“Hey,” Harlan said. “I’m right here.”
“You took Dyma, too,” Blake told Jennifer, still ignoring him. “What’s gotten into you?”
Jennifer didn’t have her hands on her hips, but that was probably because she was on crutches. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Sweetly. “Maybe being fired?”
Dyma said, “Well, yeah, she took me. What was she supposed to do, leave me in Yellowstone? We didn’t go to any strip clubs or whatever you’re imagining. It was all extremely PG-13. She stepped on broken glass. What, Harlan cut her as part of his BDSM routine? Do you even know my mom? And by the way? If you’ve got something bad to say about Owen Johnson, don’t say it to me, because he’s taking me to prom. Also, he’s amazing.”
Blake glanced at her, possibly shelved whatever he wanted to say for another occasion, then looked back at Jennifer. “I told you. I am not firing you. I’m helping you transition. I told you I’d help you get another assistant job with a good guy. Harlan isn’t the kind of guy I meant. Not even close.”
“Uh-huh,” Jennifer said. Her face didn’t look white now. It was flushed. Maybe it was the cold, and maybe it was the temper. Harlan’s money was on the temper. “I shouldn’t be his assistant, you’re saying. Because he’d, what, charm me, sleep with me, and dump me?”
“Well, yeah,” Blake said. “You know how I know that? By taking a look in the damn mirror, that’s how. He might get there sometime. I did, eventually. He’s not there now.”
“Which is fascinating,” she said, “except that he hasn’t asked me to be his assistant, he’s already charmed me and slept with me, and you could say that now I’m dumping him. Here’s a thought to chew on. Maybe that’s what happened, some of those times. Maybe they were dumping you, too, because you couldn’t give them what they wanted.”
Dyma looked shocked. What, Jennifer hadn’t told her? As for Blake, his mouth opened, and then it closed, and Harlan was in two spots at once. He was enjoying the sight of the quickest-witted ex-quarterback in the NFL lost for words, and he was also—well, a little hurt, if you wanted to know the truth.
“Emotionally, I mean,” she went on to say, proving that this was, yes, still Jennifer. “Because obviously, I believe you gave them what they wanted physically. Like Harlan. I mean, obviously you’re both athletic and good-looking and all. And attentive. At least I’m assuming, in your case, Blake. Which is someplace I’ve never wanted to go, so I’m backing off now, extremely fast. But still. Maybe they were just using you, was my point. Not that you were using me,” she told Harlan, shifting even further back to Jennifer-mode. “I was all clear. I am all clear. And now,” she told Blake, “I’d really, really like to get in this car and go home. I need to get my foot better by tomorrow, if I’m going to come into work.”
Dyma looked like she was dying to say something. She also looked like she had no idea what it would be.
“You do not,” Blake said, with the kind of strain around his mouth that you normally saw deep in the fourth quarter, “have to come into work tomorrow. You’re on crutches.”
“I hurt my foot,” she said. “Not my brain or my typing fingers. Tomorrow, I start setting you up to live without me. That was our deal, and I honor my deals.”
So that had been it. She had a new job. He knew that from Owen, who had taken Dyma to the prom. An image that could make a guy laugh, if he’d felt like laughing. Owen had probably had the best-fitting tux in the place, since his had been custom-made. Only possible way he’d have squeezed into one at all, of course. He also probably had a prom picture in a cardboard frame on his mantel now.
And Jennifer had chaperoned. Alone, as far as Owen could tell, when Harlan had asked in a hopefully casual manner.
She was working at some salad-dressing company, Owen said, which sounded like one hell of a comedown from working for Orbison. Probably not scheduling any private jets. Probably worrying like crazy about paying Dyma’s tuition, too. And if he couldn’t help worrying about her himself, some nights when he hadn’t swum far enough or run fast enough? She was a special person, anybody could see that. She was the kind of woman who shouldn’t have to be so surprised that a guy had wanted to show her a good time, in bed or out of it. She was the kind of warm, sweet loving a regular guy, a normal guy, should want to come home to. She might be baking cookies, and she’d look so good in that apron. Not his type at all, but she sure as hell ought to be somebody else’s. Somebody strong, so she didn’t have to hold up the whole sky by herself. Somebody steady, so she didn’t have to focus on surviving every day, and so she’d have somebody to hold her if she needed to cry, and she could let her guard down a little.
You see. He had a problem.
Especially when he put on his final sprint, a block out from the house, soaked to the skin, his running shoes covered with mud and his hair streaming with rain, turned into the drive, and found a white subcompact sitting in front of the gate.
A rental, most likely. Nobody would actually buy a car that boring.
A white subcompact with somebody in it.
In fact … Jennifer.
30
Life Comes Calling
He tapped on the window, and she jumped like a character in a slasher movie who’d just met the guy with the claws.
After a second, though, she rolled down the window and said, “I didn’t recognize you at first. How is your hair that long?”
“Extensions.”
She stared at him like, yes, a woman who’d just been told that a guy had sat in a salon chair to get hair extensions so he could have long, wavy blond locks. He said, “Long story. Tell you later. Here, I’ll open the gate for you.”
He pressed his thumb onto the sensor pad, waited until she’d driven through the wide double gates, and jogged up the drive to the house behind her thinking, Play it cool. Not something he normally had to tell himself. He’d have sworn she was the last woman to show up without notice and expect a guy to … what? Have another no-strings fling with her, because she was in town, and she was bored?
If that was it, he wasn’t doing it. She might think he had no self-respect, but she was wrong.
Then she climbed out of the car, dashed through the rain and up the broad stone stairs to the covered entryway, and he stared at her and thought … Well, maybe dinner.
She looked good. She was wearing jeans and the same cream-colored sweater she’d worn in Yellowstone. The same snug sweater, and … well, yeah. He’d forgotten, he guessed. Had she looked like that before? Like all of that?
Definitely dinner.
He opened the stainless-steel door, studded with rivets and looking like it belonged on a boxcar, and she followed him in, saying, “I’m not commenting on your house.”
“Yeah. I know it’s weird.” He pulled off his muddy shoes, dripped all over the limestone, and said, “Five minutes to take a shower.”
“Probably ten, if you have to comb out the extensions.”
“Yeah, keep it up. I’ve never heard that from anybody before. Make yourself a cup of coffee or something. There’s an espresso machine built in next to the fridge.”