Right Brother (17 page)

Jill made a face. “I should have remembered that. Well, as I said, we never saw him, and Ron looked around pretty thoroughly. Ashley just blurted out his name when Ron demanded—in that ‘I am the father' bass that always gets to Courtney—to know what she was doing outside.

“As for the girls, I gave them all a stern talking-to, locked the outside door and kept the key.”

“I'm so sorry, Jill. I'm so terribly sorry.”

Jill shook her head. “Ashley went out, but they all participated. Looking back, I knew they were egging someone on to something, I just didn't know what. So I hold them all responsible—and I told them that.”

Jennifer didn't doubt the other woman's sincerity. But that didn't change that Ashley had been the only one to leave the house and go to meet a boy—a much older boy.

 

“We were just going to talk.” Ashley drew her leg up on the couch after Jennifer ordered her to sit. “They made a big drama of it. It was no big deal.”

A
ping
of acid-sharp panic plucked against Jennifer's ribs at Ashley's defiance.

“It
is
a big deal,” she said. “To start, you left without permission.”

“They never said—”

“Ashley Elizabeth Stenner. It doesn't matter what they said or didn't.
You
know you are not to do that. Do not tell me you didn't.”

Her daughter's mulish expression didn't change, but she held her tongue.

“You know you would never have received permission, so you sneaked out. In the middle of the night. I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you. When did Jonas arrange this meeting with you?”

For the first time, Ashley's expression softened, looking vulnerable.

“I, uh, told him about the sleepover. And he said that was, you know, cool. He was interested, really interested. And I said I could get outside if I wanted to, if he wanted to talk or something.”

The ton of worry that had clamped down on Jennifer's heart lightened by a bare ounce. Maybe…maybe this wasn't what she'd feared. Maybe…

“And what did Jonas say?”

“He laughed. Not at me,” Ashley added, instantly defensive. “Laughed like it was cool. So I knew he wanted me to get out. So we could talk.”

“Ashley—”

“You don't understand!”

Ashley's face crumpled, making her look so much like she had as a baby that Jennifer's breath caught in her throat. Her daughter. Her baby.

At some level Ashley recognized that this boy, this object of her first crush, wasn't really interested in her. And it hurt. It hurt her so much that she wouldn't—maybe she couldn't—see it. But Jennifer was certain her daughter had no grasp of another aspect of this crush. A crush on an unattainable football player who couldn't be bothered with her—just like her father.

“He talks to me,” Ashley wailed. “To
me!
He's going to be the star of the high school football team, but he likes to talk to
me
.”

“Ashley,” Jennifer said gently, “Jonas is in high school. He's—”

“You're horrible! You go off with
him,
you're always off with
him
. He's more important to you now. But you won't let me have anybody!”

It took Jennifer a second to untangle the pronouns. “This has nothing to do with Trent. Or me. It's—”

“I hate him! He's more important to you than I am, more important than anybody.”

“That's not true!”

“God, you just don't want me to be popular!” Ashley exclaimed in another of her abrupt turns. “You think you're the only one who can be popular in this family. But I can be. I will be. Just you wait. I will be. Because Jonas likes me. He doesn't think I'm some stupid kid, and he's the star! The team's best player! Everyone says so. I won't let you stand in my way. I won't!” Her wail desolved into sobs and she stormed off.

He doesn't think I'm some stupid kid, and he's the star! The team's best player! Everyone says so.

And if only she could stand within the glow of his star, everyone would think Ashley Stenner was okay.

The slam of her daughter's bedroom door reverberated through Jennifer's bones with the truth she had feared for months.

Ashley Stenner was becoming Jennifer Truesdale.

Ashley was on the same path to making the same mistakes that she had. Her own teen years might serve as a cautionary tale…if Ashley were old enough and wise enough to recognize that. But if she were, then they wouldn't be in this situation.

What mattered now was making sure that her daughter saw her making good decisions, being a good businesswoman, making her own way. Ashley needed to look up to her so she would follow Jennifer's current path, not her past one.

Jennifer went to her room, took the key to the Barrett house from the evening bag and put it in the change section of her wallet. She would return it to Darcie the next time she saw her.

 

Jennifer stepped into Trent's office almost as soon as he arrived Monday morning. He knew that wasn't a good sign.

“Trent—”

“I thought we could go to a movie next weekend.”

“Trent—”

“I know it means an expedition to get to a theater. But I've got a craving to be overcharged for popcorn, have a hard time hearing the dialogue over the audience and step in goo that makes my shoes stick to the floor. Can't go this weekend because of the Reopening. But next weekend is the last one before practice starts, so that works. You pick the movie—though a big screen is wasted without a car crash, explosion or battle.”

She sucked in a breath, and he knew the answer wasn't simply
no
. It was
never
.

“Trent, I'm sorry if you misunderstood—” she shook her head at herself “—if I misled you Saturday. After telling you it was not a date, I sent mixed signals, and I apologize for that. It was wrong.”

He'd expected backtracking. It's why he'd hit her so fast with the idea of another date—and Saturday had been a date, damn it—so he would have time to work on her, get her over the hurdle of going on what they both would acknowledge as a date. But this, this was something else.

“What happened?”

Her head snapped up. So much swirled around in the drowning blue of her eyes that he felt it like a punch.

“Nothing happened.”

“Has anybody ever told you you're a rotten liar, Jen?”

She turned away.

“I'm sorry, Trent. Truly. You have every right to be angry after Saturday. But it would be an untenable situation to have any relationship other than business colleagues under the circumstances. The circumstances here at the dealership, I mean. Because we're coworkers. Business associates. And that's all we can be.”

She'd overdone it. All that emphasis on the dealership and business. It was a misdirection play. And he wasn't falling for it.

“Ashley,” he said.

She spun around to him. “What? No. I told you—”

“I know what you told me. And I know the bits and pieces I heard at the café.”

“Oh, God.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I should have known. In this town, I should have known.”

“Something about sneaking out. She was at a sleepover, right?”

Her sigh seemed to come from the core of the planet. “Yes.
But… Oh, God. I might as well tell you, before you come to even worse conclusions.”

He'd had people confide in him before, but didn't remember any who had been less happy about it. At the end of her tale, with her working so hard to not cry that it would have been easier on both of them if she'd just gone ahead and let the tears fall, he waited to be sure—sure she wouldn't say anything more and sure she wasn't going to give them both a break and go ahead and cry.

Then he spoke. “I'll fire him today.”

Her head jerked up. He was glad to see the tears receding under the effect of her surprise. “No, I told you, I really don't think it's his fault.”

Trent couldn't pin down the itch in him that wanted not only to fire the cocky kid, but to pop him one. He reined it in with reluctance as he recognized Jennifer wasn't going to let him scratch that itch.

“Then what do you want me to do?”

More surprise washed across her eyes. “Nothing. This has nothing to do with you. I told you only because you'd already heard pieces of it and… And….” She shook her head. “I seem to always tell you more than I intend.”

He stared unfocused through the window into the showroom. “If you really think this is just a case of a girl's first crush, what's worrying you so much?”

Her response took so long in coming that he started to think she wasn't going to answer.

“You said that sometimes when parents get a child who's different from the kind they expected or wanted, that they can have trouble understanding or connecting with that child.”

“Yeah.” He remembered that conversation. Standing in the open service bay door while the storm brewed.
That's awful,
she'd said. He should have known she was thinking about her daughter.

“I worry that I put my expectations between me and Ashley. That—”

“That you're human?”

She frowned.

“You worry that you're human,” he explained. “Because every human being puts expectations on everybody else.”

After a pause, she gave a single nod. “Okay. But with Ashley—”

“She's a kid. Worse, she's the not-yet-beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother.”

Heat shimmered between them for a second, burning the oxygen in his lungs, singeing in the blood pooling fast in his groin.

He looked away. Had to. Self-preservation kicked in at the last second. And finally, a lick of sense reported for duty.

He cleared his throat. His toes curled in his shoes as if they were holding on to a cliff edge. She looked slightly dazed. Unfocused. He knew what it would take to snap her out of this trance. One word.

“Ashley—”
yup, that did it
“—is dealing with all that. Give the kid a break. More important, give yourself a break. Wanting the best for her isn't the same as not accepting her for who she is. You're a great mother, Jen.”

She tried to smile. His imagination thought it had faint tendrils of steam still attached to it.

He continued. “I understand if you're worried what people will think of you as a mother, but you can't really believe—”

“No.” The word was fierce. “I'm not worried what kind of mother people think I am. I'm worried what kind of mother I
am
.”

I
n four and a half hours, at 10:00 a.m., the doors of Stenner Autos would officially reopen for business. Jennifer thought she might be sick.

She hadn't been able to sleep. She left Ashley a note and came to check her list one more time.

She'd forgotten something. She was sure she'd forgotten something. But every item on her list was checked off. So what…?

Trent strode into her office.

That was it. The alarm system. She'd failed to turn the alarm system back on after she came in.

Without a word, he took the legal pad with her checklist out of her hand and replaced it with a cup of coffee.

“Decaf with lots of milk,” he said. “The last thing you need is caffeine or acid. Now, relax. It's going to be fine.”

She meant to ask him what he was doing here, making it
sound as if she weren't glad to see him. What came out was, “How do you know it's going to be okay?”

“I know because we have one of the smartest women I know running Stenner Autos.”

She stared at him blankly.

He leaned forward from his seat on the corner of her desk. “That's you, Jen. I'm talking about you.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Hey, that was a compliment.”

“I know. I said thank-you. I've been thinking about the display of used cars. If we—”

“No. Not until you tell me why you flinched.”

“I didn't flinch.”

“The hell you didn't. I say you're smart and you look like I'd just slapped you with a raw fish.”

She opened her mouth to deny it again. Instead, laughter came out.

She put her hands over her mouth, as appalled as she would have been if she'd belched, but the laughter kept coming. Until it brought tears.

Finally, with mingled sighs and minisobs, she got her breathing under control.

“Okay,” he said, “that was good for you. You certainly needed it.”

“You're right, I did. Thank you.” She meant it this time.

“You're welcome. But if you think that's going to get you out of telling me why you flinched when I said you're one of the smartest women I know, you're wrong.”

“It's nothing, really. I just…” He locked gazes with her, implacable. She cleared her throat. “It's something my mother used to say to me.”

“And that was?” he prompted.

“‘There's no such thing as too pretty. But you can be too smart for your own darned good.'”

“You're kidding. What century did she come from?”

She chuckled, but it felt dry and tight. “It took me a while to realize that it was how she negotiated the world. Most people, I think, blend a lot of ways in order to negotiate the world. But some specialize. Some use smarts, some use anger, some use manipulation, some use niceness. My mother mostly used her prettiness. And she trained me the same way.”

“That's not true. You work too damned hard to think you're getting by on your looks.”

“Damn right I work hard. That's part of her training. You have no idea how much hard work went into meeting her standards. There was no question of
getting by
on looks, not with my mother. I've often thought that if she had applied all the energy she put into appearances to business, she'd be CEO of General Motors by now, and they'd be doing a lot better.”

She saw a certain look in his eyes and she shook her head. “It wasn't that bad. Nothing like with your family. I know my parents love me in their way. And I've realized the prettiness is just how my mother interacted—connected—with my father. It worked for them, and she thought it would work for me, so that's what she taught me.”

“‘No one truly knows what goes on inside a marriage. Sometimes not even the two people who are married.' My mother said that to me recently.”

She smiled slightly. “Who knew Mother Stenner could be so wise?”

He muttered something, then added, “But for you to be taught that you shouldn't use your brain—that's damned near criminal.”

“Why do you think that's worse than how your parents—your father—treated you?”

That silenced him. Because as much as they talked around
the edges of his nonrelationship with his father, he never got to the heart of it.

“It wasn't like I was emotionally abused or neglected,” she said. “My parents did the best they could. It's just…”

“That you want better for Ashley.”

“Yes.” He knew. He understood. Eric never had. How strange, his own daughter and he had never understood about wanting more for her. Wanting
better,
as Trent said.

“I've learned—a lot—from the mistakes I've made. I want Ashley to learn those lessons without having to go through the mistakes.”

“Sometimes lessons don't take hold if you don't learn them through knocks on the head.”

“Sometimes knocks on the head put you so low you never get up.”

His quick nod acknowledged she might have a point…and she might not.

Then he smiled, slow and wide. The smile that changed his face from darkly interesting to heart-hammering fascinating.

“What?” she demanded, trying to stop herself from smiling back.

“You get a look now and then that kept reminding me of something. I just figured out what—Ashley when she was learning to walk. A look of absolute determination, followed by absolute satisfaction that she wasn't holding on to anyone or anything, but was standing on her own two feet.”

 

Jennifer Truesdale was more than happy to get off her feet by the end of this business day, some two weeks into the new life of Stenner Autos.

She took her shoes off and set them on the desk next to her purse. The place had closed hours ago and she was alone, so there was no reason to keep the darned things on.

There was no reason to go home immediately, either, since Ashley was at Mark and Amy's house. Mark had been calling “just to talk,” which was starting to seem normal. He and Amy had surprised her by coming to the dealership the day after the reopening. “Not back together yet, but better,” Mark told her. They'd also brought her parents, who had seemed pleased for her, if a little vague on the details of what she was doing.

That's when the idea of Ashley visiting them before school started had been hatched.

Things were going well. With her family. With the dealership. With her running the operation. With Trent coaching. Even with Ashley, who'd served out her two-week grounding with no more eruptions.

Yes, things were going well. Not absolutely smoothly, but nothing she hadn't been able to handle. Although there was an odd blip on the statement from the bank. She'd have to look at that more closely.

They'd sold their first car the first day they were open for business—a reliable used model to Yolanda Wellton, Warren's mother.

By the next weekend, when Trent's friends Ben and Tracy came out to see Trent—and for Ben to sign autographs that drew Bears fans to the showroom—they'd sold six cars.

Trent had insisted she join him and Ben and Tracy for dinner afterward. And they'd had a lovely evening. Though there'd been an awkward few moments when Tracy cornered her in the ladies' room and refused to believe there was nothing romantic going on with Trent.

He hadn't repeated his invitation to the movies. So that was good. Very good.

“You didn't turn the security system on again.”

“Oh! You scared me, Trent.”

It was a lie. Her heart had started hammering when she'd
seen him leaning against the doorjamb of her office, but it wasn't from fear.

“Good. Hope you're scared into turning the alarm on from now on.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Saw your light on my way back from the high school. You shouldn't be working so late.”

“Look who's talking, Mr. Coach Stenner, just leaving the high school. Besides, there's a withdrawal on the bank statement I want to look at. I could show you—”

“Oh, God. Please don't make me look at bank statements now. That session last week was bad enough. C'mon.” He jerked his head toward the front door. “It's time for you to be in—to go home.”

A pulse of heat gripped her, her heartbeat skittered. All because he'd started to say
in bed.

“You're right.” She levered herself up, hooking her shoes with two fingers and her purse strap with the other hand. “I'm not even going to take paperwork home tonight.”

“Living wild,” he said from the doorway.

She smiled as she came around the desk.

Just before she passed him in the doorway, he flipped the light switch. She stopped and turned toward him.

With the dark office on one side and the lighted hall on the other it was like the day he'd arrived, facing each other in the showroom, light on half of his face, dark hiding the rest of it.

But now she knew him. She didn't need the light to see all of him. To know all of him. To know the good man he was.

She leaned up and kissed him.

As simple a kiss as he had given her in the car the night of the benefit.

But after her lips left his, she didn't step back. She held still, and felt his even greater stillness. With his head bent, she felt
the rhythm of his breath on her cheek, a whisper of it on the side of her throat, as he must feel the rhythm of hers on his skin.

She dropped the shoes, freeing her hand to curve around the back of his neck, to feel the soft-harsh prickle of his hair against her palm. She didn't need to draw him to her. He bent to meet her mouth. Kissing the side of it. Then letting her capture his bottom lip between hers.

Kissing. And kissing again. New angles, different pressures.

She dropped her purse, and used both hands to explore the shape of his skull, to hold him.

He gripped her shoulders, pulled her tight against his hard chest.

Without warning, his hold changed. He grasped her shoulders and put her away from him, against one side of the door frame, while he remained at the far side.

“We can't do this, Jen.”

“Why?”

His mouth twitched, even while lines drew it tight. “Aren't you the one who had all the reasons—we work together and I'm younger and you want nothing to do with the Stenners. And you don't trust me.”

“Trent. I shouldn't have—”

“You're right. You had no cause to trust me. But I'll give you reason now. I won't promise anything but to tell you the truth. I want you, Jen. I want to make love to you every way we can think of. So don't do this if that's not what you want, too.”

Each breath burned her lungs. Each pulse of blood seared her veins.

She reached down for her purse, opened the change keeper and found what she was looking for without fumbling.

She gripped the solitary key in her fist.

“It's what I want, too.”

 

Trent didn't ask why they'd come to Darcie and Zeke's under-construction house instead of going to his motel or her apartment.

He wouldn't have taken her to that motel regardless. Even if it wouldn't have led to gossip, it wasn't what he wanted for her. And her apartment…even with Ashley away, he wasn't surprised Jennifer didn't take him there. It would be too much of a declaration, letting him too deeply into her life.

He mentally stepped around that thought, watching her.

She switched on a small light on the dresser, setting her purse and the key there.

Echoing her moves without coming close enough to crowd her, he went to the nightstand, turning that lamp on low, dropping his car keys there, then adding the condom packets he pulled from his wallet.

Her gaze seemed to stick on the glint of those foil packets.

If she wasn't sure… It might kill him, but they would not do this if she wasn't sure.

He didn't move, waiting.

With her gaze still on the packets, she stepped out of one shoe, then the other.

He started to breathe again. He balanced on one foot to remove shoe and sock, then freed his other foot. His shirt followed in a hurry.

But with his hands on the snap of his jeans, he slowed.

Jen still wasn't looking at him. He'd have traded his best season in the NFL to know what she thought—better yet, what she felt—at that moment. She unhooked the waist of her skirt, unzipped the back and let it drop, leaving her in a blouse that teased the tops of her thighs and whatever she wore underneath.

Trent couldn't imagine anything hotter than Jen stripping for him. But this wasn't a tease that flirted with heat and humor.

Head down, she started unbuttoning her blouse.

He watched her, looking for doubt, for regret, for the flicker that would say she had changed her mind, that her mind had overruled her heart.

What he saw was that she was shy. Not uncertain, exactly, but nervous.

Her eyes came to his as he closed in on her, her fingers slowing with their work, then stopping.

He came in close, but not quite touching. Her hands dropped to her sides.

His gaze following his own movement, he put his right palm on her chest, flat against the center of her breastbone, the tips of his fingers reaching to her throat. Making no attempt to even brush the rise of her breasts at either side of his hand. Not stroking, not moving at all.

Just his palm, solid and still, against her flesh-covered bone.

Then he looked into her eyes, already locked on his. Those marvelous eyes that could hold a life, a heart, a soul, all in shades of blue.

Under his palm he felt her heartbeat, jittery at first, settle to a solid rhythm that quickened. But this quickening wasn't a sprint, it was a slow, steady climb that picked up his own heart rate, connecting them, pulsing them in sync.

Harder, then faster, then harder still.

Her chest was rising and falling in quick, harsh breaths, his hand riding with it. From some distance, he realized his own chest was doing the same.