I Waxed My Legs for This? (8 page)

Jack jogged up to Carrie’s perfect hiding place. She’d known he’d find her. Jack had always found her when she was hurt and confused. Most of the time he was able to ease the tempest, but this time he was the cause of it.

She hugged her legs to her chest and watched the dark clouds rolling in off the ocean. The weather suited her mood. Dark and troubled.

She watched him jogging toward her and her heart gave a little skip. She squashed the emotion, having become accustomed to ignoring the longing after all these years. However, having experienced a taste of what loving Jack could be like, the feeling only intensified.

“Good morning,” he said easily as he reached her rock. “Got room for someone else on there?”

There was enough room, barely, but it would require them to sit awfully close. Too close. Carrie shook her head. “Why don’t you take that one next to me?”

What looked like disappointment flitted across Jack’s face, but he sat on the stone she’d indicated.

“You’re up early” was all he said.

She shrugged, unwilling to admit she couldn’t sleep with him so close. Her dreams hadn’t helped.

“So, are we just going to pretend that last night didn’t happen?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she answered, ever the hopeful optimist.

“And if I do mind?” he asked gently.

“I’d still rather not talk about it. I do owe you an apology, and I offer it now, but couldn’t we just chalk it up to an aberration?” Carrie was desperate. It was too soon for him. He was still mourning the loss of Sandy.

Someday, after he’d healed, she would make a move. But not now. Not yet.

Jack looked at Carrie. There was a quiet desperation in her that he’d never seen before. She had as much as admitted to him that she’d had a crush on him once upon a time, but he’d been too young, too inexperienced to recognize it.

And then there was Sandy.

Sandy Baker, flight attendant, every guy’s fantasy. And she’d chosen him. Four years they had been together. Somewhere along the line he fell into the habit of thinking he loved Sandy. But, nine months ago when she’d moved out of their apartment, they’d both admitted what they had wasn’t love. It was merely comfortable. And yet, they’d never gone further than living together. With Sandy’s job as a flight attendant she was gone for long stretches of time.

It took Sandy’s injury to force them to examine their relationship, or lack of one.

They had nothing in common.

Their parting had been easier than either had thought possible. That was what had been eating Jack for the past few months. That maybe he wasn’t capable of truly loving a woman.

And now?

He was pretty sure what he was looking for had been under his nose all along. 

He thought he’d loved Carrie as a friend.  And he did.

But if last night was any indication, that love could be something more.

Maybe it already was.

The idea made him smile.

But it was obviously scaring Carrie to death. The last thing Jack wanted to do was scare her, to hurt her.

He found himself saying, “If that’s really what you want.”

Carrie just nodded, but still didn’t look at him.

Jack reached for her and she pulled away. Convincing Carrington Rose Delany that they could be more than friends was going to take some work. Convincing her that the something they could be was even better than what they had been was going to take even more.

“Mrs. Richardson called after you left,” Jack said, keeping his distance.

“Oh?”

“I hope you don’t mind that I told her we’d have dinner with her and Herb tonight.”

“Dinner?” she asked absently.

She watched the water as if she expected some cousin of the Loch Ness monster to appear at any minute.

“Yes, Carrie. Dinner. You know, that meal that comes after lunch.”

She nodded and he beat down his frustration and added. “We’re meeting them at seven. I hope that’s okay.”

Again, just a nod.

“Are you just going to keep nodding your head at everything I say?” he asked.

She shrugged this time.

“You know, we’re going to have to talk about this sometime, don’t you?” he tried.

“Talk about what?” she asked, feigning ignorance.

Jack sighed. Dealing with Carrie was something he thought he’d perfected over the years, but he was beginning to see that he’d just scratched the surface. “Have it your way. We won’t talk, won’t even mention it.”

“And won’t repeat it,” she said firmly.

“If you say so, we won’t. Just stop this silent treatment and talk to me again.”

She finally turned and really looked at him, not through him or past him. “Okay, what should we talk about?”

“How about what we’re going to do today?” he asked.

He’d broken through her icy reserve and that was enough for now.

Later, he’d worry about what to do next.

The last of her iciness melted.

Jack felt relieved. “They have that water park, I thought it might be fun.”

“A water park?” she asked.

“Yeah, you know with slides and wave pools. It’ll be fun.”

She smiled at him encouragingly and Jack knew he’d do anything she wanted, from water slides to bathing with piranha, if she’d just kept smiling at him.

“Okay. Let’s go change, grab something for lunch and then go,” she said.

Carrie was off the rock in a shot.

She seemed relieved that they were done talking about last night.

Jack just smiled as he watched her scamper toward the hotel.

He was a lawyer, something Carrie frequently forgot.

He’d promised they wouldn’t talk about it again, but when she asked him to promise not to repeat last night, he’d simply promised not to repeat it if she said so.

Jack didn’t just plan on her saying so.

He planned to have her begging him.

Carrie slipped a sundress on and scuffed her feet into her sandals.

Her sunburn had faded to a dull pinkish brown. She wasn’t even sure that she’d peel. Oh, how she hoped she didn’t peel. There was nothing attractive about a woman who was shedding her skin.

She took it back.

She hoped she peeled.

She almost wished she hadn’t slathered sunblock all over her abused skin before they had headed for the water park that afternoon.

She hoped she peeled so bad that children screamed when they saw her.

She hoped she looked so bad that Jack wouldn’t even begin to think about kissing her.

But peeling skin wouldn’t stop
her
from thinking about kissing
him
. Carrie doubted anything would.

She wasn’t about to kiss him again. At least not until he was over Sandy.

For years Jack had been with Sandy. A few months wasn’t long enough to heal.

He was still hurting.

Carrie could see it in the way he threw himself into his cases.

She could see it in his tired expression.

She could see it in the lack of women in his life.

If he had a new girlfriend, maybe she’d make a move. She could fight another girlfriend. She couldn’t fight a memory.

Maybe, after he’d had more time and truly healed, maybe there wouldn’t be more women. Maybe he’d finally notice that Carrie wasn’t his little sister—that she’d never been his sister. Maybe...

She put away the maybes and checked herself in the mirror.

She looked okay. 

When she’d come in from the water park she’d almost let out a yelp when she caught a glimpse of her Medusa hair and makeup-devoid face.

It had been worth her looking like a witch, though. Jack had enjoyed himself. He’d laughed and smiled and run around like a little boy. For a while at least he was the old carefree Jack she used to know, not the stodgy, workaholic lawyer who had been hanging around the past few years.

She jumped when she heard the pounding on the door. “Come on, Carrie. This is just dinner with an old teacher, not a night at some award show.”

“I’ll be right out.” Men.

“You said that twenty minutes ago,” he said.

“And now I’m twenty minutes closer to being done.” She could hear him muttering outside the door and smiled as she ran eyeliner under her lashes.

His grumbles made her relax.

They were back to normal. She and Jack had put the kiss behind them, at least for now, and they were back to being friends. Good friends.

Best friends.

Things were normal and this afternoon just proved it.

She looked at her reflection and patted a stray strand of hair into place.

Things were back to normal all right and tonight would just be a dinner with an old schoolteacher.

Things were not back to normal.

That much was clear an hour later. 

Carrie nudged at Jack, trying to push him out of her personal space. 

He didn’t seem inclined to move.

“And then we went to the Cayman Islands...” Mrs. Richardson continued.

Carrie didn’t mind letting the woman monopolize the conversation.

As a matter of fact, she doubted she could have conversed if her life depended on it. She was too busy fending off her ex-best friend.

Jack’s arm kept creeping over her shoulders and she kept shrugging it off.

Then his hand would fall, oh so innocently, on her knee and she’d try to nonchalantly smack it off.

He’d reach past her for the salt and accidentally graze her breasts with his forearm, though she knew their size made them difficult to accidentally graze. Their size made them almost impossible to purposely graze.

“Darn it, cut it out,” she growled in his ear when Mrs. Robertson paused and said something to the silent Herb.

“Temper, temper. You don’t swear, remember?” Jack whispered back and smiled.

“I do when you...”

“When I what, darling?” he asked, the picture of innocence.

“Don’t call me
darling
,” she said a little too loudly.

“Oh, I just love it when Herb calls me darling,” Mrs. Richardson cooed.

Carrie was sure she did. The woman was probably thrilled when Herb said anything at all, much less whispered an endearment.

“I just don’t care for public displays of affection,” she said as primly as she could manage.

That famous Mrs. Richardson finger bobbed in reprimand. “Now, Carrie, that’s not how I remember it. As I recall you and Jack have had some very public displays of affection.”

“See,
darling
,” Jack said, a heavy emphasis on the darling. “You’re just going to have to get used to my public displays.”

As discreetly as she could, Carrie elbowed him. He let out a very satisfying grunt. “Oh, I’m so sorry,
dear
. You’re just sitting a little closer than I’m used to.” She batted her eyelashes at Herb and said, “You never told us just what you do.”

“Oh, Herb,” Mrs. Richardson answered for him. “He’s a telephone solicitor. Talk, talk, talk. That’s my Herb. Lucky for him I just love listening to his dulcet tones.”

Jack started choking on the water he’d just sipped.

Carrie momentarily forgot her annoyance and hid her smile by turning and smacking his back with all her might.

“Thanks,” Jack gasped.

“You should be more careful,” Mrs. Richardson. “I knew a woman once...”

Ten minutes later, when the entire table knew Sophie Garret’s life history—a life that was tragically cut short when she laughed while drinking a soda and choked herself to death—their dinners arrived.

“Sir, you ordered the shrimp?” the waitress asked and she set the plate in front of Jack when he nodded and then passed out the rest.

Jack took the first bite and discreetly set a shrimp on Carrie’s plate of fettuccine.

“Did I ever tell you how fettuccine and shrimp brought Carrie and me together?” he asked the instantly alert Mrs. Richardson.

Their teacher shook her head. “Carrie did mention it last night, but she didn’t go into any detail.”

Carrie elbowed him again, but Jack liked Mrs. Richardson’s response better and he started, “Well, she had been dating this guy, Jed.”

“Ted,” Carrie corrected, taking great delight in biting the shrimp in two.

“Jed, Ted...anyway, they were out to dinner and he ordered the fettuccine.”

“Fettuccine?” Mrs. Richardson asked.

“Fettuccine. You see, Carrie here loves fettuccine, but she also loves shrimp.” So saying he passed her another one.

Carrie resisted the urge to toss it back into his face. He was annoying and probably deserved it, but she wasn’t someone who would waste a perfectly good shrimp.

“And Ned—”

“Ted,” Carrie corrected again.

“Ted,” Jack agreed. “He ordered fettuccine, just like she did. Well, there was no variety and she realized that she needed something more in a man. Carrie needs a man who knows how to order correctly—a man who can kiss. And, of course the first man she thought of was me. After all we’d ordered enough dinners together and we kissed me in chem class.”

“It wasn’t a kiss, it was mouth-to-mouth,” Carrie muttered.

“Well, she knew that I was the one for her.”

“Oh, Herb, isn’t that the sweetest story you’ve ever heard?” Mrs. Richardson asked. 

She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll never order shrimp or fettuccine again and not feel a flutter in my heart.”

She turned to Carrie and said, “To think, all that time you’d been dating the wrong men. It was Jack here who turned your litmus paper blue.”

Even Herb groaned over that one as a poor excuse for a joke. Mrs. Richardson laughed a kind of laugh that didn’t sound at all like the teacher Carrie remembered.

“Oh, you all liked that?” she asked. “Well, how about—and all those years it was Jack who could make your Bunsen burn.”

The tension that had Carrie’s back rigid disappeared and she found herself laughing with the rest of their group through the main course and dessert.

After they said goodnight, Mrs. Richardson hugged each of them each in turn. “Now, when those wedding bells chime, Herb and I will expect our invitation. Remember, I’m a chemistry teacher and I know a chemical reaction when I see it. The two of you are almost combustible.”

Herb just winked at both of them, wrapped his arm around his wife as the couple walked down the hall.

“Well,” Jack said.

“Yes, well,” Carrie echoed as they started toward their own room. “Do you remember her being quite so...” She searched for a word. “Ah, funny?”

“As I recall, the most exciting part of the whole class was when you and I had our kiss.”

“It was mouth-to-mouth,” Carrie said.

Jack just continued talking right over her. “The rest of it was a bit dry.”

His arm slipped over her shoulders again.

Carrie tried to shrug out of it, but he held tight. “Jack, I think it’s best if we keep our distance.”

“I’m sure you do.” His voice sounded anything but distant.

“I mean, we’re friends. We’ve been friends for years and I’d hate to jeopardize that.” She tried to quicken her pace. If she could beat him to the room she could be safely locked in the bathroom, pruning her skin in the bathtub, before he caught up.

Jack matched his pace to hers. “I’d never want to lose your friendship.”

“Then we’re agreed.” She sighed her relief.

He was going to be reasonable after all.

“Agreed,” he said, hugging her closer to him.

Her smile slipped. He wasn’t acting like her old friend.

“Jack,” she warned. “You just agreed we’d be friends.”

“Oh, I’m feeling very friendly.” His hand rained feather light caresses on her upper arm and she felt her resolve slip. He must have opened their door because she was suddenly safely inside the room.

He leaned over and kissed her neck.

“We can’t do this,” she managed to say.

“Oh, but we can.”

“What if—”

He interrupted. “What if we find that Mrs. Richardson is right? That we have a chemical reaction? What if we find that we were meant to be more than friends? I let you have last night and today to think about it. I was hoping you’d notice that there’s something special here.”

“What if we find that we weren’t meant to be more than friends? You’re on the rebound. After all those years with Sandy, you don’t know what you want.” She pushed against him, needing some distance.

Jack allowed her to push him back, but not far enough. His voice was soft. “Rebound? It’s been months, almost a year. I’m over Sandy. Truth be told, I was over her long before we split up.”

Carrie shook her head. “You hold everything inside. You always have. There hasn’t been anyone since she left. If you were over her, there would have been.”

“
Rebound
. You think that’s all you’d be? Just a rebound relationship?”

“I think there’s a chance—a very good one— that we’d end up hating each other. And then I’d lose the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“I always thought you were the bravest woman I knew. The reason you’re always in those scrapes you get yourself into is that you’re not afraid to try something new. Of course, it doesn’t always work out and you run the risk of having a problem. But you try. Are you telling me that you’re just going to let this thing that’s growing between us die without giving it a chance?”

His hands were still on her shoulders and the sensation was just too much. Carrie wanted to embrace him and forget about being reasonable. She wanted to forget about all her doubts and all the reasons why they should wait.

Did he really see her as brave, as someone who takes chances?

Carrie had always secretly been afraid that Jack had seen her as a flake. The thought that he saw her as something more than she’d ever seen herself was new and almost as terrifying as risking her friendship with Jack.

He couldn’t be over Sandy already. She’d meant the world to him.

They were all valid concerns, but they all boiled down to one overwhelming obstacle.

“I am afraid,” she admitted.

No longer content with distance, he pulled her into his arms. “So am I. Despite all the men you’ve dated and—”

“Sandy,” she said, voicing the one wedge that stood between them.

“She isn’t here in any way. None of your exes are either. It’s just you and me.”

Carrie stared at him, wanting to believe him, but not quite able to make herself do it.

“You’re the longest lasting relationship I’ve ever had.”

“Because we’re friends, not lovers,” Carrie maintained stubbornly.

“Maybe, or maybe we have something that’s meant to withstand time. Maybe what we have isn’t just friendship. Maybe it’s—”

“Stop,” she practically screamed. She didn’t want to hear him say words that would move this physical attraction to a new level. If he said them they’d always hang there between them. She pushed against him again, but this time he didn’t give an inch. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.” She gave one more shove and he let go.

“Am I?” he asked.

She turned and looked anywhere but at him.

Her heart was racing.

Maybe she was having a heart attack. That would serve him right, backing her into a comer like this. Saying she was brave and saying that there was something between them.

She stood a minute and willed her racing heart to beat faster. Jack would have to rush her to the hospital and, in the confusion would forget all about this nonsense between them. When her heart didn’t oblige her, she retreated to her last resort.

Anger.

“Who do you think you are?” she asked, turning back to him.

“I waited years for you to notice me, but you never did. I kissed boys, practicing to make myself what you wanted. But, you fell for pom-pom perfect Patti, who was followed by others, and that’s all there was. Any chance I ever had of making you see me as a woman disappeared in their shadows. Now, after all these years, after we’ve built a terrific friendship and know where we stand with each other, now you think you can just change the rules?”

“Yes,” he whispered. Like a yo-yo, she was back in his arms. This time he held on like he’d never let go and his lips moved forward to seal her fate.

Carrie had kissed boys in high school when she was practicing for Jack and she’d kissed men since, but nothing had ever prepared her for what was happening between them.

“Jack,” she gasped, though she had no idea what she wanted to say.

“Yes or no, Carrie?”