Love Between the Pages: 8 Romances for Booklovers

by Bird, Peggy

  The boutique had a downtown feel to it: open space, concrete floors finished with a high gloss, antique mixed with modern. It managed to seem haphazard, but Jade was sure it was staged down to the last detail. A woman, who Jade assumed was Bianca, stood behind a display case and was showing a svelte young woman a pair of earrings. The young woman held them up to her lobes and turned her head from side to side. Jade admired the earrings. Their simple sculptural lines swayed prettily with the customer’s movements, but the brushed silver finish gave them edge. Contrast. Jade felt her heartbeat quicken and wondered that such simple beauty could give her such joy. She smiled at the earrings, at the customer, at Bianca.

  Bianca nodded to Jade over the customer’s shoulder then leaned down to speak to the woman. Jade watched as Bianca listened to the customer and then moved away, giving the woman space to make a decision. Then Bianca waved Jade over. Jade’s heart was pounding, but she smiled through her nervousness. She was getting used to feeling her heart beat hard and decided that it was a good thing rather than a sign of an impending heart attack.

  “Hi, I’m Jade Sawyer.”

  Bianca smiled back. She was older than Jade, but not old. Beautiful and exotic looking, she reminded Jade of a well-mannered gypsy. A gypsy in a four thousand dollar suit. Jade extended her hand for a handshake, but Bianca took Jade’s hand in both of her own. Each movement was measured, nothing rushed. “So pleased to finally meet you.” Bianca looked Jade in the eyes. She examined Jade’s face and smiled, seeming pleased with what she saw. “I have something that belongs to you.” She turned back to the display case behind her, opened a panel, and pulled out the cuff that Samantha had pilfered. There was a tray lined in black velvet, and Bianca set the piece there. “You have more like it?”

  Jade was about to respond, but the client looking at the earrings had shifted her attention to Jade’s cuff and the interaction with Bianca. She interrupted. “Do you have earrings?”

  Jade resisted wiping her hands on her skirt. Here goes nothing. She unzipped the case and started to pull out the pieces. By the time Jade was done, the young woman had purchased a pair of earrings, a necklace, and two rings.

  • • •

  Her next meeting was scheduled for two. Jade arrived at the restaurant at a bit past two o’clock and glanced around. It was a small Italian place with dark wood paneling and low lights. She took a deep breath. She had made it through one meeting. Bianca had liked her jewelry, and when Jade had shown her some sketches of the nest series, she had liked those, too. If it continued to sell well, she would take more. Jade grinned to herself. It was worth the risk. She knew that even if Bianca hadn’t loved the designs, she would feel ten feet tall. Her blood pumped through her veins, and she felt bold and alive. Jade took another deep breath, being careful not to hyperventilate. She was going to need some of that courage now.

  The maître d’ was a young man with olive skin and dark hair. “Can I help you ma’am?”

  “I’m meeting someone here. A man … ” She looked beyond the maître d’s shoulder and saw him sitting alone at a quiet table in the back. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

  Jade’s heart thudded in her chest. She took one look at his so familiar profile and thought, How could I throw that away? She wouldn’t make that mistake twice. She squared her shoulders and headed toward the back of the restaurant.

  Matt froze when he saw her. His gaze had lifted as she approached but then froze as she stood there at the table. He pushed away from the table and stood. Whether it was to be polite or to leave, Jade couldn’t be sure.

  Jade held her hands out in surrender. “I’m not who you were expecting.”

  Matt’s jaw tightened. “Did you talk Sam into this or was it the other way around?”

  Matt sounded angry. Jade had imagined this being easier, Matt being kinder. Jade looked at the floor and gathered her courage. Then she looked Matt squarely in the eyes. “It was me. You wouldn’t answer my calls and I … I owe you an apology. I’m so sorry.”

  Matt nodded tersely. “Okay, great. Feel better now?”

  Jade sat down at the table and gestured for Matt to sit with her. He didn’t move. She felt the press of tears. “Please.”

  For a moment it looked like Matt would leave. He glanced toward the door, then up at the ceiling for a moment, then suddenly jerked the chair back and sat.

  Jade could breathe again. She looked at him. Really looked. It had been weeks since they had seen each other, and she could see the strain on his face. She had done that to him. Her tears tracked down her cheek. “God, Matt. I am so sorry. You have to know that I thought … ” She shook her head and started over. “I love you. I love you so much that I freaked out. I said I was protecting you from me, but the fact was, I was so happy and that terrified me. If I let you matter that much, you could hurt me that much. You were right. I didn’t have the courage or the faith. Not in us, but in me.”

  Matt wore his poker face, his writer face, but Jade just barreled on. She met Matt’s gaze, letting him see her whole heart in her eyes. “I can’t promise I won’t make mistakes, or that I’ll be perfect, or even that I won’t get scared from time to time. What I can promise you with every bit of my heart is that I won’t quit. I won’t quit loving you with everything I’ve got. No matter what life throws our way, I won’t quit. On you, on me, on us.”

  Jade paused for a reaction, any reaction. What she got was stony silence.

  “I’ve spent these last weeks being safe but numb. It was horrible. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. Today I took a huge risk, and I’ve never felt so alive.” She paused to see if Matt had any response; there was still nothing.

  She swallowed hard, reached into her purse, and pulled out a pen. “Here.” She started to draw. “I reread the Cartwright letter you left, and I found it, Matt. The wedding site. I sat there in the waning light and thought about those two people from completely different worlds. It was so unlikely that they would ever find each other, and even more unlikely that they would ever make it work.” She continued to draw on the napkin. “But they did. They went for it anyway, in the face of much larger obstacles. If Alsoomse could do it, so can I. I can do anything, because I say I can.” She wrote a date on the napkin and slid it across to Matt. “You said it to me once: don’t quit. I’m asking the same from you. Don’t quit. If you’re willing to take a chance on me, meet me here at sunset.” Jade marked an X on the napkin. It was a map of Lakehaven with the cabins and main house at the bottom. The X marked the Cartwright wedding site.

  Matt looked down at the map and then back up at Jade, but he didn’t pick it up.

  Jade stood and backed away from the table, leaving the napkin where it lay. She tried to think of something else to say, something that would change Matt’s mind, something that would touch his heart. She couldn’t think of a thing, so she just repeated something Samantha had said to her. “Just think about it, okay?” She had to swallow around the tightness in her throat. Squaring her shoulders, she turned to leave and did the one thing that took more courage than anything she had ever done. Trust.

  Chapter 26

  Jade sat alone on the bluff, watching the sunset shimmer off the surface of the lake. She hugged her knees to her chest and wondered for the hundredth time whether Matt would show. She desperately hoped that he would, but whether he did or not, she had given it everything she had. This was what it was to be alive. She rested her cheek on her knee and tried to appreciate the beauty and peace of the moment.

  A twig cracked behind her, and she swiveled around. Her heart raced in anticipation. She smiled and scanned the woods behind her for movement in the branches. It took every ounce of patience not to jump up and race toward the noise. Then she heard the beep. She tried to make sense of the electronic noise out in the woods. Cell phone? The trees parted and Jeff stepped into the clearing, swinging a metal detector around.

  Jade’s hopes plummeted. “What are you doing here?”

  Jeff’s look was
sheepish. “I … ah … ” Jeff scratched his neck. “I found some papers in your office and copied them. Plus … I maybe overheard you speaking with Meg a few days ago, and I followed you up here.” Jeff gestured with the metal detector. “You don’t mind if I … ”

  Jade took a deep breath and, staring at the ground, shrugged. She was afraid if she spoke she would scream.

  Jeff started to move off to her left but turned at a sound behind him. Jade lifted her head, her spirits restored as quickly as they had fallen. She beamed with joy. Except that it was Stu and Maddie, the Lakehaven cleaning crew, emerging from the woods and not Matt. Stu carried a shovel with the word Lakehaven stenciled on the wooden handle and Maddie had another metal detector. Jade’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe this! What are you doing here? You stole the shovel? We’ve been looking for that for weeks!”

  Stu wouldn’t meet Jade’s eyes but Maddie was downright chipper. “That writer fellow just left the letters on his desk right under our noses. What do you expect? I could hardly clean his room with my eyes closed! You don’t mind, do you sweetie?” She and Stu moved off to the right, scanning the ground with their detector.

  Jade sighed in frustration. “I guess not.”

  Another noise came from the woods, and Jade looked toward the sound with renewed hope. This has to be Matt. She waited for his broad shoulders and sandy, sun-tipped hair. What she got was stooped shoulders and white hair as Mr. Boyle entered the clearing, followed by the Kent sisters. Of course. Jade gritted her teeth. The sisters argued about where to dig. Mr. Boyle hefted a pickaxe over his shoulder and waited for directions.

  Jade couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What are you doing here?”

  The Kent sisters looked surprised at the question. Bea started. “Helping you, of course. We saw everyone else coming to help you, and we wanted to help too.”

  Adele nodded in agreement. “After all, we love you!”

  Jade flapped her arms. “But I’m not searching for the treasure!”

  The sisters ignored Jade and picked a spot to the left, beyond where Jeff was scanning with his detector.

  Jade was about to argue further when the branches parted and Ben and Meg arrived. She threw her arms up in the air. “Oh, for God’s sake! What are you doing here? No, forget I asked. I don’t want to know!”

  Just then, Jeff’s metal detector began to beep wildly and everyone but Jade swarmed the spot. Jade just sat down and hugged her knees again. Well, at least I have friends … crazy friends, but friends.

  Mr. Boyle hacked at the dirt, Stu tried to muscle his way in closer, and for a while it was pure chaos. Mr. Boyle’s pick hit something metallic, and the crowd pushed in closer. Jeff bent down and brushed away the loosened soil to reveal … a bottle cap. The group let out a collective sigh, which was followed by grumbling.

  The beautiful, peaceful scene had been turned into a farce, and when the bushes behind her rustled, she lost her patience. “Oh, for crying out loud! Now what!”

  Matt raised his eyebrows at her, the slightest trace of a smile playing around his mouth. At first, neither of them spoke. Her eyes met his and for a moment, the world stood still. She smiled up at him. He moved toward her, opening his arms as he got closer, and she stepped into his embrace. They stood, body to body, breathing. Everything fell away but her love for him and his for her. She could smell his warm scent and thought, home.

  Finally, he spoke into her hair. “Hey you.”

  “Hey.” Jade pulled away and took his hand, leading him to the edge of the bluff. She sat, and he sat next to her.

  She swept her arm in an arc in front of them. “Here it is.”

  He nodded. “Beautiful.”

  She bit her lip. “I think I want to get married here.”

  Matt leaned back and looked down at her. “Do you have a specific groom in mind?”

  She shrugged. “Someone willing to take a chance.” His gaze shifted to some point beyond her. He squinted into the dropping sun, but said nothing. She gathered her courage and continued on. “Matt, I … ” She had intended to tell him everything she felt for him, but he still was looking at some point over her shoulder. He leaned forward oddly, then suddenly stood and walked away, leaving her with her mouth hanging open.

  She watched as he walked past her to a small bush. He lifted its lowest branches and dug around a little until Jade could see what he had: a tiny piece of metal glinting out at her from the ground under the bush. He pulled the small object out. The object was covered in dirt, but even so, parts of it shone in the fading sunlight. It was silver and hammered and had an arch to it like the top of a little jewelry box. Jade just stared, mesmerized. Matt brushed away some more dirt and dug out a few pieces of rotted wood. Then he reached down into a depression in the earth and pulled something else out of the ground. He turned it one way then the other and Jade gasped. It caught the light and sent out little beams of green and gold. Matt wiped it off on his jeans, looked at it carefully, and walked back to Jade. He looked down at her and back at the object in his hand. He shook his head but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then he got down on one knee in front of her and held out the object.

  There in his hand was the most perfect ring Jade had ever seen. It was gold with a chocolate diamond, flanked by smaller leaf-shaped emeralds. Matt took her hand and brought the ring toward it. His eyes met hers. “I was going to wait. Now that just seems ridiculous. I have no idea why I thought I should wait … but I … Jade, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  Her heart was pounding, which she knew now was a good thing. She laughed and nodded and felt tears well up as he slipped the ring on her finger. The squabbling had stopped, and all of Jade’s friends watched as Matt pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She was so happy that she didn’t even mind when their audience responded with a simultaneous, “Awwww!”

  Matt pulled out of the kiss and spoke to Jade, not caring who could hear. “I said that relationships aren’t complicated unless you make them that way, but maybe that isn’t quite true. Life is sometimes complicated. Maybe that’s just part of the deal. The real treasure is knowing that and forging ahead anyway.”

  Jade kissed Matt again. She couldn’t have agreed with him more.

  Her eyes were closed, and she couldn’t see who spoke. “I think he found the ring over here.” She just kept kissing him, and he kissed her.

  “Bring the detectors over here.”

  Still they kissed.

  “Bring that shovel, too.”

  “We should work in sectors … ”

  Matt and Jade pulled apart as the sun fell behind the mountains. Arm in arm they made their way to the path.

  The voices of treasure hunters faded in the distance. “Here, let me take that! You’re doing it wrong!”

  Other than the ring, none of the Cartwright treasure was ever found. Not that Jade or Matt really cared. They had both found what they had been looking for all along.

  About the Author

  Ana Krista Johnson lives in Southern California with her husband, two kids, a dog, and a fish named Frothy. She loves books, a good cup of coffee, a day at the beach, and all things quirky.

  SNEAK PEEK

  Relentless Flame by Jillian David

  Dante entered his seventh bookstore to case since he’d arrived in Portland, Oregon. Smoothing his Armani slacks, he folded himself into the worn reading chair at Cover to Cover Books and fingered the worn chintz fabric. He relaxed, taking in the clusters of scarred wooden chairs around oddly paired tables, several upright upholstered chairs like the one he occupied, and three threadbare loveseats. The smell of old books and wood polish lulled him into a state of nostalgia for quaint shops from his homeland, Sweden. The images almost distracted him from the mission. Almost.

  Of course, he could have telephoned each store, but a strange man asking for Jessica Miller might have driven her to ground. That might not even be her name anymore. With what little he knew about her past, he wouldn’t blame her i
f she tried to disappear.

  So he’d been patient and systematic as he performed this different kind of stalk, but a stalk well within his forte. He’d honed his tracking skills over centuries of hunting devious criminals; finding a woman trying to hide in plain sight would take only a fraction of his talent. And time? Who cared how long it took to find her? He had all the time in the world. He was an Indebted—cursed and long-lived. Weeks, months, or years meant nothing to him.

  In response to curious glances from customers, he rotated his wrists in his lap to hide the shiny gold cufflinks. He needed to blend into the population, quite a task for such an impossibly sexy man like him, standing at over six and a half feet tall. He didn’t even have to be dressed to impress, come to think of it. Thankfully, modesty was one of his many exceptional traits.

  Exceptional traits like killing? Kristus. He forced himself to relax his hand, lest he splinter the arm of the chair like he’d splintered the limbs and heads of criminals for centuries.

  Thankfully, the citizens didn’t realize a murderer lounged among them in this genteel business establishment. An Indebted killer. Quite the title to go on a business card. Despite his expertise with his weapon of choice, that godforsaken foot-long knife, truth be told, he’d prefer to have a luscious flicka’s legs wrapped around him any day of the week. Thankfully, he was proficient at both activities.

  Clenching his hands into fists, Dante fought the urge to stretch his fingers toward the handle. For 300 years, whenever he killed a vile criminal, he supplied the energy needed to feed his boss, Jerahmeel’s, soul. He’d have to find a criminal soon and satisfy the blade’s hunger, or innocent citizens would begin to attract the weapon’s attention.

  A few sideways looks from customers of the female persuasion reminded him that he was, as usual, looking spectacular today. He flexed his shoulders, pleased when several sets of eyelashes batted. Not that he doubted his charm. A particularly luscious blonde and long-legged flicka had casually dropped her card off at his table at a restaurant yesterday. He licked his lips, anticipating a rendezvous this evening. Par for the fantastic course of his unnaturally long life.