"Lyssa"s mom and I split when she was one," he said, pouring milk into yellow plastic tumblers. "Elaine was killed in a car accident about six weeks ago."
"I"m sorry," she said, feeling even more at a loss. Had he been close to his ex-wife? Divorce didn"t necessarily destroy a relationship entirely.
With Jared in this quiet mood, Genna felt a surprisingly strong desire to reach out to him and offer comfort, but uncertainty held her back.
"Yeah," he went on, looking out the window above the sink, watching his daughter play with her puppy. "Lyssa was with her when it happened. She barely got a scratch, thank G.o.d."
Genna recalled the sudden closed look on Alyssa"s face when she"d answered that she lived with her father. Poor little lamb. "That must have been terrible for her."
"Yeah," he said so softly she almost missed it.
"So Alyssa came to live with you."
"Yep." He turned back to her with a big false grin that didn"t hide the vulnerability in his eyes. "That"s me, Bachelor Father."
He took the tray bearing their snack and carried it out, leaving Genna to stare after him. Bachelor Father. That must cramp his style with the ladies, she mused. She looked out the window and saw him swing his little girl up in his arms, cuddle and kiss her, and Genna got the distinct impression Jared didn"t mind at all.
They sat at Genna"s round picnic table after Jared got Alyssa washed up. Genna watched expectantly as he bit into a cookie. His eyes lit up and widened as he chewed.
"This is incredible!" he mumbled, still chewing.
Genna felt a rush of pride. Kitchen vanity. She loved to hear praise for her culinary skills. She knew darn well her chocolate chip specials were moist, rich, and chewy, with just the right consistency for dunking, but she could never hear enough of people telling her so.
"You actually made this? Jared questioned with reverent awe. "With your own two hands?"
"My own secret recipe." Genna beamed.
"Outstanding!" He grinned. He looked to his daughter for confirmation. "Great, huh, Lyss?"
An exuberant nod came from the little girl, who had chocolate all over her face.
"Do you do this for a living?" He knew from quizzing Amy that Genna was a teacher. He also knew about her scuttled summer job. But asking questions seemed like a good way to make conversation and get some ideas on how to win her over.
"No," Genna replied. "I teach kindergarten. Will you be in kindergarten this year, Alyssa?" She smiled beguilingly at the little girl.
Jared felt a twinge of envy. His daughter had effortlessly captured Genna"s heart. Of course, Alyssa was was an adorable little doll, he added silently with a father"s pride. an adorable little doll, he added silently with a father"s pride.
Alyssa shrugged in answer. There had been so many upheavals in her life recently, Jared thought, the poor baby didn"t know what to be sure of anymore. He nodded when Genna turned questioning eyes on him.
"Genna will be your teacher, Lyss. Won"t that be neat?"
That shy, heart-stealing smile eased up the corners of Alyssa"s mouth as she looked at Genna. "I know my numbers and the alphabet too."
"That"s wonderful," Genna replied. "You"ll be at the head of the cla.s.s."
Alyssa nodded. "Uh-huh. I can print my name too. Daddy showed me."
Jared blushed a little at Genna"s look of pleasant surprise. She felt a smile threaten as she pictured this football Adonis crouched over tiny Alyssa, patiently teaching her the abc"s.
"You could make a fortune on these," he said, biting into another cookie.
Genna laughed, a sound he"d been waiting to hear. He wasn"t disappointed. Her laughter was free and spontaneous, no practiced little twitter. "I"ve been making them for fifteen years, and so far all I"ve gained is weight."
He chuckled and leered comically. "In all the right places, I"d say."
It was Genna"s turn to blush. She hurried to change the subject. "Actually, I usually do some cooking professionally during the summer, but my friend packed up her catering business and moved, so ..."
"So you"re out of a job?" He had been racking his brain to come up with a job to offer her, but hadn"t had much luck. He was sure she"d turn down the housekeeper ploy, and just baby-sitting for Alyssa wouldn"t pay well enough.
"I"ll have to start looking for something Monday." She wondered if Betsy Franke could use an extra cook now that she had inherited Mary"s summer bookings.
"Well, if you ever decide to go into the bakery business let me know," Jared said. "I"m always looking for a good investment. These cookies are a sure thing."
"Flurry likes them too, Genna," Alyssa announced as the puppy s.n.a.t.c.hed the offered treat and wagged his tail as he gulped it down.
A red Porsche pulled up in front of Jared"s house and the horn sounded, playing Charge!
"Uncle Cory!" Alyssa squealed, climbing off the bench. She dashed away with Flurry hot on her heels.
"That"s my weekend construction crew," J.J. said, standing. He sent Genna one of his patented grins. "Thanks for the cookies, Teach. Catch you later."
With that he was gone. Genna chewed thoughtfully on a cookie. It seemed she had more than one neighbor: a macho madman, and a bachelor father with a velvet voice and vulnerable blue eyes.
"Will the real Jared Hennessy please stand up?"
A doghouse that was a miniature White Castle hamburger stand? Genna shook her head in disbelief as she sat at a white wrought iron table on Jared"s patio staring at the ridiculous structure. Unbelievable. The whole scene was unbelievable.
The summer sun beat down on the crowd in the backyard. Rock music blared from a boom box hanging from the limb of a white oak tree. More people were dancing than working, though two men were planting fence posts around the perimeter of the yard and and dancing. The chain-link fence they were putting up was going to be ordinary enough, not so the miniature pink flamingos stuck in the ground around the dog house. Further testimony to the abnormality of the man, Genna told herself. dancing. The chain-link fence they were putting up was going to be ordinary enough, not so the miniature pink flamingos stuck in the ground around the dog house. Further testimony to the abnormality of the man, Genna told herself.
She looked at Jared, who was dancing with two little neighborhood girls, his daughter on his broad shoulders. Half the town of Tory Hills was partying here. There were enough beer and soda cans in the trash to build a DeLorean.
Was it going to be this way every weekend? she wondered, frowning. She had never been much of a party girl and she didn"t want to start now. She loved quiet weekends at home. Was J. J. Hennessy to be the end of them?
She took a sip of the beer Jared had plunked down in front of her and gagged. How had she allowed Amy to drag her here? She couldn"t remember, but she certainly remembered her way home, and that"s where she was heading. She stood and reached for her crutches, only to have them deftly swept away by Jared. He leaned a denim-clad hip on the table.
"Leaving so soon, Teach?" he asked with a grin. "Where"s your party mania?"
"I don"t have any," she answered flatly.
"Ah." He frowned in mock seriousness. "A party mania deficiency. An adjustment to your biological party barometer is in order. Let"s see what we"ve got here."
Genna watched him search through the many pockets and loops of his cutoff bib overalls and pull out five screwdrivers, three pliers, a hammer, a toothbrush, a lint brush, a can opener, a bottle opener, and seven ball-point pens.
"Have enough tools in there?" she asked wryly as he inspected one contraption after another.
Jared leered at her. "All the important ones."
Genna grimaced at the lewd remark, trying not to notice the ripple of bare chest and arm muscles as he extracted what looked like a tire pressure gauge and came toward her with it.
"Now, just let Dr. J.J. take care of you-"
"You touch me with that thing and you won"t have a tool left in working order," she snarled, face-to-face with his hard chest.
"J.J., where are the extra potato chips?" a buxom blonde with legs up to her armpits asked on her way to the house. She wore red silk shorts and a Hawks T-shirt that gave new meaning to the word "skintight." She was one of the Lady Hawks, the team cheerleaders.
"In the cupboard, the third door to the left of the microwave."
"Think she can count that far?" Genna asked sweetly.
Jared"s eyes glittered with dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt. "I hope so. She"s an a.s.sociate professor at the University of Connecticut."
Genna felt about three inches tall. Her mouth dropped open. She closed it, then ventured meekly, "Phys ed?"
"Differential calculus. Can"t judge a book by its cover, Teach. Isn"t that part of the kindergarten curriculum anymore?"
Genna scowled and looked out at the party. She"d been b.i.t.c.hy and small-minded, which wasn"t at all like her. And worse yet, for some reason she cared very much that Jared Hennessy not think badly of her.
"I learned that in kindergarten," he went on, swilling her beer. "That and how to play doctor."
She slanted him a disgusted look. "Anything else?"
He looked thoughtful a moment and nodded. "That l-m-n-o-p is not all one letter."
She came dangerously close to giggling at that. d.a.m.n the man! Just when she was sure she despised him, he did something to make her laugh.
"So what do you think of the doghouse?" he asked, casting a proud smile at the canine castle.
"I only hope no one mistakes it for a drive-in. Couldn"t you have done something a little more ... colonial?" she offered, trying not to hurt his feelings. "To go with the house."
"Mmmm," he said thoughtfully. "I tried scaling down Mount Vernon but the wings took up too much yard s.p.a.ce. Besides, I don"t want Flurry getting the wrong idea and thinking he can invite overnight guests, at least not until he"s neutered."
"Hey, Hennessy!" The booming voice came from a teammate called Brutus, who was roughly the size of Mount McKinley. Brutus wore his hair in a Mohawk and his body encased in black leather. He looked like someone from a Mad Max movie. From halfway across the yard he flung a foaming can of beer at Jared, who snagged it inches from Genna"s head-but not before it sprayed her face and soaked the front of her plaid blouse.
Laughing, Jared shook the can hard and fired it back at Brutus, who caught it and spiked it on the ground like a football, then went into a victory dance.
"Touchdown!" Jared yelled, dancing around the table, "All right, Brutus!"
Genna stood, sputtering, trying to wipe the beer off her face with her hands. She wondered if anyone had ever done any serious studies on the placement of athletes on the evolutionary scale.
Brutus picked up the can, poured the last of the beer down his throat from an arm"s length away, then tore the can in two with his teeth.
"That guy is missing a chromosome," she said as Jared danced around her doing things with his hips that threatened to give her palpitations.
"Brutus? He"s just having fun. Don"t you know anything about having fun?"
"I know all about having fun," she said primly. "It has nothing to do with recycling aluminum orally."
"It does to Brutus. I don"t know about you, but I"m I"m not telling him any different." not telling him any different."
At the edge of the patio a game of Nerf football had turned ugly. Two players were wrestling on the ground rubbing barbecue briquettes into each other"s faces. The dog ran by with a flamingo clenched in his teeth. Two perfect examples of why I shouldn"t be here, Genna thought to herself, her temper wearing thin. She tried to blow beer-damp bangs off her forehead as she plucked the wet fabric of her blouse off her chest.
The Nerf ball squirted up out of the pile of humanity on the lawn, bounced off Genna"s forehead, and into Jared"s hands. He tossed it out to Kyle Dennison, who was promptly tackled by a dozen neighborhood kids.
"Know anything about football, Gen?" J.J. asked, still dancing. He draped a muscular arm across her shoulders, his gyrating hips b.u.mping hers.
"Certainly," she said stiffly, trying to ignore the tingles racing through her as he brushed against her. "It"s a game played by enormous, sweating men who spit and scratch-"
"That"s baseball," he corrected.
"And wear Joan Crawford shoulder pads," Genna continued, her fuse burning down to the short fibers. "It"s violent and stupid, and I"d rather have a pelvic exam than be forced to watch it on TV."
She s.n.a.t.c.hed her crutches up and started for home.
Piqued by Genna"s unflattering description of his chosen profession, Jared stood stiffly and watched her hobble across the lawn. It wasn"t going to further his cause any, but he couldn"t resist the urge to take her down a peg or two. He waited until she was halfway home before yelling, "Yeah, well, I still want you in my Jacuzzi, gorgeous!"
For one horrible eternity every pair of eyes at the party riveted on Genna. It seemed even the flamingos were staring at her. She could feel their eyes burning into her back.
Death by slow torture would be too good for him, she thought, taking back all the feelings of contrition she"d had Friday afternoon. She was definitely sticking to her original opinion of him: J. J. Hennessy was an arrogant, mannerless, macho swine. A gorgeous, s.e.xy gorgeous, s.e.xy, arrogant, mannerless, macho swine. And she was absolutely certain she wanted nothing to do with him. Almost.
He is not normal, she reminded herself as she limped around her kitchen slamming pots and pans onto the counter. She"d had her fill of crazy people when she was growing up. All of her father"s family was certifiable, her father included. A self-proclaimed inventor, he"d chased one harebrained scheme after another until he dropped dead, leaving his family with nothing but debts and not even a cent of insurance. He"d been an overgrown boy with no concept of responsibility. Just like J. J. Hennessy.
"Why"d you leave the party, Gen?" Amy whined, letting herself in the kitchen door.
Genna opened the refrigerator and started flinging vegetables into the sink. Potatoes sailed through the air one at a time, arching gracefully into the porcelain basin. A bunch of carrots missed the target and skidded down the counter, sliding into a piece of salt-glazed stoneware. Scallions flew like scattering buckshot. Amy dodged a stalk of celery. Genna answered without coming out of the refrigerator. "I won"t be a party to madness."
"Lighten up. A little madness is good for a person." Leaning around Genna, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a c.o.ke out of the fridge and plopped down on a stool at the counter.
"Who are you now, Dr. Joyce Brothers?" Genna shot her friend a glare as she returned to the sink and started peeling carrots with a vengeance.
"It didn"t take a shrink to see you weren"t trying very hard to have fun," Amy answered.
"You shouldn"t have to try if it"s fun," Genna said without turning around. "I don"t happen to like ma.s.s insanity, and the taste of beer turns my mouth inside out."
Suddenly suspicious, Amy asked, "What are you making?"
"Vegetable soup."
"But it"s ninety degrees out!"
"I"ll freeze it."
"You"re upset, Genna," she singsonged in her grating voice, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
"I am not upset." Genna stabbed a potato with her paring knife.
"You always cook when you"re upset."
Genna spun around with the knife clutched in her hand, her eyes wild. The beer in her bangs had dried, leaving them stiff and straight as string. The front of her blouse was one big stain. "I am not upset!" "I am not upset!"