Jake glared at Melinda. “Calling off my elopement with Jenna was a mistake. I knew it then. I certainly know it now.”
Jenna warmed to the rock-solid certainty in Jake’s voice. Even as she hated being caught between Jake and his ex.
Melinda merely lifted one perfectly shaped blond brow. “Say what you will,” she retorted softly, “you are not going to chase me away, Jake.”
Jake blew out a long, weary breath. “I didn’t think I would.” He looked Melinda up and down, then spread his hands wide on either side of him. “However, if you’d like to stay somewhere else, under the circumstances,” he said graciously, while Buster ran in dizzy circles around his feet, “I certainly understand.”
“Understand this.” Melinda backed away from the puppy, her high heels catching in the thick carpet of grass and causing her to stumble slightly before she regained her balance and righted herself. She slapped her hands on her slender hips. “You and I have to talk about the way you’ve been bringing up Alexandra. So don’t think you are getting off the hook this easily because you are just not! Now get me a drink and show me to my room.” Melinda pressed her palm to her forehead. “I’m exhausted.”
THE BACKYARD was flooded with yellow lamplight. Buster was still running around in circles trying to find the perfect place to relieve himself. Jenna was sitting on one of the swings in Alex’s swing set, waiting for him to do so, when Jake returned a few minutes later. “Was Alexandra glad to see her mother?” she asked, somehow managing not to look him square in the eye. She knew it was unkind—even unrealistic—of her, and she hated the jealous way she felt, but she didn’t want to see Jake with anyone else. Not Melinda. Not anyone. Jake sighed and, positioning himself just to the left of Jenna, clamped both his hands on the support beam that ran across the top of the swing set. “She didn’t see her.”
Jenna put out a foot to stop her swaying. Both hands curled around the metal chain that supported the swing, she looked up at Jake. “You mean you didn’t wake her?”
“No.” Sorrow flashed in Jake’s eyes. He briefly rested his head on his outstretched arm. “I mean Melinda didn’t see her. She went straight to bed.”
Jenna’s eyes widened in incredulity. She pushed off with her foot and began swinging lightly back and forth again. “She didn’t even peek in?”
Jake grimaced and then looked deep into Jenna’s eyes. “Amazing, isn’t it? The woman hasn’t seen her own daughter in almost two years, she’s extremely critical of the way I’ve been rearing Alex, and yet she didn’t even ask for a glimpse of Alex while she slept. I offered, but she said no, she would wait until tomorrow.”
Jenna saw the worry in Jake’s face. Her heart went out to him, even as she tried to figure out a way to comfort him. “Given Melinda’s behavior…you really can’t think she wants custody of Alex,” she said reasonably.
Jake straightened and ran his palm down the slick surface of the slide. “Not because she loves her, although I imagine in Melinda’s own selfish way that she does love Alex as much as she is capable of loving anyone, but because there’s something in it for her.”
Jenna studied Jake’s face. Clearly, he had given this a lot of thought. “Money?” Jenna guessed.
Jake scowled. Looking even more unhappy, he turned his back to the slide. “I’ve given her plenty. I offered her more. No, it’s something else.”
“What?” Jenna moved her hands higher up the chain.
Jake lifted a hand, let it fall. “That, I don’t know. Aside from the fact she’s self-involved and very image-conscious, Melinda can be a hard woman to figure out.” His eyes narrowed as Buster, exhausted from all the excitement and his romp in the yard, plopped down on his tummy in the grass and took a breather. Jake smiled at the puppy fondly and, turning his glance back to Jenna, continued thoughtfully, “My gut tells me Melinda plans to use Alex for her own benefit and that this not-being-raised-a-lady is all just smoke and mirrors to cover her real plan.”
There were other reasons Melinda could be here, too, Jenna thought. Reasons Jake didn’t even want to consider. She looked at him levelly. “Or maybe Melinda just wants you back.”
Jake shook his head in obvious consternation. “I wish it were that simple.” He looked at Jenna steadily. “But our marriage was a disaster in every way, especially the bedroom. There’s no way Melinda would want to go back to that.”
Jenna found it hard to believe a man as skilled at kissing couldn’t turn a woman on, but she also knew, from her own experiences in the dating game, that chemistry was either there or it wasn’t. And yet…Jenna flushed. “But Melinda got pregnant right away.” Within weeks of Jenna and Jake’s botched elopement, as a matter of fact.
Jake nodded, grimly acknowledging this was true. “Because I was weak and she was determined,” he said. “After that night, we didn’t even see each other again until she told me the happy news.”
Jenna wanted to believe he had never loved anyone else, the same way she had never loved anyone else. Aware she had started to tremble, she said, “And yet you married her.”
Jake regarded Jenna without apology. “She was pregnant with my child. It was the decent thing to do. For Alex’s sake, I’d do it all over again.”
Jenna studied him, hearing what he didn’t say as well as what he did. “Even though you didn’t love her at all,” she guessed, both troubled and relieved by what she was discovering.
But Jake refused to feel guilty about that, either. “We could have made it work, at least on some level, if Melinda had only met me halfway,” he told Jenna honestly. “But she didn’t and she wouldn’t.” He shrugged his broad shoulders indifferently. “I was as relieved as she was when our marriage ended.”
Having met Melinda, Jenna didn’t in all conscience see how he could have made that marriage work. The fact he was willing to try at all was laudable. She sighed. “Okay. That explains why the two of you don’t get along and why Melinda seems so full of anger and resentment and impatience now. It doesn’t explain why you want me to stay here with the three of you.”
“I can’t be alone with her, Jenna. Not again.”
“You won’t be alone with her.” Jenna vaulted to her feet and stalked away from the swing set. “You’ll be with Alex.”
“Exactly the point.” Hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, Jake ambled up beside her. “I was counting on Clara to help me run interference, but she’s not here and may not be for at least a day or so. And I was counting on Melinda bunking at the inn.”
For that part of the current fiasco, Jenna had no sympathy. “You should have known that wouldn’t work out.”
Jake nodded, not above admitting he’d made a mistake. “I guess that was just wishful thinking on my part.”
No joke, Jenna thought, even as she steeled her heart against him; she wasn’t going to get involved in Jake’s problems. “I don’t see how my being here will make things any better.” Restlessly, Jenna continued to stalk around the lamplit yard. Buster, similarly energized, got up to run along the landscaped hedges, sniffing and investigating tirelessly.
Jake kept pace with both Buster and Jenna. “Alex doesn’t have any dresses yet. If you’re here, working on them—well, at least I’ll be able to demonstrate a good-faith effort to help our daughter conduct herself in a more ladylike manner.”
Jenna had an inner bull-detector that worked like a charm. Folding her arms in front of her, she turned to square off with Jake. “You could do that just as well if I were sewing them in my shop,” she pointed out matter-of-factly. Stepping even closer, she angled her chin up at him. “What’s really going on here? What are you really afraid of?” There was something else going on behind Jake’s silver-gray eyes; she was sure of it.
Jake exhaled roughly and shoved a hand through his inky-black hair. “Melinda can be critical to the point of cruelty, especially where Alex is concerned, since she sees Alex as an extension of herself.” Jake’s sensual lips thinned; his face hardened. “She’s hurt her feel
ings before, but Alex was young, and I don’t think she really understood what was going on. I’m not even sure she remembers. But if it happens again, Alex is old enough now that she will remember. I’m afraid it will crush her.” He swallowed, shook his head. “Melinda is her mother, after all.”
Jenna felt herself wanting to help, despite herself. “Have you talked to Melinda?” she asked softly.
Jake nodded grimly. “Many times, for all the good it did me. Melinda thinks her harshness will ultimately be helpful to Alex.”
When all it would really do was crush Alex’s spirit and damage her self-esteem, Jenna thought, beginning to share Jake’s worry. “Which is where I come in,” Jenna guessed.
Jake nodded. “I need someone willing to act as a decoy and take some flak from Melinda or, if the going gets rough, to vamoose with Alex. Clara would have done it had she been here. She’s gotten very good at it—the two of them do not get along. But with just the three of us under one roof, it could be hell around here come morning.”
Much as Jenna didn’t want to be a part of Jake’s problems, or the solution to them, she did feel for Alexandra. Jenna knew what it was like to be without a mother’s love. When her parents had died, she had missed them terribly. To the point she was willing to do anything—even run away and elope with Jake in order to forget. But unlike Alex, Jenna’d had years of love and devotion from both her mother and her father. She had been almost eighteen when they died. Although there was no question that Jake loved Alex with all his heart and soul, and Clara did, too, Jenna guessed Alex had never really known a mother’s love. Not from Melinda, anyway.
To have Melinda reappear in Alex’s life, only to reject her…Well, that would be a pain that would be particularly hard to bear. Much as Jenna wanted to stay out of the situation and continue to guard her heart against Jake, she couldn’t walk away.
“SO HOW WAS the factory site?” Kelsey asked half an hour later as Jenna let herself in to her apartment. Ignoring the ranch-supply catalogs and price lists Kelsey had spread out over the living room, Jenna went straight to her bedroom and began packing an overnight bag. “We didn’t see it,” she said, keeping her back to Kelsey as she began pulling clothes from the closet. She tucked them into her bag and then went to her bureau for undies.
“Why not?” Kelsey asked as she watched Jenna select a handful of silk chemises and matching underpants and fold them into her bag.
Briefly, Jenna explained about Jake’s surprise for Alex and the much-earlier-than-expected arrival of Melinda.
Kelsey’s eyebrows rose as Jenna took several long flowing nightgowns from her drawer. “That must have been some confrontation,” Kelsey drawled.
Jenna shrugged, knowing there was no reason to deny it. Anyone who ran into Melinda would figure it out for themselves soon enough. “Melinda Carrington is a snooty handful, all right.” She slipped into the bathroom and began gathering her toiletries. “Which is why Jake asked me to stay there with them, until his housekeeper, Clara, can take over once again. To help diffuse any tension between Alex and her rather difficult mother.” Jenna dropped a vial of her favorite perfume into her bag.
Kelsey plucked it right out again. “I thought this thing you had going with Jake was going to be a fifty-fifty proposition. Something that would benefit you both while reminding Jake what he had given up when he dumped you without a backward glance. But now it sounds like it’s all about what Jake and his daughter need.”
Jenna added a pair of slippers—and the perfume vial—to her bag again. She shut it before Kelsey could snoop any more. “Sometimes children’s needs have to come first.” Bag in hand, she headed downstairs into the shop on the first floor.
Kelsey followed her out the apartment door and down the stairs. She watched as Jenna picked up her portable sewing machine and carried it to the door. She returned for the heavy leather carryall bag that contained her portable sewing kit, favorite shears and marking tools, and placed it next to the door, too.
Still watching her disapprovingly, Kelsey folded her arms in front of her, “That’s what you and Meg both said about Dani and me when Mom and Dad died. ‘Children’s needs have to come first.”’
“They do,” Jenna insisted.
But Kelsey, a free and fickle spirit if there ever was one, did not necessarily agree. She looked down her nose at Jenna, eyes somber. “Sometimes I think we might have been happier if you and Meg had followed your hearts,” she said. “If you had said to heck with what Jake’s folks thought and eloped with him anyway, and Meg had gone ahead and just admitted to one and all who fathered her baby and married him as well.”
Jenna couldn’t deny that Meg’s son Jeremy would have been better off knowing who his father was. If he had, Meg wouldn’t be facing such a crisis with the increasingly curious and frustrated Jeremy now. She and Jake were a different story. Jenna plucked the bolts of fabric she would need from the racks and added them to the pile of things at the door. “It wouldn’t have worked even if I had married Jake.” She sighed and shook her head, remembering. “His parents’ opposition was so virulent.”
Deciding she had everything she needed, not only to spend the night but to begin work on Alex’s alphabet dress, Jenna unlocked the front door, and carried the fabric out to her car, which was parked at the curb. Kelsey followed with the portable sewing machine. “If that’s the way you feel, why are you seeing him at all now? Why set yourself up for more heartbreak?”
Frowning, Jenna unlocked her trunk and set the bolts of fabric inside. “I’m not going to fall in love with him again.”
“Of course not,” Kelsey said dryly, as she fitted in the portable sewing machine next to the fabric. “There’s no need since you never stopped loving him in the first place.”
Jenna blew out an exasperated breath and kept her gaze averted. “I’m doing this strictly for business reasons, Kelse.”
“Sure you are.” Kelsey nodded knowingly as she returned for another armload.
Jenna bent to pick up her overnight bag. Kelsey got the leather carryall containing Jenna’s sewing kit. Together, they marched toward her car. Jenna explained, “If I help Jake with Alexandra, he’ll help me expand my business. I’ve wanted that for a long time.” Everyone knew that. She just hadn’t had the money or the connections to make it happen.
Once everything was neatly inside, Kelsey shut and slammed the lid. She turned and looked at Jenna, suddenly the baby in the family by age only as she warned softly, seriously, “Just make sure that’s all you want.”
BY THE TIME Jenna got back to the ranch, and parked her white convertible near the garage, the house was as quiet as could be. Jake was waiting for her on the front porch. “Everyone asleep?”
“Except Buster.”
Jenna caught the worried look in his eyes and wondered how Jake’s evening could get any worse. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.
“Let me carry your stuff up to your room and let you see where you’ll be sleeping, then I’ll show you,” he said grimly.
Wordlessly, Jake escorted Jenna upstairs. Mindful that Alex and Melinda were both sleeping, they moved quietly through the hall, past the master bedroom where Jake bunked, the upstairs playroom and the other four bedroom suites, to the room at the far end of the hall. The spacious guest suite was decorated in a soft, soothing blue and had its own bath. “This gonna be okay?” Jake whispered.
More than okay, Jenna thought, noting this one room was almost half the size of her entire apartment. “Perfect, thanks,” she whispered back, as Jake set her bags down where she directed. “Now show me what’s wrong with Buster.”
Jake crooked a finger and led the way down the back stairs, through the kitchen and mudroom and onto the screened-in back porch. It was lit up with soft yellow lights. Buster was in his crate, crying softly, and when he saw Jenna and Jake, his pitiful cries got even louder. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Jake said. “I fed him, gave him water, let him run around out back until he had don
e absolutely everything puppies need to do outside, and then brought him in. He was as happy as could be until I put him in the crate. Then he started crying. He didn’t do that before.”
“No,” Jenna regarded Buster thoughtfully, her heart going out to the little puppy, who for whatever reason seemed to be suffering mightily, “he didn’t.”
Jake continued studying Buster anxiously, “I even put some of his new toys in with him, and a nylon bone—the kind the vet said would be good for him—in there for him to chew on. But nothing has helped. He’s not going right to sleep like he did earlier today.”
Jenna knelt in front of the crate and opened it. Buster shot out and, quivering all over, leapt into her waiting arms. As soon as he was nestled in her arms, he stopped crying. Jenna smiled down at him and stroked the soft, fluffy hair behind his ears. “I think he’s just lonesome for his mama and his litter-mates. Usually, the first few nights they’re separated they cry like this.”
Jake hunkered down next to Jenna, looking both relieved that was all it was, and all the more worried, and petted Buster, too. “They do?”
“They want to go home, they want their mama.” Jenna and Jake both got to their feet. Jenna settled into the rocking chair on the porch and still holding Buster close to her chest, began to stroke him softly from head to tail. “Did the breeder give you a cloth with the other puppies’ smell on it to take home with you?”
Still looking mighty concerned, Jake shook his head. “Should he have?”
The Bride Said, Finally! (The Lockharts of Texas) Page 8