Trust Me on This - Jennifer Crusie [51]
Alec was puzzled by the lack of lilt in her voice, but he was willing to play along. “Ah, but because of my keen sense of character, I could tell you were the deep intellectual kind of woman who wouldn’t be swayed by fancy restaurants with fancy prices.” He picked up the desserts from the room service tray, sat down on the bed next to her, and handed her a sundae.
“You were wrong.” Dennie stabbed her spoon through the whipped cream to the fudge. “I am easily swayed by fancy restaurants. Also by diamonds and gold. Particularly by diamonds and gold. Particularly today.”
She licked the fudge off her spoon, and Alec tightened beside her and then forced himself to relax. “So what happened this morning?” Alec slurped his own fudge and whipped cream.
“I got fired.” Dennie put her sundae on the table beside her, evidently not hungry after all. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the blank TV.
Alec stopped slurping. “Fired?”
“My boss warned me to stay away from Janice Meredith,” Dennie said, still staring at the TV. “So I did. Sort of. But for some reason, she had me fired anyway. My best guess was your aunt Victoria but Janice was mad before that.”
“Aunt Vic wouldn’t have you fired.”
“No,” Dennie said. “But she was going to talk to Janice for me this afternoon, and Janice might have decided that I was still harassing her. She decided something because she called the owner of the paper this morning.” She turned her head to look at Alec. “And that’s the end of my job.”
Alec slid closer and put his free arm around her, balancing his top-heavy sundae in the other hand. “So we’ll fix it.”
“No,” Dennie said. “I don’t think this one is going to fix. I don’t think I’m bouncing back from this one. In fact, I think I may even deserve this.”
“Hey.” Alec tightened his grip on her shoulders. “You don’t—”
“I’m thirty-four,” Dennie said. “It’s time I tried the hard stuff. That’s what this is, the hard stuff. This is the kind of experience that will make me smarter. I don’t want to bounce back the same. This is my chance to grow up. To be tough.”
“I like you soft,” Alec said, puzzled. “And I’ve never noticed you being particularly weak or afraid, and you’re sure as hell not a quitter—”
“I always have been.” Dennie stared at the TV again. “Afraid, I mean. You know, my best friend and I used to spend the first two weeks of every summer at her uncle’s farm. He had this big pond, almost a lake, and one side of it had this ledge hanging over it. It wasn’t much of a ledge, maybe ten, fifteen feet, but to a kid, it was high.”
“Okay,” Alec said, trying to follow her drift.
“Every summer, Patience would just plunge off that cliff, and I’d be too afraid until she’d say, ‘I’ll catch you. Jump, I’ll catch you.’ And she always did. And now I’m really going to jump, and she’s not going to be there.” She squinted at Alec. “That’s the only hard part. The rest of this, losing the job? That’s not so tough, really. I needed to leave that job anyway. So it’s scary, but good scary. It’s knowing Patience can’t catch me anymore because she’s got a husband to catch now. She can’t drop everything for me. I wouldn’t ask her to. I’m going to have to do the tough stuff alone.”
“No.” Alec paused, trying to think of the right thing to say. “You’re not alone.” Alec moved his hand from her shoulder to drape his arm around her neck, hauling her closer to him, his chin against her hair. “I can cover you until you’re ninety-six.”
“Ninety-six.” Dennie’s voice sounded flat, and Alec felt a clutch of fear; maybe she wasn’t going to come back from this one. After a moment, she pulled back from him and asked in the same flat voice, “Why ninety-six?”
Alec tilted her chin up until she was eye-to-eye with him. “Because when you’re ninety-six, I’ll be a hundred, and I’ll be too damn old to break your fall. Until then, I’ve got you covered.”
She swallowed, and the movement of her throat made him dizzy. He reached across her to put his sundae on the table and free up his hand