Loving Jessie (4 page)

She shook her head as she carried the dishes through the swinging door into the kitchen. It was stupid to even think about it. What difference did it make whether Matt was an Adonis or a troll? He was her friend, and he was home.

When he was growing up, his family had lived in a tidy ranch-style home on a block lined with other tidy ranch-style homes in a tidy middle-class neighborhood. His father had been a loan officer at the Millers Crossing Savings and Loan. His mother had taken the traditional role of housewife. She’d kept the house clean and cooked regular meals. His father had worn a suit and tie to work every day, paid the bills each week, mowed the lawn on Saturday and made sure the car was taken in for service at regular intervals. They had the requisite two children, both boys, born a sedate five years apart. On the surface, everything had been almost abnormally normal.

Matt wasn’t sure how old he’d been when he’d realized that normal mothers didn’t nip their way through half a bottle of vodka a day, and that normal fathers didn’t come home at the end of the day and take a belt to their children.

He rarely thought about it anymore, but, when he did,
he knew he owed his survival—mental, emotional and maybe even physical—to his older brother. Gabe had been the one person he could count on. Gabe had always been there for him, so maybe it made sense that, when he needed a place to hole up, this was where he’d come.

Not that he’d ever seen this place before. Gabe had bought it less than a year ago. Five miles north of town, on a back road that wound up into the hills, he had two acres of mostly vertical land and a house that had been built in the sixties by a group of hippies who’d wanted to commune with the land. As it happened, the land didn’t appear to have shared their desire to find total oneness. A mud slide took out the chicken house. A fire roared through two years later. It spared the house but incinerated half a dozen old pickups, a VW van and several outbuildings. The hippies retreated to San Francisco’s welcoming arms.

In the thirty years since, the property had gone through a succession of owners, including one enterprising couple who thought it was the perfect spot for a marijuana plantation. Gabe bought it from the government after they confiscated it. Knowing how much his brother valued his privacy, Matt knew the isolation had drawn him more than the ramshackle house.

Gabe stepped out on the sagging porch as Matt slid out of the Jeep. There was little resemblance between the two brothers. At six foot one, Matt was taller than average, but Gabe was a good four inches taller still, most of it leg. Where Matt’s hair was nearly black, Gabe’s was several shades lighter. Matt had once heard his brother say that his features must have been borrowed from several other faces, because nothing matched anything else, and Matt supposed the description fit. Gabe’s nose was too big, his mouth was crooked, and his eyes were deep set.

Looking at him, Matt felt an odd little catch in his throat. If he had a home anywhere, this was it. Not the house, which, from what little he could see, looked as if it was a half step away from total collapse, but the man. Gabe had always been there for him, and he wondered suddenly if he’d ever told his older brother how much that had meant to him.

“Well, hell, I guess I’ll have to mine the driveway after all,” Gabe said as he came down the warped steps. If he felt any surprise at seeing Matt, it didn’t show. “Otherwise I’ll have all sorts of riffraff turning up on my doorstep.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think I lost the muffler in one of the ruts,” Matt told him. “You ever think about getting that road graded?”

“Nah, I get a kickback from the muffler shop.” Gabe frowned when he got close enough to see his brother’s face. “You look like hell, bro.”

“Thanks. It’s good to see you, too.” Matt reached into the back seat to pull out his duffel bag. Everything else could wait until tomorrow. “You still looking for some free labor?”

“Sure.” If Gabe wondered why Matt had changed his mind about coming, he didn’t ask. He reached out and hooked the strap of the duffel bag, ignoring Matt’s halfhearted resistance as he took it. “You hungry?”

“No. I stopped at Ernie’s on the way through town. Had a special.”

“In that case, maybe I should call for a stomach pump,” Gabe said dryly, and Matt laughed.

“I think I’ll live.” It was nearing twilight, and he could hear the musical rasp of crickets starting up their nightly serenade in the chaparral. “Saw Jessie.”

“She’s making desserts for the new owner, I think.”
Gabe opened the screen door, automatically lifting it up slightly to keep it from scraping across the warped spot on the porch floor.

“Yeah, that’s what she said. In fact, I had a slice of some sort of cheesecake she’d just brought in. It was good. Seems funny, seeing her all grown up.”

“She was all grown up before you left,” Gabe said.

“Yeah, I guess.” He wasn’t sure why the idea bothered him.

The interior of the house didn’t look much better than the exterior, Matt saw. The floors were warped, none of the window frames were square, and the stone fireplace looked like a rock pile waiting to happen.

“Is there anything square in this place?” he asked, looking around.

“Your head.” Gabe carried the duffel bag through a frameless opening that had once held a door. “I did the plumbing and electrical first, so there’s hot water and lights. The bathroom’s almost done, and I’ve been working on the kitchen. I figured everything else could wait.”

“Hot water and food pretty much cover the bases,” Matt agreed. He followed his brother into a small room, which held a narrow bed and a chest of drawers that had definitely seen better days. There were no curtains on the windows, but there was a faded rag rug next to the bed. It was scruffy and probably none too clean. Matt thought he’d never seen anything that looked better.

“Thanks, Gabe.” Emotion made his voice tight, and he cleared his throat self-consciously. “It looks great.”

“Don’t thank me. I plan on working your ass off.” Gabe reached out to squeeze his shoulder as he left the room.

Matt stood in the middle of the dusty, run-down room and let the feeling wash over him. He was home.

D
ana McKinnon had always known what was expected of her. Her earliest memories were of her mother telling her to smile pretty for the camera. By the time she was ten, she’d lost count of the number of times she’d heard that command. There had been others. Don’t get dirty. Don’t muss your pretty hair. Don’t frown. Don’t run, because you might fall down and scrape your knees. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she’d realized how many “don’ts” there had been in her life. She’d obeyed them all.

Her mother had been a woman of limited talent and unlimited ambition. In her youngest daughter, she found the means to indulge the latter. Roxanne Andrews was a pleasantly pretty woman, her husband average, and they had two reasonably attractive children. Then, like a genetic miracle, there was Dana, a child of such exquisite beauty that people literally caught their breath when they saw her for the first time.

Roxanne recognized opportunity when it knocked, and by the time Dana was six months old, her smile was
gracing the label of a new line of baby food. At two she was a print model for an exclusive and very expensive line of children’s clothing. Roxanne’s ambition suffered its first check when it became apparent that no amount of lessons was going to turn Dana into the next Jodie Foster. Abandoning visions of herself wearing Vera Wang and Tiffany while she watched her daughter accept her first Oscar, she turned her ambitions toward more attainable goals—beauty pageants.

While other little girls were making mud pies and friends, Dana had been learning deportment and modern dance. She was never allowed to run and play for fear a fall might result in a disfiguring scar. Hours were spent sitting in front of a mirror, perfecting a smile that showed just the right amount of teeth. Her life centered around her beauty and her mother’s ambitions.

She’d known, with the instinctive wisdom of the young, that her mother loved her because she was beautiful, and that Roxanne loved her most when she won a pageant, so Dana worked hard to see that she won every time. She barely knew her siblings, and her father was little more than an indulgent smile and occasional pat on the head. Everything depended on pleasing her mother. And the key to her mother’s love was always looking her best so she could win the ribbons and crowns that meant so much to Roxanne.

She knew—had always known—that her looks were the one thing she had to offer, so when Reilly McKinnon asked her to marry him, she knew why. He was handsome, successful and charming—the kind of man who could have had any woman. If he’d chosen her, it was because of her looks. She’d accepted that without resentment, because she’d fallen head over heels in love with
him. And, for the first time in her life, her beauty was going to get her something
she
wanted.

Wasn’t there some irritating Oriental proverb about being careful what you wished for? Or maybe it was a Gypsy curse. Dana sighed as she splashed a healthy measure of scotch into an old-fashioned glass. Whatever its ethnic origins, she should have heeded the warning. Then again, maybe the more appropriate warning was the one about pride going before a fall.

Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror behind the wet bar, Dana’s fingers tightened around the glass as she fought the sudden urge to hurl it at the woman looking back at her. She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing in slow, deep breaths, the way she’d once done before walking out onstage. Opening her eyes again, she studied her reflection dispassionately.

There was no vanity in the assessment. After spending more than half her life listening to her physical attributes being picked apart by her mother, other contestants and a revolving assortment of pageant organizers, she had learned to dissect her own appearance as impersonally as a scientist inspecting a specimen on a slide. At thirty-four, she no longer had the dewy look of youth necessary for competition, but she was still a beautiful woman.

Her hair was the pale golden color sometimes called champagne blond. When it was loose, it fell in a heavy curtain halfway down her back, but she rarely wore it that way anymore. Usually she pulled it back into a simple twist, as it was now. The stark simplicity of the style emphasized the classic oval of her face. Her eyes were a deep, clear blue, framed by thick, naturally dark lashes. Her nose was short and straight, and her mouth was full and beautifully shaped. It was a face of classic beauty, the kind that weathered the whims of fashion.

But it wasn’t enough, she thought. It hadn’t been enough to win the crown her mother had coveted so desperately, and it wasn’t enough to hold her marriage together. It didn’t matter how perfect the face in the mirror was; it wasn’t quite enough.

Hearing footsteps in the hall, she lifted the glass, letting the smooth bite of the scotch burn away the threat of tears. Her self-control firmly in place, she turned as Reilly entered the living room. Even after five years of marriage, despite all that had happened between them, her heart still jumped when she saw him. There had been a time when she’d welcomed that bump of awareness, the quick little rush of pleasure that came with knowing he was hers. The pleasure was still there, but now it was so mixed with hurt and anger that she couldn’t separate the two, and she half turned away, afraid of what he might read in her eyes.

Halfway across the living room, Reilly felt the pain of her subtle rejection slice into him, but he forced himself to move forward as if he hadn’t seen it, as if she’d smiled and welcomed him the way she once would have. His fault, he reminded himself. If she didn’t want to look at him, he had no one to blame but himself.

“How was the luncheon?” he asked, pretending not to notice when she turned her head so that his lips landed on her cheek rather than her mouth. The light floral scent of her perfume filled his head, made him ache to pull her into his arms. Time, he reminded himself. He’d promised himself that he would give her all the time she needed.

“Tiring.” Casually, Dana moved away, making a conscious effort to relax her grip on the heavy glass. She’d been involved in several charities over the last five years. She had neither marketable skills nor any driving ambition toward a career, but she did enjoy the idea that she
was making a difference in the world. Reilly had teased her once by saying that she’d spent so many years telling pageant judges that she wanted to work for world peace that she’d started to believe it. Remembering the laughter in his eyes, she felt an aching sense of loss. But, when she spoke, her voice was calm, well modulated—yet another benefit of her years on the circuit.

“Margaret Docherty wants to cut the building budget by eliminating half the bathrooms. She seems to think that people who’ve been living on the street ought to be so grateful to have a roof over their heads that they won’t mind waiting in line for a shower.”

“Interesting, when you consider the four-bedroom, six-bathroom house we built for her a couple of years ago.”

Reilly moved behind the bar and pulled a bottle of Evian out of the small refrigerator. As he twisted the top off, he tried not to look at the bottle of scotch and wonder if the glass she held was her first. That was another thing that had changed this past year. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just imagining a problem that didn’t exist.

“I think Margaret is concerned that, if the shelter provides too much comfort, the inhabitants may get ideas above their station.”

Restless, Dana moved around the room, making a minute adjustment to a lampshade here, straightening a picture frame there. She was conscious of Reilly watching her, his green eyes asking questions she couldn’t answer. Questions he had no right to ask, she thought, caught off guard by the sudden sharp surge of anger. Who the hell was he to have questions?

Not fair, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment as she struggled to push away the rage that was much too close to the surface these days. She’d said it was all behind them. At the time, she’d been desperate to put it
behind them, shove it in a closet and hide it away somehow. She could hardly blame him if she’d found it impossible to do so.

“So, are you going to cut down on the number of bathrooms in the shelter?” Reilly asked, and Dana made an effort to focus on the conversation.

“No.” She swallowed the last of the scotch, feeling the warmth of it seep through her. “I pointed out that the quality of the finished project was going to reflect on the committee, and that I certainly didn’t want my name associated with a shoddy facility.”

“Good thinking.” Reilly lifted the bottle of water in a toast. He’d settled on the arm of an overstuffed chair, his long legs braced on the floor. Wearing jeans and an old gray T-shirt, his feet bare and his dark blond hair a little rumpled, he looked annoyingly attractive, distressingly masculine. It was irritating to find herself so aware of both. “Snob appeal works every time.”

“It’s certainly the quickest way to Margaret’s heart.” Needing a distraction, Dana moved to the wet bar and poured herself another drink. Turning, she caught Reilly’s eye.

“A little early for that, isn’t it?” His light tone was at odds with the concern in his eyes, and she took a perverse pleasure in lifting the glass and taking a deliberate swallow before letting her eyes shift to the clock on the mantel.

“It’s almost seven o’clock in New York,” she said coolly.

She saw the quick flare of surprise in Reilly’s eyes and wished the words unsaid, or that she’d at least managed to give them a light, dismissive touch.

“Dana, I—”

The mellow chime of the doorbell made him break off.
He shot an impatient glance toward the entryway, and she knew he was going to ignore the bell, but she didn’t want to ignore it. She was pathetically grateful for the interruption. It would give her a chance to repair the thin crack in her self-control. When she moved as if to answer the door herself, Reilly straightened away from the chair.

“I’ll get it,” he said irritably, and Dana drew a shallow breath of relief as she watched him walk from the room.

The anger had caught her off guard, just as it so often did these days. Feeling it was one thing; revealing it was something else altogether. It was better not to show emotion, she thought, looking down into the drink she’d only been half-aware of pouring. Uncontrolled emotion was an ugly thing. Never laugh too loud, never let anyone see you cry, and never, never show anger. Not if another girl won the crown you’d worked so desperately hard for.

Not even when your husband slept with another woman.

Maybe he should have called first. Thumbs hooked in the corners of his front pockets, Matt rocked back on his heels as he contemplated the blank door in front of him. The big house looked just the way he remembered—two stories of white stucco with colonial blue trim, topped by a red-tile roof. The Spanish/Mediterranean style was ubiquitous in California, like the Mexican fan palms that lined the street and the big eucalyptus that shaded the front yard. None of them were native to the state, but one thing California excelled at was borrowing things and making them her own.

There had been a time when he would have just pushed open the door and walked in without bothering to ring the bell. When he and Reilly were growing up, the big house on Sycamore Street had been a second home to
him—the home he’d wished could be his. And Bill and Libby McKinnon had been the parents he’d wished were his.

But a lot had changed since then. Reilly’s father had died almost ten years ago, and his mother had surprised everyone by moving to Sante Fe and opening a nursery, which was apparently doing quite well.

It seemed strange that everything should look so familiar when it was all so changed. And he was more than ever convinced that he should have called first. But he could hear someone approaching the other side of the door, and it was too late to change his mind unless he wanted to dive into the shrubbery that flanked the porch.

Then the door was opening and Reilly’s look of surprise was disappearing in a broad grin that told him some things hadn’t changed at all.

“So how the hell are you?” Reilly asked as Matt settled into one of the big, overstuffed chairs that flanked the empty fireplace. There were more changes inside the house than out. The wall-to-wall carpeting had been pulled up, exposing polished oak floors, and the eclectic mix of furniture he remembered had been replaced with pieces done in warm shades of coral and cool teals that complemented the Mexican-tile hearth and soft floral drapes that framed the tall windows.

“I’m good.” Matt smiled at Dana as she handed him a cold amber bottle of beer. “Thanks.” When she smiled back, he blinked, a little dazzled by the sheer beauty of her.

Five years ago, he’d flown in for the wedding straight from Afghanistan. There hadn’t been time for his mind to make the shift from the blood and destruction he’d left behind to the flowers and lace beauty of the ceremony
he’d come to witness. He’d performed his part, handing over the ring at the appropriate moment, toasting the bride and groom, laughing and talking with old friends. And through it all, he’d felt as if he were standing somewhere apart, watching his own performance in a play. The bride’s beauty had registered only as another, not quite real, element in the play.

Even now, she hardly seemed real. Wearing a pale blue linen sheath, her long legs lightly tanned, a pair of strappy little sandals on her slender feet, she reminded him of a young Grace Kelly—exquisite, unapproachable, a little cool.

“How long have you been home?” Dana asked, her voice as smooth and polished as her appearance.

“Two days. I got in on Saturday.”

“You were living in Seattle, weren’t you?” Dana sat in the chair opposite him, her knees bent slightly to one side, ankles crossed. It was a pose of careful grace, and Matt found himself wondering if she ever relaxed enough to slouch a little. “The heat must be quite a shock after Seattle.”

“Just seeing sunlight is a shock after Seattle,” Matt said dryly.

“You look pretty good for a guy with a bullet hole in him,” Reilly said, cutting through the polite small talk. Carrying a half-full bottle of Evian, he sank down on the arm of Dana’s chair, bracing one bare foot against the floor and resting his arm along the back of the chair.