Valentine's Child Read online

  “You don’t believe me at all.”

  Her eyes were dark pools of resentment; her mouth now drawn tight. Jake knew he’d stepped over the line, yet a part of him was just as upset as she was. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Just stay away from me. I’m not your problem anymore.”

  “I’m going after Tim,” he growled.

  “I hope he beats some sense into you.”

  “He’ll be lucky to get one punch,” Jake snarled.

  Her mouth worked. He expected round two. Instead, two tears appeared at the corners of her eyes, caught by the moonlight. She tipped her head back and inhaled a shaky breath, her breasts heaving with emotion. In that moment Jake was consumed by lust, his own body reacting to her vulnerability in a very male, very unacceptable way.

  But he couldn’t help reaching forward to catch a piece of her silken hair between his fingers.

  She jerked as if he’d slapped her. Her eyes shot sparks of fury and she batted his hand away.

  “Sherry …”

  She twisted away and yelled back at him, “I can take care of myself!” as she stumbled up the beach. It was the completely wrong direction and after a few silent swearwords, Jake took off after her.

  He caught her halfway to the surf. “I’ll take you home.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, Goddamnit. I’m sorry. I’ll take you home!”

  “I’m not going there. I’m not going there ever again. And, no, my dad didn’t do this to me.” Hysterical laughter bubbled from her breast. “Maybe I did it to myself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing.” Her voice was flat.

  “Tell me.”

  She opened her mouth as if to speak, caught herself, gazed at him long and hard, shook her head and silently kept walking away, her steps weighted as if she were the oldest person living on the planet. Jake made one last attempt to talk to her, but she was deaf to him. She’d checked out.

  He made some stupid comment — he couldn’t remember what; something about her stubbornness — and she glared at him.

  “I made a really big mistake,” she told him.

  “Sherry …”

  “Leave me alone, J.J. Go be with Caroline. You fit with her. I’m out. This is over — whatever it was. It’s over.” And she kept on going up the beach, away from him and, though he didn’t know it at the time, away from Oceantides.

  Now, cradling his beer, Jake suddenly shivered, the memory ice-cold. Some said hell was a frozen wasteland with no warmth. He could believe it. Sherry’s glacial ending had been completely final. She’d never returned to school. And while Jake frantically tried to reach her and make amends for his heartlessness and lack of understanding, she was already on her way to her new life — whatever that was.

  He’d never seen her again until now, and the irony of it was that seeing her again brought back the heat she’d stolen from his life. He hadn’t even really known it had been missing. But last night, and this morning, he’d felt the furnace blast of emotion and desire; and although his head was clear, his body was all too eager to jump in and get burned again.

  “I’m sorry, he’s not here,” the pert young woman behind the reception desk told Sherry, her brows lifted inquiringly. “I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

  Jake’s receptionist, Barb, as her nameplate read, eyed Sherry with open curiosity. It occurred to Sherry that Jake’s small offices didn’t invite a large crowd of customers; it wasn’t the nature of his business.

  “Would you tell him that Sherry Sterling stopped by?” The words were sawdust in her throat. “I’ll call him later.”

  “Sure.”

  Back on the street, Sherry reviled her continuing cowardice. She was glad — overjoyed — at the reprise. A bad sign. A bad, bad sign.

  With time on her hands and nothing to do but wait, she walked across the street to Crawfish Delish, instantly aware that some crisis was in full swing.

  “The chef walked out,” one of the waiters moaned as Sherry took a seat.

  “He’s just a cook,” another waiter sniffed. “And a drunk, too.”

  “The orders are backed up,” the first one complained in a near wail. “I’m about to quit, too!”

  “Need some help?” Sherry offered. “I run a deli in Seattle. I’m not bad at waitressing.”

  “Are you serious?” The wailer blinked twice, then rushed to the front counter where five minutes later a woman about Sherry’s age came out to apologize to Sherry.

  “I can’t believe they’d go so far as to offer a job to one of our customers!” she declared, flustered.

  They stared at each other. Slowly, Sherry realized that the heavyset woman with the bleached hair was none other than her old friend, Jennifer.

  “Sherry?” Jennifer asked, blinking.

  “Hi,” she answered a bit shyly. “I just keep running into people I know. I guess that’s what happens when you return to your hometown.”

  “What are you doing here? Jeez, you look great.” Envy and admiration were mixed together. “Everyone said you’d be a movie star, or something.”

  “Or something.” She half-smiled. “Actually, I was serious about the job. I’m just in town for a while, but I feel so useless and when I walked in here, well …” She shrugged. “If you need some temporary help, I’d love to help out. I can cook a little, too.”

  “Gerald’ll be back after he gets his knickers out of a knot,” Jennifer sniffed. “But we could sure use some extra hands. All the teenagers are completely useless. Say they’re gonna show up and never do. Kinda like we were, I guess.”

  “Are you the owner?” Sherry inquired.

  “Day manager. You’ll love this, I took over Julie’s job before she got married and left Oceantides. It really is a small world, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah …” Sherry sighed.

  “I’m divorced,” Jennifer added, as if Sherry had asked. “How about you?”

  “Single.”

  “I don’t believe it. I always thought… huh.” She lifted her shoulders dismissively. “The guys all wanted you. I remember wanting to be you, senior year.”

  “I was a shitty friend,” Sherry said.

  “Yeah. You were.” She broke into a grin. “But we were all pretty stupid about Jake, weren’t we?”

  “Hey!” The wailing waiter cried, and Jennifer grabbed Sherry’s hand and led her through the few obligatory forms that allowed her to be hired. Sherry was taking orders by one o’clock and by five, she was in the kitchen, learning the chef’s “secret” recipes, which were really basic seafood dishes prepared with spices that added flair. By six she was ignoring admiring glances from Dennis, the night manager, and by eight she’d befriended every employee and was a minor sensation at the small restaurant.

  At ten she walked into a cold mist and turned as if by rote toward Bernie’s Pizza. Ryan was at work and, spying Sherry, he saluted her with a flour-laden hand.

  “You’re still here. I’m glad. I told Kathy about you and she wants to see you.”

  I’ll bet, Sherry thought, but she made appropriate interested responses.

  “We should get the gang together again,” Ryan added.

  A snort escaped as she remembered all the whispering after she and J.J. had separated at the end of football season. Though Ryan had always staunchly defended her to J.J. and his other buddies, there was no way he could really understand how difficult the situation had been for Sherry. She would have done anything to win J.J.’s love, and she hated Caroline for being the girl for him.

  Even now, hearing that Caroline and J.J. were engaged had the power to twist her guts. Yet in there last fight, hadn’t she basically told him to go back with her, that they were made for each other, even though she’d just learned she was pregnant?

  She’d still been reeling from that news when a drunken, overeager Tim Delaney had ignored all her signals and attempted to maul her. She’d run to J.J., expecting a white knight to ride to
her rescue in more ways than one. Tim’s amorous attack had frightened her, but in retrospect it now seemed more ludicrous than truly dangerous. He’d been drunk and stupid and she’d been so overwhelmed at seeing those two pink lines appear earlier on the pregnancy test that she’d run away from him in a panic. It was the pregnancy that had sent her sobbing to J.J.’s door, not really Tim, but she was too upset and shattered to say so, and when J.J.’s Neanderthal thinking kicked in, she just let it happen, too upset, hurt and infuriated to do anything else.

  Enough, Sherry thought now gathering her composure as she realized Ryan was watching her curiously.

  “I saw Roxanne and Matt today,” she told him. “They invited me to the wedding.”

  “Are you going?” Ryan was eager.

  “I don’t think I’ll still be here.”

  “It’s only a few weeks.”

  “I know, but… I’ve just got some things to wrap up, and with any luck, I’ll do that tonight.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going out to the Becketts’,” Sherry revealed, making a face at the thought. “I tried to talk to J.J. today, but it didn’t quite work.”

  “He’s gotten a little cold,” Ryan apologized instantly, ever the good friend. “Don’t let it put you off.”

  “It didn’t. It’s weird coming back here and seeing so many familiar faces. You always think things will change, but Oceantides feels like it’s been caught in a time capsule.”

  “Did Jake seem that way to you?” Ryan asked.

  “Among others,” Sherry answered.

  “Have you seen Caroline?” At Sherry’s shake of her head, he said, “Looks great, like you,” he added kindly. “But she’s… well, she was always cold, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do know what you mean,” Sherry admitted, eyes twinkling.

  “It would have been good for Jake to leave for a while, you know? I mean, try to imagine being a Beckett all your life.”

  Sherry actually laughed, her musical lilt catching the attention of several groups of people eating pizza at various tables. Encouraged, Ryan added, “Must be hell being a stuffed shirt, huh?”

  “Hell,” Sherry agreed.

  “You and I never were.”

  “No, we weren’t.”

  “Thank God,” he muttered fervently. “It’s a flat-out curse — that background. Jake’s mother’s enough to make you afraid to fall asleep at night.”

  “Dragon Lady.”

  “She’s even worse now since Jake’s dad died. The Becketts own everything in town, and Jake just gets unhappier with each purchase.”

  “You and — Jake — are still friends, though?”

  “Naw. Not really. He doesn’t come in here, and I’m busy with my family. Whenever we see each other we act like we’re going to get together, but it never happens.”

  “That’s a shame,” Sherry murmured.

  “Yeah… well, things change.” As if hearing how maudlin their conversation was becoming, he asked, “Hey, you hungry? Feel like a pepperoni?” He gestured to the row of various sized, stainless-steel pizza platters, hung on the wall.

  “I just finished a shift at Crawfish Delish.”

  “A shift?”

  “I’m their newest employee. Just for a while, until I… get things settled. Their chef quit today, and it was a madhouse.” Seeing Ryan’s peculiar expression, Sherry asked slowly, “What?”

  “Did you meet the owner?”

  “No. Why?”

  He shook his head, opened his mouth, clamped his lips together, then shook his head again. After a few moments, he said, “The Becketts own Crawfish Delish, Sherry.”

  She stared at him.

  “I told you they own everything.”

  Sherry was speechless. Her little rescue mission had just made another tie between her and the Becketts. “Well…shit,” she said finally.

  Ryan grinned like a devil. “You said it.”

  “I guess when I see J.J., that’ll give us one more thing to talk about.”

  “Good luck,” Ryan said, and Sherry headed back out into the wind-driven night.

  “Hey, wake up, Mr. Beckett. You’re home.”

  Jake lifted his head and squinted through the windshield of an unfamiliar car. The vehicle was old and losing its muffler. The sound was deafening. Black rain streaked the windshield, then was swept away by scratchy wipers only to return in a thick, wavy sheet a moment later.

  Jake’s perception had been dealt a deathly blow. He was having a hell of a time remembering whom he was with. “What?” he asked thickly.

  “You’re home,” one of the Tank House’s barmaids reminded him with a gentle shake of his shoulder. The one who’d delivered his first beer. “Your Jeep’s still on the street. You were in it, but not moving, so I offered to give you a ride.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered, meaning it.

  “My pleasure.”

  He stumbled from the car, sketched a thank-you, then fumbled with the front gate. Lord, when was the last time he’d been too drunk to drive?

  The barmaid’s car throbbed away, some dangerously worrisome metallic sound scraping underneath its hood. Serious auto work ahead, Jake decided hazily. Glancing down at his shoes, he noted the slippery mud oozing over the sides. I’ll have to take them off before I go inside, he reminded himself dutifully, and just as quickly forgot.

  Swaying on the front-porch steps, he came to himself again. Damn it, he was at Beckett Manor, as Sherry Sterling would say. He should have asked the barmaid to take him to his condo. Too late now, though. Tomorrow there would be hell to pay, no doubt about it. But for tonight he didn’t give a damn. Make that, he didn’t give a good goddamn.

  Headlights flashed around the corner. Jake squinted in the direction of the approaching car, decided he didn’t give a good goddamn about them, either, and let himself into the house, half falling over the threshold.

  Once in the foyer he remembered the mud on his shoes but it was too late. The gleaming patina of the polished oak was smeared with sloppy clumps of muck, and the fringed edge of the octagonal Oriental carpet was dark brown and wet.

  “Whoops.” Wrinkling his nose, he removed his shoes, nearly losing his balance in the process and swearing good-naturedly at his own drunkenness.

  Sharp footsteps sounded like a rain of bullets. They approached from the rear of the house, Patrice’s sitting room. Jake stood to attention, thought it might be amusing to salute, then found himself swaying in front of both Patrice and Caroline, hand at his brow.

  Their mouths were twin ovals of horror.

  Whoops again.

  “J.J.!” His mother hissed.

  “Oh, Jake,” Caroline murmured, turning away.

  Suddenly he remembered he was supposed to meet Caroline tonight. Dinner, he recalled. Or was that last night? Nope, last night she’d been out of town.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Where have you been?” Patrice demanded.

  “Out drinking?” he suggested. Thinking he was the epitome of humor, he started laughing, ignoring the heated silence from the two women in the room.

  Two women in his life.

  What’s best for you.

  He shuddered. And then the doorbell rang.

  “Someone’s on the porch,” Patrice snapped, frowning. “Did you leave the gate open?”

  Jake shook his head, then nodded, deciding, yes, he had left the gate open.

  “Our reservation was for eight,” Caroline reminded him a tad frostily.

  “I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Jake answered as a soft rap sounded on the front door. “I’ll get it,” he added magnanimously, but Patrice, after shooting him a look that could cut through steel, opened the door herself.

  “Oh!” she said, surprised.

  Jake peered around her and nearly fell over. Sherry stood on the other side of the threshold, her hair windblown, rain darkening the shoulders of her black jacket, looking gorgeously wanton and refreshing as sea air. />
  “May I come in?” she asked, her gaze searching out Jake. Those blue-purple eyes made contact and Jake felt his stomach seize up.

  “By all means,” he invited with a sweeping gesture of his arm that nearly knocked him over.

  “J.J.!” Patrice hissed.

  “Jake,” Caroline entreated.

  Ignoring them both, he said, “May I take your coat?” Then reached forward to do so. Feeling her skin shiver beneath his fingers, he wondered suddenly if maybe he wasn’t quite drunk enough to deal with the force that was Sherry Sterling.

  “What brings you out so late?” Patrice asked her.

  Jake blinked at her, wondering why his mother sounded so fearful. What was it about Sherry that sent Patrice into such a state?

  “I think you know,” was Sherry’s mystifying answer before she turned to Jake and asked, “Is there somewhere we could go talk alone?”

  VALENTINE’S CHILD — NANCY BUSH

  Chapter Seven

  “I don’t think that would be such a great idea,” J.J. replied, one hand reaching awkwardly for the foyer wall for a means of support.

  “J.J. is not in any state to go out,” Patrice declared tightly.

  “I can make my own decisions, thank you very much,” he told her amiably. “I’m going to head into the salon. Why don’t you all join me?”

  Sherry watched J.J. move into the gilded room at the southwest corner of the house. She’d made a mistake. Once again. Although at least this time she could console herself with the thought that she’d had no way of knowing J.J. wouldn’t be sober. Instead of relief, however, she felt annoyance and frustration. She wanted to unburden herself, and she wanted to do it now because she had a very serious fear that given enough time her craven heart would take over and she would chicken out entirely..

  Patrice Beckett had aged. Little wonder; they’d all aged. But the fire that had sustained her still burned. Sherry could practically feel its heat coming from the woman in waves of hate.

  Or was it fear?

  Patrice was in on this deception, too, Sherry reminded herself grimly. Patrice had guessed the truth and then had had the gall to try and direct Sherry which path to take.