Jennifer Greene: Wintergreen

Dear Reader,

I had such fun with this story. It has several themes I love-loyalty…forbidden love…a woman wrongly accused of something she never did.

My heroine desperately needs help-the kind of help that can only come from her ex-brother-in-law. For her son, she’ll do anything. Unfortunately, what the hero demands from her is…everything.

Hope you enjoy the story!

Jennifer Greene

Carefully, Lorna slipped the key into the lock, yawned hugely and tiptoed into the hall of her first-floor apartment trailing a chiffon scarf and a gold-spangled evening purse that seemed too monumentally heavy to lift at two in the morning.

“I thought I told you to stay out and have a good time.”

Lorna jumped, her head pivoting around toward the scolding voice. Freda Noonan had a hand on one hip and was all wide-awake, foot-tapping impatience. Lorna shook her head, suppressing a tired smile. As a daunting image, her friend lacked something. Freda’s red-gray hair was in curlers, and she was wearing a robe the Goodwill would have rejected a decade ago. “The sun’s about to come up. I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came home,” Lorna said dryly.

“ Don’t tell me you were worried about Johnny.”

“Of course I wasn’t.” Lorna hesitated. “But he was okay, wasn’t he? This afternoon I thought he was coming down with a cold…”

“Between your Johnny and my Brian, the house was destroyed three times over. Mostly your monster’s energies. Which is the point,” Freda chided. “Potential father material. What was wrong this time?”

“Nothing,” Lorna said mildly. “Hal has a lot of potential wrestler in him, but except for that he seemed fairly law-abiding. Why on earth did you wait up for me?”

“God knows. You’re getting beyond help,” Freda said disgustedly.

Lorna grinned and pushed back a dark mane of chestnut hair as she kicked off her sandals. “You want wine or coffee-as in, how long is this scold going to take? Keep in mind that both boys will be up at dawn.”

“Wine, and for the rest of the night the boys are your problem. Why do you think I decided to babysit here tonight? And don’t be sending my little angel next door any earlier than ten tomorrow morning.”

Lorna chuckled, moving through the pale green living room that she knew had some claim to taste and even serenity…somewhere beneath the model airplanes and comic books. Switching on the overhead light in the kitchen, she wondered for a full second and a half if it was worth the effort to drag a chair over, to reach the wineglasses in the top cupboard. It wasn’t. She poured the Pinot Noir into two Pac-Man mugs, aware that Freda had trailed after her.

“Honey, he was gorgeous. And don’t try to tell me he wasn’t interested.”

“Oh, he was interested,” Lorna agreed. “The so-called bash at his place had a massive guest list of four, and the other couple politely left at eleven.”

“I thought you said…”

“I did. I thought it was going to be a big affair.”

“All right. So what happened between eleven and two?” Freda demanded interestedly as she picked up her mug of wine.

“Nothing unusual. First we played sophisticated seduction. You know, how many times can he fill my glass while we talk. Then he shifted to poker, as in, let’s see if I was really bluffing when I said no. Then we had to check out whether I was the kind who liked a man to be a little rough.” Lorna’s voice was full of dry humor, as she automatically cleaned up the children’s glasses and took a swipe at the counter with a damp sponge.

“And then… ” Freda prompted impatiently.

Lorna took a sip of wine and perched up on the counter, her dark gray eyes rueful as she met her next-door neighbor’s gaze. “And then…nothing. I just told him that I’d honestly had enough, and the chase came to an end rather abruptly. Hal turned into a lamb…” Lorna considered. “Maybe not exactly a lamb… ” At Freda’s quelling stare, Lorna’s humor subsided, her smile fading.

“Lorna, I thought you liked him,” Freda said despairingly.

“I do.”

“And you can’t tell me you weren’t attracted-”

“He’s very good-looking,” Lorna agreed.

“Well, then?”

Lorna sighed, her thick dark lashes suddenly shielding the vulnerable cloud-gray of her eyes. “Couldn’t you see the way Johnny looked at Hal when he came to pick me up? He didn’t like him, Freda. And Hal just isn’t kids-oriented.” Lorna hesitated. “Maybe further down the road, Hal might even have offered a ring, but I have a feeling the next day he’d have been looking into boarding schools.”

“Lorna, he couldn’t have spent more than an hour with the boy! You can’t live your entire life through Johnny. With your looks, you’ve got a right to be picky, but honey, you’re downright impossible. And that boy needs a father before you ruin him completely. Someone has to have the courage to land a good one on his backside occasionally.”

“I know that. In principle, I’ll even grant that Johnny needs a masculine influence. The problem is that the men who make good fathers turn me on like dead dishrags. Say, Freda, are you going home soon?” Lorna inquired politely. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t covered the territory before.

“Obviously, I might as well.”

Lorna slipped down from the counter and finished her wine, setting the mug down by the sink. “You were a sweetheart to watch the two of them.”

Freda moved to the back door. “It balances out, you know that. Brian’s here more than he’s home.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned back to Lorna. “You don’t still have Johnny’s father on your mind? Lorna, you’ve got to trust again. Everyone isn’t like that Whitaker clan-”

Something cold and familiar settled in Lorna’s throat, but she shook her head with a weary smile. “I haven’t thought of a Whitaker in nearly nine years. Don’t be silly, Freda.”

“You’ve waited a long time-”

Lorna whispered firmly, “ Go home. ”

The door closed with a little click, and Lorna let out a pent-up sigh, raking her hand restlessly through her hair. After locking the back door and switching off lights, she headed toward the bedrooms, her hands unconsciously reaching behind her to unzip her dress. The first door was Johnny’s, and she automatically peeked in.

Freda’s son, Brian, was stretched out peacefully, the covers snugged up to his chin. Predictably, her own son was another matter. His blankets had been pulled out from the bottom of the bed and were trailing on the floor along with his arm, and only one leg was covered. Lorna silently rearranged the blankets, taking a moment to smooth the irrepressible cowlick on top of Johnny’s towhead and to kiss the freckles he hated. Both worry and love showed on her expressive face as she tiptoed back out, leaving the door open an inch or two.

He was too smart, her nine-year-old son. In fact, his school had identified him as a gifted child. He was also stubborn, curious to the point of being insatiable, courageous to the point of recklessness, and at times, Lorna admitted to herself, he was more than she could handle. Last week there had been more trouble at school…

The dress slipped down from her shoulders and made a silky pool on her bedroom carpet. No one was going to tattle if it stayed there until morning. The makeup, though, had to come off. Her eyes were burning from the layer of mascara applied too many hours before.