Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  “Depends who’s playing.” Jake frowned heavily at the sports announcer. “The weather’s next.”

  Storms in the Gulf of Alaska. He’d caught just the tail end of a marine weather update when he turned on the radio in his car half an hour ago. Monica had been settling her skirts into the bucket seat of Jake’s sports car, still talking about the play they had just seen. Jake had heard the words gale warning as the volume came up on the car speaker, but Monica’s voice had drowned the rest.

  Where was Jenny now? Did that lover of hers have any idea how to handle a boat in a storm? He shouldn’t have let her go. He should have done more, somehow made her see that sailing around the north Pacific in a small sailboat wasn’t a game.

  “Are we going out?” Monica asked patiently.

  “In a few minutes,” he answered absently. “I want to catch the weather.”

  Monica waved a hand towards his living room window. “You can see the weather. Rain! You dashed back here as if you had the devil on your tail. Driving like a maniac, breaking the speed limit, then—”

  “I heard there was a storm in the Gulf of Alaska.” He was sitting on the edge of a large chair, glaring at the announcer.

  “It’s Jenny? You’re worried about Jenny?”

  He used the controller to turn the volume up, then back down. His face was grim as he said, “That’s my part of the country. I grew up on the Queen Charlotte Islands – summers, anyway. My mother’s family were mostly fishermen. I spent my summers fishing, finding out just how wild those waters can be.”

  “Jenny can look after herself.”

  Jake turned away angrily, remembering Jennifer sitting in that coffee shop at the airport the day she left. She’d agreed to let him drive her to the airport and they had come out from the city in silence, Jenny staring out the window, presumably dreaming of her damned George. Jake had pretended to concentrate on the traffic while he tried to think of a way to talk sense into her.

  He couldn’t believe she would throw up everything for a man whose name he’d never even heard until a few days ago.

  In the five years since she’d walked into his studio, he’d seen her work her way through a string of admirers. He’d watched jealously, yet never believed any of them mattered to her. She kept them all at a distance. Certainly he had never thought Jennifer might leave him for one of them. She was too damned good at her job to just walk away like that.

  But she had done it, and only unwillingly accepted his offer of a ride to the airport. She’d insisted on dragging one of the heavy suitcases into the terminal building on her own, until he’d grabbed it away from her and stalked to the ticket counter. He had slid both suitcases onto the scales with muscular ease that he would never have admitted was a deliberate show of superior strength.

  She’d had a routine conversation with the woman at the counter – Yes, two pieces of luggage. Non-smoking – no, not a window seat.

  In the course of work, Jennifer had often flown with him to locations where he was filming. She had always arranged to let Jake have the window seat, placing herself in an aisle seat. If he thought of it at all, he had assumed she gave him the window seat because she knew he enjoyed looking out as they flew. Now, after five years, it occurred to him that she was nervous of flying, that she had always been oddly silent when they were in the air.

  How on earth could she be afraid to fly, yet willing to trust a man named George to pilot her over the high seas?

  “Gate twenty-nine, four o’clock,” the ticket clerk pronounced.

  Jenny took her boarding pass and slipped it into her shoulder bag, swinging back to Jake, eager to take her leave and get on her way to that blasted George.

  She was dressed casually for traveling – jeans and a light blouse under a loose sweater that hinted enticingly at the fullness of her breasts. He kept finding his eyes straying to the tightness of the denim across her hips, the curves revealed by the soft sweater.

  “Thanks for the ride, Jake.” She stepped out of the way of a young woman lugging a toddler and two suitcases.

  Jake stared down at her, wishing he could take her in his arms, realizing that she really was going. He had no idea how he could make her see reason. He’d never been able to get close to her except when they were working.

  “Thanks,” Jennifer said again. He wondered why she was so nervous of him. “I’ll go to the gate now. I may as well.”

  “You’ve got an hour. Let’s go have a coffee.” He grasped her elbow and steered her out of the path of a volubly French group wheeling past with two luggage carts piled high with suitcases. He avoided her eyes, knowing she wasn’t coming willingly. “Are you hungry, Jennifer? Did you have lunch?”

  She shook her head and he urged her on, propelling her ahead of him.

  “Here, let’s get out of this crowd. All of Vancouver must be flying today. Now which? You’re not hungry? Or you didn’t have lunch?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’ll feed me on the plane.“

  Once he had her seated in the restaurant, he ordered her a light lunch and she didn’t protest. She sat staring silently out the window. He had to work at distracting her.

  “Did you see the photographers gathering near the Air Canada counter?“

  She had shaken her head, making him uncomfortably aware that she didn’t want to be with him.

  “I wonder who they’re waiting for,” he persisted. “Someone said something about the Prime Minister’s wife.”

  “I doubt that. She probably travels on government jets all the time.”

  “Don’t be cynical, Jennifer,” he had teased and, finally, she had laughed.

  “Jennifer, do you— what are your plans for this sailing trip? Your itinerary? This George, does he know what he’s doing? Now, don’t get prickly, Jenn— lord, you’re temperamental these days. I’m just concerned about you.”

  He hadn’t often heard impatience in her voice, but now she said abruptly, “I’ve sailed before, Jake. I grew up sailing, spending my summers on the water.”

  “At Campbell River, for God’s sake!” he burst out angrily, frustrated by his inability to make her see reason.

  She bristled, pushed her hair back and said aggressively, “I’ll have you know, we’ve had some pretty heavy weather up there.”

  “That’s protected waters,” he scoffed. “Sure, the winds blow, but you never get the kind of seas they get in the Dixon Entrance – where are you going, Jennifer? The boat’s in Ketchikan?” She nodded and he pressed on, “What’s your first port of call after you leave? When are you leaving?”

  She looked across the table, away from him. He followed her gaze. She was looking out the window at the runway. Was she in that much of a hurry to get to her lover? She said, “Jake, our plans aren’t that definite. We’re stopping at the Queen Charlotte Islands – it’s the logical first stop, just across Dixon Entrance.”

  His overactive imagination supplied a graphic vision of the two of them, drifting in some secluded bay, in intimate loneliness. Monica, he reminded himself grimly, trying to drown out one fantasy with another. It didn’t work. It never did. He was cursed with wanting the one woman who wouldn’t let him near.

  “Just! Jennifer, do you have any idea what that stretch of water can be like?”

  “Jake, I—”

  He leaned forward, pleaded, “Shouldn’t you think about this more? After all, this George is a pretty new event in your life. You’re throwing away everything for someone you hardly know.”

  She stared at him for a long, heavy minute. When she did answer, her voice was flat and angry.

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions, aren’t you, Jake? I haven’t told you anything, but you’re determined to jump to conclusions. First you’ve got me taking a job with your competition, then running off on a sudden— a sudden love affair. None of this is your business, but – just as a point of information – I’ve known George a lot longer than I’ve known you.”

  “I don’t believe it,”
he insisted over a sick fear. Why the hell did it matter to him? She’d never been even slightly interested in him as a man. He wanted her back because he needed her in the studio. This sexual attraction would go away sooner or later. He found himself insisting, “I don’t believe in this love affair with George.”

  She’d always been so cool. He’d seen the ice in her eyes when she caught him watching her, when she’d sensed his attraction to her. He’d seen her with other men, and he would have sworn it was the same. She kept everyone at a distance.

  Was George the reason for it all? For George, was she a passionate lover, giving out the warmth, the passion he sometimes thought he sensed in her?

  “You don’t believe—” Jennifer started to say angrily, then her voice lost its heat, dropped. “But it doesn’t matter what you believe, does it?” She smiled without any humor. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  He should have realized what she was up to, but he actually thought she was going to the ladies’ room. He watched her, then jerked to his feet as she went through the doors to the main terminal and just kept walking.

  She’d left him tied up with a furious waitress who was just bringing a seafood salad and clam chowder to their table. The waitress was quickly reinforced by the restaurant manager, an aggressively dangerous woman dressed in a severe gray suit. Jake managed to free himself from the whole embarrassing incident with quick apologies and ready cash.

  Jennifer was nowhere in sight.

  “Damn!” he cursed, earning himself a severe reprimand from an elderly woman who rushed past with her purse clutched tightly to her breast.

  What had gotten into Jennifer, transforming her from her usual quiet, helpful, dependable stability into— into what? He’d always known she was hiding her feelings from him, but he hadn’t expected this strangely contrary woman who seemed to be determined to do the craziest, the most—

  He caught up with her just as she was passing through the security checkpoint.

  “Jennifer!”

  She ignored him, smiling brightly at the guard as she handed him her handbag.

  Jake moved between Jennifer and the security booth. “Now, listen—”

  “Your boarding pass, sir?” The uniformed man stepped between them as Jennifer walked briskly through the X-ray scan.

  “I’m not a passenger. I just want to talk to—”

  “Sorry, sir. You can’t go beyond this point without a boarding pass.”

  And Jennifer was gone, walking around the corner, with only a quick, unrepentant glance back.

  Jake stared at the television set, oblivious to the details of today’s football game, waiting for what he’d come for. The weather. Just how detailed did they get on this channel? He couldn’t remember, hadn’t really cared before.

  “Are we going out?” Monica asked, not for the first time.

  “Yes,” he said absently, wishing he’d never started dating her. “In a few minutes.”

  What a fool he’d made of himself in that flaming airport! Jennifer, turning contrary and elusive, had been like a red flag to a bull. First the embarrassment in the restaurant, then leaving him standing like a fool at the customs counter.

  Damn! No one had made a fool of him since the day he went to art school over the protests of his father’s family. Only Jennifer, damn her! He’d never been able to get anywhere near her. Was that why she’d been so fascinating to him from the beginning?

  When Jennifer first started working for him, he’d been in the middle of a casual affair. He’d ended it immediately, turning his attention to this mysteriously quiet girl with the deep, stubborn eyes.

  She’d said no when he asked her to dinner – but she’d accepted an invitation from the accountant in the office downstairs. When she stopped dating the accountant, Jake had tried again, inviting her to a show he knew she wanted to see.

  She had been silent for a long moment, concentrating on the papers in front of her. Then she had met his eyes directly and said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  He hadn’t asked again. He hadn’t stopped wanting her, but he thought he’d stopped showing it. After a while, he came to see how valuable an assistant she was, and he told himself he was glad that he hadn’t ruined a good working relationship for a short-lived affair.

  But now she was leaving, walking away and leaving him on the wrong side of an airport security check. He stood staring at the empty hallway, finally becoming aware of the uniformed guard who was smiling, as if he had seen it all before.

  If she thought she could walk away that easily, evade him by walking through a gate and laugh back from the other side…

  “I want a ticket on the flight to Ketchikan!” he demanded of the ticket clerk back at the terminal. “The one that’s boarding at gate twenty-nine now.”

  She touched keys, stared at her computer display. “I have no seats on that flight, sir. If you’d like to go on standby?”

  “Yes, all right. And book me back, too.”

  She paused, her hands poised over the keyboard. “On which flight, sir?”

  “The same plane.”

  “The same? Sir—”

  “It does come back, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it comes back – immediately.” She glared at him, evidently trying to decide just how much of a nut case he was. “That flight only stays on the ground at Ketchikan for—”

  “That’s fine. Just do it, would you?” he said abruptly, embarrassed at having to explain his irrational impulse. He pushed a credit card across the counter to her, and that seemed to silence the protests. Apparently it didn’t matter how crazy he was if he was willing to pay.

  Then he waited, prowling the terminal on the wrong side of the security checkpoint, watching the clock. The loudspeaker call, when it came, was difficult to hear, but he caught “…standby passengers Mudge and Austin,” and dashed back to get the boarding pass that would let him through the security checkpoint.

  “No hand luggage?” asked the security guard, hiding his smile as he recognized Jake.

  “No.”

  “You’d better hurry, sir. Gate twenty-nine has already boarded.”

  So he ran down the empty corridor, flashing his boarding pass at the stewardess, turning to ease his broad shoulders down the narrow corridor, looking for the curtain of long, brown hair that would identify Jennifer.

  He didn’t find her until he was on the plane.

  She was near the front, in the non-smoking section, wedged between a quietly suited businessman and a youth with a punk haircut that projected from his head in a blond-turning-purple nightmare.

  “Excuse me—” he bent over the purple hair, speaking low-voiced, “—would you mind trading seats with me so I can sit with my wife? I’m two rows back, in 8F.”

  Despite the hair, the boy smiled and nodded, pulling an over-sized pack from under the seat and stumbling over Jake in his hurry to comply.

  Jake had dropped into the aisle seat, his shoulders too wide for the space allotted them, pushing into Jennifer’s space. He was uncomfortably aware that she shifted to move away from him. The stewardess walked back, glanced down at him with a frown, shrugged and walked on past.

  “Your wife?” Jennifer’s voice sounded amused. Thankfully, she wasn’t looking at him; he was sure he’d flushed deeply enough that it would show even through his dark skin. He heard the anger clipping her voice. “That’s a new one. You do like to get your own way, don’t you?”

  She kept her eyes away from him, looking across the businessman’s open copy of Time Magazine to the window. They were starting to move away from the terminal building. “You do whatever it takes,” her low voice lashed him. “Lies, flashing that charm. Whatever it takes.”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  She glanced at him. As usual, he couldn’t read anything in her eyes as she said wryly, “You have me as a captive audience, so have your say. You’ve been itching to lecture me all week. You—” She stopped talking abruptly, her hands tensed
briefly as the jet accelerated. At the front of the passenger cabin, the stewardess was standing, facing the passengers as she began to demonstrate the safety features of the airplane. On the loudspeaker a male voice narrated an accompaniment to her motions.

  Jake covered Jennifer’s clenched hand with his. “Why didn’t you tell me you were afraid of flying?”

  She jerked her hand away. “What difference would it make? Shh! I want to hear this.”

  The stewardess gave them an annoyed look. He dropped his voice. “When we flew to California last year, you got this same demonstration and—”

  “Two years ago,” she corrected. “That was two years ago. I haven’t gone anywhere with you in over a year.”

  “You haven’t? Surely—”

  “Nowhere. Not since you hired Hans.”

  “Are you sure?” He shifted uncomfortably. “You must be. You’re always right about the details – I didn’t realize.”

  “Didn’t you?” she said coldly, “Since the day Hans walked into your studio, I haven’t gone on location anywhere.”

  She was glaring at him, challenging him. He stared back, picking out the green glints in her hazel eyes. Her eyes had always concealed more than they revealed, yet sometimes he’d imagined they responded to him.

  He remembered the California trip. They’d been doing a film on a Canadian expatriate who lived in California and claimed to have visions of the future.

  The psychic had put them up in his large beach house. Jake had just finished a rather unsatisfactory affair with a girl named Merle, another in a string of attempts to distract himself from his futile attraction to Jennifer.

  It was starting to affect his work. He supposed it was because she was so indifferent to him – some kind of arrogant male desire to be universally desired by women. He liked to think he was free of that kind of nonsense, but he was becoming obsessed by Jennifer, dreaming dreams that would have her slapping his face if she’d ever known.

  He’d spent three nights sleeping in the psychic’s guest room, aware of Jennifer in the next room, imagining he could hear her breathing, see her sleeping. During the days, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, watching her move about in the thin clothes that were suitable for the hot sun, but showed every seductive curve of her body.