“Have you cooked for her yet? Girls like when a guy cooks for them.” As Connor well knew.
“No! I can’t cook!”
“Why?”
“Because!” Davey yelped. “I might hurt myself. Jessica doesn’t let me even use the toaster.”
That seemed extreme. The kid had a job, after all, and toasters weren’t rocket science. “Guess what? I know how to cook. I’m a chef.”
“I bet you’re a horrible chef.”
“You like the nachos at O’Rourke’s? And the chili?”
“Duh,” he answered. “They’re great.”
“I make those.” Davey blinked in surprise, and Connor almost smiled. “You want a girl to like you, you have to cook for her.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And yet it’s true.”
Davey mulled that over. “Jessica won’t let me cook, because I might get hurt.”
Well, shit. It wasn’t as if Connor had too many aces in his pocket. If Jess put the smackdown on this idea, he’d have to fold.
“I’ll teach you to be safe,” he said. “And you know what? It can be our secret, and then you can surprise Miranda and your sister by making her a cake or nachos sometime. How would that be? When you get really good, you could cook dinner a couple times a week and not have Jess always make it for you. Be the man of the house, you know?”
He didn’t answer. Glanced back at Miranda.
“What do you say, Dave? Is it a deal?”
Still no answer. Davey might have a low IQ, but he wasn’t dumb.
“Also, I need to pick out a dog,” Connor said, throwing the Hail Mary pass. “And I was thinking you could help me find the right one.”
“Will you kill it?”
Connor rolled his eyes. “No. Now, do you want to help me or not?”
* * *
WHEN JESSICA GOT home from work that day, she really just wanted to go to bed.
Or have a glass of wine. A normal person could have a glass of wine; she couldn’t. Pity.
Chico Three would have to do as stress relief. He was up for the job, whining and wagging his whiplike tail, pushing his big head against her legs. “Hello, Chico,” she said, kneeling down to pet him. “Who’s a good dog? You? You are? I’ve heard that about you.” She kissed the dog’s head and scratched behind his ears.He looked a lot like Chico the Original. No wonder it was hard for her brother.
At least Davey hadn’t been worse at the restaurant today. She had to give her father credit. And that, too, was a dangerous thought.
She changed out of her work clothes and went to her computer. Did a quick bank-balance check; everything was still there.
She and her father had never talked about the credit card thing, but she’d been changing her banking password and PIN number every week since he’d been back.
While she was at the computer, she typed in houses for sale, Manningsport, NY. Another relaxation device in lieu of wine—real estate fantasy.
She didn’t want a fixer-upper, though that was what she could afford at this moment. But she didn’t have the skills needed to overhaul a place, even though she loved the shows on HGTV that featured people sledgehammering through walls. And she already had two jobs, though she was only taking two shifts a week at Hugo’s. She could do some painting, some cosmetic work, but thinking about tearing down walls just made her feel tired.
Emmaline Neal had a great house that Jess had hoped would go on the market when Em married Jack Holland, but her sister had moved in—Angela, who taught at Cornell and spent weekends at the house. And it was a family house, so Jess really didn’t see it going up for sale.
Anything on the lake or with a good water view was prohibitively expensive. There were a lot of trailers for sale, but Jess wasn’t going back to one of those, even though some could be really cute. No. She wanted a real house. With a porch.
A house like Connor’s would be perfect.
She snapped her laptop shut. Wishful thinking, she believed that was called. Today had been a big step backward in their relationship.
Maybe it was better if this ended quickly.
Or if they could go back to the sneaking around. Dancing together at the reunion...that had been both terrifying and the most wonderful thing ever, being there out in the open, everyone knowing...and judging. The other night, when Ned stayed home with Davey, Connor took her out to dinner in Geneva, the first time they’d been in the same restaurant at the same time and neither had been working. It had been strange. And wonderful, if nerve-racking. The whole time, she’d been thinking, So this is what normal people do.
She’d also been worrying about what happened when Connor got tired of this.
It wasn’t that Jess felt as though she was a bad person. It was just that she felt a little...well...dismissible in the grand scheme of things. She’d failed every single time she’d tried to get her parents to sober up, and while she’d read all the literature, she couldn’t help feeling that if she’d just been better, or smarter, or nicer, she would have found a way.
Yes, she was glad her father was sober, though how long he’d stay that way was anyone’s guess. But it hurt that he’d only gotten that way when he’d been long away from her. All those talks, the pleading and begging from his own daughter, hadn’t done the trick. She hadn’t been enough.
No one except Connor had ever wanted more than sex, not even Levi. Levi sure hadn’t fallen in love with her (nor she with him, but still). And back in high school, once sex was over, guys didn’t exactly bring her home to their mothers. Despite her popularity in parked cars, not one boy asked her to the prom. She had to wonder if Connor was just fixated on her, and if, sooner or later, he’d learn what all those other guys had figured out long ago—she really wasn’t relationship material.
A boyfriend... She didn’t know how to have a boyfriend. When she and Connor had been out the other night, she’d racked her brain for fun and interesting things to talk about...and came up empty. That was why women like Marcy tended to drain the blood from her veins. The never-ending stream of confidence, whereas sometimes Jess felt as tired and gray as an old dishcloth.
She was hardworking. She was loyal. She believed she had a good heart. But it was hard to imagine she deserved the best guy in the world. He liked her. He said he loved her. And he still didn’t know everything about her, about what she’d done to Davey.
But he’d kissed her at the reunion. He put that idiot Jake on his ass for her, and while it was all very medieval, she owed him at least an attempt.
“Hi, Jess!” Her brother banged into the kitchen and threw down his backpack.
“Hey. I didn’t hear the bus.”
“Guess what? I’m picking out a dog for Connor O’Rourke.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE MANNINGSPORT ANIMAL SHELTER was like the Four Seasons for the Four-Legged, with hardwood floors, ambient lighting and a large, fenced-in dog park. The Cat Community Room, whatever that was, had dozens of carpeted perches and strange little bridges and structures to prevent boredom, according to the brochure in the foyer. And the Dog Lounge looked hauntingly similar to Connor’s living room.
“Hey, dude!” Bryce Campbell called as Connor walked in. Last summer, Bryce had sunk a hefty sum into what was then a very modest, typical animal shelter and now ran the place. “What can I do for you?”