A Marriage Between Friends

CHAPTER FOUR

“I THOUGHT married people lived together.”

“Most of them do.” Jill had finished reading Teddy a chapter of his book, raising her voice to be heard above the rain beating on their roof. Now her throat felt scratchy.

Eyes averted, Teddy plucked at his comforter. It was lime green and matched one of the walls she and Teddy had painted. “Are you going to live together?”

“No.” She’d been surprised to see that Vince still wore his wedding ring. Because of Craig, Jill used hers like a shield. Vince had no reason to wear his. “We don’t have a marriage like other people. In fact, I don’t know how long we’re going to stay married. I doubt Vince will come back.”

More plucking by Teddy.

“What’s bothering you?”

“Can’t we keep him? As my dad?”

“No! He’s a person, not a pet.”

“Everybody else has a dad but me.” Teddy gave Jill his best puppy-dog eyes.

“You know that’s not true.”

Teddy tugged at the comforter some more. “I think I’ll go to sleep now.”

“Teddy?”

“I’m really tired.” He rolled over to face the wall, leaving Jill no choice but to turn off the light and wish him good-night.

As soon as she closed Teddy’s door someone knocked on the front one, followed by a muffled, “It’s me. Edda Mae.”

“What’s wrong? Did the power go out in your cottage?” It was really storming now and there was no reason for Edda Mae to be up. As quickly as she could, Jill undid the old chain, flipped back the dead bolt and turned the lock on the handle.

“Surprise,” Vince said, looking windblown and more handsome than he had a right to, hugging the rail as Edda Mae traipsed past him down the stairs.

“Edda Mae?” Jill’s cheeks heated. She should have made sure Vince left thirty minutes ago.

“Storm’s here. Remember your manners,” Edda Mae called.

The wind rushed up the stairwell, past Vince and his duffel, dancing around Jill’s bare feet.

“Should I walk her back?” Vince glanced after Jill’s meddling surrogate mother, a small purple umbrella clutched in his hand.

“Did she pull that frail-old-woman act on you? She’s steadier on her feet than a mountain goat and just as stubborn. She’ll be fine.” At least until the morning when Jill gave her a piece of her mind.

Vince nodded absently. Neither of them spoke. The rain continued to pour.

“I should go,” Vince said eventually. Yet he stood there staring. At Jill.

For about two seconds, Jill considered making Vince drive in the storm. Water gushed out of the rain gutter below. The route down the mountain was treacherous; and anything could happen on a night like this—mud slides, hidden potholes, unexpected pools of water. It wouldn’t take much for someone unfamiliar with the road driving a sexy little sports car a bit too fast to end up stuck in a ditch. Or worse.

“I suppose Edda Mae told you about our cottages. All I’ve got to offer you is the couch.” A lumpy, short couch.

“That’ll do.” Without setting eyes on it, Vince flashed Jill his dimple.

It was such a rare sight—that dimple—that it took her back to their wedding day. Jill was frozen, spellbound.

“Jill?” Vince gestured toward the living room. “Can I come in?”

Jill stumbled to the side to let Vince pass and escaped to collect a clean sheet and blanket. She took a pillow from her own bed. When she returned Vince was examining the wall where her framed photos were arranged. He’d removed his tie and unbuttoned his dress shirt. The T-shirt beneath fit him snugly and Jill paused in the hallway, struck with the urge to run her hands over the soft cotton, something she’d done many times to her shadow husband. But never to the real thing. She wouldn’t have the courage.

“Where was this one taken?” Vince straightened a picture of Teddy. With a grin as wide as Texas, Teddy stood on the bank of a river holding a golf-ball-size piece of fool’s gold, looking like he was trying to convince Jill he’d struck it rich.

Clutching the bedding tighter, Jill propelled herself past Vince. “The Mokelumne River. It’s not far from here.”

“Looks like you had a great time that day. My family doesn’t have pictures like this. I’m not sure why…” He wandered farther down the wall of photos.

Jill experienced a pang of guilt. Vince had mentioned earlier he’d wanted to be a part of Teddy’s life. He’d said as much before they’d gotten married, too. Why was he so attached to a child he hadn’t fathered when she…?

Jill began folding and tucking the bedding into the creases of the couch. Now she was feeling guilty about the couch, too. “This wasn’t designed for someone to sleep on. It’s short.”

“And narrow,” he added, staring at it.

She’d finished with the linens, but she couldn’t look at Vince and her mobility problem had returned. Her feet were leaden, weighted down by myriad emotions—desire, shame, confusion—all of them unwelcome. “But at least you’ll be safe and dry tomorrow morning.”

Vince sighed. “So I can be on my way.”

“Yes.” So that her life could return to normal.

“And you can try to derail the tribe’s plan for a casino.” There was no hint of recrimination in his voice. “Is Shady Oak that successful on its own?”

“I’m just breaking even.” It was painful to admit.

Jill couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Vince. “The key to Shady Oak’s success is in our luxurious accommodations and isolation. Wireless service doesn’t work here. Without the daily distractions of e-mail and cell-phone calls, my clients can focus and be more productive.” Her parents had alternately complained and praised that aspect of Shady Oak on one of their rare visits. “Edda Mae is a wonderful storyteller. She has a Native American story with a moral to fit every situation. We promise at least one story each booking.”

Vince was frowning at his BlackBerry. “And the vacation homes?”

“The plan I support for growth is to build a gated community of luxury vacation homes on a first-class golf course. The casino doesn’t benefit Railroad Stop residents equally—the profits will go to the tribe.”

His head shot up with the oddest expression, a mixture of wariness and disbelief. “It’s an Indian casino. What about taxes? Jobs? Which will provide you with more?”

“Long-term, jobs would be a wash, I think. A successful casino might bring in more in tax revenue in the long run. But you’d have to gamble on it being special enough to be a destination, and ‘special’ costs money. There are other casinos closer to civilization in the valley that are an easier drive.”

Vince peered at her intently, then laughed. “Nice try. I think I’ll wait for Arnie’s projections.”

Unexpectedly disappointed that Vince didn’t trust her, Jill bit her lip and let her gaze fall to the floor.

Thunder rumbled overhead, filling the awkward void between them.

“You never got around to telling me why you left me,” Vince said gently.

Jill’s head shot up. “You accused me—”

“Let’s not circle back to that.” There was no anger in Vince’s expression, only compassion. This was the Vince she’d married.

“I’m not proud I left, Vince. You offered me something I wasn’t ready to take.” Jill’s voice was brittle from years of guilt. “We were kids ourselves. After what happened I couldn’t—”

“I would have waited. I told you on our wedding night—”

Hugging herself, Jill stepped back. “You don’t understand. It wasn’t about us sleeping…” She choked on the word. Jill willed herself to keep it together. “You don’t…I…I left Las Vegas because I was ashamed.”

“No one knew about Craig but you and me.”

“I’m not talking about Craig,” Jill said, tightening her arms about herself. “I was ashamed that I couldn’t be sure…that I didn’t know…You had no doubts, but I was going to have a baby that was created from an act of violence. I wasn’t sure I could love it.”

It was a rare occasion that left Vince speechless.

“I knew what it was like to grow up without love. I came second to our family casino. I couldn’t do that to another child,” Jill whispered. “And if you loved the baby and I couldn’t, our marriage would have been a terrible mistake.” A far bigger mistake than it had been.

“You could have said something,” Vince returned gruffly. “I would have understood.”

“You would have tried to convince me I’d learn to love the baby.” Vince could coerce the devil if he wanted to. Once on a class field trip to an amusement park, he’d persuaded Jill to try a crazy-scary roller coaster. Her stomach still flipped at the memory. “I was getting over the shock of what happened. By the time I realized how I felt, we were married.”

“You would have given Teddy up for adoption?” She’d never seen Vince so dumbfounded.

Jill nodded. She forced her arms to relax, brought an image of Teddy as a baby to mind and found herself smiling. “But I loved Teddy from the second I laid eyes on him.”

“Then why didn’t you come back?”

“Because you deserved so much more out of life than a broken woman and another man’s child.” Drained, Jill wanted nothing more than to collapse on a chair.

“At least you were right about one thing,” he said unforgivingly.

Jill bristled. She’d come clean. She didn’t need Vince’s bitterness. “I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Good night.”

Those two words rekindled the intimacy she’d felt with him earlier. Jill edged toward the hall, eyes on the floor, torn between wanting to slug Vince and needing to be held by him.

“Isn’t this funny?” Vince said softly.

Jill’s head snapped up.

“You and me under the same roof. Me on the couch. Déjà vu.” His dark eyes hinted at old hurts. “You don’t plan to run out on me in the middle of the night, do you?”

Jill’s chin came up a notch. “Teddy’s asleep. Down the hall.” She wasn’t about to leave her son. This was her home.

“He must be a sound sleeper to snooze through all this.” Vince’s half smile wasn’t apologetic or rueful. It was…

Vince couldn’t be thinking…

Oh, yes, he could. He’d been the bad boy all the high-school girls whispered about with longing in their voices. Rumors abounded about Vince, rumors based on what someone told someone else about some unknown girl at some other high school and her lost virtue.

“That’ll be enough of that,” Jill said as matter-of-factly as she could manage without quite looking him in the eye. The last thing she wanted was for Vince to see how he unsettled her.

On shaky legs, Jill retreated to her bedroom and shut herself in, his deep laughter following her. She climbed into the dormer window and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, striped with tears from the storm. Vince had always managed to be one step ahead of her. She might kick Vince out tomorrow, but he’d be around, studying her, trying to anticipate her next move to block his casino. She’d need more than garishly painted signs to stop Vince and Arnie.

She should be angry or anxious. Yet her heart beat faster knowing her husband was in her home, sleeping between sheets that had touched her skin.

She should never have created the fantasy Vince, the ideal husband. The real Vince wasn’t perfect. He had a hair-trigger temper and he loved the trappings of success, the energy and excitement of Vegas. Whereas Jill was often uncomfortable in her own skin and content living her life behind a security fence.

So why did she still find Vince so compelling?

Jill stroked the angles of the diamond on her wedding ring, but for once it gave her no comfort.

CHUCKLING, VINCE PLUMPED up the pillow Jill had given him and lay down on the couch. Despite the surprising revelation about why she’d left, Jill amused him. Few women he ran across in his life did that nowadays. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time being with a woman without having sex had been so much fun.

If he was a cat, she’d be the mouse. She’d given too much away tonight, providing Vince with information he could use to his advantage. And she’d always been a soft touch. It wouldn’t be long before Vince had Jill supporting his efforts in Railroad Stop. He wouldn’t let their past and his fondness for her stand in the way.

There was just enough light outside to cast liquid shadows on the ceiling. Something hard poked his hip. Vince shifted and reached beneath the sheet to find a button on the cushion. He edged closer to the back of the couch only to encounter another in the middle of his back. Edda Mae’s love seat was starting to look better and better. Through trial and error Vince found a way to avoid the buttons, certain that his position on the couch had some fancy name in yoga.

A light and flowery aroma filled his nostrils. He turned his head and drank in the smell of Jill from the soft cotton pillowcase. He’d only been close to a handful of people in his life—his grandparents, his best friend, Sam, and for a few weeks, Jill. For years, he’d taken her abandonment personally. Jill’s leaving had never made sense, until now.

He’d understood Jill from the first day of kindergarten. While other kids were walked to class by their moms or dropped off by dads in luxury SUVs, Vince stepped out of a large black Town Car driven by his family’s chauffeur. But at least the windows were so dark that no one could tell his mom wasn’t inside.

Jill didn’t have it so lucky. On good days she hopped out of dented old cars driven by someone in a white shirt with a name tag. Sometimes during the off-season the hotel shuttle bus pulled into the school’s circular driveway—social suicide.

And yet Jill kept smiling, kept trying to fit in, not that the kids ever really let her. Vince didn’t fit in out of necessity. It was safer alone. That way he didn’t have to explain anything. In school he’d kept his mouth shut and his head down, until he discovered that the bruises that occasionally showed up on his face in junior high gave him a bad-ass reputation that guaranteed others kept their distance. Besides, his dad always apologized when he sobered up.

Vince’s gaze drifted to the shadows of a bookshelf where he’d seen a photo of Jill in front of a Christmas tree, cradling Teddy and wearing a guarded smile. Two weeks after Senior Ditch Day she’d bolted out of physics class to throw up and found Vince waiting outside the girls’ bathroom door. He’d driven her to a coffee shop, fed her toast and listened to her babble about her parents and how they’d never really loved their only child.

Vince understood Jill, all right. Now if he could just make her see things his way….

“EDDA MAE, what are you doing here?” Jill whispered when she returned to her apartment the next morning. She’d risen at dawn to find the sky clear again and had spray-painted NO CASINO! on all the signs.

“I’m makin’ breakfast.” Edda Mae smiled from Jill’s sunny kitchen as if everything was right with the world, but Jill wasn’t fooled. Edda Mae was here to see if Jill and Vince had slept together.

“He’s still here,” Teddy said in a low voice, pointing at Vince asleep on the couch. “Are you sure we can’t keep him?”

Edda Mae laughed softly while Jill shushed the two of them.

Vince’s long legs spilled over the end of the couch while Moonbeam curled in the crook of his arm. Vince slept as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but Jill had tossed and turned all night wondering why Vince had come to Railroad Stop—it couldn’t have been a coincidence—and wondering what she was going to do to about the casino.

Teddy came to stand beside Jill and they stared at their houseguest. Jill wanted to do damage with her fingers to Vince’s tamed, dark hair. Nobody should look that good in the morning wearing yesterday’s slacks and a baggy, long-sleeved T-shirt, especially a man who was trying to turn her world upside down.

One of Vince’s toes twitched. His feet were big and sturdy, the kind that moved purposefully forward when confrontation loomed. Jill was almost envious. Her feet were small and always seemed to back away.

When Teddy poked Vince’s foot with his finger, Vince jerked awake, black eyes bleary and ringed with dark circles, as if he’d tried more than a polite sip of Edda Mae’s whiskey last night. Moonbeam growled and Vince grimaced.

A smile tugged at Jill’s lips.

“A little help here.” Head straining to one side, Vince pointed to the protesting dog with his free hand.

A boyish giggle filled the air.

Edda Mae poked her head out of the kitchen. “You’ll need more food now that you’ve got an extra mouth to feed.”

“If you’re determined to keep him, take him to your place.” Jill removed Moonbeam from Vince’s chest, depositing the pooch in Teddy’s arms.

“Thanks.” Vince’s intense gaze seemed bent on capturing her own, but Jill wasn’t to be trapped.

She scurried over to the kitchen where bacon sizzled in a pan, pausing to wash her hands at the sink, which gave her a view of the living room.

“I told you she gets up early, boy,” Edda Mae said, snapping a green kitchen towel at Vince’s knee before trundling back to the kitchen without an ounce of remorse in her expression.

Matchmaking. Busybody. Traitor.

Edda Mae met Jill’s narrowed gaze and shrugged.

“I feel like a pretzel,” Vince grumbled as he pushed himself upright in fits and starts.

Teddy grinned from ear to ear as he watched Vince unfold himself from the furniture. Gathering Moonbeam closer with one hand, Teddy pointed to Vince’s chest with the other. “You have dog drool on your shirt.”

Vince spread the white cotton with both hands. “What the…?” He sank back onto the love seat, thumbs rubbing temples.

“You gave him whiskey?” With a huff of disgust, Jill searched her cabinet for some aspirin. Everyone in Railroad Stop knew Edda Mae’s homemade whiskey was more powerful than jet fuel and just as deadly. Vince was clueless. Yet another difference between her fantasy Vince and the real McCoy.

“I did no such thing.” Edda Mae used a fork to turn over the bacon strips.

“I turned her down.” Beyond the occasional shoulder-and-neck roll, Vince wasn’t moving. He barely acknowledged Jill when she offered him a glass of water and two aspirin tablets.

“Teddy, wash up for breakfast.” Jill turned her back on Vince and went to set her small dining table. “Once you’ve fed Vince, Edda Mae, he’ll be on his way.”

“He’s a bit of a pretty boy. Don’t you think he might like to shower and shave before you send him down the hill?” Edda Mae took eggs out of the refrigerator.

“We’re not running a bathhouse,” Jill countered, more than a little uncomfortable with the idea of Vince naked in her shower. “Remember him? He’s the enemy.”

“He’s no such thing,” Edda Mae pooh-poohed her, then frowned and stared at Vince. “He’s so pretty, in fact, he might be one of those men who like men. I could be wrong but—”

“You’re wrong,” Vince growled. “Not that I have anything against men who like men. I’m just not one of them.”

Edda Mae didn’t look convinced.

Jill tried not to smile. “He and Arnie want to build a casino, remember?”

“I want a golf course,” Teddy said, grinning at Vince. “I’d like to play golf if I had someone to teach me.”

“Have you looked at his face?” Edda Mae continued. “That’s a face you can trust.”

Jill rolled her eyes.

“Come on, Mom. You did marry him.” Teddy came into the kitchen and put Moonbeam down so he could wash his hands. “There must be something about him you like.”

Jill didn’t want to remember.