Back for Seconds (22 page)

“Indeed they are,” he grinned as he took other seat beside her bed, directly opposite of Joely. He pretended the bear was talking in a funny voice. “’I heard you didn’t feel well and I thought I’d bring you some balloons to brighten your day.’” She giggled as she reached for the bear.

“I love him. What’s his name?”

“You know, he didn’t say but I myself have always been partial to Xander.” He gave her a wink. “So how are you feeling?”

“Better,” she told him as she examined her new toy. “I had a surgery.”

“I heard,” he said. “You gave us all quite a fright. I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” He leaned forward to share a secret. “I hear there’s a vat of chocolate ice cream at the restaurant with your name all over it. But you’re going to have to work on your pathetic face to get it. Let me see it,” he said, showing her how to give a deep pout with big sad eyes. She giggled as she mimicked him. “Not bad. Not great, but not bad. After another day or so of hospital food you should have it down pat.”

He turned his focus to Joely. “How are you? You look exhausted.”

She shrugged. She’d sleep when they got Hannah back home. “No rest for the wicked,” she dismissed.

He studied her face. He wanted to say so much but he couldn’t say any of it in front of Hannah. So he kept it professional. “I called Tish this morning. She was completely sympathetic and sends her best regards. We can postpone the trip for another time, after Lil Bit here is all better.”

Joely shook her head. “I’ve changed my mind, Xander. I can’t take these kinds of trips away from the kids. They need me here.”

He wanted to argue immediately but he knew this was one battle he was going to have to choose wisely. “You’re the boss,” was all he said. From his look, she got the message.

“Xander!” Kari said as she entered the room. “What are you doing here?”

Joely glanced up in time to see Russell and Nash enter behind Kari.

Xander stood and gave Kari a quick side hug. “I came to see the wee patient,” he said, referring to Hannah. “Hey, buddy,” he greeted Nash. They shared their bro handshake, which made Nash smile. He turned to Russell. “Nice to see you again.”

Russell nodded but said nothing. Kari and Nash greeted Hannah with hugs and kisses, and she promptly shared her new bear. “This is Xander,” she said with a big smile. Both Kari and Russell glanced at Xander, who shrugged.

“Small world,” was all he said. “I do need to get back to the restaurant, though. So I will leave you all to it.” He turned back to Hannah. “Get well soon, love. And work on that pathetic face. It’s still much too cute.” He made the face and she mimicked, full of giggles and smiles that negated it instantly.

After he left, Hannah promptly regaled her surgery saga for her brother and sister. Russell tapped Joely’s shoulder, indicating that she should follow him outside the room, which she did.

“I thought you didn’t want the children to meet the people we dated.”

“I’m not dating Xander,” she told him.

“That’s good,” he said, which took her by surprise. “That’ll make it easier for you to move back into the house.”

Her widened eyes met his. “What?”

“It’s going to take a couple of weeks for Hannah to recover. I think she should do it at home, where she’ll be more comfortable.”

“And then, what? We get to uproot ourselves again in a few weeks?”

“Or you could stay,” he said softly.

She studied him through narrowed eyes. “Are you asking me back, Russell?”

“I think we can both agree that this arrangement isn’t working. This weekend taught us that. We’re a family, Joely. We should be together.”

“But you don’t love me anymore. You said it yourself.”

“A lot of things were said in the heat of the moment,” he dismissed without confirming or denying. “Our kids need us. Both of us. We should do whatever we need to do to be there.”

“So… I come back home, become the doting little homemaker, and you get to keep fucking Jena on the side, just like before?”

He made a face at her use of the obscenity, pulling her by the arm down the hall where they could speak privately. “Why are you being so difficult? I thought this was what you wanted.”

“To be guilted into staying in a loveless marriage?” she shot back. “Russell, think about what you’re asking.”

His blue eyes could have cut steel. “I know what I’m asking. We’re still married. Nothing has changed.”

Her eyes flashed as she glared back up at him. “Everything has changed, Russell. Everything.” She ripped her arm from his grasp and stalked back down the hall to Hannah’s room.

Joely remained obstinate all the way until Hannah’s release from the hospital two days later. She was going to return home to Lillian’s house in Old Elmwood, rather than cart the kids back to Fairway Oaks. She didn’t even consult them about it. Russell was just being over-emotional after the scare they had with Hannah and her emergency surgery. Once the cloud had passed, all the problems that had shattered the marriage before would still be there – namely Jena, who still worked for Russell.

“Do you really want me to fire her?” Russell had challenged when she brought it up.

“No,” Joely had answered. “Because you’ll just hire someone else in her place. Or have you already?” she said, thinking about the new assistant he had hired to tempt David to stray.

Regardless of how she fought him, Russell championed hard for her return all the way until she rolled Hannah out to Lillian’s car idling at the entrance of the hospital. He followed behind, carrying Hannah’s belongings.

“I’d like to see Hannah before my next official visitation,” he told Joely, who helped Hannah into the backseat.

“Fine,” she said. “You know the address.”

He watched helplessly as she got into the passenger side and Lillian drove away without even glancing his direction.

He was at the end of his rope. He had offered her the key back into his home and into his life, but she had rejected him. Was this because of that young stud, Xander? Or was she punishing him for what he had done with Jena?

Maybe Kari had been right. Maybe she was simply happier now that she was on her own. It gave him an idea. He used his free afternoon to head down to the mall. He had a couple of aces hidden up his sleeve, to show Joely how much better off they’d all be if she simply came home.

Joely and Lillian spent their afternoon getting Hannah comfortable in her room. Mason and Chris brought Lilah over for a playdate after school, which made her little social butterfly happy as she shared all her toys and books and her tales of woe from the hospital with her new BFF.

Mason brought a care package for Joely too, including bath bombs and a bottle of wine. “You look exhausted,” he told her after he gave her a big long hug.

“Mom duty,” she shrugged. “You know all about that.” She couldn’t even imagine what it had been like for Mason and Chris when Lilah had been so sick, where it was life and death for more than a few hours. They were up to their necks in debt for her medical bills, but neither one of them complained. Money wasn’t important. The life of their child was.

Still, practical concerns did rear their ugly heads. Joely hadn’t baked in four days, a record for her. She watched her bank account stall well below the $10,000-goal she had set for herself. Whether she wanted to or not, she knew she’d have to take the job with Jena now. It was a matter of money. Her pride would just have to deal with it.

Her pride was already staggering anyway. No one had bugged her for any new cookies yet. She could only hope that was because they were giving her time to take care of her daughter, and not that interest had waned. She couldn’t help but quiz Mason about it that Monday afternoon they sat sipping tea and eating some of the last of her irregular cookies she’d kept for the kids.

“So has everyone forgotten about me yet?” she asked. She couldn’t even look at him when she said it.

“Are you kidding? When we ran out of the last of your cookies during Sunday lunch, I thought we were going to have a riot on our hands. You’re barely going to get a chance to catch your breath before you’re back in the kitchen.”

She chuckled. “That’s good news at least.” Then, quieter, “I’m surprised Xander hasn’t been blowing up my phone.”

Mason shot her a knowing glance. “Among other things.”

She sighed. She didn’t want to talk about her ill-advised dalliance with the sexy Brit. She
had
to. “Is it that obvious?”

Mason shrugged. “To anyone paying attention, I guess. Fortunately for you most people are caught up in their own business. Your secret is safe, so far,” he added with a grin. “So what’s the deal?”

“I don’t know. He came on like a locomotive the minute I walked into the restaurant, not sure why. It’s not like he’s hard up for women, and I’m no Mata Hari.”

“That’s true,” Mason agreed easily. She glared at him.

“Thanks.”

“Hey, if you want someone to blow sunshine up your ass, don’t hang out with the gays. We tell it like it is.”

“So what is it?” she asked, because she really, really wanted to know.

“There’s no rhyme or reason to what Xander does. He has his own set of priorities and objectives. I’ve seen him go home with a new girl every night and I’ve seen him fixate on one particular target until she breaks. He definitely seems to like the chase, though.”

She chuckled. “He should be plenty through with me, then.”

Mason playfully hit her with his hand. “You slut! Details. I want details.”

She shook her head, blushing all the way to the roots of her hair. “He kind of sees me as a project, I think. Like his house.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being flipped every once and a while,” he grinned.

“The problem is that he’s now rubbed off on Russell, who wants me to come home now of all things.”

Mason rolled his eyes. “You’re not going, are you?”

She shook her head. “It’d just be too hard on the kids. They’ve already had their world turned upside down on his whim. I’m not going to let him twist them in the wind any more than I have to.”

“You make it sound like you have no say so in the matter. What does Joely want?”

Another sigh. “I don’t know. I just don’t think I can go back, you know? It would never be the same. That big old house seems smaller. So does Russell. It was like his affair tore my blinders right off.”

Mason sympathized with her conundrum. “Do you still love him?”

“Four months ago, I probably would have answered yes, no hesitation. But I don’t know if I would have meant it, not like I meant it nineteen years ago, or even five years ago. I don’t know when it happened but I got so complacent. We both go so complacent.”

He filled in the blanks. “And here’s this new guy who makes you feel alive again, someone who makes going back to sleep unthinkable.”

“It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“You’re human,” Mason corrected. “You want more than the life Russell is willing to offer.” She nodded. “I think you’ve answered your own question.”

“You don’t think the kids will hate me?” That was her biggest fear.

“Of course they’ll hate you. They’re your kids. Everything that goes wrong in their life will come back to you in some form or fashion. But when they’re older and they’ve had some distance, they’ll see it was the best thing for you at the time. No one who truly loves you would expect you to put yourself last behind their happiness.”

“Except Russell,” she said. “He won’t even fire that girl from his office.”

Mason laughed. “Oh, yes. Jena.”

She was stunned that he knew who she meant. “You know her?”

“She’s been spending some time at the restaurant. I think she has a new target.”

“Xander,” Joely surmised and Mason shrugged.

“She showed up Sunday night, stayed at the bar with a couple of her friends, you know – like they do. According to the bartender, she was trying to figure things out about Xander, and whether or not he was available. She was particularly interested in his aborted trip out of town.”

Joely groaned. “That makes sense then. She pieced it together just like everyone else did. No wonder Russell changed his mind, lickety-split. She’s moved on to someone younger – the irony.”

“And since he knows he can’t compete with someone like Xander for her,” Mason started.

“He’s decided to come back home to good ol’ Joely. Great.”

He touched her hand. “At least now you know.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“That’s what gay friends are for,” he winked.

Upstairs, Lilah and Hannah were bonding even more, both sitting atop Hannah’s bed, playing with their dolls, talking about hospitals – a new thing that connected them.

“How long were you in the hospital?” Hannah asked.

“Months and months,” Lilah told her. “I nearly died.”

Hannah frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t want her friend to die. “My problem was fixed by a surgery. Couldn’t you get a surgery?”

“I had lots,” Lilah told her as she brushed her doll’s hair. “I hate surgery.”

“Me too,” Hannah empathized.

“My daddies got me some special medicine. It made it all go away. Like magic.”

“Oh?” Hannah said.

Lilah nodded. “I still take it every day. I haven’t been in the hospital this whole year. You should take it too,” she decided.

“What kind of medicine is it?”

Lilah made a face. “I can’t tell you. My daddies say that people don’t understand, so we have to keep it a secret.”

“Best friends don’t keep secrets,” Hannah reminded.

Lilah considered that for a moment before she nodded. “You’re right.” She leaned across the bed to whisper her precious secret in her best friend’s ear. Hannah made a face. She’d never heard that word before.

“What does it do?”

“Daddy says it makes the cancer cells shrink and then disappear. I was so sick for a long, long time. But he started giving it to me and I felt better. I even wanted to eat. I never wanted to eat on chemo.”

“What’s chemo?”

Lilah shuddered. “It’s another kind of medicine. Dad says it wages war on cancer, that’s why it makes me so sick when I take it. It made me hurt all over.”

Hannah didn’t like the sound of that either. She still hurt from her surgery, but the pain before the surgery was so much worse. She leaned over to hug her friend. “I’m happy your medicine fixed you,” she declared.

“I’m happy your surgery fixed you,” Lilah said.

They went back to playing with their dolls.

Mason picked up Kari and Nash that afternoon, so that Hannah wouldn’t have to leave the house. They loved his car and the music he blasted from his stereo, which was much more current than the oldies from the 1980s and 1990s that their mother always listened to. Kari decided to catch a ride with Mason to the restaurant as well, so they dropped Lilah off at their house, where she met Christopher.

She’d never met gay people before, much less a couple. She found them both terribly fascinating, just like the gay folks she saw on TV. By the time they reached Lillian’s Place, she and Mason were thick as thieves.

She was especially excited to see Xander again. It had been a long, scary weekend and he knew it. He greeted her with a hug. “There’s my special girl. How’s it going? How’s Hannah?”

“Better,” she said as she squeezed him extra tight. She loved how he filled her arms. It was something she had dreamed about for months. “She’s at home now.”

He wanted to ask which home, but he didn’t dare. He still remembered the possessive look in Russell’s eyes when he entered the hospital room that Saturday afternoon. Those kids, and that crazy, sexy woman Xander couldn’t stop thinking about, were a part of Russell’s family, not his. He was crazy to get involved. Absolutely nuts. And yet…, “How’s your mum?”

“Okay,” Kari answered. “She hasn’t had a chance to bake or anything, though.”

He nodded. He hadn’t expected her to. “No hurries. Her customers love her. They’ll be here when she gets back.”

In fact he had new fewer than twenty orders stacked up already, booking her for six weeks solid of weekend commitments, including the baby shower Jena and her sister were throwing.

Jena had used Hannah’s illness to direct all her questions about the event to Xander. She had left him several messages over the weekend, to consult again on the arrangements. He knew he couldn’t put her off forever. He also knew that being alone with her could be a huge mistake. He was no fool. He knew she was interested. Technically he could have worked directly with Nicole to plan everything, but Jena had planted herself right in the middle. He knew it wasn’t because she wanted to order customized cookies.

A few months ago he probably would have used any excuse to get into her pants. She was young and sexy, and promised to be a lot of fun. Now things had changed. He had told himself that he was seducing Joely for her, to build up her self-esteem after Russell had crushed it underfoot. The first time he laid eyes on her, that night in the restaurant when Lillian had introduced them, he could see her broken spirit in her beautiful brown eyes. But he also saw a spark there, trying its best to catch fire. That was the fire he stoked for weeks on end. He thought maybe a casual flirt or two would do it, it normally did. But Joely was deliciously complicated, this jig-saw puzzle that was difficult as hell to put back together again. Instead of being put off by the investment that demanded, he found himself even more drawn to her. Soon he fantasized about a rendezvous where she’d turn from a frumpy housewife into a sexy cougar right at the tips of his fingers.

He set out to make her so crazed with desire she’d explode just like a beach ball bursting out of the water. Instead he made himself crazy thinking about her. That first night she had kissed him had only hooked him for more. Now he was hopelessly addicted. Just one kiss, one touch… one night with her wasn’t enough.