A Kiss Too Late. Ellen James
anyone judging or dissecting or analyzing her plans until they were a little more substantial, a little more shaped.
Now Jen glanced over to where her two great-uncles sat together on a wooden bench among the delphiniums. They looked so…old. They were both officially retired, although they still spent long hours at the offices of Hillard Enterprises, keeping an eye on things. It had to be difficult for them, knowing that the family business must pass into younger hands. Worst of all, there were no Hillard heirs to take over. William had never married; Thomas had gone through two marriages and a few volatile love affairs without producing any progeny. Jen had never been able to envision a career in shipping, and she’d supplied no children who could eventually do the job.
The familiar guilt swirled over Jen, the stifling sense that the whole burden of the Hillard name rested on her, and that she had failed to carry it. She’d refused to have kids with Adam, she’d divorced him, she’d gone off to New York to pursue her own idea of happiness… By Hillard standards, she’d been amazingly selfish. Yet her own choice had seemed clear. She could either continue being selfish, or suffocate–
“Don’t look so disgusted with your great-uncles,” Adam murmured at her elbow. “If Thomas pokes his nose into your life, he’s just hoping for some excitement. Not to mention the fact that he genuinely cares about you, Jen. And William…William is very concerned that someone in New York might hurt your feelings. You know how sensitive he is about artistic rejection.”
Oh, yes, poor Uncle William and the novel no one would publish. It was a famous family story, although William himself refused to talk about it anymore. Jen suspected, however, that William still guarded that manuscript somewhere, the pages moldering away in a desk drawer or ancient filing cabinet, a constant symbol of his failure. William hated rejection of any kind, and somehow he’d seemed the most hurt of anyone when Jen had left for New York.
Damn. Jen had been afraid it would be like this coming back to Newport, all the old guilt and the old tenderness taking her over. Because no matter what, she truly did love her great-uncles and her mother. She cared about them and worried about them and wanted desperately for all three to be happy and well. She just couldn’t live with them.
“You don’t need to appeal to my better sentiments,” she told Adam in a low voice. “I’m not completely unfeeling, you know. It’s just that– Don’t you realize, Adam? For the first time in my life, for the very first time, I’m doing something on my own, without help from my family, from you, from anyone.” She wondered at this sudden impulse to explain things to him. How would he possibly understand? Adam stood here now, stroking his mustache in a judicious manner as he observed her. It was a disconcerting gesture on his part–first of all, because it gave her the unaccountable desire to reach out her fingers and stroke his luxuriant mustache herself. That was distracting enough. But Adam really did seem to be contemplating her in judgmental fashion, like a professor wondering how to bring a recalcitrant student into line. It put Jen immediately on the defensive, giving her even more knots of tension in her shoulders.
“I can’t figure it out,” Adam said after a moment. “All those years of ours together and I never once suspected that you wanted to be an actress. How could something like that slip by me? Just tell me that.”
Jen folded her arms. “It annoys you, doesn’t it? Finding out that something about me was outside your control. But it’s not that simple, Adam. It’s not like I went around all the time wishing I could be an actress and hiding the wish from you. For such a long while I pushed the whole idea away. I mean, it seemed so foolish, so impossible. I’d never acted in my life. I had no reason to believe it was something I could do…” Her voice trailed off. Once again, she was explaining too much to Adam. It made her feel more foolish than ever, but somehow she had to finish.
“It wasn’t until…until our marriage got into serious trouble that I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life. And that was when I knew I had to give it a shot. I had to see if I could be an actress. I had to know I’d tried at least. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying.” She didn’t mention the immense insecurities about the endeavor that assaulted her every day–every minute, really, if she was honest. But she was going ahead. She could be proud of that much.
Adam continued to study her. “You’ve been away from me a year,” he murmured. “An entire year, all that time attending acting classes and going to auditions. But your life is still a mystery to me. I don’t know what you’re doing to support yourself. I don’t even know if there’s a new man in your life.”
Jen flushed. She could feel the heat rising through her body, reaching her face, staining her cheeks. More confusion churned inside her. She simply could not admit the truth about that to Adam. In the year she’d been in New York, she hadn’t been with any other man. Oh, she’d gone on a few dates, that sort of thing, but nothing serious. And that was part of the problem. No doubt she needed to be with another man, someone who could erase the memory of Adam’s kisses, the memory of Adam’s caresses….
Jen felt her flush deepen, and she had to glance away from Adam. She was thirty-two years old, and yet she had known only one lover in her life, one love. No wonder Adam still had such power over her senses. But she hadn’t met anyone in New York who attracted her the way Adam did. It was a hopeless circle. Jen almost laughed thinking about it, even though it wasn’t a particularly humorous situation.
“So I’m being nosy,” Adam admitted, when she didn’t answer him. “So I’ll stop. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
This was a surprise–Adam’s backing off before he obtained what he wanted. Jen glanced at him suspiciously, but it seemed at last the rehearsal was starting. The groom had reappeared, the violinists and cellist had finally set up, Jen’s mother looked comparatively more composed, and Reverend Kiley had opened his prayer book with a flourish.
As best man and maid of honor, Adam and Jen were obliged to walk down the aisle together, the aisle in this case being the flagstone walk that traversed the length of the garden. Twelve years ago, Jen had walked down this exact same path in her beaded silk wedding gown, a great-uncle ready on either side to give her away.
“Steady,” Adam said, as if reading her thoughts. He placed his hand under her elbow. “Remember, you’re not the one getting married in two days. You don’t have any reason to be nervous this time around.”
“I’m not nervous,” she muttered back. “Not in the least.” Jen stared straight ahead and saw the pastor smiling nostalgically at her and Adam. Reverend Kiley, after all, had been the one to perform their wedding ceremony all those years ago. How many other memories would assault Jen before this rehearsal was over?
Just then she heard a beeping noise, as if her own agitated pulse had suddenly acquired sound. The noise, however, was coming from Adam. He had one of those obnoxious little beepers, it seemed, heralding some important phone call.
Adam frowned, but he excused himself to use the telephone inside the church. The rehearsal came to an awkward halt, and Jen reflected wryly that she’d just been abandoned while walking down the aisle.
Adam returned a few moments later. He glanced at Jen and then at the rest of the wedding party. “I’m very sorry, but there’s something of an emergency at the newspaper. I’ll have to drive into Boston. Please go on without me. I’ll have Jen fill me in on what I miss.”
All Jen could do was stare at him. She saw the expression on his face, the focused intensity that always came to him whenever he spoke about his newspaper. So things hadn’t changed over this past year–not at all, it seemed. Adam couldn’t take even a day or two off without the Boston Standard intruding.
He gazed at Jen for another minute or so, his expression growing enigmatic. But then he turned, striding away, going out through the garden gate–and vanishing from her sight.
CHAPTER FIVE
A DAM COULD TELL that something was wrong with Russ Billington. He could tell that, not by looking