• 4 •

It's always good to go into the weekend with something to celebrate. This was another important truth Jessica had learned in her forty-four years on the planet. Celebrating over her possibly successful foray into the job market beat discussing what lay ahead on Michael's job horizon.

He had been more than willing to celebrate her afternoon's success. “Way to go,” he said after she'd told him, and gave her a big, smacking kiss. “You're already out there fishing for something. I'm impressed.”

“I don't exactly have a fish on the line yet,” she reminded him as she ladled canned sauce on their spaghetti.

“But you've baited the hook.”

She frowned. “You wouldn't believe how much bait costs.”

Both his eyebrows went up.

“I had to buy something I could wear to a job interview. I never realized how noncorporate my wardrobe was.”

Michael smiled at that. “You've got a point there. I can't remember the last time I saw anyone in the office wearing sequins or tank tops.” She dumped her salad-in-a-bag into a bowl and he took it to the kitchen table.

She joined him with French bread. “I gave myself permission since I'm investing in my future.”

“You are. You have to dress for success,” he agreed.

Michael pretty much always agreed with her when it came to spending money because he was a sweet man. In the past money hadn't been an issue in their marriage, but now, between college and wedding debt and a possible period of unemployment, she realized he needed to stop being so agreeable.

“I just hope that investment pays off,” she said. It could. Caroline Withers could feel sorry for her.

“You'll get something,” Michael said easily. “Try another agency next week.”

“Another?” He wanted her to go to another agency and do all that sweating again?

“You probably should. The more temp agencies you have your name with the better, at least if you want to find a foothold in the corporate world.”

“I do,” she said. Who was she kidding? Michael should be singing Fleetwood Mac's “Tell Me Lies” to her.

“It's like putting out résumés,” he continued. “You want to circulate as many as possible so you increase your chances of getting an interview.”

“Oh.” That made sense, of course.

She thought of having to face that one-hour work commute on a regular basis and shuddered. You don't have to find full-time employment, she reminded herself, something part time will do. Nothing at all would do better. She really wasn't cut out to be an office drone.

Grow up, she told herself sternly. This is how it works in the real world. Millions of people go to jobs they hate every day.

Except her husband. He loved his work. So did Rachel Green. So did Tiffany Turner, her other neighbor and craft buddy. Jess sighed.

“Don't worry,” Michael said as they settled down with their meal. “I bet you'll have more work than you can handle.”

She nodded and managed a smile. Who knew? She might decide she liked office work. She would definitely like a paycheck. She knew that much.

“Where's our son?” Michael asked.

“He went over to the Sticks and Balls to shoot pool with Danny.”

Michael frowned. “I hope he spent time job hunting first.”

“I'm sure he did,” Jess said quickly. Mikey was asleep when she left for the city, but he'd been gone by the time she got home. Surely somewhere in between sleeping and leaving to hang out with his buddy he'd done something other than eat all the leftover chicken she'd been saving for dinner.

“I don't want him sitting around playing games on his computer all day,” Michael said sternly, as if Mikey was still twelve and she was, somehow, responsible for his behavior.

“I'm sure he's not.”

“Our son really needs to be looking for a job.”

“He will,” Jess assured Michael. Mikey had a business degree. He shouldn't have trouble finding something. If he looked.

She suddenly understood why her son had been dragging his feet on the job hunting for the last month. It was hard going out there and putting your ego and your future on the line, hoping you'd impress some stranger enough to want to take a chance on you. She really didn't want to do that again, herself.

After dinner Michael went to his computer to check out some business networking sites and Jess drifted to the old baby grand piano she kept in a corner of the living room and vented, pounding the ivories. But hard as she banged, she couldn't stop thinking about the pounding she and Michael were about to take.

Tiffany stopped at Safeway on her way home to pick up a little something to bring to Friday craft night. Jess was hosting this month, and while she always had plenty of goodies, Tiffany never liked to come empty-handed. She found some fresh strawberries that would be wonderful.

There. That took care of the girls. What about dinner? She decided to pick up some odds and ends from the deli. It was a great way to save time.

But not money. Tiffany checked in her wallet. Just as she suspected, she was two dollars short. The woman behind the counter had already put everything in little cartons so Tiffany couldn't very well say, “Put it back.” She'd have to use her charge card.

By the time she got home Brian was already there, sitting out on the deck, drinking a Coke. She opened the sliding glass door and poked her head out. “Sorry I'm late. I had to stop at Safeway. Dinner'll be ready in a sec.”

“I'm not hungry.”

There was something very unsettling about Brian's tone of voice. “Did you have a late lunch or something?” Maybe he'd had bad news at work. With a sick feeling, she sat down opposite him.

He was a hottie, with that beefcake chin and those dimples. Except they only showed when he was smiling, and right now he wasn't smiling. “Tiff, have you been charging things?”

Her heart began to thump wildly. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because I found an unopened package of sheets in a bag under the bed.”

Abracadabra sheets. She'd meant to transfer them to the linen closet and forgot. “What were you doing looking under the bed?”

“I was looking for my old running shoes,” he said, frowning at her. “What? I'm not supposed to look under the bed?”

“No.”

His frown became a scowl.

“I mean, no, that's not what I meant.” Oooh, this was not going well.

He looked at her warily. “You've only been using the debit card like we agreed, right? You haven't gotten another charge card, have you?”

She could feel her cheeks sizzling under his penetrating gaze. “I …” Her mind went blank.

“Oh, God,” Brian said faintly. “Tell me you haven't.”

She bit her lip.

His lips pressed into a thin, angry line and he left the deck.

“Brian, wait.” She followed him through the kitchen. “I can explain.”

He walked through the living room.

“Brian, please. It's not much.”

He grabbed his car keys from the little table by the front door.

“Where are you going?”

He held up a hand. “I can't talk to you right now, Tiff. I need to go cool down. Okay?”

No, it wasn't okay. “Brian, don't leave. Please.”

Tiffany turned on the tears to no avail. Her husband shook his head and went out the door.

Run after him, cried her conscience. Give him the credit cards and tell him to cut them up.

She took one step and stopped. No. I need to let him calm down.

You just don't want to give up the credit cards.

That was so not true. But it would be stupid to cut them up. Who knew what the future held? They might need those credit cards.

Tiffany shut the door and flopped on the living room couch where she indulged herself in a good cry.

You'd better do something.

And right now there was only one something to do. More bar-gains had to return to the mall. She hauled her unhappy self into the bedroom and took the sheets out from under the bed. She found the receipt for them in her underwear drawer, where she hid all her charge receipts. She also grabbed the receipt for the body butter she'd stocked up on and fetched one of the two jars from under her bathroom vanity. She could part with one.

But wait. They'd been on sale. It was hardly worth returning body butter she'd eventually need. She put it back under the vanity. The sheets would still go. She'd regret it, she was sure, but she'd take them back. She had to have something to show Brian when he came home.

After much soul searching she also parted with a pair of shoes and a serving platter she'd gotten on sale and had tucked away to give as a wedding present in case someone they knew decided to get married. Her returns assembled, she put the deli dinner in the fridge, grabbed her car keys, and left for the mall. As she got closer with her returns she began to cry again. Her husband was gone who knew where and now the last of her bargains were going. Life sucked.

You're doing the right thing, said her conscience.

“Oh, shut up,” she snarled.

Jess shooed Michael out the door to go play poker with his pals down the street and got busy setting out the refreshments for craft night. She and her friends were making wineglass charms and Jess had planned her menu accordingly. She had picked up a couple of bottles of raspberry dessert wine from Bere Vino and truffles from the Chocolate Bar, Heart Lake's favorite chocolate-ria. Wine and chocolate, perfect.

Next, mood music. She put on a CD she had burned with all of her favorite American Idol downloads. Now she was truly ready. Let the crafts begin.

Rachel was the first to arrive. She was tall and willowy and Jess heartily envied her great legs. If she had legs like that she'd never waste them on pathetically unshort shorts like the ones Rachel was wearing tonight. Rachel also had on a turquoise colored spring sweater set that was lovely with her dark coloring. Lovely, but not hugely sexy. Rachel had never dressed provocatively, but it seemed to Jess that since her divorce the girl had been sinking into schoolmarm mode, becoming increasingly more conservative. Her long, black hair was now sporting a few fine strands of gray—battle scars, she called them—which she refused to hide under hair color. As far as Jess knew, she hadn't even cut her hair in the last year, preferring instead to catch it in a band at the base of her neck. Her face was a little too long to call her beautiful, but her big, brown eyes were striking and she had a gorgeous smile.

When she had something to smile about. From the look on her face as she walked through the door, Jess could tell that she wasn't going into the weekend with any reason to smile. She'd looked somber when Jess ran into her in the grocery store, but since then, she'd gone from somber to shoot-me-now.

“You look like you need chocolate therapy,” Jess said as she led the way to the worktable she'd set up in the family room.

“I need therapy, period,” said Rachel.

“Aaron troubles?” Jess guessed. The goodies were laid out on the nearby coffee table. She picked up the plate of truffles and handed it to Rachel.

“This is good for me. What are you and Tiff going to have?”

“That bad, huh?”

Rachel popped a truffle in her mouth, then set the plate back on the coffee table. “Worse. I don't have a job anymore.”

Jess sat down on the nearest chair. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. But that's not all. Claire needs braces and the Prince of Darkness is being his usual rotten self. I'd stick my head in the oven, except it's electric.” She took another truffle.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go back to subbing if I can't find a teaching position. Between the schools in Heart Lake and Lyndale I should be able to pick up enough work. It's just—” She stopped and shook her head.

“That you wanted something permanent,” supplied Jess.

“I wanted something to go right,” Rachel corrected, eyes flashing. “I swear, the day I met Aaron my life became cursed.” She ran a hand through her hair. “All right, that is a major exaggeration, I admit, but I feel like everywhere I look I see bills to pay. I just …” Her voice broke.

Jess put the plate of chocolates in her lap and a glass of wine in her hand. “I'm so sorry.”

Rachel went for her third chocolate and rinsed it down with a healthy slug of wine. “It's okay. I'll be fine. My mom always says God never closes a door without opening a window.”

Rachel's mom was currently busy caring for her husband, who'd had a stroke, and Rachel's deadbeat sister, who had moved home with her two children. Talk about an eternal optimist. But Jess nodded her agreement. “That's a good thought to keep in mind.”

“I need a window to open really soon,” Rachel said, rubbing her temples.

“I hear you,” Jess said with a sigh.

“Oh, geez, listen to me. What's going on with you? Does Michael have a job?”

“If we want to move to Ohio, he does.”

Rachel's face lost its color. “You're not moving, are you? Oh, Jess. Please tell me you're not moving. I know it's selfish of me, but if you leave that will be the final straw.”

“We're not,” Jess assured her. “Michael is looking for something around here. And I'm going to get a job.”

“A job?” Rachel looked at her with new interest. “Doing what?”

“Robbing banks,” Jess said, deadpan. “I'll start with Washington Federal Loan. They should have plenty now that they've been bought out. Want to drive the getaway van?”

That brought a smile. “Sure. Let's give them something to talk about here on Cupid's Loop. Seriously, what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to see if I can get work as a temp.”

Rachel gave a thoughtful nod. “I hear they can keep you busy doing that. I never thought of you as the office type, though.” She took in Jess's tight jeans, pink tank top, and pink sequined flip-flops, and added, “I can hardly wait to see what you wear to the office.”

“I can do office boring if I have to,” Jess said, and plucked a chocolate from the plate. They were disappearing fast. If Tiffany didn't hurry up and get there she'd miss out. Jess checked her watch. It was now a quarter after seven. Well, Tiffany tended to run late.

But by quarter till eight the chocolate was gone and half of the wine, and there was still no sign of her. Jess went to the living room and looked out the window. She could see Tiffany's Craftsman style house, which sat kitty-corner and across the street of their cul-de-sac. Like all the houses in Heart Lake Estates, it was big, too big for two people really, but Tiffany and Brian had planned to fill it up with babies. So far it was still too big, although Tiffany had done a good job of filling it with home furnishings from Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel. Her car wasn't in the driveway. Neither was Brain's jeep.

“That is so weird,” Jess said, returning to the family room. “Nobody's home.”

“I say we start,” Rachel said. “She's always late, but this is ridiculous.”

“Maybe I'd better call her and see if she's okay.”

“She probably found a sale, which means we won't see her until after the mall closes. I don't know where she finds the money for all these bargains,” Rachel muttered as Jess went for the phone.

“She got another charge card. Didn't she tell you?”

Rachel's eyes got big. “No. She knew I'd ream her out. And I'm betting she didn't tell Brian, either.”

Jess called Tiffany's cell phone, but only got her voice mail. “Hey, where are you? We're ready to start.”

“Ready to start? I am starting,” Rachel said. She seated herself at the worktable and began sorting through the tiny charms, which they would then string along with beads onto little wire hoops to loop around wineglasses. Jess had found everything from multicol-ored glass fishes to tiny shoes in various styles.

Jess joined her and they worked another ten minutes with still no sign of Tiffany. “Don't you think it's strange that she hasn't showed up yet?” Jess asked. “I just saw her this morning so it's not like she could have forgotten.”

“Like I said, she found a sale,” Rachel said, slipping a bead next to the charm on her wire.

“I hope everything's okay.”

“Of course it is. If it wasn't, we're the first people she'd have called.”

They finished their creations and still there was no sign of Tiffany. Jess went to the living room and looked out the window again. The cars were back in the driveway now and a light was on inside. “She's home now.”

“Nice of her to let us know she wasn't coming,” Rachel said, settling on the couch. “I don't get it. She was the one who wanted to make these.”

As she spoke, Tiffany's front door opened and out dashed a petite blonde with a heart-shaped face, wearing designer jeans, a silky pink top, and sky-kissing heels that screamed designer label.

“Here she comes,” Jess announced.

“Just in time to lick the empty plate,” said Rachel, who had devoured the last truffle.

A moment later Tiffany was at the door.

“Where have you been?” Jess asked, letting her in. “We were worried.” Then she realized that Tiff's eyes were red and puffy, a sure sign she'd been crying. “What's wrong?”

“Brian found out about the charge cards.” Tiffany fell onto the love seat. “It was terrible,” she said and burst into tears.

Jess sat down and put an arm around her. “What happened?”

“He, he, he …”

“He beat you,” guessed Rachel in horrified tones.

“No. He, he, he …”

“Oh, my God, he's leaving you!” Rachel cried.

“Noooo.” Tiffany wailed. “He took my credit cards. Even after I returned everything.”

Rachel stopped looking sympathetic so Jess stepped in. “I'm sorry.”

“Well, I'm not,” said Rachel. “Tiff, you should be glad Brian took those credit cards. Think of the mess you could have gotten into with them.”

“Oh, that's easy for you to say,” Tiffany snapped. “You have credit cards.”

Rachel's eyes narrowed. “Well, let's trade. You can have my charge cards and I'll take your husband.”

This was not good. Jess had two emotional women in her living room going at it and no chocolate left. “Come on, you two,” she pleaded. “This isn't like either of you.”

Rachel sighed. “Sorry. I'm a little cranky tonight,” she muttered.

Tiffany nodded, accepting her apology, but she still looked hurt. An awkward moment passed before Tiff said in a small voice, “You're right to lecture me. I know I'm wrong. It's just that …”

“What?” prompted Jess.

“I don't know how to explain it. Somehow it was easier to cope when I could go in the store and buy something on sale. Getting a bargain was like doing a good thing for our family.”

She didn't need to explain what she was coping with. Jess had had a miscarriage herself. It was a grief most people didn't understand, a loss met with well meant words like, “Don't worry. You'll get pregnant again.” As if losing that life growing in you along with all the hopes and plans for the future meant nothing. She suspected shopping was Tiffany's way of trying to fill the emptiness.

“We're a mess,” Rachel said. She went to the family room and returned a moment later with the near empty bottle of wine. She filled a quarter of a glass and handed it to Tiffany. “Sorry. This is all that's left. And we ate all the chocolate, too. We've been consoling ourselves.”

Before Tiffany could protest, Jess filled her in on Rachel's lost job and the crisis looming on the horizon for her and Michael.

“Rachel's right,” Tiffany said miserably. “We are a mess.”

“Only temporarily,” said Jess. “Things could always be worse.”

“I guess you're right,” said Rachel. “Why do we always see the glass as half full?”

“Cuz it is, cuz somebody drank all the wine,” said Tiffany, frowning at the glass in her hand.

“Seriously,” said Jess. “So we're not rich. Most people aren't. But we've got lots of good things in our lives.”

“Mine all went back to the store,” Tiffany grumbled.

“Yes, but you've still got your husband,” Jess reminded her, “and he loves you. That's huge. Rachel has her kids, I have my family, and we have each other. How many people live on the same block as their best friends? I'll admit, we have some challenges right now, but we're not starving.”

“Yet,” said Tiffany. “They laid off two people in Brian's department this week. If he gets laid off I don't know how we're going to make it,” she continued, refusing to be sidetracked. “Especially now that I don't have any credit cards.”

“I have to admit, I'm scared, too,” Rachel confessed in a small voice.

She had a right to be. She was an only child, but her parents weren't swimming in money, and at the moment they had problems of their own. And Jess and Tiffany weren't exactly in a position to help her, other than offering moral support.

But you had to think positive. That was something else Jess had learned in her forty-four years on the planet. “We can't let a little thing like money problems defeat us,” she insisted.

“People jumped out of windows in the Thirties over a little thing like money problems,” Rachel reminded her.

“Well, you wouldn't have been one of them,” Jess told her sternly, “and neither would I, and neither would Tiff.”

“You're right,” said Rachel. “I'd have pushed Aaron out a window instead and collected his life insurance.”

Tiffany giggled at that. But she sobered quickly. “So, what are we going to do?”

“Maybe we should take some kind of money management course,” Rachel suggested. “We could probably all stand some improvement in that area.”

“Except now I don't have any way to pay for one,” grumbled Tiffany.

Rachel frowned. “Good point. Without a job, I can't afford some big, expensive course.”

“Me, either,” said Jess.

“There has to be something we can do,” said Rachel.

They all sat there, the only sound in the room Tiffany's nails clicking against her wineglass as she thought.

“Wait a minute,” said Rachel suddenly. “Where's the one place in town where learning is free?”

Jess's face lit with understanding. “Of course! You're a genius.”

Tiffany looked from one to the other, confused. “I don't get it. What are you talking about?”

“The library,” Rachel explained. “It still doesn't cost anything to check out a book. I'll bet we can find dozens of books on managing money.”

“Why not? Let's go tomorrow morning,” Jess suggested.

Tiffany looked pained. “I can't go. I have three clients coming in to get their nails done tomorrow morning.”

“We'll find something for you,” Rachel promised.

“It better be something on how to get through credit card with drawal,” muttered Tiffany.