by Aria Ford
“We’re very grateful for your collaboration, Howard.”
That was my father’s voice breaking through my reverie—and he was speaking to the man on his right—a well-built, glossy-haired fifty-year-old in an impeccable business suit. Nevertheless, he was looking at me. I frowned, trying to bring my mind back to the present. Had I missed something? Probably.
It was months since I’d seen Jackie, and I really thought I’d forgotten, but today, more than ever, she was back in my mind. I had been watching the evening sky, lost in thoughts and memories of her.
“Yes,” I murmured. “It’s good to see eye-to-eye.”
The man laughed. I seemed to guess the right thing to say. Which was good. This was not a man I wanted to offend. Father would never forgive me.
He was my father’s main competitor and recently, through considerable effort and entertaining bills that would even have turned my dad’s hair white—not that it could turn whiter—we’d won him round. He had agreed to cede the field of short distance trucking to us, in exchange for partnership in our new shipping venture. It was an occasion worth celebrating.
In fact, we were celebrating, I reminded myself. Which was why I found myself in a suit sitting at the rooftop restaurant on a summer evening, with the sound of clinking glasses and muted conversation in my ears, the scent of spice and perfume in my nose.
Perfume. Alexa.
I turned to my right, where Alexa Jones sat. The daughter of Howard; in fact, his only child, Alexa was elegant, refined and pretty in a cool, indifferent way. She could have been a magazine come to life, from the tips of red-painted nails to her immaculate hair. She was also as quiet as if she were the cover of a magazine.
“Enjoying the salad?” I asked politely.
“Mm,” she nodded coolly. She lifted a glass of sparkling wine and sipped it indifferently, her vermillion-bright lipstick leaving a tiny smudge on the edge. Under normal circumstances, I would have felt my loins tense at that. Weirdly, nothing happened.
But then, it wasn’t so weird. Not only had something happened inside me that left me searching in every face for the soft, gentle lines of Jackie Jefferson. Dad was putting pressure on me and Alexa.
He wanted me to marry her.
“You read the latest book by Stiglitz?”
“Yes,” I nodded. I had, a bit. Mr. Jones looked surprised by my answer. I could almost hear the machinery in his head ranking me up a level. Man can read books. Ten points.
I shuddered and reached for my water. I wasn’t drinking—since my playboy days I avoided drink when I could, afraid to kick-start another cycle of madness in my life. Mr. Jones frowned.
“You going to have some of this Champagne?”
I moved my head to one side, a small shake. “Pass, thanks.”
Raised brows. In Mr. Jones’ world, apparently not drinking was anathema. The machinery ratcheted and I moved down a level. Alexa coughed delicately beside me.
“You went to Hawaii for your holiday this year?”
“I did,” I nodded. “It was nice. You enjoy Hawaii?”
“Oh yes,” she smiled, inclining her pretty head in a dainty nod. “I do.”
“Alexa likes to water ski,” her father put in encouragingly. If she was embarrassed by the paternal intervention, she gave no sign. Just looked at her hands and giggled prettily. I found myself feeling sorry for her.
What would it be like to be a caged bird? To have everything, even your likes and dislikes, in the common domain as Alexa seemed to? She wasn’t free to make any choices of her own: she even had someone’s hand so firmly on your future that she didn’t even get to decide who to marry.
I shuddered again. I was largely in the same situation, though the bars were less obvious. My father wouldn’t have actually stooped to making conversation on my behalf, but he was nonetheless pushing me along, trying to make me do as he wished. And he wanted Alexa for me. He had said so.
Make her like you, son. I expect great things…having Jones on our side will make us golden. You know that and I do. So make a good impression. We need an alliance—I’m counting on you.
Anyone else saying that would have been being obscure. Knowing my father, it was as good as an edict from the highest lawmaker that I had to marry Alexa. He needed it of me.
“I tried to water ski once,” I said to her with a grin, trying to make conversation. “It didn’t work out too well.”
As it had happened, I had been so drunk as to be incapable of an upright posture on land, never mind at speed on the surface of the water. The experience was one I was lucky to survive. It made me question my friends and the breadth of their friendship. I could have died and all they would have done was cheer me on as they pretended to cheer all my actions, no matter how ill-advised.
She snorted. “It’s easy,” she said lightly. “Maybe you just weren’t shown how.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said nothing. Just lifted my glass and drank some water and looked out over the magnificent view and the sun sinking slowly across the way.
“Alexa, you should tell Scott about your first skiing lesson.”
Alexa colored. “Oh, Dad. I couldn’t possibly tell him that!”
As Mr. Jones proceeded to tell the story, I watched Alexa swallow her discomfort and giggle along with the rest of us. My father raised a brow at me across the table, as if to say, “this is going well, isn’t it?”
I looked at my plate. The remains of an inordinately expensive dinner looked back at me. I wished myself away from this moment, away from this place.
“Right,” my father said. “I think dessert is coming shortly, so while we’ve got the champagne to hand, I want to make a final toast. To us. The future. Our strong ties strengthening.”
“To the future!” Mr. Jones was enthusiastic. As we all murmured, “the future,” and clinked glasses politely, I found myself wishing I could get up and walk away. I also found my mind straying, as it had been all that day, to the woman I had shared a bed with months ago.
I wonder what Jackie would think of all this? I tried to imagine where she was right now, what she might be doing. It was around nine in the evening, on a Saturday. What did she do on Saturday evenings? What had she cooked for supper? Or had she gone out for a meal, maybe with a new guy, someone who would make her smile the way she had that night beside me?
I didn’t want to imagine her out with another guy, so I abruptly cut off those thoughts, surprising myself. I had slept with her once. It shouldn’t matter to me if she had fifty guys between me and now. I didn’t even know how long it had been since I saw her, though I guessed I could have counted it up.
“Scott?”
“Yes?” I looked up into the brown eyes of Alexa, thick lashes fringing them beautifully. She was lovely, I had to admit. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t simulate some kind of feeling for her. I just couldn’t.
“I wanted to ask you about your travels,” she said. “My father mentioned you were in Singapore last year?”
“I was,” I nodded. “It’s a great place.” I had found it inspiring: clean, technological, organized.
“I don’t know how you do all this traveling,” she said and her lip wrinkled in distaste. “Foreign countries are so…foreign.” she sounded scandalized. I laughed.
“I guess they are. But our way isn’t the only way, right?”
She frowned, as if I’d suddenly spoken Martian. I saw my father make a face across the table, as if to tell me to change topic. I did so.
“What’s your favorite holiday destination?” I asked.
“Oh! The Hamptons…”
As she told me about her most recent vacation, I found my thoughts drifting again to Jackie. I wondered what she would like to talk about. I had a feeling that engines would be part of it. I found myself wishing she was here.
This is stupid. I told myself the same thing stubbornly again. You spent a night with her. You can’t go comparing every girl you meet to her.
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br /> But I couldn’t help it.
The supper wore on. After a while, my plate was cleared away and I found myself presented with a trio of amazing desserts in delicate glassware. I sampled them—each was perhaps the size of an egg cup, but intensely flavorful—and watched Alexa tasting hers.
Under any other circumstances, the combination of a pretty girl in a red dress and sweet dessert would have got me going. But something was different today. I was almost impatient with myself. It felt as if my spark plugs needed replacing.
The thought made me grin. I imagined myself in the car, turning the key and turning it and the engine coughing and rattling and dying again. That was how I felt. No matter how much I tried to make myself ignite interest in this girl, nothing happened.
I guess the pressure from Dad would kill just about anything stone dead. I felt his eyes on me as I ate, almost as if he was willing me to do something, say something. I breathed in the scent of rich, exquisite coffee—the coffee had come around with the dessert—and ignored him.
Dinner ended at around ten that evening. I was tired and I followed Dad down to the car, Alexa on my arm. She was walking close, but not too close, keeping a polite distance between her knee and my leg. Her hand was linked to my elbow, her red-painted nails dark against the black of my blazer. I felt sorry for her and I felt sorry for me. We were both trapped.
“Goodnight, Scott,” she said softly. She looked up into my eyes. This close I could smell the sweet floral of her perfume and I could see the moist red lips up close. I bent down and pressed my cheek to hers, first one side, then the other, politely.
“Goodnight, Alexa.”
She looked up into my eyes and I looked down into hers. Our fathers were somewhere else—I could just make out their voices, the soft burr of them as they talked together about something or other. I knew I should kiss her.
I bent down and pressed my lips to hers, a brief contact.
Then she was waving at me and going to join her dad, who had just stepped away from mine and came crunching over the gravel to find her.
When they had gone, roaring off in their car together, I was left facing my dad.
“A successful evening,” he said. He looked up into my eyes. He was tired. I could see that. His face was lined and weary and he looked badly in need of sleep.
“It was,” I said softly.
“Son, you really must do me proud,” he said. “I need that guy to like us…so badly.”
I sighed. I nodded. “I know, dad.”
He sighed too. “You could at least kiss her next time.”
“What?” I felt a stab of surprise, of betrayal, in my heart. Had he really watched me? Rated my kissing? What was wrong with this guy? I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say and besides, he was walking back across the drive towards the waiting car. It was too late.
I stood where I was, breathing the cool, fragrant evening air and sighed.
I was stuck. I had lost my chance to make a good impression on the one girl who insisted on haunting me. And now I was failing to make a good impression on the one my father chose for me. The one, I thought, with a sinking feeling, he wanted for my wife.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jackie
The local Aldi brought me joy when it first opened—close, well-stocked and convenient, it made grocery shopping so much easier. And there couldn’t have been a time at which I appreciated it more. If I had to drive across town for groceries, I don’t know what I’d do. Getting stuck in traffic with a baby would be unpleasant, to say the least. And more so for them than for me, I reckoned, which wouldn’t be fair.
I looked down into the stroller as I pushed it around the corner into the baking aisle. The little face that lay there, asleep and peaceful against the child-size pillow, took my breath away.
My daughter.
Even though she had been born just over a month ago, I still couldn’t believe it. She had come into my life in early Autumn, a reminder of that late winter night all those months before. But the way I felt wasn’t about that. I adored her for who she was. My daughter.
She already had a personality of her own, I thought as I turned down the end of the aisle and looked for the baby food. She was quiet and tranquil most of the time, waking me only when she needed something or when she just wanted cuddles. She was very cuddly, my daughter.
Stella. My star. I smiled down at her as she opened her eyes and looked up at me. She often did that, as if she wanted to make sure I was still there. I said her name.
“Hello, Stella. I’m still here.”
The words reassured her, I thought. She closed her sleepy eyes again and settled down. Her eyes were gray—an uncertain gray that could go brown, or blue, or green. Or stay as it was. My eyes were green too, after all.
I studied her face as I stood in the queue. I looked for the similarities to Scott. There were some—the high, squarish forehead, the jawbone, the little nose. Her eyes seemed to be mine—larger and wide—though I couldn’t be sure yet, of course. I wondered if they would be blue, like his.
Come on, Jackie, I told myself firmly. You should forget him. He wasn’t interested in us.
I pushed the stroller out of the grocery store and onto the sidewalk. The rear wheel didn’t stick like it usually did, which was a good thing. My groceries in two large bags slung over my shoulder, I walked on out to the car. I parked the stroller carefully by the side of the car, opened the trunk and hauled the groceries round with a grunt, packing them into the trunk of the car.
As I usually did, I made myself angry to get some strength. I grunted with effort as I swung the bags of groceries about, thinking of how angry some of the myopic teachers at the school made me, how impatient I felt with the funding restrictions, how much I wanted to slap Scott. How could he do this to me? Just walk out without caring? Leave us like this?
Stella must have heard me groaning as my back bent, because she made a little fretful noise. I sighed.
“It’s okay, honey. Lullaby bay-by…” I sang in a wavering monotone. I have never been a good singer. Luckily, my own toneless attempts seemed to soothe my baby rather more than anything else did. She was just over a month old now, and slept less than I ever thought a human being could do.
“Thank Heaven for maternity leave.”
I sighed and, feeling weary and exhausted, slammed the trunk and went over to lift Stella out of the stroller and into the carry cot. At that moment, just as I bent over the stroller, the car went past.
A BMW i8.
A white one.
I wouldn’t normally notice cars at a time like this, except for the fact that you don’t see BMW i8’s often. Not in my neighborhood, especially. And this one was white, and sleek, and going past just fast enough for me to think it was driven by someone who really liked the acceleration that it offered.
I stared after it, leaning on the handle of the stroller in shock. It couldn’t possibly be.
I hadn’t thought I was capable of feeling shock. After the birth I had been too half-asleep for any strong emotions, pretty much, except the slow fire of anger I stoked inside myself to keep myself going sometimes. And the intense, heart-twisting love I felt for Stella.
But I was shocked.
After the initial surprise, my first reaction was anger. The cheek! How dare he come here? How dare he just drive past, so uncaring? It’s like what he did—just drove his way into my life, used me and drove out again. User!
I was stoking the anger, using it to force aside all other feelings. The wonder and hopefulness. The sorrow and the overwhelming fact that I missed him. That I wished I could hear from him. See him. Know we meant something to him and share my joy and Stella with him.
“Damn Scott.”
I spat it angrily and reached for the stroller. I had lifted Stella out and laid her down in the cot. Now all I had to do was fold up the damn stroller and pack it into the back of the car. As second-hand strollers will do, the thing had a mind of its own and
it inevitably refused to budge when I needed it to fold up quickly.
I was on my knees, fiddling with the pin that held the legs of the thing and swearing under my breath when I heard the car door slam. Someone had parked on the sidewalk just beyond the parking bays. I looked across, about to shout an angry retort at the person for parking in a non-parking zone. I looked up.
Tall and dark haired, wearing an impeccable suit of a navy so dark it was almost black, with his blue eyes alight with emotion, chiseled face firm, was the man I thought I’d never see again.
My throat felt as if someone had poured cement into it. It was blocked so much I could barely draw breath, barely swallow; barely make words.
“Scott.”
“Jackie?” He was smiling so incredulously at me that I would have laughed except for how touched I felt.
“Yes,” I said through my poor, bruised throat. “It’s me.”
My heart was thumping in my chest as if I was about to collapse, my breath was shaky and my hands trembled. I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine, their blue depths alive and warm and shining with emotion.
