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

the award for his video on the Swiftsure Race, he’d been busier and busier, so flooded with commercial contracts that he could hardly stop and work on the exciting, creative projects that had been typical of the first four years Jenny worked with him.
    It had all happened together. The award. The flood of new commercial contracts. Hans being hired as Jake’s assistant. Jenny’s discontent .
    And Jake’s. He’d always been volatile, but Jenny was sure the commercial success of the last year had been bad for him. His time was increasingly taken up with petty details like scheduling and politics. There was less and less opportunity for him to do truly creative work. Yet he couldn’t seem to turn down a new contract, no matter how mundane. He accepted them, then handed the worst jobs to Jenny. He’d go nuts, thought Jenny, finishing the Madison series on his own.
    Hamburgers!
    She really had to get away, get some perspective, prove to herself that there was more to life than holding Jake’s spare cameras. Or watching Jake and Monica .
    She’d never thought he would marry any of the women he dated. Had he really shared his inner self with Monica? Jake the artist, the passionately caring man. Whenever she’d seen him with a woman, he’d seemed to hold some part of himself aside. Yet he’d let Jenny see the private part of him. Crazy, but she thought she knew things about him that no one else did. In some ways, she’d been closer to him than any of his women.
    Did Monica know that he’d cried the night his grandfather died? Jenny had been with him that night, sitting in the studio in the dark, listening to Jake share his memories of the old chief who had just died. Jenny had cried, too.
    It really was time she left, got away from him. She was becoming obsessed.
    She came into the studio feeling his presence, knowing he would be sitting at his desk. Heaven knew where his car was, but Jake was right here.
    He was staring at a mound of paperwork that had been growing over the last few weeks. His gaze shifted to her as she came in, but his face remained blank, as if he didn’t really see her.
    “Where were you?” he asked tonelessly.
    “The library.”
    “I thought you’d gone.”
    His eyes flickered to the coat rack where her umbrella still hung, down to her spare pair of shoes on the shoe rack. Whatever he said, he’d known she’d be back.
    She carried her armful of books and papers over to her desk, her back tense, aware of his eyes on her.
    Her ears must be supersensitive. She heard the thin lead of his pencil snap.
    Tension crept into his voice as he asked, “Exactly when are you planning to leave me?”
    She arranged the papers carefully, answered, “My plane leaves on Sunday afternoon.”
    “Your plane?“
    He clicked another lead down on his pencil. She sat down, finally looking across at him. His black hair covered his forehead; he was looking down, sketching something perhaps, though she thought he was just doodling. Another time she might have walked over to look. She slid open a drawer and placed her pens carefully in the slot where they belonged.
    “George’s boat is in Alaska. I’m flying to Alaska Sunday.”
    His pencil snapped again. He crumpled the paper and threw it into the trash basket beside his desk. “Will you have the preparations ready for the Eglinton film by then? And the Madison series?”
    “I think I’ll have Eglinton ready.” She kept her voice neutral. “You have to make some decisions about scheduling before I can go farther, but if we could hash those out tomorrow I can get all the reservations set up, supplies lists, and so forth. I can’t get Madison done – I’ll finish the film I was working on, but the last two will have to be done by someone else.”
    She waited for a storm of protest from him, but he said nothing, just turned back to his paperwork and proceeded to ignore her.
    So she went home and spent the evening dreading coming back to work the next morning,