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Why did the ordinary rites of passage that so many women took for granted—boyfriends, marriage, motherhood—seem to slip from her grasp like fine sand? In her teens and twenties, there had always been “later.” But watching relationship after relationship crash and burn—if they ever got off the ground to begin with—had a way of eroding a girl’s self-confidence. Not to mention her hopes.
Was it so wrong to want a family of her own, to ache for a pair of loving, strong arms around her in bed at night, to be the reason for someone’s smile? Was it foolish to want a little someone to stay up late wrapping Christmas presents for, to wonder if they’d ever get potty trained or be okay on their first day of school, to embarrass the heck out of by kissing them in public, to tuck in at night and read to?
Or was she just being selfish?
And her mother listened and rocked her and told her, no, she wasn’t being selfish at all, that someday she’d have her own family, a husband who’d cherish her, children to love. That she had so much to offer, she just had to be patient. Things happen for a reason, Mama said, even if we might not understand the particulars when we’re in the middle of it.
So what, exactly, Dana wondered over her mother’s murmurings, was the reason for C. J. Turner’s appearance in her life? To torment her with eyes she had no reason to believe would ever sparkle just for her, a pair of arms she ‘d never feel wrapped around her shoulders, a chest she’d never be able to lay her head against?
She sucked in a breath: What on earth was she going on about? She didn’t even know the man! Were nice guys so rare these days that simply being around one was enough to send her over the edge? Because even in the midst of her pityfest, she knew the meltdown had nothing to do with C. J. Not really. No, it was everything he represented.
All those things that, for whatever reason, always seemed to elude her.
But even the best crying jags eventually come to an end. Dana sat up, grabbed a tissue from the tole-painted box on the end table, and honked into it, after which her mother pulled her off the futon and led her to the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, the road to Jenny Craig was paved with comfort food, but there you are. And as she ate—fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad—and as Amy Grant held forth from the clock radio on the counter, punctuated by the occasional war whoop from the family room, the conversation soon came back around to her cousin.
“So …” Dana wiped her fingers on a paper napkin, perking up considerably when her mother hauled a bowl of shimmering cherry Jell-O out of the fridge. “What was Trish asking about me? And is there whipped cream?”
The can of Reddi-wip plonked onto the table. “Just if you still lived alone, still worked at the store.” Mama scooped out two huge, quivering blobs into custard dishes. “I gave her your number, I hope that’s okay?”
“Sure. Not that she’d ever call me.” The first bite of Jell-O melted soothingly against her tongue, reminding her of the last dessert she’d eaten. As well as the lazy, sexy, South Carolina accent of the man who had bought it for her.
Her mother was giving her a pained look. So Dana smiled and said, “Speaking of the store, I started looking at possible sites for the new location today.”
“Well, it’s about time! A body can’t hardly breathe in that itty-bitty place y’all are in now. Find anything?”
Yeah. Trouble. “Not yet.”
“That’s okay, you will, honey. You just have to keep looking.”
A twinge of either aggravation or acid reflux spurted through Dana as she stared hard at her spoon. And how long, exactly, was she supposed to keep looking? She thought back to how she’d spent weeks searching for the perfect prom dress, finally finding one she absolutely loved in some little shop in the mall. Except … the neckline was too low. And it was red. With a full skirt. And all those sparklies …
So she’d kept looking. And looking. Until, by the time she finally realized that was the only dress she really wanted, it was gone. So she’d had to settle for something she hadn’t liked nearly as much because she’d dithered so long.
Because she’d believed herself unworthy of something so perfect.
She nearly choked on her Jell-O.
She was still doing it, wasn’t she? Refusing to even try something on because of some preconceived notion that it wouldn’t work. And maybe it wouldn’t, once she got it on (she stifled a snort at the double entrendre). God knew she’d left plenty of clothes hanging in dressing rooms over the years. But at least she owed it to herself to try, for crying out loud—
“Dana, honey? Why are you frowning so hard?”
Dana blinked herself back from la-la land and smiled for her mother, even as fried chicken and potato salad tumble-dried in her stomach.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, thinking, Damn straight I have a lot to offer.
And absolutely nothing to lose.
Chapter Three
C.J. clattered his keys and cell phone onto the Mexican-tiled kitchen countertop flanking a professional-grade cooktop he never used, gratefully yielding to the house’s deep, benign silence. His briefcase thumped onto the stone floor as he glanced at the message machine: nada. Good. However, since his cleaning lady, Guadalupe, only came twice a week, his cereal bowl greeted him where he’d left it more than twelve hours earlier, bits of dried corn flakes plastered to the sides, a half cup of cold, murky coffee keeping it company. He tossed the dregs into the stainless steel sink, splattering his shirt in the process, aggravating the vague irritability clinging to him like seaweed.
C.J. yanked open the dishwasher and rammed the dishes inside, then grabbed a beer from the Sub-Zero fridge. Moments later, he stood on his flagstone patio, his gaze skating over the infinity pool, its mirrored surface reflecting the cloudless, almost iridescent early evening sky, then across the pristinely kept golf course dotted with fuzzy young pines and delicate ash trees beyond. And backdropping it all, the rough-cut Sandia Mountains, bloodred in the sunset’s last hurrah. A light, dry breeze shivered the water’s surface, soothing C.J. through his shirt. He took a pull of his beer and thought, glowering, What more could I possibly want?
Other than dinner magically waiting for him, maybe.
And not having to make a certain phone call this evening.
Back inside, a couple of touches to assorted wall panels instantaneously produced both cool air and even cooler jazz. Damn house was smarter than he was, C. J. thought grumpily, continuing on to the master suite at the back of the house.
From the middle of the king-size bed, a yard-long slash of gray surveyed him—upside down—through heavy-lidded yellow eyes. The cat pushed out a half-assed meow that ended in a yawn huge enough to turn the thing inside out.
“Don’t let me disturb your rest,” C.J. said as he tossed the day’s dress duds into the leather club chair in the corner, adding to the mountain of clothes already there, waiting to be hauled to the cleaners. He’d barely tugged on a soft T-shirt, a pair of worn jeans, when he felt a grapefruit-sized head butt his shin.
“Nice try, fuzzbutt, but you’ve still got food in your dish, I looked. Which is more than I can say for myself. Unless you want to make this phone call for me?”
The cat flicked his tail in disgust and trotted away, and C. J. mused about how he wouldn’t mind having a tail to flick in disgust himself, right about now.
He rolled his shoulders as he returned to the kitchen, his aching muscles a testament to the fact that too many years of twelve- and fourteen-hour days were beginning to take their toll. Still, work was what he did. Who he was. Besides, what was the alternative? Watching reality TV for hours on end? He glanced at the microwave clock. Eight-thirty-two. Two hours later in Charleston. If he put this off long enough, he’d miss his father’s birthday altogether. A tempting, if unrealistic, thought. “Forgetting” the occasion would only add fuel to the implacable fire of bitterness and resentment lodged between them.
The cat writhed around his ankles, startling him. The house was beginning to cool off. C.J., however, was not.
Eight-thirty-six. Frosted air teased his shoulders as he opened the freezer, yanked out a microwaveable dinner. He peeled back the corner and stuck it in the zapper. Fifteen minutes. More than enough time.
He snatched his cell off the counter, hesitated another moment, then dialed. His father answered on the first ring, his voice bombastic, irritable, condemning the caller for having interrupted whatever he’d been doing. “Turner here!”
“Dad. Happy birthday.”
A moment of silence followed. Then: “That you, Cameron?”
“Who else would it be? Unless I have a half brother you forgot to mention.”
Again, brittle silence stretched between them. Ah, yes—one did not joke with Cameron James Turner, Sr.
“Wondered if you were going to remember.”
“Of course I remembered.” Although he hadn’t sent a card. Hadn’t in years, since Hallmark didn’t make one that said Thanks for never being there for me.
“Well,” his father said. “It got so late.”
“I just walked in the door. Long day.”
That merited a grunt, but nothing more. Then, “Business good?”
“Fine.”
“Growing?”
“Steadily.”
“Glad to hear it,” his father said, but perfunctorily, without any glow of pride. Not surprising, considering how small potatoes his father obviously considered a four-person real estate agency. In Albuquerque. C.J. glanced at the microwave and mentally groaned. How could two measly minutes seem like an eternity? “So. You do anything for your birthday?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know—go out with friends?”
“Why would I do that?”
Why, indeed? “Well. I just wanted to say … happy sixty-fifth.’ Night—”
“Not so fast, hold on a minute. You planning on coming out anytime soon?”
Shock sluiced through C.J. He and his father hadn’t seen each other in more than a dozen years. “What did you say?”
Why?
“Simple enough question, Cameron. I’m getting my affairs in order, need your signature on some papers.”
C.J.’s fingers strangled the phone. He should have known. “I can’t get away right now. You’ll have to courier the papers to me.”
“But they have to be witnessed—”
“So I’ll have them witnessed!”
The dial tone snarled in his ear; his father had hung up on him, shutting C.J. off, and out, as he always had. Always would.
C.J. slapped the phone shut. From two thousand miles away, he felt the burning look of disapproval etched into his father’s overlarge features, the disappointment shadowing blue eyes like C.J.’s own. He’d never understood why, nor had he ever felt compelled to dig around for answers he wasn’t sure he wanted, anyway. The basics were simple enough: his father had denied him nothing, except himself.
And while C.J. would never intentionally treat another human being as dismissively as his father had him, his well didn’t exactly run deep, either, judging from his lack of any real connection with the women he’d dated over the years. Clearly, he’d inherited his father’s factory-defective heart.
But Dana’s different, came the thought, as unexpected and unwelcome as a bee sting.
Followed immediately by Don’t go there, Turner.
Not a problem, he thought with a rueful grin. Not after all he’d gone through to reach a place where he was finally as much in control of his life as was humanly possible. And blissfully, gloriously free—free from the pressure to be someone he wasn’t, free from either his own or anyone else’s expectations.
At his feet, the cat meowed, a tiny interrogative eeerk.
Almost nobody, anyway.
The microwave beeped. In a daze, C.J. popped open the door, grabbing his dinner with his bare hand. He cursed, dropping the hot tray with a great clatter.
Free, he mused, to make a fool of himself without witnesses.
He let the cat out back, then followed, his meal and drink in tow, to sink into one of the pricey, thickly padded patio chairs the decorator had picked out. The sky had gone a deep, soothing blue; C.J. took another pull of his beer, then let his head loll back against the cushion. Overhead, the first stars had begun to twinkle. And if he wanted to sit here for the next two hours watching them, he could. If he wanted to turn the volume up all the way on the sound system, he could. If he wanted to leave the toilet seat up, or his towels on the floor, or two weeks’ worth of clothes piled on his chair, he could.
It was as close to heaven as any man could wish for, he thought, forking in a bite of tasteless … something.
“Such a shame you have to go out in this heat to look at more properties today,” Mercy said from her perch on the counter beside the cash register, dunking a donut into her coffee.
Squatting in front of a display of infant toys, Dana lifted her eyes, caught the smirk. “Uh, yeah. You look real broken up about it.”
“Oh, come on,” Mercy mumbled around the last bite of donut, then dusted off her hands. A geranium-pink tank top emblazoned with a rhinestone heart set off her ebony curls, today caught up in a series of clips studded with even more rhinestones. Subtle was not one of Mercy’s strong suits. “I can think of a lot worse things than tootling around the city with a good-looking guy.”
“Whom you haven’t even met, so how do you know how good-looking he is?” Dana stood, moving over to a rack of toddler dresses to yank out a 3T that had gotten wedged in with the 2s. “And you have powdered sugar on your chin.”
The brunette rubbed at the spot. “Did I get it?” Dana glanced at her, nodded. “And I trust Cass’s taste in men. So …” Mercy slithered off the counter, tugging at the hem of her short white skirt, then knotted her hands around the top of the chrome rack, chin propped on knuckles. “How hot are we talking, exactly?”
Her just-try-it-on initiative about C.J. notwithstanding, Dana wasn’t about to give her partners any ammunition toward the cause. This was one uphill battle she intended to tackle on her own, thank you. So she shrugged and said, “He’s okay, I suppose. If you like that type.”
“Type as in gorgeous?”
“No. Type as in ‘I-don’t-do-serious’.”
“Oh, that.” Mercy batted the air. “Not a problem.”
Dana couldn’t help the laugh. “And you’re saying this because …?”
“Yeah, yeah—I know what you’re getting at. But I’m still single not because I don’t think there’s a man alive who doesn’t, deep down, want to come home to the same woman every night, but because I’m … particular.” She flounced over to the door, peered out at the still-empty parking lot. In this heat, it was unlikely they’d get many customers. “A girl’s gotta have standards, you know.”
Dana eyed the leftover donuts still on the counter, forced herself to look away. “And one of mine is that the sight of children and wedding rings doesn’t make the guy puke.”
Mercy pff’ed her disdain through glossed red lips, then tented her hand over her eyes. “Speaking of standards … badass vehicle at three o’clock. Yowsa.”
Dana glanced over to see the familiar silver sedan glide into a parking space. “Oh, no! I was supposed to meet him, at the agency,” she said over a pounding heart, suddenly not at all sure she was ready to put her new resolve to the test. Especially before her second cup of coffee. “What on earth …?”
Both women stood, transfixed, as C.J. got out of the car, slipped on his suit coat. Poor guy, dressed for a board meeting in this weather. Still, that first glimpse of tall, handsome man in a charcoal suit was enough to make anyone’s heart stutter. Including Mercy’s, apparently.
“He’s okay?” she said, eyes wide. “Hey, you don’t want him, toss him this way. I got no problem with leftovers.”
“What happened to your standards?”
“Trust me, chica. He meets them.”
The door swung open, and he was in. And smiling. “Morning, ladies,” he said, his voice still holding a hint of just-out-of-bed roughness that made Dana swallow. Hard.
Then she smiled, thinking, Okay, toots. You can do this.
Damn.
The Dana Malone smiling broadly for C.J. from across the store was not the same Dana Malone he’d left three days ago. Where was the nervousness, the shyness, the insecurity, that had—C.J. was pained to admit—made it much easier to blow her off as any kind of a threat to his hard-won autonomy?
You are man, he reminded himself. Strong. Above temptation. Impervious to … smiles.
While he stood there, thinking about how strong and above temptation he was, the curly-haired dynamo standing beside Dana jutted out a slender, long-nailed hand. “Hi! I’m Mercedes Zamora. Partner Number Three.”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Dana said. “Mercy, this is C. J. Turner—”
“I know who the man is, honey,” Mercy said with a warm—very warm—smile. Out of the corner of his eye, C.J. caught Dana’s glare. The phone rang. Nobody moved.
