The Winter Lodge by Susan Wiggs Page B

going to be awkward for you, seeing them?”
    Seeing the woman their father had married after being dumped by Mariska? How could that not be awkward? “We’re all grown-ups. We’ll deal.”
    “Thanks. My mom’s parents and Nana and Grandpa Bellamy have been friends forever. I think between the four of them, they decided my mom and dad would marry long before my parents even met.
    That might be why they ultimately got divorced. Maybe the marriage wasn’t their idea in the first place.”
    To Jenny’s discomfiture, she could too easily imagine marrying someone because it was the right thing to do, the practical thing. She had almost done exactly that, long ago. She skirted the thought and accepted the bra. Olivia had excellent taste. Jenny picked out seven pairs of underwear. Though the sexy wisps of lace caught her eye, she selected plain beige hip-huggers. She needed to be practical.
    Olivia moved on to a display of pajamas, holding up and then discarding a frumpy high-necked nightgown. She held a pink baby-doll top up to Jenny and nodded her approval.
    “Maybe it was meant to be, you staying with Rourke.”
    “Believe me, it wasn’t.”
    “You never know. Look at me. If anyone had told me I’d wind up living in a trailer with an ex-con, I would have thought they were joking. My mother practically went into therapy when I gave her the news. It was a jolt, you know. Last May I was dating an heir to the Whitney fortune, a guy who was once featured in Vanity Fair. By the end of summer, I’d fallen in love with Connor Davis. So it just goes to show you.”
    “Show you what?”
    “You don’t always get to pick who you fall in love with. Sometimes love picks you.”
    “Why do I get the sense that you’re trying to tell me something?”
    “I’m not,” Olivia said, tossing her the pink baby dolls. “Not yet, anyway.”

    By the end of the day, Jenny had discovered a new level of fatigue. Until now, she had taken the concept of “home” for granted, as most people did. The simple knowledge that your home—your favorite chair, your stereo, your bed, the stack of books on your nightstand—was waiting at the end of the day was a true source of comfort, something she hadn’t thought about until it was gone. Now weariness dragged at her, and she thought wistfully of her own home, her own bed. The moment she stepped inside Rourke’s house with her shopping bags, the fatigue hit her like a giant wave.
    “You look like you’re ready to drop,” he said. The dogs came galloping in from their run in the yard, shaking snow from their fur, tails waving in greeting. Clarence, the one-eyed cat, followed, slipping into the fray.
    “Good guess,” she said.
    He fed the animals, talking to them as though they were people, which Jenny found unexpectedly charming. “Move aside, boys,” he instructed. “And don’t gulp your food. You’ll get the hiccups.”
    Despite her fatigue, she caught herself smiling as the dogs lined themselves up, watching with adoring eyes while he fixed their dinner. Why hadn’t she ever adopted a pet? That unconditional love was incredibly nice to come home to.
    “How about you?” Rourke asked her. “What do you want for dinner?”
    Oh, boy. “Anything. At this point, I’m not picky.”
    “Good, because I’m not much of a cook.”
    “You want some help?” she offered.
    “Nope. I want you to take a good long shower, because you’re going straight to bed afterward.”
    She thought about his cushy bed and felt a wave of yearning as she headed into the bathroom. The shower, like everything else in his house, was meticulously clean yet oddly generic. She resisted the temptation to snoop in his medicine cabinet. There was, she knew for a fact, such a thing as learning too much information about a person. Besides, the more she learned about Rourke, the deeper his mystery seemed.
    After her shower, she put on the soft yoga pants and hoodie she’d bought earlier, combed her hair and went