by Lori Wilde
Steve traced a finger over the intricate scroll carvings. “Where’d you get it? This is first-class woodwork.”
Ridley jerked a thumb at Tuck.
Steve’s eyes met Tuck’s. “You did this?”
“I was laid up with a broken ankle.”
“This is amazing. I mean, I knew you were a talented carpenter, but damn, Tuck, you could make a mint off these.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Tuck said.
Ridley wanted to poke him and tell him not to be so modest.
“I’m serious,” Steve said. “I know a guy. Owns a gallery in SoHo. This might not be his thing, but I’m sure he can refer you to someone who would know how to represent it.”
“Hey,” Ridley said to Tuck. “You could have a whole new career.”
“Rid, you mind if I take this back to the city with me? Show it to my guy, see if he’s interested?” Steve asked.
“You better ask Tuck if he’s interested.”
“Well?” Steve arched his eyebrows.
Tuck shrugged. “It’s Ridley’s box.”
Steve looked at Ridley again.
Ridley didn’t want to part with the box, but if Steve could help get Tuck back in the mainstream flow of life, he’d make the sacrifice. “Just make damn sure you get it back to me safe and sound so I can give it to Evie on Christmas.”
“You guys are coming to New York for the holiday, right?”
“I don’t know.” He and Evie hadn’t cemented their Christmas plans.
“That’s what Meredith and Jim are planning. ”
“We’ll play it by ear.”
Steve slapped Tuck on the back. “Damn, man, I still can’t believe how good you are. Mark my words, my friend is going to go ape over this. Looks like the old Manning magic is back.”
“CAN I DO ANYTHING TO HELP?” Jillian offered, feeling like the odd woman out in the kitchen filled with family members.
“You can make the poppy-seed dressing for the spinach salad,” Evie said. “The recipe and the ingredients are on top of the microwave.”
Happy to have a chore, she moved purposefully to the microwave and started making the poppy-seed dressing, only to become aware that Grandmother Fairfield was staring at her.
“So you’re Tuck’s roommate, huh?” the old lady asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gran snorted. “Roommates,” she muttered. “In my day, we called it shacking up.”
“Mrs. Fairfield,” Jillian rushed to assure her. “Tuck and I really are just roommates and friends.”
“Hmph,” Gran said. “Who you trying to kid? I see the way he’s looking at you.”
Her comments startled Jillian. How did Tuck look at her? Had his grandmother already picked up on the sexual chemistry between them? To distract herself, she took the cap off the white-wine vinegar. “I can assure you our relationship is strictly platonic.”
“Maybe for now …”
“Mom,” Tuck’s mother thankfully intervened, “would you like me to escort you to the table? Evie’s just about ready to serve dinner.”
“Sorry about Gran,” Evie whispered as her mother took her grandmother into the other room. “She’s got strong opinions.”
“I understand,” Jillian said, and busied herself with adding sugar and poppy seeds to the white-wine vinegar.
A few minutes later, everyone was seated at the table while Tuck’s father said grace over their meal. Afterward, everyone dove in and started passing plates around the table. It was a warm and friendly atmosphere until Gran, who was eyeing Jillian from across the Thanksgiving spread, said, “You’re nothing like Aimee, nothing at all.”
“Mother!” Tuck’s mom scolded, while several other people chided, “Gran!”
“Well, she’s not.”
Tuck reached for Jillian’s hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. She was amazed at what that one gesture did to her heart.
“When are you and Ridley going to give us some grandbabies?” Meredith asked Evie, taking Jillian out of the hot seat and putting Tuck’s sister squarely in it.
“We’re working on it, Mom.”
“You’re thirty-five and the clock is ticking.”
“We know, we know.” Evie’s smile was tight, strained.
Jillian immediately felt sorry for her and guessed that she hadn’t told her family about her infertility issues.
“What’s the problem?” Gran narrowed her eyes at Ridley. “You shootin’ blanks?”
“Gran!” the entire room exclaimed.
“Everyone else tiptoes around the truth. I just call ’em like I see ’em. I’m eighty-five. I don’t have the time or patience for hem-hawing.”
“The turkey is delicious, Evie,” Jillian said.
“Hem-hawer,” Gran accused.
Jillian met the older woman’s gaze. “You don’t want me to hem-haw. Okay, I’m calling it like I see it. You’re a rude old lady.”
The entire collective gasped.
“Nope.” Gran grinned mischievously. “She’s not a thing like that goodie-two-shoes Aimee. So what’s the deal between you two?” She wagged a wrinkled finger between Tuck and Jillian. “Is it true love or just sex?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, Mrs. Fairfield, but I’m not having sex with your grandson.”
“Must be true love, then.”
“I don’t believe in the concept of true love.”
“You don’t believe in true love?” Gran stared at Jillian as if she’d stepped off a spaceship from another planet.
Everyone else at the table was gaping at her as well.
“I think the concept of destined love is a myth perpetuated by fairy tales and greeting cards.”
“Then stay far away from my grandson, missy. He’s been kicked around by life enough in his short time on earth. He doesn’t need to go falling for a woman who doesn’t believe in true love.”
“Well, if believing in true love makes a person as cranky and bitter as you are, then I’m happy to do without it,” Jillian said.
The entire roomful of people fell silent, including the kids. Everyone looked at one another. Suddenly Jillian realized how rude she’d sounded.
Dear God, what had she done? What had she said? Why had she said it? She had no idea how to maneuver in a family. She had no right to be here. Chagrined, Jillian pulled her hand from Tuck’s, jumped up from the table, grabbed her coat off the rack by the door, and ran outside as fast as her legs could carry her.
HUMILIATION TIGHTENED JILLIAN’S FACE. She was a horrible, horrible person. Baiting an old lady.
She stood in Evie and Ridley’s backyard, staring at the snow-covered mountains, breathing hard and trying to calm her racing heart. She could see the ski lodge from here. Thunder Mountain was a sprawling winter tourist destination, not far from Salvation as the crow flies, but a thousand miles difference in tone and flavor. Salvation did not possess the ubiquitous overpriced mountain gear shops or celebrity-owned boutiques or chain restaurants or sprawling condo expansions or new-age healing centers that had sprung up around the resort.
Jillian caught a glimpse of Tuck from her peripheral vision as he followed her out the back door. He stood behind her, two thermoses clasped in his gloved hands. She couldn’t look at him.
She heard the snow crunch under his boots as he walked toward her, and she could feel the heat of his gaze stinging the back of her neck. She cringed at what he must be thinking of her right now.
The smell of Thanksgiving hung in the air, smoked turkeys and roasted chestnuts and cranberry sauce. Cornbread stuffing and green-bean casserole and glazed carrots. It smelled like home. It smelled like family. And it was more than clear that she didn’t belong.
She thought about the way Tuck’s family had looked at her, and she’d just known what they were thinking. You can’t replace Aimee. What is this woman doing here? She’s not one of us.
Jillian had never belonged.
Not with her mother. Not with
her father and her stepfamily. Honestly, not even with her friends Delaney, Tish, and Rachael. Even with them, she’d held herself in reserve, never really fully letting down her guard. The only person she’d ever allowed herself to have a strong emotional connection with was Blake, and that was simply because he’d been as lonely as she was.
Jillian had thought she kept up her guard to protect herself from getting hurt. What she now realized was that she’d never let people in because she was afraid that if they knew who she really was deep down inside, they wouldn’t want anything to do with her. She felt like such a fraud, dressed in festive clothes, pretending to be someone she was not. Pretending to be the kind of woman who could successfully navigate holiday family gatherings and be accepted.
What did Tuck see in her? Why did he want to be her friend?
“Jilly?” he murmured.
She turned. He extended a thermos toward her. A lump of emotion knotted her throat.
“Coffee. Black as pitch just the way you like it.”
She took the warm thermos, clutched it in her hands, dipped her head, unable to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved in there. I don’t know what came over me. I can’t imagine what your family must think of me … um … coming unhinged like that. I truly am sorry. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Jillian.” Her name on his lips was a gentle reprimand. “Look at me.”
She tilted her chin up and met his warm, unwavering gaze.
“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. For one thing, Gran had it coming. For another thing, you’re as entitled to your opinion as anyone in that room. If anything, I’m ashamed of the way they behaved. I hope you’ll forgive them. Normally they’re really not like that. They’re just all worried about me—”
“I know, I know. You lost the love of your life, but I feel sorry for whoever you end up marrying, Tuck, because she’ll never be able to live up to the sainted Aimee.”
Silence fell.
Jillian remembered the day of their first fight. It had been about Aimee. She gulped. “Tuck, I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right,” he said, twisting open the top of his thermos and taking a sip. “Aimee wasn’t perfect. She had her faults. It’s easy to forget now that she’s gone.”
Jillian followed his lead and took a sip of her own. She hardly dared believe he was able to talk about Aimee without getting defensive. “Is it terrible of me to want to hear what her faults were?”
“Not terrible at all.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his soulful whiskey eyes. “Simply human. Okay, here goes. Aimee stole the covers at night. I’d end up shivering on one side of the bed, and she’d have the blankets heaped on top of her and tumbling off over on the other side to the floor.”
“A real blanket hog, huh?”
“And she had the most irritating habit of chomping the ice in her drink. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Drove me around the bend.”
“Ice-chomping blanket hog. How did you stay out of divorce court?” Jillian dared to tease.
“And Aimee had this way of laughing that ended in a snorting sound. I thought it was cute when we were dating, but after a couple of years, it got a little annoying.”
“You loved her terribly, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I did. But she’s gone and I’m still here, and I gotta find a way to live with it. I don’t want the next woman I marry to feel as if she has to compete with Aimee’s memory.”
“You’re right. Whoever this woman is, she deserves all of you, Tuck, and I say this from my heart as your friend. You deserve to love again without fear of being hurt. Life hurts but you shouldn’t avoid living to keep from feeling pain. For one thing, it doesn’t work.”
“No?” He never looked away, never even blinked.
“Hurt and pain will always find you. And secondly …”
“Yeah?”
“You gotta have the pain in order to appreciate the pleasure and the joy life has to offer. Life is filled with contrasts for a reason. Hate and love. Shadows and light. On and off. Up and down. It’s the paradox of a dual universe.”
“And you say you’re not spiritual? You’re sounding a lot like Deepak Chopra to me.”
“Okay, so I’ve done some reading, some spiritual exploration.”
“So what’s your excuse, Jillian? Why aren’t you out there doing the carpe diem thing when it comes to dating, romance, and love?”
“Because,” she said, finally admitting it to herself as she admitted it to him. “I’ve been living so long in the shadows that I’ve lost the ability to see the light. I don’t want you to get lost in the darkness, Tuck. I care about you too much to let that happen.”
“You …” The expression in his eyes flared, but she couldn’t really read the emotion there. “You care about me?”
“Of course I care about you. We’re friends, right?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Friends.”
“Friends,” she echoed.
“And you don’t believe in true love.”
She shook her head.
He nodded. “So if we’re friends, how about going skiing with me on Saturday at Thunder Mountain?”
“Um …” Did she want to go?
“Friends have fun together. Correct?”
“I suppose they do.”
“Then let’s go have some fun. Just you and me.”
“You sure your ankle is up to it?”
“It’s been seven weeks since I broke it. No better time to find out what shape I’m really in.”
The back door opened at that moment, and Evie came out on the steps, coatless, arms wrapped around her, turkey apron still tied at her waist. She was shivering against the wind. “Come inside, you guys. It’s time for pie.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I love the way Jillian lit into your grandmother.” Ridley chuckled to Evie once all the guests were gone and they were cleaning up the kitchen together. Ridley was washing the dishes, Evie drying them. “The old gal has been allowed to run roughshod over your family for too long.”
“I was mortified.”
“For Jillian?”
“For you.”
“For me?” He cast a glance at her. “What for?”
“That shooting-blanks comment.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“Yeah.” Evie blew out her breath. “I’m the one with the problem.”
“It’s not a problem. We’ve only been trying for a year. We’ll get there, honey. You’re just putting too much pressure on yourself.”
Evie didn’t answer and instead industriously dried one of the turkey platters Ridley had just handed to her. She wished she shared his optimism. But she was going on thirty-six. Already, the days of her viable eggs were numbered.
“Jillian is one fiery pistol.” Ridley chuckled. “I just wonder how much longer she and Tuck can keep this platonic relationship going.”
“Speaking of fiery pistols …” Evie tossed the cup towel aside and snaked her arms around Ridley’s waist, babies burning on her brain. “What do you say we leave the dishes until tomorrow and call it a night?” She stood on tiptoes to take his earlobe between her teeth.
“Come on, honey.” He loosened her arms. “I’m exhausted, and we’ve both got to get up early in the morning. We can go one night without sex.”
“But I’m ovulating.”
“We did it last night and twice the day before.”
“Excuse me. I didn’t realize having sex with me had become such a chore for you.” She turned away.
“Evie …” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back toward him. “Don’t get mad.”
“Ridley, you just don’t seem to grasp how important this is to me.”
“And you don’t seem to realize all the pressure you’re putting on me to perform. I’m only human. It’s taking all the fun out of our lovemaking.”
“You want me to relax?”
“I do.”
Ridley exhaled in exasperation. “I’ve told you before that a vision quest is not the answer for you.”
“I think you’re being mean not letting me do this.”
“And I think you’re being unrealistic.”
“Tuck had a vision of Jillian and now here she is. That’s pretty powerful mojo.”
“Exactly. It’s not something you mess around with if you’re unprepared for it.”
“I’m your wife. Don’t you love me?”
“Of course I love you. That’s precisely the reason I don’t want you to do it.”
Evie yanked away from him in frustration. Why was he so adamant she not go on a vision quest? Why was he denying her this peek into the future?
“Hey, hey.” He chased after her. “Come here.”
“What?”
His arms went around her, and he lowered his head to kiss her. Evie didn’t kiss him back.
“You forget all about the vision quest and I’ll make love to you every night until you get pregnant. How’s that?”
Evie looked into the dark eyes of the man she loved more than life itself. “Okay, all right, but tonight, I get to be on top. I heard it increases your chances of having a boy.”
THE SNOW AT THE TOP of Thunder Mountain on Saturday morning was the finest skiing powder Jillian had ever seen. The day was perfect. Sun shining, no wind to speak of. The slopes smooth and tightly packed.
Below them on the black-diamond trails, expert skiers maneuvered over moguls, jumping and swishing in their colorful ski attire. A small flotilla of novice skiers followed an instructor down one of the easier, green-circle trails. And at the very bottom of the mountain, they could see the raw beginners snowplowing madly on the bunny slope. To their left, the ski lift deposited a new round of skiers and then circled back down for more.
Jillian wriggled her fingers into her ski gloves. We’re just here to have fun, she kept telling herself. It’s nothing more than that. Not a date. Two friends out enjoying the mountain.
“I’m tired of being a gaper. I’m ready for the milk run. Race you to the base.” Tuck grinned and pulled his ski goggles down over his eyes. “Last one down buys lunch.”