“I’ll come with you,” said Jack.
The twins had to stop off at the bathroom. Indra went ahead, leaving Jack to pace the hallway outside the ladies’ room as Harley exited the kitchen carrying a tray full of drinks.
“I won’t keep you. I just want to say sorry about my mother.”
“Nothing Melinda does could surprise me.”
The twins emerged from the bathroom. “Harley!” Freddie and Frankie threw their arms around her waist, causing her tray to tip precariously.
“Girls!” said Jack. “Harley’s working.”
Harley smiled indulgently. “It’s okay.”
“When can we come over again and play with Daisy and Tulip?” they asked.
Harley eyed Jack. “You’ll have to ask your daddy.”
The girls whirled around as one and flung themselves onto Jack. “When can we go? When? Soon? Soon, okay?”
“Shh!” said Jack, a hand on each twin’s upper back. “Inside voices.” Eyeing Harley, he asked, “Maybe later today?”
“I have guests coming tomorrow. I’m afraid I have to go home and get ready for them.”
“Awwww.” The girls’ faces fell.
“You’ve been wrestling alligators ever since you got back to town,” said Jack.
“What about next weekend?” asked Harley. “Frankie, how about I make you something one hundred percent cruelty-free.”
That brought the smile back to her face. “Can we?” she asked Jack.
“All right by me.”
“Everything okay?” Gordon, the club manager, appeared from out of nowhere. He lifted a meaningful brow at Harley.
“Got to go, girls,” sang Harley, detouring around them. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
Under the manager’s scrutiny, Jack watched her go, admiring the S-curve from waist to hip as she balanced her tray on her shoulder.
His phone dinged. Prudence, again.
Why did you lead me on?
Chapter Thirty-three
Harley hurried home after her shift at the club to finish preparing rooms for a wedding party. The bride and her attendants were driving up from their homes in California for the destination wedding. Two of them arrived after midnight. Just when Harley got them settled, the third woman rang the bell and she went through her routine once more.
At least they left shortly after breakfast for the wedding venue.
Later that night, when the reception was over, they returned barefoot, dangling their high heels by their straps, their dresses creased and makeup smeared.
“Looks like you had a good time,” yawned Harley, tightening the sash on her robe.
Then came the men in their shirtsleeves, loosened bow ties draped around their necks.
“Where’s the room?” one man, apparently the groom, asked his bride.
“Follow me,” she replied, gathering her skirt and ascending the stairs.
Not only the groom but his male friends trooped after her.
“Excuse me,” said Harley. “I believe some of you don’t have reservations.”
The women exchanged perturbed looks. “We paid cash for the rooms.”
“I charge by the person, not the room. Are you forgetting about breakfast? I have to buy enough food to serve everyone.”
“No problem. We just won’t eat,” said one of the men. At that, they laughed and continued up the stairs.
Harley didn’t know what to do. She knew better than to argue with drunks. She hadn’t asked for a credit card, so she couldn’t add the charges. She decided to bill the bride, hoping she would pay it when she came to her senses, and chalked it up to another lesson learned. From now on, she would make her guest policy crystal clear.
She was exhausted from the cumulative effect of working Thanksgiving, staying up late last night, and again tonight. Hopeful the wedding party would pass out, she fell back into bed.
But it wasn’t long before she heard the front door opening and closing, followed by music, laughter and the loud voices of yet more people. It seemed the party was only just getting started.
That’s it. She threw off her covers and marched downstairs in her T-shirt and flannel pants to find four more people lounging in the living room with their feet on the coffee table. One of them popped a cork to a rousing volley of cheers as champagne sprayed in an arc, landing on her yellow velvet ottoman.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Hey! Who are you?” asked a man jovially. “Who cares who you are—we’re having a celebration! Come join the party.” The man thrust one of her own glasses, obtained from her china closet, into her hand.
“This is my house, and that’s my furniture you’re ruining,” she said, pointing to the ottoman.
“Sorry. My bad,” he said, chugging from the bottle until his laughter forced him to stop and wipe his mouth on the back of his hand.
She hurried to the kitchen for a tea towel. The guest was always right. That’s what the guides to running a B and B said. When she got there, she found a couple making out against her counter.
“Do you mind?”
“Oops,” hiccupped the woman. She had the decency to lead her beau out of the room.
Harley wondered where she was taking him. But she had to blot the wine off the ottoman before it stained. She grabbed a couple of towels and headed back to the living room, and when she got there, her jaw dropped when she saw a man standing on her beautiful ottoman with his shoes on, peeing into her fiddle-leaf fig.
“Get out! Everyone, out! Now!”
But her words were drowned out in the commotion.
Then someone mentioned going out to see the goats. Her property was one thing, but her animals were another. She had visions of the poor creatures fainting in terror. She had to defend them. But how?
If you ever need anything, holler. At the time, she had chalked up Alex’s offer to polite neighborliness. Only now did it occur to her that, as both a cop and a friend of Jack’s, Alex was serious about looking out for her.
With shaking fingers she punched Alex’s number into her phone.
“Harley,” he answered in his officious voice after the first ring. “ ’Course I remember you. What’s up?”
Minutes later, Alex pulled up in his unmarked car, lights flashing, a backup officer close behind him. And following them came Jack.
* * *
It had taken some good-natured cajoling by the men, but soon the house was emptied of everyone but the bride and groom, who the whole time had been closeted in their room, presumably doing what all brides and grooms do on their wedding nights, and the original two women members of the party.
Still in her bathrobe, Harley breathed a sigh of relief as she thanked the men. “I hated to call for help, but when they started talking about the goats . . . I was picturing it turning into a free-for-all, with you throwing them bodily off the porch. I can’t believe it ended peaceably.”
“You were right to call. As for defusing the situation, when you’re outnumbered, you have to use brains instead of brawn,” said Alex.
Alex and the other cop left, but Jack stayed behind.
Harley pinched her temples. “If I’d known this was what running a B and B was like . . .”
Jack escorted her to a kitchen chair. “You’ve been drinking from the fire hose ever since you got back to town. What are you going to do when the baby comes?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. In Seattle, all she had was a one-bedroom apartment and her design business. Now she had added another full-time business and—Jack.
“I know,” said Jack.
She searched his face.
“Quit the B and B.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. At least not until my royalties start coming.”
Jack looked down at her, so strong yet so vulnerable. When Alex had called him and told him there was trouble at the Victorian, he didn’t think twice before jumping into his truck.
“Besides, what about goat yoga?”
“Those goats won’t miss doing yoga with strangers. They’ll be just as happy to do yoga with you and the girls.” He took her in his arms. “What can I do to help you? Whatever you need. I’m here for you.”
Without thinking, she replied, “I can do this on my own, the same way I’ve made my career on my own. I don’t need you or any other man to help me.” She had started with nothing. She hadn’t just beaten the odds against a starving artist making a living. She’d smashed them out of the park.
“You don’t have to be so defensive. I’m asking you to lean on me, and let me lean on you. What more do I have to do to convince you that you can trust me?”
It was because of Jack that she was standing in her dream house. He’d seen to it that everyone in his family welcomed her.
Everyone except Melinda, of course.
“There’re some things you need to know about. Things I probably should have told you before, but everything was going so well for us, I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“What could possibly ruin what we have?”
“The first day I went back to work at the club, your mom was there.”
He exhaled loudly and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. “Great.”
“She tried to bribe me to leave town again.”
Jack set down his glass and went over to gaze out the window. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You knew I was in her crosshairs. Like I said, I didn’t want to spoil things. Anyway, it didn’t work. I didn’t take the bait. It’s over now.”
He came back to the couch, sat down beside her, and took her hands in his. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. You’re great with the girls. They’re much happier than when we first came back. Their grades are improving and they’re easier to get along with.” He hesitated. “What would you say to us moving in together?”
Harley slipped out of his grasp, tightened the sash on her robe and angled away from him. There was a time when she would have jumped at the chance. The irony was, now that Jack was finally ready, she wasn’t. Why couldn’t the two of them ever be on the same page?
“I know you’re determined to be a one-woman band, doing your artwork, running a B and B. But why run yourself ragged if you don’t have to? I thought you were the open minded one. What’s the down side? The house is plenty big enough.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“What if I were to tell you I need you to take care of me? And the girls, and your son. Our kids. We can be a family.”
Waking up next to Jack every morning . . . the patter of three pairs of little feet down the hall? Ending each day together? It was everything she had ever wanted.
“You won’t have to open your house up to strangers any more. The only people you’ll have to take care of are the people you care about and who feel the same way about you.”
They had found their way back to each other against all odds. She should be ecstatic. But there was still something else that nagged at her, kept her from going along with Jack’s plan. She bit her lip. “You make it sound so perfect . . .”
“It is perfect. Why are you so against it? Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll even have another baby.”
She hadn’t told Jack that she was infertile. Because letting him in on her secret would lead to him insisting on taking the blame for having made her that way. And even though his marrying Emily had cut her like a knife, she couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him.
There was something Jack still hadn’t told her either: what he was doing with Emily while he was seeing her.
He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Harley. You make me very,” he kissed her lips lightly and unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, “very,” kissed her again, and undid the next button, “happy.”
He cupped her head, his mouth hungrily seeking hers. A minute later, he pulled back and asked, “Tell me I make you feel the same.”
“You know you do. You always have.” He untied her sash, slipped his hands into her robe and pulled her body flush with his. He was larger than she remembered. Any hint of boyish wiriness was gone, replaced by slabs of solid muscle from years spent hefting bins full of grapes and barrels full of wine. She felt ultrafeminine in comparison. “You’re very persuasive. You know that?”
Gently he peeled her robe off her shoulders, held her at arm’s length and examined her, surrounding her breasts with his warm hands, making her nipples tighten. “Then it’s a done deal.” He kissed her again and slowly lowered her backward onto the couch cushions.
She pressed her hands against his chest and wrested her mouth from his. “Wait. There’s something you should know—” She’d rehearsed the words over and over in her head.
“Whatever it is, it can wait.” He nuzzled her neck, slipping his hand between her legs.
She inhaled sharply. A moment later, her head fell back and her eyes closed, reveling in the sensations swirling through her.
* * *
“Nnnnnn.” Harley groaned into her pillow.
“What’s that?” panted Jack. He lay next to her in her bed with his hands behind his head, feeling exceedingly smug. “Did you say you wanted to do it again?”
“Nooooo.” He might have had his way the first go-round, but she had made him pay, and pay dearly. “I cry uncle.”
He grinned into the darkness, absentmindedly trailing his fingertips lightly across the small of her back. He hadn’t felt so satisfied, so hopeful, in years.
And then he felt something . . . something that wasn’t supposed to be there. His hand stopped on an elevated ridge along Harley’s spine.
Her muscles tensed. “Whad?” Though muffled in her pillow, her voice held a distinct edge. He sat up and fumbled with the lamp on the nightstand until he found the switch.
Then he leaned over her lower back and ran his finger over the four-inch scar.
There were a couple of closed head injuries when the Homecoming Court was thrown from the float. Jimmy Polanski fractured his right thumb when he broke his fall, costing them the game against Barlow that night. Jane Zhou, whom the mean kids called “Plain” Jane, sustained a broken collarbone. At half-time, when Jane walked out to the fifty-yard line with her arm in a sling and was crowned queen, word circulated through the bleachers that she’d got the mercy vote.
Slowly, Harley rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. The moment she’d been dreading was here.
She began speaking in a monotone. “After the accident, my periods stopped. The doctors assured me they would come back in a year or so.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, unable to continue. Every month she waited, watching for the slightest cramp, the merest trace of pink. “I’m still waiting. I’ve done some reading. The medical term for it is post-spinal cord injury amenorrhea. In a small percentage of cases, periods never resume. It’s being studied extensively overseas. They think it has something to do with the effect of trauma on prolactin levels. Too much prolactin inhibits menstruation.”
As the upshot of her words hit Jack, his self-satisfaction vanished, replaced with self-loathing. “If you don’t have periods . . .” His conclusion was too devastating to give voice to. “But . . . I thought your back injury wasn’t that serious. I thought the surgery fixed things.”
“All the surgery did was take out the tiny fragments of fractured vertebrae. The body is a complicated machine, Jack. Even the slightest trauma to the spinal cord can throw things off. And when you toss hormones into the mix . . .” She winced. “Bottom line is, I can’t get pregnant. I’ll never carry my own child.”
“Aw, Harley. Jesus.” He cradled her cheek, searching her face with silent tears streaming down it. “This is my fault. I did this to you.”
She removed his hands and squeezed them between hers. “Jack, no. It’s nobody’s fault. It was a freak accident.”
All these years, she’d been suffering in silence. He sat up on the side of the bed, put his feet on the floor, and hung his head.
“Don’t tell me that! If it weren’t for my carelessness, this never would have happened.”
She rolled onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow. “Stop kicking yourself. I was the navigator—”
“I was the one behind the wheel. The driver is always the one responsible.”
“If you want to go assigning blame, I’m every bit as culpable as you are.”
But he’d been raised to take responsibility for his actions above all. Nothing she could say would ever convince him of that.
Chapter Thirty-four
Jack had taken the girls to Harley’s house for dinner. Now they were back at the estate.
The girls were in the living room, whispering when Frankie jumped up.
“Freddie! That’s my favorite pencil! Give it back!” Freddie ran around the coffee table, her twin hot on her heels, both giggling.
“What did you have to eat?” Melinda asked, imagining Harley stuffing them with sugary desserts.
“Soup,” said Freddie.
“And salad,” finished Frankie.
“Hmph,” said Melinda.
The timer on Jack’s phone buzzed. “Listen up, girls. I have a call scheduled with my man Down Under. Get ready for bed and I’ll come up and kiss you good night when I’m finished.”
Jack grabbed his jacket and headed out for his office.
“Girls,” Melinda repeated. “It’s time for you to go upstairs and get your baths.”
But instead of complying, they continued chasing each other around the furniture.
“Frankie! Did you hear what I said?”
The more time they spent at Harley’s place, the more headstrong they were becoming.
Out of breath, Freddie said, “You tell her.”
“No, you,” panted Frankie.
“Tell me what?” asked Melinda.
“Let’s do rock-paper-scissors,” said Freddie.
The first two attempts were ties. Not surprising, given their telepathic bond.
“Rock crushes scissors,” said Freddie. “You lost.”
“What is it you’re dying to tell me?” Despite their silliness, Melinda filled with foreboding.
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