Just Add Spice

“You can stop now.” She swallowed down a lump of emotion. Tad was hitting a bit too close to the bull’s eye.

“I would,” he told her, “But damn it, Jenna. I am not going to pass up the opportunity to say you might have a second chance at something great. You were deliriously happy when you met Rafe. I couldn’t get you to come back from Italy to pick up a new job. You took off all that time to be with him. And then… You suddenly couldn’t work enough. Why?”

She stared at the road and bristled. Tad knew about her relationship with Rafe from the other end of the phone line when they chatted every few weeks. And from the meager details she’d shared with him—at her discretion.

As had been the case with Rafe—which she’d confessed to the previous evening—she’d let Tad know what she wanted him to know. But not everything.

“BFFs do not do this,” he said. And sulked.

Jenna continued to drive in silence. They entered the city and headed north on Van Ness. She made her way to North Beach and found a parking spot a block from Sampogna’s. She cut the engine and turned to Tad.

“You are my best friend. The only one I’ve ever had. The only one I’ll ever have because, despite my personal deficiencies, you actually do get me. And I will tell you more about my life with Rafe, if you want to know it. But there’s one thing you have to understand about my split from him.”

“What?” he asked, apparently breathless from her intensity.

“He divorced me.” Humiliation and pain seeped through her. “He sent the papers to a hotel in Des Moines while I was shooting an episode. He wanted out, Tad. I don’t blame him. But again… He divorced me.”

Tad was quiet a moment, letting her implication settle in his mind. Then he said, “Despite the fact you were away, you weren’t the one to walk away.”

“Right.” Her chest pulled tight. “I never wanted to end it with him. Yes, I fucked everything up because I kept taking jobs all over the country. But… I never wanted a divorce. There was no other man. There was no other anything to come between us. Just me not knowing yet how to deal with the new world I’d been catapulted into when I said I do and not knowing how to be more settled and less nomadic.”

Tad regarded her closely. “You haven’t told him this.”

“He’s been through enough, don’t you think? And what purpose would it serve, anyway?”

“You feel betrayed.”

The corners of her mouth quivered. Her eyes misted.

Tad said, “As dysfunctional as your marriage was, you thought it was real. That it would last, even if you weren’t there.”

“I was selfish.”

Tad shook his head. “What else do you know, Jenna, other than to flit about? That’s not your fault. It’s how you were raised.”

Yes, Tad knew much about that particular part of her past. Again, not everything, but enough to draw sound conclusions. And the fact that he called her by her given name, not one of the many pet names he’d chosen for her, told Jenna this was serious territory they entered.

With more emotion welling within her, she said, “I fully comprehend that it’s irrational and unfair for me to feel this way, but when I saw the ink stamp on the envelope that said the package was from a law firm, I wanted to stuff it into the nearest trash can and pretend it never arrived. But I took it to my hotel room, set the packet on the desk and stared at it. Willing myself to open it. And when I did, everything I’d hoped I could someday believe in crashed down around me.”

“Oh, sugar plum.” Tad’s hand closed over hers, squeezing gently.

“I guess, in the back of my head, I believed Rafe would wait for me. Be patient. And that I would somehow come around. Everything would be okay. I wouldn’t be freaked out by his family. I’d embrace them. I wouldn’t be so obstinate when he wanted to do things for me. I’d let him. I wouldn’t be so independent. We’d be partners. Equally.”

“Well, you did get some equality out of it. You jilted him. And he jilted you right back.”

“Yes.”

Tad brushed his fingers over her cheek. “But not really.”

Her gaze narrowed on him. “What do you mean?”

“He calls you all the time. You always answer. No matter where you are or what you’re in the middle of. You answer. And now you’re here.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. “Only for two weeks, Tad.”

“You have control over your own destiny. Decide what you want it to be, Jenna.”

Shifting away from her, he unlatched his seatbelt and slipped from the car. She opened her eyes and stared at his empty seat.