A Marriage Between Friends (12 page)

“For his butt?” Teddy dissolved into giggles.

“Aspirin, then.” Jill took pity on Vince. After all, he’d saved her baby. “If you were so sore, how come you didn’t come home earlier?”

“I was fine standing around the campfire. I didn’t stiffen up until we drove back.” They’d taken Edda Mae’s truck, which had old, worn-out shocks, so every bump must have been murder on his backside.

“I can’t wait until next year.” Teddy practically ran into the kitchen after Jill. “Mom, I want to visit Vince in Las Vegas. Can I?”

“No.”

“But Vince says they have paintings there.” His eyes glowed. He’d loved painting since he’d first finger-painted at age two.

“The Sicilian has quite a collection, including a Picasso in my grandfather’s private quarters,” Vince said.

Vince wasn’t helping. “Occupy your mouth with these.” Jill gave Vince two aspirin and a glass of water.

“Please, Mom.”

“Teddy, I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep.” Vince was bound to disappear permanently from their lives now that she was divorcing him. And if his casino deal went through, he’d only be in town a day or so each year—not enough time to establish a meaningful relationship with Teddy.

“But, Mom—”

“Ixnay on the eggingbay,” Vince whispered.

“As if I don’t know pig Latin.” Jill narrowed her eyes at Vince. “What else did you teach him?”

“Only how to make friends and be cool.” Teddy collapsed back on the couch. “I love having a dad.”

She’d been right. Vince was ruining her son. He’d never be happy having a single parent again.

“Teddy, you have school tomorrow. Go get ready for bed.”

The day, which had ended so successfully for Jill’s business, was now sour and bleak.

V
INCE WAS MISERABLE
. He lay like a pretzel on his stomach on Jill’s couch. It had been a hot day and Jill’s apartment was stuffy. Vince had taken his shirt off and tried for what must have been the hundredth time to fall asleep. But he couldn’t ignore his body’s aches, couldn’t stop second-guessing decisions and recalling feelings he’d had in the past about Jill, or keep from playing out scenarios for the casino deal. Vince didn’t love Jill, but he’d decided on a course of action and he was going to stick to it. Maybe Jill would come to her senses and maybe she wouldn’t.

Light flooded the room and Vince squinted.

“You need a hit of Edda Mae’s whiskey.” Jill walked past the couch. She wore a tank top and soft flannel pajama bottoms that clung to the curve of her hips. “Your thrashing makes it hard for anyone to sleep.”

Vince reached out as she passed. He’d always gone after what he wanted. His bare arm and empty hand dangled over the couch.

His scar.
Trying to tug his shirt back on while lying down sent Vince tumbling off the couch. After the day he’d had Vince decided to stay on the floor. It made it that much easier for Jill to walk all over him. “You could have given me a little warning.”

“Gee, like you gave me when you showed up at the town meeting?” Jill’s voice drifted out from the kitchen.

“I was busy. I meant to call,” Vince grumbled. He just hadn’t worked up the nerve.

“Or when you blindsided me with the rafting trip?”

“That was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Or how about—”

“Enough! I get the picture.
Wife
wants more communication.”

“Wife?”

“Like it or not, that’s what you are,” Vince mumbled into the carpet. She’d seen his arm.

“We never even…you know. It’s like a nonbinding, unfulfilled—”

“Oh, hell, no. You either wear the ring or you don’t.”

“Which would explain your string of so-called one-nighters as…” Jill knelt next to him.

“A desperate cry for attention from my wife during a long and painful separation?”

“Proof you don’t think of yourself as married?” Jill helped Vince up off the floor.

The feel of her hands on him nearly made Vince weep, but he was in no condition to sweet-talk her into touching him some more. Every muscle protested, every joint ached. “If that were true I would have a long-term live-in girlfriend.”

Jill hesitated before pressing a shot glass into his hands, confirmation that his words gave her pause. And why didn’t he have a live-in girlfriend? Why had he spent the past ten years of his life making mistakes—with her, his grandfather, his career. The list went on.

“Edda Mae’s home brew?” he asked, trying to grin, desperate to elicit a smile from Jill.

“Looney Mooneyshine?” Jill said, straight-faced.

“That sounds like something Teddy would come up with.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Jill was probably just as tense as he was and unable to relax enough to laugh.

“You aren’t joining me,
wife?
” he asked when he couldn’t take her silence anymore.

“I’ve got to get up early and make breakfast for the guests.”

“Chicken.”

Jill stepped back, not taking the bait.

Vince examined the clear liquid from several angles before downing it in one gulp. Immediately, his esophagus flamed with heat and he struggled for air. The room spun.

Jill pounded his back until Vince gasped enough air to fill his lungs. “Are you crazy? That stuff could kill a horse.” Holding his head, Vince dropped onto the couch.

She plunked herself down on a chair next to him. “Tell me about your scar, the one on your arm.”

“I thought you were going to bed.”

“I’ve decided I’ve told you far too much about me. It’s time to even the score.” Was she trying not to smile? Vince couldn’t tell.

With surprisingly steady fingers, Vince set the shot glass on the coffee table, resisting the urge to tug down his shirtsleeves further. “I’m not drunk enough.”

“Would you tell me if you had another?”

God, he hoped not.

“It looks like a nasty bullet wound.” Jill gave Vince a clinical once-over and he felt a totally different kind of heat, one she probably hadn’t meant to create.

“Did you get it in the war?”

“Go to bed,
wife.
” And now Vince’s mind conjured up a different picture. Jill in bed, beckoning him to join her. He’d seen her green-and-white quilt, could imagine her on it, naked and crooking her finger at him.

“Not yet,” she said.

Edda Mae’s whiskey was trouble. Warmth spread to Vince’s fingertips. He glanced at Jill, at the generous swell of her breasts, at the nipples pressing against the thin yellow material of her tank top.

He curled his hands into fists. “Go on. Unless you want to trade secrets like—” he nearly said
lovers
“—schoolgirls, you better leave.”

Jill shifted, glanced at Vince’s right arm and then away.

Silence hung between them, increasingly leaden with every heartbeat, until Vince was sure nothing could break it.

“It’s all about control, isn’t it?” Jill said with a sigh. “Your scar. My past.”

Vince shook his head. “It’s not about control. It’s about self-preservation.”

“He made me feel helpless.” Jill’s words fell between them almost like a whimper, an acknowledgment of her pain. “You know my wounds. I think it’s only fair I know about yours.”

Vince was reminded of Jimmy, flaunting his pain for everyone to see. Vince had it all wrong. Jill was strong enough to deal with his scars. It was Vince who didn’t want to share them, who wasn’t brave enough to bare his soul to her.

“Good night,
wife.
” Vince needed to push Jill away, to cover his head with a pillow and hide.

“But—”

“If you stay and I show you my scar—” that hideous reminder of his near disastrous failure “—there’s a cost,” Vince warned as he raised his eyes and let Jill see the burning need there. “The next woman to see my scar will be my wife in every way.”

It was nonnegotiable. Vince had to possess Jill. The power of it scared him. He was no better than Craig.

“You don’t mean that,” Jill whispered.

Vince let his expression speak for him and before he knew it, he was alone.

“Y
OU’RE UP EARLY
,”
Edda Mae noted as she made her way to the coffeepot the next morning. “Even for you.”

Jill had bacon sizzling in a pan and four dozen eggs whipped up and ready to scramble. There was too much on her mind: Vince and his scar, Teddy’s longing for a father, Vince’s kiss, not to mention the day’s chores at Shady Oak. Jill had tossed and turned all night and eventually called it quits around five a.m. “Can you slice the bagels and set out the muffins?”

“Just let me get a shot of go-go juice first.” Edda Mae filled a mug with steaming black coffee. “How did the rafting trip go?”

“They had a great time.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Did I? Teddy wants to visit Vince in Vegas.” Jill didn’t mention that Teddy also wanted Vince as his dad, while Vince had kept silent on the subject.

“Teddy’s not a baby anymore, Jill. It’s time to let him test his wings,” Edda Mae said, setting her coffee cup down by the bag of bagels.

“He’s only ten and unfortunately for him, he’ll always be my baby. Did you open the gate? I’m expecting a delivery.”

Edda Mae nodded. “This situation with Vince and Teddy reminds me of a story—”

“No time for stories, not if you’re going to Francie’s today,” Jill cut her off as gently as she could.

“I feel better about going with Vince here. He can’t be so busy with Arnie that he won’t find time to help you in the kitchen. I forgot to ask if he’s a good cook.”

“He’s leaving this morning.”

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

But today was different. Jill wasn’t sleeping with Vince and there was no way she was supporting his casino. Jill would turn down any deal Vince offered.

“Watch out, Jill. You’re burning the bacon,” Edda Mae said.

Jill began quickly scooping bacon strips out of the frying pan.

The trouble was, you could pay attention and still have everything you’d dreamed about and worked for go up in smoke.

“C
OME ON
, V
INCE
. You take longer to get ready than Mom.” Teddy danced at the bathroom door, watching Vince shave.

“What’s your hurry?” Vince deadpanned. “Do we have time for another joke?”

“No.”

The kid was bouncing off the walls with uncontained excitement. He’d been telling jokes as if no one had ever listened to him before. Vince was still stiff and sore from the rafting trip, although Edda Mae’s whiskey had helped him sleep. “I have to eat breakfast and get to the bus stop,” Teddy babbled. “Why are you so slow? I thought grown-ups were always busy. Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes. I have a meeting.” Gone were the jeans and western shirt. Vince was expecting Arnie this morning, so he’d put on fine wool slacks, a white button-down shirt and a tie.

“About what?”

“About a casino I want to build in town.” Arnie was going to show Vince the blueprints. Vince couldn’t help being eager.

“Oh.” The excitement burst out of Teddy like a popped balloon. He stopped moving. “I forgot. We don’t want one of those.”

“It’s not such a bad thing.” Vince stuffed his razor back into his shaving kit.

Teddy shook his head slowly, his gaze so solemn that Vince’s heart filled with doubt. And then Teddy whispered, “If you build the casino, will you still be my stepdad?”

God, I hope so.
But he couldn’t promise anything, except, “I’ll always be something to you, at the very least, a friend.”

Teddy rolled his eyes. “I hope not. I’ve got enough friends. Come on, I have a surprise for Mom.” And then Teddy loped down the hall. “Last one downstairs has stinky feet!”

Realizing after one quick step his bruised and battered body couldn’t move as fast as Teddy’s, Vince accepted his smelly status and went down the stairs like his grandfather.

“Mom, don’t move. There’s a spider on you,” Teddy said from behind Jill a few minutes later when Vince walked in. He put his forefinger to his lips and grinned at Vince who stood in the doorway to the large kitchen.

“Where? Teddy, get it off.” Jill’s voice shook, but she stood very still, clearly frightened, one hand frozen on a frying pan full of scrambled eggs.

With playful wickedness, Teddy’s fingers danced across the collar of Jill’s shirt. Her entire body started to shake.

Vince frowned from where he stood by the doorway. “Teddy—”

“Get it off! Get it off!” Jill started a panicky version of the Snoopy dance. Her feet were moving, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

Teddy was laughing silently, his fingers still freaking Jill out.

“Is it off? Is it off me?” Jill suddenly flinched away as if this might get rid of the spider. Scrambled eggs flew everywhere. Jill stopped moving, glanced back at Teddy’s hand still raised in the air and at the eggs on the floor, the cupboards, her sneakers.
“Teddy!”

“What’s going on in there?” Edda Mae called from the dining room. She’d been setting up an easel with a fresh pad of flip-chart paper.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Jill said, glowering at Teddy.

Consumed with laughter, Teddy collapsed against Vince. “Wasn’t that cool?”

“No. It was thoughtless and stupid and…” Vince became aware of how pale Teddy’s upturned face had become. “It wasn’t cool.”

“I thought you liked me,” Teddy said, looking up at Vince with tearful eyes.

Jill set down the frying pan with a clatter. “Teddy, you can have cold breakfast this morning. Upstairs. Alone.”

Vince couldn’t look away from Teddy’s disappointed expression, couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d ruined their relationship.

“She needed to laugh,” Teddy spoke barely above a whisper.

“Now, Teddy.” There was something dictatorial in Jill’s voice that had Vince wanting to march upstairs with him.

“Grown-ups are so lame,” Teddy tossed over his shoulder before disappearing out the door. He’d said grown-ups, but Vince knew he meant one grown-up in particular.

Vince listened to Teddy’s footsteps pounding up the stairs, cringed slightly when the door slammed and then turned to Jill. “What just happened? He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you. You did the right thing,” Jill said, swabbing up the mess at his feet. “Welcome to parenthood. It stings at first, but you get used to it.”

“One minute we were joking and the next he was out of control.”

“He knows I hate spiders. I woke up once with one trying to crawl up my nose, and he’s taken advantage ever since.” Jill tossed the last paper towel full of eggs into the trash and got out the mop and pail from a nearby closet. “Boys have a different sense of humor than girls.”

Needing something to do other than stare at Jill, Vince filled a mug with coffee. “I don’t remember.”

Jill whisked the mop around without glancing up, suddenly more like the demure, unsure girl of his school days. “That’s because you weren’t a normal boy.”

He’d already admitted as much, but Vince didn’t like Jill saying it.

“You probably never pulled a prank on your mother,” Jill went on as if unaware she’d just hit a soft spot.

Considering his mother was a high-maintenance, high-strung former showgirl, Vince had to agree, but still—

“And you didn’t hang out with the other boys, which probably explains why now you look like you stepped out of
GQ
magazine every day.”

“I didn’t hang out with
anyone.
” The older Vince had gotten, the less accepting the cliquish private-school students were of a boy who had too much hurt and anger bottled up inside. “And lay off my work clothes.”

But Jill was on a roll now and paid no attention to his words. “So it makes perfect sense that you’d never put a frog in your mom’s mop bucket.” Jill leaned down to examine her handiwork. With a satisfied nod, she put the mop and pail back in the cupboard and then washed her hands. “Or try to use your mom’s bra as a slingshot.”

Now there was an image that got Vince’s attention, making him wonder how softly stretchy his wife’s bra might be. Accommodating enough for his hand?

As if sensing the degenerate nature of his thoughts, Jill’s cheeks flushed and she busied herself with fixing more eggs.

This conversation was loaded with more pitfalls than a blind date. Sexual attraction was the least of his worries. Unfortunately it was the most pressing of them.

“Are you saying,” Vince began when he’d had a few more moments to pull himself together and decipher her speech, “that Teddy misbehaves when he’s with other boys? Or with me?”

“Well, kids need limits. The adult sets the example. Teddy’s starting to push you now, to see how far you’ll let him go.”

“Great.”

“Parenting isn’t all fun and games, not in the long haul.” She scrutinized him.

Vince suspected she was about to ask if he was up to the task, but there was a knock on the kitchen door.

“That’ll be our grocery delivery.” But when Jill opened the door Arnie stood there. His slow perusal of her body had Jill wanting to back up a step, but she held her ground, curling her hand into a fist behind her back. “What do you want?”

“Good morning to you, too. Is your husband home?”

Jill hesitated.

And then Vince’s arm was around Jill’s shoulders, his lips pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. Jill didn’t know whether to melt against Vince in relief or stomp his foot.

“Sweetheart, I forgot to tell you Arnie was dropping by this morning.”

“Have I come at a bad time?”

Yes. “No.” If glares were daggers, Jill would have pinned Arnie against the porch railing. If Jill had more nerve Vince would be next to Arnie with a well-placed knife just below his crotch.

How could he invite Arnie up here?

“Arnie, why don’t you wait for me out back?” Vince said. “You can go through the double doors to your right.” He still held Jill in the crook of his arm. “I’ll bring coffee.”

“Sure.” But Arnie didn’t move.

After a moment Vince turned Jill to face him, cradled her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Wife.”
Vince pulled back and shut the door.

Jill knew the kiss was for Arnie’s benefit, but that didn’t mean her heart didn’t race at Vince’s touch or his teasing endearment.

“Don’t worry about Arnie,” he said.

“It’s none of your concern,” Jill managed to say. And it wasn’t. Arnie would leave Jill alone once the casino project went forward or died.

“I’ll fix it,” Vince sighed, letting her go.

“You’ll do no such thing,” she hissed at him. “I’m divorcing you.”

“But until we’ve both signed away our marriage,
you’re mine.
” Vince’s black eyes burned with anger. “And he’s going to know it.”

Jill gripped the counter when Vince said
you’re mine.
“You said I had to prove I could stand on my own.”

“I lied,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Well, if it’s so important to you, why don’t you step outside and punch Arnie in the nose? You’d get what you want—satisfying a Neanderthal urge to draw blood—and so would I. No more casino.” It was unlikely Arnie would put up with such humiliation.

“I hate it when you think you’re right,” Vince said, considering her.

Jill smiled in triumph, fully expecting him to scowl at her.

Instead, Vince grinned right back, flashing her those perfect teeth and annoying dimple as he stroked her nose with one finger. “I’ll punch him after we ink the deal.”

Jill threw the dish towel at his back. But really, how hurtful was a dish towel?

“H
OPE YOU LIKE
your coffee black,” Vince said, handing Arnie a mug, but in his mind’s eye he was tossing the mug to the ground and taking a swing at the older man. Funny thing was, Vince was just as calculating as Arnie, especially when it came to Jill. What right did Vince have to stake any claim other than a paper marriage?

Arnie balanced the mug on the porch railing while holding a rolled-up set of papers. “Nice view out here. I tried to get Edda Mae to sell this property to the tribe and get involved in the casino, but she had other ideas.”

It was Vince’s wife who had the ideas, but Vince wasn’t getting into a pissing match. Jill was right. Vince had to keep his temper. But the anger felt good because it bolstered the decision he’d made about the deal.

Vince frowned. He’d never let consequences influence his business decisions before, yet this time something constantly nagged his conscience.

As if sensing Vince’s tension, Arnie tossed Vince a sideways glance. “Did I come at a bad time?” he repeated.

“Are those the plans?” Vince asked, more than ready to get this meeting over with.

“Yes.” Arnie unrolled them against the railing. “The architect did a fabulous job capturing the Indian-lodge feeling on the outside.”

Sure enough, the front looked as if it was made of logs, and it had a tall portico so that guests could drive up to the front door and request valet parking, even in their RVs. The “logs” were huge, perhaps eight to ten feet around, and looked real, instead of formed from plaster.

Vince kept his voice even. “What about wear and tear? Plaster chips easily.”

“We’ve budgeted for a newer compound. It’s tougher. They use it in all the amusement parks now.”

With a nod Vince flipped to the next page, which detailed the casino interior—a manmade brook, lined with trees and crossed by foot bridges, wound its way through the main floor. Vince counted the slot machines, the blackjack and crap tables. State law allowed a minimum of each and they had been drawn to scale.

Vince turned to the page that depicted the bar.

“It has a Western saloon feel with just enough elegant touches to keep it from being clichéd,” Arnie said, a note of pride in his voice. “Each side of the bar has a different theme, one for each of the traditional stories told by the Native Americans in the area.” Arnie continued explaining his vision while Vince calculated costs and revenue in his head.

The design was classy yet not overly ambitious. It would complement Shady Oak perfectly.

“What’s this?” Vince pointed to a substantial amount of space.

“It’s our, um, keno lounge. The stage area is just behind it.”