A Little Bit of Déjà Vu (16 page)

Her memory still held intimate little details about him that she’d learned during the two nights he’d just held her in bed. Like the way he mumbled in his sleep, that he liked the right side of the bed, and he didn’t like the covers tucked around his feet.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I just unconsciously handed it to you that way because Dan drank his black,” she fibbed, praying Emma would never have occasion to mention her father had drunk his coffee light and sweet.

One dark eyebrow raised a fraction. “
Hmmm
….I guess I must’ve been mistaken about the pie I thought I saw in your refrigerator.”

It obviously did wonders for his ego that a woman he’d dismissed so easily had never been able to forget the tiniest details of the four days and three nights she’d spent with him. Cocking her head, she feigned a questioning look. “Oh, do you like pecan pie? That’s wonderful. I was hoping to fatten Emma up. Would you like a slice with your coffee?”

His lips smacked in amusement. “I don’t suggest you quit teaching to pursue a career on the stage, Maggie. I’d love a piece.”

Once she served him a huge wedge, they carried their coffee into the living room. Jake propped his stockinged feet on the coffee table and groaned as he scraped the first taste of his dessert off his fork with his teeth. “Oh, man. This is about the best I’ve ever tasted. Why aren’t you having a piece?”

“Do you know how many calories are in a slice of that?” If she had any hope of shedding some weight before her daughter’s wedding, she didn’t dare even look at dessert. And she was going to have to trade the second half of her sandwich at lunch each day for a walk.

“So then just have a taste of mine.” He captured her lips in another sweet, tantalizing kiss that left her dazed. When he drew back, he murmured, “I’m not looking to rehash our past. I want new memories so I can forget what happened between us.”

Her head spun as he lowered her back on the sofa, his pecan flavored mouth becoming more demanding than before. Curling her fingers into his hard chest, she shivered in response to his tongue leading hers in a frenzied mating dance.

“Look, Mom!”

Chapter 9

Damn. Jake sprang away from Maggie as her daughter burst through the front door. The kids had to have bought the first ring they saw to get back that fast. He glanced at Emma’s outraged face, then at Maggie.

Now what? From the day he’d met this woman, his desire for her had caused nothing but trouble for him.

“How could you do this to Daddy?” Emma’s features twisted in revulsion. “I thought you loved him.”

“I do, Em. I—”

“Emma.” He squeezed Maggie’s hand and lied through his teeth in an attempt to mollify her daughter. “This isn’t what it looks like. I kissed your mom. She didn’t kiss me back.”

“Why would you hit on my mother? You’ve known her one stinking day.”

Telling the girl the truth would only upset her more.

Alex wrapped his arms around Emma. “Angel, calm down.”

“No, I won’t calm down. It’s gross.” Emma spun on Jake again. “You’re going to be my father-in-law, Mr. Manion.”

“That’s right, so why don’t you call me Jake or Dad?”

“No.” Her upper lip curled. “You’re nothing like my dad. He never would’ve come on to my fiancé’s mother.”

Had he likened Emma to a timid kitten the evening before? He never would’ve guessed she could turn into such a fierce little tigress when her family was threatened, which apparently was what she was feeling.

Although her father had been dead for almost two years, the icy hostility chilling her gray eyes said she saw Jake as an interloper in her parent’s marriage, and she wasn’t about to let him off the hook until she was good and ready.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have kissed your mom. When you came in, you wanted to show her your ring. Let’s see it.”

She hesitated, and Alex caressed her cheek. “Em, don’t let what happened spoil the night for you.”

Reluctantly, she thrust her hand under her mother’s nose. “Isn’t it gorgeous? There’s a wedding band that matches.”

Maggie held her daughter’s finger and studied the ring they’d chosen. “It’s beautiful, Sweetie.”

Even with his limited knowledge of diamonds, Jake could tell the tiny stone couldn’t be much more than a quarter carat not counting the little chips running along the white gold band.

Alex shrugged. “I wanted to buy her a bigger one, but silly Emma insisted we should save the money to pay for diapers of all things. Go figure.”

Jake squeezed his son’s shoulder and smiled at Emma. “It’s perfect.”

“Thank you,” Emma forced past her tightlipped smile. Apparently she needed some time to warm back up to him.

“Well, goodnight, ladies.” Jake reached for the doorknob. “We’ll let you get to bed.”

Maggie stopped him. “So I’ll take care of making the arrangements for the reception?”

“No, I want to help you.”

Glancing back at Emma locked in Alex’s embrace, Maggie sniped under her breath, “Why? So you can torture me some more?”

“That wasn’t my plan. But now that you mention it, that sounds quite entertaining. Besides,” Jake winked at her and whispered, “it’s my experience you seem to like my brand of torture.”

He cleared his throat loudly, and Alex and Emma jumped apart. “We thought, since you two have finals coming up and the arrangements have to be made for the wedding as soon as possible, maybe we should take care of booking a caterer and ordering the flowers for you.”

Alex arched his eyebrows at Emma. “Is that okay with you, Angel?”

“I guess so. My mom knows what I like. And after all, they’ll be paying for it. What about you?”

“As long as we get married, I don’t care if we have peanut butter sandwiches and dandelions.”

~~~

The moment Alex started the engine, Jake reached down and flipped off the car stereo so he would have his son’s complete attention. “I’d like to talk to you.”

Alex shifted into reverse and backed out of the parking space. “About?”

“Your mom.”

Closing his eyes, Alex huffed and slammed the stick shift into first gear. “Not again.” The tires squealed as he let out the clutch. “I already told you I’d invite her.”

“It’s not
your
relationship with her that I want to talk about. It’s mine.” If Jake had learned nothing else in his psychology classes it was his son needed to forgive his mother before he could hope to have a good relationship with other women. “You don’t know the whole story. Your mom had no choice but to leave us.”

“Yeah, so you keep telling me.”

“Well, it’s true, damn it. I was slowly driving her out of her mind. She was no good for you the way she was, and she knew it. I’m hoping maybe, now that you’re having a child of your own, you’ll be able to understand she left because she loved you.”

Alex glared at him. “I thought we weren’t talking about
my
relationship with her.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to make you understand that, if you’re going to blame anyone for your mom becoming an addict and leaving, it should be me.”

“Come on, Dad. Lots of men do things that piss off their wives. Other women don’t get strung out over it.”

Jake laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “That’s what you don’t understand. It wasn’t just some annoying habit that drove your mom over the edge.”

“No?” Alex cocked one eyebrow at him. “Then what?”

Jake told him what had happened without mentioning who the woman was or the fact that he’d gotten her pregnant. “You’re a man now, Alex, so I’ll be blunt with you. This girl was like a wet-dream come to life for me.” There was something about Maggie’s sweetness that turned him on like no other woman ever had.

“So why didn’t you just marry her, instead?”

Jakes throat tightened. “She didn’t want me.”

Alex did a double take. “Get out. She dumped you—the NFL’s first draft pick?”

“I couldn’t believe it, either. I’d never been rejected before. At that point, I realized, even though I might not have been cloud-nine in-love with your mom, I did care a lot for her. So I went through with our wedding.”

Jake turned in his seat to face Alex. “When your Uncle Chris teased me in college about talking in my sleep, I figured he meant occasionally.”

“No.” Alex snorted. “You do it a lot. I hear you mumbling all the time at night.”

“I don’t know if it was unresolved bitterness, a wounded ego, or what, but I had a lot of dreams about the woman and talked during them. Even though I loved your mom and tried like hell to be a good husband, she couldn’t handle knowing I wasn’t passionately in love with her.”

“That’s it? She became an addict ‘cause you had the hots for some fantasy woman?”

Jake heaved a deep sigh. “Alex, if Emma started having erotic dreams about some other guy she’d slept with and moaned his name in her sleep, how do you think you would handle it?”

The muscles in his son’s throat visibly convulsed, and he simply nodded.

“I kept this from you at the time because you were so young, but now you need to know your mom was so depressed, she tried to kill herself. The only way she could get better was to get away from me. If she hadn’t, she would’ve ended up dead.”

Alex braked at a traffic signal and pressed his fingers to his eyelids and choked out, “But she didn’t need to get away from
me
.”

Jake looked away from the pain on his son’s face. He probably should’ve waited until they got home, but he’d wanted Alex held captive so he’d be forced to listen to him. “You’re upset. Why don’t you let me drive?”

“No.” Alex wiped his eyes and sniffed. “I’m, okay.”

“Son, your mom couldn’t take care of
herself
, let alone you. She believed you were better off without her. By the time she cleaned up and was ready to be a mother again, you wanted no part of her.”

“Do you blame me? She ignored me for three years.”

“No, I don’t, and neither does she. Believe me, Alex, if I could’ve forced myself to feel more for your mom, I would’ve. Lord knows I tried.”

“But you were in love with that girl.”

“No, I was in
lust
with her.” Jake shrugged. “I’m not proud of any of this. I feel like a deviant telling my kid about my sexual fantasies. But I don’t see any other way to convince you to give your mom a chance.”

Alex turned the Vantage into their driveway and pressed the remote for the garage door as he pulled in. “I promise I’ll try.”

~~~

On the way home from their meeting at the White Glove caterers on Sunday afternoon, Margie stared out the passenger’s side window, treating Jake to a chilly silence. She’d had enough of him running roughshod over her. She should have called her friend Louise and asked her to go with her and left him completely out of this.

By the time they arrived back at her condo, he was clearly fed up with her as well. “I’ve never met anyone with such vivid body language before,” he told her. “What the hell is your problem? You must have a whopping case of PMS.”

Damn him. He’d hit the nail right on its head.

“Isn’t that just like a man? Anytime a woman is annoyed, it’s got to be her hormones.” She jerked her head around to face him. “You want to know what my problem is? It’s
you
, Mister. Where do you get off telling the caterer to bill everything to your credit card?”

“That’s what you’re upset over?”

“Yes. What gives you the right to arbitrarily steal the privilege of paying for my daughter’s wedding?”

“Ex-
cuuse
me.” He swung the SUV into a parking space in front of her unit. “I didn’t realize you considered it an honor to shell out for this shindig.”

“Well, I do. Dan and I were married at the courthouse.” She’d always regretted not having a real ceremony with lots of flowers and beautiful dresses. “We always planned to give Emma the fairytale wedding we didn’t have.”

“At sixty bucks a head for just the food, I’d say we’re doing that.”

“No,
you’re
doing it.” She poked his chest. “Or trying to. What happened to the little hot dogs, chicken wings, and cold buffet we agreed to order?”

Since Alex intended to invite the entire football team and their dates, they’d originally planned an informal reception with paper plates.

“I was hoping to redeem myself a bit with Emma by giving her a fancy reception and a cocktail hour.”

“During which, I might add, the majority of the guests will be limited to sparkling cider or punch.”

The canopy to shield everyone from the sun and possible rain had cost over four hundred dollars alone—and that was without any table or chairs to go under it. If that wasn’t expensive enough, in lieu of the plastic and paper goods they’d planned on, Jake had requested crystal and china tableware and opted for a chilled seafood bar as well as butler service to pass a large assortment of fancy hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. The
cocktail
hour was now to be followed by a gourmet buffet with a carving station.

“And do you really think with all the food you ordered it’s necessary to have a Viennese table in addition to a three-tiered Black Forest wedding cake?”

Jake tossed his hands up. “Okay, so I admit I got a little carried away. I didn’t eat lunch today, and the pictures of all those pastries made me hungry. Alex is my only child.”

“Thank you. I needed to be reminded of that.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to do that. I’m just saying I wanted to surprise the kids with a day they’ll remember.”

“Exactly.” She jabbed his chest again. “
You’re
doing it all.”

He grabbed her finger. “Stop poking me, damn it. That hurts.”

Good. Too bad her fingernails weren’t longer.

“Look, Maggie, I understand how tough it must be for you to have your daughter getting married without Dan, but—”

“You have no idea what I’m feeling.” Every time she thought of her daughter walking down the aisle without her daddy beside her, a flood of angry tears welled in Margie’s eyes. And they had nothing to do with her menstrual cycle.

“Look, most guests will be Alex’s and my family and friends. I feel like I should pay for a large part of the reception.”