A Reunion And A Ring (Proposals & Promises Book 1)

by Gina Wilkins

  “Would you like a glass of water before you leave?” she asked without quite meeting his eyes.

  “No, I’m good. I’d kind of hoped to stay a little longer, but I can see you need time to deal with this.” Spotting a pad and pen on the bar, he scribbled something on the top sheet. “Here are my numbers. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  At the moment, she hadn’t the foggiest idea what she would say. She merely nodded.

  He hesitated, as if there were many things he wanted to discuss. But obviously he could see that she simply wasn’t up to that conversation yet. He took a step toward her and rested his hands on her shoulders as he bent his head to kiss her. He didn’t immediately move away when he released her mouth, but looked at her with a serious expression.

  “I want to see you again, Jenny. I think that goes without saying. But even if you decide you don’t want to take another chance on us, don’t let anyone else try to change you to suit them. Trust me, I’ve been there. It doesn’t work. It only makes you miserable.”

  “You should go now, Gavin,” she whispered. Her eyes felt suddenly hot and she did not want to cry in front of him. She needed desperately to cling to what little self-control she had left. “We will talk. But not tonight.”

  “Take all the time you need,” he said gruffly, taking a step backward. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

  She merely nodded. With a last brush of his hand against her face, Gavin left. Only then did she allow herself to sink into a chair and bury her face in her hands.

  Everything had changed tonight. All her carefully laid plans had shattered beneath Gavin’s kisses. No matter what happened with him, she knew she couldn’t accept Thad’s proposal now.

  She couldn’t tell Thad over the phone, of course. He deserved a face-to-face answer to his offer. He would be disappointed, though in all honesty she doubted he would be heartbroken. Nor would he be angry; in all the months they’d dated, they’d exchanged no more than a few cross words. In all likelihood, he would wish her the best, maybe try one more time to convince her how good they’d have been together, and then he would graciously accept her answer.

  Thad had a plan that would remain intact despite her decision. It wouldn’t take him long to implement it with someone equally suitable as his partner. Another attorney, perhaps, or a professor or marketing executive. He had no interest in vacuous young arm candy. He claimed to be attracted to intelligence, competence and poise. She’d been pleased that he’d set his standards so high and that he thought all those flattering adjectives applied to her.

  As for herself—maybe she’d known all along it would turn out this way. Not that she would find Gavin again, of course, and certainly not that the powerful attraction that had always existed between them would draw him to her bed. But maybe when she’d taken off for the woods to consider and deliberate, she’d secretly known she would be unable to commit to Thad in the way he wanted.

  As Gavin had pointed out, her joy lay in the business she’d built for herself, the plans and goals she still had for it. Maybe that should be enough for her. Maybe, like her mother and grandmother before her, she was destined to be single and self-sufficient. Maybe, unlike them, she’d been fortunate enough to come to that realization without the agony of losing someone she loved and with whom she’d planned to live out her lifetime. The dread was still there, still sharp and discouraging.

  She had to admit now that she didn’t love Thad enough to be happy with him. But she still feared she loved Gavin entirely too much.

  * * *

  She had almost forgotten she’d made plans to have breakfast with Tess late Sunday morning at a new café they’d both wanted to try out. Tess sent her a text asking if they were still on, and after a brief deliberation, Jenny agreed, hurrying to get ready in time.

  After a near-sleepless night in her now memory-filled bed, she wanted to get out of the apartment for a while. Tess’s serene, soothing presence could be just what she required to calm her jangled nerves. She definitely needed calming before she joined her mother and grandmother for their regular Sunday dinner later that evening.

  “Well?” she asked as they sat at a little table in the cute but crowded café. The tables were arranged so close together that she was almost elbow to elbow with one of the three prim-looking elderly ladies at the nearest one. From their conversation, conducted in a volume meant to compensate for the noisy room and their own poor hearing, she determined that they were indulging in a nice brunch after early church services. She wasn’t interested in eavesdropping, however, choosing instead to focus on her breakfast companion. “Did you handle the big work emergency last night?”

  Tess looked up from her spinach, tomato and feta quiche with a rueful grimace. “Eventually. It took me a while to reach Scott. He’d let the battery run down on his phone and I had to make half a dozen calls to finally track him down at a client dinner. He took care of everything after that.”

  Tess probably would have been called on even if Scott were easily reachable, Jenny thought with a slight shake of her head.

  During the year and a half she’d known Tess, she’d figured out a few things about her friend’s relationship with her boss. Scott Prince was a brilliant businessman who’d built his commercial construction business into a successful and rapidly growing enterprise, but the day-to-day details were left to others, usually Tess. Twenty-nine years old, she had worked for Scott for six years. He’d been just striking out on his own when he’d hired her. She’d worked her way up till from clerical assistant to office manager. No one got to Scott except through her, and everyone who worked for him was more invested in keeping her happy than him.

  Tess was fiercely loyal to her employer, but the first to call him out when he got “too full of himself,” as she phrased it. If she had ever had romantic feelings toward her unmarried boss, she’d never said.

  At the moment, Tess apparently wasn’t thinking about her own hectic life. “So,” she said, deftly turning the conversation around. “Gavin drove you home last night?”

  Jenny took a quick sip of her coffee to delay answering, nearly burning her mouth because of her inattention. She set her cup down carefully. “Yes.”

  “He seems nice.”

  “He is.”

  “I think Stevie was trying to fix me up with him, but I could tell pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work even if I were interested in pursuing him.”

  Jenny dug a mushroom out of her omelet with her fork. “I don’t really see you with Gavin.”

  “Considering he’s still head over heels in love with you, neither do I.”

  Jenny’s fork clattered loudly against her plate, drawing a disapproving glance from the nearby church ladies. Ignoring them, she frowned across the table at Tess. “He’s not still in love with me. Until last week, we hadn’t even seen each other for ten years.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t pining for you those whole ten years, but I think seeing you again brought his feelings for you back to the forefront,” Tess mused aloud. “The way he looked at you last night...well, the hair on my arms stood on end. Talk about chemistry.”

  Jenny swallowed a groan in automatic reaction to her friend’s words, which so eerily echoed the way she’d always privately described her own reactions to Gavin. “I’ll admit there is still an...attraction between us.”

  “Mmm.” Tess sighed a bit wistfully. “I wouldn’t mind knowing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that sort of attraction.”

  After swallowing another, more cautious sip of coffee, Jenny couldn’t resist asking, “You never had that feeling when you saw me with Thad?”

  Tess grimaced. “I, um...”

  “I’m asking honestly, Tess. You won’t hurt my feelings, whatever you say.”

  After a moment, her friend shrugged in resignation. “No. I never felt that way abou
t you and Thad. I mean, he’s a very nice man. I admire him quite a bit, and I’ll probably vote for him for whatever office he eventually pursues. He seems very, um, fond of you.”

  “But the hairs on your arm have never stood on end around us?”

  “Well, no.”

  Jenny nodded with a touch of regret.

  Tess spoke quickly. “Look, that doesn’t mean you and Thad won’t be very happy. I mean, marriage should be based on more than physical attraction. You and Thad have so much in common intellectually and philosophically. You make great partners. Everyone says so.”

  “Everyone but you and Stevie.”

  Tess cleared her throat. “Stevie’s an incurable romantic, and I’m maybe a little too choosy for my own good. We’re probably not the best judges of anyone else’s relationships.”

  Jenny pushed away her half-eaten egg-white omelet. “I’m breaking it off with Thad. I’m just waiting until he gets home so I won’t have to do it over the phone.”

  Her amber eyes going wide, Tess asked, “Because of Gavin?”

  “Not in the way you mean. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t marry Thad even if I hadn’t run into Gavin again. Gavin just made me realize that I’m very happy with my life as it is, and that my feelings for Thad aren’t deep enough to justify what I’d be giving up for him. I mean, Thad hasn’t asked me to abandon my career, but he and I both know I couldn’t give it the attention it requires and still be the full-time political partner he’s looking for. He’s on the road more than he’s in town, and he’s made it clear he would want me to travel with him. As much as I enjoy my time with him, I think in the long run I’d regret giving up my own goals.”

  Tess nodded without surprise, proving that she’d had the same doubts about Jenny’s future with Thad. “So... Gavin? Did you and he talk when he took you home last night?”

  To her dismay, Jenny felt her face redden. She looked quickly down at her coffee, hoping Tess wouldn’t notice. She should have known better.

  “Um, Jenny?”

  “I’m not breaking up with Thad because of Gavin,” she muttered crossly. “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Okay. Unlike Stevie, I won’t pry into what happened last night. But you know she’s going to ask.”

  “And I’ll tell her to butt out,” Jenny snapped, her frayed nerves unraveling. “Yes, Gavin and I have electricity or chemistry or whatever the hell Stevie calls it, but that’s just sex. Okay, maybe it’s great sex, maybe once-in-a-lifetime, mind-blowing, teeth-rattling sex, but that’s not enough to build an entire future on. Because it wouldn’t—it couldn’t—always be that good, right? And then what would we have?”

  Tess cleared her throat.

  Realizing she’d spoken with a bit more passion than she’d intended, Jenny bit her lip. The three gray-haired ladies at the next table stared at her with wide eyes and open mouths. And then one of them grinned and winked at her.

  Jenny covered her face with her hands. She had never been so happy to hear Tess’s phone beep than she was at that moment.

  Tess read the text message on her screen, then exhaled heavily. “As much as I would love to continue this fascinating conversation, I have to run. Duty calls. But, um, maybe you should calm yourself a bit before you speak to Stevie.”

  Jenny groaned into her hands. Perhaps having breakfast with a friend hadn’t been the best idea today, after all. Clearly it would take more time than she’d expected to recover her characteristic composure that had been shattered last night. She would go home and work on that before she spoke with Stevie.

  She would most definitely have to get a grip before she saw her mother and grandmother that evening, a meal she wasn’t looking forward to at all.

  * * *

  Though Gavin had promised himself he would wait for Jenny to phone him, he kept second-guessing that decision as Sunday crawled by. Maybe he should call her, just to make sure she was okay. But he’d told her he’d give her time.

  Though he hadn’t heard a ring, he checked his phone for missed calls Sunday afternoon, vaguely disappointed to see that there were none from Jenny. Was she waiting for him to call her? Had she talked to that other guy yet today?

  Had last night been a one-time thing, an impulsive trip to the past, a way for Jenny to get him out of her system for good before moving on? Before making what Gavin was certain would be the biggest mistake of her life?

  Surely she would break it off with Thad now. She couldn’t marry some other guy after what she’d shared with him last night, could she? No one else could possibly make her feel what he did, just as the reverse was true for him. She couldn’t even considering marrying someone else when all it took was a touch, a kiss, to ignite a blazing fire between them. Could she?

  “Hey, Gav, break’s almost over.” Holding a basketball and wearing shorts and a tee, Avery approached. “You are still playing, right?”

  Gavin stashed the phone in his gym bag again. He, Avery and J.T. had been playing Rob and a couple other medics in three-on-three basketball. The score was tied at two wins, and they’d agreed to play a twenty-one-point tiebreaker. “I’m coming.”

  “You weren’t thinking of calling her, were you?” Avery asked suspiciously. He didn’t bother to clarify who he’d referred to, as there was no need. Gavin hadn’t told his friend about last night, but somehow Avery knew something was up.

  “Let it go, Avery. Let’s play basketball.”

  “Damn it, Gav, why are you letting her do this to you again?”

  “Just give me the ball. The way you’re playing this afternoon, the medics are going to kick our butts this time.”

  “I’m not the one who got distracted and let the ball hit me in the jaw,” Avery reminded him irritably. “One guess who you were thinking about.”

  Gavin scowled and rubbed his chin.

  “Hey, guys, come on. Let’s get this massacre over with,” one of Rob’s friends called out. “I’ve got to be home in time for dinner.”

  “Drop it,” Gavin said when Avery started to speak again. “Just play ball.”

  With a gusty exhale, Avery spun on one athletic shoe and stalked toward the court with Gavin following. Gavin didn’t really blame his buddy for being so pushy. Avery had been there to see what the last breakup with Jenny had done to him. Just as Gavin had been there during Avery’s painful divorce from his first marriage a few years ago. He would give anything to make sure his friend wasn’t hurt like that again. Avery certainly felt the same about him.

  His friends wanted the best for him, he thought with a sigh. Maybe he should listen to them.

  Maybe he’d call Jenny after this game.

  Or maybe he’d wait and let her call him.

  Damn it, Avery was right. He really was letting her mess with his head—and his heart—again. If he had a lick of sense, he’d forget he ever ran into her again. But when it came to Jenny, he’d never had a great deal of sense.

  * * *

  “So I told Margaret this morning after Sunday school that I don’t care what her grandson’s excuses are, there’s no way I’d spend any more hard-earned money to bail out his sorry butt if I were her,” Gran proclaimed over dinner, completing a story that had droned on endlessly through salad and now to the ham and potatoes course. “They’ve spoiled that boy something terrible and now the whole family’s paying the price for it, especially Margaret, since she’s the only one of the bunch who had enough sense to put away a little money for her latter years.”

  Jenny’s mother shook her head in disapproval. “I feel sorry for Angie and Don. They don’t deserve to be punished this way. But Angie still makes excuses for him, blaming all his problems on everyone but him. She can’t accept that he’s a grown man in his twenties now, and that he has to take responsibility for his own failings.”

  As uncomfortable as she
was by the gossip, Jenny was relieved that at least they were focused on someone other than her for now.

  Maybe the thought had crossed her mind too soon. Her grandmother turned to smile smugly in her direction. “I told Margaret that I hated to brag, but I was glad I haven’t had to deal with that sort of disappointment from my grandchild. I said that Jenny hasn’t given us a day’s trouble since her little college rebellion, and even that was fairly mild and short-lived. Only natural, I suppose, for a teenager to test her wings when she’s away from home, but we’d given her enough solid raising that she straightened up with only a little guidance from us.”

  Wincing at the indirect reference to Gavin, Jenny said peevishly, “I’m right here, Gran. Must you talk about me as if I weren’t?”

  “Just telling you what I said to Margaret.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have. She’s upset about her grandson, and it seems unkind to boast about me to her. Besides, I’m hardly perfect.” Nor was she a possession to be pulled out and shown off, she added silently. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that her grandmother saw her that way.

  For years, she’d tried to please her exacting grandmother, who had dealt out gestures of affection like earned rewards.

  Jenny’s mom had been more generous with her affection, but as a hospital nurse, her hours had been very long, leaving Jenny more often in her grandmother’s care. Her mom was also quieter, often overshadowed by her forceful parent, so it had been Gran who had most inspired trepidation in Jenny. Funny how those deeply ingrained patterns could carry over into adulthood, she mused as she played with the food she didn’t want but was afraid to push away for fear of rousing her grandmother’s suspicions.

  “Margaret understands that I was only expressing my gratitude that I’ve been blessed with a more successful grandchild,” her grandmother shot back, oblivious to the offensiveness of her comment. “At least I know I won’t have to worry about my bank account being drained by irresponsible family members. Both you girls have worked hard for your livings, and once you marry Thad, I’m sure you’ll make sure your mother and grandmother have what we need, won’t you, sweetheart?”