Free The Trouble With J.J. by Tami Hoag Page A

headline in front of her.
    Genna calmly brought her coffee cup to the table and sat down with a saccharine smile. “And how are you today, Amy?”
    “Don’t think I didn’t see Jared Hennessy leave your house last night, because I did.” She pinned Genna with a look that had compelled more than one errant child to spill the beans. Her brown eyes narrowed and her little mouth puckered up. Color flushed her pudgy cheeks.
    “Did you?” Genna’s face was the picture of innocence. She sipped her coffee. “How was the movie?”
    “The same as it was the last five times I took kids to see it.” Against her will, Amy’s gaze wandered to a plate of nut bread to her left. She drummed her fingers on the table. “J.J.’s little girl is a doll.”
    Genna smiled as she felt a strange stirring in her heart. “She is, isn’t she? Something in those big blue eyes makes my heart flip over when I look at her.” She’d always wanted a little girl of her own. She might have had a daughter like Alyssa if things had worked out differently with Allan. But they hadn’t.
    “She’s so shy,” Amy said. “I try to draw her out, but only Jared seems to be able to do that. He’s so good with her.”
    “It’s been hard on her,” Genna said, frowning. “Losing her mother, moving to a new town.”
    “Yeah, it’s going to be even harder on her if that rotten aunt takes her away.”
    “How’d you hear about that?” Genna asked, concerned that the news had somehow hit the neighborhood grapevine.
    Amy snatched a piece of nut bread and put it on the table in front of her. “The all-knowing, all-seeing Aunt Bernice. Don’t worry. Jared told her, and she wouldn’t tell anyone but me, and I wouldn’t tell anyone but you, and you already know. Do you think his sister-in-law can pull it off?”
    A worried frown creased Genna’s brow. “Jared’s lawyer says she can try. Even though Jared and hisex-wife had joint custody, it seems Elaine named her sister as guardian of Alyssa if anything ever happened to her. That complicates things. Plus, Jared has a wild reputation. Whether it’s deserved or not may not matter. If Simone gets a judge who’s sympathetic to her argument and if she has some evidence that makes Jared look bad …”
    Amy shook her head. “You’d think it’d be all cut and dried. I mean, Jared is Alyssa’s father, there shouldn’t be any question about custody.”
    They drank their coffee and listened to the bird-song drifting in on the summer-scented air. Finally needing to break the silence and her train of thought, Genna said. “I suppose you know about my ‘job’ too.”
    “Of course. I see you got him to cut down on the flamingo population. Good girl.”
    “I didn’t have the heart to make him get rid of all of them.”
    Willpower crumbling, Amy popped the nut bread into her mouth and chewed. Smiling, she waved an accusatory finger at her friend and singsonged in her distinctly unmusical voice, “You’re softening up on him, Genna.”
    “I am not,” she denied, her eyes looking everywhere but at the kitchen floor.
    “You have to admit he’s charming.”
    Genna scowled in grudging admission. “I suppose he’s charming … in an obnoxious sort of way.”
    The back door banged.
    Singing to himself that he’d had his eye on a certain lady for days, Jared danced in and boogied his way across the kitchen to the counter. he started taking cookies out of the cookie jar and slipping them into the many pockets of his camouflage paratrooper pants. Spotting the ladies, he shoved his sunglasses back on his head and leaned his elbows on the counter. His smile moseyed across his face, setting Genna’s skin a-tingle. His gaze captured hers. “Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Genna.”
    How was it her name sounded so much longer when he said it? And so much sexier.
    “Morning, J.J.,” Amy said, her amused expression directed at Genna. “What’d you learn in school yesterday, J.J.?”
    Jared grinned,