Up Close and Personal. Fern Michaels
least you could do, Jake, is show me the courtesy of listening to me. Let’s not create a scene. I’d also like it if you’d lower your voice.”
“Personally, Pop, I don’t give a good rat’s ass what you’d like. If you’re worried about how loud I’m talking, let’s not talk about it at all, and there won’t be a scene. Look, Pop, I understand you have feelings for Mrs. Windsor, have always had feelings for that woman even when Mom was still alive. I didn’t like it back then, and I still don’t like it. You really don’t want to go there with me. Maybe she can jerk your strings, but she sure as hell isn’t going to jerk mine. If you promised her my help, rescind that offer right now. I wouldn’t tell that woman what time it was if she was standing in a dark room. I think I’m going to go to Burger King after all. See ya, Mister Forrest.” Jake was greased lightning as he bolted from the chair and left the dining room.
Rifkin stared at his son’s back as he weaved his way through the tables to the exit. He’d known an explosion was going to happen, so why had he arranged the dinner? Because Jake was right—Rifkin had always been in love with Sarabess Windsor and could deny her nothing.
Now he had to concentrate on eating the dinner that was about to be put in front of him. Food that he knew would stick in his throat. Still, he couldn’t give the other diners something to speculate about. He looked up and smiled at the waiter as he set his food in front of him. “Jake had to leave. I’ll take his dinner to go and drop it off later.”
“No problem, Mr. Forrest.”
“I’ll have another beer if you don’t mind.”
“That’s not a problem, either, Mr. Forrest.”
Somehow or other, Rifkin managed to chew his way through his dinner. He wasted no time with dessert or after-dinner coffee. He stuck some bills under the saltshaker, picked up the to-go bag, and left the restaurant. His next stop: Sarabess and Windsor Hill. To report his failure—a word that wasn’t in Sarabess’s vocabulary.
Chapter 3
Jake did precisely what he had told his father he would: headed straight for Burger King on Bacon Ridge Road. He ordered two Whoppers, a Big Double Fish, fries, a milk shake, and a Coke before he headed to a parking space where he chewed his way through his fast-food dinner. He really had to stop eating this crap even though they said the burgers were flame-broiled, he thought, continuing to chow down on the fast food.
Now he had two things to think about tonight (three, if you counted Amanda Pettijohn): Trinity Henderson, the little girl from his past; and Sarabess Windsor, the woman his mother and his aunt Mitzi had hated with a passion.
As Jake munched his way through one of the two Whoppers he thought about his mother, who had died during his senior year in high school. Nola Forrest had been the sweetest, gentlest, kindest woman in the world. To his knowledge, his mother had never said an unkind word to or about another living soul. She’d loved all children and animals. He knew for a fact that she’d loved him with all her heart.
Their gardens, which his mother had planted and tended, had been written up in every Southern magazine in print. She’d taken him and his friends camping and didn’t mind sleeping in a tent, and she’d laughed about the creepy-crawly things that abounded in all campgrounds. She’d taught him to drive, taught him how to swing a baseball bat. She’d played tennis with him at least twice a week. Even though they’d had a cook and a housekeeper, his mother had cooked all his favorite foods one night a week. They’d laugh and giggle over the food that wasn’t good for them, but she’d justify it by saying they would double up on vegetables the rest of the week. The brownies that she made every Saturday morning were the best.
But she knew. How could she not have known? Everyone in town knew that Rifkin Forrest had a thing going on with Sarabess Windsor. However, no one in town, and that included his mother, knew if that thing had ever been acted upon. Jake thought it had, but he couldn’t prove it. Once, during his sophomore year, he’d gotten the courage to actually discuss with his mother what he considered his father’s indiscretion. She hadn’t put him off. Instead, she’d said rumors should never be repeated. Her eyes had been so sad when she said it. Oh, yes, she knew.
When she’d gotten sick, she’d changed her will, leaving the entire Granger fortune, except the mansion, to him, in a trust that he couldn’t tap until he was thirty-five years of age. The mansion had come to him when he turned thirty. The remainder of the robust trust would be available to him in ten months. His father had been stunned and actually started proceedings to contest the will, but he hadn’t followed through once he read a letter his mother’s attorney handed him hours after the reading of the will. His father had never divulged the contents of the letter, nor had Jake asked. Things had changed after that, though. There was less spending money, his first car had been secondhand. He’d gone to a second-tier college, and his allowance had been meager. He’d worked to have extra spending money.
To say he and his father had a close, warm relationship would be a lie. They worked in the same office, had dinner occasionally, but they didn’t really socialize. They never called one another just to chat—there was nothing to chat about. As far as Jake knew, his father never went to the cemetery to visit or leave flowers on his mother’s grave.
His father still lived in the stately historical mansion that had once belonged to the Grangers of Crestwood. He himself had never gone back to the mansion after he graduated from law school. Instead, after his time in Albany, he found a three-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Crestwood that suited him just fine because the owner of the complex said they accepted dogs. Not that he had a dog, but he was going to get one. Plus, he liked the window boxes and the colorful striped awnings over the windows. The window boxes and the flowers reminded him of his mother. Each renter was responsible for the flowers, something he took seriously. His window boxes were the prettiest, he thought smugly. When he was finally settled, he was going to go to the SPCA and adopt a dog.
He’d furnished the entire apartment with secondhand furniture and a few antiques he’d picked up at garage sales. If he had anything to say about it, he would never set foot in his mother’s old home even though it now belonged to him.
Jake jammed the napkins and the leftovers from the Whoppers into the bag his food had come in. He slipped his car into gear, drove over to the trash can, and dumped the bag. “You can just kiss my ass, Sarabess Windsor,” he muttered as he waited for a break in traffic before swinging out onto South Main Street.
So much for Sarabess Windsor. Short and succinct. On to Amanda Pettijohn. No doubt she was ticked off big-time. He had to decide if ticking off the lovely beauty was important or not. In two seconds flat he decided that in the scheme of things it wasn’t important.
Jake buzzed on down the road, stopped for the light at Five Points, continuing on until he came to Tea Farm Road, where he made a left. He made several more turns before he brought his Mustang to a complete stop. He climbed out, briefcase in one hand, the fish fillet and milk shake in the other. He whistled for Elway, the resident cat that he and the others fed and took care of. Elway was disdainful and had no loyalty to any of the tenants. He went where the food was, the main reason he was so fat. No amount of enticing or cajoling could tempt the cat to come indoors. He would follow the tenants up the steps to their individual decks, where he would wait patiently for his food to be put onto a plate and his milk or water into a bowl. Battle-scarred Elway, one part of his ear missing, his tail limp and bedraggled, had six such arrangements.
Again, Jake whistled for the cat, who came on the run and followed Jake up the steps to his second-floor apartment. Jake opened the door and waited like he always did to see if Elway would follow him. He always left the door open in the hope the fat cat would venture indoors, but he never did. Today, however, Elway trotted indoors, looked around, then leaped up onto the tweedy-looking sofa that held a thousand different smells. Stunned, Jake made no move to close the door but reached for a dish and a little bowl in the cabinet. He crumbled up the fish filet and poured the milk shake into the bowl. He set them on the floor and waited to see what the cat would do. What a coup this was! He could hardly wait to tell his neighbors.