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Then, to Jenna, Ian said, “Thanks for the lemonade. This was nice.”
“Sure,” was all she said as she watched him get to his feet.
He paused a moment, and she couldn’t tell what was going through his mind before he said, “Tomorrow night is the grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs—will you be there?”
“I will be,” she said.
A slow smile spread across his handsome face. “Good … I’m glad….” He answered almost as if he shouldn’t be admitting it.
Then he headed for his car, and Jenna watched him go.
And watched him and watched him, drinking in every last drop of the sight of the best derriere she thought she’d ever seen.
Until he rounded the side of the house, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
And she was a little sorry about that …
So apparently, he hadn’t put a damper on her day.
But as for the rest—the skin-tingling on contact, the ogling of his backside when he’d walked away, the fact that she’d enjoyed spending that brief time with him?
She didn’t know where any of that had come from.
But she did know that there was no place in her life for it.
Not now. Not with him.
In the last eleven months, she’d gone from one disaster to another. The death of J.J. and of Abby’s dad. Her own divorce. Her mother’s death. Her father’s. The tax debacle and the likelihood that she was going to lose the farm. She’d gone from chaos to more chaos to even more chaos.
And it had to end. For both her own sake and for Abby’s. They needed to find a little solace, a little calm, a little peace. To settle down, to settle in. Together. Just the two of them.
Nowhere in any of that was there a place for skin-tingling or ogling or enjoying Ian Kincaid’s company.
In fact, a man—any man—but certainly Ian Kincaid of all men, was the anti-solace, the anti-calm, the anti-peace, the anti-settling down, the anti-settling in.
And Jenna wasn’t having any part of that.
So why was she suddenly looking forward to tomorrow night’s grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs even more than she had been?
It didn’t matter why.
She just knew she needed to squash it.
And that was what she was determined to do.
Although that little bit of a thrill at the thought that Ian Kincaid would be there was hard to catch and squash when it again took flight at merely the glimpse of him behind the wheel of his car as he drove from the side of her house and waved on his way to the main road.
But still she was determined.
Peace and calm and solace, settling in, settling down—that was what she was going to find, to achieve, for herself and for Abby.
Without the disruption of a guy who made her skin tingle …
Chapter Three
“What do you think, Abby? Too much?” Jenna asked her niece as she stood in front of the full-length mirror early Monday evening.
Of course, Abby didn’t respond. The fifteen-month-old was occupied with the bottom drawer of Jenna’s dresser, exploring and dragging out every scarf, glove and whatnot she found there.
After feeding Abby dinner, Jenna had taken the baby upstairs with her and set her in the crib with a slew of toys to keep her safely entertained so Jenna could take a quick shower and shampoo her hair.
Then she’d retrieved Abby and brought the little girl with her to her bedroom, where she’d set Abby on the floor. Being let loose in Jenna’s room always meant one of two things for the infant—either she played in the closet or she opened the bottom dresser drawer. Since Jenna had had problems picking out what to wear tonight, Abby had already demolished the closet and moved on to the drawer.
But Jenna was intent on looking her best for the grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs.
The cocktail affair was to be casual, but somehow Jenna didn’t want to go too casual. So while she’d opted for jeans, they were her dressiest jeans—jeans she’d paid a small fortune for because they rode every curve to perfection and managed to transform her rear end into a much better shape than she thought it had on its own.
To go along with the jeans, she was wearing a black, crocheted-lace blouse over a strapless black, spandex tube top. And for shoes she was trying on her post-divorce-first-night-on-the-town-with-the-girls-to-prove-she-could-still-get-hit-on shoes—peekaboo-toed, black patent leathers with bows and four-inch heels.
And she had gotten hit on that night. In those shoes. And that same outfits….
Not that she was aiming to get hit on tonight, of course. She wasn’t. She just wanted to look good. This was really the first fancy evening social event she’d gone to since being back in Northbridge.
And the fact that Ian Kincaid was going to be there? That he’d made a point of asking if she was going to be there, too?
Okay, maybe that had a teensy, weensy bit to do with the fact that she wanted to look good. But that was all. And it was just a matter of pride. Yes, her father had died owing the government over forty-thousand dollars in unpaid taxes that she couldn’t pay, either; yes, Ian Kincaid and the Kincaid Corporation might be able to get her father’s farm and turn it into a football training center, whether she liked it or not, but she still had her dignity. And that outfit and those shoes.
And maybe tonight she wanted to think that she might be able to make Ian Kincaid eat his heart out just a little …
“As if that could happen,” she told her reflection in the mirror, to bring herself back down to earth.
After all, she reasoned as she applied some blush, some eye shadow, some mascara, she was thirty not twenty—if she were still twenty, she wouldn’t have even needed the blush. She was a nurse, not a doctor—the way she’d set out to be. She was divorced after ten years of marriage to a man whose mother had been and still was more important than Jenna had ever managed to be to him. And while a lot of her male patients flirted shamelessly with her, most of them were elderly.
Second looks from guys her own age? Sure, those she got now and then. But despite the fact that following Ted to Mexico and then to several states in his failed career pursuits had made her fairly well-traveled, she’d never acquired any sort of sophistication. She was still a small-town girl through and through. And it was there on the girl-next-door face that she didn’t have complaints about, but that didn’t make men like Ian Kincaid drool, so there was no reason to think that he was going to.
And even if he did, so what? she asked herself as she bent over to give her hair a thorough brushing before standing straight again to fluff it and let it fall in loose waves around her shoulders.
Besides being desperate to find some serenity in her life, she was fresh out of a marriage that had completely revolved around her former husband and his—well, actually, his mother’s—goals for him. For Ted and his mother, she’d sacrificed everything—including her own dreams and having kids and time she should have spent with her family.
If she hadn’t, her family might not have ended up the way it had.
And while she didn’t know much about Ian, she did know that he worked for his father. To her, that meant that meeting his boss’s requirements wasn’t something he could leave at the office. It meant that his father held two major positions of importance in his life, and that gave his father double the power over him, double the influence over him, double the reason for Ian to factor in his father’s opinions, desires and goals, and try to please him above and before all else. Above and before everyone else.
For Jenna, that raised red warning flares.
In her experience, a family tie that strong ended up taking the number one priority.
And getting lost in the dust of accommodating that wasn’t something she was ever—ever—going to do again. The cost was just too high.
“So we don’t care whether or not Ian Kincaid’s jaw drops tonight,” she muttered to Abby, who was trying to pull a stocking cap over her own curly hair and again paid Jenna no attention.
But still it would be a really nice ego-boost if his jaw did drop, she couldn’t help thinking.
And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of an ego boost after this winter.
It just wouldn’t change anything, Jenna swore.
She had set a new course for herself, for her life. An unwavering course.
Ian Kincaid might be drop-dead gorgeous, a pleasure to sit on the porch and drink lemonade with, sexy enough to have had her fantasizing about him all through the night, on her mind this entire day—or not—but he was also a guy to stay away from, even if she wasn’t intent on sticking to her own new path.
So an ego boost was honestly all she wanted from him. All she would allow.
But if his jaw dropped when she walked in tonight?
She’d be glad for that ego boost.
Then she’d go on about her business and never give him another thought.
The grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs was by invitation only; Jenna had helped Meg address them and knew that over two hundred of them had gone out.
The main house on the compound—the house Meg shared with her husband Logan and Tia—was being used as the babysitting center. Manned by four teenage girls, that was where Meg’s three-year-old stepdaughter and several other children and infants were being left.
Abby was not altogether good with strangers and clung to Jenna when the babysitters tried to take her, but after a moment of watching Tia—whom Abby treated like a big sister—Abby motioned to be let down. She crawled over to where the three-year-old was playing. Since Tia welcomed Abby and let her play with the train set, too, Jenna felt free to leave her and went through the house and out the back door.
Directly behind Meg’s home was a large two-car garage. Over that was the studio apartment where Jenna knew Ian was staying. There weren’t any lights on there, so she assumed he was already at the party.
A shiver of excitement ran through her at that thought, the thought that she was on her way to seeing him again.
Then she got furious at herself.
She was also on her way to seeing potentially two hundred other people, she reminded herself. Why was it only Ian Kincaid she was thinking about and getting excited over?
Take it down a notch, she warned herself.
But still she walked a little faster to get to the party.
It was being held next door to the garage, in what had once been the property’s barn. The top half had been converted into a loft where Chase Mackey lived with his soon-to-be-wife, Hadley, and Ian and Chase’s nephew, Cody.
The lower half of the barn was devoted to Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs. The rear portion was work space, while the front half had been turned into showcases that displayed the furniture to best effect. Those showcases had taken from December until now to finally complete.
As Jenna neared the big barn doors that were open for the event, she could see light spilling out and hear the sounds of the guitarist and singer Meg had hired, as well as laughter and many, many voices.
As hosts and hostesses, Meg, Logan, Chase and Hadley were positioned at the entrance to greet new arrivals. The mayor and his wife were taking up their attention as Jenna got there, so she motioned to Meg to let her know she was just going to go in, and then she moved around them, headed for the sea of people.
She spotted several of the Perrys and the Pratts she’d grown up with, and she took a moment to chat with them. She said hello to the Graysons, who were new to town but whom Meg had introduced her to. Logan and Hadley’s half siblings were there—although Jenna didn’t see Dag and his new wife Shannon, Ian’s sister. All of the other business owners in town were there, along with the entire town council and even a few people who looked familiar, but whom Jenna couldn’t quite place.
The one person she didn’t see was Ian Kincaid.
Not that it made any difference, she told herself. She knew almost everyone there, she was looking forward to talking to many people she hadn’t yet had the chance to reconnect with, and it didn’t make any difference if she never encountered him tonight.
Except that somehow in her scenario of making her entrance, she’d imagined him alone in the distance when he caught his first sight of her and being bowled over by it.
Silly. It was just so silly….
When it struck her just how silly it was, she shuddered a little at having had such an adolescent pipe dream and vowed to put Ian Kincaid completely from her mind. This was a party she’d been looking forward to before she’d even met him, and she was determined to dive into it, to enjoy herself and not to have another thought about the man.
Starting now!
Since Logan, Chase and Hadley—who worked with Logan and Chase as their upholsterer—had been busy decorating the showcases, Meg had taken charge of the party planning, and Jenna had helped her friend wherever she could. Part of that help had involved deciding where to put the bar, the hors d’oeuvres table and the guitarist and singer. So even though she couldn’t see any of those things through the crowd, she knew what direction to go to get to them.
It took time to move through the mass of people, because she did know most everyone, and there were so many more greetings to exchange along the way.
Then she finally made it to her destination, and that was where she found Ian Kincaid.
He was standing alone near the bar, rather than in the middle of the showroom floor, and his jaw didn’t drop when he first caught sight of Jenna. But his striking pale blue eyes did widen, and that supple-looking mouth of his stretched into a slow, appreciative smile that still managed to send the message she’d been hoping for.
“This is not the look of a farmer’s daughter,” he said when Jenna reached the bar and he stepped up to meet her as if he’d been waiting for her.
“What are farmers’ daughters supposed to look like?” Jenna asked, raising her chin in challenge and suppressing a smile of her own.
“Not as good as you look,” he said, tilting his head to take in the full view now that he was nearer.
And while Jenna lectured herself about how it shouldn’t please her to have his reaction be what she’d hoped for, it still thrilled her to no end.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked then.
“It’s an open bar,” Jenna pointed out.
His smile turned into a mischievous half grin that told her he’d known that all along.
“I’ll have a glass of red wine,” she told the bartender, bypassing Ian.
“Make it two,” he added over his shoulder as he leaned an elbow on the bar and focused his attention solely on Jenna.
Despite that, just as the bartender poured their wine and slid the glasses to them, three old friends came up to say hello to Jenna and put in drink orders of their own.
As Jenna chatted with them, Ian stayed where he was. It seemed rude of her not to introduce him, so she did.
“Are you here together?” Neily Pratt—one of the three old friends—asked Jenna.
“No!” Jenna answered much too quickly.
Ian chuckled quietly, as if her discomfort at that question amused him.
“But you were talking when we came up, so we’ll leave you alone,” Neily added when the other three glasses of wine had been delivered.
“Would it be so bad if we were together?” Ian asked when the women had moved off. “Because Shannon isn’t here yet, and everybody else I know is busy. I was hoping you’d have pity on me and keep me company.”
