Plain Jane Macallister

There was no purpose to be served by tormenting herself with the long list of Mark’s accusations. He believed that she had never loved him at all, which wasn’t true. It wasn’t.

She had never stopped loving the Mark Maxwell she had known when they were teenagers. She’d hidden in her cocoon of fat and inside her house, and when she became too lonely she’d reach within herself for that love, wrap it around her like a warm, fuzzy blanket as she relived the memories of what she’d shared with Mark.

But those days of hiding were over. She’d rented an office downtown two months ago and was a successful businesswoman who greeted the public with new confidence and self-worth.

And Trevor, her sweet, darling son, took his dessert to his room each night so Emily wouldn’t have to watch him eat it while she wasn’t having any of the calorie-laden treat. She was, indeed, stepping out of the gloomy shadows into the brilliant sunshine, just as her grandfather had wished her to do. If she didn’t feel like smiling, by golly, she didn’t smile.

Everything had been going so well, Emily thought, as she swept back the blankets on the bed. Until now. Until Mark had reappeared in her life and turned it upside down. An angry Mark. A handsome and self-assured Mark, who was so intimidating and made her feel fat and sloppy, vulnerable and…

It was as though, Emily mused, taking her nightie from beneath the pillow and starting toward the bathroom, Mark had somehow pricked her with an invisible pin, creating a tiny hole where the self-confidence and self-esteem that she’d struggled so terribly hard to achieve were slowly escaping, and she didn’t know how to keep it from happening.

Emily stopped at the bedroom door, then went to the dresser and took out the mirror again, staring at her frowning reflection.

“Get a grip, Emily MacAllister,” she ordered herself.

She would not, she vowed, allow Mark to destroy the Emily she had become. No. She’d square her shoulders, lift her…darn it, her double chin, and decide with him how best to reveal his identity to her…their son.

There would be no more begging, pleading, acting like the child she had been when she had loved him. She didn’t love him now, for heaven’s sake, so her emotions, her heart, would not get in the way of making the proper decisions for Trevor.

No, she had no feelings whatsoever for the Mark Maxwell who had returned to Ventura after so many years.

None at all.

Did she?

Three

Honey instead of sugar in his sun tea.

“Damn it, Maxwell,” Mark said to the dark room, “give it a rest.”

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed in his hotel suite and groaned as he saw it was after two o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t even been able to doze since attempting to sleep hours before.

His mind, Mark thought angrily, was a jumbled maze of disturbing information he’d gathered while at Emily’s house earlier that night.

“Yeah, Emily,” he said, dragging both hands down his face, “I still like honey in my sun tea.”

Even though he’d lashed out at her when she’d asked him that, Mark thought, he’d known from the look on Emily’s face and from the way she’d flinched when he’d yelled at her, that she hadn’t been playing tricky games. Her asking him that question had been an honest reaction to her knowing he was coming to dinner.

And Emily had remembered after all these years that he liked honey in his sun tea.

And for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, that fact warmed him to the very depths of his soul.

“Ah, I’m losing it,” Mark said, dropping his arms heavily onto the bed.

He was on mental overload, that was for damn sure. He had nowhere to put all that he’d discovered since returning to Ventura less than twenty-four hours ago.

He had a son.

Trevor MacAllister, who from the moment he was born should have been Trevor Maxwell.

It was time, it was long overdue, for Trevor to know the truth.

Yeah, okay, he could see Emily’s point that a news flash like that shouldn’t be dropped like a bomb on a kid of that age. But the existence of Trevor, plus the package of lies that Emily had told her family wasn’t all that was keeping him from getting the sleep he so desperately needed.

No, it was more than that.

It was Emily, herself.

Mark sighed.

Emily, his mind echoed. She was still so beautiful, so…her. In all his travels he’d never seen brown eyes as enchanting as Emily’s. He’d never seen lips so perfectly shaped, so kissable. He’d never seen hands so delicate that they fluttered gracefully in the air like exquisite butterfly wings when she became animated. He’d never seen—

“You have three seconds to knock it off, Maxwell,” Mark said aloud, anger and frustration making his voice gritty. “Or I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”

Mark rolled onto his stomach, punched his pillow with far more force than necessary, then total exhaustion finally claimed him and he fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep.

“Why are you putting flowers in a vase on the table, Mom?” Trevor said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to do that when a guy comes to dinner. It’s lame. Girl stuff, you know what I mean?”

“Company is company,” Emily said, peering into the oven. “I’m simply setting an attractive table because we have a guest sharing our meal.” She straightened and looked at Trevor. “You, sir, need to go take a shower and put on clean clothes before Mark gets here. Shoo. And shampoo your hair, too. If you don’t get the chlorine from the pool out of it, it’s going to turn green.”

“Really? Cool.”

“Trevor!”

“I’m going, I’m going,” he said, stomping across the room. “Sure is a bunch of big deal about some old guy you used to go to school with. Geez. You’d think he was somebody important, for crying out loud.”

As Trevor disappeared from view, Emily leaned back against the counter and sighed.

Important? Mark Maxwell? she thought. No way, Trevor. The man is only your father, who you believe is dead, an angel in heaven. The man who intends to inform you of his true identity in the very near future.

“Oh, what a mess,” Emily said, pressing her fingertips to her temples as she felt a painful headache beginning to throb.

She glanced down at the pretty border print of bright flowers around the bottom of the white summer dress she wore, then smoothed the full skirt over what she knew were her much-too-broad hips.

She’d considered wearing a long-sleeved dress but that would have been uncomfortably warm for a July evening, she mused. So there she was in a square-cut neckline and no sleeves, chubby arms displayed for all to see. For Mark to see.

“So?” she said, pushing away from the counter. “There’s just more of me to hug, that’s all. Not that there’s a long line of admirers panting to hug me but…oh, Emily, just put a cork in it.”

She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and saw at the same moment that the doorbell rang that it was exactly six o’clock.

Typical Mark, she thought, leaving the kitchen. He had a thing about being punctual. She’d learned to be ready to go when he arrived at her house to pick her up for a date because if she kept him sitting in the living room he got antsy and out of sorts.

He’d once stood in the rain on her front porch, getting soaked to the skin, because he thought it would be as rude to be early as it would to be late.

At the door, Emily hesitated, drew a steadying breath, then opened the door.

Oh, cripe, she thought dismally, Mark was just so gorgeous, so blatantly masculine…. Black slacks, a trendy gray shirt with no collar and— Why didn’t he have a cowlick anymore? A person was born with a cowlick, and it was there for life. You couldn’t just decide not to have a cowlick anymore, so…