After That Night

Maybe not, Jenna thought. But the cake sure tasted like part of a condemned man’s last meal.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE TIME Jenna got home that afternoon, her mind was more made up than ever. There was no way she could face a powerful, sophisticated businessman like Mark Bishop and ask him a bunch of silly questions about love and romance and how he’d found the girl of his dreams.

But at the same time she couldn’t help sympathizing with Vic and her dilemma with her sister. The easiest solution, Jenna decided, was to farm out the article to one of FTW’s many freelancers. Even on such short notice, one of them would be glad to take the job. She could start calling them right after she got the boys settled down for the night. If she had to, she’d pay for the piece out of her own pocket. End of problem.

That decision made, Jenna turned her attention to dinner. She would have preferred to take a warm bath and put her feet up with a good book, but no such luck.

Her older brothers were coming over. Christopher had been in a major funk this week because his girlfriend, Amanda, was out of town visiting her family. Trent, now a full partner in the family construction business, wanted to celebrate the completion of their most recent job, a large office complex on Magnolia Street. Jenna’s sons, Petey and J.D., always enjoyed having their uncles in the house, and her father was eager to try out his new grill. The evening promised to be noisy, lively and exhausting.

She fixed a salad and baked potatoes to go with the steaks her father grilled. While Christopher and Trent roughhoused with her sons in the living room, Jenna slipped peach cobbler into the oven and swallowed two aspirins to quell the headache building behind her eyes.

The meal was a success. The fellows were always appreciative of her cooking and had the good sense to remark on it. Afterward, as Jenna placed the cobbler and ice cream on the table, there were groans that they were too full, but she noticed that this didn’t stop them.

Her father launched into a speech about barbecuing techniques. Christopher said that Amanda had called him and missed him already. Trent was helping the boys scoop ice cream while they playfully fought over who got the biggest helping. The closeness, the good-natured ribbing, the relaxed laughter—it was into this familiar family patter that Jenna brought her own contribution to the conversation: Vic’s attempt to coerce her to go to New York.

Talk at the table ceased as if someone had just discovered a bomb planted in the centerpiece. Five pairs of eyes turned in her direction.

After a lengthy silence, Trent was the first to speak. “Wow,” he said as he returned to scooping ice cream. “Victoria must be really desperate.”

Jenna was momentarily speechless. Maybe it was her headache. Maybe it was the heat from the kitchen that had caused an unpleasant line of perspiration to form along the small of her back. Or maybe it was just the offhand, incredulous way Trent had said it, as though Vic’s suggestion was unthinkable. Whatever it was, her brother’s comment rankled. Why was it so impossible to believe his kid sister might be able to handle the interview?

Jenna decided she had to know.

“Why wouldn’t she ask me?” she said. “I’m an equal partner at the magazine. We share a variety of jobs. I can still carry on an adult conversation. Unless, of course, I’m trying to talk to you.”

“Yeah, but…” If he’d missed the sting in her words, Trent certainly couldn’t have misinterpreted her frown of displeasure. He subsided with a grumpy scowl of his own and focused on his bowl of ice cream.

Her father made the situation worse. “New York?” he exclaimed, as though he found the words offensive. “You can’t go there.”

Jenna turned her frown on her father. “Why not?”

“We need you here at home.”

“That’s a lousy reason and you know it. It’s two days. I’ll be back before you and the boys finish the leftover cobbler.”

Her father’s chin set in the same stubborn lines that used to irritate her mother so much. “I don’t like it. It’s much too dangerous. You’re a small-town girl, and the big city’s not the place for you, Jenny-girl.”

Jenna could feel the spoon in her hand cutting into her palm she gripped it so tightly. “For heaven’s sake, it’s New York, not Bangkok. I commute into Atlanta five days a week. I think I can handle it.”

William McNab apparently failed to notice the irritation in his daughter’s voice. “Big-city Atlanta is not the same as big-city New York. Things are different here in the South.”

She batted her eyelashes dramatically. In a heavy Southern accent, she said, “Land-sakes, Papa. I think I can handle being among those darned Yankee carpetbaggers. But if I can’t, why, I’ll just skedaddle back here to the plantation.”

Trent chuckled around a mouthful of cobbler. “Make up your mind, Jen. Are you Lois Lane or Scarlett O’Hara?”

“Knock it off, Trent,” Christopher warned softly, obviously sensing trouble ahead.

Trent looked momentarily confused. Her father sighed, then tossed his oldest son a humor-her look. “Explain the difference to her, Chris.”

Christopher was an Atlanta police detective and could probably regale them with a dozen grim tales from the mean streets of New York. But Jenna, feeling more annoyed by the minute, wasn’t willing to listen. She raised a hand to stop him, then addressed her father.

“You know, Dad, I’m a grown woman now. I’ve been married and divorced, and I’m the mother of two children. What I am not anymore is Jenny-girl. I am not a child, and I am perfectly capable of conducting this interview and hailing cabs and riding the subway and— J.D., stop that!”

Six-year-old J.D. had been trying to start a duel with his brother using a spoon that still dripped ice cream. He jerked his head up guiltily. Jenna gave him “the look,” then went around to his side of the table to wipe at the spot he’d made on the tablecloth. She kept her head down, focused on the task at hand because her throat was suddenly clogged with frustrated, angry words unfit for the boys’ young ears.

Used to defusing potentially dangerous situations, Christopher spoke up. “Take it easy, sis. Dad didn’t mean anything by it. He just worries about you. We all do.”

She glanced up, looking at her brothers and her father in turn. They didn’t appear a bit apologetic, only surprised by her attitude. She was a little surprised by it herself. Just how long had this resentment about the way they saw her been boiling up inside?

Next to her, seven-year-old Petey finished scraping out his bowl. He smiled at her. “I think you’ll be great, Mom. You can do anything.”

Probably just a ploy to get a second helping of dessert, Jenna thought. But she couldn’t help feeling a swell of ridiculous pleasure. At least someone at the table thought she was an adult capable of more than baking a passable peach cobbler.

She leaned over, captured her son’s tousled blond head with one arm and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said as he reddened and squirmed out of her grasp. “You believe in your mom, don’t you, honey?”

“Uh-huh,” Petey replied. “You can tell him all about us. How you ran the pumpkin patch for school last year and how you got Randy’s dad to pay for Little League uniforms and the special Easter baskets you made for Gramma Resnick’s nursing-home people…”

“And how you’re a good cook,” J.D. offered.

The smile froze on Jenna’s face. Neither one of the boys had a clue what conducting an interview was all about. It was also horribly clear just where they thought her talents lay.

In being a mom. Not a real person at all. Just the family facilitator who made sure they got to school every morning with full stomachs and clean clothes. The one who carted them to soccer practice. The one who read them stories at night and cried silly tears over the pictures they drew. Just being a mom.

At the other end of the table, her father and Christopher remained judiciously silent, but Trent, never one to catch subtle changes in the air around him, couldn’t help grinning at her. “There you go, Jen,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Offer the guy some peach cobbler. He’ll spill his guts about romance faster than one of Christopher’s collars trying to beat a rap.”

This time all three men laughed. Even the boys joined in, not fully understanding the conversation, but tickled by the goofy face their uncle made.

Jenna ignored the laughter, refusing to make the discussion any more unpleasant with the boys present. She retreated to the kitchen to wash the dinner dishes while Trent helped Petey with his homework and her father flipped on his favorite television program. Perhaps sensing her irritation, Christopher made a half-hearted attempt to clear the table and help with the dishes, but she shooed him into the living room to join the others.

She usually ran the dishwasher, but tonight she filled the sink with hot, soapy water and slowly lowered the dishes into it. She wasn’t that eager to join the rest of the family. Maybe tonight she’d distance herself entirely from them. Even the boys.

It didn’t matter that some of the things they’d said were the same arguments she’d used at lunch with Vic. They should have been supportive. They shouldn’t have made fun of the idea. At the very least, they should have pretended to think she could do it. For heaven’s sake, she was a college graduate. A working mother. She wasn’t stupid.

She supposed it was her own fault if her family discounted her, tried to run her life. Growing up, she’d allowed her brothers to do most of her thinking for her. It was habit with them now. And since her mother’s death a few years ago, her father had become more protective of her, as well.

The circumstances of her failed marriage hadn’t helped. Jack Rawlins had been the sweetest-talking, handsomest man she’d ever met. He had dreams of running away from the ho-hum world of corporate accounting, living in wild, indolent grace on some tropical island. The unreliable heat of physical desire had sparked and flared between them, and over the objections of her entire family, they had eloped.

For a while, even after the boys came, they’d both worked toward that fairy-tale goal. Jack had bought a boat to fix up. He wanted to sail around the world, and Jenna could see herself on the deck, warmed by the sun, her hair tangled with salt spray as she kept a journal detailing their escapades. They would share a life bigger and grander than anything hot, humid Atlanta had to offer.

But by the fifth year of their marriage, Jenna had begun to modify that dream a little. The boys needed roots. They would be in school soon. The house they’d bought required repairs that were more crucial than the rotting, rusting boat sitting in drydock in the backyard. Could you really support yourself on a small island in the Pacific? Live on coconuts and fish? Maybe it was time to consider occasional vacations, instead of a permanent relocation.

Foolishly, she’d thought Jack had come to that conclusion, too. Passion became a missing ingredient in their comfortable, suburban lifestyle, but Jenna was certain that Jack still loved her. That whatever hopes they’d had to compromise, it would be all right. Sooner or later, didn’t everyone have to accept reality?

And then she woke up one day to discover that Jack hadn’t settled at all. That he’d emptied their bank account, run up their credit cards and booked a flight to Tahiti.

For two.