Page 30 of About that Fling
It was the closest they’d come to talking about Gert’s literary achievement.
Now, as Jenna sat looking at her laptop screen, she wished she’d been able to properly congratulate her aunt. She’d known the bestseller thing was a big deal, but until she started researching, she hadn’t realized how big. Not only did it likely mean some bigger royalty checks for G.G. Buckingham, it was a feather in Gert’s proverbial author cap. Something that meant she was more than just a little old lady tapping out flowery romance novels in her spare time.
Not that Gert’s novels were flowery. True, Jenna had never read one, but she suspected G.G. Buckingham’s Panty Dropper series ran closer to 50 Shades of Grey than Pride and Prejudice.
Well, maybe she’d send Gert some flowers. Anonymously, of course. She could spring for a gift certificate to Massage Envy and convince Gert it was a bonus she got from work that she wouldn’t have time to use. That was something, right?
Jenna clicked off the New York Times page and scrolled over to her Facebook icon, hungry for a little mindless browsing.
She took a sip of wine and clicked “Like” on a video about a kleptomaniac cat. She moved her cursor down the page, rolling her eyes over a distant cousin’s latest political rant. A few slots down, one of Mia’s sisters had posted shots from the reception, several of which made Mia look like a red-eyed walrus. Intentional, no doubt, but at least Facebook-phobic Mia wasn’t likely to see them.
Jenna scrolled a little further, smiling at a puppy meme, then at a photo posted by an old college friend honeymooning in Belize. Wasn’t that where Mia and Adam had honeymooned? She thought she remembered a story Mia told about Adam getting belligerent with a street vendor who tried to overcharge them.
“Honestly, it was only five dollars,” Mia had told her with a sigh. “It probably meant more to the guy than it did to us. That should have been a warning sign right there, if my new husband wanted to bicker about pocket change instead of gaze at the sunset with me.”
Jenna frowned and kept scrolling, not wanting to go too far down that path. How weird was it that she knew details about her lover’s honeymoon with another woman? Details he probably never imagined she knew?
He’s not your lover, and it’s none of your business.
Right. How well did she even know him, anyway? She frowned, then clicked her mouse in the search window. She hesitated. Then typed his name.
Adam Thomas.
A shiver snaked up her arms, and Jenna wasn’t sure if it was guilt or intrigue. But really, what was the harm in a little Facebook stalking?
It took her a few tries to find the right one. Adam Thomas in Germany had an unfortunate overbite and a BMW he liked to pose beside while wearing a red leather jacket. Adam Thomas in Iowa appeared to be in the middle of gender reassignment surgery.
Finally, she found him. Adam Thomas from Chicago. No mutual friends, of course. Though Mia had a Facebook account, she rarely checked it, and had obviously unfriended her ex years ago. Or was it the other way around? What was the Facebook etiquette with divorce, anyway? Did you unfriend each other instantly, or only if the split was contentious? Did you divvy up friends the way you divvied up furniture and silverware, or did everyone try to keep up the pretense of staying chummy instead of picking sides?
Oddly enough, she hadn’t needed to deal with that when she and Shawn had split up. Though her ex-fiancé lived life with his smartphone glued to his palm, he’d avoided social media like the plague.
“Such is a waste of time,” he’d declared, barely glancing up from the stock trade he needed to complete during a romantic brunch.
God, she didn’t miss that.
Jenna studied Adam Thomas’s Facebook page, a rush of intrigue making her skin prickle. She clicked the file for his photos, surprised his privacy settings allowed it. Jenna kept hers locked down tight. No one could see anything unless she’d specifically friended them, not even her photos. But Adam Thomas was practically an open book. True, there were probably things she couldn’t see without being his Facebook friend, but she was surprised at how much was wide-open for perusal by a total stranger.
You slept with the man. You’re hardly a total stranger.
She took another sip of wine, feeling like a stalker as she scrolled through his photos. There was a shot of him in a suit at a conference. Not something he’d posted himself, so someone else must’ve tagged him. Another more personal shot of him fly-fishing. Another image from that series showed him shirtless on a riverbank, and Jenna shivered, remembering the feel of that chest beneath her fingertips, the smooth plane of his abdomen, and the springiness of his chest hair under her palms.
Stop it, she ordered herself. Get off this page and go click on some cat videos.
But she didn’t stop. She kept scrolling, hoarding tidbits of information the way a squirrel gathered nuts to stash in a tree. Adam enjoyed cooking. Had Mia ever mentioned that? She’d complained her ex hadn’t helped much around the house, but this Adam had an entire folder of photos featuring meals he’d learned to make in a cooking class the previous spring. He’d also done a triathlon the summer before, and Jenna squirmed a little at the sight of that physique showcased in a neoprene wetsuit. Damn, the man looked fine.
She kept scrolling, smiling at the Vivienne Brandt quote he’d posted several weeks ago about the importance of not living your life for someone else. Jenna took the last sip of wine and set down her empty glass, eyes still glued to the screen.
“Jenna?”
She jumped, feeling like a schoolgirl caught reading a dirty book under the covers. Then she remembered Aunt Gert wrote dirtier books than anything she’d ever smuggled beneath the bedsheets.
“You need something, Gertie?” she called, scrambling up from the table with a hasty glance back at a photo of Adam cradling a cousin’s toddler.
“If it’s not too much trouble, sweetheart, could you bring me my crochet basket from the living room? I left it right next to the davenport.”
“Sure thing. Sit tight.”
She reached over to put the laptop in sleep mode, but knocked her empty wineglass onto the keyboard instead. She righted the glass and hurried to the living room where she snatched up Gert’s basket of yarn and crochet needles. She hustled down the hall and rounded the corner into Gert’s room.
