The Favor Read online

  Janelle cried out, earning a startled query from her mother, who was concerned that something had gone wrong. “They’ve made me breakfast, Mom. That’s all.”

  “Oh, how nice. I’ll let you get to it, then. Have Bennett call me later. I miss him.”

  “We made eggs,” Bennett said when she’d disconnected. “And toast, and Nan helped me make cinnamon buns.”

  “He did most everything but the icing.” Nan wore a colorful dressing gown and had tied a kerchief over her hair. She beamed.

  “Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.” Bennett came around the table to hug her, and she squeezed him tight. He’d grown, she noticed. His head came up past her shoulders now.

  “Sit down, Janelle. Let Bennett bring you some eggs. Bacon, too.” Nan waved for her to come to the table.

  Janelle sat, suddenly emotional and overwhelmed with it. “This all looks so great.”

  “He wanted to do it,” Nan said. “Come on, before it gets cold.”

  The eggs were delicious, light and fluffy, with a sprinkling of cheese. The cinnamon buns were, of course, amazing. Even the coffee was great. Janelle ate until she was stuffed, then sat back with a sigh to rub her stomach.

  Nan hadn’t eaten much, but she had eaten. Now she plucked apart a cinnamon roll and licked at the frosting. “What time is everyone supposed to come over today?”

  “About noon.” Janelle looked at the clock. They had a few hours until then, and everyone was supposed to be bringing a dish, so that she didn’t have much to prepare.

  “Time for a nap, then.” Nan yawned and pushed away from the table. She staggered a little, though, and Bennett caught her arm.

  Janelle was next to her in a another moment, both of them holding Nan so she didn’t fall. “Got you.”

  Nan sighed, then managed to straighten her shoulders. “Just got a little woozy, that’s all. I’m okay. I’d like to nap in my bed though, honey, not the couch. That way if I’m still sleeping when people get here, they can sit and visit.”

  “Do you need help, Nan?” Bennett asked.

  Janelle was so proud of him she wanted to cry. Together, they helped Nan to her bedroom. It all went fine until just before they reached the bed, when Nan stumbled again. Bennett did his best, but as she twisted to keep her grandmother from falling, pain ripped through Janelle’s neck, shoulder and back. She gasped aloud, barely keeping the worst sort of curse from flying out by biting her tongue, hard. That pain was nothing compared to her neck and shoulder.

  Nan didn’t seem to notice, though Bennett looked concerned as Janelle tucked the covers around her grandma as best she could with only one arm that felt as if it worked. In the hall, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just wrenched my neck.” She gave him as broad a smile as she could muster, which seemed to satisfy him. “Can you do me a huge favor and clean up the dishes from the table? And do your best in the kitchen. I’m going to need to put some ice on this.”

  She’d originally injured her neck and shoulder in a relatively minor fender-bender before Bennett was born. Riding in the passenger seat of her friend Heather’s car, neither of them wearing seat belts, both more concerned with the music on the radio than watching for slowing traffic. Heather had rear-ended the car in front of them. She’d cracked the windshield with her forehead, while Janelle had managed to hit the dashboard with her neck and shoulder. It didn’t bother her all the time, except when she slept wrong, or bent and twisted a certain way. Then the pain was excruciating. It had effectively ended her short-lived career as a dancer in Vegas—not that she’d expected it to last forever, and it had turned out to be a blessing, since it had forced her to get her real estate license.

  People coming to the house would just have to deal with a mess. Janelle took a soft ice pack from the freezer and shaped it to her neck with a wince. She watched Bennett clear the table, thinking she could help at least a little bit, but knowing as soon as she lifted her arm that was going to be impossible. She’d be lucky if she could move tomorrow at all, and then only if she took care of this right now. Ice, anti-inflammatories and, in about an hour, a steaming hot shower.

  “Thanks, honey, I appreciate it,” she told her son.

  Bennett looked up with a stack of plates in his hand. He might’ve been in the habit lately of arguing with her, but not today. “I’m sorry your neck hurts you.”

  She wanted to hug and squeeze him, but fortunately for him, could not. “How did I get so lucky to have such a great kid?”

  Bennett shrugged. “I guess I have a great mom.”

  “Good one.” With her non-aching arm, Janelle mimed punching a clock. “Cha-ching, that goes in your bonus account.”

  “Mom, is it okay if Andy comes over today for the picnic? I said he could. And Mr. Tierney, too.”

  Janelle shifted the ice on her neck. “I guess so. Why not?”

  Bennett moved past her to put the plates in the dishwasher. “Well, Andy doesn’t have a mother to spend the day with, so I figured he could come over. But I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it if Mr. Tierney came.”

  She would not, in fact, be sad if Mr. Tierney did not come, but that wasn’t the same thing as not liking it if he did. “It was very nice of you to ask them.” She paused, biting back her next question until it managed to wriggle free, anyway. “What about Gabe?”

  Bennett, concentrating on slotting dishes into the rack, didn’t even look up. “I don’t know. I guess he might come, too.”

  Upstairs, she dosed herself with ibuprofen. Did she want Gabe to come to the picnic? Did she care?

  Janelle had seen him a few nights ago, coming in late. She’d been up reading, half watching for the light in his bedroom to turn on, though she’d never have admitted it. When it did, she’d clicked off her reading lamp and pulled the blankets to her chin to keep herself from peeking at him through the window. Temptation had won.

  He’d been out drinking. She could tell by the way he leaned a little too heavily on his dresser when he lifted one foot and then the other to untie his boot laces. Not drunk enough to be impaired, just enough to be a little loose. His hair had been rumpled, the tails of his shirt untucked. He looked like a man who’d been tussling, or who’d gotten dressed in a hurry.

  He’d stripped down to his shorts and stood in front of the window as if he were putting on a show just for her. Not that he ever looked her way, even once, because he didn’t. He moved from the dresser to the laundry basket to the bed without even glancing toward the window. She knew he slept in pajama bottoms or boxers, sometimes with a T-shirt when it was cool, so when he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs, pulled them off those long, lean thighs and kicked them aside, she expected him to put on something else.

  She hadn’t expected him to climb into bed naked and finish off for himself what the night had so obviously started.

  Watching from her own bed, her line of sight obscured by the angle and the halfhearted attempt she’d made at closing the curtains when she went to bed, Janelle knew she shouldn’t watch him. She should close her eyes and turn away from what was meant to be private. It was licentious and yes, creepy, to spy on him no matter what he was doing, but especially when he did...that. It didn’t matter that back in those before times, the open curtains had been an invitation to whatever show Gabe felt like putting on. Time had passed, things had changed. They were adults, and he probably didn’t even remember those days. She should’ve felt ashamed about the way her breath caught and held as she watched his back arch, when the pace of his stroking hand quickened. She should’ve felt guilty, and she would have, if only Gabe hadn’t gone to the window when he was finished and stared right through it into the darkness of her bedroom before firmly and deliberately closing his blinds.

  “Jerk,” she muttered, but without heat.

  Shaking her head at the memory, Janelle arranged her pillows to cradle her as she opened her laptop and typed in her Interflix password. She’d been working her way through a series of Br