Jenna rose up on her toes to see if the little girl in question was asleep on the seat beside her dad. “Where is she?”
“Libby picked her up after she left your book-club meeting so they could look at flower-girl dresses online. I guess the wedding shop in town can get things shipped overnight from Denver.”
Jenna hadn’t known that. “Cool. Maybe Lib will find something, too. Did you work out an arrangement with Cooper where the mine is concerned?”
“Pretty much.” He looked away, pretending to check the rearview mirror, even though Jenna could tell no one was coming. The night was still. Just the way the people of Sentinel Pass liked it.
When she looked at his face in profile, she felt a strange sensation—as if her perception had suddenly shifted and she was seeing him for the first time. A handsome hunk of a guy, but rough around the edges compared to a certain television producer. For years she’d told herself that if she ever fell in love, Mac would be the guy she’d want. But suddenly she knew that wasn’t true. He was a friend. And that was all he’d ever be to her.
“Um…I’d better go,” she said, feeling slightly light-headed. “It’s getting dark and one close call was enough.”
“Once the rest of the flatlanders get here, you probably won’t be safe on the road.”
She let her wave be her answer. But his prediction bothered her. She’d dropped out of college and moved home because she felt safe here. Did she really want to be instrumental in changing that aspect of her hometown?
A few minutes later she turned into her driveway. She put away her bike, then slipped in the back door. To her surprise, her mother was sitting at the table, her hands cupping a mug as if this were winter and she was cold.
“Hi. What’s up? You feel okay?”
Bess blinked as if she’d been falling asleep—or deep in thought. “I’m fine. Decided to sip a little mint tea in case the pie aggravated my acid reflux, but, you know, I think it’s better. I haven’t had to take a pill in days. How’d the job interview go?”
Job interview? Not like any she could ever remember. “I start tomorrow.”
Mom clapped. “Oh, good for you, Jenna. I’m so glad you got up the nerve to try. Don’t worry. It’ll be great. Bernese mountain dogs are wonderfully social and work well with others.”
“Mom. You can drop the dog references. Shane said he likes your idea and is going to try to fit your character into the script. You don’t have to keep calling him that.”
“I can’t help it. I have a feeling he’s here to rescue you.”
She looked so serious, Jenna wasn’t sure what to say. “Rescue me from what? I’m doing fine. Better than fine. It sounds like he’s going to pay me a lot of money to be a script consultant. That means we’ll be able to do all those pesky fix-it jobs around the Mystery Spot we’ve been putting off.” She looked at the peeling wallpaper behind the stove. “Maybe we can do a few home improvements around here, too.”
When Mom didn’t reply, Jenna looked at her. “What?”
“Nothing.” Mom pretended to take a sip of tea. Jenna could tell the difference.
“Bessie,” Jenna said trying to imitate her father’s deep bass voice. “It’s something. I can tell.”
Her mother’s sigh was large and theatrical, but also heartfelt. Jenna hurried to the table and sat. “What’s wrong?”
“Today when I suggested selling the Mystery Spot, you acted like I was off my rocker. But the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I have to wonder why we’ve never considered the possibility. This was your father’s dream, not yours. And certainly not mine.”
Her tone sounded almost as if she hated the place. “Mom, you gave up a career on stage to help Dad every summer. Can you honestly just walk away?”
“I think so. Yes. I’m sure I can. Maybe not last year, but I think Clarence would understand by now. The business was actually a point of contention throughout our marriage. I’m not proud to admit this, but there were many times I felt that that place meant more to him than we did. His family.”
“You make the Mystery Spot sound like his mistress.”
“It was. In a way. He could escape to it every day, and he was certainly lord and master there. The only reason I didn’t force him to choose between it and us was I wasn’t certain which he’d pick.”
Jenna got up and walked around the table to put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “How come you didn’t mention this after Dad died?”
Her head touched Jenna’s. “Because you stepped up and filled in for your dad so well. I thought running the place gave you purpose, and was good for your self-esteem.”
Jenna pulled back. She walked to the sink to get a glass of water and give herself time to digest this odd revelation. She thought she’d been preserving her father’s dream as well as working to keep a roof over their heads and help her mother. Instead, she’d been colluding with her father’s mistress.
Wouldn’t Shane like to get his hands on this? She pushed the thought away.
“It’s probably too late in the season to sell the place, but—”
“I know that, Jenna. I didn’t mean we should abandon the old girl, but new options are opening up and we need to be honest with each other, don’t you think? We only have this one life to live. I don’t have any regrets, but a few years from now I’d rather not look back and wish I’d taken my chance when it came my way. And the same goes for you, Jenna Mae.”
Jenna understood what she what was saying. But what more did her mother want her to do? She was already risking public humiliation by sharing her meager and possibly laughable writing skills with a relative stranger. She’d agreed to hand over control of the Mystery Spot to a nineteen-year-old so she could spend time with a man who made her realize the supposed love of her life was merely her best friend’s brother. Damn. She simply didn’t think she could handle any more change at the moment.
“I’m really pooped, Mom. Can we talk about this in the morning?” She polished off her water and set the glass on the counter.
Her mother was watching her. “Of course. I told you Robyn’s picking me up, right? She seems so excited about this promotion. She reminds me of you when you were that age—fearless in the face of any new challenge.”
Fearless.
Maybe she had been. Once. Now…
“Mom, do you have any sleeping pills? I’m exhausted, but with so much on my mind, I have a feeling I won’t be able to fall asleep.” Or stay asleep if my nightmare comes back.
“Of course.” Her mother stood and led the way up the stairs.
The benefit of a hypochondriac mother, Jenna thought, trudging after her, was having ready access to a vast pharmacopoeia.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHANE WAS UP well before the appointed time to meet Jenna. His sleep had been restless and unproductive so greeting the dawn seemed as good a plan as any. He hadn’t felt this unsettled in years, and he knew Jenna was to blame. She got to him. And it wasn’t just guilt or some deluded sense of righting a wrong. She was like an itch he couldn’t quite reach because it kept changing places.
He took the cup of coffee he’d brewed outside to the small, east-facing patio. Pale golden-pink threads of light were cutting through the misty fog that hovered in the tall trees beyond the yard. The sky was quite beautiful. It reminded him of growing up in Minnesota.
He muttered a low epithet and dropped into a wooden Adirondack chair after flipping over the pad to avoid the dew. Settling back, he kicked out his feet to the matching footrest.
One of his dreams had been about Jenna. They’d been holding hands, walking down a woodsy lane when his brother appeared from a converging path. He’d exerted some kind of Svengali charm over Jenna and she’d left with Adam before Shane could utter a word.
“It’s not your fault, Shanely,” Adam had called over his shoulder. “You can’t help it if you’re impotent.”
“Shanely,” Shane muttered into his mug. The last time Adam had used the w
ord, he’d converted it to an adverb.
“Don’t act so damn smug and Shanely,” Adam had shouted after their mother’s funeral. “I was the full-time son. You’re the one that got away. Distance creates the illusion of perfection. Every time Mom turned on the television, your name came up. ‘I wonder how Shane is?’” he said in a mewling voice. “Every f-ing time.”
Shane had wondered why Adam, who cursed like a gang member, had toned down his language, but when he looked over his shoulder and spotted the minister and their father, he’d understood. His brother was extremely conscious of maintaining his public persona.
The sound of a car pulling into the driveway scattered the memory. He rose and walked through the narrow breezeway between the house and garage. Two feet of the space was occupied by chopped wood, messily stacked.
The house had potential—in an HGTV way. Interior design was a hobby of his, but he wouldn’t be here long enough to give the place a makeover. Heck, he’d be on a flight back home in a day or two if he didn’t give the network execs a decent outline. Preferably by this afternoon.
“Hey. You’re up,” Jenna said, getting out of her Honda sedan. The faded yellow car bore the Mystery Spot logo on the door. Even from a distance he could tell the signage was a magnetic add-on.
What she really needed, he thought with a smile, was a new Volkswagen Bug with a hot-purple and yellow paint job. That would get people’s attention.
“Coffee?” he asked.
When she shook her head, the sunlight, which had just topped the trees, made her hair shimmer. As she came around the car, he saw she was wearing a short black skirt. Her legs were perfectly proportioned and athletic looking. This was a woman who exercised and took care of herself. She wore two tank tops, teal over pink. The pink showed a hint of feminine lace that made his mouth go dry.
“I brought along a thermos of sweet tea and some bakery cookies in case we get hungry. Grab whatever you need and hop in.”
He had everything organized in his leather tote. He locked the door of the house—ignoring her bemused snicker—and joined her. Maybe locals left their houses unlocked but he was from L.A. and he sorely missed being able to punch in an alarm-system code before leaving.
“It smells amazing around here. Too bad there isn’t a way to bottle that for the show,” he said getting into the passenger seat. He reached down to release the catch so he could give himself more leg room. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive? Mine’s bigger.”
“Said like a true man,” she said with a toss of her head. Before sitting down, she’d scraped back her hair in a ponytail held tight by a pink scrunchy. It reminded him that her clip was sitting on his bedside table.
He lowered his shades to look at her. “As opposed to a fake man?”
His tone must have held more of an edge than he’d intended because her pretty reddish eyebrow shot up. “Did someone not sleep well? Or are you not a morning person?”
“Yes and no. Where are you taking me?”
When she turned in the seat to back up the long driveway, her right hand brushed against his shoulder. The sensation set off a zing of awareness that penetrated his body armor of denial like a hollow-point bullet. Crap. The first time she’d accidentally bumped into him, he’d attributed his response to having been without sex for so long, but after the dream he’d had before dawn…nope. This was bad news. Apparently that college-boy-gotta-get-laid-or-die thing he’d felt for her years before was back. Or maybe it never went away.
Either way he was screwed. He was now her employer.
Script. Focus. The words sounded good, familiar, comforting, even. Then she started telling him about her favorite place on the planet. Her writing spot. And his palms started to sweat and his jeans felt too small.
“The lake is low right now,” she was saying. “We really need rain. I don’t suppose Hollywood could help us with that, huh?”
He shook his head. Script. Focus.
“But the view is very nice. And nobody goes to the spot where I’m taking you.”
Alone. In the woods. On a beautiful morning with the woman of his dreams…who would carve his heart out of his chest with a dull spoon if she knew what he knew.
He clawed at the lever controls on the door to lower the window. The fresh, clean air he liked—still cool and moist—washed over him.
“Do you get car sick?”
Talk about emasculating…He shook his head. “Just absorbing the ambience.” Lame. Even Cooper writes better dialogue. “Tell me the name of the lake again?”
“Pactola. It’s a reservoir.”
“Swimming? Boating? The usual?”
The prompt produced the desired effect—a chamber-of-commerce-worthy spiel about the area. He listened with one part of his brain while reminding himself of how much he and Coop had riding on this. Especially Cooper. His best friend in the world. The brother he should have had.
Shane had worked in Hollywood long enough to know what happened when head writers got involved romantically with members of their staff. Not to mention the fact that only a self-absorbed idiot would begin a relationship on a lie. And if he told her the truth, he’d sure as hell never have a chance with her. Better to savor this time while he had the opportunity, because if he broke his vow to his mother and told her about Adam, that would end any connection they might have made. And he wasn’t sure he could face the rest of his life without some kind of memory to sustain him.
Twenty minutes later they parked in a turnout that seemed made for her car, leaving behind the traffic of the highway. Not that there was a lot by California freeway standards, but they’d passed a steady stream of vacation vehicles, all shapes and sizes.
After a short walk along a barely detectable path that wasn’t wide enough for two, they emerged at a spot that momentarily took his breath away. In the distance a blue jewel of a lake was surrounded by wooded hillsides. The only thing marring the perfection of the image was the several feet of bank exposed by the low water.
But apparently that didn’t keep people away. A dozen boats rocked on ripples supplied by the ever-present breeze and a few active speedboats. Families congregated by the water’s edge with a colorful tapestry of coolers, beach towels and shade tents. Fortunately, he and Jenna were far enough away to avoid the sounds of humanity. Their musical backdrop was the chatter of aspen leaves and bird calls.
“This is gorgeous. To get the clichés out of the way, do you come here often?”
She laughed as she pulled a quilted packing blanket from the backpack she’d been carrying. “A couple of times a week in the off-season. If I’m not subbing at the post office. Sometimes I sit and read. Or write in my journal. Nothing formal. Just scribbles. Observations about what’s happening around me. Mom and I tend to get on each other’s nerves if we’re in the same house for too long, so this is a good break.”
He sloughed off his shoulder strap and sat across from her. “Do you still write poetry?”
She kept her focus on setting out the snacks she’d brought. “A little. Um…You know I don’t have much time. Wedding-dress shopping, remember? We’d better get started.”
He opened his laptop and turned it on. “Shall I show you what little Coop and I sketched out? Then you can give me your gut feelings.”
She folded her legs under her and rocked forward in an interested manner. He could read her curiosity and enthusiasm. It made him feel old and jaded by comparison.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to focus on the premise of the show. “The first episode needs to set up the action. I thought we’d show Cooper someone—we need a new name—and his to-be-determined sidekick sprinkling Coop’s mother’s ashes in the ocean while his secretary—as yet unnamed—delivers the news that he’s broke and a bloodthirsty bookie is out to get him. Coop will probably be in his cups and grief stricken.”
“He’s okay with being portrayed as a boozer?”
“His character will have a lot of room for growth.”<
br />
She threw back her head and laughed. “What a diplomatic way of saying you’re making your best friend into a has-been lush with a mommy complex.”
He chuckled, too. “Maybe that’s why Coop was having trouble getting behind this.”
They looked at each other and a sudden sense of awareness struck them both. Shane knew she felt it, too, because her fair skin suddenly turned pink and she looked at her hands. “What do you suggest?”
She cleared her throat. “Well, I like the idea of starting with the funeral, but what if we made his mother more of a Hollywood icon. A Liz Taylor type who couldn’t bear to have a son more successful than her, so she subtly undermined his career. He might know this and feel a love-hate relationship?”
An image came into his mind. “Instead of a quiet tossing of ashes, there’d be a lavish Hollywood funeral. Maybe cameos from some legends or legend look-alikes.” He hunched over typing furiously. “I like it. A lot. The studio would go nuts promoting it. Brilliant.”
When he glanced up, he saw her blush had intensified.
He opened the screen further and scooted closer to give her a chance to see what he was writing. “Coop does the glad-handing. Exchanges barbs with his ex-wives. Wife?” He looked at Jenna.
Her bare shoulders lifted and fell.
She has great shoulders.
“The more the merrier, I guess,” she said. “Because once he comes to Sentinel Pass, Libby’s friends are going to use all of these social gaffs as fuel to keep Libby and Cooper apart.”
He nodded, impressed by her ability to think ahead. “Good. Coop can help with this dialogue. He has plenty of experience where his exes are concerned.” He typed in the basic setting, a few hints of stage direction: black hearse heads line of expensive cars, limos and Hummers. Luminaries, dignitaries, stars and starlets. Coop stands out, his gofers hovering.
“Coop needs a crew. Sycophants. Users with some marginal job.”
She pursed her lips. “I can see that. They’ll be the ones pulling him back when he tries to move forward, right?”
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