by Debbie Mason
Jeff was waiting for her, sitting in an Adirondack chair on the covered porch. He stood up as she pulled her VW in behind his shiny Land Rover, and he was right there when she got out of the car.
“Let me explain,” he said before she had a chance to say one word of the speech she’d been rehearsing in her head. “I never—”
“You didn’t tell me the truth,” she blurted.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you. I just—”
“I know you didn’t. I get it. If I had a father who issued public statements about me, I’d want to divorce him, too. But you could have told me that. You could have trusted me.”
Jeff’s gaze intensified, his brown eyes full of emotion. “Are you telling me that you actually understand why I didn’t give you my full name?”
“Well, duh. I read what your father said about you. And it was brutal. But more important, it was just wrong. I spent a lot of time today reading some of the things you’ve written for New York, New York. They were wonderful articles, Jeff. You have a gift for words. So what he said was just not true. You’re a writer—a really good one. But the thing is, you should have been honest with me from the start.”
He let go of a long breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest, but I didn’t know you at first. And then…Well, I wanted to take care of your taxes before I said anything. Please tell me you never believed that crap that’s going around town about how Pam used me to set you up, because that’s just not true.”
“Of course I don’t believe that. If that was your purpose, you had a funny way of going about it. All that dusting and organizing and color coding. It didn’t make it easier to decide to sell the place, you know.”
“You aren’t going to sell it, are you? I’d hate to see that bookshop go out of business.”
Tears filled her eyes, and a lump the size of a peach stone swelled in her throat. She shook her head. “I never wanted to sell. I just had to.”
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her right into his arms. Her head hit his strong, steady shoulder, and she leaned on him like she’d never leaned on anyone in her life. The emotions she’d been denying finally found their way to the surface. She had to take off her glasses when the tears came. She cried for Grammy and her parents. She cried because, standing there in the circle of Jeff’s arms, she didn’t feel alone anymore. And finally, she cried because she didn’t have to close her store.
He held her tight, stroked her head, and gave her a place to stand, a place to be. Leaning on him was like coming home.
When the tears had run their course, she tilted her head up, but it was no use. She couldn’t see him because her vision was still smeared with tears. But it was all right, because he came toward her and started kissing away the tears that had run down her cheeks.
She started laughing then, which was weird because her heart had swelled to the point where breathing had become difficult. He ignored her laugh and continued to dispense little kisses all along her cheeks and over to her ear, where he whispered, “Listen to me, Melissa, for just one minute. I went up to Charlotte’s Grove, and I told Mark and Pam Lyndon that I was changing my name. I’ve already taken the first steps to do that legally. I also told Pam that she needed to call you to apologize for the way she acted the other day.”
She pushed him back and gazed into his eyes. He was a complete blur, but that didn’t matter. “You told Pam Lyndon she needed to apologize? Oh my God, I don’t think anyone has ever told Pam Lyndon that in her entire life.”
He laughed a little and put his forehead against hers. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
They stood like that for a long moment as the tension of the last few days melted away. “So, I have a million questions,” Melissa said.
“About what?”
“About you, Jeff. I want to know everything. I want to know what your favorite color is and what you like for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. And which vegetable makes you want to yak. I want to know your birthday and the worst and best Christmas present you ever got. I want to know it all because, damn it, I crave your body, and when that happens, it means my heart is automatically involved. You know? I don’t do the whole friends-with-benefits thing well. So if that’s all this is, I’ll just get in my car and go now, okay?”
She was prepared to have her heart crushed when he said, “Brussels sprouts.”
“What?”
“I hate brussels sprouts. How about you?”
She took in a deep breath filled with the woodsy scent of him. “It’s cauliflower that makes me want to hurl. And, for the record, my birthday is the sixteenth of March.”
“Really? Mine’s on the seventeenth. Next year we should throw a big party.”
Next year. She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. His arms were still around her. She was safe here. She’d always be safe here. She may have met him only days ago, but he was “the One.”
“I have something to seal this moment,” he said, moving back a little bit. “I intended to present it to you last night. But you didn’t answer my calls.”
“I was getting drunk with the girls. Bad move on my part.”
He laughed. “Put on your glasses.”
She snagged them from her jeans pocket where she’d put them right before her crying jag. She slipped them on just in time to see him pull something from his pocket.
He held it out to her, nestled in his palm. “It’s the arrowhead,” he said. “Yesterday I bought a rawhide shoelace and made a necklace out of it. When I get a chance, I intend to take it to a jeweler for a proper gold chain. I thought you might like a little memento of our first time.” He gave her a salacious grin. “Turn around. Let me put it on you.”
She turned, and he pulled her hair aside and then fastened the necklace at her nape. He pressed his lips to the spot right below her ear, and she groaned out loud.
“Our first time, huh? That implies there will be a second time,” she said.
“Yeah. And many, many more, I hope.” And then he did the most romantic thing ever. He lifted her into his arms and carried her over the threshold of his cabin.
Epilogue
Three Months Later
Melissa was manning the checkout at Secondhand Prose and reading a murder mystery when the front door jangled. She looked up in time to see Jeff strolling through the door, carrying a cardboard box that looked as if it had come from an online bookseller.
Both cats immediately arrived on the scene and tried to trip him as he headed in Melissa’s direction.
“Hey, you guys, give me a break,” he said as he stepped over the felines with admirable grace—grace that hadn’t yet failed to warm Melissa’s insides.
“I bring gifts,” he said, putting the carton on the counter and leaning across it to give her a kiss that left them both a little breathless.
“Hmm, nice. I like your gifts,” she said.
He laughed. “I was talking about this,” he said, nudging the box.
“This looks like a box of books,” she said. “From the competition.”
“Ah, but this isn’t just any box of books. Look inside.”
She opened the carton, and right on the top was a large-format paperback book titled A Child’s Book of Stories. “Oh, how beautiful!” Melissa said in a rush as she opened the book and started browsing through. “I love Jessie Wilcox Smith’s illustrations. She’s my favorite illustrator of all time.”
“Yes, I know. That was one of the first things I learned about you. All those fairytale T-shirts.”
She looked up from the book and gave him another kiss.
“There’s another book in the box,” Jeff said after a very long, hot moment.
“Another Jessie Wilcox Smith book?”
“No, it’s a hardbound copy of Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales.”
She put her paperback on the counter and pulled the second book from the box. It was one of those leather reproduc
tion books with a fancy embossed cover, gilt lettering, and a ribbon bookmark stitched into the binding. She wasn’t fooled. The book probably retailed for less than ten dollars.
She glanced up at Jeff. There was a gleam in his eye, and the corner of his mouth was curling just a tiny bit, as if he knew a secret he was bursting to tell. Did he think he’d found her a special first edition or something?
“Oh, this is nice,” she said, trying to sound super-enthusiastic, when she would much rather be hanging out on the beanbag chair drooling over Jessie Wilcox Smith’s illustrations. Or, better yet, upstairs in bed drooling over Jeff.
“Open it,” Jeff said, “to the marked page.” Was there a tremor in his voice?
She opened the book to a three-paragraph story entitled “Brides on Trial.” Right below the story’s final paragraph, the book had been horribly defaced. Someone had cut a deep hole in the pages to create a secret hiding spot. And in the spot, with the ribbon bookmark threaded through it, was a sapphire and diamond ring.
Melissa’s breath caught in her throat, and tears filled her eyes as she looked up at Jeff, the man who had become, in just a few short months, her best friend and the love of her life.
“Melissa,” he said in his deep, quiet voice, “I walked into this enchanted place, and the minute I saw you, I knew I’d come home. I’ve patiently spent the last few months waiting for the right time to ask this question, and I don’t want to wait anymore. I think I know enough about you to say that I never want to leave your side. You love Jessie Wilcox Smith, you know every story in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, even the gruesome ones like the ‘Heavenly Wedding.’ You snore, you love margaritas, and you read romances when you think I’m not looking. Will you marry me?”
Like any fairytale prince, Jeff got down on his knee, took her hand, and kissed it.
“Oh my God, yes. Yes, yes.” Melissa fell down onto her knees, too, and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you, Jefferson Talbert-Lyndon. And even though you are technically a member of the Lyndon family, I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.”
Jeff grabbed the Grimm’s Fairy Tales off the counter and sat on the bookstore’s floor. “Sorry about defacing a book, but I figured it was for a good cause. And we’ll be keeping this book forever.”
He pulled the ribbon bookmark through the ring. “Do you like it?” he asked. “It’s a family heirloom, but from the Talbert side of the family. It’s my grandmother’s ring.”
“The cat-lady-on-the-Hudson grandmother?”
Jeff grinned. “The very one.” He took her left hand and slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly. “Grandmother would have loved you, Melissa.”
And just then, Dickens and Hugo joined the group hug on the bookstore floor, one cat in each lap, proving—at least to Melissa’s satisfaction—that Grammy would have loved Jeff too.
About the Authorh
Hope Ramsay was born in New York and grew up on the North Shore of Long Island. Hope earned a BA in political science from the University of Buffalo and has had various jobs working as a congressional aide, a lobbyist, a public relations consultant, and a meeting planner. She’s a two-time finalist in the Golden Heart and is married to a good-ol’ Georgia boy who resembles every single one of her heroes. She has two grown children and a couple of demanding lap cats. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia, where you can often find her on the back deck, picking on her thirty-five-year-old Martin guitar.
You can learn more at:
HopeRamsay.com
www.facebook.com/Hope.Ramsay
Twitter, @HopeRamsay
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Table of Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Driftwood Cove
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
An excerpt from Primrose Lane
About the Author
Also by Debbie Mason
ACCLAIM FOR DEBBIE MASON
“A Fairytale Bride” by Hope Ramsey
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Newsletters