Sex for Beginners Box Set(11)

Self-condemnation welled in her chest, choking her. God, she was lonely. She glanced at the basket holding Jason’s accumulating mail and before she could change her mind, picked up the phone and dialed his cell number. While his phone rang, she reminded herself she had legitimate business to discuss with him and inhaled to compose herself. Should she try to sound perky, or detached? Which, she wondered, would best convey the notion that she’d moved on and was merely tending to the pesky loose ends of her marriage?

Jason answered before she could decide. “Gemma? What’s up?” His voice was even and polite, as if he were talking to anyone…or no one.

A sharp pain struck behind her breastbone.

“Gemma? Are you okay?”

His thinly veiled irritation roused her from her wounded daze. “Sure,” she said, sounding amazingly normal. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you to answer. I was planning to leave you a voice message.” She impressed herself with her improvisation.

“What about?”

“Your mail, and some other things you left. What should I do with them?”

“Is it anything important?” He sounded as if he was walking somewhere, juggling the phone.

She hardened her jaw. “Not to me. Some magazines, golf stuff.”

“You can toss it as far as I’m concerned. I took everything that meant something to me.”

Right between the eyes. She blinked, then nodded. “Okay, then.”

“Did you tell your parents yet?” For the first time, she detected a note of sadness in his voice. It made her wonder if he’d prolonged the marriage for their sake.

“Mom called yesterday—she’d heard from another source. Did your office issue a statement?”

“No, we decided it was best just to ignore it and answer questions as they arise.”

Ignore it. “I…” She almost faltered. “I have phone messages from several nonprofits asking me to help with their upcoming fund-raisers, on your behalf, of course.”

“Divert them to my secretary. She’ll take care of it, make appropriate excuses.”

She wondered if kind old Margery knew that, after ten years, Jason still referred to her by her position instead of her name. Had he previously treated his wife with similar disrespect when talking to others?

“Is that all?” he asked, clearly already thinking about something else. “Do you need my help with something, Gemma?”

“No,” she murmured. “I’m fine.”

She hung up the phone quietly, in opposition to the fact that her heart was shattering all over again. She straightened her shoulders and exhaled. She wasn’t fine yet, but she was going to work harder at it. Somehow she was going to find herself again, the woman she’d been before meeting Jason.

While she ate a bowl of cereal, she thumbed through the yellow pages for the names of companies to service her air conditioner. The first two she called were three weeks out on appointments, the third could come within a week at a price that took her breath away. She hung up the phone and decided that the sultry indoor temperatures were tolerable after all, at least until she achieved full-time gainful employment.

She checked her watch—8:15 a.m. Jean at the employment agency had said she’d call by eight o’clock if the museum needed Gemma, so it looked as if she needed to make alternate plans for her day. Hopefully by tomorrow, word of mouth about The History of Sex exhibit would have spread and the three newly hired guides would be booked solid.

She sipped the last of her coffee while standing over the sink, sneaking glances next door to see if Chev’s truck had appeared. It hadn’t. She decided she’d take advantage of the lower morning temps and work in her neglected yard.

She went to the garage and plucked her wide-brimmed straw sun hat from a hook, retrieving the floral garden gloves that she stored inside the crown. She hesitated before putting on the protective gear. The last time she’d worked with her flowers and plants, her life had been bumping along fine…at least, as far as she’d known. Jason had arrived home late, as usual, and she was still thinning the daylilies, having lost track of time. He had been irritated with her, she recalled, because she hadn’t started dinner. And even after she’d reported spending most of the day volunteering at a local community center (representing his name and office), he had left her with the distinct feeling that she wasn’t living up to her end of the bargain as a political wife, not contributing enough to his happiness.

She had been stunned and hurt, but had attributed it to postelection stress. In hindsight, it had been a warning of what was to come only a few days later.

She donned the hat and gloves, then pulled the lawn mower from the corner and gathered her bucket of gardening tools. A narrow door in the rear led to the backyard and patio. The wrought-iron table and chairs, with floral pillows and matching umbrella had been left by the previous owners and Gemma imagined a happy couple sitting there having an evening cocktail and winding down from the day. On occasion, she had brought reading materials out here to enjoy under the shade of the umbrella, but she couldn’t recall Jason ever joining her.

As she picked up the festive pillows to rid them of leaves and debris, she wondered if Jason had decided to leave even before they’d bought this house…and then realized with jarring clarity that he probably had. He’d seemed detached throughout the buying and moving process, and other than setting up his office and staking claim to half the closet space and enough room in the garage for his golf equipment, he’d shown very little interest in either the house or the neighborhood. Because he’d known his days there were numbered?

From the patio she could see the back of the Spanish-mission-styled house next door. The tile walkways were broken and, in some places, missing altogether, and the yard and landscaping were overgrown. But other than a cracked and peeling oval-shaped pool, long since drained, the house itself looked to be in better shape from this side. She idly wondered what color Chev planned to paint the house and if he planned to restore architectural details. Probably not, since he’d made it clear he was flipping the house when it was finished.

The man would be gone within a month, and forgotten.

With a mental shake, she reminded herself that she had too much to do around her own house to be thinking about the goings-on of the man next door. Especially since he had likely dismissed her from his mind.

The grass was deep from neglect, necessitating two passes with the mower, one on a high setting, and one lower to the ground. But the physical exertion felt good, and the aroma of fresh-cut grass never failed to lift her mood. Before long, the tiny back and side yards were neatly shorn, and she had worked up both a sweat and a powerful thirst.

Retreating to the relatively cooler temperatures of the kitchen, she wet a paper towel and dabbed at her forehead and neck. From the refrigerator she retrieved a bottle of tea. Hearing a vehicle arriving next door, she glanced out the window over the sink to see a large flatbed truck back onto her neighbor’s property. Its cargo appeared to be columns—many of them, in different shapes and sizes. The driver sounded his horn, then jumped down from the cab. When Chev Martinez didn’t appear, the driver gamboled to the door but still received no answer. He returned to the truck and appeared to check a clipboard against information stamped on the bottom of the columns. After much head-scratching, he looked utterly confused.

Finally, he set aside the clipboard and unloaded a column that caused Gemma to frown—it was clearly Corinthian, probably not the style that Chev had ordered to replace the ones that had once supported the arched entry porch. After a few seconds’ hesitation, she went outside and walked next door, signaling the driver.

“Maybe I can help?”

“Are you the owner?”

“Uh, no. But I know something about the house, so if you’re confused about which columns to leave, I might be able to offer some guidance.”

He looked relieved. “That’d be great. If I leave the wrong ones, I can’t come back until next week. The numbers are smudged, so it could be any of three different kinds I got here.”

Gemma looked over the wood columns stacked on the flatbed like thick slabs of lumber and pointed out the pair that Chev had likely ordered. “The twisted ones.”

The man unloaded the columns in a cleared spot alongside the driveway, then came back to where she stood and extended his clipboard. “Will you sign for these, lady?”

She hesitated, suddenly nervous at having made a decision about something that was none of her business. She was saved from responding by the arrival of a silver pickup truck. “Here’s the owner now.”

Chev pulled up next to the bigger vehicle and swung down from the driver’s seat. His gaze swept over Gemma and she was suddenly conscious of her sweat-soaked, stained work clothes. Remembering the shuttered window, her heart thudded in her chest.

“Is there a problem?” Chev asked.

The man pointed to the column he’d first taken off the truck. “Your neighbor here saw me unloading this column.” Then he gestured to the pair he’d unloaded. “She said those were probably the ones you ordered instead.”

Chev’s gaze flitted back to her, molten in his appraisal. “She’s right.”