Monica complained the entire way out to the car. She didn’t stop as they drove back to her place. By the time they pulled into her driveway, however, she was thanking Jenny profusely for dragging her out of the party before she made an ass out of herself.
Then she threw up in the front yard and, crying hysterically, begged Jenny to stay the night with her so she wouldn’t be alone.
Jenny was in no mood to nurse a barfing grown woman but since she was undoubtedly the source of some of Monica’s misery, she felt she owed her at least that much. She agreed to spend the night on the living room couch. Monica insisted she take the guest bedroom upstairs.
Naturally, thanks to Monica’s frequent stumbling trips to the bathroom, Jenny got no sleep that night. But with Monica’s tongue loosened up, thanks to the alcohol, she learned what she had long suspected.
“My father’s a bum, running from the law,” Monica confessed sometime in the wee hours of the night. “I didn’t know it when I was a kid, but I learned later he wasn’t the business tycoon I thought he was, but a crook.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Jenny said as she helped Monica get back into her bed. Monica’s face was an odd mixture of crimson blotches on a field of sickly white. Her eyes were red and watery, the lids hanging over them as if they were too heavy to be lifted completely. “There. You just lie down and be still.”
“I am. The freaking bed just won’t stop moving.” Monica closed her eyes. “My entire life’s a big lie. I’m nobody. The daughter of a fugitive with no money, no future, no fiancé…”
“Jason hasn’t broken up with you.”
“Not yet. But he will.” She lifted her eyelids just long enough to look Jenny in the eye. “He loves you, you know. He has since the switch. I had to say something. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I’m not you. I can’t pretend to be.”
“Oh, Monica. You have so much going for you. You’re beautiful and popular. You have a terrific home. Look at this place.” Jenny motioned around the room at the expensive furniture. “Not to mention you’re intelligent and have a great career—”
“I’m alone.”
“It’s better to be alone than to be with the wrong person…” She gave Monica the same line she’d repeated to herself too many times to count.
Monica sighed and blinked. A fat tear slipped from the outer corner of her eye and dribbled down the side of her face. “But you’re not alone. You have friends who truly like you, not just want something from you. You have parents who call and leave worried messages on your answering machine if they haven’t heard from you in a while. All I have is a grandmother in a nursing home who occasionally remembers who I am. I pay her bills every month but half the time she screams for the police when I visit, claiming she’s never seen me before.”
“That’s where all your money goes?”
Monica’s watery gaze fixed on Jenny’s. She whispered, “Grammie is all I have left. Medicaid won’t pay for her to stay at Sparrow Court but I didn’t want her moved. The owner is an acquaintance of mine. I know Grammie gets the very best treatment, isn’t stuffed in a corner and forgotten. It’s the least I can do.”
“How very sweet and generous of you.”
“It’s killing me financially but if Grammie knew the truth, that all her money was gone, it would kill her. Years ago, dad talked her into signing over her assets to keep the nursing home from taking it all…and then he cleaned out every account! He even used her money to pay for my graduation gift. I tried to stop him but I couldn’t.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“How could he do that and live with himself? I feel guilty and all I let him spend on me was the money for the trip to Europe,” Monica said, sobbing. Her eyes were even redder now and deep red splotches stained the skin around them. “He stole from his own mother and I couldn’t stop him.” She sniffled and Jenny handed her a tissue from the box on the nightstand.
“Is that why you changed your mind about marrying Jason?” Jenny asked, putting two and two together.
“At first I was ready to smack you for getting involved in Jason and me. I mean, what nerve!”
“Sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Monica nodded and slid her a smile. “I know. Your heart was in the right place. And that, along with the knowledge that if I didn’t marry him, I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay Grammie’s bills any longer, kind of squashed any thoughts of me inflicting any physical harm on you. By getting Jason back for me, you did me a huge favor. You know what those bills are doing to my finances. My house is near foreclosure. Since Jason cosigned the mortgage for me, his credit will be ruined too if I don’t make the payments.”
“Have you told Jason about your grandmother?”
“No.”
“Okay. I need to ask you then, and maybe I shouldn’t be asking you this now when you’re clearly…”
“Blitzed?” Monica supplied for her.
“Yes, blitzed.”
“Ask away. I’m in the mood to be honest. Ask me about my deepest darkest secrets.”
“I just want to know about one. Forgetting for a moment about your grandmother, about the money aspect, do you love Jason?” Jenny held her breath as she waited for Monica’s answer.
“That’s the thing. I do love him. Very much. But not the way I should. He deserves to have a wife who is crazy about him, can’t stand to be apart from him for even a minute. Who dreams about him at night. Who can’t stop thinking about him throughout the day…” she mumbled, her voice getting lower and lower. “I do love him. I just can’t…love…him…enough…” A soft snore buzzed from her throat.
Careful to be quiet so she wouldn’t wake Monica, and lost in her thoughts, Jenny tiptoed from Monica’s room and returned to the guest bed. Her thoughts, about Monica and Jason, about Monica’s grandmother, and about wishes and stars, kept her company as she watched night turn to dawn.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, Jenny woke up with a start. Either someone had pulled another switcheroo on her again or she was sleeping in the Arctic.
She opened her eyes.
Neither seemed to be the case. There were no icebergs in sight and she recognized her clothes and the room in which she’d dozed off a short time ago. But in that time, it appeared, Monica’s furnace had gone kaput. Either that, or she hadn’t paid her gas bill.
She knew she had a couple of options. She could go home and let Monica figure it out…but that one wasn’t very nice. Or she could bundle up and do some investigating. It was a chilly alternative, but the better of the two. Already feeling the effects of the cold on her nose and fingers, she wrapped the comforter around her and walked to Monica’s bedroom. After knocking and receiving no response, she opened the door and poked her head into the dark room. The shades were drawn. The room was deathly quiet.
“Monica?” she said in a hushed voice. “Are you okay?”
She got a groan for a reply.
Deciding it was better to wake up a hungover Monica than to leave said hungover Monica in a house with no heat, she walked to the bed and tapped Monica’s shoulder. “Monica, either your furnace died last night or you owe somebody some money.”
Monica groaned again and slowly lifted a hair-tousled head. “What time is it?” she grumbled, turning her head toward the nightstand.
“I don’t know.” Jenny noticed the clock’s red numbers weren’t lit. “The clock isn’t working.” She went to test the light switch on the wall. The overhead didn’t turn on. “Did you pay your electric bill?”
“Yes. Two weeks ago.”
She kept flipping the switch, knowing it probably wouldn’t all of a sudden work but willing to keep trying anyway. “Are you positive?”
“Yes. It’s winter. I’m not that stupid. I can’t live without lights and heat.” She sat up and dropped her head into her hands. “Ohhh…my head is killing me. That Long Island stuff is trouble.”
“I warned you.” Jenny lifted the blind and gla
nced outside. From her vantage, she could see the corner of the neighbor’s garage. The motion detector-activated light was on. “Your neighbor didn’t lose power.”
“I paid the bill. I can show you the check stub to prove it.”
“Maybe you mailed it too late?”
“It cleared the bank.”
“Well shoot! I don’t know what’s wrong then.”
“I know what to do.” Moving slow, like a zombie rising from the dead, Monica sat up then stood. Her head hung low as she shuffled across the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser. She held out a business card. “Call this man.” When Jenny took the card, Monica dragged her miserable frame back to her bed and laid down. “Let me know when he’s coming. Please? Thanks.”
“Okay. But do you have a cell phone? I don’t think your cordless is going to work.”
“My purse.” She pointed at the chaise in the corner.
Jenny rummaged through the contents of Monica’s purse until she located the phone then left the room to make the call to Bill the electrician.
Recognizing the name, Jenny introduced herself as the woman he’d met at the club a month or so ago, gave him Monica’s address and explained their dire circumstances. He said he would be over within the hour. She reported her success to Monica, who suddenly seemed to have made a remarkable recovery. She bounded out of bed and ran to the shower, ignoring Jenny’s suggestion she wait. As expected, she returned from the bathroom a little while later with dripping wet hair and a scowl. “I can’t dry my hair. He can’t see me like this.”
Jenny chuckled. “I tried to warn you. Just let it dry naturally.”
“I’ll have icicle dreadlocks.”
Jenny shrugged. “Maybe that’ll turn him on. You said he thought you were too high-maintenance. This oughta prove you’re not.” She tugged on a soggy lock of hair.
“Hardly. It’ll just make me look scary.”
“You couldn’t look scary if you tried.” Jenny nudged Monica’s shoulder then walked to the door. “Better hurry. According to the clock on your cell phone, he could be here in as little as ten minutes, maybe sooner.”
“Okay, okay!” Monica ran to the dresser as Jenny left the room and closed the door.
Hungry, she headed for the kitchen, hoping to find something edible. It had been a long time since the switch back, so all the goodies Jenny had bought would be long gone. She could only hope she’d find something that would fill her stomach without making her ill.
The refrigerator was empty.
The cupboards were empty.
The freezer was empty.
Drats! She put on her coat and collected her purse and keys. “Monica, I’m headed up the road for donuts,” she shouted up the stairs. “Want anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”
“Suit yourself!” She hurried out into the cold, surprised to find almost a half-foot of snow on the ground and more falling. Unlike last night’s snow, these were the big, soggy flakes that accumulated by the inch. The road was covered, with little more than two dirty ruts wandering through the quiet neighborhood. The air was still. It was eerie.
She got in her car and white-knuckled it to the donut shop where she picked up a dozen donuts and a dozen bagels, just in case she was forced to stick around Monica’s for a while. At least she wouldn’t go hungry. Then she headed back.
A big white van was parked in Monica’s driveway. She parked her car next to it and went inside.
It was still freezing inside, and dark. Her arms full of paper bags with donuts and bagels, she walked to the kitchen, shouting, “Monica?”
“We’re down here,” Monica answered from the basement.
Jenny took a bite of a custard-filled donut before venturing down the stairs at the rear of the kitchen. She followed the moving beam from a flashlight either Monica or the electrician was holding in the rear of the basement. It was dark down there, but not pitch-black, thanks to several long but narrow rows of glass blocks letting in faint daylight. “How bad is it?” she asked as she approached them.
The electrician’s back was turned toward her, and his flashlight was directed at the circuit breaker box on the wall. “Looks like the main breaker tripped off.”
“Why would that happen?” Jenny asked.
“Hard to say.”
She heard a click then the lights in the basement turned on.
Monica grinned. “Yay! That’s all it was?”
“Sure looks that way.” Bill the electrician shut the panel door and turned around to face the ladies.
Jenny smiled. “Thanks a lot for coming on such short notice.”
“What about the furnace?” Monica asked. “You wouldn’t leave two helpless women here during the middle of a snowstorm to freeze to death, would you?”
Jenny couldn’t miss the twinkle she saw in Monica’s eyes as she smiled at the hulking electrician.
“Helpless? Hardly.” He chuckled and returned Monica’s smile. Then he grinned and winked at Jenny too. Jenny couldn’t miss the fact that there was more than one kind of electricity happening in that basement. The air around her was charged with nervous energy, fed by the looks Monica was giving Bill and he was giving Jenny. “The furnace should come on in a minute. The blower can’t operate without electricity.”
Monica giggled and twirled a soggy lock of hair around her finger. “Oh, how silly. I knew that, of course.” She stepped closer, her wide eyes fixed on his face. “Thanks so much for coming out here so quick. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“Not a problem. Give me some time and I’ll think of something. Two beautiful women…I’m sure there are one or two possibilities.” He smiled at Jenny, and growing more uncomfortable by the second, Jenny failed to respond.
Was he suggesting…a ménage?
Bill was one handsome devil of a man, no doubt about it. Tall and solid, he was built like Atlas, his arms thick and muscular, his shoulders broad, his chest wide, his waist narrow. And his face was ruggedly handsome with deep brown eyes and sexy dark stubble over his chin and jaw. There was a naughty spark in those eyes. That man was trouble with a capital T, perfect for Monica. Not perfect for Jenny.
“How about a donut?” suggested Jenny, knowing that was a far cry from what he was looking for.
“That’s a good start but I was thinking more along the lines…” He stepped closer and Jenny found herself back-stepping away. “…of a home cooked vegetarian dinner.” His chest inches from Jenny’s chin, he tipped his head and whispered, “What do you say?”
Monica stepped in, catching Bill’s arm as he lifted it, no doubt intercepting his touch to Jenny’s face. “Jenny there’s had a change of heart and has gone all Atkins on me. The good news is she gave me all her old cookbooks, and with power, I can get my way around a kitchen with the best of them.”
His attention diverted, he backed away from Jenny enough to allow her to breathe again. “Can you make a decent Reuben?”
“The best!” Monica said exuberantly. She took him by the hand and led him upstairs. “I’m on a first name basis with the delivery boy for Mike’s Market down the street. I can get the ingredients here in two snaps.” She illustrated with a couple of saucy finger snaps.
Several steps behind them, Jenny pondered her getaway, choosing the moment Monica dialed the market to gather her donuts and bagels and break the news that she was leaving. Monica mouthed, “Thank you.” And waved. She didn’t look the least bit put out.
But Bill did.
Certain he wouldn’t be sorry for long, Jenny made an excuse about a dog she didn’t really own needing to be let out, and made good her escape. Just before she headed out the door, Bill cornered her and whispered, “I’ll call you.” A little bit guilty for using him the way she had, but not interested in feeding his interest, she simply smiled and said, “Enjoy your meal with Monica. She’s nothing like you’d expect when you first meet her.”
His knowing nod suggested he understood exactly
what she was implying.
Satisfied she’d set him straight, Jenny trudged into the snowstorm, started her car, and swept off the inch or so that had accumulated on the windshield in the short time since she’d returned from the donut place.
Top speed as she drove home was about ten miles per hour. A self-proclaimed snow wimp, she fought to keep her zippy new car on the road as all-wheel-drive trucks barreled past her, blinding her with the mud-tinged slush they threw off their wheels. Thanks to a fear of freeway driving during snowstorms, her trip home was long and exhausting, and thanks to getting very little sleep the night before, she was ready for bed the moment she pulled into her parking space.
Safe, warm, and prepared to hunker down and ride out the storm, she carried her goodies into the kitchen, took the most direct route to her bed she could find and, after changing into her favorite sweats, climbed into bed and buried herself in the blankets. It took her no time to fall asleep.
As she drifted off, she heard Jason’s voice. He was calling her name. No, he was doing more than that.
Unclothed from the waist up, he was bent over her, whispering, “Jenny, let me show you how beautiful I think you are.”
Instantly tingly and breathless, eager to feel his weight pressing upon her but equally guilty and confused, she asked, “But what about Monica?”
“You know as well as I do that we’re through. We have been for a long time. Neither of us wanted to admit it, even after we broke up.” He sat back and gathered her hands in his. His grip was warm, firm, his expression sober. “It took something extreme for us to sever the last bonds.”
“But I’m her friend.” She wiggled her fingers in his hands, not really wanting to pull them free but knowing she should. “Even if you’ve broken up, I don’t date my friends’ ex-boyfriends. It’s just not right.”
“But I love you. And so does Monica. She wants us both to be happy.” He kissed each fingertip then released her hands. He bent lower and kissed her, his tongue teasing the corners of her mouth before plunging inside. She heard her breathing quicken, felt the rush of warmth wash up her chest and over her face. A slight but steady throb began between her legs as his hands plunged under her shirt and found her breasts. He pinched her nipples between his thumb and forefingers and she moaned. He nibbled on her neck and she squirmed with pleasure. He pressed a knee between hers, and she rocked her hips back and forth, rubbing away the ache of need growing by the second.
MisTAKEN Identities Paranormal Romance Page 18
