Betty walked back out to the hall and opened the door to the dining room. “Nicki! Look who’s here,” she said, releasing a furry dynamo of brown and gold and white from captivity.
A Shetland collie—a miniature Lassie—came barreling into the room, leaping and barking.
“Lucy? Lucy’s here? She’s alive?” Nicki jumped off the couch, stumbling over the girls in her path as she ran to meet the Sheltie. She dropped to the floor, clutching the dog to her with all her might, laughing and crying as Lucy covered her face with kisses.
“Look, Uncle Bryan! Oh, look! Lucy’s alive!”
Bryan’s throat was thick as he hunkered down beside his niece. He scratched the excited dog behind her ears, a little surprised by just how glad he was to see Lucy again. He and Nicki had conspired to get the dog for Tom and Lori for Christmas three years before.
“A farmer found her about five miles out of town,” Betty said. “She was dehydrated, but not hurt. He put notices up, but everybody was too busy taking care of things after the tornado to pay much attention. Then last week, Sally and I were driving by the farmer’s house, and Sally saw her. We stopped and called her name, and sure enough it was Lucy.”
Nicki’s gaze was glued to the dog, her fingers stroking her pet as she listened. Suddenly she froze, squeezing the little dog so tightly Lucy squirmed to escape. “We can keep her, can’t we, Uncle Bryan? We’re gonna take her home with us, right?” she asked, her young face filled with fear.
“Of course, Nick. Happy birthday, honey.”
“Oh, Uncle Bryan, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She got up and threw her arms around Bryan’s neck, tears streaming down her cheeks. But for once, Bryan knew, they were happy tears.
His eyes met Betty’s over Nicki’s shoulder. She was crying, too, but she was also smiling. She gave Bryan a thumbs-up.
“Okay, who wants cake?” she asked a couple of minutes later. The girls were crowded around Nicki again.
“We do!” Ten girls screamed their approval. One sat oblivious, hugging her dog in the middle of the floor.
NICKI SLEPT most of the way home with Lucy nestled in her lap. The dog was obviously as happy to be reunited with Nicki as Nicki was to have her. Bryan breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d been afraid seeing Lucy would make Nicki lonelier for her parents. He’d even gone so far as to think she might refuse to have anything to do with the dog. He’d never given any thought to his own reaction. He’d certainly never expected to find that he’d have any affection for the animal.
Fancy that. Bryan Chambers, bachelor extraordinaire, comforted by a family dog.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JENNIFER HAD SPENT The Day as she always had— trying to forget. She hadn’t heard from Bryan all weekend and she’d missed him. A lot. Now it was Monday, and she stood in the service drive at Teal Pontiac waiting for him, nervous and worried about the upcoming filming and trying not to show it. And he was late.
“You’ve done it again, Jennifer. One Price Selling has only been in place for a couple of weeks, and already there’s a noticeable increase in sales volume,” Ralph Goodwin said from beside her. She hadn’t even realized the general manager had joined her.
“It’s still too early to really judge, but thanks for the vote of confidence.” She’d noticed the increase herself; she’d been monitoring sales reports daily since the first commercial had hit the air two weeks before. But she was too cautious to get her hopes up yet. Advertising in general usually brought in increased business at first.
Ralph rested his elbow on his other arm, his hand under his chin. “The place is buzzing with positive feedback. The general consensus seems to be that customers are fully embracing the idea of being able to buy a car without the pressure of haggling for it.”
Where’s Bryan? The film crew’s already in the showroom. “How about your sales staff? They giving you any trouble?”
“A little. Not a lot. We’ve had an occasion or two when a customer wouldn’t buy a car unless he could dicker, not believing, of course, that we wouldn’t dicker when push came to shove. When we wouldn’t, the customer walked. There’s a little grumbling each time it happens.”
“But the numbers the guys’ll gain in the long run when people understand we mean what we say will be well worth the loss of a sale or two.”
“I know. It’s just a hard concept for salespeople to swallow—letting a deal walk out the door. But none of them are quitting yet. I’d even go so far as to say that the majority are happier. We’ve taken away a lot of the negative pressure of the job by giving them a good product and reliable service to sell, rather than price.”
Jennifer nodded. It still sounded right to her. It could work. It had to work.
She saw a familiar vehicle pull onto the lot. Bryan. Finally.
She walked over to meet him as he hopped down from the Jeep.
His gaze sought hers immediately. “How’re you doing?” It wasn’t an idle question.
Okay, now that you’re here. “Better than I expected.” He looked great. He was wearing lightweight cotton pants today, instead of jeans, and a polo shirt. The short sides of his hair were windblown, but the back was in its usual ponytail.
He studied her. “I thought you might dress a little more casually today, since we’re going for kid appeal,” he said, walking with her toward the showroom.
“I just felt more comfortable this way. Besides, suits are my image. I’ve worn them for every commercial I’ve ever done. I was afraid the whole thing would look fake if I wore something different now.”
Bryan conceded the point. “I like your hair,” he said.
It was up in its usual twist, but she’d added a couple of gold-and-black clips that matched the buttons on her suit. “Thanks.”
He looked over at her again, his sexy brown eyes warm, approving. “I’d like to see it down even more.”
Jennifer felt his regard all the way down to her toes, although she’d been telling herself all weekend to forget him. She’d decided he obviously wasn’t interested in her—not as a woman. In all the times they’d been together, he’d only kissed her once. That time in her office. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t had the opportunity.
But when he looked at her like that…
“Hey, boss, we’re ready to start whenever you give us the go-ahead,” Jake Landers said as she and Bryan walked into the showroom. Bryan stopped to have a few words with him.
Jennifer continued on into the showroom, her gaze immediately seeking out the little boy standing with his. mother by the electric red Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Coupe. About four feet tall, blond and dressed in shorts and a Hawks T-shirt, he looked harmless enough. So why did her stomach suddenly feel as if she was going off to war?
“Ready, Jen?” Bryan said, crossing to her. Nobody but Tanya and Dennis had ever called her Jen. She liked the sound of it coming from Bryan.
“Ready,” she said, smiling at him. As ready as she’d ever be, at least.
“Okay, you remember Bob McKinney and Jake Landers, don’t you?” he asked, leading her over to the two men.
She smiled and reached out to shake their hands. “Of course. How are you, gentlemen?” She’d liked them the last time they’d worked together. She’d liked the films they’d turned out, too.
“Just fine, ma’am,” Jake said for both of them. “If we can have you right over here, we’ll get this show on the road.”
With one last look at Bryan, Jennifer put herself in the hands of his crew.
The morning wasn’t too bad. Jennifer found that if she kept her own counsel, watching the proceedings from the side except when she said her lines, making this commercial was no different than any of the other ones she’d done. The little boy, in spite of his youth, was a professional. She wasn’t expected to entertain him, or even watch out for him. He had his mother there to do that. And she didn’t have to make him like her—Bryan’s lines took care of that.
She’d been convincing her staff of ov
er six hundred employees about the merits of One Price Selling for weeks. And she believed in it herself. So the part she was playing, explaining One Price to the boy’s mother, felt almost natural to her. Answering his questions, in slightly less formal terms, was simply a matter of reciting the lines Bryan had written. By the end of the morning, when Jake and Bob were finally satisfied they had enough on tape, she was feeling pretty relaxed. The next few days might not be so bad, after all.
“It was nice meeting you, Ms. Teal,” the boy said as he and his mother were leaving. It was the first time he’d spoken to her apart from the scripted lines.
“It was nice meeting you, too, Taylor. You’re pretty good at what you do, you know.” Jennifer was glad to have a chance to tell him. She’d been impressed, and she always made it a point to offer praise for a job well-done.
The little boy smiled and blushed. “Thanks. You’re not so bad, either. And I love your cars.”
If he were old enough to drive, she would probably have given him one. Jennifer continued with her goodbyes, all the while hearing Taylor’s words ringing in her ears. You’re not so bad, either. She could have hugged him right there on the showroom floor.
Tuesday, at Teal Hyundai, was even easier than Monday. There were two kids, a boy and a girl posing as brother and sister, and all Jennifer had to do was walk up while their parents were busy working out the financing, smile at them, offer them a Teal Automotive coloring book and walk away. A voice-over introduced One Price Selling, pointing out that the bank’s financing paperwork was the only time-consuming part of buying a car at any of the Teal Automotive dealerships.
They ran through the take half a dozen times, and each time, Jennifer smiled at the children, and each time, they smiled back. She knew they’d been told to, that their smiles were written into the script, but they made her feel good, anyway.
They were about halfway through the shoot when the little girl came over and stood in front of Jennifer. “I love your earrings,” she said. “My diary has hearts on it and so does my jewelry box.”
Jennifer’s fingers went automatically to the heart-shaped gold studs in her ears. She’d forgotten she’d put them on. “Thank you,” she said, smiling at the child.
“Ready to roll,” Jake called, putting an end to the impromptu conversation before Jennifer could worry about finding something to say about diaries or toy jewelry boxes. It was back to the safety of rehearsed lines and staged smiles.
But the little girl smiled at Jennifer when she came over to tell her goodbye, and that wasn’t rehearsed at all.
“What were you so worried about?” Bryan asked her as they walked out to their cars afterward. He was smiling at her, too, and her heart beat faster.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure at the moment, but let’s get through tomorrow before we celebrate.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be the easiest of all. You put a baby in a built-in car seat and you’re done.”
Jennifer knew that. It was the thought of picking up the baby to begin with that was keeping her up at night. Tanya’s pregnancy had shown her how much she’d been fooling herself all these years. And she hadn’t held a baby since…
She didn’t want to think about that now. “Are you and Calvin still going over things?” she asked. He’d had to rush away the day before to meet with his partner.
“Yeah, but we got a lot done. He came to the house last night, too. One more afternoon and we should just about have it wrapped up. I’m looking forward to a little time off, I can tell you. It’s been two weeks since I’ve been up in the air.”
They reached her car. She unlocked the door, but didn’t immediately climb inside. “Speaking of time off, how’d last Friday go?” she asked. She couldn’t help but wonder about the personal business that had taken him back to his hometown. It had dawned on her that while he demanded she open up to him, there were parts of his life about which she knew nothing. She didn’t even know where he lived.
His expression grew solemn. “Better than I expected.”
“You were expecting a bad time?” she asked. She hadn’t thought of that when she’d tormented herself with visions of what he might have been doing. Like seeing an old flame—or a current one.
He looked at her, as if searching for something, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Do you remember the tornado that ran through northern Georgia this time last year?”
“Of course.” That part of the state had been declared a national disaster area. She’d donated heavily to the cleanup cause herself. And then it hit her.
“Shallowbrook was right in its path. It was one of the towns worst hit, wasn’t it?”
He swallowed, looking out over the top of her car, and nodded. She felt a sickening sense of dread even before he spoke.
“I lost most of my family in the blink of an eye.” He sounded as if he still couldn’t quite believe it.
Jennifer reached out to him, uncaring for once of who she was, of where they were. She cupped his jaw with her palm. “I’m so sorry, Bryan.” There was nothing else she could say.
“I was driving up when the storm hit. There was a family party at my parents’ house. Everyone was there—my sister and her husband, cousins, aunts and uncles. I was two hours late and so…” He didn’t have to explain any further. She could only imagine the hell he was revisiting.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again, her eyes filling with tears.
He looked down at her, taking her shoulders in his hands as if touching her somehow grounded him in the present, away from visions of the past. “Thanks,” he said, looking at his hands on her shoulders, then letting go of her all of a sudden, as if he’d only just realized his hands were there.
“So it wasn’t as bad going back as you’d thought it would be?” she asked.
“I’ve been back many times, and it’s always hard. But a friend of mine had found something she thought I’d want. I wasn’t so sure until I got there, but she was right.”
Curious, Jennifer asked, “What was it?”
“My sister’s dog. The damn thing had been wandering around for several days after the tornado, and this farmer found her and took her in.” He went on to tell her how Betty and her daughter happened on the Sheltie, took the animal home and called him right away.
“Did the dog remember you?”
“Oh, yeah, she remembered all right. She’s been underfoot ever since.”
Jennifer smiled. “So you brought her back with you?” she asked, liking the picture of this big, strong, free-spirited man driving home with a dog in his lap.
“Yeah. She’s at home. She’s part of the reason Calvin and I didn’t finish last night. We took her out back for a game of ball that lasted longer than it should have.”
“I’m glad you have her,” Jennifer said. It made her feel better for him to know that he had at least a small piece of the family he’d lost.
“Me, too.” He was smiling again.
Jennifer was perfectly content to bask in that smile.
BRYAN STOPPED HOME after he left Teal Hyundai. Nicki had still been asleep when he’d left that morning, and he didn’t like not having shared breakfast with her before he went off to work.
She was still sleeping when he got home shortly before lunchtime, but she’d moved from her bed to the living-room couch, probably because she’d had to get up to let Lucy out back. Bryan frowned as he looked down at his sleeping niece. She’d been asleep yesterday afternoon when he’d called from the office, too.
Lucy was jumping up on his leg, and he reached down with one hand to grab the dog into his arms. “What are we going to do with her; Lucy my girl?” he asked, scratching the dog behind the ears. He was rewarded by a lick on his chin. He laughed.
Nicki sat up suddenly, disoriented. She pushed the hair out of her face. “Uncle Bryan?” she said when she saw him. “Why are you home? Is it dinnertime already?”
“No. It’s not quite lunchtime,” he said. He was worried about her, sure that
sleeping through summer vacation was not healthy.
She rubbed her eyes. “Then how come you’re here?” she asked, yawning. And then she stopped midyawn to stare at him.
“Did you find her? Is that it?” She studied his face. “Is it bad?” she whispered, looking frightened again.
He hated that look.
“I didn’t find her yet, Nick. I just stopped in to take you to lunch,” he improvised. He’d give her a reason to stay awake if he had to, give her hundreds of them. She wasn’t going to break down on him. He dropped the dog to the floor.
“You didn’t have to,” she said, scooping Lucy up and burying her face in the thick fur.
“I know, Nick.” Lord, he was tired of not reaching her. She’d looked so excited when she’d thought he had news. But her answers might not lie in finding her birth mother. He had to help her find the will to live within herself.
She looked at him as if waiting for something.
“Go on. Get some clothes on. We’re going to the Burger Barn. And bring a swimsuit.” To hell with Calvin and Innovative Advertising. He was taking Nicki to Splashtown. Even she couldn’t sleep through an afternoon at the water park.
He called his partner and arranged to meet him later that evening. Calvin’s family had stayed at the beach for an extra week, so Calvin didn’t mind working another evening. Bryan didn’t mind, either. The busier he stayed, the less time he had to think.
BRYAN DROVE to Teal Ford bright and early Wednesday morning. He’d finished filling Calvin in on the projects at hand and had cleared his schedule for the day. As soon as they wrapped up the filming, he was going to have a talk with Jennifer. He couldn’t go on this way any longer. He wanted the woman so badly he went to bed aching at night, and his dreams were filled with fantasies so wild even he couldn’t believe his subconscious had conjured them up.
She wanted him, too. He’d read it in her eyes. He’d known it the night of the Boston concert. If he’d gone into her apartment then, they would have made love.
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