The Inn at Dead Man's Point

by SUE FINEMAN

Katie was taking her nap when Jenna and Alessandro arrived at Sophia’s house.

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner tonight?” said Sophia. “You must be tired.”

  “I am.” Jenna sat on the living room sofa and closed her eyes. Listening to the soft murmur of voices from the kitchen, she fell asleep.

  When Jenna woke, she was lying down with a light cover over her, and Alessandro was helping his mother cook. Watching the two talking and laughing together, Jenna’s heart hurt for all the years she’d missed with her own mother. They never got to shop for prom dresses together or have those little talks about boys, but the worst part was the damage to her self-esteem. Aunt Mattie had destroyed her confidence and made her feel like an unlovable person.

  Her mother had taught her a little about cooking, but Aunt Mattie wouldn’t let her in the kitchen except to clean, and she did plenty of that. She cleaned the rooms, changed the sheets, and scrubbed the bathrooms between guests, and she was responsible for keeping the living areas clean, too. It was a lot to expect from a young girl, but Mattie not only expected it, she demanded it and then criticized if it wasn’t clean enough to suit her. And it never was.

  Nothing was ever good enough for Mattie Worthington, but she was the only mother Jenna had after her parents died. She would have been better off if they’d sent her to a foster home. If not for Uncle Charlie, she would have run away.

  Alessandro’s deep voice broke into her thoughts. “Jenna?”

  She looked up and smiled, and he smiled back, a smile so warm and loving it brought tears to her eyes. He dropped to his knees beside the sofa. “You okay?”

  “I was thinking about my mother and Aunt Mattie, how different they were. One was encouraging and loving and the other…” She sat up and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Alessandro handed her. “I’m getting sappy.”

  He sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and soaked up his strength while his hand covered her cheek and his fingers threaded into her hair. Jenna snuggled in. “I could stay here forever,” she whispered.

  “Okay with me,” he murmured back. He leaned down a little and kissed her gently. “Shall we set a date?”

  She pulled back. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, yes you did, and so did I.”

  “You caught me in a weak moment.”

  “Nah. You were like this before that business with the check.”

  That business with the check had torn them apart. “Alessandro, I was going to tell you after we got home from California, but—”

  “Yeah, I know. Instead of convincing myself I couldn’t trust you, I should have talked to you. Trouble is—”

  “Trouble is, we both screwed up, and we blew away something special.”

  “Does that mean—”

  Sophia called them to dinner at that moment. Alessandro kissed her again, whispered, “We’ll talk about this later,” and then went to help his mother put dinner on the table, leaving Jenna wondering what would happen when they got back to the inn tonight.

  Sophia knew in her heart that these two belonged together, but she couldn’t say anything without seeming to interfere. They’d figure it out in God’s good time, and they’d be married before the new baby came, like she and Vincent were so many years ago.

  Her dear Vincent had been gone so long now that at times he seemed like a distant memory. They were together for only fourteen years before God took him.

  Although she spent time with each of her children and their families, there were times when she felt like she was intruding into their lives. She loved every one of them and she adored her grandchildren, but they fussed over her as if she couldn’t take care of herself. She wasn’t so old that she couldn’t live alone, and she took her blood pressure medicine so she wouldn’t have another stroke.

  Jenna had told her in so many words that she needed space of her own, and even though Sophia loved having Jenna and Katie living with her, she understood. Jenna had been on her own for a long time. She’d taken care of herself and her little girl with very little help from the child’s father, like Sophia had taken care of her family after Vincent died. But by the time she lost her husband, Sophia knew what love was and what she’d lost. She’d lost her partner in life, and she was left with six kids and no job skills.

  She’d made a decision to stay home with her grieving children instead of leaving them to take a job that paid next to nothing. They got a little Social Security, and Sophia got her daycare license. Being a mother was what she did best, and there was a need for quality child care in their neighborhood. They didn’t have anything extra, but they got by.

  She was immensely proud of her children, of the kind of people they’d turned out to be. They all worked hard, and except for her youngest son, they were all loving parents. Alessandro would be a father soon, and he’d be a good daddy like the other boys.

  Although she hadn’t given birth to Nick, she loved him as if she had. He’d come to her scarred on the inside and the outside. The poor boy’s mother beat on him, starved him, and neglected him until he got big enough and brave enough to run away. When he showed up on her doorstep she nearly cried. He was so skinny, his clothes were rags, he had a big scar through his eyebrow, and his nose was a little crooked from being broken. It took months of love and patience to turn him into the boy she knew he could be. By the time he started junior high, he was as much her child as the others.

  Since then he’d given back every drop of love she and the other kids had given him and more. He’d made Max and Company a place where everyone in the family could work and thrive. He gave his cousins positions of authority and praised them when they did well. He quietly helped her after she had her stroke, and he was always there when she needed him. He’d even named his daughter after her.

  Alessandro had done well for himself, too. Cara had put him through college, but he would have made it on his own. He had a quiet strength that took him to professional levels the others would never reach. His brilliance in designing Nicky and Cara’s house had earned him praise by professional architects before he ever started college, and now that he had his degree, he could compete with the best of them.

  Her youngest son had never been in love before, and this misunderstanding with Jenna tore at him. He wanted to make a family with Jenna and Katie and their new baby, but Jenna was holding back. Trusting Alessandro with her love would be harder for her than having a baby alone.

  Sophia said a quiet prayer for God to help Alessandro and Jenna find a way to be together forever.

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  After Jenna bathed Katie and put her to bed, she took a long, hot bath. Alessandro was pacing up and down the hallway, and she knew he was waiting for her, so they could ‘talk.’ More than anything, she wanted them to put the business with the check behind them and move forward with their relationship, so their baby would have two parents in his life. Arguments she could understand, but without talking with her, Alessandro had walked away as if she had never mattered to him. Losing him had hurt deeply. It was almost like waking up and hearing that her parents would never be coming home again. Now he wanted back in her life. It was what she wanted, too, but what if she lost him again?

  She rubbed her tender nipples. Until she’d reconnected with Alessandro, she hadn’t had sex since the night she got pregnant with Katie. Work had been stressful that day, and the boss from hell had put his hand on her breast. Without thinking, she’d swung around and slapped his face. Two of her co-workers had seen what happened, but they hadn’t said a word. One had laughed, as if being assaulted in the office was funny.

  When she got home from work that day, Brian was waiting at her apartment. He’d broken up with yet another girlfriend, and he didn’t have anyplace to sleep. So she let him in, they shared a bottle of wine, and he seduced her. If not for the boss and the wine, she wouldn’t have let Brian into her bed. It was like the night she lost her virginity, the night he got her too drunk to know what she w
as doing, only this time she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Getting pregnant with Katie was a huge surprise, but once she got used to the idea, she rather liked it. She’d lost her family, but she could build another one, beginning with the baby. Brian didn’t like it, but she didn’t want or need Brian in her life.

  Now she’d have another baby to love.

  She felt a slight breeze and looked up to see Alessandro standing in her bathroom door. Her hand was still on her nipples.

  “Would you let me do that?”

  She stood and felt the water run off her body, over her tender nipples and her belly that would soon be swollen with pregnancy. Alessandro swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He brought the towel and wiped her shoulders and back. As he wrapped it around her waist, he leaned over to lick the water off her nipples. The touch of his tongue sent currents through her breasts and down through her body, and she moaned.

  His mouth came down on hers, releasing the passion in them both. She clung to him, and as he kissed her and rubbed his rough thumb over her sensitive nipple, she knew they’d make love tonight.

  They went into her room, to her bed. She tugged at his shirt. “You’re wearing way too many clothes, Mr. Donatelli. I like my men buck naked, and since there’s no longer any need for birth control, I mean naked everywhere.”

  She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders while he unzipped his slacks. In seconds, his clothes were in a pile on the floor and they were in the bed together. He touch her tenderly, as if he cherished her and their barely there baby, and she knew he cared. His big hand covered her belly and his finger traced a stretch mark from when she was pregnant with Katie. “I heard my mother tell Maria that these were stripes of love. I never knew what she meant until now.”

  Jenna had gone through her last pregnancy alone. Whether she and Alessandro had a future together as a couple or not, she knew he’d want to be involved in this pregnancy and in his child’s life. He’d want to see the ultrasound, help her choose a name, and sing to his unborn child. If it was a boy, he’d teach him to play ball and hammer a nail, and if it was a girl, he’d screen her boyfriends and give her advice about boys. She hoped he’d do the same for Katie, because although Brian loved his daughter, he wasn’t much of a father.

  Alessandro’s lips touched one stretch mark after another until each one had been branded with his kisses. Oh, yes, this pregnancy wouldn’t be anything like the last one, where she went to bed alone every night. She had no one to smile with over the results of the ultrasound, no one to feel the baby kick, and no one in the delivery room with her when she gave birth except the doctor and nurses.

  He nuzzled into her breasts and his mouth closed over her nipple. She cradled his head and ran her fingers through his hair, holding him as she hadn’t been able to since he’d walked out on her in California.

  Her heart swelled with love.

  Al made slow, sweet love to Jenna, savoring every touch and taste of her luscious body. She’d let him back into her life. Was it because of the baby, or did she love him? The way she was holding him and touching him, it felt like love.

  Later, he helped her change the sheets. “I used to dream about you in high school, Jenna. In the ninth grade, I thought you were pure and innocent, and I wanted to put you on a pedestal and give you everything you ever wanted. But I was just a geeky kid.”

  She nudged him with her shoulder. “You weren’t that bad.”

  “Oh, yes I was, but everything changed the next year, the day you asked me to kiss you. I wanted to so much, but I didn’t want to do it in front of the whole school. When you said it was a dare, you broke my heart.”

  He fluffed her pillows and tossed them down on the bed. “Then, a year later, after you broke up with Brian, I started dreaming of sweeping you off your feet and saving you from Brian Baxter. Those dreams led to kissing your lips, touching your breasts, and our naked bodies rolling in the dewy grass in a secluded meadow.”

  She clutched the blanket between her breasts. “Oh, Alessandro. I had no idea.”

  “I didn’t want to share you with Brian or anyone else.”

  “Brian is a weak man, and his father jerks him around like a puppet.”

  He cocked his head. “Is that why you slept with him?”

  “No, I slept with him the first time because he spiked my coke at a football game. It was the first time I’d ever had anything to drink. When I realized what we’d done, I cried half the night. I wanted my first time to be special, and I did it in the backseat of a car with a boy I didn’t even like that much.”

  He sat on the half-made bed. “I never figured you’d want to sleep with me.”

  She swung a pillow around and hit him with it. “You were wrong. I just didn’t know what I wanted until I saw you all grown up. You are a magnificent man, Alessandro Donatelli.”

  Al gazed at her cheeks, rosy from making love, and wondered what their children would look like. She was so fair, and nearly everyone in the Donatelli family had brown eyes and dark hair. Katie looked a lot like Jenna, but Brian had blue eyes, too.

  “When is the baby due?”

  “March 21st, give or take a week or two.”

  He laughed. “That’s my mother’s birthday.” He cocked his head. “Did you plan it that way?”

  “Plan? Who plans? This was a complete surprise.”

  “And a very nice one at that.” It was the best kind of surprise. He’d be a father, and if he could talk her into it, he’d also be a husband by then. But if he pushed too hard, she might run in the other direction, so he had to move slowly.

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  Mattie played the doctor’s games and gave the right answers to his questions, and after too much time in the hospital, he finally told her she was being released to the nursing home on a trial basis. “If at any time they decide you are a danger to yourself or to others, they will send you back to the hospital, and then we’ll have to find you other accommodations. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “If I can’t behave myself, the nursing home will kick me out.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How soon can I leave here?”

  “Tomorrow morning. You’ll have to take your medication on schedule, Mattie. No arguments. I know it makes you a little sleepy, but it’s necessary.”

  It might be necessary for them, but not for her, and if she argued the point, she’d end up back here, locked up with lunatics. She might be old, but she wasn’t crazy.

  They gave her clothes back the next morning, minus the gate opener and the matches, and handed her an envelope with the money from the sale of the car. “You’ll want someone at the nursing home to lock this up for you.”

  “What for?”

  “So someone doesn’t steal it.”

  “Okay.” She wouldn’t argue the point, but there was no place in the nursing home to spend money except the vending machines back by the laundry. You’d have to eat an awful lot of junk food and drink a lot of Pepsi Colas to spend this much. If someone was going to steal it, it would be the nurses and aides. She never did trust those people.

  She rode the shuttle through Tacoma and across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to Gig Harbor, to another jail of sorts. The driver parked in front of the nursing home and lowered the wheelchair lift to the sidewalk. She’d never needed a wheelchair before, but she’d spent so many days in a hospital bed, her strength was gone.

  The driver pushed her inside and up to the nurse’s desk. Nurse Cooley, the head jailor, forced a smile. “Mattie, it’s nice to see you back.”

  “Is it?”

  The smile disappeared. “It is if you’ll behave yourself this time.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Mattie handed the nurse the papers from the hospital and the envelope of money, minus a couple bills she’d stuffed into her pocket when the driver wasn’t looking.

  “Welcome home, Mattie,” said one of the aides. The aide pushed her into the room and left her sit
ting alone in her wheelchair facing the bed.

  Mattie wanted to tell her that this wasn’t her home, that it would never be her home. The doctor at the hospital told her she’d never be able to go out to the inn again, but he was wrong. She’d go as soon as she got her strength back and weaned herself off the pills that made her muzzy-headed. She’d start with the morning pill, so she could think during the day, and as soon as she got used to that, she’d stop taking the one in the evening.

  She had things to do, and she couldn’t do them until she could get around under her own power and think more clearly.

  She’d give herself a week, maybe two.

  Mattie Worthington would not die in a nursing home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenna wouldn’t sleep with him all night like she had before, but over the next few days, she came into Al’s bed to snuggle or he went to her bed. It wasn’t every night, and they didn’t always make love, but he soaked up her affection.

  She wasn’t ready to talk of the future, but each time she pointed out features she liked in his plans, he took note of it. He’d incorporate as many of those features as he could into the plan for their home. She’d have her pantry in the kitchen and the corner jetted tub in the bathroom. He’d give her anything she wanted if she’d stay with him.

  Jenna came home one day with a bunch of boxes and started packing the linens and kitchen things. There were two sets of dishes, one quite old, in addition to the everyday set. She polished the silver and packed it, and Al handed down the things from the highest cabinet shelves. Many of these were things he’d never seen before. Big wooden salad bowls, casserole dishes, stacks of cloth napkins and tablecloths, serving trays, and beautiful crystal. He said, “If Mattie had sold some of this, maybe she could have paid her taxes.”

  Wrapping another glass in newspaper, she said, “She wouldn’t have known what the crystal or china was worth, and nobody uses real silver anymore. I used to spend hours polishing it.”

  The garage was full, so Al stacked the boxes in the kitchen.

  “How soon do we have to be out?”