When they were finished, Jack was waiting, having already paid for Frankie’s photograph and Freddie’s book.
“How come you know so much about art?” asked Frankie when they were on the way home.
“Art has always been a big part of my life.”
“Why?”
Harley thought. “How does your photo make you feel?”
“It makes me want to know how it feels to move and sway the way that dancer is moving,” she said, waving her arms and twirling down the sidewalk.
“Mine makes me wonder about the words and the pictures hidden inside the folds,” said Freddie.
“I have a feeling art is important to you, too. But you just don’t think about it because you’re surrounded by it everywhere you look.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Easy. Yellow.”
“Red!” shouted Freddie.
“Remember when you were asking me what jail looked like and I told you how gray it was? Imagine no more yellow, no more red ever again. In fact, imagine no colors. Instead, what if everything in your life was gray, from your clothes to your bathtub to the walls of your bedroom?”
“Ew,” they said.
“That’s a little taste of what it would be like in a world without art.”
“It’s like without the park, the whole downtown would be gray.”
“Exactly.”
Jack turned into Harley’s drive.
“Do we have to go home now?” the girls pleaded.
“Remember my meeting?” Jack reminded them.
Harley looked at him. “I can take the girls.”
Leave the twins with Harley? Mother wouldn’t like it. But it would be a great chance for them to get to know each other.
“Pleeeeze?” came from the backseat. “We want to make fingerprints.”
“Maybe I should have asked your dad first,” said Harley. “I tend to make snap decisions, and he likes to consider all the angles.”
“Well, Dad? Can we?”
“I guess that would be all right. I’ll come back for you right after the meeting.”
“Hooray!” they shouted.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Later that night, Jack stood at Harley’s door wearing a suit and holding a loosely constructed bouquet.
“What’s this?”
“I walked by Posey’s after my meeting downtown. The yellow ones are sunflowers. They stand for warmth and happiness. Easy to see why.”
Harley caressed their petals. “They’re lovely.”
“And these are asters. I just liked the purple color.”
She smiled. “What about the white ones?”
“Humility,” he said, his caramel eyes brimful of sincerity.
She stood back. “Come on in. I’ll put them in some water. There’s wine in the decanter.”
He untied his tie, yanked it through the crease in his collar and slung it casually across his shoulder.
When she returned to the living room, she found him seated on her new, fluffy ivory-colored rug between the couch and the coffee table, his wineglass dangling from his hand draped across his raised knee, a silver cuff link glinting in the light from the candles she’d placed around the room.
“Thanks for everything you did for the girls today.”
Harley smiled sideways as she set down a plate of cheese and crackers and joined him on the floor. “How did their grandmother like their fingerprints?”
“Let’s just say her definition of art is a little narrower than yours.” Jack grinned, set a slice of cheese on a cracker, and handed it to her before making himself one.
She snuggled the small of her back closer to the couch, her legs stretched out straight in front of her.
“Let’s not talk about the kids anymore,” he said.
She took a sip of the wine he’d poured her. “Then what do you want to talk about?”
“Us.”
In the weeks since the open house, Jack had been walking a tightrope. Every moment with Harley, that rush of excitement, that buzz of electricity came roaring back with a vengeance. They couldn’t talk long enough or late enough into the night. Any day he didn’t see her face was a day wasted.
She felt it, too . . . he could tell by the way her pupils expanded into huge black pools when she looked at him.
His feelings were so close to the surface, the slightest brush of their arms raised goose bumps. He inched closer, caressing her shoulder with the lightest touch of his fingertip. “It’s been a while now since we moved back. . . .”
“I know. I have a calendar, too.” Her smile was soft and seductive.
“Don’t tease me,” he cautioned, a hint of danger in his voice. His self-discipline was only so strong.
“You used to like it when I teased you. Like the time I ran circles around your truck with you chasing me.”
When he caught her, they were laughing so hard their lips could hardly fashion a kiss.
“How about the time you waded into the Molalla at Knights Bridge Park, peeling your clothes off as you went, until I had no choice but to splash in after you, slipping all over the rocks, almost killing myself?”
“It was your fault for kicking off your tennis shoes. The trick is to keep them on, even if that’s all you keep on.” She eyed the V between the top buttons of his shirt, then locked eyes with him as she ran a fingertip around the rim of her glass. “We had some good times,” she said softly.
But the ultimate expression of affection between a woman and a man was something each had learned with another. Now that they knew what they’d been missing, the possibilities hung heavily between them, like a fat cluster of grapes, ripe for the picking.
He leaned forward, tipping his head until his lips were close to her ear. “We can have even better times,” he murmured into her hair, his heart slamming against his ribs with every beat. As desperately as he wanted her, he couldn’t afford another misstep. He pulled back and cupped her face, searching it like a road map, hoping it would show him the way.
Harley felt her inhibitions slipping away. Yet warning lights flashed in her brain. Old questions still haunted her. A thousand times, she had wondered why Jack had shattered her heart. Now was her chance to ask him. And yet she was afraid the answer would hurt all over again. So instead, she skated around it.
“After you got married and I moved away, I still thought about you and Emily for quite awhile. I used to torture myself, imagining Jemily having the casually elegant life of a style blogger.”
“Ha,” said Jack bitterly, his head falling back against the seat cushion. “What people called Jemily were nothing more than longtime family friends.” An introspective look came over his face. “There’re only two people who know what goes on inside a marriage. It might have looked pretty on the outside, but almost from the beginning, there was no intimacy—physical or emotional.”
Almost, thought Harley. Emily didn’t get knocked up all by herself.
“Truth is, I was never lonelier than when I was married to Emily. If I had to guess, I’d bet she was just as lonely as I was. Looking back, we lacked the most basic connection. Hell, when the kids weren’t around, things could get downright awkward. Sometimes I thought we must be the only married couple in America in their twenties who slept in different rooms and—here’s the kicker—were just fine with it.”
“But all those pictures on social media—” Harley blurted out, and immediately felt herself redden.
“Those so-called ‘candid’ ”—he drew air quotes—“group shots of birthday parties and ski trips with the twins in matching outfits? C’mon, Har. You’re an artist. You know. People are pros at retouching reality. They don’t post selfies of their silent car rides or what they look like watching TV alone, night after night.”
“I guess not.”
“I admit it wasn’t all bad. We never had knock-down, drag-out fights. Maybe we should have. At least that would have been a s
ign that there was some shred of emotion between us. Emily and I might have shared a house, but we didn’t share what was inside us. We put all our focus on the twins. It was a convenient smoke screen—everybody knows raising twins is supposed to be hard. That way, we didn’t have to examine ourselves and see that it just wasn’t working.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I don’t have the words for what I’m about to say. I’m no good at sharing my emotions. That’s the way I was brought up. Don’t talk about your feelings. Better yet, don’t feel. Feelings are overrated. Once you start pretending feelings don’t matter, you become numb to them. Don’t touch, because it might get you in trouble. That much, I know for sure is true.”
“Jack—”
She licked her lips and lowered her chin a fraction of an inch.
“You’re flushed,” he said. “Do I make you nervous?”
“ No.”
“I think I do.”
“Not nervous exactly.” She twirled a lock of hair, trying to get up the nerve to meet his eyes. “Excited,” she whispered.
“Me too,” he said softly. “Very, very excited.” He tickled her lips with the tips of her hair and they parted, her breathing becoming labored.
Dropping the lock of hair, Jack reached for her and brought her toward him and kissed her eagerly, their first kiss in ten, long years.
He slipped his tongue inside her mouth, and she reveled in his desire. As exciting and memorable as their first, fumbling attempts had been, as many times as she’d held them up as a standard for other men’s kisses, this was infinitely better. Before they were only experimenting. Now, in addition to the lush physical sensations, each kiss held piercing depth and meaning.
“Harley,” he said hoarsely, cupping her breasts inside her shirt, lifting them up, and her head fell back and she sighed.
He kissed her neck as he slung his necktie across the room and began unbuttoning her shirt, kissing a trail from her cheek to her mouth to her other cheek, easing her backward as he did.
Jack felt her fingertips race across his back, leaving a trail of pleasure everywhere they went. He had almost forgotten this kind of need existed. Never had he been so aroused, never wanted a woman as much as he wanted her now.
His kisses delved deeper, more urgent, as his fingers fumbled maddeningly with her buttons. Finally, the last one came undone and he rose from her and thrust the two sides apart like curtains letting in the light to a man who had seen only darkness for so long.
Looking up at him, her eyes shone, her breath was audible as her breasts rapidly rose and fell, pressing against their surrounding fabric.
Jack reached behind her and deftly unsnapped the hooks and eyes. Immediately, the bra went slack and he pushed it up, revealing creamy breasts with pointed pink nipples. He thumbed one of them as he took her mouth again and slid his other hand around her waist, pulling her close.
Jack’s knee was sliding between her thighs, impatiently nudging them apart as he neared the breaking point.
What am I doing? thought Harley.
“Jack.” She planted her palms against his chest and pushed against him.
“What?” he panted, his face the picture of concern. “What’s wrong?”
Things are far from resolved between us, she thought. I can’t let myself fall right back into our same old pattern, only to get hurt yet again.
He turned aside to let her get to her feet and she walked away, fastening her bra, then her shirt, putting distance between them. Most of her buttons buttoned, she turned around to see him sitting with one leg raised, a look of confused concern on his face.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.
“I—I’m just not ready.”
He rose, shoved his shirttail into his pants, and sheepishly rebuckled his belt, his arousal still very evident.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said without looking at her, ruffling his floppy hair into some semblance of order. He snatched his tie off the floor and looped it over his head, flipping up his collar and starting a knot.
“You don’t have to go,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
Hurting him was the last thing she wanted to do. It was half the very reason she had stopped him. And now she had hurt him anyway. He was trying not to show it, but it was plain to see in the way he refused to meet her eyes and in his posture.
“This isn’t what I came back to Ribbon Ridge for,” she said.
“And you think I did? But since we both are, I thought we could make the most of it.”
“Is that all we’re doing, here? Having a good time?”
“What do you mean?” There was an edge to his voice.
“Things are different now. We each have our own, separate, busy lives. You live on the estate with the twins, and I have the Victorian, and pretty soon, a son. And we each have our own businesses to run.”
“I thought things were going good between us.”
“They are.”
“Did things go okay with you and the girls the other day? They didn’t get out of line, did they? Because if they did—”
“They were perfect angels.”
“Do you enjoy spending time with me?”
“You know I do.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “Sit down.”
Reluctantly he sat next to her on the couch, his back ramrod-straight.
“I can’t believe I’m asking you this. Me—the impulsive one. But pretty soon it’s not just going to be just me anymore. I’ll have a child to consider.”
“You’re right,” he said, catching his breath. In his eagerness to resurrect the good old days, maybe he’d gotten ahead of himself.
“You’re not upset?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you’re okay with us taking it slow.”
“Absolutely. Whatever you want.” They had come this far. Jack didn’t want to risk blowing it.
From the back of his mind came the niggling reminder that he was supposed to be actively seeking new wife—a woman who was the direct opposite of Harley. Somehow when he was with her, that goal receded into the back of his mind, like taxes or jury duty or some equally tedious chore.
If he forced himself to see past her bed-tousled hair, her hint of cleavage above her half-buttoned blouse, she looked so earnest.
She was right. He had to get out of there.
He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be around,” he said, and he headed for the door.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The girls barreled down the stairs of the estate, dressed for trick-or-treating in the costumes Mother had bought for them.
“Walk,” said Mother.
Freddie looked down at her long-sleeved, black knit shirt with a giant appliquéd “P” on the front. “I still wish I could’ve been Wonder Woman.”
Mother tsked as she tugged at Freddie’s shirt with a critical eye. “Everyone is going to be Wonder Woman this year. Don’t you want to stand out in the crowd?”
“I wanted to be a dancer and wear a yellow outfit,” said Frankie wistfully in her white shirt and pants.
“Salt and Pepper is timeless. You two look terrific. Stand up nice and tall, now. Shoulders back.”
Frankie and Freddie scrutinized each other’s costumes, knowing that arguing was futile.
“Here are your treat bags.” Mother handed them each a bag, then ducked behind Jack and mouthed, “Two treats a piece. Otherwise they’ll be up all night.”
Frankie rolled her eyes as she applied yet another coat of clear lip gloss to her lips. “We can hear you, Mimi.”
“We’re not babies,” grumbled Freddie, holding out her hand to her sister to use the gloss next.
“Hold on. I’m not done yet,” Frankie groused.
Mother clapped her hands together, opened her eyes wide, and in a singsong voice said, “All set?” as if they were, indeed, babies instead of budding adolescents.
They
looked up at Jack with shiny pouts, faces sullen, their lashes suddenly terrifyingly long and dark and not like little-girl lashes at all.
Jack had a sudden premonition of them driving off in cars with boys and going to dances.
“Come on, then, me hearties.” Tonight, they were still his little girls, and he was bound to make the most of it. He was wearing the same costume he always wore, a billowing white shirt with a wide crimson sash tied around his head and an eye patch.
“Put a leash on that measly mutt of yours and we’ll be off.”
* * *
Halloween in Seattle was celebrated with dances, balls, haunted houses, and live performances. Harley’s urban neighborhood came alive with the classic ghouls and witches and popular characters from books and films. Each year she handed out enough candy to last until Easter.
She didn’t know what to expect this year. In hopes that at least a few intrepid souls would knock on her door, she’d bought treats and dressed up in the long black gown she’d bought a few years back for a Hollywood theme party.
But now it was getting late and she hadn’t had a single comer.
She poured herself yet another glass of wine and reached into the candy dish for her fourth candy bar. Then she lay back on the couch and began scrolling through photos of babies in costumes on her laptop, projecting to next Halloween, when she would be deciding whether to dress her little one as an elf or a monkey, or maybe in a simple pumpkin costume.
Ding-dong!
Clicking her laptop closed, she jumped up and hurried to the door.
“Trick-or-treat!”
Harley slung her feather boa around her neck and struck a pose against the doorframe, in part for something to lean on, but also because she was a little tipsy. “Hello, ladies.” She eyed Jack up and down, from his eye patch to his tall black boots. “Cap’n. I remember you.” In her minds eye she saw again Jack as a kid, posed atop a fallen log ‘raft’ brandishing his iris-leaf ‘sword.’ But with those long limbs and broad shoulders, he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was all man.
Jack seemed equally pleased to see her in costume. “Ahoy, lass!”
She stood aside. “Do come in,” she drawled, fanning herself. “Like I always say, a man in the house is worth two in the street.”
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