Danielle Steel - Full circle

“… Why do you lie like that?” She had challenged Harry more than once but he felt no remorse.

“Some of it's true anyway.”

“The hell it is. I ran into one of your friends last week who thought I had been knifed by a coke dealer in the holding cell. For chrissake, Harry, knock it off.”

She thought of it now and assumed he had been at it again as she smiled at Jack. “Actually, things are pretty quiet right now. How ‘about you?”

“Not bad. We have a few good cases. Harry and Ave went up to Tahoe for a few weeks, so I'm holding the fort on my own.”

“He's such a hardworking type.” They both laughed and he looked at her hesitantly. He had been dying to call her for a week and he hadn't dared.

“You wouldn't have time for lunch, would you?” Oddly enough, for once she did. He was ecstatic when she said yes, and they went to the Bijou, a small French restaurant on Polk, which was more pretentious than good, but it was pleasant chatting with Harry's friend for an hour or so. She had heard about him for so many years, and between her heavy caseload and her turmoil over Drew Lands they'd never met.

“It's ridiculous, you know. Harry should have gotten us together years ago.”

Jack smiled. “I think he tried.” He didn't say anything that indicated he knew about Drew, but Tana could talk about it now.

“I was being difficult for a while.” She smiled.

“And now?” He looked at her with the same gentle look he had used on their godchild.

“I'm back to my old rotten self again.”

“That's good.”

“Actually, Harry saved my life this time.”

“I know he was worried about you for a while.”

She sighed. “I made an ass of myself … I guess we all have to sometime.”

“I sure did.” He smiled at her. “I got my kid sister's best friend pregnant in Detroit ten years ago when I went home over the holidays. I don't know what happened to me, except I must have gone nuts or something. She was this pretty little redhead … twenty-one years old … and bang, the next thing I knew I was getting married. She hated it out here, she cried all the time. Poor little Barb had colic for the first six months of her life, and a year later, Kate went back again and it was all over. I now have an ex-wife and a daughter in Detroit, and I don't know anything more about them than I did then. It was the craziest thing I ever did, and I'm not about to do it again!” He looked extremely determined as he said the words, and it was easy to see that he meant every bit of it. “I've never drunk straight rum either since then.” He grinned ruefully and Tana laughed.

“At least you have something to show for it.” It was more than she could say, not that she would have wanted Drew's child, even if he hadn't had the vasectomy. “Do you see your daughter sometimes?”

“She comes out once a year for a month,” he sighed with a careful smile. “It's a little difficult to build a relationship based on that!” He had always thought it was unfair to her, but what else could he do? He couldn't ignore her now. “We're really strangers to each other. I'm the oddball who sends her birthday cards every year and takes her to baseball games when she's here. I don't know what else to do with her. Ave was pretty good about keeping an eye on her in the daytime last year. And they lent me the house in Tahoe for a week. She loved that,” he smiled at Tana, “and so did I. It's awkward making friends with a ten-year-old child.”

“I'll bet it is. The relationship … the man I was involved with had two of them, and it was odd for me. I don't have children of my own, and it wasn't like Harry's kids, suddenly here were these two big people staring at me. It felt awfully strange.”

“Did you get attached to them?” He seemed intrigued by her and she was surprised at how easy it was to talk to him.

“Not really. There wasn't time. They lived in the East,” she remembered the rest of it, “for a while.”

He nodded, smiling at her. “You've certainly managed to keep your life simpler than the rest of us.” He laughed softly then. “I guess you don't drink rum.”

She laughed too. “Usually not, but I've managed to do a fair amount of damage to myself in other ways. I just don't have any children to show for it.”

“Are you sorry about that?”

“Nope.” It had taken thirty-three and a half years to say it honestly. “There are some things in this life that aren't for me, and children are one of them. Godmother is more my style.”

“I probably should have stuck to that myself, for Barb's sake, if no one else's. At least her mother is remarried now, so she has a real father figure to relate to for the eleven months I'm not around.”

“Doesn't that bother you?” She wondered if he felt possessive about the child. Drew had been very much so about his, especially Elizabeth.

But Jack shook his head. “I hardly know the kid. That's an awful thing to say, but it's true. Every year I get to know her again, and she leaves and when she comes back she's grown up by a year and changed all over again. It's kind of a fruitless venture, but maybe it does something for her. I don't know. I owe her that much. And I suspect that in a few years she'll tell me to go to hell, she has a boyfriend in Detroit and she's not coming out this year.”

“Maybe she'll bring him.” They both laughed.

“God help me. That's all I need. I feel the way you do, there are some things in this life I never want inflicted on me … malaria … typhoid … marriage … kids.…” She laughed at his honesty, it was certainly not a popular view or one that one could admit to most of the time, but he felt he could with her, and she with him.

“I agree with you. I really think it's impossible to do what you do well and give enough to relationships like that.”

“That sounds noble, my friend, but we both know that that has nothing to do with it. Honestly? I'm scared stiff, all I need is another Kate out from Detroit and crying all night because she has no friends out here … or some totally dependent woman with nothing to do all day except nag me at night, or decide after two years of marriage that half of the business Harry and I built is hers. He and I see too much of that as it is, and I just don't want any part of it.” He smiled at her. “And what are you scared of, my dear? Chilblains, childbirth? Giving up your career? Competition from a man?” He was surprisingly astute and she smiled appreciatively at him.

“Touche. All of the above. Maybe I'm afraid of jeopardizing what I've built, of getting hurt … I don't know. I think I had doubts about marriage years ago, although I didn't know it then. It's all my mother ever wanted for me, and I always wanted to say'ut wait … not yet … I've got all these other things to do first.’ It's like volunteering to have your head cut off, there's never really a good time.” He laughed, and she remembered Drew proposing to her in front of the fire one night, and then she forced it from her with a flash of pain. Most of the time the memories of him didn't hurt much now, but a few still did. And that one most of all, maybe because she felt he had made a fool of her. She had been willing to make an exception for him, she had accepted the proposal and then he had gone back to Eileen.… Jack was watching her as she frowned.

“No one is worth looking that sad for, Tana.”

She smiled at him. “Old, old memories.”

“Forget them, then. They won't hurt you anymore.”

There was something wonderfully easy and wise about the man, and she began going out with him almost without thinking about it. A movie, an early dinner, a walk on Union Street, a football game. He came and went, and became her friend, and it wasn't even remarkable when they finally went to bed with each other late that spring. They had known each other for five months by then, and it wasn't earth shattering, but it was comfortable. He was easy to be around, intelligent, and he had a wonderful understanding of what she did, a powerful respect for her job, they even shared a common best friend, and by summertime when his daughter came out, even that was comfortable. She was a sweet eleven-year-old child with big eyes and hands and feet and bright red hair, like an Irish setter puppy. They took her to Stinson Beach a few times, went on picnics with her. Tana didn't have much time—she was trying a big case just then— but it was all very pleasant, and they went up to Harry's place where Harry eyed them carefully, curious as to whether it was serious with them. But Averil didn't think it was and she was usually right. There was no fire, no passion, no intensity, but also no pain. It was comfortable, intelligent, amusing at times, and extremely satisfying in bed. And at the end of a year of going out with him, Tana could well imagine herself going out with Jack for the rest of her life. It was one of those relationships one saw between two people who had never married, and never wanted to, much to the chagrin of all their friends who had been in and out of divorce courts for years, one saw people like that eating in restaurants on Saturday nights, going on holidays, attending Christmas parties and gala events, and enjoying each other's company, and sooner or later they'd wind up in bed, and the next day the other one would go home to his or her own place, to find the towels exactly the way they wanted them, the bed undisturbed, the coffee pot in perfect readiness for their needs. It was so perfect for both of them that way, but they drove Harry nuts and that amused them too.