close to the vest. Whether the lesson had come from his mother’s abandonment or from working in New York’s cutthroat financial industry, Seth wasn’t sure. Either way, he wound up not picking up the phone.
The whole time, his liquid brown eyes stayed riveted on the Cadillac idling in front of Eden’s flower shop. Outwardly, he didn’t move a muscle; inwardly, he was going crazy. From here, the woman did look like Jenna. For a second, he pretended it was, and that she was impressed by the one-story brick Savings & Loan that was now his. Seth Spencer, said the brass nameplate on his office door. President.
Not that Jenna would care. Against his will, Seth visualized her Soho loft, the tasseled pillows, stacked books, and rock-hard, thigh-high queen-size bed that was perfect for lovemaking. The image was razor-sharp since Seth had showered, shaved and slept there with enough regularity over the past year and a half that the place felt like home.
Jenna had been naked in bed when he told her he was leaving a job at Goldman Sachs to return to Tyler as president of the family’s S&L, since his father, Elias, was retiring.
“Wonderful,” was all Jenna had said.
“Wonderful,” he muttered now. She hadn’t voiced concern for the future of their relationship, nor asked if he wanted to keep in touch. In fact, she hadn’t even quit painting her toenails. Even now he could see her: wearing a crimson nightie, sitting on the mussed covers of the bed, tilting a bottle of mint-green polish in one hand and brushing the nail of her baby toe with the other. She hadn’t been the least perturbed that he was leaving. Why couldn’t he just accept it?
He blew out another sigh, this one more murderous than the last. And why was that ugly gold junker still idling? Was it really Jenna? Was she waiting for him to notice her? To come out and strike up a conversation?
“If that’s what you’re thinking, sweetheart, keep dreaming,” Seth whispered around the unlit cigar, unaware his posture was exactly as it had been twenty-three years ago, on Thanksgiving Day, when he’d sat ponderously at his father’s kitchen table after hearing that his mother had disappeared. Later that day, he’d been told she’d run off with Ray Bennedict. Before nightfall, Seth had decided his mother was never coming back, and he’d promised himself he wouldn’t hope for a phone call or a knock at the door. He wouldn’t torture himself with the usual, ridiculous adolescent fantasies…wouldn’t imagine his mother coming to the schoolyard fence, her haunted eyes searching for him and his brothers, Quinn and Brady….
No, once she left, it was best never to expect a woman to return.
Seth leaned forward, anyway, wishing the woman in the Cadillac didn’t look so much like Jenna. He didn’t trust his perceptions, though, no more than he could admit how her lovemaking had affected him. Model-tall and fire-hot, Jenna had burned in his arms like a flaming torch. She possessed wild, short, red-streaked hair and a trendy wardrobe of sequined sweaters, feathered earrings and capes that electrified Seth’s every last male nerve. Where he strictly wore muted browns and grays, Jenna’s wardrobe exploded in magenta and turquoise, violet and crimson. All brightly colored motion, she’d been like a bird, flitting around him while Seth stayed still as a statue.
Somehow they’d fit, though.
“Our bodies sure did,” he growled, gritting his teeth against the sudden, unwanted ache of his groin. Ever since he’d happened into the Soho gallery where she worked, he and Jenna had dated. Not seriously, they’d assured each other, even though they’d wound up in bed on the first date. The next evening, on the second, they’d ordered takeout and made love while devouring Chinese food, and on the third date they’d quit bothering with the food.
But it was only sex, they’d said. Unusual chemical attraction. Nothing more.
They’d even gone months between dates as if to prove their continued emotional sovereignty. But now, as Seth stared at the car idling in the road, he admitted the truth. He still wanted her. He missed her like the devil.
Maybe he should have initiated a talk about their relationship before he left New York, but Jenna knew that wasn’t his style, didn’t she? Sighing, he tried to ignore the panic in his gut. He shouldn’t have minded the feeling. He was used to money deals and playing daily roulette with the stock market, and now that he had his own bank, the stakes were even higher. But when he made banking decisions, rows of neat, orderly figures backed him up. The panic he felt now was different. This panic was female-related, and Seth knew next to nothing about females.
Banking, he understood. Slowly and steadily, he’d worked for years, garnering the experience needed to run the S&L, a business in which his brothers Quinn and Brady had no personal interest. Seth had followed their father’s every step, going from Columbia to Wharton, then to Goldman Sachs—all so that now, at the age of thirty-seven, he could run this bank.
He’d never imagined that only six weeks after taking the job he’d be fighting the urge to turn his back on everything he’d ever worked for, just so he could return to New York and Jenna. Jenna, who doesn’t even want you.
The Cadillac started moving again.
His heart missed a beat.
But no, it really couldn’t be Jenna. She was from a Podunk North Carolina town she’d professed to hate, and once she’d left for the big city, she’d never looked back. Jenna would never venture into a place that lacked a cappuccino bar, a foreign film theater or inch-thick tabloids dripping with juicy celebrity gossip. Not that Tyler lacked gossip, Seth thought with remembered anger, his broad, powerful back stiffening to ward off buried emotions left over from adolescence. After his mother ran off with Ray, Seth had endured more than his share of pitying glances and hushed whispers. It hurt having the whole town know the Spencers hadn’t been man enough to hang on to the woman they loved.
It was why, if Seth was honest, he’d rather be anywhere in the world than Tyler, Wisconsin, this time of year. October was nearly gone, and Canadian air—cold, crisp and thin—was sweeping south into the region and chilling him to the bone.
Twenty years, he thought. Hard to believe, but it had been twenty years since he’d lived in Tyler. A lifetime. He’d been sure that when he came back home, the old feelings of loss and longing would be gone, but this was cold, hard, wintry country, with glassy lakes and too much empty space, the kind of country that always left a man with too much time on his hands to think about his past.
One too many nights Seth had needed Jenna to keep him warm. Now he cursed the stranger in the car for making him remember how her soft, smooth skin had burned under his greedy hands, and how easily her damp, wanting mouth had slackened for his, memories that made his groin tighten.
Memories, Seth thought, were damn powerful things.
Outside, the car swerved. Silently, he watched the headlights sweeping the pavement as the car rounded a corner, then disappeared. Only then did he rise. He kept staring into the dark, his eyes inadvertently searching, his heart aching with familiar loss and the firmly held conviction that once a woman was gone from a man’s life, she never returned.
“WHERE’S THE Kelsey Boarding House?” Jenna Robinson groaned, twisting the sparkling engagement ring on her finger and glancing into the rearview mirror, to where Gretchen was strapped in a car seat. “Hey there, sweetie,” she added. “You holding up okay?”
The two-year-old yawned.
Jenna chuckled. Gretchen looked adorable, dressed in black corduroy overalls and a pint-size black leather jacket. “We’re almost there,” Jenna assured, freeing a hand and flattening Molly Blake’s
