The afternoon heat was gathering, but she didn’t turn on the window unit—she didn’t deserve to be comfortable. Picking up an old paperback, she sprawled across the bed and tried to read, but couldn’t make herself care about the beautiful blond heroine’s problems with her handsome rapscallion of an Italian conte.
Blondie would have a happy ending, but Laurel wouldn’t. She’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it, but it would be a bed of nails rather than the one she wanted to be in. Resigned to her fate, Laurel laid her head on the pillow, turned off her brain, and slept.
Hours later she heard a masculine voice calling her name. Still half dreaming of an Italian conte who inexplicably preferred so-so brunettes to drop-dead-gorgeous blondes, she managed to sit up on the side of the bed as Jase came rushing into the room.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. You’ve got half an hour to get ready for the Bosque Club.”
“I’m not going,” she heard herself say as she stood up to confront him.
She hadn’t planned to say that, but that’s what came out, without excuse or explanation. Maybe it was her subconscious taking over and fighting to prolong Jase’s visit. Maybe it was heroine’s voice from the romance she’d been reading. Whatever the source or intent, she was standing by it.
He gave her a long, level look, and she knew he was going to ask her the question she didn’t want to hear.
“Why?”
Refusing even to try to answer, she stared back at him, her lips pressed together.
His face hardened, and his left eyebrow lifted. “Don’t tell me you don’t have anything to wear, because I’ve seen your closet. If you want, you can even wear that sexy red number again—if you put something on under it.”
“I have a headache.” It was true. She did have a headache, but she always got one when she took an afternoon nap in the heat of the day.
“So? Take an aspirin.”
She could feel her defiance crumbling under his steady gaze and tried wheedling. “I don’t like the Bosque Club. It’s too crowded. Couldn’t we go somewhere else where we could be more private?”
Jase’s eyes narrowed to slits of jet. “Somewhere people won’t recognize me?” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with care, like a death sentence.
Laurel was startled at his misinterpretation. “No, no, that isn’t it at all! I’m proud to be seen with you—anywhere!” Her words tumbled over each other into a near incoherency. “It’s not you…that was sixteen years ago…even Bosque Bend doesn’t have that long a memory—oh, maybe a few old fuddy-duddies…but it wouldn’t matter if everyone did. I love you…I always have—”
“Then, what’s the problem?”
Her shoulders slumped as she suddenly understood the unrelenting tenacity and determination that had enabled Jase to rise in the business world. Did she actually think she could withhold Daddy’s downfall from him in perpetuity? She probably should have told him when he first appeared at her front door, but now she’d waited too long. Besides, what would she have said? She didn’t have the words. She’d never discussed it before, not even with her mother.
The end of her idyll was in sight, but maybe she could delay it one day longer.
“Okay, I’ll go, but not tonight.” She tossed her head. “Tomorrow night.”
Jase studied her face for a moment, then nodded his assent and held out his hand. “Promise?”
She clasped his hand and even managed a smile. “Promise.”
He sealed their bargain with a long kiss before relaxing his embrace so they could talk. “I’ll cancel the reservations, then. And about dinner—don’t worry about it. I put in a stint as a short-order cook and can rustle up edible grub in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
After a dinner of chicken tenders and fries, they watched an old Michael Douglas movie and made love on the leather couch in the den before trailing upstairs to bed.
Her last night with him. She tried to absorb every moment of it to warm herself during the cold, lonely nights to come.
*
Thursday morning dawned bright and clear, auguring another sweltering afternoon. Laurel’s dreams had been troubled, but she decided to suck it up and think positively.
Maybe everything would turn out just fine. Maybe the club would be stuffed to the gills with new members, people who’d moved into town so recently that they wouldn’t know who she was. And maybe the old-timers would keep their mouths shut, as Ray apparently had.
The other side of the bed was empty, but she could hear Jase’s heavy tread on the stairs, accompanied by a rhythmic clinking. She sat up in bed to greet him as he came through the door, holding a small tray.
He put it down on the edge of her nightstand. Coffee and toast.
“Breakfast in bed, milady, but you’ll have to take care of yourself for lunch.” He pulled up a chair to sit with her while she ate. “I’ll be out till later in the afternoon. Got a hot deal I need to handle personally.”
“It sounds like you’re buying up the whole town.”