Twice the Chance

“Yes.” She felt her lips curve. “It would still be no.”

He snapped his fingers and shook his head. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

She didn’t let her smile grow until she got behind the wheel of her car. It was a good thing Matt Caminetti was strictly off-limits. Otherwise, he might tempt her to forget that she couldn’t trust her instincts, especially where men were concerned.

THE LARGE BOX SITTING on the carpet in the middle of Jazz’s living room floor didn’t look like anything special. Slightly battered and made of cardboard that was dirty in places, the box had arrived by UPS almost an hour before.

Jazz hadn’t opened it yet because she had the feeling that nothing would be the same once she did. Ridiculous, really, considering she didn’t know what was inside.

She had no basis for foreboding except that she seldom got anything delivered to her at all besides bills and junk mail.

The box probably weighed a good thirty pounds or so. If Jazz hadn’t been religiously doing the shoulder exercises Matt Caminetti had given her two days ago, she might not have been able to lift it without pain.

She frowned. Thinking about how considerate Matt had been represented a different kind of Pandora’s box. It seemed less risky to find out what was inside the package than to open herself to the possibility of dating him.

Jazz got down on her knees beside the box, flipped open her pocketknife, cut through the packing tape and drew back the cardboard flaps. A sheet of white paper lay atop a pile of what looked to be mostly clothes and books.

Jazz picked up the piece of paper, noticing at once the South Carolina Department of Social Services letterhead. She read the few typed paragraphs, then read them again.

It seemed her foster parents had found a box of her belongings in their attic. Instead of trying to find Jazz’s current address and mailing her the box themselves, they’d asked DSS to forward it.

Jazz shouldn’t be surprised. The last time she’d seen or heard from her foster mother was at a holding cell in the county jail the night Jazz was arrested.

A tear dripped down Jazz’s cheek. She angrily dashed it away. She’d learned quickly all those years ago that crying accomplished nothing.

Jazz put the letter aside and turned back to the box, pulling out some skinny jeans and shirts with plunging necklines. The high-heeled black sandals and bangle bracelets she’d been wearing when she was arrested were there, too. So were a black hip-hugging micro miniskirt and a thong bathing suit.

The rest of the box contained more clothes she’d never wear again, a few pieces of cheap costume jewelry, an alarm clock with a dead battery, some Harry Potter paperbacks and a couple of high school yearbooks.

Jazz sat cross-legged on the carpet, her back resting against her love seat, and leafed through the top yearbook. It was from one of the most traumatic times in her life: junior year, after her grandmother died and Jazz was shuffled to foster care. The only image of Jazz was in the class-photo section. She was unsmiling, her hair falling forward in her face, defiance in her eyes.

After flipping her yearbook closed, Jazz picked up the second one. It was black like the first yearbook but the name of the high school on the cover was different. Jazz ran her fingers over the four embossed numbers that formed the year before Jazz was born.

This was her dead mother’s yearbook, not hers.

She’d been so angry at her mother for leaving her the way she did that Jazz had never even looked through it. Jazz had a vague memory of packing the yearbook with the few belongings she’d taken from her grandmother’s home. She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d kept it except she had nothing else of her mother’s.

She held the book without opening it, remembering the chocolate bars her mother would bring when she stopped by every month or so to ask Jazz’s grandmother for drug money.

Jazz’s gratefulness for those scraps of affection had turned into resentment when her mother died of AIDS, although at nine years old Jazz hadn’t fully understood the situation. She still didn’t.

Had her mother been on drugs when she got pregnant with Jazz? Is that why her mother claimed not to know who had fathered Jazz?

Jazz stared down at the yearbook, curious if it would shed any light on who her mother had been. She flipped it open to a page that contained a yellowed newspaper clipping and a snapshot. The article was a glowing review of the high school drama department’s production of The Odd Couple, which heaped praise on Bill Smith, the student who’d played Oscar. Jazz skimmed the article for her mother’s name but didn’t find it.

She picked up the photo, barely recognizing the young, smiling girl as her mother. Next to her, with his arm around her, was the same handsome, dark-haired boy pictured in the newspaper article.

Jazz leafed through the yearbook but found no other newspaper clippings or snapshots. Why had her mother kept only those?

She turned to the section containing the junior-class photos. Like Jazz, her mother hadn’t finished high school. Bill Smith wasn’t pictured among the juniors but Marianne Lenox was, smiling almost as widely as she’d been in the snapshot.

Jazz thumbed through the yearbook pages until she reached the senior-photo section, noticing there were no signatures or messages written in the margins with one exception. Something was written in a bold hand under the photo of William Smith.

Thanks for the good times, M. It was signed Bill.

The caption underneath his photo read: A Man of Many Talents. Then came a listing of extracurricular activities that included drama, track, honors’ society, debate club and jazz band.

Jazz band.

Her heart pounded so hard she could feel the blood pumping in her ears. Jazz stared down at the photo of the dark-haired, dark-eyed Bill Smith, telling herself that what she was thinking was crazy. Jazz saw nothing of herself in him. Why, she looked more like the girl in the photo next to him.

The girl’s name jumped out at Jazz: Belinda Smith. Jazz’s eyes dipped to the caption under Belinda’s name: The Better Half of the Smith Twins.

The page in front of her blurred as Jazz tried to think. She was pretty sure twins ran in families. Jazz didn’t know if it was true but she’d even heard it was common for twins to skip a generation.

It no longer seemed like a wild coincidence that her mother had kept an old newspaper clipping and photo of a boy who’d played in a jazz band.

The irony was that in the same month Jazz had stumbled across twins who could be her biological children, she may have identified the man who fathered her.

CHAPTER THREE

JAZZ MIGHT HAVE TO find another form of exercise.

Running had always helped her think more clearly, but in the week and a half since she’d looked through her mother’s yearbook she still hadn’t decided what to do about Bill Smith.

And now trouble she didn’t need was on her heels, because she was nearly convinced that the man behind her on the park’s running trail was Matt Caminetti.

She stole another glance over her shoulder. Maybe she was wrong. The man was within thirty or forty yards, far enough away that his features were indistinct but close enough to tell he had a lean build and golden-brown hair.

She’d seen dozens of men over the years while running in Ashley Greens Park who were brown-haired and in shape. Her glimpses of the mystery man had been so fleeting he could be anybody.

Besides, Matt had specified that he came to the park with the twins on Sunday mornings. It was Monday morning, a month after she’d met him and two weeks since he’d stopped by the restaurant. Fearing that she’d bump into him every time she went jogging was crazy.

Except it was Labor Day, when people didn’t necessarily stick to their schedules. Jazz would usually be at work on a Monday morning herself, but Pancake Palace was closed for the holiday.

To be on the safe side, she ran faster.

The path left the straightaway to snake through a copse of trees. With her eyes straight ahead, Jazz concentrated on pulling ahead of the man. At the quicker pace, her legs protested, her lungs burned and her breath grew short.

It didn’t make a difference. She soon heard the crunching of footsteps gaining on her.

“Hey, Jazz.” A familiar voice that didn’t even sound winded called from behind her. “I thought that might be you.”

Matt was suddenly running abreast of her, matching his pace to hers. Jazz had a notion to speed up and try to lose him but that was extreme, not to mention impossible. She slowed. He did, too.

“I didn’t…know…you were…a runner.” She could barely catch her breath to form the words.

“I’m not,” he said. “But if I’m going to scrimmage with my kids, I need to stay in shape.”