Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) by Vanessa Grant Page B

his smile as he recognized Jake.
    “No.”
    “You’d better hurry, sir. Gate twenty-nine has already boarded.”
    So he ran down the empty corridor, flashing his boarding pass at the stewardess, turning to ease his broad shoulders down the narrow corridor, looking for the curtain of long, brown hair that would identify Jennifer.
    He didn’t find her until he was on the plane.
    She was near the front, in the non-smoking section, wedged between a quietly suited businessman and a youth with a punk haircut that projected from his head in a blond-turning-purple nightmare.
    “Excuse me—” he bent over the purple hair, speaking low-voiced, “—would you mind trading seats with me so I can sit with my wife? I’m two rows back, in 8F.”
    Despite the hair, the boy smiled and nodded, pulling an over-sized pack from under the seat and stumbling over Jake in his hurry to comply.
    Jake had dropped into the aisle seat, his shoulders too wide for the space allotted them, pushing into Jennifer’s space. He was uncomfortably aware that she shifted to move away from him. The stewardess walked back, glanced down at him with a frown, shrugged and walked on past.
    “Your wife?” Jennifer’s voice sounded amused. Thankfully, she wasn’t looking at him; he was sure he’d flushed deeply enough that it would show even through his dark skin. He heard the anger clipping her voice. “That’s a new one. You do like to get your own way, don’t you?”
    She kept her eyes away from him, looking across the businessman’s open copy of Time Magazine to the window. They were starting to move away from the terminal building. “You do whatever it takes,” her low voice lashed him. “Lies, flashing that charm. Whatever it takes. ”
    “I wanted to talk to you.”
    She glanced at him. As usual, he couldn’t read anything in her eyes as she said wryly, “You have me as a captive audience, so have your say. You’ve been itching to lecture me all week. You—” She stopped talking abruptly, her hands tensed briefly as the jet accelerated. At the front of the passenger cabin, the stewardess was standing, facing the passengers as she began to demonstrate the safety features of the airplane. On the loudspeaker a male voice narrated an accompaniment to her motions.
    Jake covered Jennifer’s clenched hand with his. “Why didn’t you tell me you were afraid of flying?”
    She jerked her hand away. “What difference would it make? Shh! I want to hear this.”
    The stewardess gave them an annoyed look. He dropped his voice. “When we flew to California last year, you got this same demonstration and—”
    “Two years ago,” she corrected. “That was two years ago. I haven’t gone anywhere with you in over a year.”
    “You haven’t? Surely—”
    “Nowhere. Not since you hired Hans.”
    “Are you sure?” He shifted uncomfortably. “You must be. You’re always right about the details – I didn’t realize.”
    “Didn’t you?” she said coldly, “Since the day Hans walked into your studio, I haven’t gone on location anywhere.”
    She was glaring at him, challenging him. He stared back, picking out the green glints in her hazel eyes. Her eyes had always concealed more than they revealed, yet sometimes he’d imagined they responded to him.
    He remembered the California trip. They’d been doing a film on a Canadian expatriate who lived in California and claimed to have visions of the future.
    The psychic had put them up in his large beach house. Jake had just finished a rather unsatisfactory affair with a girl named Merle, another in a string of attempts to distract himself from his futile attraction to Jennifer.
    It was starting to affect his work. He supposed it was because she was so indifferent to him – some kind of arrogant male desire to be universally desired by women. He liked to think he was free of that kind of nonsense, but he was becoming obsessed by Jennifer, dreaming dreams that would have her slapping his face