Greg held his own reaction to that news in check. As his glance swept her face, he also wondered if she was only masking how bad she did feel. Knowing her as he did, he wouldn’t put it past her. She didn’t look as if she were ready to bolt for the bathroom, though. And her color wasn’t as pale as it might have been had the nausea been as severe as some he’d treated. If anything, as she sat with her hair tousled and tugging her shirt higher on her shoulder she simply looked…appealing.
She had a sleep crease in one cheek. Her clear-blue eyes, like her smile, still looked languid and drowsy from having just awakened. But even just waking up, that smile seemed to come easily. He felt relieved to see it.
What gave him the most relief was that her old optimism seemed to be waking, too.
What Jenny felt awakening was her curiosity. Since Greg didn’t seem in any hurry to rush off, and she wasn’t feeling quite ready to stand up, she figured she might as well take advantage of the knowledge in his handsome head. There could be definite advantages to living with a doctor.
“What causes morning sickness, anyway?’
He didn’t even hesitate. “Hormones. As best we can tell,” he qualified, sounding like the physician he was, looking like a regular guy taking it easy on a Saturday morning. “They mess with everything when you’re pregnant.”
“I thought they just messed with mood.”
“They can definitely do that. I’ve had pregnant patients tell me it feels as if their body has been taken over by their evil twin. Things irritate them that never bothered them before. They cry at the drop of a hat. But hormones affect everything from digestion and sense of smell to libido and energy level.”
She’d noticed certain of those effects already. Those on her energy level and libido, anyway. Pulling her glance from his broad shoulders, she murmured, “And that’s all going to go away?”
“Sure,” he offered with confidence. “Within a few months after the baby is born. Then you just have to deal with your normal hormonal state.”
Jenny opened her mouth, closed it again when she saw his smile. She couldn’t tell if he was being sympathetic or if he was teasing her. Either way, their discussion was over.
He rose to stand over her. “I’m fresh out of herbal tea. Do you have any at your grandma’s house?”
“It’s packed.”
“Then I’ll throw in some toast for you and go grab a shower. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll go get the rest of your things.”
Throwing the blanket aside, she scrambled after him to the kitchen, slowing a little when she became aware of the queasiness again. “You don’t need to do that. I can make my own breakfast.”
“I’m getting coffee anyway,” he called back, totally ignoring her insistence that she could do it herself. “Stop being stubborn.”
She wasn’t being stubborn, she just didn’t want him to feel she needed to be taken care of.
Or maybe what she wanted, she realized an hour later, was for him to stop doing things that made her care about him any more than she already did.
She’d told him she could get the boxes from the house after work tomorrow. She only worked lunch shift then. Today she had lunch and dinner. In turn, he’d told her that lifting heavy boxes wasn’t a good idea for a woman in her condition. He’d seemed to know she didn’t want to impose on him. He also seemed to suspect that she would slip over and accomplish the task by herself, anyway—which was probably why he’d ushered her out the door to help her get them before her shift that day.
He’d already carried out three.
“Do you want the flowerpots on the porch?” he asked, picking up the last box from the now empty counter.
As Greg started away, she moved to the stool at the end of the counter, positioning it just so.
The floor of the bright kitchen was now bare of bedding and boxes. Everything from the cupboards and bathroom had been packed and stowed with her two remaining pieces of luggage in the back of Charlie’s pickup.
“Please,” she said, unable to leave the flowers to die. “But I’ll get them.”
He stopped, looked back. “Have you asked anyone to help board this back up?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.”
She gave a nod, murmured a quiet, “Thank you.”
It relieved her enormously to know she wouldn’t have to live in a kitchen with a leaky roof, plumbing that rattled, and survive the winter by the heat of a woodstove. As she glanced around the now-empty room, it was hard to see any improvement she’d made beyond the paint. The sink was still stained. The window over it was still cracked. That crack did now sport a slash of duct tape, but the silver-gray bandage actually made the window look worse.
Even with all the advantages of moving, the thought of leaving her grandma’s house empty again made her feel incredibly…sad.
Wanting the feeling to go away, she refused to look around anymore. Aware of Greg watching her, she pulled the overhead cord to turn out the light on her way from the kitchen. With their footsteps echoing in the empty living room, she headed with him for the front door and locked it behind them.
It wasn’t until the box was in the back with the others and they were in the truck heading up the road that he asked, “Are you okay?”
She could blame the sadness she felt on fluctuating hormones, she supposed. She might have done that, too, had the explanation not felt disloyal somehow.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking about the house.” She picked a bit of lint from her black skirt, absently smoothed her hem. “Living there reminded me of how safe I’d always felt when I was a child. There was always this wonderful sense of security at Grandma’s house when I was growing up. At my parents’, too,” she told him, thinking of how little thought she’d given the gift back then. “It was the freedom to just be who I was, I guess. And a sense of belonging that sort of followed me everywhere I went around here.”
Her hormones were definitely fluctuating, she decided. She was getting maudlin. That thought alone would have had her trying to laugh off her melancholy—had she not just caught the look of total incomprehension Greg shot her.
He couldn’t relate to a thing she’d said.
The realization turned her odd mood into a different sort of sadness. He’d had none of what she’d simply taken for granted growing up. He knew nothing of being raised with security and freedom. His own childhood had held little beyond constant control, reproach and a total lack of affection.
She remembered Greg telling her of the claim his father had made, that he had been too privileged to ever make it in a place like Maple Mountain. Considering that now, she couldn’t help but wonder if one of the reasons Greg took jobs in isolated places was more than a need to prove his father wrong. She wondered if maybe it was because he was searching for the sense of belonging he had never known.
“Do you feel that in Maple Mountain, too?” she asked, still unable to accept the benign indifference he’d claimed toward the town. “That sense of belonging?”
His focus remained on the road, his expression as matter-of-fact as his tone.
“I’ve never felt I belonged anywhere in particular,” he admitted, ruling out Maple Mountain along with every other place he’d ever been. “I only knew where I didn’t. I know some people need that,” he offered, sounding as if he knew how much she did. “But being a permanent part of a place isn’t something that’s ever mattered to me.
“Are you okay to go to work?” Casually dismissing a need most other people would consider essential, he glanced toward her, then checked his watch. “You were due there three minutes ago.”
Every time she encountered the wall his emotional scars had built, a voice of caution sounded in the back of her brain. Mindful of that voice now, she assured him she was fine and focused on acting as if having married a man who never allowed anyone to get truly close had been the most natural thing in the world.
“You know Lorna will have heard,” Greg warned, waving at
Joe when the deputy’s Jeep went by in the other direction. “She’s friends with Sally, and Sally calls her mom every morning, so Mrs. McNeff would have mentioned it by now.”
“I think Joe heard, too.” Jenny motioned the rearview mirror, catching brake lights in it as the Jeep suddenly slowed.
Glancing into the mirror himself, Greg passed the Welcome to Maple Mountain sign. “Yeah. He did,” he concluded, seeing the Jeep turn around. “Either that or he needs something.”
The trail of weekend cars on Main caused Greg to slow a couple of blocks before he came to a stop in front of the diner. By then the Jeep’s bumper was mere yards from theirs.
Jenny reached for her door. She was about to thank Greg for the ride, when his brow furrowed.
“Tell you what,” he said, as if he only now realized he should tell her where he’d be. “I’m going to drop your things off at the house. Then, depending on what Joe wants, I’ll either be at the clinic or out at the Larkin place. I told Charlie I’d help them with the branch thinning.”
Behind them she heard Joe’s door slam. Her heart jumped with the sound. Greg also knew they were about to have company, and if they wanted everyone to believe they had married for the usual reasons, then he might do exactly what had been expected of him after their little ceremony yesterday.
Surprised by how quickly her heart beat at the thought of him cupping her neck and drawing her into a kiss, however brief it might be, she prepared to meet him halfway. But all Greg did was glance from the image of Joe grinning in his side mirror and give her a quick smile of his own.
“Good luck,” he said, and kept both hands right where they were.
Caught between feeling awkward and embarrassed, she ducked her head and grabbed the clean apron she’d left on the seat between them. “You, too.”
Glancing up, she wiggled her fingers at Joe standing at Greg’s window and slipped out, calling back to Joe that it was good to see him, but she couldn’t visit because she was now officially late.
The quick embarrassment she’d felt gave way to a different form of unease as she hurried past the pumpkins and mums on the diner’s steps. It was such a little thing, but not knowing what to expect from Greg made her feel as off balance as she had before he’d offered her the use of his home and his name.
Trying to shake the suspicion that she’d just traded one set of anxieties for another, she hurried inside, smiled at the teenage Tina waiting on the eight occupied tables and headed into the kitchen to wash her hands.
Dora stood at the grill, her silvering blond hair in its usual figure-eight bun covered by a hairnet. Jenny had no more opened her mouth to apologize for being late, than Dora turned from the grilled cheese sandwich she’d just flipped and planted her fist, spatula protruding, on her ample hip.
“I can’t believe you didn’t ask for the weekend off.”
“You can’t?” she asked, tying on her apron before she shoved her hands under the faucet.
“You just got married! You’re supposed to be on your honeymoon.” Dora’s green eyes danced. “Tina is covering your shifts this weekend. I asked her as soon as I heard your news from Lorna. And speaking of which, why aren’t you and the doctor off somewhere nice and romantic?”
Jenny’s motions slowed. She and Greg hadn’t discussed that one.
“Tina is taking my shifts?” she asked, evading.
“Well, of course. I couldn’t imagine that you’d want to spend your time around here. And by the way,” she added, a smile rounding her cheeks, “I had a feeling there was something going on with you two. I could see by the way Dr. Reid watched you when he’d come in for dinner that he had a real thing for you.”
She offered the claim with a definitive nod, quite proud of her powers of observation. “Lorna, she saw it, too. Amos missed it though,” she continued, turning to flip two more sandwiches and scoop up the first. “The man just about lost his dentures in his coffee cup when I told him this morning.”
She grinned, then turned to slide the sandwich onto the cutting board. With the deft whack of a wicked-looking knife, she sliced the sandwich in two and slipped it onto a plate.
She looked back at Jenny.
“Go on,” she said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Get out of here and go spend the day with your husband. I’ll see you tonight at the community center.”
“The community center?” She and Lorna had thought Greg had a thing for her? “What’s going on there?”
“Your wedding reception, of course. You might be able to sneak off and get married, but there’s no way you’re going to deny us a party. Joe’s wife is organizing it. Anyone who sees you is supposed to tell you to be there at seven o’clock. I’m closing my doors at eight sharp, so I’ll be there by eight-thirty. Don’t leave before I get there. I want to hear all about this.”
Joe told Greg about the reception that morning. Jenny knew because Smiley mentioned it when he dropped off her mail at Greg’s house that afternoon. But Greg didn’t return from the Larkin place until six-thirty that evening.
Hearing him come in, she figured he had just enough time to shower and change clothes before they had to leave.
She was actually grateful for his need to hurry. She’d spent the day in the house, debating if she should put her cookware in his kitchen or leave it packed and fixing the supper he hadn’t returned in time to eat. When he poked his head around the doorway, much as he did at the office, and told her he was home, his glance when straight to the nicely set table and the pork chops, mashed potatoes and salad she had just started to put away.
The look on his face made it clear that he hadn’t considered letting her know he’d be late, or that he’d thought she would have gone to such trouble for a meal.
Feeling even more awkward than she had when he hadn’t kissed her that morning, she turned away, reminding him as she did of how little time he had to get ready.
He said he would hurry and headed straight upstairs.
Jenny quickly took care of the rest of the food and the dishes, feeling foolish for presuming they would share their meals together, feeling even more foolish for having him realize she’d thought they would. For all practical purposes—and the entire arrangement had been born of practicality—when she and Greg weren’t in public they were nothing more than roommates.
She reminded herself of that as she hurried upstairs herself, checked the makeup she’d already spent too much time on and changed into the off-white cocktail dress she’d last worn to a company dinner. It was the only thing bridelike or party-ish that she owned. The Feds had taken most of her good clothes, those with the better labels that she’d bought on sale. The only reason she had the dress and the suit she’d worn yesterday was because they’d been in the dry cleaners at the time her other things had been confiscated.
Hurrying back down minutes before seven, she pulled her black dress coat from the closet. She’d just finished buttoning it when Greg appeared in gray slacks and a navy sport coat, took one look at the strappy white heels on her feet and announced that they’d drive rather than walk.
She had no idea where Dora and Lorna got the idea he had a thing for her. Except for her feet, he barely glanced at her as they climbed into Charlie’s truck for the minute-long drive to the center.
Because they only had that long to get their stories straight, she mentioned the little glitch she’d encountered at the diner. “Dora asked why we didn’t go on a honeymoon.”
“So did Joe.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we didn’t have time. What about you?”
“I sort of skipped over it and didn’t answer.”
“Then, let’s stick to what I told Joe.”
She lifted her chin to agree, only to frown as he turned the corner and the large, white clapboard building came into view. “There are an awful lot of cars there.”
Greg thought so, too. Distracted as he was by the woman beside him, he simply figured there must be somet
hing else going on.
He felt like a heel for not having called her. Joe had told him that Tina had covered Jenny’s shifts for her, so it wasn’t as if he’d thought she was working. It just hadn’t occurred to him that she would have spent her first real day off in ages in his kitchen.
They needed to talk. If she enjoyed cooking and that was how she relaxed, he had no problem reaping the benefits. If she felt she needed to cook for him, or if she had the idea that he was looking for anything domestic in their arrangement, he needed to let her know that wasn’t part of the deal. He knew she felt grateful to him, but he expected nothing from her other than what he’d asked, her help with the estate and, later, in the new office.
Now just wasn’t the time to bring it up, he conceded as they left the truck a minute later and headed for the center’s main door Not with half of Maple Mountain turning toward them as they stepped into the large main room and bursting into applause.
His hand rested lightly against the small of Jenny’s back. Beneath the wool of her coat, he felt her go stock still.
He didn’t move himself. Being married to her seemed to be getting more complicated by the minute.
“Well, come on in you two!”
Amber Sheldon, Joe’s pretty blond wife, emerged from the wall of people ahead of them and motioned toward Jenny. “Joe, get her coat. Let’s get you both some punch.”
Jenny felt herself being pulled forward as her coat was slipped from her shoulders. She glanced behind her to thank Joe, but it was Greg holding her coat.
He was also staring at her bare shoulders.
The silky white dress she wore covered her from neck to knee in front, but bared her shoulders and half of her back. In the space of a second his glance ran from the tiny strips of white fabric criss-crossed between her shoulder blades, skimmed her backside and jerked to her eyes again.
“Great dress,” Amber exclaimed as Jenny felt her heart skip. “Is that what you were married in?”
“Ah…no,” she murmured, still feeling his eyes on her back as Amber tugged her forward. “I wore a suit.”
Trading Secrets Page 19
