by Dena Blake
“I want you to look at it.” Jillian’s tone was unintentionally demanding, prompting a raised brow from Mrs. Patterson. “Please,” she said, trying to temper the request.
Vicki leaned forward and looked at the picture. “Who’s this?”
“That’s me.” She watched for her reaction as she looked at the cartoon of the Jillian with an exaggerated butt and even larger bosoms.
Her lip curled slowly, and she began to chuckle. “It’s not very flattering.”
“I know, but now look at this one.” She slid the portrait of Abby across the desk to her.
Mrs. Patterson’s amused look turned to one of astonishment. “This is Abby.”
Jillian nodded. “It’s very good, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful.” Looking up at JJ briefly, she blinked. “David drew this one also?”
“He drew them both within an hour, sitting right in front of me.”
“Amazing.” She pulled the caricature of Lucy out of her desk. “I wonder why Stan hasn’t mentioned this. I know of several art scholarships right now that David could benefit from, and I haven’t seen anything at all about him come across my desk.”
“That’s what I was wondering.” She sank into the chair in front of the desk. “From what David tells me, Stan’s not a very engaging teacher. Apparently he gives assignments, then turns around and types on his laptop the rest of the hour.”
“I didn’t realize Stan had a laptop in his classroom.”
“He built a roll-out shelf under his desk and hides it when any of the faculty come in.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“The first week I started, I had to get something in his room, and I came across it.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Like that would endear me to the rest of the faculty.”
“I suppose you’re right about that.” She sat back in her chair looking at the three pictures. “Give me a few days to check into this.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate it, and I know Blake would also.” She got up and headed to the door.
Vickie picked up her phone and began to dial. “Close the door on your way out, please.”
* * *
Amelia helped finish the dinner dishes as everyone else migrated to various places in the living room. Abby and Logan stayed at the dining-room table, doing homework. The other boys commandeered the couch and TV, and after JJ finished loading the dishwasher, she wandered out onto the front porch. After Amelia had dried and put away the last pan, she went out front and joined JJ on the porch swing.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asked. JJ had been noticeably quiet at dinner, and Amelia couldn’t help but wonder why.
“This afternoon, in Mrs. Patterson’s office, I felt like I was back in high school again. I was so nervous, I thought I was going to have a panic attack.”
“You certainly didn’t show it.” Amelia had been totally impressed by the protective stance JJ had taken for the kids. Even more impressed that she’d done it for David as well as Abby.
“I don’t know. When she started in that authoritative tone, I just couldn’t speak.” She rubbed her forehead.
Amelia fought the urge to put her arm around her shoulder. “Well, you sure put Lucy in her place.” Amelia chuckled. “I’ve never seen her so ruffled.”
A smile crept across JJ’s face. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”
Amelia let out a deep belly laugh. “I’m thinking that woman will be staying out of your way for a long time.”
“In other words, I’ll have the bathroom all to myself.”
“Yes, you will, you big bully.” Amelia poked her in the ribs, and her pulse spiked at the huge smile she received from JJ in return. She made eye contact, held it, and her stomach vaulted into somersaults again. The tension between them had somehow become thick, charged even. God, she was beautiful, even more so when she smiled.
JJ broke the connection and averted her gaze to her lap. “I showed Mrs. Patterson a couple of David’s more serious drawings. She was impressed.”
“Really?” Amelia turned sideways and put her arm on the top of the swing behind JJ. She resisted the temptation to reach over and drag her thumb lightly across JJ’s shoulder.
“Uh-huh.” JJ nodded. “A few deadlines have already passed, but I think she’s going to see if she can find him a scholarship somewhere.”
“Wow. That’s awesome.” Amelia was honestly taken aback. She’d seen David’s sketches. Why hadn’t she thought of that herself? “What made you talk to Mrs. Patterson about him?”
“He’s just so good. I want him to have the best opportunities possible, and no one should stand in the way of that.”
Click. Amelia felt the tumblers in the lock to her heart inch forward a tiny bit. All the warning bells were going off. This woman was doing crazy things to her, physically and emotionally, things she should ignore but couldn’t.
* * *
Jillian had said her good nights and gone upstairs after Blake had finished mowing the yard and joined them on the porch. She’d thoroughly enjoyed the time she’d spent with Amelia this evening. The mood between them had become lighthearted and playful. The temperature outside was delightful, and the sunset was beautiful, the perfect combination for combustion. It had been difficult to leave Amelia sitting there but imperative that she put some distance between them.
Jillian changed into her T-shirt and pajama pants before she plucked the book out of her nightstand drawer. It had been a long day, but she still had some reading to do in order to keep up with her false persona. She’d just opened the book when her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She looked at the name displayed across the screen and picked it up.
“Hey, handsome.”
“Hey, love. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yeah? What are you up to?”
“Just delivering your voice mail.”
Jillian tensed immediately. “Who called?”
“Your girlfriend, of course.”
“Don’t say that, Marcus.” Jillian’s body shivered at the thought of Kelly finding her. She’d gone to great lengths, including the purchase of a new cell phone and leaving her old phone with Marcus in New York, to hide her location to keep Kelly from following her. “What did she want?”
“She said she was getting ready to go out and meet some friends. Thought you might want to come along.”
Fuck! “I wish she’d just leave me alone.”
“You did make it clear you don’t want to see her again, right?”
“You know I did.” She kept her explanation short, not wanting to relive the whole agonizing experience.
“Should I call her back?”
“God, no. I hope she found someone else to occupy her time.”
“Possibly, but you’re hard to beat.”
“Oh, Marcus, you such a sadistic charmer,” she said evenly.
“When exactly are you coming home, anyway?”
“I don’t know. There’s been a complication.” She paused. “Amelia is here.”
“You knew that was a possibility.”
“Yeah. I guess I did. I just didn’t think she’d still be living here.” She had known it was a possibility, and although there was probably no chance she and Amelia would ever be together again, a small part of her held out hope for a chance to reignite the fire that once burned between them. It was becoming clearer with each moment they spent together that the flame had waned but never gone completely out.
“She lives at the house?”
“No. She has her own place, but she spends a good amount of time here.”
“And?”
“And it’s still there, Marcus. The chemistry, the feelings, all of it.” There, she’d said it out loud. Did that make it more true?
“Does she know who you are?”
“No. I don’t think so, and I haven’t told her.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I honestly don’t know.
” Jillian heard someone coming up the stairs. “Hey, Marc. I gotta go. Let me call you back.” She didn’t wait for a response before she hit the red button.
She heard a soft knock as the door pushed open and Abby came in. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one. I was just practicing my speech for the assembly tomorrow.”
“There’s no assembly tomorrow. It’s Saturday.”
“Oh. I guess you’re right. What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the movies.”
“We are, but I forgot my jacket.” She walked toward the adjoining bathroom.
“Here.” Jillian went to her closet and took out her own cropped leather jacket. “Wear mine.”
Abby’s eyes lit up. “Are you kidding?”
“No. Go ahead.” She held it up for Abby to slide her arms inside. “It’ll look great on you.”
“Wow.” Abby ran her hand down the sleeve. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”
“I know you will. Have fun.” She was surprised at the good feeling she got from the happiness she saw in Abby’s face. All in all, it had turned out to be a good day.
Chapter Ten
Jillian sat at the dining-room table editing the information she’d gathered on community group homes. She was two weeks into her new identity, and everything was falling into place. She’d been making good headway in getting to know Blake and was finding he was a pretty good parent. She just didn’t know when the time would be right to tell him about Abby. They seemed to get along well enough, but getting along and becoming an immediate parent were two different things. She was just biding her time at the school. She tried to avoid counseling kids as much as possible and spent most of her time working on the story about Heartstrings House. She’d originally made it up to get herself into the house, but after living here and observing the day-to-day challenges as well as the red tape involved in funding, she’d decided it would make a good feature story.
“Are the kids home from school yet?” Blake came out of the office and peeked through the blinds by the front door.
“Not yet. Abby has tennis practice this afternoon.”
“Are you sure it’s this afternoon?”
“Yeah. She has it every day.”
“Must have been cut short today, and it looks like tennis isn’t her only extracurricular activity.”
Jillian pushed out of the dining room chair, darted over, and looked through the slit in the blinds as Blake held them down for her.
“What the hell is she doing?” She pushed the blinds farther apart.
Blake chuckled. “I think you can see what she’s doing.”
She yanked the front door open and raced out on the porch. “Abigail Davis, you get your butt inside this house, right now.”
Abby rolled her eyes and turned back to the boy whose lips had just been glued to hers, which put her into even deeper hot water. Jillian rarely called her Abigail, and when she tacked the Davis on the end, it meant big trouble.
“See you tomorrow?” Abby said.
“No. You will not.” Jillian’s voice rose as he scurried down the front steps. “You will not see him here at this house, ever again.”
“Lighten up, Auntie. You’re embarrassing me.” Abby went inside and headed upstairs.
Jillian followed her up. “I’m not kidding, young lady.”
“I’m still going to see him at school, unless you plan to keep me out for the rest of the year.” Abby’s face flickered into a false smile as she rounded the banister and headed up the next flight of stairs, which made Jillian even more angry. “Or we could always go back to New York.”
“And take that makeup off. I should’ve never let you wear it in the first place.” Jillian flopped down onto the top step and mashed her face between her hands. She knew this would happen sooner or later, but later had been her preference. It wasn’t something she was proud of, but fifteen had been the magic number in her life with a boy. It had been the loneliest, most horrible sexual experience of her life, and she hadn’t done it again until she’d met Amelia. Now Abby was pushing those same boundaries, and Jillian knew Abby wasn’t any more ready for it than she’d been at that age. Convincing Abby of that wasn’t going to be easy.
“That went well.” Blake smiled as he came up the steps and sat next to her.
“Did you see that?” She felt the heat rising in her cheeks. “The boy’s tongue had to be all the way down her throat. And his hands.” She shivered at the thought. “They were…everywhere!”
She hopped up, went down a few steps, and whirled around. “Why would she do that? Bring him here and let him fall all over her right in front of me.”
“She needs some guidance.”
“From me?”
“Yes, from you,” he growled. “You’re a beautiful woman, and she wants to be just like you.” He shook his head. “Now with her mother gone, you’re all she’s got.”
Jillian didn’t know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, but it sounded like a little of both. “She’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“You’re right, but look at the bright side.”
Bright side? What bright side could there be to a horny teenage boy feeling up her fifteen-year-old niece?
“She could be half-naked in the backseat of a car with him.”
Her eyes flew wide again. Jillian had been half-naked in the backseat with Amelia more than once.
“But she’s not. She brought him here…for you to see.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for her to just ask me?” Had being a teenager changed that much since she was one?
“She’s feeling you out.”
Jillian stared at Blake, still not quite understanding what he was saying.
“In essence, you’re her mother now, probably a bit younger and cooler, and she needs some sort of a connection with you.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Raising David has been a learning experience.”
“I didn’t know it was going to be this difficult.”
“No one said raising kids was easy,” Blake said with a laugh.
“You’re right about that.” She threw her shoulders back and took in a deep breath before she headed up the steps.
After knocking lightly, Jillian turned the unlocked knob and pushed the door open. “Abby, we need to talk.” Her eyes darted around the room, then to the closed bathroom door.
“I can’t believe you embarrassed me like that.” Abby’s muffled voice came through the door.
You were embarrassed. What about me? Seeing her little niece in a lip-lock with a seventeen-year-old boy who had more facial hair than King Kong didn’t give Jillian the most comfortable feeling. She dropped down onto Abby’s bed and ran her hand across the fairy-tale pattern imprinted on the comforter. Abby was still so much a child that she couldn’t fathom her with a boyfriend.
“Come on out and talk to me.”
The door flew open, and out Abby came swaddled in her robe with a towel wrapped around her hair. “You just don’t understand.”
“Of course I do.” She patted the space on the bed next to her. “Now come. Sit with me.”
The bed bounced as Abby dropped down onto the end instead of next to Jillian.
“What was all that about?”
“I finally get a boy to notice me, and you have to go and blow it for me.”
Jillian shifted around on the bed and tucked one leg up under her. “You shouldn’t worry so much about men…in your case, boys. They’ll always notice you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me see. How can I explain this better?” She looked up toward the ceiling. “I was probably in my freshman, no, sophomore year in high school when I broke up with the quarterback of the junior-varsity football team.”
Abby gave her a surprised look.
“It was the right thing to do, but he didn’t take it very well. We had absolutely nothing in common. He told me, I’m sure out of ange
r, that I wasn’t anything special and there were plenty of girls more beautiful than me out there.” She laughed at the memory. “It seems funny now, but at the time I was devastated.”
“What a jerk.”
“Yes, he was, and that jerk went on to be the varsity quarterback, but that’s another story.” Jillian pulled her other leg up on the bed and sat with her legs crisscrossed. “After that, I always wondered if it was true, if there wasn’t anything special about me.” She smiled as confidence filled her. “Until I had been out of high school for a few years and something happened that changed the way I thought about myself.” She touched her finger to her lips. “I can’t remember where I was going, but I’d stopped in this coffee shop to get an espresso, and I noticed this absolutely gorgeous woman staring over her coffee cup at me.”
“Why was she staring?”
“I didn’t know. In fact, it made me very nervous at first.” She did know, but that wasn’t the point of this lesson. “Then I looked at her looking at me through the reflection in the mirror behind the counter, and that’s when I knew just how beautiful I was.”
“Huh?” Abby’s nose wrinkled.
“She was looking at me the way I look at other beautiful women.”
Her brows drew together. “You look at other women?”
Jillian laughed. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I wish I could be as beautiful as they are.”
“Oh, I get it. Like how Amelia looks at you.”
“What?” Jillian played dumb. “Amelia was looking at me?”
“Yeah, she’s beautiful, and she watches you all the time.”
“Really. I hadn’t noticed.” That was a lie. Jillian had been unable to keep her eyes off Amelia since she got here, and now she guessed the impulse was mutual.
“I want to look like you. I mean like you used to.” She reached under her pillow, pulled a magazine out, and slapped it into her lap.
“Where did you get this?” Jillian looked at the cover of the news magazine and smiled at the picture of her alter ego, Jillian McIntyre. She’d done the interview a few months before her sister had died.