by Judy Baer
I wasn’t disappointed.
Jack pulled up in my driveway and came to my door with a sheepish expression on his handsome face. “Why do I feel I’ve been tricked, manipulated and stage-managed into something I wanted to do anyway?”
“Because you have been—by two experts. And the question is, would you be going to a flea market today if they hadn’t manipulated you into it?”
“No.”
“Case closed.” I grabbed a denim jacket off a hanger and joined Jack on the front step. “Besides, I got conned, too. All that’s left to do is enjoy it.”
It didn’t occur to me until I was almost to Jack’s vehicle that he wasn’t driving his van. “Nice wheels. This certainly isn’t the daddy-mobile you usually drive.” I ran my finger over the finish of the low, sleek sliver Beemer.
“Ben doesn’t like to ride in it. The rules are different from the van—no eating, no videos, no radio…”
“No fun?”
“I suppose not. It’s a big boy’s toy, not that of a ten year old.”
“I see that,” I practically purred as I slid into a seat that felt as if it was made of kid leather. “This is the nicest ride I’ve ever had to a flea market.”
We pulled into a parking spot as several people walked by carrying their purchases—an old floor lamp, toys, a velvet Elvis.
“Why is everyone leaving?” Jack wondered.
“These things start early. That’s when you get the really good stuff. By now the early shoppers are on their way home.”
“Did we miss something wonderful?” A light breeze ruffled Jack’s hair as he stared at the dozens of tents and tables spread out before us.
“Probably, but we can live without it. I only shop for a few things—vintage jewelry, silver pieces and the occasional piece of glassware.” I pointed to the far corner of the tables. “There are usually some nice pieces of jewelry over there.”
“Do you know what you’re looking for?”
“I often shop for my mother. She’s a collector and I’ve got a pretty good eye.”
“I’ll bet you do.” He was checking out more than my eyes, I noticed. An unbidden shiver of pleasure ran through me. Thank you, Ben and Maggie!
My gratitude only grew as Jack and I explored the flea market together. More than once I reached for his hand to pull him toward one table or another and he let it go with reluctance. His wall of reserve was not down, but there were definite chinks in the mortar.
“I think dinner is in order,” Jack suggested as we pulled away from the market with a small bag of treasures, a sterling silver teapot black with age, three silver teaspoons and an assortment of costume jewelry.
“Shopping makes me hungry,” I offered, pleased by his suggestion.
He looked at me with a soft, warm expression. “I know just the place to go.”
The Italian restaurant was tucked into the basement of a large industrial building now made into trendy lofts. The walls were original brick, the floor rough with age and use and candles filled the room with a moody, shadowy ambiance.
“A booth, please,” Jack requested. The banquettes were upholstered in rich Italian tapestry and red velvet curtains encircled the space like an embrace. A tall candle guttered in an ancient wine bottle and elegant ivory linens draped the table.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I noticed other details. Rich oil paintings, fine crystal and large baskets of warm breads on the table. “I didn’t know this place existed.”
“One of my clients owns it. I’ve wanted to come here for some time, but he told me it’s not a place to come alone.” He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “Thank you for sharing the experience with me.”
“My pleasure” wouldn’t have said enough. It was my absolute delight.
Jack leaned against the padded back of the booth and studied me through half-closed eyes. His gaze felt smoky and mysterious as it grazed my features. A flicker of warmth grew within me.
What was he thinking? I wondered. Was it about me? Or were his thoughts with the ghost of Emily, who couldn’t be here with him?
Chapter Twenty-Five
The romantic atmosphere had the opposite effect on Jack from what I’d hoped. He seemed to sink deeper and deeper into an emotional morass with every course. By the time dessert arrived, I had to say something.
“What is it, Jack? Instead of enjoying this wonderful meal, you’re looking more and more miserable.”
“It shows that much, huh?” He smiled with his lips but his eyes were dark, unreadable pools.
“I’m beginning to get a complex. Usually men enjoy my company.”
He looked startled. “Quinn, I love your company. You are the first woman I’ve met since Emily who hasn’t pressured me into anything I don’t want to say or do. You’re a gift, a delight. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. It’s just that…” And his thoughts seemed to drift away once more.
This time, however, he managed to reel them in again.
He picked up my hand and cradled it between his palms. “Going out like this is the closest I’ve come to what my sister calls ‘moving on with my life.’” His fingers kneaded the soft dip at my wrist and sent a tremor through me.
He looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I know I need to move on with my life but I simply can’t figure out how.”
“Or if you’ll ever want to?” I asked as gently as I could.
“‘Ever’ is a long time.” He took his hands away from mine, leaving me feeling chilled and bereft.
“Do you want coffee, Quinn, or are you ready to go home?”
I found Pete and Maggie there, waiting for me. Pete was pouring chocolate sauce over vanilla ice cream and the dogs were watching him raptly, as usual.
“How was it?” Maggie jumped to her feet when I entered the kitchen. “Wonderful?”
“Very nice.”
“Nice? Isn’t that a word like fine? If something is nice or fine it’s like getting an average grade in school. I want you to say it was an A plus. “
“It really was…nice. Pleasant. Enjoyable.”
“I can find that much fun going to the grocery store! He’s gorgeous, Quinn, as adorable as that super cute son of his. Why didn’t he just sweep you away?”
“It’s impossible.” I sagged onto a chair. “He’s already taken.”
“Dating?” Pete looked up from his ice cream. “Nobody ever said that before.”
“Not dating—married. Jack’s been a widow for over two years, but he’s still very much married to his memories. He’s not ready for someone new in his life yet and may never be.”
“Bummer,” Pete commented. “Then you’re in a fix no better than mine. Kristy won’t have anything to do with me, either.”
“I think we’ve both fallen in love with the unattainable people.”
“Love, you say? Quinn, are you saying you’re falling in love?”
“Does Jack know this?” Maggie dipped celery sticks into a puddle of chocolate syrup on a plate, her idea of dieting yet not depriving herself.
“He knows I love Ben, but who wouldn’t? But he’s still grieving for Emily. It’s something very personal that he has to work out for himself. There are times when I see how much he does care for me, but there’s no way I’m going to attempt to muscle my way into this life and try to banish her from his thoughts. This is something Jack has to do alone.”
“And there is no chance that—”
“None whatsoever. He’s said as much. He’ll never marry again. He’s had ‘the best.’”
Maggie whistled through her teeth. “Now that’s tough competition.”
The vision of me as a tight-lipped spinster school-teacher began to loom in my mind. She wore a starched white blouse, a black skirt and shoes like those worn by the Wicked Witch of the West. Her hair was sparse and gray and her mouth pinched like she’d been sucking on a pickle for thirty years. Would that, could that, someday, be me?
I would h
ave to revise that vision if it was going to work for me, I decided. First I’d give my pathetic spinster new shoes.
With Ben and Nathan both back in school for the past three weeks, I was left with no excuse whatsoever to be hanging around their neighborhood except, of course, for my friendship with Nathan’s mother, Linda.
“I’ve missed having you around,” Linda told me as she poured me a cup of coffee. “What’s new?”
Now that’s a loaded question.
“In a nutshell? I’m hostess for a reality-television program and have to interview my own best friend because she’s a contestant on the show. I got my dog wormed, my windows washed and three new tutoring opportunities. My other best friend, Pete, has been cooking dinner for me every night. He says it’s because he wants to take care of me, but the real reason is that the woman he’s crazy about won’t give him the time of day and he can’t stay home alone with his thoughts. My parents have announced their plans to stay in an ice hotel in Swedish Lapland this winter. I cleaned my closet and gave most of my clothes to charity. There, how’s that?” I didn’t mention that I’d also fallen in love with her unavailable neighbor.
“And I chaperoned a group of children to the zoo. Boy, do I feel like an underachiever. Tell me about the television show and your friend,” Linda encouraged.
“I can’t tell you much. The producers think that in order for our interview to be ‘real,’ we shouldn’t discuss the show before the interview.”
“So you don’t know if she’s going to have a nose job or a body lift? That must be difficult.”
I helped myself to a scone and some strawberry jam. “The odd thing is that lately Maggie appears relatively unconcerned about the show. Her mind is elsewhere. Not many weeks ago this was all she wanted out of life and now she seems disinterested in the process.”
“Maybe she’s decided she’s okay with her looks as they are.”
“I can’t imagine how it could happen. I doubt she’ll ever be satisfied.”
“Why are you doing it, Quinn? You said yourself you wouldn’t have taken the job if it weren’t for your friend.”
“I had this crazy idea I could ‘protect’ her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need your protection.”
I silently vowed to bring up the subject of Maggie’s changing mood after dinner tonight.
“Have you seen Jack lately?” Linda asked, changing the subject into even more uncomfortable territory.
“Not recently.” I felt empty inside as I said it. If Jack had been interested in me personally, if he had cared at all, he would have called.
“I’m having him over for dinner this weekend. Want to come?” Linda looked sly and self-satisfied.
“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t play matchmaker with me. Jack’s not interested. I don’t want you to put him in an awkward spot.”
Unfortunately, Linda didn’t have any such reservations.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Seeing Jack so many days after our intimate dinner date gone wrong was as uncomfortable as putting my size-nine feet in size-six shoes. He was charming as always, of course, ready to pull out my chair, ask after my health and smile at my feeble jokes. But there was a vaporous yet impenetrable wall between us that only I seemed to sense, a wall made of memories, of the joy and the grief Jack had experienced with Emily, of all the things I would never ask Jack to put down in order be with me.
When he’s ready, I’d been telling myself. I knew I shouldn’t fool myself with even that, any longer.
Linda had invited Pete and Maggie to dinner, as well. “The more the merrier,” she’d said, and I was grateful for their presence.
“Ben’s going to camp next summer,” Jack announced over dessert. “He’ll be in the pilot for the JA program. It’s going to be outstanding.”
He turned to me. “He’s been in a growth spurt, Quinn. He ate me out of house and home for three weeks and now he’s taking off like a weed. Eat, grow, eat, grow. That’s how it works with Ben.”
“I miss him. I’m glad he’s in school and doing well, but I do miss him.” How much more stilted could this conversation get?
“He misses you, too. You should stop by and say hello sometime.”
And run into you again? That’s like taking a bandage off one hair at a time. No thanks.
“I’ll call him.”
“He’d like that.” Something flickered in Jack’s eyes.
Disappointment? Hardly. Relief.
Then unexpectedly, he added under his breath, “I missed you, too.”
Unfortunately, Jack left the party first without offering to walk me to my car.
As I was leaving, Linda backed me into a small powder room just off their foyer and demanded, “What happened? Where’d the magnetic pull between you two go? You’re acting like strangers.”
A rap on the front door forced Linda and I to spill out of the powder room.
The front door opened. “Linda, I forgot my jacket in the dining room.” Jack looked as if there was something he wanted to say but before he could, Maggie breezed in from the other room.
“Oh, good, you haven’t left yet,” she said to Jack. “You mentioned that you’d never been on a studio set. Why don’t you come tomorrow? Quinn is interviewing me.”
“Thanks, Maggie, but I have appointments all day tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
He glanced at me and looked away. “Really sorry.”
“Another time, then.”
But of course Jack and I both knew another time wouldn’t come.
“Hey, Quinn, how’s it going?” Sam greeted me at the studio with his ever present smile. “Are you ready to interview Maggie about her upcoming transformation?”
Sam is the most engaging and likable guy on the studio set. He is also very handsome in his own broken and patched-back-together way. I can see why Maggie enjoyed their time together during the show.
“Not bad, considering. Sam, may I ask you something?”
“Of course. I’m an open book.”
“You are, aren’t you? What you see is what you get.”
He grinned his toothy smile. “I hope it’s more than that. What you see isn’t that great.” He held up a mug. “Coffee? You’re early and we’re late. We’ve got time.”
I took a mug and sat down out of everyone’s way in a darkened corner of the room by a large curtain. “How do you do it? Everybody loves you. Every woman on the set would like to take you home and cook you dinner.”
“Is that an invitation?” He leaned back in his own chair and crossed his legs at his ankles. “I don’t ‘do’ anything, Quinn. I’m just me. Simple, steady, ugly me.”
“You aren’t ugly!”
“Have you looked at me lately? My nose looks toward my left ear, my jaw shoots the other way, I’ve got a mouth full of ivories that just won’t quit and I had terrible acne as a kid. Ugly is my middle name!”
There wasn’t anything to say. He hadn’t exaggerated, yet when I look at him I see warm eyes, a smile that’s spread throughout his entire body, curly black hair, broad shoulders, a trim body and the one of the most beautiful personalities I’ve ever met.
He saw my confusion. “‘Handsome is as handsome does, Sam,’ my grandmother used to say. She told me that if the most beautiful person in the world was a bad-tempered liar, their handsomeness would only fool people for a little while. Then others would see them for what they are and they wouldn’t be so pretty, anymore.”
He took a swig of the coffee. “That bit of knowledge came in handy when I started boxing and got beat up like this. I always figured if I was handsome on the inside, it would show through, like Grandma said.”
“And it does.”
He smiled endearingly at me. “So I never bothered to get my nose fixed and I’m doing okay.” A shadow passed over his features. “That’s why it is so hard to work on this particular show.
“These women don’t get it. There’s not an ‘ugly’ one in the bunch. Look at Maggie. She’s gorgeo
us. I have no idea what she’s doing here.” He looked at me shyly. “I’d love to have a woman like Maggie by my side. I’d walk ten feet tall.
“You’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Sam asked abruptly. “I can tell from things you say and how you act around here. You’re just—nice.”
“That’s a lovely compliment, thank you.”
“See, I’m a Christian, too. My grandmother saw to that. She told me that God made me perfect for the purpose He had for me. I didn’t believe her for a long time, but lately I’ve realized she’s right.”
I leaned forward and felt my elbow bump into something on the other side of the curtain. When I moved again, whatever had been there was gone.
“See, here I am, happy as a clam, with a bunch of discontented women. If they looked like me, then they’d have something to be dissatisfied about! Maybe God’s trying to make a point here. You know Mandy, the blond lady you interviewed first? She is changing her mind about what she wants to have done.”
Sam’s eyes sparkled. “She said that talking to you and meeting me proved to her that looks aren’t everything. Cool, huh? I just had to wait until God put me and my ugly mug in a place where it could do some good.”
I didn’t attempt to stop Sam from calling himself ugly because he wore it as a badge of valor rather than of shame.
“I wish Maggie could hear you.”
“Hearing isn’t enough. She’s got to believe I’m telling the truth.”
Maggie. After Sam left, I peeked around the curtain to see if I’d knocked something over with my elbow and found Maggie, huddled in a corner, half-hidden by the big sheets of canvas. Tears streaked her face.
For the very first time I thought that Chrysalis could do Maggie a little good. She needed someone to powder her nose.
I knelt beside her, put my hands on her shoulders and felt her tremble.
Impulsively, I opened my cell phone and called Pete. “Can you come to the studio and pick Maggie up?”