Page 15 of Already Home

Almost afraid thinking about him conjured the call, she pushedthe talk button.

“Hello?”

“Jenna. I only have a second. Some woman called, looking foryou. She sounded strange. You’re not in trouble, are you? She wasn’t a billcollector, was she?”

I’m fine, she thought grimly. Nice to hear from you. How are things?

But Aaron had never been interested in polite conversation, notunless it got him something.

“Did the woman leave her name?” she asked, knowing it wasn’t abill collector. She might be failing at her business, but she hadn’t stoppedpaying her bills.

“No name. When I said you’d moved back to Texas, she thanked meand hung up.” He shouted something to a server.

The background noise told her he was in the kitchen of his newrestaurant. If she were vindictive, she would have been hoping he gave everyonefood poisoning on opening night.

“You’re calling to tell me someone you don’t know was askingabout me and you don’t have any more information than that?”

“I thought you’d want to know.”

With that, he hung up.

She stared at the phone for a few seconds, then shoved it intoher pocket. After collecting her purse, she let herself out the back, thenchecked the lock. Although her car was only a few feet away, she decided to walkaround the area and see if she could figure out her next move.

The conversation with Aaron was confusing, but she decided toignore it. Anyone looking for her could find her as easily here as in L.A. Asfor her ex, well, he had the emotional attention span of a gnat. Later, when hewanted something, he would point out he’d done her a favor tonight and wouldexpect to be repaid.

It was fairly light, although dusk was approaching. The eveningwas warm—still in the mid-seventies. As she passed a restaurant, she noticed thebar crowd spilling out onto the patio. Maybe it was just her, but there sureseemed to be a lot of couples.

Looking at the heads bent so close together, listening to theintimate laughter, made her think more about Aaron. Not that they’d ever beenlike that. It seemed to her she and her ex hadn’t exactly wallowed in the “inlove” stage. They’d met when he’d been hired at the restaurant where she’dworked in Phoenix. He was already successful, flown in from L.A. to save anailing establishment. The owner had promised him free rein and had vowed to fireanyone who didn’t cooperate, so the staff had been nervous about hisarrival.

Jenna remembered her first impression had been of a charmingshowman who captured everyone’s attention. His style was so different from herdeliberate way, his volume in contrast with her quiet voice. She’d been aware ofhim, intrigued by him and flattered when he’d asked her out.

They’d mostly talked business—cooking and how she created herrecipes. She hadn’t thought he was especially attracted to her and wasn’t surehow she felt about him, so it was a surprise to end up in his bed. From that dayon, they’d sort of been together. A couple. For a long time, she, too, had beenintrigued by the public persona. Eventually she’d started to realize Aaron wasmore flash than substance, but for her, a flaw in a partner wasn’t a reason toend a marriage.

Jenna paused on the sidewalk for a second, looking at thevarious couples. She’d always wanted what her parents had. One true love. Sure,that sounded like something out of a fairy tale, but she knew it was real. She’dgrown up watching true love at work.

Her parents had met on Beth’s first day of college, taken onelook at each other and fallen madly in love. Already aware she couldn’t havechildren, Beth had resisted Marshall’s advances. Jenna smiled and startedwalking again. Those had been her mother’s exact words when she told the story.“Marshall’s advances.”

She could imagine her handsome father pursuing the girl of hisdreams. He wasn’t a man who ever lost, and he’d wanted Beth. They’d been engagedwithin a year, married the following summer, after Marshall had graduated, andstarted looking for a baby to adopt by early fall. Jenna had shown up in theirlives in the spring.

It was perfect, she thought, happy to have been a part of theirstorybook lives. And what she’d always wanted. But somehow that kind ofrelationship had eluded her. While Aaron had obviously cared at first, she’dnever felt she was the love of his life. Not that she was so sure he’d beenhers, either. But she’d never thought she would end up divorced and withoutchildren. She wasn’t sorry she’d come home, she just didn’t understand how she’dgotten so offtrack.

The store was a disaster. There was no other way to describeit. She knew she didn’t have the experience necessary to be successful, andwhile retail wasn’t her dream, it was all she currently had. Being smart andhardworking were great, but obviously not enough.

She lingered outside the window of a clothing boutique,wondering how their sales were.

The cooking class had been a disaster as well, she thought,remembering the bored looks of her squirming audience. Violet had been right.People didn’t want to attend a lecture. They wanted to get their hands dirty.Have fun, like in the yarn store. There they were always doing. No instructor sat up front, showing them how to knit. They learned by practicing the techniquesthemselves.

Violet’s other point about having something to sell thatrelated to the classes made sense, too. Assuming anyone made it through one ofher lectures, he or she simply left when Jenna was finished. The customer wasn’tcompelled to buy anything. Which made for a crappy bottom line. Even if she gavethe occasional class on how to use different equipment, it wasn’t going to beenough to sustain the store. They needed a product customers could buyregularly. Something they liked that made their lives easier. Most people didn’tsee the need to own more than one food processor or mixer.

If she wanted to be successful, she needed to completely changeher game plan and her vision for what the store should be. This wasn’t abouteducating the cooking public, it was about creating a place that was warm andwelcoming. A place people wanted to go.

And while she was making all these changes to her store, shemight want to look at herself, she thought. At least move toward having fun withher work and maybe even her life. Or really, what was the point?

Four

Violet arrived at nine-thirty, per usual.The store opened at ten, which gave her a half hour to get things in order. Ifnothing else, she needed to make sure they had enough cash on hand to makechange. Less of a problem in a store where no one bought much of anything, butshe had high hopes that eventually they would start to move product.

She pulled in next to Jenna’s Subaru, then walked to the backdoor and used her key to let herself in. To the left was the small restroom, tothe right, the storage area. Boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Jenna hadordered with the idea that she would be selling things in the first week ofbusiness. Once they’d realized the store wasn’t going to be an instant success,it had been too late to cancel the deliveries.

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