White Pines Summer

by Sherryl Woods

  “I’m not sure,” she confessed, her expression bleak. “I mean, it’s not a big deal, right? It’s dinner.”

  “That would certainly be the tack I’d take,” he said, deliberately insinuating there were other less innocuous explanations.

  She stared at him. “Meaning?”

  He regarded her with pure innocence. “Meaning that I’d kiss it off as a simple uncomplicated meal. Who could make anything out of that?”

  “It is an innocent meal.”

  “If you say so. Obviously, though, your niece didn’t think so. Whose version do you think the rest of the family will believe? My hunch is they’re all prepared to think the worst of me.”

  Clearly agitated by the question, she glanced at Petey, dug in her purse and handed him a handful of quarters. “There are some video games in that alcove over there. Why don’t you go try them?”

  “I’m not finished eating,” Petey protested.

  “Please,” Jenny said.

  When Petey glanced at him, Chance knew Petey was hoping for a reprieve. Instead, he gestured toward the games. “Go. You know you love video games.”

  Pete’s turned-down mouth indicated his displeasure, but he slid out of the booth. “Okay, but you’d better leave the last slice of pizza for me,” he warned. “I’ve only had two and I’m still hungry.”

  “You’ve had three, but you’ll get another piece,” Chance promised, eager to send him on his way and see just what Jenny had on her mind. “And thank Ms. Adams for the change.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he grumbled ungraciously. “Thanks.”

  When Petey was gone, Chance directed a solemn look at the woman across the table. “I take it you had something you wanted to say in private.”

  She lifted her gaze and met his evenly. “I just wanted to make sure we were clear about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You and I...” She waved her hand dismissively as if no other words were necessary.

  Chance got the message, but he wanted her to spell it out just the same. “Yes?” he prodded.

  “There is no you and I, no us, no anything, correct? We established that before we ever left your house.”

  She was so darned determined to tidy up the situation, to establish the limits of their friendship, that he couldn’t help giving her a difficult time. He returned her look with a perfectly bland expression. “If you say so, darlin’.”

  “I do,” she said firmly.

  Chance grinned. “Last time I heard those two words said with so much passion I was standing in a church.”

  She scowled at him. “Chance!”

  “Yes, darlin’?”

  She sighed heavily. “Oh, never mind.”

  “Tell me. You can tell me anything, you know.”

  “And you’ll find a way to use it against my father, no doubt.”

  “Not all my motives are ulterior. In fact, I think I’m developing a case of straightforward lust where you’re concerned.”

  She frowned, creating an endearing little furrow between her brows. He wanted to kiss it away.

  “Blast it, Chance!” she said. “Stop looking at me like that and stop saying things like that. This situation is complicated enough without you suggesting that there’s some sort of chemistry between us.”

  “There is,” he said. “It might be a tad inconvenient under the circumstances, but life is messy. I’ve learned it’s best to go with the flow.”

  She regarded him incredulously. “Oh, really. You don’t strike me as a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Not many men who claim to be hell-bent on revenge would even try to pass themselves off as laid-back.”

  He shrugged. “Contradictions are a part of life.”

  “Oh, save your dime-store philosophy. This dinner was about me trying to get Petey’s respect so he’ll settle down in class. That’s absolutely all it was about. I would never have agreed to it otherwise.”

  “Maybe for you that’s all it was,” he taunted, and allowed his own interpretation to remain unspoken. In fact, Chance was enjoying himself too much to stop teasing her now. Besides, there was more than a little truth behind his taunts. He could easily get addicted to watching that blossoming of pink in her cheeks, that rise of indignation that darkened her eyes. He sat back and enjoyed the predictable return of both.

  She leaped to her feet, then leaned across the table until she was in his face.

  “Stop that this instant,” she demanded.

  Chance couldn’t help himself. He chuckled. Big mistake. Her eyes flashed with pure fire. It was a little like staring into a bed of flaming coals. It was downright mesmerizing.

  “Damn you, Chance Adams!” she shouted, oblivious to the stares she was drawing.

  Aware that she intended to say a whole lot more at full volume, he stood up, too, a move that forced her to take a quick step back until the booth’s bench caught the back of her knees and trapped her where she was. Even though the table still separated them, he could feel the heat radiating from every furious fiber of her being.

  He reached over and cupped her face in his hands, then murmured only half apologetically, “Darlin’, this is for your own good.”

  Before she could guess his intentions, he kissed her. The position was awkward, the stares disconcerting, the table an impossible barrier, but Chance gave his all to that kiss. The instant his lips touched hers, all that mattered was the wildfire it set off in his veins and making sure it never stopped.

  Jenny trembled, quite possibly with fury. He was quaking for another reason entirely. The sensual feel of her mouth under his, the taste of her, the scent of her spicy, sexy perfume all combined to scare the daylights out of him. He’d begun by teasing, but what was happening right now, with Jenny’s mouth surrendering to his, was deadly serious. He backed off as if he’d inadvertently touched an open flame.

  Jenny remained exactly where he’d left her, hands braced on the table, eyes dazed. When she realized he’d released her, she sank back onto the bench as if her knees would no longer support her. She stared at him, blinked several times, then ran her tongue slowly over her lips.

  That last unthinking gesture almost cost Chance his very fragile grip on sanity. If she’d done it again, he might have picked her up caveman-style and carried her out of the restaurant and off to the nearest bed...or floor...or hayloft.

  “What...?” She began, but her voice trailed off. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Why...?”

  Chance searched for any explanation besides the truth. He wasn’t about to admit he’d impulsively and thoroughly kissed her solely because he’d no longer been able to resist. In fact, he dimly recalled that there’d been another reason entirely at the outset.

  “You were about to cause a scene,” he said, remembering. “I figured it would be better if people thought it was a lovers’ tiff.”

  “Why?”

  For one halfway honorable instant, he’d had some crazy notion about protecting her reputation, but he supposed a case could be made that the very public kiss hadn’t done much for that, either. In fact, when the truth came out about the reason he’d come to Los Piños, more folks than Dani Jenkins would be labeling Jenny a traitor, especially if they’d seen that kiss. Unexpected guilt made him edgy, so he skirted the truth with lighthearted banter.

  “I’m an impulsive man. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “Impulsive? Go with the flow?” Her skepticism was plain in her tone and in her expression. “These are not words I would use to describe you,” she said.

  “Maybe you just don’t know me all that well.”

  “No,” she conceded, “I probably don’t, but some things it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to figure out.”

  He regarded her speculatively. “We could work on changing that so you know the real me, all of it.”<
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  Alarm flared in her eyes. “Oh, no. No way. You’re not dragging me into the middle of this mess. It’s complicated enough already.”

  “You’re already in the middle,” he pointed out.

  “No, I’m not. I’m Harlan Adams’s daughter, period.”

  “And my son’s teacher.”

  “That part’s not a problem,” she claimed.

  “That part is what brought us here tonight,” he reminded her.

  “Well, it won’t happen again, that’s all. Either Petey learns to behave in class or...” Her voice trailed off.

  He wasn’t crazy about that unspoken threat. “Or what?” he demanded quietly.

  Her chin jutted. Her gaze clashed with his. “Or I’ll see he’s suspended.”

  The threat, about what he’d expected, had Chance’s hackles rising. “And I’ll tell the principal you’re taking your displeasure with me out on my son.” Chance kept his tone even and friendly, but he was pretty sure she got the message he was seething.

  “That’s blackmail,” she accused, clearly not the least bit intimidated.

  “If you’re going to use that label for me, I might as well live up to it. Besides, I call it protecting my boy. You don’t want to be caught in the middle. I don’t want him to be caught in the middle. I’d say we’re at an impasse.”

  “Why don’t you just come out to White Pines, have it out with my father and get it over with?” she asked a little plaintively.

  It was an approach Chance had considered and then dismissed. He shrugged. “Too easy. I figure I ought to let you all stew for a while wondering when I’ll make my move and what form it’ll take.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” she warned in a somber tone. “My father’s in his eighties. He’s got a softer, more forgiving heart than the rest of us. You’d do better to make peace with him than to wait around and risk having to deal with his sons and daughters. And if there’s so much as a hint that stress was behind something happening to him, there’d be hell to pay.”

  Chance thought about that grim warning long after he’d taken Jenny back to her car and watched her drive away. The only problem was, he didn’t want to make peace with Harlan Adams. He’d become more and more dedicated to making him pay for what he’d done to his younger brother. Chance wanted him to suffer during whatever time he had left here on earth, and then he wanted him to rot in hell. White Pines might not hold the same mystique for Chance that it had for his father, but getting his hands on it was the least he owed Hank.

  * * *

  Jenny would have preferred being pilloried to walking into Dolan’s drugstore the next afternoon to face Sharon Lynn and Dani. Although technically she was their stepaunt, they were close enough in age that they’d always treated one another more like very tight-knit cousins, maybe even sisters. Jenny had a feeling this afternoon they were going to be regarding her more like a traitor.

  The irony, of course, was that going out with Chance and Petey had stirred up all this trouble and accomplished absolutely nothing. If anything, Petey had been even more impossible in class today.

  As she’d feared, he seemed to think their dinner the night before implied she’d be lax in disciplining him. He’d seemed stunned when she’d hauled him out of the classroom and planted his little butt on a chair in the hall and told him to stay there and think about whether he wanted an education or if he’d prefer to go through life ignorant.

  “I’m going to tell my dad about this,” he’d threatened. “And he will never, ever kiss you again.”

  “I can live with that,” Jenny had muttered, determined to ignore the terrible sinking sensation the threat stirred in the pit of her stomach. She had liked kissing Chance Adams entirely too much.

  “Yeah, well, you’re gonna have to,” Petey shot back.

  All in all it had been a rotten day. And there was more to come, she thought as she glanced around Dolan’s.

  At four-thirty the soda-fountain counter was mostly empty. Two teenage boys, who had a crush on the older and very out-of-their-reach Sharon Lynn, were finishing their soft drinks when Jenny came in. Dani wasn’t there yet.

  Jenny breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe Dani hadn’t even filled Sharon Lynn in on what she’d seen the night before.

  Her hopes were dashed when she saw Sharon Lynn’s speculative expression. If Dani hadn’t spread the word, then someone else surely had. Los Piños thrived on gossip, especially when it concerned a member of the Adams clan. Some folks in Los Piños thought the family had been born and bred purely to provide them with titillating entertainment.

  “Hi,” she said as she slid onto a stool. “I gather you’ve been expecting me.”

  “Dani mentioned she was meeting you here,” Sharon Lynn said neutrally.

  “Did she also mention why?”

  “Something about you being out with Chance Adams last night.”

  Jenny sighed. Sharon Lynn grinned and took her sweet time pouring a soda for her.

  “Of course, a few other folks in town have had a far more fascinating tale to tell,” Sharon Lynn said as she set the drink on the counter. “One I don’t think Dani knows about yet.”

  “Oh?”

  “The word is, he planted a kiss on you that had half the women in town swooning. True or false?”

  “I can’t attest to whether or not anyone swooned,” Jenny said evasively.

  “But he did kiss you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “He claimed it was to keep me from slugging him and causing a scene.”

  Sharon Lynn chuckled. “An interesting approach.” She peered closely at Jenny. “So how was it?”

  “What?”

  “The kiss?”

  “Is that all you care about, that the man kissed me?” Jenny demanded, then recalled that Sharon Lynn’s own parents had been responsible for many a steamy scene right here in Dolan’s. Maybe a lack of restraint and a streak of incurable romanticism ran through the lot of them.

  “You have to admit it’s the most interesting part of the story,” Sharon Lynn said.

  “I suppose that depends on who’s telling it.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t enjoy it?”

  Jenny considered lying and claiming that Chance’s kiss hadn’t affected her one way or the other. Other men had kissed her. It wasn’t as if one kiss from Chance was anything special. For the past twenty hours or so she’d been trying to convince herself of precisely that. Sooner or later she was going to need someone to confide in. Sharon Lynn didn’t seem to be judging her too harshly so far. Maybe she could tell her the truth and put the whole thing into perspective.

  “My knees went weak,” she admitted ruefully.

  Sharon Lynn grinned. “All right!”

  Jenny studied her warily. “Aren’t you furious?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because of who he is. Goodness knows, I’m furious. It’s an impossible situation.”

  Sharon Lynn waved off the obvious problem. “This may be the best for everyone concerned. You can mediate. You’re very good at that. Ask those people on Capitol Hill you used to badger all the time.”

  Jenny groaned at Sharon Lynn’s lack of understanding of her skills. She wasn’t in the habit of making nice just to keep peace. More often than not, she was the one touching off dynamite, though not in the literal sense.

  “I am not good at mediating,” she corrected. “I am good at waking people up, stirring up controversy. My initial impression is that this time I’ve already stirred up a veritable hornets’ nest.”

  “That would certainly be my impression, too,” Dani said, slipping onto the stool next to her. She glared at Jenny. “What the heck were you thinking last night when you decided to go out with Chance Adams?”

  Feeling defensive already, Jenny returned Dani’s scowl with one of her own. �
�Not that I owe you an explanation, but I was thinking that I had an out-of-control student on my hands and that spending a little time with him and his father outside the classroom might help the situation.”

  “So that led to playing kissy-face with a sworn enemy of Harlan’s?” Dani demanded, her expression incredulous. “Parent-teacher conferences with you must really be something.”

  Jenny winced, upset not so much by the pointed barb but by its implication. She had really really hoped that Dani hadn’t heard about the kiss. It had happened after she’d gone, but obviously Dani had heard every steamy little detail. Of course, half the people in the restaurant had probably made it their business to take a pet in to see Dani. Those who hadn’t gone there had apparently stopped by Dolan’s for a soda first thing this morning to fill Sharon Lynn in.

  “I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me,” Jenny protested in self-defense. It wasn’t much of an argument, but it was the only one she had.

  “The way I heard it you didn’t exactly shove him away,” Dani countered. “Most people had the impression that you two were giving off more heat than the pizza oven.”

  Jenny hated fighting with someone she’d always loved like a sister. Because they weren’t sisters, they’d rarely had cause for any of the usual sibling spats. Besides, Dani had always been even tempered and rational. She’d been a calming influence on Jenny’s more fiery personality. Now she seemed hell-bent on inflaming it herself.

  “Dammit, Dani, whether or not I kiss Chance Adams really isn’t anyone’s business but mine,” Jenny all but shouted.

  Dani faced her defiantly. “It is when it hurts the family.”

  “Who, pray tell, was hurt by my kissing a man?”

  “Not just a man,” Dani contradicted. “Chance Adams.”

  “Okay, okay, you two, settle down,” Sharon Lynn soothed. “Fighting among ourselves won’t help anything.” She turned to Dani. “Does Grandpa Harlan known about this?”