by Tami Hoag
“Honey,” Jared laughed. “I let Brutus do whatever he wants.”
Jared, Genna, and Alyssa all trooped down to Gorgeous Guy’s Hair Emporium on Tory Hills’ Old Market Street, where the brick buildings dated back to before the Revolution. When they came out half an hour later, Jared looked more like a GQ model than a rock star.
Guy very cleverly had left the top short and had cut off the long strands that had straggled down Jared’s neck. The style left him looking amazingly clean-cut, and Genna’s fingers were itching to run up and down the back of his smooth, strong neck. Even Alyssa liked the new look, proclaiming her daddy to be “very pretty.”
“Clothes make the man,” Genna proclaimed, dragging Jared by the arm from Gorgeous Guy’s toward Wagnall’s Clothiers, the one and only men’s shop in Tory Hills. They wouldn’t be able to outfit Jared totally here, but at least he could get a couple of shirts that didn’t qualify as walking billboards.
Jared balked, eyeing the nattily dressed mannequins in the window with obvious distaste. “I already have clothes.”
Genna let go of his hand and planted her hands on her hips. She looked up and down at the black tank top and camouflage pants he wore. “Yeah, you’re all set if we want to go out to eat in the jungles of Nicaragua.” She gave Alyssa a wink and a grin. “Come on, Lyss, grab Daddy’s hand and let’s drag him in here.”
Alyssa giggled and immediately began tugging on her father’s hand, jumping up and down and pulling at him. “Come on, Daddy!”
With the help of a clerk who held the door open, they managed to get Jared into the store. He was still scowling when they came back out with two button-down oxford shirts, a plain navy blue tie, two polo shirts, and a pair of navy gabardine trousers.
“Cheer up,” Genna said. “It’s good for your new image to be seen shopping in the local stores. Besides, now you won’t have to worry about taking me out to dinner at a nice restaurant and having them punish you by making you wear one of those awful ties they keep at the desk for people who underdress.”
Jared didn’t mention that he had a whole closet full of shirts and ties, since it so obviously pleased Genna to dress him up like a Ken doll. Her picking on him about his everyday clothes irked him a little though, and he got back at her that evening by making choking noises over dinner at Leonie’s while tugging at the knot in his new tie.
The next few days were spent schooling Jared on normal, small-town behavior and trying to get him to give up his earring. That was something he flatly refused to do, as the diamond stud had been a gift from his mother. Evenings were devoted to dates that often included Alyssa. They did every normal thing Jared could think of. They went to the movies and to dinner. They even played miniature golf.
Everywhere they went Jared was pestered for autographs. Genna watched him closely as he signed scraps of paper, always smiling, even when a fan interrupted a meal. She also noticed that many of his fans were women. He attracted them like metal filings to a magnet. It was disgusting. Women of all ages fell willingly under the spell of his unusual charm. More than one woman had made it clear that she would fall under more than that if he were interested, but Jared always turned the ladies away with a wink and a grin.
Wednesday of the following week the three of them piled into Jared’s new Mercedes station wagon and headed for downtown Hartford. Jared had agreed to take Genna shopping for accessories for his house and had promised Alyssa a picnic as soon as he took care of “a little something.”
His “little something” turned out to be shooting a thirty-second commercial for the NFL’s antidrug campaign. Genna and Alyssa were allowed to sit off-camera and watch as makeup people, lighting people, sound technicians, and cameramen fussed over and around Jared. Through all the commotion he remained his amiable self, talking football with the crew and signing autographs. When the director shouted “Action,” Jared simply looked directly into the camera and delivered his lines like a pro.
They did three takes, though Genna would have sworn only one had been necessary. She was more than a little surprised at Jared’s professional attitude in front of the camera. The way he had talked about his college days and his degree in communications, he would have had her believe he didn’t know a light meter from a lens cap, when obviously he knew a lot more.
His acting ability was nothing to sneeze at either. He was very relaxed in front of the camera. Dressed in jeans and a tight Hawks T-shirt, he casually leaned back against a smooth oak desk, his sneakered feet crossed at the ankle, his hands stuffed into his pockets. The wall behind the desk displayed framed photos of Jared in action on the football field, and the shelves held game balls and trophies. When the film started rolling, he looked into the camera as if he were looking into someone’s eyes and said his lines as if he were speaking directly to that one person. His message was clear and sincere.
“As quarterback of the Hartford Hawks, I’m known for being a little unorthodox.” He grinned engagingly, then grew serious. “But doing my own thing doesn’t mean doing drugs. I get my highs on the football field helping my team win championships. I don’t need drugs messing that up. Everybody knows drugs are stupid.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Why do you think they call it dope?”
When Genna asked him why he hadn’t mentioned the commercial, he just shrugged it off.
“No big deal,” he said, turning his attention to Alyssa. “How’d you like that, muffin?”
Alyssa gave him her shy smile. “Were you on TV, Daddy?”
“I will be.” He scooped her up in the crook of his strong arm so they were face-to-face. “They’ll run that ad this fall when I’m working.”
Alyssa turned to Genna with a proud look. “My daddy plays bootball.”
Genna hid her mirth with a smile. After all, she didn’t know much more about the sport herself. Jared laughed and kissed his daughter’s cheek. “That’s foot ball, sweetheart.”
Afterward they ate hamburgers in Bushnell Park on the capitol grounds. Every time Genna mentioned shopping, Jared changed the subject. The day was too summer perfect to spend in a store, he’d said. He drove them to Elizabeth Park instead, where they walked through the famous rose gardens and watched people lawn bowling.
The combination of the warm sun and the intoxicating scent of the flowers made Genna feel giddy and weak. She had told herself she could have fun with him without getting her heart involved, but as she watched him lift Alyssa so the little girl could have a better view of the flowers, Genna doubted it.
She’d been attracted to him from the start, but that desire had been easily dampened by her initial low opinion of him. The trouble was, he wasn’t Jared the Jerk anymore. He was the Jared who sat on the kitchen floor with her and gently listened to her tale of an unhappy childhood. He was the Jared who forgot little details like winning national awards and making commercials. He was the Jared who always had time for his daughter and his fans. He was the Jared with summer-sky eyes and kisses that stole every scrap of sanity Genna possessed.
She would be a fool to fall for him. He’d never get serious with a kindergarten teacher. And he wasn’t the type for her to get serious with either. He’d said himself this was just a summer romance, nothing heavy. It was a convenient relationship that they were both enjoying.
Really, she told herself, there was no reason for her to be afraid of getting overly involved. They were just working together. The boundaries of their arrangement were very clear in her mind: they were working together and they were friends for the summer. Certainly she was adult enough by now to lean over the edge of the waters of romance without falling in.
Of course she was. It had been a long time since she’d been attracted to a man on any level. So now that this major league hunk was showing an interest, she was simply overreacting. She’d gotten too involved in a one-sided romance once before and she was afraid of letting it happen again. That was why she’d hardly even gone out with a man since her breakup with Allan. She knew too well how it hurt to gi
ve her heart to someone who wanted only to play handball with it. Allan had left her feeling uncertain of herself as a woman and uncertain of her own judgment. It was only natural that she was skittish of the same thing happening again. But it wasn’t going to. She and Jared had become friends. There was nothing scary about that.
Genna smiled to herself as she watched Jared model a big straw bonnet bedecked with flowers for Alyssa. The vendor stood by her cart laughing and clapping her hands at his antics.
Infatuation. That was all she was feeling. He was a good-looking man, personable in his own strange way. Infatuation. It certainly wasn’t … the L word. No. It was simply a normal attraction between two healthy adults who had been spending a lot of time together.
She breathed easier knowing she wasn’t in any real danger.
Genna sat next to Jared on the edge of his stone patio watching Alyssa at play in the yard with Flurry. She had finally given up on the shopping idea. They had all been ready to come home after their afternoon in the park. “Any news from your lawyer?” she asked.
Jared shook his head. His eyes never left his daughter as he spoke. “Paul said they made all the initial moves, now they just seem to be waiting around. I don’t know what their game plan is, but I don’t like it.” He raised his shoulders as if he were trying to shrug off his apprehension. “Anyway, we’re doing our part, so let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay,” Genna said, honoring his desire to drop the subject. “Why didn’t you tell me about the commercial?”
Jared shrugged again and sipped from his can of root beer. “I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.”
“You do a lot of that kind of thing? Commercials, I mean.”
“Some.”
He was being shy and modest and she knew it. How sweet. Amy had told her he made megabucks doing commercials for several nationally known products. If he was the arrogant jerk she had first thought him to be, he’d have been bragging about it, trying to impress her.
“I thought Alyssa might get a kick out of watching,” he said.
“She did. She’s very proud of you, you know.” Genna smiled at the blush that spread across his cheekbones. She wriggled her foot as the puppy attacked her shoelaces.
“Come on, Flurry!” Alyssa coaxed, one hand holding firmly on top of her head the wreath of flowers Jared had bought her. With a bright red rubber ball in her other hand, she enticed the puppy away from Genna’s shoe.
“Do you get paid for a commercial like the one you did today?” Genna questioned.
He shook his head, his gaze on his daughter, who was squealing as the puppy jumped up on her. “Throw it for him, honey!” he called, then said to Genna, “No. That’s a public service. The league pays for production costs, but not for my part. They encourage us to do the spots, but even if they didn’t, I’d do it. It’s a cause I believe in. A lot of kids look up to me. I consider it my responsibility to set a good example, especially since I have sort of a wild reputation. I mean, I like to see kids having a good time, but I don’t want them to get the wrong idea. I don’t want to see them get mixed up in that kind of trouble.”
Genna thought about what he’d said for a minute as the radio played something romantic in the background. At first glance Jared didn’t look like the sort of man parents would want their children to emulate. Jared, with his spiked hair and diamond earring and come-hither grin. But he was a sports hero and he was right—kids would look up to him whether their parents wanted them to or not. He could easily have shrugged off the responsibility, told them to live to party and break all the rules. Instead, he told them to be themselves, but to live right.
Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re sweet.”
He grinned at her, pushing his sunglasses up so she could get the full impact of his startling blue eyes. “So you keep saying. Tsk, tsk, Genna. You’re going to have me thinking I’m the teacher’s pet.” His grin melted down to a sensuous smile and he spoke in his whiskey-on-the-rocks voice that rasped across Genna’s skin like velvet. “But that’s okay, I don’t have anything against petting.”
She gave him a black look and shoved him, sending him rolling on the lawn to be attacked by the puppy. He scrambled to his feet, wiping puppy kisses off his cheek as Alyssa and Genna laughed.
“You’re in big trouble now,” he warned, shaking a finger at Genna as Alyssa raced into the house with the puppy at her heels.
“I’m terrified,” Genna scoffed, but got to her feet just the same, anticipation making her skin tingle.
“I think I bruised something.”
“Your pride?” she offered sarcastically.
He raised one dark brow as his lips twitched upward. “Maybe. Wanna go to my room and see?”
“You’re impossible!”
“Naw.” Quick as a cat, he grabbed her and started to dance to a funky tune on the radio. “Hard maybe, not impossible.”
“Disgusting, definitely.” She pretended offense just as she pretended not to notice the provocative sway of his hips so near her own.
He chuckled. “You love it and you know it.”
She rolled her eyes at the macho line.
Bernice came out the back door wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Phone, boss.”
“Thanks, Bernice.” He winked at Genna and danced into the house, singing in his smoky voice about how right he was for her.
Genna strangled a frustrated scream in her throat and dropped onto a white wrought iron chair across from Bernice.
“He’s something, ain’t he?” the older woman said, crossing her chubby legs. She wore black stirrup pants with high-top sneakers and an oversize Hawks T-shirt that swallowed up her stocky body. The short sleeves hung past her elbows.
“Something else,” Genna amended, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know what it is about that man. He unleashes something wild in me. I never know whether I’m going to laugh at him or slug him. Do you know what I mean, Bernice?”
Bernice puffed up her red hair and laughed. “Honey, my ex-husband couldn’t unleash the dog, but I read a lot of romances and I’d say you’re in love.”
Horror-stricken, Genna gasped, “With Jared Hennessy?”
“I don’t see Tom Selleck hanging around here.”
“In … L … with Jared Hennessey,” she mumbled to herself, shuddering. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t even verbalize the word, and she’d just finished telling herself it was only infatuation. She decided she should say it out loud. “No. It’s only infatuation.”
Bernice laughed until Genna thought she was going to choke. She slapped her knee as tears streamed down her flushed face. Finally her guffaws were reduced to gasps by lack of oxygen. “Oh—oh—that’s a—a—good one! Boy, have you got it bad, toots!”
Genna scowled, seeing no humor in the situation at all. “Great.”
SIX
THE L WORD. How had she let it happen? Had she let it happen? Maybe Bernice was wrong. Genna had been trying to convince herself of that for two days. Once again she tried telling herself it was just infatuation. She waited. Nothing. No sense of calm came over her. She didn’t feel reassured in the least. In fact, she felt vaguely nauseated. Oh, Lord, I am in … the L word.
How? How had she let herself fall in …L … with a man like Jared Hennessy? Only a few days before she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Now she was in … L … with him.
Disastrous, she thought as she went through a rack of little girls’ jumpers. They were shopping for clothes for Alyssa because Jared had “sort of ruined” a lot of her things in the wash a few days before he had hired Bernice.
Nothing good can come from this, she told herself. In a few weeks her job would be over, Jared would head for training camp, and she’d be back teaching school. She would have spent the whole summer in … L … with the wrong man. She was always off balance with Jared. He made her feel as if she were stuck in a pair of haywire inversi
on boots. And it was a cinch he wasn’t in … L … with her. Jared was just having fun.
She’d gone and done it again, gotten in over her head with a man who wasn’t interested in a future with her. Not only that, he wasn’t even her type. He was unconventional, impetuous, outrageous. She was looking for solid, dependable … boring.
Jared studied the determined frown on Genna’s face and smiled to himself. She’s coming around, I can feel it. Bernice had said so, and he was starting to believe it. That Genna wasn’t very happy about it didn’t faze Jared. He was finally winning her over. Her defenses were wearing down and momentum was on his side. Genna was a woman with a good head on her shoulders; sooner or later she’d admit she’d been wrong about him and give in to his charm. He hoped.
She needed time to get used to the idea. If he pushed her, she’d probably tell him to take a hike. He’d promised her a no-strings romance. He wasn’t sure that was what he wanted anymore, but he would have to pretend it was true for a while.
Alyssa singled out a red corduroy jumper and insisted she’d wear it every day forever and ever. After she and Genna returned from the fitting room, and Jared paid for the dress, it was added to the bunch of packages in their shopping bag.
“Can I get a new nightie to wear to Courtney’s house tonight, Daddy?” she asked as they came to a row of nightgowns.
A worried frown tugged at Jared’s features. He stooped down by his daughter and brushed at her black bangs. “Are you sure you want to stay overnight at Courtney’s house, Lyss?”
Alyssa’s blue eyes begged as eloquently as her voice. “Yes, Daddy, please let me stay. I’m a big girl!”
“I know you are, sweetheart.” Jared sighed.
Genna watched the exchange, wondering what the problem was, but not wanting to interfere. Amy had arranged to pick Alyssa up at the shopping mall and then treat the girls to pizza, ending the evening with a sleepover at the Dennisons. The girls had talked of little else for two days.