The Trouble With J.J. (7 page)

“I think most people would have thought of
antacid,” Genna said, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the magnetic pull of his body.

Jared’s mouth twitched at the corners. “I don’t mean just that. I mean about helping me become normal. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am.”

He moved closer, one hand wandering under her hair to caress the nape of her neck. Genna shivered. She thought she should make an appropriate employer-employee type statement, but the inside of her mouth had turned to sand, and she couldn’t do anything but gaze mutely up at him.

He inched closer still, until his thighs were nearly brushing hers. He lowered his head at an angle as his glittering ice-blue eyes held hers captive. When he spoke, his voice had the same texture as the night sky. “I can’t tell you, but maybe I can show you.”

Genna told herself she should voice a protest as she tipped her head back and parted her lips, but that was impossible and she knew it. For some insane reason she wanted Jared Hennessy to kiss her. She wanted to know what it was like to be held by those muscular arms.

Jared was more than happy to show her. He gathered her against him, and his lips stole across hers in a teasing caress that had her arching up to
him, silently begging for more. His hand cupped the back of her head, the silk of her hair threading through his fingers. His mouth slanted across hers, tasting, savoring her sweetness.

Genna moaned deep in her throat. His kiss was overwhelming. Not demanding, but a wonderful experience that sent her senses racing. She felt tiny and soft and feminine against Jared’s rock-solid body. The heat his mouth generated against hers poured over her until she felt like a caramel that had been left out in the sun to melt.

Her hands set off on a journey that began at his lean, hard waist and wandered up the steep outward slope of his rib cage, then around and over the ridges and planes of muscle on his broad back. His body was a work of art. She felt as if she were caressing Michelangelo’s
David
.

Reluctantly Jared lifted his head and let an inch or two of cool night air separate their bodies. Genna wasn’t indifferent to him at all, he rejoiced inwardly. He had wanted the kiss to go on forever, but he’d felt his body responding to the sensual stimulus and had had enough sense to back off. Genna might not have fought off his kiss, but she was trying to fight the attraction that sparked between them. He wasn’t going to push her. He had
his fish on the hook now and he knew better than to lose her by reeling her in too fast. They’d be working together. She’d get to know him—and like him, he hoped. Gazing down into the surprise and confusion in her eyes, he realized how important that was to him.

“See you tomorrow, Teach.” He smiled and backed toward the screen door.

Genna’s tingling mouth formed the words “good night,” but no sound issued forth. She offered him a weak smile and a nod.

“’Night, Genna,” he said huskily, slipping into his house.

Genna wasn’t so sure she had enough control of her motor skills to get across their respective lawns. She wasn’t altogether certain she wasn’t going to keel over right there and then. Picking up her pink pumps, she limped toward her house feeling as if she’d just jumped into the rapids above Niagara Falls.

Turn Jared Hennessy into a normal person? Jared, with the diamond earring and striped lawn and kisses that sapped the strength from the knees of a perfectly controlled woman?

What on earth had she gotten herself into?

FOUR

“F
IRST OF ALL
, what do you know about being normal?” Genna asked, her pencil poised. She sat at Jared’s kitchen table with a yellow legal pad in front of her, the top page covered with notes.

Jared stared into space with a look of intense concentration. He bit his lip and shifted on his chair like a teenager who’d gone to the ball game instead of reading his social studies assignment. Finally his gaze returned to Genna. “Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?” she questioned, a tad dismayed. It would take more than giving Jared a haircut and getting the mannequin off his porch to impress a judge. She had hoped he would at
least have a passing knowledge of basic normal behavior.

Maybe he did and just didn’t realize it. She decided to throw out some questions that the average small-town person would know. “Just jump in when you have an answer. What’s the best day to hit a garage sale? When do you fertilize the lawn? What do you wear to a PTA meeting? What’s the best way to get rid of door-to-door salesmen? How many Brownies make a troop?”

He shook his head and shrugged.

Genna sighed. She didn’t know anything about custody cases—they would know more when Jared’s lawyer called back—but if it was anything like adoption, the court would send someone to report on Jared. They definitely had their work cut out for them if he was going to pass inspection.

“Well,” she said, “the first order of business is to get you a housekeeper. Someone to cook and clean and keep an eye on Alyssa when you leave the house.”

“I’d never leave Alyssa alone.” He plucked another blueberry muffin out of the basket Genna had come armed with. Steam rose from it as he broke it open and spread butter on it. “Just what
would having a house-keeper entail? Does she have to live here?”

“No.”

“I don’t want some fussy old bag taking over with Alyssa.” He didn’t always get her braids straight and he wasn’t really up on the latest fashions for five-year-olds, but those were duties he wouldn’t give up for anything.

“That’s fine,” Genna scribbled on her notepad. “You’re hiring a housekeeper not a grandmother.”

“Good.” He devoured the muffin, thinking it was the most exquisite thing he’d ever tasted—next to Genna’s lips. “These muffins are fabulous.”

“Thank you,” she said, not looking up.

“And that pie you brought over looks great.”

“I’m glad you think so.” She continued writing.

Jared watched her, smiling to himself. She had shown up at his kitchen door at eight A.M. sharp, dressed in navy walking shorts, a pink oxford-cloth shirt, and big tortoiseshell reading glasses that made her eyes look impossibly large and guileless. She’d had a notebook under one arm and a wicker basket on the other. He guessed this schoolgirl look was intended to cool his ardor.
Try again, Genna
. If only she knew he was fantasizing
making love to her with her wearing nothing but those glasses.

“I think I know someone who might fit the requirements,” she said, thinking of Amy’s Aunt Bernice, who lived five blocks away. Bernice had been around. She wouldn’t bat an eye at Jared’s … uniqueness. “I’ll call her and see if she’s interested and if she can come by for an interview.”

She made more notes, mainly to keep her wayward gaze off Jared. He’d answered the door wearing nothing but a red velvet bathrobe and a pair of gray wool socks. The robe gaped open now, exposing a wide expanse of muscular hair-covered chest. He didn’t seem to care. She was sure he would have felt just as comfortable sitting there stark naked.

That thought suffused her body with heat. It was too easy to remember the feel of his fabulous body against hers and too hard to remember he wasn’t her type. Oh, why in the world had she ever let him kiss her? She hooked a finger inside the collar of her blouse and swallowed hard.

“While I’m on the phone,” she said a bit raggedly, “you can put some clothes on and go mow the lawn.”

He chuckled deviously, an unholy gleam in his eye. “Don’t you like my outfit, Genna?”

“It isn’t exactly haute couture for lawn mowing,” she said dryly, arching a delicate brow at him.

Jared leaned across the table, forcing her to look into his twinkling eyes. “I love it when you talk French to me, Gen. Do it again.”

She leveled a no-nonsense look at him. “Mow the lawn, Jared.”

“Okay,” he said equably, sitting back in his chair. “Plaid this time?”

“Regular.”

He frowned. “As in plain?”

“Plain. Nondescript.”

“Herringbone?” His brows lifted in a show of hope.

“Plain, ordinary, free from affectation, unremarkable.” She didn’t let his scowl daunt her. “Normal people don’t mow their lawns in patterns. And get rid of the flamingos.”

Suddenly he looked like a little boy who’d been told Christmas had been canceled and he could never have a puppy or join the Cub Scouts. Genna felt her resolve sway.

“All of them?” he asked.

Darn it, yes, she said to herself. She hated those cheap plastie vultures; they were eyesores. But Jared looked so genuinely disappointed.
Be tough with him, Genna. Steel yourself
.

“I kind of like them,” he said sadly.

The steel cracked and crumbled like old plaster. “All right, you can keep two—”

“Six.”

“Four. Two in front and two in back.”

“Done.”

He stood up and demonstrated some respect for Genna’s sensibilities by tightening the belt of his robe. The action didn’t keep her from thinking that red was an incredibly sexy color on him and that it brought out his tanned good looks. She was going to stop thinking things like that as soon as he left the room, she told herself. But instead of leaving, he came toward her, leaned down, and kissed her.

“We’re gonna be a great team, Genna,” he said against her lips. “Trust me. I know these things.”

Trust him? When pigs fly
.

He sauntered out of the kitchen singing something about being in heaven and walking on clouds.

He even sings sexily, she thought.

With Jared out mowing the lawn and Alyssa
across the street playing with Courtney Dennison, Genna took a tour of the house, making decorating notes. She had feared it would resemble a frat house, but it wasn’t so bad. Jared had more or less left it alone, thank God.

The basement had been turned into a miniature gym with shiny, chrome-plated Nautilus machines. The big country kitchen had been left completely unadorned except for a giant pink hippopotamus cookie jar filled with dry, unappetizing, store-bought cookies. She made a note to bring over some of the peanut butter-chocolate chunk cookies she’d baked at one
A.M
.

Crayon pictures Alyssa had drawn covered the front of the refrigerator. They would definitely stay. Genna smiled. Each one depicted a very tall stick person, Jared. She recognized him by his hair and earring. Some showed their new house, and most had Flurry in them somewhere. One showed “Uncle Brutus” with his Mohawk hairdo. There was even one that immortalized Genna. Her head looked like a pyramid, and she had lopsided breasts and a chocolate chip cookie in each hand.

A print of dogs playing poker hung in the formal dining room. Genna grimaced. That would have to go. An eighteenth-century watercolor should hang
on the rich cream and navy wallpaper, she decided. A beautiful cherry corner cabinet stood empty. She had a set of china that would look perfect in it. Maybe she would loan it to him.

The living room held large, comfortable-looking masculine furniture covered in a nubby oatmeal fabric. The arrangement was haphazard. A minor problem. A framed poster of the Hartford Hawks logo was the only wall decoration. A dozen football trophies sat on the oak mantel in no kind of order.

Throw pillows would give the room color, she noted on her pad. Maybe they could group the football stuff around Jared’s desk, an oak rolltop beauty that sat off to the far side of the door, cluttered with papers.

She looked around, wondering what to do with the walls. She had suggested hiring a decorator for the house, but Jared had refused. It was important to him that his house look like a homey, lived-in home rather than a layout for
House Beautiful
. That made sense.

Genna glanced out the window to make sure Jared wasn’t doing the lawn in paisley. She shook her head. He wore faded cutoffs that strained the bounds of decency and an enormous Chinese
coolie hat. She printed the word
wardrobe
on her legal pad.

Sliding down onto the window seat, she wondered what his lawyer would have to say when he called back. Could his sister-in-law really try to take Alyssa away? The possibility made Genna sick. She freely admitted the shy little girl had stolen her heart. She hated to think of not having Alyssa around. And if it bothered her so much, what must it be doing to Jared? she wondered.

Not fit to be a parent. Anger boiled inside Genna. Jared was a little unorthodox, but he was more fit to be a parent than many so-called normal people she knew.

He went by the window again with a flamingo dangling by its throat from a belt loop on his shorts.

Genna shook her head. “Now I’m defending him.”

She tried to imagine the sister-in-law, Simone. Jared’s comments made the woman sound like the next prime-time soap vixen: Alexis Colby in a bad mood. It was hard to picture her in a different light, since Genna was on Jared’s side, but she made an effort. Natasha from
Rocky and Bullwinkle
was as good as it got. Women who tried to take children
away from their natural fathers just couldn’t be pictured as Beaver Cleaver’s mom.

Of course, Genna thought, Simone didn’t look at Jared and see Robert Young from
Father Knows Best
either. Her perceptions of him would have been colored by his divorce from Elaine. And Simone had lost her only sister. It was probably natural for her to want to have Alyssa fill that void in her life.

Genna glanced back out at Jared, who was trying to push the lawn mower while the puppy bit into his sneaker and pulled in the opposite direction. Even though she hadn’t known him long and still refused to admit she liked him, she already felt an intense loyalty toward him. Simone could rot. Genna would do everything she could think of to help Jared.

Bernice was the ideal housekeeper for J. J. Hennessy. Fifty-nine, and built like the corner mailbox with a poof of red hair, her personality was just a little left of center. After spending her entire life in Brooklyn working in an underarm deodorant factory, she had retired and divorced at fifty-five and moved to Tory Hills to be near her favorite niece. Bernice was gruff and outspoken, but she had a heart of gold and
more sense than to feed a five-year-old sausage-anchovy pizza.