“Well, you wear it well,” he told her. “You don’t look a day over a hundred and thirty-five.”
Balling her fist up and shaking it at him, Liv clucked, “Funny. You’re such a funny guy.”
Jared opened a carton of fat-free sour cream and doctored his potato. “The truth is,” he told her, “I should have realized that your body has recently completed a round of cancer treatments.” Then, without hesitating, he reached across the table and did the same for Liv's potato as he continued. “You weren’t ready to ride a couple of miles. We should have started out by circling the block.”
Liv laughed.
“Salt and pepper?” he asked.
“Please. I was trying to impress you,” she said, and then cringed at the admission. “How’d I do?”
“You’d be hard pressed to do anything I didn’t find impressive, Liv. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of taken with you.”
Liv glanced up from her dinner, and his eyes caught hers. She gave a halfhearted attempt to look away, to no avail.
“The feeling's mutual,” she finally told him.
Jared's smile warmed her face, and then the heat moved down her neck to her shoulders and chest.
“That's odd,” he commented, and then he took a bite of grilled salmon.
“What is?”
“It feels like the miles between here and Ohio just doubled somehow.”
Liv set her fork down on the rim of her plate and softened with a smile. “When I planned this trip, I sure didn’t plan on you.”
“Any chance you’ve fallen in love with the place and might have thoughts of making a move?”
Liv sighed. “I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. My job is there. My friends. My doctor.”
“There are doctors here,” he reminded her. “In fact, I happen to know a few of them.”
“My life is in Ohio, Jared.” The words, although true, felt suddenly hollow and sharp-edged.
Jared pushed the food around on his plate with the tip of his fork in silence. “I understand,” he finally said. “But what about extending your trip? Is that a possibility?”
She couldn’t say the thought hadn’t crossed her mind a few hundred times already. But her disability leave had already been exhausted, and her savings cushion was just about depleted.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “It's complicated.”
Josie's coming home and will want her house back. I only have five more years before I’m eligible for early retirement at the hospital. My follow-up appointment with the oncologist is scheduled for a week from Friday.
The thoughts buzzed, and her stomach rocked.
Picking up her life and moving to Florida because of a man she’d just met? The idea was absurd! Who did that kind of thing? And yet—
“Hey, Dad. Olivia.”
Liv's head popped up as Rand led Shelby across the patio toward them.
“Hi, Rand. How are you?”
“How was the sunset?” Jared asked.
“Magnificent!” the girl piped up.
“Olivia, you remember Shelby Barnes?”
“Of course,” Liv said. “Good to see you again.”
“You too.”
“Can we join you two for a minute?” Rand asked, and Liv took note of his cautious tone.
“Of course,” Jared replied. “Sit down.”
Rand and Shelby exchanged wary, nervous smiles. Rand scraped his chair closer to hers, and then took Shelby's hand.
“This looks ominous,” Jared observed. “Do I need to strap myself in?”
“Maybe,” Rand admitted.
“Randall. Did you wreck the Sun Runner?”
“No, Dad. The boat is fine.”
Liv noticed that Jared started to ask an additional question and then stopped himself, looking to Rand.
“Well,” he began, and then he glanced at Shelby for an encouraging smile and a nod. “Dad. When I head back to London to start the spring session, Shelby's going with me.”
“Really.”
“I know we haven’t known each other for long,” Rand began, taking on the somewhat frantic cadence of motivation to get his final shots in before his father's objections. “But we’ve known each other long enough to know we’re in love. And we’re getting married.”
Liv pursed her lips tight, her eyes darting from Rand to Jared and back again.
“Married.”
“And we’d like to do it here. Before we leave.”
Liv admired Jared's calm demeanor at the timbre of this news. Less than two weeks ago, Rand had knocked at her own door, inviting her out on a date. And now here he was, stiff and guarded, announcing his plans to marry Shelby Barnes.
“How old are you, Shelby?” Jared asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“Have you spoken to your parents about this?”
“No, sir.”
Jared paused and rubbed his temple.
“The thing is, Dad,” Rand interjected, “we’re not here to ask your permission. We’re just here to tell you our news.”
Liv winced. Probably not the wisest plan of attack, but …
“And I was hoping you’d be my best man.”
Nice save.
Rand stood up first, and then Shelby popped up in response, slipping her hand into his.
“We’re on our way over to speak to Shelby's family. You take some time for this to sink in, give it some thought, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
Jared nodded. Caught in the headlights of his son's departure, he sat motionless and silent until well after the now-engaged couple was gone from sight.
“Are you all right?” Liv whispered as she cupped her hand over his. When he didn’t respond, she added, “Jared?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have nodded off. I just had the most unbelievable nightmare.”
She couldn’t help herself, and she released a sudden burst of laughter.
“I’ll just clear these dishes,” she said, stacking his plate onto hers. “I’ll wake you in a little while.”
12
Prudence slinked back toward the pond again, and this time she held her breath as she did. With all the caution and care she could muster, and her eyes clamped shut, she stepped right up to the edge of the water.
She eased one eyelid open, and then the other, daring to look at her own reflection for a second time.
“It's always a surprise,” she told Horatio as he fluttered to her side.
“What's that?” he asked.
“Seeing yourself from outside yourself, instead of always only seeing the rest of the world.”
“Ah,” Horatio nodded. “You’re right about that. It can be quite jarring.”
On the one morning that Liv might have slept in, when there were no neighbors (or reptiles) taking liberties in the swimming pool, and Boofer was uncharacteristically quiet atop her bright pink bed cushion, Liv couldn’t sleep.
She brewed a cup of herbal tea at 2 a.m., took a spin around the dark house at 3:30, and was wide-eyed and alert, flat on her back and staring at the ceiling, as the digital clock blinked 5:41. She couldn’t get the picture of Rand and Shelby out of her mind.
More to the point, it was Jared's reaction to their news that was stirring up her anxiety.
There they’d been, talking in loose terms about the future over salmon and asparagus, Liv stumbling around her thoughts, hoping against hope for a way that she wouldn’t have to say good-bye to Jared. And then …
Rand and Shelby want to get married.
After knowing each other not much longer than Liv and Jared had, they were ready to peel away their inhibitions and dive into the marriage pool. No life preservers, no inflatable orange jackets, just them and the choppy Gulf of Matrimony. It wasn’t until she’d seen Jared's reaction to the news—he’d compared it to a “nightmare”—that she realized how truly foolish she had been. Rand and Shelby's announcement acted as a mirror reflection in which Liv was able to see a clear a
nd shining truth. She and Jared were no more ready to make a change in order to be together than Rand and Shelby were. Yet for those few minutes leading up to the awakening, she’d been harebrained enough to swim around in the fantasy.
Boofer didn’t make a sound as she hopped up to the bed, slipped into the curve of Liv's arm, and lay down. The dog gave her new friend an understanding glance and then sighed as she closed her eyes.
Poppety-pop.
Liv chuckled as she stared her down, but Boofer was unfazed.
I knew it was a mistake to bring home a chunk of salmon for this dog! Back to dry food and Milk-Bones.
She clamped her eyes shut and whispered a little prayer that she might come to her senses about Jared.
“Let me just enjoy the time we have together, and then have the strength to walk away from him and go home.”
Boofer punctuated the prayer with a sleepy groan.
“And amen,” Liv added.
As the clock rolled over to 6 a.m. Liv made the decision to put her feet back to the floor. There was nothing more unproductive than thinking in the dark, and so she made herself a fast cup of coffee and then headed into Josie's office to fire up the computer and set about changing the course of her morning.
With her birthday looming, and subsequent plans for snorkeling with Jared, Liv determined not to head into another activity without being fully prepared. She wasn’t going to let the fact that she’d never been snorkeling or scuba diving, or even fishing, in her life become another bike ride in the making! And so she navigated to her favorite search engine and typed into the box.
Snorkeling for dummies
Amazed that there was actually a book by that title, she scrolled through some of the results before trying a different tack.
Sanibel snorkeling preparation
The World Wide Web could be counted on for nothing if not diversity. As she worked on her coffee, Liv learned all about the gear that would be used and the reason for each piece, the surprising world beneath the surface of the sea, and what to expect from a day on the water.
She scribbled down items for a Seaside Survival Kit.
Sunscreen. Of course.
Sunglasses and hat. To shield the sun.
String cheese or peanut butter crackers. In case of low blood sugar.
Hand sanitizer. For icky ocean things.
Insect repellent. Pesky mosquitoes.
Vinegar or rubbing alcohol. In case of jellyfish sting.
Breath mints. Just in case.
She hit PRINT on a how-to list that rattled off while she changed into her swimsuit. Then she grabbed the snorkeling equipment she’d spotted in a net bag hanging on the hook inside Josie's front closet and headed out back to the pool.
Liv sat on the edge of the first step and slipped large green flippers over her feet, then accidentally sloshed the how-to paper with water, smearing some of the fresh ink.
“While standing in shallow water,” she read aloud, “practice putting your face below the surface while looking through the mask.”
Liv wiggled her flipper-covered feet in a sort of greeting before tilting back her head and lifting the mask like a headband.
“If your mask or snorkel should fill with water,” she read, “this can be a frightening experience. Take great care to learn the process of clearing the equipment prior to your day of snor-keling—o-kay! To clear the snorkel, exhale strongly through your mouth, which will send the water up and out of the tube. Some snorkels are fitted with … blah blah blah blah.”
Liv swished the snorkel around in the pool water, and then pressed it to her mouth. Breathing in hard through her nose first, she then blew out, sending water sprinkling out of the tube.
“This seems easy enough,” she declared, and then slipped the mask into place for her first snorkel-swim in just four feet of chlorinated water.
Jared squinted, trying to figure out what was at the center of Josie's pool. At first, it looked to be a large, red plastic plate bobbing at the surface. And then it took an odd curve, and a border of solid white appeared on one side.
He moved closer to the edge of the pool and pushed his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose and peered over them.
It's someone's … bottom, he realized, and then his laughter rang like a church bell. A backside, just floating in the water!
The round, red bottom submerged just then, followed by two green flippers, kicking and splashing. When she came up again, the sight of Liv—her red curls dark and slicked straight back from a face almost completely obscured by a bright blue mask, with a lemon-yellow snorkel extending over her head like a one-sided antler—doubled him completely over. He snorted, leaning on the back of one of the patio chairs to catch his breath.
“Whad?” she exclaimed, standing in the shallow end of the pool, her foggy mask suctioned to her face and her hand folded against her hip. “Whad’re you laughing ad?”
“I wish you had my perspective,” he replied with a chuckle.
Liv pushed the mask up over her forehead and glared at him. “I knew the minute I decided to try this that you would come through that screen door. I just knew it.”
“Listen, Jacques Cousteau,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m driving out to Naples to check on one of my patients. Are you interested in coming along?”
“Where's Naples?” she asked as she peeled the mask over her head.
“Less than an hour. But it's worth seeing, if you’re interested.”
“Okay.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then planted her hand on her hip again and raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
Liv raised her hand and flicked her fingers at him. “Go,” she sang. “Go, go, so I can get out of the pool.”
“I’ve seen you in your swimsuit before, you know,” he teased, but her fingers just danced that much faster, pointing the way toward the screen door. “All right. I’m going.”
He sauntered toward the door at a snail's pace for effect. When he heard Liv groan, he broke into a full grin.
“I’m telling your patient, you know. What a terrible doctor you are, making them wait like this.”
Jared shot her a glance over his shoulder, and Liv cried out immediately, “Jared Hunt, turn around and get off this property right this minute.”
He laughed out loud as he opened the screen door and stepped out onto the lawn.
“One hour,” he called.
“O-kay,” she sang back to him.
“Okay then.”
“Go-o.”
“Go-ing.”
“Now-ow.”
“Go-one.”
Jared walked home with that grin plastered across his face the whole way. As he poured himself a cup of coffee, he realized that his face kind of ached. No matter how he tried, however, the smile was going nowhere, and he had Olivia Wallace to blame.
She was just the most adorable creature he’d ever met. Modest and insecure, charming and funny, smart and completely disarming, Liv was what Jared would have created if given the chance to put together the perfect woman.
I’m in real trouble here, he realized as he strode into his home office and plunked down in the leather desk chair.
He gulped from the warm cup and then set it down on the desk and leaned back into the chair.
“I’ve only known her …” he began, and then fell silent.
This is absurd. She's leaving and going back to Ohio next week. What are you going to do, propose?
Jared's gaze floated to the framed picture of Rand on the corner of the desk. His son's huge, engaging smile always pinched at his heart. When he was a little boy, that smile seemed too big for his little face but, as he grew into it, Rand learned how to master it.
If only he’d use it for good instead of evil, Jared joked inwardly.
Rand could get just about anything he wanted in life because of that smile, and now his father wondered if that was a blessing or a curse. In fact, he could almost manage to blame that sm
ile for the fact that a young and innocent twenty-two-year-old blonde had agreed to marry him after knowing him for only a few weeks.
He wondered what Shelby's parents had to say about the announcement, and whether they felt a little panicky when they thought about the reality of their daughter pledging her entire life to some professor with a great smile, who would be dragging her an ocean away from the life she’d only just begun to build.
Youth offered a certain advantage to Shelby and Rand that Jared didn’t have. At fifty-five, he certainly couldn’t turn his head and ignore the flags and alarm bells going off at the thought of making such an impulsive commitment, or at the thought of asking someone else to make it. Liv had a life of her own in Ohio. She had friends and a job and a home. Hallie was her best friend. She surely wasn’t going to leave her behind, uproot her entire life, and move more than eight hundred miles on the off chance that a physical attraction with Jared would turn into something lasting. And yet, even the mere thought of it now summoned a spicy-scented hope inside of him.
Jared groaned. He tilted his head back and clamped his eyes shut and shook his head.
Get a grip, man.
For a moment, he wished he hadn’t given in to the temptation to invite Liv to ride along to see Fletcher in Naples. A couple of hours alone in the car might have been helpful just then. But ever since they’d met, Jared had been making the most of every possible interlude, inviting her to dinner and lunch, out on the boat, even stopping by with no solid reason for doing so. There was something about Olivia Wallace, and he felt uncharacteristically helpless in the fight against it.
Case in point: An hour later, when she opened her front door and stood before him in a teal-blue sundress the color of the Gulf, with her fire-red curls piled upward and an eager smile spread across her porcelain face, Jared sent a quick and silent prayer of thanks upward for the next several hours in her captive company.
The ride to Naples flew by on wings of conversation that never once ebbed. From their marriages, their early lives, his in Chicago and hers in Ohio, to their favorite books and music, one topic to another to another. Nothing was off-limits.
The Big 5-OH! Page 11