Ask Anyone

by Sherryl Woods

Her stomach fell. “You’re paying me off to go away?”

  He nodded. “That’s the idea.”

  Jenna shoved the check back across the table, spilling her tea in the process. She paid no attention as it ran straight toward her lap. “Forget it,” she said fiercely.

  She wasn’t about to let Bobby Spencer buy her off with a check to cover the cost of the carousel horse. She wanted a contract for the waterfront development and her blasted horse. Nothing less would do.

  And if she had to pack up Darcy and take up residence right here in Trinity Harbor until she got what she wanted, well, that was what she’d do.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Bobby. Get used to it.”

  He seemed completely nonplussed by her vehemence. “But your daughter—”

  “Is out of school for the summer,” she retorted. “I can have her down here with me by tomorrow.”

  “Your job—”

  She made a quick decision and met his gaze evenly. “This is my job. Getting this contract is my chance to make something happen in my career. I’m not walking away from it without a fight.”

  The fact that her announcement made Bobby look as if he’d been punched right in the gut was just so much icing on the cake.

  “Where’s Jenna?” Maggie asked, when Bobby returned to his office after lunch.

  “Gone, I hope.”

  Maggie seemed surprised and a little disappointed. “For good? I thought she was made of tougher stuff than that.”

  “I should be so lucky,” Bobby said with a resigned sigh. “No, I imagine she’ll be back.”

  His secretary grinned. “Good. I liked her.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re cut from the same cloth.” He regarded her pointedly and added, “Neither one of you knows when to let well enough alone.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Maggie said agreeably. “By the way, Richard called from the paper. He’s on his way over. He heard about the theft.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him to talk to Tucker?”

  “How do you think he heard about it?” Maggie retorted.

  “Well, hell,” Bobby muttered. What good was it being the sheriff’s brother, if the man was going to blab your business all over town?

  “Think of it this way,” Maggie advised. “It could be worse. It could be your father on his way over.”

  “You have a point,” Bobby agreed, but his momentary cheer faded quickly.

  Why had King been so silent? Usually he liked to make his opinions known. His silence did not bode well. Either he was sick or he was up to something. Since King was healthy as a horse, it was more likely the latter. Bobby started to reach for the phone, then stopped himself.

  “Be grateful,” he muttered.

  Maggie eyed him curiously. “What?”

  “Nothing. When Richard comes, send him over to the kitchen. I’m going to experiment with a new crab recipe.” Maybe he could find a spice that would cover the taste of arsenic. The list of people he’d like to serve it to was getting longer and longer.

  5

  Hiding out in Trinity Harbor for a few weeks began to seem more and more sensible as Jenna drove back to Baltimore. Not only would it give her time to land the development contract, but it would lessen the odds that her father would find out about that missing horse and the money she’d squandered on the carousel. Hopefully she’d recover the stolen horse in the meantime, as well.

  And a nice long vacation with Darcy could only be a good thing, too. They needed to spend some quality time together. Maybe Jenna could actually manage to reestablish the fact that she was the mother and Darcy was the kid. Her daughter seemed to be a little mixed up on that point.

  The more Jenna considered her plan, the more she warmed to it. By the time she turned into the tree-lined drive at her father’s house, she was convinced it was the second-smartest idea she’d ever had. The brightest was going after that development contract in the first place. It was exactly the kind of dramatic gesture that could change the rest of her life. If she made a success of this, her father would have to acknowledge her. He would have to give her more to do than answering phones and typing letters.

  After just two days in Trinity Harbor, walking into her father’s house reminded her of just how pretentious her lifestyle had been up to now. There was too much of everything. Too many ornate antiques cluttered the rooms. Heavy draperies shrouded the windows. Vases filled with fresh flowers filled all the rooms with an overpowering sweet scent. Her father—or more precisely, his decorators—had access to more money than taste.

  Jenna shuddered at the oppressive atmosphere and headed for the one room that was bright and airy, the kitchen that her mother had designed and her father rarely entered.

  The housekeeper looked up from the salad she was fixing and smiled. “Welcome home,” Mrs. Jamison said. “Did you have a good trip?”

  How to describe it? Jenna thought. “It was interesting,” she said finally. “And I loved the little town. In fact, I’m going to schedule a vacation for the next few weeks and take Darcy down there until school starts. How is she, by the way? Did she give you any trouble?”

  “None at all,” Mrs. Jamison insisted, though her tone and the twinkle in her eyes suggested otherwise. Mrs. Jamison doted on Darcy, which meant the girl got away with quite a lot when Jenna or Darcy’s grandfather weren’t around to forbid it.

  “Okay, tell the truth,” Jenna said with a sense of foreboding. “What did she do?”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” Mrs. Jamison said mysteriously, that hint of amusement still threading through her voice.

  “Please tell me she did not dye her hair purple,” Jenna pleaded.

  “No, you made yourself quite clear about that,” the housekeeper assured her. “But perhaps you should have been a little more inclusive.”

  A dull throb began behind Jenna’s eyes. “Meaning?”

  Mrs. Jamison gestured toward the doorway. Jenna turned slowly and found Darcy peeping around the corner. Her hair was shamrock green and had been cut by blunt-edged scissors and gelled so that it poked up in all directions.

  “You said I couldn’t dye it purple,” Darcy said, her chin tilted defiantly.

  “So I did,” Jenna agreed, wondering if this was the payback she was due for her own childhood rebellions. Of course, until Nick, hers had been minor in comparison to this. Keeping her tone level, she beckoned to her daughter. “Come in and let me see.”

  Despite her defiance, the nine-year-old looked as if she might be harboring some very deep regrets about her impulsive behavior. “I think it looks great!” Darcy said, as if daring her mother to deny it.

  “Well, there’s certainly no question that you’ll stand out in a crowd. Was that what you were hoping?” she inquired, knowing perfectly well that Darcy much preferred to blend in. Usually these little displays were designed solely to drive her mother up the wall. Darcy knew her mother would insist they be corrected by the time she went out in public.

  “Yes,” Darcy said stubbornly.

  “Good.” Jenna made a quick decision, one she hoped might impart a stronger lesson than the usual punishment she doled out, apparently rather ineffectively since the misbehavior kept recurring. “Run on upstairs and pack your clothes.”

  Darcy’s eyes widened. Her lower lip quivered. “You’re sending me away?”

  “No, I’m taking you away,” Jenna corrected, her expression as cheerful as if nothing at all were amiss. “We’re going on vacation first thing tomorrow.”

  Her daughter blinked at that. “You’re letting me go like this?”

  “It is the unique look you wanted, isn’t it?” Jenna asked innocently.

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “You usually take me straight over to Rene’s and make her fix it.”

  Jenna smiled. “Not this time. Besides, you’ve already cut your hair pretty short. I’m not sure what a hairdresser could do to correct it.”

  A horrified expression
crossed Darcy’s face. “You’re making me keep it like this?”

  “Yep,” Jenna said as Mrs. Jamison turned away to hide a smile.

  Tears pooled in Darcy’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I hate you,” she shouted, and ran from the kitchen.

  Jenna sighed.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” Mrs. Jamison reassured her. “It’s a good lesson in living with the consequences of her actions.”

  “I know, but you haven’t been to Trinity Harbor,” Jenna said, voicing her one regret about the plan. “Darcy is going to stand out like a sore thumb.”

  “Then she won’t be so quick to do something impulsive like this again,” the housekeeper said.

  Jenna looked at the woman who’d raised her brothers and done her best to be a mother to Jenna on her rare visits home. “Why does she do things like this? She’s only nine. What on earth will she be doing when she hits her teens?”

  “Maybe she’ll have it all out of her system by then,” Mrs. Jamison suggested soothingly.

  “Or maybe she’ll be in a juvenile detention facility,” Jenna said wearily.

  “You weren’t, were you?”

  “I never did anything like this,” Jenna insisted.

  “Didn’t you? Maybe you never touched your hair, but then it was your pride and joy because it was red like your mama’s. I do seem to recall that you came close to giving your daddy a heart attack when you came home from school sporting a snake tattoo one year, and that was some years before tattoos were all the rage among respectable people.”

  “It was temporary,” Jenna reminded her.

  “Your father didn’t know that.” The housekeeper grinned and patted Jenna’s hand. “Darcy’s hair is temporary, too. It will grow and the color will wash out eventually.”

  “I was really hoping she’d have a good time in Trinity Harbor. How can she if everyone keeps their kids away from her because she looks like a pint-sized member of a grunge band?”

  “Is this really about Darcy being accepted, or about you?” Mrs. Jamison asked with her usual insight.

  Jenna heaved a resigned sigh. The wise woman had nailed it on the head again. “A little of both,” she admitted.

  After all, what kind of an impression would Darcy make on uptight Bobby Spencer? He was likely to take one look at Jenna’s child and conclude that a woman who had no better control over her daughter couldn’t possibly be entrusted with a million-dollar development plan.

  “What kind of people make judgments based on appearances?” Mrs. Jamison asked.

  Jenna considered the validity of this point and nodded. Bobby hadn’t exactly held her disheveled appearance against her on the morning of their meeting, had he? Maybe he’d be generous where Darcy was concerned as well.

  “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Jamison.” Why would she even want to work for someone who held a little girl’s appearance against her? “Where’s my father, by the way?”

  “Out for the evening. He said he’d catch up with you at breakfast.”

  Jenna didn’t bother trying to hide her relief. “Has he gotten a glimpse of Darcy?”

  “Not yet. Even she was smart enough to stay in her room when he came back to change for dinner.”

  “Good. Maybe I can get both of us out of town before he wakes up in the morning.”

  Mrs. Jamison didn’t even pretend to hide her dismay. “You’re leaving without talking it over with him? Do you think that’s wise, Jenna?”

  “I think this might be one of those times when a note is smarter than a direct confrontation,” Jenna assured her.

  Besides, if she could sneak away, there would be less of a chance that he’d pry her secret mission out of her. She wanted a signed contract in her hand the next time she saw her father. It might mute his disapproval of her underhanded tactics in leaving him out of the loop on this project. She didn’t exactly have the authority to commit Pennington and Sons’s resources to this deal.

  As for abandoning him at the office with no notice, to her very deep regret, she acknowledged that he probably wouldn’t even notice.

  Bobby looked across his desk into the fascinated gaze of Anna-Louise Walton and winced. “You don’t approve of me trying to buy Jenna off, do you?”

  “That depends on why you decided to try it,” the pastor said, amusement dancing in her eyes. “Care to explain your thinking?”

  “No good could come of having her here,” Bobby said flatly. “None.”

  “Because she’s a woman?” Anna-Louise asked mildly.

  “Watch it,” her husband warned Bobby. “Think about your response very, very carefully. You’re about to get a sermon on being a sexist pig unless you answer this exactly right.”

  “Yeah, I can see the trap,” Bobby conceded.

  Anna-Louise frowned at both of them, then addressed Bobby. “Do you doubt Jenna’s qualifications?”

  Bobby shook his head. “Her firm has solid credentials, though I got the impression this is her first big presentation. She all but admitted she had something to prove.”

  “Okay, then,” Anna-Louise said approvingly. “And what about the plan itself? Didn’t you like it?”

  “She didn’t have preliminary sketches or anything, but in terms of concept, it was actually right on target,” Bobby admitted, knowing that he was digging a very deep hole for himself.

  “So you tried to get rid of her just because she’s a woman and therefore what? Not in need of a job? Not smart enough?” Anna-Louise pressed.

  “Of course not,” Bobby denied heatedly. That sort of blatant discrimination was wrong. Even he could see that, though at the moment it was darned inconvenient. Besides, Jenna had made it plain that she was ambitious and smart, both admirable traits in his book.

  Anna-Louise grinned. “Then it must be because you were attracted to her and that scared the living daylights out of you. You did swear off relationships after Ann-Marie ran off with Lonnie four weeks before your wedding, right?”

  The mention of Ann-Marie and Lonnie still had the capacity to stir up a cold rage in Bobby. Anna-Louise wouldn’t have touched that topic if she had a grain of sense in her head, but then she hadn’t been here at the time. She hadn’t witnessed his humiliation firsthand. She only knew that the prospect of bumping into the two traitors had kept Bobby away from church ever since, and no amount of pressure or cajoling had been able to woo him back.

  “I know your heart’s in the right place, Anna-Louise, but I do not want to discuss those two with you,” he said tightly. “Not ever.”

  “Or with anyone else, it seems.” The minister regarded him with compassion. “Maybe it’s time you discussed your feelings about what happened with someone. Until you forgive them and let go of the past, you’ll never be able to move on with your life.”

  “Not going to happen,” Bobby insisted. He’d fry in hell first.

  “The only person you’re hurting is yourself,” she said softly.

  Bobby sighed. That was probably true enough. He certainly hadn’t seen much evidence that Ann-Marie and Lonnie were suffering any pangs of guilt over what they’d done. The only place in town they avoided was the yacht center. Other than that, they paraded around town hand in hand, flaunting the fact that they were madly in love and seemingly oblivious to the fact that they’d betrayed Bobby to be together.

  Their children were less circumspect. They turned up on the docks with their friends and invaded the kitchen for snacks whenever they could get away with it. No matter how many times Bobby told Tommy that his restaurant kitchen was off-limits to him and his friends, Daisy’s adopted son continued to treat it as if it contained his own personal stash of treats. Ann-Marie’s boy, J.C., was usually among the interlopers.

  Even so, the yacht center and restaurant were still about the only places left where Bobby felt reasonably safe from unexpected encounters with the two people responsible for breaking his heart. Not that he intended to admit any of that to Anna-Louise. He just sat there stonily, endur
ing her expectant stare.

  Richard finally took pity on him and spoke to his wife. “Hon, maybe you shouldn’t push this. Besides, I’m not sure we’re entitled to know why Bobby doesn’t want to work with Jenna. It’s his project and his money.”

  “I thought he might feel better if he made a confession about his real reasons for trying to avoid working with her,” Anna-Louise said unrepentantly.

  “Wrong church,” Richard pointed out. “He needs a priest for that.”

  “I can listen,” Anna-Louise protested. “And offer comfort and forgiveness. The mechanics might be different, but the principle’s the same no matter which church I belong to.”

  Bobby chuckled despite himself. “Sorry, Anna-Louise. I’m not in need of either one. I’m perfectly comfortable with my decision. The only thing I regret is that it didn’t work. The woman’s stubborn as a mule.” Spencers knew all about stubbornness, it didn’t take much for them to recognize it in others. And Jenna had it in spades.

  The pastor’s eyes brightened. “Then she is coming back? Good! I can hardly wait to meet her. Daisy and I will host a little get-together so she can get acquainted with a few people.”

  Richard groaned. “You just want a chance to cross-examine her and see how she measures up as a candidate for Bobby’s love life.”

  “I most certainly do not,” Anna-Louise said indignantly. “I’m perfectly content to leave the matchmaking to King. Although the way I hear it, Jenna does look an awful lot like Ann-Marie. Is that so, Bobby?”

  The observation seemed to suck the breath right out of him. He hadn’t considered it consciously before, but it was true. Jenna did bear a remarkable resemblance to the woman who had broken his heart and humiliated him in the process. Maybe that was why he’d reacted so violently the first time he’d seen her. Maybe it had nothing to do with the commotion on his lawn at all.

  “I refuse to answer,” he said blandly.

  “Which must mean she does,” Anna-Louise said complacently. “King is going to be in hog heaven when he hears that little tidbit.”

  “Not an especially reassuring thought,” Bobby noted. He glanced hopefully at Richard. “Can you stop this?”