by Toni Blake
“Well, looks like everything’s back to normal,” he said cheerfully when all that remained were some full trash bags next to Edna’s back door and a stack of tables Mike would return the next day.
But for Amy, nothing was back to normal at all.
And that was when it hit her, hard, like a punch in the gut. That it really never would be.
No matter what happens now, my life will never be the same.
Amy stood in Under the Covers, saying goodbye to Rose Marie Keckley, who held her enormous cat, Milo, in her arms. Milo was a Maine Coon who weighed twenty pounds and nearly dwarfed Rose Marie.
“Sorry it didn’t work out,” Amy said earnestly. She clutched Mr. Knightley firmly in her grasp, but he continued hissing at the visiting long-haired cat.
“Yes—me, too. It seemed like a good idea, didn’t it?” Just then, Milo took another light swipe at Mr. K. and both women took an additional step backward.
“Best laid plans,” Amy said. And this seemed like just one more thing out of her control lately. When Rose Marie had mentioned at the shower that she thought Milo needed some interaction with other cats, Amy had thought of Mr. Knightley, deciding he could use some socialization, too. She’d thought if Mr. Knightley got used to being around some different felines that maybe he’d learn to get along with Austen, as well. She’d even gone so far as to envision playdates with all the cats in town, for both Knightley and Austen. But as it turned out, he and Milo had begun hissing and screeching and swiping at each other the moment Rose Marie had brought her big, handsome cat through the door. Mr. Knightley had even ended up scratching Amy, for heaven’s sake.
“Well, that was a weird idea,” Tessa said after Rose Marie left.
Amy just flashed a look across the room. “What was wrong with it?”
“Well, if the goal is to get Knightley to be friendly to Austen, shouldn’t you be putting them together, as opposed to sticking him with other cats?”
Okay, Amy supposed that made sense. She’d just thought . . . “He was so mean to Austen before. I kind of didn’t want to put her through that again until I thought he’d be nicer.”
“All right, I guess I can understand that—you’re trying to protect the innocent. But sometimes you have to go through some unpleasantness to get troubles worked out, you know? I really think it makes more sense for you to keep pushing them together if that’s what you really want.”
Amy nodded, because she knew Tessa made sense. But she just held such a soft spot for the little black-striped kitty—who currently hid somewhere in the bookshelves to escape all the catfighting going on at the front of the store. She wasn’t sure why since she loved all cats, but something about Austen made her feel overprotective. Maybe Amy just sympathized with feeling unloved more than ever right now, so much that it was carrying over to the bookstore’s current stray.
“Well, either way, Mr. Knightley’s in too much of a mood for me to try making them play together again today, so I’m taking him back up to the apartment,” she told Tessa. “Then we can shelve the new romances.” Even if the very idea of romance shredded Amy’s heart every time she thought about it lately.
By the time she returned to the bookstore five minutes later, Rachel had shown up. And Amy had no sooner walked in the door than Rachel said, “Okay, out with it. Start talking, girlfriend.”
Oh crap. She’d almost forgotten. That she’d been forced into promising Rachel she’d explain what she was doing skulking around the parked cars at the shower, and why Tessa had been keeping Logan occupied. She’d even forgotten to yell at Tessa for letting Rachel know something was up. She supposed her thoughts had been all over the place the last couple of days—like on Logan, and cats. And Logan, and Anna. And Logan, and the fact that she’d watched all six hours of the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice last night, while draining a tub of strawberry ice cream, just to distract herself a little.
“Don’t you have more pressing things on your mind?” she asked Rachel. “Like your wedding in less than two weeks? Or your honeymoon?” She and Mike were going to Italy to rediscover his roots, and though everything was completely planned, she knew there were plenty of last minute things to be done.
“Yes, that’s why it took me an entire two days to track you down and find out what’s going on. What are you keeping a secret from Logan?” she asked, eyes wide with wonder.
And Amy simply sighed. She didn’t look forward to going through this again so soon after having just shared it with Tessa. So she cut to the chase. “I’m in love with him.”
Rachel gasped.
“But he’s all into Anna.”
“Oh,” Rachel said glumly.
“And the whole thing is very weird right now, that’s all. So it’s not my favorite topic.”
“But what were you doing at his car?” Rachel asked, her voice a little softer now.
Another sigh left her. And her stomach churned. She felt so childish about this part. “I don’t have the guts to tell him how I feel, since I know he doesn’t feel the same way. But Tessa felt I should do something, so the something I’m doing is . . . sending him letters from a secret admirer.”
“Wow,” Rachel said. “This is far bigger than anything I could have imagined was going on. You and Logan? I guess, actually, it makes perfect sense in a way—I just never thought about it before.”
“But the thing is—there is no me and Logan. There’s Logan and Anna. And then there’s me by myself. Like always.”
“Oh Amy,” Rachel said, looking profoundly sad for her and sort of making her want to cry. Especially when she moved in for a hug. It was sweet and all—in fact, it was exactly the way she would normally respond to something like this, always ready to comfort a friend—but what she’d just learned was that when someone was feeling down, this kind of reaction could be almost enough to push them over the edge.
So she struggled to hold herself together as—oh God—now Tessa joined the hug, too, making it into a group experience, and that was when a few tears snuck free. Amy simply couldn’t stop them. Because she did feel alone. Because everyone was getting married, everyone else had love in their lives, the true, deep, lasting kind she craved. It was still hard to fathom that she’d gone from being her normal, generally happy self to feeling so empty inside.
And yet . . . as she stood there hugging her friends, finally letting out her tears, she realized that maybe this had been coming for a long time and that she’d just gotten pretty good at hiding it, even from herself. She’d always wanted love, but figuring out who she wanted it from had just pushed all these yearnings, all this emptiness, to the surface in a way nothing else had before.
And as awful as it felt to stand there and cry, she supposed she needed to get it out, and she was thankful to have such good, caring girlfriends to do it with.
Almost the second the tears waned, though, as they pulled back and reached for tissues for Amy, Rachel said, “There’s really only one thing to be done here, Ames.”
Amy blinked, surprised that Rachel was coming at her with a plan that quickly. “There is?”
Rachel gave a succinct nod and said, “You have to seduce him.”
Oh brother. Some plan. “I can’t do that,” she said simply.
“Why not?” Rachel argued. “Look, I know that’s not your usual mode of operation, and it will take you out of your comfort zone, but it’ll be worth it. And not that I want to scare you or make things feel any more dire here, but . . . it might be a matter of beating Anna to the punch. Because don’t get me wrong—she’s great, and she’s going to be my sister-in-law, but she . . . isn’t shy with him. So you have to not be shy with him, too, now. If you really want him, Amy, you have to just go for it.”
Amy couldn’t hold in her sigh. The advice sounded so much like Tessa’s in a way, like everything was on the line here if she didn’t make a bolder move. And she even believed that was true. But she didn’t have a bolder move to make. “Look, it’s not that I don’t w
ant to, and believe me, I see the urgency, it’s just . . .”
“Just what?” Rachel asked. “Because even if it’s been awhile, it’s only sex, you know? You’re both adults, you’ve both done it before, and you know him really well, so . . . what’s the problem?”
Only sex. Rachel would look at it that way. She had no idea, no idea at all, what she was actually suggesting here or how impossible it was.
And as much as Amy had never wished to share this particular tidbit of information, now she suddenly heard herself blurting it out, because there seemed to be no other way to make Rachel understand why she couldn’t seduce Logan. “The problem is—both of us haven’t done it, okay?”
Amy felt the weight of her words as they left her. God—it was even worse saying it out loud. She felt . . . so left out, so undesirable, so utterly childish as she watched both their expressions transform into pure shock.
And when they said nothing, just stood there gaping at her as if she were the two-headed goat they’d once seen together as teenagers at the summer carnival, she said, “You guys have to swear you’ll take this to the grave. And Rachel, you absolutely cannot tell Mike! I’d be even more humiliated. And he would probably tell Logan, too.”
“But I have this honesty thing going with him, remember? Because I’m marrying him.” Honesty between Mike and Rachel had been an issue a few times since they’d met.
“Well, not about this you don’t! This doesn’t affect him, so he doesn’t need to know. Got it?”
Rachel blinked, still clearly stunned—apparently by Amy’s laying-down-the-law attitude as much as anything else. “You’re seriously not yourself these days, are you?”
“No, it just so happens that I’m not. Got a problem with that?”
Rachel gave her head a speculative tilt and said, “No. In fact, like I said before, I actually kinda like it.”
“So you’re not telling Mike any of this, right?” she felt the need to confirm.
“Okay, yes, correct. I won’t. Because you’re right—it doesn’t affect him.” Yet then her expression became pinched. “But . . . oh my God, Amy—you never did it with Carl back when you dated him for so long?”
She could only sigh at the sad reminder. “No.”
“Well, why not? He was cute, kind of.”
At this, Amy let out a huff. “Unlike you, when I was younger it took more than someone being cute, kind of, for me to have sex with them.”
“Wow, you really aren’t yourself,” Rachel said, visibly taken aback.
And Amy realized what she’d just said. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I didn’t mean to criticize.”
Yet Rachel merely held her hands up in front of her as if it were no biggie and replied, “No—I really, really like this side of you. It’s like . . . you’re human or something. You have flaws like the rest of us.”
Wow. She’d never thought about that, that having these kinds of flaws might actually make her friends relate to her more. It was heartening under all the weird circumstances. Yet it also reminded her . . . she was flawed. In huge ways that made her feel bad. “You don’t think I’m awful for being jealous of Anna?”
“Not about Logan, no. You’ve known Logan your whole life—to me, that means you’re . . . entitled to be a little jealous.”
Yet something about that answer made Amy’s stomach churn anew. It meant she wasn’t imagining any of this, that there was definitely something to be jealous of. “Do you think I should worry? About them, together?”
And now it was Rachel who sighed, looking lost for an answer. Which was rare. And which told Amy all she needed to know. Yes, she needed to worry. And if Rachel had found herself in this position, she had what it took to make a big move—Rachel had always been confident, outgoing, sexy. But Amy had none of that. Amy was just . . . Amy.
And so when Rachel finally said, “Don’t worry—this will all work out,” Amy knew they were only pretty words, all Rachel could come up with.
And she felt more certain than ever that it wouldn’t work out the way she wanted at all.
Eight
What blindness, what madness had led her on!
Jane Austen, from Emma
Anna sat at the bar in the little hole-in-the-wall gathering place outside town, the Dew Drop Inn. As bars went, it wasn’t much, but like every place in Destiny, everyone there was friendly. And the beer was cold. And Logan was behind the bar. That was the best part, of course.
Except . . . she was beginning to wonder if he liked her as much as she’d first thought. He seemed to enjoy her company, but he hadn’t made a move on her, or even tried to kiss her, even though she thought she’d made it pretty clear she was into him.
Of course, they were hardly ever alone, so when would he kiss her? Every time she saw him, they ended up in a crowd—even if that crowd was only her brothers and their fiancées.
And even as much as she hoped they might end up leaving the bar together later, she knew it was doubtful. Tonight was Rachel’s bachelorette party—she was waiting for Rachel and her friends to show up now—and she just knew something would happen before the end of the night to blow her plans for Logan.
As she sat sipping from a beer bottle, she watched him tend bar.
“Fuzzy navel, coming up,” he told the short blonde, an older woman, who’d just ordered it. Then added, a bit sheepishly, “As soon as I figure out what that is.”
The woman and Anna both spoke at the same time. “Peach Schnapps and vodka,” and it made Anna let out a good-natured laugh. She’d been observing him for nearly an hour now and this wasn’t the first drink he hadn’t known how to make. How on earth had he become a bartender, for heaven’s sake? After she’d first met Logan, Mike had mentioned he’d recently left his longtime job at the Destiny Fire Department, but he hadn’t said why and she hadn’t felt at liberty to ask.
“Uh, how much of each?” he asked then, looking back and forth between the two women.
“Between you and me, darlin’,” the blonde said, “you might need to go back to bartendin’ school.”
“You can tell I’m new on the job, can’t ya?” he asked with a disarming grin that clearly won the lady over. But even so, Anna couldn’t help thinking he seemed as out of place behind that bar as she felt at moments in this town.
Oh, she liked the people well enough. And she felt a real bond with the family that had embraced her. No one here had been anything but kind to her. And she’d had flashes, early on, when she’d really thought the place—and the people—could begin to feel like home.
But she was a city girl at heart, and even as quaint as it was, Destiny was no city. And the people here . . . they were almost too nice. She knew herself well enough to realize she had certain sharp edges about her—she went after what she wanted, she generally said what she meant, she dressed boldly and wasn’t afraid to show off her shape—and the longer she spent here, the more she began to feel like a fish out of water.
She had the most in common with Rachel, which was fortunate since she was staying with her and Mike—but she couldn’t help feeling she was intruding on their happy home. And she couldn’t live there forever, even if she knew Mike would make it hard for her to leave.
And that was another thing—Mike. She cared for him already—she truly did—and she understood what he’d gone through when she’d been taken. But if he hovered any more, he’d be on top of her. She’d been relieved to have a reason to get out of the house tonight without him, thankful when Rachel had pointed out that it was a girls-only event.
“Shit,” Logan muttered behind the bar, and she looked up to see that he’d managed to spray himself with water from the soda gun.
She couldn’t stifle her laugh and he met her gaze with another cute grin. “You’re jealous of how good I am at this, right?” he asked her.
“You read my mind,” she playfully replied.
Blotting at his button-down shirt with a rag, then wiping up the mess he’d made, he resumed work
ing on another concoction, telling her with a confident sideways glance, “I’ll get better at it.”
She responded with another smile—since even if he was a bad bartender, he was cute at being bad. And when he came back down to where she sat a minute later, she gave him one more smile and said, “I have a feeling you’d make a better fireman than a bartender.”
He responded with a tilt of his dark blond head. “Someone told you about that, huh?”
She nodded. “Mike mentioned it when I first got to town. Why’d you give it up? Don’t you know girls think firemen are sexy?”
He smiled at the last part, but didn’t exactly answer the first. “Eh, it was just time for a change. And I can still be perfectly sexy without all the fire gear, promise,” he told her with a wink.
“Oh, no worries there,” she assured him. “You’re sexy as hell no matter what you do.”
“Good to know,” he informed her as he started wiping down some glasses. But then he paused in his work and gave her a slow, speculative look. “Um, this might sound like a weird question, but . . . you haven’t been sending me . . . little messages, have you?”
She wasn’t exactly sure what he meant—maybe this was some small town way of asking if she was coming on to him? So finally she said, “Um, yeah, sure I have.”
But now he gave her a funny look, as if perhaps he wasn’t sure she knew what he was asking, either. And it began to feel a little awkward, so she decided to just move on. “So . . . doing anything after you get off work tonight?”
Logan just replied with a laugh and said, “Sleeping. We’re open ’til two, and then I have to clean up. Makes for a pretty late night.”
And Anna merely nodded, getting the message loud and clear. After which she made an even bolder decision, to simply lay it on the line and be blunt. “You know, I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe . . . you’re just not into me.”
She appreciated it when his eyes went wide. “Why would you think that?”