Welcome to Serenity (25 page)

He met her gaze. “And let’s make this the very last conversation we have about my love life, okay?”

“Suits me,” she said, standing up and heading toward her own office. She glanced back over her shoulder. “But just to be clear, from what I can tell, you don’t actually have a love life.”

Clearly miffed, she walked out and shut the door behind her with a little more force than necessary.

“Thanks for pointing that out!” Tom called after her.

“My pleasure!” she shouted back.

Tom shook his head. Only several weeks ago his life had been on track, serene even. Yet in such a short time, he’d managed to get himself caught up with a disapproving mother, a meddling secretary and a fascinating woman who claimed to want nothing to do with him. Apparently fate really did enjoy having its little laughs. Jeanette gave herself a stern lecture as she changed back into her work clothes. She was not going to let that ridiculous lunch with Mrs. McDonald get under her skin. She was not going to take out her frustration on her clients. She was going to be pleasant for the rest of the afternoon if it killed her. And she absolutely, positively was not going to think about that kiss Tom had laid on her on the sidewalk in front of Sullivan’s and yet another mention of marriage. Half the town had probably heard about that kiss by now. Maddie knew, Jeanette was sure of it. She’d caught the glint of amusement in Maddie’s eyes when she’d walked into the spa. She’d ducked into a stall in the ladies’ room just to keep Maddie from cross-examining her about that kiss. Avoiding Maddie, however, turned out to be the easy part. She’d forgotten how quickly the Serenity grapevine worked with the general population.

“What’s going on with you and the new town manager?”

Drew Ann Smith inquired just as Jeanette began her facial.

“Everybody’s talking about it.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Jeanette said evasively. Her response made Drew Ann laugh. “You kissed the man in the stands at the football game. Everyone was amazed the girders holding up the bleachers didn’t melt.”

“Just trying to prove a point,” Jeanette said blithely.

“And did you?” Drew Ann asked. “Prove the point?”

Jeanette thought about it. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I did.”

Unfortunately, she’d also stirred up a hornet’s nest with the discovery that kissing Tom and being kissed by him were addictive.

“Heard you two were going at it again in front of Sullivan’s today,” Drew Ann said, her voice muffled by the towel that Jeanette had deliberately draped over her mouth in a futile attempt to silence her.

“Why is everyone so interested in what’s going on between Tom and me?” she asked plaintively. Drew Ann chuckled. “This is Serenity. Most of our lives are fairly routine and boring. Keeping up a steady play-byplay on the hot romances in town is what we do.”

“Tom and I are not having a hot romance.”

Drew Ann yanked away the towel and stared at her. “Are you crazy? If a man who looks like that and kisses like that wanted me, he wouldn’t have to ask twice.”

“I imagine Wendell would have something to say about that.” Jeanette was referring to Drew Ann’s husband, who ran one of the town’s two insurance agencies. Drew Ann chuckled. “Wendell would probably be relieved to have a break.”

Jeanette’s gaped. “Drew Ann!”

“Well, it’s true. Ever since I hit menopause, sex is on my mind all the time. I guess it’s because I don’t have to worry anymore about getting pregnant.”

Jeanette wasn’t sure which made her more uncomfortable, discussing her own relationship or Drew Ann’s. Listening, though, came with the territory, so she let Drew Ann chatter on, murmuring appropriate comments on cue and trying to keep the image of Drew Ann and Wendell going at it like rabbits out of her head.

By the time she got back to her office, though, she had to fan herself to cool down from all that talk about sex. She sipped from her glass of tea and was about to get to her next client when the phone rang. She grabbed it because she knew the receptionist wouldn’t have put it through if it wasn’t important.

“Jeanette?” The quavery voice was her mother’s.

“Mom? Is everything okay?” Jeanette asked, a knot of dread forming in her stomach. Of course everything wasn’t okay. Her mother never called her. Only an emergency would have her doing so now.

“It’s your father,” she said. “He’s in the hospital. I just thought I should let you know.”

Jeanette sat down hard. “What happened?”

“He had an accident on the tractor. He ran it into a ditch and it fell over on top of him. That was about a week ago and—”

“A week ago? And you’re just now calling to tell me?”

“We didn’t want to worry you,” her mother said. “Now, though, he’s got pneumonia and one of those staph infections that people get in the hospital. The doctor said it could be serious and that maybe I should call you.”

“Which hospital, Mom?”

She named a Charleston hospital that Jeanette was familiar with. He wouldn’t have been transferred from the small regional hospital if it wasn’t very serious.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can get away.”

“You don’t need to rush,” her mother protested.

“If Dad’s sick, I need to see him,” Jeanette said, trying hard not to scream at her in frustration. A week? He’d been in a tractor accident a week ago and she was just now finding out about it. What did that say about their family?

“I’ll be there in an hour. Two, at the most.”

She hung up and bit back a curse. Once again, she’d been an afterthought. If her dad hadn’t developed complications, if the doctor hadn’t suggested that her mother call, she might never have known he was injured in the first place. Her mom was probably already regretting having called.

She hurried down the hall to Maddie’s office and quickly explained the situation. “I can do Maxine’s treatment, but then I really need to go. Can someone call and cancel the last two appointments on the schedule?”

“I’ll do it,” Maddie said. “If you want to cancel Maxine, just tell her you have a family emergency.”

“She’s already here. She has to drive nearly an hour to get here. I can do it,” Jeanette said, then realized she was shaking and that her eyes were welling up with tears. Maddie was around her desk in a heartbeat.

“Sit down,” she ordered. “Don’t even think about going anywhere till I get back. I’ll talk to Maxine and see that those calls are made. When you’re back you can give Maxine a free facial if you want to, to make up for the inconvenience of her driving all this way.”

“Yes, please. Do that,” Jeanette said.

After Maddie left, Jeanette let the tears flow unchecked. Some were for her father. Given her mother’s tendency to downplay everything, who knew how serious his condition really was? Mostly, though, her tears were for a family that no longer seemed to exist, the one of her childhood that had been loving and close and filled with laughter. When the door to Maddie’s office opened, she mopped her eyes with a tissue and looked up to find Tom there.

“Maddie called me,” he said. “I’m driving you to Charleston.”

“No,” she said fiercely. She could not deal with him right now.

“You’re in no condition to drive yourself. Everyone else is tied up, so I’m a last resort. Don’t argue. You know you won’t win, not against me and certainly not against Maddie.”

“Okay, fine, whatever,” she muttered, choking back a sob. “What is wrong with me? I can’t seem to stop crying.”

“You’re scared for your father,” he said. “You’ll feel better once you’ve seen him for yourself and know exactly how he’s doing. Let’s go.”

“I’m not just scared for my father,” she said. “I’m furious with my mother. She kept this from me. She didn’t think I needed to know that he’d been in an accident, that the tractor had rolled on top of him. He could have been killed!”

Her voice escalated, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “And letting me know was some kind of afterthought.”

Tom hunkered down beside her and clasped her hands in his. “He wasn’t killed. Concentrate on that. As for the infection and the pneumonia, those are setbacks, nothing more.”

She shook her head. “And here I thought your mother was terrible,” she said wearily. “Mine takes the prize.”

“Do you really want to debate about which of our mothers is more dysfunctional?” he asked. “Let’s just get to the hospital.”

“He’d better not die before I get there,” she said angrily.

“If he does, I swear I’m never speaking to either one of them again.”

Tom didn’t say a word. He just met her gaze, one brow lifted. Jeanette giggled. “Okay, now you must think I’ve really lost it,” she said, her fury easing slightly. He tugged her gently from the chair. “No, I don’t. Your reaction is understandable,” he told her, sliding a comforting arm over her shoulders and guiding her out of the spa through the backdoor.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, dragging her feet. He grinned. “Also understandable.”

He continued to propel her forward until they reached his car, a nifty little two-seater she’d never seen before except in ads in luxury magazines. It was not the car she’d ridden in before. “You really are rich, aren’t you?”

“My parents are,” he corrected. “This car was a present when I graduated from college and they still had high hopes for me.”

“Can I drive it?”

“Not in your present state of mind,” he said, opening the passenger door.

“How fast does it go?”

“Pretty fast,” he said, regarding her with amusement.

“Planning on running away from home?”

She smiled again. “Could we?”

Tom grinned. “Ask me again after you’ve seen your father. I might be all for it.”

Jeanette’s smile faded. “Tom, do you think you can really run away from home, when you don’t even know where home is anymore?”

Tom’s expression sobered, too. “I honestly don’t know,” he told her. “I think that’s a discussion best left for another day.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she said.

She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. What she really wanted was to shut off her mind, but unfortunately that seemed impossible. All the way to Charleston, a steady reel of memories played in her head. In most of them, her dad was the way she liked remembering him—doting on her, always ready to comfort her or read her a story or to make her laugh. He’d been so proud of her accomplishments and of Ben’s. He’d been steady and sure, the glue that held them all together. She’d never been able to reconcile that man with the one who’d withdrawn from everyone, from life itself after Ben’s death. Tonight she wanted to throw her arms around the dad she remembered from her childhood. Her greatest fear, though, was that she’d find that other man, the one who barely acknowledged her, lying in that hospital bed.