Husband in Training Page 4

  "Well, whatever you meant, don't. This whole 'training' thing is between you and Nick. I didn't say no to it because you both seemed so excited about giving it a try. But do not expect me to get involved. Understand?"

  "Oh, Mother."

  "Understand?"

  "Yeah. Sure. Gotcha." Polly flopped to her back again and stared at the ceiling some more. "Sheesh," she said, then muttered with great sarcasm, "I hope you have a marvelous time."

  "Thank you very much, I think I will. And I'll ask your grandmother to come and stay with you, just so you won't be alone."

  Polly sniffed. "I'm thirteen years old. I'll be fine." Then she turned her head, sarcasm forgotten. "Hey. Maybe I could have Mellie over. To spend the night. We wouldn't need Granny, then."

  Jenny marveled sometimes at the workings of her daughter's mind. If she hesitated to leave one thirteen-year-old alone, what led Polly to believe that she'd feel better if she left two?

  "Mom. Please?"

  "If your grandma's here to keep an eye on you, having Mellie over would be fine."

  "We do not need Granny."

  "I'm the mom here. I'll decide what you need."

  "Oh, great. Whatever. Fine." Polly dragged herself to a standing position. "So. Can I call Mellie and invite her?"

  "Let me talk to your grandmother first."

  "When will you do that?"

  "Tomorrow, I promise."

  Grumbling under her breath, Polly wandered back to her own room.

  Alone, Jenny tried on the dress. It looked fine and it still fit. But as she turned before the mirror, she couldn't help thinking that something new would be nice.

  Once a week, on Thursday, Polly stayed two hours after school to tutor kids who were having trouble in reading and language arts. Jenny usually spent that time in her own classroom, redoing bulletin boards and straightening supply closets. But that particular Thursday, the bulletin boards didn't need changing—and the supply closets could wait.

  Jenny got in her car and drove to Arden Fair Mall. Luck must have been shining on her, because she found a parking space in a row right near one of the entrances to Nordstrom's.

  She saw the dress hanging on the end of the rack when she got off the escalator onto the second floor. It was turquoise, a sort of peacock turquoise, the color pearlescent, seeming to alter with every change in the light. It was evening length, with a slit up the back to the knee. It had a mandarin collar and cutaway shoulders—and a matching jacket that would ward off the cold night air. Jenny glanced at the price tag. Four hundred and eighty dollars. She shouldn't.

  Still, she found a dressing room and tried it on, her heart pounding in excitement. She loved the way the slinky fabric slid down her body, like water. Water with substance, yes, that was how it felt.

  One glance in the mirror and she knew she had to have it.

  Of course, she needed a special bra for it. So after the salesclerk rang it up and covered it carefully with a Nordstrom's bag, Jenny went over to lingerie and bought the right bra—along with a pair of shimmery stockings. Her pulse racing, she dared to stop in at the shoe department, where she actually found a pair of turquoise evening sandals.

  Her heart was still pounding too hard and too loud as she carried everything back to the car.

  She hung the dress in the back seat and put the other things in the trunk. Then she slid behind the wheel.

  That was when she realized that her hands were shaking.

  She grasped the wheel to steady them. Her heart went on thudding, as loud as a barrel drum. The sound seemed to fill the car. Jenny gritted her teeth, gripped the wheel harder and stared out the windshield.

  "I have just spent six hundred dollars," Jenny said aloud to no one in particular. She said it again, "I have just spent six hundred dollars." This time, she added, "To go out on Saturday night. With Nick."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  With a tiny moan, Jenny leaned on her door and got out of the car. A cold wind was blowing. It lifted her pale hair and blew it against her cheeks as she locked the car and then hurried back into the mall.

  She wandered around for a few minutes, staring blindly at display windows, and then found a pizza stand. She bought a giant-sized Diet Pepsi and she sat at a table by herself. Slowly she sipped, watching the people go by in the mall a few feet away.

  At the next table over, a young man and woman were sharing a pizza with a small, blond-haired child.

  "Drink your milk now, Lily," the woman said.

  The little girl lifted her paper cup and took a big sip, then set the cup down and pointed at her upper lip. "Moustache, Mommy," she announced with great pride. The man took a napkin and swiped at the little girl's mouth. Childish giggles rang out. "All clean now, Daddy?"

  "All clean. Drink the rest."

  Obediently the child drank some more.

  Jenny tried not to be too obvious about watching them, a happy little family, sharing pizza at the mall. Once, she and Andrew and Polly might have been in their place.

  It did hurt to see them. To remember how it had once been, but could never be again.

  Still, it didn't hurt as much as it would have at one time.

  Jenny supposed she took comfort from that.

  Plus, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that even if Andrew were still with them, it could hardly be the same. Polly wouldn't be crowing over a milk moustache, not by a long shot. And Andrew certainly wouldn't be wiping her mouth for her.

  Jenny sipped from her straw, and let herself think again of the dress hanging in the back seat of her car. If spending the money bothered her so much, she could always march back out there collect everything, and return it all right now. She could wear the black one. It was thoroughly appropriate for the occasion.

  But her hands weren't shaking anymore. And her heart had settled down. She saw her earlier reaction as just what it had been: an overreaction.

  In the first months after Andrew's death, she'd had reactions like that often. Her heart would go crazy and her hands would shake—over the simplest things, in the most mundane places. Once, in the grocery store, she'd rolled her cart by the condiment section and realized she didn't need to buy mayonnaise that day.

  Neither she nor Polly cared for it; it was Andrew who put the stuff on everything, going through a giant jar every month, at least. She used to tease him about it, telling him she could hear his arteries hardening as he spread that stuff on thick.

  But that day in the grocery store, she realized she wouldn't be teasing him anymore. Nope. And she didn't need to buy mayonnaise, that was for sure. And all at once, her hands were shaking. And her heart pounded so hard, it hurt to have it beating in there.

  She saw herself, stepping right up to that shelf, calmly reaching for those jars of mayonnaise, one by one and hurling them to the floor of the aisle, shattering them all, each and every one, till the store was awash in mayonnaise and greasy shards of broken glass.

  She'd left her cart right there in the middle of the aisle and gone out and sat in her car for a full five minutes before she made herself go back inside and finish the shopping she'd started.

  She had told herself that what mattered was that she had finished what she'd started.

  And every time she bought groceries after that, it got a little easier, until she could walk by the condiment section with no escalation of her pulse at all, without even glancing at the mayonnaise jars.

  Maybe she had spent too much on the dress. But it had been so long since she'd bought a dress just because she wanted to, just because she saw it on the rack and knew that it was meant for her. Just because it brought out the hints of pink in her skin, deepened her pale blue eyes. And flowed down her body like water given substance.

  Heck, maybe she'd never bought a dress for those particular reasons, now she really gave it some thought.

  A pure, sinful self-indulgence, that's what that dress was.

  Jenny stood. Sh
e left the father, the mother, the little golden-haired daughter and the pizza stand behind. A few yards down the mall, she found a trash can and dropped the remains of her Pepsi into it.

  Every woman, she decided, had a right to a pure self-indulgence now and then. As long as she didn't make a habit of it, of course.

  Jenny arrived home before Polly. She put her new dress away. She was starting on dinner when the mother of one of the students Polly tutored dropped her off at the foot of the driveway. Jenny watched through the kitchen window as her daughter waved, then turned and ran up the walk.

  Polly slammed the front door. "Mom! I'm home!"

  "In the kitchen!"

  Polly came flying in, cheeks bright red from the cold outside. She dropped her heavy pack on the table and shrugged out of her down jacket. "Test tomorrow in World History." She held up her history book, which she clutched in her hands. "I want to look over the chapter again." She tossed the jacket on top of the pack. "Call me when Nick gets here, okay?"

  "Sure."

  Polly whirled for the hall. "Wait."

  Polly groaned. "What, Mom?"

  "Hang up your jacket. And take that pack to your room."

  "Oh, Mom…"

  Jenny just looked at her. Grumbling under her breath, Polly grabbed up the two articles and disappeared down the hall. Jenny called after her, "And don't slam that—" Before she could finish the sentence, Polly's door slammed.

  Shaking her head, Jenny turned for the counter where several stalks of celery and a yellow onion waited to be sliced.

  Nick arrived at a little after six, just in time to help Polly set the table. By seven, Polly had him looking at Georgia O'Keeffe calla lilies as well as oils and pastels by Mary Cassatt.

  "So you'll have something constructive to contribute," Polly explained to him, "when Sasha wants to talk about art."

  Polly pointed out the feminine, sensual lines of the Georgia O'Keeffe flowers. Nick grunted and turned the page. "Hey, this isn't bad." It was a cow skull with a peony growing out of the left eye.

  Polly launched into her interpretation of the piece—which didn't seem to make a lot of sense to Nick. He grunted some more.

  Jenny retreated to the spare room, where she plunked herself down on the futon and watched "Rivera Live" on the small TV in there. Around nine, she got up and turned off the TV.

  Out in the dining area, Nick was getting ready to leave.

  "Making progress?" she asked as he pulled on his jacket.

  "Ask the teacher," he advised.

  Polly said chidingly, "I really don't think you ought to miss tomorrow night, Nick. Monday through Friday, that was the deal, remember? Until we both think you're really getting somewhere."

  Nick said, "Look, Pol. I'm sorry. But I've got a meeting that's bound to run late."

  "Come over afterward."

  "Can't. Gotta get home."

  Jenny smiled to herself. She had thumbed through the TV Guide a few minutes earlier and noticed that there was a Bulls game on tomorrow night—which was the only reason she could possibly imagine that Nick might be eager to get home to that awful house of his; he had a big-screen TV in the huge living room.

  Polly sighed. "Well. Keep up with your reading. Don't slack off."

  "I won't."

  "Monday we'll discuss Wuthering Heights."

  "I can't wait."

  "Just get it read."

  "I will, I will." Nick shot a glance past Polly, at Jenny. "Seven-thirty Saturday, right?"

  She thought of the dress, hanging in her closet. Of herself wearing it, dancing in Nick's arms. She didn't know whether she felt elated—or sick to her stomach. "I'll be ready."

  "See you then."

  Staring at herself in the mirror on her closet door, Jenny straightened the jacket a little and smoothed the fabric of the turquoise dress. She looked fine, she thought. She'd swept the sides of her chin-length blond hair back away from her face. The earrings with the tiny sapphires in them that Andrew had given her for their fifth anniversary sparkled in her ears. She turned, so that she could look back over her shoulder for a rear view.

  Yes. Fine. Perfect. No reason to be so nervous. No reason at all.

  Laughter drifted to her from down the hall. Her mother and the two girls, Polly and Amelia, had settled in at the table to play something called MindTrap. Of course, the girls had groaned when Granny suggested the game. But Kirsten Lundquist hadn't let the groaning bother her. Like her mother before her and her daughter after, Kirsten Lundquist was a teacher to her bones; she'd taught everything from kindergarten to high school algebra. And she knew how to ignore the complaints of recalcitrant children.

  She'd clapped her hands briskly. "Come on, girls. Let's get this table cleared. Then we will enjoy a game that will challenge our minds a little—and allow us to enjoy each other's company at the same time. Meanwhile, Jennifer will have the time she needs to get ready for her big date."

  Her big date. Jenny stared at her own reflection in the mirror as her mother's words bounced around in her brain. Her eyes looked way too wide. And her lips too pale.

  More lipstick. That should help. She whirled for the mirror over the sink in her bathroom. The lipstick waited there on the edge of the sink, where she'd left it a few minutes before. She grabbed it and pulled off the cap.

  And right then, the doorbell rang.

  Startled, Jenny emitted a tiny cry of alarm. The lid stayed in one hand, but the lipstick itself went flying. It bounced against the mirror and fell into the sink.

  "Ridiculous. Foolish," Jenny muttered to herself as she commanded her hand to stop shaking, picked up the lipstick again, rolled it out, then slowly and carefully applied it to her lips.

  "There," she said, rubbing her lips together as she recapped the tube. "Better. Much better." She straightened her shoulders, gave her hair a final pat and whirled for the door to the hall, pausing only to grab her small beaded evening clutch from the end of the bed.

  When Jenny emerged from the hall, Nick was standing by the table, looking absolutely splendid in a tux. Something tightened in her chest when she spotted him. In spite of her extreme nervousness, she identified the emotion: pride. She was proud to be his date.

  Right then, he turned and saw her. The two girls and her mother, at the table, did the same.

  There was a moment of echoing silence that made Jenny's ears ring.

  Then Nick whistled—a real, bona fide wolf whistle. "Well," he said. "Wow."

  In the space of an instant, Jenny's hands stopped shaking and her heart settled down to a nice, easy rhythm. "Why thank you, Nicolas." She let her lashes sweep down modestly. "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "Mother." Polly's voice held a note of accusation. "Where did you get that dress?"

  "At a department store, I'd imagine," Kirsten said dryly. She smiled at Jenny. "You look absolutely lovely, Jennifer."

  "But you were going to wear that black one," Polly insisted, sounding cheated. "Why didn't you tell me you went out and bought something else?"

  Jenny felt a bit uncomfortable. Why hadn't she mentioned the new dress to her daughter?

  Kirsten had a perfectly acceptable answer—even if it wasn't the real one. "Polly Brown, it is not your mother's responsibility to report her every action and decision to you. This is her date and, since she is an adult, what she chooses to wear for it is her own concern."

  "But Granny, you don't understand. Nick and I—" Polly cut herself off as Nick caught her eye and gave a quick shake of his head. Jenny couldn't decide why he'd done that. Perhaps he only meant that Polly should listen to her grandmother. But maybe he feared she might launch into an explanation of the "training" she was putting him through.

  Jenny suspected the latter. Kirsten Lundquist was a no-nonsense sort of woman. She probably wouldn't think too much of her thirteen-year-old granddaughter teaching a grown man how to improve his love life. Nick had always admired Kirsten, so her opinion would matter to him.

  "You and Nick w
hat?" Kirsten inquired gently.

  Polly looked away, brought her hand up to her mouth and surreptitiously tapped at her top row of braces. "Oh, never mind. I guess you're right. It's none of my business."

  "You do look really hot, Mrs. Brown," Amelia said in that sweet, soft voice of hers. Jenny murmured her thanks to the pretty, dark-haired girl.

  Polly took her finger out of her mouth and grudgingly added her vote. "Yeah, Mom. You look great."

  "And we have to go." Nick cleared the distance between them and put his hand at Jenny's back. Beneath her dress, her skin tingled at his touch. She stiffened, then relaxed. So silly, to be so edgy…

  She gave Nick a fond smile, then turned to her mother. "We might be out late."

  "Don't you worry. We'll be fine. I'm going to beat these youngsters at this game and then allow them to watch a movie. You two have a terrific time."

  A pair of ficus trees woven with twinkle lights flanked the entrance to the huge ballroom. Overhead, recessed corner chandeliers poured a mellow light over the sixty-plus tables set with creamy white china, sparkling glassware and gleaming silverware.

  When Nick and Jenny walked in, it looked as if most of the guests had already arrived. The light from the votive candles in the center of each table caught on beaded gowns and diamond earrings. Everywhere Jenny looked, something seemed to be glittering.

  They were immediately surrounded by several of Nick's business associates. He greeted them warmly and introduced Jenny. She smiled and said hello and hoped she wouldn't be called upon later to remember all the names.

  "You want to get rid of that jacket?" Nick asked, once the crowd around them thinned out a little.

  "Good idea." She took it off and handed it over, catching the appreciative light in Nick's eyes as he let his gaze wander over her bare shoulders and downward, to take in the snug, clinging fit of the gown. "Did I tell you I like that dress?"

  "I kind of figured you did—when you let out that whistle back at the house."

  He winked at her. "Subtle I'm not."

  "That's part of your charm."