“I want you to let go of the guilt, for starters.”
“Leave it, Tanya.”
“I can’t, Jen. I’m going to lose you if I do. And you’re going to lose, too.”
Jennifer sat back down, her head in her hands. “I can’t do this again.”
“You haven’t done it yet. That’s my point. All these years, I’ve thought you handled everything so well, but instead, what you’ve been doing is beating yourself up every year on her birthday until you’re crazy with pain, and then you run from it the rest of year.”
Jennifer couldn’t breathe. “You’ve deduced all this because I’m not happy you’re pregnant?” Jennifer couldn’t believe how awful those last five words sounded.
“No!” Tanya rubbed the slight mound of her belly as if apologizing to her baby for Jennifer’s horrible words. “But when you started avoiding me, it got me thinking about a lot of things. Made me see them in a different way.”
“What things?”
“Look at how you are around children, Jen. Or, rather, how you’re not around them. You avoid them like the plague. At last year’s Christmas party you even arranged it so they’d be in a different room altogether.”
“I hired a Santa, Tanya! He had gifts for every one of those children. Can you imagine what a ruckus there’d have been if they’d been in the same ballroom as several hundred adults?” She went over to the wet bar and poured Tanya a glass of the sparkling water she always kept on hand for her.
“It might have been fun. There’s nothing like seeing that glow in children’s eyes when they’re opening presents from Santa. Besides, that doesn’t explain your refusal to speak to all those eighth graders at that young businessmen’s convention last fall, or your insistence that we shop during school hours. And what about that time they wanted you to appear at the children’s home to raise money for the new roof? You bought the damn roof yourself so you wouldn’t have to go.”
“I’m just not good with children, Tanya,” she said, handing Tanya the glass.
“Baloney.”
“I’m not. They make me nervous. I don’t know, maybe I get it from my parents, but I always feel uncomfortable when I’m around kids.”
“Maybe it’s because you can’t look at them without remembering, without all the old guilt coming back, and that makes you feel unworthy all over again. I don’t think it’s the children who make you uncomfortable, Jen. I think it’s the relapse into low selfesteem that does that.”
“Since when did you get your degree in psychology?” Jennifer asked, going back to pour herself a glass of wine. Her hands were shaking and some of the wine spilled over the rim of her glass.
“I love you, Jen. I think that counts more than a degree.”
Jennifer couldn’t continue to fight Tanya. She knew her friend well. Tanya had a stubborn streak the size of Georgia when she believed she was right. And Jennifer had a feeling Tanya was right this time. She took her wine over to the couch, needing to sit. Her legs were shaky, too.
“What do you want from me, Tanya?” she asked softly, meeting her friend’s concerned gaze.
“I want you to forgive yourself for giving away your baby. I want you to let yourself grieve for your loss.”
“Oh, I grieve, Tanya. More than I realized.”
Tanya shook her head. “You don’t grieve, honey. You just hurt. Grieving means letting go.”
Jennifer couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. They welled in her eyes and rolled slowly down her face. “I wish it were that easy, Tan. But maybe it isn’t possible to have a baby and then just let go.” Jennifer felt alien saying the words. She hadn’t talked about her daughter since the baby’s first birthday when she’d poured out her soul to Tanya. But maybe Tanya was right. Maybe she hadn’t recovered from that time in her life as she’d thought she had. She should be feeling happy for her friends’ upcoming parenthood. So maybe, as Tanya said, it was time to take a close look at herself, come to terms with her past.
And suddenly, as the walls she’d built so many years before came tumbling down, Jennifer was swamped with emotions, with thoughts, she hadn’t dared let herself acknowledge. And every one of them hurt.
“I never said it was easy, Jen.” Tanya’s voice brought Jennifer back up from the abyss. She’d forgotten, for a moment, that her friend was even there in the room. “But I’m afraid you’re never going to get on with your life if you don’t let her go.”
Jennifer saw the love in Tanya’s eyes, and it gave her the strength to continue into territory she’d thought never to visit again. “It doesn’t seem right that I turn my back on my firstborn and then go blissfully on with my life.”
Tanya grabbed a tissue from an end table and sat down beside Jennifer. “You didn’t turn your back on her, honey. You gave her a shot at a much better life than you could have provided for her.”
Jennifer sniffed, her tears still streaming down her face.
“Oh, Jen,” Tanya said, holding Jennifer the way she had that day so many years ago.
Jennifer cried until she didn’t have any tears left, leaning on Tanya, needing her friend’s strength. Tanya continued to hold her, murmuring soothing words. At last Jennifer sat back on the couch, her mind clouded by the anguish she’d kept bottled up inside.
“You know, there’re places you can go now, places you can register yourself as her mother in case she’s looking for you.” Tanya’s soft words broke the silence. “There are even ways you can find out where and how she is.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Jennifer said, her voice still thick with tears. “During those first years, I drove myself crazy thinking about finding her. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve stopped in a crowd because I saw a child who looked her age and had my color hair?”
“Then why haven’t you registered? What could it hurt?”
“I promised I wouldn’t.” But until that moment, Jennifer hadn’t even realized she still put any stock in that childish promise. She had at first, of course, during those early difficult years. But she was an adult now. She hadn’t thought of those hospital-bed promises in years.
Tanya frowned. “Promised who?”
“I don’t know. God maybe. Or myself. I promised I wouldn’t look for her, and I wouldn’t ever let anything or anyone ever take her place in my heart, if only she could have a happy life.” She’d promised something else, too. She’d promised never to make love again. But surely she wasn’t still holding herself to that vow, was she? The reason she hadn’t been with another man was simply that she hadn’t had the time to develop a close enough relationship.
“When, Jen? When did you promise that?”
“The night before they took my baby away. A nurse brought her in to me.” If she closed her eyes, Jennifer could still feel the softness of her daughter’s skin, still smell that new-baby smell. “I held her.” Her words were barely a whisper, but they conveyed twelve years’ worth of anguish.
“Oh, Jen,” Tanya said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry. But surely you haven’t been holding yourself to a promise made under those conditions. You were only a child!”
“I know. And it’s not like I’ve even thought about that old vow for years, but I thought about it a lot those first few years, and I guess upholding it just became habit.”
She drew a shaky breath. “Besides, in my heart, I know I don’t have the right to hunt her down. If she does have a happy life, if her family is everything I chose not to be, it would be cruel for me to breeze in now and stake my claim to her. She may not even know she’s adopted. And what if she hates me for what I did? Or worse yet, what if I’m like my mother? What if I’m just not good with kids? With her?”
Tanya wiped away her tears. “You need to quit worrying about that right now, Jen. You’re too good with people not to be good with kids. After all, they’re just miniature adults with a huge dose of innocence thrown in. All you need to relate to kids is some compassion, and you’re one of the most compass
ionate people I know.”
Jennifer smiled through her tears. “What about that time Ralph Goodwin brought his kid to the Teal corporate offices and then got tied up with the accountant for over an hour? Rachel went home sick and I got stuck with the child. He must’ve told me ten times he hates me. He even stuck his tongue out at me.”
Tanya laughed. “He was a brat, Jen. He stuck his tongue out at everybody.”
“Okay,” Jennifer conceded, serious again. “But how about that time here in the building when the electricity went out and I was in the elevator with that little girl who lived downstairs? She huddled in the corner the whole time and acted like I was the big bad wolf, ready to eat her at any second. That had to be the longest two hours of my life.”
“She was scared. She wanted her mother. It wasn’t anything you did.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“You’ll see. You’ll have your chance. Just as soon as junior’s born.”
Jennifer didn’t think so. She’d always been afraid of being like her parents, unable to relate to children, but she’d been pretty sure of it that night in the elevator. She’d been unable to reach that little girl, unable to offer any comfort. And there hadn’t been a single instance since then that had proved her wrong.
But Tanya was right about one thing: it was time to stop running. She’d had no idea she’d let herself get so out of whack over the years, and wondered if that vow she’d made as a child had had other far-reaching effects. Maybe it, and not lack of time, had stood in the way of her ever developing a lasting relationship with a man. She didn’t know, but it was a possibility she was going to have to face, and she would, just as soon as her One Price policy was up and flying. And until then, no matter how painful she might find the next several months, she was going to be there every step of the way for her friends, just as they’d always been there for her.
Tanya broke gently into the silence that had fallen. “Even if you don’t search for your daughter,” she said, “you can still register yourself as her birth mother.”
The prospect was exhilarating and frightening at once. What if her daughter needed her? But what if she failed her daughter? “Maybe.”
“Just maybe?”
Jennifer thought of Bryan. Of the commercials he wanted her to do. “I don’t know. You may not think I’m a failure around kids, but I’m not so sure. I never know what to say to them.”
But if the lines are written for me, if they’re rehearsed, if I know in advance what the children are going to say…
“At least think about it, Jen. Don’t be so ready to condemn yourself.”
“Maybe…”
The two sat silently for a couple of minutes, absorbing the peace of the penthouse. And then Tanya got up to retrieve her glass and sit back down on the other couch.
“Now that that’s out of the way, tell me about this gorgeous hunk you’ve been seeing,” she said, typical Tanya-style.
“I’m not seeing him. We’re just friends. And you can tell your husband that his big mouth is going to get him into serious trouble if he doesn’t watch it,” Jennifer replied, feeling more like herself again.
Tanya grinned. “Oh, my! I didn’t realize this Bryan guy was such a big deal. There may be hope for you yet.”
Jennifer threw a pillow at her friend, hitting her square in the face.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Tanya said, laughing as she jumped up with the glass she’d been holding. “You’ve spilled water all over your pretty white couch.”
Jennifer stood up, too. “Either come help me answer some charity letters or go home, Tanya. I have work to do.”
“But what about the couch?” Tanya asked.
“It’ll dry.”
Tanya answered more than thirty letters, including checks from Jennifer in each, before she finally went home. She didn’t mention Bryan or the baby again.
JENNIFER WAS BUSY all weekend, working both at home and at the office, visiting a couple of her dealerships as she usually did on weekends and holidays so her people knew that while she expected them to work the off-hours, she wasn’t asking anything of them she didn’t do herself. She attended a Hawks game on Saturday night with her finance managers and their spouses, and an art exhibit with Tanya on Sunday. And afterward, she had dinner with Dennis and Tanya at their home in Snellville, just west of Atlanta.
She saw the nursery her friends were setting up, picked up a tiny white T-shirt and cried all the way home. But at least she was no longer running.
She didn’t hear from Bryan all weekend.
But he called her first thing Monday morning, before she’d even had a chance to pour herself a cup of coffee. “Did you read them?” His voice was wonderfully familiar and exciting at the same time.
“Don’t you ever say hello?”
“Hello, did you read the scripts?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They’re good.”
“And?”
He sure didn’t make anything easy. “I want your word that I have the final say on anything that’s aired, and that you’ll destroy any tapes I don’t approve of.”
“So, you’re going to do them.” The approval she heard in his voice almost made the rough weekend she’d spent fighting with herself over her decision worthwhile.
“On a couple of conditions.”
“Which are?”
“You’ll be there for the filming of each and every one of them.”
“Of course.”
“And if I say stop, we stop.”
“You’re the boss. How soon can you clear a couple of days to get it done?”
She looked at her calendar. Friday—The Day—was blank. She was hoping to spend it with Bryan—but not working. It was going to be hard enough just to get through those hours.
“Is next Monday soon enough?”
“Monday’s good. Calvin’ll be back by then to hold down the fort here, and it’ll be easier for me to spend a few days away from this place. It’ll also give me time to find the kids. I’ll let you know the details later in the week.”
“So I won’t see you before then?” she asked. She couldn’t come right out and ask him for a date on Friday. Just like she hadn’t been able to look up his home phone number and call him over the weekend, no matter how badly she’d wanted to. She might be a nineties woman, she might live in a man’s world, but she’d been labeled “easy” once. It wasn’t going to happen again.
“Would you like to?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do to juggle things here.”
Jennifer pulled out the tickets she had. They weren’t for Friday, but she’d told him she’d let him know if she heard of a concert more in his style. She wasn’t asking for a date, merely doing a favor for a friend.
“Boston’s playing at Fulton County Stadium on Wednesday night. Somebody gave me a couple of tickets.” Someone had. The girl she’d bought them from at the ticket outlet where she’d stood in line on Saturday.
“Boston. Quite a band. Now that brings back some memories.”
“I don’t know about blankets in the grass, but it’ll be outdoors and blue jeans.”
“Just my style. Okay, lady, you’ve got yourself a date. What time’s the concert?”
“Eight.”
“Then how about if I come for you at five and we can stop someplace for dinner on the way?”
“I’d like that,” Jennifer said, feeling better than she had in weeks, years maybe.
Just two more days until she saw him again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRYAN WANTED TO KICK himself for agreeing to go to the concert. He could have gotten out of it easily. He could have simply told her he was busy all week with Calvin out of town. She’d have understood. And he would have told her that if she hadn’t agreed to do the commercials, if she hadn’t given him another spurt of hope.
But he still should have turned her down. Because the concert w
as a date. Pure and simple. He had a date with the most beautiful woman he’d known in a long time, a woman he’d been fantasizing about since he’d spoken to her in that art gallery all those weeks ago, the first woman he’d seen more than three times without getting bored. Nicki’s mother. A woman who was off-limits.
A woman who might very well hate him when she found out he’d been seeing her as a means to his own ends. One thing he’d learned over the past weeks with her was that she didn’t trust lightly. But she trusted him. She was opening up to him in ways she apparently hadn’t done with a man in a long time. And he was breaching that trust at the same time he was encouraging her to open up more.
But what choice did he have? Nicki had had another nightmare over the weekend. He’d figured the recurrence was probably due to her upcoming birthday, but that didn’t make it any less painful—for either of them. He wasn’t sure how much more his niece could take. He wasn’t sure how fair he was being to her by having the information she wanted more than anything else and not giving it to her.
And yet, could he risk the chance that Jennifer might reject her? Could he risk Nicki’s falling apart on him completely? Bryan didn’t have any answers, but he knew one thing: he was living on borrowed time.
THANK GOD it wasn’t blankets on the grass. Bryan didn’t think he’d have been able to keep his hands off her if they were lying down. As it was, he was having as hard a time keeping his mind on the show as he had at the symphony. And Boston was one of his all-time favorite rock bands.
But Jennifer was wearing one of those short shirts Nicki had wanted, minus the daisy. The tanned strip of bare waistline only inches away from him was sheer torment. Her hair was up as usual, but a few tendrils had escaped and brushed his arm every time she turned her head.
The chords from the beginning of “More Than a Feeling” blared out across the stadium, and Bryan felt the familiar rush of adrenaline he always got when he heard the song. He sat forward to watch the lead guitarist, his hand dropping to the arm of his seat.
But it didn’t land on the arm of the chair. It landed on Jennifer’s hand. And before Bryan’s lust-fogged brain could demand that he remove his hand immediately, Jennifer’s fingers curled around his.
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