Sugar and Spice: 3 Contemporary Romances

by Jenny Jacobs

  He nodded. Dresser, window seat, bookshelves exactly as ordered. The fabric on the bed and the window seat looked a touch exotic. It was comfortable, attractive, masculine, and him. He was sort of surprised because Greta had seemed determined not to get to know him at all.

  Apparently he didn’t respond with praise quickly enough because she said in freezing tones, “If you dislike it, I would be happy to make changes. However, we did agree — ”

  “It looks fine,” he said hastily. “It looks wonderful. I was just thinking about how it would look if I had done it myself.”

  “It would have curios,” she said, and now it was her turn to shudder.

  “You were right,” he said, offering the admission as an olive branch. What woman could resist a man who admitted when he was wrong? “It’s perfect.”

  She gave him a suspicious glance but seemed mollified. “All right. Let me know if you do want anything changed.”

  “No. Don’t change a thing.”

  She nodded, then turned and left the room. Apparently he had not completely blown it.

  “Come look at the pièce de résistance,” she said, gesturing toward the room across the hall, a smile playing about her lips. A smile that he didn’t trust. What had she done to his spare bedroom? He hoped it wouldn’t give him a heart attack because he wasn’t sure she’d dial 9-1-1 if it did.

  He followed her across the hall to the spare bedroom, which she kept referring to as the home theater room. He pushed open the door to look into the room, standing to the side in some trepidation, as if a tiger might leap out at him. You never knew what Greta might find amusing.

  Nothing happened. It was quiet. Too quiet. He tensed as he stepped into the room. He spotted the recliner first. “A Barcalounger!” he exclaimed, all of his concerns vanishing in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He strode over and plopped himself down. The chair cushioned and surrounded him, perfect for viewing televised sporting events and the Antiques Roadshow. “Where did you find this?” he asked. He had traveled all over the world and had never found a chair as perfect as this one. He operated the lever, giving a contented sigh as the footrest popped up and the back reclined.

  “The Barcalounger is a joke,” Greta said with asperity, her hands fisted on her hips, but he could forgive her that. She might have thought she was being ironic — apparently she didn’t think he’d get the insult — but he didn’t care. A Barcalounger. She really was perfect for him. It was worth any price to keep her. As his interior decorator, of course. He didn’t mean she was perfect in any personal sense. Not at all. Personally, she was a pain in the posterior.

  “Michael’s dad had one exactly like this,” he said. “In fact, he might have owned this very chair. Where’s the remote?”

  She made a sound like a growl and he glanced over at her. He must have heard wrong because her face was perfectly calm as she indicated the side table next to his elbow.

  “This is just so cool,” he said, picking up the remote in one hand, running his other hand along the fabric of the chair. “Where did you find it?”

  “eBay,” Greta snapped. “It’s a joke, Ian.”

  “A joke?” he said, shaking his head. “No, no, no. It’s perfect.”

  “I’m not allowing you to keep that thing — ”

  “You bought it for me!” he crowed. “You can’t take it back. It’s perfect.”

  Greta eyed him as if he might be playing with her. In other circumstances he might have been, but in this case he was dead serious. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “You can keep it, but you must never admit you got it from me.”

  “I’m telling you, all the men I know are gonna die of envy,” he said. “If you let me tell them — ”

  “No.”

  “You can never have too many clients.”

  “Yes, you can,” Greta said. Although she didn’t say it, he could practically hear her think: You are a perfect example of one too many clients. “Tess and Michael will be back from their honeymoon next week and they’ll finish the job for you.”

  Then she was gone. He heard her shoes on the steps, then the front door closing quietly behind her. He sat in the recliner. He aimed the remote at the television. He had a remark or two he would have liked to share with her but they occurred to him too late: she was gone. He clicked over to ESPN and settled back.

  It was a great Barcalounger.

  Chapter Eight

  The flowers were beautiful — miniature roses and carnations, freesias, and even a tiger lily nestled in the vase — but she fully intended to throw them away. Every time she saw them, the sight would make her clench her teeth, and that was no way to go through the day.

  She thanked the florist’s delivery driver and set the vase on the hall table. She didn’t even have to open the card to know who had sent them. She recognized the thick black scrawl on the envelope from the checks he’d written her.

  She opened the card anyway. Love the recliner, he’d written, followed by his initials. She crumpled the note and tossed it in the trash. He had to rub it in, didn’t he? At least he knew how to pick a good florist. Plenty of practice in apologizing to women he’d offended, probably.

  Good riddance, she thought, throwing down her bag and kicking her shoes off. Tess could deal with him from here on out, just as she’d promised to in the beginning. Greta padded barefoot into the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. That would help soothe her ruffled nerves.

  It had been one of those days. The morning had started off with a phone call from an irate client who despised her proposed design ideas and instead of either finding a new designer or describing where the design had gone wrong, she’d attacked Greta personally, reviling her taste and antecedents. Though Greta knew the tirade said more about the client than it did Greta, it had still upset her, especially when she found herself wondering if the client might, after all, be right.

  Which was exactly what she’d wondered when Paul had abused her, and at that thought, she’d crisply fired the client and hung up the phone. Though ending the relationship was supposed to be an empowering act, the whole experience made Greta feel hollow inside. And she hadn’t even had a cup of coffee to fortify herself because Tess wasn’t working today.

  Drat that Tess. Where was she when a person needed her? Off at Disney World on her honeymoon, Belinda in tow. Greta could use Belinda right now. Belinda always helped her keep things in perspective. But no, Tess had selfishly taken her to Disney World. Who took a kid on a honeymoon?

  “We’re a family now,” Tess had said. Sure, but what about Greta? What good was it to have a sister if she wasn’t going to be there when she was needed?

  The tea kettle whistled. Very well. She would fix a nice cup of tea and take a look at a new catalog that had come in from one of her suppliers. That would make a nice relaxing lunch break. She would throw the flowers away —

  The phone rang before she could do anything. She glanced at the caller i.d. screen on the phone and frowned, not immediately recognizing the number. She picked up anyway.

  “Greta?” The smooth voice made her relax. It was Donald, the lawyer she’d met at Tess’s wedding. He wouldn’t ruffle her in any way, shape, or form.

  “How are you?” she asked pleasantly.

  “I’m very well.”

  She tried to imagine having an exchange like this with Ian. It wasn’t possible.

  “I really enjoyed meeting you at Michael’s wedding,” Donald said. “I’m wondering if you’d be free for dinner on Saturday evening?”

  “Let me check my schedule,” she said. She knew exactly what was on the schedule, but she enjoyed this part of the dating game, when both parties knew the rules and played by them. Unlike Ian —

  “I’m free,” she said firmly. At the wedding, she hadn’t found Donald all that interesting but she wa
nted to give him a chance. He was the opposite of every man she’d ever been attracted to before, which meant he was exactly the kind of person she should be dating. And then Tess couldn’t say Never dating is not breaking the cycle, Greta anymore because Greta would be dating. So there.

  “Shall we try Zen Zero for dinner?” he asked, naming a popular Thai restaurant. Appropriate for a first date, and not so expensive that it was obvious he was trying to impress her. Then he suggested a late showing of a new documentary film at Liberty Hall, the local independent theatre. The invitation showed he lacked imagination but Greta did not require her dates to possess imagination.

  Irritatingly, after she hung up the phone, she wondered what kind of date Ian would plan if he ever called and asked her to go out with him. Not that she wanted to find out. Just that she would bet good money it wouldn’t be dinner and a movie.

  • • •

  Greta smiled at Donald. It was a fake smile, one she had developed through years of dealing with stressful clients, but he didn’t know that. Apparently it never occurred to him to think her expressed interest in him could be anything less than genuine. What ego. It would occur to Ian. Not that he didn’t come fully equipped with an oversized ego. Just that he would know the smile was fake the moment he spotted it. Well, good for him, she thought, grinding her teeth together. Teeth-grinding made it hard to eat. She set her fork down. Forcing her jaw to relax, she took a sip of water and tried to remember why she’d agreed to the date in the first place. Oh, right, he was the opposite of the kind of man she was attracted to, so therefore he was safe. Or at least appropriate.

  Donald continued his discourse on the efficacy of various types of trusts. How had he decided that her polite inquiry — “What area of law do you specialize in?” — required twenty minutes of explication? She glanced discreetly at her watch. Make that twenty-three minutes. She had, with her characteristic good sense, written her will some years previously and reviewed it annually. That was about as much as she wanted to think about the relationship between death and money. Her eyes glazed over.

  It wasn’t completely Donald’s fault. After all, she’d encouraged it by trying very hard to appear interested in his conversation. She wondered if she ever bored anyone like this when she talked about interior design. Probably. What made up an interesting conversation was entirely in the eye — or the ear — of the beholder.

  She lifted her fork again, concentrating on the fact that at least the food was good. And wasn’t there something to be said for having a dinner companion that wasn’t Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or whatever show was playing on HGTV?

  The door to the small Thai restaurant opened, letting in a gust of cold air that attracted her attention, which wasn’t difficult since she was desperate for a distraction. She looked over Donald’s shoulder to see who had come in. She set her fork down with a clatter. Oh, yes. That was all the evening needed.

  Ian sauntered into the narrow vestibule and said something to the host at the stand, which Greta could see from her table. The host nodded and went to speak to a passing waiter while Ian took a seat in the open waiting area. Clearly he didn’t plan to stay — thank goodness — because there were a few unoccupied tables and he wasn’t being shown to one of them. Greta watched him with narrowed eyes. An unappealing idea occurred to her. Perhaps he was waiting on a date to meet him. Well, what did she care if he was? He was probably the kind of man who’d date a bouncy twenty-something.

  She was gritting her teeth again. Let him have all the twenty-somethings he wanted. She had Donald. This was not as bad as it sounded.

  Ian glanced around the restaurant and she hastily turned her attention back to her plate. She hoped he wouldn’t notice her. Donald’s shoulders weren’t quite broad enough to hide her from view.

  “Someone you know?” Donald asked, momentarily interrupting his monologue on asset preservation techniques. He glanced over his shoulder to see what she’d been looking at. He assessed and dismissed Ian with a quick appraisal. Apparently Donald saw him as neither a potential rival for Greta’s romantic attentions nor as a potential client in need of asset management.

  “He’s just a client of mine,” she said, forking up more pad thai, thinking that didn’t quite express their relationship. Not that they had a relationship.

  Grr.

  She ate another bite of rice. She refused to give Ian any more attention. He would no longer take up any room in her brain. Let him date girls young enough to be his daughter. What woman of taste and discernment would have him? He did not deserve a moment of thought and she promised herself not to allot him so much as another second of speculation or interest. That promise didn’t stop her from noticing when the waiter came out of the kitchen with a paper bag of carry-out. So he was going to have dinner with his television, not a twenty-two-year-old. Unless she happened to be on Survivor. Greta knew what that was like. She took most of her meals alone. The twinge of kinship startled her. Of course, he wouldn’t be watching HGTV. No doubt he’d be tuned to ESPN. Why was she thinking about this?

  She watched, chewing slowly, as Ian paid the waiter and walked to the door. It was only then he caught sight of her. She realized immediately that it was too late to look away. Since she was unwilling to snub him directly — he was a client after all — she nodded distantly at him. He paused, then stood a moment, as if he thought it would be rude to leave without speaking to her, though she would have had absolutely no problem with that course of action. She wished she could shoo him along in some subtle way but of course it would have been unprofessional to do that.

  He took a few steps in their direction, stopping at a reasonable distance from their table to show he didn’t intend to intrude. Since she’d been raised to be polite above all, she gritted her teeth (again; her jaw was starting to hurt) and said, “How are you, Ian?”

  “Fine.” She made simple introductions between the men, which Ian acknowledged with a quick nod. Donald didn’t say anything. Then Ian said, “Enjoy,” indicating her meal, and left the restaurant.

  The encounter let her curiously deflated. Her nerves were on high alert around Ian and for the encounter to turn out to be so innocuous was somehow disappointing. She told herself she was thankful the interruption had been so trivial and forced herself to look away instead of watching his progress down the sidewalk, which she could see through the plate glass front window. Now she could focus on her companion. Her dreadfully boring companion. At least Ian was never boring. Insufferable, yes. Infuriating, indeed. But unlike her present companion, Ian was no cure for insomnia.

  Unwillingly, she glanced out the front window of the restaurant again. Ian was halfway down the sidewalk, the bag swinging casually in his hand. Was he whistling? He was going to bring the food back to that big house and eat in the recliner all by himself, she knew. Why did that bother her? She ate alone at her kitchen table almost every night of her life and it hadn’t hurt her yet. Turning a charming smile on Donald, she ruthlessly put Ian out of her mind.

  • • •

  Ian juggled the paper bag from Zen Zero, the keys Tess and Michael had given him, the uncooperative front door lock, and the frenzied barking of the dogs, who smelled food. Not for nothing had he retired as a lieutenant colonel; he knew how to handle multiple priorities. The lock finally yielded and he staggered inside.

  The dogs immediately launched their offensive, but Ian was expecting it and held the food out of reach.

  “Get down, Agnes,” he said. “You, too, Rufus.” But apparently he said it in such a way that no one believed he would do anything if they didn’t behave. Which he wouldn’t because he wasn’t really a dog person and didn’t know much about them. Except to keep the food out of reach.

  “No, Blue!” he growled in his best take-charge voice, but no one said, “Yes, sir!” They just panted excitedly and wagged their tails.

  The things he di
d for his friends. Pet-sitting. A man his age taking care of how many dogs?

  He put the pad thai on top of the refrigerator and shooed the dogs outside into the fenced yard that contained their exuberance from spilling over onto the neighbors’ yards. Then he took a deep breath and tried to remember what he was supposed to do.

  He consulted the list Tess had helpfully put on the refrigerator under magnet that resembled a sewing machine. Right. Feed the dogs. He found the bowls where he had put them last, filled them with dry kibble, then made sure the water dishes were full. After that, he braced himself and let the dogs back in, watching as they fell over each other trying to get to the food.

  “Relax, guys,” he said. “There’s plenty for everyone.”

  If they heard him, they gave no sign. Well, now he knew where the term feeding frenzy had originated.

  After a few moments of voracious wolfing — if he hadn’t just fed them this morning, he would have sworn they were being starved to death — they settled into companionable munching, with occasional slurps from the water bowls and the occasional tussle for position in the hierarchy. After a few minutes, Ian thought it was safe enough to retrieve his own dinner. Only Agnes came over to investigate, and she was easily warded off.

  He collapsed onto the sofa and reached for the remote, then opened the box containing his now-lukewarm dinner. He forked rice in his mouth while watching a lame reality show. Tess didn’t have premium cable or a satellite dish. He had a great home theatre room at home, thanks to Greta, but here he was stuck in the land of the Luddites. Unfortunately, there were no good sporting events on broadcast television tonight. And Greta was out with the pompous windbag Ian had seen her with at Michael’s wedding. He couldn’t decide which was worse.