Beautiful Little Fools(75)

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JORDAN TURNED OFF the car in front of Jay’s house now, and I pushed away the memory of that other night, the last time I was here. Tom’s jealousy, his sudden craving for me. But all that was superseded by his need for this woman in the city, I supposed. Or else why had she called so many times last night during supper? He’d lied to me. He wasn’t done with her at all.

“What are we doing here, Jordie?” I sighed as I stared at Jay’s sprawling estate in front of us.

“It’ll make Tom awfully jealous. And serves him right after all those telephone calls through supper last night.”

“But Tom doesn’t even know we’re here,” I said.

Her face twisted a little, somewhere between a frown and a smirk, an expression I couldn’t quite place. “Well, I left a note on his desk to let him know exactly where I’ve taken you.”

“You’re positively wicked, Jordie.” But it warmed me a little to picture the look on Tom’s face when he walked into his study and read Jordan’s words.

Seeing Jay again was the last thing I felt like doing, and I wished Jordan and I could’ve simply taken a drive and then lied about it. I was about to suggest such a thing when Jay walked outside, came right up to the car. “Daisy!” he exclaimed, opening up my car door and tugging gently on my arm to pull me upright. “Come on in.”

“I’ll drive around and come back in an hour,” Jordan said. And then she sped off into the heat of the afternoon, abandoning me, before I could protest.

“I’m sorry to just drop in on you like this uninvited,” I said to Jay, suddenly feeling nervous to be here with just him. The last time we’d been all alone, at Nick’s house, I’d felt so powerless that it had sent me spinning in Tom’s study later that night. “I don’t know what Jordan was thinking. I could walk next door to visit Nick.”

“I won’t hear of it.” He grabbed my arm, as if to say that now that I was here, he would never let me go again. I shifted back, out of his grasp, uncomfortable. “I have your favorite tea,” he spoke quickly. “The kind you used to like back in Louisville.”

“Chamomile?” I asked. He nodded. It was really Rose’s favorite tea, not mine; she used to make it all the time for both of us, and the truth was I hadn’t drunk it in years. It tasted and smelled and reminded me entirely too much of her. “I’m really not… in the mood for tea,” I said. I eyed the path to Nick’s and fought the urge to break into a run. I wasn’t at all wearing the shoes for it.

“Well, we can have lemonade instead. Come on, we’ll sit out back. Reminisce about the good old times we had.” He stared at me, his eyes refusing to move from my face. And I supposed it was either that or stand out in the hot drive for the next hour waiting for Jordan to come back while he stared.

I relented and followed him into his house and through it, out onto the back veranda, and down the steps to his large sparkling pool.

“The water is the perfect temperature, and I’ve barely gotten to use it all summer,” he said. “We should go in!”

“I don’t have my swimsuit,” I said quickly. Though we were outside, surrounded by the woods on one side, the sound on the other, and a great big blue expanse of summer sky above us, I suddenly felt trapped. What had happened to the lemonade? The reminiscing?

Jay stared at me now, his eyes roaming my body, a little glassy like he was remembering the way every inch of my skin looked naked. I felt my face turning hot. Everything about Jay felt suffocating, all-consuming. He would push and push and wouldn’t stop until he claimed me, would he?

But then he looked away, bent down, removed his shoes and socks, rolled up the bottoms of his pink trousers, and walked toward the water. “Come on, Daisy. We’ll just put our feet in.”

Sitting at the edge of the pool with his trousers rolled, he looked innocent, like a little boy. I slipped my own shoes off and dipped a toe in carefully—he was right, it was the perfect temperature. I let my feet sink in next to his, and I sat down next to him, swirling the water gently with my toes.

He moved his foot closer and tapped his toe gently against mine. “Do you remember when I climbed up into your bedroom in Louisville? The way we felt when we were together.” Jay covered my foot with his foot, moved closer and trailed his fingers across my knee.

“Oh, Jay.” I slithered away from him, splashing a little water. “I’m no longer the girl you knew in Louisville. And you’re not that man, either. You have so much to offer now. I bet there are a thousand women in New York who’d want to be with you.”

He moved closer to me, undeterred. He put his fingers on my thigh and gripped hard so now I couldn’t slither farther. “But Daisy,” he said, squeezing my thigh through my dress, “I only want you. All I’ve ever wanted was you. And you want me too. I know you still do.”

It would be so easy to surrender to him, to kiss him, and let him pull off my dress and to dive headfirst into his pool. How easy it would be to betray Tom the way he had betrayed me, over and over and over again. How easy it would be to ruin him with the knowledge that I’d been with another man. When Jay leaned in all at once, kissed me hard, on the mouth, I was still thinking about Tom’s red-hot jealousy. And I let him kiss me for a minute without pulling back.