by Helen Conrad
Jennifer laughed. “Wow. What an idea. I’ll have to think that one over.” And file it away under “Hopeless Causes” she thought as she looked around the cute little diner. Clean and colorful with paintings of surfers and fishing boats all over the walls, she could tell the place did a good business. Somehow you could just feel success.
Meggie sat in her seat, lower lip thrust out, eyes sad but dry. Mickey was keeping a sharp eye on her and she didn’t dare try for the door again.
“How old is she?” Jennifer asked, trying to hide her smile.
“Three and a couple of months.”
“She’s adorable.” Leaning closer, she added softly, “But she looks like a real handful.”
Mickey rolled her eyes and laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
They talked as Jennifer ate, and she noticed that Mickey’s gaze kept flashing toward the doorway, as though she were expecting someone—and she was nervous about it. And then the door’s warning bell rang, just as the woman had turned away. She spun back and her face lost all its charm as her eyes narrowed coldly.
“Hi,” she said. “She’s ready.”
A tall, sandy haired man was sauntering in, looking at Mickey with eyes as cold as hers were. Good looking in a slightly wrinkled around the edges way, he gave her a quick nod, then turned to Meggie.
“Let’s go, kid,” he said.
Mickey took her out of the booster seat and turned, holding her tightly. “Did you get the new car seat?” she asked.
The man gave her a sour look. “Yeah. We’re all up to code.” He held out his arms for her. “Hey, I’ll take good care of the kid. Don’t worry.”
Mickey looked miserable. “You’ll have her back by eight, right?”
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “If you really want me to stop taking her, you know what you have to do,” he said, and then his gaze caught sight of Jennifer.
“Hey, I remember you. Jenny, right? I’m Kevin Adams. I knew your brother Tony.” His face changed, suddenly warmer and filled with compassion. “Hey, that was rotten. He went way too soon. No fair, huh?” He shook his head. “He was one of the good guys. I’m really sorry.”
Jennifer murmured something receptive, but her attention was on Meggie’s mom as Kevin carried Meggie out the door. Her eyes were filling with tears and she turned away as they spilled over.
“I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing a tissue. “This is really, really hard.” She went to the window to watch Kevin put Meggie in the children’s seat in the back of a broken-down Taurus, then get into the driver’s seat and drive away.
Jennifer hesitated, knowing it was none of her business, but feeling very confused about what was going on. “Why is he taking your little girl?” she asked at last as Mickey went back behind the counter.
“He’s my ex-husband. The court ordered visitation rights.”
“Oh.”
She shook her head, her red hair bouncing about her shoulders. “It kills me when he takes her. She doesn’t want to go. You could see that, couldn’t you?”
Jennifer nodded hesitantly. She didn’t want to stir up anything that wasn’t warranted. “But she didn’t seem frightened of him” she noted, hoping that might make her feel a bit better.
Mickey stared into her eyes, searching for reassurance. “Really? You didn’t see fear?”
Jennifer shook her head.
“Oh God, I hope you’re right. I worry so much… .”
“You don’t think he would do anything to hurt her, do you?”
“No. I don’t know.” Mickey shrugged, looking miserable. “I have no proof,” she said. “All I have is my own nightmares.” Her face crumpled in misery. “He doesn’t care about her. All he wants… .” Her voice trailed off.
“Mickey, what did he mean when he said you knew how to stop this?”
She looked at Jennifer for a long moment, then shook her head. “He never had any interest in Meggie. We were divorced a year ago but we were separated long before that. At first, he didn’t even want to know her name. And then… .” She sighed. “And then, once the divorce was final, my father gave me this café. He transferred ownership to me. Kevin didn’t get a cut.”
“Good.”
She nodded. “But he thinks he was cheated. And he wants his share of the business. It was only after the transfer was made that he suddenly started fighting for his parental rights of visitation. You see? He knows it kills me to watch her go with him. That’s what he’s counting on. He wants to wear me down until I give him a portion of the business.”
Jennifer nodded as well, feeling worried. “But since he’s the father, I don’t see how you can stop him.”
Mickey blinked rapidly and looked about to say something, but she held it back, pressing her lips together and turning away. And Jennifer’s heart broke for Mickey. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this.
She tried to tell Reid about the situation later that evening, but he already knew all about it.
“I love Mickey. She’s been great the way she took over for her father when he got sick. I stop in there for breakfast all the time.” He ruffled Jennifer’s hair and smiled at her. “And you’re a sweetheart to care about them. But you’ve got to understand, Kevin’s got rights too.”
“But if he’s just taking Meggie with ulterior motives… .”
“You don’t know that. What if he’s finally decided to make a go of his life? What if he’s trying to do the right thing for his baby?”
She paused, frowning. She supposed it was a possibility, but she wanted to be on Mickey’s side. Maybe she was jumping the gun. But she didn’t think so.
Reid promised to talk to Mickey and see if he had any advice he could give her, and she had to be satisfied with that. Meanwhile, she resolved to drop in and talk to the woman herself, just to be sure nothing tragic was looming. And once Reid started kissing her, other problems tended to fade into the background pretty quickly.
Would he ever want to marry her? He hadn’t mentioned that possibility. Was it because he thought she would never be able to stay in Destiny Bay and be a proper attorney’s wife? Was that what was holding him back?
All right, she decided. She would prove to him that he was wrong. She loved him, deeply, desperately, and she would change for him if she had to.
She worked very hard at it, shopping for the appropriate clothes, forcing herself to walk with grace and dignity, smiling formally instead of grinning widely as she usually did. She went to an exclusive make-over studio, letting them tame her curly hair into a fashionable bob, enduring the sculptured nails, the makeup lesson. And when Reid brought clients home for drinks one evening, she played her part to perfection.
“You were wonderful,” Reid told her afterward, and though she was pleased that her efforts had met with success, something inside cried a little that he thought so. Did he like the new Jennifer better than the old? But that was the point, wasn’t it?
“Just call me Astrid the second,” she muttered, turning away.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But it was worth it. She shone again at tennis at the club, then at the theater. It looked as though she’d finally made the grade, as though it really were possible to make herself over into the ideal wife.
But, inevitably, there were a few setbacks. There was the time Jennifer had noticed that the cocktail waitress serving them in the lounge at the country club was Krissy Blake, an old friend from public school. She chatted happily with Krissy for fully five minutes before she realized that the couple they’d come with were throwing daggers at her from their frosty eyes. One wasn’t supposed to be quite that friendly with the help.
Then there was the time she got lost in the restaurant. She’d come along with Reid to take two new clients out to dinner. The two gentlemen were Middle Eastern. They seemed quite taken with Jennifer. She worked hard at impressing them. She spoke graciously, modulating her tones and managing to hold back her tendency to grin. She wore a d
ove-gray suit that would have looked in place on a young Princess Grace. Reid’s blue gaze glowed with pleasure every time it settled on her.
They arrived at the restaurant. Called the Obscure, it was very trendy at the moment. The outside looked like the entrance to a cave and inside it was pitch-black except for tiny candles on the various tables. The light from each candle was so dim that it didn’t reflect upon the faces of the diners. The waiters wore helmets with little lamps on them in order to see their way.
They’d all been together when they walked in, but somehow Jennifer made a wrong turn. The next thing she knew, she was all alone.
“Reid?” she whispered into the blackness.
The only sounds were the hushed voices of the diners, all of whom seemed to be as intimidated by the darkness as she was.
“Reid!” she said more loudly.
There was no answer. She was on her own. She began to grope her way along, testing every step.
She blundered along in the dark for a few moments, then decided to stop and wait for a waiter. After all, she’d already made enough of a scene by getting lost. Imagine how Reid would feel if she fell over someone’s table in front of his clients!
She honed in on a candle. “Hello?” she tried tentatively.
There was no reply, so she tried to slide into the booth, but instead of finding herself pushing along the vinyl seating, she landed right into a very male lap.
“Hello,” said a baritone.
“Oh—I’m sorry,” she cried, jumping up. “I just wanted to find a place to sit while I wait for a waiter to come by. You see, I’m lost. I can’t see a thing in this place.”
“Please, be my guest,” the baritone said.
“Thank you.” She put out a cautious hand and found the way had been cleared to allow her to sit. Slowly, she slid into place. There was the sound of a lighter being cocked, and suddenly a flame lit a candle set in a small lantern in the middle of the table.
“This must be our lucky night,” said the baritone as he gazed at her.
Two more sets of masculine eyes appraised her just as warmly.
Jennifer laughed, looking around the table. “This looks like the male version of a witches’ coven,” she said. “Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. Do you guys do any magic tricks?”
The baritone grinned. “We conjured you up, didn’t we?”
“Beginner’s luck,” scoffed one of his friends. “The really difficult feat will be providing enough women to go around.”
They all laughed and the candle flickered, almost going out. But Jennifer found that her eyes were becoming accustomed enough to the gloom to begin to make out shapes as long as she didn’t look directly at the candle in the middle of the table. She shuddered as she wondered where Reid was and what he was thinking.
“I won’t be here for long,” she told her hosts. “I’ll just wait here until a waiter comes by with one of those little searchlights, and then I’ll hitch a ride with him. In the meantime, I didn’t want to stand out there in the way of people I can’t even see.”
Suddenly, the entire room was flooded with light. People screamed. Some even dove for cover. And Reid’s voice boomed out. “Jennifer, where are you?”
Jennifer jumped up and saw Reid along the wall with his hand on a huge switch. “Right here!” She waved at him, and his gaze hardened as he caught sight of her and her three male companions.
“Thanks, guys,” she said, and began to thread her way between the tables, smiling at the Middle Eastern gentlemen standing near Reid, their eyes wide with total bewilderment. A man in a tuxedo—obviously the chagrined and angered manager—was yelling at Reid to turn the lights back off, but Reid was paying no attention. His eyes were riveted to Jennifer, and he stood waiting, his hand on the switch, until she reached his side.
“Look at this place,” was the first thing she said to him, trying to treat this incident as though there were nothing at all strange about it. “Look how ordinary and tacky it looks in full light.”
It was true. Peeling paint and worn carpets weren’t evident in the gloom, but now that Reid had put some light on them, it was all too obvious. In reality the place had about as much trendy appeal as a skid row dive. It was as though a room full of beautiful women had suddenly all had their wigs pulled off. All of which did nothing to contribute to the manager’s mood.
But Reid wasn’t interested in the shortcomings of the decor. He shook his head as she approached.
“How do these things always happen to you?” he muttered, more at a loss than angry.
“Just lucky, I guess.” She smiled hopefully at him. “I just got lost ... It could happen to anyone.”
But he was shaking his head even as he held off the apoplectic manager with one hand.
“I understand,” he said, a half smile curling his lips as he gazed at her, “but I don’t think they do.” He gestured toward his clients, who were gazing at the room as though they’d found themselves plunked down in Wonderland.
Of course, they couldn’t stay and eat now that the manager wanted to kill Reid. And it was awfully late to get into a decent restaurant. They left the Obscure, laughing as the lights went back off to try to recreate its shattered illusion. Jennifer suggested they go for pizza, which caused Reid’s jaw to turn to granite, but the Middle Eastern gentlemen were delighted and had a wonderful time, eating pizza and playing old fashioned video games. All in all the evening was a success, but you never would have known it by looking at Reid’s face.
When they were alone together, these little annoyances blew over, and they laughed and played like children. Reid could sometimes lose the stiff attorney demeanor, and the lines in his forehead would magically disappear.
“Magic, “ he murmured once as they lay side by side on the beach, each tired and sandy, baking in the sun, oblivious to all that went on around them. “That’s the word for you. When we’re together, you must use magic to make me feel so good.”
If only she knew how.
Her favorite thing to do while Reid was busy was to go down to the marina and the embarcadero and watch the boats come and go. After an hour of that, she would often go into Mickey’s On the Bay for a cup of coffee and a talk with Mickey, if she wasn’t too busy. The woman had a way of making it seem as though everything was going to work out just fine.
For everyone but herself. Kevin was still insisting on taking Meggie out at least once a week.
“And now he’s talking about wanting to take her for a whole weekend,” Mickey told her late one afternoon. “I swear, I think if he tries to do that, I’ll take her with me and run.”
“Oh Mickey, you can’t do that. Where would you go?”
She shook her head, eyes haunted. “I don’t know. If I could only be sure… .”
“Sure of what?”
Her green eyes looked into Jennifer’s, then darted away. “Sure that he wasn’t doing drugs anymore,” she whispered, then closed her eyes and pressed her lips together tightly.
“Oh Mickey. The court won’t stand for that, will they?”
She shrugged. “Not if I had proof. But… .” She shook her head, misery in her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do. Maybe I should just give him part ownership of this place. I probably would if I thought he wouldn’t just make new demands.”
Jennifer grabbed her hand and held it tight, wishing she could think of something she could do to help. She’d brought the situation up to Reid a couple of times. But she had her own problems with Reid right now.
Nothing she did seemed to go right anymore. Mostly, they had good times, but the occasions when things went wrong began to mount in number. More and more often Jennifer would find herself going in to the village to visit Mickey in order to calm down afterwards.
One day she was sitting at a window table, watching a boat tie up and soon a familiar looking man jumped off and came straight for the café.
She turned to watch him come in the door and she smiled at him, knowing he was Reid’
s younger cousin.
“You’re Tag, aren’t you?” she said when he was close enough.
He turned and favored her with a slow smile. “Little Jenny Thornton. I heard you were back in town.”
“Why does everyone remember me as Little Jenny? I never was that small you know.”
“No. Not really. I think it was because you were always trailing behind Reid, everywhere he went.” He shook his head, laughing. “The guy must have been six years older than you were, but you were bound and determined to keep him in your sites.”
She laughed too. “Is that how you remember it?”
“That’s the way.”
She smiled. Tag was only a year or so older than she was. She’d known him well at one point in the past. He’d even dated a friend of hers. Looking at him, he was so obviously a Carrington. His father was Reid’s father’s brother.
Funny that he seemed to live like a beach bum, his clothes a bit ragged, his hair too long, his tan too deep. But that twinkle in his eyes, that handsome face, marked him as a Carrington, no matter how he tried to wish it away.
“What are you doing these days?” she asked him.
“I’ve got me a boat. Got me a big ocean. And that’s pretty much all I need.”
She gave him a sad look. “Sounds lonely.”
He looked at her quizzically, as though no one had ever said that to him before. “It is sometimes,” he admitted. “The trouble is, the opposite of lonely is just too much darn noise.”
She nodded, a slight smile on her face. She understood exactly what he meant and for just a moment, there was a friendly connection between them. “So there’s no woman in your life?”
“No woman!” He grunted, rolling his eyes. “I had a woman once. Didn’t take to it. I do better on my own.” He smiled at her. “Too long in one place and I get antsy. In fact, I’m late for moving on right now.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Hawaii. Maybe to China.” He gave her a look. “Want to come along?”