Switched, Bothered and Bewildered (20 page)

She splashed cold water on her face and felt around for a towel, blotted the moisture off and looked again. Same basic face.

Jillian realized she really had no skills when it came to taking care of herself. She was thirty-five, and the signs of her unhealthy lifestyle were catching up with her. Maybe she should slap on some of that expensive cream she'd purchased at the Serenity Spa.

She brushed her teeth quickly, dragged a brush through her hair, and went back into Jana Lee's room. Her head still felt fuzzy and disoriented. Where the hell had she put that stack of clothing she'd left out?

Plastic sheeting still covered most of the room so they could work on the ceilings. She dug around and found the dresser with the one drawer that was now her own. It was full of neatly folded undies, cotton bras, socks, T-shirts and shorts. At least she was neat. She, Jillian, was neat. That was a positive trait, right?

She grabbed one of each item and slapped the drawer closed, wiggled out of her oversized sleep shirt and pulled all the appropriate items of clothing onto her body.

It was already warm in this room. This was turning out to be such a hot June. She put a bandana over her head to keep the paint flecks off and started downstairs. Coffee. She smelled coffee.

The coffee turned out to be pretty skanky, hav-

ing sat in the coffeemaker for probably seven hours, but she poured herself a cup anyway and cut it with a little milk. Scissors would have probably worked too.

Through the small window over the sink she could see Dean, sawing boards on the skill saw out on the deck. A spray of sawdust fluttered around him. His white tank T-shirt was tight on his muscled body. Man, Dean was the best-built guy she had ever been around. Certainly the best-built guy she'd ever been kissed by. She felt her lips, remembering that kiss, then she sipped the horrid coffee, which burned her lips with acidity and heat. Yak. Coffee was definitely something she should give up.

But great-looking guys, well, that was something she should take up. There was something about a guy in a white tank T-shirt and jeans and the way you could hold onto his bulging bicep and have him lift you off the ground that turned her on more than she'd ever been turned on before.

Who would have known she was a secret voyeur of buff guys? She smiled to herself. She had definitely missed the boat dating those soft city boys.

Hunger of a different sort made her start scrounging around the completely trashed kitchen for food. When she opened the fridge she saw a plate with plastic wrap and a sticky note

that read
Mrs. S
—
nuke this.
Dean must have saved her some breakfast.

She took off the sticky note and put the plate full of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and thick slabs of bacon in the microwave for one minute. Then she grabbed a fork and found the roll of paper towels for napkins. Might as well ditch the coffee for a glass of orange juice. There, she was trying anyhow.

Over on the counter she cleared herself a space and perched on the high bar chair. She'd over-nuked the eggs a bit, but the potatoes were perfect. It didn't matter, because she was starving.

Wow, this stuff was great. There was a touch of basil in the eggs, and the potatoes had sweet onions, fresh pepper and cheddar cheese mixed in. The bacon was a major indulgence, but it tasted divine.

Dean came in carrying a board. "Hey, you're up."

"I must have been tired. I'm sorry. I'll make up for it."

"You needed it. Don't apologize."

"Thanks for breakfast. Did you make this?"

"Yep. I brought some groceries. Your fridge was kind of . . . naked."

Interesting word choice he'd made. Dean looked her over in a very hungry way, although she couldn't imagine what there was to see. She

looked like crap. No makeup, scruffy as hell, just crap. She stuffed another bite of eggs and bacon into her mouth.

"Where is everybody?" she asked.

"Lunch break, and Stan is picking up the French doors. They'll all be back in twenty minutes. Enjoy the peace."

"Yikes."

"Your cell phone rang a few times. I figured they'd leave you a message."

"Oh, thanks." She popped off the chair and rushed to check the voice mail on her cell phone. Why did she run to check the phone, as if it were on fire? It was a habit more than anything, and as she dialed the exchange she wondered why she'd done it. She had a perfectly good hot breakfast sitting there getting cold. She sat back down while she listened to the phone go through its thing, then punched in her codes.

Immediately she wished she hadn't. She didn't like the sound of Oliver's message about faxing her something, or Jana Lee's garbled nonsense about Pitman producing a set of Little Princess dolls. She just couldn't deal with any of that till she'd finished her breakfast and had some decent caffeine, whatever form it took.

Shutting the phone off, she picked up her fork again. But now she had a twist in her guts. Nothing went down right, and she gave up after two more bites. Well, three. Those potatoes were deli-

cious. But now she had to know what was going on, and it made her extremely tense.

Dean was positioning his board on the kitchen floor, and once it was set, he looked up at her. "I've got to make some noise. Shall I wait?"

"No, go ahead. I need to make a call. I'll go outside."

She found paper and a pen and walked out to sit on the old picnic table where they'd had their pizza party last night. Jillian auto-dialed her office, and Oliver picked up quickly. He sounded odd.

"Oliver, what's up?"

"Oh hello, Miss Tompkins, nothing very burning, we've just got a little pile of legalese for you to go through and sign. It's a bit sticky with you being not actually here and them thinking you are, but I'm sure I can ruffle or shuffle or rearrange the papers well enough to hide the fact that your sister is neither here nor there."

Jillian could have sworn she heard a hiccup. "Oliver, are you ...
drunk?"

"What could possibly give you that idea? Two champagne cocktails does not affect me in the least, and that nice bartender put extra Drambuie in just for us, and your sister is going to look like a million dollars on that date."

"What date?" Jillian felt a real strange twisted-up feeling come over her.

"Her date with Jackson Hawks. Oops, I probably shouldn't have mentioned that," Oliver blath-

ered. He did that when he'd had a little too much wine. She'd actually never seen him do that at work, though. Things were going nuts at Pitman without her.

As to Jackson, Jillian felt herself have a rather interesting reaction: She had a knee-jerk jealous response. What was Jana Lee doing dating Jackson?

"And where is Jana Lee?"

"She's taken the rest of the day off to primp."

"Sounds serious."

"Jillian Tompkins, you need to let your sister know she can have Jackson."

Jana Lee with Jackson? Jillian couldn't even wrap her head around it. "Are you joking? They are all wrong for each other. Listen, Oliver, how can you fax me the papers?" She reverted to her business persona.

"J.L. informed me you've got a computer setup on that end. If you'll go set up a fax program, and e-mail me the number, I can make it happen. Got it? Paper should start spitting out of your printer before you know it. I'll be ready the minute you give me the signal, Captain."

"I can do that. So what's this about the Little Princess dolls?"

"Apparently if you remove Cindi Lou Who's head and replace it with yours, then add a little pink princess dress, you're ready to go. The dragon has been a little harder. But we need to get your permission on that face as quickly as possible."

"What about Harvey?"

"Since he was in a suit, his licensing rights revolved around the creator of the series, which we obtained gleefully, from what I hear. Although I think they might get Mr. Dragon's permission anyway, just to cover all their legal asses."

"Are there royalties involved?"

"Yes, there are."

Jillian heard Oliver take a big slurp of something, and assumed it was coffee, because he started to talk more clearly. Royalties—that was great, but Jillian was nervous about not being there for a new product conception.

"Did you go over any recall data for Cindi Lou and see if there were any complaints? Are they using snaps on the dress? Or can we do Velcro? We've had so much less trouble with Velcro. And what about the unit packaging costs, have they considered all those damn wires they like to hold these things in with?"

"All of these details are in order. I learned from the best, you know." Oliver sounded huffy.

"Shit. Should I fly back?"

"I'd be offended if you did."

Jillian rubbed her forehead hard to make the pain go away. She felt that horrible pounding panic come creeping through her body. "I'm going to go set up the fax now, Oliver. Thank you for all this."

"Consider it a gift. And think about what I said about your sister. This thing with Jackson has potential."

"Potential for what, disaster?"

"If so, it's a natural disaster."

"I'm going now. Watch for my e-mail."

Jillian hung up the phone, which she now wanted to throw off the deck into the harbor waves. Why did she have this reaction every time she had to deal with work? And why did she care whether her sister went out with Jackson Hawks? After all, her sister was entitled. Her sister could probably win over Jackson easily. Not like her. He'd run screaming away from her—again.

She took deep breaths and closed her eyes. But instead of calming down, she did the oddest thing; she started to cry. She cried because Jackson hadn't fallen for her, and because her sister was a better person than she was, and because she just hated her job. She hated it. She'd be happy if she never had to go back there.

Jillian sobbed. She put her head on her arms, and the pain inside her just spilled out. Oh
God,
she just couldn't stop. The tears seemed to flood down her face as she tried to wipe them away with the edge of her T-shirt. She didn't know where the girls had gone to, but she sure didn't want Dean to see her like this. She got up and edged through the giant hole in the wall where the French doors

would go, stifling her sobs with a clean rag she'd picked up. Relatively clean. The sawdust made her sneeze and cry at the same time.

Just as she tried to scoot quickly from the doorway to the stairs, he came around the corner, out of the utility room, and she ran smack into his chest. She looked up at him, startled. He grabbed her arms to keep her from falling.

She looked up and tried to smile, hoping it didn't show. He looked in her eyes and in one small moment took in everything. He dropped what he was carrying, pulled her into his arms and leaned them both against the wall.

The warmth of his body moved her emotion to a different place: a place that made it even harder to stop crying. She let out a huge sob, then put her hand over her mouth to keep the rest in. She lay her head on his chest, melting against him. It felt so, so good.

He stroked her hair and talked softly to her. "Whatever it is, it's better to let it out. Keeping it bottled up makes bad things happen."

"I can't."

"Can't let it out?"

"It will swallow me up."

"I'll be here to pull you out."

"I'm sorry, Dean." She stepped back and wiped her eyes on her T-shirt again. "I shouldn't even be doing this to you. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm just all screwed up."

He touched her arms again. "Remember how I told you I used to have a construction business?"

"Yes," she answered.

"I had a first-class burnout. I know what it feels like. If you want to talk about it, I'm a good listener," he replied.

His touch was so soothing. She pulled a big breath in through her nose and closed her eyes for a minute. "I'm okay. I just need to get back to work. Give me a job to do."

He sighed and let go of her. She just couldn't surrender to whatever was eating her. He'd given her a big opening to just tell him the truth, too. Like why she was pretending to be her sister. He took another breath and refocused. "How about more painting? The living area needs another coat. I'm almost done with the underlayment for the kitchen, and we'll be having that French door installed today. We can focus on the living room while the kitchen floor tile goes in." He handed her his handkerchief. She wiped her eyes on it and handed it back.

He stuffed it in his pocket. "Also we need to move everything out of the upstairs bedrooms to strip and paint the ceilings. There are too many boxes in there to move around well. The garage is dry; we could keep stacking them in there. Pick a job. Prep the living room, or move boxes. I'm going to finish in here." He motioned to the kitchen.

"Move boxes it is." She saluted him and marched upstairs, then stopped and called back. "Oh, I have to work on the computer upstairs for a few minutes—e-mail, that sort of thing."

He nodded. When she was out of sight he shook his head and wished he could ease her pain. There was something going on. Whatever it was, it was probably the reason she'd come here to her sister's house. Her job in San Francisco, whatever that was, must be a major source of stress.