Darlene Gardner - Twice the Chance

“That’s not why you can’t concentrate,” Sadie Phillips declared. Jazz hadn’t even noticed the waitress enter the kitchen. Sadie’s lips, painted a deep pink, were smiling. Her hands rested on her curvy hips. “It’s because of the hot guy. Who is he?”

Jazz felt heat creep up her neck. “Nobody.”

“Oh, come on, Jazz. Stop being so blasted private,” Sadie said in her thick Southern drawl. “If a man like that was interested in me, you couldn’t get me to shut up about it.”

“It’s not like that,” Jazz said.

“Oh, really? Then why didn’t he look twice when I shook my stuff at him?” Sadie demanded.

“You got good stuff,” Carl said without glancing up from the potatoes he was slicing.

“Why, thank you, Carl.” Sadie sounded pleased by the compliment. “The only reason for a man not to look is if he’s interested in other stuff.”

Carl chuckled softly. Jazz kept her head down, glad she had the excuse of transferring pancakes to plates. In prison, she’d quickly learned that knowledge was power. She wasn’t about to tell Sadie why she had no interest in dating Matt Caminetti. She wouldn’t tell anyone.

Jazz got through the rest of her shift without another mention of Matt. When two o’clock arrived, her mind turned to the lonely night ahead. A legion of short-order cooks had come and gone since she’d started at Pancake Palace three years ago, enabling Jazz to choose a shift that allowed her to take a second job. Too bad she hadn’t been able to find one that gave her more hours.

“Hey, Jazz.” Sadie was waiting for Jazz beside the front door. The waitress’s eyes sparkled. “That man who’s not interested in you? He’s in the parking lot.”

Jazz’s breath snagged before a logical explanation occurred to her. “He probably has some shopping to do.”

Pancake Palace was located in a shopping center a few miles west of historic downtown Charleston, sharing space with a grocery, a drugstore and other assorted businesses.

“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” Sadie asked.

The waitress opened the door, stepping aside to let Jazz precede her. Matt Caminetti was leaning against a silver coupe. He immediately straightened and walked toward them.

“Told you so,” Sadie said teasingly, her voice a whisper. “I expect to get the whole story on Monday.” She headed away from Jazz, waving and calling, “Bye, Jazz.”

“Bye, Sadie,” Jazz said automatically. She couldn’t seem to get her feet unstuck.

She’d been so focused on the twins at the park that Matt had barely made an impression. That wasn’t the case today. Matt was the sort of man women looked at, not so much because he was drop-dead handsome but because he had an unmistakable energy. Like someone had thrown on a light switch inside him, causing everything about him to seem more vibrant. Even his slight Southern accent was attractive, smooth instead of twangy.

“I promise I’m not stalking you,” Matt said when he stepped onto the sidewalk. He was smiling, his light brown eyes trained on hers. She was five-nine in her bare feet but he was half a head taller. He held out a few sheets of paper along with something red and stretchy. “I brought you some elastic tubing and printouts of isotonic exercises for your shoulder.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”

“Because this is what my orthopedist said to do when I strained my shoulder back in college.” He continued to extend the items to her. One corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “I promise I didn’t attach any strings.”

She uncrossed her arms and took the sheets and the tubing, being very careful not to accidentally touch him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He held up a hand in farewell and did a slow jog to his car. Halfway there, he turned back and called, “Notice how I didn’t ask you out again?”

“I noticed.”

“Out of curiosity, if I had asked, would the answer still be no?”

“Yes,” she said.

He jumped on her reply. “Yes? You changed your mind?”

“Yes.” She felt her lips curve. “It would still be no.”

He snapped his fingers and shook his head. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

She didn’t let her smile grow until she got behind the wheel of her car. It was a good thing Matt Caminetti was strictly off-limits. Otherwise, he might tempt her to forget that she couldn’t trust her instincts, especially where men were concerned.

THE LARGE BOX SITTING on the carpet in the middle of Jazz’s living room floor didn’t look like anything special. Slightly battered and made of cardboard that was dirty in places, the box had arrived by UPS almost an hour before.

Jazz hadn’t opened it yet because she had the feeling that nothing would be the same once she did. Ridiculous, really, considering she didn’t know what was inside.

She had no basis for foreboding except that she seldom got anything delivered to her at all besides bills and junk mail.

The box probably weighed a good thirty pounds or so. If Jazz hadn’t been religiously doing the shoulder exercises Matt Caminetti had given her two days ago, she might not have been able to lift it without pain.

She frowned. Thinking about how considerate Matt had been represented a different kind of Pandora’s box. It seemed less risky to find out what was inside the package than to open herself to the possibility of dating him.

Jazz got down on her knees beside the box, flipped open her pocketknife, cut through the packing tape and drew back the cardboard flaps. A sheet of white paper lay atop a pile of what looked to be mostly clothes and books.

Jazz picked up the piece of paper, noticing at once the South Carolina Department of Social Services letterhead. She read the few typed paragraphs, then read them again.

It seemed her foster parents had found a box of her belongings in their attic. Instead of trying to find Jazz’s current address and mailing her the box themselves, they’d asked DSS to forward it.

Jazz shouldn’t be surprised. The last time she’d seen or heard from her foster mother was at a holding cell in the county jail the night Jazz was arrested.

A tear dripped down Jazz’s cheek. She angrily dashed it away. She’d learned quickly all those years ago that crying accomplished nothing.

Jazz put the letter aside and turned back to the box, pulling out some skinny jeans and shirts with plunging necklines. The high-heeled black sandals and bangle bracelets she’d been wearing when she was arrested were there, too. So were a black hip-hugging micro miniskirt and a thong bathing suit.

The rest of the box contained more clothes she’d never wear again, a few pieces of cheap costume jewelry, an alarm clock with a dead battery, some Harry Potter paperbacks and a couple of high school yearbooks.

Jazz sat cross-legged on the carpet, her back resting against her love seat, and leafed through the top yearbook. It was from one of the most traumatic times in her life: junior year, after her grandmother died and Jazz was shuffled to foster care. The only image of Jazz was in the class-photo section. She was unsmiling, her hair falling forward in her face, defiance in her eyes.

After flipping her yearbook closed, Jazz picked up the second one. It was black like the first yearbook but the name of the high school on the cover was different. Jazz ran her fingers over the four embossed numbers that formed the year before Jazz was born.

This was her dead mother’s yearbook, not hers.

She’d been so angry at her mother for leaving her the way she did that Jazz had never even looked through it. Jazz had a vague memory of packing the yearbook with the few belongings she’d taken from her grandmother’s home. She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d kept it except she had nothing else of her mother’s.