“DENNIS?” JENNA WILLED away the falter in her voice and hurried to the living room to find her ex-husband standing on the porch, grinning at her through the broken front window. Spidery cracks spread out from a hole just right of center, distorting his face and making him look more pitiful—and more sinister—than the last time she’d seen him. Thick whiskers covered his jaw, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair, prematurely gray, stood up in places, looking as if it hadn’t been combed in a week. He wore nothing more than a pair of dirty jeans and a T-shirt, despite the cool weather. A rock the size of a baseball lay at Jenna’s feet.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, staring at the shards of glass on the carpet winking like new-fallen snow in the late-morning sun. “That’s an expensive window you broke. You can’t just go around destroying other people’s property!”
Still grinning, he put a hand to his chest. “You think I did that? Some kid rode by on his bike just as I drove up. Tossed something through the window. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
Jenna watched him carefully. He’d broken the window in the perfect place to reach a hand through and unbolt the door. And she hadn’t locked the back door behind her.
“What do you want?” she asked, cutting to the chase. Dennis didn’t appear drunk, but he could be hungover. And mean. In their years together any mention of Adam sent his temper soaring. And now Dennis believed she’d gone back to her high-school sweetheart.
He dragged a hand through his hair, and this time when he spoke his voice had lost its mockery. “Is it too much to ask to see my son?”
“Do you really want him to see you like this?” Jenna studied the man she’d married and marveled at how much he’d changed. Heavy lines around his eyes and mouth made him seem at least ten years older than he was, and his stomach, once taut, now hung soft and flabby over his belt. He smelled as if he hadn’t had a bath in weeks. Worse, he didn’t seem to care. “How did you get here so fast, anyway?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t coming from Oregon. But then, you wouldn’t know anything about that. You don’t give a damn where I live anymore.”
As long as it’s far away from me. “Listen, Dennis, Ryan isn’t here, and we have nothing to say to each other. We’ve been through everything—”
Slamming his fist into the door, he shouted, “Not enough, we haven’t!”
Jenna backed away and sent a glance at the telephone. Could she get hold of the police before Dennis got inside?
As if reading her intentions, he breathed deeply through his nose and stood straighter, trying to regain control. His hands, the brutal power of which Jenna knew all too well, flexed but remained at his sides. “Come on, Jen. I don’t want trouble. I just want to talk to you about Ryan. I’m better now. I want to come around sometimes, see my son. Let me in so we can talk. I’m not some worthless piece of shit!”
“Dennis, you’re nuts if you think you’re any better. I can see you still need help. And I don’t want you in here, not with all that talk about body bags.”
Chuckling, he turned to gaze out over the front lawn, which was perfectly manicured and green and sloped down to a white sign with “The Victoriana” written in fancy script. Jenna could see Billie, the owner of Billie’s Bath and Body, inside the house-turned-retail establishment across the street and wished she’d call the police. But their neighbor had no way of knowing Jenna was in trouble.
“Lover boy’s not home, eh?” Dennis said, turning back.
“Adam’s not my lover. Regardless of what you may think, we have no interest in each other. He just came home to visit his grandparents. It’s the first I’ve seen of him.”
“Well, he’s not much of a protector if he’s always running off. I guess that macho crap last night was just big talk. And here I thought he was ready for me.”
“Leave Adam out of our problems, Dennis. He’s going back to San Francisco and his own life. He’s got nothing to do with us.”
“He’s the one who stuck his big nose in, Jen.”
Jenna shook her head. “You shouldn’t have been calling here so late. He’s got his grandparents to worry about.”
“Didn’t sound too upset about the old folks. Sounded like he was worried about you. What’s he doing? Banging you a few times while he’s on vacation? At least I was willing to marry you. Support you and raise a family. What’s he ever done?”
The old rage bubbled up inside Jenna. She’d supported their little family more years than Dennis had. She’d worked full-time and been Ryan’s mainstay. She’d taken care of their house and cars and taxes. She’d lied for Dennis, carted him around, cleaned up his messes, sat through more Al-Anon meetings than she could count and pretended everything was okay for so long that the mere memory was enough to send her blood pressure through the roof.
But she bit her tongue to avoid falling into the same old argument, and raised her hands. “I give up, Dennis. Blame me for everything. Call me any name in the book. Tell everyone you meet how terribly I treated you. Send all our old friends letters and e-mails. You can publish it in the paper. Just go away, all right? Ryan and I are happy here, and I’m going to do my best to make sure we stay that way.”
“The two of you are happy? And what about me, Jen? Seems you’ve forgotten something. What about ‘till death do us part? In sickness or in health’?” Shoving his hand through the hole in the window, he tried to unbolt the door. Before he could manipulate the latch, however, Jenna grabbed the brass bunny that held the front door open during the summer and used it like a hammer to smash Dennis’s hand.
With a cry he pulled his injured fingers back.
“Now go away,” she said again, “or the next time you stick your hand in here, you’ll draw back a bloody stump!”
Cursing, he shook his hand as if to ease the pain, and his face twisted with rage or hate or both. “I’m gonna kill you, bitch,” he said. “Just you wait and see. When you least expect me, I’ll be here. Then Ryan will come to live with his daddy.”
Dennis lifted his head at the sound of a siren in the distance. Then he whirled around and stalked down the porch, climbed into a battered Ford Escort Jenna had never seen before and peeled out of the drive.
Jenna stared at a drop of blood rolling down the window from a jagged piece of glass that must have cut Dennis’s arm.
And then she ran to the bathroom and promptly threw up.
* * *
“WOW! WHAT HAPPENED?” Ryan looked up at the cardboard Jenna had taped to the inside of the broken window. Her son had raced inside ahead of the others. Mr. and Mrs. Durham followed, and Adam brought up the rear.
Jenna kept her voice as neutral as possible, considering she’d barely had time to clean up the mess and tape the cardboard in place before the Durhams’ Cadillac turned into the drive. “I was on my way to get the mail and tripped. Put my hand right through the glass. I’m sorry. I’ll pay for it to be replaced.”
Mr. Durham took her hands in his larger ones and peered at them. “You didn’t get cut?”
“No. I don’t know how I avoided it, but I feel terrible about the window.”
“That’s why we have insurance,” Mrs. Durham piped up. “Accidents happen. We’re just glad you’re safe.”
Only Adam seemed to doubt Jenna’s story. He raised an eyebrow and turned to study the window with a frown.
“Mom, you wouldn’t believe what we saw!” Ryan said, the window quickly forgotten, at least by him. “Whales! A big bunch of them—”
“A pod, dear,” Mrs. Durham corrected, gathering up the basket she’d set on the floor and trailing Mr. Durham to the kitchen.
“—swimming south to warmer waters. That’s where Adam said they were going. It was so awesome. Wasn’t it, Adam?”
Ryan looked at Adam with such naked adoration that Jenna had to take a step back and find a seat before her shaky legs crumpled beneath her. As if an insane ex-husband wasn’t enough of a problem, now her son worshiped Adam. The man who was so good at telling bedroom lies. The man with No Commitment stamped on his forehead.
“Adam knew just the place to pull over,” Ryan went on. “And Pop took binoculars so I could get a good look. Whales have a blowhole, you know. I saw water shooting out of it!”
“Is that so?” Jenna folded her arms and refused to meet Adam’s probing eyes. She hadn’t fully recovered from Dennis’s visit yet; she was afraid that her anxiety showed.
“Adam said next time he comes he’ll take me mountain biking,” Ryan announced.
It was Jenna’s turn to cock an eyebrow at Adam, but she responded to Ryan. “Honey, you don’t have a mountain bike, and besides, Adam is a busy man. He rarely has time for a visit, you know that. Maybe he can take you on a hike come spring.”
“Spring?” Adam disarmed her with a boyish grin. “How do you know I won’t be back next weekend?”
“Because I know you,” she said simply. And I think I know what you’ve come to like—a fast pace, a sophisticated woman who asks for nothing more than you’re willing to give, stiff professional competition and the excitement of winning a case. Not an old girlfriend who once loved you more than life, or an eight-year-old boy who already thinks you’re the next best thing to a super hero.
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. I’m not eighteen anymore, Jenna.”
She smiled back. “Coulda fooled me.”
“Did you hear that, Ryan? I think your mother’s asking for the old tickle torture.”
“No!” Jenna swatted at Adam’s hands, but he lifted her easily out of the chair and had her on the ground, rolling in a fit of laughter in seconds.
“Say uncle,” Ryan advised, laughing as he watched. “He has to let you up if you say uncle.”
“Say uncle,” Adam echoed, straddling her waist and pinning her arms above her head with one hand.
“Uncle means…I surrender,” Jenna said breathlessly amid her efforts to escape, “and I’ll never surrender, at least not to you!”
Adam stopped tickling. “That sounds like a challenge.”
Jenna could smell spearmint on Adam’s breath and feared he was going to kiss her right there in front of Ryan. Or at least that was all she could think about—his kiss.
Instead, Adam angled his head to look up at her son. “Next week, squirt,” he said. “I’ll be here Friday night, and we’ll go mountain biking Saturday morning. Consider it a date.”
“Yippee!” Ryan set off in a circling gallop that gave Jenna the opportunity to voice her displeasure.
“I tried to get you off the hook,” she said, her voice barely audible, “but you don’t know when to quit. Now he’s got his heart set on next week.”
“And you think I’ll leave you both behind and not look back.” Adam’s thumb gently followed the line of her jaw.
“That’s exactly what I expect—based on experience. But Ryan doesn’t know any better.” She tried to free her hands so she could get up and put some space between them, but Adam was too big, too powerful. His hat had come off during their scuffle, revealing a head of tousled hair, and the whiskers on his chin made him look more rugged than usual. In spite of her tart words, Jenna itched to bury her hands in his hair and draw him closer. But she wasn’t about to ask for that kind of trouble.
His gaze lowered to where her breasts strained against the fabric of her blouse. “Like I said, I’m not eighteen anymore.”
“Neither am I,” she replied, but the hunger in his eyes made her nipples tighten until even she could see them standing out through her shirt.
He gave her a slow sensuous smile, and she knew he’d noticed when he said, “Oh, yeah? Well, some things haven’t changed.”
* * *
“YOU OKAY?” Adam approached Jenna on the narrow street fronting the inn and waited while she collected the mail from a white Victorian-style box. He’d showered and shaved and now looked more like the suave lawyer she’d seen the night he arrived, although he was dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Because you look like a scared rabbit.”
Jenna pretended to be fully absorbed in checking through the stack of envelopes. “I’m just tired. We were up late last night.”
He leaned against the mailbox, blocking her retreat to the house. “And?”
She finally gave him her full attention. “And what?”
“Tell me what happened with the window.”
A strong wind, carrying the scent of eucalyptus and redwood, nearly yanked the mail from Jenna’s grip. She tucked the letters in the pocket of her thick corduroy jacket, then used one hand to keep her hair out of her face as she gazed into Adam’s dark eyes. “I already did. I fell.”
He studied her, but didn’t press. Instead, he approached the subject from a different direction. Lawyer tactics, Jenna guessed. “I figure it would take Dennis eight hours or so to get here from Oregon. That means he could arrive anytime. Is that what has you so jumpy?”
“I don’t think he’s coming.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Jenna shrugged. “What can he hope to accomplish? I have a restraining order against him.”
“That hasn’t stopped him from calling.”
“He gets drunk, he calls. I doubt he has the money to get here, anyway. He hasn’t worked in months, and his family’s getting tired of helping him since he refuses to go into detox.”
The memory of Dennis looming through the broken window rose in Jenna’s mind, making the lies taste bitter in her mouth. She longed for Adam to pull her to him and hold her tightly against his chest until the shakes went away—because sometimes it seemed they never would.
But she was determined not to frighten Ryan or worry the Durhams or involve her old boyfriend in her problems again. Adam seemed to think he couldn’t go home until he knew she was safe, but she’d been dealing with Dennis for years without a protector. She could handle her ex-husband. It was Adam who frightened her.
“So you’re going to stick with your story. You fell?”
She shrugged. “Sorry, nothing more exciting than that. You said yourself that Dennis couldn’t have gotten here any sooner than now.”
Adam nodded but didn’t look convinced. “I told Ryan I’d take him out for a burger tonight. Any chance you’d like to come along? Just to make sure I don’t make any more promises you’ve already decided I won’t keep?”
“Is that your way of asking my permission to take Ryan somewhere?”
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
Jenna could think of no good reason to deny her son the adventure of a night out. “He can go, I guess.”
“Does that mean you won’t join us?”
“I can’t. We’ve had three late bookings. They’ll be here any minute. But please don’t think I’m being over-protective in worrying about Ryan. His father’s already been a big disappointment. He doesn’t need another one.”
“What makes you so sure I won’t deliver, Jen?”
“I guess I’m just trying to figure out why you’re bothering to take an interest. You have a lot waiting for you in San Francisco. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”
His face grew stubborn, pensive. “Enough of that. I’m tired of your trying to get rid of me. I’ll go when I’m ready, and not until I’m sure Dennis is minding his manners.”
“You’d better send for your things, then.”
“That bad, huh?”
Jenna raised her brows. “There’s no way to be sure he’ll ever leave us alone. That’s a fact I have to live with, but it has nothing to do with you. And Dennis isn’t to blame for everything.”
“Oh, yeah?” Adam slid his hands in his pockets and hunched against the wind.
“Yeah.” Jenna heard her voice soften with the pain of admitting the truth. “I couldn’t give Dennis what he needs. I couldn’t love him enough to make him whole. Maybe if he’d married someone else, things would have turned out differently.”
Adam opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to change his mind and settle for, “So the trouble started early on?”
“The trouble started before I even married him. I just wasn’t smart enough to walk away then.” How could she say she’d been lost without Adam? That she hadn’t had the confidence to take life solo? It was so pathetic—and true. But the years had a way of strengthening people, of ameliorating weaknesses. What Jenna had once thought unbearable—being alone—she now found a relief.
Adam squinted at a gray sky that looked like rain, an odd expression on his face. “You were young. I bet if you’d met Dennis later in life, you’d have chewed him up and spit him out, just like you’re doing to me.”
Jenna tucked her hair behind her ears. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that you won’t give me a chance to be your friend. You’re determined to shut everyone out. To shoulder this on your own.”
“So after three years of dating in high school, no contact for fifteen years, and a brief reunion, the man who took my virginity wants to be my friend?”
He smiled, charm so natural to him he wore it like a second skin. “So you do remember.”
“How could I forget?” She looked past Adam to where the dark rich earth sloped downward to meet the sea. Black rocks jutted out of the water. Seagulls wheeled above the white foaming waves, their cries lonely against the deserted beach. Trees grew sideways, like stooped old men carrying the burden of the wind on their backs.
“Then you also remember that I lost my virginity at the same time,” he murmured.
But for me it meant something. Jenna swallowed the words before they had a chance to pass her lips. She’d come home to Mendocino knowing, even before Adam had returned, that he’d always be part of this place. “All right,” she said. “Let’s be friends. Friends are supposed to keep your secrets, anyway, and you already know one of mine.”
“The baby?”
She nodded and he stepped closer, lowering his voice even though there wasn’t anyone else around. “Some of your secrets I’ve kept for years, Jen.”
She swallowed hard. “Like?”
“Like how your breasts felt against my chest. How you’d wrap your legs around me and pull me so deep inside you that I didn’t know where I stopped and you began—”
Unwilling to hear more, Jenna shook her head and put up a hand to stop him. “On second thought, I don’t want to be friends, Adam. I don’t want to be anything.”