Daring Young Man Page 5

  "Lauren," Jake said, "I have a feeling your outburst didn't have anything to do with a shortage of mint cookies, good as they are. I mean, I'd certainly be upset if I couldn't find my favorite treat…" He chuckled softly, and that further dissolved the tension in the office. Lauren rocked forward in the chair, looking away. How ghastly she must look to him right now, she mused. She wished for a mirror to see exactly how much damage the tears had wreaked on her makeup.

  "I know," she said. "It's not worth turning one of your boys into a bocce ball. But, Jake, he didn't do anything wrong. If I hadn't provoked him—"

  "I'm not going to fire Jimmy, if that's what you're thinking," Jake said. "I am going to talk to him about his language, though. It doesn't matter who is at fault for what, my employees do not talk to my customers the way he did to you."

  "Of course." He sounded so protective of her, loving. Lauren let words caress her; her skin prickled and her nipples tightened with the hope that his hands would follow.

  "A bit early for you to be out shopping," Jake said. Lauren met his quizzical grin with a sadder one. "Want to talk about it?"

  She sighed. "Might as well. I'd rather you hear it from me than as twisted, third-hand gossip." How to tell him, though? Aside from Ellie, Sue, and Cal, nobody knew the pictures were intended for Jake's attention. How could she explain that she had been fired for unwittingly passing off photos of herself to her students?

  She chose her words carefully, explaining that she had been asked to resign due to circumstances caused by her own carelessness. "Let's just say that what the children found, should not have left my home," she said finally. "Rather then mire the school in some kind of scandal, it was decided that I leave DPA."

  "Well, that's ludicrous," Jake exclaimed, and Lauren sighed. Of course, he'd think that way. He didn't know for certain that the entire computer lab had access to photos of her swollen clit.

  "Can't you work it out with the school somehow?" he asked. "A suspension without pay, or some kind of compensation? Seems ridiculous to just can you over one little mistake."

  "It was a doozy, though," Lauren said. "And I really don't want to talk about it anymore." "Of course, dear. I understand." Lauren wanted to cringe. This was not the kind of conversation she wanted to have with Jake, and this was definitely not the way she wanted Jake to talk to her. They had gone back in time twenty years, back to the old drugstore where Lauren and Sue had spent their allowances on Cokes and candy bars, Jake ringing them up at the register. How Jake had addressed her then was no different from his current voice.

  His tone was fatherly, she wanted it to be passionate. She wanted to hear him say how badly he wanted to pull her onto his lap and straddle him, grinding his hardening cock into her, soaking her panties. No, she actually wanted him to just do it, and tell her how much he enjoyed it.

  She wanted to unbutton her blouse and undo the front clasp of her bra, let her breasts spill forth and invite Jake to pop a nipple in his mouth, and flick his tongue across her skin until it pebbled. Um…her pussy throbbed just thinking about it. Anywhere else, any other time, her hand would be cupped over her pussy lips, rubbing the ache to orgasm. Fuck me, she wanted to say. I love you, please love me back. Instead, she rose and reluctantly eased away from Jake's sympathetic touch. "I

  should go," she said. "You okay to drive?" Jake sounded convinced that she was not. "I could drop you

  off—" "No, thanks," she broke in quickly. Inside, butterflies flapped in unison, creating a swirling maelstrom of emotion. How she had wanted for Jake to say those words, but his timing was terrible. She knew she looked like hell, felt like hell, and knowing Jake he would want to see her inside the house. No way was Jake going to escort her into a living room strewn with sex toys...and Blowjob Bob stretched across her carpet.

  "I'll be fine," she assured Jake. "I just need some time to myself, to wallow in self pity." She offered a sad smile which Jake returned.

  "Wish we had some Mint Creme Delights with which to wallow. If it helps any, a bag or two of peanut butter sandwich cookies has helped me in the past. Take some on the house."

  "Thanks." Lauren let out a choked laugh between sniffles. It wasn't an invitation to bed, but a good start nonetheless...if she could dare show her face in the store again. "They'll come in handy, give me something to munch on while I'm updating my resume." "It's going to take two bags of cookies to update a resume?" "Why not? I have all the time in the world now." "What will you do?" Jake asked. "Where do you think you would like to work?" "It's not like I can write my own ticket." Lauren shook her head. Unless Penthouse is hiring.

  "You shouldn't sell yourself short, dear." "I don't know what I'll do, Jake." Lauren moved toward the door. "Teaching is all I know. I could go to Virginia Beach and find work, if there's any. Of course, if I am lucky to find work it probably won't be until September, so I'll then have to find something to tide me over until then. Luckily my rent is covered, and I have some savings and alimony, I could live off that and work part-time somewhere." As she spoke the image of her miserable self in a Burger King uniform surfaced. Enough years of that and she'd be working alongside her own students one day, or working for them. Ugh.

  Jake stroked the stubble on his chin. "Driving all the way to Virginia Beach for a part-time job doesn't sound logical, Lauren. You'd basically be working to pay for gas. It'd make more sense to find something here." "Not much to do around here." "Not necessarily. I'm sure you have more skills than you realize," he said warmly. "All those lesson plans you do, and grading papers, you must know something about keeping records and being organized, right?" "Yeah." "How are you with money?" "I haven't robbed any banks lately." Lauren cast a wry smile and looked around the office. What was Jake getting at? "And I can balance my checkbook, if that means anything." Her eyes misted over. There would be no more grading papers at DPA, and it occurred to her that Mr. Yost might not be so inclined to recommend her for future jobs. What school would hire her? "Means plenty to me. Lauren, what would you say to a job here, at Jake's?" "Would you like fries with that?" "What?" Jake laughed. Lauren wanted to melt and seep into the floor. "Huh? Did I say that out loud? I didn't

  mean to, I was thinking about something...Jake, I wasn't trying to belittle your offer... Offer? Of a job, working for Jake? With Jake? Under Jake? Underneath... Lauren blinked and shook the erotic thoughts from her head so she wouldn't be

  tempted to speak out of turn again. "Well, I must say, Lauren, that would be a good sales pitch for my cashiers to use, if I sold fries. Don't think it would work with the potato dishes and organic hash browns in the frozen foods section, though." "Heh, guess not," Lauren said with an uneasy laugh. "No, Lauren, I'm thinking of something more clerical." Lauren tried to concentrate as Jake explained his planned expansion of Jake's, and the need for office help. With the room suddenly brighter and cozier, with Jake now standing and edging closer to her, she could only think of his arms around her, drawing her into a loving embrace. She swore the birds pictured in mid-chirp on the wall calendar behind Jake's desk came to life and echoed the joy bubbling inside her.

  Me and Jake, confined in close quarters ...she could feast daily on his handsome smile and lean, tanned arms, flawless silver hair she desperately wanted to see between her thighs as he ate her pussy.

  She turned her head and saw Jake was still talking, and snapped to attention in time to answer his question. "Of course I can start Monday," she said. "No sense in sitting around the house waiting for something to happen."

  "Of course." Jake laughed uneasily, it seemed, at that, but his voice pitched back to a jovial tone. "Well, then, why don't you come by around seven? We open at eight, you know that, and I can give you the fifty cent tour and orientation. As much as you shop here, we might whittle that down to a quarter."

  She laughed in reponse to Jake's chuckling, then let out a surprised yelp at the nearby thwack just outside Jake's office door. Jake seemed not to notice—maybe these sounds were common in the store—but it wa
s enough to lure Lauren partway out of the door to see the ample form of Marlene Robeson retreating, slouching past shoppers and staff toward the exit. A dark cloud seemed to follow the older woman.

  Marlene had been eavesdropping...for the entire time? Lauren's eyes narrowed. Thoughts of her disgraced dismissal faded as she realized a new conflict on the horizon. Marlene had to be upset with Jake hiring on Lauren for a job for which Marlene was better qualified, and what would upset Marlene about being passed over for part-time work unless she were after Jake, too?

  Lauren realized, too, as she bid Jake goodbye and started for the exit herself, that she had the advantage. This thought weighed heavily on her mind, yet lightened her spirits so much that she practically floated out of the store, her head held high. Never mind that she had forgotten Jake's offer of free cookies, or that in a matter of minutes the Dareville grapevine would report Lauren's indiscretions to the entire town...

  She stopped short of her car. Jake would hear, too, about the pictures. Would he rescind his job offer? He couldn't, he wasn't the sort of man to renege like that. Was he? No. Lauren wiped the sweat from her hands before taking the wheel. She wouldn't bring up the pictures herself, she decided. Maybe Jake would hear the gossip and dismiss it. He wasn't the gossiping sort, he was a wonderful man who saw the best in everybody, even an old fuddy-duddy like Marlene Robeson. If he happened to make mention of pictures, she would think of an explanation.

  Tomorrow. Like Scarlett, she would worry about it tomorrow. Today, she had to clean up her living room, and think of something to do with those pictures.

  There didn't seem to be any reason to show them Jake anymore. She drove home smiling, believing in some indirect way they had already done the trick.

  Five

  Jacob Earl Marbury, you are certifiably insane. Insanely in love with you, Cynthia Louise Redding. Come down from there before you break your neck! I don't want to, I feel like I could fly. Do you think I should, Cindy? Do you think I

  should flap my wings and fly to the moon? I think you should come down and kiss me. Yes, I think one kiss would send me to the moon quicker. I'll bet. Now get down from that blasted tree! You're not the daring young man in the

  flying trapeze, you know. No, he wasn't. He wasn't then, he wasn't now. Daring didn't seem to come as easily

  as it did when he was eighteen and swinging from trees. That night, so long ago, Jake felt he could have leaped from that gnarled magnolia tree in the middle of Dareville Memorial Park and hung in mid-air, suspended only by his beloved's smile, fueled by the knowledge that she had said yes. Yes. They had been walking home from graduation rehearsal, and Cindy Redding had said yes, she would marry him.

  Those memories wafted before him, veiling the scene at the house across from his, moving in perfect time to the present. He was watching a neighbor's teenaged son negotiate thick tree limbs with precarious balance in an obvious attempt to impress the girl standing below. They were so focused on each other, Jake was certain neither one was aware of the voyeur rocking on his front porch with a glass of iced tea. A lovely scene it was, young love in blossom. His free hand raked the chipped paint of the chair's arm, crossing to that of the empty chair beside him. It would be a perfect scene, he decided, with Cindy sitting there, sharing it with him. He could see her now, rocking in unison with him, their chairs creaking a gentle twilight rhythm. He would have to settle instead for being alone, assuming J.J. would not stay long. J.J.? Lord, what now? The rocking chair stilled as his son's Mercedes cut into the scene and shattered the serenity with one slam of the driver side door. J.J. wasted no time crunching up the gravel path to the porch steps, yet more papers clenched in his fists. Internet jokes they were not, Jake knew. "Have you completely lost your mind?" was his son's greeting. Jake chose to remain nonchalant. "Not completely, no," he said. "The medulla oblongata is still intact. I can walk from here to the bathroom without tripping, and at my age that's all I can hope for. Did you want some tea?" He held up his tumbler; the sharp edges of melting ice scratched at the plastic.

  "What I want is an explanation." The paper crinkled in J.J.'s grasp as he waved them in Jake's face. "What's all this about you buying property for a second store in Suffolk, and why did I have to hear it from Annette Jenkins? Why did you even buy through Annette, and go outside the family?"

  "Would somebody within the family have let me make such a purchase without argument, son?" Jake said. "I'm an adult, and as such I reserve the right to spend your inheritance any way I wish while I'm still breathing."

  J.J. slumped into the chair beside Jake; Jake cringed as Cindy's ghost dissolved in the brief gust blown upward to move J.J.'s bangs from his face. "You should be taking it easy while you're still breathing," he grumbled. "You keep working and you won't be breathing much longer. They'll find you dead in aisle six surrounded by athletes smiling down at you from Wheaties boxes."

  And that would be a bad thing? The sun was setting before them; it was too late for this argument, and if it wasn't he didn't want to have it again. Rather than say anything, he elected to rock back and watch his son stew. "And why did you have to go to Annette, of all people?" J.J. whined. "What's wrong with..." That's when it occurred to Jake that his son had dated Annette Jenkins, and that it had ended badly, as had a number of J.J.'s relationships with women. A pang of regret washed over Jake. No doubt the young woman had crowed about the sale the first chance she got.

  "Did you think it wouldn't get back to me, Dad? You know I have access to all real estate records and transactions in the area, and you know what? I probably could've gotten you a better deal on the land, as much as the idea of you expanding the business unnerves me." J.J. looked bothered, red in the face. He eyed Jake's tea with longing and Jake, without a second thought, surrendered the tumbler.

  "I'm sorry, son. I suppose I was thinking more of myself than of your reaction. I know how you and Red feel about my working, and I didn't want to aggravate matters by getting you further involved. The deal's not done yet, I could still bring you in to consult—"

  "No, no. Don't listen to me, Dad. I'm just ranting. Annette's a good agent, she'll do right by you, regardless of what I ever did or didn't do to her." J.J. downed the tea with a vigor that sent two rivulets streaming down either side of his jaw. Then, with a leering sideways glance, "You're not going to work double shifts, are you? That commute is hell."

  "No. Danny will run the Suffolk store, and I'll stay here. Though I'll be up there a lot in the beginning, getting things ready."

  J.J. grunted. It wasn't the answer he really wanted, Jake knew, but J.J. had no choice but to accept that he would not spend the rest of his life sitting around the house doing nothing. Waiting only made death's approach seem a longer time in coming. The more he worked, the quicker time passed.

  "And if it makes you feel any better," Jake added, "I've hired on more help at the store. Office work, so I don't have to do it."

  "I heard." J.J.'s tone was sour. "Though I have to wonder if much work will get done." "Excuse me?" Jake asked, an eyebrow raised. "Lauren McKenna. You hired on Lauren McKenna to work at the store." J.J.'s head lolled back against the rocking chair, the whites of his eyes large and glowing under the now illuminated porch light. "Between that move and the new store, I can't believe that I haven't tried to muscle you into my car to have you checked for dementia."

  Jake snatched back the tumbler with a force that sent watered-down tea sprinkling down on his knuckles and J.J.'s pleated slacks. He ignored his son's curses and halfhearted hand swipes against the wet fabric. "Have you lost your manners, son? What in blazes do you mean by that?" "You hired Lauren to work for you." "She's in a bad way, I'm just trying to help her out before the next school year when she can find something permanent. And what's your problem with Lauren McKenna? She's good people." "She's a whore." That word floated in the air like a bad stench. Jake wrinkled his nose and steeled his jaw. Never in his life had he raised a hand to his sons. To be certain, the temptation had come
and gone over the years, but until now the desire was never so strong.

  "Young man," he addressed his son as though he were a child, "you do not come to my house and say such things." "What? I shouldn't speak the truth?" "You shouldn't pass judgment when you are not qualified to do so," Jake said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Last I read, only Jesus could do that." Truth, indeed. Where his son obtained the notion that a sweet woman like Lauren McKenna could be branded a...he sighed, he couldn't bear to think the word.

  J.J. snorted. "What would Jesus do? Would He hire a...woman of loose morals...to cook his books?"

  "If you had paid attention during Bible school you'd know the answer to that. What's your beef with Lauren McKenna, anyway?" Far as Jake knew, Lauren was one of the few women in town his son hadn't dated. "And how did you know I hired her as my new office manager? I haven't even told Danny yet." "Ran into Marlene Robeson at the store earlier, while I was looking for you." "Marlene?" Jake frowned. Had the older woman been spying on his conversation with Lauren? He tried to shake away the discomfort, but then wondered what else Marlene had been saying about him.

  "If you needed an assistant, Dad, why didn't you just hire on her? She knows the system, even gave her free time to help you out, and she has more experience than Lauren."

  Jake sighed, he had his answer, indirectly anyway. "I don't tell you how to sell houses, son. You didn't answer my question about your poor opinion towards Lauren." "You know I'm on the DPA Board of Advisors," J.J. said. "I do." J.J. slouched in the rocker and lifted a foot to rest on the porch railing, but his leg wasn't long enough to reach. "Clay Yost called an emergency meeting. Informed us that a computer disc containing explicit nude photos of your new office manager was discovered in the possession of a minor."