by Baer, Judy
And now I’ve fallen in love…in the short space of a weekend…with my former client’s brother…whom I disliked intensely only forty-eight hours ago. This is totally out of character for me, as foreign a language to me as Swahili.
It’s almost too much for a pragmatic, cool-headed Scandinavian girl to bear.
“There you are!” Jared waited for me by the door, and by the way his eyes lit up when I walked in, I knew he was overjoyed to see me.
What an amazing turnaround it had been for us in the last few hours. We’d not only made peace with each other, we were buzzing around each other like two bugs drawn to each other’s light. Molly’s idea was inspired. If we could send all our world leaders to a spa for a month or two, they’d be so mellow we could get things like world peace worked out and have time left over for a facial.
As his fingers touched my elbow and he cradled my arm in his hand, a sense of rightness washed over me like a blessing. It was a rightness I’d never felt with anyone else in my life.
Is he the one for me, Lord? Now? When I was least expecting it?
Isn’t that the way with God? He’s a Father who loves to surprise us with gifts far more wonderful than we could ever expect or design for ourselves. I looked up and into Jared’s eyes—a gift in itself for someone my height—and saw my feelings mirrored there.
For a person who is risk-averse like me, who likes preplanning and loves caution, this is a brand-new experience. Prudence was replaced by infatuation as I drifted through dinner in a delirious haze. Cardboard would have tasted divine. I could have been eating chicken lips and fish eyebrows and loved it all. And what made it all the more wonderful was that Jared seemed to share my happiness.
“I certainly underestimated you,” I admitted. “I was sure your heart was made of stone—or ice—and now…”
“Molly says it’s my biggest flaw—being too soft with her.” His voice softened.
“That reminds me. She called. I’m supposed to tell you ‘hi.’ She’d planned to call you as well but was running late, and her ride came. Apparently she is headed to a friend’s lake cabin.”
“She called you?” He seemed surprised.
“She wanted to know if I’d learned to like her big brother as much as she does.”
His eyes twinkled. “And?”
“As much. Maybe even more.”
“Imagine that.” His voice softened and the way he looked at me made my heart leap in my chest.
“And she told me to give you this.” I leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
“Now I have even more to thank her for.” He shook his head and I saw sadness creep into his expression. “Sometimes she just breaks my heart.”
What a strange thing to say!
“You haven’t heard any of the Molly stories, have you?” he asked ruefully.
“What do you mean?”
“Molly, the Lake and the Mislaid Car, Molly and the Missing Children, Molly and the Mystery of the Lost Purse, Vanishing Graduation Diploma and Straying Lawn Mower?” He sighed and leaned back in his chair as if this might take a long, long time.
“Sounds better than a Nancy Drew series,” I commented. “Tell me more.”
“When Molly was sixteen, my father bought her a car. Nothing fancy. A used Cavalier. Granted, it wasn’t much of a car, small and inexpensive, but it got good gas mileage. Molly was only supposed to drive it to specified places like school, the park near home and to a few reliable friends’ homes.
“My sister has always been…distracted. She’s always thinking ahead and sometimes forgets to live in the present. Anyway, she and her friends decided to have an afternoon birthday party for one of the girls in her group and hold it at the park. It’s pretty there, a nice little lake, more of a pond, really, shelters, fire pits, the works.
“Molly, as usual, volunteered to do about seven things, including decorations, the cake, start the fire…well, you get the idea.”
I nodded. I could just see her bustling around, trying to make things nice for the birthday girl.
“She went early, of course, so by the time the other girls arrived, she had everything ready. Apparently they had a good time, because it was early evening when the party began to break up. Molly was taking down the decorations when one of the girls asked her if she needed a ride home.
“Of course, Molly said she’d driven herself and turned to point to her car. That’s the first anyone noticed that the car was missing.”
“Stolen?” I gasped. “Poor kid!”
“Not exactly. The police and my parents were called. It was the first officer to arrive to take down a description of the car who noticed the rear bumper of a red Cavalier jutting out of the lake just below the girls’ campsite.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep my jaw from dropping.
Jared looked both weary and amused as he said, “Close as anyone can figure, Molly drove to the shelter, unloaded the decorations and cake and then parked the car. Unfortunately she parked the car close to the lake in a spot where the ground falls fairly steeply toward the water. There’s no real shore there and there’s a drop-off. That, combined with the fact that Molly turned off the ignition without shifting the car into Park or Neutral, made it easy for the car to roll into the water.”
I suddenly felt much of Jared’s weariness—and no little portion of his amusement, as well.
“The girls admitted to having a boom box on full blast so no one heard a thing when the car rolled into the water.”
“What did your parents…the police…” I heard myself stammering.
“They called someone to retrieve the car, but no one even scolded Molly. She took care of that herself.”
He smiled at my quizzical gaze. “She grounded herself for three months, took away all her own dating privileges and promised to get a job to pay for having the car refurbished.”
“That’s harsh.”
“She’s always harsh with herself. Far worse than my parents would have been. I think she’s so disappointed with herself sometimes that whatever punishment she metes out is more painful than anyone else would ever dream up.”
“So did she do all those things?”
“My parents made her pay for the car. The rest they didn’t press. Nobody wants Molly miserable—except Molly.” Jared chuckled. “She told everyone from then on that she was on probation and that they should all hide their keys when she came around.”
“Well, it was just a one-time incident.” I looked into Jared’s eyes. “Wasn’t it?”
“Not exactly. There’s also the story of Molly and the Lost Car at the Airport Parking Lot and dozens of Molly and the Missing Keys stories.”
“Well, at least that was the worst of it.”
“Not exactly.” Jared played with his spoon, tapping it on the water glass, the centerpiece, his coffee cup. It was as though thinking about these things made him nervous.
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“There was the time Molly lost some children.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this one.”
“It has a happy ending.”
“Okay, then.”
“While she was babysitting for our neighbor, who has three children, Molly got the brilliant idea that she would take the kids into downtown Minneapolis to go Christmas shopping for the children’s mother. After that, just think major department store, lost children, chaos and panic.”
I sometimes feel lost, chaotic and panicky when I’m Christmas shopping. I could hardly imagine Molly as a teenager with three little kids…
“Apparently, Molly got distracted by some jewelry and took her eyes off the children for a few moments.”
“Quick. Tell me the happy ending.”
“It didn’t come quickly. She did have the presence of mind to ask for help immediately. They locked the doors and scoured every inch of the store.”
“And the children?”
“It seemed that they’d vanished
into thin air.”
“Where did they find them?”
“In the last place they looked.”
“Of course.”
“The kids had found the door that leads to the outside display windows. It being Christmas, there was one entire scene of Santa’s workshop, another of a line of children waiting to see Santa and a third of a family of kids waiting by the fire for Santa to arrive.”
“And?”
“Apparently the children had crawled into the window displays and played there for quite some time, to the delight of the people on the sidewalk. If anyone had walked out the door and asked if three little kids had gone by, they would have found them immediately. By the time police got to them, however, one child had crawled into Santa’s lap and was sound asleep, another had lain down on the floor with the mannequins of the children in repose waiting for Santa Claus and had fallen asleep with them. The third, the oldest, had gathered all the loose toys from the elves at the workshop and taken them behind a curtain to play with them. He had made a Lincoln log house, a fort of blocks and was putting the finishing touches on a Lego airport when they found him.”
“And Molly?”
“She’d sworn herself to a life of chastity, bread and water and no makeup for a month by the time we got there. She also offered to give up television, the phone in her room, popcorn and chocolate. She was trying to think up a worse punishment, but she hadn’t yet been able to commit herself to an entire lifetime without mascara and blush.”
I laughed, because Jared made it sound so funny, but I saw that Molly’s external clutter and chaos had much to do with her internal goings-on. Before I could speak, Jared leaned forward and put his hand over mine, and I felt a zing of energy bolt up my arm like lightning. It knocked out all my power receptors, and I was putty in his hands.
“Enough about Molly. More about you.”
And I was almost sure he added under his breath, “And me.”
We’d been talking for some time, utterly unaware of everything around us when I remembered the thought that had come into my head earlier.
“Jared, do you think it’s possible that Molly has ADD?”
“Attention Deficit Disorder? I doubt she’s been evaluated. I’m not sure that twenty years ago people were quite so aware of it as they are now. Why?”
“Because it would explain so much of Molly’s behavior.”
Jared looked mildly interested. “Really? I don’t know much about it, other than it seems to be in the news a lot these days.”
“I’m no specialist, but I have a cousin whose daughter has ADD. In fact, I feel rather stupid that I didn’t consider this before now. I’d assumed it had been ruled out in Molly’s case, but she has all the signs.”
“Such as?” He was twirling a lock of my hair with his index finger and not paying much attention to what I was saying.
I was having difficulty paying attention to what I was saying, too, but I forged ahead. “Distractibility, a short attention span, bed wetting late into childhood, doesn’t listen well to directions, misplaces things, is easily bored, restless, fidgety, can’t sit still, impulsive, trouble with follow-through, inefficient…” The longer I talked, the more impact the symptoms had on my consciousness.
On Jared’s, too, apparently. He straightened and let my curl fall from his finger. “You’re describing Molly exactly.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, other than I don’t usually think of ADD manifesting in adults. It has to, of course, but we hear so much about diagnosing it in children these days…”
Jared’s forehead was wrinkled into a frown. “It makes sense. Perfect sense, in fact. I wish I knew more….” Then he shook himself like a big wet dog just out of a pond. “But we can discuss it later. Tonight—” and he touched the tip of his finger to my lips and drew it down the curve of my cheek “—is for us.”
Chapter Twenty
There was a string quartet playing in the Grecian room and a waiter glided around the room offering appetizers to those milling about. My stomach gave a great heave of hunger and I tried to catch his eye. Another waiter appeared and offered me my choice of beverage—water, bubbly or still, soda water with lemon or lime or something he called a “water beverage” flavored with fruit juice. Nice as this little soiree might be, we were still obviously at a health spa and they were elegantly attempting to force us to get in the required eight to ten glasses a day.
Although the appetizers weren’t made of water, it was close—cucumbers with a sprig of dill, radish roses with a single caper as their center, carrot coins topped with a minuscule daub of something white—whipped cottage cheese, probably. There was caviar—three eggs per toast point—and one slice of bread had no doubt been enough to serve the entire room. My hunger nipped at my insides with the persistence of a termite on wood.
Jared walked over to me with a grin on his face. “What game are we playing here—the ‘imagine there’s food on the plates and pretend to eat it’ game?”
“We’re eating light.”
“Huh. We’re eating invisible. I picked up what someone called a watercress sandwich and held it to the light. I’ve seen paper thicker than that bread. This is like the story of the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone’s pretending to enjoy the food, and there’s nothing on the plate.”
I patted my stomach. “It will keep us trim.”
Jared looked me up and down. “Let me see, a radiant Scandinavian ice princess who isn’t wintry after all. Silvery blond hair, frosty blue eyes, a complexion perfect as porcelain…yes, I can see why you might worry if you put on a pound or two.”
I felt a blush bleeding through my entire body. “You shouldn’t…”
“Why not? It’s true. So is the fact that you are graceful, move like a dancer and turn heads wherever you go.”
He watched my expression turn to astonishment. “Of course, that’s not why I like you.”
My mouth worked like that of a fish out of water.
“I like you because you’re funny, intelligent, independent and you don’t let me get away with anything—even bullying my own sister.”
Having been completely blindsided by this shower of accolades, I was glad for the waiter who came by to offer me an appetizer—a twig of celery with a minuscule speck of cream cheese spread on it.
Fortunately there was more substance to the rest of the evening than there was to the food.
“The Art of Romance” program turned out to be an eclectic mix of romantic paintings throughout history, romantic music, poetry and a few funky extras. One of these extras was a “Qualities of the Ideal Man” contest. Now, I’m not much on contests, but when first prize is a free night’s stay at the Oasis, I can become pretty creative.
“You’re going to do it?” Jared asked. “Write a list of what you want in a man?”
“This is for fun, you know. I don’t think they expect something terribly deep or inspired.” I was already recalling some of the ridiculous conversations Wendy and I had had about men over the years.
“Aren’t you going to reveal your personal requirements?” He studied me with a soft smile. “Otherwise, how will I know how to act?” Jared put his hand over mine. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll tutor you.”
“I want to be teacher’s pet.”
“You already are.” Then, so as to not draw any more attention to us, I grabbed the pen and paper I’d been given and started to create the requirements I figure most women want in their ideal man.
Jared, seeing I was serious, wandered off to learn how to read poetry and dip strawberries into chocolate, leaving me to my imagination.
Qualities of an Ideal Man by Sammi Smith
He laughs at my jokes.
Showers regularly.
Understands PMS and its consequences, is unafraid of a woman in hormonal flux and knows that chocolate, flowers and jewelry are the only real cures desp
ite what medical experts say.
Can read my mind.
Is willing to give up the remote without twitching, trying to hide it under a cushion or wanting to “discuss” why I want it.
Chews with his mouth closed.
Knows when to say “Yes, darling,” and mean it.
Calls me when I’m thinking about him.
Calls me when I’m not thinking about him.
Just calls.
Remembers my birthday, the anniversary of the day we met and any other day I’ve decided in my mind is special (but have not even told him about—see quality #4—mind reading).
Owns candles and knows how to use them.
Thinks a week without bringing me flowers is a disgrace.
Says I’m the most beautiful woman on the planet—and means it (This has nothing to do with nearsightedness and everything to do with inner-sightedness).
Takes walks with me under the stars.
Know the right answer to the question “Does this make me look fat?”
Shares my spiritual beliefs.
Never lets a day pass without saying “I love you.”
I turned in my list to the spa staff who were doubling as contest judges and went to find Jared.
“What happened to the chocolate-dipped berries?” I asked, mouth watering already.
“We ate them. Every guy here is starving, Sammi.” He lowered his voice. “Someone went out on a covert run for pizzas. We’re planning our rendezvous for later. I don’t think the staff patrols the prison yard at night. If they do, we’ll just have to make a break for it.” His eyes grew wide and serious. “If I’m caught and they throw me in solitary confinement, tell Molly thanks anyway for the great weekend.”
“Okay, drama king. And what else did you do while I was gone?”
“I discovered I really don’t agree with Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
“Say what?”
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’” He looked dreadfully serious all of a sudden as he took my hand. “I’m not sure I could stand to lose you now, Sammi, any more than I could bear to lose one of my family. I think it might be better to never love than to think of it slipping away from you.”
