Valentine's Child (17 page)

Headlights flashed around the corner. Jake squinted in the direction of the approaching car, decided he didn’t give a good goddamn about them, either, and let himself into the house, half falling over the threshold.

Once in the foyer he remembered the mud on his shoes but it was too late. The gleaming patina of the polished oak was smeared with sloppy clumps of muck, and the fringed edge of the octagonal Oriental carpet was dark brown and wet.

“Whoops.” Wrinkling his nose, he removed his shoes, nearly losing his balance in the process and swearing good-naturedly at his own drunkenness.

Sharp footsteps sounded like a rain of bullets. They approached from the rear of the house, Patrice’s sitting room. Jake stood to attention, thought it might be amusing to salute, then found himself swaying in front of both Patrice and Caroline, hand at his brow.

Their mouths were twin ovals of horror.

Whoops again.

“J.J.!” His mother hissed.

“Oh, Jake,” Caroline murmured, turning away.

Suddenly he remembered he was supposed to meet Caroline tonight. Dinner, he recalled. Or was that last night? Nope, last night she’d been out of town.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Where have you been?” Patrice demanded.

“Out drinking?” he suggested. Thinking he was the epitome of humor, he started laughing, ignoring the heated silence from the two women in the room.

Two women in his life.

What’s best for you.

He shuddered. And then the doorbell rang.

“Someone’s on the porch,” Patrice snapped, frowning. “Did you leave the gate open?”

Jake shook his head, then nodded, deciding, yes, he had left the gate open.

“Our reservation was for eight,” Caroline reminded him a tad frostily.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Jake answered as a soft rap sounded on the front door. “I’ll get it,” he added magnanimously, but Patrice, after shooting him a look that could cut through steel, opened the door herself.

“Oh!” she said, surprised.

Jake peered around her and nearly fell over. Sherry stood on the other side of the threshold, her hair windblown, rain darkening the shoulders of her black jacket, looking gorgeously wanton and refreshing as sea air.

“May I come in?” she asked, her gaze searching out Jake. Those blue-purple eyes made contact and Jake felt his stomach seize up.

“By all means,” he invited with a sweeping gesture of his arm that nearly knocked him over.

“J.J.!” Patrice hissed.

“Jake,” Caroline entreated.

Ignoring them both, he said, “May I take your coat?” Then reached forward to do so. Feeling her skin shiver beneath his fingers, he wondered suddenly if maybe he wasn’t quite drunk enough to deal with the force that was Sherry Sterling.

“What brings you out so late?” Patrice asked her.

Jake blinked at her, wondering why his mother sounded so fearful. What was it about Sherry that sent Patrice into such a state?

“I think you know,” was Sherry’s mystifying answer before she turned to Jake and asked, “Is there somewhere we could go talk alone?”

VALENTINE’S CHILD — NANCY BUSH

Chapter Seven

“I don’t think that would be such a great idea,” J.J. replied, one hand reaching awkwardly for the foyer wall for a means of support.

“J.J. is not in any state to go out,” Patrice declared tightly.

“I can make my own decisions, thank you very much,” he told her amiably. “I’m going to head into the salon. Why don’t you all join me?”

Sherry watched J.J. move into the gilded room at the southwest corner of the house. She’d made a mistake. Once again. Although at least this time she could console herself with the thought that she’d had no way of knowing J.J. wouldn’t be sober. Instead of relief, however, she felt annoyance and frustration. She wanted to unburden herself, and she wanted to do it now because she had a very serious fear that given enough time her craven heart would take over and she would chicken out entirely..

Patrice Beckett had aged. Little wonder; they’d all aged. But the fire that had sustained her still burned. Sherry could practically feel its heat coming from the woman in waves of hate.

Or was it fear?

Patrice was in on this deception, too, Sherry reminded herself grimly. Patrice had guessed the truth and then had had the gall to try and direct Sherry which path to take.

As she looked up at Patrice now, a flood of uncertain emotions poured through Sherry’s veins. It didn’t help to have Caroline standing behind the woman’s shoulder, a lieutenant in this war with Dragon Lady, the autocratic general.

Sherry quivered inside, as much from J.J.’s unexpected touch when he removed her black jacket, as from the turbulent emotions plaguing her at the sight of her old nemesis.

J.J. had hurt her terribly and he was the reason she’d fled without telling him she was pregnant. But it was Patrice — and Sherry guessed Caroline might be involved in there somewhere, too — who had turned Sherry’s wound into a mortal one. It was Patrice who had ultimately forced Sherry to leave town.

She’d actually come to Sherry’s home a few days after Sherry’s ignominious appearance at the Beckett dinner party — shown up on a hot June night dressed in a lavender silk suit. She’d come from church, she said, although it was a Wednesday night and Sherry had never known Patrice Beckett to be an avid churchgoer. She’d come to offer Sherry money in order to drive her out of J.J.’s life forever. But the money was nothing compared to the pain Sherry was already feeling from J.J.’s belief that she could play such terrible games.

So, now, with Patrice’s blue eyes staring her down and memories swirling like dust devils, Sherry remembered everything — the lies, the hurt, the money and the deception. The guilt that had been eating at her had lessened over the years because although she was partially at fault, she’d been barely
eighteen
whereas Patrice had been a grown woman who should have had some scruples.

“Are you coming?” J.J. asked from the doorway, looking disheveled in a frustratingly sexy way. His hair lopped forward and the grim lines around his mouth were replaced by a hint of dimples. He’d always been way too attractive — blessed by the gods. Wondering what she could possibly accomplish, Sherry took a step after him.

“Wait,” Patrice muttered harshly. “You have no business being here.”

Sherry eyed her adversary. “I have business.”

“What kind of business?” Caroline asked her, her eyes following J.J.’s progress as he threw himself onto a divan at the edge of Sherry’s vision. Unhappiness had drawn fine lines around Caroline’s mouth.

“You’ve been out of J.J.’s life for years,” Patrice said softly, picking her words carefully. So, Caroline didn’t know. It was Patrice’s own dirty little secret. “You can’t come back now without some consequences.”

“Consequences?” Sherry inched her chin upward. She hated confrontation as a rule and prayed she could keep up her bravado. But a traitorous little shudder had begun in her lower limbs, a trembling she could not control although she desperately wanted to appear calm and cool. Patrice had that effect on her. She’d always had that effect on her.

“Caroline, would you mind giving us a minute alone?” Patrice asked.

Caroline looked from Sherry to Patrice. Clearly she was as confused as J.J. about Patrice’s strange aversion to Sherry. Nevertheless, she headed after J.J., but as soon as she was gone Sherry wished her back. Alone with a viper. Dragon Lady. Sherry met Patrice Beckett’s sharp gaze with hot defiance.

“We had a deal,” Patrice said in a low tone.

“You and I never had a deal,” Sherry disagreed.

She thought back to the ten thousand dollars she’d been forced to accept from Patrice once she’d left Oceantides, pregnant and alone. Her aunt Elena had taken pity on Sherry and given her a home in Seattle while Sherry awaited the birth. But when the check arrived from Patrice and Sherry refused to sign it on principle, Elena had taken matters into her own hands and forged Sherry’s signature. Sherry couldn’t believe it, but she didn’t stop it. Aunt Elena insisted they had to do it for Sherry’s mother’s sake. Cynthia Sterling had tried her best to keep the pregnancy a secret from her husband, but when Donald Sterling found out, his wrath was endless. The money helped Cynthia move closer to Elena and Sherry — and far from her abusive husband.

But of course, Patrice Beckett wouldn’t understand that kind of desperation.

“You took the money,” Patrice hissed. “If you break this up now, I’ll demand it all back.”

“And I’ll get it for you,” Sherry answered tautly.

Patrice snorted. “You can’t possibly pay it all back.”

“I don’t have to discuss this with you. It’s J.J. who needs to know the truth.”

“You can’t talk to him now. He’s drunk.” Her mouth said the word as if it tasted bad; her expression seemed to suggest J.J.’s lack of sobriety was entirely Sherry’s fault. “Go home and think about what you’re doing. I mean,
seriously
think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it for fourteen years.” Sherry pushed past her on her way to the salon and J.J.

Caroline was perched next to him on a burgundy divan that looked old and beautiful and expensive, probably a one-of-a-kind antique. J.J. sprawled, legs out, hands dangling between his knees, his eyes half-closed with sleep. Sherry hated to admit that Patrice might actually be right: now wasn’t the time to tell him about Mandy.

“So, how long are you in town?” Caroline asked, smoothing her palms on her dress.

“I’m not sure,” Sherry answered, wondering how many times she’d been asked that question since she’d resurfaced in Oceantides.

“Sherry,” J.J. sang unexpectedly. “Sherry, baby …”

Sherry didn’t know which of them reacted the more violently — herself or Caroline. Caroline flinched so hard she half jumped up from the couch, but Sherry’s intake of breath was a faint gasp. Patrice, who’d stepped into the salon’s archway, looked ashen and old, but J.J. seemed completely unaware of his devastation.

“Still haunting the neighborhood, I see,” he muttered, his gaze narrowing on Sherry in a way that momentarily panicked her. Was he more sober than he let on?

But no, his head flopped toward Caroline, his temple touching one tense shoulder. She reached up to touch him but it was a curiously reluctant gesture, as if she were unfamiliar with the feel of him — her fiancé. There was absolutely no naturalness about Caroline Newsmith at all. She wouldn’t meet Sherry’s eyes, and Sherry, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely, felt her chest constrict painfully.

“It’s been a long time,” Caroline murmured, her smile forced.

“A lifetime,” Sherry agreed

“So, you wanted to see Jake?”

“Well, yes… among other people,” Sherry added, realizing her small lie was to save Caroline embarrassment. Why she cared, she couldn’t say, but Caroline’s petty meanness in high school seemed far away and remote right now; practically nonexistent, as insubstantial as fairy dust.

High school itself was an ancient memory and Sherry marveled that such a brief span of her life had produced such a rage of continuing torment.

It also produced Mandy,
she reminded herself. And Mandy was the reason everything mattered so much to this day. Mandy was a product of intense feelings, and maybe that was why she appeared so intense herself.

“It’s really great to get all misty-eyed over high school, isn’t it?” J.J. declared ironically.

“People move on. Grow up. Change their lives.” This was from Caroline, surprisingly, who seemed to suddenly feel the need to justify her position. “Did you know Roxanne is marrying Matt Hudson? On Valentine’s Day,” she added, unwittingly sending a frisson up Sherry’s spine.

“I heard this morning,” Sherry admitted. “Roxanne invited me to the wedding.”

Caroline’s eyes flared. “Are you going?”

“I… think so,” Sherry said, wondering what devil had suddenly possessed her.

“So, you’re staying in Oceantides then,” J.J. said. Beneath his thick, inscrutable lashes she couldn’t tell if he was watching her or not.

“My business partner wants to make a trade. I take a few weeks off now, she takes a few weeks later.”

“Kind of like a reunion for you,” Caroline suggested. She looked none too happy with the arrangements.

“It’s more like a pilgrimage,” Sherry admitted.

A cool breeze swirled through the room and everyone looked to the doorway where Patrice stood like a statue. Sherry’s fanciful mind wondered if the stirring air was created by her own cold fury, but she could see the front door had cracked back open, and a breath of sea air had swirled inside.

Examining J.J., Patrice demanded, “How long have you been drinking?”

J.J. shot her a glance that would have set a lesser person’s knees to quaking. But Patrice was made of stern stuff. “Not long enough,” he told her. “I’m still conscious.”

“I’m sure you’re making a wonderful impression on our guest.”

“Don’t worry about Sherry,” J.J. said before Sherry could object herself. “She escaped early. Ran right out of town.”

Patrice’s hands fluttered. “It’s not like you to do this sort of thing.”