Cross My Heart (2 page)

She smiled suddenly, thinking of the cabinets in her parents’ kitchen. They’d let their daughters be in charge of painting them when Jenna was fifteen.

Jenna, the oldest, had voted for purple. Allison, three years younger, had insisted on yellow. Megan was eight years old and the baby of the family, and she’d begged for pink. There were twelve cabinet doors altogether, which divided nicely into four apiece, so they’d agreed to compromise.

Irene’s mouth twitched a little when she bought the paint her girls picked out, and it twitched even more when Joe Landry caught his first glimpse of the kitchen after his daughters had finished with it.

“Jake and I are doing the living room,” was all he’d said. Jake was Jenna’s twin brother and the only boy in the family, and he and Joe had done the living room in a manly hunter green.

Irene had finally repainted the cabinets a few years ago. But she’d left the knobs pink, purple, and yellow.

The farm had been flourishing for several years now, and the house looked great these days. Growing up, though, it had felt like the Landry home was perpetually falling apart. Shingles off the roof, paint peeling, plumbing and wiring needing repair. There was always work to be done, as if there wasn’t enough to do out in the fields to keep the farm going.

Jenna had loved and hated that work, just as she’d loved and hated the farm itself.

Her feelings for her family hadn’t been so complicated. For them, she’d felt only love. But as much as she adored her parents and siblings, she’d itched to leave home from the time she was thirteen. And when the band she’d started with some high school friends started to take off, she hadn’t hesitated. She’d been out the door a few days after her eighteenth birthday.

Now, twelve years later, she was back in Iowa again.

Not that she was living here, of course. This was just temporary. Her teaching job was over in August, and then the Mollies were getting back together for a reunion tour. That would last a couple of months and then she was off to L.A. for a new gig—music supervisor for an indie movie.

Her doorbell rang. Jenna set down her scraper and rinsed her hands, glad to be finished for the night. It was time to dig into a large pizza with sausage and mushrooms and black olives.

She dried her hands quickly and went to the front door.

“Am I glad to see—”

The words died on her lips, and she found herself blinking up at her handsome next door neighbor instead of the pizza guy.

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Hello.”

He was even more gorgeous up close, in the understated way that had appealed to her when she’d first seen him a few weeks ago.

His brown hair was cut conservatively short, and his eyes were the same shade of warm mahogany. Straight nose, firm jaw, nice cheekbones. He had a nice mouth, too. She bet he had a great smile, even though his expression, the few times she’d seen him, had always been serious.

In the music business, a man that good-looking would a) be aware of it and b) use the fact to his advantage whenever possible. But you could tell by the way he held himself that this man wasn’t conscious of his appearance at all.

Jenna, on the other hand, was very conscious that she was wearing old sweatpants, a faded Ramones tee shirt, and no makeup, with her hair tangled and wild beneath her faded blue bandana. In the occasional fantasy she’d entertained about her neighbor, she’d been wearing something a lot sexier.

“Hello,” he said. Unlike her, he looked like a grownup in khaki pants and a button down shirt. “I’m your neighbor. From next door,” he added, waving a hand towards his beautiful white clapboard house.

“Sure, of course. I’ve seen you around.”

Ogled him would be more accurate. Like the day she spent half an hour watching him out the window while he mowed his lawn. She hoped he might take off his tee-shirt in the ninety degree heat, but her wish hadn’t been granted.

Right now he was looking a little uncomfortable. Maybe he’d come to tell her the weekend jam sessions were too loud, even though she was keeping things unplugged.

“It’s the music, isn’t it?” she said contritely. “I’m so sorry. We’ve been playing acoustic but if it’s too loud I can…”

He was shaking his head. “No, your music is fine. That’s not why I’m here. My name is Michael, by the way. Michael Stone. And...okay, I’m just going to come out with it.”

He took a deep breath. “My daughter Claire is here for a visit. She lives with her grandparents and I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like. She’s fourteen and hates my guts, and the closest thing we’ve had to a civil conversation in two years was just now, when she recognized you. Apparently you’re a member of one of her favorite bands.”

He took another breath. “And that’s why I’m here. I’m pretty much throwing myself on your mercy, Ms. Landry. I’m hoping you’ll come to my house for dinner tonight and make me look like father of the year.”

If he’d planned it out deliberately, he couldn’t have said anything that would have melted her more. What woman wouldn’t be a sucker for a dad trying to improve his relationship with his teenage daughter?

“Call me Jenna. And of course I’ll come over.”

He looked surprised. “You will?”

She smiled up at him. “You expected a harder sell?”

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Coming here was impulsive, and I’m not usually impulsive. I didn’t know what to expect. But I thought you might have plans.”

His brown eyes warmed a little as he looked at her, and Jenna felt a tingle at the base of her spine.

“My only plan involved a pizza, which I will now call and cancel. I’d love to come to your house for dinner. But your daughter knows I’m not in a band anymore, right? I don’t want to meet Claire under false pretenses of fame and glory.”

He shook his head. “She told me your band broke up a few years ago. She did say something about a reunion tour this fall. I think she’ll probably ask you about that.”

 Jenna laughed. “Her and everyone else. Give me a few minutes to change, okay? I’ve been doing some painting and I’m not exactly presentable.”

His eyes traveled down her body and back up to her face. “I think you’re very presentable,” he said, and she could tell it was the second impulsive thing he’d done today, because he looked a little self-conscious after he said it.

She felt a sudden rush of awareness, like an electric surge. It was so strong and so unexpected that she almost took a step back.

“Okay, then,” she said after a moment. “I’ll be over in, say, half an hour? Will that work for you?”

“That’s perfect,” he said. “We’re having salmon, if that’s all right.”

“Perfect,” she said, echoing him.

“Well…great. We’ll see you in half an hour.”

Jenna leaned against the doorframe and watched him cross the lawns between their houses. When she realized she was staring, she closed the door firmly and went upstairs to shower.

A few minutes later she was scrubbing paint flecks off her skin under the spray of hot water. She pictured Michael’s serious face and warm brown eyes, and the way his loose-limbed body had filled her doorway. She remembered his gaze moving over her, and the way her body had responded.

She hadn’t felt that
zing
in a long time. It had been a while since she’d even felt like flirting with anyone.

But why now? Why him? Michael was nothing like the bad boy type she’d always gone for in the past.

He struck her as the responsible type. Stable and mature. He looked so serious—and she knew from her neighbor on the other side that he was a doctor.

She’d turned thirty a few months ago, a milestone she hadn’t wrapped her mind around yet. Was her attraction to her conservative-looking neighbor a sign of things to come? Was this the final death knell of her old wild self, the girl who’d left home to start a rock band?

Jenna stepped out of the shower and toweled herself dry. She smoothed lotion onto her skin and stood at the counter to apply her makeup.

She’d always sworn she’d never lose her edge, never turn boring or conventional or tame. Look at Tina Turner, still rocking the house at seventy. If Tina could stay wild then so could she.

But looking at herself now, she acknowledged that she wasn’t the person she’d been at eighteen…or even twenty-five. Five years ago, for instance, she would have gone for dead pale skin and lips, and exaggerated her eyes with thick black liner. Now she was putting on mascara and lip gloss and not much else.

She couldn’t pin down the exact moment in time she’d changed her look. It had been a gradual thing.

There’d been other changes, too. She’d quit smoking almost three years ago, and to help deal with the nicotine cravings she’d started jogging. Now she actually enjoyed getting up early to run before breakfast. A far cry from her days in the band, when the Mollies would stay up till dawn and sleep till late afternoon, in time to get ready for that night’s show.

She didn’t go out to the clubs as much, either. She’d settled in Chicago after the Mollies called it quits, working as a studio musician and enrolling in a degree program for music education. Between work and classes something had to give—and that turned out to be her night life.

Then a few things happened. The Mollies made plans for a reunion tour, she got the job offer from L.A., and an old friend asked her if she’d be interested in teaching music that summer in Willow Springs, Iowa.

The lease was up on her Chicago apartment. Aunt Beth and Uncle Sean were travelling until fall, and when they offered her their house for a couple of months, the timing had seemed too perfect to pass up.

So here she was.

Coming back to Iowa made the other changes in her life stand out in sharp relief. When she was living in Chicago, giving up cigarettes and a few nights out hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. But here in the town where she’d grown up, it felt like the old Jenna had slipped away when she wasn’t even looking, replaced by a woman she wasn’t sure she wanted to become.

A woman who got up early to go running. A woman who spent her days teaching and her nights working on home improvement projects. A woman who found herself attracted to her next door neighbor, who was conventional and serious instead of wild and reckless.

A woman who was losing her edge.

No
, she told herself, pulling on a pair of jeans and her CBGBs tee shirt. The fact that she’d made a few changes in her life didn’t mean she was losing her edge.

She was attracted to Michael because he was hot, not because he seemed mature and responsible. And she wasn’t going to act on her feelings. She hardly ever saw him, for one thing—he seemed to work a pretty intense schedule. And she was only here for the summer. Nothing, and especially not a man, would keep her in Iowa any longer than that.

Jenna had only two rules when it came to the opposite sex. Don’t let them change you, and don’t let them tie you down. She’d almost let a guy change her, once—before she found out the hard way that he wasn’t worth it.

It was a mistake she had no intention of repeating.

***

Michael took one last, critical look at his dining room.

Was it too formal? He’d set the table in here rather than in the kitchen, wanting to make a good impression on his beautiful new neighbor—who’d turned out to be even more stunning up close. Only now, remembering her paint-flecked sweatpants and tee-shirt, he felt a qualm. Maybe Jenna would prefer a more casual setting.

But it was too late to change things now. She’d be over any minute.

She’d be here. In his house. Thinking of that made his blood run thick and hot in his veins, a pulsing warmth that made his whole body feel…primed.

He knew, of course, that there’d been no actual change in the temperature of his blood. He was a doctor; he knew exactly what blood was and how it functioned in the body. He also knew that what he was feeling now was a biological reaction he could trace in scientific detail, from surges in norepinephrine and dopamine to the actions of his adrenal gland and blood flow to his corpus cavernosum.

Usually, that kind of knowledge gave him power. Logic and intellect could always control emotion and sensation. But this time, for some reason, it didn’t seem to matter that he knew exactly what was happening in his body. The effect Jenna Landry had on him was stronger than his ability to reason it into submission.

“Dad!”

He turned his head to see his daughter coming down the stairs. When he’d told Claire about the guest coming for dinner, she’d stared at him for almost a minute, actually speechless. Then she’d squeaked out something and dashed upstairs. Now she was back, having changed out of her blouse and into a tee-shirt with Death Cab For Cutie emblazoned on it.

“Do I look okay?”

That was an unexpected question. Claire had stopped caring what he thought about her appearance a long time ago.

“Sure, sweetheart. You look great. Is that the name of a band?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s a band. God, Dad, how can you be so—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish the insult. The doorbell rang and the two of them froze briefly, looking at each other.

They went to the door together, and he pulled it open.

Jenna stood there on his porch smiling at them both. She wore a silk headband the same sapphire blue as her eyes, the color vibrant against her black hair. Like Claire, she was wearing a tee-shirt in honor of something he’d never heard of. CBGBs, whatever that was. The shirt looked soft and well-worn from many washings, and was somehow more flattering to her slender curves than the most elegant cocktail dress could have been.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, Michael. And you must be Claire?”

His daughter nodded. Jenna held out a hand and Claire took it, eyes wide. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said breathlessly.

“It’s nice to meet you, too. I hear you’re a music fan.”

Claire nodded again. “I have all your songs,” she said in a rush, and then winced. “Wow, that sounds lame. I mean, I bet you hear that all the time.”

Michael stepped back and gestured for Jenna to come in.

“It’s not lame at all, it’s flattering,” Jenna said as she crossed the threshold. “Wow, this place is beautiful,” she said, looking around her as Michael led the way into the living room.