“They fell for it?”
Jazmine’s eyes widened. “I meant it. At first I thought they were losers but they’re actually pretty cool. I think they just wanted to see what I carried around with me.”
Frankly Shana was curious herself.
“Once they looked inside, they were willing to give it back.”
“You’re not missing anything?”
Jazmine shook her head.
“Great.” Muttering under her breath, Shana dipped the scoop into the blue bubblegum-flavored ice cream. The bell above the door rang, but intent on her task, Shana didn’t raise her head.
“I’ll have some of that myself,” a male voice said.
“Uncle Adam!” Jazmine shrieked. Her niece whirled around so fast she nearly fell off the stool.
Hearing his name was all the incentive Shana needed to glance up. She did just in time to watch Jazmine throw her arms around a man dressed casually in slacks and a shirt. From the top of his military haircut to the bottom of his feet, this man was Navy, with or without his uniform. His arm was in a sling and he grimaced when Jazmine grabbed hold of him but didn’t discourage her hug. From the near-hysterical happiness the girl displayed, a passing stranger might think Shana had been holding Jazmine hostage.
“You must be Ali’s sister,” he said, smiling broadly at Shana.
She forced a smile in return. She’d been prepared to dislike him on sight. In fact, she’d never even met him and was already jealous of the relationship he had with Jazmine. Now he was standing right in front of her—and she found her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. He seemed to be waiting for her to reply.
“Yes, hi,” she said and dropped the metal scoop into the water container, sloshing liquid over the edges. Wiping her wet hand on her white apron, she managed another slight smile. “Yes, I’m Ali’s sister.”
On closer inspection, she saw that he was tall and apparently very fit. Some might find his looks appealing, but Shana decided she didn’t. Brad was just as tall and equally fit—from spending hours in a gym every week, no doubt admiring himself in all the mirrors. Adam’s hair was a deep chestnut shade, similar to her own. No. Not chestnut, she decided next, nothing that distinguished. His was plain brown. He might’ve been considered handsome if not for those small, beady eyes. Well, they weren’t exactly small, more average, she supposed, trying to be as objective as she could. He hugged Jazmine and looked at Shana and—no.
But he did. He looked at Shana and winked. The man had the audacity to flirt with her. It was outrageous. This was the very man Jazmine wanted her mother to marry. The man whose praises she’d sung for two full days until Shana thought she’d scream if she heard his name one more time.
“I’m Adam Kennedy.” He extended his free right hand.
She offered her left hand because it was dry and nodded politely. “You mean Uncle Adam.” She hoped he caught the sarcastic inflection in her voice.
He grinned as if he knew how much that irritated her. Okay, now she had to admit it. When he smiled he wasn’t ordinary-looking at all. In fact, some women—not her, but others who were less jaded—might even be attracted to him. That she could even entertain the remote possibility of finding a man attractive was upsetting. Wasn’t it only a few days ago that she’d declared to her sister that she was completely and utterly off men? And now here she was, feeling all shaky inside and acting like a girl closer to Jazmine’s age than her own. This was pathetic.
In an attempt to cover her reaction, Shana handed Jazmine the bowl of ice cream with its two heaping scoops.
“Uncle Adam wants one, too,” Jazmine said excitedly, and then turned to him. “What happened to your arm?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern. “Did you break it?”
“Nothing as dramatic as that,” he said, elevating the arm, which was tucked protectively in a sling. “I had a problem with my shoulder, but that’s been taken care of now.”
Jazmine didn’t seem convinced. “You’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”
“I’ll be fine before you know it.”
“Good,” Jazmine said; she seemed reassured now. Taking Adam by the hand, she led him across the restaurant to a booth.
Shana could hear Jazmine whispering up a storm, but hard as she strained, she couldn’t hear what was being said. Working as fast as her arm muscles would allow, she hurriedly dished up a second bowl of ice cream. When she’d bought this business, no one had mentioned how hard ice cream could be. She was developing some impressive biceps.
She smiled as she carried the second dish over to their booth and hoped he enjoyed the bright teal-blue bubblegum ice cream. After she’d set it down in front of him, she waited. She wasn’t sure why she was lingering.
Jazmine beamed with joy. Seeing her niece this happy about anything made Shana feel a pang of regret. Doing her best to swallow her pride, she continued to stand there, unable to think of a thing to say.
Her niece glanced up as if noticing her for the first time. “I was telling Uncle Adam about my backpack. He’s the one who said those other girls just wanted to be friends. I didn’t believe him, but he was right.”
“Yes, he was.” Shana might have been able to fade into the background then if Adam hadn’t chosen that moment to turn and smile at her. Ignoring him would be easy if only he’d stop smiling, dammit.
“The girls gave it back?” Adam’s gaze returned to Jazmine.
Her niece nodded. “Madison asked me to sit next to her at lunch today and I did.”
Adam reached across the table and the two exchanged a high five. “That’s great!”
“Can I get you anything else?” Shana asked, feeling like a third wheel. These two apparently had a lot to discuss, and no one needed to tell her she was in the way. Besides, she had a business to run. Several customers had come in; at the moment they were studying the list of ice-cream flavors but she’d have to attend to them soon.
“Nothing, thanks.” He dipped his plastic spoon into the ice cream. Then, without giving her any warning, he looked at Shana again and their eyes met. Shana felt the breath freeze in her lungs. He seemed to really see her, and something about her seemed to catch him unawares. His brow wrinkled as though he was sure he knew her from somewhere else, but couldn’t place her.
“How long can you stay?” her niece asked.
Adam turned his attention back to Jazmine.
Shana waited, curious to know the answer herself.
“Just a couple of hours.”
“Two hours!” Jazmine didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
“I’ve got to get back to base for a meeting.”
“Right,” Shana said, diving into the conversation. “He has to go back to Everett. We wouldn’t want to detain him, now would we?” She didn’t mean to sound so pleased about sending him on his way, but she wanted him out of there. Shana disliked how he made her feel—as if…as if she was on the brink of some important personal discovery. Like she’d told her sister, she was off men. For good. Okay, for a year. It would take that long to get Brad out of her system, she figured. Now, all of a sudden, there was this man, this uncle Adam, whose smiles made her feel hot, then cold. That wasn’t a good sensation for her to be having. It contradicted everything she’d been saying—and it made her uncomfortable.
“I’ll stop by again soon,” Adam promised, looking directly at her as he said it.
“I want to know what happened to your arm,” Jazmine insisted.
“Surgery.”
“Does Mom know?”
Adam shook his head. “She’s got enough on her plate without worrying about me.”
“You’ve talked to her?” Shana demanded. She forgot that she was pretending not to listen to their conversation. Catherine, the woman who worked part-time, arrived then and immediately began taking orders while Shana handled the cash register.
Adam shifted toward her. “She e-mailed me.”
“Oh.” Embarrassed, Shana glanced away. “Of course.”
“I wish the base were closer,” Jazmine muttered.
“Everett isn’t that far and with light duty, I’ll have more time to spend with you.”
“Exactly how soon do you have to leave this afternoon?” Jazmine pressed. “Couldn’t you please, please have your meeting tomorrow?”
This kid wasn’t easily put off, Shana thought. While she was more than ready to usher Adam Kennedy out the door, her niece was practically begging him to stay.
“It’s not really up to me. I’ve got to go soon, but I’ll visit as often as I can.”
“He’s busy, I’m sure,” Shana said before his words sank into her consciousness. He’d be back…often. In other words, she’d better get used to having him around, and judging by that smirk, he intended to smile at her some more. Oh, great.
“As often as you can?” Jazz repeated. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll make sure I’m here at least once a week to check up on my favorite girl.”
Instead of shouting with happiness, Jazmine hung her head. “Only once a week?”
Once a week? That often? Shana’s reaction was just the opposite. As far as she was concerned, weekly visits were far too frequent.
Ali’s little sister seemed oversensitive, Adam observed with some amusement as Shana returned to the ice-cream counter. That wasn’t the only thing he’d noticed, either. She was beautiful with classic features, dark hair and eyes and a face he found utterly appealing. Ali was a beautiful woman, too, but in a completely different way. Although both had dark brown hair and eyes, the resemblance stopped there. Shana was the taller of the two and model-thin, whereas Ali had more flesh on her. If he were ever to say that out loud, she’d no doubt be insulted, but it was the truth. Ali wasn’t overweight by any means, just rounded in all the right places. In his opinion, the little sister could stand to gain a few pounds. He wasn’t sure why he was concentrating on the physical, because his reaction to Shana was much more complex than that. He was attracted to her. Period. He liked what he saw and he liked what he didn’t see—what he sensed about her. Attraction was indefinable, more about the sum of a person than his or her parts. People called it chemistry, sparks, magic, all sorts of vague things. But whatever you called it, the attraction was obviously there.
Something else was obvious. She felt it, too. And she didn’t want to. In fact, she seemed determined to make sure he knew that. He didn’t go around ravishing young women, willing or unwilling, but he definitely got a kick out of her reaction to him. He couldn’t keep from grinning as he headed into the heavy freeway traffic on I-5 North.
On second thought, he might be overreacting. Perhaps it was all those musings about his lack of female companionship following his release from the hospital. Pain could do that to a man. Maybe he was wrong about Shana’s interest in him; maybe he’d simply been projecting his own attraction and—Damn, this was getting much too complicated.
That same evening, when Adam logged on to the Internet, he discovered two messages from Ali. In the first, she was eager to know if he’d made contact with Jazmine; in the other, she asked if he’d be able to give her sister a break now and then. He immediately e-mailed back that he’d seen Jazz and everything seemed to be fine with her and Shana. He also said he’d visit as often as he could. Several questions regarding Shana went through his mind, but he didn’t ask them, not wanting Ali to get the wrong impression. He also feared she’d relay his interest to her sister—and he just wasn’t ready for that.
An hour later, his phone rang. It was Jazmine, who spoke in a whisper.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In the closet.” She was still whispering.
“What’s the problem?” So Jazmine wanted to talk to him without her aunt listening in. Interesting.
“I hate it here and—oh, Uncle Adam, it’s just so good to see someone I know.”
Adam wished he could be there to wrap his arm around the girl’s thin shoulders. “It’ll get better.” He didn’t mean to sound trite, but he couldn’t come up with anything else to say. “Didn’t you tell me you’d made friends with those two girls who took your backpack?”
“Yeah, I guess, but it isn’t like California. Seattle isn’t like anyplace I’ve been. I miss my mom and…I just don’t like it here.”
“I feel that way whenever I’ve got a new duty assignment,” he said, wanting to comfort her and not knowing how. “I’m in a new work environment myself and to be honest I’d much rather be in Hawaii. It’s the perfect duty station. But you do get used to wherever you are, Jazz….”
“I just want to be with my mom,” Jazmine said, sounding small and sad. “I wouldn’t care where it was.”
“Are you getting along with your aunt?”
Jazmine hesitated. “She tries, and I appreciate everything she does, I really do, but she doesn’t know that much about kids.” As if she felt bad about criticizing her aunt, the girl added, “It’s not as bad as it was on Monday, but…”
Adam wanted to continue asking questions about Shana, but he preferred not to be obvious about it. “She seems nice.”
“She is, but she’s got issues, you know.”
It was difficult for Adam not to laugh outright at Jazmine’s solemn tone. “What kind of issues?” he asked gravely.
Jazmine snickered. “Where would you like me to start? She has this old boyfriend that she dumped or he dumped her—I don’t know which—but she won’t even say his name. I heard her talking to Mom, and every time she got close to mentioning his name, she called him that-man-I-used-to-date. Is that ridiculous or what?”
Adam murmured a noncommittal reply.
“That’s not all. Shana used to have a regular job, a really good one for a drug company. Mom said she made fabulous money, but she quit after she broke up with this guy. Then she bought the ice-cream parlor. She doesn’t know a thing about ice cream or pizza or anything else.”
Still, Adam had to admire her entrepreneurial spirit. “She seems to be doing all right.”
“That’s only because she phones the former owners ten times a day, and I’m not exaggerating. She finally figured out she can’t do everything on her own and she hired a lady to come in during the afternoons to help her. I’m only nine-going-on-ten, and I figured that out before she did.” Jazmine stopped abruptly, as if something had just occurred to her. “You’re not attracted to her or anything, are you?”
Adam relaxed in his chair and crossed his ankles. “Well…I think she’s kinda cute.”
“No, no, no!” Jazmine said, more loudly this time. “I was afraid this would happen. This is terrible!”
Adam loved the theatrics. “What is?”
“Shana,” Jazmine cried as if it should all be perfectly logical. “What about Mom? If you’re going to fall in love with anyone, make it my mom. She needs you, and you’d be a great stepdad.”
“Jazmine,” he said, the amusement suddenly gone. “I think the world of your mother. She’s a wonderful woman, and I love her dearly, but—”
He had no idea how to put this without upsetting her. “Your mother and I, well…”
“You love her like a sister,” Jazmine finished for him. She sounded resigned and not particularly surprised.
Adam almost wished he could fall in love with Ali. Perhaps if he’d met her before Peter did, things would’ve been different. But he hadn’t, and now it was impossible to think of Ali in any other way.
“That’s pretty astute of you,” he said.
“What’s astute?”
“Smart.”
Jazmine sighed heavily. “Not really. I said something about you to Mom, and what she said is she loves you like a brother.”
So it was a mutual feeling, which was a relief. “Did your mother tell you she was ready for another relationship?” he asked.
“I think she is,” Jazmine replied after a thoughtful moment. “But I don’t know if she knows it.” She hesitated, and he could almost see her frown of concentration
. “Mom’s been different the last few months.” She seemed to be analyzing the situation as she spoke. “She’s less sad,” Jazmine went on. “We talk about Dad a lot, and Mom laughs now and she’s willing to do things and go places again. I guess someone mentioned that to the Navy, because they decided to give her sea duty.”
“I’m grateful your mother’s feeling better about life. When the time’s right, she’ll meet someone special enough to be your stepdad.”
“But it won’t be you.”
Adam heard the sadness in her voice and regretted it. “It won’t be me,” he said quietly.
“You are attracted to Shana though, right?”
“Maybe.” That was all he’d admit. He found himself wondering about the man Shana had recently dumped or been dumped by.
“So this guy she used to go out with—”
“They were engaged, I think, but she won’t talk about it.” There was a pause. “She didn’t get a ring, though.”
Engaged? Even an unofficial engagement suggested this had been a serious and probably long-term relationship. Which could explain why Shana had seemed so skittish.
“Are you gonna ask her out, Uncle Adam?”
Adam wasn’t prepared to make that much of a commitment, not yet, anyway. “Uh, we’ll see.”
“I think she’d say yes,” Jazmine said brightly. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Some women seem to need a man in their lives, but…” His voice trailed off; he wasn’t sure how to complete that thought.
Jazmine muttered a comment he couldn’t hear.
“Pardon?” he said.
“Just remember, she’s got issues—lots and lots of issues.”
Adam managed to stifle a chuckle. “I’ll do my best to keep that in mind. Listen, Jazz, do you feel okay now?”
“Yeah…I guess I should come out before Shana finds me in here. Oh!”
That small cry was followed by some muffled words, but he caught the drift of what was happening. Shana had just discovered where Jazmine had taken the phone.