TERRY BROUGHT THE KIDS home late Sunday night. Jaclyn had expected them at dinnertime, but they didn’t arrive until after eight.
“How was it?” she asked, as they came trooping in. She brightened her smile as much as possible so no one would suspect the heartache she was experiencing underneath. “Did you have a good time?
“It was fun,” Mackenzie said. “Grandma and Grandpa took us out for ice cream before we left.”
“That sounds good. What about you, Alex? Did you have fun?”
Her son didn’t answer. He shot her an angry look, nudged past her and went straight to his room.
Jaclyn winced, wondering what she was going to have to deal with this time, then shoved her hurt feelings aside. Already particularly vulnerable tonight, she didn’t want to dissolve into tears.
Alyssa had fallen asleep in the car. Terry carried her to her room, and Jaclyn helped him put her to bed.
“Thanks for taking them,” she said, following Terry back to the front door. “They like getting to see you and your folks.”
“And you like the freedom you have in their absence, right?” he said, pivoting so fast that she nearly ran into him.
Freedom? Jaclyn had spent a long, lonely weekend, at least since Saturday morning, one of the most difficult of her life. But she had managed to do a lot of studying—studying she wouldn’t have been able to accomplish if she’d had the kids. “I’m getting my real-estate license. It was good to have some time to study, if that’s what you mean.”
“We both know you were doing a little more than that.”
Jaclyn took a deep breath and counted to ten. She wasn’t going to come undone. Eventually Terry’s jealousy and his sneering comments would disappear from her life. Besides, his reaction was probably natural enough, considering the fact that her being with another man was a whole new concept for him.
“Thanks again,” she said quietly, ignoring his baited words.
Her dogged politeness seemed to diffuse his anger. He stared at her for several seconds. Then his expression softened. “Is he really someone you could care about?”
Jaclyn’s first instinct was to not reveal anything. But she’d known Terry almost her whole life. He was her high school sweetheart, her husband of twelve years, the father of her children. If he didn’t have the right to ask her an intimate question, who did?
She nodded.
“That hurts,” he said, closing his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Does that mean you love him?” He acted as though he didn’t want to pose the question but couldn’t help himself.
Jaclyn considered telling him no to spare his feelings, but there didn’t seem to be much point in lying. Whether she loved Cole or not, she wasn’t ever going back to Terry. He needed to accept that and move on. She hoped this would help.
“I do,” she said.
“Since when?”
Jaclyn wasn’t sure she could say, exactly. Since Feld, certainly. Since the day he’d hired her, possibly. Maybe since the day she’d seen him in Joanna’s. “It already seems like forever.”
Covering his face with one hand, Terry took a deep breath. “I blew it, didn’t I, Jackie? When we were together, you tried to tell me what I needed to do to save our marriage. You tried everything to get me to listen, but I wouldn’t. And now…”
And now it was too late.
MONDAY WAS AWKWARD. Cole kept himself buried in his office, for the most part, and wouldn’t even look at Jaclyn when he came to the front office to speak to Margaret. Jaclyn was busy sending faxes to various mortgage companies. She said hello to him when he entered, but he acted as though he didn’t hear her, finished his business with Margaret and left. When she made him dinner, he sat down and ate in silence, then went back to his private office before she could even finish the dishes.
“I’m leaving,” she said, ducking her head into his office on her way out.
“Good night,” he responded without inflection and without looking up.
Jaclyn paused before starting down the hallway, wanting to apologize and explain why she’d said what she had on the phone Saturday night. She wanted to tell him the truth, that the night they’d shared meant too much to her, not too little. But she knew she’d be opening a can of worms. She’d put some distance between them. That was the important thing. It was better to move forward now and let what happened on her birthday fade into the past. She hoped, with time, that Cole would forgive her and forget.
Returning to the office, Jaclyn gathered her jacket and purse, then threw a glance at the avalanche of paper on Rick’s desk and sighed. Too many things were falling through the cracks at Perrini Homes, which worried her, for Cole. But he wasn’t willing to let her help him, and she couldn’t do it on her own. She didn’t know where to start.
Locking up, she tried to put those added concerns out of her mind. She had a lot going on already. The kids would be hungry, and she was too tired to think about cooking again. Or maybe she was too depressed. She’d tried to talk with Alex after Terry had left last night, but her son wouldn’t open up to her. She knew he held his father’s unhappiness against her, but he was too young to understand all the factors that had led to the divorce. She could only love Alex and hope he’d come around, which was easier to do when she wasn’t so strung out. In any case, she wanted to climb into bed and pull the covers over her head so she could kick herself, without interruption, for getting involved with Cole in the first place.
WHY HAD COLE CALLED HIM?
Rick stayed in his seat long after the others had filed out of the classroom, staring into space and thinking about the phone call he’d received from his older brother the week before. He’d already analyzed the conversation a dozen times or more, but he still couldn’t figure out what it was Cole had wanted. Were there problems at the office? Did his brother need something he was too proud to ask for?
No, Cole had always done just fine on his own. Maybe if Rick were Andrew or Brian, Cole would have called simply because he missed him. But Rick had always been a liability. Cole could only be glad to be rid of him, especially now that he’d had time to make the transition at the office.
At the front of the room near the chalkboard, Professor Hernandez was gathering his teaching materials. “Don’t forget to read the first third of Les Misérables for next Monday,” he said as Rick left.
Rick waved to acknowledge his words, then unsnapped the cell phone from his belt. He’d tried to call Chad last weekend to see if he wanted to go do something, but Chad hadn’t been home and Rick hadn’t talked to him since. Maybe Chad could tell him what was going on with Cole.
“Hey, what’s up?” his brother said when he recognized Rick’s voice.
“Not a whole lot. What’s going on with you?”
“I’ve been busy, man. It’s Thursday already, and we only have until Monday to finish the due diligence on those lots in Sparks. I’ve been taking care of some customer callbacks on the houses we sold at the last development, and we’re starting Phase II at Oak Ranch. It’s crazy.”
“Sounds like it. So Cole got the funding for the Sparks project?”
“Yeah. Schneider came through. Again.”
Rick had never expected to miss the office or what went on there. Before he’d left, he’d been eager enough to break away and branch out on his own so he could correct the mistakes he’d made in his early years. But he felt strange now, as though he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. As though he was missing out on something important.
“Cole has never had so many brands in the fire. How’s he managing?” He didn’t add without me, but that was what he wanted to know. Had his leaving made an impact?
Chad hesitated. “He’s getting certain things done. Other things are falling through the cracks.”
“Like what?”
“Like just about everything you used to do.”
“Why hasn’t he hired someone to replace me?”
“I don’t think he wants to replace you.”
“What about Jaclyn? She could take over some of that stuff—all of it, eventually.”
“She’s busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Cooking and cleaning for Cole.”
Cooking and cleaning? What was up with that? It took Rick fifty hours a week to keep up with Cole and his projects. Who was running the office in his absence? “But he can’t go on like that. Eventually he’ll bury himself in paperwork.”
“We’ve got a real-estate agent selling houses like mad. I think we’re there already.”
Rick sighed. After all he’d put into his job, it was difficult to watch it go to hell. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Cole’s not one to let things go.”
“I don’t know, man.”
Remembering the call he’d received in the middle of the night, Rick wondered how it tied in to everything he was hearing. Did Cole want him to come back? And if so, was Rick willing to go?
“Push him to train Jaclyn,” he said. “It’ll save him time in the long run.”
“I think he likes what she’s doing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Take a wild guess.”
“They’ve got something going on?”
“He took her out to Feld last weekend.”
“Cole hates Feld.”
“He must not hate it anymore. He just bought a sand rail.”
Obviously quite a few things had changed since the first of September. “So what’s going to happen next?”
“I wish I knew. Gotta run. Concrete truck’s here.”
Rick let his brother hang up, then sat tapping his forehead with his phone. Cole had put too much into Perrini Homes to let things slide now. What was happening?
He doubted Chad could tell him any more than he already had. But he knew someone who might have the answers.
THE REST OF THE WEEK wasn’t any easier than Monday. Jaclyn thought Cole would eventually lapse into his old self and forget about what had happened between them, but it didn’t look as though he was going to do it anytime soon. He barely spoke to her. When he did, his sentences were clipped and formal. And every time his gaze landed on her, he looked quickly away.
He probably disliked her immensely. Jaclyn hated the thought of that, but she told herself it didn’t matter. She’d placed some calls to other companies, looking for new employment, and had sent out a few résumés. She would come up with something. She just needed to weather the emotional storm she’d caused by making that one colossal, stupid mistake on her birthday, and keep moving forward.
At least she knew how to survive difficult times. The past fourteen months had taught her to duck her head and keep putting one foot in front of the other. And that was exactly what she planned to do.
Only, sometimes she didn’t want to go forward. Sometimes she wanted to go back—back to last Friday night. Regardless of the repercussions, the time she’d spent with Cole had seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And maybe it was. She’d fallen head-over-heels in love this time. Far more powerful, both physically and emotionally, than what she’d ever shared with Terry. Her compulsion to be with Cole was so strong it hurt.
She picked up the sweatshirt he had tossed on his bedroom floor and held it to her face, pausing in her cleaning to breathe in the scent that lingered on the thick material. Spicy and masculine, it conjured Cole in her imagination like nothing else could.
“What are you still doing here? It’s after five.”
Jaclyn spun to find Cole in the doorway. She was running late, but Margaret had had to leave early and he’d been gone all afternoon, so Jaclyn had been in no hurry to leave. She liked cleaning Cole’s house, feeling him all around her in the things he touched and used and owned. But she’d lingered too long.
“I just finished your dinner,” she said, swallowing nervously. “I put it in the fridge since I didn’t know when you’d be back. Would you like me to reheat it?”
“No, I’ll eat later.”
“It’s meat loaf,” she added. His favorite. She’d also made garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus spears and a German chocolate cake for dessert. And she’d finished ironing his shirts and slacks, washing his blue jeans, dusting his room and mopping the kitchen floor. For some reason, she found taking care of him in those personal ways very gratifying.
He didn’t answer. He just stared at her standing in the middle of his floor, hugging his sweatshirt, and raised his eyebrows in question.
Jaclyn glanced away, folded the sweatshirt and put it neatly on his bed, which she’d just made. “Larry Schneider called this afternoon,” she said. “He’s been waiting for that new set of financial statements for three weeks. He wanted to know what was taking so long.”
Cole rubbed his jaw and sighed. “He knows Rick’s gone.”
“He wanted to know if that meant things were falling apart around here.”
“They’re not falling apart. I’ll get to it in the morning.”
“I’d be happy to do it for you, if you’ll just show me how.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re not going to hire someone to replace Rick?”
Cole suddenly looked tired, sad. “Rick’s not someone I can replace,” he said.
“I know.” Jaclyn was tempted to put a hand on his arm, to comfort him in some way, but she didn’t dare touch him. “I’m sorry, Cole. Maybe someday he’ll come back.”
He nodded but held himself rigid as Jaclyn skirted past him.
“See you tomorrow,” she murmured.
“Jaclyn?”
She paused at the threshold.
“The night you came over. It meant something to me,” he said softly.
That simple statement took Jaclyn’s breath away. It was exactly what her heart longed to hear, exactly what she’d hoped—that their night together had held meaning for him, too. But how much meaning? And what were they willing to do about it? Could Cole ever commit?
She waited, hoping he’d say more. If only he’d mention love…promise that he’d be faithful, that he’d be a good father to her children. But she was wishing for the same elusive moonbeam Rochelle had coveted. Cole didn’t want a family, especially a ready-made family. He’d made no secret of that.
Still, the vulnerability that showed in his face at that moment was almost enough to break Jaclyn’s resolve. She ached to hold him and whisper that she loved him and knew, if she didn’t leave right away, she’d do exactly that.
Marshalling strength she didn’t know she possessed, she murmured a quick thanks and left.
COLE STOOD facing Rick’s desk and sighed. He’d handled what he could over the past seven weeks, for the most part working nights and weekends. But there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to do it all. He was falling behind, and it was starting to become a real problem. The bank was waiting for the financial statements. The payroll company had said they wouldn’t cut any checks next week unless they received the income tax deduction forms signed by the construction crew, and Cole had a stack of outstanding bills that needed to be paid—the lumber and concrete companies had both called already. And there was more, lots more. Only, Cole wasn’t sure he could handle everything Rick did. His brother had been there from the beginning and had carved out his own niche. Until Rick left, Cole hadn’t realized how much he depended on his brother or how lost he’d be without him. There were some things Rick had done that Cole didn’t even know how to do—the accounting was one of them.
He’d have to hire that out, too, he decided. He had to get things moving again. They were selling and building a lot of houses. He couldn’t let the infrastructure of his business collapse.
He glanced at Jaclyn’s desk, which was neatly organized, then at Margaret’s, which sat next to Jaclyn’s and wasn’t so neatly organized, and wondered how to restructure the company. Rick wasn’t coming back. It was time Cole faced the truth and made the appropriate changes. Too many employees were depending on him for their living. So, should he train Jaclyn to do Rick’s job? Could he tolerate having her so close, indefinitely?
He wasn’t sure. The way she looked, the way she talked and smiled and dressed drove him nuts. He wanted to take her out to dinner and dancing, buy her things, tell her how gorgeous she was and what she did to him every time he saw her. He wanted…
What did he want? Sometimes he wanted to make her his own, completely, wholeheartedly and forever. But that sounded a lot like marriage, which led to the risk of repeating what had happened with Rochelle.
It’s just another weak moment, he thought. But he didn’t plan on being weak for long. He was going to get over her.
His resolve firmly in place, Cole took Rick’s chair and started digging through the stack of papers closest to him, hoping to clear some things away, but the telephone interrupted him before he could get much of a start.
“Hello.” He held the receiver to his ear with one shoulder so he could still use both hands.
“Hello? Is this Perrini Homes?”
“Yes, it is. Cole Perrini speaking.”
“Ah, Mr. Perrini. I’m glad I caught you. I actually thought your office would be closed by now and was planning to leave a message for—” a pause “—Margaret Huntley.”
“I’ll be happy to have her call you. Are you in the market for a home?”
“No, actually I’m calling about Jaclyn Wentworth. This is Ronald Greenhaven with Guthrie Real Estate. I just wanted to verify a few items she has listed on her employment application.”
Cole dropped the papers in his hand and gripped the phone more tightly. “Her what?”
“Her employment application. She stopped by a few days ago to apply for a job. She doesn’t have much experience, but I met her when she came in, and she seems sharp and professional. Would you say she’s a reliable worker?”
Cole didn’t know what to say. Why was Jaclyn applying for other jobs already? He’d assumed she’d tell him, that he’d have the chance to shift her responsibilities and retain her. So this could only be a result of…
Leaning his elbows on the desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “She doesn’t have her real-estate license yet. She can’t sell houses,” he said, his words more direct than he’d meant them to sound.
Greenhaven paused. “Yes, but she indicated that she’d be willing to come on as a receptionist until then.”
“Starting when?”
“Right away.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“It is?”
“Yes. She already works for me.”
Cole slammed down the phone, angrier than he’d been in a long time. He’d gotten too close to Jaclyn a week ago, and she was running. To a point, he could understand that. He hadn’t exactly made a commitment to her. But he wasn’t the one who’d shown up in her bedroom in the middle of the night. And he’d respected her wishes and left her completely alone since then. Why was she doing this?
Picking up the telephone, he dialed her number, but when he heard her voice, he hung up. What he had to say was better said in person, after the kids went to bed.