Hitting the Right Note

by Rhonda Bowen

  Simon shrugged. “Someone has to be.”

  “So back to the when-do-you-find-time-for-the-garden thing.”

  “Everyone has a hobby, Judith,” he said, reaching around her for a pot. “This is mine. It relaxes me, so I make time for it. And when I am away, my cousin stays here and takes care of the place and the garden for me.”

  JJ nodded. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then went back to slicing the mushrooms.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of the constant traveling?” she asked without looking at him. “I mean, do you ever plan to, I guess, settle down?”

  There was silence behind her, and for a while she wondered if he had heard her question.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a long moment. “Sure, I get tired of it sometimes. I could live the rest of my life without eating another restaurant meal, and if I could find a way to travel without sitting in airports for hours, I’d do it. But I like what I do. I like the people I get to help. And I’ve never had a reason to ‘settle down,’ as you put it.”

  He stopped moving and JJ turned away from the cutting board to look at him.

  “Honestly,” he said, “this is my house, but right now that’s all it is—a house. If I ended up in South Sudan and felt like it was where I wanted to spend the rest of my life, I would give this up in a heartbeat. I guess I’m just waiting on something to make somewhere feel like home—somewhere that I really want to come back to.”

  JJ turned around and began slicing again. “Who’s Elena?”

  She heard something fall behind her, but she didn’t dare turn around. She could feel Simon’s eyes burning holes into her back, but she would rather feel them than see them, so she kept chopping.

  “What did Nigel tell you?”

  “Nothing,” JJ said. “Except that she was very important to you.”

  “She was,” Simon said.

  She heard cupboards open and knew he had gone back to what he was doing. So he wasn’t going to tell her. That was fine. The truth was, she probably shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. If their relationship had been as serious as Nigel had suggested, she should have waited for Simon to broach the topic. But she couldn’t not ask—not after everything Simon had said about not having a reason to settle down or a place that felt like home.

  “We were engaged.”

  JJ turned around to look at him, surprised that after the lengthy pause he had chosen to continue. Instead of looking at her, he was placing another pot on the stove. He tipped in some olive oil then scraped in some cloves of garlic.

  “I met her while I was in Ecuador,” he continued. “She was an Oxfam ambassador working in a community near where I was stationed. I was supposed to be there for only six months, but after we started spending time together, well, it stretched out into a year. She extended her term with her project also, so our commitment to each other was mutual. Or so I thought.”

  “What happened?” JJ asked. She had abandoned her mushrooms completely to hear the story.

  “Onions?”

  She handed him the plate with chopped onions.

  “I asked her to marry me,” Simon said. “She said yes. My parents were back in London at the time, so I took her there and she met the whole family. They loved her. My mom especially, ’cause they shared the same background. Then we went to Ireland and met her family. That went great too. Everything seemed to be going great. Mushrooms?”

  JJ handed him the plate of mushrooms. He glanced at the plate and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Bigger chunks, more flavor,” JJ explained.

  He smiled and shook his head before scraping them into the sizzling pot. The delicious aroma of the garlic filled JJ’s senses and triggered her hunger center.

  “How soon till dinner?” JJ asked, eyeing the pot longingly.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Okay.” JJ pulled out a knife and a long loaf of thick, crusty bread. “I’ll make the garlic bread. Tell me the rest of this story.”

  He nodded. “I had to go back to Ecuador to finish up, and she was supposed to join me. She was a week late, and when she finally got there, things were off. After weeks of probing, she finally told me that there was someone else her parents had intended for her to marry, and that they were pressuring her. I was floored. I hadn’t suspected anything like that when I met her parents, and she had never mentioned this other guy before.

  “From there, things just kept going downhill. She would tell me nothing had changed, she still wanted to get married, but then she kept stalling on the wedding plans, trying to push the date. When she finally called it off, I wasn’t surprised. It hurt. But I’d had a feeling.”

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” JJ said as she watched him check the pasta, grate cheese, and do anything to keep from looking at her.

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “She got married a couple months after that. I saw her brother not long after, and he told me.”

  JJ grimaced as she laid the bread on a baking tray. “Yeah. That must have been hard.”

  “It just made me more skeptical, you know?” Simon said. “People can tell you they love you, tell you they want to be with you, but sometimes the words and what’s real are not the same. How can you really know that people mean what they say?”

  “I guess that’s what love is about,” JJ said, slipping the tray into the oven. “It’s taking that risk. Nigel told me you hardly date anymore. Is that why?”

  “When did you and Nigel have all these conversations?” Simon asked, throwing a questioning look at her. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Not even a little,” JJ said, wiping the crumbs from the countertop. “I just wanted to know who you are, and sometimes I felt like I couldn’t crack the surface.”

  Simon added tomatoes to the pot. “I guess I do hold back a bit. That’s what makes me bad in dating situations. Plus there’s the whole celibacy thing, and the whole traveling thing. They don’t exactly make me the ideal boyfriend for most women.”

  JJ pulled glasses and plates out of a cupboard before heading to the dining table.

  “Good thing I’m not most women then.”

  They ended up eating outside. They agreed that warm days in Toronto were too good to waste indoors, so they took Simon’s pasta with tomato-mushroom sauce, garlic bread, and salad out to a wooden picnic table sitting in a shaded section of his backyard.

  JJ tried to hold back from stuffing herself, but she couldn’t. They had done an excellent job on dinner. Okay, so maybe most of the credit went to Simon. JJ knew homemade pasta sauce was better than anything off the shelf, but she was convinced that the fresh-off-the-vine ingredients brought the level up to heavenly.

  For dessert, they took a bowl of strawberries—also from Simon’s garden, but allowed to chill—down to the very bottom of the yard, where large stones lined a shallow creek. JJ shook her head as she settled on the ground beside Simon.

  “You have a river in your backyard. Seriously?”

  He laughed. “It’s nowhere near a river. More like a stream. And it’s dry most of the time. The rain a couple days ago is the only reason why we’re seeing anything now.”

  “Still, a football field–sized backyard, a greenhouse, and a stream behind your log cabin home are pretty impressive,” JJ said. “I can’t believe you have all this going on. I never would have guessed.”

  “Now you know something about me that very few people know,” he said, lazily leaning back on his palms. “Now you have to tell me something about you to even the score.”

  “I think you know all the major points. My family, my seamstress career, my new singing career. That’s pretty much everything,” she said.

  Simon didn’t seem convinced. “Nah, there’s got to be more. Something about yourself that no one could guess, or find out on the Internet. Something unexpected.”

  JJ bit her lip thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled. “Okay. Here’s something.”

  He turned a little to get a better v
iew of her face.

  “I almost stayed in France.”

  Simon’s eyebrows rose. “As in, for another year?”

  “As in, indefinitely,” JJ said, loving the surprised reaction she’d garnered. “I loved every moment of the year I spent in Europe. I don’t think I was really ever homesick. When I was halfway through, the woman running the company I had my internship with offered me a job. So for the last half of my time in France, I worked for her. It was enough to live on. I looked at apartments in Paris, even houses in the countryside. I started getting the documents together for a work permit. I was ready to start my life there.”

  “So what changed your mind?” Simon asked.

  “My dad had his first stroke,” JJ said simply. She looked off into the expanse of field before her but barely saw any of it. “My whole family seemed to fall apart. Mom went a bit crazy, Sydney had to take over the business, and she and Lissandra were pretty much swamped trying to handle that and take care of Dad. Josephine was still a teenager, Dean was still in school, and Zelia was in school and between majors. It was just chaos. I had to come home. My family needed me.”

  Simon nodded. “Do you ever regret not staying?” he asked after a moment.

  “No,” JJ said. “Coming back was the right thing to do. But I sometimes wonder how things would have turned out had I stayed. Life would have been so much different.” She sighed. “It’s funny how one thing can change your whole life.”

  “Like a sudden stroke,” Simon said.

  “Or a broken elevator,” JJ replied.

  Simon looked over at her, and as their eyes locked she felt herself falling into him again. He seemed to hold her in place as he traced a finger down her nose, across her bottom lip, under her chin. Then he used the same finger to pull her closer. JJ melted into him as his lips met hers. His kisses kindled a fire in her that started in her toes and spread through her whole body. What had she been doing before she met this man? Before she kissed this man? No man she had ever been with had made her feel the way Simon did. It was like he looked at her and saw her thoughts; he touched her and touched her soul; he kissed her and singed her senses.

  When they finally separated, she rested her forehead against his, unable to bear the feeling of distance from him.

  “Simon,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.

  “Judith?”

  She sighed at the effect of her name on his lips. “What happens now?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She pulled back and opened her eyes, waiting for him to do the same. When he finally did, she saw that he knew exactly what she was referring to.

  “In less than four weeks, Sheree will have the baby and you’ll be on a plane to Malawi,” she said.

  “And in less than four days, you’ll be on a plane back to the tour,” Simon said. He rubbed a hand over his face. “We always seem to have the worst timing.”

  They sat in silence, staring at the water. JJ knew she couldn’t keep doing this if there was no future for her and Simon. She was already in too deep, and the more time she spent with him, the more she felt like he was ruining the possibility of her having a relationship with anyone else. He was the man she had dreamed about years ago, come to life. How could she ever get over that?

  “What will happen at the end of your tour?” Simon asked, still looking at the water.

  “I don’t know,” JJ said. “But Kate, Deacon’s manager, told me to start looking for a place in LA. Plus Deacon talked about recording my song that he did on tour, so I would have to be there for that too. Honestly, Simon, I really don’t know.”

  “What do you want to happen?” Simon asked.

  “I want to not lose you again,” JJ said.

  He looked over at her, surprised.

  JJ shrugged. “We might as well be honest with each other from the start.”

  “Well, if we’re being honest,” Simon began, “then I’ll tell you, I want to see where this could go. It’s insane how much I think about you, Judith, how much I care about you, and we haven’t even spent that much time getting to know each other. I know that has to mean something, and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t at least make a decent go of it with you . . . that’s if you want to.”

  JJ smiled. “I want to.”

  He grinned. “Okay, then.”

  “Okay.”

  JJ’s eyes fell to his mouth. He leaned forward to kiss her, but just before they made contact, JJ jumped back.

  “What about our schedules?” she asked worriedly. “When would we see each other?”

  “We’re seeing each other plenty right now,” Simon said, zooming in on her lips.

  “Yeah, but after next week, it’s another three weeks until I’m back in Toronto,” JJ said. “And then almost right after, you’re gone and who knows if you’ll be back soon after . . .”

  “I’ll be back,” Simon said, cupping her cheek.

  “But when?” JJ asked. “How are we going to get to know each other? We barely had time to talk while I was on the road.”

  “Talking is overrated.”

  “Simon!” JJ slapped his arm to get him to focus. “This is serious.”

  He sat back and gave up on his pursuit of her mouth. “I know this is serious,” he said, taking her hand. “But, Judith, I met you five years ago in a hotel in France. We never exchanged contact information, never even knew each other’s last names, but we managed to run into each other here, in a hospital in Toronto. Don’t you think God might have had something to do with that?”

  JJ’s eyes widened.

  Simon smiled. “Yes, I have been thinking that, too,” he said, answering her unspoken statement. He kissed her fingers.

  “Judith, angel, we both know we want to be with each other. We’ll do the best we can to make that happen, but at the same time, we both have to do the things that God has put in our hearts to do: your music, my medicine. At the end of the day, if you and I together is God’s design, our efforts will be successful and it will all fall into place. But if it is not, no matter how we plan, it will never work.”

  JJ took a deep breath, acknowledging the magnitude of Simon’s statement.

  “So what are you saying?” she asked, wanting him to clarify it.

  “I’m saying, let’s just enjoy the time we have with each other now and promise to make time for each other when things get crazy again,” Simon said. He leaned in toward her. “I flew out to see you once, remember?” he asked, tucking a curl behind her ear. “I have no problem doing that again . . .”

  He kissed her nose. “And again . . .”

  He kissed her cheek. “. . . and again.”

  He kissed her other cheek.

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” JJ grabbed his face and pulled him closer, finally affording him the kiss he had long sought.

  Simon was right. One day at a time was all they could do, along with placing the whole thing before God. This would be new to her, praying about her and Simon. But it was worth a shot. After all the mistakes she had made so far in the relationship department, she could use a little help.

  Chapter 34

  “JJ! Phone!”

  JJ burrowed a little deeper into the pillows, languishing in the pleasure of not having anywhere to be for several hours. She had been out all night with Simon. But it had been completely PG as they sat on the hood of his Jeep at a lookout point near his home, waiting for some constellation that could only be seen after midnight on a few nights during the summer. JJ had thought the whole thing was a hoax to get her to stay out with him, and she had told him so. But when he pointed out the cluster of stars at around one a.m., JJ realized that Simon was the real deal—a man who was clearly interested in being with her, but could be with her at one o’clock in the morning without trying to get into her pants. He would never understand how his appeal rating had skyrocketed with just that one thing.

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture his face, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his lips w
hen he smiled. The feel of his lips when he . . .

  “JJ, I think it’s someone from the tour,” Sydney said, sticking her head through JJ’s bedroom door and tossing her the cordless. “Where is your cell phone?”

  JJ shrugged and took the call off hold. “JJ Isaacs speaking.”

  “JJ, this is Andrew.”

  “Hi, Andrew,” JJ said with a smile as she rolled over onto her back. “How is it going? Enjoying your week off?”

  Andrew harrumphed. “It’s more on than off. There’s so much happening here, which is actually why I’m calling.”

  JJ’s chest tightened. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said. “Have you checked your e-mail this morning?”

  “Uh, no,” JJ said, sitting up and glancing around the room for her cell phone. “Did you send me something?”

  “My assistant should have e-mailed you your electronic ticket,” Andrew said. “I know I told your manager anytime tomorrow would be fine, but turns out we need you here in the morning.”

  The tightness turned into a heavyweight. “Wait, you spoke to Rayshawn? You need me back tomorrow? Why?”

  “The extension of the tour,” Andrew said with a touch of impatience. “We need you to sign the new contracts and submit the original music for the new song so we can get our production people working on it. Plus we want to firm up some dates for recording. Didn’t your manager tell you all this?”

  No. Rayshawn had not told her anything. In fact she had not spoken to him since the Monday morning when he had peeled away from her front curb. How could he make all these arrangements without telling her? She dug through her purse for her iPhone.

  “Why didn’t you call me directly?” JJ asked, bypassing Andrew’s question.

  “We did,” Andrew said. “My assistant was trying to get you on the phone all afternoon yesterday.”

  JJ pulled out the phone and sighed. The battery was dead. Just like it had been yesterday afternoon while she was with Simon. She had been so sleepy when Simon dropped her off, she had forgotten to plug it in.

  “When we couldn’t get in touch, we called Rayshawn and set everything up.” She heard Andrew sigh on the other end. “Is this going to be a problem?”