by Toni Blake
Well, he tried to stop. But he kept watching. He watched her slide her key into the lock, then turn it. Then jiggle the knob. Then cuss. “Damn it.” Her voice echoed across the street.
Two minutes later, she still struggled with the door.
And even Jack felt her frustration. He was mad at her and sad at her and lots of other things, too, but he still wanted her to be able to get in her front door. And without quite planning it, he found himself standing up and walking across the street.
Stepping up onto her porch behind her, he realized he hadn’t been this close to her in days and that it felt strange—and desperately good. But he didn’t want to feel that. He wanted to feel surly and bitter instead. So he said, “Big date?”
She flinched, then turned to him with a sneer. Understandable, he supposed. And it made her no less gorgeous. “If you must know, I’m waiting for an important phone call and I forgot my cell today.”
Jack shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He almost knew what they were both thinking, even if he hesitated to say it. It seemed an odd road to go down again. But he still finally said, “Want me to break the door down, Alice?”
. . . and the fall was over.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Chapter 21
CHRISTY CONSIDERED the offer. It was all too tempting to say yes. But . . . it suddenly seemed like an irrational move. It was a phone call, after all, not . . . a date with a rich guy. And for the first time, her original decision to have him bust the door down suddenly seemed irrational, too. Funny, at the time that date had seemed so all-important. That was before you were brave enough to depend on yourself and just wanted someone to rescue you. She was glad those days were over because she felt so much stronger inside now—even if not all that much had really changed.
“It’s not a lock I don’t have a key to this time,” she explained. “It’s just that the regular lock always sticks. Let me try it one more time.”
And looking down with fresh determination, she shoved the key back in the lock, then pulled it back just a smidge, then gently turned the doorknob and key at the same time with just the right finesse—and the lock finally clicked open.
She gasped in wonder as she lifted her eyes to the man next to her and they both let out happy laughs. “Life’s little miracles,” she said.
And he replied, “They come along when you least expect them.”
“Thanks for the offer, though,” she told him. “It was sweet of you to be concerned.”
“I’m a sweet guy,” he said, their eyes meeting briefly again. But then he blew it off with a wink and a joke. “Just don’t let that get around.”
As he followed her up the stairs to the apartment, he asked, “So what’s this phone call you’re stressed about? Something about Charlie? Is he doing all right?”
She looked over her shoulder at him as she entered her bedroom, making a beeline for her phone on the rickety bedside table. “He’s fine as far as I know,” she said. “I’m expecting a call from my bank.”
“Oh?” He sounded surprised, which she could understand. She was still pretty surprised at her own boldness, too.
And she didn’t mind telling him about it—though the words came out more quietly than intended. “I applied for a loan,” she said as she grabbed up her phone to check it. And sure enough, she’d missed a call and had a voice
mail.
“A loan?” he said behind her. “To take care of your grandpa?”
But she was already dialing the voice mail, so she held up a finger to ask Jack to wait a minute.
“Ms. Knight, this is George Donner, your loan officer. We’ve thoroughly reviewed your loan application and would be happy to extend to you the amount you’ve requested—however, given your short credit history and your current income, it’ll be necessary to have a co-signer on the loan.” From there, he went on to explain what she already knew—that a co-signer bore the responsibility of making payments on the loan if she failed to.
This was just what she’d feared and hoped against. She didn’t want to make anyone bear her burden. And besides, the only person she knew who even had the means to co-sign for her was the guy standing behind her right now, the guy she didn’t want to ask for any financial favors. She knew he would probably do it, but she didn’t want to be the girl he’d originally thought her, the girl who would use him for his money.
“You don’t look happy,” he said. “They turned you down?”
“Not exactly.” She continued looking at her phone in order to avoid looking at him. “It’s just that they want . . .”
“A co-signer,” he guessed.
“Yep,” she confirmed, tossing her phone on the bed in discouragement.
“Tell me about the loan, Alice. Is it to take care of your grandpa? How much is it for?”
Christy was torn. Because she knew he was going to offer. And she almost didn’t even want to let him. And yet . . . she knew she could make the payments; she just knew it. Her jewelry was selling so well and there were no signs of it stopping. And she would save as much of her money as possible in case lean times came, like after tourist season ended. And then maybe she could get into some boutiques further south, where tourist season didn’t really end, or maybe she could try to get some sort of foothold selling her pieces online, and then it wouldn’t even be about location.
So she took a deep breath and told him the amount. “And mostly, yes, it’s to support Grandpa Charlie. But also to help me get my jewelry business more firmly established now that I’ve seen such promising results.”
“I’d be happy to co-sign for you,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”
Christy pulled in her breath. She remained torn—but tempted. If she did this, if she let this happen, she had to make sure they were both on the same page about it. “If I were to accept your offer, Jack, it wouldn’t mean I want your money.”
“I know that, Alice,” he said very calmly.
“And I’ll make the payments, come high or hell water. I’m not looking for a bailout anymore—I promise. I need for you to understand that and to know how serious I am about it.”
Jack peered down into her pretty hazel eyes, so desperate and wild at the moment, and longed to put her at ease. He didn’t like her feeling she had to justify herself to him. And he was sorely tempted to tell her he could just pay for Charlie’s care at Sunnymeade himself, and that he’d be happy to give her whatever additional amount she needed for her business.
But even as he opened his mouth to say all this, he realized . . . it was the wrong answer.
She didn’t want a bailout. She didn’t want his money.
And he instinctively understood that she didn’t even necessarily want to be put at ease right now.
She wanted something else entirely.
She needed . . . for him to believe in her as much as she’d come to believe in herself. She needed him to believe that she was capable of making smart decisions and growing her jewelry business.
What he’d had in life that she didn’t were people who had always believed in him and supported him—his parents, teachers and professors, friends and co-workers—and only in this moment did he realize how much their encouragement had mattered when it came to following his dreams and striking out on his own.
So instead of offering her the money, he offered her something else. He said simply, “I have faith in you. All the faith in the world.”
And when an unexpected light sparked in Christy’s eyes, he understood—that was what Charlie had meant. He’d found the thing she needed from him. Just simple faith. That was all.
Christy looked up at the man with whom she’d traveled such a strange and twisted and passion-filled road. She hadn’t expected this, and something in the simple words touched her more deeply than she could have antici
pated. “Jack,” she said, “after everything, you don’t know how much that means to me.”
And then she followed the instinct to throw her arms around his neck in gratitude. And, of course, wrapping her arms around him, having his body pressed up against hers, made her feel far more than just gratitude—and when Jack enclosed her in a warm embrace, then said near her ear, “I know you can do this, honey,” it buried her. It erased every last ounce of her resistance. And it made her kiss him.
She never meant to—it just happened. And to have her lips pressed against his warm mouth, to have his body molding so snugly against hers, felt like coming home.
She knew it was crazy to be kissing him under all the circumstances, and yet she couldn’t stop. He kissed her back, just as feverishly—until together they sank to their knees on her bedroom floor.
And then he stopped kissing her just long enough to whisper, “Have faith in me, too, Christy. Please.”
The words stole her breath, made her pull back, look into those sexy blue eyes.
“Have faith in me to never hurt you again. Have faith in me to always be honest with you, to always trust you. Have faith in me to be the man you deserve. Have faith in me to love you and make you happy. Because I’ll do all those things if you’ll only let me.”
Christy knew a moment of truth when she saw one. And she also knew there were plenty of good reasons she’d walked away from Jack that night on the beach. And she knew that even if she wanted to trust him again, it wouldn’t happen automatically—trust had to be earned, and that would take some time, some caution. It came back to that whole broken plate thing—being sorry didn’t instantly repair it.
But what if protecting herself was the wrong thing to do here? What if protecting herself meant never again opening herself up to real happiness, to a real, loving connection with someone?
And didn’t she know that, despite his deceptions, Jack was the most amazing guy she’d ever met? And that she loved him?
And so if she was ever going to open her heart again, shouldn’t it be to the man she loved? And to the man who had faith in her?
If he believed in her, was it so much of him to ask that she give him the same in return?
“Real trust,” she said cautiously, “won’t happen overnight.”
But she could instantly see that her words had given him hope, told him she was opening the door, just a crack.
“I don’t mind proving myself,” he promised her. “For however long it takes.”
Christy weighed it all in her head—and in the end, she realized it came down to taking a risk, and believing. Just like when she’d set up that table at the beach that first night, nervous and afraid she wouldn’t sell any jewelry. And look how that had turned out.
She didn’t want half a life. And how on earth could anyone live a whole life—a real life, a happy life—if they weren’t willing to take chances and believe in the things, or people, they cared about?
“I love you, Jack,” she said, being brave enough to open the door a whole lot more. “And I want us to go back to where we were, back to being happy, back to loving each other.”
“I never stopped loving you, honey,” he assured her, and her heart swelled in her chest.
“I didn’t stop loving you, either. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Thank God,” he murmured, then kissed her again.
But a blissful moment later, she stopped them with a gasp, pressing her palms to his chest. “Only . . .”
“What?” he asked, clearly worried.
“I . . . kind of decided that if I got the loan I would move to Coral Cove. Because it makes sense to be near Grandpa Charlie. And that’s where the heart of my business seems to be. And, well, because I grew a lot there, and I was happy there, and so I just thought it made sense.”
“You’re right,” he agreed with her, “it does make sense.”
She blinked. “But what about us?”
“I can’t think of a nicer place than Coral Cove for us to start over together, Alice.”
Christy drew in her breath, amazed. “Really? You’d do that for me? You’d move to Coral Cove?”
“In a heartbeat, baby.”
And as she got lost in more warm, sweet kisses, she knew already that she’d made the right choice about Jack. And she suddenly had all the faith in the world in him, too.
“She tried the little golden key in the lock,
and to her great delight, it fitted.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Epilogue
“I LOVE you, too, Grandpa Charlie,” Christy said, then pushed the disconnect button on her phone, leaned back in the white wicker chair on her porch, and peered out over the ocean. It was a clear, sunny, blue-sky day and the surf was calm and the view never got old. Just one more reason, of many, to be happy.
She could scarcely believe the conversation she’d just had with her grandpa. Soon after she and Jack had moved down here to Coral Cove a few months ago, he’d spent a long afternoon on the pier with her and Jack telling them about Susan, his first love who had amazingly ended up at Sunnymeade with him, but in a coma. And just now he’d called to tell her of one more miracle—this morning Susan had opened her eyes. And she’d said his name. And she’d been aware of all the time he’d spent at her side. Christy had never heard her grandfather sound more giddy or youthful.
She couldn’t wait to tell Jack, but he was inside, in the office they’d created from a spare bedroom in the little green cottage they’d bought on Sea Shell Lane, directly across from Fletcher’s place. He was making calls to clients this afternoon, so she’d promised to leave him alone. But it had been a big day already, and she was having trouble containing herself.
In addition to Grandpa Charlie’s incredible news, she’d gotten some other phone calls, too.
Bethany had just been given the art showing she’d been dreaming of, at a downtown Cincinnati gallery. And Christy had talked her into coming down for a celebratory vacation in a few months.
And Anna had called to tell her Duke had just proposed! They were planning a simple wedding on the lawn of their inn in Destiny, the Half Moon Hill Bed and Breakfast, next spring, so Christy and Jack would definitely need to make a trip home for that. She couldn’t have been happier for her dear friend.
And last but far from least, she’d confirmed two new consignment clients today, an upscale clothing and jewelry shop on Clearwater Beach and a hotel gift shop in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, sales continued to soar, and she was having no trouble making her loan payments and sending payments to Sunnymeade as well. Of course, having combined households with Jack made finances a lot easier—there was no denying that—but she still truly believed she could have done this on her own if she and Jack hadn’t gotten back together.
All in all, life in Coral Cove was amazing. She loved living at the beach, and she and Jack had returned to the secluded spot where they’d first made love more than once to recreate the moment. It was wonderful being so close to her grandpa, and close to other friends they’d made here, too. They still frequented the Hungry Fisherman, and tomorrow Reece was taking them out for another snorkeling trip. Tonight, after the Sunset Celebration, they had plans to meet up with Fletcher, Tamra, and some of the other residents of Sea Shell Lane for a bonfire and marshmallow roast on the beach.
She loved their little beach cottage and—oh, the simple joy of being able to turn the key in the lock and always be able to get inside!
“And then there’s you,” she said, glancing down at the fluffy white cat who had just trotted up to weave a figure eight around her ankles. She bent to heft Dinah up beside her in the chair. “You don’t have to scavenge for fish remains anymore, and Jack and I get to have a furry friend around the house. I think that worked out well for all of us, don’t you?”
Dinah meo
wed, and Christy scratched behind her ears the way the kitty liked. Dinah, it turned out, was the perfect last piece of the puzzle, the final ingredient in her joyful new life that made it . . . perfect.
Though of course the best part of her life in Coral Cove was Jack. A little faith between them had gone a long way. So far that it wasn’t even necessary to think about it anymore—it was simply this soft but solid thing that floated all around them.
And with Jack she’d already found what she’d declared to Bethany made for the perfect love: He made her feel safe without saving her. She’d saved herself. And she’d fallen in love with a great guy in the process. What more could a girl want?
Well, the beach maybe. But she had that, too.
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author TONI BLAKE’s love of writing began when she won an essay contest in the fifth grade. Soon after, she penned her first novel—nineteen notebook pages long. Since then, Toni has become a RITA®-nominated author of more than twenty contemporary romance novels, her books have received the National Readers Choice Award and the Bookseller’s Best Award, and her work has been excerpted in Cosmo. Toni lives in the Midwest and enjoys traveling, crafts, and spending time outdoors. Learn more about Toni and her books at www.toniblake.com.
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By Toni Blake
ALL I WANT IS YOU
HALF MOON HILL
WILLOW SPRINGS
HOLLY LANE
WHISPER FALLS
SUGAR CREEK
ONE RECKLESS SUMMER
LETTERS TO A SECRET LOVER
TEMPT ME TONIGHT
SWEPT AWAY
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.