“Yep. Got my dinner conversation all ready. Never going to forget the sight of you flying off that fence backwards and hitting the dirt, your arms and legs going like a cartoon.” Owen started to grin, and then he started to laugh. “Oh, man, that’s a good one. My sister-in-law’s going to work that for all it’s worth. She calls you “the sexy Viking” when she wants to rile Dane up. Guessing she does some sighing when they’re watching you play, too. That’s what you get for being so pretty. She’s going to be teasing, getting all sparkly. Good for the marriage, I think is the idea.”
“What, I’m bait?” Harlan complained.
“How do you think they got four boys? Do your charming Thor thing, like you’re an arrogant asshole but at least you know it. She’ll love it. He’ll hate it, or he’ll act like he does. He’ll try to beat you at pool, too. If you let him do it, they’ll be having that next kid for sure. Nothing like the thrill of victory. What’s nine months from February?”
Harlan said, “No. Stop.”
“Can’t help it,” Owen said. “Breeding’s in my blood. Hey, at least they have their own house. You don’t have to listen. Also, Amy wants a girl. Call it your good deed.” He pulled open the oversized door on the log-frame house and added, “One tip, though. Tonight, when my nephews get hold of the pool cues? They get excited. You might want to duck.”
2
The Sponge Absorbs
Jennifer Cardello finished taking her boss, Blake Orbison, and his brand-new wife, Dakota Savage, through their newly redone lake house in Wild Horse, Idaho, and tried not to think it was her swan song.
Maybe she was wrong, but she was almost never wrong. Getting things right was the whole point of her.
Also, her Spanx were pinching. She may have done a little stress eating over the holidays.
“And the piece de resistance,” she told Dakota, leading them down the hickory steps and flinging open double doors to reveal a long room lined with windows and French doors that opened onto a snow-covered patio and lawn and the expanse of lake and mountains beyond, all of it a study in gray, black, and white on this winter day. “One stained-glass studio,” she said, “executed to specifications.” Pale bamboo flooring, cabinets and countertops of the same material, white paint on the walls, recessed lights in the ceiling for shadow-free illumination. Clean and pure and light, ready for creation.
Dakota stood still, rooted to the spot. Blake, though, muttered to Jennifer, “Great job. As usual. Thanks for getting it done.”
She waited fifteen minutes more, in the background, taking notes on her phone. What to add, what to get changed. Dakota didn’t demand, and neither did Blake. They just asked. Politely.
Blake was a great boss. Rich guy or not, former NFL quarterback or not. Too bad she had the strong feeling he wasn’t going to be her boss for long.
She knew Dakota was done thinking about the room when she started wandering around the studio, pulling gorgeous wavy panels of stained glass out of their racks and holding them up against the light, her movements decisive now, without the tentative quality that meant, “I’m not used to giving orders.” She was thinking about art, Jennifer could tell, even though she herself was the least artistic of creatures. If it wasn’t written down in black and white, she didn’t get it.
Never mind. Everybody had skills. She still had hers. She could use them. Unless she got a brain tumor, of course. Or had a stroke. She felt a little like she was going to have a stroke.
She fought down yet another surge of panic, longed for a bag of peanut M&Ms, and when Blake said, “Come up to my office a sec, would you?” she went. Because, again, her job.
Two long floors up, because this place had seriously over-tall ceilings, with Blake taking the steps two at a time—his bad knee really was better, then—and Jennifer trying to pretend she wasn’t gasping like a fish out of water after the thirtieth one. She followed him into his office, which featured another view of the lake and a piece of stained glass hanging right in the middle of it that still wowed her. It was a conch, with all its secret folds and smooth surfaces, the visible expression of a woman whose creativity sparked straight from her fingertips.
You know. An exciting woman.
“Take a seat,” Blake said, and then didn’t do it himself. Instead, he paced around the desk and looked out the windows, and Jennifer sat there, sucked in her stomach, felt the sweat popping out on her upper lip from the stairs and the nerves, and waited for it.
“Thanks for everything you did while we were gone,” he said again. “Everything with the house, and with the resort. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” Jennifer said. “I’ve never actually been laid off before. I’m sure it doesn’t feel as bad as I’m imagining. If you don’t get to it pretty quick here, though, I’m going to have to manage my own layoff. There’s such a thing as ‘a bridge too far,’ and that’s mine.”
Blake stopped frowning out the window and fiddling with a pen and said, “You’ve never been laid off? Never dropped the whole pack of burger patties onto the floor at McDonalds? Never even been on the wrong side of a budget cut?”
“No. I was a single mom. I always needed the job too much to mess up, and then I worked at the courts, remember? I was a file clerk. It’s hard to mess that up, as long as you can sing the alphabet song. I moved up until I got hired as chief clerk for the deputies, and then you hired me. They don’t fire you when you work for the state unless you really screw up, and when you need the job, you don’t screw up. Job security’s my thing. Was my thing, because the resort’s up and running now and has a good manager, you’re not going to be spending that much time in Wild Horse, and you don’t need an assistant here anymore. A property manager, that’s all, and I can get that set up for you. Just say it, Blake. Rip off the Band-Aid. I’m a big girl.”
Except that she’d given up her shot. The chief clerk vacancy at the courthouse, when Betty-Anne had finally retired. The job she’d put in for, the one that would have set her up forever, the one everybody had said was hers. It actually had been hers, but she’d passed it up, because Blake Orbison had moved to town, he was building a high-end resort the likes of which Wild Horse had never seen, and he needed a crackerjack assistant to help him do it. She hadn’t known one single thing about the rich and famous, and she’d known less than that about the NFL, but she’d known how to get things organized and get them done, she’d done exactly that, and it had been the most exciting two years of her life.
She had a great resume now. Too bad she didn’t live in LA. Also too bad she hadn’t thought of all this before she’d passed up that chief clerk job. Elizabeth Kempworth had it now, and she’d be hanging onto it until they pried her computer keyboard from her cold, dead hands.
She was having some trouble breathing, but she was having no trouble sweating. Now that this was here, it felt bad. Specifically, she felt sick. That would be the final humiliation, vomiting on your boss as he fired you. She wasn’t going there.
“I’m not firing you,” Blake said. “I’m helping you find alternative employment.”