Ivory Tower (14 page)

Settled in the coffee shop with a double shot latte, Jenna
reached for Sharon’s hands. “I want to thank you. I’d have never made it
through that workshop without your encouragement.”

“Ah, that wasn’t anything, but you’re welcome.” She twisted
Jenna’s hand, then nodded at Josh. “You two get hitched last night?”

Jenna couldn’t help her wide grin. “Yes, we did.”

“Good. That’s real good,” Sharon said. “Whoever put this
together will be real happy to hear that.”

Whoever put this
together?
Jenna had completely forgotten
the letter that brought her here. “Were you part of this—whatever it was?”

Sharon grinned as she nodded.

“How...? Why...?” Jenna had so many questions, she didn’t
know where to start. She drew a deep breath. “Who sent me here?”

Josh had started to squirm in his seat.

“
Dunno
who did the
sending
.” Sharon shrugged. “Know who did
the requesting, though.”

She looked to Jenna’s side.

Josh looked like someone lit a fire under his seat.

“What’s she talking about, Josh?”

“I...well, to be honest, it was a last resort.” He grasped
Jenna’s hands. “Okay. Try not to get mad, but I saw this ad in a newspaper that
said if someone needed emotional healing, they should fill out the application
and send it in.”

He clutched her hands so tight she could barely break free,
but she did. “You sent in an application?”

“Honestly, I hung on to it for weeks. Never planned to
actually mail it in.”

Jenna shook her head, a slow, measured movement as she
tried to make sense of what Josh was saying. He’d sent an application in asking
for emotional healing? For her. “So,” she managed. “What made you send it?”

“A particularly gruesome day of watching you give in to all
of your mother’s demands.”

She knew exactly which day that was. They’d ended it tense
and barely speaking after he’d asked her to set her mother straight on just whose
wedding this was.

“So I mailed the application. Never thought anything would
come of it until you dodged the wedding shower and disappeared. Scared the crap
out of me at that point, too. So trust me, if you’re thinking how you’ll get
back at me for this, you already have.”

Unable to fully fathom that some application, from some
random newspaper ad, had led them to this point, Jenna sat back and tried to
think it through. She should be angry. Furious, even. She twisted the gold band
on her finger. It was hard to be angry when she’d gotten everything she wanted.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Sharon said. “He picked the
best place possible to ask for help.”

That focused Jenna. “Who? And how?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I was just asked to help out a
bit, since I’d be here at the conference anyhow. I’d have done it no matter
what for the chance to meet you.”

“How can you not know who set this all up?”

“That I can answer. You see, I’m from Chicago. Live there
with my mom, who runs a little establishment called Masquerade. She got herself
into kind of a bind a year or so ago and someone—we’ve never known who—got her
out of it. So now, every once in a while, we get asked to help someone who
needs it. Like you.”

“So we may never know who helped us?” Jenna asked.

“Correct,” Sharon said. “But, hey, it all worked out,
didn’t it?”

The last few days had been eye openers in more ways than
one. Jenna couldn’t decide if not knowing would be worse than knowing how this
all happened. In the end, though, it had been the not-so-gentle gentle nudge
that set her on the path she’d wanted to find.

“You ticked off at me? You have a right to be,” Josh said.

Jenna twined her fingers through his and looked into the
eyes of her husband, the man she loved. “How can I be? I got everything I
wanted.”

Shortly thereafter, Josh and Jenna finished their coffee
and rose to go.

“Sharon,” Jenna said. “I don’t know how to thank you for
everything you’ve done for me.”

“Just keep writing those books, okay? And maybe, just
maybe, one of your characters will be named Sharon some day?”

Jenna laughed. “You really want to be a character in one of
my novels?”

“It’s about the only action I’ll have had, I think. So
yeah.”

“Okay, you’ve got a deal.”

Jenna and Josh promised to keep in touch with Sharon and
said their goodbyes. In the cab, Jenna watched all the flashes of Vegas neon,
even in the bright sunlight. “I think I’m going to miss this town.”

Josh wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her
close. “We’ll come back. At least once a year, I think. We’ll have lots of
anniversaries to celebrate.”

“I believe we will,” she mumbled as she melted into his
kiss. “Yes, I definitely think we will.”

En route to the airport, Jenna didn’t see Vegas slip by.
Holding onto Josh, she worried her lower lip, wondering what it would be like
facing her mother. Praying her newfound strength would hold, and that her
mother would listen to her, understand her, and realize it’s time to let Jenna
live her own life.

A miracle. That’s what she needed.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hi, Mom. We’re at the airport. Josh and I.” Jenna cocked
her head, listening, while Josh kept watch for Maggie’s car. “No, we’re not
flying out. We’re—”

Again the cut off pause. Josh watched his wife on the phone
and prayed these few days away had given her enough perspective to deal with
her mother. If not, well, he didn’t want to think about that.

“Josh.”

Pause.

“Yes, Josh. We’ll—”

Jenna’s lips turned into tight, thin, white lines during
this pause.

“If you’d listen to me for just a moment.”

Jenna pulled the phone away from her ear and gave it a
talk-to-the-hand signal, then cupped her ear against it once again. Her face
was as red as he’d ever seen it.

“Mother— Can you—” She took a deep breath and raised her
voice. “Be quiet, Mother.” Jenna paused yet again. Josh knew her mother
wouldn’t listen.

“Thank you,” Jenna said, surprising him. “Now, we will
explain everything when we get to the house. We should be there in, oh...” She
glanced at Josh.

“Forty-five minutes or so, if Maggie ever gets here,” he
said.

“An hour,” she told her mother, then listened. “No, I’m not
going to apologize for running out. And no, I’m not going to explain it on the
phone. We will talk when we get there. Goodbye.”

She stared at the phone for a moment, then hung her head
and he could see the sheen of tears forming. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

Josh enveloped her in his arms, trying to hug the hurt
away. “We’ll keep you strong. And it has to be done. She needs to move on, find
her own life. Living through you isn’t going to work anymore.”

He was gratified with a smile, albeit a wavering one.

“You can handle this. I know you can.”

Further conversation was cut off as
Mags’
rattletrap car sputtered its way to the airport curb.

“We could have called a cab, you know,” Josh said, giving
the eyesore car a little kick.

“Don’t start getting all hoity-toity on me now that you’re
Mr. Moneybags,” Jenna laughed.

Mags
leaped out of her car and attacked Jenna with hugs. “Oh,
my God. I can’t believe you actually did it. Show me the ring. Was it like a
fairytale? Did you get any pictures?” She went back and forth between Jenna and
Josh, alternately hugging them and slugging them in the shoulder.

“I can’t believe you got married without me,” she said to
Jenna after a slug that had his wife massaging her arm. “I’m glad you went
ahead and did it, but I can’t believe it.”

When a police officer started in their direction, Josh
threw their luggage in the trunk and they chugged their way out of the airport.

“Again,”
Mags
said. “You got
married without me?”

“You knew we would,” Jenna said. “No way Josh picked out
the, um, lingerie in that bag. You
knew
.”

“Maybe. Okay, so I had a pretty good feeling about it. But
damn, I wish I’d been there.”

“We brought pictures.”

“Yay! I’ll look at them after things settle down. So,”
Mags
said with a gleam in her eye. “You two figure out the
whole multi-millionaire thing?”

Jenna glanced at Josh before answering. “Not really. We
kind of got swept up in the moment. I think we’re going to have to rely on our
personalities keeping us from making his money matter more than other important
things—like each other.”

“It’s not just his money,”
Mags
said.

Josh sat up. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, ever since Jenna started writing, she’s had me
managing her money.”
Mags
shrugged as she turned her
blinker on to change lanes. “Turns out, I’m pretty good at it.”

“And that means...?” Jenna turned to face her friend.

“It means, you’ve been making royalties hand over foot and
hardly spending any of it. So I invested. And, well, you’re well on your way to
your first million dollars yourself.”

“Seriously?” Josh asked.

Jenna’s mouth froze in a permanent “O.” If Josh weren’t so
floored himself, he’d be enjoying her look of shock, just a little bit.

“Seriously,”
Mags
answered Josh.
“Jenna’s got her own pile of
moolah
to draw on. And
it’s sizeable.” She tapped Jenna’s hand. “Hello? You still with us?”

“
Ummm
, I’m just...stunned.”

Okay, so maybe he could have a touch of fun with this. “That
means that all that time you were giving me crap for selling my company and
making us rich, you were wealthy in your own right?”

Jenna, still apparently speechless, sank back into the worn
cushions of Maggie’s car.

“Uh huh,”
Mags
said.

“Hey,” Jenna spoke up. “I didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue.”
She turned to
Mags
. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Exiting the freeway,
Mags
shrugged. “Tried to. You didn’t want to hear it.”

“Holy cow,” Jenna said. “I can’t believe it.”

“And this moment,”
Mags
said with
a grin Josh figured rivaled Garfield the Cat after playing a joke on
Odie
. “This moment is almost as satisfying as it would have
been to be at your wedding. Almost.”

****

They all grew quiet for the remainder of the drive. Jenna’s
shoulders tightened with each turn Maggie took in that last mile to her home.
The only one Jenna had really ever known. She bit her lip, praying her mother
didn’t forbid her to ever return. She had to find a way to convince her mother
that this was a good choice for both of them.

When they pulled up to the curb, Josh and Maggie waited for
her to make the first move. She took a deep breath and faced them. “I’m sorry,
guys. I have to do this alone. Maggie, I know I promised you could be there,
but it’s not fair to Mom if she feels we’re ganging up on her.”

“But—”

Jenna held up her hand and forestalled her best friend. “Plus,
I need to know
I
can do this.”

She looked at Josh and saw him nodding his head. “I
understand. We’ll head for the coffee shop around the corner.” He stepped out
and opened her car door for her, then pulled her into his arms for a long kiss.
“I’m proud of you, honey. Just remember what you have waiting.”

“How could I ever forget. And
Mags
?”
She poked her head in the car. “Thank you. For the investments and everything.”

“My pleasure,”
Mags
said, grinning.

“I’m not paying you enough.”

“I was going to talk to you about that.”

“How about we start with a bonus,” Jenna said, eyeing the
car. “Go get yourself a new car. Please. On us.”

“
Woohoo
! Josh, you got internet
on that phone of yours? I need to do some searching while we’re waiting for the
atomic bomb to go off.”

Jenna watched them pull away, then turned and entered the
house without a backward glance.

In the master bedroom, her mother sat at her vanity, styling
her hair. Jenna sank into the rocking chair that felt as familiar as her own skin.
How many times had she sat here and watched her mother apply her makeup? Jenna
had learned everything about maximizing your looks while she watched her
prepare for some function or fundraiser. All while swaying back and forth in
this chair, the same chair her mother had rocked her in as a new parent.