Читать книгу Be My Valentino - Sandra D. Bricker - Страница 10

Chapter 3

3

Jessie pulled the door open and stared into the face of a cardboard box bearing the logo of Granny’s Pizza on Broadway. Best pizza in Southern California, she and Danny had determined when they had lunch there together a couple weeks back.

He slowly lowered the box. “I come bearing pizza.”

She resisted the urge to return his charming smile. “Granny’s?”

“You said it was your favorite,” he replied. With a lilt to his voice, he added, “Grandma’s secret sauce, fresh mozzarella, and parmesan reggiano with sprigs of baby basil.”

“Now you’re just mocking me.”

“I’m not,” he teased. “I’m emulating your passion for the cuisine.”

She purposefully cocked one brow. “Toppings?”

“Pepperoni and onion. Mushrooms on your half.”

Her rebellious stomach growled in reply. Traitor.

“So can I come in?” Danny asked.

She took a moment, pretending to think it over. “Or you could just leave the pie and call me tomorrow.”

“Nothing doing. I had to smell this baby all the way over here.”

“Fine.” She stepped back and tugged the door the rest of the way open. “But only because I’m really, really hungry.”

The orange sun dipped low behind him, nearly finished with its day’s work. The sunglasses on his head held back normally straight hair that had dried in an unruly, wavy mop, and the faintest traces of saltwater tickled Jessie’s nostrils as he slipped past her.

“I’ll get some plates.”

Jessie heard Danny fiddling with the locks on the front door as she produced a couple of plates, some flowered paper napkins, and two bottles of water from the kitchen. When she returned, he’d made himself at home on the sofa.

She sat on the floor on the opposite side of the coffee table while Danny loaded two slices on a plate and handed it to her.

“I assume this pizza comes at a cost?” she inquired.

“Indeed it does.” He grinned, sliding two more slices to his plate before dropping to the floor, folding his legs, and propping his arms on the coffee table in front of him.

“Do tell.”

He took a huge bite from one of the slices. “The price is conversation,” he said over a full mouth.

“About?”

A haze of serious concern transformed his expression, and he wiped his mouth with a napkin he already had wadded in one fist. “You have to ask?”

Her heart palpitated sharply. “Well, I can’t read your mind.” She ignored his pointed gaze long enough to bite into her pizza. “Mm, this is so good.” But the deliberate weight of his glare pressed in without wavering. When she lifted her eyes to meet it, in fact, she buckled under its intensity. “Thanks for bringing this.”

“Look, I know Jack’s return has thrown you.”

“You think?” she muttered, dropping her line of sight to the meal before her.

“I don’t know what all he said the other night, but I could see it rocked you. In turn, you pushed me away.”

She didn’t respond with anything more than the twitch of her shoulder.

“You want to talk to me, Jessie?”

“Not particularly.”

“About anything? Or just not about Jack.”

Her pulse thrummed in her ears. She’d been avoiding his calls, putting off this moment for just this reason. She had no idea what to say to him. Did she know how unfair it was to let their new relationship suffer from the war wounds Jack had left behind? Of course she did. But could she do anything about the way she felt?

No.

Danny reached across the table and touched her hand. “I’m not just another Jack Stanton in your life, Jess.”

Her reply came out in a hoarse whisper. “I know.”

“Then why did you throw me out along with him the other night?” he asked. “And why have I not heard from you since?”

Tears rose in her eyes and stood there, hot and stinging, as she looked up at him. She owed him an explanation; and she wished she had one.

“What did he say to you when he was in here alone with you?”

Sometimes it felt like Danny could read her thoughts. Why did she feel like she couldn’t hide anything from him?

“Did he hurt you?”

“Only in here,” she said, tapping her balled fist against the sore place where her heart rested.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.” Okay, that was a lie. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”

“Like what?” he pressed.

“Like how I always seem to have some guy taking care of me. First, my grandfather. Then him. Now you.”

“Really?” he said, dropping the balled napkin onto the pizza still sitting on his plate. “You moved away from Louisiana to stand on your own and make a life here in L.A. No one was taking care of you then. You met and married someone who left you high and dry, and how did you respond? You picked yourself up and made a business out of nothing, all on your own.”

“Hardly on my own.”

“Jessie. I’m not here to take care of you,” he stated. “I’m here because you’re a part of me now. A part that—without it—I feel hollow. And I’ve never said that to another human being before in my life. Did you ever think . . . maybe . . . you’re the one taking care of me?”

A spike of emotion pierced her, dead center in the chest, and she narrowed her eyes just enough for the pool of tears to spill over and stream down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, and she wiped her eyes with a napkin with a large blue flower stamped on the corner. “That’s a really nice thing for you to say.”

“It’s not just words, Jessie. Not just something I said.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” he asked, a question mark curving in his voice. “How do you know that?”

“Because you’re not the kind of man who just says what someone wants to hear.”

“That’s right.”

Danny pushed himself up from the floor and rounded the table. He eased himself down next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

“You and I started because of Jack,” he said softly. “But he has nothing to do with who we became.”

She dropped her head to Danny’s shoulder and sighed. She wanted to believe him, she really did. But something deep within Jessie made her feel like a foolish young girl again. The kind of girl she used to be. The kind of girl who could believe the pretty words of a pretty man, just because she wanted to believe them.

* * *

Danny hadn’t made the trip up the mountain at this time of year in a long time. He’d nearly forgotten what a beautiful drive it could be until that afternoon as they chugged up the snake-like road. But here they now were—he and Jessie—enjoying a leisurely pace in his open Jeep so that Riggs and Allie, following behind them in his clunker of a van, could manage to keep up.

“What are those pale yellow flowers along the side of the road?” Jessie asked him. “They smell like heaven.”

“Wild honeysuckle. My mom loves it too,” he told her. “She used to nag my dad until he pulled over and let her pick some on the way up, and she’d put them in those . . . you know, the jars?”

“Mason jars?”

“Right. She had them all over the cabin.”

“Ooh, that sounds really nice. Can we?”

Danny grinned. “There’s a turnout a few miles ahead.” He produced his cell phone from the pocket of his shirt and handed it to her. “Number three on the speed dial. Give Riggs a heads up that we’re about to make a stop.”

Allie apparently answered her father’s phone. The lilt in Jessie’s voice told him so. He couldn’t help sneaking one lingering glance at her—so relaxed, so different from the woman who could hardly look him square in the eye just a few nights prior over pizza. It did Danny’s heart good to see the change in her once the restraining order against Stanton had been issued and a little time and space had come between the two of them.

Jessie had put up a fuss when he’d asked her to come along on this weekend getaway, but enlisting Piper’s considerable influence had helped. And even Riggs had contributed to putting her mind at ease about the trip.

“I dropped by to replace her front door,” he’d confessed to Danny after a morning of surfing. “She offered me some coffee and I just told her casually that she could bunk with Allie. She’s into all that fashion stuff, and it’s not like there’s anybody like Jessie she can talk to about it, right? I didn’t tell her how, when she heard about the trip, Allie immediately asked if Amber was coming along. I just said she’d be doing me a solid by spending a little girl time with my kid.”

“And that worked,” Danny had marveled.

“Yeah, I guess. She said she’s going, didn’t she?”

“That she did.”

Every now and then, Aaron Riggs popped up and shocked him. This was one of those times.

Danny lowered the volume on the radio as he angled into the turnout. The tires on the two vehicles pushed crushing sounds out of the gravel as they came to a stop, side by side. Allie thrust open the passenger door on the van and jogged toward them.

“Isn’t it something up here, Jessie?” she exclaimed. “Beautiful, right?”

“Very.” Jessie swiveled out of the Jeep and they walked toward the border of wildflowers on the edge of the mountain. “Let’s pick some for the cabin.”

“Okay, cool.” Allie’s voice carried across the slope of the mountain. “One time when we came up here, we went to this ski place and took the lift all the way up the mountain. You can have a picnic up there on account of it’s not winter and they’re not using the mountain for anything else, and then we rode our mountain bikes back down again. Maybe we could do that this time, if you like riding bikes.”

Danny got out of the Jeep and stretched. He looked over in time to see Riggs doing the same next to the open door of his van.

“What do you figure,” he asked Danny as he approached, “another ten, fifteen minutes?”

“A little more than that. Maybe twenty to get as far as town. Another ten to the cabin.”

Riggs looked after the girls and one corner of his mouth lifted into a fragmented smile. “She can hardly wait to get out on the lake. She’s been chattering about it all the way up the mountain. You think Jessie will give it a try?”

“No idea.”

“Anything else from the scumbag?” As long as Danny had known Riggs, he switched gears like that. Still, even after so many years, the change in conversation tripped him up at times.

“Stanton? Not that I know of. Rafe helped push through a restraining order.”

“Those things never really stop someone intent on harassment.”

“No. But it gives him something else to lose.” Danny pinned his hope on that. “Might make him think twice.”

Allie’s laughter jingled like silver bells on Christmas morning, drawing Danny’s attention to the inside of the turnout where she and Jessie had stopped; Allie on a large boulder, and Jessie standing behind her. A large bouquet of cuttings—honeysuckle stems mixed in with bluish-purple lupine—lay casually on the ground next to them while Jessie braided the girl’s glossy dark hair, inserting tiny yellow blossoms as she went.

The afternoon sun peeked through the branches of trees behind them, and one long-armed beam reached straight through shimmying leaves and landed on the slope of Jessie’s shoulder, igniting her dark hair with gold and copper. She glanced at Danny just then and smiled—seemingly so carefree and happy. A sharp jolt of electricity ran straight through him. He couldn’t help hoping that it lasted, that it wasn’t just a fleeting moment of peace for her.

“Do you like my hair?” Allie asked as she ran toward her father.

“It suits you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “You’ve always been my little flower child. Jessie, can you do mine next?”

“Don’t mind him, Jessie,” Allie said over a rolling giggle. “He just likes to be silly. Can we get something to eat soon? I’m hungry.”

“Let’s get on our way up the mountain then,” Danny suggested.

“Jessie, you want to ride with us? Ooh, or I could ride with—”

“Jessie’s going to ride with Danny,” Riggs interrupted with a quick wink. “C’mon. Keep me company the rest of the way.”

“But we’ll get something to eat soon, right?”

“We’ll stop in town,” Danny promised.

Once they buckled into the Jeep, Danny circled around and pulled out onto the mountain road behind Riggs’s van.

“Mind if I put on some music?” Jessie asked.

“Sure.”

She chuckled as she seemed to decide on one of the CDs in the case, and he waited to hear what she’d chosen. On the first few notes, he recognized James Taylor.

“What’s this remind you of?” she asked, cranking up “Shower the People.” He didn’t need time to think it over, but she didn’t wait to find that out. “It played that afternoon when my car broke down and you picked me up. Remember, I met Steph for the first time that day.”

“I do remember.”

“Speaking of . . . She sent me an invitation to her wedding.”

“You mentioned. That’s good.”

“So you still don’t mind if I go.”

“Mind?” he said with a grimace. “Why would I mind?”

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m intruding.”

“Jessie.” He sighed. Didn’t she know by now that she hadn’t insinuated herself into his life? He’d drawn her there with ease and enthusiasm. There was only one individual in that Jeep with any reservations about the future at all, and he wasn’t that person.

“Okay. Well, I’d like to go,” she said.

He’d thought it had been established the day she told him she received the invitation, but he asked her anyway. “Do you want to go together?”

She hesitated before replying, “Sure. That might be fun.”

Jessie softly sang along with the music for the next few minutes up the mountain, and Danny lounged in the sound of it. When “Carolina on My Mind” came up on the queue, he grinned, remembering what she’d once told him about that song.

She sang along a few moments, then she glanced over at him and giggled. He allowed the recollection of their time together that afternoon to skitter through his mind. The way she’d accepted the band for her hair and joked about their “matching ponies,” and how she told him about her love for James Taylor’s music, and especially how she’d taken to changing his Carolina lyric to California instead.

“I always knew I wanted to get out of Slidell, and Southern California was just this pie-in-the-sky sort of Nirvana of glitz and movie stars, so I started dreaming about coming here long before it was even a real possibility. So I had California on my mind.”

Danny sighed. “So how do you feel about it now? Cali still on your mind?”

“Well. My personal glitz is now otherwise engaged,” she joked.

More and more all the time, he reckoned.

For him, though, it was another song that had taken root in his memory since that day. Every word, every note of one old song by James Taylor whispered Jessie’s name every time he happened upon it, transporting him back to that very afternoon when, for possibly the first time, he’d realized he’d found the other part of himself. A part that had been missing or damaged—or broken entirely—until she happened upon his door.

Something in the Way She Moves. And at that very moment, there went Taylor on the Jeep’s sound system again, digging it all up in him one more time.

“She has the power to go where no one else can find me . . .”

“Such a pretty song,” Jessie commented, and Danny nodded.

“Very.”

* * *

My little Jessie growed up so fast after her Mama left us. She went from checkered dresses with petticoats and frilly little socks to skirts so short I near ’bout had a heart attack. For a few years there, I became like one o’ them guards with the big hats standin’ watch at the gate to the Queen’s palace overseas. Pointin’ my finger at her like a musket. She knew just by lookin’ at me to go back to her bedroom closet and try again.

“Grampy, you have no fashion sense a-tall,” she used to tell me.

“Maybe so,” come my reply. “But I’ll find some way to o’ercome.”

Thank the Lord, when she growed into her own style, brought with it a degree o’ modesty that put an old man’s heart to ease after a lotta years o’ standin’ at the back door, finger ready to point the way back around.

Then come that husband o’ hers, and he did the finger waggin’ fer me. Didn’t have much use for that stuffed shirt, but I sure didn’t mind him takin’ the reins of watchdog at the door.

“Jack likes everything just so,” Jessie told me when they come to visit.

Next thing, I figured I’d see her with a little pill box hat ’n some o’ them white gloves, like Jackie Kennedy. Yeah, he liked everything just so, all right.

Too bad my Jessie weren’t a just-so kinda girl at the heart of her.