CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ten more laps.
Jake flip-turned and shoved off from the pool wall, leaning into his breaststroke. All he thought about was the muted sound of bubbles churning underwater, the silky way they slid over his skin. This is awesome, he told himself. He should have done it days ago before everything turned to shit.
One of the benefits of owning the top three floors of a residential penthouse in downtown Dallas was having an indoor pool. It meant you swam year-round.
He finished the ten laps, came up for air, and squeezed the water out of his eyes. Carmen de Boers stood at the far end of the room. For once she wasn’t wearing her “Dress for Success” business uniform for female executives. Her belted dress shorts showed off a lot of hard work at the gym.
Jake launched himself out of the water, seized a towel, and then padded over to her. Admiring Carmen’s legs should have given him a corresponding urge to see what else she had going on, but if he had to be honest, that urge wasn’t there. Carmen was a business associate. Sure, he wanted to prove to himself it wasn’t all about Maggie, but…maybe he’d just have to try harder.
“You’re back,” Carmen said, not bothering to hide her delight in seeing him. “Country life not doing it for you?”
“No restaurants, no coffee bars and no pools.” He rubbed his face with the towel and caught her eyeing him. Carmen, you naughty girl.
Again he tried to grab even a thread of interest and came up empty-handed.
“What else is going on?” she asked as they left the pool area and went into the living room. “How’s the Regal coming along?”
“Slowly. Like everything else in a small Texas town.” He walked to his bedroom, which was close enough for them to continue a conversation. He selected a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck and then returned to the living room where Carmen sat stiffly on the couch.
“Is this it then?” she asked with a peculiar smile. “Are you here for good or just here for a few days?”
Jake sat across from her and stretched his arms over the back of the couch. Like everything else in this room, the couch was sleek and masculine, the lighting recessed, the furniture minimalist. The black marble floor had a black-and-gold Aubusson carpet on it. A floating spiral staircase led to the dining room upstairs. His elaborate sixteenth-century fireplace, flanked on both sides by green-veined marble pillars, had been imported from a chateau in France.
Funny, all this and his mother had never set foot inside the place.
Being here should have soothed him. Why didn’t it?
“Pete Manford’s got this part of the restoration handled,” he said. “There really isn’t a lot for me to do until he gets all the crap out.” Jake glanced at the wall clock. Maggie would be locking up for the day, ready to take that sad excuse of a dog out for a walk.
He wished he hadn’t thought about Maggie.
Carmen seemed to be studying him. Waiting for something.
“May I ask you a personal question?” she said.
More fucking questions. He shrugged, trying to be a sport about it. Of course, this was Carmen he was talking to. She wasn’t laidback exactly, but she’d known him since forever. “The real reason you came back to Dallas this soon…how much of it had to do with that woman you’re seeing?”
He ran one hand over the back of his head. Well, at least it wasn’t a question about his family. Family stayed in a box and that box was closed. But talking about Maggie didn’t feel much better. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.” Carmen got up and went to the big floor-to-ceiling window overlooking North Harwood Drive. Since night had fallen, downtown Dallas had turned on all its vivid neon and twinkling lights and rectangular yellow office windows. “We’re friends, right?” she said. “We tell each other things.”
“What kind of things?” That I feel like shit? That I’ve been mauled by emotions I can’t control anymore?
She crossed her arms and leaned one shoulder against the window frame. “Have you ever given any thought to dating seriously? I mean, like, dating a serious person. Someone who travels in your same circles. Who understands the demands of business.”
Jake observed her rigid posture, her lack of inflection, her tense waiting. Was she suggesting what he thought she was suggesting? “I’m thirty-one years old,” he said. “Dating seriously has never really been an area of interest.”
“Yeah, but how many supermodels and actresses can you go out with before you get sick of it?” she asked, fingering the chunk of turquoise around her neck. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone you can rely on? I’m sure the cookie lady was fun, but you must’ve gotten bored or else you wouldn’t be here.”
There was no way this conversation was going to end well. Jake pushed off from the couch, found a pack of smokes inside a desk drawer and lit up. “Let’s just cut to the chase, Carmen. You must have something in mind. What is it?”
She turned toward him, her cheeks faintly pink, eyes luminous. He thought about the work they’d done together, restoring the old bank, an abandoned sugar mill, all the office buildings they’d collaborated on. They could say goodbye to that now.
Of course, that’s what love did. It ruined fucking everything.
He waited, feeling sick inside.
“Are you going to make me say it?” she asked, trying for coquettish and falling short. “Can’t you guess?”
Jake took a long drag and let the smoke plume out of his nostrils. “You mean you.”
Carmen slid the turquoise back and forth across its chain. “Does that sound so strange to you? We have lots in common, you know. And we have something that none of your hookups could ever have.”
If he didn’t know Carmen, he might not have noticed the nervous tightness at the corners of her mouth. He might not have heard the quick laugh that made him think, What can I do to stop this?
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We have friendship,” she said softly, walking up to him and touching his arm. “I’ve waited a long time, Jake. I’ve watched you bounce from woman to woman. But I always knew the day would come when you would see the value in having a woman who understands you. Who wants what you want. Who isn’t just after your money.”
That last one stung. Until Maggie, he’d always had a rich man’s paranoia about the women he dated. Does she want me or does she want my money?
But he couldn’t bear the raw, naked need blazing on Carmen’s face anymore. “Oh, Carmen. Why does it have to be like this?”
“Like what?”
He hated disappointing her. Not even his male ego—which no one had ever referred to as anemic—enjoyed this. But it was worse than that. It meant saying out loud the very thing he’d been fighting. It meant admitting the truth, even to himself.
“I’m in love with Maggie,” he said. Poor Maggie. I’m a terrible man to be loved by.
Oh, those were damning words. He felt stupid and obvious, afraid she might laugh. But seeing the shock on Carmen’s face made him wish he could take those words back. In that moment he knew he and Carmen would never be close again. Try as she might, she would never forgive him.
Carmen clasped her hands in front of her as though someone had just submitted a business proposal, which she was graciously considering. “I see.”
“I’m sorry, Carmen. You know how it is. These things just sort of happen, I guess.”
“Does she love you?”
Jake stubbed out his cigarette and immediately wanted another one. When had his smoking gotten so out of control? “I don’t know if she’s even talking to me, to tell you the truth. I was a real fucking asshole, not just to her but her whole family. Even Mason’s pissed at me.”
“So you mean to tell me you’re in love with someone you’re not even talking to?” Carmen stared at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Everything, he wanted to say. I’m such a mess, I couldn’t even tell Maggie that my mother’s dying. Hell, I couldn’t even tell her I had a mother.
Carmen trailed her fingers over the end table, clearly struggling to sort through her feelings. “Well, you’d better move fast if you want to save this thing with her.”
He looked up in surprise. “I want to fix it. I just don’t know how.”
She slid her purse off the table and hung the strap over her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
He followed her to the door and then opened it. Her eyes searched his for a moment, haunted in the way that Maggie’s were haunted. “I’m trying to do the right thing here,” she said. “It’s not your fault. Men never know what’s good for them. But if you want that woman, you’d better find a way to open up to her, Jake. She’s not going to put up with your bullshit the way I did.”
* * * *
After work, Maggie collected Gus and drove the four blocks to her parents’ house. She knew her dad would be there, tinkering away in the garage. And although she could scarcely admit it, maybe being there with her kind, imperturbable father, amidst the motor oil smells from her childhood, might bring her peace.
At this point, she’d do just about anything to stop thinking about Jake.
I used to like my life, she thought as she pulled up to the house and Gus scrabbled at the window to go see Grandma. At least she hadn’t been miserable. But then Jake came along and showed her everything that she’d been missing. And now, no matter how hard she tried, there was no unknowing that.
Every time the bell rang above the door at the bakery, she’d look up, hoping it was him. When would she learn? What would it take for her to finally accept the truth? Men left. That was what they did. They left you wanting them like you wanted your next breath. They left you with all the memories while they went on to the next new thing.
Gus did a flying leap out of the car when she opened the door and then went tearing across the grass toward the house. Deep breath, she told herself. Fake like you’re happy in case Mom is watching. Priscilla was like a bloodhound on the scent when it came to her girls. You had to step lively if you wanted to out-fox her.
Maggie watched Gus bullet through the open front door. Then she turned toward the garage, where her father had car guts strewn across a red plastic tarp. A vintage Esso gas pump stood against one wall. A wheeled tool chest stood against the other. Wall calendars, most of them years out of date, showed all the shiny fast cars that Doak loved. Priscilla used to say they were the reason he’d chosen to become a firefighter in the first place—just to drive the hook-and-ladder.
Now that he was retired, her dad spent most of his time in the garage. His old Zenith was tuned to a station that played Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline—all the classics. The mini-fridge had greasy palm prints on the door handle. When she was a girl and Doak asked her to get him a root beer or a sarsaparilla, Maggie had refused to touch the handle without a shop rag. But she’d sit for hours on the cracked red leather high stool, kicking her feet against the rungs, asking him a million questions.
Her father had always been there for her. She had never doubted his love. And for the first time, knowing what she knew about Jake’s mom and dad, her heart felt an even greater sense of gratitude.
“Hey, Gypsy,” her dad said, using his old nickname for her. He pushed out from under a car on his rolling mechanic’s creeper. “What brought you out here? The Chevy need an oil change?”
Doak had rebuilt her red 1953 Chevy pickup almost from scratch, “Macgyvering” hard-to-find parts himself. Maggie found the cracked leather bar stool and sat on it. “No, the truck’s fine. I had some free time is all.”
He seemed to study her. Maggie couldn’t really tell because she refused to meet his eyes. It was worse being here. Instead of soothing her, the familiarity of childhood made her feel a thousand times lonelier and beyond the reach of comfort.
“Your sister came by this morning,” he said, pushing back under the car. “She and Lexie and Mason are headed up to Dallas.”
“I miss them,” Maggie said, trying not to sound so forlorn. “Cuervo is only half the fun when they’re not here.”
“Hand me that socket wrench, will you?” he asked, pointing to the black case on the table behind her.
She hopped down. “Quarter inch?”
“The three-eighths.” He gave her a warm, sentimental smile when she handed it to him. “Just like old times, eh, Gypsy?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard and then turned away so he couldn’t see her strangling on her grief. This was pointless. She shouldn’t have come.
“It was nice meeting your friend the other night,” her dad said, cranking the socket wrench. “He seemed like a pretty smart guy. Smarter than Todd at least.”
Maggie banked down a wave of desperation. She picked up a ball of twine that had unraveled. Her dad had never liked Todd. All hat and no cattle, he’d said, but she’d just dismissed it as typical overprotective dad stuff. What a pity she hadn’t listened.
“A box of rocks is smarter than Todd,” she muttered. “It’s not a fair contest.”
Doak banged something loose and then set the part on the floor beside him. “Did I ever tell you about the time I stood up your mother?”
Maggie stopped rolling the twine and tried to remember. Having a marriage like her parents’ marriage had always been a dream of hers, a dream that seemed further out of reach than ever before. Jake was nothing but another misfire, another shining example of how many times she’d gotten it wrong so far.
“It was our second date,” her dad said. “Our first had been fantastic. We’d gone to the Regal. Don’t you remember? I took her to see Commando, starring that big guy with the funny accent.”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Yeah. She loved it, and that movie wasn’t really the kind of thing most girls would like, you know? There was a lot of shooting.”
Maggie finished spooling the twine and set it on the work table. She looked over at her father even though his legs were the only things visible. “Why did you stand her up then?”
“Because I liked her. And it scared the crap out of me. I’d never liked a girl that much before. It kind of spooks a fella when he wakes up one morning and realizes being single isn’t as much fun as it used to be. That maybe, just maybe, there’s a girl out there he’d rather not shake loose of.”
“Oh, Dad,” Maggie sighed. “I know what you’re trying to tell me. But that’s not the case with me and… Things are a lot more complicated now.”
“More complicated than they were in my day?” She heard him chuckling beneath the car. Instead of annoying her, it made her sadder. What if the things she wanted didn’t exist anymore? The tightknit family, the happy children, the strong communities that helped to shape them. Maybe this wild yearning she felt was for something she could never have. Not with Jake. Not with anybody.
Her dad rolled out, grabbed a shop rag and wiped his hands with it. The blue eyes resting on her were as full of love as her very first memories of them. “Know what I think?” he said.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“The heart knows,” he said gently. “Sometimes a man’s just gotta wait till he catches up to it. But the heart is always up ahead, lighting the way. Let’s hope he’s smart enough to find it.”