by Lexy Timms
“You deserve it!” she replied at once, and she reached over to squeeze my hand, her bracelets clanking down her wrist as she did so.
“Thanks,” I replied, and I took a deep breath. I knew that when I told her the next part, she was going to freak out, but I didn’t want to keep it from her any longer.
“I actually have my first interview tomorrow,” I admitted, attempting to keep my voice casual and failing dismally. She clapped her hands together at once.
“Oh, and who’s it with?”
“Jesse Miller.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Okay, sorry, what?” she demanded, her eyes widening. “As in...?”
“As in the Jesse Miller, yeah,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m not even quite sure how I managed to swing it. I ran into him in the street a couple of days ago, and he knocked into me and made me drop all my stuff, and we got talking...”
“Oh, you’re so lucky,” she gasped. “You know how much I would give to run into Jesse Miller like that...?”
“Yeah, he was really apologetic,” I explained. “And when I told him what I did, he let me know that he had an interview there at the end of the week. And that he wanted me to be the one to do it.”
“So he was flirting with you, is what you’re saying?” she asked, cocking her eyebrow.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I replied at once. “I think he was just trying to help me out, you know, since I only just started there and everything...”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she laughed, rolling her eyes at me playfully. “He just wants to see you again because he feels like he should support your career.”
“I really don’t think it’s anything more than that—”
“You’re blushing,” she replied, grinning triumphantly. “You might not think it’s anything more than that, but you hope it, don’t you?”
“I...I don’t know,” I replied, and I found a little smile playing at the corners of my mouth. I knew that I shouldn’t have been letting this get so far under my skin, but it was hard when all I wanted to do was see him again—and it had nothing to do with the professional boost that it would give me, and everything to do with the sight of his hands in those gorgeous leather gloves.
“Oh, come on, if I thought that I was going to get a guy like that alone for an hour or so, I’d have a million ideas running through my head!” she pointed out. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it a little...”
“I’m interviewing him for work,” I reminded her. “It’s nothing more than that. I’m not going to mess anything up by letting you get into my head...”
“But I’m already there,” she teased, leaning over to tap a finger against the side of my temple and laughing. “That’s what you always forget. So what are you going to ask him? Apart from the obvious—if he’s single, what he’s doing after this, you know...”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to think of the best way to approach it, but I’m not sure how to get into it without offending him in some way. I mean, I know everyone in town wants to know what the hell is up with him...”
“Yeah, where did he get all that money from?” she wondered aloud. “And where can I go looking for it? And how much of it will I get in the divorce...?”
“You’ve got a one-track mind,” I teased her. “But yeah, I’m trying to work some of that out. I know that he just turned up here a few years ago, but nobody ever really knew where he came from or what he was doing here—kind of strange, if you ask me.”
“More than a little strange,” she replied. “And now he just seems to give all his money away to anyone who asks, right? I don’t know what that’s about.”
“Seems like guilt to me,” I replied, and she raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, that journalistic instinct already coming out to play, is it?” she asked, and I nodded.
“I can’t see why else anyone would be in such a hurry to get rid of all that money,” I pointed out. “Unless there was something tied up in it that they didn’t want to have to think about anymore.”
“Hmm, good point,” she agreed, tapping her finger against her chin. “How much do you think he has?”
“Enough that giving most of it away on a yearly basis isn’t enough to render him destitute,” I replied. “So I’d say he must be working at some pretty impressive levels, right?”
“Right,” she agreed, and she smiled and shook her head at me. “You have no idea how cool it is to hear you talk like this and know that I’m not going to be the only one to hear it.”
“You mean that you’re getting sick of being the only sounding board for my ideas?” I laughed, and she shook her head.
“You know that’s not what I mean!” she exclaimed. “I’m just glad that all your practice and hard work is going to good use. You deserve it, you really do. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Tiff,” I replied, reaching over to give her a hug. I was so lucky to have a friend like her, and I would never take her for granted. It wasn’t often that you met someone from your hometown who was as sweet as she was, as loyal as she was—damn, we had seen enough implosions of high school friendships to know that for certain. But she was always supportive, always kind, and always generous with me, and I was never going to take her as a given.
“So what about you?” I asked her with interest. “What’s going on at work? Any more dramatic post-break-up head-shaves?”
“None to report, sadly,” she replied. “Though I think I nearly talked a girl from the tennis club into shaving it all off just for fun. She’d probably have gone for it, too, if it hadn’t been for her boring husband...”
I sat back and listened to her talk, and the two of us caught up on everything that had been happening in this small town since the last time we had seen one another. Which wasn’t a lot, but I didn’t care. Tonight was just about relaxing, detaching a little—I had been on high-stress mode trying to make it work at my new job, and I just needed to unwind and have a little fun with my best friend in the meantime.
I wanted the night to keep going, but I knew that if either of us had another cocktail, we would both be struggling to get out of bed and make it to work the next morning.
“I guess we should call it here,” Tiffany remarked as she pulled a face.
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “I want to be on fighting form when I see Jesse tomorrow.”
“You have to text me to let me know how it goes, okay?” she told me. “I want to know every detail. And if you can drop in the fact that you have a single friend who could use a little boost in the financial department...”
“I’m not sure that’s going to come up,” I laughed.
She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
We argued a little over the bill before we decided to split it down the middle. With that, the night was over, and I walked back to my place, a little tipsy around the edges and looking forward to seeing Jesse far more than I should have been.
Chapter Seven
Jesse
AS I APPROACHED THE office, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Because I was going to get to see the girl that I had run into before—and I was looking forward to laying eyes on her again.
With her crazy puff of blond curls, her green eyes, and her freckled skin, she looked like she was a native of this place—pale and pretty and came from good breeding, for sure. I wondered if I should have called ahead and told the editor—Allison, was it?—that I intended to do the interview with someone other than her, but I was worried that she might have called it off or rescheduled if I’d tried. Right now, I just wanted a chance to see that girl again, and I wouldn’t have passed it up for anything.
I strode through the door, was gestured upstairs by the bored-looking receptionist, and arrived in the bustling office for Kingston Press. I surveyed the space in front of me—could have done with some rennovations, but maybe the editor preferred the classic feel that it had. A few people glanced up at me,
but they were all too busy to let their gazes linger on me for too long, thank goodness. I didn’t want to be the center of any attention today—unless it came from that girl who was going to conduct the interview.
A few moments later, the editor strode out of her office—I knew that she had to be the one in charge from the way that she carried herself, and sure enough, she extended a hand to me, the picture of confidence.
“Nice to meet you in person, Jesse,” she told me, as I took her hand. “I’m Allison. We talked on the phone.”
“Yes, I remember,” I replied. “Now I do have a request, since I’m here.”
“Anything at all,” she replied smoothly, not missing a beat.
“I met an employee of your office yesterday,” I explained. “A woman who was running late to work. I’m afraid I waylaid her further, and I’d like her to be the one to do the interview.”
I could see a brief moment of irritation pass across Allison’s face, but she did her best to keep it contained. She nodded and led me toward a small meeting room. Once she had me inside, she called for someone across the office.
“Sarah!”
As soon as I heard her name, I smiled. It suited her. Classic, pretty, feminine. It had been a surprise yesterday when I’d heard her cursing like a sailor after I had knocked all that stuff out of her hands—I hadn’t expected something so filthy to come out of the mouth of a girl who looked so innocent. But honestly, that had just intrigued me further, and there was no way that I was going to pass up the chance to get to know her a little better.
With the door still open, Allison took a moment to talk to Sarah—I could tell that she was annoyed by the chance of plans, but she must have known that the chances of getting me back in here again were pretty slim, so she wanted to do everything that she could to make me comfortable.
I heard the words Don’t blow this before Sarah stepped into the room, a big smile on her face and her cheeks a little flushed.
“Hi there,” she greeted me, extending her hand. I rose to my feet.
“Sarah,” I murmured. “Nice to meet you properly.”
Allison was still lingering in the door, and Sarah shot a look at her, probably to tell her to stop worrying because she had this. With that, Allison stepped outside, and Sarah closed the door behind her.
“I didn’t think that you were actually going to ask for me,” she remarked.
“I’m a man of my word,” I replied, and she nodded as she sank into the seat opposite me.
“So I see,” she agreed, and she glanced up at me again. With a little more time to just look at her, I couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was—the soft curve of her lips, the way that she chewed on her bottom one as she went through her pockets to find the notebook and recorder. She laid them out on the table in front of her, and I couldn’t help but notice that her hands were shaking a little. I wanted to tell her that she had nothing to worry about, but, if I was being honest, I actually found her nerves a little cute.
“So,” she began, once she had tested that the recorder was actually recording. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” I replied. She smiled at me, her cheeks still taking on that pink tinge that they had when she had walked through the door and seen me there again. I didn’t read too much into it. Plenty of women got that way around me. It didn’t mean anything—it just meant that she knew that I had some serious influence in this town and that she didn’t want to make a mess of whatever it was that was happening here.
“Okay, great,” she began, and she flipped through the notes in front of her and furrowed her brow. A little line appeared between her eyebrows, like an arrow pointing down her nose, and I smiled. There was just something so appealing about her—I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet, but I was hoping that by the end of this interview, I might have figured it out.
“So do you want to start by telling me a little about yourself?” she suggested, looking up at me again, this time clearly starting to sink in with some comfort to what was happening.
“I’m Jesse,” I replied. “I’m thirty-two. I’ve lived here for about six years, and I spend most of my time trying to help other people get the lives that they want.”
“That’s a hell of a soundbite,” she remarked, scribbling something down on her notebook and smiling. “You practice that in advance?”
“I might have,” I replied, trying to push to the back of my mind the memory of standing in front of the mirror that morning and repeating the answers to a few questions that I was sure were going to come up. I didn’t want to be surprised—I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and implicate either my brother or myself in something that we had long wanted to forget, that was for sure. I knew that Luke would be waiting to hear from me as soon as this was done, wanting to hear that I hadn’t made a mess of things and come out with something that was going to make both of our lives that much harder.
“Good to know,” she chuckled. She had a nice laugh, bright, and easy, as though she never had to worry about anyone judging her. I liked that.
She continued with the easy questions, the ones that I had expected—everything from why I had committed my life to helping other people, to my brother, to my family, all of that. The stuff that kept the readers of a publication like this happy enough that they knew me, and not looking at me sideways the way I knew a whole lot of them would now. I didn’t want to give away too much, but I had to hand over something, or else people would just go ducking in and out of my life to try and find out the truth that they clearly didn’t think I was being fair enough in sharing.
But it would only be a matter of time before the hard questions came. And I didn’t want to have to deal with those, not really. I had to accept that they were on the way, because there wasn’t a chance in hell that a place like this was going to let me off with a puff piece. I had avoided the press for years, and all that meant was that they must have been building up stacks of questions to ask me when the time was right. Maybe I’d been hoping that someone like Sarah wouldn’t come on so hard, but if anything, she would give even more than the rest of them—she had something to prove, after all, and she needed to make sure that everyone could see that she had earned her place here just like the rest of them.
And, sure enough, as she flipped over another page in her notebook, I saw her trace her finger down a new set of questions—and my heart sank. I felt like I had been doing pretty well up to this point, but now I could feel some of the control seeping out of my grasp, a sensation that I hated more than pretty much anything in the entire world.
“So, obviously, your charitable work has made a big difference around here,” she went on, trying to phrase the question in such a way that wouldn’t give away anything that she wasn’t ready for. I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep my cool right now. I could already feel some discomfort inching up my spine, and I did my best to try and ignore it. Hopefully, it wasn’t reading on my face. The last thing I needed right now was for her to look at me and be able to see straight through to the fear that I was nursing inside of me.
“But I think most people reading this article will want to know about you,” she went on, leaning a little closer toward me over the table. I could smell her perfume—something that had the scent of baked goods, vanilla, sugar, a little cinnamon. It was distracting. She was distracting.
“Such as?” I replied, playing dumb. If I could just keep her talking, maybe the time that we had assigned for the interview would just run out, and I wouldn’t have to answer anything that she was throwing in my direction.
She didn’t take her eyes off me for a moment, looking at me as though she was trying to get under my skin—and, somehow, I could feel her succeeding. There was something about this girl, something about the sharpness around her edges, that made me uncomfortable in the best way possible.
“Well, where did you come from?” she asked me. “Where are your family? Did they live in Kingston before you?”
I fell silent. I
didn’t know how to deflect these questions, but I knew, sure as hell, that I didn’t want to answer them right now. I looked down at my hands for a moment, wondering if my brother was right—if I should have avoided this as long as I could and just pretended that there was nothing else for me to discuss with the press. I had thought that I would be able to keep control of anything that was thrown my way, but this woman was making it way harder than it should have been to do that.
“Why did you come here?” she continued. “There must have been a reason you picked a place like Kingston...”
I took a deep breath. I knew that I was going to have to give her an answer. But that didn’t mean that I wanted the rest of the world to know about it.
Chapter Eight
Sarah
TO MY SURPRISE, INSTEAD of replying, he reached over and flicked off my recorder.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, reaching out to turn it back on. “That’s how I keep a record of everything. I need this running—”
“I don’t want there to be a record of this,” he replied firmly. Some of the lightness had gone from his voice, and it was clear that he wasn’t joking. I was surprised—I felt as though the interview had been going really well so far, but now...this? What had I done wrong? Surely he had known that I was going to ask about his past—how could this have come as a surprise to him?
“You want to go off the record,” I confirmed, and he nodded.
“If that’s possible.”
“It is,” I replied. I knew that Allison would kill me, but my curiosity was getting the better of me. I wanted to know what it was that this man was hiding, and I was sure that I was getting close to answering the questions that everyone in this town had had about him since the moment that he had turned up.
“I don’t want to talk about my past with reporters,” he explained. “I just don’t think it’s something I’m comfortable with.”