by Heidi Betts
With her own overzealous hand, Charlotte had made a shower curtain of fabric that contained both neon checks and huge, oddly shaped flowers in colors that were equally bright and didn’t quite match the blocks, but didn’t clash, either.
Alone, the curtain might not have been too bad. But, of course, her aunt hadn’t stopped there. She’d added a rubber duckie soap dish, a giraffe toothbrush holder, a SpongeBob SquarePants Dixie cup dispenser, and a rainbow trout towel rack that held a black towel and washcloth set. (Black, of all colors, when there was nothing else black-save perhaps some miniscule outlining on the shower curtain design-in the entire room.)
But that wasn’t all. Charlotte had also knit several Southern belle toilet paper covers and had them strategically displayed. Three lined up along the back of the commode, two on the floor on either side of the toilet, and one across the room on the floor at the opposite end of the white porcelain tub. Just in case, you know, there was a major toilet paper emergency. Like maybe a Girl Scout troop dropped by and all needed their tushies wiped at the same time.
Martha Stewart, her aunt definitely was not. Although, ironically, Charlotte ’s bedroom and the rest of the house was actually rather normal and mundane. There were a lot of antiques sprinkled around, and a few unusual pieces here or there, but nothing that would put someone in fear for their life.
Gage wasn’t afraid, though. Jenna doubted much of anything scared him, frankly, and he’d been around Charlotte and Charlotte ’s old farm house enough while they were married that he probably wouldn’t have been surprised if a litter of rabid squirrels jumped out of the linen closet.
Before he’d arrived, Grace and Jenna had raced around the upstairs, putting things to wrong. She’d told Gage there was a plumbing leak when there really wasn’t, so they’d had to create one.
To that end, Grace had loosened a pipe fixture under the sink, and they’d used a couple of the SpongeBob Dixie cups to splash water here and there as though the pipes had been dripping for quite a while, then sopped it up with extra towels. The towels were still on the floor, wadded up and wet and screaming for a cleanup crew.
“Sorry about the mess,” Jenna said, kicking at one of the towels with the toe of her shoe. “I tried to keep the water from spreading too far.”
“No problem,” he murmured, setting his beer on the sink and his toolbox on the floor, then kneeling down to study the vanity’s inner workings.
Worrying a thumbnail between her front teeth, Jenna stood in the doorway and watched, praying he wouldn’t figure out that she and her friends had staged the leak to lure him out to the house. He didn’t seem suspicious as he turned the knob to shut off the flow of water to the pipes, twisted this and felt around that.
“I don’t see any cracks or corrosion,” he said.
She didn’t respond, afraid that anything she said might blow the whole charade.
Gage flipped around, lying down on his back to stare up at the bottom of the sink basin. “Can you hand me-”
Before he’d even finished his sentence, Jenna had the bottle of Corona shoved into his hand.
“Um…” He looked at her oddly. “Thanks, but I was actually going to ask for a wrench.”
“Oh.” She gave a nervous, too high-pitched laugh. “Sorry about that. But you might as well enjoy it,” she added, crouching down beside his toolbox to search for what he needed.
When she found it, rather than handing it to him, she stood back and waited. He continued to eye her strangely, but she held her ground.
Finally, he took a slow sip of beer before setting the bottle aside. As soon as he did, she handed him the wrench.
“Thanks,” he muttered, reluctantly pulling his attention away from his exhibiting-blatant-signs-of-psychosis ex-wife to once again tinker beneath the sink.
She liked to think that after this was all over, he’d believe her when she said she hadn’t gone off the deep end and wasn’t in need of a Thorazine Big Gulp, but something told her that wasn’t going to happen.
It was a shame, too, because as she stood there, staring down at him lying on the floor, she couldn’t help but wish things had worked out between them. That she had a right to ogle his body, admire the play of muscles beneath his tight T-shirt and the way he filled out a pair of Levis.
And he filled them out well. Really, really well.
“You’ve got a loose fitting under here, so I tightened it, but I don’t see anything else that should be causing a leak.”
Sliding back out from under the vanity, he used a corner of one of the towels to dry the pipes, then turned the water back on and tested his work. When everything remained dry, he slapped his hands together, wiped them on the front of his jeans, and returned the wrench to the toolbox.
“I don’t know how that got loose, but you should be okay now. At the very least, it will hold until you can get a professional out here next week.”
“Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
That sounded good, right? Now she just had to figure out how to get the rest of that Corona -and maybe a second one-into him before he could leave.
To that end, she rushed around him, plucking up the wet towels and tossing them into the bathtub, then grabbing the bottle of beer while he collected the toolbox.
Gage stepped out of the small powder room, moving toward the stairs, and a shaft of panic stabbed through Jenna’s heart.
“Wait!” she cried, reaching out with both arms as though that gesture alone could draw him back and keep him there a bit longer.
Cocking his head to one side, he did exactly as she asked-he waited. For her to say something, do something, give him a reason not to climb back in his car and drive back to town.
And she was trying, she really was. Her mind was doing its best to race, to grasp for an excuse. But a couple pitchers of margaritas and enough Mexican food to feed Santa Anna’s army had made her brain sluggish.
A dozen responses would have rolled off Grace’s tongue by now, with a dozen more lined up and ready to go. Ronnie would have simply grabbed him by the collar and kissed him into submission.
But, for better or worse, Jenna wasn’t like either of her friends. She may have been married to Gage for three years before things had started to go downhill, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say or how to handle him. She wasn’t sure she ever had.
“Jenna?” he prompted when she stood there like a crash test dummy. “Was there something else?”
Eyes wide, mouth open and working like a guppy’s, she made a high, squeaking sound that caused Gage to blink. He probably thought she was having a seizure and was about to swallow her tongue.
Then she blurted, “The bedroom!”
He blinked again.
“There’s a… um, lamp in the guest bedroom that hasn’t been working quite right. I’m afraid the wiring might be faulty and I worry about it starting a fire.”
Lifting a hand to his chin, he rubbed his jaw, his fingers making a slight scratching sound as they scraped against the dark beard stubble growing there. He shook his head slightly, and she knew she had him about as confused as a man could get.
“Jenna, I’m no electrician. I-”
“Please?” she asked, instilling her tone with what she hoped was just the right amount of pleading. “I’m out here all by myself for two weeks. I don’t want to lie awake nights worrying about the house burning down around me.”
Gage sighed. “Fine. Lead the way.”
“Great.” She beamed at him and moved down the hall, pushing open the door to the room where she was staying.
As he brushed past her, she once again shoved the bottle of Corona into his free hand. “Here, finish your beer before you start, though. You deserve it.”
Instead of following him inside as she probably should have, she slowly moved away. “I’ve got another one in the fridge. I’ll just go get it for you. Be right back.”
Sidestepping along the railing that ran the length of the up
stairs hallway with a too-bright, too-wide smile stretching her lips, she quickly spun around the banister and danced down the stairs… not breaking her neck, thank goodness, although there were a couple times when her feet slipped and she nearly took a header.
This wasn’t part of the plan, she knew. Grace would crown her if she knew Jenna was running away from the bedroom where she’d finally managed to corner Gage.
But she needed that beer, darn it. She needed Gage to drink it, and drink it fast.
If he didn’t… Well, if she couldn’t get it into him, then she’d just drink it herself and be done with this whole stress-inducing, blood pressure-raising, faint-worthy mess.
Knit 3
While Jenna was off God knew where doing God knew what, Gage touched the bottle of Corona to his lips and took a long swallow, wondering what Jenna was up to. It didn’t take a detective-which he just happened to be-to figure out that she was drunk off her ass, he just didn’t know why. Or what had apparently caused her to drunk-dial him after more than a year of no direct contact or one-on-one conversations between them.
He’d bet a month’s pay she was up to something.
Or maybe she wasn’t up to anything, but was simply nervous about having him around when they normally made a point of keeping Zack, Grace, Dylan, and Ronnie around as buffers.
But he still got the feeling there was more to it than that.
The minor bathroom issue that could have been resolved with a single twist of a wrist.
The sudden need to have a lamp looked at in her bedroom, when she could have just unplugged it and told her aunt she should have an electrician check over the house’s wiring when she got back.
The cold bottle of beer shoved into his hand the minute he walked through the door, and the second one she literally ran downstairs to retrieve.
That was the strangest thing of all. Even while they’d been married, he could count on one hand the number of times Jenna had greeted him at the door with a cold beer. Or brought him a beer at all, unless he’d asked her to.
If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect she was trying to get him drunk, too.
Of course, he shrugged off that thought as soon as it popped into his brain, because even Jenna could figure out that it would take a heck of a lot more than two beers to put him under the table. He was a big guy; two six-packs might not even have done it.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been three sheets to the wind, let alone flat-out, ass-on-the-ground drunk, but if it was going to happen, it would take something stronger than Corona.
Taking another pull from the bottle in his hand, he set his toolbox down beside the bed and flipped the switch to turn on the lamp Jenna had complained about. It came on smoothly, with no flickers or sizzles that might signal an electrical problem.
He shook his head and lowered himself to the corner of the bed, facing the doorway. Continuing to sip the beer that had no chance of making a dent in his blood-alcohol level, he listened to the sounds of Jenna moving around below.
The muted shuffle of her rapid steps as she crossed the floor. The smack of the refrigerator opening and closing. The echo of her moving back the way she’d come. He heard her bouncing up the stairs, heard her stumble and mutter a mild curse (because for Jenna, they were all mild) as her shin hit a runner, and knew the second she rounded the corner even before she reappeared at the door of the bedroom.
Then again, he had a feeling he’d have been able to sense her movements anywhere. Not only in a big, empty house, but in the middle of a crowded city street… a busy bar… an ear-splitting rock concert. Something about Jenna had always gotten to him on a level that didn’t necessarily require her presence. He smelled her, heard her, felt her, even before she walked into a room.
Living without her these past eighteen months had been a fun and inventive form of pure torture. He’d brought it on himself, he knew that. And he’d wished a thousand times, or maybe more, that he could go back and handle things differently.
But even if he had, it wouldn’t really have changed anything. They’d still have been in the same boat as when she’d filed for divorce in the first place.
So as much as he might have hated it, it was probably better that he’d been forced to move into a small, two-room apartment. A place where, even though Jenna had never set foot there, he still sometimes heard her or imagined her moving around.
He wasn’t crazy. His friends might have thought he was if he’d ever admitted to them just how much he missed his wife, but he figured it was no worse than an amputee who continued to feel their missing limb and think it was still there, even when it clearly wasn’t.
And that about summed up his relationship with Jenna perfectly. She’d been a part of him, a part he’d never wanted to live without, and when she’d left, it felt like she’d ripped his heart out and refused to return it to the big, gaping hole in the center of his chest.
Yeah. That was something he’d prefer no one-especially his best friends and his ex-wife-knew. He sounded like a damn Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Sappy. Broken. Pathetic.
Much more of this and he’d have to check his nads at the door.
Eyes locked on Jenna-and hers locked on him-he downed the rest of his beer.
No sooner had he set the bottle aside on the same nightstand as the lamp he was supposed to be fixing than Jenna was right there beside him, shoving a second bottle into his hand.
“Is there something I should know about this beer?” he asked her, eyeing the cold Corona quizzically. There was something going on here, getting fishier by the minute.
“No, why?” she replied just a little too quickly and with a little too much pitch to her tone.
He remained silent for a beat before shrugging a shoulder and raising the bottle to his mouth. “Just wondering.”
His throat flexed convulsively as he swallowed, taking in a full three-quarters of the fresh beer. He didn’t have a reason for taking so long to drink, except that it bought him some time to think, to contemplate what might be going on here, since he didn’t believe for a minute that she’d called him over just to help with a few random household tasks.
“So tell me again what the problem is with the lamp,” he said, setting the second bottle of beer next to the first and beginning to rise from the bed.
A wave of dizziness washed over him and his vision went from black to fuzzy to black again.
“Whoa.” Blinking in an effort to bring the room into focus, he stretched an arm out toward the carved oak headboard and slowly lowered himself back to the mattress.
“Gage? Are you all right?”
Jenna’s voice, filled with concern, came to him as if through a wind tunnel, hollow and reverberating. He lifted his head to glance at her only to have her face go all blurry and indistinct.
“I’m fine. I just-” He continued to blink, trying to shake off whatever had suddenly taken hold of him. His eyes were dry and tired, his tongue feeling about three sizes too large for his mouth, making it hard to talk. Not that it mattered much, considering his brain seemed to be having a difficult time putting two thoughts together.
“Why don’t you lie down,” Jenna offered.
She was beside him now, one arm around his back, helping to lower him to the mattress, the other pressing against his chest to make sure he went down.
“What did you do?” he thought he asked, though it might have come out as more of a slur.
“Nothing, you’re just tired. Lie back and go to sleep.”
But he wasn’t tired. Or he hadn’t been when he’d gotten here. He’d been wide awake-or darn near-after her phone call woke him from a dead sleep. How could he be tired again already? Unless…?
It was right there, on the tip of his tongue. The reason he was so groggy all of a sudden, the reason he felt like he needed a nap and might not have much say in whether he took one or not.
But then it was gone as his grogginess grew. It didn’t help, either, that Jenna was sitting on t
he bed beside him, her hip pressed against his, her fingers brushing lightly through his short hair and over his scalp in a soothing motion that was growing hard to resist.
He let his eyes drift closed, let her lull him in a way she hadn’t since they were first married. When they were still crazy in love, and before he’d fucked it all up.
Gage couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been this happy, this content.
Then again, what sane man wouldn’t be?
The way he figured it, things didn’t get much better than this. Waves lapping just outside the room. The warm island breeze blowing through the open balcony door. And the most beautiful woman in the world tucked securely at his side, her slim, sleek body rubbing sensuously against his own.
Oh, yeah, this was the life. If he’d known it could be this good, he’d have swept Jenna away to the Caribbean long before now. As it was, he was beginning to wonder if there was any way to stretch out their two-week honeymoon and stick around St. Thomas and its surrounding islands for the next… oh, fifty years or so sounded good to him.
The short, spiky strands of Jenna’s dark hair tickled his bare shoulder as she began to stir. Her leg, hitched over his own, bent and slid up his thigh until her knee came dangerously close to unmanning him. Instead of disturbing him, though, the soft brush of skin on skin heated his blood and generated thoughts of making love to her, even though it hadn’t been that long since their last passionate encounter.
Not that it mattered. He’d realized almost from the moment they’d met that he couldn’t get enough of her. He could still be inside her, limp and wrung out from one of the earth-shattering climaxes he always found in her body, and want her again. Find himself growing hard again.
He was one lucky son of a bitch.
And he knew it. Knew there wasn’t another woman on the planet who could set him ablaze the way Jenna Langan-now Marshall, thank God in heaven-did. Knew no other woman would ever match him as well. It sounded hokey, but she was like his other half, seeping in and filling all the holes in his spirit that had been empty and cold before she’d come along.
