19 Headed for Trouble (18 page)

“I’m kinda here to see you,” he told her, actually physically bracing himself—as if he expected her to slam the door in his face.

Or maybe it was his eyes that reminded her of whiskey—an intoxicating swirl of brown and gold, in a face that wasn’t exactly handsome, yet still managed to make women swoon in the street as he passed by. It was his smile. Boyish. Mischievous. Warm. Inclusive. When Jack Lloyd smiled, even the wary way he was smiling now, it made people feel as if he were sharing a private joke, only with them.

And yes, she
was
standing there, transfixed, like some hapless rodent mesmerized by a king cobra.

She found her voice, which, if it had a flavor, would no doubt be something stupid, like mustard. The bland yellow kind. Not the spicy brown stuff that you got in a good New York–style deli.

“It’s really not a good time,” Arlene told him, even as he pushed past her and walked into the apartment. Which was when her famous redhead’s temper flared. “I have
nothing
to say to you, Jack. And there’s absolutely nothing that you could say to me that would—”

“Maggie emailed me, about a month ago,” Jack told her, which worked to shut her up.
Maggie
emailed him? “She said you were coming home, but only for a short time—that you were going to have to go back almost immediately. What’s up with that?”

Arlene struggled to make sense of his words. Maggie
emailed
him? His smile was gone, and his eyes were void of amusement—this wasn’t some big funny that he was trying to pull on her, the way he and Will used to do, back when they were in college and she was barely older than Maggie was now. She focused on his question, and tried to explain. “It’s a new program. We get to come home for a relatively brief visit, with the understanding that we’ll have significantly longer than the usual six months between our next tours. People were running into trouble in terms of finding short-term employment, knowing they were going to redeploy, so …” She shook her head. “Why did Maggie email you?”

“She doesn’t want you going back to Iraq,” Jack informed her—as if Arlene didn’t know that. “And she’s a pretty smart kid. She figured out a way that you won’t have to.”

Oh, Maggie
. She shook her head. “There’s no way that—”

Jack cut her off. “Yeah, actually, Leen, there is. I did some research, and Maggie’s right. Regulation 635-200. You won’t go back. In fact, you can get out for good.” He cleared his throat. “If you’re pregnant.”

And there they stood, in Will’s living room—Arlene stunned into silence, Jack waiting, patiently, for her to regain use of her vocal cords.

Pregnant?

“Oh, God,” Arlene said. “Please tell me that Maggie didn’t—”

“Yep. She did.” He smiled, but it was tight. “It was one hell of an email. Thank God I was sitting down at the time.”

She knew the feeling. Her world had tilted, and she now fumbled for a seat. “I’m so sorry. Oh, my God, she is so dead.”

Jack sat on the other end of the sofa—her sofa that had once filled the tiny Cambridge apartment that she’d shared with a much shorter Maggie. He sank back into the soft cushions, yet still managed to look too big to fit there comfortably. “Give her a break, Leen. She doesn’t want you coming home in a box.”

“How did she …?”

It didn’t make sense. Maggie had never known about the night—singular—that Arlene had spent with Jack. It had happened while the girl was visiting her grandparents. And God knows Arlene had never spoken of it to anyone, never so much as whispered Jack’s name in Maggie’s presence.

But her brother and Jack were close—although no longer as close as they’d been as roommates at Boston University. They both currently worked as reporters for the
Boston Globe
, so it made sense that Maggie would’ve met Jack at
some
point, but still …

“I met Maggie at the wedding,” Jack explained. “Robin and Jules. Last December? I told her I knew you, and …” He shrugged. “I kinda let slip the fact that you and I had, um, a thing.”

“A thing,” Arlene repeated.

“Yeah,” Jack admitted, making an
oops
face. “And I also may have said something about, you know, about my, well, kinda still having a thing. You know. For you.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Jack was totally screwing this up. Considering he was an award-winning journalist, he’d just delivered the lamest, vaguest declaration of love in the entire history of the world.

And he could see from the disbelief in Arlene’s eyes that she was seconds from losing it and kicking his well-dressed ass out the door.

“You
told
my
daughter—
”

“That I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he finished for her, afraid to be more precise in defining exactly what he was feeling and had felt for going on over a decade now, because it was clear that Arlene wasn’t going to fall into his open arms in the immediate future. He’d had that chance, two years ago, and had completely blown it back then. “Yes. We were talking and … I wanted to know how you were.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she shot back, “although still missing my favorite pair of underpants.”

And there it was—the moment of truth. “Okay,” Jack said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and calm. “Good. Let’s put everything out on the table. Let’s talk about that night. I want to tell you about what happened to me the day after.”

She shook her head vehemently. “Let’s not. Let’s stay on topic and …” He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “Will told me he saved your life,” she said. “Last November. That you were in Afghanistan and—”

“He’s got nothing to do with this.” Jack knew where she was going. She assumed Will was the mastermind of this crazy plot. Truth was, he hadn’t even mentioned it to Will. Probably because Will would have shut it down, fast, and Jack had had this completely insane spark of hope that Arlene would welcome the chance to stay
home—after getting over the initial shock that her daughter had approached Jack for stud services. “This was all Maggie’s idea.”

Arlene wasn’t convinced. “Why are you dressed up?” she asked suspiciously.

He looked down at his wool-covered legs, at the bright silk of his tie. “I wanted to, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Look nice?”

“So that I’d have sex with you,” she concluded. Good old point-blank Arlene. Why couldn’t he be attracted to the shy, reserved type? “You wore it because you were wearing a suit that night.”

He had been. That night.

He’d just won an award for a newspaper story he’d written on the health-care crisis. He’d been giddy, not just from the award, but because he was being recognized for writing about something that mattered.

After the award dinner, purely by chance, he’d run into Arlene downtown, near Copley Square, getting out of work from what she said was a temporary second job, filling in for a waitress friend at a local restaurant.
She’d
been wearing jeans and a clingy tank top, sandals on her feet, her red curls loose around her shoulders, her smile filled with sunlight and …

But Jack couldn’t for the life of him remember the underwear she’d had on that incredible night. Black or purple. He’d have thought the color would have been permanently burned into his brain. Black—or purple—against the paleness of her smooth, perfect skin, as she’d tumbled back with him, onto his bed.

As he’d done what he’d been dying to do for years and years and
years
—to bury himself inside of her, to see her beautiful hair spilled across his pillows, to know that the smile that sparkled in her eyes was just for him.

Her eyes weren’t sparkling now. In fact, they were narrowed. She was looking pretty grim. And tired.
Haunted, no doubt, from all she’d done and seen over the past long months, living in a war zone.

And Jack knew that if he had any chance at all here, it would come because he told her the truth, so he said, “Yeah. I wore the suit because you told me that night that I looked good in a suit, that it made you want to, you know, take
off
my suit and—”

“I remember what I said,” she cut him off, then swore, because her redhead’s complexion made it impossible for her to hide a blush. Yeah, she not only remembered what she’d said, she obviously remembered what they’d done after she’d said it.

Jack remembered, too. Vividly. In glorious Technicolor. Except for the color-of-her-panties part.

“I didn’t call you back,” he told her quietly, “because Becca threatened to kill herself. I made a really bad mistake, a few nights before you and I hooked up. She came over to my place, and … I thought it was … you know, once more for old times’ sake? It was stupid.
I
was stupid—I’ll be the first to admit that. I should have known better. But then when she …” It had been a nightmare—his ex-wife’s phone calls, her threats, his fear that she just might be crazy enough to do it. His twisted reasoning that she truly must’ve still loved him … “She’s the mother of my kids, Leen. I thought I needed to give it one more shot—regardless of what I really wanted. Which absolutely was you.”

She didn’t believe him. He could tell from the way she was nodding. “You could have written a note. Sent my panties back.”

Crap. “Would you believe me if I told you I wanted to keep them?”

She laughed in his face. “For Becca to find? No.”

“Yeah, that would’ve been bad,” he admitted. “But I did. Want to keep them. That’s not why I didn’t send them to you, though. It’s actually …” He just had to
say it. “See, I, um, found
two
on my floor. Black and purple. I didn’t know which was—”

“That,” Arlene interrupted him, standing up and crossing toward the door, “I believe.”

Jack stayed in his seat, determined that she hear him out. “The others were Becca’s, and … I swear, Arlene, that night? I was certain my marriage was over and done. We’d been separated for six
months
. I spoke to a lawyer earlier that week—”

“Thanks for dropping by.”

He tried a new tack. “Maggie says you’re home only for a month.”

She opened the door. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. It’s time for you to go.”

“You know, if we worked hard at it, I’m pretty sure I could get you pregnant in that timeframe.”

“Joke’s over, Jack.” Arlene was getting seriously pissed.

But he still didn’t move. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “I should have called you,” he said. “I was wrong, and I regret it. If I could do it over, and do it differently, I would. I would call you and I would explain, and I would …” He had to clear his throat. He closed his eyes and he just said it. “I would tell you how much that night meant to me, and how badly I wanted to have other nights, just like it, for the next fifty years.”

She shook her head, unrelenting, but then said, “You broke up with Becca a year ago. It never occurred to you to call me then?”

Hope shifted inside of him, just the slightest spark of life inside a miniscule seed, ready, with the least bit of encouragement, to grow. She’d obviously kept track of him. Asked Will for information.

“You were seeing what’s-his-name,” he pointed out. “Peter. The idiot.”

“If you thought he was such an idiot,” she countered, hands on her hips, “why not kick down my door and—”

“I thought you were in love with him. Will told me it was serious.”

She laughed her surprise, turning it into a scoff. “It wasn’t.”

“Yeah, well, Will told me it was.” Jack was unable to hide his frustration. “He told me you were happy and I …” He held her gaze, imploring her to believe him. “I wanted you to be happy, Leen, so I stayed away.”

That shut her up. In fact, she shut the open door, too, coming back to stand in the middle of the living room. But now her arms were folded across her chest—he was far from winning.

“So when you found out that Peter was a thing of the past,” she finally said, “you immediately emailed me …? Except, wait, you didn’t.”

“I found out that Peter was a thing of the past,” he told her, a touch testily himself, “when Maggie emailed
me
, asking if I was interested in
knocking
you up.” He glanced at his watch. “She’s going to call, in about two minutes, to tell you to have dinner without her—that her rehearsal’s going to run late.”

Arlene was horrified. “You didn’t actually tell her that you’d—”

“Yeah, right.”

She was apparently unable to process sarcasm right at that moment, so he clarified. “Of course I didn’t. But I did tell her I was going to come here and …” The ring he’d bought was burning a hole in his inside pocket, but he wasn’t supposed to throw the damn thing at her. He was supposed to go heavy on the romance, get down on his knees. No, there was a time and place for everything, and that ring box was staying deep in his pocket. At least for now. “Talk to you,” he finished, since she was waiting, impatiently for the end of his sentence.

“Hey, how are you. It’s been a while. Let’s have sex so I can get you pregnant, because a thirteen-year-old thought that would be a good idea.”

Okay. Apparently he was wrong. Arlene was completely capable of dishing out the sarcasm, even if she wasn’t able to take it.

“No, actually, my plan was to say,
Hey, how are you? It’s been a while. I’m still as crazy about you as I’ve always been and for the first time in what feels like forever we’re both single at the same time, so what do you say we put a new spin on the relationship thing and see if we can’t get it to work by getting married—to each other this time.”

And that had done it—Jack had completely stunned her. He’d managed to stun himself, too, having all but resolved, mere seconds ago, not to mention the M-word.

But now that he had, he might as well go big. He reached into his jacket pocket for the ring box, opened it, and set it on the coffee table, in front of her.

She slowly lowered herself into Will’s ugly-ass Barca-Lounger, her eyes huge in her too-thin but still-beautiful face. She didn’t say anything, she just stared at him.

And okay. If he were going to be rejected, he might as well make his humiliation complete. He got down on his knees on the carpeting in front of her and took her hand. Her fingers were cold as he interlaced them with his own. “Marry me, Arlene,” he whispered.