She recognized the woman as a neighbor—the one with the house on the west corner, someone she’d seen at the grocer and library and line at the movies. Clearly the woman was stopping to see Jack, because he got a buss on the cheek and a cuff on the neck.
“Hey, stranger, way too long since we had a drink. Hi,” she said to Merry, and extended a hand.
The conversation didn’t last more than a couple minutes before the woman—Nancy Riker—wandered back to her own table, where she was jammed in with a group of friends. But the short exchange was long enough for Jack to look uncomfortable.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“No reason to be. I could see what was what,” Merry said gently, but Jack only looked more awkward.
“She’s a nice person,” he began.
To help him climb off the hot seat, she filled in, “I’d guess…she was devastated right after a divorce. You did some consoling. You made it clear this wasn’t a relationship thing, which wasn’t what either of you wanted. So you clicked together a few times and parted ways, no hard feelings.” At his astonished expression, she chuckled.
“Someone told you?”
“No. Who would be telling me something like that? It was just…looking at her. And you. She’s pretty. And seems genuinely nice. And she greeted you in a way that there’d obviously been something going on sometime, but also…she wasn’t hurt. Wasn’t worried that you were.”
“You got all that out of a one-minute conversation?”
“And maybe a teensy bit more.”
“What?”
She finished her last sip of wine. It was one thing, to know in her heart that she needed to quit running, and another to take some real chances with Jack that could be darn tricky. “I suspect she’s the kind of woman you hone in on pretty often. I don’t mean about her being someone newly divorced when you hooked up. But that you tend to leave relationships with both sides happy. Play the game fair. But also…”
“Also what?”
“Also…you only look for women who don’t want a permanent hook up. Who won’t have that expectation.”
“Why would you say that? Where’d you get it?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. Am I wrong?”
“I didn’t say you were wrong. But—”
“I think I got it from your boys, Jack. Kicker wants to be just like you—or like he thinks you are. Free. All about a good time. But, Cooper…he’s never said it in exact words, but he seems to want the opposite. He doesn’t want to play the game, date, all that. He just wants to find a girl to spend the rest of his life with. He hungers…to be with someone.” She hesitated again. “Unlike Kicker, I think Cooper sees your loneliness.”
“Me. Lonely?” He looked astonished. “I don’t know why Cooper would think that. I’ve got all kinds of friends. The boys. Good neighbors. Friends at work, work I love…”
Merry thought, for darn sure this wasn’t how she’d seen the evening going with Jack. But having started down this side road, she figured she might as well face the road signs she’d failed to before. “She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”
“Who?” Jack said, with a look on his face that clearly expressed how ditzy he thought she was being.
“Your ex-wife,” she said gently.
“Hell. My divorce was ages ago.”
“I understand. But I think…” She groped to find the right words. “When my mom left me, I was Charlene’s age. When you’re a kid, you just count on your parents as unconditionally loving you. I counted on mattering to her. It never crossed my mind that I wasn’t important enough in her life that she could just walk out and really not look back.”
“I hate to believe it was that easy for her,” Jack said, but she could see something in his eyes. A sharp connection to what she was saying.
“She claims it was hard, that she felt a lot of guilt. And maybe she did. But my reality was still that she pretty much left me bleeding—” Merry took a breath “—the same as your ex-wife left you.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“No, of course it isn’t—because you weren’t a child. Adults know better than to expect unconditional love from each other. But doesn’t everybody want to believe they’re irreplaceable? At least to someone? And maybe we’re not. But it stings like a knife when we find that out for sure…oh, damn.” She’d been looking at Jack, not her watch or the far clock on the wall. But a loud burst of laughter from another booth made her glance up, and abruptly she realized it was twenty to nine. If she didn’t leave this minute, she’d be late picking up Charlene, and she’d gotten phobic about being late, afraid Charlene would worry that she’d been forgotten.
Jack had already paid for the drinks, but when she stood up, he bolted to his feet as well. The way he looked at her, she doubted he’d noticed the clock or other people any more than she had. His eyes met hers with an intensity that buttered her heart.
“I have to go,” she said, “but darn it, Jack. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while that I understood.”
“That you understood what?”
She shook her head, wildly, fast, tucked her purse strap on her shoulder and leaned up. Even with only seconds to spare, she closed her eyes before kissing him. It wasn’t a bar come-on kiss. It was an I-love-you-and-don’t-care-if-the-whole-world-knows-it kind of kiss. Just a tilt of the head. A brush of the lips. An emotion that took flight before it ever turned into a promise.
“That I understood that you weren’t going to love me,” she murmured. It was probably the only way she could manage to do this—to say what needed saying. In a public place. Where the kids were nowhere around, and all their clothes were on. And where she was in such a hurry that she wouldn’t risk getting embarrassingly emotional.
When he didn’t immediately contradict her, she gulped back the sharp feeling of loss. “It’s all right, Jack. I’m glad we’re friends. I’m glad we live next door. But I get it completely, why you weren’t looking for more from me. I was hoping for more, I admit it. But that’s only because I find you so impossibly easy to love that I couldn’t help dipping in those waters, you know? Not because I was looking to be a pain.”
She shot him a humorous smile—or a smile that she hoped looked honest and humorous—and then flew.
In less than two hours, the dusky evening had turned into a glowering night, with clouds fisting overhead and thunder moaning in the west. She could taste the rain in the air, feel the close humidity. The temperature was warmer—crazy warm compared to the first of March in Minnesota—and suddenly she missed home so much she could hardly see.
Or maybe that was tears blinding her vision. Darn it, she’d said what she needed to say, hadn’t she? She hadn’t run from it. Maybe she hoped he’d contradict her, hoped he’d claimed to have fallen madly in love, that he’d finally found someone who was irreplaceable in his life, namely her. But that was such fairy-tale thinking that she’d never expected it, and she’d tried to be frank so he’d know she wasn’t the naïve cock-eyed ditz he’d first thought her.
Now, though, she had to shake the tears before Charlene saw her. Charlene had to be what mattered. She had to get perky again.
She would.
She did.
Charlene bounded down the library steps the minute the car pulled up. She heaved in a half-dozen books and climbed in. “So how’d it go, cookie?” Merry asked.
“It was horrible,” Charlene said, but clearly she was jazzed. “Talk about a mean assignment. We’re talking cru-el. Took us hours and hours. But I worked with Dougall and Mike and Greta and George. Mike actually knows something about computers. But George, he was such an Edsel.”
“An Edsel?”
“Yeah, that’s what my dad used to say. I think it was a car. You know, a car that tanked? That’s George. A lot of ideas, but they all tank. Anyway—”
Buzz, buzz, buzz all the way home. Then cookies and milk. Then chasing after dirty clothes and glasses and towels that somehow
had walked into the living room. Then came a discussion of the next day’s schedule of events—who knew an eleven-year-old needed an agenda calendar to keep it all straight?
And the whole time, Merry kept thinking, she was glad she’d gotten that out with Jack. She’d just been building up illusions that he seriously cared, that he was developing the winsome, yearning kind of loving feelings that she had. If he wasn’t, it was far better to nip the whole thing in the bud before anybody got hurt.
Like her.
Because right now it felt as if her heart were broken three ways from Sunday and might never recover. Pretty hysterical, considering Jack had never said or implied a single promise, nor hinted at even a vague hope for a future.
Funnier yet, Jack was the first man who’d made her strikingly aware that love and lust were only part of the whole deal. Kids used the “respect” word incessantly these days, yet Merry had never considered how much it mattered to her…that when you really loved a man, his respect counted more than diamonds.
Or else the lust thing, enticing as it might be, was only worth rhinestones.
“So, can I do it?” Charlene asked.
By then, they were both brushing teeth in their respective bathrooms, walking back and forth with toothbrush midmouth to finish their conversations. Only Merry had lost track. Damn it, despair could do that to a girl.
“Run it by me one more time,” she said.
“Come on, Merry. You heard me. It’s a ropes climbing course.”
“You mean like…climbing. As in climbing mountains. As in going up real high so that you could fall real far. So far you’d risk breaking your ankle. Or your head.”
“God, you are such a wimp. It’s a sport, Mer. Just like any other sport.” When Charlene peered into her face, she seemed to realize a “no” was coming, because she abruptly blurted out, “My dad would have let me do it.”
Merry almost dropped the toothbrush. It wasn’t as if Charlene never mentioned her dad, but it was the first time he’d popped into a conversation, as normal as sunshine. And how normal was this, for Charlene to try to guilt her into getting what she wanted? Merry was so proud of her she wanted to shriek. “I’ll tell you what. I think it’s past time we worked with some of your dad’s things—either packed them away or sold them or gave them away—whatever you want, Charlie. But right now too much is just sitting there, gathering dust. So…if you’ll give me Saturday morning to deal with some of that stuff, then you can sign up for the ropes course.”
Charlene hesitated. Until now, she’d gotten pretty freaked at even the idea of touching any of her dad’s belongings. But now she said, “Do you mean it? You’ll put it in ink that I can sign up?”
“Well, I’d need to hear some more. Who teaches the course. Whether I’d trust him or her. The safety record and all. But if the details pass muster, then…I think…okay.”
Charlene disappeared into her bathroom to spit. Merry heard the sound of the water running, then nothing. She’d started slathering on moisturizer when Charlene suddenly showed up again in the doorway, wearing one of her best major scowls.
“All right, we can do that stuff on Saturday,” she said.
And that was it. The kid disappeared into her own room, not slamming her door, but closing it with a quiet clip.
Merry thought, I’m gonna die if I lose that kid. She had second thoughts about their conversation on the climbing course, because darn it, she knew full well, she might not have power over what Charlene did after the custody hearing.
But that was down the pike. And it was right now that Charlene had shown signs, finally, that she was starting to come to terms with her dad’s death—which meant that it was right now Merry wanted to respond to her. Over the next week, obviously, she’d have to bring up the hearing. But every second they were together wasn’t going to be about that, Merry was determined.
She was going to “mom” Charlie with all the love she had. Period. It was an easy choice to make, because love had no timetable.
She only wished that were just as true with Jack….
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JACK HURLED A FISTFUL of gravel at the window, thinking damnation but that woman had messed with his mind for the last time.
A man could take a lot—but there was a limit. That limit, he figured, was what any reasonable male human being could be expected to tolerate in the realm of risking his life, limbs and losing his mind. Not to mention his heart.
He waited, but when there was no sight or sound showing up in the spare bedroom window, he bent over to scoop up another fistful of gravel. Between the cloudy sky and spitting rain, it was impossible to see clearly. If he accidentally gathered up any bigger stones with the gravel, he could well break a window.
A broken window would hardly help his cause. And tonight, that’d just be his luck.
Still, he hurled the second fistful, only to suddenly notice movement from a different room farther to the west. That window suddenly cranked open. “I’m not in the bedroom,” she called out.
“Yeah, I had that impression.” He also had an inkling where she was, since jasmine-scented steam puffed out the open window.
“You know, if you wanted to see me, you could use the door like normal people.”
“Yeah, well, that would have risked waking the squirt. And I needed to see you. Merry. Listen to me.” It’d been spitting rain for the last half hour. Not a deluge. Just enough to drool icicles down his neck, to drizzle from his eyebrows, to make the night truly miserable. “I don’t know where you got all that psychological stuff about my ex-wife. But I came over here to tell you that I never heard such nonsense.”
“No?”
“I was trying to answer you, for Pete’s sake. But then you had to run off. And this is like the third time. There’s always something to run off for. I can’t finish a conversation with you to save my life.” When he realized he was throwing his hands around, talking like she did with body movements, it scared him. So he slugged his fists onto his hips in a more normal, tough-guy posture. “So I’m here to tell you, just maybe some of that nonsense was true.”
She didn’t interrupt. He’d counted on her interrupting, because she always did. Then she’d say the words and he wouldn’t have to. It seemed she chose that moment to completely stay quiet and listen, the damn woman. So he was stuck going on.
“I thought we had a pretty darn good marriage,” he said. “Perfect, no. But I loved her. I loved our boys. Maybe the fire in the furnace wasn’t as hot as it used to be, but she was busy, and I just tried not to care. It seemed to me we’d built too good a life to throw it out. And whether either of us were that thrilled for a period, I know it sounds corny, but I believed in the vows.”
“Aw, Jack…”
There she went again. Her heart…man, her heart was always in her eyes. All that sympathy. All that compassion. All that love, just given so generously.
He flexed his hands. “So when she just took off, it was like she ripped off my ego with her.” He scraped a hand through his wet hair, to stop the drips. “I hate talking about stuff like this.”
“Did you think I was forcing you?”
“No. But I’m just trying to admit…maybe I did take an easy road after that. Not a cold-blooded love ’em and leave ’em track. But maybe I didn’t let anybody get too close. Maybe you had that part of things right. I just hadn’t put it all in those words before.”
She leaned over the sill, crossing her arms. “You’re getting soaking wet.”
“Sometimes you have to slap a guy upside the head before he thinks, you know? Who wants to think if they don’t have to? About stuff like this?”
“Come in out of the rain, Jack.”
“But what happened to me isn’t the point. What I wanted you to know was that…I wasn’t using you. I wasn’t playing you. If you thought I didn’t care…for all I knew in the beginning, that’s what you wanted, someone to sleep with now and then, someone to just be there. For a while. So you woul
dn’t be so by yourself when you first moved here. That’s what I thought we were doing. But I didn’t know…that was going to change for me. I didn’t know…I was going to feel differently than I had all this time. I—”
Hell and a half.
She disappeared.
Here he was pouring out his heart, standing there in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, and the woman just disappeared on him.
If that wasn’t typical of Merry, he didn’t know what was. From the minute she’d moved here, she’d made him think about all this damned crap he didn’t want to think about. Made him think and worry about how he was raising his boys, that his sons could get the idea their dad was a man who couldn’t commit. She’d made him think about Cooper, and how damn much the boy just wanted to be part of a family and all a family meant.
Hell, a family meant everything to him, too. Or it used to. Once upon a time. All right. Now. He fiercely hungered for a woman to wake up to. To share with. To seduce. To argue with over dinner. To just be with, for God’s sake.
And for someone who valued being with him.
It was pretty dumb, how much that mattered to him. He was no kid seeing life through rose-colored glasses anymore, no idiot who still counted on a woman to be there no matter what. But somewhere in his dusty mental attic, apparently he’d locked up that hope that someone’d be there through a little thick and thin. If it wasn’t too thick or too thin. And Merry, because she was so infernally upbeat and open, had somehow coaxed him into believing that if a guy was really careful, if he loved her all the way, all the time, if he—
The back door opened. “My God, Jack. You’re a mess.”
In the silver mist, he could see she was wearing a thin nightgown. Nothing sexy. But here she was barefoot, wearing a pale long nightgown that swooped around her ankles, stepped out on a March night—and no, it wasn’t pouring, but it was still coming down in nonstop cold noodles. Proving for all time that she didn’t have a single functioning brain—my God, she was ditzy—she walked straight toward him with her arms held out.
Blame it on Cupid Page 29