by Cara Colter
Somehow he knew, despite her ability to think of someone else, even when she was in distress, he knew he would not be sending that dress, or anything else of hers, to Goodwill.
He also knew she was the kind of woman who would require him—any man she was with—to be a better man.
“Not up for that,” he said out loud, as if somehow that would make it true, as if it would take away the unexpected longing to be the kind of man worthy of a woman like Jessica.
He told himself, again, he was glad she was gone.
The words rang as hollow as a tree that had had its insides burned clean out by a lightning strike.
CHAPTER NINE
“JESSICA, YOUR FATHER and I have to talk to you. Can we come over?”
Jessica sighed. This was the problem with living in a little cottage in your parents’ backyard. Of course they could come over, they were steps away. She couldn’t even pretend she wasn’t home. Her mother’s kitchen window looked right at her house. They would have known the second she returned from the bookstore today.
Funny how since she’d returned from New York, she was so aware of the “problems” in her life. Town too stifling, parents too close, house too small, bookstore not challenging. Her trip to New York had triggered a deep sense of dissatisfaction in her. Which explained why she had been avoiding her parents. It made her feel guilty that she suddenly yearned for things she had never yearned for before.
Including the taste of a certain man’s lips.
But still, all those “problems” seemed like they might only be distractions from the real issue. And yet, she recoiled from the question that pressed at the edges of her mind every time she lay down to go to sleep: What was the real reason she had run away from Jamie?
If she craved the taste of his lips, if she wanted him in her life, why hadn’t she stayed and talked to him? Heard his side of things? At least given whatever was happening between them an opportunity to grow? Should she call him? Should she apologize?
Before she could go too far down that road, there was a knock on the door. Jessica realized she should have offered to go over to their place. Her small space was something it had never been before—a disaster! Since her return, looking after her own space seemed like too much of an effort.
She opened the door and her mother and father filed in, looking very solemn, casting worried glances at her and the state of her house, on the way to her kitchen table.
“Jessica,” her mother said, without preamble, “you’ve been home a week. Your father and I can’t help but notice you seem depressed.”
Depressed? Did it go that far? She looked around her tiny home: empty ice cream buckets on the counter, dishes piled in the sink, clothes on the floor. Good grief! This was not her.
“We know you told us you were robbed in New York. We were wondering about post-traumatic stress. Maybe some counseling—”
Jessica bit her lip. It was the first time she had felt like laughing since she got home. “Mom, I’m okay. I don’t have PTSD. Honestly, the robbery...” she hesitated. What could she say? Led to the best experience of her entire life? “...just didn’t affect me that much.”
If that was true, if it had led to the best experience of her life, why had she been so quick to run, to slam the door shut behind her?
“But something has!” her mother wailed. “Your father and I have talked about it. Another possibility we thought of was that you fell in love with New York, didn’t you?”
For a heart-stopping moment, Jessica heard you fell in love in New York, didn’t you?
She didn’t say anything, so her mother rushed on.
“If that’s what’s bothering you—if you want to go there—we support you 100 percent. We would miss you dreadfully, of course, but we are still young people, quite capable of looking after ourselves. We’re not doddering old fools, even if we can’t run our phones. Or the TV set.”
“Don’t forget the tablets,” her father added, pleased to be of help.
Her mother shot him a look.
Jessica saw, between them, in that look of exasperated affection, everything she had always wanted. Comfort, companionship, love that had survived many tests and challenges, a deep knowing of another human being.
Her parents, she knew, from their stories, had been just like Jessica and Devon: lifelong companions, soul mates who had grown up next door to each other.
But in New York, Jessica had glimpsed something far more terrifying than their steady love, something that burned brighter and hotter.
There was that fear again, flitting around the edges of her mind. She shoved it away.
“What your mother is trying to say is that we would never want you to put off an opportunity out of a sense of obligation to us.”
“Yes, that is exactly what I wanted to say. Just think! We could visit you in NYC. It’s on my bucket list.”
They were both looking at her so hopefully, wanting so desperately to fix anything that was wrong in her world.
Jessica could feel tears forming in her eyes. Her parents were setting her free, giving her their blessing. But in her heart, she knew it wasn’t a sense of obligation to her parents holding her back.
That was just one of her many excuses.
“Thank you,” she told them softly.
Her father took that as a signal to leap up from his chair and get away from a conversation that was not about an old car, so therefore was uncomfortable.
“I have to work on that lock thing,” he said, and hauled his phone out of his pocket. “Look, Jessica, I can lock the doors of the house from here. I’m trying to hook up the bookstore for you, but—”
Her mother gave him a nudge and a warning look.
“But I can do it myself!” he said. “No need for you to help, Jessica. At all.”
After they left, she looked at the clock. There was time, before dark, to go to the Falls. She had told Jamie that she always went there when she needed an answer, but she had been making the hike almost daily, and still no answers came.
New York had shown her an uncomfortable truth. Jessica had outgrown her hometown. Now what? Obviously, New York had not worked out, but should she be actively seeking out other opportunities? Thinking of selling her bookstore? Moving on?
She might have normally sounded out these ideas on Aubrey and Daisy. She had come to trust their judgment deeply. They were definitely her “go-to” when she needed to share a confidence.
But this time, they were in a tizzy of excitement over the shocking gifts they had been given.
Neither of them would entertain the notion that their gifts—Daisy, a villa in Italy, and Aubrey, funds to go on a grand adventure—were very different than hers. Neither of their gifts was directed at their professional competency. While their gifts seemed only to reflect the generosity of the giver, seemed to be only about embracing fun, Jessica felt the weight of a judgment in the gift of a job opportunity, as if Viv had sniffed out a failure, as if the opportunity she had directed toward Jessica was based in pity.
Aubrey had scoffed at the idea, and Daisy had been silent when Jessica had said it, which Jessica assumed was disagreement. So, she had gone quiet online, feeling, not quite betrayed by her two friends, but not understood, either.
Suddenly, she had the feeling. They knew.
Aubrey and Daisy knew that Jessica’s feelings of upheaval may have been precipitated by the unexpected job offer, but they had not been caused by it.
Indeed, it might have all brought her to this place she most needed to be.
Facing the fear that was at the core of her being, and that directed every single other thing in her life.
* * *
Jamie swatted at a mosquito. He felt as if he had been on the longest journey of his life, and it had brought him to the very edges of the earth.
Timber Falls was not an
easy place to reach. It had taken nearly two days to get here, including the flight and renting a car from the nearest airport. After driving through a wilderness of towering trees and soaring mountains—country so endless and magnificent it made a man feel small and lost—his GPS had finally delivered him to Timber Falls.
It was a town out of a postcard: against a backdrop of ragged-edged mountains and deep green forests, was a wide valley that held neat and tidy streets, lined with pastel-painted cottages and Victorian houses in historical colors. There were shady porches, with swings on them, fenced yards with patches of lush green grass that begged for bare toes to wiggle in it. He caught glimpses of garden plots with neat rows of furry green growth poking up through rich black soil. Everywhere were lilac trees, in full blooms of white, lavender, deep purple. The summer air was perfumed with their scent.
He passed two churches, small boxes of buildings with soaring spires, and a water park where children squealed as they squirted each other with cannon-like guns and as a bucket on a post filled and then spilled over on top of them. The elementary school and the high school shared grounds, the soccer fields and baseball diamonds empty, the swings in the play yard deserted for the summer.
The outlying neighborhoods gave way to a quaint main street, baskets overflowing with colorful petunias hanging from old-fashioned streetlight standards. At two stories, the tallest buildings were the town hall, and the Royal Bank.
It was all exactly as Jamie had pictured the town Jessica would come from.
He drove slowly, passing the hardware store, a restaurant, a bakery, a hair salon. And there it was. Sandwiched in between a false-fronted ice cream store and a sandstone art gallery was a narrow old house that had been converted into a bookstore.
The plate glass window had a graphic in Baskerville Old Face that declared it was Jessica’s store, The Book and Cranny.
Jamie could feel his heart begin to beat faster in anticipation of seeing her again. How would she react? Surely she would not slam a door in his face when she knew how hard it was to get to this place?
He was here on official business, but if that was completely true, his heart would not be beating nearly out of his chest at the thought of seeing her.
He got out of his car and was blasted by early-summer heat. He hurried across the sidewalk and opened the door of her store.
A bell rang when the door opened. The store should have felt dark after the bright sunlight of outside, but it didn’t. He had expected he might feel closed in by shelves of books, but instead the space felt open, cheery, light-filled and wonderfully cool.
He could see Jessica’s touch everywhere: in the beautiful little nook that the store had probably taken its name from, which was filled with colorful pillows, in the sunflower-yellow wall hung with framed posters for favorite children’s books: Where the Wild Things Are, Love You Forever, Goodnight Moon.
A well-loved copy of Are You My Mother? was open on its spine on one of the pillows. He scanned the space and saw only four people: a mother with two children, and a middle-aged man flicking through the newspaper selection.
No Jessica. In fact, there was no evidence that anyone was employed here. He walked around and looked at hand-lettered signs on the walls.
We can book you without an arrest.
Odds are we’re your favorite bookie.
Caught you read-handed.
We’re all about buy the book.
Then a door opened, and he held his breath, then let it go again when an elderly woman came out from an office area and set some books on the service counter. He craned his neck to see into the office, but she frowned at him and closed the door.
He walked over to the counter. “I’m looking for Jessica Winton.”
The woman lowered half-glasses to the tip of her nose and regarded him silently for a long moment. “She’s not here. She left early. She’s been leaving quite early every day since she came back from New York City.”
She said this in a faintly accusing tone, as if she could read where he came from, from a mile away. As if Jessica had returned to them changed, and she saw that as his fault. Had she returned changed?
Reading way too much into it, he told himself sternly. He was here on business. He couldn’t very well ask where she lived, could he? Or maybe he could, since it felt like the pretense of business, not that he could afford any more pretense around Jessica!
“When will she be back?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Did he look as deflated as he felt? Because the woman’s expression inexplicably softened, and she pushed her glasses back up on her nose.
“You could try the Falls,” she said. “I’ve seen her going up that way several times.”
Small towns, where everyone knew what everyone else was doing and weren’t afraid to share it, either. What if a stranger was seeking Jessica for nefarious purposes? He wanted to say something to the woman about revealing her boss’s whereabouts, but Jamie reminded himself, as he exited the store back into the heat, that Jessica had not appreciated his feeling protective of her.
The Falls. She had told him that was where she went for answers. What answer did she seek since she had returned to this place?
Swatting at mosquitos, it occurred to Jamie that he was in her home territory this time. It might be that he was the one needing protection. Weren’t there bears around here? His shoes didn’t seem particularly well suited to this activity either. How far were the Falls?
He heard them before he saw them, a roar in the distance that grew louder and louder until he could see mist in the air. He came around a final twist in the pathway and stopped short.
Jessica was sitting on a large, flat rock, facing the Falls. Her eyes were closed and her face was lifted to the mist that fell around her. Her knees were drawn up to her and her arms were wrapped around them. She had on a sleeveless white tank top, belted khaki shorts and sturdy hiking boots. In the time she had been back here, her skin had become sun-kissed and was the warm golden brown of a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. Her hair was in a braid that hung over one shoulder.
She did not look like the same woman as he had spent time with in New York: she seemed more natural, completely at home with herself, more stunningly beautiful, if that was possible.
She must have sensed she was no longer alone, because she dropped her head, opened her eyes and turned to look at him.
For one moment, in her eyes, he saw surprise, followed by unbridled joy.
He was aware a man could live for such a look from a woman.
But then the look was gone, so quickly he wondered if it was a trick of light and mist, an illusion created by the rainbows that danced in the air around her.
“Hello, Jessica,” he said, having to raise his voice to be heard over the thunder of the Falls.
She slid off the rock, brushed off the seat of her shorts and faced him, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, the look a man could live for gone completely from her beautiful face.
* * *
Jessica could not take her eyes off Jamie. He was out of his element, and impossibly it made him even more gorgeous! That beautifully cut suit, the jacket hooked over his shoulder with his thumb, made him look like a model ready for a photo shoot in a rugged location. His hair was falling sexily over one eye, and he looked as confident as he had on the streets of New York.
She had been coming here for answers since her return from the big city but the Falls had been stubbornly silent. How could she have known him for such a short period of time, and her heart whispered beloved when she saw him?
When Jamie had come out of the mist, he had seemed as if he could be her answer.
But wasn’t he the kind of man who a lot of women probably thought was their answer? By his own admission his very own sister said he had made capturing he
arts a game. Besides, here was the truth: people needed to provide their own answers!
She had to steel herself against that abundance of charm and confidence. She had to steel herself against the cry of her own heart.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
“I was sent here. To talk to you.”
Sent here. She was still some kind of assignment. “Oh,” she said, and tossed her braid over her shoulder, “punishment. You let the charity case get away.”
His expression darkened. “It was never like that. Vivian Ascot has amazing instincts. She hasn’t gotten to where she is in business on her inheritance alone, believe me. You have something she wants, and I’ve been sent to get it.”
Jessica actually felt disappointed. He was here for business, not because he had missed her. Not because he had thought of her every day. Not because those thoughts had crowded out all else and filled him with an insane sense of longing. Not because his life had suddenly felt as it was lacking and as if he needed to change everything.
“What does she want?” Jessica had tried to get in touch with Vivian since she and Daisy and Aubrey had figured out that was who their benefactress was. They all had. But as Daisy had put it, “You’d think she was the Queen.”
Her security was impenetrable. They couldn’t even tell if Vivian knew about their multiple social media attempts to reach her, or if they had all been relegated to the spam pile.
“She—we, JHA—want to see, firsthand, how you are making that bookstore such a phenomenal success. If you won’t come to work for us, we’ll come to you. We’re hoping you’ll agree to let us use your bookstore as a model. We’d compensate you, naturally.”
The only part that interested her was the “we.” JHA. Not me. Not I.
“It’s unnecessary to compensate me,” Jessica said stiffly. She also realized she was slightly miffed that he wasn’t here to beg her to change her mind. “And it was unnecessary to come here. I could have sent you any information that you needed.”