by Lori Wilde
“Are we being bribed?” Suki asked suspiciously.
“I can’t bring my family muffins without an ulterior motive?” Jodi leaned against the counter and did her best to appear as if she didn’t have an agenda.
“Hmph,” Suki said, but plucked a muffin from the basket. “I don’t trust Trojan muffins. If you know what I mean.”
“I sense subtext here,” Mom said. “What’s going on with you two?”
From the corner of her eye, Jodi saw a shadow move from the second floor balcony. “Incoming,” she warned.
Everyone took a collective jump back as Callie, the calico Suki had rescued during Hurricane Sandy when she was a student at NYU, dropped down from the balcony overhead to the checkout counter.
Callie glanced around, a displeased expression on her face that said, Dammit, you people are catching on to my ways. The calico loved pouncing on unsuspecting victims and was known to pout when she didn’t pull off an ambush. The left half of Callie’s face was solid black, the right half orange. Her chin and chest were fluffy white, while her left forearm was orange and her right forearm was black. The back of her body was a swirly blend of black, orange, and white, giving her an exotic, one-of-a-kind appearance.
“Come here, precious.” Breeanne scooped the cat into her arms. Breeanne was arguably Callie’s favorite.
Jodi leaned over to whisper to her sister, “Could I talk to you upstairs in the bookstore?”
“Sure,” Breeanne said, stroking the calico’s fur. “What’s up?”
“Yeah,” Suki said. “What’s up? Jake Coronado?”
“Huh?” their father asked, looking unsettled.
“Have another muffin, Dad.” Jodi held the basket out to him and gave her youngest sister a big-eyed, you’re-bucking-for-a-strangling stare.
Breeanne had turned for the stairs and Jodi followed.
She studied Breeanne, who looked absolutely radiant as she sank down in a chair in front of the bookstore’s computer. Seeing her looking so happy and healthy lifted Jodi’s spirits to the ceiling. So many times the family had feared they were going to lose her. As a girl, Jodi had done her best to hold things together at home whenever her folks were at the Children’s Hospital in Dallas at Breeanne’s bedside during her numerous heart surgeries.
“You look beautiful,” Jodi said, perching her butt against the corner of the desk. “I’m so happy for you and Rowdy.”
“Thank you.” Breeanne blushed, raised a self-conscious hand to her head. “I still can’t believe I landed him.”
“Rowdy should be the one who can’t believe he got such an awesome woman as you.”
“He tells me that every day.” Breeanne’s smile deepened, her eyes shining bright with love. “Jodi, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.” She reached across the desk to squeeze Jodi’s hand. “You’ll find your soul mate one day. I’m sure of it.”
Jodi shook her head, but her pulse spiked strangely. “I’m not sure I buy into the whole soul mate concept.”
“I didn’t believe it either … until Rowdy.” Breeanne took a deep breath. “Jodi, he’s the most incredible guy in the world and he’s perfect for me.”
“I know. When I see you two together …” I get lonely. “I realize Ryan did me a huge favor leaving me at the altar.”
“If only he hadn’t done it in such a cruel and dramatic way.” Breeanne’s eyes brimmed with sympathy.
“It’s okay,” Jodi said, and meant it. “He toughened me up. I needed that.”
“I hope he didn’t make you hard.” Breeanne’s voice lightened, but her eyes saddened.
That alarmed her. “Do you think I’ve gotten hard?”
“No, not hard. Just …”
“What?”
Breeanne winced. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“No, really. If Ryan has affected my behavior, I want to know. I don’t want to become bitter.”
“Not bitter,” Breeanne said. “That’s not what I mean. But maybe too tough? Don’t let what happened close your heart off to love.”
Jodi sank back on the desk. “Wow, is that the way I’m coming across?”
“I only mention it because I love you so much and want you to be happy.” Breeanne patted Jodi’s hand. “I know it took me a while to let go of my fears before I could fully commit to Rowdy.”
“What fears?”
“Of not being good enough for him. Once I let go of my fears, once I stopped being afraid, it was so easy to love. What are you afraid of, Jodi? What is holding you back from loving with an open heart?”
Breeanne’s insight stunned her. She was right. One hundred percent. Yep. Letting go of past hurts. Putting yourself out there. Opening up. Good idea. But how did you let go of the values and beliefs and fears that made you who you were? What happened if she was able to let go of them? Who would she be then? Jodi had no idea.
“Listen,” Jodi said. “You know that perfume I found in the hope chest?”
Breeanne nodded. The day after Jodi had found it, she’d asked Breeanne to smell the perfume, but like everyone else, her younger sister hadn’t been able to detect the scent.
“It’s alarming really,” Jodi said. “Scary that I am able to smell this amazing fragrance that no one else can smell. It makes me wonder if I’m having hallucinations.”
“I know,” Breeanne said. “You’re not. Initially, I felt the same way about the cheetah scarf.”
“I don’t believe in magical thinking or prophecies.”
“What about a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
Jodi shrugged. “I guess anything is possible. It’s a little overwhelming to go there.”
“Jodi …” A knowing expression came over Breeanne’s face. “Did someone else smell the scent too?”
Silently, she nodded.
“A guy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A cute guy?”
“Yes.” She hadn’t been breathing and the word came out brittle and airless.
Breeanne’s eyes caught fire and she gripped Jodi’s arms with both hands. “Jodi, it’s him.”
A shiver shook Jodi’s bones. “Him who?”
“Your soul mate. Your one and only.”
Jodi shook her head. “That’s completely loony tunes. Cray-cray. Mad Hatter tea party nuts.”
Breeanne clicked her tongue in a tsk, tsk noise, as if Jodi was the most unenlightened person on the planet. “It happened to me and Rowdy.”
“I’m not like you,” Jodi said. “I’ve got a deeply cynical side that just won’t let me go to those airy-fairy places.”
“You’re not deeply cynical. You’re just scared.”
Um, yeah.
“What if I told you that smelling the perfume was all in your mind? Would that make you feel better?” Breeanne sounded like a wise old sage, as if she was a hundred and six instead of twenty-six.
“So I just imagined I smelled the scent and he caught a whiff of my delusion?”
Breeanne clasped Jodi’s palm with both hands, peered earnestly into her eyes. “Something like that. I did some research after I found the scarf and discovered some really interesting things about how our brain can trick us.”
“In what way?”
“As a survival mechanism, your brain looks for patterns even when there aren’t any. It produces optical illusions, all kinds of things. Seeing—or in your case—smelling is believing, but reality can be subjective.”
“Okay. And that doesn’t make us nuts for even entertaining the idea that a scarf or a perfume could lead us to love?”
Breeanne laughed. “No, it makes us human. Everyone’s brain deceives them in one way or another.”
“So let me get this straight. According to your research, it’s all in my mind? My nose doesn’t really smell lavender or vanilla?”
“That’s right.”
“And you don’t really feel soft material when you touch the cheetah scarf?”
“Well, I do feel the softness, but it�
�s not really soft. The sayings on the hope chest set up our expectations. Our brains are hardwired for myth. We want to believe, so we experience through our senses.”
“All right. I’ll bite.” Jodi ironed her eyebrows with her fingers. She didn’t know if she was buying this, but she preferred a more logical explanation to magical thinking.
“You smelled something because your brain set you up to smell something. It’s psychosomatic.”
“Key word being ‘psycho’?”
“It’s not psycho. It’s brain chemistry.”
“Okay, I can get into that, except now here’s the tricky part. Why does this guy I’ve met smell the very same thing I do?”
“Ah.” Breeanne raised an index finger. “But does he really? Has he told you specifically that the perfume smells like lavender and vanilla?”
“Well, he didn’t get that detailed about it and I didn’t think to ask. He just said I smelled so delicious that he wanted to lick me. Or something along those lines.”
Breeanne giggled. “Oh my, that sounds nice. That is if you want him to lick you.”
“I do, but I don’t want anything more than that. I don’t want a magical soul mate, twined-together-forever thing that you and Rowdy have going on. At least not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wanted to be able to just have casual sex. You know. No strings. Simple. Fun. Have a good time and be on my way. I don’t want our encounters to be fraught with meaning. Can’t it just be for fun?”
“It can be, yes.” Breeanne nodded. “But what if it’s more? Do you really want to close that door?”
“Look, I just met this guy. I’ve only seen him three times. It can’t possibly be love.”
“But there’s something there or you wouldn’t be so panicky.”
“I’m not panicky.”
“Um …” Breeanne said. “You just tore a piece of paper to shreds as you talked about him.”
“Huh? What?” Jodi glanced down. At some point she’d pick up a piece of copy paper from Breeanne’s desk and had systemically torn it into pieces now littering her lap, and she’d been completely unaware of it. “Oh crap, I am panicking.”
“No worries.” Breeanne swept the pieces of paper that had fallen onto the desk into the trashcan with the side of her hand, while Jodi plucked at the paper fragments dusting her jeans.
“What do I do?” Jodi moaned.
“You want this guy for right now, but not for happily-ever-after.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why do I want him or why do I only want him for a fun fling?”
“The fling part. Why are you afraid of something more?”
“Because of Ryan,” she admitted. “I was so wrong about him. I don’t trust my judgment anymore, and I’m so attracted to Ja— this guy,” she quickly corrected. “I don’t want to set myself up for more heartbreak.”
“You’re not willing to take the chance that this guy could actually be the one.”
“Right. And I’m certainly not trusting the predictions of hope chest perfume.”
Breeanne giggled. “It does sound pretty far-fetched when you put it like that, but hope chest and perfume aside, there’s a bigger issue here, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, I’m not ready to get involved, and since I’m not really the casual-fling kind of woman, I should probably back off this relationship before I get in too deep.”
“Or you could dive in headfirst and live in the moment and let whatever happens, happen.”
Jodi decided not to comment on that. “You were going to tell me why this guy smells the perfume too. If it’s all in my head, how is it that he smells something too?”
“Because when you wear it, you exude confidence. You feel good when you’re wearing it. That’s what he’s picking up on. Your pheromones. Not the perfume.”
“More brain trickery?”
Breeanne nodded. “More brain trickery.”
“Hmm. All right. That explanation might work for perfume, but what about your cheetah scarf? I can see how if I’m confident my body might give off an attractive scent, but how in the world did both you and Rowdy perceive the scarf as soft?”
“I’m no scientist or neurologist, but it’s Rowdy’s theory that when I wear the scarf he sees the world through my eyes—soft, gentle, kind.”
“Ahh, that’s so sweet I might just throw up,” Jodi teased.
Breeanne laughed. “You’re just jealous.”
“Damn straight,” Jodi said. “Damn straight.”
Jodi hugged her sister and then sat back down. “I really am so happy for you.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“And I’m beyond touched that you asked me to be your maid of honor.”
“It’s a lot of work—”
“I’m loving every minute of it.”
“So …” Breeanne canted her head. “What do you think about Jake taking over for Warwick?”
Jodi shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “Whatever works for you and Rowdy.”
“Is Jake the one who can smell your perfume?” Breeanne asked coyly.
Jodi tried not to react, but goose bumps broke out over her skin. “What makes you ask that?”
“You seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.”
“He seems nice enough,” Jodi said.
“Such a shame about his wife.” Breeanne’s eyes got sad and she clicked her tongue.
A chill rippled over her. His wife? Jake had a wife?
“What about his wife?” Jodi struggled to keep her tone of voice neutral. Why was she so bothered by the news that he’d had a wife? She barely knew the guy. And she was the one who’d refused to let him tell her anything personal about himself.
“You didn’t hear about it?”
“Hear about what?”
“Of course, I admit that I didn’t really pay that much attention either. I was in the midst of my final heart surgery and it happened in Chicago and I didn’t know Rowdy then. But it was a big story in baseball circles.”
“What happened?” Jodi asked, stabbing her fingernails into her palms.
“Three years ago, just before Jake’s career really took off, his new bride was killed in a convenience store robbery. Jake was playing for the Cubs, but his wife was originally from East Texas. Jefferson, I believe and I think Rowdy mentioned they’d even bought a house together there.”
“Oh wait, I vaguely remember hearing something about that,” Jodi said. “It was about the time I started dating Ryan.”
“It was so sad.”
Jodi plastered a palm over her mouth. Sympathy for Jake and all he’d suffered pushed through her veins, rushed up to clog her heart, her throat, her tear ducts. “The poor guy.”
“Jake was on the road when it happened,” Breeanne continued. “And Rowdy helped him through those dark times. He was a real mess.”
“Did they catch the guy who did it?”
“Yes. He’s in prison serving a life sentence.”
Jodi’s stomach pitched, unable to imagine what that must have been like for Jake, but her whole body ached for him.
“Jake and Maura were only married six months,” Breeanne went on. “But her murder just about destroyed him. Rowdy says Jake’s still picking up the pieces of his life. That’s why I was sort of hoping that Jake was the one who could smell your perfume. I know it’s silly and it’s the romantic in me wanting to play matchmaker. I wish you and Suki and Kasha could all find the same happiness I’ve found with Rowdy.”
Jodi didn’t know what to say. She sat there stunned by what Breeanne had told her. Jake’s happy-go-lucky smile hid a lot of pain. How brave he was! Her admiration for him climbed into rarefied air.
“Here, let me look it up for you.” Breeanne leaned over the computer keyboard to type something into Google and a second later an article about the murder of Maura Coronado popped up on the computer screen.
The picture of a smiling, auburn-haire
d young woman below the lurid headlines took Jodi’s breath.
Breeanne gave a soft gasp, met her gaze, and said exactly what Jodi was thinking. “Oh my gosh, Jo, Maura looks enough like you to be your sister.”
CHAPTER 14
Jodi Carlyle’s Wedding Crasher Rules: You just met him.
Of course you don’t love him.
“Jodi,” Mom’s voice drifted up the stairway to the bookstore where Jodi and Breeanne sat staring at Jodi’s look-alike, Maura Coronado. “There’s someone down here to see you.”
“Who is it?” she called down.
“Come and see for yourself.”
Jodi went to the balcony, leaned over to look down on the first floor, and saw Jake Coronado standing there with a baby on his hip.
He wore a pair of faded button-fly Levi’s, a white T-shirt, and a brown leather bomber jacket, looking hot as the Fourth of July. Her heart thumped crazily.
Jake glanced up at that moment. A slow, easy smile lit up his eyes as if she was the best news he’d had all day, and his sizzling gaze pinned her to the spot. The man looked even sexier with a baby on his hip. How was it possible?
A strange and wondrous flutter began at the base of her brain and slid slowly down her spine to lodge in her tailbone and unfurl graceful wings.
“Come on down, honey.” Dad waved to her.
She was stuck. No sneaking out the back way and pretending she hadn’t heard or seen any of this.
What was he doing here? And why now when she hadn’t had time to process this new information about his dead wife and the fact she looked strikingly like Maura?
Keep up your guard. Don’t go soft now because you feel sorry for him.
Squaring her shoulders, she went downstairs to see what he wanted and send him kindly on his way.
“Hey,” he said as she approached, his eyes full of sunshine.
“What are you doing here?” she asked lightly.
He gestured at the baby in his arms. It was her neighbor Kendra’s son, Tobias. “His mom left him with me because she couldn’t find you. Her sister went into labor and she took off to the hospital. Ham wouldn’t watch him. So I took your van because it had a car seat in it and here I am.”
“Krystal’s in labor? She’s a month early. I hope everything is okay,” Jodi fretted.