Learning to Love Again (21 page)

“Will you be back?”

“Yes.  I’m not a quitter, Jack.  I might not be getting married in a few weeks, but I’m not leaving Waketon again,” she dumped sugar and cream into the coffee and took a tentative sip.  Jack grinned at the face she made.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I’m sure, knowing Jason, he’ll be back sometime today to try and patch things up with me.  Just don’t let him know where I’ve gone.”  She waited for Jack to nod his agreement.  “I’m going to leave here and drive straight down there.  Can you just call the hotel and change the reservation to my name please?”

Jack grabbed a pen and paper off the counter and wrote the name of the hotel down for her.  “It’s on the River Walk.”  The itinerary and the slip of paper with the hotel’s information on it were slid across the table to her.  “Stay as long as you need to, my treat.  Should I tell Carly and Helen where you’ve gone?”

“Just please ask them to not tell Jason.  I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to talk to him,” she took another swallow of the coffee, and then dumped it down the sink, causing Jack to chuckle.

“Sorry.  I used my usual amount out of habit.  Do you want me to make another pot?”

“No, I’ll do it,” she grabbed the coffee and filters and started a fresh pot.  “How do you stand it that strong?”

“How do you stand it that weak?” he shot back, standing up.  “You want some breakfast?”

She stood back and watched him start making omelets.  Feeling her eyes on him, he glanced over.

“What?” he reached back into the refrigerator and grabbed the cheese and mushrooms.  “You can make some toast, if you’re not too busy watching the coffee drip.”

She took the loaf of bread out of the bread box and moved over to the toaster.  “I was just wondering…you told me that one day you’d lost the only woman you’d ever loved.  Why didn’t you ever try again with someone else?”

For a minute, she didn’t think he was going to answer her.  He turned the heat down under the omelets and turned to look at her.  “I was bitter, for a long time, for starters.  I had thought I’d loved her and I thought she felt the same way.”  The toast popped up and he watched as she buttered it and set it on a plate.

“I tell myself I was lucky I found out what she was like before I fell into her trap.”  Jack slid the omelets out onto plates and set them down on the table.  “I overheard her one night, talking on the phone.  She’d found out that I wasn’t living off of Pop’s money.  She wasn’t interested in me, just my money,” he shrugged.  “It’s been a recurring problem I’ve had for years.  First, people assume Pop is leaving a chunk of his estate to me.  And then they find out about my own success.  If I ever meet someone not out for just the money, I’ll think about it.”

Jack sat down at the table and started eating.  She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and sat down across from him, pushing the food around on her plate.

Jack leaned back in his chair and studied her pale features.  “I’ve had my friend who has the security and PI firm to do some digging on your parents.”

“What kind of digging?” she pushed her plate away.  She had managed to take a couple of bites of the omelet but she just didn’t have an appetite this morning.

“After you found that letter, I asked him if he could find out anything about who your mom might have been leaving town with, or even who your biological dad might be.”

“It’s been over fifteen years.  How would they be able to find who she was leaving with, if the police couldn’t?”

“To the police, they had a murder-suicide on their hands, and they didn’t care about why it went down.  As long as it wasn’t a homicide, it didn’t matter to them,” Jack shrugged.  “I, uh, went through some more of those boxes Helen kept for you and found some journals your mom wrote.  You should read them sometime.”

“What’s in them?”

“Everything she never said to you and should have, for one thing.  And the name of your biological father.” Jack stared across the table at her, watching as her already pale face drained of every bit of color.  “Hell, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have told you that, not today, anyway.”

“No, it’s okay,” Nicole reached across the table and patted his arm.  “It’s just, it’s still hard to wrap my head around it all, you know?” she shook her head.  “For over thirty years, I’ve thought of one man as my father and that my mother hated me.  In the space of a few months, I’ve learned she didn’t hate me, but he’s not my father.  Add that in with my bastard of a fiancé cheated on me with someone else, well, today is just starting out to be a shitty day.”

Making a sound of agreement, Jack stacked the plates, getting ready to clear the table.  “So, what do you want to do?  Brian is more than happy to at least run the name your mom put in her journal.  Brian is former military, too.  If the guy wasn’t just blowing smoke up your mom’s ass and really was stationed at Hood, he’ll find him for you.”

Nicole stared into her coffee cup for a moment.  “I need to think that one through.  It wouldn’t just be my life changing with that knowledge.

“Fair enough.”

She gave him a sad smile.  “I would like those journals, if you have them handy.”

“Of course.  I’ll go grab them for you.  I only found four, but from the way they’re written, I think if you looked through everything Ma has in that barn, you might find more of them,” he set the dirty plates in the sink and wiped his hands on a towel.  “Are you going back to your condo this morning, or what?”

“No, I think I’m going to head out.  Thanks, Jack.  You can be pretty nice, when you want to be.”  She gave him a watery smile and finished her coffee, standing up to put the cup in the sink.

“Yeah, if I had a dollar for every time a woman told me that,” Jack shot her a grin.

“You’d have a dollar,” she teased, crossing over to him and placing a soft kiss on his cheek.  “I’ll clean up the kitchen for you.”

“No need.  I’m going to work from home today.  I’ll get it done,” he turned her and gave her a gentle push in the direction of her room.  “Go get your stuff together and I’ll go grab those journals for you.”

It didn’t take her long to get her stuff back together.  She met Jack back out in the kitchen and he pointed to the journals stacked on the table.  “Did you read all of them?”

“Yes, well, more like skimmed them.  I wasn’t sure if you’d want them or not, and I wanted to try and give Brian as much as I could to go on,” he explained as she picked the books up.  He grabbed the handle of her suitcase and walked her out to her car.

“Be careful driving.”

“I’ll be careful,” Nicole promised as she rolled her eyes.  “And I’ll call when I get to the hotel,” she tacked on before he could mention it.

“And take lots of notes for me, if you wind up going to the conference,” he held her door open for her, shutting it once she was behind the wheel.  She hit the button to lower the window.

“Thanks, Jack.  I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one.  Now, get out of here,” he tapped the roof of her car and stepped back, allowing her to start it and drive away.

Nicole had no idea what she was going to do next, but first she’d get to San Antonio and decompress.  Then maybe she could take some time to figure out what to do with this mess.

NICOLE ARRIVED IN SAN ANTONIO BEFORE THE ALLOWED check-in time at the hotel, so she decided to spend the time walking around the River Walk.  It had been years since she had been in San Antonio, and she was curious to see the changes.  She walked along the waterway, watching the boats of tourists drift by, enjoying the enticing aromas from the many restaurants.

She found herself exiting the Riverwalk near The Alamo, the doomed mission in the heart of the city where the fight for Texas’ independence had begun.  Although she had been there countless times before, it had been a few years and she decided to enter the shrine.  It was always fun to listen to the tour guides tell the stories of The Alamo.  And of course, they never failed to mention the rumors of the gold that was supposed to be buried somewhere on the grounds.

It was after three o’clock before she made her way back to her hotel, stopping in the garage to grab her bag out of the trunk of her car.  She tossed the key card and her purse on the desk, and stowed the bag in the closet, and then stretched out on the bed.  Her eyes were starting to burn, from the lack of sleep and the number of tears she’d shed the night before over Jason.

Oh God.  Jason.  She still couldn’t believe what was happening to her.  She had trusted him, had given him her love, and now it looked like he’d played her for the fool.  Maybe her mother had been right all along.  Maybe it was better to not trust, to not love.  Maybe it was better to live out your life alone, live for yourself and not anyone else.

She turned on her side, curling up into a ball, and cried, feeling her heart break into ten thousand pieces, all over again.

After the tears stopped, she forced herself to get up and call Jack to let him know she had made it to San Antonio without any difficulty.  They talked about the conference for a few minutes and she assured him she was planning on attending at least a couple of the workshops.

“I don’t care about that, Nicole.  I’m just worried about you,” he told her.  “We all are,” he added after a brief hesitation.

“Has he been by your place?” she asked with a slight catch in her voice. If Jack heard it, he didn’t comment.

“Yeah, a couple of hours ago now.  He’s pretty upset, Nicole.  He swears it’s all just a misunderstanding, and he needs to talk to you.”

“A misunderstanding?  He was in the shower and she was in his room, answering the phone!”  She heard her voice escalating, and struggled to regain her composure.

“Don’t shoot the messenger.  I’m just saying that once you are ready to listen, he wants to talk to you.  He left here to go over to the ranch to talk to Mitch and Carly.  And don’t worry, Carly isn’t going to give him any information, although she might give him a few bruises.”  Jack assured her.

“Sorry.  I’m tired and feel like my life has gone from sugar to shit in the blink of an eye,” she apologized.  “I think I’m going to grab a nap and then head to this dinner workshop tonight.  I’ll call you sometime tomorrow.”

“It’s all good.  I remember a time or two where I told you to ‘fuck off’ when I was in that VA hospital,” he told her with a chuckle.

“You threw a few things at me, too.  Good thing your aim sucks,” Nicole shot back with a laugh.  “Thanks, Jack.”

“You know I’ve always got your back.”

Nicole disconnected the call and retrieved one of her mother’s journals from her bag.  Stretching out on the bed, she skimmed through it, promising herself she’d go back and read it in more detail later.

Jack was right, it was full of all the praise and feelings of love Nicole would have loved to have heard as a child and teenager.  Every one of her accomplishments was in all capital letters or underlined or starred.  Even the little things like her perfect attendance were noted.

And it detailed how her mother was afraid of telling Nicole how she felt.  Her mother had always been afraid of the bottom falling out of her world, just like Nicole was.  Her mother had suffered through so many disappointments in life, she didn’t know how to look for the good.

The journal she’d picked up didn’t cover the years before her parents were married or mention who her biological father was.  It did talk about how the man she thought of as her father was always doing little things for her mom and how her mom felt guilty for not having the same depth of emotion for him.  Her mother had loved her dad, just hadn’t been in love with him.

Nicole set the book aside and rolled onto her side, a tear sliding down her cheek.  She and her mother were so much alike, it seemed.  What a shame that they couldn’t talk about this, then or now.  Closing her eyes, Nicole cried for the first time for the mother she’d lost.

After a short nap, Nicole forced herself to get up so she could attend the dinner workshop.  It would make her focus on something other than her own problems, at least for a few hours.  She ran into a few former classmates and found herself agreeing to a night out on the town with them, delaying her return to an empty hotel room for as long as possible.  But when it became obvious her associates were planning on hitting as many bars as they could on the Riverwalk, she begged off and made her way back to the hotel.

She told herself she wasn’t disappointed that Jason hadn’t called her cell phone all day.  She told herself she was strong and she would survive this heartbreak, too.  As she sank down onto the bed, she admitted to herself she was a liar.