“You like my map?”
“I do.” He cocked his head to one side and studied the outline of forty-eight states that she’d obviously painted with painstaking care. Thirty-three states were filled in with rainbow colors, and the state capital of each marked and labeled in gold. Beneath the map, also lettered in gold, was the message “Through the Great Forty-Eight,” and the dates of her last birthday and her next, when the trip was scheduled to end.
“When do you paint each one?” he asked. “Colorado’s still blank.”
“When I cross the state line into the next state. I make a little ceremony out of it. People at the roadside rest stops get a real kick out of my insanity.”
He gazed down at her. “You’re not insane. You’re whimsical and creative, and I’d be a fool to tamper with a spirit like yours and try to mold you to my way. I’ll have to be grateful for what time you give me, Jill Amory.”
“You have me for a few more days,” she said, her heart full with his understanding.
“A few more days.” He sighed. “Okay. First on the agenda, I’d like you to come to dinner at my parents’ house tomorrow night. I’ve mentioned how you’re helping with the mall situation, and they’d love to meet you.”
“That sounds nice. I accept.”
“And then…” His gaze wrapped her in soft velvet. “After dinner, and a decent interval of afterdinner conversation, I want you to come home with me.”
She couldn’t speak as the passion in his eyes fueled her own.
“Will you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
8
THE NEXT MORNING Jill sat at Spence’s oak desk drinking coffee and forced herself to think about tourist bus lines. He’d left her alone to make the calls while he worked with Stephanie and Horace, taking inventory. She couldn’t have concentrated at all had he stayed in the office with her. His mere presence in the store, the sound of his voice or his laughter, made thinking difficult. She wondered how he was carrying on so easily with the day’s work, given what they had planned for tonight.
At lunchtime Charlie brought her a corndog and some lemonade.
“Spence told me to take care of you,” he said, opening his own bag. “You seemed to enjoy our lunch together before, so…”
“This is great, Charlie.” She couldn’t bear to tell him that she wasn’t as big a corndog fan as he, or that food was the least of her concerns today.
“Any success with the tour buses?”
“It looks as if we’ll have to take two not-very-new buses or none at all, if we want to schedule the tour this week,” she replied. “I have to check with Spence and find out whether he wants to take a chance on older buses. All the others are booked.”
“I daresay he’ll tell you to take a chance,” Charlie said, dipping his corndog in a small container of mustard. “He’s worried that Tippy will have the department store signed up very soon and the museum shipped down to the vacant space where the shoe outlet used to be.”
“We need to keep that from happening,” Jill agreed. “I thought we’d draw up a petition demanding that the museum be kept where it is, and after the bus tour we can ask everyone to sign it.”
“Splendid idea,” Charlie said. He finished his corndog and wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “Well, I mustn’t keep you too long.” He stuffed the napkin and the empty lemonade cup in his paper bag.
“You don’t have to rush off, Charlie.” Jill discovered the old man’s chatter was a welcome distraction from her heady thoughts about Spence. “Tell me how you’re getting along with Gladys.”
“Oh!” Charlie flushed. “Why, ah, we’re doing just fine, my dear.” He shifted in his chair. “Matter of fact, I’m meeting Gladys in a short while for another turn around the ice on the skating pond.”
“Is that right?” Jill smiled. “That’s why you’re anxious to be out of here. You have a date.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a date.”
“Why not?”
“We are just good friends, Gladys and I,” he said, rolling the top of his sack down then rolling it back up again.
“I hope you are good friends. That makes everything so much nicer. But, Charlie, Gladys looks at you the way a chocolate freak looks at a hot fudge sundae. And I’ve caught you looking back. So don’t try to pull this ‘only friends’ business around me.”
To Jill’s surprise, Charlie’s discomfort increased. “Alas, but you’re right,” he said, sounding distressed. “I find Gladys extremely attractive.”
“What’s so terrible about that? She’s even rich, besides.”
“Yes,” Charlie wailed. “She’s everything I could want. Fate is so unkind.”
“Unkind? Charlie, I don’t get it. You should be overjoyed, not moaning pitifully about the situation.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Surely you’re not allowing pride to stand in the way of happiness for both of you?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not pride, my dear. I’m just not…able…to indulge in such matters.”
She was stunned into silence. Apparently the poor man was struggling with impotence. He probably hadn’t been with a woman in years, and now the pressure to perform was too much. Jill’s heart went out to him. “Maybe you haven’t given this enough time,” she said gently. “After all, you only moved into Gladys’s house last night.”
“I’m afraid time will only make everything more difficult,” Charlie moaned.
“You’re taking the problem too seriously,” Jill advised. “You should relax and you might be surprised what will happen. Loosen up, Charlie.” Listening to herself, Jill was amused to think she was giving such advice to a fellow at least three times her age. Yet if she didn’t help Charlie in this delicate matter, who would?
Charlie peered at her. “Loosen up? Are you referring to the exercises we all do before the Senior Striders race-walk? I fail to understand how that—”
“No, not physical loosening,” she said with a smile. “Mental loosening. Your thinking is too rigid, and that’s why you’re having problems with…with Gladys.”
“Dear me, you may be right, but discipline and duty have been my code for more years than you can imagine. To cast off those restrictions at my age…”
“If you don’t cast them off now, when will you?”
Charlie flushed a deeper crimson. “You see,” he said, creasing the bag with his fingers, “I never expected to… That is, I thought never again to… Well, I really don’t know about this. I could be inviting chaos.”
“Chaos? Now really. Aren’t you overreacting a little?”
“I must consider the consequences of my actions.”
Jill hid her smile. She and Spence had to worry about consequences, but not Charlie and Gladys. Age did have its compensations. “I think you’re being far too cautious,” she said. “You deserve a slice of happiness, and you should take it.”
Charlie rested his chin on his hand and stared into space. “I don’t know if I dare,” he mused.
“Dare.”
“I wonder if she likes to travel?”
“Ask her.”
He shook his head. “It would never work.”
“That’s negative thinking, Charlie.”
“Of course, I don’t recall anything in the manual that precludes this,” he said, as if to himself.
“Manual?” She imagined him studying Masters and Johnson or The Joy of Sex. Poor Charlie. “Just do what comes naturally,” she advised. “All the sex manuals in the world won’t replace a loving touch by someone who cares about another.”
He blinked. “Sex manuals? Who said anything about sex manuals?”
“I thought that’s what you meant, when you said something about the manual didn’t preclude something. And I want you to know that books can only do so—”
“I see what you mean,” he said quickly, his ears pink. “And you’re so right, my dear. I’ll keep what you’ve said in mind. And now to a more important topic…. How is everything bet
ween you and Spencer?”
At the mention of his name, Jill began to tingle all over. “You haven’t talked with him about…about us?”
“Not a great deal. But from the look on his face, I have hopes that you and he reached some sort of understanding last night.”
“Um, I suppose you could say that.” Jill busied herself cleaning up the debris from her lunch.
“Excellent, excellent. Certainly now you see the wisdom of staying through February fourteenth.”
Jill looked up. “I do?”
“Don’t you want to assure a future with Spencer?”
“I—I don’t know. We’ve only just begun to—”
“You don’t know?” Charlie frowned. “Then you’re not as far along as I’d hoped. That’s what comes of slacking off on the job, of course, of imagining that I can dally with a beautiful woman. I have no one but myself to blame.”
“Why on earth do you keep insisting that what happens between Spence and me is somehow up to you?”
Charlie stood and picked up both lunch bags. “Because it is, my dear,” he said, and left the office.
Jill stared after him, openmouthed. One minute Charlie was confiding his lack of sexual ability, and the next he was implying that he was in charge of her love affair with Spence. Dear as the old man was, he was also one pickle short of a jar. Perhaps she was wrong to push him toward Gladys, who seemed perfectly sane.
As Jill pondered whether to talk with Gladys about her beau, Spence walked into the office and sat down in the chair recently vacated by Charlie.
“Charlie just chewed me out,” he said with a grin. “He wants a commitment that we’ll be together on February fourteenth, and I told him I wouldn’t be a party to interference with your plans. I described your map, and he said I had no business being intimidated by a thing like that. I told him about dinner at my parents’ house tonight. He was pleased that I was taking you home to meet the folks.”
“Spence, you didn’t say anything about…”
“Our plans after dinner?” His gaze was gentle. “No, of course I didn’t. That’s our private concern.”
“I should have known you wouldn’t tell anyone, even Charlie. Did he say anything else to you?”
“No, he had to go—Gladys was waiting at the skating pond. But when he left I could tell he was still irritated with me for not being more assertive. Somehow I’m supposed to keep you here through the fourteenth.”
She considered the situation for a moment. “Spence, do you think Charlie should see a doctor or anything?”
“M.D. or Ph.D.?”
“Maybe both. He’s really acting strange about this St. Valentine’s thing.”
“I suppose, but so far it’s all pretty harmless.”
“What about Gladys? Does she know that Charlie is…”
“A little nutty? She knows. She told me that’s one of the things that fascinates her about him. If some therapist got rid of all his little quirks, Gladys might not want him anymore.”
Jill groaned.
“I wouldn’t worry about Charlie, if I were you,” he said, leaning his arms on the desk. “I’ve known him for several months, and so have Gladys, Robert, George and Bernie. Nobody’s ever thought he was a danger to himself or anyone else. If he’s a little cracked, it’s a neat kind of craziness. All he wants out of life is to bring lovers together, and we could use a few more people fixated on that, don’t you think?”
Jill gazed into his dark eyes. “When you put it that way, I guess so.”
Spence glanced toward the office door he’d left open behind him. “Wish I could shut that,” he said in a low tone, “but Stephanie and Horace already suspect something’s going on between us. No point in advertising it. He reached across the desk and stroked her hand.”
“No,” she agreed, as her heart beat faster.
“Tell me about the bus tour. How are we doing?”
She swallowed and tried to remember what she’d wanted to ask him. “Old buses,” she said finally. “All I can find are two old buses. The newer ones aren’t available on such short notice.”
“Then I guess we’ll have old buses. Can you get them for Tuesday?”
“I think so.”
“When it’s arranged, why don’t you call Robert about the catering? Then if you wouldn’t mind designing the invitations, I’ll have Stephanie or Horace run them off at the copy shop and take them around today.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow I’ll leave Horace in charge here,” he continued, “so we can map out the route of the tour. We can drive it together.”
She realized he was planning to be with her for the rest of the weekend. And then what? After spending tonight in each other’s arms, would they spend Sunday night the same way? And Monday night? And…
He touched the inside of her wrist. “I can feel your pulse beating. Pretty fast.”
“I think…you’d better go back out there and finish whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Killing time until tonight, that’s what I’m doing. My folks are excited about meeting you. Anyone who believes in the original mall concept is already a trusted friend.”
“I don’t have any fancy clothes,” she said, remembering another problem she’d wanted to mention.
“Wear your jeans. We don’t dress up around my parents’ house. Don’t forget that my ancestors were casual types who sold supplies to miners. My family hasn’t changed much since then.” He continued to move his finger lightly over her wrist.
The contact was electric, but Jill couldn’t pull away. “All right, then. Jeans it is.”
“You can leave here whenever the invitations are done. I’ll pick you up about six at the campground.”
“You won’t have any trouble finding me?”
“With you I seem to have built-in radar. Besides,” he added, smiling, “I doubt anyone else parked there has a map of the United States painted on their van.”
“True.”
“Charlie really is upset because I’m not making you stay until Valentine’s Day.”
“Does he think you could force me to do that?”
He circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger and brought her hand, palm up, to his lips. “He thinks I could get you to do that…without force,” he said, tracing the lines on her palm with his tongue.
She had trouble speaking. “But you…wouldn’t try.”
He gazed at her silently for a long moment before replying. “There are times when I wonder if I can help trying.”
JILL DISCOVERED that she’d been right about the black Trans Am when Spence picked her up at six on the dot.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you,” she said, watching him handle the powerful car. “You obviously grew up here, but I can’t picture you moving right into a job at your parents’ store.”
Spence laughed. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. There’s something about you… Well, did you?”
“No.”
“Aha! My instincts were right.”
He shifted into fourth gear. “I’m glad to see you using your instincts.”
“It’s a recently acquired skill. I’ve been listening to other people for most of my life. But for the past seven months, they haven’t been around, so I’ve had to listen to myself.”
“Good.”
“So what were you, before you became a shop keeper?”
“I flew a little.”
“Flew a little. Come on, Spence.”
He grimaced. “I was part of the war machine. That’s why I cherish people like Charlie who would sooner die than carry a gun.”
“A fighter pilot?”
“Yes.”
“Figures,” Jill said, watching the way he handled the car. “But fighter pilots don’t get the job by accident. I’ve seen Top Gun and I know you have to work at making the grade.”
“Oh, I wanted the job, all right. I’d always dreamed of flying, like most little boys, especially ones who
grow up in Colorado Springs, almost next door to the Air Force Academy. I still love flying—in fact, I’m in the process of dickering for a little Cessna to have fun with—but eventually I realized that I wasn’t in the Air Force just to fly around. I was there to kill people, if the need arose.”
“Witness our love,” Jill murmured.
“What?”
“Oh, I was remembering what Charlie said your last name meant—‘witness our love.’ I suppose a last name like Jegger doesn’t really fit well with bloodshed.”
“Nope. Neither would Amory, if what Charlie says is right, and it means ‘loving.”’
“He’s right. I looked it up in the bookstore.”
“Oh?” Spence seemed pleased. “Did you look up mine?”
“Yes, and Charlie’s right about that, too.”
“Hmm. I wonder if that means you’ll do the loving and I’ll watch.” He grinned at her.
“Think so?” Jill felt rosy, warm and sexy—probably not the best way to greet Spence’s parents.
He glanced at her. “No. I’m a lousy spectator. I prefer participation.”
“Glad to hear it,” she murmured. “And now I think we’d better change the subject.”
He smiled. “It’s a becoming subject for you. Your cheeks are pink as a baby’s bottom.”
“Oh? And what do you know about babies’ bottoms?” She wondered with a little shock if he’d tell her about the children he’d had with his first wife. Jill hadn’t even considered the possibility. There was so much she didn’t know about Spence Jegger.
“Nieces and nephews. I’m the last of six kids and the only one who hasn’t presented my folks with grandchildren.”
“Oh,” she said, adding his large family to her small cache of information. “How come none of your brothers and sisters are involved in the store?”
“Didn’t want to be. I didn’t think I wanted to run it, either, and the whole business would have passed out of the family when the mall was built. I got the news about the sale of the land while I was in Germany, about the time I had to decide whether to reenlist. I came home.”
Forever Mine, Valentine Page 10