The Love Square (13 page)

By then, it was close to two. Jenna cringed as she checked her phone and saw three missed calls, two from Alex and one from Penny, and about fifteen text messages. She sighed.

“Are they looking for you too?” Dylan asked. “I have five missed calls and ten texts.”

“I think they all hate us,” Jenna said. “Guess what, though? I don’t care.” She threw her phone on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean, we’re allowed to be a little reckless, right?” She sat cross-legged on the bed, her chin in the air.

“Right. How do you want to reply?” Dylan disappeared into the bathroom, and Jenna heard him brushing his teeth.

“How about, ‘Spent wild night with your D-Barnes and don’t plan on leaving the bed,’” she called after him.

Dylan peeked around the bathroom door and grinned a mouthful of pearly, polished whites. “Maybe that’s too aggressive. How about, ‘We’re fine, sorry we missed lunch,’ or was it brunch? I can’t remember. Anyway, ‘Sorry we missed
you
’ so they don’t know we aren’t paying attention.”

Jenna nodded. “Yes. Sorry we missed
you
.”

Dylan continued, “Then, ‘How about lunch tomorrow?’ Tomorrow’s Sunday, right?”

“If we ask them to lunch on Sunday, we have to show up, though.”

“True. But I have to leave tomorrow, so we’ll have to leave this room anyway, unfortunately,” Dylan said. “I’ll send the text.”

Jenna watched him tap out the message, admiring how his now dry, soft-looking hair fell down his face, the way he curved from his back to his shoulders to the belt on his robe, down over his hips and thighs. She could devour him for days, months, and never get tired of him.

“Is tomorrow Sunday already? We’re just getting to know each other,” she said as she untied the belt of her robe. She let it slip off, and the robe fell over her waist onto the bed. “What are we going to do until Gretchen gets back at five?”

In less than a second, Dylan had tossed the phone away and jumped on top of her. “Have I told you you’re fucking awesome?” he said, sending tingles from her lips, to her belly, down to the tips of her toes.

“Only once,” she lied.

“You’re fucking awesome, Jenna in the Blue Dress.”

“Stecco,” she said. “My last name is Stecco. But I like ‘in the Blue Dress’ too.” She smiled and kissed him, planning how to fill the hours until they had to leave.

Chapter 11

Clare

Clare woke for the second time that Saturday morning in Lucas’s bed, but this time he was nowhere to be found. She looked at the clock, then saw the handwritten note next to her.

C—come find me before breakfast so I can join you—L.

He’d drawn a smiley face next to the
L
.

Clare was an awkward, chubby, boy-crazy thirteen-year-old the first time she laid eyes on Lucas, the seventeen-year-old heartthrob getting ready to graduate high school. She’d heard around town he wanted to work with horses, so she manipulated her parents into hiring him for the summer to help around the stables. Clare, Melissa, and Cindy would hide out and peek at him from behind the haystacks while he worked and talk about his dreaminess, who he was dating, what they thought he’d be like as a boyfriend.

When the summer ended, Clare’s parents knew they had an asset in Lucas and offered him the backhouse and a generous salary to stay on full time. Clare started high school, got a part-time job at the little independent bookstore on Main Street, and concentrated on her schoolwork. She enjoyed having Lucas around because her parents were always so busy. While her crush on him never faded, she’d figured she was too young for him, and her parents would kill her if she took his attention from the horses, anyway.

Four years later on his twenty-first birthday, Lucas sat in Clare’s dining room enjoying one of her mom’s delicious dinners and opening presents. Mom had sewn a quilt for him, and Dad gave him cigars and whiskey. Clare had enlarged and framed the photograph of the farm she had taken—a copy of which now hung in her California office—and wrapped it up with a nice neat bow. On the bottom of the photograph with a lightly held pencil, she’d written:

L—You belong here…C.

Then, right there at the dinner table, Lucas had asked her dad, “Sir, would you mind if I take your daughter out tonight?”

Clare turned beet red and stared at Lucas wide-eyed.

“Do you think that’s appropriate?” her dad had asked.

“Just as friends, sir. I’d never disrespect her, or you. I just thought it would be nice to see a movie.”

“A movie, eh? No drinking?”

“Daddy!” Clare said. “Of course not!”

“Well, it’s up to her, Lucas. As long as there’s no drinking involved, a friendship is fine by me.”

Clare and her mom looked at her dad in shock. He had always resisted her dating, bellowing, “You will not step foot out of this house with a boy until you are eighteen, young lady!” Clare’s mom had pleaded with him to lighten up, but there was no convincing him. Yet that night, he’d practically pushed her into the world with Lucas.

Lucas had turned to Clare. “What do you say? Want to catch a movie?” He’d flashed the smile she had loved since she was thirteen, and she’d nodded, unable to form words.

The rest was history. Eight years later, here was Clare, in the backhouse, twenty-five years old, doing the same thing she’d done when she was seventeen.

It was a morning like this only six months ago when Clare had decided to take the California assignment. Talking to Lucas was heart-wrenching. “A year?” he kept saying. “You want to be apart for a year?”

“I need to do this. I need to try something for myself. And if I do a good job, I’ll get the district manager position here. It would mean more money. I’ve been manager of the Cliffville store for five years now. If I don’t advance, I’ll go nuts.”

“Aren’t you happy? Am I doing something wrong?”

“No! You aren’t doing anything wrong. I need a break.”

“From us?”

“From Nebraska. From this farm. From this town. I’m not like you, Lucas. I am restless. I want to see the country. I wouldn’t leave for another two months, and a year will fly by, you’ll see.” Lucas could object all he wanted, but she’d known she was going. She wouldn’t let him stop her no matter what that meant for their relationship. She had to get away.

As she got dressed, she looked over the bureau at the photo she’d given him eight years ago. She must have known back then, before she’d left, that she couldn’t spend her life in Cliffville. She’d tried to convince herself she would be back, but she knew even then that she wouldn’t.

As she wandered outside onto the property, the cool morning breeze blew against her bare arms. The sun was calm in Nebraska, so mild and manageable. She thought about her life in California. The busyness, the city, the craziness. Despite all that, she knew she’d become more settled in the wackiness of California than she’d ever felt in the quietness of Cliffville.

And then there was Dylan.

If she focused on Dylan and their potential, she’d find the strength to talk to Lucas.

Outside, Lucas brushed her favorite horse, Mallory. She watched him whisper in Mallory’s big, brown ear, “Clare’s going to be so happy to ride you, Mal. We’ll take you out to the meadow. You love the meadow, right, big girl?”

Mallory turned her head and saw Clare before Lucas did, and Clare could have sworn Mallory’s eyes lit up. The sight of Lucas with her horse in the stable where she grew up, on a beautiful Nebraska day, made Clare hate herself.

Why can’t I be happy here?
She had everything she loved right in front of her.
Why can’t I settle myself?

Ever since she was a kid, all she’d wanted to do was live on this farm, with Lucas, Mallory, and her friends nearby. She didn’t care what life outside had to offer. Until she’d started working at the bookstore. There, she would sit in the stacks and peruse the travel section and read books set in faraway places, and suddenly Nebraska seemed small. Cliffville, which had been her entire world, became a little dot on a map.
A little dot with a giant hold over me.

Clare walked to Mallory, petted her nose, and hugged her head.

Lucas smiled when he finally saw her. “Good morning, sunshine.”

She returned the smile. “Mallory looks beautiful, Luke. When can we ride?”

“After breakfast. Come back to the house with me.” Lucas walked around Mallory to take Clare’s hand. “It’s so good to see you.” His brown eyes never left hers as he picked up her hand to kiss it.

This is too hard.
She knew if she walked into that house with Lucas, he would make her breakfast, and then they’d end up in bed together. In Lucas’s mind, she was his fiancée who had come home to visit him. Of course that’s what he’d think. She had to say something before they went back into the house and she reacquainted herself with the comfort she knew she would feel in his arms.

She stopped moving. “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Do we have to?”

Clare sighed. He knew what she was about to do, but that didn’t make it any easier. “I’m sorry” was all she could muster.

“Why, Clare?”

“Because I want to stay in California,” she whispered, then she started to cry. “I don’t want to live in Cliffville anymore.”

“You don’t want me anymore? Us?”

“You’re not asking to move to California with me.”

He ran his rough hands through his dark hair and then reached for her shoulders. “I can’t imagine my life anywhere but here. With you. Don’t do this. You’ll see when you move back.” He rubbed her shoulders with his thumbs as he bent to her eye level. “We’ll get married. I’ll hire more help and we’ll travel. We’ll go wherever you want, see the world. We can do it together, Clare.”

“You’d be miserable.” Lucas hated traveling. He’d never even been on a plane. He was as rooted in Nebraska as the big tree they’d first kissed under. The stability in his life was one of the reasons she loved him.

Lucas squeezed her shoulders. “I’ll do it for you, Clare. I want you in my life. You
are
my life. Don’t do this to us,” he begged.

“I can’t stay here and you can’t leave. It can’t work. Don’t you see?” Clare pleaded with him to understand as her heart broke into a million pieces.
Why am I so awful?

After she talked to Lucas, she had to face her parents, so she headed to the main house. She opened the front door with a tearstained face to find her mama cleaning up breakfast dishes.

“Mama?” she said timidly.

Andrea Davis gasped when she turned and saw her crying daughter. Without question, she bee-lined to Clare and wrapped her arms around her. It was just what Clare needed as she cried and cried in her mother’s arms.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing here? Why are you crying?” she asked. “Come sit. Let me call your father. You should have told us you were coming. Why are you sad?”

She sat at the kitchen table.
“Because I broke Lucas’s heart.” Clare’s parents treated Lucas as their son, so Clare knew her news would not be welcome.

“Oh, Clare. What happened?”

“Nothing happened, Mama. I want to stay in California.”

“But, honey, I thought you hated it there,” Andrea said.

“I did, but now I don’t. I want to stay. I know that’s selfish of me, with you and Daddy here at the farm, and Lucas, and my friends. But, Mama, I can’t come back to Cliffville.”

“But you’re okay? You’re not hurt?”

“No. I’m fine.”

Andrea’s demeanor changed. “So let me get this straight,” she said in her stern “mom” voice. “You came to visit us because you think you want to stay in a place you claimed to hate just months ago. The plans we made for you and Lucas and the farm are out the window. You suddenly found yourself out in California, and you aren’t coming home?”

Clare nodded.

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said and done,” Andrea said. “We’ll talk about it when your father gets here. You aren’t staying in California, Clare. No way.” Then she turned her back to Clare and went back to drying her dishes.

“But, Mama—”

Clare wanted to yell at her mother that she was twenty-five and she didn’t have to do what her parents said anymore, but she couldn’t get the words to come out.

Andrea held up a hand. “That’s settled. Would you like me to make you breakfast? You look too skinny.”

And just like that, Clare was ten years old again.

***

Alex

Scott, Dom, and Alex left Long Island Saturday afternoon hungover and miserable, each for their own reasons. Penny had given Alex her car keys because she and Steve had decided to shack up for the rest of the weekend, so Alex was stuck driving Scott and Dom, who were fighting, back to Scott’s place in Manhattan. Jenna was nowhere to be found. She and Dylan had missed the brunch plans the group had made.

Alex regretted offering to hook up Dylan with Jenna the second he’d heard the words fly out of his stupid, drunken mouth and texted her that stupid, drunken text. Of course Dylan was going to say yes. Jenna was fucking gorgeous in a way that rendered those around her speechless. If Dylan was leaving with anyone that night, it would be Jenna. After all these years of hanging out with Dylan, Alex should have known better.

Alex had called and texted Jenna when he lost track of her and Dylan. She hadn’t been in touch, besides a text around three a.m. that said:

Fine, at Dylan’s hotel
.

He trusted Dylan and knew she was okay, so he didn’t have a legitimate reason for obsessing. Except that he loved her and wanted her full attention.

On the ride back to Manhattan, Scott and Dom barely talked. Alex figured from snippets of insults shooting back and forth every few miles or so that Dom was extremely possessive and Scott was a flirt.
Bad combination
, Alex thought but didn’t say.

About halfway to Midtown, Scott’s phone buzzed. “It’s Jenna,” he said. “‘Not going to make rehearsal this weekend. See you at brunch tomorrow. Call you later.’” Scott threw the phone onto the dashboard. “I’m really happy Jenna’s getting some, God knows she needs it, but it’s not exactly the most convenient time,” he complained. “We only have four weeks until Vegas.”

“Scott,” Dom whined. “It’s Dylan Barnes.
Sunrise, Sunset
? You wouldn’t want to leave the bed, either.”

Alex winced and snapped at Dom, “What’s the fucking obsession with Dylan?”

“Calm down, Alex,” Scott said. “Dom’s just excited. Dylan’s a big deal.”

Alex directed his words to Scott. “Dom’s been talking about Dylan nonstop.”

“You’re just jealous. You could have been hitting that,” Dom murmured from the backseat. “I tried to stop you from pushing them together.”

“Shut up, Dominic,” Scott said. “You of all people shouldn’t criticize Alex for being jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” Alex said.

“You are,” Dom said. “But maybe this isn’t the time to discuss.”