But there was no time and even less privacy. She couldn’t leave Ashley alone at night and they couldn’t use Darcie’s guest room during the day with the renovators there.
Alone in her windowless office with the door closed, Trent had groaned, but said, “Okay. But I get to hold your hand at dinner.”
“Trent, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Hey, even the high school kids can hold hands in public.”
“I meant dinner. It’s just that everyone would read so much into it. You know what Drago’s like.”
“So? Let everyone read. Who cares?” He looked at her. “Uh-huh. You care. You don’t want anyone to know.”
“It’s not the way you make it sound. But there’s the situation here at the dealership—”
“Yeah, I bet there’s never been a relationship between people who work together.”
“I have Ashley to consider.”
“Ah.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I understand that you don’t want to leave her alone at night. And I understand you wanting to keep our making love private. But at some point, you’re going to have to break it to her that I’m in your life, so dinner doesn’t seem unreasonable.”
“There’s been so much going on this summer, so much has changed, I just… Not yet.”
He’d left then. She’d known he wasn’t happy. But she couldn’t just breeze into Ashley’s room one night and say, Oh, by the way, I’m involved with Trent, who happens to be both your uncle and the man you seem to like least in the world.
She couldn’t.
He hadn’t said anything more about it. And they’d even found one night last week when they’d worked so late that everyone else had left…. And then her windowless box of an office had become a haven, with the door locked and some creative use of her desk chair.
She had welcomed his kiss, his arms, his body, feeling him slide inside her with a rightness that sang along her skin and deep in her soul.
They would work this out.
It needed time. That was all. Some time.
Chapter Twelve
“Hi, Jonas.”
Trent barely recognized that happy chirp as Ashley’s voice.
He held his position bent double in the backseat of the black sedan Jonas had supposedly finished cleaning. Trent had been pressed into service checking used cars because Jennifer was up to her neck in dealing with the new cars that would be coming in. He’d found cigarette butts under the driver’s seat and had collected sixty-four cents from the floor under the passenger seat when he heard Ashley’s voice.
He raised his head and, with the car door open, he could see her, Jonas and Barry over by the car wash.
She was smiling as if she’d just won the lottery, with her jackpot Jonas’s face. Trent happened to know that Jennifer had told her to stay away from the boy.
If Jonas’s bored mumble was a greeting, it wasn’t much of one.
“I thought I’d come see what you’re doing,” she said brightly.
“I’m working. What does it look like? Go away.”
“Oh. I just…” Even from this distance, Trent saw color surging into her face. She leveled her chin the way he’d seen her mother do, and walked away.
Trent came up behind the boys before either knew he was there.
“Jonas,” he barked from just behind the kid’s shoulder.
He pitched forward, knocking his head against the car’s side panel and swearing.
When he saw who it was, he scrambled up—a task made more difficult because Trent’s position crowded him against the car—and muttered an apology for cursing.
“Barry, take a break,” Trent ordered, not taking his gaze off Jonas.
Jonas looked anywhere but at Trent. When his gaze fell on the sedan, he said. “I didn’t get all the way finished with that one yet. Barry must have moved it by mistake. I know my initials are on the form, but—”
“What do you think you’re doing with my niece, Jonas?” Trent could barely believe the words came out of his own mouth. Where the hell had this surge of protectiveness come from?
“Huh? Your niece? Oh. Ashley? Nothing. I mean, I asked some stuff about you and she talked about her father and now she just keeps bugging me.” The kid came to a full stop. His mouth opened so wide Trent thought he could see his tonsils. “You don’t mean— You can’t. My God, she’s a kid!”
Jonas’s reaction was unfeigned. A knot eased from Trent’s gut.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice so low Jonas had to go still and intent to hear it. “She is a kid. And you stay the hell away from her.”
“I will. I— Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
He was talking to Trent’s back.
God, he better be careful or he’d be acting as though Ashley were his kid. He’d be well and truly caught, not just in a family, but in the last family on earth he should be in.
“Be careful of this step.”
Trent had her hand gripped in his, and shone the flashlight over the step he was on and she was about to climb.
The deconstruction of Darcie’s house was in full swing. “This is crazy,” she muttered as Trent tugged her along the hallway.
“A little chaos is a small price to pay,” Trent said, sweeping aside protective plastic and opening the door to the bedroom that formed an oasis.
An oasis within the construction and an oasis in their lives.
“I know why I’m in this,” Jennifer said, unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re kind. You’re down-to-earth. You’re capable. You’re comfortable with who you are and where you are. You’re just so sane. You’re—”
“You are going to get to sexy eventually, aren’t you?” he demanded, holding up the sock he’d just shed.
She laughed. “And you’re sexy. Incredibly, incredibly sexy.” She kissed his chest, then straightened. “And then there’s me. I’m a mess. With a daughter who makes me more of a mess every day. Why would you want to get involved with us? How does it benefit you?”
“You mean besides the obvious?” Having disposed of her blouse, he made a lightning strike to kiss, then suck, then soothe with another kiss the delicate skin where her shoulder met her throat.
She sighed with pleasure. “Yes,” she said. “Besides that.”
“Then the answer is the same to both questions—why I’d want to get involved with you and how it benefits me. It’s you.”
“I said besides that.”
“Sex isn’t all you are, Jennifer. Being around you—well, let’s say I’m a whole lot happier guy than I used to be. I have a life. Look at the way you got me to start coaching. You not only encouraged me to go for what would make me happier, you made it possible.”
“Maybe I just wanted to run the dealership alone.”
He laughed. “Maybe? I know you wanted to. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t have my best interests at heart. Actually you did twice—because you knew I’d be happier not running the dealership and you knew the dealership would be better off without me getting in your hair every five minutes.” He slid his fingers into her hair, pulling free the pins that had held it back. “Though getting in your hair does have its benefits.
“I’ll tell you something, Jennifer Truesdale. From the time I was a kid I’ve done my damnedest to study hard and anticipate what was coming my way so I could handle it. That’s how I am. I study, I look ahead, I anticipate.”
“I know. But—”
“But not with you. Because with you I feel things. With you I enjoy now. And with you… Ah, Jen, don’t you know? I never could have anticipated you.”
At some point after Jennifer collapsed on Trent’s chest, she’d shifted, so when she opened her eyes after dozing, she was on her side, one of her legs over his.
“This will be the last time we can be together for a while,” she murmured.
She’d agreed Ashley could attend the summer’s final sleepover only after extracting pledges of perfect behavior from her.
It was a small gathering—Ashley, Courtney and Sarah at Sarah’s house for her birthday and a farewell to summer. At noon the next day, the last Friday of summer, the girls would go to school for a two-hour session of getting class schedules, locker assignments and books.
Come Monday, the school year began for real.
Back at the beginning of summer, when this was planned. Sarah’s mother had talked with Jennifer and Jill, as the other mothers, and they’d all decided that, in addition to falling on Sarah’s actual birthday, it was a better plan to give the girls more time between the sleepover and the start of school than a weekend date would.
But first, she and Trent had the whole night to be together.
They’d been so eager to make use of this opportunity that she hadn’t taken the time to explain when they’d arrived.
Trent rolled his head on the pillow to look at her.
“Yeah, I heard Quince is going to be in town more often in the fall. I need to get my own place.”
“You probably do, but that wouldn’t change that we wouldn’t be able to do—” she gestured from him to her “—this.”
“You can’t leave Ashley alone,” he said.
“No, I can’t.” She levered herself on one elbow. “What?”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t have to. What?”
“You let her manipulate you. You let her—”
“Stop. This is because you think you see Eric in her. I don’t—”
He raised one hand, the one not wrapped around her. “Fine. I won’t say another word about your perfect daughter. I’ll butt out.”
“Oh, I know she’s not perfect. And you want to know something else?”
He looked as if he wanted to say no, but wasn’t that stupid. “What?”
“I see a lot of someone else in her, too. I see a lot of the Stenner genes that landed in her uncle in her. Stubborn. Proud. Closing out hurt, determined to never let anybody get back inside if she’s been stung once. Refusing to talk about it. What have you got to say to that?”
She thought she’d reached him. She thought she might have gotten through to him. Might have cracked the protective covering he kept around his feelings about family.
“What I’ve got to say is if this is our last time for a while, we should make good use of it.”
Trent heard the phone ringing inside his room as he put his key into the motel door. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. He’d only dropped Jennifer off at her car a short time before.
Could something have happened?
He slammed the door behind him, and in two long strides had the phone. “Yes?”
“Trent? Finally.”
It was Linc.
Worry fell away, only to be replaced by surprise. “What are you doing calling at this hour? It’s not even five your time.”
“Don’t I know it. I’ve been calling since last night. Your cell phone’s off, too.”
Eventually, both he and Jennifer had slept. Neither had awakened until the light breaking through the window jerked him into alertness later than they’d planned. They’d scrambled up—catching one kiss over the bed as they’d changed the sheets, and another in the car before he backed out of the garage. Because they couldn’t—or Jennifer wouldn’t—kiss goodbye out in the open where anyone might see them. Where anyone might know they were together.
But he wasn’t telling Linc any of that. At least not now.
“What’s up, Linc?”
“A buddy of mine called me last night. Strictly on the Q.T. He saw my name connected to yours, and figured I’d be interested. Do you trust all those people you’ve got working for you at that dealership?”
“What’s this about, Linc?”
“First, tell me who’s running the accounts?”
“Anne Hooper does the books—she’s the one you said was top-notch after I sent you the first month’s worth.”
“Just you and Jennifer can write checks off the accounts? Not this Anne Hooper?”
“Right.”
Linc hissed a breath out through his teeth. “There’s no easy way of saying this, Trent. Somebody’s set up a side account. Separate from the ones you sent me papers on. Money’s going into this account from the dealership, and then it’s going out.”
“Where?” Trent asked, his chest suddenly tight.
“It’s not clear where—not yet. I’m working on that. But if it’s just you and Jennifer who can—”
“Don’t say it, Linc. Don’t say something I won’t be able to forgive you for.”
Silence hummed over the phone line.
Linc expelled a breath of exhaustion. “Okay, I won’t say anything unless I know for sure. But if I do, Trent, I’m going to say it whether you want to hear it or not. Because if I didn’t, I’d never forgive myself—not as a professional, not as your friend.”
“It won’t be an issue,” Trent said.
“I hope not. I sure as hell hope not. Will you dig around there? See what you can find out?”
“Yeah.” It might have come a beat slow—would a man who was sure be reluctant to put it to the test?—but it came. “Yeah, I will.”
So, after he took a shower and dressed, he returned to Drago, opened the dealership and went directly to Jennifer’s office.
He hesitated a moment, then tried the door. It was unlocked. He went in.
Jennifer had her key in the apartment door lock when she heard a sound from inside.
She knew all the advice said to leave, to run down the stairs and call the police. But a stronger instinct shoved that good advice aside.
She swung open the door and heard her daughter’s sobs.
Racing through the apartment, she found Ashley curled on her bed, clutching a pillow to her middle the way she used to as a child.
“Ashley! Are you hurt?”
Her mind cataloged the facts. No blood, no sign of injury, disheveled hair, tearstains down her face, wearing the clothes she’d taken with her to the sleepover for this morning, her cries sounding more of fear and anger than of pain.
She gripped her daughter’s shoulders. “Ashley Elizabeth. Tell me right now—are you hurt?”
“Noooo,” she wailed.
“Are you sick?”
This response was less distinct, but Jennifer recognized it as negative.
Okay, not the worst. She could deal with this then. She could.
“Ashley, tell me what’s happened. Why are you here?” She was supposed to have stayed at Sarah’s until they all biked to the school. “How did you get home? What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong!”
“Ashley. You have to tell me what’s happened.”
Her daughter jolted upright, wrenching out of her hold. “Everyone knows. Everyone. They said they had to tell me because they’re my best friends and everybody’s been talking about it for weeks and they all say you’re in love with that man.”
I am.
The recognition came so fast, so hard, that Jennifer gasped at it.
Oh, God. She loved Trent.
He was the one. The one Darcie had told her was all she needed. And then it makes no difference if it’s never lasted before.
The one who didn’t believe in family. The one who didn’t get along with her daughter. The one who would complicate her life beyond belief.
The one who made her so happy.
“I said they were crazy. You’d never do that. But they said you’re going to marry him. That you chose him!” her daughter wailed. “You let him come between us!”
Jennifer made it past the smiling good-mornings of the dealership staff, none of whom seemed to be concerned that she had come in at nearly noon instead of being here before anyone else.
She wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing sending Ashley out to keep her date with her friends. But she’d seemed calmer after they’d talked. Even though Jennifer had refused to make any promises.
She saw motion in Trent’s office, and felt as i
f a vise inside her—one that had been twisting tighter and tighter since she’d put her key in the apartment door lock five hours ago—had just clamped down to the max.
With the football team’s final roster being posted this morning, then practice this afternoon, he wasn’t supposed to have been here until this evening. She’d thought she would have more time.
She went directly to her office, putting her purse on the desk. Some level of her mind took in that someone had moved the pad with today’s list on it. And the stack of papers ready for her to look through had been shifted, as if by someone’s elbow when they sat by the computer.
But that minor mystery would wait.
First, she had to break her own heart.
She went to Trent’s office, knocked on the open door and walked in, knowing she had to do it now. Do it fast. And do it here, where they would be constrained by potential witnesses through the window to the showroom.
“Trent, we have to talk.”
Belatedly, she realized he’d been pacing. What on earth…?
He’d spun around at her voice, his eyes alight and his mouth smiling at seeing her. “I was thinking exactly the same thing.”
He came toward her.
Before he could touch her, before he could make her forget what she needed to say, she rushed out the first words that came to her. “There are all these things between us, and we’ve never dealt with them, and they just sit there getting bigger and bigger.”
He’d stopped at the words between us. “Like what?”
“Like why you really came here this summer. I know why you wanted to get away, I can understand that, but why did you come back? I thought it might have been for your father, to try to finally win his approval.”
His face twisted.
She reached toward him, then dropped her hand.
“No, no, I know that isn’t the truth now. And I’m glad, because I don’t think that man will ever…but Trent, why? And why did you stay?”
“I stayed because you and Ashley needed help.”
She sucked in a breath. “You stayed out of charity? Duty?”
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