Janelle Taylor (2 page)

Eventually, Jordan acknowledged that Phoebe was right. The dress
could
be sold. Sold, or thrown away.

But either scenario was just too much trouble. Either scenario meant looking at it, touching it, thinking about it, thinking about Kevin, thinking about the life they had carefully planned together only to have him carelessly toss it—and Jordan—aside.

She wasn’t planning to bring the gown with her a year later when she left her parents’ house and moved the rest of her belongings to Washington.

She had laid the dress, still wrapped and on its hanger, on top of an overflowing cardboard box she was using for garbage. She assumed the movers she’d hired had discarded it. It wasn’t until she arrived in Georgetown and unpacked her belongings that she found that the movers had packed not only the dress, but the box of garbage as well.

She didn’t know whether to laugh at the realization that she had paid to have her garbage, some of it smelly kitchen scraps, hauled three hundred miles, or to cry at the sight of the beaded, embroidered white gown that seemed bent on haunting her for the rest of her life.

So…

Here it hung, four years after the June wedding that wasn’t.

She’d heard Kevin had gotten married not long after she moved away, to a local girl who had been several classes behind them in school. He and his wife didn’t
waste time starting a family, and already had two small children.

Pulling a T-shirt over her head, Jordan caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored closet door.

Strands of her long, dark hair tumbled from the casual updo she’d piled it into this morning. Her face was lightly but expertly made up, accentuating her large green eyes, high cheekbones, and full mouth.

She couldn’t wait to scrub off all the goo. She wasn’t big on makeup, but she had to look presentable on a daily basis, considering the caliber of her client list. She noticed that her face seemed paler than usual. Or maybe that was just because she had increasingly noticed the sun-kissed complexions of others now that summer was underway.

There was a time when summer, for Jordan, meant bare, golden skin. She and Phoebe actually used to lie out in the yard daily in bathing suits, coated in oil rather than sunsceen, too young and vain to worry about radiation and skin cancer.

Those were the days,
she thought wryly.

When was the last time Jordan had even been in the sun? She grimly recalled pulling down the visor to block its rays through her car’s windshield just yesterday.

You need a vacation.

Her business partner and old college pal, Jeremy Van Pragh, said that frequently. Weekly. Daily, even—especially lately.

Jordan never listened. Whenever Jeremy took advantage of their slow season during late winter by jetting off to the Caribbean, Jordan busied herself catching up on book work and trying new recipes.

Now, as she stared at her reflection, she contemplated her life.

All that she had … and all that suddenly seemed to be missing.

The catering business was successful beyond Jordan’s and Jeremy’s wildest dreams. Only three years into the venture, they counted among their regular clients some of the biggest names in the capital’s high-profile political and social arena.

For the first time in her life, Jordan had plenty of cash, a nice-sized savings account, an IRA, and a growing investment and stock portfolio. She had a new car, a membership to an upscale gym, a complete business and casual wardrobe, and a newly renovated town house filled with custom-made furniture and draperies, top-notch appliances, and electronic equipment.

The trouble was, she was too busy to drive her black BMW convertible anywhere but to work—so busy that most of her casual clothing still had price tags attached, and she didn’t know how to work half the appliances in her kitchen. She had never even watched a DVD or played a CD on her home entertainment system, surfed the Internet, or sent an E-mail from the home computer.

Poised, standing in the middle of the oversized master bedroom suite she shared with no one, Jordan thought about Andrea MacDuff, who seemed convinced that Jordan’s lifestyle was bordering on tragic.

Andrea didn’t even know that Jordan hadn’t had physical contact with a man—not so much as a
kiss,
for Pete’s sake—since Kevin left her at the altar.

It wasn’t that Jordan agreed with Andrea’s outdated views on women, careers, and marriage. But…

Maybe it
was
time to start dating again.

Even blind dating.

After pulling on a pair of shorts, Jordan made her
way back downstairs to look for Beau Somerville’s phone number.

Beau didn’t even look away from his computer screen when the cell phone in his pocket rang. He was intent on reconfiguring the kitchen island on the floor plan for the addition the MacDuffs were doing on their Virginia farmhouse. Andrea was insisting on an L-shaped island despite Beau’s caution that it would mar the flow. She was a stubborn woman, whose honeyed drawl and delicate appearance were misleading. She reminded Beau of his mother. A real steel-magnolia type.

By the third ring, he absently reached for the phone as though swatting a pesky mosquito. He flipped it open, his eyes still fastened to the computer monitor. His head was beginning to throb and his shoulder blades ached from sitting in this position for hours. There were times when he missed the old-fashioned, more portable way of drafting architectural designs, on good old-fashioned paper instead of with CAD software.

“Beau Somerville,” he murmured, electronically dragging a portion of island to a perpendicular position.

There was a slight pause. “Hi,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “I’m surprised I got you and not your voice mail again.”

“I don’t have voice mail on this cell phone yet,” he replied, his concentration broken, his hand poised on the mouse.

“Oh … this is your cell phone? I’m sorry, I called the wrong number. Andrea gave me both, but I thought this was your home number….”

“Andrea?”

“MacDuff.”

“Is there any other?” He found himself cracking a smile. “This is Jordan, right? Jordan Curry?”

“Is there any other?”

He chuckled, surprised at her snappy comeback. Maybe he shouldn’t have broken tomorrow night’s date with her after all. When he’d decided earlier to back out, it wasn’t because he had a good excuse. It was more like…

A classic case of cold feet.

The last thing he wanted to do was get involved with someone. He had only been in Washington for a few months, freshly liberated from a relationship with Lisa, who had thought he was going to marry her, give her babies, and build her a dream house. And before Lisa, there was …

No.

He didn’t want to think back that far. He dragged his thoughts to the present, but it was too late. The almost-memory had tossed a chill over his heart.

“Did you get my message?” he asked Jordan Curry, who was supposedly the most beautiful, intelligent, successful woman in the metro D.C. area. Oh, and she made “a praline pie that would do that Somerville N’Awlins heritage proud"—a direct quote from Andrea.

“I got your message,” Jordan replied, sounding efficient, as though they were discussing a business proposition. “You wanted to reschedule?”

Not particularly. He had been hoping that after another round or two of phone tag, their telephone correspondence would fizzle and he’d be off the hook.

“Sure,” he said, because that was, after all, the message he had left on her machine.

Irritated, he pressed some keys on his computer keyboard, hoping to sound busy so he’d have an excuse
for cutting the conversation short. He asked, just as efficiently, “When do you want to meet?”

“It’s up to you.”

There was something sultry about the low pitch of her voice, he noted. And she didn’t have a trace of any kind of accent. He was so used to Lisa’s forced drawl that he welcomed Jordan’s lack of one. Lisa had grown up in the Midwest but considered herself an adopted Southern belle. She’d gone to college at Tulane, which was apparently when she started dyeing her brown hair blond, got blue contact lenses, and learned to “y’all” in earnest. The mere memory of her syrupy inflections grated on his nerves.

“How about Saturday?” Beau heard himself suggest to Jordan Curry.

“Saturday, the day after tomorrow, or Saturday, next week?”

“I’ll be gone on vacation next week, so the day after tomorrow,” he clarified, wondering what the heck he was doing. Just because this woman didn’t sound like Lisa didn’t mean that he should date her. He shouldn’t date anyone. Ever again.

“The day after tomorrow … ?” He could hear what sounded like datebook pages flipping. “I’m free that night,” she said.

She didn’t sound legitimately pleased about it, though.

Well, she was the one who had called him back. If she didn’t want to go out with him, she shouldn’t have returned the call.

“Great,” he said with fake enthusiasm to match her own. “Do you want to meet for dinner, then?”

“That would be good.”

“Good.”

“Where do you want to meet?”

He named a restaurant.

She named a time.

They hung up.

Beau wondered if he should hunt down his Palm Pilot and mark the date and the details. Nah. He wouldn’t forget. It was only two days away.

He scowled at the layout on his computer screen. A chunk of the kitchen island was now obstructing the mudroom doorway. How had that happened?

He had a date with Jordan Curry. How had
that
happened?

Beau shook his head. He honestly wanted to strangle Andrea MacDuff.

A little over twenty-four hours later, Jordan climbed out of her BMW and raced through a downpour toward her front door. What a day … and night. Her fingers ached like crazy from pitting cherries for the jelly she had made as favors for a bridal shower to be held on Sunday afternoon, and her shoulders were sore from bending over the painstaking task. She was sore all over, and now she was soaked, too.

The rain that had begun loudly in the middle of the night hadn’t seemed to let up for a moment since. The world was a gray, humid, soggy mess.

All Jordan wanted was to get into her dry, air-conditioned townhouse, change out of her damp clothes, and curl up on the couch with that issue of
Martha Stewart Living.
When she had tried to read it last night, she had been so weary she’d dozed with her head on the page and finally gave up and went to bed….

She stopped short now on the bottom step in front of her door.

Somebody was huddled beneath the overhang that sheltered the top step, which wasn’t big enough to qualify as a stoop.

Not just one person, she realized, gaping at the figure in the dark-colored slicker. There were two. One was a third of the size of the other, also clad in rain gear.

“Jordan?”

“Oh my god!” Jordan recognized the voice, if not the sight of her best friend. “Phoebe!”

She raced up the steps and threw her arms around her friend.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking from the small section of Phoebe’s face that was visible inside her hood, to the small child who stood with his arms wrapped around her leg.

“Waiting for you,” Phoebe replied.

“For how long? Did I know you were coming?” Jordan was fairly certain it hadn’t slipped her busy mind. A visit from Phoebe was monumental. She would never forget something like that.

“No, you didn’t know,” Phoebe said. “We haven’t been here long. When you weren’t home, I was trying to figure out where we should go next. We took a cab over from the train station. I should have told him to wait…”

“Well, now it doesn’t matter.” Jordan fumbled with her keys, unlocking the door. “Let’s get inside. Is this Spencer? Why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?”

Phoebe only said, “Yes, this is Spencer,” as she and her son stepped past Jordan’s beckoning arm and over the threshold.

Jordan followed them in, reeling.

Never in a million years would she expect her closest childhood friend to show up on her doorstep.

She hadn’t seen Phoebe in … how long had it been? She backtracked mentally to their last meeting, in a hushed funeral parlor back in Glen Hills, their hometown. About eighteen months, Jordan realized. It had been eighteen months since Phoebe’s father passed away. That was around the holidays.

She still recalled the late-night phone call that had preceded that unexpected trip home, and her surprise at hearing Phoebe’s wavering voice on the other end of the line. Phone calls from Phoebe had been scarce for a few years, ever since she married Reno and moved to Philadelphia.

Yet whenever they talked, time and distance fell away.

“Jordan, Daddy’s dead,” Phoebe had said that night on a sob. Jordan had cried with her.

Of course, Jordan had gone home for the funeral. She flew into Erie on a tiny commuter plane in a blizzard and flew out the same day, thanks to a wedding she was in the midst of catering for the grand-niece of the Speaker of the House.

Now she recalled how fiercely Phoebe had clung to her when they embraced beside the casket—until Reno interrupted, drawing his wife away, saying the minister needed to speak to her.

Spencer wasn’t even there, Jordan remembered. They had left him with a baby-sitter at Phoebe’s older brother Curt’s house.

“How old are you now, Spencer?” Jordan asked, crouching beside the godson she hadn’t seen since he was a gap-toothed toddler.

“I’m thirty-one.”

“No, Spence,
I’m
thirty-one,” Phoebe said with a tight smile. “He’s almost four,” she told Jordan. “But he has an active imagination.”

Phoebe was as pretty as ever, Jordan noted, watching her friend lower her hood, admiring her long blond hair caught smoothly back in a ponytail.

She was skinnier than ever, too. Her always-angular face looked almost gaunt. Her hazel eyes were trenched in shadows, as though she hadn’t slept well lately.

“I can’t believe you’re really here!” Jordan straightened and shed her wet Burberry trench coat, tossing it carelessly over the back of a nearby chair. “This is an incredible surprise. Is Reno with you?”