CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Jenny!”
Startled by Lila’s shout, Jenny overbalanced and began an inexorable fall into the thicket of brambles she was cutting down. She threw out her arms in the classic windmill position, and then Lila was there, grabbing her shirt. She hauled Jenny upright.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Jenny said, turning to Lila.
“Yow.” Lila took a long step back. “Who won the fight? You or the wildcat?”
“Huh?”
Lila gestured at her. “You look like you’ve gone a couple of rounds with a cougar.”
Jenny wiped her brow with her forearm. “It’s just a few of scratches.” She dropped the pruning shears and stripped off her work gloves. “What’s up?”
“I decided to come and see how it’s going. How long have you been at it?”
“Two days.” When Jenny had shown up at work on Monday morning, Ronnie had filled her trunk with tools, taken a quick look at Jenny’s sketches, grunted approval, and sent her off to the community center.
Expecting to meet with the committee and do a small presentation or a pitch, Jenny had taken her sketches with her, ready to blow them away with her designs and ideas.
She never got the chance.
The committee had turned out to be one woman, who’d introduced herself as Barbara, the chump who’d been home sick with food poisoning when they’d handed out responsibility for the project, and was still pissed about it.
Barbara’s brief had been simple. She’d taken Jenny to the back of the community center, stood at the edge of the creeping wilderness, and said, dramatically, “Help.”
The land was overgrown to the point of utter neglect. Brambles encroached upon the building from the property line in a thorny, billowing tide. Some patches of grass were visible, although the small oases of green were in the process of being choked out by a rippling, luxurious crop of weeds. Jenny was going to need a scythe to get through that lot.
She hadn’t been able to hold back her fierce smile.
“I can help,” she’d said to Barbara, voice throbbing with determination. “Can I start now?”
“Knock yourself out. You got a cell phone with you?”
“Yep.”
“If you get lost back there, call the firehouse. I’m not coming to find you.” Barbara shuddered. “Gives me the creeps.”
It gave Jenny chills, too. The good kind.
She could do something great here. She knew it.
It was going to be amazing. Right now, though, she’d been hacking for two days, and she’d barely made a dent.
She was having the time of her life.
Lila had been digging around in her purse, and hummed with triumph as she pulled out an aerosol can, popped the top, and sprayed Jenny in the face.
Jenny sputtered, rearing back and scrubbing at her eyes. “What the hell—”
“Calm down. It’s a refreshing mineral water mist, not Mace. I promised I’d never do that to you again.”
They’d been twelve when they’d found a canister in Mrs. Baxter’s purse while searching for lipstick, and had decided to see how bad it could be. They drew straws. Jenny went first.
One emergency room trip and a furious Elle later, and Jenny had been left with an understandable wariness of getting sprayed in the face with anything.
Although she had to admit, the mineral mist was refreshing.
“You could have opened with that,” she said.
“I could have, but every second counts with heatstroke. You are seriously red. Another refreshing spritz?”
Jenny closed her eyes and lifted her chin. “Spritz me.”
Lila obliged, then recapped the spray. “I brought lattes. Is there anywhere good to sit? I don’t want to hang out down here. I watched Jurassic World the other night, and I’m still jumpy about velociraptors. There could be a whole pack hiding in that jungle.”
“Let’s pretend for a moment that velociraptors are real—”
“They’re real.”
“If there are any, they’re not hungry. I’ve been here for two days.”
“They could have been watching you. Biding their time.” Lila’s pupils shrank. “Now I scared myself.”
Jenny took Lila to the small terraced area at the back of the building. Lila left Jenny and ran back to her car, returning with a two-cup carrier of iced lattes, and a folded picnic blanket under her arm. “One more thing,” she said, and clattered off on her high heels.
Jenny flattened a patch of the long grass and spread out the blanket. Sitting cross-legged, she opened up the first-aid kit she kept in her backpack, and cleaned her scratched-up arms with a medicated wipe.
Lila returned, walking with a deliberate catwalk strut as she held out a large metal A-frame sign like a ring girl at a boxing match. Jenny, who had been applying a bandage to a sluggishly oozing scratch, froze.
“What is that?” she said.
“You like it?” Lila dumped the sign, kicked it open with a practiced move, and stepped to one side.
Jenny scrambled over to kneel in front of it. “I love it.”
Finley Landscaping, the sign proclaimed in bold turquoise script against a sunny yellow background. Below was an email address, Jenny’s cell number, and right at the bottom, Ronnie’s Pots & Plants.
Jenny put a fist to her mouth. “I love it,” she said again. “I love you. This is awesome!”
“It was a rush job, but I know a guy. If you don’t like the colors, we can get it redone.”
“It’s perfect. Lila. Thank you!”
Lila scuttled back when Jenny jumped up and went to hug her. “You are sweating like nobody’s business, and this blouse is silk.” But her smile was wide, her eyes dancing.
They sprawled on the picnic blanket and settled in to eat lunch.
Lila’s was a salad with about four pasta noodles and an olive in it.
Jenny’s was a PB&J and an apple.
Tomorrow, she might get crazy and add a cookie. Or twelve. She was burning calories like a lumberjack on this job. At this rate, she could eat an entire box of Megan’s muffins for lunch, and still lose weight.
Lila had kicked off her stilettos, untucked her blouse, and lay on her stomach. She sucked noisily on the straw stuck in her skinny iced latte. Her ankles were crossed in the air, her chin was in her hand, and she was staring at Jenny.
Jenny, crunching her apple, stared back.
This had been going on for some time.
Eventually, Jenny couldn’t take it anymore. She finished her apple, tossed the core into the brambles for the velociraptors, and said, “What?”
Lila reached the bottom of her latte and drew out the gurgling drain noise as long as she could. She propped her chin in both hands. “Something’s going on with you.”
“A lot’s going on with me.”
Lila’s eyes narrowed as she assessed Jenny. “Did you go to the gym without me again?”
“No. I promised it was a one-time thing, and I keep my promises. Besides, I don’t need to go to the gym. I think I’ve lost five pounds already.”
“The way you’re sweating, I wouldn’t get too excited. It’s probably water weight.” Lila slapped at a fly. “I definitely prefer the gym. Air conditioning. And prettier surroundings.”
“This will be pretty when I’m done.”
“But since you’re designing this as a garden for the enjoyment of toddlers to seniors and everyone in between, it’s not going to have the kind of pretty I’m talking about. As in, hot men lifting weights. What’s going on? I sense something…different.”
Jenny hesitated.
Lila sat up. “Tell me.”
“I kissed Derek. I kissed him a lot.”
“What? When? Was it good? Forget that, of course it was good. Is he a face holder? He is, isn’t he? Tender cheek cupping, am I right? Does he play with your hair?”
“He does everything. That’s all I’m willing to share.”
“Hell no, it is not. I’m your best friend. Your best friend who brings you refreshing mineral mists and cool new business signs.” She shook Jenny’s empty latte cup at her. “And ice-cold caffeinated beverages. Details. Gimme.”
“Nice try.”
Lila sighed. “Hit me with the highlights, then.”
“He came over to discuss the bill for fixing my car and we ended up…fooling around.” Jenny remembered the feel of Derek shuddering in climax beneath her, and bit her lip.
“Wow.” Lila pointed at Jenny’s arms. “You’ve got goosebumps even though it’s hot enough I can hear my sunscreen hissing into vapor as we speak. It must have been something.”
“It was.”
“And out of nowhere. What made him decide to stop giving you the polite-but-distant treatment?”
Jenny rubbed the back of her neck and slid Lila a glance.
“Uh-oh. I know that look. What did you do? Did you jump him?”
Jenny took a deep breath. “Remember about six months ago when Derek drove us back from Kurt’s?”
“Yes.” Lila tensed. “You slept with him!”
“No! Well, kind of.”
Lila looked like she was going to burst. She waved her hands incoherently.
“I slept with him in that he was there overnight. In my bed. With me. We had pizza, he carried me up to bed, and I guess I kinda—” she rolled her eyes at herself, “—I snuggled him a bit. Next thing I know, it’s morning, and he’s still there, and it’s perfect.”
“You had sex with him.”
“I did something stupid.”
“You didn’t have sex with him?”
“I panicked. I pretended that I thought he was Gabe because Gabe and I were having a secret affair, and Derek got…mad.”
“Why would you even do that?”
“I told you, I panicked! I wasn’t ready! It seemed like a great idea! Then my car broke down, and Kate made a comment about Nora being pregnant. Derek thought I was pregnant, which was hella flattering, let me tell you. Point is, I couldn’t pretend to be seeing Gabe anymore. Derek fixed my car, came over about the bill, and we ended up on the floor.”
“The floor? He’s an animal. Way better than tender cheek cupping. You lucky thing.”
Jenny was almost sure that she was the one responsible for them ending up on the floor, but there had been so much wild heaving and thrashing it was hard to be certain.
“Lila.” She dropped her voice low. “He’s going to have sex with me.”
“You. Lucky. Thing.” Lila turned serious. “You do feel lucky, don’t you? I know I talk a lot of shit, but Jenny, Derek wanting you is irrelevant if you don’t—”
“I do. I want him.” She heaved a sigh. “Oh God, I want him. I just don’t know how to do it.”
“Again? Okay. When a man and a woman love each other very much—”
“Funny, except I don’t need the birds and the bees talk, what with having had my own little bee. I have a bee! I have a daughter. How do you have sex with a child in the house?”
Lila shrugged. “How complicated can it be? Parents do it all the time.”
“Derek isn’t a parent. I’m the parent. I don’t want to be a bad mother, having trysts with my lover with my child a couple of rooms down. It feels skeevy.”
“Don’t do it at your house, then. It’s not the only option. And yes, you’re a mother. You’re a woman, too, Jenny. If you were taking random guys home on a Saturday night I’d be all, ‘Hey, lady, take better care of my goddaughter and protect her home environment’. But we’re not talking about random guys. It’s one guy. It’s Derek. Kate knows him. You trust him. Whatever you’re doing with him, it isn’t casual.”
“It’s casual. It has to be casual. The only possible way we can have anything is if I keep it casual.”
Lila’s eyelids flickered and she smoothly corrected, “Whatever you’re doing, it’s no big thing, it’s just fun.”
No big thing? Right. Derek had kissed her, and Jenny’s whole world had changed.
Now he knew that all he had to do was remove his shirt, unbutton his jeans, and she was helpless.
He’d told her he was going to push. He’d told her she could go ahead and fight. He wasn’t going to stop.
She didn’t want him to. Ever.
The fact of it was, Derek Tate had already seduced her. They might not have had sex yet, but it was a matter of opportunity, nothing else. Her stomach twisted, low. This was happening.
She was going to do it.
But she was going to keep it casual. On her terms. Derek could take it or leave it.
She really hoped he took her.
It.
She really hoped he took it.