A Lot Like Love

by Jennifer Snow

  “No. I just thought she might be enjoying being back home.”

  “I’m sure she is, but I think her plan is to go back,” he said gently.

  “But anything can happen, so who knows, right?”

  Wes sighed. “Who knows,” he said reluctantly. “Get some sleep, okay?”

  He stood and turned off the lamp. After a good-night hug, he headed toward the bedroom door.

  “Hey, Dad, I was thinking—if I’m going to ever have a stepmom someday, it’d be cool if it was Sarah.”

  He nearly wiped out on the pile of books on the bedroom floor. Stepmom? Where was that coming from?

  “Sarah and I are just…friends.” Friends who’d shared an amazing kiss a few nights ago. A friend he couldn’t stop thinking about. And a friend whose braless state earlier that day had had him almost drooling with lust.

  Yeah, sure, they were just friends.

  “I’m just saying that I’m throwing Sarah’s name into the hat of possible options,” she said with a sly smile.

  Damn, his daughter had noticed the connection and chemistry between him and Sarah. Had Sarah said anything about him that weekend? “There’s not even a hat,” he said gently. “Let alone options.”

  “Then it should be an easy win for her,” Marissa said.

  “Rissa…” How did he explain to her where he was emotionally on the whole “moving on and dating” thing when he didn’t quite know where he was on that himself?

  “I know you like her, Dad. You can admit it.”

  She’d suddenly become a little matchmaker. She’d never shown any interest in him dating or finding someone before now. Maybe it was her age and the length of time since losing her mom that had her feeling a void. Or was it because it was Sarah? “I do like Sarah. Night, sweetheart,” he said, turning off the light and leaving the room.

  In the kitchen, he opened the fridge and took out a beer. He twisted off the cap and leaned against the counter as he took a swig.

  Maybe letting Marissa spend the weekend was a bad decision if his goal was to protect her from disappointment in the long run. Especially since she was envisioning the two of them getting together.

  He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

  And unfortunately, his daughter was right. Winning his heart could be an easy victory for Sarah if he let it happen.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sarah’s fingers flew over her keyboard that evening as she revised her proposal for SmartTech Kids. Marissa was a genius. A collectibles feature was the perfect addition. Kids loved to collect things—sports cards, mini-figurines, dolls—and this new generation also loved the idea of making money.

  She’d only hit Send on the email to her boss when her cell phone rang three minutes later. Gail’s number lighting up the call display had her heart pounding.

  Did her boss love it or hate it?

  “Hi, Gail,” she said as she answered.

  “Finally!”

  Sarah breathed a sigh of relief.

  “This collectibles thing is unique and cool,” she said. “How did you come up with it?”

  Sarah ignored the implied suspicion in her boss’s voice. “A friend’s daughter actually suggested it. She collects Beanie Babies…”

  “Well, it works,” Gail said. “I hate to admit it, but maybe this time away was good for you. Helped you expand your limited creative side a bit more.”

  Even a compliment contained an insult. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “Hey, Gail…I was wondering whether or not you’d had time to review those other app ideas I submitted last month?” If her boss was in a good mood, now might be the time to ask for the freedom to work on some of her own ideas.

  “I did.”

  Sarah waited.

  “Honestly, Sarah, I was underwhelmed. Let’s focus on this SmartTech account. Don’t divide your focus.”

  Sarah resisted the urge to argue that she could do both, and while the SmartTech Kids account might not be her strong suit, she could really come up with something great for the telecommunications side of the company, given the opportunity. Arguing with Gail was futile. Her boss’s open-door policy simply meant she was always working and expected everyone else to be as well. “Okay.”

  “I’ll see a complete revised proposal tonight?”

  Sarah checked the time on her phone. It was already ten o’clock. “Absolutely,” she said, disconnecting the call.

  Sitting back, she sighed. Would she ever get the chance to work on projects she was passionate about while employed by Gail? Would she get to demonstrate what she could do? Or would she constantly be striving to prove herself without the end rewards she really wanted?

  The downstairs doorbell ringing made her frown. Who was here this late?

  Grabbing her cardigan, she slid her arms into the sleeves and pulled it around her body as she left the bedroom and descended the stairs.

  The doorbell echoed throughout the inn again.

  “I’m coming,” she said as she hurried to the door. She peered out through the window in the side of the door and saw a vehicle parked in the circular driveway, but she couldn’t see anyone. She cautiously unlocked the door and opened it.

  Lia Jameson stood on the step, two large suitcases behind her. What the hell was she doing here? The reunion wasn’t for another two weeks.

  “Surprise!” Lia said, opening her arms wide for a hug.

  It was indeed a surprise. And not entirely a good one.

  …

  His beer untouched on the table in front of him, Wes shifted his weight on the wobbly barstool near the back of Trent’s Tavern later that evening. Carmen had stopped by to work on some accounting for the business and had offered to babysit, so he could accept his brother-in-law’s last-minute, late-night invite for drinks.

  The local hot spot on Main Street was quiet for a Sunday evening, and Wes appreciated the low-key vibe as his thoughts continued to return to his conversation with Marissa.

  A stepmom. Wow.

  “You okay, man?” Dustin asked, sliding his gaze away from the SportsNet game recap playing on the flatscreen above the bar.

  “Yeah,” he said, then turned his cell phone toward Dustin now. “Check out this app.”

  Dustin’s eyes widened over the rim of his own beer bottle, and he coughed as he choked on a mouthful. “I’m sorry, did you just say app? I would have bet big money that you didn’t even know the term.”

  His brother-in-law might have won that bet a few weeks ago, but lately he was really making an effort to get on board with the whole technology thing that Marissa was so caught up in. He was starting to understand more of the appeal.

  “It’s the one Marissa designed for coaches,” he said. He’d bought it and downloaded it that evening and was still trying to figure out exactly how to use it, but so far he’d entered in all the names of his Little League players and the dates of their upcoming fall games.

  Dustin took the phone, and his smile was wide as he scrolled his finger over the screen. “That little girl of yours is a genius. She must have gotten it from my sister,” he said.

  “Obviously,” Wes said. “But it really is useful, right? I mean, no more clipboards or having to look up player positions…it’s all there next to each player’s name. Emergency contacts are listed, and I can call them by clicking the phone number on the screen…” He was in awe, and he’d barely scratched the surface of what the app could do.

  “Damn right it’s useful. This thing can even track players’ speed and ball-handling techniques. Where did she learn to upload it for sale?” Dustin asked, playing around with the app’s features.

  “Sarah helped her. Apparently, I have to stop by the bank tomorrow to open a bank account for her.” He chuckled at the thought. Marissa was growing up so fast, and so far that summer, she’d learned a lot from Sarah, but more i
mportantly, her own confidence had grown.

  Sarah was supportive, offering advice but letting Marissa experiment with her own ways of doing things. Sarah acted like a sounding board for his daughter’s ideas and helped to enhance them. She encouraged and celebrated the wins with Marissa and helped her come up with solutions to the challenges. That meant more to Wes than he could ever verbalize.

  “The owner of the B&B? The one Rissa couldn’t stop talking about at dinner?”

  “That’s her. She works in technology and offered Marissa an opportunity to work with her the last few weeks.” He peeled the label on his beer bottle.

  “That was nice of her,” Dustin said, eyeing him. “Smart and caring—makes sense that Marissa would get attached.”

  Wes could hear the implication in Dustin’s voice, so he cleared his throat and nodded toward the phone. “Anyway, that thing is great, huh?”

  “This is really impressive for a nine-year-old. Pretty soon she’ll be making more coin than you.” He handed the phone back with a grin.

  Wes stared at the app. In just a few days, it had been downloaded almost a hundred times. Marissa was over the moon about it, and he’d seen her drawing of her L.A. mansion that she planned to buy once she was a millionaire from her technological creation.

  It wasn’t about the fact that she was making money off something she’d created that had him feeling so freaking proud. It was the fact that despite resistance—mostly from him in the form of lack of understanding—she’d persevered and continued to work toward something she was passionate about.

  As much as he worried about her, he knew she would be just fine.

  His own life, he was less certain about. Once the inn renovations were done, he didn’t have any big projects scheduled for the fall. Carmen’s visit that evening had definitely been to remind him of that fact.

  “Have you reached out to that real estate agent regarding the office space on Main Street yet?” Dustin asked, as though reading the direction of Wes’s thoughts.

  Wes shook his head as he took a gulp of his beer. “Not yet.”

  “Look, man, you need to start taking risks. Come into the bank and let’s look at some options,” Dustin said.

  Borrowing from the bank to secure the space didn’t appeal to him. What if business continued to be slow and he defaulted on the loan? Every opportunity he’d ever taken had been calculated on low risk. Starting the company had been using his savings from his football career. That money was gone, and he needed to make sure Marissa’s future was taken care of. “I don’t know…”

  Dustin nodded but gave him a look. “So you’re going to let your daughter put herself out there and take risks, but you’re not willing to?”

  Dustin had a point. He wouldn’t be a great role model for Marissa if he was too afraid to take the necessary chances for a better future. In business and with his heart, too, for that matter…

  He swallowed another gulp of the warm beer. “Buy the app, support your niece, wise guy.” He paused. “And schedule me in for an appointment next week.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  This was how she was going to die. Which, given her current situation, might be a welcome respite.

  Sarah’s lungs hurt as she gasped for air the next morning, following far behind Lia down Main Street in what the other woman had called a “leisurely” jogging pace. The last time Sarah had jogged was…so long ago, it had been blocked from memory.

  Lia stopped in front of Delicious Delicacies and waved at her to hurry up.

  Sarah resisted the urge to offer her own less friendly hand gesture as she came up next to her. Lia’s surprise arrival would have been annoying at any time, but last night’s timing wasn’t ideal. After the call with her boss, Sarah hadn’t exactly been in a great mood to catch up and start planning the reunion with her former high school frenemy. She’d had the proposal to submit to Gail and in truth, she hadn’t really thought she’d have to help Lia plan the event. Just offer the venue. But apparently, the other woman was expecting her to be involved.

  Sarah placed her hands on her knees and bent at the waist, wincing at the pain radiating through her rib cage.

  “I take it you’re not a jogger?” Lia said, not even the slightest bit out of breath.

  “I prefer…being able to…breathe,” Sarah said. Her legs were jelly and her mouth was a desert. She needed water. Lots of water.

  Lia’s fake look of concern only irritated her more. “You really shouldn’t neglect your health, Sarah. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  “We’re…the same age,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “My FitTrack scale would have a hard time knowing it,” she said, opening the bakery door and heading inside.

  This time, Sarah didn’t resist the hand gesture as Lia allowed the door to swing back toward her.

  “Oh my God, it smells like heaven in here.”

  From the kitchen, the sound of a tray being dropped revealed Jessica had heard the familiar soprano voice. A second later, her friend pushed through the swinging door of the kitchen, nearly colliding with a panting Sarah.

  “Water. Lots of water,” Sarah said, reaching into the fridge for a bottle and twisting off the plastic cap.

  “Why are you sweating?” Jessica asked, removing her cat-patterned oven mitts.

  Sarah held up a finger as she guzzled half the bottle. “Lia thought it would be fun to jog here,” she said through clenched teeth as they headed into the front of the bakery. After pulling an all-nighter on the SmartTech proposal, Lia banging on her bedroom door at eight a.m. to rise and shine only two hours after Sarah had crawled into bed had been met with many protests. Only Lia’s persistence that they needed to secure the event’s desserts ASAP and the promise of baked goods had finally gotten Sarah out of bed.

  “All four miles?” Jessica looked as though the idea was ridiculous as well, and it justified Sarah’s own lack of motivation to exercise.

  “I usually start my day with five,” Lia said, hurrying forward to hug Jessica. “So great to see you.”

  Over Lia’s shoulder, Sarah’s wide eyes silently pleaded with Jessica to take over occupying the woman. Since the night before, she’d been glued to Sarah’s hip. Reminiscing about the old days was a lot less fun when two people remembered those days in two completely different ways. Lia’s memory had seemed to block out the competitiveness between the two of them… Then again, being the one who won all the time might have rewired Lia’s brain to see things differently in hindsight.

  “I thought the event wasn’t for another two weeks,” Jessica was saying to Lia, her eyes watering slightly as she looked to be repressing a sneeze.

  Must be by the slightly too strong perfume Lia wore. Sarah had been sneezing all morning. She was tempted to put up a Scent-Free Zone sign in the B&B. “She got here early…to plan. Isn’t that great?” she said, still struggling to catch her breath.

  Lia glanced at her. “You look like you ran the Boston marathon—sweat is dripping down your forehead, and your legs are barely supporting your weight. This is not a good sign, Sarah.”

  In contrast, Lia looked like she’d just come from the salon, her high ponytail swinging back and forth and her makeup still perfectly in place.

  Lia stretched a hamstring, and it was impossible not to marvel at how tiny she was. Her thighs were the size of Sarah’s calves. Her expensive matching running outfit hugged her size zero body, as if it had been painted on. And Sarah hadn’t even realized women could have such defined abs.

  “I really want everything to be perfect. The desserts will need to include some vegan and sugar-free options. Mal and I are climbing Mount Kenya in January and we’re in training.” She reached behind her to stretch one hamstring, then the other one.

  Sarah was still trying to get air into her lungs.

  “Wow. Mount Kenya. That
’s ambitious,” Jessica said.

  “No. They have a full…very detailed training schedule. Lia explained it all to me last night,” Sarah said, giving up pretenses and slumping onto a stool in front of the counter. Otherwise, she thought her legs might give out from beneath her anyway.

  “Preparation and planning are the keys to success when taking on challenges,” Lia said as though repeating something she’d read on a Facebook meme. “We climbed Everest on our honeymoon.”

  Didn’t most couples lounge on a beach somewhere sipping cocktails and making love in the afternoon? That was the way Sarah planned on spending hers if she ever got married. An image of Wes’s bare torso flashed in her mind, and she forced it away.

  “Seriously? You went rock climbing on your honeymoon?” Jessica asked as a timer sounded in the kitchen and the smell of cinnamon rolls made Sarah’s mouth water.

  “Yeah. Didn’t you see the pictures I posted on Facebook?” Lia finished stretching and yanked her dark hair free of her ponytail, shaking it loose around her thin, muscular shoulders. Not even so much as a ripple appeared in the dark locks from the elastic band.

  If Sarah took her hair out of her ponytail holder right now, she’d have a huge lump in the back of her head all day.

  “No, sorry, no Facebook account,” Jessica said.

  Jessica preferred face-to-face connections. She always insisted on FaceTime phone calls and said texting couldn’t replace an actual conversation with a friend, while social media seemed to be an addiction for most. She’d survived this long without having an online presence besides her bakery website, and Sarah had given up trying to convert her friend.

  Obviously Lia thought Jessica was a bit too out there. “How is that possible?”

  “Jess is one of those weirdos who doesn’t need constant validation,” Sarah said, shrugging. “I know, bizarre, right?”

  “I see you caught your breath finally. Good, because we’re jogging back,” Lia told her. “Anyway, Jess, I have pics on my phone I’ll show you.” She pulled her phone out of who knew where, and Sarah frowned as she examined her own stretchy workout pants but couldn’t find a pocket anywhere. Maybe splurging on a big name brand was worth the price… They probably made Lia’s ass look better than it actually was as well.