Welcome to Serenity

by Sherryl Woods

  Jeanette barely contained a sigh. Watching the romance blossom between those two had been amazing. Elliot had been fully committed practically from their first meeting, but Karen’s past with a man who’d abandoned her and their children, along with Elliot’s family’s disapproval of him marrying a divorced woman had complicated the situation. But he’d remained steadfast despite the obstacles. They were finally finding the happiness they both deserved.

  As if he sensed Jeanette’s envy, Tom reached for her hand beneath the table and gave it a squeeze. She looked into his eyes and saw a depth of understanding there that sent another jolt of electricity through her. She jerked away in dismay. It was the second time he’d made her feel this way, all warm and fuzzy inside. Attraction was one thing, but she could not be falling for him, not even a little bit. She wouldn’t allow it. Despite his flirting, despite the undeniable sizzle between them—or maybe because of them—she couldn’t trust him or herself.

  It didn’t matter how well he fit in with her friends. It didn’t matter that he was sensitive and kind. All that mattered was that eventually he would choose his career over her and leave. He’d said so himself.

  As if he sensed that her withdrawal ran deeper than removing her hand from his, he met her gaze. “Everything okay?”

  Jeanette forced a smile. “Just a close call,” she said. “But I’m fine now.”

  “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  She shook her head, then got to her feet. “Thank you all so much for coming here tonight,” she said, deliberately avoiding Tom’s gaze. “I think I’ve hit a wall. I’m exhausted. Mary Vaughn, how about it? Can you give me a lift home?”

  Tom frowned. “I can drive you.”

  To Jeanette’s relief Mary Vaughn was immediately on her feet. “I’ll do it. We can go over a few things on the way, okay, Jeanette?”

  “Sure. Good night, everyone.”

  She all but raced out of Sullivan’s and beat Mary Vaughn to her car by a full minute.

  “Want to tell me what that was about?” Mary Vaughn asked as she unlocked the car.

  Jeanette shook her head.

  “There are a whole bunch of people in there who would have been happy to drive you home. Why me?”

  “Because I thought you might be the only one who wouldn’t have a million questions,” Jeanette said ruefully. “Was I wrong?”

  Mary Vaughn chuckled. “Oh, I have questions,” she said. “But I can keep them to myself.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Jeanette said, leaning back against the seat with a sigh. “By the way, how are you doing? That wasn’t too uncomfortable for you, was it? Not just dinner, but the whole evening?”

  “Actually it wasn’t half as awful as I was anticipating,” Mary Vaughn said. “Do you know how lucky you are to have friends like that?”

  Jeanette nodded. “I do. I thank God for them every single day.”

  As they pulled up in front of her small apartment complex, which Mary Vaughn had visited once before to pick up an order of skin cream after spa hours, she turned to face Jeanette. “Do you think...could we maybe grab lunch sometime? Or go to a movie? I know it probably seems weird since you know I was interested in Tom, but that ship has clearly sailed. I just want you to know there are no hard feelings. I’d like us to be friends, at least if it won’t put you in an awkward position with Dana Sue and the others.”

  Jeanette remembered the wistful expression in Mary Vaughn’s eyes earlier. She understood loneliness all too well. “I can’t imagine they’d object to us having lunch sometime. I don’t have my schedule in my purse. Why don’t we set it up next time you come into the spa.”

  “That would be great,” Mary Vaughn said. “Thanks for the sale today. If you have any questions when you go to the bank for the loan, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the spa later in the week. And I’ll do everything I can to push this paperwork through so you can close on the house as soon as possible.”

  Impulsively, Jeanette leaned across and gave her a quick hug. “Good night. See you soon.”

  The faint sheen of tears she spotted in Mary Vaughn’s eyes caught her off guard. It told her she’d done exactly the right thing by including her tonight. Underneath all her polish, beneath her aggressive attempts to go after whatever she wanted with single-minded determination, Jeanette sensed that Mary Vaughn had as many insecurities as the rest of them. It was something she never would have guessed before tonight.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jeanette’s phone rang off and on all day Sunday, but she did her best to ignore it. Eventually she went for a long walk just to escape the temptation to pick it up. She knew from caller ID that most of the calls were from Tom, but a few had been from Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue, all of whom were no doubt increasingly frustrated at not being able to figure out why she’d walked out on Tom the night before.

  It wasn’t until late Sunday night, when the calls finally ended, that she realized she’d only postponed the inevitable. She had to face Tom first thing in the morning at the Christmas festival meeting. She couldn’t skip it again. It would show a level of cowardice that even she found unacceptable.

  Before she went to bed, she laid out one of her favorite outfits as a confidence booster. She told herself the bright red sweater seemed appropriate, but the truth was, she’d chosen it because it flattered her coloring. She teamed it with gray slacks and a pair of red shoes that Helen had talked her into buying. While these weren’t the outrageously expensive high heels Helen preferred, they had cost more than Jeanette usually spent on an entire outfit. Buying the matching purse had given her heartburn.

  When she walked into the meeting room at Town Hall, she felt confident and sexy. As soon as she saw the appreciative gleam in Tom’s eyes, she realized she probably should have opted for dowdy. This selection was clearly giving him ideas. She swallowed hard, forced a smile for Tom, then chose a seat on the other side of Ronnie.

  “You can’t hide from him forever, sugar,” Ronnie whispered in her ear. “The man has it bad.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” she insisted. “I’m a challenge, nothing more.”

  Ronnie chuckled. “Wishful thinking. You got something against handsome and rich?”

  “Nothing at all,” she assured him.

  “Then why are you avoiding him?” he asked, still in an undertone.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “That’s not what his half-dozen, increasingly worried calls to my house yesterday suggested.”

  “He called there?” she said, dismayed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He was freaking out because he couldn’t reach you. It didn’t help that Dana Sue hadn’t been able to reach you, either. It took some serious persuasion on my part to keep the two of them from racing over to check on you. I swear, if you hadn’t walked in here just now, there’d be a posse out looking for you before lunchtime.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I never meant to involve everyone else in my drama.” Not that there was much drama involved. In fact, she was trying very hard to prevent drama.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Ronnie assured her. “I told ’em you probably needed a little space to absorb the fact that you’d taken such a big step. Buying your first house is scary business. It is your first, isn’t it?”

  Jeanette nodded. “And it all happened so fast that I’m absolutely terrified I might have made a mistake. I called the bank this morning to make an appointment to apply for the loan and hung up before anyone said hello.”

  “Buyer’s remorse, cold feet, whatever you want to call it, is perfectly normal,” Ronnie assured her. “You’ll get over it. And you need anything, you have all of us as backup.”

  “Thanks.”

  He studied her closely. “Other than being scared silly over committing to apply for
a thirty-year mortgage, everything else is okay?”

  She gave him her brightest smile. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then, that’s good enough for me.” He grinned. “Word of warning, though. Just your assurance about that might not be enough to satisfy Tom or my wife.”

  She glanced at Tom, who was watching her exchange with Ronnie intently. “Yeah, I get that.”

  A moment later Tom called the meeting to order and then ran through the agenda in record time. It was obvious he wanted this meeting over with, much to Howard’s annoyance.

  “Where’s the fire, son?” Howard demanded when Tom cut his report short and called for adjournment. “I thought we could discuss where we’re going to get the town Christmas tree this year.”

  Tom barely contained a sigh. “Where do you usually get it?”

  “We’ve found most of ’em on the outskirts of town,” Howard said. “Up until recently there was a lot of heavily wooded property nearby, but development’s had an impact on that.” He cast a hard look at Ronnie as if the construction boom was all his fault. “I think we’re going to have to go a different direction this year. There’s a farm that raises Christmas trees just outside of Columbia. I think we should go up there and take a look around. It’ll probably cost us a little more, but I think we’ll find a better selection.”

  “Okay, I designate you to go,” Tom said. He was about to gavel the meeting to a close, when Howard spoke again.

  “This is a committee decision,” Howard protested, then added with enthusiasm, “I say we all go next weekend. There may not be a chill in the air yet, but we’ll play some Christmas music in the car, take along some hot chocolate, really get into the spirit of things.” He beamed at them. “We can make a day of it.”

  Jeanette and Tom groaned almost simultaneously.

  “I can’t go on Saturday,” she said. “It’s one of my busiest days at the spa.”

  “Saturday’s no good for me, either,” Mary Vaughn said. “I usually have an open house going that day or, if I don’t, I’m out showing properties. Same with Sunday.”

  Howard frowned at Ronnie. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the hardware store does too much business on Saturday for you to get away, too.”

  Ronnie shrugged. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  Howard shook his head. “Okay, then, we’ll make it a weekday. Tuesday suit everyone? That’s a week from tomorrow, so you have plenty of advance notice. Jeanette, can you make that work?”

  Knowing that one day was no better than another for doing something she absolutely did not want to do, she nodded. “I’ll reschedule my appointments. Tuesdays are usually pretty light.”

  “Good,” Howard said approvingly. He turned to Tom. “And nothing much happens on a Tuesday around here, am I right? No big meetings.”

  “None,” Tom conceded with obvious reluctance.

  “Tuesday, it is, then,” Howard said with satisfaction. “We’ll leave from here at 7:00 a.m. We can even skip our regular Monday meeting. That ought to make everyone happy.” He turned to Tom. “Now you can end the meeting if you want to.”

  “Thank you,” Tom said. “Meeting adjourned. Jeanette, could you stay for a few minutes so we can discuss the vendor situation?”

  “I need to get to the spa,” she said, not anxious to be alone with him.

  “Ten minutes,” he said.

  “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly and followed him into his office.

  Tom closed the door behind them and clicked the lock. He gestured toward a chair, but Jeanette remained standing. He shrugged.

  “Everything okay with you?” he inquired mildly.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re not mad at me for some reason?”

  “Not at all.”

  He regarded her with bewilderment. “Then could you explain what happened Saturday night and why you wouldn’t answer any of my calls yesterday?”

  Jeanette immediately went on the defensive. “I left Saturday night because I was tired. I didn’t answer the phone yesterday because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Was this about buying the house?”

  “Mostly.”

  “And the rest? Did that have anything to do with me?”

  “Why do you automatically assume that I think about you at all?”

  He lifted a brow.

  “Okay, yes,” she conceded grudgingly. “You were part of it.” She met his gaze. “Tom, you seem to want a whole lot more than I have to give. We hardly know each other and you want to share a house with me. Maybe you’re just joking—”

  “I’m not,” he said evenly.

  She shuddered. When he said stuff like that, she almost lost what little resolve she still had to keep her distance from him. She held up a hand as if to hold him back. “That’s what I mean. It’s too much, too soon.”

  He frowned at that. “Will you sit down so we can actually have a conversation? I feel as if you already have one foot out the door.”

  “I told you I need to get to work.”

  He sighed with frustration. “Have lunch with me, then. Let’s talk this through. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s just that I’m a decisive man. I don’t see the point in wasting time when I know what I want.”

  “And what you want is me?” she asked incredulously. “Come on. That’s crazy.”

  He nodded. “I’m a little thrown by it myself.”

  “Yet that hasn’t slowed you down.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t see any reason to slow down. I’ve always set goals for myself, then gone about achieving them. I don’t let obstacles stand in my way.”

  “Are my feelings just one more obstacle for you to overcome?”

  He winced. “In a way.”

  “Well, let me know when you recognize that my feelings might have validity, that when I tell you I need time, you get that I mean it. Maybe then we’ll have something to talk about.”

  She went to the unlocked door between his office and Teresa’s and yanked it open. She’d almost made it to the outer office, when Tom whirled her around and kissed her, a sizzling, lengthy kiss designed to leave her weak-kneed and breathless. Which it did.

  “I’ll pick you up at the spa at noon,” he said quietly, ignoring Teresa’s openmouthed stare. “We’ll talk more over lunch.”

  Jeanette regarded him with exasperation. “Did you not hear one word I just said?”

  “Every one,” he assured her. “And that kiss just contradicted most of them. We’ll discuss the rest when I see you later. And don’t even think about standing me up, because I will find you and we will have this conversation.”

  Before Jeanette could gather her wits, he walked back into his office and closed the door.

  “Whew!” Teresa murmured, fanning herself with the minutes of the last council meeting. “I’d heard all about the fireworks between you two at the game Friday night—that was all over town by Saturday morning—but I had no idea...” She shook her head.

  “Teresa, I’m begging you, please do not tell Grace Wharton about this,” Jeanette said, knowing that was exactly where Teresa would be headed in a couple of hours, sooner if she took a coffee break. “It will just add fuel to the fire. I know I started it by kissing him at the game Friday night, but that, well, it was impulsive. I don’t usually do things like that.”

  “Honey, nobody’s holding it against you,” Teresa soothed.

  Jeanette scowled. “That’s not what I meant. I had my reasons for that kiss, but it was a mistake. A huge mistake! I realize now that I don’t want to be the subject of town gossip, and even though he doesn’t seem to give two hoots about it, it won’t be good for Tom, either.”

  Teresa regarded her with disappointment. “You want me to keep
the kiss I saw just now to myself?”

  Jeanette nodded. “Please. I’ll give you a free facial,” she said.

  “You must want my silence a whole lot,” Teresa said with increasing amusement.

  “I’ll throw in a massage, too,” Jeanette added, unable to keep a hint of desperation out of her voice.

  Teresa couldn’t seem to stop grinning, which suggested Jeanette was compounding her mistake by making such a big deal of this latest kiss.

  “To tell you the truth, Tom would have my hide if I accepted what amounts to a very generous bribe from you, so I’ll decline the facial and the massage, but the fact that you offered...” Her grin spread. “What that proves is that this relationship the two of you have is getting downright interesting. I’ll keep what I saw just now to myself, but something tells me it won’t take long before the whole town knows your business, anyway. It’s impossible to hide that kind of heat.”

  That was exactly what Jeanette was afraid of. It was getting more and more difficult to keep denying it to herself, as well.

  * * *

  Tom was feeling rather pleased with himself when there was a tap on the door to the conference room. He opened it to find Ronnie on the other side.

  “You and Jeanette finish your conversation?” Ronnie asked.

  Tom nodded.

  “Then maybe you have time to listen to a piece of advice from a man’s who made more than his share of mistakes when it comes to women.”

  Since his current plan seemed to be having less success than he’d anticipated, Tom waved Ronnie to a chair. “I’d welcome another viewpoint.”

  “Back off,” Ronnie said succinctly. “I talked to Jeanette before the meeting. She didn’t say much about what was going on with the two of you, but I picked up on one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s scared to death of what she’s feeling for you.”

  “If I give her space, she’ll just think it to death,” Tom argued.

  “If you don’t, you’ll lose her,” Ronnie said. “She’s feeling pressured. When I wanted Dana Sue back, I was in her face a lot. All that accomplished was to solidify her defenses. Once I got busy with opening my business, she had time to start missing me. She got her feet back under her, felt in control again. Some women, they need to feel like they’re in charge. It terrifies them when they think they’re not, especially if they’ve been hurt in the past.”