Redemption's Kiss

by Ann Christopher

  Leading her daughter back to her own room via the bathroom for a cup of water, Jillian renewed her eternal pledge, the one that never quite seemed to sink in.

  I’ll never go back to that man. Not ever.

  Chapter 7

  Oh, for goodness’ sake.

  Not this early in the morning. Just—no. Please…no.

  Not before she’d had that third cup of coffee. Not while she was running around like a headless chicken, trying to feed her guests their breakfast. Not before she’d recovered from seeing him last week and from the dream and the unsatisfied lust that still burned just beneath her skin.

  Not Beau. Not again.

  Balancing the bowl of fresh fruit salad—watermelon, honeydew, grapes and blueberries, very bright and healthy—in her left hand and the plate of muffins, carrot today, in her right, Jillian took a deep breath and tried to count to ten so she could calm down, but she only made it to five.

  Okay, Jill. Try something else.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and opened them again, refocusing and hoping that what she’d thought was Beau was merely a figment of her overwrought imagination. She could be mistaken, right? Maybe that wasn’t Beau at all. Maybe there was some other really tall guy with a cane floating around. Maybe…

  No. Of course not. When had her life ever been that easy?

  Beau was unmistakable in his khaki suit, yellow tie, scar and cane, standing at the hostess station on the wide porch of the B & B with Seinfeld at his side.

  It wasn’t like he blended in with the rest of the populace anyway, what with looking like a god and all. He was taller and handsomer than all the other men there, most of whom were either beleaguered young fathers with demanding children looking for another muffin, or geriatric citizens with plaid shorts, socks and sandals.

  Already all the women present were looking around with interest, trying to keep Beau in sight while pretending to read their menus or eat their eggs.

  What a disgusting display.

  The man and the dog waited for their table like perfect gentlemen, clearly enjoying the bright sunshine of what promised to be another beautiful day. Beau had a laptop tucked under one arm and wore a pair of sunglasses that made him look wickedly dangerous and mysterious, just in case he wasn’t striking enough already.

  What the hell should she do now? Other than focus on not having another panic attack, that was. The first unpleasant skitterings of her pulse had begun, and her breath was becoming shallower by the second, as though her lungs would only admit a molecule or two of oxygen at a time, nowhere near enough to sustain life.

  In the kitchen on the other side of the screen door, just out of everyone’s line of sight, she leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes and tried not to lose it.

  Breathe, Jill, breathe. You can do it—

  Wait a minute.

  Her lids popped open to the red haze of her sudden anger.

  What was she doing? Falling apart in the middle of the breakfast rush? Heading toward another panic attack? Because of Beau, the man who’d already stolen more of her life than she cared to admit?

  Oh, hell, no.

  Suck it up, girl. Put your big-girl panties on and be a woman. You can do it.

  She was just squaring her shoulders and getting ready to march outside and deal with that man, the fly in her ointment and ant at her picnic, when Barbara Jean appeared at her side.

  Barbara Jean gave her a bewildered glance, probably thinking that the boss was cracking up and wondering if she’d still get paid if that happened. Then she followed Jillian’s line of sight and all the pieces fell into place.

  Barbara Jean’s breath hitched.

  Jillian certainly understood the reaction. Looking at Beau was like that. As though the most powerful industrial-strength car vacuum had attached to your body to suck the thoughts out of your head and the air out of your lungs.

  “He’s here.” Barbara Jean, who had, after all, met Beau before when she flew Allegra back and forth between the parents, spoke in an awed whisper. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Oh, please. Get over it.” Enough was enough with the whole Beau thing. Jillian found some backbone for her spine and glared at the girl as she swung the screen door open and marched out to face him. “And where’s my daughter? You two are supposed to be helping down here. These guests don’t refill their own coffee and get their own forks and napkins, you know.”

  “She’s getting dressed. Purple princess today.”

  So much for Jillian’s futile hope that Allegra would wear the cute short set she’d bought her the other day at Target. Ah, well. There was plenty of time to de-princess the child later.

  Jillian stepped onto the porch. Dredging up a serene lady-of-the-manor smile that probably didn’t fool anyone who wasn’t legally blind, she put the food on the sideboard for all her hungry guests and met up with Beau at the hostess station.

  His face brightened when she appeared, something along the magnitude of the morning sun rising on the eastern horizon. That was the thing about Beau. He’d always had a knack for making Jillian feel special. The thing she had to keep in mind was that in Beau’s world, any given woman was only special until the next woman came along, a period that usually lasted less than a baseball season.

  Yeah, she knew all that about him. And yet her foolish heart still went berserk.

  After an arrested moment, he snatched his glasses off.

  She wished he hadn’t done that.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Good morning.” She said it just like that, cool and unruffled, the same as she’d greet any other diner here at the B & B, and felt very proud of herself. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Eating. I hope. Since Seinfeld got all my muffins last week. I was hoping that since you’ve had a little time to get used to my presence, it might—” He trailed off and waited, looking wary. “Is that okay?”

  She shrugged and turned her placid smile on Seinfeld so she wouldn’t have to stare into Beau’s face while she lied. She’d never been a good liar.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Ah…” Beau said. “Because you hate me and the horse I rode in on?”

  Yeah, she did.

  Much as she thought she’d matured since the divorce, inside she was still a disillusioned and bitter girl with a heart of stone as far as he was concerned. No real progress had been made and now, she suspected, none would ever be made. Any thoughts she’d had of being a gracious steel magnolia above all the petty slings and arrows she could throw at him died a swift death.

  Oh, yes, she hated him.

  She wanted to hurt him, and then she wanted to hurt him again. No punishment was too great for him, no agony too unbearable after all he’d done and continued to do.

  If she could, she’d torment him from now until the day one or the other of them died. Even then she might just have a chat with God and see if he could grant her special dispensation to torment Beau in heaven although, clearly, with this kind of thing in her heart, heaven was a questionable proposition for her.

  What was that quote about hell hath no fury? Right now it felt like the yawning fires of hell were in the center of her chest, burning the remnants of her broken heart to cinders.

  Only, she could never let him know what he did to her. So she turned her flat gaze on him and made it as politely puzzled as she could.

  “What makes you think I care enough to bother hating you?”

  It was a direct strike right between the glittering crystal of his hazel eyes, which darkened with the hurt. His whole face fell, reminding her of a punctured balloon with all the air rushing out until there was nothing left but a shriveled remnant.

  Nodding as though he’d expected this sort of response, he looked away, to a lone table at the far end of the veranda under one of the hanging ferns.

  Then he looked back, his gaze shrewd.

  Oh, God. He knew she was lying. Of course he knew.

  “You did a pretty g
ood impression of hating me last week.”

  They stared at each other, Jillian too stubborn to drop her gaze and let him see that he was right. A flush crept over her cheeks, hot and uncomfortable.

  Where had this new Beau come from? When had he become this vulnerable and humble? Beau wasn’t fragile. He didn’t have a clingy bone in his body.

  And yet it was all right there in his face—all his desperate need. She meant a lot to him and he hoped he still meant something—even hate—to her. At this point he’d be thrilled to take whatever emotion she’d toss his way.

  Only, she wasn’t going down that road with him—not ever again.

  “I was surprised to see you,” she said. “That’s all.” Another nod, followed by a rough swallow that made his Adam’s apple bob. He looked flattened. Defeated, even. Good.

  She felt a rush of dark triumph, but it was fleeting. The sensation of fingers closing around her throat and tight bands squeezing the air out of her chest, on the other hand, seemed to last forever.

  “I’ll just sit at that table in the back,” he told her.

  “Great. It’s a buffet, so help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  He walked off. After settling Seinfeld under the shady canopy of the enormous oak, he came back to the porch and wove his careful way through the tables and the appreciative stares of every woman in the place, which were growing more blatant by the second.

  Don’t watch, Jill. You have work to do. Ignore that man. Don’t care.

  She did care. His limp, she noticed as she tracked his progress through her eyelashes while arranging the napkins on the sideboard and making sure there were still plenty of forks and knives, was much less pronounced today. It didn’t seem to take as much effort for him to get from here to there, even though he’d walked all the way down the street again, the idiot. Why did he push himself so hard? And how was he going to balance his plate in the buffet line when he had the cane? Not your problem, Jill.

  Calling the laundry service about the sheets, which were looking a little dingy these days, was her problem. Time to go back inside.

  But then one of the guests recognized him.

  “Governor Taylor?”

  Oh, no. Jillian cringed and tried to shrink into invisibility, and the elderly woman wasn’t even talking to her.

  Beau looked stricken. He faltered for one excruciating second before recovering enough to look around and discover the woman glaring, all righteous indignation and moral superiority.

  “I thought that might be you,” the woman said. “I can’t believe you’d show your face in public.”

  The woman’s husband—they were Mr. and Mrs. Fanelli in room 208, Jillian remembered now—appeared at his wife’s elbow, looking embarrassed, and shot Beau an apologetic smile.

  “Come on, Margaret.” He tugged his wife’s arm, trying to steer her back to their table, which was several feet away. “Let’s let the man eat his breakfast in peace.”

  Mrs. Fanelli stood firm. “After the way he disgraced his wife? And now he’s here at her bed-and-breakfast? Someone needs to school him on a thing or two.”

  Several people at nearby tables started to whisper. Jillian’s heart sank. Even Seinfeld, sensing something in the air, raised his chin from its resting place on his paws and glanced around, ears perked.

  Only Beau seemed unaffected by the brewing storm. He stood tall and kept his chin up and shoulders squared, even though a ruddy flush had begun to creep across his cheekbones.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am.” That slow drawl of his, always thicker when he got upset, was now the consistency of peanut butter. “If you’ll excuse me—”

  Wow. Fifty points to Beau for being gracious to the old witch.

  Beau kept on his trajectory to the buffet table and that would have been the end of the matter, but the woman seemed to think he deserved a little more public embarrassment and clung to his heels like a terrier.

  “How could you do that to your wife?” Mrs. Fanelli asked.

  “Margaret,” Mr. Fanelli tried.

  Okay. This was enough. Jillian didn’t need perfect strangers pitying or defending her—she’d endured more than enough pity over Beau’s cheating, thanks—and she really didn’t need a disruption during breakfast. With her luck, one of the guests would leave here, go to one of the travel Web sites and leave a bad review about the B & B. She couldn’t have that.

  Hurrying over, she tacked a pleasant smile on her face. “Hello, Mrs. Fanelli. Is something wrong?”

  The woman turned eyes of utmost outrage and bewilderment on Jillian, as though Beau had announced plans to rob Fort Knox and she just didn’t understand how he thought he could get away with it.

  “This man is here, eating at your restaurant, and I—”

  Uh-uh. Wrong word choice. Jillian let her pleasant smile cool twenty or thirty degrees. “This man is the father of my daughter and a guest here,” Jillian told her. “I assume you don’t have a problem with that.”

  Mrs. Fanelli gaped. Only the veranda’s wood-paneled floor prevented her jaw from dropping all the way to China. “You’re serving him?”

  Though he’d reached the buffet table at last and picked up a plate, Beau put it down now. Before Jillian could say anything—and she had a few thoughts about minding her own business that she planned to share with Mrs. Fanelli, paying customer or no—he looked to Jillian with an unspoken apology in his eyes. Then he addressed Mrs. Fanelli.

  “I just meant to come and have some coffee and a muffin. Maybe a bowl of fruit. I wasn’t planning on causing any scandals this morning.” His gaze flickered back to Jillian. “But since I seem to be disrupting things, I think I’ll go on home.”

  “Good idea.” Mrs. Fanelli straightened the collar of her dress with grim satisfaction, her work done for now.

  Something came over Jillian. Outrage at being protected like a piece of fine china on a shelf, for one, and sheer idiocy, for another. Whatever. This was her damn B & B and, since she paid the mortgage, she made the choices around here, not Mrs. Fanelli.

  Putting a hand on Beau’s arm, she stopped him from leaving. He froze, his brows hitching with surprise.

  “Mrs. Fanelli,” Jillian said. “I decide who to serve around here, thanks.”

  Mrs. Fanelli gasped. “But—him?”

  She had so much disgust in her voice she may have said it, or that. You serve that slime-covered, flesh-eating thing, do you, Jillian? What on God’s green earth is wrong with you, girl?

  “Yes.” Jillian kept her gaze narrowed and her voice iceberg cold. “Him. He is the father of my child. Unless he’s a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, he’s getting a muffin. You’re not a grand wizard, are you, Beau?”

  Beau, who seemed to be recovering from so much shock he might have been struck by lightning, stammered and recovered fast. “Not a grand wizard, no.”

  “And,” Jillian continued, “you do have money, right?”

  Beau, who, at the time of their divorce, was worth $48 million, a generous chunk of which he paid to Jillian in the settlement, and a tiny chunk of which he still owned, even after funding his foundation, pressed his lips together and dimpled but managed not to smile.

  “I think I can cover my bill, yes.”

  “Then it’s settled.” Jillian waved him back to the buffet. “Grab a plate.”

  Mr. Fanelli, meanwhile, took his floundering wife in hand and steered her toward the edge of the porch that led to the path to the street. “We’ll just be going now. Y’all have a nice day.”

  Whew. Crisis averted. Jillian lapsed back into gracious hostess mode. “Where are you folks headed today?”

  Mrs. Fanelli continued to glare impotently, but Mr. Fanelli seemed happy to chat. “Thought we’d check out the aquarium today. See if they have any great white sharks swimming around in a tank.”

  Jillian laughed. “Don’t get your hopes up. See you at dinner.”

  They left, taking one kind of tension with them and le
aving another. Now what? She didn’t want to stay and couldn’t make herself leave.

  Beau studied her with something unsettling in his expression. It was probably the way he’d look if he discovered a naked, six-breasted woman waiting in his bed—mostly delighted, but uncertain of what to make of his unexpected good fortune.

  The worst part was seeing a hopeful light in his eyes and feeling something similar in her chest. It aggravated her. Didn’t she know by now that Beau and hope couldn’t peacefully coexist? That Beau was a hope killer as well as a love killer? That nothing good could ever come of giving this man even an inch in her life?

  “Thanks, Jill.”

  She scowled. “Don’t thank me. And don’t read anything into this. I hate to be bossed around in my own B & B and I hate to lose a paying customer. That’s all.”

  There was subtle skepticism in his raised brows, but he had the good sense to play along. “Right.”

  “Well.” She moved toward the kitchen door because she knew she had work to do in there, even if she couldn’t remember what it was just now. “I’m just going to—”

  “You probably have a million things to do, eh? Clean up from breakfast…make lunch…pay bills and make sure all the guests have their towels and pillows and brochures. The B & B keeps you hopping, doesn’t it?”

  Okay. Okay, so she knew what he was doing here; this little trickery wasn’t going to work. By asking her about the inn, he hoped to forestall her and keep her talking; it was all part of his grand plan. It was no mystery how his mind worked. First, they’d have a conversation without killing each other. Then they’d share an unexpected smile, or maybe a laugh in an unguarded moment. This would snowball until they were back in bed together, with her hungry body firmly in charge and her brain AWOL. Or so he hoped.

  Not this time, buddy. Not ever.

  “It keeps me busy.” This time she got two steps before his voice caught up with her.

  “You love it, don’t you? I can tell.”

  Owning and managing this inn was the most satisfying thing she’d ever done in her professional life, much better than the early years, when she’d been a corporate lawyer, and her face probably showed it. “I do love it.”