Read Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) for Free Online Page A

boat a mile long, and I can’t find half the stuff I need. Lanterns, for example – you’d think in a city this size I could find brass lanterns for a boat! Are you all right? How did the chieftain take your news?”
    “Badly.” She shrugged, smiled unconvincingly and asked, “Shouldn’t you be calling your boat a yacht?”
    “Too classy for me,” said her elegant cousin. “I’m a down-to-earth lady.” She shoveled a hefty fork full of salad into her dainty mouth. “Somehow, I thought you’d change your mind at the last minute. Tell me the details. How did the big scene go?”
    “As you say, it was a big scene… At first he thought I was blackmailing him for my holidays, then he accused me of taking a job with the competition. He offered me more money.”
    “Much more?” asked George curiously. “If he wanted you badly enough—”
    “We didn’t get into dollars and cents.” Jake’s angry, frustrated face was burned into her mind. “I said I was going sailing with you. He asked if I was going to marry you.”
    George choked on her lettuce.
    Jenny said defensively, “Well, I just said George.”
    “Your cousin George?”
    “No.” she shook her head, smiling slightly. “Just George.”
    “Oh!” George smiled, a piece of lettuce dangling just inches from her mouth. “Now why did you let him think that?”
    “What difference does it make who he thinks I’m with?”
    “He was jealous,” George decided with satisfaction.
    “Of course he wasn’t jealous!” Jenny flushed, remembering the feel of Jake’s eyes on her, the times when she’d looked up and seen his awareness of her as a woman. To George, she muttered, “He goes through women the way you go through shoes.” She shrugged. “I suppose there have been times when I could have been one of them.” That look in his eyes, almost as if he were daring her to let him get closer.
    “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
    “ No! ” she denied too swiftly.
    “Is that why you’re coming with me, Jenny? If you’re in love with him, you shouldn’t run away.”
    “It’s not that. It’s everything, everyone around me. I feel as if my whole life is shrinking, as if I’m watching everyone else’s lives. Wayne going to Saudi Arabia. Mom and Dad in the Caribbean. Chris Eglinton climbing his mountains.” And Jake and Monica.
    George shook her head, confused. “Chris— who?”
    “A documentary we’re doing,” Jenny explained, “He’s nobody, really, just another person doing his thing.”
    “So it’s Jenny’s turn?”
    “Yes.” She had to remember that. Jake was going to make this difficult for her, but she would just have to hold onto her determination to do her own thing for once. Jenny’s turn.
    She was in love with him, but surely it would fade, go away. She didn’t want to love him. Loving only brought pain…
    “I’ll see you next week,” she had said to Lance as he dropped her at her aunt’s house that last night.
    He’d nodded, saying nothing. She’d felt sudden fear. She’d flown into his arms, clinging, her intense young voice declaring, “I love you so much!” as if she were afraid he didn’t know.
    She’d never seen him again.
    She looked up from her memories, saw George watching her too intently.
    They had already arranged their schedule. Jenny would fly north the following Sunday, with George meeting her at the airport in a rental car.
    She wouldn’t see George again for a week. It was going to be a busy week, trying to get everything done for Jake before she left him. If she was busy enough, she might be able to avoid another confrontation scene with him.

    She stayed away all afternoon, working in the library, making phone calls from her cell phone. It was late by the time she went back to the studio.
    She looked for his car outside the office building, but didn’t see it. Still on the North Shore, or perhaps his lawyer had caught up with him for the signatures he needed. Since Jake had won