Page 9 of This Time Around
“Wills!” Allie finished, cutting him off before he could air too much dirty laundry.
Wade said nothing, but Jack gave her the familiar eyebrow lift. “I know about your parents, Allie.”
“Oh?” she stirred the broth, silently insisting her heated face was the result of standing over a gas burner and had nothing to do with the conversation. Maybe Jack didn’t know the whole story.
“It was in the news,” Jack said. “I kept seeing headlines about the trial whenever I’d check the Oregonian online. Sounds like your mom was the Ponzi scheme mastermind and your dad?—”
“Right.” She stopped stirring and put the lid on the pot, desperate for something to do with her hands.
“How are your folks doing?” Jack asked.
“Okay. Under the circumstances, I mean.”
“I’m glad. It can’t be easy.”
“It is what it is.”
God, what an inane statement. What did that even mean? Jack stepped closer, and suddenly everything else fell away. Wade, the clams, the fact that Jack had a ten-year-old-daughter and a whole history she knew nothing about.
“It’s fine, Allie,” he said. “We all have skeletons in the closet. Secrets, mistakes, things we don’t like to talk about.”
She nodded, not sure she could find her words, but certain she shouldn’t speak the ones tumbling around in her brain.
You don’t know the half of it, Jack Carpenter.
Chapter 3
“Everything was delicious, Allie.” Jack reached over from his spot on the sofa to grab his coffee mug off the side table, wincing as Paige rolled over in her sleep and kicked him in the nuts.
Allie gave him her serene smile and sat down on the adjacent loveseat, a good three feet of distance between them. Maybe more. Paige had dozed off a few minutes after dessert, with Allie’s fiancé making an exit a few minutes later. Something about an urgent oral presentation at work, though Jack had seen Allie roll her eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking.
So it was just the two of them now, plus one unconscious child. As Jack shifted his daughter’s feet on his lap, Allie balanced a pale blue teacup on a saucer, stirring it with one of those dainty little teaspoons she always used to leave around their apartment. Jack breathed in the faint scent of Earl Grey, not sure what to say to the woman he’d once been ready to marry.
“Is your coffee okay?” she asked.
“It’s great, thanks.” He hadn’t taken a sip yet. “Actually, I should probably get going.” He set the mug on a coaster and tried to figure out how to move Paige without waking her.
“You said you wanted coffee.”
Allie’s tone was normal enough, but something accusatory rang in it. Or maybe that was Jack’s imagination. Too many years of veiled and not-so-veiled accusations about how he could never decide what he wanted. Never commit to a college major or a career or even what he wanted for dinner. Anything but Allie. Right up to the day she left, he’d always been sure about her.
It hadn’t been enough. Not for her, anyway.
Jack hesitated, then settled back against the sofa. What the hell, it had been sixteen years. A few more minutes of making small talk wouldn’t hurt. He cleared his throat. “Nice place you have here.”
“Thank you.”
“Been here long?”
“Oh, I guess about four years. Something like that.”
She wasn’t offering much, but then again, he was asking pretty dumb questions. Conversation used to flow better than this between them. Had they changed that much, or were they just out of practice?
He took a sip of coffee, then tried again. “Does Wade have to work late a lot?”
Something flashed in those dark green eyes, and he tried to decide if he’d sounded judgmental on purpose. No, of course not. He was just making small talk.
“Wade’s a prominent entertainment attorney,” she said. “He’s very busy.”
