The fiery confrontation in her eyes hitched up a notch. So this was Sienna the businesswoman. Paternal protectiveness unfurled in Jack’s gut.
“Look,” he said, mimicking her violent assault on the lasagna, “all I’m saying is I don’t want the twins exposed to something they shouldn’t be.”
“Do you really think I’m the type of person who runs a place for cheap thrills and dirty magazines? It’s a respected establishment. I wouldn’t want those girls upset any more than you…What’s wrong?”
Jack had taken his first mouthful of lasagna and all thought momentarily froze. Holy mother of God. It tasted like Italy. Smooth pasta, rich sauce, thick chunks of braised mince steak…When he looked back at Sienna, anger had given way to triumph in her eyes. Her mouth twitched at the corner.
“Good?” she asked.
He swallowed. “Nice try.”
Though her smile would knock a lesser man off his stride, Jack stabbed his fork in for a second bite. So what if she could cook the best damn lasagna he’d ever tasted? It didn’t mean she was an Italian chef. And it didn’t mean she could open her shop next to his girls’ home. Nothing would weaken his resolve…until he took another bite. Goddamn.
Sienna interrupted his internal battle. “I’m giving a service my customers want and love. Just because you’re wound tighter than a thong strap around a dildo does not give you the right—”
Jack coughed against the food sliding down his throat. “See? I cannot believe you just said that. The girls could walk in here any minute.”
She glanced toward the door and back again. “And what? Do you think they even know what either of those things are? Just stop stalling and tell me what this is really about. Otherwise, we have nothing else to discuss. I need my business. It’s not just about the money. It’s part of who I am. Your turn.”
She might as well have thrown a gauntlet down between them. Putting down his utensils, Jack picked up some garlic bread and tore it in half.
“Fine. My ex-wife shoved as much bare skin, fun, and frolics of that kind down my daughters’ throats to last them a lifetime. They don’t need any more.”
“Then I promise not to add any more to their misfortune.”
He narrowed his eyes. “How can you say that? That’s what your business is all about.”
“The fact is, you haven’t told me anything to change my mind, but I’ll make sure nothing happens outside these four walls. If any of my clients are filled with the urge to wear a negligee home on the number forty-nine bus or wave their tasseled nipples around as they walk down the driveway, I’ll ban them. How’s that?”
Jack’s heart beat hard. She deserved more explanation, but he couldn’t give it to her. Not yet. Not the gut-splitting regret he harbored, not the raw anger that lingered deep inside.
“Look, I need a guarantee from you that nothing is going to happen that could cause concern for the welfare of my kids.”
“Are you serious? Their welfare, Jack? It’s a shop, not a brothel.”
He took a voracious bite of his garlic bread and ground it between his teeth, stalling. This was madness. He had to give her something.
Swallowing his pride with his bread, he at last admitted, “I loved their mother once.”
Sienna stopped chewing as the teasing in her eyes slipped to something like empathy. No, interest.
“I can’t imagine anything less from you, Jack Beaton. You strike me as a man who’d only makes babies with a woman he loves.”
Jack pushed the lasagna around as nerves leapt in his gut. “We were happy. We did a lot of things together. Met when we were young and fit like two pieces of a puzzle.”
“So, what happened?”
“I worked. A lot.”
“Doing what?”
He looked up. “I’m a journalist.”
“A journalist? Here in Potterford?” She visibly paled.
“Is that a problem?”
“That depends on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you going to use your job to cause me trouble?”
Shame crept through Jack’s veins. The idea to write something disparaging about Sienna’s shop had occurred to him the night she’d told him about it—but then promptly disappeared once she’d caught him asking questions behind her back.
He shook his head. “No. I won’t do that.”
“Do I have your word?”
Who could blame her for not trusting him? He nodded. “I’m a respected journalist, not a tabloid vulture. I won’t use the paper as a way of scoring points.”
She dropped her shoulders and popped another forkful of lasagna into her mouth. Jack fixated on the way she chewed, the way it moved the skin at her throat and all the way down to her collarbones…
“You’re staring, Jack,” Sienna said without even looking up.
He glared at the board of garlic bread and tore off another chunk.
“Anyway,” he continued, “to cut a long story short with regard to my marriage, the expanding cracks split wide open when the twins were born. I was barely home, and Martina grew discontent with her new stay-at-home role. She resented me and undoubtedly the girls by their first birthday.” He lifted his glass and took a drink of wine, his mouth too desert-dry to eat bread without it. “Her first…indiscretion woke me up. Number two was the falling ax.”
“She had affairs?”
“One-night stands. Not affairs. Martina doesn’t do ‘domestic or emotion or responsibility.’ Her words, not mine.”
Sienna looked to her plate and murmured, “Slut.” After a second, she met his eyes and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Only the sound of the TV broke the silence that fell around them, yet Jack smiled back in reassurance. “I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a mug. If Martina thought I’d hang around while she made up her mind whether she wanted to be a wife and mother, she was wrong.”
“So you filed for divorce?”
He nodded. “After I found her in bed with some faceless stranger while Holly and Katy slept in the next room.”
Another silence.
Jack exhaled a shaky breath. “That’s not even the half of what finally drove us to move here, but…well, anyway, now do you understand why I’m concerned about your shop next door? Why I want that sort of stuff as far away from my kids as possible?”
Sienna placed her knife and fork on her plate, side by side with perfect regimented precision before lifting her wineglass. Holding it with both hands, she carefully watched him. “No, actually, I don’t.”
Jack’s head thumped with the start of a headache. He’d just told her some, though not all, aspects of his failed marriage, yet it hadn’t done him a damn bit of good. Fine. Then she could bring on the battle, because he wasn’t willing to tell her any more.
Sienna drank and stared straight into his eyes. “I get why you’d want to be rid of a woman like that,” she continued when he didn’t speak, “but not why the business, which you clearly don’t understand at all, frightens the hell out of you.”
“I told you. My girls—”
“Jack?”
“What?”
“This is not about your girls.”
Frustration churned in his stomach. Hot and sticky. Clinging to his insides and coating them with self-defense or the safer option to get the hell out of her house and just walk away. He pushed to his feet, the chair legs scraping sharply against the tiled floor.
“I think I’d better go.”
“Sit down.”
“No. I’m sorry to walk out after your feeding us and everything, but you can’t do this, Sienna. You can’t sit there mocking me when my ex-wife messed up our entire lives. You can’t—”
“She didn’t.”
His heart pounded. Her face was pinched red, but her eyes were alight with what looked so much like understanding that Jack didn’t know where to look. He tipped his head back. The ceiling showed white and empty. No answer up there either.
> “I don’t know how you can say that,” he said.
“Jack, look at me.”
Clenching his jaw, he dropped his chin.
“She gave you an opportunity. She gave you a reason to move here. To this beautiful English market town where the girls can grow up without their lungs being blocked with London smog. She made you slow down, move away, spend more time with Holly and Katy. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see what is right in front of your face?”
His heart beat with the partial truth of what she’d said, but what did she know about it? What did she know about marriage? Children?
“Sounds nice.”
She frowned. “What does?”
“Your idea of life. The whole naïve notion things are sent to try us. That we should grab opportunities as they present themselves. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“Don’t mock me. I know what I’m talking about. You haven’t the monopoly on wanting to protect people, you know. The trouble is, you have no idea what your kids need protecting from.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, because if you did, you’d know there’s no way in hell I would ever hurt another person, let alone Holly and Katy.” Her shoulders stiffened. “Do you know what? If you feel like that, you can turn around and leave.”
“I didn’t want it to come to this.”
“No? Well, you could’ve fooled me.”
Staring at her bent head as she looked at her plate, Jack fought the overwhelming need to go to her, to apologize, to say…something.
“Goddammit.” He whirled around and left the kitchen. Holly and Katy never said a word as he took their hands and led them from the house.
Chapter Eight
SIENNA LET HERSELF INTO THE SHOP at eight a.m. the next day, her eyes itchy and her mood tetchy after a restless night’s sleep. Jack had left her house under a storm cloud, Holly and Katy jogging along either side of him, trying to keep up with his long strides as he’d marched down the driveway. Sienna had let him go without even saying goodbye.
There was no getting through to the man. That much was clear. He was fooling himself that his issue over the shop was about his kids, and as far as Sienna was now concerned, that was fine. He could get on with it. She had enough on her plate without dealing with someone who didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. She’d called and double-checked with Kelsey about the legalities of switching shop locations, and all had been confirmed: there was nothing Jack could do. So that part was simple.
But the damn threat of legal action wasn’t the reason she’d watched the changing light pass over her bedroom ceiling until three o’clock that morning…
It was how Jack already affected her, within only two weeks of knowing him. The innate need she had to make him smile. How the breadth of that smile took her damn breath away.
And the look she’d recognized in those ridiculously blue eyes of his that made her feel like crap.
Fear.
That’s what had kept her tossing and turning all night. But it had been during the slowly passing hours of the night, when her thoughts of Jack had turned from disdain to pornographic, that Sienna had leapt out of bed and gotten busy. Jack was the enemy. She refused to spend any more time thinking about his eyes, his damn hair, or his stupid three-foot-wide shoulders.
Yet what really burrowed deep through her concrete walls of resistance was the way he constantly touched Holly and Katy’s hair or picked them up and hugged them close. Continual, unconscious, yet sincere gestures that knocked at her heart. His concern for his children was way past what she’d seen in other parents; he seemed to walk around under a perpetual cloud of guilt.
And she wanted to know why.
Sienna’s hands shook, and she clamped them together. She liked Jack. A lot. He had the potential to distract her from her mother, her friends, the people who relied on her. Something nobody had done since her father had been killed. He made her want to be with him—constantly. But if she got involved and anything was to happen to him…
Life was not kind, no matter how much other people tried to convince her otherwise. Bad things happened to good people. And the fear of loving and losing someone again resided like a slumbering animal inside her. Jack had woken that animal, and it now paced back and forth, contemplating the half-open gate and whether it should step out into the wilderness.
God, she didn’t want to feel this way.
“And I won’t. Whatever it is I’m feeling isn’t real. No, it isn’t. No, it isn’t.”
She walked farther into the shop, switching on lights and making the glossy black floorboards gleam. When the red-and-white-striped walls flickered into bright and forthright flamboyance, Sienna frowned. The decoration didn’t appear as cheeky, sexy, and fun as it had the previous two years. It looked garish and cheap. No prizes for guessing who’d made it feel that way.
Walking behind the counter, she took a large notebook out of her bag and tried to focus on things other than Jack Bloody Beaton. Which shouldn’t have been a problem because she wasn’t getting involved with him. Eventually, the pain in his eyes would leave her memory—she hoped.
She opened the notebook. Today she had plans. Lots and lots of plans. Adrenaline and excitement pulsed through her as she looked at the next job on her to-do list:
LAUNCH PARTY
Sienna grinned at the words printed in big bold letters at the top of the page. How would Mr. Misery cope with that? A party for women. Real women with real needs and desires despite whatever a sex-phobe might think. She tapped each job in turn:
~Pack up and move stock from shop to house.
~Clear front room and put up shelving and displays.
~Send out invitations.
~Put ad in local paper.
~Rearrange and put out stock.
~Buy wine and nibbles.
She bit the end of the pen as she thought and then scribbled down the final task:
~Organize games.
Adding the period with gusto, she slapped the notebook shut. There was plenty to be getting on with while she left Jack to his ideas of shutting her down that would never come to fruition.
She switched on the stereo, and Luther Vandross’s dulcet tones filled the shop. Sienna jigged her way into the storeroom. First job was emptying the shop shelves and packing up the stock. She might officially have weeks before she needed to be out of there, but every day that she lingered just pulled the noose of apprehension tighter around her neck. Getting out and announcing to the world she intended to set up shop at Marsden Place would make it real. If nothing else, Sienna was used to dealing with reality.
She grabbed some packing crates stacked at the back of the room and carried them out into the shop. As she busied herself with the “summer sizzler” display, the next hour passed in a frenzy of bras, thongs, and baby-doll negligees, her fingers nimbly extracting garments from hangers and shell-pink cases to pack them in boxes.
Each time the merchandise blurred in her vision, Sienna swiped at her tears and pushed on. The closing of the shop would feel good…eventually. It was the closing of one chapter and opening of another. Wasn’t that what her dad had taught her? Move on, adapt.
By the time ten o’clock rolled around, a six-by-six-foot space at the front of the shop stood empty. Sienna sighed. Everything would be all right. Jack was a good man and would see sense sooner or later. She would stay in Potterford, and her business would carry on as always.
Lifting her arms above her head, she stretched out the kinks in her back and neck, just as the first customer of the day strolled into the shop. Sienna dropped her arms.
“Hi, Mrs. McGill.” She wiped her hands on the cloth hanging from the waistband of her skirt. “Is it warming up out there?”
“Is it true?” Mrs. McGill hurried toward her and froze when she saw the empty shelves. “Oh, my dear Lord. It’s true. I saw the note in the window. You’re moving? The shop here is closing?”
Sienna stepped over a crate and took the w
oman’s elbow. It trembled in her grasp, and she tightened her grip. “It’s going to be all right. We’re just relocating.”
“How will I get there? I have no car. No money for buses. I’m scared of trains and planes and bikes—”
“The shop will be at my house,” Sienna assured her and couldn’t help but smile. The woman was apparently oblivious to her priority for lingerie over transport.
Mrs. McGill gaped. “Your house?”
“Yes.”
The older woman slapped her hand to her throat. “You can’t do that. I can’t have people watching me enter your home and leave with a little red bag under my arm.”
Sienna laughed. “How is that different than when you leave the shop? Surely it’s better than walking out onto the street here?”
Mrs. McGill’s face dropped. “There is nothing funny about this.” She pulled her arm from Sienna’s grasp and clamped her hands to either side of Sienna’s face. “I need you. We all need you. You’re a relationship angel sent down from heaven to spread good sex around like a magic dust.”
“That won’t change—”
“No, now you listen to me because you need to understand. You are to our lives what cream is to chocolate. What Colin Firth is to Pride and Prejudice.” Releasing Sienna’s face, Mrs. McGill stretched her arms heavenward. “My God, you are what my nether regions have been waiting for their entire life.”
Sienna moved her jaw from side to side, checking it still worked.
Mrs. McGill clutched her arm. “Did you hear what I said, honey? Do you get it? Do you really understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes. Everything is going to be all right. The shop will open again in a few weeks, and I’m going to make everything perfect. Just you wait and see.”
“A few weeks?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need more than my usual amount of you-know-what if I’m to keep Roger happy for that long.”
Gently extracting Mrs. McGill’s hand from her arm, Sienna walked over to the shelf holding the chocolate body paint and nipple tassels. She picked up a party-size tub of chocolate.
16 Marsden Place Page 8