“Tonight for your entertainment we have with us eight youngsters whose hard work and ability have won them auditions for ‘America’s Got Talent.’ Judges will select which four will compete on national television…”
Jacob and Michelle took turns at the microphone, introducing the acts before they came onstage. The children sang, danced, and one little guy even did a stand-up routine. Jacob was as awed as everyone else by the talent. He just wished he hadn’t glanced at Michelle during one of the acts. The longing in her eyes as she watched the children on stage unsettled him. It dawned on him that she’d probably planned to be a mother by now. And probably would have been, if she wasn’t so adamant about living in the past. He’d thought of several different explanations for Brian Colby’s disappearance, not all of them involuntary. None of them had happy endings. But maybe the worst scenario was no ending at all.
* * *
JACOB NURSED his drink, watching the couples on the dance floor. He caught a glimpse of honey gold skin as one couple sailed past and he looked the other way. He was glad Michelle was having a good time. He just didn’t think her current partner needed to have his hand pressed so intimately in the small of her back. Her bare back. The tip of her shoulder would have done fine.
Taking another sip of his drink, he looked around for a partner for himself. A brunette across the room caught his attention and smiled a smile that men the world over could translate in a second. She was available. He looked again. And she was beautiful. Her figure was model perfect in her shimmering gown. She was young enough not to have that look that said she’d seen it all, yet old enough to know the score.
He looked away.
He was sipping ice water and making small talk with the bartender when he saw Michelle again. She was with some guy who was so smooth-looking Jacob wondered why her hands didn’t just slip right off him. He oozed money and position and just a little too much confidence for Jacob’s liking. And he was holding Michelle far too close.
Jacob set his glass down on the bar. It was time to go. Michelle might not have to get up early in the morning, but just because they didn’t have to go to work tomorrow didn’t mean that he’d be able to sleep in. He had three little terrors who would be bouncing into his room by seven in the morning. If he was lucky. If not, they’d be jumping on the end of his bed by six. They liked playtime before school.
He strode onto the dance floor for the first time that night, tapped Michelle’s partner on the shoulder and, when they turned, grabbed Michelle’s wrist.
“It’s time to go.”
Michelle’s partner glared at him. She didn’t look too pleased, either. Neither did the five or six couples who bumped into them in the middle of the crowded dance floor.
“I’ve got a headache,” Jacob said, wondering what he was doing creating a scene just because some man had been dancing a little more closely than necessary with Michelle. A few hours ago he’d been encouraging her to have a good time, knowing that it was the best thing for her.
“You’re not feeling well?” Michelle asked solicitously.
“No.” Jacob was surprised to hear himself continuing the lie. Her concern was making him feel like a heel. But he still didn’t let go of her wrist.
“Just let me get my purse,” Michelle said.
Jacob berated himself every way he knew how while he waited for Michelle to return. Being jealous of her dance partners was ludicrous. He was way out of line, overstepping the boundaries that governed their friendship—the boundaries that he himself needed if he and Michelle were going to remain partners.
* * *
MICHELLE WAS QUIET on the drive home, and Jacob welcomed the distance their silence placed between them. She stared out the window and he wondered if she was thinking about Brian Colby. Was she wondering where he was or remembering a night spent dancing in his arms? Envy welled up inside Jacob.
“Mind if we stop for something to eat?” he asked, breaking the silence that was suddenly deafening in the darkened vehicle.
“Not at all. I’m starving. I’ll even buy, since we missed dinner on my account.”
“In that case, I’ll have two of everything,” Jacob said, pulling into an all-night restaurant famous for its breakfasts.
The young, long-haired host who seated them at a cozy booth for two eyed Michelle appreciatively. She wasn’t the only woman in the restaurant in evening clothes, but she was definitely the most beautiful. The young man glanced at Jacob with envy.
“You’re one lucky dude,” he muttered as Jacob waited for Michelle to slide into the booth. Jacob didn’t bother correcting him.
“You feeling better?” Michelle asked half an hour later as they finished their breakfast.
Jacob nodded. The food had definitely helped improve his mood.
“You probably just needed something to eat,” she said, smiling at him.
“Probably.”
“So what’d you think of the show tonight?”
Jacob grinned at her. “Are you fishing for a chance to say, ‘I told you so’?”
“Well, I did tell you it was worth our time, and I was right, wasn’t I?”
“I’m not sorry we went,” he said.
“After all the doughnuts I had to buy to get you to come tonight, I think I at least deserve the chance for an ‘I told you so,’ Ryan.”
“You were absolutely correct, Ms. Colby. Our time was well spent and I’m glad you talked me into going. I had no idea how much one evening could accomplish.”
“Those kids were really something, weren’t they?” she asked, getting serious on him all of a sudden.
Jacob agreed that the kids had been remarkable. Remembering the yearning he’d seen on her face when she’d watched the talent show that evening, he was once again struck with how much she was cheating herself out of as the years rolled by without her.
“Did you and Brian plan to raise a family?” he asked before he could stop himself. What he needed right then was more distance, not more familiarity.
“I was six weeks pregnant when he left to go overseas.”
“You were? But…” She’d said the words so softly Jacob wondered if maybe he’d misunderstood. But as he looked across the table into her pain-filled eyes, he knew he hadn’t. “Oh, Michelle. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, looking down at her empty plate.
Jacob cradled his coffee cup in his palms. “What happened?” he asked.
“I lost the baby the day after they told me Brian was missing. It was a boy.”
He could tell she was trying hard not to cry again. She looked up finally, a sad tremulous smile on her lips, and Jacob felt a rush of admiration for her. He was amazed how she could come to work every day, be cheerful and optimistic, when her life had held so much tragedy. Until tonight, he’d had no idea how much.
“Did Brian know? About the baby, I mean?” he asked.
She looked down at her diet soda, stirring the near-empty glass with her straw, and shook her head.
“I wanted to wait until I was completely sure. It was going to be a homecoming surprise.” Her words were little more than a whisper.
Silence stretched between them as her words hung in the air.
“How do you do it?” he finally asked. “How do you find so much good in this world when it treats you like it does?”
She shrugged and looked up at him. “I don’t always find good. But I know it doesn’t help any to focus on the bad. When I lost the baby I almost lost myself, as well. It hurt so badly I didn’t have the strength to get up in the morning. I kept thinking I’d be okay when Brian came home. The loss was as much his as it was mine. He’d be as devastated by it as I was, and together, sharing that, we’d get through it. I didn’t think things could get any worse. But they did.”
Jacob wished he were someplace he could take her into his arms. “You mean not finding Brian?”
She shook her head. “No. I was staying with my mom and dad after the miscarriage, and one morning a couple of weeks later, the first time I’d been alone since leaving the hospital, I got a phone call. It was a government official wanting me to identify a corpse that had washed up on the shore of the Gulf of Suez near Cairo. Brian had been staying in Cairo. The body was still intact and they were certain it was Brian. When I hung up the phone I promised myself that if I was spared that—if it wasn’t Brian, if only I could still hope he was alive—I would handle anything else. They brought the body back here, my dad drove me to the airport to meet the plane, I looked into the body bag, and it wasn’t Brian. I’d never been so thankful in my life. I knew then that I had to get a grip on my grieving or it was going to kill me before Brian made it home. Ever since then, I just do what I have to do to get through and look for whatever good I can find to make the waiting easier.”
“I think you’re a remarkable, woman, Michelle Colby,” Jacob said softly, holding her gaze with his own.
She looked down. “I’m not really. Sometimes I think maybe I’m just taking the easy way out, doing nothing but waiting. But I just don’t know any other way. So I wait.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this, except that tonight I needed a friend and you seemed different somehow, more human.”
Jacob frowned. “More human? What have I been up to now? An alien?”
“You always seem so invincible. In all the years I’ve known you I’ve never heard you ask anyone for anything.”
“Maybe you weren’t listening,” he said lightly, reaching for his wallet as he picked up their bill.
“And maybe you weren’t asking.” She snatched the bill from his fingers. “I said I’d pay. See if you can handle having someone do that much for you.” Her tone was teasing, but her eyes told a different story.
Jacob drove her home, waiting until she’d waved at him from her living room window before he pulled away. Michelle might think he needed to reach out to people more. But she was wrong.
* * *
HE WALKED his babysitter to the end of his driveway, watched while she ran across the street to her mother’s bungalow and went slowly back inside, locking up for the night. Looking in on the girls on the way to his bedroom, he tucked in a stray limb here and there. As he bent to put Jessie’s teddy bear back into bed with her, he was surprised to see his daughter’s big brown eyes gazing up at him. Her brow was puckered, her lower lip quivering.
Jacob sat down on her bed and lifted her onto his lap. “What is it, precious? Did you have a bad dream?”
She sniffled and shook her head. “Tomorrow’s Valentine Day,” she said softly. Her little voice was so forlorn Jacob had to struggle not to smile.
“Is that a problem?” he whispered back.
Her head moved against his chest as she nodded. Jacob loved the feel of her slight weight leaning on him, trusting him. Needing him.
“I forgot to tell you that me and Meggie are s’posed to bring cookies to the party.”
“That’s easy enough, punkin. We’ll stop at the store on our way to school in the morning. Okay?”
“’Kay.” She didn’t sound any happier.
“Jess? Is there something else wrong?”
She sat up and studied him for a moment, then settled back against him. “Meggie says not to say,” she said barely above a whisper.
While Jacob was concerned to hear that his daughters were deliberately keeping things from him, he was even more concerned about the reason for their silence. Picking Jessie up, he carried her out to the living room, reaching to flip on the light by the couch as he sat down with her on his lap.
“Okay, sport. Get this once and for all. There is never, ever, anything you can’t tell me and there never will be—got that?” He took hold of her shoulders, turning her so that she was looking at him.
Wide-eyed, she nodded.
“I can’t keep you and your sisters safe unless I know what’s happening, Jess. So it’s important that you guys don’t keep secrets from me.”
She fiddled with one of his shirt studs. “It’s just that when I said me and Meggie’d bring cookies to the party, some of the kids said we always bring yucky store kinds, so I said uh-uh and they said uh-huh, ’cause we didn’t have a mommy to make cookies for us to bring and I said we had you and they said daddies couldn’t make cookies, so I said you could and now we’re going to be bringing yucky store ones anyway ’cause I forgot to tell you about making them,” she finished in a rush.
Jacob would have loved to have a talk with each and every kid in Jessie’s class. “I’m not glad you forgot to tell me about the cookies, Jess, but I think we can solve this pretty easily. Lucky for you I don’t have to work in the morning because of tonight’s benefit show. So I’ll make a deal with you. You put your pretty little self right back to bed, go to sleep, and I’ll see about getting those cookies made. Deal?”
Jessie flung her arms around his neck and squeezed him so tightly it hurt. “Thank you, Daddy.”
* * *
MICHELLE FLUFFED the pillow on the end of her couch and settled down against it—again. She couldn’t sleep. Usually, when her demons drove her from her bed, she’d be out as soon as she lay down on the sofa. There was something soothing about being in the living room. There were no expectations there. But it wasn’t working this time.
She turned over, closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but a restless energy hummed through her. Her traitorous mind replayed the scene that had taken place hours earlier in this very room. She could still feel Jacob’s arms around her, pulling her against him.
She reached for the picture on the end table, gazing at Brian’s likeness in the moonlight. Not that she needed the picture to remember every line of his face, every expression, every smile. She didn’t need to see his laughing green eyes to imagine them gazing at her lovingly.
But how could she continue just existing like this? Brian had been gone for so long…
Rolling over, she hugged Brian’s picture to her chest. Tonight Jacob had been warm and solid—real. He was more than just a memory. She remembered the compassion she’d seen in his eyes when she told him about the baby she’d lost. She had a feeling that underneath his irreverent facade was a deeply caring man.
But none of that gave her the right to be unfaithful to her husband. She’d rather die than take the chance that Brian might come home to find that she’d given her heart to another man.
* * *
JACOB COULD THINK of a lot of things he’d rather be doing at one in the morning than looking through cookbooks. Like going to bed, for instance.
Sugar cookies. That sounded doable. He had sugar. He looked at the picture in the book and figured he could cut out a pretty mean heart with a paring knife. Then scanned the list of ingredients, hoping he wasn’t going to find something like chocolate squares or coconut. He didn’t stock many baking supplies. Flour, salt, butter. Check. Biscuit and pancake material. Vanilla he had for when he and the girls, mostly he, cranked out homemade ice cream. And baking soda. Jacob opened his refrigerator—yes, he still had that open box of baking soda Nonnie had told him to put there when he’d forgotten to throw away the bologna before leaving on vacation last summer. He was set.
He dumped the ingredients into his biggest bowl, determined to make the best cookies Lomen Elementary had ever had. Maybe then his little girls could just go about living their lives like the happy kids they should be. He’d bet there weren’t too many mothers who’d stay up half the night baking cookies simply because their daughters had forgotten to say they needed them. Unless of course that mother were Michelle. He had a feeling she’d stay up all nig
ht to bake cookies if she had to.
Not that he had any business thinking about Michelle. Nope. He was going to make life easier on himself and keep thoughts of Michelle strictly off-limits. There would be no more spurts of jealousy, no more hormonal reactions. She wasn’t the type of woman a guy had a casual relationship with. And casual relationships were all Jacob had.
Besides, he didn’t have a chance with Michelle, casual or otherwise, even if he chose to, which he wouldn’t. Brian’s hold on Michelle went much deeper than the loyalty of young love Jacob had originally thought it was. She’d made a pact with fate to hold on until Brian returned. Just hold on. She wasn’t really living at all, just existing. It sounded as if she hadn’t even yet begun to grieve for the baby she’d lost. She was waiting for that, too.
Jacob cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. After what he’d witnessed and heard that evening, he didn’t think Michelle was ever going to get on with life until she had her answers—one way or another. And by the sounds of things, those answers might never be found.
He spent the next few minutes picking eggshell out of his cookie dough.
CHAPTER FIVE
“JACOB, CALL FOR YOU on line six.” Bob Chaney, their producer, poked his head into the sound room during a commercial break Friday morning.
Michelle pushed a button on the telephone and handed Jacob the receiver. He looked so different this morning than he had on Wednesday night, and she’d hoped the return to his usual uniform of sweats and T-shirt would have a grounding effect on her growing interest in him. It hadn’t.
“Of course I remember. I never forget a beautiful woman,” she heard him say into the receiver.
Michelle studied the program sheet in front of her. They had three promos coming up, a telephone interview, a weather spot, sport scores to announce again and six songs to play. What did she care if Jacob was talking to a beautiful woman? It certainly wasn’t anything new.
“Tonight?”
Please say no.
Four Times the Trouble Page 6