Lenora Worth - Because of Jane

“You look tired now. You have dark circles under your eyes. Do you sleep at all?”

Lenny’s brand of tired creaked all the way to his bones. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep. “I get by,” he said. “But I suppose you can help me find some new energy?” Exploring the possibilities of that proposition did intrigue him. Analyze a little bit; flirt a little bit. See which one of them caved first. That tactic had always garnered him a pretty woman on his arm. But then, maybe he didn’t have the energy to even flirt.

“That’s part of the therapy, yes.”

He watched as she started stacking magazines, clearing away the section of the table she had somehow managed to take over. “Even if you think you’re too old for football, even if you don’t get this current contract dispute settled, you could be a commentator or a spokesperson. Your agent says you’ve got offers all over the place, endorsement deals, movie offers—”

His halfway good mood turned to ice as a kind of panic knocked the wind out of him. “My agent—the one I just fired—talks too much and presumes too much. Those deals aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Most of them are comical or beneath my dignity. I’m not ready for stupid reality shows about has-beens.” He flipped open his phone, then shook his head. “Eight messages from Marcus already. Got him backed against a wall.” Then he closed the phone but kept his bravado. “I’ll let him stew a little bit more.” Getting up, he cleared away their dishes. “Oh, and did I tell you—you’re fired, too.”

Jane got up, whirling and almost running into him as he turned from putting the dishes in the sink. He brought his hands up to block her at the same time she brought her arms out to keep from ramming against him. Their fingers touched.

Lenny felt as if he’d taken a direct hit from some force of nature. Worse than a linebacker coming at him. Her sleepiness seemed to disappear as her eyes opened in a rush of pure awareness. His very cells zinged with a renewed energy. And he didn’t feel so tired anymore.

Lenny backed away, while Jane looked startled, her hazel eyes changing like the leaves outside. “Sorry,” he said in a deep-throated grunt, the scent of her floral perfume hitting him.

“I…it was my fault.” Her jittery laugh caught in her throat. “My father always said I was clumsy. Always rushing, running into things, banging my knees, scraping my hands, falling, always falling.”

“I don’t see that.” His gaze took a stroll down the tiny length of her. “You seem very sure of yourself.” He held her hands, looking down at her taupe-colored nail polish. “And your hands don’t seem to be all scraped and battered, not like mine, anyway.”

She turned his hands in hers, her touch as gentle as the brush of a soft wind, her gaze following the deep calluses on his fingers, the surgery scars on his wrist.

“You do have a lot of scars. Football is not a kind sport.”

If only you knew.

“Battle scars,” he retorted, trying to hide behind the ice again. But with her tiny hands holding his, Lenny felt something solid and rigid slipping into a slow melt inside him. Acknowledged it and held it back. He couldn’t open that floodgate. Not yet. With a gentle tug, he removed his hands from hers. “We all have battle scars, don’t we, darlin’?”

JANE TOOK IN A BREATH, the lingering heat of Lenny’s calloused touch burning through her. Then, because he was staring at her, she wondered what he really saw when he looked at her. Did he see the unmarried, nearly middle-aged woman who’d given her life to her education and her career? Did he see the loneliness, the isolation of the wall she’d managed to build around herself to keep others out, but more importantly to hold herself in?

Did he see her as the successful life coach, or the pathetic woman who’d come traipsing up his driveway on a broken shoe heel in hopes of using his name and his fame for her own purposes? The woman who worked to keep her own sorry personal life at bay, who stayed close to family simply because she needed the noise they could provide? Appalled, Jane wondered why was she analyzing herself instead of the subject at hand.

“Hey, are you all right?” Lenny asked, his icy eyes turning warm.

“I’m fine. The food helped.” Then she put her hands down by her side. “Lenny, please let me help get this place in order. I can help clean up your grandmother’s house. For her sake. She’d want that, don’t you think?”

His expression turned taut and pinched. “Maybe I don’t want to get this place in order.”

“But you need to get your life in order. I can help you with that. And I think you’ll feel better afterward.”

He shook his head. “You know something, Coach. I’m beyond help. I appreciate your efforts, but you should leave while you’ve got a chance.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Jane replied. And this time, it had nothing to do with ulterior motives or professional recognition. And why had that plan changed? she wondered.

Because this bitter, melancholy man has you all twisted and confused, she thought, anger clouding her better judgment. And you don’t get twisted and confused.

She was about to tell him to stop playing his flirty little head games with her when an alarm went off on his watch. Boy jumped up from his spot at the back door, barking at the buzzing noise.

And then Jane noticed something really amazing about big, bad Lenny Paxton. He looked up the hallway, his consistent frown changing with all the beauty of a cloud passing through the sun’s rays, his eyes going from cold and distant to bright and full of excitement.

“What time is it?” he asked as he hit his watch. “This thing is slow sometimes.”

Jane looked around at all the various clocks in the kitchen. Not one of them was working. “It’s four-thirty.”

Lenny made a whistling sound. “This infernal expensive watch has never worked. I have to go feed the hogs before I go to football practice.”

Noting his stress coming and going, she said, “Hogs? You have hogs?”

“It’s a farm,” he said, his words long and drawn out so she could catch on.

“You’re going to feed the hogs, before… What…? Did you say football practice?”

“Peewee football,” he said, grabbing her by the hand. “We have practice and I can’t be late. C’mon, you can help.”

“With the hogs?”

Lenny nodded, clearly proud of himself for thinking up this idea. “Yeah, and then, Miss Life Coach, you’re going to sit tight while I go to practice. This week we have opening night for the Warthogs and I’m their head coach. If you’re still around later in the week and if you behave, I might let you go to the game.”

If you’re still around… He was thinking of letting her stay! A good sign. But about the immediate plans…

Jane backed away. “I don’t do hogs and I don’t do football.”

Lenny turned to lean down, his nose level with hers, his eyes sparkling like fireflies at midnight. “Then what are you doing in Razorback country, lady?”

JANE WENT UPSTAIRS and entered the first room on the left, her mind reeling. After she’d stood there dumbfounded, her throat too dry to speak, he’d told her to change her clothes. Then he’d dumped her suitcases up here. “Hurry up. We’re burning daylight.”

After meeting him on the rather narrow stairs—or at least the stairs seemed narrow with him blocking her and with all the clutter of old newspapers and magazines on almost every step—she’d silently watched him stomping away with a parting shot over his shoulder. “Wear something sensible—like jeans and a work shirt.”