Adding Up to Marriage. Karen Templeton
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trying to save her soul. Got it in one, she thought as, nodding to Silas to come in, she pointed to the phone and mouthed, “My mother.”
“Oh, sugar, I’m so glad I got you.….” Hearing the tears in her mother’s voice, Jewel squeezed shut her eyes, only to realize when she opened them again that Silas was staring at the life-size pelvis complete with embryo and placenta sitting on the banged-up coffee table she’d picked up for next-to-nothing at a yard sale when she’d moved into the house. She shoved the front door closed with her bare foot, her mother’s “Monty broke up with me!” knifing through her morning groggies as she padded into the living room.
“Oh … I’m so sorry,” she said, thinking, Who the heck is Monty? On her way to the kitchen she poked Silas in the arm, distracting him from the pelvis. “Coffee?”
“Uh … sure,” he said, distracting Mama from Monty. For the moment.
“Honey? Who are you talking to?”
“A friend,” Jewel said, shrugging at Silas’s lifted eyebrows before yanking open the fridge for the Folgers, briefly considering snorting it instead of waiting for it to brew.
“Don’t you try to fool me, young lady, that was a man’s voice!”
“Nothin’ gets past you, huh?” Jewel said, carting the coffee over to the coffee maker, remembering too late when she reached up into the cupboard for the filters that she wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. Oops. “I can have men friends, Mama.” Although having them ogle her butt wasn’t on the list this morning. “Listen, I have to go, but how’s about I come down and go to lunch with you or something on Saturday? Cheer you up?”
“Oh … not today?”
Jewel sighed. Much as she truly loved her mother, all she wanted was for the woman to grow up. To be her mother and not that clingy chick in high school who tells everybody she’s your BFF when she’s not.
To give Jewel a chance to do some growing up of her own.
“I’d love to, Mama, really, but my day’s already full. But hey—why don’t you go shopping? You know that always makes you feel better.” For at least twenty minutes.
“Well … I suppose I could.” A delicate sniff sounded in Jewel’s ear. “But it’d be so much more fun with you along.”
At one point, that had been true enough. For Jewel, anyway. Nobody knew her way around a mall better than her mother, even if Mama was always trying to buy Jewel prissy, girly-girl things she’d never wear. “I know, but I can’t today. I’ll call you later, how’s that?”
After promising her mother she’d call as soon as she could, Jewel pocketed her cell and shut her eyes again, willing the coffee aroma into her veins. As usual the conversation was ripping her in two: she could be what her mother wanted her to be, or what Jewel needed to be, but not both. And the endless tug-of-war was making her bonkers.
Still, self-preservation kept her heels dug in and her bleeding hands tight on that rope, boy … or risk toppling right over into the Aching Void of Need she’d had to haul Kathryn DuBois out of more times than she could count, when yet another relationship fizzled out on her. On them both, actually, since losing three “daddies” and any number of also-rans hadn’t done Jewel any favors, either.
But if nothing else she’d learned from her mother’s example, having seen first-hand the vicious cycle of hope and heartbreak that were part and parcel of letting “love” blind you to reality. Hence her resolve to never let anybody do to her what so many had done to her mother.
Besides, if she didn’t stay strong, who’d take care of Mama?
“Let me guess,” Silas said behind her, making her jump. Because somehow she’d forgotten he was there. “I woke you.”
Jewel made sure she was smiling before she turned. “Only because I slept through my alarm.” She peered behind him. “You lose somebody?”
“The kids? Like there was any way we could talk with them around. Anyway, Ollie’s in school already. I left Tad at the shop with Noah. And my dad. And everybody else. One kid, a half-dozen sets of eyes … should work out just about right.” Silas folded his arms over his chest. Doing the Stern Look thing. On him, it worked. As did the gray, geometric-patterned sweater and jeans. Geek chic. “You do that often? Sleep through your alarm?”
Jewel’s stomach growled, reminding her of the vast void within. “No, actually,” she said, opening another cupboard door for oatmeal. “But I got called out unexpectedly last night with a mother having false labor. She didn’t settle down—” she yawned “—until nearly five.” The oatmeal dumped into a bowl with milk, she set it in the microwave and edged toward the fridge. “Want some eggs with your coffee?”
“Already ate. Thanks.”
“Whatever. I’m starving.” She cracked three eggs into a bowl, dumped two pieces of what her mother called “bird seed” bread into the toaster. “But don’t you worry,” she said, banging a skillet onto the old gas stove, “that was a one-off. My sleeping in, I mean. Normally I’m up at like six, raring to go. I have a lot of energy, which you may have noticed.”
But she doubted he’d heard her, since when she turned he was frowning at the disaster of a living room with its re-re-recycled furniture, littered with DVDs and textbooks and clothing that had wandered out of her closet and hadn’t yet found its way back, not to mention the dozen bulging, partially ripped garbage bags of kids’ and baby clothes and toys the church ladies had left for her to pass along to some of her and Patrice’s needier clients. The pelvis. Then his gaze drifted back to her, those green eyes positively teeming with questions.
And something else, something that sent little flickers of heat hoppity-skipping through her blood. Good thing, then—really good thing—she didn’t have to worry about pesky things like him maybe coming on to her. Because, alas, she was only human. And kinda, um, lonely, truth be told. As was Silas, she’d bet the farm.
Which could present a problem. Because while Jewel was not into sharing her body with all and sundry, she did have to admit to a certain fondness for sex, dimly remembered though that might be. Hence the hormones, which even now were whispering how little stoking it would take to go from flickers to raging conflagration.
Little creeps.
“Maybe you should get dressed,” Silas said softly, taking the bowl of beaten eggs from her, and she thought, Don’t look at the mouth, even as she noticed how turned down that mouth was at the corners. Disapproving and whatnot. “Before somebody sees us through the window—” he nodded toward the curtainless kitchen window facing the street “—and gets the wrong idea.”
Oh.
Her cheeks flaming, Jewel fled, feeling like a scolded little girl.
Which went a long way toward damping those flickers, boy. Yes, indeedy.
Silas beat those eggs as if his salvation depended on it.
Since his reaction to Jewel was making him feel close enough to perv status to ratchet the discomfort level up to, oh, about a million-point-two.
Even though there was no reason it should. Okay fine, so a brief glimpse of her bare bottom—hell, if he’d blinked he would’ve missed it—when she’d lifted her arms had fired a jet or two. Perfectly natural. And inevitable, frankly, considering how long it’d been since those particular jets had fired.
It was who the jets were firing for that had him all shook up.
Why hadn’t he blinked? Why?
Silas set the bowl of eggs on the counter—no point scrambling them until she returned, they’d only get cold—and wandered back into the living room, which could only be called a wreck. Gal hadn’t been kidding about her housekeeping skills. Or lack thereof. Scrupulously avoiding the model of the female innards on the coffee table, he instead found himself