UNRAVELING \UN-RAV-EL-ING\ PP (1603) 1: coming apart at the seams 2: inability to hold together 3: what I was doing at a dizzying pace.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but suddenly:
I was no longer engaged,
my sister had miscarried,
my debutantes were on the verge of devolving into the laughingstocks of Willow Creek,
and my grandmother’s cherished symphony association debutante ball (not to mention its financial stability) was threatening to collapse.
If that wasn’t enough, in the bonus round there was:
Jack going for the jugular,
me not sure I could win against him,
leading us all to my mother’s reputation (not to mention her financial stability) on the verge of swirling down the drain with the remnants of last night’s bottle of good sherry.
Oh, and one other thing. I had started questioning who exactly I was. Yes, me.
Though really, what would you expect. My perfectly ordered life was exploding in my face, and I knew that if I allowed the girls to become fodder for the gossip mill as I had been, I would never forgive myself.
I sat at my childhood white French Provincial student’s desk, with gold gilt trim. My grandmother’s letter lay on the desk in front of me. For about the millionth time, I reread the note, holding her heirloom pearls like rosary beads, still unable to put them on. To say she had overestimated my abilities to save the day would be an understatement. No sooner had I felt confident about the way things were coming together than boom, everything fell apart.
None of this felt good, which reminded me just why I didn’t do emotion. Quite frankly, it never helped, which was why I had always scoffed at the notion that “messy is good.” Hardly.
If I had been the type to indulge in said beliefs, I would have gone to the dollar movie house downtown and watched B movies all afternoon and stuffed myself with day-old popcorn. Given that I could be counted on to be just like me, I decided there was no time like the present to deal with a settlement, thereby allowing me to ignore said emotions of vulnerability.
Taking the Volvo, I headed for Jack’s house. I didn’t know if he still lived there until I pulled up and saw the Suburban and Harley. As I sat in the front drive, my fingers curled around the steering wheel, my heart did double time as I told myself that I would under no circumstances touch him in any way. He was engaged, even if I wasn’t any longer.
Which reminded me of his fiancée. Was it possible, even in Willow Creek, Texas, that they lived together?
I knew Jack drove the Suburban, and I doubted Miss Long, Tall, and Svelte rode the Harley, so she either didn’t live there or wasn’t home. I got out of the car and knocked on the door.
His home was one of the small cottage houses that had been built in the 1920s. It was a perfectly kept stone house with bronze metal roof, and a cobbled circular drive. I knew he could afford more, but for whatever reason he stayed in the place he had bought for himself once he had started paying his own way. Neither his brother’s wealth nor his more recent success as an attorney in the hottest boutique law firm in Central Texas had changed him. Still wild. Still daring. Still didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him.
Knocking again, I turned and looked back at the tiny yard and street. The house was on a rise, the rolling hills undulating out into the horizon. I had forgotten the power of that view, the big Texas sky overhead a nearly painful blue, blocked only by the long, twisting stretch of live oak branches.
I didn’t hear the door open, but I wasn’t startled when he stood behind me and said, “Carlisle?”
I turned back and yet again felt that surge in my chest. I mean, really, you should have seen him. He wore Wrangler jeans, work boots, a sweat-stained T-shirt as if he had been engaged in some sort of manual labor.
“Why are you here?” he said, his expression dark and not just a little forbidding.
I would have appreciated a hello. Even a grunt of welcome would have done in a pinch. His accusatory question made me blush. Quickly, I cleared my throat. “I would like to discuss settling after all.”
He studied me forever, and for a second I would have sworn he wasn’t going to let me in. But finally he nodded. “Fine. But it’ll have to wait a minute. I’m in the middle of something.”
My mind ran amuck with all sorts of things he could be in the middle of.
“Is Racine here?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“I’m just asking,” I said, and followed.
The house was the same inside as it was the last time I had been there (on the floor, on the dining table, on the kitchen counter) three years earlier, with no sign of a female inhabitant. If Racine lived there, she had the same masculine taste in furniture and clothes as Jack. Which meant we were really alone. I swallowed back heat and another blush and reminded myself of my goal. Settlement. No sex. I do not have sex with other women’s fiancés.
The space was done in warm earth tones, a rustic motif that thankfully didn’t look as if he were trying to create a country cabin in the middle of town. There were overstuffed leather sofas with heavy wool pillows thrown on them, and heavy overstuffed wool chairs on either end of a pine coffee table. The walls were painted an earthy terra-cotta, the ceiling simple cream with rough-hewn beams.
When I focused, Jack was nowhere to be found. After a second, I heard him, and given that I was reasonably smart, I deduced his project had something to do with power tools given the noise that suddenly erupted through the house.
Following the din, I went down a short hallway to the kitchen of warm granite and rustic wood, then on through a screened-in porch where he had more of the simple, casual furniture and a ceiling fan. I could see Jack in the backyard working with a chain saw.
A pile of branches lay on the ground, another more orderly pile of cut branches forming a second pile. A massive grill made of bricks, mortar, steel grates, and some sort of pulley contraption lay beyond the growing pile.
As soon as the power tool stopped, he looked up and saw me.
“Mesquite wood,” he explained.
“I gathered as much.”
“For grilling.”
Call me what you will, but no one will ever say I don’t know how to appreciate a good meal. And anyone in Texas will tell you that real mesquite-grilled anything is beyond wonderful, and not something you get in Boston. I felt my mouth water at the thought.
“You look like a lion with a zebra in its sights.” He actually smiled for a change, before it was gone. “I have some lobster tails and T-bones in the refrigerator. Do you want to stay for dinner?”
“Me? You’re inviting me? The woman who you made it clear to my former fiancé that there was no love lost between us?”
“Former, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Just as well, I suppose. He didn’t look like your type.”
Clearly, he wouldn’t qualify for a Mr. Sensitive award anytime soon. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“And I suppose Racine is your perfect type?”
There went that smile again. “Jealous, Cushing?”
I snorted.
“Are you staying for dinner or not?”
Well, really, who was I to be rude and turn down such a kind invitation? Besides, he had smiled. “I don’t want to put you out,” I said with grave politeness.
“Sure you don’t.”
“Will… Racine be joining us?”
“No, she’s in Dallas.” Then he pulled the cord on the saw, the air filling with the deafening roar.
Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to avoid flying wood chips, I returned inside. Without thinking, I went to the refrigerator and found everything needed for a perfect dinner.
Rolling up my sleeves, I got to work. I made a salad of romaine lettuce, dried cranberries, tomatoes, walnuts, with an olive-and-feta vinaigrette on the side to toss in later.
Next, I found everything I needed for my mother’s famous scalloped potatoes that made the regular kind look tame in comparison. The recipe called for too much butter, too much cheese, too much cream, and even corn flakes to provide the crunchy top. It might sound strange, but take one bite and I dare you not to fall in love.
I found the steaks from Slim’s House of Meats cut to perfection. Seasoning both sides, I set them on a plate and returned them to the refrigerator. Then I found the lobster. Four tails—the perfect part for grilling.
Given that the potatoes would take forty-five minutes to bake, I made a batch of quick biscuits and found a jar of homemade jam I was certain his mother had made.
Between all I had whipped up, combined with the steak and lobster, I’d have to starve myself for a week afterward. That and run, which I hadn’t done in years. Preferably in the heat of the day. A cross between exercise and punishment.
But I wouldn’t think about that just then. There was an amazing meal with my name on it, and I wasn’t about to let a few potential (guaranteed) pounds deter me.
Just when I finished mixing up the biscuit dough, Jack came in through the back door, sans T-shirt. He wiped the sweat on his chest with a towel.
He glanced around. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
What could I say to that? “Seemed the least I could do.”
“I’m going to take a shower while the grill heats up.” He tossed the towel into the laundry room, opened a bottle of red wine, and poured two glasses. He extended one and looked at me with the sort of intensity that made me wish for an invitation to the shower. I swear he nearly asked, but he cursed instead, then disappeared.
You’d think he could get over my leaving him without a word, and my not bothering to tell him I was engaged. Hello. Then I slapped myself upside the head.
No sex, I repeated, adding, engaged, off-limits, and don’t even think about it.
When he returned, his glass empty and his hair still wet, he wore a clean black T-shirt tucked into 501 jeans. And we know what I think of 501 jeans. At least on Jack Blair.
He poured us each a second glass, and while my brain started to do the red alert thing again, I accepted the wine then let him guide me outside.
We stood on the back porch, the sun sinking on the horizon, splashing the sky in varying shades of purple. When I looked over at him, I remembered all those ridiculous feelings from the past, a larger-than-life love and, well, hot need. When I looked at his hands, all I could remember was the way they felt on my body.
“So, the case,” I interjected into my wayward thoughts, dragging up my very best professional mien.
“Dinner first.”
The smell of mesquite filled the air and, really, it would have been rude not to truly appreciate the lobster tail.
In short order, we had everything on the table. He sat down across from me, and for a second, just looked at me. I swear it was as if three years hadn’t passed.
“Jack—”
The front door banged open, cutting me off.
“Sweetie?”
Jack didn’t move a muscle.
“Jack, sweetie, where are you?”
“Racine?” I asked.
“Racine,” he confirmed.
“I can hide if you want,” I said, my smile as wicked as any Savannah could have doled out, which was a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that I was massively disappointed.
“You are not going to hide.” He stood. “We’re in here, Racine.”
His fiancée swept into the kitchen, an oversized handbag on her shoulder, then stopped. “Well, well, look who’s here,” she said. Then she turned to Jack. “You bad boy. Are you trying to charm Carlisle, hoping to win your case with a meal of steak and lobster?”
She walked over and gave Jack a long, deep kiss.
“I got back early, dropped my things off, then decided to surprise you. Little did I know you were here with Carlisle.”
She laughed, and seemed completely unfazed by my being in Jack’s house eating dinner, as if it had never occurred to her that I might be a threat.
I was almost insulted. I do have womanly pride, after all.
Racine talked about her trip to Dallas, retrieving a place setting and a glass of wine, then sitting down at the table.
“This looks fabulous. Carlisle, did you make all this?”
She didn’t wait for an answer before going on about something else. We spoke of inconsequential things until Racine leaned back and gave me the once-over. “Tell me, do you really like Boston?”
“Sure.”
Jack studied me, turning his wine glass slowly on the tablecloth.
“Hard to imagine,” Racine said, blotting her mouth. “Though Jack told me about your fiancé. Phillip, right? I think he sounds just right for you, so maybe I’m wrong about you and Boston. That’s where he lives, right?”
Jack just continued to consider me, and I felt uncomfortable.
“Actually, Phillip and I are no longer engaged.”
Suddenly Racine didn’t look quite as confident as she had a moment before.
“Not engaged?” she said. “What happened?”
“Hard to say. I guess we just weren’t right for each other.”
“Oh.” A deep line appeared between her eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So listen, I don’t want to intrude any longer. Jack, we really need to talk about the case.”
He studied me, then nodded. “Racine, can you give us a few minutes?”
She glanced between us. “Of course. I’ll just go freshen up.” But before she left, she looked Jack in the eye and I was embarrassed by the intense emotion I saw pass between them. Then she kissed him softly on the lips. “I missed you,” she said, then she left without so much as a glance over her shoulder at me.
“Shoot,” he said, as soon as she was gone.
“As I mentioned, we’d like to settle.”
He took a sip of his wine, considering me over the rim of the glass. “When I wanted to settle, you said no.”
“We’ve changed our minds.”
I spelled out the details, but this time his answer came back as no. Forgetting how he made my heart flutter, I pushed my wine aside. I reasoned, I made generous offers, I even resorted to batting my eyelashes.
He smiled at me and shook his head. “Come on, Cushing, you can do better than that.”
Obviously not.
“Fine. I’d better go.” I pushed up from the table, but he stopped me, taking my arm, his smile gone.
From his expression I couldn’t tell what he wanted from me. Everything? Nothing? Which was probably more like it since Racine wasn’t more than a room or two away.
His voice was deep, rough, when he spoke, catching me off guard. “Why didn’t you say goodbye before you left?”
“Left?”
Impatience flared. “Left Texas.”
Everything inside me froze, organs ceasing, heart stopping. I had no idea how to answer or even if I wanted to. But I suspected I owed him, at least that.
I raised my chin and looked him in the eye. “You want the truth?”
“Of course.”
“I was afraid if I did you’d ask me to stay and I wouldn’t be able to leave.”
He started to smile, an utterly not-nice smile.
But then the whole truth came blurting out of me before I could stop myself. “Or maybe I was afraid you wouldn’t ask me to stay.”
I was all too aware of those strong fingers of his circling my arm. Very aware that Racine could walk in at any minute. Very aware that he wasn’t more than inches away and I badly wanted him to kiss me. Just like at the Foley Building. Or us at the country club. His fiancée within earshot. Sanity forgotten. I know, me!
But after what seemed like forever, he simply nodded and let me go, turning away.
He got as far as the door when I stopped him. “My turn.”
His expression grew wary.
“Why didn’t you try to find me?”
His brown eyes flickered like a movie screen in the dark, the contours of his face hardening.
“Jack, love! Are you done yet?” Racine called out in the distance. “I have a surprise for you.”
The dark edge faded and I could see ease come into his body like a deep breath. Ease, rightness. That same emotion I had seen pass between the two of them before she left the room. I understood then why Jack was with Racine. She gave him a sense of peace that neither of us had been able to give each other. I also understood then that he would marry her, just as I had been dead set on marrying Phillip. Only Jack hadn’t started out living a lie with this woman. They had nothing to get over.
He smiled, that crooked smile that made hearts melt. “Like you said yourself, you’re not like me, irresponsible, only doing things when it suits me. Let’s just say it didn’t suit me to find you, and leave it at that.”
He left me standing there and headed for Racine. I’m not sure if I was more surprised that he remembered what I had said to him three years ago or that his smiling dismissal of the whole thing felt suspiciously like a javelin thrown straight through my heart.