JENNA SAT ON THE EDGE of her bed, trying to stop the tremors that racked her body. Dennis had rattled her, which was exactly what he’d intended. She shouldn’t have let him, but there was a craziness about her ex-husband that frightened her, for Ryan more than herself.
Dennis had been getting worse since she and Ryan had left him. Would he, one day, follow through with his threats?
“Mom? Was that Dad?” Ryan’s voice came from the other room, where his light had just snapped off.
Drawing in a deep breath, Jenna wondered what she should say. She didn’t want to blacken Dennis’s name. Ryan was only eight. He needed a man in his life, a healthy role model. But the boy’s father was far from healthy right now, and Ryan had, no doubt, already heard her responses to the caller.
“Yes,” she told him.
“Was he drunk again?”
Jenna squeezed her eyes shut, hating the truth and the pain it caused her son. “I think so, honey.”
Ryan didn’t answer. The springs of his bed squeaked and, in a moment, he shuffled into her room. “I know he scares you.” He stared at her, his large brown eyes as earnest as his words. “I wish I was big enough to protect you.”
Smiling, Jenna beckoned him to her. “Ryan, it’s not your job to protect me, especially from your own father.” She blinked back tears brought on by her son’s sweet devotion—and aggravated by her own raw nerves. “Dennis is…just confused right now. When he gets a handle on his drinking, he’ll be the fun dad we once knew.”
“Will we go back home, then?”
Jenna searched her son’s face for any sign of hope and found none. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Because I don’t remember him being any fun.”
Standing, Jenna rested her hands on her son’s thin shoulders. At four foot five he was only a foot shorter than she was.
“That’s a real shame, Ryan, because your father was…is…a wonderful person. He’s just got a big problem.” She didn’t add that their troubles had started long before his drinking. That piece of information wasn’t relevant, anyway, because Jenna would have stayed with Dennis, for Ryan’s sake, had he not become abusive.
Ryan nodded. “I’d better get back to bed.”
“Okay.” Jenna gave him a squeeze. “We’re doing just fine on our own, don’t you think?”
He smiled. “Yeah. I like it here.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think that Adam guy will really help me catch a black widow tomorrow?”
Adam. Another sensitive subject. Refusing to dwell on the man she’d just kicked—hard—Jenna looked at the clock next to her bed. Nearly one-thirty. What a night.
“I think so,” she said. “Now hop into bed.”
Ryan gave her a quick kiss on her cheek and headed to his room, leaving Jenna to climb back into her own bed and stare at the ceiling. She listened to the ocean, hoping it would calm her, soothe her mind into sleep, but she was still awake when the Durhams went to bed. As they passed her door, she heard Mrs. Durham ask her husband if he’d taken the medication for his high blood pressure.
Then Adam’s sure step sounded in the hall. If she wasn’t imagining things, he paused by her room, and she half hoped he’d knock so they could talk the rest of the night away. Over the years she’d wondered countless times about his life. Was his career as fulfilling as he’d thought it would be? Did he still like motorcycles? Was he in love?
She knew he’d never married. Occasionally Mr. Durham grumbled something about how quickly Adam went from one woman to the next, but neither of them had said much more than that. They were disappointed that he hadn’t settled down and started a family. And they hadn’t forgiven him yet for moving away.
Jenna yanked the comforter over her head, well aware that the desire to spend time catching up with Adam was a crazy notion.
She hadn’t forgiven him, either.
* * *
ADAMLAY AWAKE long after the rest of the house grew quiet, his head swimming. The evening had been an eventful one. Not only had he discovered his high-school sweetheart living with his grandparents, he’d heard the voice of his old friend, Dennis, for the first time in fifteen years.
Only he hadn’t liked what Dennis had to say. They’ll need a body bag by the time I’m through with you.
Adam’s hand flexed with the urge to connect with Dennis’s face, even though Dennis and Jenna’s problems had nothing to do with him. He was just visiting for the weekend. Monday would see him whizzing back to San Francisco in his new Mercedes coupe, with the top down if the weather was warm enough—his hometown and the friends he’d left there easily forgotten.
No, purposely ignored, maybe, but not forgotten. He remembered the hurt in Jenna’s eyes the day he’d broken up with her and the regret that had weighed on his heart at odd moments since. She might have married Dennis, but she’d haunted Adam’s life like some elusive ever-present ghost. She was the standard by which he measured all other women.
Blocking out the sadness of their final month together, he shifted his thoughts to better times and settled eagerly on the day they’d first made love. They’d already been dating for two years and knew each other better than Adam had ever known another human being. That day, they’d gone swimming in the ocean, as they often did. But this time Jenna hadn’t stopped him from removing her swimsuit when they left the water and stretched out on the beach.
Giving in to the smile that tempted his lips, Adam closed his eyes and relived the moment of seeing Jenna naked for the first time. She’d been beautiful, with the wind whipping her dark hair about her face, her blue eyes gazing up at him with complete trust, nipples drawn tight and hard with desire.
When he touched her, his hand shook as it did now, just remembering the feel of her silken limbs entwined with his own. He felt again the grit of the sand on his palms, the warmth of the sun on his back, the sound of the sea in his ears—and Jenna beneath him, tight and warm and willing.
After the initial pain she’d experienced, she had matched his eagerness and his passion with an honesty and an intensity that would never fade from his mind. Since then, he had searched for that same responsiveness, those same feelings, but he’d never again achieved what he’d had with Jenna. Maybe he never would, as punishment for pledging her all his tomorrows and then breaking that promise.
As much as he’d wanted her, loved her, some inner devil had urged him to leave Mendocino before he became an innkeeper like his grandparents. He wanted to see the world, challenge himself, and eventually become part of the stiffly competitive legal world in San Francisco.
A year after he left Jenna, he’d winced at the news that she’d married Dennis, but he’d forged ahead. A law degree, a prestigious practice, becoming one of four partners in a firm of sixteen. Two hundred thousand a year, then three hundred, and finally half a million turned his beat-up Chevy truck into a Buick, a Lexus and now his first Mercedes. He drove one of the most expensive cars on the market. He had a big home on the bay, powerful friends, important clients. He’d made it to the big time, hadn’t he? He should be glad of the path he’d chosen.
And he was. He’d had no real doubts until he’d seen Jenna tonight. The sight of her wide sky-blue eyes had pulled him up short. The curves of her body beneath the robe, the body he’d once known so well, had made him wonder what he’d missed—and if it wasn’t better than what he’d had, after all.
At the sound of someone in the bathroom, Adam checked his alarm clock in surprise. He’d feared it was morning and he hadn’t slept at all, but according to the clock it was only two-thirty. Only. He’d be exhausted in the morning.
He went back to the pleasant memories of his days with Jenna, remembering her carefree laugh that time he’d given her a ride on his buddy’s motorcycle. Afterward, she’d insisted on driving, gave it too much gas and popped a wheelie. They’d gone down the street on one wheel, then two, again and again, until she finally crashed and bloodied his knees, as well as hers, and they’d limped home, laughing and pushing the bike before them.
Chuckling, he wondered if she still remembered ruining her new pair of jeans that way. Fortunately holes at the knee became fashionable after that, so he still got to see her in those great-fitting jeans.
And then there was the day she’d baked him a strawberry dessert, which she spilled in her aunt’s car when she tried to bring it over to him. They’d spent the better part of the night trying to clean it up….
Whoever was using the bathroom was sure taking a long time. He could hear his grandfather’s snores throughout the private part of the inn and knew that Pop, at least, was sleeping soundly. It could be Gram or Ryan in there, but after overhearing Dennis’s call, Adam suspected it was Jenna.
Slipping out of bed, he put on the pajama bottoms he usually left in his leather bag and headed out into the hall. A light glimmered beneath the bathroom door, but the occupant seemed to be sick, not merely upset.
He knocked softly.
“I’ll be out in a moment.” Jenna’s voice sounded oddly breathless.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Is there something I can get you?”
A few seconds passed before she answered. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
In the morning? What about now? He paused, wondering what to do. Considering how she must feel about him, he figured she could be seriously ill and still not let him help her. “Do you want me to get Gram?”
Another long pause. “No. Please don’t bother anyone. I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Adam smiled to himself. She had kept him awake, but not in the way she thought. “I couldn’t sleep, anyway. Would you please unlock the door so I can see you’re as fine as you say you are?”
“No.” This time her response came quickly and the toilet flushed right afterward. To cover the sound of her retching?
“Jenna? Are you throwing up?”
No answer. He rattled the knob. “Jenna, open this door, or I’m going to wake the whole damn house.”
“Just a minute.”
He heard the tap water turn on and off. After another lengthy silence, she opened the door and flipped the light off at the same time.
“I’m fine, see?”
Blinded by the instant flood of light and then the sudden darkness, Adam couldn’t see anything. He thought he glimpsed a tired and unusually pale face, but her voice sounded better.
“What was wrong in there? Have you started throwing up when you get upset?”
Forced cheer edged her words. “No. Why would I be upset?”
Because your ex-husband just threatened to kill you. Adam nearly blurted it out before he caught himself. He had no right to barge into her personal affairs. No right to hear as much as he had. But damned if he didn’t want to help Jenna in some way, if only to make up for hurting her so long ago.
He changed tactics. “I was about to go down and make myself some tea, thought it might help me sleep. Would you like a cup?”
“No. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’d better go back to bed.”
That’s what you said two hours ago, but it doesn’t look like you’ve gotten much sleep.
“Sure.” He moved aside, catching a trace of her perfume as she slipped past. He didn’t recognize it as one of the more expensive brands he’d smelled on some of the women he’d dated, but it was perfect for her: spicy, warm, rather exotic.
“Jenna?”
She turned back when she reached her door.
“I was sorry to hear about you and Dennis.”
She stepped into her room and he wondered if she was going to answer him.
“Divorce is never pretty,” she said at last. Then, with a decisive click, she closed the door.
* * *
JENNA BROKE OUT in a cold sweat as Adam’s steps receded. She couldn’t even move. She stood in the middle of the floor, hugging her body, rocking back and forth.
She’d felt nauseated, she’d thrown up, she’d felt better—just the same as last night. But that cycle was exactly what worried her. The flu struck for at least a day. With food poisoning, you threw up until your system cleansed itself. Her nausea hit about the same time each night and always occurred on an empty stomach.
Just like it had when she was pregnant with Ryan.
Dropping her head into her hands, Jenna began to knead her temples. Oh, God, please, I can’t be pregnant.
After Ryan, she and Dennis had tried and tried to have another baby. When she hadn’t conceived after four years, they visited a doctor, who told them Dennis’s sperm count was too low. They were given the name of a fertility specialist, whom they’d never called, partly because Dennis seemed to lose interest—he had his boy and was satisfied—and partly because he’d started drinking.
Jenna took a deep breath and managed to stumble back to her bed. Climbing under the covers, she shivered and wondered if she’d ever be warm again. Just when Dennis and the divorce were almost behind her, she could be pregnant.
A new baby. A huge responsibility. Dennis’s child.
A sob escaped her as she tried again to count the days since her last period, but she couldn’t remember exactly. Dennis had forced himself on her almost three months after the divorce was final. She’d submitted because she hadn’t wanted to wake Ryan with another of their fights, and after sharing her bed with Dennis for thirteen and a half years, she hadn’t thought one more time would make a difference.
But if she was pregnant, it made a huge difference.
She thought of Adam asking her if she threw up when she was upset, and tried to calm down. He’d unwittingly offered her an alternative explanation. Stress did strange things to the body, causing headaches, stomach ailments, insomnia, all kinds of things.
Besides, her symptoms could result from fear. What she needed was to buy a pregnancy test at the grocery store and find out for sure. If it turned out negative, she could relax.
If it turned out positive…
Jenna closed her eyes. Sleep, she ordered herself. Ryan was depending on her and so were the Durhams.
But who could she depend on?
Adam. His name leaped into her mind, and for one sweet instant she let herself pretend. Then reality doused her like an icy ocean wave.
“I can only depend on myself,” she whispered to the moonlit ceiling, and settled herself sternly between the cold smooth sheets.