She was so intrigued with the thickening pudding that she almost missed the sound of the car pulling into the garage. Jake! Her heart skipped a beat. Stop that, she commanded her heart. It’s only Jake. He lives here, remember? But she couldn’t stop smiling. She loved him totally, truly, passionately, ridiculously. And she wanted him.
She took the pudding off the stove and added the butter and vanilla. Yes sir, this was a much better plan. First, make the pudding. Second, get Jake Sawyer into the sack. Third, have her head examined. She had to be crazy. Most likely it was the alcohol. It had pickled her brain. She’d heard it could do such things.
In the absence of sherbet glasses, Berry poured the pudding into coffee cups. She heard Jake move to the kitchen and knew he was leaning his hip against the counter, his arms loosely crossed over his chest, watching her. She kept her eyes glued to the coffee cups, but she felt him assessing what he saw: Lingonberry Knudsen braless in a skimpy T-shirt and silky little running shorts. She wriggled her bare toes against the tile floor and gnawed on her lower lip. She had a new plan and she was determined to see it through to the end. Now if she could stop hyperventilating and get her blood pressure under control she’d be just dandy.
Jake crossed to where she was working and looked over her shoulder. “Smells great. What is it?”
“Butterscotch pudding.” Was that her? All husky-voiced and inviting?
He scraped some pudding off the side of the pot with his finger and took a taste. “It’s good!”
“Yup,” Berry said. “And I’ve got something even better… soap.”
“Soap?”
“Yes sir, soap. I feel like taking a shower with lots of soap.”
“Have you been drinking again?”
“Nope. Been there, done that, didn’t like it, not doing it again.” She put the pudding pot in the sink and ran water into it so it could soak. “Moving on to bigger and better stuff,” she said.
She crossed the kitchen, turned when she got to the stairs, and stripped off her shirt. She smiled at Jake and made her way to the landing, halfway to the second floor. She paused long enough for her running shorts to hit the carpet. When she didn’t hear footsteps behind her, she turned and placed her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you coming?”
“No, but I’m very close,” Jake said, unbuttoning his shirt as he followed her up the stairs. By the time he reached the bathroom she was already in the shower. He dropped his jeans at the bathroom door, removed the rest of his clothing, and joined her.
“I finally get to see all of you,” Berry said, smiling.
Jake returned the smile and took the soap from Berry’s hands. “More than a couple inches,” he said with pride.
Hours later Jake drowsily opened his eyes and pulled Berry on top of him. “Mmmm,” he murmured, kissing her neck, running his hand along the smooth curve of her back. “Holy cow,” he exclaimed, looking at his watch, “do you know what time it is?” He moved out from under her and reached for his jeans. “Poor Mrs. Fitz and Miss Gaspich have been stranded at the Pizza Place all day. I should have picked them up an hour ago.”
Chapter Eight
Berry slumped deeper into the couch and furiously zapped stations with the remote control. “Twelve forty-two,” she muttered, glaring at her watch. The ladies were upstairs, asleep. Everyone was asleep but her and Jake. She’d thought it was cute when he’d had a sudden burst of inventive inspiration during supper and gone charging off down the cellar stairs. It had stopped being cute at about eleven-thirty. Now it was downright infuriating. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, knowing that she was being unreasonable. For the past two weeks, Jake had given up all his spare time to work in the Pizza Place. He deserved this night to himself. He was a chemist. An inventor. He needed to work at his profession. But why tonight? How could he leave her alone like this after they’d shared such a beautiful afternoon? It was the first time she’d ever really made love with a man, and her world felt tilted. She’d expected his world would be equally tilted.
“It’s tilted, all right,” she said aloud to herself. “Tilted in the opposite direction from mine. He could hardly wait to get away from me.” She gave herself a shot to the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Ugh, men!”
That was a bunch of garbage, she thought. She was letting all her old insecurities come back to haunt her. She shut the television off and crept up the stairs, telling herself that men simply looked at these things differently. They took life in stride. That was the basic difference between men and women. Women were women. And men were thoughtless beasts! Berry wrenched the bedroom door open and closed it with a thunderous slam. She stripped off her clothes and flung herself into bed, covering her head with the pillow. This is just temporary insanity from too much sex, she groaned. I should have started out slowly. And I certainly shouldn’t have done it the same day I made pudding. It overloaded my system. I’ll feel better tomorrow.
Three hours later Berry thrashed side to side in bed. She squinted at her clock and muttered an oath. She punched the pillow and viciously kicked at the confining tangle of sheets. You were supposed to be relaxed after you made love, she fumed. You were supposed to go to sleep with a smile on your face. What was wrong with her? She’d made love all afternoon. Why wasn’t she tired? Why wasn’t she smiling?
Another three hours later Berry half opened one eye and caught Jake tiptoeing around the room, gathering his clothes. “Jake?”
“Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep,” he whispered.
“What are you doing? Why don’t you come to bed,” she said.
He stood over her with a tie dangling from his hand and a blue shirt thrown over his shoulder. “I can’t. I have to get to school early today. If I could just find my damn shoes…” He looked under the bed and grunted with satisfaction. “Found them.” A quick kiss on the top of her head and he was gone.
Berry stared at the closed door and sighed. She didn’t want to be an alarmist, but this was beginning to feel a heck of a lot like her marriage. She slipped into a pair of jeans and a soft flannel shirt and went in search of breakfast.
Mrs. Fitz was already at the round oak table, sipping tea. “Holy cow, Lingonberry, you look awful.”
Berry got the coffee brewing. She banged a coffee mug onto the kitchen counter and stared at it.
“Looks to me like you got man problems. What’d that Jake Sawyer do now?” Mrs. Fitz asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Uh-oh. That don’t sound good.”
Berry propped herself up on the counter while the coffee dripped into the glass pot. “Boy, love really stinks,” Berry said to the coffeepot more than to Mrs. Fitz.
“Yeah,” Mrs. Fitz agreed, “it can be a bummer.”
“Are you in love with Harry?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell at my age. You don’t know whether it’s love or just the prune juice working.”
Berry poured herself a cup of coffee and set a skillet on the stove. “You like French toast?” she asked Mrs. Fitz.
“Who’s making it?”
“I am.”
“Yeah. I like it.”
Berry cracked three eggs into a shallow dish and whipped them with a fork. “Good,” she said, “because I’m going to make a whole loaf of it.”
It was eleven o’clock at night when Berry finally drove down Ellenburg Drive and solemnly stared at the house. Lights blazed from the downstairs windows and Jake’s car was parked in the driveway. He hadn’t shown up for work at the Pizza Place, and he hadn’t called beyond leaving a short message to say he was busy. Berry parked and made her way through the house to the kitchen where Jake was hunkered over the table. His shirttails were out and his shoes were kicked off.