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She tensed. “How long a while?”
“Till I accomplish what I set out to do.”
“Don’t talk to me in riddles, okay?” She arranged the roses in the vase, added water and set the bouquet in the center of the old table. Christina hovered near the back door. “Can I do drawing?” she asked.
“Great idea,” her mother replied, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. She reached for a pack of crayons on the counter, only to have her daughter turn up her little pug nose.
“I want to draw outside!”
“Outside?”
“With the chalk.”
“Why not?” Tiffany scrounged in a drawer filled with cards, pencils, keys, batteries—anything a person could imagine—until she came up with a box of colored chalk.
Beaming, Christina snagged the prize from her mother’s outstretched hand and scurried out the back door. The screen slammed behind her as she rushed to plant herself on the cracked concrete patio, upon which she began to doodle in pink, yellow, green and blue.
Tiffany watched her daughter until she was engrossed in her task, then turned to face J.D. “So, brother-in-law, to what or to whom do we owe the honor of your presence?” she demanded, then shook her head at the question. “No—” she held out her hand as if to ward off his words “—let me guess. You’re here on a mission. Just checking up on your brother’s widow. Trying to figure out if she really is the right kind of mother to raise Philip’s kids.”
She’d always been smart. Calculating. He leaned a hip against the center island. “I’m here on business.” That wasn’t a lie. Well, not much of one.
“Sure. That’s why you’re standing in my kitchen. With your bag. Come on, Jay, you can do better than that.” She closed the short distance between them, and a hint of her perfume teased his nostrils. It was the same fragrance she’d worn the last time he’d seen her. Touched her. He gritted his teeth and decided it was time to take the offensive.
“Before we get into all that, why don’t you explain what you were doing with the juvenile authorities.”
“I don’t really think it’s any of your business.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I can handle my children,” she said with a cold smile. “No matter what the rest of the Santini family thinks.” With a quick glance through the screen door to assure herself that her daughter was safely out of earshot, she lowered her voice. “I know what your father thought of me when I met Philip. I know he tried to convince Philip that I was a no-good, gold-digging woman who was barely an adult, one who looked at Philip as a…a father figure,” she said, pain sweeping through her eyes.
You don’t know the half of it, he thought with another stab of guilt.
“And I heard that you tried to talk Philip out of marrying me.”
The muscles in J.D.’s shoulders tensed. “Careful, Tiff,” he said. “I had my reasons.”
She flushed, and her eyes sparked with anger. For a second he thought she might slap him. “None of them good, Jay,” she said through lips that barely moved. “None of them good.”
“Good, no. Valid, yes.”
“Philip and I had a…a strong marriage.” Her chin inched up a notch as if she dared him to challenge her.
“If it worked for you.”
“It did.”
He bit back a sharp retort and stared down at her. His gaze lingered on her lips for a second before lowering to the neckline of her blouse, where her skin was flushed with anger, her pulse leaping at the base of her throat. His bad knee throbbed, his stupid crotch was suddenly tight, and he realized that he still wanted her. As he always had. Hell, what a mess.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, then didn’t wait for an answer but slid into one of the tall ladder-back chairs that flanked an old claw-footed table.
“Suit yourself.” She ran stiff fingers through her hair, then seemed to realize she was being too defensive. Waving with one hand, as if to disperse the cloud of fury surrounding her, she said, “Come on, Jay. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing down here? If it isn’t to spy on me, there must be a reason. The last I heard, you hated all things that had to do with me or this town.”
“Hate’s a pretty strong word.” But she was right. He didn’t trust her, and as far as Bittersweet, Oregon, went, he had plenty of reasons to despise this small town filled with small-minded citizens.
Folding her arms over her chest, she lifted one delicately arched eyebrow, silently urging him on.
“As I said, I’m here on business.”
