Lead Me On. Victoria Dahl

eyeing me for weeks. You can bet I’ll be talking to her tomorrow.”

      He’d meant to hurt her, obviously, but all Jane felt was relief. And a fleeting hope that the new legal assistant preferred friction over thrust. “I’m sorry,” she said one more time as she grabbed her purse and stood. “I thought it would be better to end things before I met your parents. Do you want me to pay my half of the bill?”

      “For Christ’s sake, just get the hell out!” Greg snatched up his water and took a gulp, not meeting her eyes at all.

      Had he been in love with her? She didn’t think so. He looked more furious than hurt. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay with a man she wasn’t attracted to. “Goodbye.”

      She waited for an answer, but none came, so Jane turned and walked toward the door. Her feet wanted to run, but she wouldn’t let them. She thought she heard a muttered curse behind her—something like “frigid bitch”—but she didn’t acknowledge it. She’d been called a lot worse than that in her life. And if that was what he’d said, then good riddance.

      Jane stepped out onto the street and took a deep breath. Free. Invisible ropes of tension were falling away as if she’d cut herself free with a knife. This was becoming a pattern with her. Cringing at the thought, she started her walk back to work. It was only half a mile, and she felt totally energized.

      A few more hours in the office and then the whole evening stretched out before her like a promise. No sex with Greg. No discussion of opera or foreign films or constitutional law or any of those other things that helped to shape her public persona. After work, Jane was going to go home, take a bath and watch something vile on pay-per-view. Maybe a horror movie. All that and she could still get to bed early and be bright eyed for work tomorrow.

      Wow. She was free.

      She tried to tamp down the relief that swelled inside her. She’d be twenty-nine on Sunday. The last year of her twenties. In 368 days she’d be thirty. She wanted to marry someday, wanted the chance to have children if she decided to. And if she wanted to marry the right kind of guy, she had to stop dumping boyfriends for superficial reasons.

      A woman didn’t need hot sex to live a good life. Just as she didn’t need a man with muscles. A rough guy in jeans and boots. A man who would wind his calloused hand into her hair and tell her exactly what he was going to—

      “Crud.” Jane shook her head to scramble those thoughts. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and she never would be again. That girl had been a nightmare of low self-esteem and even lower expectations.

      Jane Morgan was a respectable woman and she’d marry a respectable man. She had a few more years to find one, surely, but wouldn’t it take that long just to meet someone and truly know him? She was going to have to get over her boredom with safe men, fast.

      Despite her stern internal lecture, Jane couldn’t stop her grin as she headed toward her office, but once she walked through the door she put on her serious face and got back to work. A half hour later her world was back to normal. The perfect quiet job in the perfect quiet office…until her cell phone rang and she glanced down to see the screen flashing “Mom.”

      “Oh, no,” Jane groaned, taking a deep breath before she dared to answer it.

      “Honey,” her mom said immediately, “please tell me you’ve heard from your brother.”

      Alarm spiked in her blood. “Jessie? Why, is something going on?”

      “He didn’t come home last night.”

      Jane’s heart stopped, though not out of panic. No, her heart stopped out of sheer disbelief. “That’s why you’re calling?”

      “He left at six last night, and he didn’t come home and he hasn’t called, and I don’t know what to do!”

      “Mom…” She made herself take a deep breath and count to ten. “You’re being ridiculous.”

      “I just… Oh, honey, I’m sure your little brother is in trouble.”

      “Oh, that’s probably true,” Jane answered. “I just have no idea what that has to do with me. Jessie’s twenty-one years old, Mom. An adult, just like me.”

      “Well…” Her mother sighed. “He never had the advantages you did, baby.”

      Jane squeezed the phone tighter and glared at a spot of late-afternoon sunlight hitting Mr. Jennings’s door. Advantages. The woman was living in a dream world.

      “He’s not as smart as you.”

      A deep breath helped bring Jane’s blood pressure down. “I’ve told you not to call me at work unless it’s an emergency. This isn’t personal time for me.”

      “It is an emergency!”

      “No, it is not. A grown man can’t be considered missing after eighteen hours. Especially not a grown man who likes to drink and hook up with skanky barflies.”

      “Now, that’s just mean!”

      “Mom, I’m sorry, I have to go. Is there anything else?”

      “Well, I don’t think so… Wait! Are you coming over for your birthday?”

      Jane cringed. Before breaking up with Greg, she’d had the perfect excuse to miss a birthday party with her family. But now… Jane found herself wishing her mom had forgotten her only daughter’s birthday, but no such luck. Her mother had been a pretty shabby parent, but not because she lacked kindness or generosity. Just the opposite, in fact. But Jane hadn’t needed a girlfriend when she was growing up. She’d needed a mother.

      “Sorry, Mom. I’m busy.”

      “Oh, are you doing something with that new boyfriend?”

      “Mmm-hmm. Yeah.”

      “You could bring him with, you know.”

      Jane tried to picture Greg in her mother’s house, but the idea defied the laws of nature. He’d never have made it past the burned-out car in the front yard.

      “Your dad finally hauled off the Corvair,” her mom added hopefully.

      Well, then. No burned-out car in the yard, so that just left…everything else. Her family, the shop, the house and the other cast-off vehicles scattered around. Perfect. Maybe her mom had added that chicken coop she’d always wanted.

      “No, thanks, Mom. I’ll call you, though.”

      “Oh. Okay. All right.”

      Ignoring the obvious disappointment in her voice, Jane hung up and stared at the phone as the screen faded to black. What did it say about her that she’d rather be alone on her birthday than spend time with her family? What kind of person was she?

      The familiar guilt sank its claws into her heart and squeezed.

      As an adult, Jane could see the mistakes her mother had made through a clearer lens. There had been no malice in her mom’s decisions, just immaturity and desperation. The life she’d subjected Jane to—the poverty and prison visits and constant moves—had been the only life her mother had ever known. And without the early intervention of her stepfather, Jane would’ve sunk straight into that life, too.

      So she wasn’t truly angry with her mom anymore. She was just…uncomfortable.

      Her family—her mom and stepfather and brother—knew who Jane really was. They knew the kind of girl she’d been, and they saw right through her false transformation into a conservative businesswoman.

      The problem wasn’t so much her family. The problem was that Jane Morgan was a fraud. And she didn’t like being reminded of it.

      Better to keep the two halves of her life separated by a wide expanse. That way, no one got hurt, especially Jane.

      WILLIAM CHASE CRANKED UP the stereo as he roared down the mountain. The wide-open windows let