Hands On (19 page)

Never in her wildest hopes and dreams had she imagined her life working out like this. Just over a month ago, she’d been focused on leaving Rick, escaping her mother and starting a new life in another state by renting an adorable bungalow—which had promptly fallen in on her—and taking a job from which she was quickly fired.

It had all turned out surprisingly well. Ginnie laughed aloud. She was happy in her work, she’d gotten along with her mother for the first time in forever, her house was being fixed thanks to her great new friend Lara, and she had a lover who made her feel delicious butterflies in her stomach whenever she thought of him. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she felt serene.

Her life was moving in a wonderful new direction.

She heard the door shut upstairs and grinned. Harry was home early.

She ran up the stairs.

He stood near the front door, his thick briefcase held before him in a strange, at-ease military-style. The new beard he hadn’t yet shaved looked odd with his expensive clothes and accessories, but she decided she liked it. The brown suited him.

“Hey, hairy man,” she said with a smile as she crossed the living room. “I fixed a rhinoceros earlier that made me think of you. It has a big, hard, long…personality.”

Harry didn’t smile. Instead of offering a hug or a word of greeting, even, he just nodded once. “I need to speak with you.”

Ginnie got closer, wondering at the tight, controlled expression on his face. She felt disturbing quakes in her serenity. “What is it?”

“I’ve let this go on too long. It’s entirely my fault, and I take full responsibility for allowing it to happen against my better judgment. But now it’s time to stop.”

“Harry?” Panic like she’d never known before welled in her throat. His voice had sounded more empty and controlled than a robot’s. “What are you saying?”

The silence grew tight with tension. Maybe this was some weird joke. He couldn’t mean what she feared.

“This has been a mistake. I’m fixing the mistake. I never should have let you believe there was a chance for more. A serious relationship is what you’re after, but it’s not my goal. It’s not my choice.” He patted the briefcase absently, tapping out a series of increasing numbers. One/onetwothree/onetwothreefourfive. “You’re after something I won’t give you, Ginnie. And you’re offering something I don’t need or want. Therefore, I think it’s time you left.”

He spoke with a businessman’s rational, cold clarity.

This was no joke.

She felt as if her breath was cut off. A tight knot within her begged for release, but looking at his face, she realized it wasn’t going to happen.

“You—” she began.

He interrupted. “This isn’t open for debate.” He placed the briefcase on the entry table, opened it and extracted an envelope. “This is for a luxury hotel and any other expenses until your house is completed. This is also the deed to the house. I’m making a gift of it to you. I’ve arranged for the movers to be here within the hour. I’ll give you until the end of the day to clear out.”

Ginnie wondered if she was in shock.

She’d never felt anything quite like it. Her mind felt weirdly disconnected, as if she’d taken too much cold medicine. Her heart throbbed with a deep, muted pain. When she thought of Harry, which was every minute, her brain detonated the memories as soon as they arose. Painful specifics couldn’t be allowed. Only a haze of the pulverized thoughts.

The haze covered everything. It made breathing an effort and made color disappear from her world.

She felt abraded inside and out and didn’t want to touch anything or anyone.

Somehow she kept from collapsing.

Lara helped.

It was Lara who discovered the twenty thousand dollars inside the envelope several hours later.

“I’ll return it,” Ginnie said. “No, wait.” She struggled to a sitting position on Lara’s couch, grimacing as her elbow squished into a cool damp pillow. She grabbed the envelope, looked inside, pawed desperately through the deed paperwork. “There’s no note. There’s nothing personal inside. It just…wasn’t personal.”

“Ginnie.” Lara sounded frightened.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Ginnie tried to think. “Helping Hands. They need every little bit. I’ll give it to them.”

“Don’t you need it?”

What she needed was a new heart to replace the hurting one inside her chest. “Not really,” she answered. “Business is booming. And I own the house now.” The one lasting thing to come from Harry.

She said as much to Lara.

Lara looked uncomfortable. “Ah. Well…there is one other teensy tiny thing I may have forgotten to mention. Just found out about it myself yesterday, you know.”

Ginnie felt tired. “Yes?”

“The wealthy H. Barrett Sharpe has expedited your new home’s repairs.”

“How much?” She was getting a headache.

“I don’t have exact figures. It seemed to be more of a greasing of the palms, as it were. Plus he’s big in real estate, and people owed him favors.”

“Guess.” Ginnie rubbed her temples. This was getting worse and worse. She still owed him something? Aside from her life, of course—which he’d sucked the joy out of when he’d broken her heart. So that debt was clear, at least.

Lara looked at her, worried. “It’s not like he doesn’t have the money.”

“Guess,” she insisted.

Lara shrugged. “Maybe fifty thousand.”

Ginnie suspected Lara was guessing on the low side. Harry…no, she should start thinking of him as Barrett. It felt slightly less painful. Barrett, then, didn’t do things by half-measures. “That’s way too much money.” She sighed, too sad to feel anger at the way he was throwing money at her, as if she was a mistress or hooker he had to pay off. “I’ll sell the house to pay it back. I should move out of this neighborhood anyway. Maybe out of the state.”

“But you just got here!” Lara flounced to the sofa and pushed Ginnie to the side to sit next to her. “I want you to stay.” She sounded adorably young, Ginnie thought. Young and idealistic. “There’s no reason for you to move away.”

Clearly Lara’d never had her heart broken.

“I want to put up a For Sale sign right away.” But Lara had a point. “Okay, I won’t leave town. Business here is booming, after all. But I won’t keep his money, or his house. And I really can’t keep living right down the street from him. Seeing him drive by. Watching him bring home new girlfriends…” The sorrow rose up and up, clogging her throat with tears.

“Oh honey!” Lara’s warm arms wrapped around her. “He’s such an ass! What an idiot he is, what a totally blind bastard.”

She rocked for a while. Finally Ginnie took a deep breath and gathered the tattered remnants of her composure. She nodded. “He’s an ass for how he did it. But it’s not entirely his fault. He told me not to expect a relationship. He warned me. Why didn’t I listen?”

“Everyone hopes for the best.”

“Harry expects the worst. I thought I could show him not all women are schemers like Jaye Rae.”

“But you’re not!”

“I have my flaws,” Ginnie admitted. She might have been too pushy. Or too naïve. Or too aggressive in the bedroom. Too bossy, too clingy, too domestic, too easy, too boring…too not what he wanted. It didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t know which flaw he objected to. “I thought he accepted me for who I am.” She felt her lip tremble and had to clamp down on her emotions. Her body felt as if she’d been fighting a bad case of flu. Her muscles ached and her brain hurt.

Lara frowned. “So. Everything’s fine, and then suddenly he announces he’s through for no good reason and tells you to get out? That’s not okay.”

Ginnie played with the seam along the side of a pillow. “I told him I loved him. I’m pretty sure that’s what freaked him out.”

Lara stilled. “Did you mean it?”

Ginnie nodded. Her eyes filled with tears again. “I’ve dated other guys. Lived with a few. I’ve had crushes galore. But I’ve never been this much in love.” Her wounded heart was emptying, leaving cold deeper than ice at midnight. She knew it was a pain she’d always carry. She just wasn’t sure she could.

Lara squeezed her shoulder. Her voice was gentle. “He’s more of an idiot than I thought. Do you want me to try to talk some sense into him?”

“No. There’s nothing left to say. He’d have to choose to be in a real relationship to be with me, and I don’t think he’ll ever make that choice.”

The sky was clear, dark and full of stars when Harry pulled into his driveway late at night. He stepped from his car and peered at his house. It was back to being just as it had been before Ginnie, with no lights on except for on the porch.

His house looked cold and lonely.

Out of habit, he’d glanced at the progress on Ginnie’s house as he drove past.

There was a large For Sale sign in the front yard.

He’d nearly crashed his car. She was moving? Ginnie was moving away from him.

A witches’ brew of emotion raked at him. Regret. Frustration. Anger. But mostly a quickly rising sadness. A raw and primitive grief held him in its grip, until he began to shiver with the night’s cold despite his Aston’s efficient heater. He forced his legs and arms to finish driving him home, then to propel him up the steps. He made his fingers manipulate the house key to get inside.

He closed the door behind him and heard…nothing.

Emptied of her presence, the house felt nearly as cold as it was outside. Harry checked the heater. No, the automatic heater was keeping the temperature a perfectly adequate sixty-eight degrees.

There was no scent of good food in the kitchen.

There were no boxes of Ginnie’s salvaged possessions or cabinets of puppet supplies in the living room or in the basement.

The guestroom closet was empty. The bathroom was spotlessly bare.

Silence beat on his ears.

Ginnie was gone. Just like he’d wanted.

And she was selling the house he’d given her. She was moving away from him.

Harry tried to relax by putting on soft jazz music and getting some more work done.

When he realized he was reading the same column of numbers over and over again, he gave up and went to his bed.

He couldn’t sleep. For an hour, he stared at the ceiling, unable to close his eyes and having little success with censoring his thoughts.

Finally he got up.

He went down the stairs to the guestroom she’d used. He crawled under the covers and nestled his head into the pillow that still smelled like Ginnie. Ridiculous, he thought, even as he snuggled more deeply. Contemptible. Pathetic.

He breathed the last little bit of her in and felt misery so acute that he wondered if it would ever go away.

Chapter Twelve

Harry felt heavy with sorrow at work the next day.

Seeing that damned For Sale sign first thing in the morning hadn’t helped.

Neither had his obligatory look over the progress of the house. The electrical subcontractors were installing new fixtures and outlets, and the HVAC subcontractors were putting in new heating and a/c venting and ductwork. It was the finishing-touches stage of home construction. The workers went about their business with respectful nods to him, but Harry kept touring.

After awhile he couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t the house progress he was really looking for.

The roofers waved to him.

Harry waved back, feeling surly. Ginnie would have her little house finished soon.

Then she’d sell it and move away.

Harry got in his car and drove to work. By the time he entered his penthouse corner office, his mood was black.

Ginnie was probably already spending his twenty thousand dollars and laughing with Lara over how they’d fleeced him of that plus the expected house proceeds. At least she hadn’t gotten more, like Jaye Rae had. Things like access to his business and entire bank balance and what was left of his reputation.

“Envelope on your desk, sir,” his secretary told him. He nearly snarled at her, which was completely unlike him, but then his gaze fell on the plain white envelope. His name was written on the front in neat, feminine handwriting, underneath a crossed-out name. “And Mr. Kenton is expected in ten minutes.”

“Show him in when he arrives.”

The secretary nodded and backed out, shutting the door gently in deference to his mood.

Which would have irritated him more if he weren’t so interested in the envelope. It looked like the same one he’d given Ginnie.

Without waiting another second, he raced over to it and ripped it open. He knew what he wanted, what he hoped for—a letter from Ginnie.

It was her handwriting on the outside, but inside was a pre-printed receipt from Helping Hands. For the entire twenty thousand dollars.

She’d given the money away.

All of it.

She hadn’t even kept the receipt for a tax deduction. That was financially imprudent of her.

Harry sat heavily. He’d been so sure she’d keep the money. He looked in the envelope, but there wasn’t anything else. No note from her. Nothing to explain her surprising move to give his money to her nonprofit of choice. Nothing saying she missed him, wanted him back…?

He looked in the envelope again, just in case.

It wasn’t like he could blame Ginnie. After the way he’d thrown her out, why would she bother? And why did he suddenly feel as if he’d made a mistake? Ginnie might be playing some elaborate game, sacrificing the twenty thousand to lull him into complacency. She might be…

Harry exhaled, and it was as if his breath blew away the clouds obscuring the truth. Ginnie wasn’t a gold-digger. She wasn’t greedy.

She was passion. She embodied passion and instinct combined, with every choice she’d made.

And he’d thrown it away.

“Sir? Mr. Kenton is here.” His secretary made way for the older man.

Most of all, Ginnie wasn’t Jaye Rae. He’d cared for Jaye Rae, so much so that her betrayal had decimated him. But what he’d felt for his ex-fiancée was nothing compared to what he felt for Ginnie. A penny next to a shiny silver dollar. A shack next to a mansion. She’d fallen right into his arms, and he’d let her go forever.

She’d never take him back now that he’d hurt her so badly. He wouldn’t, were their positions reversed.