“Then it can’t be her,” finished Tisha, who owned The Hair Affair. “That artist—uh, Jenna Robinson’s her name, right?—she didn’t say she had a baby, did she, Molly?”
Molly swallowed hard. “No, but now that I think about it, I guess she might. How would I know?” Molly still couldn’t decide what to make of the call she’d received from Jenna, who’d introduced herself as an old friend of Seth Spencer’s. Molly had figured she was in luck. If a good friend of the local bankers was designing the menus for the bed-and-breakfast Molly wanted to open, he’d be more likely to give Molly a loan, wouldn’t he? Still, why would an artist call Molly all the way from New York, offer to pay her own traveling expenses to Wisconsin, then agree to do the artwork so cheaply? Even more suspiciously, Jenna had made Molly swear not to tell Seth Spencer she was coming to town, saying she wanted to surprise him.
Dear Lord…what if the woman in the Cadillac is Jenna Robinson? What if she’s come to Tyler with a baby of Seth Spencer’s…a baby Seth doesn’t even know exists?
There goes my loan.
Molly squelched the thought. Yes, she’d definitely started reading too much romance fiction in the lonely times after her husband died. In real life, women didn’t putter into small, uneventful towns like Tyler, driving old gold Cadillacs and wielding babies they’d kept secret from banker daddies. Frowning, Molly stared down at her drying, passion-pink nails, trying to assure herself that tomorrow’s interview with Seth Spencer would go well. Surely, her uneasiness about Jenna’s arrival was unfounded. As soon as possible, maybe even tomorrow, Jenna and Seth would be jointly surveying Molly’s Victorian home. On the phone, Jenna had been responsive to Molly’s ideas for transforming the place into a romantic hideaway; now Molly was hoping Jenna’s artistic excitement would help convince Seth to fork over the start-up capital.
No, Molly decided with finality, the wild-looking woman in the Cadillac with the wedding dress and baby couldn’t be Jenna Robinson. Fate simply wasn’t that unkind. Nevertheless, Molly was still exhaling a worried sigh as the car halted, idling outside Eden Frazier’s flower shop, The Garden of Eden. Inside, Eden brushed back her brown hair, lifted a watering can and stepped around a bucket of eucalyptus. As she inhaled the deep, sweet scent of some nearby roses, her violet eyes squinted, taking in the ancient gold tank. A whimsical smile stretched her lips when she saw the wild-looking woman inside the car who was staring toward the Savings & Loan. “Where did she come from?” Eden whispered.
“New York City,” muttered the only resident of Tyler who could accurately answer that question. Seth Spencer watched the car and driver from his office in the bank. “But what for?”
Me.
“Seth,” he growled, “that’s not Jenna.”
But ever since he’d left New York, Seth had been glimpsing Jenna everywhere: in the Alberta Ingalls Memorial Library, in Amanda Baron Trask’s law offices, outside Marge’s Diner. The woman never really was Jenna, of course. Never would be, either. Jenna’s feelings—or lack of them—were clear when Seth calmly left her Soho loft six weeks ago.
No, the woman in the gold Cadillac couldn’t be Jenna.
Seth glanced past Molly Blake’s loan proposal and today’s copy of the Tyler Citizen, both of which were on his desk, then around the bank’s homey, old-fashioned interior, taking in the red-carpeted floors leading to the teller area. Maybe he should at least head into the lobby and check out the car…
Seth, it’s not her!
Fighting the urge to reach behind him and grab the gray wool jacket to his suit, he swallowed hard, denying his emotions. He shifted his oxford-clad feet, then started to take an unlit cigar out of his mouth and tighten the silver Hermés tie around the collar of his white-pressed shirt. But he didn’t move. Even if it is her, which it’s not, let her come to me.
That was more his style. He’d never let a woman, especially Jenna, see him come running. The house he’d foolishly bought near his father’s Victorian on Maple Street flashed through his mind, and he damned Jenna again, now for how unhappy he’d felt living there these past six weeks. One too many times, he’d found himself standing in the foyer, staring down the block, taking in the wraparound porch and gingerbread trim of his father’s house, a place that had lost its womanly touch after Seth’s mother, Violet, ran off with a man named Ray Bennedict when Seth was fourteen.
Too late Seth had realized that the last thing he needed was to own a four-bedroom house on the same block where he’d grown up. “Too much history,” he muttered now. The sparse steel furniture he’d brought from Manhattan barely filled the living room, and when Seth crossed the hardwood floors, his echoing footsteps sounded empty and hollow, evoking exactly what he’d felt when his mother vanished from Tyler.
He blew out an angry sigh. He should have known Jenna wouldn’t stick around, no more than his mother had. Even worse, before his return to Tyler, he hadn’t thought about his mother for years. In New York, he’d always flown high on external stimulus, his blood rushing with the sound of car horns or ticker tape announcing the latest hot deal on Wall Street. But six weeks ago Seth had landed in Tyler again, harboring still-raw feelings he hadn’t noticed for years. Which was why he needed to quit imagining Jenna was in town. Just like his mother, Jenna had proven she didn’t give a damn.
“Get over it,” he muttered, reaching for the phone. He’d been expecting one of his brothers, Quinn or Brady, to call before quitting time to see if he wanted to get supper at Marge’s Diner, but now Seth thought maybe he should take the initiative for once and call them. But no, somewhere along the line, he’d learned to watch and wait, to gauge how much others extended themselves while holding his own cards close to the vest. Whether the lesson had come from his mother’s abandonment or from working in New York’s cutthroat financial industry, Seth wasn’t sure. Either way, he wound up not picking up the phone.
The whole time, his liquid brown eyes stayed riveted on the Cadillac idling in front of Eden’s flower shop. Outwardly, he didn’t move a muscle; inwardly, he was going crazy. From here, the woman did look like Jenna. For a second, he pretended it was, and that she was impressed by the one-story brick Savings & Loan that was now his. Seth Spencer, said the brass nameplate on his office door. President.
Not that Jenna would care. Against his will, Seth visualized her Soho loft, the tasseled pillows, stacked books, and rock-hard, thigh-high queen-size bed that was perfect for lovemaking. The image was razor-sharp since Seth had showered, shaved and slept there with enough regularity over the past year and a half that the place felt like home.
Jenna had been naked in bed when he told her he was leaving a job at Goldman Sachs to return to Tyler as president of the family’s S&L, since his father, Elias, was retiring.
“Wonderful,” was all Jenna had said.
“Wonderful,” he muttered now. She hadn’t voiced concern for the future of their relationship, nor asked if he wanted to keep in touch. In fact, she hadn’t even quit painting her toenails. Even now he could see her: wearing a crimson nightie, sitting on the mussed covers of the bed, tilting a bottle of mint-green polish in one hand and brushing the nail of her baby toe with the other. She hadn’t been the least perturbed that he was leaving. Why couldn’t he just accept it?
He blew out another sigh, this one more murderous than the last. And why was that ugly gold junker still idling? Was it really Jenna? Was she waiting for him to notice her? To come out and strike up a conversation?
“If that’s what you’re thinking, sweetheart, keep dreaming,” Seth whispered around the unlit cigar, unaware his posture was exactly as it had been twenty-three years ago, on Thanksgiving Day, when he’d sat ponderously at his father’s kitchen table after hearing that his mother had disappeared. Later that day, he’d been told she’d run off with Ray Bennedict. Before nightfall, Seth had decided his mother was never coming back, and he’d promised himself he wouldn’t hope for a phone call or a knock at the door. He wouldn’t torture himself with the usual,