Valentine's Child (18 page)

“Really,” J.J. drawled. “What is like me? Living here with you? Letting the Beckett empire swallow me up whole?” He threw out his arms, nearly overbalancing. “I shoulda up and split, like Heather.”

Patrice said sharply, “There’s no point in this.”

Sherry had come to the same conclusion. “I’ll go.”

“No, don’t.” J.J. struggled to his feet.

“I’ll… call you,” Sherry told him as Caroline got to her feet, too, as if she were afraid to let him do anything on his own with Sherry in the room.

“You wanted to see me alone. Now’s a great time. Maybe I can catch a ride home with you.”

“I’ll take you!” Caroline quickly offered.

“This can wait,” Sherry agreed. “I’ll be around for a while, and there’s bound to be a better time to talk.” She would call the Craigs tonight, she decided, and tell them what was happening. Mandy would want to know.

“Got a cell phone?” J.J. asked, and when Sherry pulled hers out, he rattled off his number which she quickly inserted into her call list.

“What are you going to do?” Patrice demanded, clearly unable to help herself. Small wonder. She had a lot to lose.

“Go to bed,” Sherry said, deliberately misunderstanding. Then a mirthful sprite inside her suddenly said, “Oh, I took a job while I’m here. It’s just temporary, but it’s a lot of fun. At Crawfish Delish.”

Patrice gasped. Caroline’s jaw dropped, and J.J. stared at her in a way she couldn’t quite fathom. They deserved it — the whole lot of these “on the water” snobs.

“Then maybe I’ll see you at work,” J.J. drawled, a grin lightening his face. He, at least, saw the humor in the situation.

They stared at each other, and Sherry, sensing that somehow he’d joined her “side,” at least for the moment, decided it was a good time to leave. With some muttered goodbyes she hurried out of the house, holding her breath until she was inside her rental car, then letting it out on a sigh of relief as she closed her eyes.

“Hey …”

Knuckles rapped against her window. Sherry jumped, her eyes flying open. J.J. stood outside, hunkered against the driving rain and wind. Twisting the ignition, Sherry waved goodbye at him, but her escape attempt wasn’t quite fast enough because he threw open the passenger door and climbed in beside her before she could hit the accelerator.

“What are you doing?” she demanded

“What are
you
doing?” he answered right back. “You’ve got something to say, just say it.”

“I don’t want to talk to you like this.”

“You’d rather I was sober?”

She could smell the liquor, but more than that she could smell the rain on the shoulders of his damp shirt. His hair glistened with droplets and when he shook his head, some of the moisture hit Sherry in a soft spray.

Her hands tightened around the wheel. “I’ve got to get back,” she said through tense lips.

“To work? I happen to know the shift’s over at Crawfish Delish. And don’t tell me you didn’t know I own the restaurant.”

“I didn’t know when they hired me.”

“But you did before tonight.”

“Ryan told me.”

“Ah …”

She didn’t like the way he said that. Too knowing. Too sure of what she was all about.

“Is it a problem?” she asked, feeling strained.

“Ryan’s still your number one fan. I remember that. He’d never let anyone say a bad word about you.”

“They managed to anyway,” Sherry murmured.

“I don’t care if you work at the restaurant,” he said, switching topics. “I don’t care if you stay in Oceantides for good.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“But I’ve got this feeling that I’m in the dark about something important.” He brushed his hair back with one hand, his face taut and serious. “Patrice is scared of you for some reason. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless there’s some reason more than high school.” He glanced at her. “Gonna enlighten me?”

She could almost believe he was sober enough to hear the truth. Staring at him, she gathered her courage. “There is something I need to talk to you about,” she admitted. Her heart began pounding once again, slow and heavy, feeling as if it would beat right out of her chest. “But I’m not sure now’s the time.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I got in the way.”

He nodded a couple of times and she realized he was still half-wasted. “You should always stay out of her way,” he said.

“I’ll remember that. We can talk later when you’re sober and I’m… ready.”

“I’m pretty damn sober.”

“Not enough.”

“You’re just not ready,” he guessed, his eyes narrowing. The sweep of his lashes against his cheek was too seductive, too appealing. She had to look away.

“I’ll call you.”

“Will you?”

She nodded.

“When?”

“I’ll stay through Roxanne’s wedding,” Sherry said. “So, we’ve got a lot of time.”

“Then I’ll see you at the wedding,” he replied, reopening the door and stepping back into the rain.

“Oh, we’ll talk before then,” she assured him.

“No.” He was positive. Leaning against the frame of the open door, he ducked his head inside to meet her confused gaze. “I’m going out of town.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. You and I, we had — ”

“Jake!” Caroline’s voice stopped his thought. Sherry gritted her teeth as she spied his fiancée coming down the front steps, and the silhouette of Patrice in the doorway like the overprotective mother she was.

“I’ll give you a ride,” Caroline declared, reaching earshot just then and spoiling any chance for further discussion. “I want to talk to you anyway.”

J.J. held Sherry’s gaze. She stared right back, unable to break that fragile contact between them. He seemed about to blow Caroline off, but she heard herself say in a low voice, “I’ll see you at the wedding, okay?”

“We’ll get it all straightened out then,” J.J. agreed, reaching her wavelength.

Sherry nodded and as J.J. slowly closed the door, she put the car in gear, glancing back at her rearview mirror at him and Caroline who stood side-by-side in the rain. It seemed inevitable, somehow, that the truth about Mandy would come out at a wedding. A wedding on Valentine’s Day. On Mandy’s birthday.

How ironic. It added a poignant sting to an already sensitive issue.

But somehow it felt right.

Valentine’s Day was on a Saturday, and Roxanne’s wedding was slated for five o’clock in the afternoon. With J.J. out of town and the pressure off, Sherry’s days sped by in a blur until suddenly it was the Friday evening before, with Sherry serving shrimp dishes prepared by Gerald, the “chef” who, for reasons unknown, had decreed her fit to work in his restaurant and who was doing his damnedest to get her to stay on, although she’d let him know in no uncertain terms that this would be her last day.

Since that last evening with J.J., she’d been content to just fill in the hours and wait for D-Day. Mandy, however, had not been so understanding when Sherry called the Craigs to let her know there’d be a bit of a delay in meeting her father.

“He’s out of town and can’t meet you yet,” Sherry said truthfully. “And I’m — uh — reacquainting myself with him, so it’s going to take a little more time.”

“Next Saturday’s my birthday,” Mandy revealed, sending a shiver up Sherry’s spine. “My mom and dad said I could come to Seattle if I wanted to. Will you be back by then?

“I don’t — think so.” Sherry ached to be with her daughter on her birthday, but telling J.J. the truth was more crucial.
Maybe next year
, she fantasized. “Your father’s best man in a wedding that day.”

That gave Mandy pause, but she recovered quickly. “He doesn’t want me in his life, does he?” she said in her direct way. She had a knack for expecting the worst.
Like mother, like daughter,
Sherry thought.
That way it doesn’t hurt as much.

“Just because he’s busy doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you,” Sherry told her.

“What’s he like?” Mandy suddenly asked, as if she couldn’t help herself.

“He’s — great,” she answered, struggling. “Strong and decent. He’s engaged to a woman we both went to school with.”
Now why did I say that?
Sherry asked herself.

“Engaged? You mean, to be
married?
When?”

“I don’t know. Sometime soon, I guess.”

“Do you like her?”

Sherry emitted a burst of choked laughter.

“Well, you knew her in school. What’s she like?”

Sherry gazed out her motel window to the gray waves sliding over the darker gray sand. “She’s probably perfect for him,” she said.

And Mandy, with a keen sense of awareness that Sherry was just beginning to appreciate, stated flatly, “I hate her.”

“You can’t hate her. You don’t even know her.”

“You don’t like her. I can hear it in your voice.”

Their communication amazed Sherry. Having gotten over her own initial shock, she discovered that she and her daughter talked the same language. It was incredible, and although she knew this just might be Mandy’s way, and that she might simply be reacting to her daughter’s frankness, Sherry truly believed their ability to get past all the rhetoric was because of blood. They were related, mother and daughter, and it mattered.

And whatever happened with J.J., Sherry had a chance to connect with Mandy now. A chance she’d never really expected. She’d dreamed of it, when she allowed herself to dream, but she’d never believed her dreams might be realized. She wanted so badly for everything to work out between her and Mandy. In her most fanciful moments, she dreamed of them living together as mother and daughter, with J.J. at least accepting his daughter at some level. But even if that could never be — for Sherry was completely aware that the Craigs loved her daughter to distraction — she and Mandy had the chance for a real relationship.

As long as she handled this J.J. thing right.

“When can I see him?” Mandy had asked.

“I’m working on it. Soon, I think. Be patient.”

She couldn’t tell her J.J. didn’t know about her; that would immediately sever their delicate connection. Better to put Mandy off until she told J.J. about his daughter.

His daughter…

Sherry shivered. Fleetingly she considered how J.J. would react when he realized she and his mother had kept the secret all these years. And she would pay Patrice back every penny of that ten thousand dollars. She should have done it years ago except that she’d always felt it was better to let sleeping Dragon Ladies lie. But Patrice was awake and breathing fire now, so Sherry, who had a decent relationship with the banker who’d helped put the deal together for her to buy her share of Dee’s Deli, had already set the wheels in motion to get her a loan for the money. She couldn’t wait to drop a cashier’s check in Patrice’s lap — with interest — and wash her hands of the whole dirty deal. For her mother, she would do it again, but that didn’t make the idea of accepting Beckett money any more palatable.

“Hurry,” Mandy urged, sounding incredibly young.

“I’ll do my best,” Sherry had assured her softly, aching inside. She’d hung up her cell phone feeling oddly moved. She badly she wanted to have her child in her life. There was still time. Still a chance…

“You going to stand there daydreaming all day?” Gerald burst into her thoughts, yelling from the bowels of the kitchen.

Sherry came to with a start. She’d been standing at the kitchen swing-door, a million miles away. “Oh, stop your bellowing,” she told him.

“Come out tonight with me — after the kitchen’s closed.”

“Forget it, Gerald. I never date coworkers. It’s a rule.”

“It’s a bad rule. We’ll go have a drink somewhere.”

One of the waiters gave her the “look.” Sherry had learned during her short employment that Gerald was closing in on alcoholism, amiable drunk that he was, and he used his supposedly volatile temperament as an excuse to go out and throw back a few too many. Although she liked Gerald, she suspected he was not long for employment. He was just too reckless and undependable. Fortunately for him, J.J. Beckett appeared to be a fairly hands-off employer.

And this was Sherry’s last day, for tomorrow was the wedding. And afterward… Well, she might have to get out of Dodge fast after she and J.J. had it out.

Skin tingling with apprehension; she hurried to serve several plates of Gerald’s fabulous shrimp pasta to a young couple holding hands by the front window.