MORENO was the first person Jessica Summers had ever heard say the F-word out loud. By the time she’d heard him say it in the eighth grade, she was fairly certain he’d already done…it several times.
Even at fourteen he’d had his pick of girls and the girls he’d picked were almost always older, more experienced and willing to do all the things Jessica only whispered about at sleep-overs. In high school he’d been the kind of boy girls fawned over, boys picked fights with and teachers disciplined just to prove they were in control.
Apparently things hadn’t changed much. Two weeks ago Jessica had seen him for the first time in more than ten years. He’d been walking down the street with a kind of lazy confidence that declared he was back in Palo Verde to stay and there was nothing anyone could do about it, short of arresting him and physically hauling his ass out of town. Again.
Even after all this time, they were still polar opposites. He was the son of migrant farm workers. She was the daughter of the town’s most prominent family. He was wild, reckless and brash. The ultimate bad boy.
She, on the other hand, seemed doomed to a tragically boring, spinsterlike existence. Unless she did something drastic.
Jessica glanced down at the delicate silver watch on her wrist. Four forty-five. Alex would be here soon and the next hour was going to go either very well or very badly.
Turning, she paced the length of her kitchen, the three-inch heels of her shoes rat-tating across the tile floor, echoing the pounding of her heart. She reached the arched doorway to her living room and kept going, the plush cream carpet muffling the clatter of her heels as she strode toward the sliding-glass door that looked out onto her back patio and pool. She stood for a moment, watching the surface of the water ripple in a breeze and wishing she wasn’t perpetually early. Today, fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity.
Her telephone rang, its shrill clatter piercing the silence. She spun around, lunging for the cordless phone she kept on the coffee table, sure it was Alex calling to cancel their appointment.
Her heel caught on the carpet and she kicked off her shoes, nudging them under the table as she grabbed the handset. For a second she clutched the phone, exhaling sharply so she wouldn’t sound like such a nervous wreck. Would she be disappointed or relieved if he couldn’t make it?
Mustering her courage, she punched the talk button and tried to sound casual. “Hello? Sumners residence.”
God, why did she always sound as though she was answering her parents’ phone?
“What are you wearing?” demanded a feminine voice.
“Patricia?”
“No, it’s your great-uncle Vernon. Of course it’s Patricia.” Her voice practically rang with exasperation. “He’s going to be there soon, right?”
“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
“So don’t waste my time with pleasantries. If you’d responded to my e-mails at work today, we wouldn’t have to do this at the last minute. Now, what are you wearing?”
Jessica had made the mistake of telling Patricia over lunch about her plan to meet Alex this evening. The other woman had ignored work all afternoon, peppering Jessica with frantic e-mail questions. Most of which Jessica had ignored. “Why does it matter what I’m wearing?”
“You’re going to see Alex for the first time in how many years?”
“Ten.”
“And you don’t think it matters what you’re wearing?” She didn’t give Jessica a chance to answer but plowed right ahead with the conversation. “Just tell me it’s not one of your god-awful, prissy little sweater sets.”
“No,” she said through gritted teeth as she made her way to the entry hall. “It’s not one of my practical and comfortable sweater sets. I’m wearing a simple black silk sheath dress.”
“Is it tight?”
Jessica paused in front of the hall mirror just long enough to shoot herself a piercing look. “No.”
“Is it low-cut?”
“No.” She felt a sinking sensation deep in her belly. Had she worn the completely wrong thing?
“It’s at least short?”
Jessica extended her leg to get a better look at the length. “Four, maybe five inches above the knee.”
“Good. That’s good. Your legs are your best feature.”
Please, Dear God, let Alex be a leg man.
“Okay,” Patricia barked, clearly moving beyond the clothing issue. “So what’s your game plan?”
“Game plan?”
“What’re you going to do? Just invite him in and proposition him?”
“No, of course not!” When she’d spoken to Alex on the phone earlier this afternoon she’d said something inane about wanting to hire his construction company to do work on her house. But she’d had no idea how she would segue from “Want to remodel my kitchen” to “Want to go out sometime?” Or, after a date or two, to transition to “Want to tear off each other’s clothes and have mad, passionate sex? Often?”
To Patricia she said, “I just…”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know.” She spun on her heel and stomped back to the kitchen, suddenly irritated with herself. “I don’t really have a plan.”
“Exactly. You don’t have a plan. That’s what worries me. You always have a plan.”
“That’s not—”
“Did you or did you not just send everyone in our team a detailed plan of what to do in case of a tornado?”
“I’m the floor safety manager now. It’s my job to—”
“We live in California. There are no tornadoes in California.”
“But—”
“Ever.”
She started to explain that she was just trying to do her job well. That she took her new responsibilities at work seriously. But wasn’t that the problem? She always took everything so dang seriously.
Before she could put any of that into words, Patricia babbled on. “So, yes, it scares me that you have no plan. This is just so unlike you. Inviting Alex Moreno over so you can seduce him or whatever is just so…so…”
“Like something you would do?”
“Exactly. This is what concerns me. You are acting like me.”
“Well, you can stop worrying. I’m not going to seduce or proposition him. I promise. I just want to see him again.”
To see if any spark of attraction still lingered between them.
And
