Life of the Party

by Kris Fletcher

  Yeah. She had nailed it. If they didn’t offer her the job, then damn, she wanted to meet the person who got it so she could try to steal his or her DNA and have it injected into her own cells.

  She allowed herself a little semi-skip of delight—the most her leg would permit—as she headed down the block. And the best part of all? Nobody smirked knowingly at anything she said. Nobody asked what her father was doing these days. Nobody repeated her name with a questioning tone, the kind that meant, I know I recognize this but how— Oooooooooh.

  This was what it felt like to be taken seriously. This was how it felt to be seen for herself, measured solely on her own merits, judged purely on her own abilities.

  Cole was going to be so—

  She came to a sudden stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

  Hang on. Why was she imagining Cole’s reaction?

  Sure, he was a fantastic guy. Yes, he was the one she was going to see in just a few minutes, the first one who would hear her tale and share her excitement. But shouldn’t she be picturing her mother’s delight? Shouldn’t she be imagining how Kyrie’s face would light up tonight when Jenna told her? Or how Bree would smile in that quiet big-sister way, give her a list of places to check out the company, and then wrap her in the most amazing hug? Shouldn’t she be already laughing in anticipation of Margie’s hoots when Jenna imitated the way one of the interviewers had stared over half-glasses until Jenna did a micro-second stare down of her own?

  She should be thinking about her family. About how excited they were going to be for her, how they would join her in waiting for the offer to come in, how they would be so proud of her as they sent her off.

  Instead, she kept picturing the light in Cole’s eyes when she shared the tales. How excited he would be for her. How her happiness was going to double as she told him everything.

  Her joy evaporated with the speed of a popped condom.

  He wasn’t supposed to mean this much to her.

  Cole was her good time. Her reward for making it through the last few years, her shot of low-cal but totally wicked indulgence before she had to throw herself into making a new life. He was supposed to be a way station. But way stations didn’t make your heart ache when you imagined leaving them. Rewards didn’t make you wish that semesters would never end.

  She closed her eyes and pulled up a memory she’d been fighting all day. After a predawn bathroom run—thank you, opening shift—she had tiptoed back into the room and stopped to drink in the sight of him sprawled across the bed, his naked chest beckoning to her, his warmth pulling her closer. She had shivered—not from the October chill, but from delight at knowing that she was about to climb back into that bed and snuggle herself in beside him and press against him in as many places as possible. Not for sex but just because it felt so damned good to touch him and know he was there.

  For one let-guard-down moment she had wondered what it would be like to know that she could curl up beside him for the rest of her life.

  For one aching heartbeat she had asked herself what would happen—what could happen—if he lost the election. If he weren’t tied to Calypso Falls. If he didn’t insist on pursuing a career where her father’s misdeeds would always lurk in the background.

  What would it be like to know that what happened between them would depend only on them? To think that maybe, perhaps, they could have a chance at something even more binding than what they’d already built?

  How would it feel to think that she might have a shot at forever with the man who had helped her remember that life could be wonderful again?

  ***

  The day after her getaway with Cole, Jenna pulled up to the McDonald’s at the edge of town, killed the engine, and wondered why the hell she hadn’t brought a tiny bottle of vodka to spike her OJ. Because God knew that was the only way she was going to get through the next thirty to forty-five minutes without committing an act that would land her in jail.

  Rob was already there. She saw him through the window, cradling what looked like a cup of coffee. She didn’t dare watch too long, lest he catch her, but she figured she had a few seconds.

  She needed them. She needed to watch him and try to get into his head. Why was he doing this? She didn’t think he was about to apologize. If he wanted information about her or her sisters, all he had to do was develop some Google skills. He certainly couldn’t be trying to hit any of them up for money, because anyone with half a brain would figure out that none of them had any to spare. And even in the days when she’d had that, she wouldn’t have wasted any of it on him.

  Or maybe he wanted to know about Mom.

  As far as Jenna knew, Neenee had not confronted Rob yet. Maybe it was time for Jenna to ensure that her mother never had to.

  She grabbed her purse and slammed her way out of the car. The sooner she got in there, the sooner this would be behind her.

  The good news was, after these meetings her curiosity would be satisfied and Rob would have no further hold over her. She could go through the rest of her life without ever thinking about him again.

  Hold tight to that one, Jenna.

  Purse over her shoulder, paperboard coffee in hand, she pasted on a casual air and sauntered over to his booth.

  “I’m here.” She set down the cup before sitting. Bench seats were always going to be a challenge, but there was no need to advertise that by slopping coffee all over herself.

  “Morning.” His face was almost stiff, his movements jerky as he moved his cup aside. He couldn’t hide the slight tremor in his hand. Nerves? Aging? Something else?

  It was no concern of hers.

  “Well.” If she had to do this, she wasn’t going to sit back and let him take the lead. “I’m here as agreed. What do you need?”

  Something that might have been a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  “Never saw the point.”

  “Can’t say I disagree with you.” He leaned forward. “So I’ll cut right to the chase, too. I took the bribes because we had huge hospital bills after the twins were born. I ran away to Costa Rica because I figured it would be easier for you girls to deal with a father who was dead than one who was in jail. If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t do either of them again, but I can’t, so here we are.” He leaned back. “Questions?”

  Good God. Like she was supposed to be able to think after that?”

  “Yes. Does being an asshole come naturally to you, or did you have to work at it?”

  The bastard laughed out loud. Long and loud, head thrown back, as if she’d told him the ultimate gotcha joke.

  She sipped her coffee and checked the time on her phone. Five minutes. They were off to a roaring start.

  “When you were, oh, three, maybe four,” he said, peeling the lid off his coffee, “I had a leather jacket. Brown. Not deep, but almost a rust color. I told you and Bree that it was made from the skin of a bear that tried to attack me in the woods one day. Told you I wrestled it with my bare hands, snapped its neck, and carried it out of there on my shoulders so I could have it turned into a coat for me.” He tasted the coffee and grimaced. “You believed every word of it. Bree started giving me the side eye, but you? Hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Most preschoolers do tend to idolize their parents. They also believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny.”

  He nodded. “Those days go too fast.”

  “Especially when you aren’t there for most of them.”

  If she’d expected him to show any remorse at her words, she was disappointed. All she got was a nod and a quiet, “Touché.”

  She blew on her coffee to buy herself some time. Not that she planned to actually drink it. Her stomach was clenched so tight, the coffee would probably bounce off it like a trampoline. But one of the things she’d learned from Kendall was that props were handy.

 
“Annie doesn’t seem to mind talking to me,” he said, as if to himself. “The twins totally ignore me, other than Paige telling me that if I thought I was walking her down the aisle, I should check myself into the closest mental health unit. Bree gave me the ice princess treatment. Almost expected her to start speaking in the royal we. But you . . .”

  She braced herself.

  “You, Jenna . . . there’s something different. There’s a level of anger there that I’m not feeling from the others. Why?”

  Because you only robbed them of their past. You’re robbing me of my future.

  The thought blazed across her mind like a Times Square news ticker. She blinked, because for the life of her, she didn’t know where it had come from. She had never thought that before in her life.

  The way her fingers curled into her palms, though, she was pretty sure that it had sprung straight from the truth.

  But there was no way in hell she was going to let him know that he was still impacting her life. At least, not any more than the obvious fact that he had essentially blackmailed her into meeting him.

  “I guess maybe I’m a little less tolerant of bullshit than they are.”

  “Makes sense. Divorce’ll do that to you, I’ve heard. Same for coming close to dying.”

  She stared down at her coffee, adding two more items to the list of Topics To Never Discuss With Robert.

  “Speaking of divorce,” she began, “Mom—”

  “I’m not discussing your mother with you.”

  He folded his arms tight. His face took on an expression she would never have thought she recognized, but the moment she saw it, her inner five-year-old knew that Daddy meant business.

  Her outer adult perked right up.

  “Still not reconciled with the fact that she didn’t welcome you back with open arms?” Jenna shook her head in mock sorrow. “Who would have thought that she wouldn’t have waited for you? I mean, it’s like those marriage vows meant nothing.”

  Jenna was pretty sure she’d hit the nerve mother lode. Rob looked . . . smaller, somehow. Vulnerable.

  Broken.

  Until he pulled his phone from his pocket, tapped a key, and handed it to her.

  He’d pulled up a contact. Paul Tadeson.

  Shit.

  “So tell me,” she said. “What do you do for fun in prison?”

  “Play cards. Watch movies. Joke around with my friends. Probably about the same as what you do.”

  “Except I don’t have guards watching me while I do it.”

  “Most of the time, I didn’t, either.”

  Despite herself, she was curious. “So the things they told me when I toured Alcatraz weren’t true?”

  “Wouldn’t know. Never been there. Not a place I’m likely to visit, either. How’s the boyfriend?”

  Oh, Rob was smooth. She’d give him that. He’d slipped it in there so casually that she almost—almost—flinched. Lucky for her, the combination of hiding in plain election sight and the final months with Kendall had taught her how to maintain a poker face.

  “Even if I had one, I wouldn’t discuss him with you.”

  “Jenna. Do you honestly expect me to believe that the only reason you’re working for Dekker is because you believe in his politics?”

  “You can believe whatever you want.” She shrugged. “Me, I’ll stick to the truth.”

  Which was exactly what this was: the truth. Cole was many things to her—too many, probably—but he wasn’t her boyfriend.

  Primarily thanks to the man absently stirring his coffee.

  “I don’t know,” Rob said, so casually that Jenna’s guard went even higher. “He seems awfully protective of you.”

  “I really can’t see how this is any of your business.”

  “Maybe you don’t believe it, Jenna, but I still love you and your sisters very much. I might have lost my right to have a say in your life, but I will never lose the right to care about what happens to you. All of you.”

  She wanted to tell him, nope, he couldn’t do that, either, but the bastard had a point. Which made her want to lash out at him. Wipe the sincerity from his face. Make him hate her. Because if he hated her, he would stop caring.

  She washed the impulse down with a swig of coffee. Mistake. It was still too hot. All it did was contribute to the steam building inside her.

  She didn’t know if she could make Rob loathe her. Kendall had assured her she was very gifted in that department, but she suspected he had decided it was easier to decide she was a horrible, loathsome excuse for humanity than to admit that he had done wrong by her. But maybe, if she piled on the guilt, Rob might just decide that being around her wasn’t worth the hit to his own self-opinion.

  “Of course,” she said, aiming for an airy tone, “even if there happened to be something between us—which there isn’t—it wouldn’t matter. Because he’s going to be mayor and I’m going to be leaving.”

  “Leaving? When? Where are you going?”

  Either they provided great acting lessons in jail, or her was genuinely surprised.

  “The where is still being worked out. The when—that’s easier. As soon as I have my degree in my hand.” She paused for effect. “Not that I want to leave. This is home. Mom, Margie, all my memories. But as you can imagine, being your daughter in this town carries a lot of baggage, especially now that you’re back. I’m not putting up with it anymore.”

  “You’re moving because of me?”

  “That’s right, Daddy dearest.”

  “That’s bullshit, Jenna.”

  She blinked. Not just at the sentiment, but at the vehemence behind it.

  He leaned forward, stabbing the table with his finger as he spoke. “You think I don’t know anything about you, and in a lot of ways, you’re right. But it doesn’t take long to figure out that you are a stubborn sack of grit and guts. You don’t collapse. You don’t roll over. And you don’t run.”

  Why the hell did his assessment have to make her glow inside, just a little?

  “If you are leaving town, Jenna, it’s because of you. Not me.”

  She scrambled for something to throw back at him. “That’s pretty damned ridiculous, coming from the man who said that he ran away because it was easier for his children to believe he was dead than to know he was in jail.”

  “Which is exactly why I know what I’m talking about.” His eyes narrowed. “Those things I told you were all true. We were buried under hospital bills. I did want to make things easier for you girls. Those are facts. Those were also the only things I let myself see, back then. Now I know there was more to it than that. That I grabbed onto those facts and let them blind me to everything else out there. Which is why I can smell a bullshitter from all the way across the room, because I’ve been there and I’ve fed myself those same lines. And I have paid the consequences, more times over than you can ever know. So hate me all you want, tell yourself I’m a delusional fool, but believe me on this one, Jenna Renee: you can lie to the world forever, but lying to yourself will always bite you in the ass. Every. Single. Time.”

  Before she could pull her wits together, he was out of the booth, sweeping his cup and napkin from the table.

  “See you next week.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Wednesday night, Cole walked toward the door to the office only to be met by Allison and Ram, who grabbed his arms and steered him back toward the parking lot.

  “What the hell?” Cole asked.

  “In a minute,” Ram said. Allison clicked the remote for her minivan. The rear door slid open.

  “If you’re kidnapping me, you might want to wait until we’re not in the middle of a place where I can easily yell for help.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s a comedian.” Ram scowled. “Could you get in the car, please? We need to talk.”

  Cole r
olled his eyes and tried to come up with a smart remark about paranoia, listening devices, and the fact that Allison’s car was the ultimate place to hide a microphone or twelve, given the layer of empty juice boxes carpeting the floor. But he was pretty sure he knew why they had waylaid him.

  He was even more sure that he wasn’t going to like what they had to say.

  In a minute he was wedged between two car seats, with Allison and Ram in the front, both wearing expressions that—had they been his parents—would have left him certain that his dog had just died.

  “If we’re going to McDonald’s,” he said, waving a hand toward the dead fries in the seat beside him, “I’d like the cheeseburger meal with the boy toy, please.”

  Allison turned a little pink. Ram grimaced.

  “Sorry,” he said. “We would have used my car, but Lucy had a little morning sickness, and—”

  “Say no more.” Cole repressed a shudder. “This is about Jenna, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Allison said it so sadly that Cole’s level of wariness jumped to DEFCON 5. His desire to do a hands-on experiment in tarring and feathering—using Robert Elias as his test subject—jumped to new heights.

  “Tadeson has been talking about her?”

  “No.” Ram frowned and shook his head. “But this morning, I got a call from a friend who works at the paper. She said that ever since the debate, there’s been talk in the office. People are speculating.”

  Ever since the debate.

  “I knew we were pushing our luck,” Allison said. “It was bad enough before the primary, when there was time for people to forget about her. But this . . . we took one chance too many.”

  “It’s not really her.” Cole had to point it out. “There wouldn’t have been a problem if—”

  “If her father hadn’t shown up,” Ram finished.

  “So the issue isn’t Jenna. It’s that someone at the debate saw her there and saw Rob there, and put two and two together—”

  “And dug up more crap than there is inside this vehicle,” Allison said. “Which, by the way, I’ll be cleaning after the election.”