CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jackie
“Jackie?”
“Mm?”
Barbara’s voice drifted through from the kitchen. When I’d told her I was planning a move to Colorado, she had sprung into action. She consulted with her sister, arranged for me to be able to visit the school and chat with the principal about working there. They needed a part-time psychologist at the junior school, she had said. The pay wasn’t great, but I’d manage. It was a job! And the promise of a new life away from here. Away from all my memories.
“How’s yours doing?” Barbara called out to me. She meant the painting work. Not only had she helped me out with the job hunt, she had also offered to help me get my apartment ready for the landlord inspection. I wanted to give him my notice.
“I’m almost done,” I said, lowering the paintbrush with a weary arm. “We should leave it, wait for this to dry. We can do the second coat tomorrow. Or I can—you’ve done so much already to help.”
She chuckled. “It’s nothing. Friends help each other. Now. How about dinner? I’m starving.”
I nodded. It was only six thirty, but I was ravenously hungry too. And tired. Painting the whole apartment by ourselves was proving to be a daunting task. “I’ll come and put it on now.”
As I clattered about with the pots and pans, I could hear Barbara in the shower. I would put the stew on to boil and then we could swap. I really needed a shower.
It all still seems unreal to me. I chopped up the onions and mushrooms, set them on the stove to sauté while I prepared the other ingredients. I was doing it. Leaving town and my memories of Scott—the memories of my daughter’s father.
I was in the shower when Barbara knocked at the door.
“Mm?” I switched off the water and called out. “If it’s burning, turn it down.”
“It’s not the dinner,” she said tensely. “It’s a visitor. Downstairs.”
“A visitor? No—it’s probably the courier. They try and get in sometimes. Can you see a van?”
“I’ll check.”
I banished the thought from my mind that it might be Scott. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that. The guy was going to get married!
I was drying off when the next knock sounded on the door.
“Yes?” I called. “What’s up, Barbs?”
“It’s me,” the voice said.
I got such a shock I dropped the towel. Almost slipped on the floor. It couldn’t be! How?
My mind recovered quickly. I lifted the towel, dried my hair. “How the hell did you get in?” I shouted through the door. I shrugged into my gown, thinking what a terrible disadvantage I was in, being in my nightgown with wet, straggling hair while he was fully dressed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded like he meant it. “Your friend let me in.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “Why did she do that? I have no reason to say anything to you.” I said that to his face, my head round the door. He stared at me.
“Jackie, please…”
“I don’t care what you have to say!” I snapped at him. In the kitchen, I heard someone stirring a pot and I lowered my voice. I looked up at him.
We were in my bedroom and I was wearing a nightgown. He was wearing a suit—a really stylish designer wear one too. I sighed. Of all the ways I planned to confront this lowlife who’d played me so badly, this was not one of them.
“Get out of my room,” I hissed. At that moment, all my charitable feelings toward him had dissolved and my anger seethed through me.
“Jackie, I…”
“If you have to say something,” I said tiredly, “Go and wait in the sitting room until I’m dressed, at least. Like a decent person. Not that you can behave like a decent person,” I added cruelly.
He looked like I’d slapped him. I felt a sort of savage pleasure in it on one hand, while on the other hand I felt bad.
He went out and shut the door. I got dressed. Jeans, a white blouse. My hair was still damp, but after a vigorous drying it was more like how I wanted it to be.
I put my head round the door. Barbara was at the stove, doing something with the stew. I wished she wasn’t there, but she’d painted the house with me and I couldn’t very well tell her to leave without supper.
“Come in here,” I said. I didn’t feel like doing this in my bedroom, but we didn’t have a choice.
He looked at me sadly, but followed me in. He shut the door. I sat down on the bed.
“Right,” I said. “I don’t want to hear whatever apology you came to make. No, let me speak,” I said as he cleared his throat. At that moment, I didn’t want to be reasonable. Didn’t want to be fair. What he had done to me had not been fair, or reasonable. And I was mad at him.
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. I warmed to my theme. “I know your news,” I said tiredly. “And I know you lied to me. I am prepared to forgive that because I love you, Scott. I know.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to let him see the tears that filled them. My voice cracked. “Scott, I love you. I know I don’t fit in your world. Stella doesn’t fit in your world either. We can only disgrace you. I know that. I will go away. I just want to ask one thing of you.”
“Jackie—”
“No. Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“I want to ask you to stay out of our lives. I don’t want to know. When I move, that’s it. I don’t want to hear about you, see you, or know you. Ever again. That clear?”
“Yes,” he said miserably. He was looking at me with horror, the way you might look at the stones in Pompeii; knowing those were once humans who lived and suffered and died. Horror and compassion and regret. I sniffed.
“What?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” he said, voice shaky. “If that’s really what you want.”
“What I want?” Now I was mad. “Oh, really? Since when has that mattered?”
He winced like I’d slapped him. “Jackie, I wanted to tell you something. But I can’t tell you if you won’t listen. If you won’t believe me. Please?”
“Okay.” I looked at the bathroom door while he cleared his throat and began. I was white-hot with rage, and if I’d been looking at him, I’d probably have thrown something at him. How dare he come here with his lame apologies and expect things to be okay. The arrogance!
“Jackie,” he said in a small voice. “I love you. I think I knew that when I first saw you, only I was so messed up then that I didn’t recognize what love was. I wanted to see you again, but I couldn’t get hold of you. When I found you again, my life changed. You have made me so, so happy. You have no idea how you have changed everything for me. Only you and Stella really matter to me.”
I snorted. “Nice try,” I muttered.
He didn’t say anything, but cleared his throat. “Jackie, those rumors are a lie.”
“Which ones?” I asked frostily. They didn’t seem like rumors to me, if the thing to which he referred was the news.
“About me and Alexa. My dad set it up. He wanted us to marry. I swear this is true.”
I looked at him frostily. “Sure. That’s why the press is full of pictures of the two of you together, not so?”
He closed his eyes. He looked like he was suffering, and in that moment I was glad. I had suffered for weeks when he walked out the first time and now he had taken that hurt and multiplied it by ten. He could hurt for a bit.
“Jackie, it isn’t what it looks like.”
“Prove it,” I snapped.
To my surprise, he smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Come to dinner with me tonight.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“I said, Jackie, would you do me the honor of coming to dinner with me? At the Halston?”
I swallowed. My heart was thumping in my chest like the piston on a small aircraft. “Are you mad?” I said, though I laughed as I said it. “You are mad. How could I do that?”
“Well, it’s easy,” he said with a wry grin. “You get dressed and ready and then you join me in the car. If your friend is staying the night, maybe she would be kind enough to look after Stella for us? We can take her out for dinner later in the week to make up for it.”
I stared at him. Of all the crazy, outrageous things he could have done to say sorry, to show me, with absolute certainty, that he wasn’t ashamed of me, this was top of the list. I was smiling.
“Scott West,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “You are mad. And I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We looked at each other, eyes locked. He started laughing.
I started laughing, too, and soon we were in each other’s arms. I felt as if my heart was flying above me, making wild looping circuits of the neighborhood. I was so happy! All the gray numbness of the previous weeks wore away and I was standing in a pool of light.
“Scott West,” I whispered into his ear as his body pressed against mine. I could feel his arousal beside my thigh, and I was aroused too. As I reached up to kiss him, longing overpowering me, he bent his lips to mine.
His tongue slid down the line of my mouth, and when it entered I sighed and wrapped my arms around him, holding him close. He tasted my mouth, and I tasted his in a kiss so slow and tender that I felt my body melt slowly.
When we moved apart, his eyes shone. My own eyes were shining, too, and I knew it would be a challenge to hold out until after dinner. But it was a challenge I was prepared to meet.