“Except Russell,” she said. “He won’t even fire that girl from his office.”
Mason laughed. “Oh, yes. Jena.”
She was stunned that he knew who she meant. “You know her?”
“She’s been spending some time at the restaurant. I think she has a new target.”
“Xander,” Joely surmised and Mason shrugged.
“She showed up Sunday night, stayed at the bar with a couple of her friends, you know – like they do. According to the bartender, she was trying to figure things out about Xander, and whether or not he was available. She was particularly interested in his aborted trip out of town.”
Joely groaned. “That makes sense then. She pieced it together just like everyone else did. No wonder Russell changed his mind, lickety-split. She’s moved on to someone younger – the irony.”
“And since he knows he can’t compete with someone like Xander for her,” Mason started.
“He’s decided to come back home to good ol’ Joely. Great.”
He touched her hand. “At least now you know.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“That’s what gay friends are for,” he winked.
Upstairs, Lilah and Hannah were bonding even more, both sitting atop Hannah’s bed, playing with their dolls, talking about hospitals – a new thing that connected them.
“How long were you in the hospital?” Hannah asked.
“Months and months,” Lilah told her. “I nearly died.”
Hannah frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t want her friend to die. “My problem was fixed by a surgery. Couldn’t you get a surgery?”
“I had lots,” Lilah told her as she brushed her doll’s hair. “I hate surgery.”
“Me too,” Hannah empathized.
“My daddies got me some special medicine. It made it all go away. Like magic.”
“Oh?” Hannah said.
Lilah nodded. “I still take it every day. I haven’t been in the hospital this whole year. You should take it too,” she decided.
“What kind of medicine is it?”
Lilah made a face. “I can’t tell you. My daddies say that people don’t understand, so we have to keep it a secret.”
“Best friends don’t keep secrets,” Hannah reminded.
Lilah considered that for a moment before she nodded. “You’re right.” She leaned across the bed to whisper her precious secret in her best friend’s ear. Hannah made a face. She’d never heard that word before.
“What does it do?”
“Daddy says it makes the cancer cells shrink and then disappear. I was so sick for a long, long time. But he started giving it to me and I felt better. I even wanted to eat. I never wanted to eat on chemo.”
“What’s chemo?”
Lilah shuddered. “It’s another kind of medicine. Dad says it wages war on cancer, that’s why it makes me so sick when I take it. It made me hurt all over.”
Hannah didn’t like the sound of that either. She still hurt from her surgery, but the pain before the surgery was so much worse. She leaned over to hug her friend. “I’m happy your medicine fixed you,” she declared.
“I’m happy your surgery fixed you,” Lilah said.
They went back to playing with their dolls.
Mason picked up Kari and Nash that afternoon, so that Hannah wouldn’t have to leave the house. They loved his car and the music he blasted from his stereo, which was much more current than the oldies from the 1980s and 1990s that their mother always listened to. Kari decided to catch a ride with Mason to the restaurant as well, so they dropped Lilah off at their house, where she met Christopher.
She’d never met gay people before, much less a couple. She found them both terribly fascinating, just like the gay folks she saw on TV. By the time they reached Lillian’s Place, she and Mason were thick as thieves.
She was especially excited to see Xander again. It had been a long, scary weekend and he knew it. He greeted her with a hug. “There’s my special girl. How’s it going? How’s Hannah?”
“Better,” she said as she squeezed him extra tight. She loved how he filled her arms. It was something she had dreamed about for months. “She’s at home now.”
He wanted to ask which home, but he didn’t dare. He still remembered the possessive look in Russell’s eyes when he entered the hospital room that Saturday afternoon. Those kids, and that crazy, sexy woman Xander couldn’t stop thinking about, were a part of Russell’s family, not his. He was crazy to get involved. Absolutely nuts. And yet…, “How’s your mum?”
“Okay,” Kari answered. “She hasn’t had a chance to bake or anything, though.”
He nodded. He hadn’t expected her to. “No hurries. Her customers love her. They’ll be here when she gets back.”
In fact he had new fewer than twenty orders stacked up already, booking her for six weeks solid of weekend commitments, including the baby shower Jena and her sister were throwing.
Jena had used Hannah’s illness to direct all her questions about the event to Xander. She had left him several messages over the weekend, to consult again on the arrangements. He knew he couldn’t put her off forever. He also knew that being alone with her could be a huge mistake. He was no fool. He knew she was interested. Technically he could have worked directly with Nicole to plan everything, but Jena had planted herself right in the middle. He knew it wasn’t because she wanted to order customized cookies.
A few months ago he probably would have used any excuse to get into her pants. She was young and sexy, and promised to be a lot of fun. Now things had changed. He had told himself that he was seducing Joely for her, to build up her self-esteem after Russell had crushed it underfoot. The first time he laid eyes on her, that night in the restaurant when Lillian had introduced them, he could see her broken spirit in her beautiful brown eyes. But he also saw a spark there, trying its best to catch fire. That was the fire he stoked for weeks on end. He thought maybe a casual flirt or two would do it, it normally did. But Joely was deliciously complicated, this jig-saw puzzle that was difficult as hell to put back together again. Instead of being put off by the investment that demanded, he found himself even more drawn to her. Soon he fantasized about a rendezvous where she’d turn from a frumpy housewife into a sexy cougar right at the tips of his fingers.
He set out to make her so crazed with desire she’d explode just like a beach ball bursting out of the water. Instead he made himself crazy thinking about her. That first night she had kissed him had only hooked him for more. Now he was hopelessly addicted. Just one kiss, one touch… one night with her wasn’t enough.
So he did what any man possessed by desire would do. He walked upstairs to his office, gathered all the orders he had saved for her, and drove across town to Old Elmwood to see her again. When she opened the door, his heart leapt with joy – despite the worrisome frown she wore.
He offered the folder. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d bring these by,” he said as he brushed past her.
She followed him to the living room. “Yeah, I’m not ready to deal with any of this, Xander.”
He ignored the dismissal in her voice. “Where’s our wee patient?”
She sighed as she stared at him across the room. “She’s sleeping.”
“On the mend, then?”
His dark eyes were guarded as he stared at her. She closed the gap between them to speak in a voice that Nash couldn’t hear from the family room. “I really appreciate everything you did to help,” she started. He promptly cut her off.
“We’re just getting started, love. I’ve decided if we can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, we’ll bring the mountain here. I called Trish this morning and she’s willing to come to Abilene one weekend in November, to get your segment on air by Cyber-Monday. Biggest online shopping day of the year.”
“Xander,” she tried to interrupt, but he was undaunted. He took a step towards her.
“You’re about to blow up natio
nwide. Don’t tell me you’re not excited.”
She took a deep breath as she braced herself for that hungry look in his eyes. It still made her quiver. Though their night together had been brief, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, or him. “What are you doing?” she finally asked in a soft, broken voice.
“Same thing I’ve done from the start,” he murmured. “I’m helping you.”
“Xander,” she said, this time a soft plea for him to take mercy on her. Just being in his presence was all wrong for her now. It reminded her of all those things she had thought she wanted, that she thought had mattered, until she was racing across West Texas hoping to see her daughter one last time before the unthinkable happened. Their affair had been brief and explosive, but if God had been willing to punish her for that, what more would she be risking for one more minute in his arms?
She shook her head. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Really. But I think we both know that anything other than a business relationship is a big mistake.”
He looked around to make sure they were alone. Then he backed her right up to the wall. “I know that you’re blowing a very minor thing into another excuse not to try.”
“Minor thing? My daughter had to have emergency surgery, Xander.”
“And she’s fine now,” he said. “Everything is fine. You’re fine. We’re fine.”
“There is no we, Xander. I told you before. I’m too old for you. I have a houseful of kids. I’m still married, for chrissakes.”
“Do you want to be?” he asked her. “Or is it just one more convenient get-out-of-life card for you?”
Her hand made a resounding crack against his cheek. His jaw clenched as he grabbed her arm with one hand and pulled her close. “You can hide if you want, Joely. If that makes you feel better. But I know your secrets now. You want me every bit as much as I want you. Try as you might, you can’t lie about that anymore. This is one hunt I will not abandon.” He lifted her up and planted a blazing kiss on her mouth, crushing her lips under his until she was forced to relent.
He released her quickly and stalked toward the door, slamming it behind him. When Nash emerged from the family room, he saw his mother leaning against the wall, trying to catch her breath. “What was that?”
“The wind caught the door,” she lied easily as she put her folder into the roll top desk just inside the living room. “Let’s start dinner,” she said as she guided her son back into the kitchen.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hannah was out of school the rest of the week, so Joely’s output was half as much as she normally produced. Part of that was because she hadn’t wanted to see Xander again so soon after their stormy confrontation. As much as she hated to admit it, he was absolutely and totally right. She still wanted him despite everything fate had thrown at her to scare her away. She dreamed about him at night. She thought about him all day. There wasn’t one part of her new life at her mother’s that didn’t have Xander’s fingerprints all over it. This included her cookie enterprise, which was her only real chance she could provide for herself or her kids.
It was ridiculous. Theirs had been a steamy sexual liaison, nothing more. It wasn’t like they were falling in love. She knew the odds of a rebound relationship. It wasn’t fair to any of them to get their hopes up, especially when the kids were already so crazy about him. Hannah had been inseparable with her Xander-bear. Kari was always full of tales from the restaurant, where Xander ruled all as the Lord of Awesome. Even Nash had opened up to Xander, following him on social media, where they shared fun little memes and jokes back and forth between each other.
The true test had come that Friday, when she and the kids were preparing more cookies for the weekend. She casually mentioned the future, just to see what expectations the kids might have had. “Have you guys given any thought to what kind of place you’d like to live after Nana’s?”
“I think we should move close to the restaurant,” Kari told her. “Make it easy for me to get back and forth to work.”
“You really like your job there?”
Kari nodded. “I love it.” She liked it far more than school, which was still so uncomfortable thanks to the popular girls who regularly made her life hell. They snickered behind her back in the locker rooms before or after P.E., and they constantly talked behind their hands about her in class and in the hall. If only they knew how important a full grown man treated her, maybe they’d cut her a break.
But her life at the restaurant was far removed from her life at school, which is why she preferred to be at Lillian’s Place than anywhere else in the world.
“Don’t you miss your friends?”
Kari shrugged. “They have their own lives now. Angela has a boyfriend. Both Brianne and Lori got jobs at the mall. But it’s okay,” she assured her mother with a smile. “We’re growing up.”
Joely returned her smile. “I guess you are. Pretty soon you’re going to have a boyfriend, you’re going to head off to college and start a life all your own. Hard to believe you’re going to be sixteen in a few weeks. Have you thought about what you wanted to do for a party?”
Kari nodded. She had given plenty of thought to it. There was only one thing she wanted – more time with Xander. “Can we have it at Lillian’s Place?”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll talk to your Nana about it.” Kari smiled happily as she returned to her lettering on the cookie. “You’re so good with that. I’m surprised I sold any at all with my crappy old writing on them.”
Kari laughed. “Your writing wasn’t bad.”
It was an unexpected compliment. “Your writing is better.”
“I know,” Kari grinned and Joely laughed. Their relationship had finally turned a corner these last few weeks. She had even helped her mother take care of Hannah while she was recuperating. Best of all she was eager to run interference between Xander and Joely, all as part of the Back for Seconds crew. Joely had barely talked to him all week, though she still jumped every single time the doorbell rang.
“What about you?” she asked Nash, who was packaging the prepared cookies.
He shrugged, as always. Where they lived really didn’t matter to him. He had made a few buddies at school, mostly thanks to Xander. They were gaming buddies online, which helped him expand his social circle. Thanks to their connection with social media, he always got to share funny, cool things from Xander, which was a big hit with his friends. But he preferred to be behind a computer screen than face to face with anyone, so as long as he had an Internet connection.
Before she could drill any more, the doorbell rang. Again Joely had to suppress any nerves as she rose to answer. She was sure she’d see Xander on the other side of the door. She hoped that her unkempt appearance would send him running for the hills, with her flour-dusted hair tied back with a handkerchief, her face free of makeup or her messy jeans.
Still, she smoothed her hair back as she opened the door. Just in case.
Only it wasn’t Xander standing on the other side of the door. It was Russell. He was dressed in a sports coat and tie, and he wore a smile for her that she hadn’t seen in years. “What are you doing here?”
He chuckled. “Nice to see you, too.” His blue gaze traveled over her appearance. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“Just making cookies,” she said as she gestured toward the kitchen. “Hannah’s asleep,” she informed him, figuring he stopped by to see her since this wasn’t his weekend for visitation.
“I’m not here to see Hannah,” he declared. “I was wondering if you had an hour to spare.”
The kids, having heard their father’s booming voice all the way in the kitchen, both came out to greet him. He observed their equally unkempt appearances with a grin. “Looks like the elves are hard at work,” he said as he hugged them both in greeting. “That’s what I like to see. My family pulling together for a common goal.”
Both kids preened under his praise. “Are you staying for dinner, Dad?” Kari asked
.
“Maybe,” he said. “But first I was going to take your mother out to run an errand. If you can keep an eye on things while we’re gone.”
Both Kari and Joely were puzzled by the strange request. “Sure,” Kari finally said. “I can finish up the cookies.”
Russell turned to Joely. “There you go.”
She looked down at her outfit. “I can’t go anywhere looking like this.”
He laughed as he took her by the arm. “Actually, that’s perfect for what I had in mind.”
When they got to the mall, she understood why. He let them into one of the stores that used to sell cookies before the shop closed about a year before. It was a commercial kitchen with the perfect storefront for pastries, and it was right at the heart of the food court. Russell didn’t say much as she wandered around the space, confused as to why he brought her there. “What is this?”
“It’s yours,” he announced with outstretched arms. “If you want it, anyway. I can sign the lease tonight. And I’ve already lined up a professional manager to run the place, since I think we can both agree you don’t have the knowledge yet to do that. But everything is in place for you to be up and running by the holiday shopping season.”
She stood gaping at him. “What?”
He chuckled as he approached. “I’ve been giving things a lot of thought, Joely. Why our marriage stumbled. Why you might be reluctant to return. Consider this my olive branch.” He handed her a key. “You can stop selling cookies from home and run your own legitimate business.”
Funny, she thought to herself. I thought I already was. She stared at the key in her palm. “Why are you doing this, Russell?”
“Because you’re my wife,” he stated simply. “And I want to see you happy.”
“We’re separated,” she reminded. She left off the part how her happiness never mattered to her when he was screwing around with Jena behind her back. She knew the opportunity to bring it up would circle back around again. It always did.
Back for Seconds (Lone Star Second Chances Book 1) Page 23