Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  “Look who’s talking!” She met his blazing eyes head on. “You’re prowling around like an angry bear – roaring like one, too!”

  He paced across the room and back again, demanding, “Are you marrying this George?” He lunged around her desk, grabbing her shoulders and giving a short, rough shake. “Jennifer, are you?”

  “Damn it, Jake! Let go of me! That hurts!” She jerked back from his hands, sending her chair rolling away from him. “And it’s none of your business!” She eyed him warily, nervous of his violent anger.

  “Are you marrying George?“

  She couldn’t help a nervous giggle. “I don’t think George is going to ask me.” Then her smile died as his face darkened in fury. For a minute she thought he was going to explode, then he stepped back and his face relaxed into a shuttered mask.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said flatly. “If someone had gotten through that damned reserve of yours, I’d know it.” He frowned, studying her, asking, “So what is it? It’s not like you to let your love life interfere with your career. There’s got to be more to it.”

  She shifted papers on her desk, managed to sound indifferent, almost bored. “If it amuses you to speculate, go ahead.”

  “Jennifer, you can’t just take off into the unknown with some man – this isn’t your style, a cheap affair!”

  “A cheap—” She pushed the chair back again and stood up, facing him, glaring at those eyes as the angry brown fires overtook the coolness she’d seen a moment ago. “Look here, Jake, you’re not my keeper! And you’re the last one to talk about cheap affairs!”

  “Well someone sure as hell should be your keeper! You’re throwing away your career – everything – for a shoddy romance. Do your parents have any idea what you’re doing?”

  Her parents! God! She closed her eyes to cover the moment’s hurt at his assumption that her parents would care. “I’m not exactly a child. I’m twenty-eight years old.”

  “You’re sure as hell not behaving like it!”

  “Thanks a lot!” she hissed, “You’re not interested in my well-being! You’re thinking of yourself. It’ll put your schedule out of whack if I quit.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year! It’d be chaos and you know it. How the—”

  “Will you stop swearing?”

  He glared at her, then took a deep breath. “All right. How would you suggest I go about replacing you? Damn it, Jennifer! You’re necessary here!”

  “What you really mean,” she said slowly and bitterly, “is that no one else around here wants to give up all their holidays, their weekends and their evenings, just to make sure you keep the commitments you take on. You say I’m giving up my career! Just what am I giving up?” She jabbed a finger hard onto the desk. “A lifetime as your general dogsbody? I don’t go on location any more. I don’t get to film anything except greasy hamburgers – Jake, a couple of years ago you wouldn’t have taken on junk like that! You’re doing more and more, without thinking about the quality of what you’re doing, giving me all the dirty work, and yourself and Hans the assignments that have some excitement. You’re getting bigger, but you’re not getting better!”

  Silence fell around them as her words echoed in the studio. Jake stared at her, his brown face strangely pale.

  “If that’s how you felt, you should have said so long ago, shouldn’t you? Instead of hiding your thoughts behind those green eyes.”

  “Jake, I don’t—”

  But he was going, turning away, closing that damned door quietly for once, but with a decisive click that made it impossible for her to go after him.

  He didn’t even know the color of her eyes, saying they were green. They were hazel, plain old hazel.

  She’d always known it would be a mistake to start shouting at Jake, that she would say too much. It was a good thing he’d left when he did, before she said even more.

  She felt sick now. She’d seen Jake angry often enough, though usually at other people. He’d never hesitated to speak his mind to anyone; but no matter what Jake had said, she’d kept any angry retorts deeply hidden.

  She met George for lunch.

  “I’m going nuts!” George confessed over a plate of salad. “I’ve got a shopping list for the boat a mile long, and I can’t find half the stuff I need. Lanterns, for example – you’d think in a city this size I could find brass lanterns for a boat! Are you all right? How did the chieftain take your news?”

  “Badly.” She shrugged, smiled unconvincingly and asked, “Shouldn’t you be calling your boat a yacht?”

  “Too classy for me,” said her elegant cousin. “I’m a down-to-earth lady.” She shoveled a hefty fork full of salad into her dainty mouth. “Somehow, I thought you’d change your mind at the last minute. Tell me the details. How did the big scene go?”

  “As you say, it was a big scene… At first he thought I was blackmailing him for my holidays, then he accused me of taking a job with the competition. He offered me more money.”

  “Much more?” asked George curiously. “If he wanted you badly enough—”

  “We didn’t get into dollars and cents.” Jake’s angry, frustrated face was burned into her mind. “I said I was going sailing with you. He asked if I was going to marry you.”

  George choked on her lettuce.

  Jenny said defensively, “Well, I just said George.”

  “Your cousin George?”

  “No.” she shook her head, smiling slightly. “Just George.”

  “Oh!” George smiled, a piece of lettuce dangling just inches from her mouth. “Now why did you let him think that?”

  “What difference does it make who he thinks I’m with?”

  “He was jealous,” George decided with satisfaction.

  “Of course he wasn’t jealous!” Jenny flushed, remembering the feel of Jake’s eyes on her, the times when she’d looked up and seen his awareness of her as a woman. To George, she muttered, “He goes through women the way you go through shoes.” She shrugged. “I suppose there have been times when I could have been one of them.” That look in his eyes, almost as if he were daring her to let him get closer.

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “No!” she denied too swiftly.

  “Is that why you’re coming with me, Jenny? If you’re in love with him, you shouldn’t run away.”

  “It’s not that. It’s everything, everyone around me. I feel as if my whole life is shrinking, as if I’m watching everyone else’s lives. Wayne going to Saudi Arabia. Mom and Dad in the Caribbean. Chris Eglinton climbing his mountains.” And Jake and Monica.

  George shook her head, confused. “Chris— who?”

  “A documentary we’re doing,” Jenny explained, “He’s nobody, really, just another person doing his thing.”

  “So it’s Jenny’s turn?”

  “Yes.” She had to remember that. Jake was going to make this difficult for her, but she would just have to hold onto her determination to do her own thing for once. Jenny’s turn.

  She was in love with him, but surely it would fade, go away. She didn’t want to love him. Loving only brought pain…

  “I’ll see you next week,” she had said to Lance as he dropped her at her aunt’s house that last night.

  He’d nodded, saying nothing. She’d felt sudden fear. She’d flown into his arms, clinging, her intense young voice declaring, “I love you so much!” as if she were afraid he didn’t know.

  She’d never seen him again.

  She looked up from her memories, saw George watching her too intently.

  They had already arranged their schedule. Jenny would fly north the following Sunday, with George meeting her at the airport in a rental car.

  She wouldn’t see George again for a week. It was going to be a busy week, trying to get everything done for Jake before she left him. If she was busy enough, she might be able to avoid another confrontation scene with him.

  She stayed away all afternoon, work
ing in the library, making phone calls from her cell phone. It was late by the time she went back to the studio.

  She looked for his car outside the office building, but didn’t see it. Still on the North Shore, or perhaps his lawyer had caught up with him for the signatures he needed. Since Jake had won the award for his video on the Swiftsure Race, he’d been busier and busier, so flooded with commercial contracts that he could hardly stop and work on the exciting, creative projects that had been typical of the first four years Jenny worked with him.

  It had all happened together. The award. The flood of new commercial contracts. Hans being hired as Jake’s assistant. Jenny’s discontent.

  And Jake’s. He’d always been volatile, but Jenny was sure the commercial success of the last year had been bad for him. His time was increasingly taken up with petty details like scheduling and politics. There was less and less opportunity for him to do truly creative work. Yet he couldn’t seem to turn down a new contract, no matter how mundane. He accepted them, then handed the worst jobs to Jenny. He’d go nuts, thought Jenny, finishing the Madison series on his own.

  Hamburgers!

  She really had to get away, get some perspective, prove to herself that there was more to life than holding Jake’s spare cameras. Or watching Jake and Monica.

  She’d never thought he would marry any of the women he dated. Had he really shared his inner self with Monica? Jake the artist, the passionately caring man. Whenever she’d seen him with a woman, he’d seemed to hold some part of himself aside. Yet he’d let Jenny see the private part of him. Crazy, but she thought she knew things about him that no one else did. In some ways, she’d been closer to him than any of his women.

  Did Monica know that he’d cried the night his grandfather died? Jenny had been with him that night, sitting in the studio in the dark, listening to Jake share his memories of the old chief who had just died. Jenny had cried, too.

  It really was time she left, got away from him. She was becoming obsessed.

  She came into the studio feeling his presence, knowing he would be sitting at his desk. Heaven knew where his car was, but Jake was right here.

  He was staring at a mound of paperwork that had been growing over the last few weeks. His gaze shifted to her as she came in, but his face remained blank, as if he didn’t really see her.

  “Where were you?” he asked tonelessly.

  “The library.”

  “I thought you’d gone.”

  His eyes flickered to the coat rack where her umbrella still hung, down to her spare pair of shoes on the shoe rack. Whatever he said, he’d known she’d be back.

  She carried her armful of books and papers over to her desk, her back tense, aware of his eyes on her.

  Her ears must be supersensitive. She heard the thin lead of his pencil snap.

  Tension crept into his voice as he asked, “Exactly when are you planning to leave me?”

  She arranged the papers carefully, answered, “My plane leaves on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Your plane?“

  He clicked another lead down on his pencil. She sat down, finally looking across at him. His black hair covered his forehead; he was looking down, sketching something perhaps, though she thought he was just doodling. Another time she might have walked over to look. She slid open a drawer and placed her pens carefully in the slot where they belonged.

  “George’s boat is in Alaska. I’m flying to Alaska Sunday.”

  His pencil snapped again. He crumpled the paper and threw it into the trash basket beside his desk. “Will you have the preparations ready for the Eglinton film by then? And the Madison series?”

  “I think I’ll have Eglinton ready.” She kept her voice neutral. “You have to make some decisions about scheduling before I can go farther, but if we could hash those out tomorrow I can get all the reservations set up, supplies lists, and so forth. I can’t get Madison done – I’ll finish the film I was working on, but the last two will have to be done by someone else.”

  She waited for a storm of protest from him, but he said nothing, just turned back to his paperwork and proceeded to ignore her.

  So she went home and spent the evening dreading coming back to work the next morning, facing a surly, disapproving Jake for the rest of the week.

  But the next morning Jake was gone long before she arrived. He’d left only a note.

  Back Friday. Schedule Eglinton shooting however you want.

  Jake

  Jenny spent her last week in relative isolation. Monica was gone to Toronto for a week-long conference on child care, wouldn’t be back until after Jenny had left. George had flown back to Alaska to provision the yacht. Jake was— Heaven knew where Jake was, but she was glad she didn’t have to face him every day.

  She thought about calling her parents, but felt too depressed to face a conversation with her mother.

  She tried to get her mind into gear, planning freelance articles and videos she might do after she left Jake, but even that seemed meaningless.

  Jake returned on Friday afternoon, almost quietly, murmuring something to Charlotte, saying a few low words to Hans that sent him hurrying out with a camera.

  Jenny was printing carefully and neatly onto a DVD label. When Jake came into the room, he closed the door behind him quietly. Jenny’s hand jerked and she watched a messy squiggle appear in the middle of the label. This was becoming a habit of hers, messing up labels as Jake came in.

  She peeled off a new label and fixed it carefully over the ruined one with shaking hands, then put the DVD down, knowing she couldn’t write again while he was watching her.

  He stood just inside the door, leaning back against it. His face was always deeply lined, as if the intensity with which he lived had drawn itself upon his features. Today the lines seemed even deeper. His dark face had a gray tinge, as she’d seen once or twice before when he was feeling ill or had a bad cold.

  “Jake, you’ve been going without sleep.”

  He shrugged her concern away, and said tonelessly, “I was tied up last night with that environmental group in Williams Lake, then I had to catch an early flight.“

  He was examining her desk with a long, slow look that didn’t miss anything. The shiny, just-cleaned surface. The empty in-basket. The drawers were empty, too, although that didn’t show.

  “So you’re all ready to go?”

  “Yes.” He looked so terribly tired. She wished she could tell him to go home and go to bed.

  “Eglinton?”

  “It’s ready. On your desk.”

  He walked over, not sitting, but standing behind his chair, turning the pages while he stood looking down, reading, then meeting her eyes across the room. Nervously, she picked up the DVD again.

  “Put that down. You’re just fiddling with it.”

  “I’m putting it in its case. Stop staring at me. You’re making me nervous.”

  He said, bitterly, “I always make you nervous, don’t I, Jennifer?”

  “No, you— I just don’t know what you’re planning to do.You come in here and shut the door, and you look—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know! Angry?”

  “I suppose that’s right. I am angry.” He stepped back swiftly, starting to prowl now. “Are you all packed?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “Monica said you’re giving up your share of the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need help moving anything?” He wasn’t looking at her, but she sensed anger behind his quiet questions.

  “No.” Did they have to have this meaningless, painful exchange of words? Some of her distress came through in her voice as she explained, “Monica’s storing some boxes for me in the storeroom. All that’s left to take are a couple of suitcases.”

  He pushed his hands into his pockets, stared out the window something Jenny couldn’t see. “What does Monica think of your going off with this George fellow?”

  “Back off, Jake!” Jenny h
adn’t told Monica anything about George. What a crazy fiction she had created in letting Jake think George was a man! “If you want to know what Monica thinks, ask her yourself.”

  He frowned at her. “What about your car? Are you selling it?”

  “Monica’s going to use it.”

  “So you might come back to Vancouver? You aren’t sure of George? Is he going to discard you when you’ve—”

  She closed her eyes briefly on a sudden wave of painful memories. “Jake, let’s not get into an argument again. I don’t—”

  He said abruptly, “I’ll give you a ride to the airport.”

  “I’m taking a taxi,” she decided in a rush.

  “Don’t be silly!” He swung back from the window, his hands pushed deeper into his pockets. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I always thought we were.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. God, she was going to miss him!

  “So I’ll see you off on your plane,” he said decisively, his tone allowing no argument. “What time should I pick you up?”

  She closed her eyes briefly again, realizing that she couldn’t avoid this. He was going to come for her, drive her to the airport. And he hadn’t given up yet. She could sense a dangerous determination in him.

  Thank goodness for George! If Jake insisted on trying to persuade her to say, maybe Jenny could pull off a convincing act of a girl determined to throw everything over for love.

  Chapter 4

  “Jake, what are you doing? I thought we were going out for dinner?” Monica’s voice was still soft, but somehow a thin edge of frustration was finding its way through.

  “In a minute.” Jake pointed the remote control at his television, punched the channel button grimly, switching through several channels. A stream of pictures flashed past – a car flying over a cliff and bursting into flames, a baby-faced blond holding a bottle of shampoo and simpering at someone off-camera. The picture settled on a depressed young man who talked with forced enthusiasm.

  Monica protested, “That’s a sports broadcast. You’re not a football enthusiast.”