12 Stocking Stuffers
Page 48
“What went on between you and Brody Jackson?” she said abruptly.
“And Merry Christmas to you, too, darling,” Jeff said. “How lovely to hear your voice.”
Angie sighed. Jeffrey would answer her questions in his own time, and the sooner she got through the formalities the sooner he’d be willing to talk. “Lovely to hear your voice, too. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, how’s Margaret, how’s the baby, how’s work, what went on between you and Brody Jackson?”
“Still my impetuous Angie. I thought age would have cured you of that,” he chided. “Why are you asking me about that now? Brody Jackson has been out of our lives for years. He just missed being in jail by the skin of his teeth, and with luck he’ll follow his brothers into exile and no one in Crescent Cove will ever have to see him again.”
“He may be out of your life, but he’s not out of mine,” Angie said. “He’s moved back up here, and I want you to tell me why the two of you never got along.”
Jeffrey’s lazy chuckle would have fooled anyone who hadn’t been married to him. “Has he been putting the moves on you? Poor Brody—I would have thought he’d let go of that old rivalry. I’ve certainly moved past it.”
“What rivalry? I know you two hated each other, but I never understood why.”
“Jealousy,” Jeff said. “He wanted what he couldn’t have. It had nothing to do with you—he just wanted to score points off me.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. All I can say is he did his best to beat me at everything—tennis, sailing, golf. The one thing he couldn’t beat me at was you, and it drove him crazy.”
“Jeff, he wasn’t out to beat you. He was just naturally good at all those things. Ridiculously so—he beat everyone. I don’t think it was anything personal.”
“Trust me, it was personal. You just happened to get in the way. Don’t let him get near you, Angie. He probably thinks you’re fair game since our divorce, and I wouldn’t put it past him to try to score just for old times’ sake, but he’d just be using you.”
“My mother liked him.”
There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the phone. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“My mother didn’t like you.”
“And I blame her for the problems in our marriage,” he said in a self-righteous voice.
“You blame my mother for you having a series of affairs? Somehow the connection escapes me.”
“You’re hurt and bitter. I understand, Angie, and I wish I could change the way things worked out.”
“I’m not hurt and I’m not bitter, Jeffrey,” she said patiently. “I just want to know what—”
“You were the one thing he couldn’t beat me at, Angie. It’s that simple. If you have any sense at all you’ll keep away from him.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been known for my good sense, Jeffrey,” she said softly. And she hung up the phone.
Chapter Four
Fourth Week of Advent
Brody kept his distance, but it didn’t do Angela much good. The beautiful tree in the middle of her living room was inexplicably entwined with the presence of Brody Jackson. Her first instinct, after that troubling phone call with Jeffrey, was to march straight over to Brody’s house and demand an explanation.
But it was dark, cold and snowing. And she wasn’t sure she could handle an explanation right then.
It was really very simple, she decided. Some kind of midlife crisis as she was approaching thirty. She’d had a crush on Brody, one she’d never been able to admit to or even fantasize about, and it had stayed buried deep inside her. And without the restraining influence of Jeffrey, without anything to do on the long, lonely nights, it was flowering like a crocus after an endless winter. And she couldn’t quite bring herself to squash it down again.
It hadn’t been the only time he’d kissed her, of course. If it had been, it probably wouldn’t have seemed so earthshaking. But that night on the deck of the Crescent Cove Harbor Club had simply been the culmination of something that had started five years earlier.
The Jacksons were newcomers to Crescent Cove, part of the new breed of summer people. The town was evolving—it had been a farming town for more than a hundred years before the first Princeton professor and his family arrived on the shores of Lake Champlain.
But taxes were rising, professors could no longer afford to take the entire summer off and wives worked, as well, and slowly but surely the big old cedar-shingled cottages along the lake were being sold in rapidly escalating bidding wars.
No one was particularly thrilled to see an industrialist like Walker Jackson move in, but he and his wife had been friendly and unpretentious, and their three young sons had blended in quite nicely. And fourteen-year-old Angela had been admittedly fascinated by her new neighbors, in particular the youngest son.
He’d been beautiful even back then—hair bleached by the sun, a tanned body, a dazzling smile. But that first summer he’d been lonely, spending his time out on the lake on his laser sailboat. When he wasn’t spending time with Angela.
There’d been nothing romantic about it at all. She was fourteen; he was a year older. Jeffrey’s family was in Europe for that summer, and for the first time Angela was at loose ends, free to do exactly as she chose. And then there was Brody. She’d read enough books, seen enough movies to feel the first forbidden burgeoning of romantic longing, but she wasn’t ready to do anything about it. Jeffrey would be back, and Brody was nothing more than an increasingly close friend. They could talk about anything and everything—Brody’s bullying older brothers and Angela’s life as an only child. The stupidity of their relatively decent parents, how they wanted to live in Crescent Cove year-round as soon as they were old enough to do so.
The Founder’s Day dance at the end of the summer had been a disaster. It should have warned her to avoid all such occasions in the future. It was the first dance she’d been to apart from the Wednesday-evening square dances, but the boys she’d known all her life weren’t ready to cross the dance floor and actually ask a girl to dance. The best that could be hoped for was a sullen stride through the crowd, a silent appearance in front of the chosen victim and then off to dance with suitable grimness.
Brody didn’t even go that far. He stayed in the corner with a group of boys, not even looking at her. It would have been miserable, except that most of her friends were lined up like ducks in a row, with no one wanting to pick them off.
By the time they announced the last song she was ready to cry, but she’d been experimenting with makeup and she thought it would run. So she lifted her head high as the kitschy sound of an Air Supply song filled the room, and then she rose and crossed the endless dance floor to stand in front of Brody.
He’d seen her coming, and he’d tried to ignore her. But they’d been best friends, and she wanted her first dance, the last dance of the summer, to be with him. She plastered a hopeful smile on her face. “Would you dance with me, Brody?”
She’d forced him to look at her. He was surrounded by his peers, all watching, waiting to see what he would do. She should have known it was a matter of teenage male pride and expected nothing less, but when he shook his head and turned back to his friends it crushed her.
She’d walked away, that same, endless walk, with remarkable dignity for a girl just turned fourteen. She’d walked out of the room, out of the building, and the two miles home on the moonlit path along the lake, wiping the tears and the makeup away from her face.
Her house was dark when she got there—her parents had gone to bed early. The Jackson house was still a blaze of lights, and she’d moved liked a shadow along the path. By that time tears and makeup and shoes were gone, and she wanted nothing more than to go curl up in bed.
She moved up her wide front steps quietly, reaching for the screen door, when she saw him in the darkness. He was there on the green wicker sofa where they’d spent hours talking, laughing, doing crossword puzzles or just sitting in
a comfortable silence. There was nothing comfortable about the silence now.
He’d taken off his tie and jacket, and he looked as miserable as she felt. Her first instinct was to ignore him, go straight into the house and slam the door behind her. Her second was to demand what he was doing there.
She did neither. She went over to the creaky old sofa and sat down, curling up in her corner, wrapping her arms around her knees as she waited for him to say something.
He didn’t say a word.
It was her first kiss, and it was a powerhouse. In itself it wasn’t astonishing—just the soft pressure of his lips against hers. And then on her tearstained eyelids, and on her cheek, and on her lips again. He’d been good even back then, a natural, and it was no wonder she’d been ready to put her arms around him. But then the porch light went on, and he drew back as if bitten.
Her father stood there, rumpled hair, clueless. “Don’t you think you ought to come to bed now, Angie? We’ve got a long drive tomorrow.”
“I can sleep in the car.” She didn’t want to leave Brody. She wanted more kisses from his beautiful mouth.
“I should go,” Brody said, starting to stand up. He had his jacket with him, and he held it in front of him. “Good night, Professor McKenna. Have a good winter. Goodbye, Angel.”
It had been the first time he’d called her that. And then he’d gone, taking the front steps two at a time, disappearing into the moonlit night.
By next summer Jeffrey had returned, Brody had discovered he was irresistible to almost the entire female population of Crescent Cove and those chaste, almost dreamlike kisses had been forgotten. By Brody, at least.
But every time Angie sat on the green wicker sofa she remembered. And she spent a very large part of her summers curled up there with a book, trying not to think about anyone at all.
Oddly enough, she’d never kissed Jeffrey on the sofa. They’d necked on the steps, on the dock, in the boathouse, at the Harbor Club and just about everywhere else during their endless teenage years, but for some reason she’d never let him kiss her on the green wicker couch.
She never did find out what happened to the furniture after her parents sold the house and the Jacksons had it bulldozed. Probably gave it to Goodwill—most summer cottages were furnished with shabby hand-me-downs and secondhand furniture to begin with, and there’d been nothing of any particular grace or beauty. And she wouldn’t have wanted the couch, really. She couldn’t imagine it on Jeffrey’s mother’s freshly painted porch; the woman probably would have insisted on painting it a baby-blue if she’d allowed it there at all. Angie decided she would rather have it gone, over with, part of her long-lost childhood.
Of course she was thinking about it now. Brody had invaded her life, her thoughts, just as he had so many years ago. She could remember the faded cabbage roses on the cushions, the stain from the grape juice she’d spilled when she’d beaten Brody at canasta, the faintly musty smell as she devoured romances and ate homemade cookies.
Cookies. She surveyed the kitchen, the sheets of parchment paper covering every available surface, with Christmas cookies on each one. She’d finally run out of eggs and room, and she needed to give cookies away before she could bake some more. And she desperately needed to bake—it was what grounded her and kept her sane.
The snow was falling lightly, two days before Christmas Eve, and she’d already given cookies to everyone she’d ever met. She knew she wasn’t going to be getting into her car in such suicidal weather, and she knew the one person she hadn’t given cookies to yet was in walking distance. And he probably had eggs.
A simple, neighborly gesture, she told herself. So they had a confusing history together. They were both grown-ups, and that was in the distant past. She should go to show him she was entirely unaffected by it, and a friendly visit with a tin box of Christmas cookies would be just the excuse. If he wasn’t there, even better. She would have made the gesture without having to actually talk to him and pretend it didn’t matter. She blew out the Christmas candle, extinguishing its warm glow, and headed out into the night.
She walked past the snow-shrouded tennis court and the tree she’d planted so long ago. Funny that they hadn’t bulldozed that when they’d wiped out everything else. She circled the house, only to discover where her Christmas tree had come from. He’d taken one of the three carefully landscaped balsams from the side of the driveway. His gardener would kill him.
The deck was freshly shoveled and his truck was in the driveway, but there was no sign of him. She could always hope he’d gone for a long hike. The wreath she’d made for him was still there on the side of the house, and smoke was curling out of the chimney. She couldn’t see him when she peered through the French doors, and her knock was deliberately soft. If he was meant to hear her, he would; otherwise, she could just leave the cookies and head back to the safety of her house.
She should have known fate wouldn’t make it easy on her. Before she could knock one more time the door opened and he stood there, barefoot and bare chested.
“Here,” she said, shoving the cookies at him. “Merry Christmas.”
He stared at her for a long, endless moment. She finally got a good look at the inside of his house—he’d brought a bed downstairs by the wood stove, the fancy kitchen was a mess and every surface was covered with books and newspapers. It was far too cozy, and she had to get out of there, fast.
He took the cookies, but he caught her wrist at the same time, and before she realized it he’d drawn her into the warm house, kicking the door shut behind them. “It’s about time,” he said, setting the cookies down on a nearby table. “Merry Christmas, Angel.” And he pulled her into his arms, against his hard, lean body, and kissed her.
It was as if she’d been holding her breath, waiting for this, for the past ten years. Since the last time he’d kissed her. His skin was smooth, warm beneath the open flannel shirt, and his mouth was just as practiced as ever. He didn’t give her time to speak, and she didn’t want to. She just wanted to kiss him, touch him, let his hands strip the heavy coat from her shoulders and drop it onto the floor.
The house was dark with the oncoming shadows of early evening, and he hadn’t turned on the lights. Maybe what happened in the dark stayed in the dark, she thought, as he gently moved her back, almost as if they were dancing again, until she came up against a piece of furniture.
He barely had to nudge her—she sank onto the sofa, still clinging to him, and he followed her down onto the cushions, his long hair falling over them both as he blotted out the light, and she closed her eyes, letting herself drift in the wonderful sensations. The smell of wood smoke and whatever soap he used, the feel of his hot skin against her hands, his hard lean body on top of hers, the taste of him, rich and dark and intoxicating. The muffled sound of the sofa as it creaked beneath their bodies, the distant sound of a phone ringing as he began unbuttoning her blouse.
He hesitated a moment, his hand stilled, and she put her hands over his wrist. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
He smiled, a slow, sweet smile. “I wasn’t going to,” he said. “This has been too long coming.” And he was reaching for the zipper of her jeans, when the answering machine clicked on and her ex-husband’s smug voice filled the room.
She froze. “You haven’t answered my phone calls, Brody. Too busy trying to steal my wife?”
She put her hands up and pushed, and Brody immediately released her, rolling off her to the side of the old sofa.
“It’s a waste of time. I had her first and nothing can change that. I was her first and her best, and you’ll just be an afterthought.”
Angela got to her feet, fastening her jeans with shaking hands, buttoning her blouse crookedly. Brody lay on his side on the sofa, an unreadable expression on his face.
But Jeffrey wasn’t finished with his long-distance monologue. “The only reason you might be able to get her in bed is that I warned her about you, and she’s still so hung up on me that she’ll do an
ything she can think of to pay me back. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she didn’t believe that, and hell hath no fury and all that jazz. Don’t be fooled—she doesn’t really want you. She just wants to get back at me.”
Brody rose slowly, lazily, stretching as he ambled toward the telephone. Jeffrey’s voice was getting edgier now, almost desperate. “I know you’re there, Brody. It’s a waste of time trying to avoid me. Sooner or later you’ll have to face the truth. The only reason you want her is you never could have her, and you’re a man who hates to lose. And all she wants is revenge. Brody—”
Brody picked up the phone, then set it down again, breaking the connection.
“Poisonous little son of a bitch, isn’t he?” he said mildly, disconnecting the various cords from the telephone and the back of the answering machine. “He’s been calling me for days now. You’d think he’d be ready to let go of you, now that he’s got a new family, but he always was a dog-in-the-manger type. He may not want you anymore, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have you. Particularly not me.” He leaned against the counter. “But then that brings us to the question of you and your motives. Any truth to what he says?” He seemed barely interested. “Is that why you’re here? For revenge against the man who dumped you?”
The room had been so hot, so cozy, the wood heat filling the high-ceilinged room. Now it was as cold as if he’d left the door open to the winter air. She turned her head to make certain it was shut, staring out into the darkness, but of course it was closed. It was only the ice in the pit of her stomach.
“Look at it this way,” she said in a deceptively calm voice. “You finally got what you wanted, even if Jeffrey’s phone call came at the wrong time. Consider me had. You’ve beaten Jeffrey. There is now no woman in Crescent Cove who wouldn’t sleep with you.”
“There are any number of women in Crescent Cove who don’t want to sleep with me,” he said. “Most of them, as a matter of fact.”