighter smile, while his dad, Hank Sr., wore the sweetly smug expression of a man who'd gotten everything he wanted. Hank had told Jenna how they'd been childless for fifteen years before he was born, followed a year and a half later by Ryan, then it had been another eight years before Cal came along. He'd said that his mother had died of cancer when Hank and Ryan were still in high school, his father struggling along listlessly until his own death five years later.
"They were great together," he said behind her. "Always laughing and kidding each other. Except when one of 'em ticked the other one off," he added on a chuckle. "But their fights were like summer storms, over in a flash and leaving the air clear afterwards." Another chuckle. "We could count on being sent to bed early on those nights, too." He leaned forward, his arm brushing hers as he removed the photo from her fingers. "Being around them spoiled me."
"For what?"
"For anything less."
A small but potent tremor shimmied through her. Her marriage to Phil had succeeded by dint of sheer dumb luck—she'd stumbled onto the right guy at the right time. No more to it than that. For some reason, that made Hank's loss more poignant, somehow. It had taken him, what? Thirty-five, thirty-six years to actually find someone who met his criteria, only to have her ripped from him.
Then again, did the circumstances surrounding how one person met another diminish the pain of losing them any less?
Jenna was about to say Tell me about your fiancée when Hank blindsided her with, "Blair told me you're thinking of doing a book signing in Tulsa?"
Oh, Lord. With everything else going on, she hadn't even thought about that. "Thanks for reminding me," she said flatly, getting up to clear the dining table. He stood as well, following her and taking the plates from her hands.
"Don't you like doing them?"
"Okay," she said, collecting the glasses and following him into the kitchen. "You can stop right there. How much did Blair tell you?"
"She said you'd had a panic attack or something at one a few years ago," Hank said mildly, setting the stack of dishes next to the sink. "That you haven't done one since."
"Yeah, that about sums it up."
"And that you agreed to do this one if she came to work for me."
"Yep."
"So you're over whatever it was that made you freak then?"
"Nope." To her annoyance, her hands began to shake. "In fact, the thought makes me want to throw up."
"Why?"
"I wish I knew. I can teach, I can function just fine in other situations. At least, I can now. But I had a problem with chronic shyness as a kid. In fact, my mother used to get on my case because I wouldn't look up when she introduced me to someone. For the most part, I outgrew it. But every once in a while it crops up, without warning. I'd always had some trouble with book signings, but that day…" She shut her eyes, shaking her head. "I totally lost it. Haven't done one since."
He crossed his arms. "So what's different about this time?"
"Because I need to get past this. Especially if I expect Blair to face something that scares her."
He reached over and took her hand, making her flinch. "You'll be fine."
She snorted. But she didn't remove her hand from his.
"That was three years ago, honey. Your husband had just died. You were stressed and grieving. No wonder you lost it. Hey—you want me to go with you?"
"Oh, Hank…that's very sweet—" And it was, an offer that made her heart swell "—but you'd be bored out of your skull. Unless you get off on watching neurotic authors sweat."
"Hey. If I can spend three hours with a teenaged girl and live to tell about it, you can handle a few fans."
"Remember that when I barf all over your shoes," she said, finally, reluctantly, slipping her fingers from his warm, strong grasp and walking out of the kitchen and back into the living room, where she bent over to pick up the album and photos. "Don't forget these…."
"No, keep 'em," Hank said. "Let her go through 'em whenever she wants."
"Good idea. Hey…what's this?" A loose photo slipped out of the album and fluttered to the floor. Jenna squatted to pick it up, but Hank got there before her, muttering a succinct cuss word when he saw it.
"I had no idea this was in there—"
"Lemme see," Jenna said, grabbing for it, only to find herself in the midst of a wrestling match as Hank, an embarrassed and thoroughly adorable grin stretched across his face, held it out of her reach.
"Forget it!"
"Oh, come on," she said, scrambling up onto the sofa cushions and wrapping one arm across his chest from behind to steady herself when she lunged after the picture. When she lost her footing and nearly took both of them down, Hank handed it over. Cackling with the thrill of victory, Jenna dropped cross-legged onto the sofa, only to burst into laughter when she got her first look.
"Omigod! Is this you? That's hysterical!"
"Now you know why I was the only eighteen-month-old kid in the county with a buzz cut."
A wide-eyed, slightly stoned-looking Hank, no more than six or eight months old, stared solemnly out at her from the photo, a bumper crop of thick, black, three-inch long stick-straight hair jutting out at a hundred different angles from his too-big-for-his-body head. The crowning touch was the adorable little jumper with a ducky on the front.
"Add a tongue stud and six-inch platform boots," she got out around her laughter, "and you could have filled in for the lead singer in KISS."
"Very funny," he said, but when she finally tore her gaze away from Heavy Metal Baby long enough to look up at him, he didn't look all that ticked. What he did look was…
Oh, dear.
Flushing—again—she stood, handing him the picture, but he shook his head. "What the hell. Maybe it'll have the same effect on Blair it did on you."
They stared at each other for the space of several heartbeats until he said, "Well, I guess I'd better be going" at the exact moment she said, "It's getting late…"
Jenna walked Hank and Mutt outside, to the edge of the porch. Crickets chirped and frogs peeped and the warm, humid air grazed her skin, smelling of night—she often thought how strange it was, that the air could actually have a different scent after the sun went down—and Hank and whatever she was giving off. Fear? Desire? Stupidity?
Hank started down the steps, only to turn back. "I don't suppose you'd like to go into Claremore tomorrow to help me pick out some furniture for the house? You and Blair, I mean? Danny's going to move into the apartment as soon as I get my carcass out of there and Cherise fumigates it."
She laughed, but said, "I don't think that's a good idea. In fact, maybe we should give Blair a day or so to absorb a few things?"
"Yeah, you're probably right. Oh, that reminds me…" He reached into his back pocket and took out a folded envelope. "Her first few days' pay. Thought maybe she might like to go buy a new CD or something."
Jenna took the envelope, still warm from his body heat, resisting the insane urge to clutch it to her chest. "I'll tell her."
"Well. I suppose I should be going. Cherise is coming at 7:00 a.m., otherwise she'll never get done by dinnertime, she says."
Again, Jenna felt an irrepressible giggle burst out of her mouth. "I must be getting slap-hap
py. I haven't giggled for thirty years, I don't think."
Hank's gaze swept her face, a smile softening that hard mouth. "From you, giggling sounds good."
On impulse, she bounced up to kiss him on the cheek, lingering a second longer than necessary, to absorb his scent, so different from Phil's. A second that cost her another slice of her sanity, since Hank turned his head to brush his lips across hers. Just a whisper of a kiss, really, nothing to write home about, before he wordlessly continued down the stairs, he and the dog, the darkness swallowing them both up.
A gnawing, aching emptiness screamed inside her, driving her back inside and to the kitchen, where she pawed through the bottom cabinet, looking for the Homeland bag still filled with stuff she wasn't supposed to have bought to begin with, probably wouldn't have bought if Hank Logan and his damn pheromones hadn't launched their assault on her still-groggy libido. She planted her butt on the kitchen floor, ripped open the bag of Chee•tos—the fried kind, not those lame air-puffed things—and had stuffed her mouth when she noticed Blair standing there, looking down at her.
"Jenna? You okay?"
Fortunately, a mouth full of half-masticated Chee•tos pretty much kills the chance of hysterical laughter escaping. Nodding and chewing, Jenna held out the bag, rattling it in a peace offering. Blair slid down onto the floor beside her, reaching into the bag. "These things are bad for you."
"I know," Jenna said, thinking, oh, honey, you don't know from bad, since it was probably in very poor form to confess to the child that she had a major case of hots for her father. She crammed another handful into her mouth, mumbling, "Tough," around them.
"Is this Hank?" Blair said, holding up the baby photo so Jenna could see it. She stopped chewing, mainly so she wouldn't choke, and nodded.
A giggle bubbled out of Blair's mouth. Then another. Within seconds, the pair of them were laughing so hard, tears were streaming down their cheeks and they had to hold on to each other to keep from collapsing right there on the kitchen floor.
* * *
God. It had been like forever since Jenna had tucked her in. It was kinda nice, actually, feeling like a kid again. For a little while, anyway. It had felt good to laugh like that, too. Made things seem a little less weird.
"You've got Chee to dust on your chin," she said, grinning up at her aunt, Meringue purring like crazy beside her on the bed.
Jenna swiped a hand across her chin. "Better?"
"Uh-huh."
"What about Hank? You feel any better about that?"
Blair sighed. "I dunno. Maybe. A little." Then she thought about that picture of him as a baby and giggled. "He was so funny-looking!"
"You should have seen the look on his face when I found the picture," Jenna said, grinning. "He was positively mortified."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Then she tugged Blair's hair. "He is human, honey."
"I know," Blair said with a sigh, then started picking at the hem of her sheet.
"You're wearing your grump face again," Jenna said. "Spill."
Why did grown-ups always assume you could explain what was bothering you? That you could somehow take all these tangled-up, scary thoughts and untangle them into nice, neat sentences that they'd understand?
"It's not like I can explain what I'm feeling."
"That's okay. Just try. Even if it doesn't make sense to you, maybe it will to me."
After she sorted through her thoughts for a minute, Blair said, "Well, I don't feel quite so mad anymore. Just…scared."
"About?"
She shrugged. "That's the hard part. I mean, when I thought Hank was just somebody we'd met on vacation, he was okay. Well, once I started to get to know him and stuff. But then I found out he was my father, and…I don't know. Everything changed. I mean, it's like so permanent now. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah," Jenna said with a real funny look on her face. "I think I do."
Suddenly, a thought Blair didn't even know was there pushed its way to the surface. "I think…I think I'm afraid to love him."
Jenna's expression got even stranger. "Because…of what happened with Phil?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe…because here's this man who's supposed to be my father, so it's like I'm supposed to suddenly love him and stuff when I don't even know him. I mean, how weird is that?"
"It's very weird, sweetie. It's weird for all of us. But there's no pressure, believe me. All any of us can do is take this one day at a time—"
"And then there's this whole thing about…" She hiked herself up on her elbows. "When I asked him if he loved my mother, he said it was all about sex—"
"He said that?"
"Well, no, he didn't exactly say that, but I figured it out. So it was like I was this big mistake, you know? I mean, my mother didn't want me so she didn't even tell my father about me, and…and…"
She didn't mean to cry like some baby, but suddenly she was, and Jenna was hugging her and telling her she wasn't a mistake, dammit, she was a gift, which really got Blair because while she knew Jenna swore, she'd never done it in front of her before.
Then Jenna pulled back to take Blair's face in her hands, her own eyes filled with tears. "This is going to sound terrible, but I used to thank God every day that your mother decided you were better off with me. In fact, my biggest fear was that she'd change her mind and come back for you."
"But why didn't she want me?"
Jenna let out a heavy sigh. "I don't know, honey. I'd given up trying to figure your mother out long before you were born. But what's important here is that your uncle and I did want you. And your father really does want to do his best, if you'll give him that chance." She hugged Blair again, hard. "You are loved, Blair Noelle Stanton, more than you can even begin to imagine. You got that?"
After a moment, Blair nodded.
"I know you're feeling a little lost right now," Jenna said into her hair. "So am I. And Hank. Who knows when any of us are going to feel normal again? But you know, sweetie, everything happens for a reason."
"You really believe that?"
"Yeah. Deep down, I really do. Even if we don't understand it at the time," her aunt said, that funny hitch in her voice again. Then she kissed Blair on top of her head, the way she used to do when she was little, and hugged her harder, and somehow, Blair felt a little better. Not great, but better.
* * *
"Okay, Ryan's about as laid back as you can get," Hank said, pulling the truck up behind Cal's in Ryan's driveway, late in the afternoon on the Fourth, "but his wife, Maddie, doesn't know the meaning of the word stranger. She's also got a bit of a romantic streak in her, so this whole reunion-with-my-long-lost-daughter thing is right up her alley."
Between them, Blair rolled her eyes, but at least she didn't look disgusted. Jenna decided to be grateful for small favors.
The past forty-eight hours had been nerve-wracking. For one thing, Blair continued to blow hot and cold about her father. Although she voluntarily showed up for work, the Grump Face still made frequent appearances. Hank had muttered something about needing a score sheet to keep track of whether he was ahead or not. Jenna's take on it was that even if Blair might not yet think of Hank as her father, at least he'd been upgraded to human. Yes, despite the frequent where-did-you-get-those-extra-heads? looks which Jenna had assured Hank were perfectly normal and not to be taken personally. He'd gained a point when Blair noticed he was wearing a nicotine patch—because, he'd said, having her gave him a reason to take care of himself—only to lose that point by setting up a basketball hoop in the driveway, which earned him an accusation of trying to buy her love. And he still refused to let her go to the Gundersen birthday party, even though Jenna had the feeling Hank was taking his new role a shade too seriously. But since he knew the boys and she didn't, she'd deferred to him, earning her the all-grown-ups-are-dumb look.
The bright side to all this was that focusing on the stuttering Blair-Hank relationship diverted her attention—somewhat—from the equally st
uttering Jenna-Hank relationship. Memories of the other night, of his solid torso clamped underneath her arms when she went after the photo, the way, for those few minutes, she'd felt giddy and silly and free, had taunted her ever since. Because she liked feeling giddy and silly and free. Oh, boy, did she like it. And boy oh boy oh boy, did she like being smushed up against all those lovely muscles, being engulfed by all that concentrated, yummy male scent.
Did she like the barely contained hunger in his eyes when he looked at her.
Gulp.
They all got out of the truck, including Mutt, Jenna clutching a bowl of her "famous" hot potato salad to her more than slightly jittery stomach, as she got a load of one of the largest, most oddly shaped Victorian-era houses she'd ever seen, planted in the middle of an oversized, heavily shaded corner lot. She knew Ryan Logan was the town doctor, had been, in fact, the only physician in the immediate vicinity before joining a small clinic a few months ago, that he'd married Maddie barely two months before; and that Cal Logan, the "baby" of the family and still a bachelor at nearly thirty, raised horses. And that was about it.
She suddenly felt unsure about how she was supposed to fit into all this. Or even if she did. And Hank's touch at the small of her back wasn't doing a blessed thing to soothe her jangled nerves. Although he'd been the soul of discretion around her since that evening, his you-stay-on-your-side-of-the-fence-and-I'll-stay-on-mine declaration had gone the way of the dodo bird. This was a man more than interested in hopping that fence and seeing exactly how green the grass was on her side. In fact, sometimes she thought—
Blair let out on an excited squeal. "There's kids?"
They'd just gotten around to the front of the house; a small dark-haired boy and an even smaller wispy-haired blond girl streaked past toward an amply proportioned woman in a tiered skirt and Birkenstocks, a long salt-and-pepper braid snaking over her shoulder, who was getting out of a beat-up truck parked in the front of the house.
Fathers and Other Strangers Page 17