“She didn’t have to be ugly about it, though.”
Jada laughed humorlessly. “I’m not offended. It’s the least of her sins.”
A family of mallards lifted off the lakeshore, quacking wildly as they flapped toward their nightly nesting ground, their green and blue feathers iridescent in the fading, golden light.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Jada said. “Do you ever get used to it?”
“I probably don’t appreciate it as much as I should. I don’t have a lot of free time to spend out here.”
“I’d like to think that if I owned a place as magical as this one, I’d never take it for granted and never leave it for long,” Jada said, a wistful note in her voice.
“That’s how my grandfather felt,” Ian said.
“You can’t really know, though, can you?” Jada asked.
“Know what?”
“How things are when you’re looking in from the outside. You can imagine it, or guess at it, but you can’t truly know. You have to live something, to be part of it. It’s the only way.”
Ian considered it. “That’s probably true.”
She seemed encouraged by his agreement. “Right, and anyway, people are so different. If one person reacts one way, it doesn’t mean you can predict how you would. That’s what makes it hard.”
“It?”
“Deciding the future.”
A stillness settled on Ian’s chest. What was she getting at? It was clear that she wasn’t talking about Sasha anymore. “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“Actually I do. It’s been nibbling at the back of my brain all day. My life has changed because of what’s happened, and it’s going to take a while to get back to normal, if it ever does.” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you hear that? What is it?”
Ian listened. He heard a high-pitched whirring not far away. It was getting closer, quickly, coming from beyond the hedges that lined the drive. Because he and Jada were sitting on the porch steps, the hedges blocked some of their view of the drive.
“It’s something electronic,” Jada said. “Oh! Look at that!”
A remote-controlled toy jeep buzzed out from behind the greenery and shot into the open circle of driveway. Its long antenna arced upward behind it, something brown and furry dangling from the end. It looked like a ... was that a toy mouse perhaps?
“Oh!” Jada pointed. “Look right there.”
The front half of a tabby cat stuck out from behind the end hedge. Crouched low, green eyes slitted and intent on the swerving jeep, the patient stalker was none other than Ms. Kitty.
The vehicle approached the cat at a slant. At the last second it turned, racing away. In a blur, Ms. Kitty leapt after it, her front paw leading the attack, claws extended, going not for the jeep itself, but for the bit of brown fluff bouncing on the end of the antenna.
“Oh, she missed! Too bad!” Jada said, smiling.
Ian would have rather looked at that smile than any of Ms. Kitty’s shenanigans. “She’s going for it again. Snagged it! Oh, it’s off again. She’s still after it, though. She sure can jump.”
A brown head bobbed above the hedges. It was young Billy, who worked at the estate helping with maintenance and groundskeeping. He was running hard when he broke into full view. He carried a small box in his hands: the remote for the jeep.
Billy noticed Jada and Ian on the steps. He skidded to a halt, panting. “Hope you don’t mind me playing with your cat,” he said to Jada. To Ian, he explained, “I’m on my break.”
“No problem,” Ian said.
“Have fun,” Jada said.
Billy tore off, as did the cat and its buzzing prey. They wound down the drive until they disappeared beyond the southern slope of lawn.
Jada’s smile faltered. “I think Ms. Kitty’s going to miss this place more than Marina and I will. I don’t know how I’m going to convince her to eat cheapo kibble again. To say nothing of all the attention she’s gotten. I’m only one person and I have no idea how to do feline shiatsu massage.”
She was joking, but Ian caught a serious undertone. “There’s no hurry. You should stay on while we get everything sorted out until it’s safe for you to ...” He trailed off, unable to say, “go home.” He didn’t want her to leave, not yet. Some undefined, indefinite later, probably. But not right now.
She turned and gave him a gentle look as she finished his sentence. “... go home. It’s time. You’re right that tonight’s too soon. I bet you can get your lawyers on this right away, though, squelch these stories flat in no time. Tomorrow, I can go home.”
“I don’t know that I can—”
“Of course you can. You already had a strategy in place this morning before the second story broke. Go ahead and do what you were going to do.”
She was right. He had the clout and his plan would lessen the scandal enough to make it possible for Jada to go home tomorrow. In good conscience, he couldn’t withhold it because he didn’t want her to leave.
“If you want,” he said. “I’ll start making my move tonight. If everything goes properly, there will be press retractions by morning and the public will lose interest before it’s time for the evening commute.”
“Perfect. I have no doubt that’s exactly how it will go.”
Normally, he would have taken pleasure in her certainty, her faith in his abilities. This wasn’t a normal time, though. “There can always be issues.” He paused. “To hell with it. I’m not going to make excuses and play around with this.”
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay here with me at the lake house. For a while. I thought we already had that settled, didn’t we? We were putting our attraction on hold until the marriage license fiasco was straightened out, and then you and I would ... move forward.”
“Actually, you and my father decided that for me,” Jada said. “I wanted to have sex with you last night, but you and Dad wanted to protect me from I don’t know what. Myself? Whatever. I never agreed to wait. You didn’t ask my opinion. You told me how it would be.”
“I was being responsible, looking out for your best interests.”
“I told you this morning that I wasn’t going to let you run me over anymore. Didn’t we already have this settled?”
He was taken aback by the fierce way she mocked his earlier question. “We did, yes. And I let you take the lead in the investigation because of it. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. I wanted you to do something other than condescendingly let me take charge. You might have, oh I don’t know, tried seeing who I actually am, and that I can’t be fooled by some macho routine where you think it’s cute that the little lady is standing up for herself. I could almost see what you were thinking, Ian.”
“Why are you so angry? I thought I was doing what you wanted.”
Her look was grim. “No, you did what you wanted to do, and that was placating me long enough to get me into bed. Shame on you!”
Shame on him? Did she really just say that? He almost laughed, it was so ludicrous. “That’s not at all what happened, or what I thought. Where is this coming from? It’s been a long day. You’re tired and—”
Jada stood, hands on hips, glowering down at him. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t finish that sentence. And because you have some mental block about what’s happening, I’ll tell you why. I am not a tired, cranky child who needs a damned nap. I won’t be talked down to. I’ve had enough of that today, especially from you.”
He knew better than to give an opponent the high ground. He stood and stepped up to a higher step for an even greater height advantage. “If you’re gunning for a fight, I’m happy to give it to you. Or we can be adults and you can knock off the unreasonable accusations and—”
“That’s it,” she said. “I’m done.” She stomped up the stairs, heading toward the front door.
Ian called after her. “I was giving you what you wanted. I let you
have your way! How is that a bad thing?”
She stopped, her shoulders rising and falling as she took a few deep breaths, as if calming herself. Then she turned around. Her tone was restrained, verging on sad. “You have no idea what I want.”
Something twisted in his stomach. He answered as gently as he could. “Then tell me what it is.”
“I never wanted my way, Ian. I wanted your respect.”
“I do respect you,” he said.
“Not how I want. I want you to respect me as a person, not just as a future lover.”