13
Jeanette’s phone rang off and on all day Sunday, but she did her best to ignore it. Eventually she went for a long walk just to escape the temptation to pick it up. She knew from caller ID that most of the calls were from Tom, but a few had been from Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue, all of whom were no doubt increasingly frustrated at not being able to figure out why she’d walked out on Tom the night before. It wasn’t until late Sunday night, when the calls finally ended, that she realized she’d only postponed the inevitable. She had to face Tom first thing in the morning at the Christmas festival meeting. She couldn’t skip it again. It would show a level of cowardice that even she found unacceptable. Before she went to bed, she laid out one of her favorite outfits as a confidence booster. She told herself the bright red sweater seemed appropriate, but the truth was, she’d chosen it because it flattered her coloring. She teamed it with gray slacks and a pair of red shoes that Helen had talked her into buying. While these weren’t the outrageously expensive high heels Helen preferred, they had cost more than Jeanette usually spent on an entire outfit. Buying the matching purse had given her heartburn.
When she walked into the meeting room at Town Hall, she felt confident and sexy. As soon as she saw the appreciative gleam in Tom’s eyes, she realized she probably should have opted for dowdy. This selection was clearly giving him ideas. She swallowed hard, forced a smile for Tom, then chose a seat on the other side of Ronnie.
“You can’t hide from him forever, sugar,” Ronnie whispered in her ear. “The man has it bad.”
“No, he doesn’t,” she insisted. “I’m a challenge, nothing more.”
Ronnie chuckled. “Wishful thinking. You got something against handsome and rich?”
“Nothing at all,” she assured him.
“Then why are you avoiding him?” he asked, still in an undertone.
“I’m not,” she said.
“That’s not what his half-dozen, increasingly worried calls to my house yesterday suggested.”
“He called there?” she said, dismayed. “I’m so sorry.”
“He was freaking out because he couldn’t reach you. It didn’t help that Dana Sue hadn’t been able to reach you, either. It took some serious persuasion on my part to keep the two of them from racing over to check on you. I swear, if you hadn’t walked in here just now, there’d be a posse out looking for you before lunchtime.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I never meant to involve everyone else in my drama.” Not that there was much drama involved. In fact, she was trying very hard to prevent drama.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Ronnie assured her. “I told
’em you probably needed a little space to absorb the fact that you’d taken such a big step. Buying your first house is scary business. It is your first, isn’t it?”
Jeanette nodded. “And it all happened so fast that I’m absolutely terrified I might have made a mistake. I called the bank this morning to make an appointment to apply for the loan and hung up before anyone said hello.”
“Buyer’s remorse, cold feet, whatever you want to call it, is perfectly normal,” Ronnie assured her. “You’ll get over it. And you need anything, you have all of us as backup.”
“Thanks.”
He studied her closely. “Other than being scared silly over committing to apply for a thirty-year mortgage, everything else is okay?”
She gave him her brightest smile. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, then, that’s good enough for me.” He grinned.
“Word of warning, though. Just your assurance about that might not be enough to satisfy Tom or my wife.”
She glanced at Tom, who was watching her exchange with Ronnie intently. “Yeah, I get that.”
A moment later Tom called the meeting to order and then ran through the agenda in record time. It was obvious he wanted this meeting over with, much to Howard’s annoyance.
“Where’s the fire, son?” Howard demanded when Tom cut his report short and called for adjournment. “I thought we could discuss where we’re going to get the town Christmas tree this year.”
Tom barely contained a sigh. “Where do you usually get it?”
“We’ve found most of ’em on the outskirts of town,”
Howard said. “Up until recently there was a lot of heavily wooded property nearby, but development’s had an impact on that.” He cast a hard look at Ronnie as if the construction boom was all his fault. “I think we’re going to have to go a different direction this year. There’s a farm that raises Christmas trees just outside of Columbia. I think we should go up there and take a look around. It’ll probably cost us a little more, but I think we’ll find a better selection.”
“Okay, I designate you to go,” Tom said. He was about to gavel the meeting to a close, when Howard spoke again.
“This is a committee decision,” Howard protested, then added with enthusiasm, “I say we all go next weekend. There may not be a chill in the air yet, but we’ll play some Christmas music in the car, take along some hot chocolate, really get into the spirit of things.” He beamed at them. “We can make a day of it.”
Jeanette and Tom groaned almost simultaneously.
“I can’t go on Saturday,” she said. “It’s one of my busiest days at the spa.”
“Saturday’s no good for me, either,” Mary Vaughn said.
“I usually have an open house going that day or, if I don’t, I’m out showing properties. Same with Sunday.”
Howard frowned at Ronnie. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the hardware store does too much business on Saturday for you to get away, too.”
Ronnie shrugged. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Howard shook his head. “Okay, then, we’ll make it a weekday. Tuesday suit everyone? That’s a week from tomorrow, so you have plenty of advance notice. Jeanette, can you make that work?”
Knowing that one day was no better than another for doing something she absolutely did not want to do, she nodded. “I’ll reschedule my appointments. Tuesdays are usually pretty light.”
“Good,” Howard said approvingly. He turned to Tom.
“And nothing much happens on a Tuesday around here, am I right? No big meetings.”
“None,” Tom conceded with obvious reluctance.
“Tuesday, it is, then,” Howard said with satisfaction.
“We’ll leave from here at 7:00 a.m. We can even skip our regular Monday meeting. That ought to make everyone happy.” He turned to Tom. “Now you can end the meeting if you want to.”
“Thank you,” Tom said. “Meeting adjourned. Jeanette, could you stay for a few minutes so we can discuss the vendor situation?”
“I need to get to the spa,” she said, not anxious to be alone with him.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly and followed him into his office.
Tom closed the door behind them and clicked the lock. He gestured toward a chair, but Jeanette remained standing. He shrugged.
“Everything okay with you?” he inquired mildly.
“Fine.”
“You’re not mad at me for some reason?”
“Not at all.”
He regarded her with bewilderment. “Then could you explain what happened Saturday night and why you wouldn’t answer any of my calls yesterday?”
Jeanette immediately went on the defensive. “I left Saturday night because I was tired. I didn’t answer the phone yesterday because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I had a lot on my mind.”
“Was this about buying the house?”
“Mostly.”
“And the rest? Did that have anything to do with me?”
“Why do you automatically assume that I think about you at all?”
He lifted a brow.
“Okay, yes,” she conceded grudgingly. “You were part of it.” She met his gaze. “Tom, you seem to want a whole lot more than I have to give. We hardly know each other and you want to share a house with me. Maybe you’re just joking—”
“I’m not,” he said evenly.
She shuddered. When he said stuff like that, she almost lost what little resolve she still had to keep her distance from him. She held up a hand as if to hold him back. “That’s what I mean. It’s too much, too soon.”
He frowned at that. “Will you sit down so we can actually have a conversation? I feel as if you already have one foot out the door.”
“I told you I need to get to work.”
He sighed with frustration. “Have lunch with me, then. Let’s talk this through. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s just that I’m a decisive man. I don’t see the point in wasting time when I know what I want.”
“And what you want is me?” she asked incredulously.
“Come on. That’s crazy.”
He nodded. “I’m a little thrown by it myself.”
“Yet that hasn’t slowed you down.”
He shrugged. “I don’t see any reason to slow down. I’ve always set goals for myself, then gone about achieving them. I don’t let obstacles stand in my way.”
“Are my feelings just one more obstacle for you to overcome?”
He winced. “In a way.”
“Well, let me know when you recognize that my feelings might have validity, that when I tell you I need time, you get that I mean it. Maybe then we’ll have something to talk about.”
She went to the unlocked door between his office and Teresa’s and yanked it open. She’d almost made it to the outer office, when Tom whirled her around and kissed her, a sizzling, lengthy kiss designed to leave her weak-kneed and breathless. Which it did.
“I’ll pick you up at the spa at noon,” he said quietly, ignoring Teresa’s openmouthed stare. “We’ll talk more over lunch.”
Jeanette regarded him with exasperation. “Did you not hear one word I just said?”
“Every one,” he assured her. “And that kiss just contradicted most of them. We’ll discuss the rest when I see you later. And don’t even think about standing me up, because I will find you and we will have this conversation.”
Before Jeanette could gather her wits, he walked back into his office and closed the door.
“Whew!” Teresa murmured, fanning herself with the minutes of the last council meeting. “I’d heard all about the fireworks between you two at the game Friday night—that was all over town by Saturday morning—but I had no idea…” She shook her head.
“Teresa, I’m begging you, please do not tell Grace Wharton about this,” Jeanette said, knowing that was exactly where Teresa would be headed in a couple of hours, sooner if she took a coffee break. “It will just add fuel to the fire. I know I started it by kissing him at the game Friday night, but that, well, it was impulsive. I don’t usually do things like that.”
“Honey, nobody’s holding it against you,” Teresa soothed.
Jeanette scowled. “That’s not what I meant. I had my reasons for that kiss, but it was a mistake. A huge mistake! I realize now that I don’t want to be the subject of town gossip, and even though he doesn’t seem to give two hoots about it, it won’t be good for Tom, either.”
Teresa regarded her with disappointment. “You want me to keep the kiss I saw just now to myself?”
Jeanette nodded. “Please. I’ll give you a free facial,” she said.
“You must want my silence a whole lot,” Teresa said with increasing amusement.
“I’ll throw in a massage, too,” Jeanette added, unable to keep a hint of desperation out of her voice. Teresa couldn’t seem to stop grinning, which suggested Jeanette was compounding her mistake by making such a big deal of this latest kiss.
“To tell you the truth, Tom would have my hide if I accepted what amounts to a very generous bribe from you, so I’ll decline the facial and the massage, but the fact that you offered…” Her grin spread. “What that proves is that this relationship the two of you have is getting downright interesting. I’ll keep what I saw just now to myself, but something tells me it won’t take long before the whole town knows your business, anyway. It’s impossible to hide that kind of heat.”
That was exactly what Jeanette was afraid of. It was getting more and more difficult to keep denying it to herself, as well. Tom was feeling rather pleased with himself when there was a tap on the door to the conference room. He opened it to find Ronnie on the other side.
“You and Jeanette finish your conversation?” Ronnie asked.
Tom nodded.
“Then maybe you have time to listen to a piece of advice from a man’s who made more than his share of mistakes when it comes to women.”
Since his current plan seemed to be having less success than he’d anticipated, Tom waved Ronnie to a chair. “I’d welcome another viewpoint.”
“Back off,” Ronnie said succinctly. “I talked to Jeanette before the meeting. She didn’t say much about what was going on with the two of you, but I picked up on one thing.”
“Oh?”
“She’s scared to death of what she’s feeling for you.”
“If I give her space, she’ll just think it to death,” Tom argued.
“If you don’t, you’ll lose her,” Ronnie said. “She’s feeling pressured. When I wanted Dana Sue back, I was in her face a lot. All that accomplished was to solidify her defenses. Once I got busy with opening my business, she had time to start missing me. She got her feet back under her, felt in control again. Some women, they need to feel like they’re in charge. It terrifies them when they think they’re not, especially if they’ve been hurt in the past.”
Tom could see the wisdom in that. Of course, backing off meant losing time, when he only had a finite amount of time to convince Jeanette that they had something special. A part of him didn’t want to waste a minute of that.
“How long?” he asked Ronnie.
Ron chuckled at his obvious impatience. “As long as it takes.”
“Does it have to start right this second? I’m supposed to pick her up for lunch in a couple of hours.”
“Up to you,” Ronnie told him. “But canceling could be a good thing.”
Tom shook his head. “And you had to work this hard to get Dana Sue?”
“Harder,” Ronnie said. “I had a whole lot to make up for and, believe me, she didn’t make it easy. I assure you that I have some firsthand experience with the value of patience and persistence.”
“Patience and persistence?” Tom echoed thoughtfully. Persistence he could handle. Patience? Not his strong suit.
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Hope you don’t mind me interfering,” Ronnie said.
“And if the situation starts getting to you, you can always call me or Cal and schedule a football game to work off some frustration. Nothing like a little sweat and a few beers to take the edge off.”
“Yeah, nothing like it,” Tom agreed. Unless it was some energetic sex with the woman who’d gotten under his skin. Mary Vaughn was surprisingly nervous about her upcoming dinner with Sonny. A lot was riding on how this evening went. If they couldn’t come up with a really good plan, it was going to be hard for her to keep saying no to Rory Sue’s pleas to go to Aspen for the holidays. The only thing worse than having her daughter gone would be having her underfoot and moping around the house as if her life was ruined and it was all her mother’s fault. She’d taken to heart Sonny’s comment about her penchant for getting caught up with business and showing up late. Determined to prove she could be on time, she’d canceled her appointment and was waiting at Sullivan’s fifteen minutes early. It gave her a great deal of satisfaction to see the shock on his face when he walked in and saw she was already seated.
He leaned down and dropped a casual peck on her cheek.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Did your appointment cancel?”
She bristled at the suggestion that she wouldn’t have been on time otherwise, then shrugged ruefully. “I canceled it myself. I wanted to prove something to you.”
“Darlin’, there’s nothing you need to prove to me. You are who you are. I accepted that a long time ago.”
She listened closely for any undercurrent of nastiness in his tone, but he sounded more amused or resigned than anything.
“Well, I’m turning over a new leaf,” she swore to him.
“I’m going to be more considerate of other people’s time.”
Sonny didn’t look entirely convinced. Instead, he glanced around in search of the waitress. “You want a drink, Mary Vaughn? Maybe some wine?”
“Just a glass,” she said. “They have a nice red zinfandel.”
When the waitress arrived, he ordered that, then a beer for himself. Mary Vaughn shook her head. No matter how hard she’d tried to cultivate his taste for wine, Sonny had always preferred beer. In a way it was admirable that he stuck to what he liked, rather than setting out to impress people by buying fancy wines the way she did. Though she’d tried her share of beer way back, just like all the other kids, she’d cut herself off years ago. Her aversion to it had come from having a father who indulged in way too much of it.
She studied Sonny closely as he chatted with the waitress, the daughter of one of his salesmen. He was tanned, fine lines fanned out from the corners of his dark blue eyes, and his light brown hair had more threads of silver in it than the last time she’d seen him. He was wearing navy blue slacks, a pale blue silk-blend shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a designer tie that had been loosened. She recognized the tie because she’d helped Rory Sue pick it out last Christmas. She wondered if he’d chosen it deliberately because of that, or if he even remembered where it came from. Either way, he looked good. Better than he had during the last year of their marriage when the tension had left him looking harried and unhappy most of the time. She’d recognized his unhappiness way too late.
“Give us a few minutes,” he told the waitress. “We haven’t even looked at the menu yet.” He turned to Mary Vaughn. “Or are you in a hurry?”
“I’m in no rush,” she said, finally letting herself relax. She’d been half-afraid that he was going to insist that she get to the point so he could bolt back to the dealership. She smiled at him. “You look good, Sonny. Rested. Are you playing a lot of golf?”
“A couple of times a week,” he said. He looked her over.
“How about you? Still working too hard?”
“Most of the time, especially with Rory Sue gone.”
“New man in your life?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I thought there might be something brewing with you and the new town manager,” he said. “At least that was the hot rumor at Wharton’s a couple of weeks back.”
“Bad information,” she said succinctly. “What about you? Have you been dating?”
He chuckled. “Aren’t we a pair? Asking all these civilized questions about each other’s love life. Who would have thought we’d ever get to that point?”
She met his gaze. “We were friends before we were anything else,” she reminded him, then added wistfully, “Sometimes I miss that more than anything, the way we used to talk for hours about everything going on in our lives.”
He regarded her with surprise. “You do?”
She nodded. “Weird, isn’t it?”
He covered her hand with his. “Not so weird. I miss that, too, Mary Vaughn. Only trouble is, there’s a whole lot of baggage that goes along with that. Most of the time it’s hard to see past the way things ended.”
“I know,” she admitted. Because there was nothing to be gained by looking back, she said, “What are we going to do about Christmas?”