Ann Christopher - Redemption's Kiss

The tension left her body by slow but sure degrees, and the crushing pressure let up until it no longer flattened her into a dark smudge on the floor. She took another tentative breath, just to be sure, and the lifesaving air didn’t kick and scream its way into her lungs.

And then, just like that, it was over.

But of course it wasn’t over at all because she was still a mess down to the marrow of her soul.

Exhausted, she slumped back and tried to ignore the low shelf of baking products cutting across her kidneys. The world came back to her and she became aware of the distant voices of guests in the foyer…the open and close of the front door…the heavy, rubberized footfall that announced the imminent arrival of Blanche.

Blanche. Oh, no. God help her if Blanche saw her like this.

Calling on the kind of supreme effort that Superman used to fly around the earth’s circumference and reverse time, she heaved herself to her feet and tested out her wobbly knees. They trembled but held.

She was just swiping some of the wetness from her face—she wasn’t sure whether it was sweat or tears and didn’t really want to know—when Blanche came into the kitchen singing, or rather rapping, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which was just…wrong.

“Fight, fight, fight the—” Blanche chanted and, without warning, swung the pantry door open, sashayed inside and came up short when she saw Jillian.

Jillian tried to look dignified. Blanche gaped.

Apparently, Blanche couldn’t get a good enough look, because she reached out and flipped the light on. Jillian wasn’t prepared. Wincing, she blinked and covered her eyes. Blanche tsked and jerked Jillian’s hand down.

The women faced off.

Judging from her horrified expression, Blanche knew the worst, but she asked anyway. “Have you had a panic attack?”

Jillian pulled free, flicked off the light and tried to escape before this interrogation reached full swing. “No.”

Blanche didn’t buy the lie, which was no surprise since the woman had the unerring instincts of a baying bloodhound on an escaped convict’s trail. “You’re all wild-eyed and sweaty, missy.” She looked around, as though she expected to see a masked intruder. “What’s going on in here?”

“Nothing.” Jillian smoothed her hair and tried not to sound too defensive. “I was just…you know, checking the supplies and—”

Blanche’s brows inched up toward her artificial hairline. “And—what? You were crying because there weren’t enough tea bags? Don’t kid a kidder, honey. What’s wrong with you?”

Jillian opened her mouth to dodge and deflect, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Why bother? Blanche would know soon enough anyway.

“Beau bought the Foster place.”

Blanche, who knew the rough outlines of the implosion of Jillian’s marriage, if not every gory detail, took this news with appropriate solemnity. With a single sharp nod, she squared her shoulders and marched to the far corner of the huge pantry, where she rummaged around behind an enormous sack of coffee beans and extracted a fifth of Patron tequila.

Whoa. The good stuff. How much was she paying Blanche, anyway? And did Blanche drink on the job? This early? She’d have to revisit these issues later, when she wasn’t so overwrought and behind on the lunch preparations.

And what— Oh, no.

Blanche had by now produced a stack of Allegra’s Dora the Explorer Dixie cups, and poured a shot for each of them. “Blanche, I don’t dr—”

Blanche shoved one of the cups at Jillian and raised the other in a toast. “Cheers. Now drink.”

Yeah. Cheers. Whatever.

Jillian drank.

The liquid courage both burned and was smooth as the finest silk going down. Jillian choked just a bit on the swallow, wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake by imbibing so soon after her panicked trauma of a few minutes ago, but then a funny thing happened. She coughed and gasped and the warmth spread through her, empowering her with enough strength to get mad.

What the hell had gotten into her?

So Beau thought he’d reappear and turn her world upside down, did he? So he thought he could just materialize and pick up where he’d left off? So he thought she’d forgive him?

Well, she had news for Beau: no freaking way.

That man had already taken enough from her. She wasn’t about to give him another inch, thought or tear, not one more cry. It didn’t matter where he lived. It didn’t matter what he said. All of that was meaningless.

The only thing that mattered now was the life with Allegra that she’d painstakingly built here at the B & B. Everything else was sound and fury, signifying nothing—especially Beau.

Let him move down the street. It was no skin off her nose.

Catching Blanche’s watchful eye, Jillian smiled and held out her cup. “Hit me again.”

“That’s my girl.” Blanche beamed with approval and topped them both off. “Cheers.”

“Salut.”

They tapped cups and tossed back the tequila, which Jillian was really starting to appreciate. She was just debating whether a third hit would make the lunch prep and cleanup go any more smoothly, when there was a sharp knock at the kitchen door and her insides turned to stone.

Oh, God. That wasn’t a normal knock. That was Beau’s knock. She knew it.

And it was all well and good to stand there in the closet and tell herself to be brave and strong, but it was something else again to be brave when Beau was actually in the room with her.

Facing him again this soon would take another thirty years off her life. She couldn’t do it.

The blind terror must have shown on her face because Blanche took charge. Hitching up her stretchy pants and reminding Jillian of Gary Cooper adjusting his holster in High Noon before the shoot-out, she gave her a grim nod and took charge.

“You leave him to me, honey.”

Relieved as Jillian was by this offer, how humiliating was it to hide in her own damn pantry while her employee took care of her ex? Sure, she felt a little wobbly at the moment, but was she that big a coward?

Blanche had cracked open the pantry door and peered out to survey the enemy. Now she retracted her head and faced Jillian with a low whistle of feminine appreciation, looking resigned to the worst possible outcome.

“Oh, Jilly,” she said. “That man’s a god. You’ve got a big problem.”

“Thanks for the news flash.”

Beau knocked again, more insistently this time, and Jillian made up her mind. Hiding in the closet was for children like Allegra. She was a grown woman and needed to act like one.

Drawing on some inner reservoir that she really hoped was filled with courage rather than suicidal tendencies, Jillian gave Blanche a gentle nudge on the shoulder.

“Go on and let him in. Give me a second. I’ll be fine.”

Blanche didn’t look at all convinced. “You sure, honey? I can tell him—”

“Now, please.”

Blanche sighed and looked to heaven for strength. Either that or she was praying for Jillian’s ultimate destruction to be as painless as possible. Then she marched out, a stiff soldier prepared for battle.

The second she was gone, Jillian snatched a paper towel from the roll on the shelf and dabbed her eyes and face. No need to look like she’d been teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Then she fluffed her hair and grabbed the nearest thing she could find, which turned out to be a giant bag of dried cranberries, and followed Blanche out into the airy brightness of the kitchen.

Beau and Blanche stood there, shaking hands and sizing each other up, but his penetrating gaze went right to Jillian the second she appeared. Jillian focused on looking cool and unconcerned and trying not to feel the hum of electricity she always felt when they looked at each other. Maybe it was still there, but she didn’t have to succumb to it. Above all, there’d be no more emotional outbursts from her today.