Sandra Hill - [Jinx] (13 page)

“You can’t be that dumb,” Frank said. “Nobody is.”

“Well, actually,” Adam said, his lips twitching with fun, “he’s a Southerner. So, maybe . . . Did you hear about the Southern boy who was asked to spell
Mississippi?
He said, ‘The river or the state?’”

John laughed good-naturedly with the rest of them. “Did you hear about the dumb Northern man? When his girlfriend asked to feel his muscle, he rolled up his sleeve.”

“I don’t get it,” Flossie said.

“Oh, shush!” Frank told her.

“That’ll be enough,” Brenda proclaimed, standing.

“Oh, sug-ah,” John told her in his deep Cajun drawl, “there ain’t no such thing as enough.”

Amusement flickered in Brenda’s green eyes.

At least John had gotten the last word in, as he’d no doubt planned.

To get laid or not to get laid, that is the question. . . .

After dinner, Adam asked her, “Do you want to go up on deck for a breath of air?”

“No!” Frank roared. When Veronica raised her eyebrows at him, he said, “I need your help with . . . something.”

Veronica understood the old coot. He honestly believed she and Jake still had a chance.

Later that night, as she lay staring up through the darkness at the ceiling of her small bunk room, where Brenda slept soundly above her, Veronica contemplated the incredible day she had experienced. She hadn’t developed a sudden affection for her grandfather, far from it, but she was learning so much from him. And it was a good feeling not to be afraid on the water. She might be about to embark on a relationship with a new man—Adam or Caleb, she wasn’t sure. Not once had she thought about her old job and what she would do next week or next month. It was as if she were on a slow-moving roller coaster, chug-chug-chugging to the top of what promised to be a thrilling adventure. This trip was going to change her life; she just sensed that it would. In what way, she didn’t know. But her whole body was on high alert, waiting for something important to happen.

In the midst of all this weighty contemplation, a tear slipped through her eye and rolled down her cheek. There was something missing in this picture.

Jake.

Why aren’t you here?

I miss you. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

Oh, Jake.

Giving up, Veronica quietly eased herself out of bed, trying not to awaken Brenda. Slipping on a pair of running shorts—she’d been wearing a T-shirt and panties to sleep in—she crept out of their small room and made her way up the steps and out onto the deck. The old Veronica would have needed Peptos and a lot of courage. The new Veronica just plowed ahead. There was a full moon out over the very still, black water. The only sound was the gentle lap of the waves against the side of the boat. She walked over and leaned her elbows on the gunwale.

Remarkable! She stood here, on a boat, in the middle of the ocean, for heaven’s sake, and she didn’t feel nauseous or terrified. And she hadn’t even taken a Pepto since this afternoon. The aversion to sea air and water had been mostly in her mind, she realized.

Just then, she heard a soft noise and realized she wasn’t alone. Caleb sat in one of the two swivel chairs at the back of the boat, which were normally used for fishing. His bare feet were propped up on the rail. He wore only sweatpants, even though it was a little chilly. In fact, she clasped her hands against her upper arms and shivered.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said back, eyeing her scanty attire.

Grabbing a soft beach blanket Flossie must have left after her bout of sunbathing today, she wrapped it around herself, then walked over and sat down in the other chair. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

“I rarely sleep much. Three, four hours a night, usually.”

“Really?”

“I’ve never been a long sleeper, but especially in SEALs, we did a lot of short naps—sometimes standing up, with our eyes open. It’s become a habit, I guess.”

“Why did you leave the SEALs, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He didn’t immediately answer, and she wondered if her question had been too intrusive. But then he said, “Burned out, I guess. I got too good at killing, and that started to scare me.”

A chill swept over Veronica’s body. She’d known that SEALs were America’s silent heroes, going into terrorist countries, fighting the wars others pretended were unnecessary. Still, to have a man admit to killing was jarring, to say the least.

“Is there some woman in your life, Caleb?”

She could see that her out-of-the-blue question surprised him. But then he smiled—the man did have a very nice smile—and said, “Not anymore.”

She tilted her head in question.

“There was someone . . . once . . . a long time ago, but nothing since has lasted very long. I’m not a good risk for meaningful relationships.”

Veronica suspected that the one-time love had something to do with his leaving the Amish and his being shunned. Changing the subject, she said, “You could always go back to being a farmer. That’s what Amish do mostly, isn’t it?”

He laughed. “I’ve shoveled more horse manure and milked more cows and plowed more fields than I ever want to. No, I’ll never be a farmer.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while.

“How about you and Jake? Do you think you’ll ever get back together?”

She stiffened at the personal question, then relaxed her shoulders when she admitted to herself that she’d been just as nosy. “I don’t think so. No, I know that we won’t. Neither of us could go through that again.”

“You still love him.” It was a statement, not a question.

She sighed. “I’ll probably always love him in some ways, but I—we—can’t live together. And he’s engaged to someone else . . . I think. But, really, I don’t want to talk about Jake.”

She sensed his unspoken “Why?”

Because it hurts so bad.

Caleb stared at her for a long moment; then he surprised the spit out of her by saying, “I want to make love with you.”

Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez, jeez, jeez!
“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Her voice had a strange wobble to it.

Instead of replying, he extended a hand to her.

She stared at the hand.

I am tempted. I am so freakin’ tempted.

But I don’t do casual.

Yeah, but maybe it’s time to try something different.

But, whoo-boy, making love with this particular guy? I don’t know. It’s like going from the kiddie dating pool to the Olympic diving event, all in one swoop.

Jake wouldn’t hesitate.

That last thought triggered her decision. She dropped the blanket, laced her fingers with his, and let him pull her over; he settled her astride his lap, facing him.

Caleb was a well-built man. Probably had zero body fat. And there was a part of him that was particularly impressive. She shifted to confirm that fact.

He jerked against her, then framed her face with his hands, pulling her down for a kiss. As kisses went, it was great. Slow at first. Urging. Then hungry. Then his hands slipped under her T-shirt and weighed her breasts in both hands, thumbing her nipples into sharp points.

He was aroused.

She was aroused.

And it just didn’t feel right. That fact was emphasized by the quiet tears that slipped from her eyes.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, pulling back and wiping away the moisture with his fingers. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not ready for this.”

He looked as if he wanted to change her mind, but then he kissed her lightly and set her back on her feet. “I understand. Maybe some other time?”

She nodded, started to walk off, then turned back. “I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”

He quirked a brow.

“You know . . .” She waved a hand at the chair they’d been sitting on.

He still didn’t seem to understand. “Do you mean impulse fucking?”

Okaaay!
With a weak laugh, she said, “Not quite the words I would have used, but, yes.”

She went back to her bunk. Alone.

It was a long time before she fell asleep.

Chapter
13

THE COWBOY WEDDING

Nine years and three months ago . . .

She was in Aruba for a vacation.

Her marriage had lasted three years. It had been nine months since the divorce.

Jake showed up wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a dimpled grin that said “I dare you.” Why that attire? Some kind of themed poker tournament, of all things.

They decided to have a drink for old time’s sake. Her first mistake.

Jake happened to mention he was studying tantric sex.

There was a wedding chapel across the highway from her hotel, flashing a neon sign that said, “Quick Weddings.”

Cowboy and sex.

Enough said!

Suffice it to say that she and Jake ended up in her hotel suite a few hours later, married again.

They were sitting on the floor in the lotus position, facing each other. Naked, except for the cowboy hat Jake wore at her insistence. And her grandmother’s pearls, which she wore at his insistence.

Yippee-kay-ay-aye . . . and then some!

“Stop giggling,” Jake told her. “You’re supposed to take this seriously.”

Hard to do when your you-know-what is pointing at me.
“And the point of all this is . . . what?”

“To prolong ejaculation so the woman can have unending orgasms.”

“I like the sound of that. But poor you!”

“No, it’s great, or it’s supposed to be. No-penetration sex.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, then homed in on one word he’d used. “
Supposed
to be great. Don’t you know for sure?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “You’re the first woman I’ve been able to talk into this crap.”

“You!” She launched herself at him, but he caught her in his arms and rolled them both over so that she lay on top of him.

“So, lady,” he said then, “did you come to my ranch to ride, or what?”

“I didn’t bring my saddle.”

“No problem. I can show you how to ride bareback . . . uh, I mean, bare-assed.” He walked his fingers up her leg, bringing long-dormant nerve endings to life, like flowers after a spring rain.

She smiled at her fancifulness.

He smiled back at her.

As his eyes roamed her body, something pulled deeply inside.

Jake jackknifed into a sitting position with her still straddling his lap. He held her tight, as though he never wanted to let her go. “I missed you so much!” he said against her neck.

“You broke my heart,” she told him, holding on just as tightly to him. “Don’t leave again.”

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she said over and over. Or was it him?

All she knew was, frozen places were melting in both of them. They would make it work this time. They would.

Chapter
14

Aliens invaded his brain . . . or God’s big toe . . .

Jake was having the time of his life. Not!

The first day was a blast. The wind in his hair, good vibrations under his butt, just like he’d predicted at the beginning of this road trip. And freedom. Precious freedom. Not to mention good friends on either side of him, tooling down the highway.

No lingering regrets over Trish. No yearnings for Ronnie. He was his own man. He didn’t need no stinkin’ relationships.

That mood lasted about half a day.

Then they passed through the Poconos, and he recalled the time he and Ronnie had gone camping. She’d lost her panties to a wily squirrel, and he’d lost his cool over what she’d done to him with s’mores.

He and Angel and Grace stayed in a motel on the Ohio border that first night. As he lay on the lumpy mattress, his arms folded under his neck, he was reminded of the first apartment he and Ronnie had rented. The box springs under the lumpy mattress made so much noise when they made love that a tenant downstairs complained to the landlord: “They’re like a bunch of fuckin’ rabbits up there.” They’d put the mattress on the floor after that.

The next day, the three biker musketeers, the self-proclaimed holy trinity of poker idols, decided to make a detour to Louisiana before heading to Las Vegas.
Some detour!
They ended up in Nashville. And, no offense to Elvis, but all Jake heard was country music I-Can’t-Live-with-You, I-Can’t-Live-without-You love songs.
Yep! That about sums it up for me.
Grace tried to talk him into a visit to Graceland, which he politely declined. Before he fell asleep that night, music floated up from the bar downstairs. Ronnie wasn’t a huge country music fan, but she did like some of it, and the Patsy Kline classic “Cryin’” was one of her favorites.
Which is precisely what I feel like doing.

For lunch the next day, in Mississippi, he ordered a black and blue burger. And he wasn’t even thinking that it was the way Ronnie liked her meat cooked.
Hah!

They hit New Orleans on the fourth day, which just happened to be the site of his fourth wedding—the Insanity Marriage.
I need this reminder like I need another couple of weddings under my belt. Shit!

They were now on their second day in the Big Easy. The gambling was good in the steamboat casino. The food melted in their mouths—piles of spicy crawfish, oyster po’boys, gumbo, jambalaya, and sweet pralines. The rowdy Cajun music put a smile on everyone’s face, and the French Quarter jazz was out of this world.

So why am I so miserable?

“Why are you so miserable?” the seemingly clairvoyant Angel asked him. They were eating breakfast on the terrace of their French Quarter hotel, crawfish and eggs, of all things, seasoned with Cajun lightning, or Tabasco sauce. The young waitress was doing everything but stand on her head to get Angel’s attention; he did have a way of attracting everything in skirts, especially the young ones who sensed his bad-boy aura—or so Angel kept telling them ad nauseam.

“I’m not miserable,” he lied.

“You are the most piss-poor liar in the world.” Angel laughed.

Grace laughed, too, then put a hand on Jake’s forearm. “What’s the matter, Jake?”

He thought about telling them to mind their own business. He wasn’t about to open a vein for them. But then he decided,
These are my friends. They care.

“Something strange is happening to me. I’m in the middle of some kind of emotional fallout,” he admitted. “Maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe aliens have invaded my body.”

Angel and Grace looked at each other. They must have been discussing him.

“This is about Ronnie, right?” Angel tipped his chair back against the hotel wall and sipped at a cup of thick Creole coffee. The gloating expression on his face made Jake want to kick the leg of Angel’s chair and land him on his laughing ass.

“What else!” he replied with self-disgust. “Though why, after two years of not seeing her and my getting engaged to another woman, it should hit me again . . .” He shrugged. “I just don’t friggin’ understand it.”

“God is giving you a nudge with his big toe,” Grace diagnosed.

“Say what?”

“God has plans for you. I’ve told you all along that Ronnie is your wife, despite all the divorces. God’s getting tired of the way you keep mangling things. So, he’s giving you a push.”

Jake’s mouth dropped open with shock. Yeah, she had been a nun at one time, but she had to be kidding about this religious bunk. “So, that’s your story?”

“And I’m sticking to it.”

“You should listen to her,” Angel said. “She has an in with the Big Guy.”

“I do not,” Grace protested. “Some things are just obvious.”

“Not so obvious to me,” Jake grumbled. “I can’t go through this again. I’m still raw from our last divorce.”

“Doesn’t that tell you something?” Grace shook her head at his defeatist attitude.

“Ya do what ya gotta do.” That was Angel’s half-assed advice, which was almost as bad as the God’s toe business.

“Listen, Jake, you love Ronnie; she loves you.” This from Grace. “That’s more than most marriages in trouble have to go on. It’s a foundation, for heaven’s sake. Build from there.” Grace was getting exasperated with him. He was exasperated with himself.

“Easy for you to say.”

“No, it’s not easy for me to say. I wish I had someone in my life to love me the way you and Ronnie love each other.”

Grace was getting riled up, and Angel didn’t help matters when he offered, “I’ll love you.”

“Get a life,” Grace said. “Like I’d ever stand in your sex line.”

“I beg your pardon.” Angel really appeared to be offended.

Jake laughed, glad to have the attention away from him. But that didn’t last long.

“I never did understand what keeps breaking you and Ronnie up,” Angel said. “Bad sex?”

It was just like Angel to think about sex. The horndog.

“No, sex has always been great with us.”

“Holy crap, what’s wrong with you two, then? Love and sex, what more do you want?” Angel gazed at him as if he were a peculiar bug under a microscope.

“Angel, sometimes you are a world-class jerk.
Bad sex?
” Grace mimicked. Then she turned to Jake. “Is it the poker?”

“Partly. Correction, it was a big reason with our first marriage. I was doing extreme stuff in the beginning. Putting a second mortgage on the house to fund my gambling, that kind of thing.”

Grace and Angel understood. Lots of professional gamblers took foolish risks at first. Angel, for example, lost his auto body shop. Grace did some nutty things while still in the convent.

“Are you addicted? Are you low on cash? Do you even enjoy the game anymore? Do you
need
to gamble . . . for the money, I mean?” Talk about cutting right to the bone! Angel should know better, though.

“This last tournament, on top of my last book deal, put me over the million-dollar mark. I’ve salted most of it away in safe stocks and won’t touch that for gambling—ever. I still have a hundred thou in seed money for poker.” He wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know. In truth, the three of them had done extremely well the past two years.

“Have you told Ronnie that?” Grace asked.

“No.” He’d be damned if he tried to get her back that way. If she didn’t want him with all his warts, well, screw her. “Besides, that wasn’t our only problem.”

“If you offered to give it up—don’t look at me like that—would she come back to you?” Grace asked.

“I doubt it. And, dammit, yes, I could walk away. But I don’t want to. I think I’ll always want to play, at least occasionally.”

“There are two sides to every story. What does Ronnie do to contribute to your breakups?” Grace sure was being persistent today.

“She can be so priggish sometimes. She picks fights with me. She thinks poker is worthless, which pretty much means she thinks I’m worthless. Her grandmother gives witches a bad name, which means Ronnie probably has witch genes. Her grandfather is a nutcase, which means she probably has nut genes, too. Other than that, she’s perfect.”

They both smiled at his portrayal of Ronnie, not believing for one minute that he thought so little of her.

Just then, his cell phone rang. He opened the lid, hoping it wasn’t Trish again. She kept calling, and he didn’t know what to say to her. But, no, it was a strange number, with a New Jersey area code.

“Jensen here,” he said into the phone.

“Jake, is that you?” It was Frank. He must be using someone’s cell phone.

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you?”

“Out on
Sweet Jinx.
We started the Pink Project on Monday.”

“Out? You mean on the ocean?”

“Where else, dumbbell? Did you think we took the boat to the mall?”

Frank’s sarcasm annoyed him, but he put that aside. “Uh, who’s there with you?”

“Brenda, Flossie, LeDeux, Peachey, Famosa, and . . .”

Jake held his breath.

“And Ronnie.”

“On a boat? Ronnie’s out on a boat?”

“Yep. And she’s lovin’ it.”

Jake couldn’t believe his ears. Ronnie had this real fear of water. She could swim but preferred not to. And there was her nausea when near water. “Bet she’s inhaling Pepto by the gallon.”

“She was at first, but now she’s okay.”

“Really?” That irritated him. Ronnie shouldn’t be changing while he wasn’t around to see it. Good thing he didn’t say that aloud. Even he could see how immature that would sound.

“Listen, the battery on Brenda’s satellite phone is runnin’ low. I just called to tell you that you better get your ass here pronto. Ronnie’s about to make a big mistake.”

The fine hairs rose on the back of his neck. “What kind of mistake?”

“Sex.”

“Whaaaat?”
Should I ask him? No! Yes! Dammit, how does he always trap me like this?

“These two guys are sniffing around her, like hounds on a poodle.”

“What two guys?”
Like I don’t know.

“Famosa and Peachey. She already had a date with Famosa, but Peach is the one about to score . . . I think.”

Score? Oh, shit! Does he mean . . . What else could he mean?
“Uh . . . what exactly do you mean by ‘score’?”

Frank said something so crude and graphic that Jake felt his face turn red, and he hardly ever blushed. “How do you know? They’re probably just friends.”

Frank snorted into the telephone. “I’m old, not dead. Don’t you think I can tell when a guy’s got sex on his mind? And that Peach, he could give you a run for your money. Flossie says he has a butt you could crack walnuts on, and Brenda says she heard SEALs can last like two hours in the sack.”

I do not friggin’ believe this.
“What do you want me to do?”

“Do you still love her?”

He refused to answer. But he began to finger the worry beads in his pocket.

“This might be your last chance.”

The line went dead.

He was clutching those beads so hard he would probably have dents in his palm.

Angel and Grace looked at him with interest.

“Frank says Ronnie is out on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and you know how scared she is of water. Plus, the old fart says Ronnie is about to get it on with some guy who has a butt that could crack walnuts. And he has the staying power of a . . . Navy SEAL.”

Both their jaws dropped as they gaped at him. Then they burst out laughing.

“I should probably go back and help her. She’s probably terrified, being on the open seas and everything.”

They continued to laugh.

“And, really, Ronnie is naive when it comes to men. She needs me to check the guy out.”

They weren’t buying his motives one bit and went on laughing like hyenas. He thought about throwing his worry beads at them.

“He says this is my last chance.”

They stopped laughing.

He left for home that night.

YMCA, YMCA . . .

Three days later, they still hadn’t located the exact site. Frank sensed they would soon, and his instincts were always good.

He got up before dawn and checked all the equipment that would be used on board once the divers went down, even though they had been checked and rechecked before. A person couldn’t be too careful on a diving operation.

He decided to do his morning push-ups before everyone else awakened. The sun just came over the horizon when he began. A small orange ball against a pale blue palette. Scenes like this convinced him there was a God. “One, two, three . . .”

“Oh, good Lord!” someone shrieked, and he fell flat to the deck like a pancake.

He got up on all fours, clumsily, then managed to sit down, even though his knees and other parts of his body protested. Turning, he saw Ronnie. “What the hell’s wrong with you, girl? Now I have to start over.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Probably.”

“You’re exercising with a cigar in your mouth,” she pointed out, as if he didn’t know.

“It’s not lit.”

“You’re seventy-five years old.”

“So?”

“It isn’t safe for you to exert yourself that way. Is it?”

“Now you’re going to worry about me? Pfff!”