They spent a quiet evening, Jake at his drafting table, working on a design for class. Next to him, at the dining room table, Robin’s fingers were fast and furious on the calculator as she reviewed some numbers from work. She was restless, muttering under her breath and bouncing up a lot. She would stalk about the dining room, brushing past him, her hand trailing down his back, or through his hair. Jake liked this—it felt comfortable, as if they had been doing this all their lives.
He had completed a major portion of his design when Robin’s arms suddenly shot up in the air. “Yes!” she exclaimed, and smiled at him, eyes sparkling. “I got an e-mail from Girt. She said they just picked up a big seafood account that’s going to pay for some box-pressing machines. Styrofoam boxes, here we come!”
“I remember when the word Styrofoam made you gag.”
“Not anymore, not since I figured out how profitable the chunky white stuff is. Come on, ask me anything. I can tell you whatever you want to know about thickness, consistency, and how to color it. Styrofoam need not be only white, you know.”
“First bubble wrap, now Styrofoam,” he said, shaking his head. “Your talents are amazing. What’s next, shrink-wrap? How will anyone compete?”
“That’s precisely the point, Hammerhead. Did you think Queen of Bubble Wrap was just some silly title I had given myself? Oh no!” She laughed, leaned back in her chair, and stretched her arms high. “Girt said David’s still got that bug thing he had when we were there a while ago. She’s really worried.”
A surprising shift in attitude about Girt, he couldn’t help note. “Sounds like you guys are starting to be friends.”
Robin looked surprised. “It does?”
“Well, yeah, when you start talking about her kid and what she’s doing. What would you call it?”
Robin gave a little laugh; her eves fell to her laptop. “I don’t know . . . it’s just that we’ve been talking on and off about her business, and these things sort of naturally pop up, I guess.”
“That’s how most friendships start.”
Robin seemed to consider that for a moment, then firmly shook her head. “Girt and I have a lot in common, but not that much in common.”
She said it as if it were out of the question, completely impractical, and it left Jake feeling cold.
And he wasn’t the only one bothered by her remark—as Robin drove home that night (after being tempted to spend another night with Jake, but afraid of . . . what?), she thought about the evening, how natural it had felt, the two of them just being together. It seemed so right. So natural. So what was it she was afraid of?
Love?
No way. Love didn’t scare her—she had loved before! No, she was afraid of getting tied down, of letting her heart do the talking instead of her head and ending up miserable because of a foolish mistake. And ending up with Jake would eventually prove to be a foolish mistake for them both, because the expectation he would have of her would far outstrip her ability to deliver. Wouldn’t it? Yes. Yes, of course it would.
So why, then, was she so head over heels for Jake if he was so wrong for her? And he was wrong, no matter how much she liked him. All the warning signs were there—baggage (Cole, his family), instability (a fledgling business), bad choices (Lindy, whom Robin had accidentally heard on Jake’s machine asking how he was doing, for Chrissakes), moneyphobia (turned white as a sheet when she suggested flying to Manhattan for the weekend). Oh yeah, he was all wrong, just like Girt was the wrong sort of friend for her, no matter how much she liked the old girl.
As Robin pulled into her drive, her head was beginning to ache, her stomach in knots. Every time she tried to think her stomach knotted up. It was too hard, too confusing, so she was just not going to do it. Nope, she was going to look on the Internet for flights to Acapulco, because she had the sudden and overwhelming urge to go somewhere.
And she might have just gone that moment, had the phone not been ringing when she came into the house.
Robin threw her bag aside and went diving for the phone. “Hello?” she asked breathlessly.
“Hi, honey.”
“Mom! Where are you?”
“New York. We’ll be here for another couple of weeks until your dad completes his treatment. Then I think we’ll be heading out to the ranch.”
Good; they’d be in Texas again, close to her. “How is he?” Robin asked.
“Cantankerous. Miserable. Testy. But I think the spiritual healing course we are doing is helping a lot.”
Robin cringed; she could just imagine what Dad thought of that.
“I’ve been trying to call you for a couple of days and wish you a happy Easter. Have you been out of town again?”
“No. I was with a friend.”
“What friend?”
What was that she heard, the wail of a locomotive headed right for her? “Just a guy,” she said and immediately regretted the words.
“Anyone I know?” Nosey Parker pressed.
“No, Mom. It’s just . . . no one you know.”
Nosey said nothing, but Robin could practically hear the steam coming out of her ears. “Why the big secret?”
“Okay, exactly how old does a woman have to be before her mom stops giving her the third degree?”