by Val Daniels
A lot of help Karen was. Jillian was trying to get things in their proper perspective and her best friend was making a big deal out of them. Jillian willed herself to reply casually, "What X-rated parts? Nothing happened." Thank heaven she could still say nothing happened, although it had been a near thing the night Matt got hurt.
"Sure. Sure. Nothing happened. The very thought of all that 'nothing' makes you blush—oh, yes, you are, Jilly," Karen said, stopping Jillian's protest. "So don't think you'll get out of telling me what went on." She followed Jillian to the coffee maker and propped herself against the counter as Jillian poured them each a cup.
Jillian had no idea what to tell her, so she silently waited for Karen's talking impulse to kick in and take over. She could then listen, making appropriate "ahs" and "uhms," and Karen wouldn't even realize that Jillian had said absolutely nothing.
"Come on, I'm not going to say another word until you tell me all about it," Karen told her as if reading Jillian's mind.
"What did Matt say when he called?" Jillian asked, buying time.
"Just that the roads still weren't totally clear and he wanted to make sure you'd made it home without any trouble. Your turn."
Jillian raised her shoulders, "I don't know what happened. How can I tell you?"
"For starters, you could explain why you aren't wearing a knockout engagement ring. What happened with Harrison? I thought making it official was the whole point of your secluded little celebration."
They had drifted back to the table and Jillian gave up fighting the inevitable. Maybe Karen would be able to make sense of the whole wretched business. She sketchily filled in what had happened between the time they'd talked on Christmas Eve and yesterday morning. "Then Harrison arrived and found me—innocently," she inserted quickly, "in bed with Matt. Needless to say, that was the end of the engagement."
Karen's jaw dropped a second time, and Jillian smiled. "I suppose you know the electricity was off for most of the time we were there?"
Karen nodded silently.
"Well, with no heat in the bedroom, Matt—gentleman that he is—informed me that I could sleep on the cold, hard floor or join him in the sofa bed. I didn't have any choice."
Now Karen laughed in sheer astonishment. "And nothing happened?"
"Nothing happened." If she said it often enough, maybe she'd convince herself. Because something had happened. Everything seemed slightly out of whack, as if nothing would ever be normal again.
"Matt must be slipping. What a jolt to his ego," Karen said finally. "I'll bet he feels like he's been hit by a Mack truck."
"He looks like it. He had a run-in with a very vicious tree." Jillian's tone was dry. "Did he happen to say if he'd been to see a doctor yet? He needs stitches."
Karen brushed aside that topic with a shake of her head. "He must have tried something."
"Well…" Jillian hesitated momentarily and decided to tell Karen everything. "Actually, I came close to…to…"
"Letting him make love to you?" Karen finished for her this time. "Just close?"
"To be honest, I almost begged him at one point." The thought still mortified her and she felt her face flush painfully.
Karen looked stunned. "You? The last of the dinosaurs?" she squeaked, then blinked twice as the rest of what Jillian had said sank in. "You mean he resisted?" Her dark curls bounced as she shook her head in disbelief. "That doesn't sound the least bit like our good friend Matt. In fact, the standing joke in college was that if you weren't that kind of girl, you didn't go out with Matt or you would be. It just sort of happened."
Jillian could believe it.
"I have to admit, though, Matt always dated girls who knew what was what," Karen added.
"You met him in college?" Jillian knew her fascination with the subject was about as healthy as a mouse's fascination with a cobra.
Karen nodded. "Jim grew up in the same area of Colorado as Matt, so shortly after I met Jim, I met Matt, too."
"Jim and Matt have been friends all their lives?"
"Not exactly. Until college they didn't associate much. Matt was several years ahead of Jim in school and I guess he was always a loner. I don't think he had much of a childhood."
Jillian sighed deeply and propped her chin in her hand. Knowing she wasn't the only one who thought he'd had an unhappy childhood didn't help much. She'd always been a real softie for anyone who hadn't grown up with lots of love and concern. Matt's tough-guys-are-self-sufficient attitude made her want to ensure that he didn't totally miss out on Grandma's kind of affection. "Yeah, I got the impression that Matt's childhood lacked a lot. He hinted that he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak."
"Back then that was probably true," her friend agreed, "but most of the area around his place has been rebuilt in the past ten years. He's sitting on some prime real estate in the middle of several resort areas. He's worth a fortune. And you ought to see his house. It's beautiful. Since Jim's family has left the area, we borrow it when we go out to ski."
Jillian shook her head, grinning wryly. "You mean all my sympathy for poor practically homeless Matt has been wasted?"
"Well, he is homeless, to all intents and purposes." Karen laughed. "But it isn't because he doesn't have anywhere to go. He has homes all over the place. I know for sure he has apartments in Wichita and Kansas City. If you can call them that. Ugh." She shuddered. "White walls, shades on the windows, the bare basics of furniture—you feel like you're walking into a rental company's showroom. When he's in Denver, he usually stays with his sister. Sometimes he lives out of motels for a month at a time. I've even known him to camp out in the office of one of his stores. He keeps clothes here, there and everywhere, and what he doesn't have with him, he buys when he needs it. It's really strange. Especially considering his house."
"The one in Colorado?"
"Yeah. It's the house he grew up in. He bought it when he started making money and he totally rebuilt and modernized it. Then the old man who lived next to them died and left Matt his rickety old place and the five acres it sat on. That house simply had to come down—it was a real firetrap, so now Matt has lots of space around him. It's an isolated little hideaway right in the middle of Mecca."
"And he doesn't spend much time there? Why not? Is it because of his stores?"
Karen rolled her eyes in an expression that clearly indicated Matt was crazy. "Jim says the stores are so well organized Matt could check in once a year and never worry about them, but of course, that isn't his way. He seems to thrive on the traveling."
"So my impression wasn't all that far off."
"Not if you thought he was a drifter," Karen acknowledged, then qualified her remark. "He'd be a real gypsy if he didn't have money. That's just the way he is. If it wasn't for his stores, he wouldn't know what to do with himself."
Jillian relaxed against the back of her chair and filed away Karen's information for future reference. "That explains why he can't decide whether or not to sell them."
"You know about that?" Karen's eyebrows rose a notch.
"He said he borrowed the cabin instead of going to his sister's for Christmas so he could think about it."
Karen was looking suspicious again. "Matt's usually very quiet about personal business. I thought he'd only discussed his plans with Jim and his lawyer."
Jillian smiled, enjoying the thought that Matt had trusted her enough to discuss his "personal business."
"I think a lot of his indecision has to do with the old man," Karen went on. "But of course, I get all my information secondhand through Jim. He says Matt wants to sell, but he doesn't think he will. Matt feels guilty, like he's turning his back on the chance the old man gave him, betraying his confidence. Did you get that impression?"
"He didn't tell me that much." Jillian faced the fact that any "personal business" Matt had shared with her had been merely to fill time. "I think he thinks I'm an airhead. And I have to admit, I had mush for brains most of the time we were at the cabin tog
ether."
"I can't imagine why," Karen teased. "Which reminds me. Somehow, you got off the subject. What happened with Harrison? Did he just break the engagement without giving you a chance to explain? I tried to tell him about the mess Jim and I made of things when he called Christmas Eve, but he cut me off."
"I explained. He was sympathetic until…"
"Yes?" Karen urged after a moment.
"Well, until I broke the engagement." Seeing Karen speechless for a third time in one day made Jillian laugh. "Close your mouth, Karen," she said, reaching across the table to chuck her friend under the chin.
"You were right. I was marrying him for all the wrong reasons." Jillian looked down at her hands and studied the intertwined fingers. "At first, he didn't take it very well. Then he decided I'd change my mind when I had time to think about how perfectly suited we were. He just left." She shrugged, realizing that their parting had been as innocuous as their relationship.
She'd hashed and rehashed the whole thing. Her engagement had been based on sheer terror at the thought of not having a soul in the world. Matt had pinpointed that fact almost immediately.
Poor Harrison. She probably owed him a better explanation than she'd given at the cabin, but things had sort of dissolved and that was that. "Now, you make sense of it all. What do you think?"
"You aren't going to like what I think."
"Since when did that stop you."
"I've told you from the beginning that I thought Harrison wasn't right for you, but…"
"And I've already admitted you were right."
"What's changed, Jilly? You'd still be engaged to Harrison if Matt hadn't been around."
"No. I just needed some time. I would have eventually come to my senses."
Karen pursed her lips and shook her head. "Then as far as you're concerned, the only thing that happened is that you realized you were marrying Harrison for the wrong reasons?"
"I guess that about covers it."
"So where does that leave Matt?"
Jillian got up to refill their coffee cups. "Where he's always been, I guess." She shrugged. "We really hit it off—don't jump to conclusions. I mean personally. I liked him and he liked me after we got over the initial shock. He let me talk about Grandma and cry on his shoulder. I didn't come home depressed like I was after Thanksgiving. It was nice." She sighed deeply. "Matt's intriguing, but any relationship I had with him would be as disastrous, if not more so, than the one I just got out of with Harrison."
"None for me," Karen said putting one hand over her cup as Jillian would have poured her more coffee. "I don't think you're right, but I suppose time will tell."
"I don't think time will have anything to do with it. I'll never see him again." Jillian gave another long sigh.
"Are you afraid to see him again?"
Jillian turned to put the pot back on its warmer. "Don't be silly," she scoffed, but had the squeamish feeling that she wasn't exactly getting stars for honesty. "What would be the point? He isn't interested in any permanent kind of relationship and I'm not interested in the kind of relationship he seems to want. I don't think either of us would be satisfied with being just friends. I'd probably end up as his lover, then be devastated when he left."
"Well, at least you didn't get yourself in over your head. That's something." Karen grabbed her purse off the corner of the table. "You're even close to figuring out why you were going to marry Harrison in the first place."
Jillian eyed her warily, curious but afraid she wouldn't like whatever Karen had to say. "I thought I'd already admitted that."
Karen shook her head. "No. You admitted you didn't want to be alone. But that's not the reason you agreed to marry Harrison."
"Oh?"
"You settled for him because you knew he couldn't hurt you. You didn't care enough to be hurt."
Jillian started to deny it but Karen stopped her. "Are you hurting now? Over anything that has to do with Harrison?" she added when Jillian would have nodded.
"So why do you think you'd be devastated if Matt left you?" Karen shrugged into her coat. "All those psychology classes I've had to take weren't wasted. I've used them to figure out how you managed to stay so untouched all this time."
Jillian frowned and sank down into her chair, pulling her feet up under her robe. She didn't bother telling Karen she really didn't want to hear her theories, because she knew it wouldn't do any good.
Karen took a deep breath. "How much do you remember about your parents?"
Jillian shrugged. "Not much."
"But when they died, you must have been crushed and confused. You were old enough to be hurt that someone you loved had left you, but not really old enough to understand that they had no choice."
"I don't know. I can't remember." Jillian wrapped her arms around her knees defensively.
"And your first love?"
"Jeremy?" Remembering the dimple-cheeked, dark-haired little boy always made her smile.
Karen nodded. "You fell in love with him in second grade."
"Yeah, he'd pull my curls and drive me crazy."
"Until his folks moved to Wichita when you were fifteen," Karen said meaningfully.
"If he hadn't moved, I'd probably still be moping around over him. And the feelings were only mutual some of the time. When he turned a little bit of attention my way, I walked around in a daze for months."
"You said you cried yourself to sleep every night for six months after he left."
"I was fifteen years old, for Pete's sake! Everything was high drama at the time."
The smile in Karen's eyes was warm. "I know. I was the same way, but—"
"It was the best thing that could have happened, Karen. After he moved, I cut out the hero worship and started dating around. I started having a lot of fun."
Jillian's cramped position had grown uncomfortable. She stood up, feeling restless.
"But did it convince you to play it a little too safe?" Karen asked. "You can't get hurt if you don't care too much." She headed for the front door.
Jillian followed her. "I think you're right. You've been taking your education far too seriously," she said lightly. "And how come I care so much about you?"
"I'm harmless." Karen said, smiling. "And all those guys you dated were harmless, too. That's the only reason you've gotten this old without winding up in someone's bed."
"And all that stuff Grandma taught me had nothing to do with it?" Jillian said wryly.
"Maybe partially."
They looked at each other for a silent moment. "Harrison was safe," Karen reiterated, as if she couldn't leave things on an easy note. "But Matt's a different story, huh? He could leave a few scars. Are you sure you didn't fall in love with him?"
Before Jillian could answer, Karen rushed on. "Is that why you ran back here like a scared rabbit?"
"My reason for being there ceased to exist."
"But you didn't have any reason to hurry back either, did you? Matt told me he asked you to stay. What are you going to do here for the rest of Christmas vacation? Stay in your apartment and be depressed?"
Jillian had an answer for that one. "I'm going to go through the rest of Grandma's things and start the new year with a clean slate. And in January, I'm going to check into using some of Grandma's insurance money to go back to school."
Karen hugged her impulsively. "I'm delighted, Jilly. I've always loved you the way you are, but I won't worry about you quite so much when you join the real world and quit playing…" She searched for a word.
"June Cleaver?" Jillian offered automatically.
"Exactly. Stop watching reruns. We've come a long way from that." She tucked her scarf into her coat. "I've got to go. I'll give Matt your phone number. He asked for it earlier—"
"Don't you dare!"
"Jillian." Karen threw up her hands, exasperated. "I'm not going to play go-between. I left that behind in junior high. It's not as though I said I was going to give it to a total stranger."
"I to
ld him I didn't want to see him again. I meant it. It's a dead end. Besides, I doubt the question will even come up. He's probably already written me off as one of those ships passing in the night. That's all it was and you're making a whole lot out of nothing. We just happened to get snowed in at your cabin at the same time."
"Well, Jilly, it's your life, but if I were you… Never mind. But please, please, think about what I've said." She hugged her again. "I'm glad you're back in alone piece."
"I'll give you a call later in the week." Karen stepped outside. "If Matt does happen to ask, I'll let him know you aren't interested," she added, closing the door behind her.
Jillian had the strong urge to fling it open and argue with her, but she wasn't sure what she would argue about.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By four o'clock New Year's Eve, Jillian was loading the last of the superfluous contents of her spare bedroom into the trunk of her little car. She'd spent the days since she'd returned going through Grandma's things and sorting out her emotional closets.
Well, most of them. Karen's unfortunate attempt at playing psychologist stuck in her mind like a needle on one of Grandma's worn-out records. Okay, so Karen could be right about her reason for having chosen Harrison. But knowing that didn't change anything with Matt.
If Karen was right, Jillian knew she'd better stop dwelling on Matt, but he'd entrenched himself in her thoughts as though he belonged there. Why would her heart choose someone guaranteed to make her re-learn the same old lesson? Somehow, she had to relegate him to her mental file labeled "fond memories." That was where he belonged.
She lifted the last cache of odds and ends off the floor as the doorbell rang.
The door was ajar from her last trip to the car. "Come on in Karen," she hollered. "I'm in the spare bedroom. I'll be out in a minute."
"And no," she added under her breath, "I'm not going out with your friend tonight."
Although Karen had been trying to convince Jillian that her only motive was a pair of wasted reservations, she suspected this was part of Karen's game plan to heal Jillian's "broken" heart.
Kicking the bedroom door open with her foot, she leaned the heavy box against the doorjamb, got a better grip on it, then pushed aside the tangle of hair covering her eyes.
