After That Night

Jenna flipped up the picture to scan the attached bio and Mark Bishop’s answers to the list of questions that had been posed to every one of the Ten Most Eligible. Thirty-two. A Leo. Educated at Princeton. No siblings.

Aloud she read, “‘My life’s passion is…my work’?” Jenna smiled at her friends. “Gosh, every woman’s dream. A workaholic.”

Lauren frowned. “Yes, and if I remember correctly, Debra Lee shared with him a few of our more embarrassing tales of adolescence. The nitwit.”

“He found them amusing,” Victoria said. She seemed determined to raise Mark Bishop’s profile. For my benefit? Jenna wondered.

Lauren shook her head. “Ha! He blew us off professionally. I got the distinct impression he thought we were goofy, naive teenagers who grew up to be goofy, naive adults.”

Jenna looked at Vic. “And you think he’ll make an interesting follow-up piece?”

A tiny frown marred Victoria’s brow. “He’s the first one to get engaged. I think it will be interesting to follow each of these guys as they come off the list. What made them choose the woman they’re going to marry? What made—” she checked the back of the profile, where she’d added a notation or two “—Shelby Elaine Winston the one for Mark Bishop? Why her?”

Lauren snorted. “Why should we care? So the rest of us can copy good old Shelby and hope that one day we’ll snag a Mr. Right for ourselves?” She shook her head in disgust, sending loose auburn curls over one shoulder. “God, sometimes I think we need to give up on that fantasy.”

“What makes you think some of us haven’t?” Jenna surprised herself by saying. Damn Jack Rawlins! He really had soured her on any notion of happily-ever-after, hadn’t he?

Victoria looked genuinely disconcerted. “What’s wrong with you two? We’re all firm believers in fairy-tale endings, remember?”

“Not lately,” Lauren said, playing with her wineglass.

Something in her tone made Jenna wonder just how much trouble there was in Lauren’s current relationship. Earlier she’d mentioned that Brad had begun to pressure her to make more of a commitment. She’d responded by taking an assignment for a travel magazine that would have her flying to New Zealand next week. Get some breathing distance between them, she’d said.

Vic cocked her head at Lauren. “Trouble in paradise?”

Lauren didn’t pretend not to understand. From the moment they’d met in grade school there’d been few secrets between the three friends. “Brad’s driving me crazy,” she admitted.

“In what way?” Jenna asked.

“In a dozen different ways. Everything he does lately gets on my nerves. Did you ever notice how many times he ends a sentence with ‘…and so on and so on and so forth’? He’ll be telling a story, and it’s as though he’s suddenly lost interest. Then I’m just supposed to guess how the rest of it goes. And if I say anything, he looks at me like I’m an imbecile.” Lauren narrowed her eyes at Jenna. “Why are you smiling?”

“I was just wishing I’d had that problem with Jack. He always finished his stories. And then he’d repeat them again and again. I could recite them in my sleep. He never shut up.” She caught sight of Lauren’s scowl. “Sorry. You were saying?”

Lauren played with her spoon, still frowning. “He attacks his spaghetti,” she said in a soft voice.

Vic sat forward. “I beg your pardon?”

Lauren looked at her friends impatiently, then made quick slicing motions with her silverware. “He attacks it. Like it’s a plate of snakes. It doesn’t matter that he’s got a pasta spoon right beside his plate. He just starts whacking at it with a knife and fork until every piece is no more than an inch long. It’s disgusting to watch.”

“Sounds serious,” Vic said, barely suppressing a grin.

“Wait till Chef Boyardee hears about this,” Jenna added.

Lauren gave them both a stern look. “I know what you’re thinking. But little irritations like that can really kill a relationship, you know?”

Jenna nodded sympathetically. “Mom used to say you could sit on a mountain, but you couldn’t sit on a tack.”

Although, she had the sudden, wry memory that little transgressions hadn’t been the death of her own marriage. Forget how Jack had repeated stories or treated his spaghetti or neglected to cap the toothpaste. That long-term affair with his secretary had pretty much distracted her from small annoyances.

She pushed thoughts of Jack to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on Lauren’s dilemma. Both Jenna and Vic had heard this same sort of complaint from their friend before.

Lauren claimed to love her independence so much that the idea of settling down with one man horrified her. Her career as a freelance photographer had really taken off in the past few years, and she now made a comfortable living regularly contributing to several different publications. While photo assignments for FTW were still a top priority, she loved flying out of the country on a moment’s notice, marching through steamy jungles and climbing steep mountains in search of just the right shot. Where would a husband and kids and a picket fence fit into that kind of life? she’d once asked her two best friends.

It was Jenna’s private theory, however, that a loss of independence wasn’t Lauren’s real fear at all. Jenna would have bet money that Lauren was more afraid of duplicating her parents’ disastrous marriage.

Her mother was on her fourth husband. And Lauren’s father, husband number one, was still referred to in their old neighborhood as Womanizing Walter. He’d been the first guy in Bear Hollow to greet any new neighbor with an armload of lawn-care products for the men—and eventually, a key to the nearest motel for young and willing wives. The scandalous details of the Hoffmans’ divorce had set the neighborhood on its ear for months.

“Has Brad asked you to marry him?” Jenna inquired.

Lauren stiffened and rolled her eyes. “No. But I think he’s going to soon. Hell, I think he’s in love with me.”

Vic placed her hand over Lauren’s. “Lauren, you know what you’re doing, don’t you? Every time a guy gets too close you start running.”

Jenna sat back in her chair, a little unnerved. “What’s wrong with us?” she asked. “Vic’s right. I can remember a time when we would have been dancing on this table at the thought of someone being in love with us. We’re only twenty-eight. This can’t be it for romance.”

Vic, who had recently broken off with her boyfriend of six months, shook her head vehemently. “Of course it isn’t. Let’s just acknowledge that we’re all going through a bad patch right now. But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up on finding true love. Or it finding us. Haven’t we built a business on the idea of romance and grand passion?”

They fell silent for a few moments, each of them caught in her own thoughts. Dexter approached the table with the dessert tray and placed a dish of sinful-looking chocolate cake in front of Jenna. She smiled her thanks. She had to admit, expensive and as calorie-laden as it was, it looked wonderful.

Vic pushed her fork into the moist slice of cake before her. “I’m not going to spoil a perfectly divine dessert with talk about how pathetic our love lives are.” She tapped a finger against the nearest photograph on the table. “I still think the women who read FTW want to believe there’s a Ten Most Eligible out there for them. Wouldn’t you like a few hints that might allow you to snag one of these guys?”

“I suppose that would depend on how much of myself I’d have to give up in order to get him,” Jenna said.

Catching sight of the picture of Mark Bishop, Dexter’s eyes lit up. “Oh, honey, I wouldn’t let him get away. Do whatever it takes. Get a complete makeover if you have to. He’s a hottie.”

They all laughed and the mood at the table lightened. After Dexter sashayed off, Jenna said, “Well, whatever secrets the happy couple want to share, I’m sure you’ll put a great spin on it, Vic.”

A short silence fell as the three women took their first bites of dessert, sighs of appreciation escaping their lips. As she slipped her fork into the cake for a second mouthful, Victoria looked at Jenna and said, “Actually I’m not going to do the article. You are.”

Jenna frowned. “Me? What are you talking about?”

“I want you to do the piece.”

Jenna shook her head. She reached over and pushed Victoria’s wineglass to the opposite side of the table. “No more wine for you.”

“I’m serious.”

The cake in Jenna’s mouth suddenly became flavorless. She gave Victoria an incredulous look, though she noticed that Lauren didn’t seem completely surprised. “Why aren’t you going?” And then, because she realized that Vic was serious, she added, “I can’t go in your place.”

“Why not? You have perfectly acceptable skills. You did that article last Christmas about gift suggestions.”

“You know very well that was a last-minute filler, and it amounted to no more than three paragraphs. That doesn’t make me a journalist.”

“It still required a way with words. Which you have.”

Jenna set down her fork, her dessert forgotten. “Yeah, and I’m thinking of a few choice ones right now.”

She looked across the table at Lauren for support. The redhead was mysteriously quiet. No help from that quarter evidently.