Plain Jane and the Playboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  “We agreed but they didn’t,” the nurse corrected. “They all started coming into the lounge on their own right after dinner. I don’t think you realize how much they look forward to you reading to them or what a big hit you are.”

  Silent up until now, Jorge put in his two cents. “Jane has this tendency to underestimate herself,” he confided to the nurse.

  Jane caught the look in the head nurse’s eyes as they shifted from Jorge to her. She could swear she could almost hear the woman applauding her.

  As if she had anything to do with Jorge’s being here, Jane thought.

  But there was no time to protest or ponder over whatever accolades the woman was silently awarding her. She had a pint-sized audience eagerly waiting to hear the further adventures of a plucky little girl who lived in the Alps with her grandfather.

  Leaving her purse on a chair, along with her coat, Jane picked up her book and walked into the next room.

  The walls were decorated with paintings done by patients and the room was littered with toys, some worn, some fairly new, all scattered about on small tables.

  The children broke into a cheer when she walked in. Some were sitting on the floor, others took their places at the miniature tables. A couple of the children were in wheelchairs.

  “Hi, kids,” she greeted them cheerily. “Sorry I’m late.”

  She sounded, Jorge thought as he took his place by the doorway, like a completely different person than the woman he’d met on New Year’s Eve. Confident, poised and full of fun.

  Definitely a woman he wanted to get closer to.

  Chapter Nine

  For the most part, children were not among the vast number of people with whom Jorge had daily contact. He didn’t know how to talk to them or what to expect when he was around them.

  So it was with a degree of interest and no small amount of fascination that he watched the group within the lounge become captivated almost from the moment that Jane began to read.

  And they remained that way, spellbound by something he would have bet money should have bored them to tears. After all, the story of Heidi was a gentle, peaceful one, relying on emotions more than drama. As far as he knew, nothing exploded, nothing even made a loud noise.

  But for more than an hour, all there was was the sound of Jane’s voice as she provided both the book’s narrative and the voices of all the different characters in the timeworn classic. As he watched and listened, Jane became Heidi, then Peter, the goat herder, and, most delightfully, she became Grandfather, in all the blustery glory that eventually gave way to a loving man.

  There was no other sound in the room, no whispers to distract the others from story. Every pair of eyes, and that included those of the nurses, were unwaveringly on Jane as she breathed life into every word, every nuance, vividly creating scene after scene for her small audience.

  The woman was definitely gifted, he thought. He would never have guessed that she had this talent. And when she finished for the evening, he was almost as disappointed as the children.

  “Can’t you do a little more?” one of the girls begged. Her eyes were bright blue and she had a head full of golden curls.

  Jane smiled, but she shook her head. The book remained closed, a bookmark marking where she would start reading the next time. “It’s late and someone has to get to bed.”

  “But I’m not tired,” the little girl protested, ending her sentence with a pronounced pout.

  “I meant me, Faith,” Jane told the girl with a laugh. She went through the motions of an exaggerated yawn. “I’ve had a very long day and I’m pretty tired.” Enthusiasm entered her voice as she continued. The woman was a born storyteller, Jorge thought. “But just think, that gives us another day to get together and see what happens to Heidi now that she’s in the big city.”

  “Will you come tomorrow?” another little girl begged. She looked frailer than the first girl and had a red and yellow bandanna tied around her head.

  Jane smiled at her as she gently ran her hand along the girl’s bandanna. Ordinarily she came by twice, sometimes even three times a week. She’d already put in her three days. But how could she find it in her heart to say no to someone who was obviously so much braver than she was?

  “I’ll come tomorrow, Betty,” she promised.

  Several of the younger children, including, to Jorge’s surprise, the boys, cheered.

  Herding the children together, the nurses began to empty the lounge. Jane waved and said a few words to each and every child who left the room. Only once they were gone she picked up her book and, holding it to her chest, glance in the direction where she’d last seen Jorge.

  She half expected him to be gone.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was right where he had been for the last seventy-three minutes, leaning against the doorjamb on the other side of the room. Now that the children were gone, he crossed to her. Jane attempted to read the expression on his face. While open and friendly, it still gave nothing away.

  There was another layer to the man, she thought, one that he kept private and under wraps. She couldn’t help wondering what he was like, deep down inside, when he wasn’t being the extremely seductive Jorge Mendoza.

  “You are a very interesting person, Jane Gilliam.” He was close enough to whisper the words. Why did everything that came out of his mouth make her heart beat faster? She had a feeling that he could make her pulse spike simply by describing the weather.

  She couldn’t guess what was going through his mind. Was he being sarcastic? She’d never thought of herself as particularly interesting. “Because I dress up to read books to kids?”

  That was part of it, but it wasn’t what he really meant. “Because you give so much of yourself. Tell me, after you give all that away, is there anything left over for you?”

  She didn’t feel herself particularly depleted. “Oh, there’s lots left over for me,” she assured him.

  This volunteer work was only a small part of her life, although she was thinking about expanding it. Red Rock Memorial Hospital wasn’t the only place where children were forced to remain while they underwent treatment for conditions they didn’t understand. The fact that these treatments made them better—most of the time—compensated for the discomfort and loneliness they experienced. The nurses could only do so much and she wanted to help.

  Jane firmly believed that as her diminutive listeners became involved in the worlds she verbally created for them, these small patients were transported to lands they’d never been to before, and that helped alleviate their loneliness. And, for a little while, their fears.

  “Have you had dinner yet?” Jorge asked. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled and he grinned. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  The sounds coming from her stomach embarrassed her. There hadn’t been time to eat. “You don’t have to keep feeding me,” she told him.

  He studied her for a moment. She fidgeted ever so slightly. “You’re an independent woman, aren’t you?”

  She hadn’t thought of herself that way, but she realized that he was right. Independent women probably weren’t his type, but it wasn’t in her to lie. “I’ve had to be.”

  To her surprise, he nodded as he took in the information.

  “Fine. I have nothing against independent women.” The grin made her weak—hunger had nothing to do with it. “And to prove it, I’ll even let you pay.”

  A laugh escaped her lips as she reached for her coat. “I’m not that independent.” She had to watch every penny if she wanted to continue the work she was doing.

  “No problem,” Jorge assured her as he moved behind her and helped her slip the coat on. “I like playing the man.”

  He didn’t have to play at it, she thought, enjoying the way his hands felt on her shoulders even through the coat. Jorge was the man. All man.

  “Do you mind if I go home and change first?” she asked as they walked out of the building.

  There were far fewer people around now as they c
rossed to the parking structure where she’d left the car. Evening had descended, weaving shadows in and out of the landscape.

  “If you want to,” he answered. “Although I think you kind of look cute in knee socks.” She felt his eyes sweep over her as they reached her car. “Actually, if you stay in that outfit, someone might call the police to have me arrested for endangering the morals of a minor.”

  Getting behind the wheel, Jane glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror before buckling up. “I don’t look that young,” she protested. Although maybe the pigtails did cut a few years off her age, she decided.

  She looked like a teenager in his opinion. “Let’s put it this way,” he said, his seat belt clicking into place, “in that outfit you don’t run the risk of having Boy Scouts fight over which one gets to help you across the street—they’d be fighting over which one gets to kiss you at the movies.”

  He had a silver tongue all right, she thought, turning her key in the ignition. But she was a realist and while his words sounded pretty, she knew it was all just empty flattery. She wasn’t the kind anyone would ever fight over.

  “You must know some pretty desperate Boy Scouts,” she commented as the engine came to life.

  “You know, you shouldn’t do that,” Jorge told her seriously.

  She thought he was referring to the car stalling out. “Do what?”

  “Sell yourself short like that.”

  “I don’t sell myself short,” she told him. Looking both ways, she slowly inched out of the space. “I know exactly what I am and what I’m not.”

  “And what are you?” he asked, curious to hear what she had placed in the plus column.

  She made a right at the end of the winding road, leaving the hospital compound. “I’m hardworking, generous, fairly intelligent and very loyal to my friends.”

  “You forgot kind to small animals and children.”

  She heard the smile in his voice, and it coaxed one from her in kind. “That goes without saying.”

  “And what aren’t you?” he pressed.

  “Pretty,” she answered simply, mentally putting a barrier between herself and the word, the way she always did.

  That smacked of an insult—and a deep wound. “Who told you that?”

  She shrugged as she merged the vehicle into the main thoroughfare that led away from the hospital and eventually brought her to her apartment complex. “No one had to tell me that. I have mirrors in my apartment.”

  It wasn’t a mirror that had made her feel this way, he thought. It was someone who mattered. “They need to be replaced, because you’re not seeing what I see.”

  She wished he’d stop that, stopped saying all those nice things that weren’t true. Because she was liable to start believing him and then she’d really be setting herself up for a fall.

  “My mother told me I was plain,” she finally said. “It really seemed to bother her that I wasn’t pretty.” She spared him a quick glance before focusing back on the road. The full moon looked as if it were traveling with her. “Mothers aren’t supposed to lie to their children.”

  “They’re not supposed to, no, but not every mother should have been a mother,” he reminded her. Hers certainly didn’t win any prizes, he added silently. “Maybe yours was jealous.”

  “Of me?” Jane asked incredulously just before she laughed. Really laughed.

  It had a nice sound, he thought, even if it was at her own expense.

  “Of you,” he repeated. “A lot of ‘beauty queens’ are very shallow and very jealous of anyone who might steal the spotlight from them. Especially as they get older. Trust me, I’ve known more than my share of those.” Women who saw lines in the mirror that weren’t there, who were afraid of getting a day older, a day beyond their prime.

  He didn’t sound as if he liked those women very much. “If that’s what you think of them, why did you hang around them so much?”

  When he’d been younger, there’d been more than his share of older women, women who were drawn to his sensuality as well as his youth. “Maybe that’s why I’m not hanging around them anymore.”

  But you will be. Once you win your bet or get tired of your charade, you’ll be back with those beautiful, vapid women, she thought.

  And the thought filled her with a sadness that took more than a moment to shake.

  “You know,” Jane said twenty minutes later as she unlocked her apartment door, “If you’ve changed your mind about going out to eat, that’s okay.”

  He’d never known a woman who constantly presented him with avenues of escape. Didn’t she want to go out with him?

  “I haven’t changed my mind,” he told her. “If anything, I’m hungrier.” His eyes met hers. “How about you?”

  She wasn’t hungry as much as she was walking on air. Every time he looked at her like that, she became airborne. It was a struggle to remain grounded. Anchored. She kept reminding herself that none of this was what it seemed and that as long as she just enjoyed herself and didn’t get carried away, it was going to be all right.

  But it wasn’t easy.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she promised, shedding her coat as she hurried toward her bedroom. She tossed her coat onto the sofa as she passed by it.

  He saw her bedroom door close and for a moment, he felt a strong urge to open it and follow her inside. But he was fairly certain that if he did, it would spook her and he didn’t want to do that. Didn’t want to drive her away or traumatize her.

  The winning over of Ms. Jane Gilliam was going to take time. The very thought intrigued him because he’d never had to coax a woman before. That he did, he supposed, was part of the attraction he felt. He had to admit that he’d never taken time to really get to know the woman behind the face and body before. Ordinarily his goal had always been gratification—both his and that of the woman he was with.

  The latter had always been part and parcel of the deal. That way it worked out to everyone’s mutual benefit. But this time around it was different. Different in a way that he didn’t quite understand. But he meant to. And right now, there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

  Less than five minutes later, the bedroom door opened.

  Had she changed her mind?

  Or was that a silent invitation for him to enter?

  Jorge took exactly one step toward the bedroom before Jane came out, wearing a simple black pencil skirt and a powder blue pullover. Taking a complete inventory in less time than it took to say the phrase, he found his gaze lingering on her legs. Did she realize that she had killer legs? Probably not, he decided.

  “That was fast. Most women I know—including my sisters,” he added purposely so she wouldn’t think he was just comparing her to the women he’d gone out with, “take that long just to reapply their lipstick.”

  She’d always been able to get ready at a moment’s notice. It evolved from a sense of knowing she’d be left behind if she kept either of her parents waiting the few times that they actually took her someplace with them.

  “Not much to fuss with,” she told him. “Besides, I was afraid you’d change your mind if I took too long.” She’d almost said, “come to your senses,” but she’d managed to stop herself just in time. “Are we going to your parents’ restaurant again?”

  He heard the barely suppressed note of eagerness in her voice. “I’d rather not.” She slipped on her coat before he could help her with it. So he opened the door instead. “Unless you like eating with an audience.”

  Crossing the threshold, she looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  He waited as she locked the door.

  “Most evenings, my mother’s there to help out. She has a wonderful memory.” Whether Jane knew it or not, she was exactly what his mother would have chosen for him. “She sees you with me and I guarantee she’ll take it as a sign that her prayers have been answered.”

  She’d never thought of herself as the answer to anyone’s prayer. The last guy who’d unceremonious
ly dumped her just before New Year’s had made that abundantly clear.

  At the risk of sounding dumb, she said, “I still don’t understand.”

  He led the way to guest parking, where he’d left his sports car.

  “My mother is a wonderful woman who has what she feels are very simple wishes. She wants to see all of her children married—and she’s willing to move heaven and earth—and everything in between—for that to happen. My sisters now are all taken care of, so my mother concentrates all her efforts on getting my older brother, Roberto, and me, married off.”

  As long as she was on her own and not a drain, her mother didn’t care how she lived her life. “You should appreciate that your mother cares so much about your happiness.”

  Hitting the security lock, he opened the passenger door for her.

  “I love my mother.” His eyes lowered as she slid her legs in. “But her definition of happiness is not necessarily mine.”

  She waited until he got in on his side. “Meaning you never intend to get married?”

  That sounded as if it was carved in stone. He shook his head.

  “Meaning I don’t intend to get married now. There’s always tomorrow,” he added, letting her in on his private philosophy.

  Glancing at her before he pulled out of the parking spot, he noted that the smile on her lips had more than a hint of sadness to it.

  “Not always,” she told him. “My father always thought he’d have all the time in the world to do what he wanted to do ‘tomorrow.’ But for him, tomorrow didn’t come.”

  Jorge read between the lines. “How old was he when he died?”

  “Forty-two.”

  And although she had never managed to make her father proud of her the way she so desperately wanted him to be, she still missed him a great deal. Struggling for a moment, she managed to tamp down the melancholy feelings that were rushing through her.

  He’d done it again. This was the second time she’d done this in the space of one evening.

  Jane looked at Jorge ruefully. “How is it that I keep pouring out my soul to you?”