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Jenna flipped up the picture to scan the attached bio and Mark Bishop’s answers to the list of questions that had been posed to every one of the Ten Most Eligible. Thirty-two. A Leo. Educated at Princeton. No siblings.
Aloud she read, “‘My life’s passion is…my work’?” Jenna smiled at her friends. “Gosh, every woman’s dream. A workaholic.”
Lauren frowned. “Yes, and if I remember correctly, Debra Lee shared with him a few of our more embarrassing tales of adolescence. The nitwit.”
“He found them amusing,” Victoria said. She seemed determined to raise Mark Bishop’s profile. For my benefit? Jenna wondered.
Lauren shook her head. “Ha! He blew us off professionally. I got the distinct impression he thought we were goofy, naive teenagers who grew up to be goofy, naive adults.”
Jenna looked at Vic. “And you think he’ll make an interesting follow-up piece?”
A tiny frown marred Victoria’s brow. “He’s the first one to get engaged. I think it will be interesting to follow each of these guys as they come off the list. What made them choose the woman they’re going to marry? What made—” she checked the back of the profile, where she’d added a notation or two “—Shelby Elaine Winston the one for Mark Bishop? Why her?”
Lauren snorted. “Why should we care? So the rest of us can copy good old Shelby and hope that one day we’ll snag a Mr. Right for ourselves?” She shook her head in disgust, sending loose auburn curls over one shoulder. “God, sometimes I think we need to give up on that fantasy.”
“What makes you think some of us haven’t?” Jenna surprised herself by saying. Damn Jack Rawlins! He really had soured her on any notion of happily-ever-after, hadn’t he?
Victoria looked genuinely disconcerted. “What’s wrong with you two? We’re all firm believers in fairy-tale endings, remember?”
“Not lately,” Lauren said, playing with her wineglass.
Something in her tone made Jenna wonder just how much trouble there was in Lauren’s current relationship. Earlier she’d mentioned that Brad had begun to pressure her to make more of a commitment. She’d responded by taking an assignment for a travel magazine that would have her flying to New Zealand next week. Get some breathing distance between them, she’d said.
Vic cocked her head at Lauren. “Trouble in paradise?”
Lauren didn’t pretend not to understand. From the moment they’d met in grade school there’d been few secrets between the three friends. “Brad’s driving me crazy,” she admitted.
“In what way?” Jenna asked.
“In a dozen different ways. Everything he does lately gets on my nerves. Did you ever notice how many times he ends a sentence with ‘…and so on and so on and so forth’? He’ll be telling a story, and it’s as though he’s suddenly lost interest. Then I’m just supposed to guess how the rest of it goes. And if I say anything, he looks at me like I’m an imbecile.” Lauren narrowed her eyes at Jenna. “Why are you smiling?”
“I was just wishing I’d had that problem with Jack. He always finished his stories. And then he’d repeat them again and again. I could recite them in my sleep. He never shut up.” She caught sight of Lauren’s scowl. “Sorry. You were saying?”
Lauren played with her spoon, still frowning. “He attacks his spaghetti,” she said in a soft voice.
Vic sat forward. “I beg your pardon?”
Lauren looked at her friends impatiently, then made quick slicing motions with her silverware. “He attacks it. Like it’s a plate of snakes. It doesn’t matter that he’s got a pasta spoon right beside his plate. He just starts whacking at it with a knife and fork until every piece is no more than an inch long. It’s disgusting to watch.”
“Sounds serious,” Vic said, barely suppressing a grin.
“Wait till Chef Boyardee hears about this,” Jenna added.
Lauren gave them both a stern look. “I know what you’re thinking. But little irritations like that can really kill a relationship, you know?”
Jenna nodded sympathetically. “Mom used to say you could sit on a mountain, but you couldn’t sit on a tack.”
Although, she had the sudden, wry memory that little transgressions hadn’t been the death of her own marriage. Forget how Jack had repeated stories or treated his spaghetti or neglected to cap the toothpaste. That long-term affair with his secretary had pretty much distracted her from small annoyances.
She pushed thoughts of Jack to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on Lauren’s dilemma. Both Jenna and Vic had heard this same sort of complaint from their friend before.
Lauren claimed to love her independence so much that the idea of settling down with one man horrified her. Her career as a freelance photographer had really taken off in the past few years, and she now made a comfortable living regularly contributing to several different publications. While photo assignments for FTW were still a top priority, she loved flying out of the country on a moment’s notice, marching through steamy jungles and climbing steep mountains in search of just the right shot. Where would a husband and kids and a picket fence fit into that kind of life? she’d once asked her two best friends.
It was Jenna’s private theory, however, that a loss of independence wasn’t Lauren’s real fear at all. Jenna would have bet money that Lauren was more afraid of duplicating her parents’ disastrous marriage.
Her mother was on her fourth husband. And Lauren’s father, husband number one, was still referred to in their old neighborhood as Womanizing Walter. He’d been the first guy in Bear Hollow to greet any new neighbor with an armload of lawn-care products for the men—and eventually, a key to the nearest motel for young and willing wives. The scandalous details of the Hoffmans’ divorce had set the neighborhood on its ear for months.
“Has Brad asked you to marry him?” Jenna inquired.
Lauren stiffened and rolled her eyes. “No. But I think he’s going to soon. Hell, I think he’s in love with me.”
Vic placed her hand over Lauren’s. “Lauren, you know what you’re doing, don’t you? Every time a guy gets too close you start running.”
Jenna sat back in her chair, a little unnerved. “What’s wrong with us?” she asked. “Vic’s right. I can remember a time when we would have been dancing on this table at the thought of someone being in love with us. We’re only twenty-eight. This can’t be it for romance.”
Vic, who had recently broken off with her boyfriend of six months, shook her head vehemently. “Of course it isn’t. Let’s just acknowledge that we’re all going through a bad patch right now. But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up on finding true love. Or it finding us. Haven’t we built a business on the idea of romance and grand passion?”
They fell silent for a few moments, each of them caught in her own thoughts. Dexter approached the table with the dessert tray and placed a dish of sinful-looking chocolate cake in front of Jenna. She smiled her thanks. She had to admit, expensive and as calorie-laden as it was, it looked wonderful.
Vic pushed her fork into the moist slice of cake before her. “I’m not going to spoil a perfectly divine dessert with talk about how pathetic our love lives are.” She tapped a finger against the nearest photograph on the table. “I still think the women who read FTW want to believe there’s a Ten Most Eligible out there for them. Wouldn’t you like a few hints that might allow you to snag one of these guys?”
“I suppose that would depend on how much of myself I’d have to give up in order to get him,” Jenna said.
Catching sight of the picture of Mark Bishop, Dexter’s eyes lit up. “Oh, honey, I wouldn’t let him get away. Do whatever it takes. Get a complete makeover if you have to. He’s a hottie.”
They all laughed and the mood at the table lightened. After Dexter sashayed off, Jenna said, “Well, whatever secrets the happy couple want to share, I’m sure you’ll put a great spin on it, Vic.”
A short silence fell as the three women took their first bites of dessert, sighs of appreciation escaping their lips. As she slipped her fork into the cake for a second mouthful, Victoria looked at Jenna and said, “Actually I’m not going to do the article. You are.”
Jenna frowned. “Me? What are you talking about?”
“I want you to do the piece.”
Jenna shook her head. She reached over and pushed Victoria’s wineglass to the opposite side of the table. “No more wine for you.”
“I’m serious.”
The cake in Jenna’s mouth suddenly became flavorless. She gave Victoria an incredulous look, though she noticed that Lauren didn’t seem completely surprised. “Why aren’t you going?” And then, because she realized that Vic was serious, she added, “I can’t go in your place.”
“Why not? You have perfectly acceptable skills. You did that article last Christmas about gift suggestions.”
“You know very well that was a last-minute filler, and it amounted to no more than three paragraphs. That doesn’t make me a journalist.”
“It still required a way with words. Which you have.”
Jenna set down her fork, her dessert forgotten. “Yeah, and I’m thinking of a few choice ones right now.”
She looked across the table at Lauren for support. The redhead was mysteriously quiet. No help from that quarter evidently.
“Absolutely not,” Jenna said firmly. “No.”
Victoria lifted her head, all haughty tyranny. “Technically, I’m your boss. I order you to do it for the sake of the magazine.”
Lauren and Jenna burst out laughing, and even Victoria cracked a smile.
“I might let you order my dessert,” Jenna said, “but I’m an equal partner of FTW, and you can’t send me off to—” she flipped back to Mark Bishop’s bio to see where he lived “—to Orlando just because you don’t want to do it.”
“You don’t have to go to Orlando,” Victoria said.
“Good.”
“He and Shelby will be in New York.”
“What?”
“They’ve agreed to squeeze in a joint interview while they’re in New York this week. He’s there on business, and she’s picking out her trousseau. It’ll be easy. They’ll be in a lovey-dovey mood. Flush with the glamour and glitz of New York, the city of love…”
“I thought Paris was the city of love,” Lauren cut in.
Victoria shot her a sour look. “Thanks for your support.”
Jenna crossed her arms, annoyance tinged with the tiniest bit of fear beginning to take hold of her. Searching for the right argument, she looked down, straight into the steely, hooded eyes of Mark Bishop. The guy was in the newspaper business, for heaven’s sake. He’d certainly recognize that she was completely out of her element. He’d chew her up and spit out the pieces.
She cleared her throat. Loudly. “I can’t just drop everything and go to New York. I have two children who—”
“Don’t play the little-homemaker card with me,” Victoria said in exasperation. “You have a father and two older brothers who dote on those boys, and they’d be quite willing to baby-sit if you asked them. God knows, you do everything for them.”
“Send Lauren.”
Lauren gave her a small smile of commiseration. “I’m already going. To take the pictures.”
“She can’t do the article,” Victoria said. “She might be a genius with her camera, but you know her thought processes can be hopelessly disorganized. Doesn’t allow for good writing.”
Making a face at Victoria, Lauren replied, “Keep it up, and you’ll be looking for a photographer, as well as a journalist.”
Vic reached across the table and squeezed Lauren’s arm. “You know I love you, darling. Desperation always makes me cruel.”
“What about one of the freelancers?” Jenna suggested.
“Aren’t you always telling me we need to watch costs where we can? Why should we pay a freelancer when there’s a perfectly good writer in-house?” Victoria developed an interest in scraping crumbs from her plate. “Besides, there’s no time. You and Lauren have to show up at his penthouse suite tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow!”
Seeing Jenna’s consternation, Lauren decided to speak up. “Come on, Jen. We can do it. Then we can go shopping. Or take in a show. We can have a ‘wild woman weekend’ just like in the old days.”
“The last time I acted like a wild woman, I ended up married to the most inappropriate man in the world.”
“Well, you certainly don’t have to worry about that this time,” Victoria said. “Shelby Elaine isn’t going to turn number six loose without a fight.”
Jenna tried again. “I can’t go anywhere tomorrow. I have an appointment.”
“With whom?” Vic asked suspiciously.
“With a real-estate agent. I wasn’t kidding before. I’ve got to find a place of my own. The boys need it. I need it. Independence Day is long past due.”
How irksome it was to see the open skepticism on both her friends’ faces! Vic, of course, was the first to weigh in with her opinion. “I don’t know why you think you can fool us with all this nonsense about buying a house. You’re not going to move out of your father’s place—at least not until you get married again. You claim to be eager to get back out on your own, but there’s still a part of you that wants to stay there.”
“Why would I want to stay there? It’s too small for all of us. Dad can drive a person nuts. It’s too far from—”
“Because it’s safe.” Vic cut across the conversation.
Jenna stared down at her abandoned dessert. She wanted to refute Vic’s words, but she had no grounds.
She longed for independence, longed to make a home for herself and the boys, but at the same time she was scared to death. Afraid to fail. Afraid to find out she couldn’t manage on her own. It was horrible to be this age, have come this far, and still suspect that deep within, the same old insecure Jenna was sabotaging every move.
She could feel Vic and Lauren’s eyes on her and felt a surge of rebellion. “Why can’t you go, Vic?” she asked, determined to keep the conversation on the problem at hand. “And I want the truth.”
Victoria looked down for a moment, running her fingers through her blond hair in a familiar gesture that told her friends the teasing time was over. When she lifted her eyes, Jenna saw the uneasiness there, tinged with an un-characteristic fear.
“I’m flying out to California tomorrow morning,” Victoria said, the lightness gone from her voice. “I’m not going to let Cara flit off to Europe to ride around on the back of a motorcycle without trying to make her see reason. That guy is no good for her, and maybe face-to-face I can convince her of that.”
During Victoria’s last year in college, her parents had been killed in a car accident. Cara, six years her junior, had been seriously injured. Vic had dropped out of school and come home to take care of her sister. She’d nursed her back to health, settled their parents’ estate and over-seen the sale of the family business. The sisters loved each other dearly. But that didn’t mean Cara would let Vic tell her how to run her love life.
Jenna knew firsthand how such interference could sometimes produce a result just the opposite of the one desired. She leaned closer to her friend. “Vic…are you sure this is the best way to handle the problem? Don’t you remember when everyone in my family tried to persuade me not to marry Jack? We couldn’t get to the justice of the peace fast enough.”
“It won’t be like that,” Victoria replied. She pressed her lips together tightly, as though her anxiety had leaked out before she could catch it. “My mind’s made up, the tickets are bought, so don’t try to talk me out of it.”
They all subsided into thoughtful silence. The rest of their desserts remained uneaten. Jenna stared down at the picture of Mark Bishop, seeing nothing but the potential for disaster. She would do anything to help the magazine and her friend. But this? How could she hope to succeed?
Eventually the silence became charged and uncomfortable. Jenna picked up the picture again, releasing a huge sigh. “Lord, he looks so intimidating.”
“Debra Lee says he’s a prince to work for. And he’s fallen in love since that picture was taken,” Victoria said. “He’ll be a pussycat.”
Jenna opened her mouth to refute that, but Lauren touched Victoria’s sleeve and said, “Give her some time to think about it, Vic. You know Jenna. She likes to weigh everything very carefully. I’m not surprised she’s hesitant, the way you’ve sprung this on her.”
Victoria looked back at Jenna. “All right. I’ll give you until tonight to make up your mind.”
“And then what happens?” Jenna asked.
“And then I start begging.”
Lauren laughed, but Jenna frowned. She wouldn’t go. She just couldn’t. No more thought on the matter would make a difference.
And she wasn’t going to let this foolishness keep her from enjoying a dessert the company was paying good money for. She picked up her fork again and deliberately placed a sizable bite of Chocolate Sin into her mouth.
The icing was thick, cloying. She tried to savor its richness, but all she could see were Mark Bishop’s dark eyes staring up at her from his picture beside her plate.
“Don’t look like that,” Vic commanded. “You’re not being sent to the executioner’s block.”
