by Shirley Jump
He swallowed hard and pushed the feeling away. Wanting Jenna had never been a problem. Making a relationship work between them had.
Right now, the last thing he had time for was a complicated involvement, particularly one he knew wasn’t going to end happily. He’d learned his lesson long ago. A smart man didn’t require multiple trips down Bad Experience Avenue to learn to make a detour.
“Uh, here,” he said, nearly shoving the container of milk into her hands. “You should do this.”
She glanced over at him, and a smile curved up her face. Damn. Why did she have to smile? “Don’t tell me you’re abandoning me. You saw what happened last time I tried this on my own.”
“I’ll be right here.”
“Watching me screw up?”
“Something like that.”
He’d wanted Jenna Pearson from the minute his hormones matured and he realized the girl he’d known since first grade wasn’t a girl anymore, but someone on her way to being a woman. Worse now, he knew what it was like to have her, knew the intimate curves of her body, knew how she sounded when he entered her, when she was satisfied and happy, and curved into his arms.
He knew it all, and as much as he thought he had forgotten those details, it was clear they were very much alive in his memory.
He also remembered their breakup, the swift demise of a relationship that had once seemed golden. He’d taken her to Chicago, intending to propose. At the end of the weekend, just as he was about to pull the ring out of his pocket, Jenna had dropped a bombshell.
She wasn’t going to college in Indiana. In fact, she wasn’t staying in Riverbend one more day. She was moving to New York. She’d tried to talk him into going, too, into attending culinary school in the city. For a while, he’d considered it, then realized all those days of goofing off in high school had caught up with him and his grades weren’t good enough for the prestigious culinary institutes. Nor did he have any desire to trade one permanent address for another. He wanted to see the world, and he’d thought Jenna would go with him, or worst case, wait for him to return.
But as he’d watched her pack, he’d realized something. They were headed in different directions. Stockton’s dream had always been the same—wander the greatest cities in the world, learning the restaurant trade. Jenna had made it sound as if she wanted the same thing, but all the while, she didn’t. She’d been making plans, applying to colleges, looking for apartments. The betrayal had stung.
After all this was over, she’d be leaving him behind again. If he was smart, he’d remember that.
The sauce came together, bubbling up and thickening with each whisk. Stockton stepped back. “Now add a little nutmeg, taste it and see if it needs anything else.”
She ran the nutmeg over a micrograter, watched the dark brown dots fall into the creamy sauce, then took a teaspoon and sampled the béchamel. She smiled. “Perfect.” Then she held out the spoon to him. “Taste.”
His lips closed over the spoon but he wasn’t thinking about the taste of the sauce. He thought of how her lips had been here just a moment before, how if he kissed her, he would taste the béchamel, and so much more. And how incredibly foolish it would be to do that.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, fine.” He jerked away and got back to work mixing the cheese filling for his manicotti.
The waitstaff hurried in and out of the kitchen, shouting orders, asking questions. Conversing with them gave Stockton an excuse to stay away from Jenna. Across the room, Jenna listened to him talk to the staff, but kept quiet herself and focused on her work. With the sauce done, he had switched her back to basic prep work, which kept her busy chopping and dicing. Stockton stayed by the ovens, checking the roasted chickens and baking bread. Putting Jenna from his mind.
At least, that’s what he told himself. But as the rush of orders continued to come in, he found himself right next to her over and over again. “Sorry,” he said, as he bumped her hip for the third time that day, trying to reach for a spice on one of the upper shelves. It was as if his body was just looking for ways to contact hers, because he definitely didn’t run into Larry, the regular sous chef, this often.
She gave him a quick smile. “No problem.”
He plated the order of bracchiole and pasta, then slid it under the warming lamp until the waiter came to retrieve the plates. A quick glance at the clipboard running the length of the shelf showed no more pending orders. The dinner rush had passed. That meant it was after nine, and time to begin the clean up from today and some of the prep work for tomorrow.
“Why don’t you go home?” he said to Jenna. “The dinner rush is over. There’ll be a few more stragglers, but nothing me and the prep cooks can’t handle.”
She leaned against the counter, and let out a deep breath. The front of her apron was a rainbow of stains from the sauces she’d tended and the space under her eyes was shadowed. “Phew, thank goodness that’s over. Is it always this busy?”
“Pretty much.”
“I don’t know how you keep up. I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is chop a bunch of vegetables and stir some sauces.”
“You did more than that. You were a great help.” His gaze skipped over the kitchen, past the mountain of dirty dishes that Paul was running through the automatic dishwasher, then over the stack of folded tablecloths, napkins and fresh silverware two of the waitresses were prepping to carry out to the tables. He turned back to Jenna. “I appreciate it a lot.”
Jenna perched a fist on her hip. “Are you admitting I was right?”
“Right about what?”
“That you could use the help, and that having me here would be a good idea.”
“Okay, yeah, you were right.”
She grinned. “I usually am.”
It was a moment of lightness, and one Stockton should take as such. But there was something in him—some masochistic urge to dredge up a past that he wanted only to forget—that had him opening his mouth. “Were you right about us?”
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “We were better off apart. We wanted two different things.”
“We did. And we still do.”
She looked as if she wanted to say something, but instead she nodded. “The proverbial fish and the bird.”
“I’d say it was more like a shark and an eagle. One of us had to be in constant motion, hungry for the next challenge—”
“And the other flew away as far as possible.”
“I remember that as a mutual decision.” One of the waiters came in and tacked an order onto the shelf beside Stockton. He glanced at the slip of paper, then began readying a plate of lasagna. “Don’t you?”
“You’re right. I should go home. I have a lot to do tomorrow,” Jenna said. Her voice held a cold, icy tone.
“Jenna,” he said, before he could stop himself.
She turned toward him. “What?”
“Why didn’t you wait for me?”
A long, sad smile crossed her face. “Because you were always traveling, Stockton. Not just with airplanes and cars, but with your heart. What’s the point in waiting for something that was never going to be mine?” She brushed past him, then left the kitchen. Going, as always, in the opposite direction of him.
He reached for a ladle to add extra sauce to the lasagna. Steam wafted off the baked dish, and a melody of scents emanated from the layers of fluffy pasta, thick cheeses and spicy sausage. He’d always thought of lasagna as a marriage of tastes and flavors that pleased nearly every palate. Sweet, spicy, savory, all together. Stockton drizzled sauce over the dish, realizing as the first drops hit the pasta that he’d accidentally added Bolognese instead of the customer’s order of classic red sauce.
He scraped the mistake into the trash, then plated another slice of lasagna. That was where thinking about the impossible got him—making mistakes and trying to combine two things that would never, ever work.
Aunt Mabel had waited up, even though Jenna had told her twice that it would be a long, late evening.
Jenna thought about begging off early, and heading to bed, but found herself craving the company. And maybe, over the mugs of tea Aunt Mabel had set out, Jenna could find some of the answers she needed.
“I talked to Betsy after you left for the restaurant today. I told her to go easy on you.” It was as if Aunt Mabel had read her mind. Jenna had thought, spending all these years away from Riverbend, that the town gossip would die down. That people would stop judging her because of her mother’s actions. But this afternoon with Betsy had proved differently. She was still Mary Pearson’s daughter, and every mistake she made seemed to be compounded by that maternal legacy.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Her aunt’s wrinkled hand covered hers. “I most certainly did. My dear, you’ve been through enough. It’s time that some people in this town learned to keep their noses on their own faces.”
Jenna sighed. “That’s never going to happen. You know how small towns are. Always dredging up the past, trying to make it fit with the present.”
Aunt Mabel’s lips thinned. “What my sister did shouldn’t be any reflection on you. Why people insist on putting the two together, I’ll never know.”
Jenna remembered very little of her mother—she’d been seven when her parents died, and her memories were centered around Christmases and birthdays and long sunny days on the farm. But she remembered her mother’s smile, and for Jenna, who’d been too young to understand what—or who—was making her mother smile, it had seemed like maybe things were improving, when really they were heading on a fast downward spiral. “Why did my mother do it?”
A long sigh whistled out of Aunt Mabel. “I knew you’d be asking these questions one day.” She toyed with her mug. “She was unhappy. You knew that.”
Jenna nodded.
“I don’t know if it was really anyone’s fault. I think she just got married too young and didn’t really think it through. Your father was a good man, but they were more friends than anything else. And when life started throwing them lemons—”
“Those were grapefruits, Aunt Mabel.” Jenna thought of all the years of poverty, the times when they had teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Jenna had been too young to understand much more than the fact that every bill caused a fight among her parents.
“It was enough to test any marriage. For a while, your mother took a job at the library. The extra money was nice, I’m sure, but with it came…someone else.” Aunt Mabel sighed. “I know she didn’t go out looking for a relationship. It just…happened.”
Happened. Jenna closed her eyes, and when she did, she was back at that day, sitting in this very kitchen, listening to her aunt Mabel tell her that she would be staying there from now on. “If she hadn’t met that other man, maybe she never would have died in that car accident. And my father, rushing to see her, and going off the road, too. It was all because she met him, Aunt Mabel. And decided she loved him more than us.”
“That’s not the whole story, Jenna. Your mother—”
Jenna threw up her hands. “My mother ruined my life by what she did, Aunt Mabel. I don’t want to hear how I should be more understanding or how she loved her family deep down inside. Because in the end, she made the choices that destroyed everyone.”
“Aw, Jenna—” Aunt Mabel’s fingers closed over her niece’s “—I wish you’d stop writing history in indelible ink. Sometimes there’s a lot more gray than black to the stories we hear.”
Jenna shook her head, refusing to have this conversation again. “Well, let’s just hope that Eunice’s birthday bash gives everyone something else to talk about.”
Aunt Mabel took a sip of tea, then pursed her lips, as if she wasn’t happy with the change in conversation, but would accept it. “I think the party will be fabulous. I’m not worried about that. What I am worried about is—” her gaze met her niece’s “—you.”
“Me? I’m fine.” Jenna crossed to the refrigerator for a snack she didn’t want or need. “I’m fine.”
Aunt Mabel sighed. “I’d really rather you didn’t go back to that city. Why don’t you settle down here? You could have a great life here.”
“I already have a great life.” Jenna moved the mayonnaise to the side, and considered some leftover pudding. The chocolate dish blurred in her vision.
Did she really have such a great life? For years, she’d told herself she loved living in New York. After all, she’d dreamed of nothing else for as long as she could remember. Living in the city, surrounded by the sights, smells, sounds, hundreds of miles from small-town America…that was what she’d thought she wanted.
Until she actually had it and she found herself lying in her bed at night, wishing the traffic would die long enough to give her a taste of the near silence of Riverbend nights. She’d walk the streets, and miss the expansive views of the sky, the fresh scent of a spring breeze. She’d visit the same coffee shop three times in one week, and every time be treated like just one more customer, rather than walking into the deli in downtown Riverbend and hearing someone call out her name, even if she hadn’t been there in a month or a year.
But living in Riverbend hadn’t been all Utopia, either, and she needed to remember that.
“I have a great life,” she repeated. “And when this is over, I’m going back.”
Aunt Mabel sighed. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying to convince you to stay here and put down some roots.”
Jenna shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it. “What roots do I have in this town, Aunt Mabel? Besides you?”
“More than you think, my dear.” Aunt Mabel looked as if she wanted to say something more, but didn’t.
Jenna withdrew the chocolate pudding from the fridge. She retrieved a spoon from the drawer and returned to the kitchen table. The first bite of pudding hit her palate with a smooth, cold sweetness. Exactly the antidote she needed for the topsy-turvy day she’d had. After a while, she got up, and had a second bowl of pudding, topping it with a squirt of whipped cream.
It had been one of those days. And then some.
CHAPTER SIX
THE COLD AIR HIT STOCKTON like a punch to his jaw. He loved winter, but not when the temperature dipped below zero. He hurried down the sidewalk toward Samantha’s bakery, his coat drawn up against his neck, and wondered idly if Rustica would succeed as well in Florida as it had in Indiana. If winter kept its icy grip on Riverbend, he’d be sorely tempted to try a Gulf Coast relocation.
As he rounded the corner, he nearly collided with a tall figure in a thick wool coat. “Jenna.”
Surprise lit the notes of his voice. Sure, she’d been here for a few days already, but every time he saw her, it caught him off guard. It had to be because he’d gotten so used to not seeing her. Not because every time they were together she had him asking himself questions he tried never to ask.
“Stockton. What are you doing out in this cold?” The fur-trimmed hood of Jenna’s coat concealed her lithe figure, and made her seem more fragile, not that Jenna was ever vulnerable. The wind blew at her, but she didn’t seem affected.
“Heading to Samantha’s bakery. I wanted to talk to her about orders for next week.”
“Oh.” She thumbed in the opposite direction. “Listen, I’m on my way to Betsy’s for another meeting, but I’m a bit early. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee and talk about the plans for your anniversary party?”
“You don’t have to do that, Jenna. If anything, I owe you for working for me last night. I’m sure you have plenty to do with Eunice’s party coming up.”
“As do you.” She cocked her head and studied him. “You know, it’s not a crime to ask for help, Stockton.”
“I do—” He cut off the sentence. “Okay, maybe I don’t. But this time I am asking.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth. That something had been awakened in him last night when they’d had that moment over the potatoes, and he’d been thinking about it ever since. That he had stayed up late last night
, running through a thousand what-ifs, and always, always, coming back to the same destination. She lived a life apart from his, and always would.
“Because I’m terrible at planning parties,” he said, and offered her a grin.
“And I’m terrible at white sauces.” Her grin echoed his. “All right. Let’s get out of this cold, and see what we can come up with.”
They headed into the diner, and took seats in a booth in the back. A waitress brought them coffee, and Jenna wrapped her hands around the hot mug. He noticed Jenna was wearing a tailored white button-down shirt with a close-fitted jacket and matching slacks today. He didn’t know designers—couldn’t have told a Gucci from a garbage bag—but he could tell an expensive cut and fabric when he saw one.
“I had a lot of ideas for your party,” Jenna said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Rustica lately and I was thinking if—”
“Jenna Pearson?” The voice cut through the diner, sharp and high-pitched. “Mary Pearson’s daughter?”
Tension stiffened Jenna’s spine. But she planted a smile on her face and turned in her seat. “Mrs. Richardson. So nice to see you again.”
Gertrude Richardson. All towns had a woman like her, someone who thought keeping her opinions to herself was a waste of perfectly good opinions. Stockton wondered how old Gertrude was now—she had to be somewhere in her eighties—and wondered if she’d ever slow down on her one-woman crusade to tell people her version of the truth.
Gertrude propped a fist on her hip. “I hear you’re in charge of Eunice’s birthday party.”
“I am.”
“Well, consider this my RSVP. I will not be attending.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Richardson. I’m sure Eunice will be disappointed.”
Gertrude waved a dismissive hand. “Eunice won’t care two whits if I’m there or not. I’m staying away out of protest.”
“Protest?” Jenna arched a brow. “Of what?”
“Of her letting you, of all people, be in charge. My goodness, you should be ashamed of yourself, coming back to this town and trying to act like you’re some uppity business woman, going to show us country folk how it’s done.” The older woman leaned in closer, sending a wave of floral perfume into the space. “I know you, Jenna. Know where you come from, and it’s no fancy city.”
