No Place Like Home - Love in Seattle

by Christina Butrum

  Obviously too insistent to talk to her, Colin thanked Kelsie and barged into the office, closing the door behind him.

  “We have to talk,” he said, persistently repeating himself until she finally gave in. This whole situation was out of control. “I have to talk about this... about us.”

  Unlike most women, who wanted nothing more than for a man to fall madly in love with them, Janelle couldn’t allow that—not this time. As much as her heart now disagreed with her, she needed to be practical and realize this wasn’t going to work out.

  Instead of saying what he didn’t want to hear, she listened to what he had to say. She needed to give him at least that much, in return for how things were going to pan out. She wasn’t allowing herself to feel much more than what feelings already existed. She wasn’t going to allow herself to fall in love him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, his eyes locked on her as she sat silently waiting out the conversation. “About the bakery, about us, about everything actually.”

  “Colin...”

  “Just hear me out for a minute.”

  He scooted his chair closer to the desk and reached for a piece of loose paper from the pile next to the printer. Grabbing a pen from the small cup on the corner of the desk, he scribbled something at the top of the page—too illegible for Janelle to read.

  “I know you have your heart set on going back to Cincinnati, continuing your career and never thinking about Seattle until you absolutely have to, but hear me out,” he said, drawing what appeared to be a timeline or map of some sorts. He put his pen down. A mix of excitement slashed with disappointment crossed his face before he said, “First, I want to know what this is.”

  He motioned a hand between the two of them, a look of concern etched in his eyes. She didn’t know what he wanted to hear. She had had several thoughts since the night out with him had happened. Thoughts of staying, thoughts of going back home, thoughts that seemed to circle on a never-ending cycle.

  “Because I don’t believe that this is nothing, Janelle,” he said, taking hold of her hand as he slid closer. “I honestly don’t know what it is, but I know that it’s something.”

  When she didn’t answer, but instead pondered on what words to use to describe what was on her mind, he said, “And I know that it wasn’t just sex, at least not to me, it wasn’t.”

  A smile tugged at her lips as his words registered. For the first time in a long time, she had true feelings for a man who had the same in return. Living in a large city made it close to impossible to find someone who wanted more than just sex. Settling down with business men was the equivalent of signing over their rights apparently.

  “I know you feel more than that, Janelle,” he said, leaning closer in order to look her in the eyes. “Tell me what you’re thinking. I need to know.”

  “Colin, I told you from day one,” she said, hesitating while choosing the best words. She wanted to let him down easy, because there was no way she was going to change her mind. She got her stubbornness from her father, and lately she had to stand her ground and was thankful for it, until now. “I’ve made up my mind already.”

  Defeated by her words, but still not giving up, Colin said, “Tell me what you’re thinking about us. I don’t care about anything else right now. I just care about us.”

  “Colin, don’t.”

  “Janelle, tell me that it’s a lost cause and I’ll leave,” he pleaded. “Tell me that you don’t feel what I feel and I’ll be out of here.”

  Enemies. They were once enemies. Only a few short weeks ago, she couldn’t stand the thought of him, but lately, he was the only thought she had.

  Pulling her hair back into a messy bun, she wrapped a hair tie around it as she said, “Colin, I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t.”

  Pointing to her chest, he said, “Tell me what’s in here. Tell me how you feel about us.”

  “I...” She struggled to find the right words. More of a struggle between her heart and her brain. Love versus logic. Something she had never had to deal with. Feelings were never this heavy for her to deal with. Fighting them off was more of a challenge than facing them and dealing with them. She wanted control and that wasn’t going to happen. “I have so much going for me back in Cincinnati. I have my career. It may not be a bakery, but I...”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” he interrupted. “That’s why you need to be here. You’re not happy in Cincinnati. I can tell.”

  “Okay, Dr. Phil,” she said, leaning back in the chair; crossing her arms. “Tell me more about what I apparently don’t know.”

  Laughing, he shook his head. “I know that you know. You just don’t want to say it. You’re scared of the uncertainty, and you don’t trust me.”

  “I trust you,” she mumbled. Though she once had not trusted him, she did now for whatever reason—fate, feelings, hope...

  The excitement on his face played out in a bright, wide smile. If he could have danced around, Janelle was sure that he would have. “You do?”

  “I do now.”

  She hadn’t been sure of the change in her feelings, but he had proved that he had changed. He had proved that he felt bad for the way he was in college and she had seen the guilt etched on his face the night of that conversation.

  “Here’s my plan,” he said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working or something?” she asked, realizing it was getting late into the morning.

  “I took the day off so I could spend it with you.”

  His words cut straight to her heart, causing the butterflies and the palpitations to return, like they had since things had changed between them.

  “I needed to talk about everything with you,” Colin said, unfolding the paper in his hand. “I wanted to make sure we could talk without any distractions.”

  Handing her the creased paper, he allowed her time to look it over. She read through it once and read through it once again. Tears stung as she read his idea of co-owning this coffee shop. “My parents aren’t going to allow it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I called my dad this morning and he wasn’t impressed with the idea. He told me that I needed to continue on with my career in Cincinnati,” she said, hearing the pain in her voice and knowing that he’d be able to hear it too, no matter how well she fought to keep the tears from falling.

  “I’ll talk to your mom,” he said, overconfident that things were bound to go his way. “I want you here with me, and I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make your dreams come true.”

  ***

  The conversation between Colin and her parents hadn’t gone as smoothly as he had expected, but he had gotten farther than she had. They had still said no, but she could hear the hesitation in her mother’s voice. There was hope that it left her mother with something to think about.

  “She wanted to say yes,” Colin said, confident that his conversation had softened her mother’s decision.

  “I’ll believe it when I hear it,” Janelle said, pouring herself a cup of coffee before mixing in her favorite French Vanilla creamer. “I’m still wondering what they have up their sleeve.”

  Sitting at a nearby table, Colin pulled out a chair for her. “Why do you think they have something up their sleeve?”

  “The last time I talked to my mom, she said they have a surprise but they can’t say anything about it,” Janelle explained. “It just seemed odd that she couldn’t share any of the details with me.”

  “Maybe they’re thinking about staying in Florida,” Colin said, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Yes, until fall.”

  “What if they’re planning on living there?”

  The thought of her parents living in Florida was not something unbelievable, but she knew that her mother wouldn’t leave the coffee shop business behind. There was no way, unless...

  “I doubt it,” she said, dismissing the thought before it transpired into higher
hopes. Her parents would never allow what she was thinking. Maybe when hell froze over, but definitely not now. “My mom wouldn’t give all of this up.”

  Shrugging, Colin said, “You never know.”

  He was liking this. Janelle on the other hand wasn’t. There was no reason for her to get her hopes up. Her parents enjoyed the fact that she was producing her own success in the Cincinnati Enquirer. They would never humor the thought of her coming back to Seattle to start over—no matter the reason.

  “I have an idea,” Colin said, tapping his thumb against the lid of his cup. “I’ve been thinking on this for a while now, but until now, it really didn’t seem like a good idea.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything that has to do with this place or them,” Janelle said, crossing her arms. “You can keep those thoughts to yourself.”

  She would eventually have to go back to Cincinnati, pick up where she left off. Continue writing her baking articles for the Enquirer and carry on like nothing in Seattle had happened. Eventually, she would have to toughen her heart against the loss, as she boarded her flight back home.

  “I think you should start baking now and selling what you bake here in the coffee shop,” Colin said, spitting the words out fast so she couldn’t interrupt without listening first. When she didn’t say anything, he said, “I mean, it isn’t a bad idea to give these people in Seattle a taste of what they’d be missing out on if you skipped back to Cincinnati.”

  The wink he gave her caused her to squirm in her seat. He had an effect over her and he knew it. She knew exactly what else he was insinuating—he’d miss her if she left. This definitely was not all about her baking. This was about her opportunities. The opportunity to do what she loved—literally.

  “Okay,” she said with a slight sigh.

  “Okay.”

  “What happens if people demand baked goods when I’m packing my bags?”

  “They’ll be demanding, your mother will catch wind, and you won’t be packing your bags to go anywhere,” Colin said matter-of-factly.

  He sounded so sure that his plan was going to work. She wondered how much time he had actually spent thinking this through. She also wondered how he had gained so much confidence to battle against her mother’s wishes. It was going to be interesting, watching everything fall into place or completely fall apart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Baking at all hours of the night had once been her dream—until now—when it proved to be too challenging to keep herself awake in the chair as she waited for the cookies to come out of the oven.

  Colin had left early. He had things coming up that he needed to attend to in order to meet by his deadline for Seattle Times. He promised to call her before he called it a night. Glancing at the grandfather clock that chimed noisily against the silence in the living room, Janelle realized it was a quarter ’til midnight. When had she gotten so old that she couldn’t stay up past midnight?

  Startled by the phone vibrating against the stand next to her, Janelle jumped with a slight shriek. She saw his face light up on the screen and reached for her phone. Her heart skipped beats—part from scare, the other from who was calling her.

  “Hey, you,” she answered, smiling even though she was half asleep. “You called at the perfect time.”

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked, sounding half asleep himself.

  “No, not at all,” Janelle said, stretching before standing up from her chair. “You actually saved me from burning two dozen cookies.”

  The fact that he had called her before she had dozed off was like a saving grace. Had he not called, she would have fallen asleep and been awakened by the smell of burnt cookies, and possibly a fire.

  “You’re baking at midnight?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “I took your advice,” she said, laughing as she made her way to the kitchen. “I’m making cookies for the customers tomorrow.”

  “What kind of cookies?”

  “A variety,” she said, leaning into the oven to check on said cookies. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  An assortment of baked goods lined the counters around the kitchen. Her parents’ kitchen smelled of soft sugary scents.

  “I like surprises,” Colin said, chuckling.

  She pulled the baking sheets from the oven and laid them to cool on top of the stove. She would use a spatula after a while to pluck them off the sheets and onto the cooling rack she had set up nearby.

  “That’s good, because you’re in for one once you see how many cookies I have baked tonight.”

  “I think your customers are going to go crazy over them,” he assured her.

  “You mean my parents’ customers?” she asked, still unsure about their plan to change things without permission.

  “They’ll be lining up for your baked goods, and only yours, as soon as they have a taste of them,” he said, sounding a bit too confident that his plan would actually work. “It’ll help when they read your article in Seattle Times.”

  “Wait,” she said, trying to make sense of what he had just said. “What are you talking about? It won’t be in Seattle Times.”

  He cleared his throat on the other end of the line and said, “Yes, it will ,because I put it in there.”

  “Why? I mean, seriously, Colin?”

  She was impressed by the skills he used to sneak a few points in without her looking. At the rate he was going, she would never be upset at him again—which of course she wouldn’t want to be. The last week had been amazing, absolutely over the top when it came to Colin. He had really shown her that he cared and would do anything for her—making it almost impossible for her not to find herself falling for him.

  “Why? Because I want the best for you and I think you’ve found it,” he said matter-of-factly. “In more ways than one.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at the way he implied he was the best she had found. She had to admit, she had been hesitant to allow herself the feelings that had stirred up for Colin. She also had to admit this was the first time she had ever fallen head over heels for a man like Colin Davis.

  “How?” she asked. “I mean, how were you able to put my article in Seattle Times?”

  “It was easy,” he said. She swore she could hear the smirk on his face.

  “How so?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see,” he said, playing her words back at her. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  Smiling like a love struck teenager, Janelle said, “Yes, but...”

  “You’ll see tomorrow when the newspapers arrive.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he said, obviously playing along with the cute ending to their conversations.

  Before she hung up, she remembered that he had called her. At midnight. “Was there something else you needed to talk about?”

  “Nope, I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said, and once again she could have sworn she heard the smirk on his face. He thought he was cute, which he was, but that was beside the point. “Have a good night and don’t burn any cookies.”

  “They’re all out of the oven. They’re currently cooling as they wait for me to frost and put away,” she said. “Have a good night.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay,” she replied.

  Hanging up from the conversation left her giddy and excited for morning. She was more than ready to get these cookies frosted so she could head to bed, but she was more than ready to see the turnout from customers and the article he had written in Seattle Times.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She hadn’t thought about how she was going to get all of the cookies to the coffee shop. She had only planned which containers she would put them in. Now she was faced with ten of her mother’s Tupperware containers full of cookies and no way of carrying them all at once without causing them to slide together and make a mess.

  Setting the stack of containers on a nearby stand by the front door, she raced back to the kitchen in search of something
to assist her with the chore of carrying them the four blocks she had to walk.

  Searching through cupboards, she came up empty handed, until the thought of what she hoped her parents still had in the garage. She grabbed the set of keys from the hanger by the back door and made her way to the garage, praying her parents had not gotten rid of what she planned to use.

  Flipping on the light after unlocking the door, she glanced around the crowded garage. It looked like her parents hadn’t managed to spring clean this year, as boxes and totes filled with who knew what packed every open spot of the floor.

  Shuffling her way through the mess, she spotted the bright red object she had been looking for. Reaching for the handle, she gave it a hard yank, pulling it out from underneath a light pile of newspapers. Carrying it out of the garage and onto the back deck, she realized it needed to be cleaned—of course.

  Rushing inside to grab a wet rag, she glanced at the clock in the kitchen to make sure she had plenty of time before she needed to be at the coffee shop. She had less than forty-five minutes to get moving that way—plenty of time.

  She made her way outside and took her time cleaning. When she was done, it looked like a brand new wagon. It was small, from her childhood, but it would be perfect for the job. Carrying it in through the back door, she stopped in the kitchen. She would need to carry the containers to the front steps and she would have to load the wagon out front so the cookies wouldn’t fall out going down the stairs.

  Packing the containers into the wagon the best way she could, she wrapped a roll of saran wrap around the whole shebang to make sure no containers would make a break for it. After running inside to grab her purse and bag, she set off toward the coffee shop.

  She had drunk enough coffee this morning to stay awake for a week straight, because, as much as she had tried to sleep, she ended up tossing and turning all morning long—ending up with just a few winks of sleep.

  She pulled the wagon behind her, catching a few curious glances from the onlookers as she passed by. More than happy this morning, she greeted and waved at, with a friendly smile, every person she met on the street.