This called to mind something she’d said when he showed up for his first dance lesson. In the end we don’t need a man who’s perfect. Good thing, because Neil wasn’t perfect.
Jonathan knew he had no room to talk; he wasn’t perfect, either. Had Lissa reached a point in life where her opinion was the same as Juliet’s when it came to men? If she’d stopped looking for Mr. Perfect, maybe he had a chance.
He went out to the kitchen and found Neil and Juliet in a cloud of smoke. The kitchen door was open and she was trying to fan it outside while Neil waved a broom in the general direction of the smoke detector. “Babe, I know you like to read,” he shouted over the noise, “but how about not doing it when there’s something on the stove?”
“I’m sorry,” she shouted back. “It really was going to be good chili.”
“I know,” he shouted, then swore and fanned the broom harder.
At last the smoke detector, having done its job, settled back into vigilant silence.
“Uh, hi, guys,” Jonathan said.
“I hope you weren’t invited for dinner,” Neil muttered.
Jonathan was glad he’d been wise enough to wiggle out of it. Her husband couldn’t do that.
Juliet looked sadly into the pan. “This is ruined.”
“You think?” Neil said grumpily.
At that she burst into tears.
He was at her side in a shot, hugging her. “It’s okay, babe. I felt like pizza tonight, anyway. How about I go over to Italian Alps and pick up a large mushroom and onion?”
She nodded and he left. “I suck at cooking,” she said miserably.
There was an understatement. “Maybe you need lessons.”
She frowned.
“Seriously, Jules. Maybe cooking is for you like dancing is for me. You just need some instruction. I bet if you took a class, you’d be great.”
Well, maybe. He remembered a few sessions in the kitchen with their mom. The time Juliet started a fire on the stovetop was about the last time Mom insisted she learn how to cook.
She considered this. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea. I think Neil’s getting tired of my cooking.”
Eating Juliet’s cooking for four years—Neil wasn’t a shit. He was a saint.
Jonathan watched as she tried to scrape the mess out of the pot. She’d have better luck finding the end of a black hole. She finally gave up and dumped the pot in the garbage. Now he knew what to get her for Christmas. Pots and pans and some cooking lessons. There was a present Neil would appreciate, too.
She looked like she was going to cry again, so to distract her, Jonathan said, “Hey, what about that dance lesson?”
She wandered out of the kitchen, looking like a mourner leaving a gravesite.
But once she started talking about dance steps, the sad face vanished. “This is such a fun dance. Women love it.”
Yeah, but did every woman know how to do it? “What if she doesn’t know the steps?”
“It doesn’t matter as long as you’re a strong lead. Anyway, women pick up dance steps pretty quickly.”
By the time Neil had returned with the pizza, they’d mastered the basic step and were moving on to a variation. “Lookin’ good,” he said.
But not feelin’ good. Thanks to his workout at the gym, his arm was killing him. No pain, no gain, he reminded himself. Still, he was glad to take a break and join them.
After the pizza was consumed, Juliet was ready to teach Jonathan a new move. This proved to be more than his wounded muscle could take. He swore under his breath and dropped his arm.
“Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” He rubbed the screaming muscle.
“Did you work out today?” Neil asked.
Jonathan nodded. “I think I pulled something.”
Neil disappeared into the kitchen, then came back a moment later with a bag of frozen peas and a tea towel. He wrapped the peas in the towel and pressed them to Jonathan’s arm. “Ice, Advil and rest. And lay off the workouts for a couple of days.”
Lay off? Just when he needed to be working harder. Like Juliet’s cooking, this sucked.
* * *
Ever since returning to work after his mistaken-identity weekend, Kyle’s cubicle had felt more like a refrigerator than a work space because of the frosty atmosphere between him and his cubicle buddy.
Make that former cubicle buddy. Mindy was a walking ice sculpture. Her polite good-mornings were enough to give him frostbite and there was no banter anymore. He was in outer Siberia and suddenly he hated his job. He’d never realized how much more fun she’d made it.
“She gave up on Ted,” he heard Karen Carmichael saying to Sarah Schillman as he approached the water cooler. “Now she’s on to someone new. She’d be perfect for a reality show. You could call it Gold Diggers of the Northwest.”
Ow.
Sarah giggled, but on seeing Kyle, she said a quick “Hi, Kyle” to alert her friend to shut up.
Karen turned and saw him, and her face flushed tomato red. “Oh, hi, Kyle.”
“Hi,” he said with a disapproving frown. The women left but the comments lingered. Kyle got his cup of water and returned to outer Siberia, where Mindy was typing away in frozen silence.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her. If he’d known the dinner invitation was from her, he would’ve turned her down right away. But instead she had to leave that cutesy little note. Why had she done that? Why hadn’t she just asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner? Maybe asking in writing had seemed safer than doing it face-to-face.
He could identify with that. Many a time he’d sweated bullets over how to ask a girl out. It looked like connecting with the opposite sex wasn’t any easier for women than it was for men.
Although Jillian had no problem. Was she really on to someone new? And if so, who?
By the end of the day, Kyle knew exactly who. Si Klein, the company’s top salesman, stopped by her desk and she lit up like Christmas in Icicle Falls’ town square. Si said something, and she smiled and tossed her hair. She sure had recovered from her broken heart in a hurry.
Si was probably twenty years older than Jillian. His hair was thinning, he was getting a gut and he didn’t drive a Jag. He drove a Mercedes convertible. And he had a condo in Vegas. The ugly truth walked up to Kyle and smacked him in the face. She is a gold digger.
And he was a fool. Like countless other men, he’d been taken in by a pretty face. He’d overlaid the real Jillian with a fantasy Jillian who was sweet and adorable and clever. Well, she was clever, he’d give her that—clever at finding men who had what she wanted and making them want her.
But they didn’t stick with her. Darrow hadn’t.
A conversation he’d once had with Mindy came back to him.
“Sometimes I think I’d rather be pretty than smart.”
He hadn’t known quite what to say. Mindy wasn’t bad-looking. “Why’s that?” he’d asked.
“Because men care more about pretty girls than they do smart ones.”
Well, she was right in a way. Nobody wanted to date a dog. Still, “I dunno. There’s got to be more to a woman than her looks. Otherwise, a man would get bored.”
Now Kyle wondered why Darrow had dumped Jillian. It sure wasn’t because the woman was unattractive. Something had turned him off. Was it because he’d looked behind the facade and saw there wasn’t enough to hold his interest?
Kyle didn’t want a facade, either. He wanted someone he could connect with. Now he realized it wasn’t Jillian.
Following that hypothesis to its logical conclusion—if not Jillian then who? A vision of Mindy in shorts and a clingy top sneaked into the back of his mind. Too late. That Mindy was gone. She’d been replaced by the ice queen sitting next to him.
* * *
The atmosphere was far from festive when the guys sat down to play poker. Kyle was suffering from the pain of disillusionment and had concluded he was never going to find Ms. Right, let alone get laid anytime in the next century. Bernardo was grumpy because Anna was mad at him for cheating on his diet.
And Jonathan was frustrated, plagued by visions of buffness denied. On top of that setback, he’d gone to the eye doc and learned that yes, indeed, he still wasn’t a candidate for Lasik surgery. He’d tried contacts and had no success, so that meant he was stuck with his glasses. Unbuff and bespectacled. How was he going to get Lissa’s attention at this rate?
But everyone’s problems paled compared to what Adam was going through. Chelsea still wanted nothing to do with him. “And we’re gonna have a kid.”
Jonathan felt a stab of envy. A kid. He wished he had a wife and was expecting a kid. Then he remembered the mess Adam was in.
“Congratulations,” Bernardo said. “Now the fun really begins.”
“So do the bills,” added Vance.
“Is it a girl or a boy?” Kyle asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Adam growled. “I’m lucky I even know she’s pregnant. I thought I was in trouble before, but now... Oh, man, I’m in deep shit.”
“Since you’re having a kid, I’d think she’d be more open to taking you back,” Jonathan said. But what did he know?
“She would have. We were this close. Until I blew it. Damn. But it came at me out of nowhere.”
“What did you do?” Bernardo asked.
Adam gave them the lowdown on his meeting with his wife. “Now she’s back to not talking to me,” he finished. “I should have said...something.”
“You did,” Vance pointed out. “You said the wrong thing.”
“What the hell am I going to do?”
No one answered him. Probably, Jonathan figured, because no one had any idea what he should do.
“You know,” Adam said, “it’s funny how when you first meet a woman, all you see is a pretty face and a great body you want to get your hands on. Then you go out with her and things change. You can’t get enough of seeing her, being with her. Before you know it, she’s your best friend, your whole life. She gets to be like breathing, something you don’t have to think about. You assume she’ll always be there. You forget how much you need her, how much...”
Oh, no, Jonathan thought, he’s gonna cry.
The crisis was averted when Adam turned a sob into a cough and cleared his throat. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“You ought to tell her what you just told us,” Bernardo advised.
“Why don’t you do something to show her you’re glad about the kid?” Vance suggested. “That’s a big thing to her.”
“Hey, it’s a big thing to me, too,” Adam said. “But it’s scary.”
“Women never want to know you’re scared,” Vance told him. “It doesn’t give ’em any confidence in you.”
Adam frowned. “It shouldn’t be this hard, dealing with women.”
Vance’s smile was cynical. “Yeah? Who said?”
The game continued halfheartedly. Until Bernardo ran out of money. Then, with a sly grin, he took the copy of Wooing Willow Adam had returned to him and laid it on the table.
“Hey, you were gonna lend that to me next,” Kyle protested.
“Well, amigo, now maybe you can win it and keep it.”
“That’s mine,” Kyle said. “Call.”
Adam folded. “I’m done with it.”
Vance showed his cards. He had a pair of kings.
Jonathan had garbage. He shoved in his cards, facedown.
“Ha!” Kyle crowed. “Three of a kind. Come to Papa.”
The game resumed. Fortunes shifted, short-term loans were made. Pretty soon Jonathan was low on money. “Okay. I’m out of cash.” He grabbed a couple more romance novels from his coffee table. “These should be worth a few chips.”
A discussion ensued regarding how many chips a library sale paperback was worth.
“At least twenty blues,” Jonathan argued. He held up Vanessa Valentine’s The Swan and the Leopard.
“Oh, yeah, put that in,” Bernardo said. “Anna hasn’t read it yet.”
“And what makes you think you’re gonna win it?” Adam taunted.
“I’m feeling lucky now that Vance has lent me five bucks,” Bernardo said.
The game continued and two more of Jonathan’s books found their way to the poker table. “I’ll see your Vanessa Valentine and raise you a Harlequin SuperRomance.”
Vance let out a whistle. “High rollers. Fold.”
Bernardo and Jonathan followed suit, and then it was down to Kyle and Adam.
Kyle scowled. “Fold. You were bluffing, weren’t you?” he demanded as Adam raked in his winnings.
Adam just grinned.
Bernardo chuckled. “You scored big, amigo. Hope you read those and learn something.”
“Man, I need to,” Adam said. “I’ve got to get Chelsea back. I’ve got to make things right, got to show her I’m cool with the baby.”
“Try doing what the hero in A Delivery for the Doctor did,” Jonathan said. If anyone overheard this conversation, they’d think he and his friends were nuts.
“What did he do?” Adam asked.
“He went out and bought a bunch of stuff for the kid,” Jonathan said. “Put a different gift on the woman’s doorstep every day for a week.”
“And then what happened?” Adam asked.
“The last day he stood on the doorstep with a big stuffed bear. She took him back.”
“As easy as that, huh?” Adam mused.
Vance frowned. “Don’t be a dip. When it comes to women, nothing is easy.”
“But it’s worth trying,” Bernardo said.
Adam nodded vigorously. “At this point I’ll try anything.”
“Well, that takes care of you. Wish I could wrap up my love life like that,” Kyle said sourly. “I was wrong about Jillian and I think I blew it with Mindy.”
Bernardo looked confused. “Who’s Mindy?”
“She works next to me. She’s a lot of fun, and she doesn’t care what kind of car a man drives.” Kyle shook his head. “I keep asking myself, what would Vanessa Valentine do?”
“Yeah, well, we’d all like to know that,” Adam said.
It occurred to Jonathan that Vanessa Valentine, queen of romance, would probably have the solution to all their problems. Was she anywhere in Washington? Did she ever make house calls? “I saw her on TV. I wonder where she lives.”
“Are we gonna play cards or what?” Vance growled, and Kyle started dealing.
At the end of the evening Adam was the big winner. He held up a copy of A Delivery for the Doctor. “I’m reading this one first.”
Bernardo took a handful of chocolate chip cookies out of the package on the counter. “Looks short enough. You should be able to handle it,” he said with a grin. “Hasta Las Vegas, amigos.”
The party broke up, Adam opened his book and Jonathan decided to check out Vanessa Valentine’s website. He got his iPad and did a search. Of course, big-name writer that she was, her name came up all over the place. He didn’t bother reading the articles and interviews but went straight to her website.
It wasn’t what Jonathan had expected. Instead of a girlie home page, all pink and plastered with lacy hearts, Vanessa had opted for a simple, cream-colored page with her name written across it in a black scrawl. There was only one heart on the page, and it was her logo—a small, red heart with two interlocking Vs inside it, which occupied the upper right-hand corner. Under her name he read, “Home of the bestselling romance writer.” Various tabs took visitors to pages where they could read book excerpts, enter contests or check her
appearance schedule.
He went to her bio. There she was, in her black suit and pearls, posing with arms crossed in front of a bookcase stuffed with Vanessa Valentine novels. He started reading. The woman had written a ton of books, been on every bestseller list known to man and even had one of her books made into a movie. And, whoa, what was this? She lived in Seattle!
He scooted over to the page that listed her appearances. She was all over the country, hitting every major city from New York to L.A. But hey, she was making an appearance in Seattle at Emerald City Books.
Emerald City Books? That was Vance’s bookstore. Vanessa Valentine was coming to his bookstore and he hadn’t said anything. What was with that? Who knew? But there was one thing Jonathan did know. He was going to Seattle to meet Vanessa Valentine.
Chapter Fourteen
Jonathan arrived at Emerald City Books on a balmy Tuesday evening. There hadn’t been an inch of space on the street for blocks, and he could see why as he looked in the store window. He’d be lucky to find a seat.
A tall, middle-aged man in jeans and a polo shirt was walking a small Boston terrier back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the store. The dog saw Jonathan and went into a barking frenzy.
“No, Bubba,” the man commanded.
Jonathan could tell Bubba was all bark and no bite. He knelt to pet the dog.
Sure enough, Bubba was happy to make instant friends with anyone who wanted to pet him and started jumping on Jonathan, licking his hands.
“Are you here for the signing?” Jonathan asked the man.
The guy looked at him as if he were insane. “My wife is.”
And he and Bubba were keeping their distance. Jonathan understood. He’d been like that himself. Until he became enlightened.
He gave the dog a final pat, then entered the bookstore. Once inside he found himself in a steamy fog of perfume thick enough to give a guy an asthma attack. The Vanessa Valentine book party wasn’t scheduled to start for another twenty minutes, but the store was packed with women of all ages and hotter than an oven in spite of an open door and two fans working overtime. And the noise level—between that, the perfume and the sight of women everywhere, he was teetering on the brink of sensory overload. Everyone was talking, laughing, eating chocolate and grabbing books.
Romance on Mountain View Road Page 17
