Dealing with Annie Read online

  Annie looked over at Dennis, sure and happy and spoiled and…just a little arrogant. Then she thought of Ian, with his intensity and affinity for being his own man, and knew there was no comparison. “You and Dennis,” she said slowly, trying it out on her tongue. Other than that one little stab of pain, she felt nothing. Truly nothing.

  “I told her you’d probably thank her,” Dennis said dryly. “But she was so worried.” He slid his arm around Jenny and looked down into her face with a fierce love Annie had never even guessed he could experience.

  “I wanted you to know the truth,” he said. “I just didn’t want to push it. Or her. And then there’s the money issue—”

  “Dennis.” Jenny’s eyes filled as she set her head on his chest briefly. Then she straightened and looked miserably at Annie. “I need to tell you the rest. Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear. I…lost everything in day trading. Everything. So I panicked. For about one second I considered getting out of Annie’s Garden for the money, but that was it, I swear. I never really meant it, but—”

  “Stop.” Annie tried to put it all together. “You and Dennis, and you didn’t tell me. You lost all your money and you didn’t tell me. Stella offered to buy your stock and you didn’t tell me…” She shook her head. “Honestly? That’s a lot of omissions. Maybe what you should tell me now is why I shouldn’t hire an attorney and a tribe of accountants to see what else you haven’t told me.”

  “No, that’s not necessary. Honest…” Jenny looked miserable. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I’d do anything rather than hurt you. Trust me when I say what’s happened is all personal. The day trading was an addiction. Is an addiction. I need help, I know that. I’ve been…desperate.”

  “So desperate you tried to scare me into accepting all this with the calls, the tires, the threatening notes?”

  Jenny wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said slowly. “I didn’t do any of those things.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No, really.”

  “Jenny.” Dennis lifted a brow.

  Jenny looked horrified. “Oh, my God, I’d almost forgotten.” With a wince, she turned back to Annie. “Okay, we called you from a pay phone. Once—No, make that twice. Probably two weeks ago now.”

  “We were at a park, talking,” Dennis said, taking Jenny’s hand. “I had convinced her to tell you she needed help. The reception was bad, and we couldn’t use the cell, remember, Jenny?”

  Jenny nodded. “I thought you answered, and I said I have to talk to you, or I’m going to die.” She winced. “Dramatic, I know, but that’s how I felt. Then I realized we’d been disconnected. I tried one more time to get you, but I lost my nerve…I kept losing my nerve.”

  “So you didn’t send me crushed makeup with a note that says I’m next. You didn’t call me, just a little while ago, from some new cell phone and say an ‘eye for an eye?”’

  “No!”

  Annie searched both their faces but saw nothing even close to such a deception. Was it really possible just those first two crank calls had been from them? But who’d been responsible for all the rest—the slashed tires, the crushed makeup, the note, the footprints outside her window? She looked at Stella, who raised her hands.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said firmly. “That’d all take far too much effort.”

  “Look,” Dennis said. “All we’re guilty of is not telling you about what happened between Jenny and myself. Jenny losing money on the market was none of your business until she made the mistake of thinking about selling out of Annie’s Garden to solve that problem. She never intended to do anything so drastic. But, my God…” He let out a disparaging breath. “No one ever broke any laws here.”

  “But you broke some serious trust,” Annie said to Jenny, her heart physically hurting.

  “I know,” Jenny whispered. “God. I know, I just—I’m not like you. I don’t have the confidence—”

  “No.” Annie shook her head. “Don’t turn this on me.”

  “I’m not. I won’t. But Annie…how can I make this right? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  I’m not like you. The words ran through Annie’s head.

  She wasn’t that different from everyone else. She needed affirmation, relationships. She needed love just like everyone else.

  Where had she gone wrong, that no one saw that? Couldn’t she be strong and self-sufficient, and still let love in?

  Yes, maybe at times she’d been a little too strong. A little too self-sufficient. But that wasn’t a crime. “I don’t know how to fix this,” she said. “What are you doing about money?”

  “This morning, Dennis asked me to marry him.” Jenny’s voice hitched. “He’s going to cover the debt for me.”

  “I…I’m happy for you.”

  At that, Jenny flung her arms around Annie in such a great, big bear hug, Annie staggered back a step.

  “Oh, Annie, I’m just so sorry. I’ve just been so scared. I’ll never hide another thing from you again. Never, never, never.”

  “Hello, people…have we forgotten moi?” Stella tapped her expensive heel on the floor. “Can we bring this back to me?”

  “Oh! Yes…” Jenny pulled back and looked at Annie. “I should have told her no right up front.”

  “Actually, I think selling your stock is a good idea,” Annie said.

  Stella beamed.

  Jenny’s mouth dropped.

  “If you sell them to me.” Annie drew in a deep breath. “As you should have done in the first place.”

  Stella’s smile fell to mimic Jenny’s mouth.

  Dennis reached for Jenny’s hand. “It’s okay. I told you, she likes to be in control. Let her have it all, you don’t need to work.”

  Annie wanted to smack him but controlled herself, barely.

  Stella didn’t. “Jenny, honey, don’t let him hang on you like that.” She eyed Dennis like she would pond scum. “If you need a man that bad, just get a good vibrator. You’ll never look back, trust me. So…who the hell is stalking Annie?”

  They all stared at one another.

  Annie’s stomach felt queasy at the reminder. “Stella—”

  “I could squash you like a grape in sales any day, any time, you know that. I have no need to mess with you. But call my attorney if you want to persist, I don’t have time for this. See you on the shelves.” Stella sauntered toward the elevator. “Oh, and I suggest serious therapy for all of you,” she called back over her shoulder. “Immediately.”

  When Annie turned back to Annie and Dennis, the two of them were making out right there in the hallway.

  Definitely time to go. Past time.

  She just wanted to be home. She was halfway down the hall when Jenny’s voice reached her.

  “Annie?”

  The last thing she wanted to do was turn around, but at least her soon-to-be ex-partner was no longer lip-locked with Dennis, but staring after her with worry in her eyes.

  “What are we going to do?” Jenny whispered.

  Annie wasn’t feeling the “we” at the moment. “I’ll let you know.” For the first time in her life, she felt like a stranger to her own hometown, and couldn’t wait to get back to her real home. Cooper’s Corner.

  * * *

  ANNIE WENT TO THE DOCTOR’S office to get Aunt Gerdie. On the short drive, she convinced herself that her tires had indeed been slashed by a kid in town, that the footsteps in the snow beneath her window had been put there by the cable guy who’d come out to adjust her reception, and that the other calls were just a crazy mistake. The note she hadn’t exactly figured out yet, but it all seemed so farfetched. She’d manufactured a stalker when there was none. There was no danger. Unless she counted the danger to her heart over how she felt about Ian.

  Aunt Gerdie had finished with the doctor in Annie’s absence and had been given a good bill of health, though she was to stay away from pickles.

  Ian was nowhere in