Once Around (21 page)

#

Rafe wondered what she would do if he put his hand on her belly. She was so lush, so womanly, so ripe, that he wanted to feel the swelling of her body beneath his palm. Once with Karen he had tried to kiss her belly, touch her in a way that conveyed the wonder he felt, but she had pushed him away as if he were a stray dog bent on slobbery, desperate affection. He never tried again. They'd moved through her pregnancy in angry lockstep, growing apart while the baby grew bigger. They'd never really had a chance. Everyone else knew it. Only Rafe had been foolish enough to think the gods of destruction would look away. He and Karen had been a mistake from that first night in the back of his pickup truck with only the stars overhead for company, only the pounding of their hearts for music.

The baby kicked again
, fluttery staccato movements that beat against him like an insistent woodpecker.

"
She's not always this feisty," Molly said, looking apologetic.

"
I think she's a redhead like her mother."

"
Don't say that!"

"
What's wrong with being a redhead?"

"
What isn't?" she said, then laughed. "When I was little, I used to beg my mom to dye my hair."

"
Your hair is beautiful." He'd spent nights dreaming about her hair, how it would feel against his skin.

"
I want a happy, serene baby brunette," she said. "Nobody teases brunettes." She looked up at him, and if he didn't know better, he would have thought she was flirting with him. "Can you imagine terrible twos with a redhead?"

He couldn
't. He hadn't been there for the terrible twos. Some other man had been playing daddy to Sarah by then. "I've always wondered what's so terrible about being two," he said. "They're short, and I can outrun them."

"
They're unionized." Her blue eyes danced with mischief. He'd never seen her more alive, more beautiful. More irresistible. "Didn't you know that the one who wears the diapers rules the house?"

He liked seeing her this way
, lighthearted and funny, the way he imagined she'd been before her husband took a hike.

The way he imagined she would be if she belonged to hint.

#

When Jessy was a little girl
, Jo Ellen would sit by her bed every night and read to her. "That's what the rich people do," she said to her daughter. Rich people read to their babies before they were even born, filling those little heads with stories about love and happiness and success. Jo Ellen read from Dickens and Shakespeare. She brought home huge coffee-table volumes of great an from the library then opened diem on Jessy's lap as if they were children's picture books. Jo Ellen didn't know any more than Jessy did about art and history, but if it meant helping her baby girl, she'd learn.

Daddy Jim thought Jo Ellen was crazy.
"Quit filling her head with dead men!" he'd bellowed more than once. "Teach her something she can use." Like how to fix her hair real pretty and put on makeup and maybe learn how to dress like a girl instead of some scrawny little tomboy.

But Jo Ellen wouldn
't listen. She didn't want that for Jessy. She wanted her daughter to do more than marry into a better life. She wanted Jessy to build that better life with her own two hands. Jessy wanted to read about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and daydream about , reading those stories to her own little girl one day. When Jo Ellen found a book of fairy tales under Jessy's pillow, she'd burned it in the fireplace then put the, ashes on her daughter's pillow.

"
No man can make you as happy as you can make yourself," Jo Ellen told her the day Jessy started high school. "You remember that, or I'll know the reason why."

You
're wrong, Mama,
Jessy thought as Spencer Mackenzie spun her around the dance floor.
I've found a man who can make me happier than I ever imagined.

Spencer didn
't know it yet, but that was all right. It was enough that he showered her with compliments while they danced. It was enough that he held her in his arms as if she was something delicate and lovely. She'd engineered the whole thing, yet he didn't seem to mind one bit. He danced with her as if it had been his idea, as if he couldn't imagine anything he'd rather do.

He
's being polite, Jessy. Don't go reading anything into it or you'll only end up hurt.

Of course he was being polite. Rich people were always polite and kind. Noblesse oblige they called it. Jessy didn
't care. All that mattered was that she was in his arms, and he showed no signs of letting her go.

He introduced her to a half dozen of his colleagues
, tall and handsome men with pedigrees like his own. Yesterday's Jessy would have felt cowed and uncomfortable; she would have retreated behind a screen of diffidence. Today's Jessy kept up her end of the conversation and darn near preened over the way those handsome young men hung on her every word. New hair, new dress, new attitude—that was all it took. Anything was possible now.

Spencer
, though, was harder to figure. They danced a fox trot, two waltzes, and a spirited salsa; then he suggested they sit out the next set. Molly and Rafe were at the table. The wait staff was starting to serve the main course. Rafe had the slightly glazed look of a man who'd had too much champagne, although his glass hadn't been touched. Molly was downright radiant.

A stab of envy pierced Jessy from breastbone to spine. There wasn
't enough makeup and hair color in the world to turn her into Molly Chamberlain, no fancy dress that could provide the magic. God must have been feeling awfully generous the day Molly was born and had decided to bestow all of his gifts on that one little baby girl. She could have been mean-spirited and coarse; her beauty would have compensated. She could have been colorless and plain; her sweet nature would have supplied the radiance. But she wasn't any of those things. She was genuinely good-hearted and beautiful from head to toe. Jessy was jealous as hell, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't hate Molly.

That didn
't mean she was going to sit there and watch Spencer fall under her spell. Most women would come up short in a side-by-side comparison with Molly Chamberlain. Jessy knew she couldn't compete when it came to beauty, but there was one area where she could level the playing field and tip the odds in her favor.

Chapte
r Twelve

Dinner was lost on Molly. She had no ide
a if she'd eaten filet mignon, roast duck, or fried shoelaces. She was vaguely aware of conversation going on around her but she couldn't tell if they were talking about nuclear fusion or the New York Jets. At one point Spencer asked her a question, and she stared at him as if he were speaking in tongues.

Poor man. She felt sorry for any man who had to stand in Rafe
's shadow.

Somewhere between the entrée and the dessert
, Molly rallied from her fog long enough to realize Jessy had left the table.

Rafe was sitting across from her. The coffee cup looked absurdly fragile
, cradled in his hand. She had a sudden image of that enormous hand against the bare flesh of her belly and she shuddered.

"
Are you okay'?" he asked.

"
Fine," she said.

He slipped out of his jacket
, then got up and walked

around to her side of the table.
"Put this on," he said. "There's an air-conditioning vent right above this table."

"
I'm not cold," she said. "I--"
What are you going to tell him, Molly? That you shivered because you could feel his hands on you?
"I
don't want to steal your jacket."

"
No arguments," he said, draping the jacket over her bare shoulders. "You don't want to catch cold, do you?" '

"
You don't catch cold from being cold," she said. "You can catch cold only from someone who has a cold."

"
That's not what my grandmother said."

"
That's not what my grandmother said either." The jacket was still warm from his body. The satiny lining felt like a caress. She wanted to bury her face in the fabric and breathe deeply. She wanted to burrow deep inside the folds and pretend she was in his arms.

She wanted.

"What did your grandmother say?" He sat down next to her. His knees brushed against hers. Neither one moved away.

"
I don't remember," she said, looking into his eyes. "Something about chicken soup, I think."

"
Chicken soup is good," he said.

"
I hate chicken soup." But she loved the way the candlelight made his dark blue eyes glitter like stars in a night sky.

"
My grandma made potions." He traced a design along the side of her wrist. Who would have figured the wrist bone was an erogenous zone?

"
Potions?"
Love potions. Make my grandson irresistible to women.

"
She was an Ojibwa medicine woman. She knew all the herbs and flowers and how to heal with them."

"
I didn't know you were Native American." That explained the glossy black hair and strong features. But those blue eyes—where did they come from?

"
Half Ojibwa, half Scots. Ojibwa doesn't mean much around here."

"
Did it mean much in Wyoming?"

"
Montana," he said. "Yeah, it meant a hell of a lot."

His expression closed in on itself again
, and she wished she could pull back her words. "I'm Jewish and Irish," she said. "More guilt than you can shake a rosary at."

He laughed out loud.

"So you can laugh," she said, tilting her head slightly as she looked at him. "I wasn't sure."

He slid his index finger over her wrist bone
, along the side of her hand. Her breath caught in her throat. She prayed he hadn't heard the sound but she knew he must have. Everyone in the ballroom must have heard it. He turned her hand over, and instinctively her fingers closed over her palm. If he touched his mouth to her palm, she would be lost forever.

She pulled back her hand
, and the ballroom swam back into focus. "I wonder where Jessy went."

He met her eyes
, and she knew that he understood the meaning behind her words. "She was here a minute ago."

"
She'd better hurry back, or I might steal her chocolate soufflé." The truth was she wouldn't know a souffle from sawdust right now. The only thing she knew was how much she wanted him.

Rafe pushed his dessert toward Molly.
"Here," he said. "I'm not big on desserts."

"
This isn't dessert," she said. "This is chocolate. One of the four basic food groups."

"
My tastes run to other things."

It was a simple statement
, said with no particular degree of emphasis or innuendo. Still, her whole body reacted to his words as if they were a quote from the Kama Sutra.

"
And where's Spencer?" she asked, dipping her spoon into the center of the souffle. It sighed then settled into more earthbound dimensions. "His dessert might be in danger, too."

"
He's standing to the left of the orchestra," Rafe said, "talking to some guys who look just like him. I'm not surprised you can't find him. Every guy in this place looks like his clone,"

"
I'll admit there's a certain style among Princeton men, but they're not cloned."

"
They should wear name tags." The hint of a smile curved the left corner of his way-too-sensual mouth. "How do their wives find them at the end of the night?"

"
Maybe they don't want to be found."

"
Maybe they're not worth finding," he said

"
Some of them aren't," she said. She clicked her spoon against the side of her plate. "It took me a while to figure that out."

"
And you've got it figured out now?"

She nodded.
"Now I miss what could have been, instead of what was. What was isn't worth the tears."

"
It takes some people years to reach the same conclusion.''

She placed her hands on her belly and moved them in small
, comforting circles. "Nothing like a baby to give you a new perspective."

The orchestra returned from break
, and lush music once again filled the ballroom.

Rafe stood up.
"Dancing's not chocolate," he said and held out his hand.