Oh, she loved him. She just hadn’t known it was possible to fall in love without even realizing it.
“You are now bound to each other for life,” Pilgrim Hai intoned. “May your union be fruitful and blessed, and may you weather the storms that you will face.” He stepped back and gestured at both of them. Jimmy nearly leaped forward and swept Jenna into his arms again.
“My tigress,” he murmured, as he pulled her close and kissed her neck. “My wife!”
*
In the morning, Jenna could hardly stop smiling. As she watched Pilgrim Hai perform the final binding ceremony between Casey and Jo, she wanted to shout the news to the world. But she contented herself with merely exchanging meaningful glances with Jimmy while Casey and Jo made the same vows that they had made to each other only the evening before. Late last night, while Jenna had snuggled in Jimmy’s arms, she had explained her plan to keep their marriage a secret long enough to get through the West project. “Besides,” she had added, a little more somberly, “I really don’t think Zane will take the news so well. Better if I can just stay away from Marah and hopefully weaken any attachment he has to me before I tell him I’ve fallen in love with his friend.”
“And married his friend,” Jimmy added, a tone of supreme satisfaction in his voice.
“Yes, that too,” Jenna said with a smile.
They agreed that Lilah would have to be let in on the secret, though. “She’s fantastic with secrets,” Jenna explained. “She’ll think it’s a grand adventure, and part of her will love tricking Mr. Quintan.” It was the only way if they were going to spend a significant amount of time together. Fortunately, they were all still living in Quintan Tower.
Jenna’s first test of her plan had been when she had to drag herself out of Jimmy’s arms so she could head back to her own hotel room during the early hours of the morning. It was so hard to leave. She wanted to just throw it all to the wind and let everyone know, as long as she could sleep a little longer with her body nestled next to Jimmy’s. But she forced herself to get up, ignoring Jimmy’s mumbled protests. If her mother found out, she would stage a huge wedding celebration, no matter if the wedding had already taken place here in Symphoria. It was one thing that her mother wouldn’t be able to resist. That would be a disaster. There was no way that they would keep it a secret from Jenna’s boss or the Quintans in that situation, and Jenna would have been out of a job before she could even try to explain. She held her breath as she waved her card key at the door. It whooshed open silently, and Jenna crept into the room. Her mother was still asleep, and she didn’t even stir. With a huge sigh of relief, Jenna slipped into her bed without bothering to change out of her dress. Luckily, she got a couple of hours of sleep before her mother woke her, and her general tiredness was met without suspicion. Her mother automatically assumed she’d had a very late night at the club with Jo’s group.
The binding ceremony finished without any interruptions at all. Jo wore a traditional bridal dress, and Casey was back in his dress uniform. Jenna had gotten a good look at Margharita Morten and her husband—Casey’s grandparents had not looked especially thrilled, but they had not interfered in the ceremony. Or maybe Casey’s grandmother had made good on her threat to speak to Pilgrim Hai, but he had not considered her objections worth preventing the wedding. Jenna was so filled with her own happiness that she couldn’t help beaming at both Casey and Jo when she wished them joy in their new adventure. Hopefully, they would be every bit as happy as she and Jimmy.
Through the final reception and the trip back to the shuttleport, Jenna did her best to try and act casual so her mother wouldn’t suspect anything. But when her mother’s eyes kept darting back and forth between Jenna and Jimmy, Jenna knew her mother suspected something.
And she didn’t disapprove.
Jenna couldn’t wait until the next five months passed and the QE West project was finished. If they could just get through that without any major problems, she just knew everything else would work out. For once, she would get her way in everything—a man she loved and the career she had dreamed about.
14. Secrets
Jimmy wasn’t surprised that Jenna wanted to keep their marriage a secret. However, it was so hard to stay silent about it. He wanted to share with everyone why he glowed with happiness, why he was the luckiest man alive, why getting shipped from Terra to Zenith was the greatest thing that ever happened to him.
He still hadn’t even met Jenna’s father. He wondered if Jenna’s mother would approve, but she’d seemed to like him well enough in Symphoria. Plenty of time for that in the future, though. Jenna wanted to take a trip out to Dos Cientos as soon as the West project was finished and then officially tell her parents the news. A trip to Terra to meet his own family could follow as soon as Jenna could take enough time off work. If she could manage to take time off work. If Jimmy could manage to leave Jax.
Maybe the trip to Terra would have to wait a little while longer. He held her hand as she dozed on his shoulder the whole shuttle trip from Dos Cientos back to Omphalos and tried to plan out a future after the West project. He grimaced at the thought of asking his father for a real job to do, but he could hardly just play around all day in the QE. It was time to grow up. He made silent promises to himself and to her that he would become the kind of husband she deserved.
Back in Omphalos they finally confronted the cold hard fact that if they were going to keep their marriage secret, they were going to have to separate. Jimmy helped her lug her bag into her apartment in Quintan Tower, and they both stood in the entryway looking at each other helplessly. Jimmy ached for her already. Their one night together in Symphoria had been nothing short of magical, and he didn’t want to give that up already. But if they moved in together, that would kind of defeat the purpose of keeping Carter and Quintan both in the dark.
Luckily, Zane was still in Marah. Jimmy didn’t think he could stand to watch Zane try to regain Jenna’s affection. He felt a twinge of guilt. Zane was his friend, and it was kind of despicable to cut him out like this without even letting him know. But as he stared into Jenna’s eyes, he didn’t care. All that mattered was that Jenna was his for the rest of their lives.
“What are you thinking about?” Jenna asked shyly, taking both his hands.
“I’m thinking that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” Jimmy answered quietly, leaning forward and kissing her gently on the lips.
“You’re just saying that because you’re stuck with me now,” Jenna rebutted playfully.
“Yep,” agreed Jimmy. Then he abandoned talking altogether and kissed her more enthusiastically. She responded eagerly, and some time later he surfaced back to reality as they lay on the couch together, her head resting on his bare chest as he played with her golden hair.
“I love you, Jimmy Forrest,” Jenna murmured quietly.
“Love you more,” Jimmy returned fervently.
Suddenly the door chimed and slid open. Lilah strode into the room before they even had a chance to try and sit up. She stopped in shock just inside the door, her gaze sweeping the two of them on the couch and no doubt coming to all the wrong conclusions. Well, not totally wrong conclusions, but maybe jumping to partially wrong conclusions.
Finally, she unfroze enough to move so the door could slide shut.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised by this,” Lilah noted as she leaned back against the doorframe. “Was it too much to ask for you guys to take it to your room, though, Jenna?”
Jenna blushed pink. She was even prettier when she blushed. Had Jimmy ever seen her blush? Maybe not. Man, he wanted to kiss her. Even with Lilah standing here. But Jenna looked acutely uncomfortable being discovered like this by her roommate, so he decided to forgo claiming another kiss and draw all the fire to himself.
“It’s not my fault, Lilah,” he protested. “Jenna is a modern-day siren, and she lured me to her home la
ir. Once I was here, she sang her mystical song, and the next thing I knew I woke up on this couch. The minute you walked in the door you broke the spell!”
Lilah tried to keep a straight face. She managed a stern look for about two seconds, and then both girls broke into giggles. Jimmy used their distraction to snatch his shirt off the floor next to the couch and pull it over his head.
“You are so full of it, Jimmy. Honestly, if anyone is the siren, it’s you. Jenna had too much common sense before you came into her life and corrupted her.”
Jenna shook her head, giggling helplessly. She still hadn’t managed one word to her roommate. So Jimmy figured it was up to him to drop the real bombshell.
“Watch it, Lilah. That’s my wife you’re calling corrupted,” he announced.
Lilah’s laughter stopped as suddenly as if she had been switched off. Jimmy grinned. Jenna swiped at him playfully. “Way to break the news, Jimmy. Now Lilah’s going to faint on us.”
Lilah gasped. “It’s true?” she exclaimed. “Oh stars above! That’s what you were doing this weekend? Getting married? I thought you were going to the wedding of a friend,” she accused, pointing at Jenna, “not running off to get married yourself! You could have told me!” Jenna sat up straighter, trying to readjust her clothing. Her hair looked a bit wild; Jimmy’s playing with it had left it sticking out in odd directions. He tried to smooth it down for her, but it didn’t help. She swatted his hand away.
Lilah was still waiting for an answer, her hands on her hips.
“Well . . .” Jenna hesitated, “we didn’t exactly plan it ahead of time. We did go to a friend’s wedding, but Symphoria was just such a romantic place and . . .”
“And your hormones got the best of you,” finished Lilah.
“Yep!” Jimmy said at the same time Jenna retorted indignantly, “Of course not!”
Lilah merely raised her eyebrows. “I take it you have yet to tell Zane the news,” she said.
Once again, Jimmy decided to be noble. “I’m going to be the one to do it. But it’s better if we wait until he gets back to Omphalos, so when he shoots me there’s close enough emergency care to save my life.”
“Well, that’s a nice thought,” Lilah observed, “but you know his father will comm him with the news right away. Although he’ll still be half a continent away, so you should be safe from harm, at least if Mr. Quintan doesn’t line us all up and shoot us on Zane’s behalf.”
Finally Jenna spoke. “Well, that’s why we’re going to keep it a secret. At least for now,” she rushed on, noticing the stony look on Lilah’s face. “When Quintan West is finished and Zane comes back, we’ll tell everyone.”
“That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, Mrs. Forrest,” Lilah lectured sternly. “Dumber than eloping on the spur of the moment, even though anyone with eyes could see that you two have been head over heels for each other since you met. Whatever nastiness you’re hoping to avoid by keeping it a secret will only be ten times worse next year, if you can manage to keep the secret that long. And if you can’t keep the secret that long, what then? You’ve made things even worse!”
Jimmy had to admit that Lilah’s assessment of the situation made an awful lot of sense. Of course, she didn’t know that Jenna would lose her job if either Zane or Mr. Quintan even hinted to Carter & Yen that they were unhappy with Jenna. Jimmy didn’t see why they would—Jenna was a fantastic architect, so why wouldn’t Carter & Yen want to keep her just for her talent?—but Jenna flat-out refused to see reason. Jimmy knew straight out that the “keep it secret” stipulation had been the only reason that Jenna had the courage to marry him this weekend. She was certain that her dream would be over if news of the marriage filtered into the wrong ears.
Right or wrong, she was his wife, and he would stand by her. Even if she insisted on keeping everything a secret.
“Please, Lilah?” pleaded Jenna. “Just trust me on this? It’s only for a few more months.”
“Oh, all right,” grumbled Lilah. “But no more conjugal displays on the couch, please? Get a room—preferably Jimmy’s, since he has his own apartment!”
*
Once they had Lilah on their side, they found a way to work their relationship into a new routine. Jenna still officially lived with Lilah, as far as anyone knew. But most nights she spent with Jimmy in his apartment two floors below hers, and she headed back up to her place in the morning to get ready for work. Jenna was paranoid that some of their neighbors would notice her regular visits, but it helped that most of their floors’ occupants were employees of the QE, and they worked the longest, most random shifts known to humankind. Nobody had the same regular schedule as Jenna, so even though she occasionally ran into a neighbor, nobody saw her often enough to really put two and two together.
Jimmy still met regularly with Mr. Quintan’s engineering team. The design for the local gate was going forward, fortunately. Occasionally, another design snag would show up, but the prototype was almost working, and there was a good chance that they would have the thing in place and operational by the time QE West was finished, so Mr. Quintan was in a fairly good mood. He didn’t at all seem to notice that Jimmy spent a lot of time with Jenna. In fact, with Zane off in Marah and well on his way to being fully recovered from his nanospeed addiction, Mr. Quintan didn’t seem to have a potential match between Jenna and Zane on his mind at all.
Except one day, Mr. Quintan held Jimmy back after a staff meeting. “My daughters are coming in from Terra tonight, and I’m planning to take the girls out for the day. Would you like to join us? You haven’t seen them for quite a while. I’ve also invited Jenna Donnell so she can get to know the whole family.” Jimmy assented casually and then spent the rest of the day ruminating about Quintan’s resurgent interest in pairing Jenna with Zane. He obviously wasn’t inviting Jenna hoping that she would get to know Jimmy better.
And why hadn’t Jenna told him about the invitation herself?
That night Jimmy and Jenna had dinner together in her apartment. Lilah was working, and they both felt the need to spend some casual time together doing something any normal married couple would do. Jimmy let Jenna cook—it was her apartment after all—but after watching her struggle to figure out how to program the oven, he decided that next time he’d invite her downstairs and do the cooking himself.
“Didn’t your parents teach you how to cook?” he asked in amusement when their egg masala loaf finally turned out charred on the outside and gooey on the inside (from an already prepared box version, no less).
“No, they weren’t big on teaching us much in the way of domestic skills,” Jenna admitted while she dug through their cooler looking for something else. She finally placed a container of cold bean salad on the table and grabbed some rolls to go with it. “When I was young, both my parents worked so much that we had a housekeeper who took care of a lot of it. Then when I was older, my parents were too messed up after my brother’s death to worry about making sure I could cook.” It was the first time since that one night months ago that Jenna had ever mentioned her brother.
“What was his name again?” asked Jimmy, spearing a bean and popping it in his mouth. It actually wasn’t half bad. He wondered if she had gotten it takeout from a café and tried not to smile. It was funny to find something that he could do better than Jenna.
“Erik,” Jenna answered, slumping down next to him at the table. “It’s so weird: my brother would have been eighteen this year if he were still alive. Probably attending the university.”
“Do you still miss him?” Jimmy asked, taking her free hand with his as they both continued to eat.
“I do, but it’s not too bad. He’s been gone nine years, you know? I’ve forgotten so much about him. I remember some things, but when I try to remember how he sounded when he talked, or what he liked to do for fun, or what his best subject in school was . . . I just can’t remember anymore. I feel ba
d about that. But still, wherever my brother is, I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to be unhappy.”
Jimmy was thoughtful, considering her words. Then he made an observation. “It’s not the same with your sister though, is it? Is it just because not enough time has passed, do you think?”
“Partly. But partly it’s because with Andie, nothing is really over, you know? My mom still insists she’s alive. My father privately disagrees but allows my mom to live in this fantasy world. She’s still trying to organize search parties in the jungle. As if for two years my sister has just been lost, living off of tree grubs and berries, and if we just look hard enough we’ll find her. I can’t let her go. I thought I had. That was the point of that night by the river, but what if my mom’s right? What if I’m just giving up, and Andie is out there somewhere, and she needs our help? What if my subconscious doesn’t want to find her because Andie always ruined everything before? I feel so guilty for that, but I hated my sister for ages. Maybe I’m the cause of all this.”
She gulped. “Or maybe it’s just because our family is cursed.”
Jimmy cocked his head, putting his fork down on his empty plate. “A curse?” he repeated curiously. Jenna had vaguely mentioned a curse before, but he’d always thought she was joking. But now it sounded like she was truly serious about it.
“I know, it sounds ridiculous,” Jenna began, almost apologetically. “But I overheard my mother talking about it once, and it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Just because both your brother and your sister died young?” Jimmy said, trying hard to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He really wanted to know what she thought, but lots of people lived through tragedy. Was there a living human who wouldn’t have something awful happen at one point? It didn’t mean that they were cursed.
The Quintan Edge (Roran Curse Book 2) Page 16
