“In overalls,” Dakota said, gasping a little, because his mouth had found her favorite spot on her neck. “And … painter’s goggles. And, uh … knee pads.”
“Yeah,” Blake said, getting rid of her bra. “Somebody sexy like that. How do you feel about doing it on the floor, darlin’?”
“I’m all … good with that,” she said. “As long as I’m not on the bottom.”
He sighed. “Well, a man’s got to sacrifice. Get those jeans off. If I’m going to be on the bottom, you’d better be all the way naked, because I’m going to need a view.”
After that, he got a little distracted from the Jennifer topic. He figured he’d give it a shot, though, the setup thing. He didn’t have to tell Dakota. Not unless it worked out. Then, he’d tell her for sure, because he’d have won.
And he did like winning.
3
Fancy Free
Jennifer stoppedat the gym on the way home. She wasn’t always the best about that, but better late than never. Because—job hunting. And never mind that her heart sank into her stomach and she got those panic flutters at the thought. You were proactive, that was all there was to it, and if you were going on interviews, you made sure your best skirt wasn’t tight around the waist. People noticed that sort of thing, and besides, she hated Spanx.
Was it too late to get in no-Spanx shape before her layoff?
Yes. But still.
That was why, though, she did the stair climber,notthe elliptical machine, on which you went more slowly when you got to a good part of your book and which was, let’s face it, the closest thing there was to dawdling along the sidewalk as you read said book. She’d beenwaytoo out of breath on those stairs today. She wasn’t any older than Blake Orbison, and if he could spring up them two at a time, she could at least not gasp like a dying guppy as she dragged herself to the top.
Right. Torture Stairs climbed, a quick shower, after which her face remained red but too bad, and one final stop at the grocery store where, tossing a pound of flank steak (Reduced for Quick Sale!) into her cart, she wondered at what point in her life shewouldn’tstop at the grocery store on the way home from work.
The point, maybe, when she was responsible only for herself, dressed in breezy, wide-legged trousers with a jacket thrown casually over her slim(mer) shoulders, having a quick meal of Chinese vegetables at a tiny hole-in-the-wall known only to locals before stepping briskly into the elevator of her modern apartment block, furnished with her usual cool, modern sensibility in tones of gray-blue and chalk-white.
(Ha. As if. Hey, it was adaydream.)
Should all that sound lonely and sad? Why did it sound good instead? Because Blake had made her think about it, that was why.
She’d spent so many bleary-eyed nights, when Dyma had been a colicky baby, watching 70s sitcoms on late-night cable. Turned down low, so her mom and grandpa could sleep. She’d held her red-faced, grumpy infant with her shock of black hair that always stuck straight up and her legs that stuck straightoutwhen she was mad, which was most of the time, thought about waking up at seven for school the next day, which was in about four hours, triednotto think about how differently this was turning out from what she’d imagined, and watched Mary Tyler Moore in her perfectly neat, elegantly arranged apartment, with a big M on the wall that proclaimed that this was a space that belonged to her and only her, hanging out with her work colleagues who were like family, at a job that always looked like fun, then talking things over with her wisecracking best friend. She’d thought how incredibly glamorous that life would be, and how she wasn’t ever going to have it.
Mary’s life hadn’t actually been anything close to glamorous, she realized now. LessSex in the Cityand Manolo Blahniks and moreA Quiet Existence in the Midwest.Maybe that was the point, though. It had seemed attainable.
Well, in somebody else’s reality. Except that her life was fine. She’d done great. Everybody always said how great she’d done. Everybody except her mom, who’d said, only a week or two before she’d suddenly succumbed to the heart attack caused by the lupus that had plagued her for so long, “You should get out of here, you know, spread your wings. Once Dyma graduates, why not? What’s holding you here?”
“Well, you,” Jennifer had answered. “Grandpa. Everybody. Also, I have a great job now. Hey, this is my big step, right? I’m doing great.”
“Except that you’re still here,” Adele had said.
“I like it here,” Jennifer had answered.
Her mom had just looked at her. Now, she remembered that look as she threw a max pack of TP and a bag of coffee into her cart, then a packet of egg noodles and a pint of light sour cream, a half-gallon of OJ, two family-size boxes of not-quite-Cheerios and two gallons of milk—feeding milk goats would have been more economical than Dyma’s milk habit, and how could one teenage girl go through that much cereal? She added a few regular old white mushrooms, wondered what the fancy ones actually tasted like, threw in some anemic-looking February tomatoes, looked at the avocadoes, and looked away again. She didn’t need to be buying any avocadoes, fat-wiseormoney-wise. She didn’t need to be making beef stroganoff, for that matter, but her grandpa liked it, and she might be feeling a little bit guilty about even entertaining the Mary Tyler Moore idea. He knew about it, too, thanks to Blake’s decision to barge in and mention his plan before he’d even talked to Jennifer about it. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to put off the discussion.
She just wished her mom were still here.
Always.
Was it wrong to miss your mom so much, when she’d been struggling so long and had only been hanging on for the three of you? When you were thirty-four, with a grown child of your own?
It was just that without her, without that person who’d loved you always and would love you forever, you felt so alone. Your buffer against the world, your safe place … it was gone.
It wasn’t true. She still had her grandpa. She still had Dyma. Blake was going to help her get a new job. She was doing great. Lots of people were worse off.
She added some broccoli to the cart. Dyma had been making noises about becoming a vegetarian lately. Hopefully she’d wait until she started college for that. Broccoli was cheap in February, though. Good for you, too. Nutritiousandlow-calorie. It had that bristly thing going on, and all those little sandy particles, but never mind.
What kind of restaurant did the Snow Lodge at Yellowstone have? Didn’t matter. Afreerestaurant, that was what. Maybe she should feel guilty about allowing Blake to send her off on this obviously trumped-up vacation, but she couldn’t. Shewasgood at her job, she’d worked hard for him, and anyway, Blake was a grown man who did what he wanted. If he wanted to send her off to look at wild animals for a couple days, who was she to object? She’d be broke again soon enough, especially with Dyma’s housing to pay for—another stab of pure fear at that one—unless she took him up on the Portland idea.
