Claudia had just polished off a Lean Cuisine entrée, a glass of milk and some strawberries when her phone rang. She recognized Jennifer’s number.
“Hi, Jennifer!”
“Hi, Claudia. I didn’t get you in the middle of anything, did I?”
“Just finished dinner.” She wondered if she would like Jennifer as much if she wasn’t John’s sister. Yet even as Claudia asked herself this, she knew she would have wanted Jennifer as a friend under any circumstances.
“I just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed spending the day with you on Saturday,” Jennifer said.
“Ditto.”
“And I was wondering what your plans are for the weekend. Or if you have any.”
“My friend Sally’s coming.”
“The one from Austin?”
“Uh-huh. She’ll be here about five on Friday.”
“What will you do on Friday night?”
“I don’t know. In fact, I was going to call you, see if you wanted to do something with us.”
“That’s perfect, then, because I called to invite you to come over Friday for a game night. I’m planning to ask John and Philip, as well, and maybe this guy at work that I kind of like. Do you think Sally would enjoy something like that?”
It did sound like fun, and even though Philip would be there, John would be, too. And she wouldn’t be on a date. She and Sally would arrive together and leave together. It was perfect. Sally would get to meet both John and Philip, as well as Jennifer. “I think it sounds great, and I know Sally would enjoy it.”
“Oh, good. I’ll tell the guys to come at seven, but why don’t you and Sally come around six? That way we’ll have a chance to get in some girl talk before they arrive.”
“All right. Can I bring anything? Chips and dips? Wine?”
“Chips and some kind of dip would be nice. Otherwise, I’ll have it under control. I’m taking Friday off—actually, I have an interview Friday morning. Anyway, I thought I’d fix a big pot of chili and a salad for dinner, but I hadn’t thought about a snack. And knowing the guys, they’ll probably want one once dinner wears off.”
“Okay. Now tell me about the interview. When did this happen?”
“Remember on Saturday when I said I’d sent a résumé to the classic-rock radio station?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the station manager called me this morning. He’s looking for an assistant, and he wants to talk to me about the job.”
“Oh, that’s great. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“Now what about that guy? I didn’t think—” Claudia broke off.
“Didn’t think what?”
Claudia hesitated, then decided to take the plunge. “I hope you don’t mind, but Philip told me about your fiancé, and…well…he said you weren’t dating yet.”
“No, I don’t mind. And I’m not dating. But I think I’m finally ready to.” Her voice thickened. “I loved Matt with all my heart. I’ll always love him. But I can’t live on a memory forever.”
“No.”
“And Riley, well, he’s such a sweetheart. A really nice, kind man. I think…I think I could care for him. But he doesn’t seem to think of me in that way. I mean, so far we’re just buddies, you know?”
“And you’d like to change that?”
“Maybe. Friday night will be an experiment. If he says yes, that is.”
Claudia thought about how pretty and smart and nice Jennifer was. If this Riley had any brains at all, he’d jump at the chance to spend an evening with her. “What does this Riley do?”
“He’s the head writer for the station’s five and six o’clock news.”
“Does he have a first name?”
Jennifer laughed. “Riley is his first name. Riley Peterson.”
“Well, I’m looking forward to meeting him. And to Friday night. Thanks for thinking of it.”
“So can you come?”
Wild horses wouldn’t have kept John away if Claudia was going to be there. So much for your resolutions. “Sure, sounds like fun.”
“Great. Now I’m going to call Phil,” his sister said. “Oh, and just so you won’t be surprised, I’m inviting a friend of mine from work.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Uh-uh. He’s a writer I’ve worked with quite a bit. His name is Riley Peterson.”
John’s antennae perked up. A man? His sister was interested in a man? “Something I should know about this Riley?”
“Don’t get ideas. We’re just friends, that’s all.”
John thought she’d protested much too quickly. Which told him everything he needed to know. He was glad he’d get a chance to check out this Riley, see if he was good enough for Jennifer, but even if he wasn’t, John was still glad to see his sister was finally coming back to the land of the living. Matt had been a great guy, one John would have been proud to have as a brother-in-law, but Matt was dead, and Jennifer wasn’t.
John knew his parents concurred. None of them wanted Jennifer to spend the rest of her life grieving over what might have been. John’s mom wanted grandchildren, she wanted both her kids to marry and be happy. Not that marriage guaranteed happiness. Far from it, John thought, but he knew where his mother was coming from. He wanted his sister to be happy, too.
“Okay, sis, no ideas,” he said. “I’ll see you on Friday. Hope your interview goes okay.”
Philip smiled when he hung up the phone. John had come through for him. He’d obviously talked to Jennifer and arranged this whole game-night idea.
He thought about the rest of John’s advice. To invite Claudia to do something unusual, something she wouldn’t say no to. Should he do it after the game night and before John’s party? Or wait until after the party?
Well, he had plenty of time to decide.
In the meantime, he’d continue to give Claudia space. He felt encouraged that John’s plan might work because she seemed friendlier now than she had before, more inclined to want to spend a few minutes talking to him when they saw each other in the halls or when she had to come to the administration offices.
If this works, I’ll be the one in John’s debt, not the other way around.
Philip had always felt uncomfortable knowing that his cousin did feel indebted to him. Philip hadn’t given John a kidney because he wanted thanks. He’d done it because it was the right thing to do, and he knew if their positions had been reversed, John would have come through for him in an instant.
They hadn’t always had a perfect relationship. Philip had been envious of John many times, had even felt resentment toward him—sometimes he still did—and he was sure John had had some negative feelings toward and about him, too. Hell, they were both human.
But they were also bonded by blood. Double cousins. Almost as close as if they were siblings.
You might resent your brother, you might even hate him at times. But in the end, he was your brother.
For the rest of the week, Claudia looked forward to Friday night. On Friday afternoon, she left school shortly after three and made it home by three forty-five, well ahead of Sally’s expected arrival.
Deciding she had time for a shower, Claudia raced upstairs, stripped off her clothes, and was in and out of the shower in less than ten minutes.
Thirty minutes later, hair moussed and dried, dressed in army-green cargo pants and a matching three-quarter sleeved skinny T-shirt, her clogs, and the ever-present armful of bracelets, Claudia checked to make sure there were clean towels and a new bar of soap in the guest bath, and that the guest room looked inviting.
Satisfied everything was ready for Sally, Claudia headed back downstairs to get herself something cold to drink while she checked her e-mail.
She was still reading and replying to messages when her doorbell rang. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was only four-thirty. Sally had made good time.
“Claudia!” Sally said when Claudia opened the door, “I love your place.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” Claudia pointed out, laughing.
“I mean the whole complex. It’s gorgeous.” Sally put her overnight bag down and hugged Claudia hard.
“C’mon, I’ll show you around.”
Sally oohed and aahed over Claudia’s furniture and the layout of the condo, and kept a mile-a-minute monologue going in between, telling Claudia how her mother was driving her crazy and how her sister Kristin was thinking of getting a divorce and how their mutual friend Bart had suffered a broken collarbone in an accident the day before.
“Whoa, slow down,” Claudia said.
“Can’t help it. I’ve missed talking to you.”
“Sally, we’ve talked every other night since I moved here.”
“I know, but it’s not the same.”
Claudia couldn’t help laughing. “It’s exactly the same. Talk is talk, no matter where the parties live.”
“No, it’s not. The thing is, I know you’re here and not in Morgan Creek. That makes a difference.”
Claudia was still shaking her head over Sally’s logic—which actually made a weird kind of sense to Claudia—as she led the way to the guest room. While Sally unpacked, Claudia told her about the evening’s plans.
“Oh, that sounds like fun!” Sally said. “I’m dying to meet Philip and John.”
“I figured you would be.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”
“No more than fifteen minutes.”
“Then I have time to freshen up?”
Claudia waited downstairs until Sally was ready. When she came down, Claudia saw she’d changed into cropped khaki pants and a bright red sweater that complemented her dark hair and still-tanned skin.
“Are you going to one of those tanning places?” she asked as they prepared to leave.
“Why?”
“Sally…you know they’re bad for you.”
“I don’t like white skin,” Sally mumbled.
“Okay. When you get skin cancer, don’t come crying to me.”
“Did I lecture you when you were smoking?”
Claudia made a face. “Point taken.”
Sally continued her earlier chatter during the short drive to Jennifer’s, mostly giving Claudia the rundown on what had happened to Kristen’s and Bill’s marriage that was threatening to put it to an end.
“But didn’t she know how he felt about having kids before they were married?”
Sally shrugged. “I don’t know. She says she didn’t, but I think she just figured he didn’t mean it and she’d change his mind.”
“Marriage is such an iffy proposition, isn’t it?” Claudia mused. She was thinking about her brother Bryce and how his beloved first wife, Michelle, had died. And about Lorna and how her husband had had an affair with his assistant. And, of course, about her own parents, who were still together but obviously miserable with each other.
And yet…there were good marriages, too. Her oldest sister Chloe had a great marriage, and from what John and Jennifer had told her, their parents did, too.
“I know you take a chance when you get married,” Sally said, “but I still hope I do. Of course,” she added dryly, “I’ll have to find someone first.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Seems to me you have found someone. Two someones. And I’m excited that I’m going to get to meet them both tonight.”
“I’ll be curious to see what you think. Oh, and I almost forgot. Please don’t say anything about my family. I haven’t said anything about them, and I’d like to keep it that way for a while.”
“Do you think Philip and John and Jennifer would change toward you if they knew?”
“I don’t know. I’d just rather wait until we’ve been friends longer.”
“Claudia, you’re paranoid when it comes to your family, you know that?”
“Maybe.” But Sally hadn’t had to contend with the fawning, the not-so-subtle bid for favors, the requests for money and the ill-disguised resentment when she refused. “But it’s been my experience that people just look at me differently when they know my background.” And they realize how much money I’m likely to inherit.
Sally only nodded, and a few minutes later, Claudia pulled up in front of Jennifer’s house, so the subject was dropped. Claudia would have parked in the driveway, but she didn’t want to get blocked in just in case the situation became uncomfortable or something and she needed to make a quick getaway.
A smiling Jennifer opened the door. Claudia made the introductions and watched as her two friends sized each other up.
“You’re just like Claudia described you,” Jennifer said.
“So are you,” Sally said.
They both grinned.
Claudia breathed a sigh of relief. She could tell they’d get along fine.
“C’mon back,” Jennifer said. “You two can have a glass of wine and talk to me while I finish making the salad.”
“Mmm, smells good,” Claudia said as they entered the kitchen. She eyed the pot on the stove. “Can I peek?”
Jennifer smiled. “Sure, go ahead. Why don’t you stir while you’re at it? In the meantime, I’ll pour y’all some wine. Red okay? I’ve still got some of that Shiraz.”
They both said the Shiraz was fine.
Claudia lifted the lid on the pot of chili. “This looks so good.” She picked up the wooden spoon Jennifer had obviously been using and stirred. “Is that bits of jalapeño pepper I see in there?”
“Uh-huh. Not too much, though. Some people don’t like their food real hot.”
She handed Sally and Claudia their glasses of wine, then resumed making her salad, which looked about halfway done. Sally perched on a bar stool and Claudia leaned against the counter, watching.
“So how was your drive in?” Jennifer asked Sally.
“I made good time. The traffic wasn’t too bad, which surprised me. I thought Friday afternoons on 290 were always heavy.”
“You were lucky,” Claudia said. The last trip she’d made to Morgan Creek had taken her an hour longer than usual. “But Jennifer, tell us about the job interview. How’d it go?”
Jennifer grinned. “I got the job.”
“Really? That’s wonderful!”
“Yeah, I’m tickled.”
Turning to Sally, Claudia said, “Jennifer had an interview this morning.”
“So I gathered.”
“I want to hear everything,” Claudia said.
“Well,” Jennifer said, pausing in the midst of cutting up some baby carrots. “First of all, Tom—that’s the station manager, Tom Slocum—is just great. I liked everything he said about his philosophy of work, his goals for the station, how he feels about his employees, just everything. He’s really nice and super smart.”
“Is he cute?” Claudia said.
“If you can call a sixty-year-old balding man cute,” Jennifer said with a laugh.
“There’s Sean Connery,” Sally pointed out.
“He’s sexy, but he’s not cute,” Jennifer said.
“Finish telling us what happened,” Claudia said.
“He showed me around, told me what the job would consist of—which sounded like a piece of cake to me after what I’ve been required to do at the TV station—and then he offered me the job. More money, fewer hours, and better working conditions. What more could a person ask for? Oh, and it’s closer to where I live, too.”
“When do you start?”
“I plan to give my notice on Monday, so two weeks from then.”
“I’m thinking of looking for another job, too,” Sally said. She worked as a paralegal in a high-powered Austin law office.
“What is this? A disease?” Claudia said.
Sally shrugged. “I’m tired of the stress. I’ll tell ya, working this job did one good thing for me. It cured me of the idea I might like to become a lawyer myself.”
“So you don’t want to be a paralegal at all anymore?” Claudia asked.
Sally shook her head.
“What will you do instead?” Claudia couldn’t voice what she really wanted to say, which was, What else are you qualified to do?
“You know how my grandmother made me the beneficiary of her insurance policy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I was going to save the money and use it as a down payment on a house.”
“Yeah, and I thought that was a good plan.”
“I can still do that, just with a smaller down payment. I thought I’d use the rest to stake me while I start my own business.”
“Really?” Jennifer and Claudia said at the same time.
“What kind of business?” Claudia said.
“Web design. Maybe even get my certification to work on personal computers. You know, go out to homes and help people who are having problems with theirs and who don’t know what to do.”
Claudia thought about that for a moment. “You know, that’s a great idea, Sally. You’ve done a fantastic job with Bill’s Web site.” Sally’s brother-in-law owned a restaurant and Sally had designed his site. “And you’re a whiz with computers.”
Sally smiled happily.
“I say go for it,” Jennifer said. “Life is too darned short to spend it doing something you don’t like.”
“Amen,” Claudia and Sally said together.
The three of them continued to talk as Jennifer finished her preparations. “The guys should be here soon,” she said.
The words were barely out of her mouth when the doorbell rang. Jennifer wiped her hands on her apron, removed it, said, “I’ll get it,” and blew out of the kitchen like a shot.
Sally grinned at Claudia. “I think she’s anxious to see someone.”
A few minutes later, a smiling Jennifer brought a big, curly-haired redhead into the kitchen. “This is Riley,” she said. Her eyes were shining.
“Hi,” he said, ducking his head.
Why, he’s shy, Claudia thought, charmed.
“Jennifer tells us you’re a brilliant writer,” Sally said.
He beamed, turning his warm brown eyes to Jennifer. “Not really brilliant.”
And he’s definitely interested in her. She just can’t see it yet.
The doorbell rang again.
“This time, why don’t you get it, Claudia?” Jennifer said.
For the second time in a week, Claudia drew in a deep breath while walking toward Jennifer’s front door. Her heart had quickened.
Who was on the other side?
John?
Or Philip?
Not that it mattered. Both presented a different set of problems.
Remember, there’s safety in numbers.
She took a deep breath, then opened the door.