Once Around

by Barbara Bretton

  "If you need help with your belongings, I can recommend a good local moving service."

  Her eyes crinkled as her smile widened. "I can pack my belongings in my suitcase and have room to spare for the complete works of Shakespeare."

  He didn't know what to say to that. Most people of his acquaintance had more stuff than they could fit in a town house and summer place in Cape May. He'd need three trunks just to pack up his law books. His clothes would take another three. That thought had never made him uncomfortable before, but it did now.

  #

  The lawn mower sat in the center of the backyard like an abandoned car. One second Rafe had been pushing it up and down the slope, the next second he was gone. Maybe he'd had enough, Molly thought, tapping her fork lightly against the side of her plate, Maybe he had better things to do than pay off a debt to the wife of the man who'd backed out on the deal. She wouldn't blame him one bit if he'd packed it in and she never saw him again.

  Jessy's voice danced around the edges of her thoughts. There was something vaguely familiar to the lilting tone. Jessy was flirting with Spencer. The realization hit her right between the eyes.

  Molly looked at her across the table and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Jessy's plain face was expressionless, save for a smile that caused her brown eyes to almost disappear. Someone should have told her not to smile that way. She'd be a mass of crow's feet before she turned forty. Spencer stood perfectly straight with his back to the refrigerator. He looked like an advertisement for extreme discomfort. Poor Jessy. She was so far from being Spencer's type that it made Molly feel almost sorry for her.

  It hadn't taken long for Molly to get a good sense for the type of woman who appealed to Spencer Mackenzie: beautiful, socially acceptable, and temporary. He was great company, but a woman would be very foolish to fall in love with him. Not that Jessy Wyatt was in love with him. She'd known him less than two hours. You could barely get a good case of lust started in two hours.

  As if on cue, Rafe appeared in the. doorway. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, although he didn't look sorry at all. He looked downright annoyed. "A messenger dropped this off for you."

  "A messenger? Are you sure it wasn't FedEx?"

  "I know the difference between FedEx and a messenger." His tone was flat, but she thought she caught a sharp edge to his bland words.

  She felt her cheeks go red. She hadn't meant to embarrass him.

  He crossed the room and handed her a flat, bright red envelope with a wide snow-white label pasted neatly in the center.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Chamberlain."

  She shook her head. "Somebody hasn't been keeping up with local gossip."'

  Spencer extended a hand to Rafe.

  "Spencer Mackenzie," he said.

  Rafe hesitated just long enough to make Molly wonder if he was going to ignore Spencer entirely, "Rafe Garrick."

  The two men shook hands.

  "I'm Molly's lawyer," Spencer said.

  "I cut her grass," Rafe said.

  Spencer nodded. "You're doing a good job."

  "Thanks," said Rafe.

  Molly winced. Somehow he'd managed to make "Thanks" sound like "Go to hell."

  She slid her index finger under the bright red flap. "This isn't a fancy way of serving a subpoena, is it, Spencer?"

  His handsome face darkened. "I wouldn't think so. Maybe you should let me handle this."

  "I'm only joking," she said, waving him away. She ignored the smirk on Rafe's face. So what if Spencer didn't have a great sense of humor. Humor wasn't everything.

  Jessy didn't try to mask her curiosity. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and rested her chin in her palms. "Maybe you won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes."

  Molly arched a brow. "The Prize Patrol isn't parked out front."

  "Maybe they're around the corner," Jessy said, deadpan. "Ready to pounce."

  "They better have an ambulance, too," Molly said as she reached into the envelope, "because I'll need resuscitation.''

  The men were quiet. That didn't surprise Molly. Men were invariably puzzled by female byplay. They probably thought she and Jessy were fighting, which Molly found hilarious since their handshake had practically been a declaration of war.

  "So what is it?" Jessy asked.

  Molly drew in a breath. "Tickets," she said after a moment. She looked up at Spencer. "For the Historical Society dinner-dance."

  "Two hundred a pop," Spencer said. "Robert must've been feeling guilty."

  Molly fanned the four tickets between her fingers like a winning poker hand. "Think I could scalp these at the door'?" Spencer's patrician jaw sagged. "I'm only kidding," she said quickly. "I know Princeton matrons aren't supposed to scalp tickets to a charity dance, but I don't think there's a law against giving them away."

  She had their attention now. Rafe, Spencer, and Jessy were all staring at her as if she'd lost her mind.

  "Here," she said, holding out the tickets. "Pick one."

  Jessy leaned forward and plucked a ticket from the group. "Thanks," she said, dipping her head in Molly's direction. "Think they'd mind if I wore jeans?"

  Spencer bent down and selected a ticket. "I'll pay you for this," he said.

  "Try it and I'll find another lawyer." She smiled grimly. "These tickets are on Robert."

  That left Rafe. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest. He looked amused, a little disapproving, extremely sexy.

  "There's one ticket left," she said, feigning a casual self-confidence she didn't feel. "You might as well join us."

  "Thanks," he said, "but I'll pass."

  "Of course you won't pass," she said, aware of Jessy's and Spencer's rapt interest in their byplay. "This is an exclusive group. You're part of it. There's a ticket here with your name on it."

  His jaw tightened. She saw it happen. She'd read about it a million times, but this was the first time she'd witnessed the phenomenon. Impressive, she thought, and more than a little bit off-putting. He wanted that ticket as much as he wanted a case of chicken pox. Maybe even less. Which made her want him to have it even more

  Their eyes met, and everything else fell away. Who was she kidding? The only thing she wanted was Rafe.

  Chapter Seven

  Jessy went back to the hospital after lunch to gather up her belongings. She'd stuffed most of them in a pair of lockers off the doctors' lounge. The rest she kept in the trunk of her car. It had been sweet of Spencer Mackenzie to offer the name of a moving company. If he'd offered himself as moving man, she would have said yes in a New York minute, even though a child could have carried everything she owned and then some.

  Did he have any idea how she felt about him? She hadn't tried to hide it. Molly Chamberlain was wondering about it. Jessy saw it in her eyes across that sad little kitchen table that would have looked more at home in her mama's, house than in the middle of that fancy Princeton mini-mansion. Of course, that mini-mansion wasn't worth spit in a bucket if you couldn't pay the mortgage.

  Spencer was Molly's lawyer. That much Jessy knew for a fact. What she couldn't figure out was how they felt about each other. She'd listened to them talking in Molly's kitchen, and it was like listening to foreigners. Only this time it was Jessy who was the foreigner.

  They seemed to know the same people, the same references, the same jokes. Molly could finish Spencer Mackenzie's sentences, same as he could finish hers. Maybe they were old friends, Jessy thought. That would explain it. She didn't want to think they were anything more than that, because she loved him. She knew it was crazy to even think such a thing, but there wasn't a doubt in her mind. All her life she'd waited for this moment, wondered where she'd be when it happened, who the man would be, and now, today, right there in central New Jersey, it finally happened.

  She loved everything about him. The sound of his voice, a mellow baritone that made her shiver. He had clear gray eyes like polished silver. His dark blond hair was perfectly cut, kept just long enough t
o make her yearn, to run her fingers through it. His jawline was strong and well-defined. Straight nose, gorgeous mouth. Even his ears were perfect. She'd never seen anyone like him before. Not even in her dreams.

  She left her car on the upper level of the parking structure and bypassed the elevator. She raced down the stairs .then hurried across the lot near the ER and into the hospital. A woman in a red suit was doing business at one of the pay phones to the left of the door. Her notebook computer was open on her lap, and a leather-bound organizer rested on the small shelf beneath the phone. Saleswoman? Patient? Visitor squeezing in some work between bedside vigils? Jessy toyed with the possibilities as she emptied her lockers and stuffed everything into a Macy's shopping bag. She loved wondering about people, trying to figure out who they were and why they did the things they did. Back home everyone had been cut from the same bolt of cloth. They dressed alike, thought alike, went to the same schools and churches, and married each other's cousins.

  She'd been planning her escape from the day she was born. She liked to think she'd come out of her mother's womb with her bags packed. Her daddy never quite understood why not even on the day she finally left for good.

  "You stick with your own kind up there," he'd said as they drove to the airport six weeks ago. "Nothing but Jews and Communists in New York, if you ask me."

  "New Jersey, Daddy," she'd said with a look toward Jo Ellen. "Princeton's in New Jersey."

  "New Jersey, New York. Same damn thing if you ask me." Jim Wyatt's eyes glittered with fifty-five years of suspicion. "Nothing but a bunch of Communists up there. Jew Commie bastards looking to make the blacks king of the world."

  It didn't matter to Jim Wyatt that Communism had been dead for almost two decades. Old hates were good hates, and he clung to them the way other men clung to their recliner chairs and remote controls.

  Jessy was through trying to make him see, the light. This time tomorrow she'd be walking down one of those picture-postcard Princeton streets, breathing that ratified air, acting like she belonged there. No more of her daddy's rants about Jews and Communists and blacks when it was really his own pathetic lot in life that had him so all-fired mad at the world.

  "Now, you let the girl alone, Jimmy." Her mama's voice was soft and apologetic, but Jessy knew there was a core of steel inside the woman. If it hadn't been for Jo Ellen's determination, Jessy would have ended up married to Danny Watson, dying a little more every day. Jo Ellen's ambition had been the fuel that got Jessy through med school. "She's going up there to be a doctor. She doesn't have time to be worryin' about your nonsense."

  Daddy's lips thinned so flat they almost disappeared. "You won't think it's nonsense when we're all speaking Spanish."

  Jessy couldn't help it. She burst out laughing. She didn't meet Jo Ellen's eyes because she knew her mama couldn't so much as crack a smile, or the wrath of God would fall on her narrow shoulders. As it was, Jim Wyatt would be all over his wife with angry words and accusations the minute Jessy's plane taxied toward the runway.

  "They're callin' my flight, Daddy! I'll write soon as I'm settled." Jim didn't say much of anything, just stood real still as she kissed his cheek. Whatever he was feeling, he kept it all buried inside himself. He hated much better than he loved, her daddy did, but that wasn't her problem anymore.

  "I'm getting the car," he said to her mother. "You be out front, Jo Ellen. I'm not waitin' around all night for you."

  Her mama nodded, but her focus was on Jessy, same as it had been since the day she was born. All of her mother's unanswered dreams were wrapped up in her little girl, the one who was going to make those dreams all come true. Jo Ellen's eyes were wet with tears, but Jessy knew her mama was too proud to let them fall in public. Oh, she'd cry later on. Probably in the shower, with the door locked and the water running so nobody could hear her. That was the way she'd cried when she'd heard her sixteen-year-old baby was carrying a baby of her own.

  "It's for the best," Jo Ellen had said, smoothing Jessy's choppy light brown hair with gentle fingers. "Giving that baby away is the right thing to do." That was back when Jessy still believed those gentle fingers could hold back an army of hurt. "You have your whole life ahead of you, Jessy. Don't let your dreams slip away."

  Jessy had been in line for a scholarship to Duke. Premed. Everything her mother had ever wanted for her. If she kept the baby, she could kiss all of those dreams good-bye forever.

  Her daughter was taken from her womb, cleaned up, and presented to her new parents. Little did they know Jessy's heart went with her.

  Now here she was, in faraway Princeton, living her mother's dreams for her. She'd graduated at the top of her class. She'd performed flawlessly as an intern. Her residency at Princeton was a major coup.

  "You've got to be the best," Jo Ellen had said to her at the airport. "That's the only way out."

  I am out, Jessy had wanted to say, but she knew Jo Ellen wouldn't hear her.

  She was a good doctor but she'd never be a great one. Technical expertise without passionate commitment would keep her from achieving the top rung of success. Her dreams were smaller—and in some ways much harder to come by. She wanted someone to love her.

  She wanted Spencer Mackenzie.

  The doctors' lounge was filling up. She tossed the last of her things into her bag then closed both lockers. She was on duty tonight, which meant she had just enough time to drive back to Molly Chamberlain's house, unpack, shower, then drive back to the hospital.

  Quickly she checked her reflection in the mirror. Big mistake. It didn't seem to make much of a difference. She looked like something the cat dragged in, with her braid unraveling and the dark circles under her too-small eyes and the pallor that pegged her as a first-year resident. At least it was only pallor. As an intern, she'd looked downright cadaverous. But, no matter how you looked at it, she was no match for Molly Chamberlain. The thought of seeing, Molly first thing every morning, sometimes even before her first cup of coffee, was enough to make her reconsider. Maybe sleeping in the doctors' lounge for the next few years wasn't such a bad idea after all.

  She must have been crazy to think Spencer Mackenzie would ever notice her with Molly around. For a couple of minutes there, she'd actually almost convinced herself that she had a chance. In theory she looked like a contender: she was single, a doctor, and not pregnant with another man's child. The only thing Molly had going for her was beauty.

  Too bad Jessy didn't have anything that could compete with it. Men didn't stop in their tracks because you'd maintained a 4.0 GPA or because you graduated magna cum laude or because you finished at the top of your class in med school. They didn't give a damn about any of that. All they cared about was the way you looked. And that's where Molly Chamberlain had it all over Jessy. She didn't seem to have anything else going for her, at least nothing that Jessy knew about, but what she did have was more than enough. As far as Jessy had been able to determine, Molly had been the classic rich guy's wife with the Jeep and the fancy house and the baby on the way.

  No career. No skills. Just beauty.

  It was always enough. Maybe the men didn't always stay as long as you wanted them to, but they stayed for a while. Jessy couldn't even get them to notice she was alive. She wasn't ugly. Ugly could be interesting. Lots of models were downright ugly in person but turned into goddesses through the camera's loving eyes. Jessy was plain. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Nothing features. Her body was spare and straight. She could walk naked into a room, and nobody would know she was there. Not if Molly Chamberlain was anywhere in the vicinity.

  #

  Spencer stayed awhile after Jessy left.

  "Let me put up a pot of coffee and fix you a sandwich," Molly said "You must be hungry."

  "Just coffee, thanks," he said. "I grabbed something to eat before I drove out here." He took a seat at the card table set up near the sliding doors.

  She turned to Rafe, who was still standing in the doorway. "I don't suppose you want anything," she said. She'd
already watched him eat lunch out there under the tree. It was the highlight of her day.

  "The sandwich sounds good," he said, his expression studiedly neutral.

  "To eat outside?" She didn't know why she bothered to ask. He always ate outside. That was their unspoken arrangement.

  "I wouldn't mind getting out of the sun."

  The statement was innocuous enough. Indian summer had arrived, and a full, blazing October sun beat down with mid-afternoon ferocity. She couldn't blame him for wanting to be inside, but there had been plenty of other hot sunny days. Why did he pick this one to come inside?

  "Fine," she said, turning away. "You and Spencer can talk football while I get everything ready."

  Rafe didn't sit down the way he was supposed to. Instead, he followed her into the working part of the kitchen.

  "The table's over there," she said, gesturing across the room to where Spencer sat patiently.

  "No reason you should do all the work." He was close enough that she could catch the smell of sun and warm skin. The combination made her dizzy with longing, and she took a step back.

  "I think I can handle it myself."

  "I'll get the plates." He reached into the cabinet over the sink and took down three flat white sandwich plates.

  "How did you know where I keep the plates?" she asked.

  "Lucky guess," he said and placed them down on the counter.

  He's watched me, she thought. The idea delighted her.

  "Need some help?" Spencer called out from the other side of the room.

  "I've got everything covered, Stuart," Rafe said.

  "His name is Spencer," Molly said quietly.

  Rafe grinned. "Whatever."

  Poor Spencer, she thought as she put coffee beans into the grinder and pressed the On button. She hoped he wasn't as easily maneuvered in the courtroom as he was in the kitchen.

  #