Page 28 of Tempting Eden

“Adele! You can’t just invite someone for dinner at the last minute. What if Jack has plans? What if Rosa didn’t make enough food?”

I couldn’t help but smile at Eden giving someone else lectures on manners. Adele grinned up at me.

“He wants to stay. Don’t you, Jack?”

“Well, I don’t think I should.” Getting involved in what was obviously a mother/daughter power struggle didn’t seem like a good idea at this point.

“Look, Mom, you scared him off.” The “happy now?” was implied.

Eden crossed her arms over her chest. “I did not. Jack can stay if he wants. I don’t care either way.”

“If you don’t want him to stay, I guess he should go…” Adele let go of my arm and gave a noncommittal shrug.

Eden threw up her hands. “Fine, Adele, fine. You win. Stay, Jack, if for no other reason than to entertain my badly behaved daughter.”

Adele squealed in triumph and started pulling me farther into the house.

“I’ll get another ride home,” I called over my shoulder to the driver. “Drop my bags at my address.”

Adele led me through a room with a black grand piano, then a hallway lined with huge canvas portraits. I wanted to stop and examine them, but she dragged me along through another series of doors, all dark and solid. Eden disappeared behind us. I wondered if I’d ever figure out how to navigate the maze back to the front door.

We entered a library, books lining the walls from floor to ceiling. The room was bigger than any house I’d ever lived in. She hurried to a corner with cushy chairs and pillows. I could tell this was her little den from the selection of books scattered on the tables and floor. Tons of teenage tomes—vampires in love with humans, deadly tournaments where children fought to the death—many of which I’d read, though I would never admit it to another soul.

She flumped down onto a threadbare but comfortable-looking couch. After scooting aside a stack ofSeventeenmagazines, I sat across from her in a tufted armchair.

She gave me a thorough once-over, smiling a little before settling her gaze on my eyes.

“So, you want to know why I invited you for dinner?” Her tone was conciliatory as she tucked some unruly blonde strands behind her ear.

“My sparkling personality?”

She slipped her feet up under her. “Because you are the first person I’ve ever met who’s not afraid of her. You actually call her Eden!”

I refused to think about how it came to be that I called her Eden, given I was in the presence of her daughter. “Well, yes.”

“She’s just so…” She rolled her eyes, looking even more like a miniature of her mother. “You know, stiff and stuff. Like, everyone’s afraid of her, so they say Ms. Rochester this, Ms. Rochester that. Blah blah. But you aren’t scared of her, are you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her question. Fear was something I had been intimately acquainted with for a number of years. I knew it inside and out, just like it knew me. The fear she was talking about was not the truest sort, the kind I’d lived with and worried I’d die with. But I supposed it was all relative. And I was glad fear for her was different than it was for me.

“Hmm, you actually think before you speak. I never do that.” She put her pinky nail in her mouth and began chewing the tip.

I laughed. She was somehow both precocious and endearing. “It’s a skill. Just takes practice. And no, I’m not afraid of your mother. She’s just a person. Just like we’re people, sitting here talking. You and me.”

“But what if she fired you? Isn’t that scary?”

I shrugged. “I’d land on my feet.”

She blew air out her nose in a huff. “I want to be just like you. Cool and calm, no matter what.”

I shook my head. “Sometimes being cool and calm, as you said, comes on the other side of being rash and fiery. Then again, sometimes people are just different from the get-go.”

She stopped chewing her pinky. Unbelievably, she had even more intensity in her than her mother. “What kind are you?”

I cleared my throat. “What book report was it you said you had due?”

“Oh.” Her eyes opened wider as she perused me harder. “Oh!” She leaned over and frantically started digging in the nearest pile of books. After more than a few tomes landed with loud thunks against the wooden floor, she dragged outThe Bluest Eyeby Toni Morrison.

I stifled my groan. Great book? Yes. Hit a little too close to home? Definite yes.

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