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
