“Oh, Lord, no. Donna’s one of the strongest, most capable women I’ve ever met. Mine…isn’t. Not emotionally, anyway.”
“She’s certainly capable of mortifying her daughter in public.”
Jewel almost laughed. “Her way of showing she cares.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
Her gaze lifted to his, eerily calm, like the slate blue sky right before a whopper storm. The corners of her mouth tilted in a humorless smile. “Are you kidding? My scars have scars. I mean, who doesn’t try on a dozen different personalities in high school, seeing what fits and what doesn’t? But…”
She sighed. “I was a straight A student, Silas. I worked my butt off in nursing school, graduating near the top of my class. Mama’s not stupid, but she barely made it through high school, never went to college. Lord knows I’ve got issues about…other things, but I’m good at what I do. And I know it. When she gets going like that, I can never quite tell if she’s truly worried that I’ll fail—by her definition, anyway—or it simply hurts her too much to acknowledge I’m successful in ways she never was.”
Good Lord. If Amy’s mother had done that to her, his ex would have bitched and moaned for a week. That Jewel seemed so philosophical about the whole thing was blowing his mind. And almost pissing him off. “Then why on earth do you let her get away with that crap?”
“Because I can?” Jewel said dryly. “Hey, there’s a reason she only knows my PO box. And why I said we don’t talk all that much. She would suck me dry, if I let her.” She blew a short laugh through her nose. “Neediness and disapproval are a killer combination.”
“Hence your not wanting her to know you’re going through a rough patch.”
“And give her ammunition? Oh, heck, no. But Mama can’t help who she is. What she is. So I stick close enough to pick up the pieces when needed, but far enough away to preserve my sanity.” She started to rise. “And I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than listen to me yammer about my mother—”
“Next appointment’s not until two.” The dog scratched at the door, begging to be let back in. Silas obliged, then said, “In fact…how about a sandwich?”
He could sense her waffling. “You don’t have to—”
“Done,” he said, placing the sandwich in front of her. “Tuna and mayo on white bread. Even I can’t screw that up.”
Granted, being dragged into somebody else’s family dynamics was the last thing Silas needed. Or wanted. Nor was he clear about his motives for sticking around—morbid curiosity? That protectiveness thing again? Who knew? Whatever it was, he scraped back a chair and sat across from this intriguing young woman who clearly loved her screwed-up mother, only to suppress something approaching a shudder when her eyes grazed his, a sad smile pulling at her mouth.
“Once I get going I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Silas said, surprised to discover he honest-to-God meant it.
For some reason Jewel never talked about Mama to anybody. Not her college roommates, not even Patrice. She wasn’t sure why. Which made her wonder even more why spilling her guts to Silas seemed perfectly normal. But she felt like there was all this stuff boiling up inside her, that if she didn’t let it out it would burn her alive. And also, like maybe if she gave voice to all these tangled-up thoughts, somehow they’d get untangled and start to make sense.
At least, talking couldn’t make things any worse, right?
After toying with her sandwich for several seconds she finally tore off a corner, gesturing with it and giving poor Doughboy false hope. “Mama was a figure skater. When she was a kid, I mean. I’ve seen tapes. She was good. Real good. Good enough that there was apparently talk of her being Olympic material. Except the year she had her first real shot at Nationals, she went boy crazy and lost her focus. Both her grades and her skating went south.”
Silas propped his cheek in his palm. “How do you know this?”
“My grandmother—her mother—told me, shortly before she died, when I was ten. Anyway, by the time Mama graduated from high school—by the skin of her teeth, she was not one of those overachievers who could practice four hours a day and still keep a 4.0 average—her shot at Olympic glory was long gone, but she was still good enough to join one of those ice shows.”
The first bite of sandwich stuffed into her mouth, she tore off another and fed it to the dog. Made the beast’s day. “Six months later, she was married to one of the guys in the tour and pregnant with me.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. One of those life-altering moments. From which she never fully recovered, if you ask me. Or moved past. Her skating career was in the toilet, she had a subpar education, a kid to raise and insufficient ambition to overcome any of it. All she had was her looks. And yes, she’s still gorgeous, you can say it.”
“If you like that type.”
“She’s a stunner, Silas. Something I wouldn’t be if every makeup salesgirl at Macy’s had at me for a week,” she said with a rueful laugh, ignoring Silas’s pole-axed expression to add, “And what Mama mostly stuns, is men. Except, unfortunately, once the jolt wears off they all fly away.” She made a little flapping motion with her fingers. “Including my father, when I was two. Although that’s at least kinda understandable, what with my being the product of an ice-show fling and all. It was the two daddies after that…sorry. If I start to sound bitter, stop me, ’kay?”
Silas had sunk back in his chair by now, one wrist on the table, his other hand stroking Doughboy’s head. “You don’t think you’re allowed to feel bitter?”
“I’m allowed, sure. If I want to go down that road. I don’t. I want to find a way out of the muck, not wallow in it. And to that end, I finally figured out that Mama keeps picking men whose maturity level matches hers. Which makes them fun as all heck to be around, but eventually both parties get bored, like a pair of four-year-olds who don’t want to play anymore. So the men left. Over and over and over, they left.”
She shrugged, an old, ingrained habit. One Silas apparently saw straight through when he gently said, “Except…it wasn’t only your mother they were leaving. Was it?”
Her stomach heaved as she suddenly saw the double line in the sand. One was hers, gouged years before, the other Silas’s. Not that she’d cross, but holy-heck-on-a-stick if she hadn’t crept close enough to send a grain or two tumbling into the insubstantial crevice. On her side, at least.
Her lips parted a moment before she grabbed her plate and glass and bolted to the dishwasher, at which point she realized Silas had already crossed both lines and was on her side and what did she intend to do about that?
“Sorry—”
“No, it’s okay,” she muttered, putting her dishes into the washer and pushing shut the door. Then she turned, her arms tightly folded over her quaking middle as she amassed the necessary forces to shove him back across before there was more than sand finding its way into crevices. “God knows I had no intention of going down this road today, but since I’m taking care of your kids—and since you’ve met my mother—you should probably know what my Looney Tunes potential is.”
“And there you go overreacting again. I don’t think—”
“So, yeah,” Jewel said, ignoring him, “by the time Aaron’s father bid us adios I realized you can only watch so many people walk out of your life before you shut down, at least to some degree. It wasn’t something I consciously did, I don’t think…but whatever it is that makes people take that chance on another person? It wore out a long time ago. Meaning I’m apparently as relationship impaired as my mother is.”
Silas’s brows crashed together. “A conclusion you’ve reached at twenty-five?” At her raised brows, he mumbled, “Sorry, that was out of line—”
“No, actually, it’s a valid point. Especially since…”
She reached up to fiddle with her ponytail while she chose her words.
“It’s kinda hard to grow up yourself when you don’t exa
ctly have the best example in the world. You saw Mama—does that look like somebody who subscribes to US News & World Report? So I’m kinda way behind the curve, here. Maybe I’ve made enough progress to know all my screws aren’t as tight as they should be, but I’ve got a long way to go before I can be taken out in public. If that day ever comes.”
Silas’s brows crashed together. “Why are you being so rough on yourself?”
“I prefer to think of it as b-being realistic,” Jewel somehow got out over the tremors racking her body from the bizarre combination of compassion and irritation in his eyes. She swallowed, steadying herself. “I know you think I act like a kid sometimes—no, don’t try to deny it, your face is like a giant billboard. But if I do, that’s because I still feel like one in a lot of ways. Doesn’t mean I’d ever put your kids in danger, but it does mean that…that maybe I relate more to them than I do to a lot of so-called adults.”
His eyes never leaving hers, Silas quietly said, “You relate to this adult just fine,” which got the tremors going all over again, threatening to rattle her brain loose from her skull, and she thought, O-kay, chickie, time to change the subject.
Which she did by saying, “Hey…I noticed this morning you’re out of, gosh, practically everything. Why don’t I take Tad to the store and do some stocking up? I make fried chicken that’ll make you weep, no lie.”
Their gazes held for several seconds, hers clearly pleading to let the conversation—and her—go.
“That sounds great,” Silas said at last, realizing if you open the can of worms you’ve got no right to get upset if they crawl away. Or all over you.
“Okay, then,” Jewel said, swinging her arms and backing toward the doorway leading to the hall. “I’ll see you later, then. Um, thanks for lunch.” Because this conversation? It never happened. “Tad! Wanna go to the store, baby?”
A few minutes later Silas stood at the kitchen window watching a giggling Jewel strap his little boy into his booster seat, then carefully back out of the driveway and slowly drive off, and his things-are-supposed-to-add-up brain registered that…things didn’t. At all. That her words and her body language, what she said and what she did, were at complete odds with each other.
And that his pitiful left-brained soul wouldn’t rest until he figured it—her—out.
Chapter Seven
“C’n we go see Gramma before we go home?” Tad asked as they loaded the groceries into the car. Well, Jewel loaded, Tad was doing the ants-in-the-pants wiggle. Jewel, however, being the designated adult—hah!—had to confine her wiggling to the unseen variety, never mind that she was about to pop right out of her skin. Holy moley.
“Can’t, sugar, I need to pick your brother up from school—”
“But it’s on the way! And I miss Gram-ma—” he launched himself at the tailgate, bounced off, did it again “—’cause we haven’t seen her in for-ev-er.”
Moving the child aside to slam shut the hatch, Jewel sighed, then finger combed those irresistible curls. “I know, sugar, but the school’s actually in the opposite direction. And we’ve got perishables in the car.”
“What’s that?”
How I feel when your father looks at me.
“Stuff that’ll go bad if it’s not kept cold.” She opened the back door and pointed. “In.”
Scowling—and looking so much like his father Jewel nearly choked on a laugh—Tad crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not a baby—why can’t I sit in front with you?”
“Does your father let you do that?” He slid a “You’re kidding, right?” look to her and she smothered another laugh. “Uh-huh. So don’t even go there, buddy. The law says little dudes have to sit in the back in a booster seat because that’s where it’s safest. So come on, or we’re gonna be late picking up Ollie.”
“Life is so not fair,” the kid grumbled as he climbed into the seat and let her buckle him in.
“Too true, sweet pea. But…why don’t I see if your Gramma and Papa can come over for dinner? Seeing as I bought enough chicken to feed half the town, anyway.”
Not to mention having other people around would distract her from Silas’s too-knowing looks. His too-kind eyes. Because it would not do to succumb to those eyes, to let herself even get near the same trap that’d taken far too many chunks out of her heart already. Not to mention her hide.
“Yeah! C’n I call ’em? I know the number.”
Of course he did. Jewel dug her cell phone from her purse and handed it to the four-year-old, who studied it for maybe two seconds before punching in the number. “C’n you get on the Internet and stuff with this?”
May as well fill out his MIT application now and be done with it. “So they say. My mama gave it to me a couple of months ago, but I haven’t had a chance to really play with it.” Meaning she was too much of a techno-boob to figure half of it out. Long as she could make and receive calls and text, she was good.
“Gramma says they’d love to come,” Tad said a minute later, holding the phone to his chest. “What time and can she bring anything?”
“Tell her six, and no. I’ve got it covered.” A little fizz of excitement tickled the pit of her stomach, bubbling away at least some of the anxiety from that little tête-à-tête with Silas earlier. It’d been ages since she’d cooked a big meal. If she hurried, she could even make a cake….
“Gramma says to tell you you’re an angel,” Tad said, handing her back the phone and looking hugely pleased with himself. Warmth suffused Jewel as she leaned over to tickle Tad’s sweatshirted tummy—man, those things were like magnets, weren’t they?—then walked around to get in behind the wheel, wondering why the more she tried to wrest control out of the chaos that was her life, the more complicated it got.
Honestly.
The intoxicating scent of baking chocolate, the squeals of laughter and low-pitched barks, all punched Silas in the gut the instant he walked inside. He paused, frowning, until something thumped him on the back of his head and said, It’s called happiness, idiot. Remember?
Pocketing his keys, he headed—with some trepidation—toward the source of the noise and the aroma to find his two mini-mes and their sitter chasing each other around the kitchen armed with mixer beaters and wooden spoons…flinging some sort of gooey substance at each other. Hence the dog’s frenzied barking, interrupted every couple of seconds or so to schlurp frosting blobs off the floor. The cabinets. A child.
He’d forgotten how messy happiness often was.
“Daddy!” Ollie shrieked, zooming over to share the joy. And, no doubt, the aforementioned gooey substance.
“Gramma and Papa are comin’ to dinner, an’ Jewel made a cake, and we helped! It’s gonna be de-lic-ious!”
Silence descended, except for the rhythmic schlurp, schlurp, schlurp of Doughboy’s washcloth-sized tongue against the far wall.
“Oh, um…hi?” Jewel said, panting and clearly trying to squelch the laughter. A huge, cream-colored smear completely obliterated one side of her glasses. She cleared her throat, then removed her glasses to wipe the dirty lens on her shirttail. “Didn’t expect you home so soon.”
“No kidding.”
They locked gazes for a moment before she said, “Guys? Go get cleaned up and change. Toss your clothes in the laundry, I’ll wash them while I’m doing the rest of dinner.”
The boys dashed off, bumping into and shoving each other—
“And don’t touch anything before you get those clothes off and your hands clean!” Jewel yelled after them, then turned back to the mixer bowl on the island, wiping her hands on the seat of her pants. Beside the bowl sat three dark chocolate cake layers, cooling on wire racks. “Honest to God, I have no idea how that happened. One minute Ollie was helping me stir the frosting, and the next thing I knew all heck broke loose.”
“I take it you’re feeling better?”
Her eyes zinged to his, then skittered away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Jewel—”
/> “Hey, Doughboy—how ya doing over there?”
The beast glanced over, butt wriggling and jowls jiggling, then returned to his chore, happy as a pig in slop. Or a bulldog in a frosting-splattered kitchen. Clearly unfazed, Jewel dunked a wooden spoon into the big metal bowl on the counter, then held it out to Silas. “Buttercream frosting. Been wanting to make it forever but never had a reason. Go on, taste. It’s a clean spoon, no cooties.”
She had frosting in her hair. Her cheek. Over her left breast.
Silas hesitated, then tasted.
“So…?”
“It’s…okay.”
Jewel laid the spoon across the bowl and folded her arms, which is when she noticed the blob on her boob. She scooped it off with her index finger, stuck her finger in her mouth. “You mad because we made a mess, or mad because you weren’t part of the fun?”
“I’m not mad…”
Are, too.
Fine, so he was mad. But not about the mess. No, he was mad about how this gal was getting to him, about how she could make the boys laugh like that when he couldn’t, about how he’d sworn to steer clear of women with issues he had no clue how to handle and here this one lands right in his lap, boom, about a thousand other things he couldn’t even pin down long enough to name.
But mostly he was mad about feeling like he was being stretched in a dozen different directions, about finding himself in this strange new place where he felt so out of control—of his kids, his home…his feelings.
And it was all Jewel’s fault. Except it wasn’t.
“I’m not mad,” Silas repeated, reaching for the spoon and another bite of frosting. “Confused, maybe, but not mad.”
After a loooooong silence, she muttered something that sounded like “Welcome to my world.”
“Except about this,” Silas said, jabbing the spoon at the frosting. “This is quite possibly the best damn thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
Doughboy woofed in agreement and went back to licking. The front of the stove, this time. Jewel laughed, then turned a bright smile on Silas that only made him more confused.
Adding Up to Marriage Page 10