“Rough day?” Sydney asked, then took a bite and waited for Jessica’s response.
“Brutal,” Jessica replied, letting out a big breath.
“Want to talk about it?”
Jessica thought about it for a minute as she forced herself to slow down, lest she choke to death on a sandwich. “You know what? I really don’t, if that’s okay. But tell me about your day. Take my mind off mine.”
“Well.” Sydney finished the bite in her mouth, and Jessica watched in fascination as she visibly began to loosen up just the tiniest bit. “I went to a brewery today, so already, my day was way better than yours.” She laughed and the sound was very cute, very feminine, and it made Jessica smile.
“A brewery? Yeah, you totally win.”
“I’ve never been to one before. It was pretty cool. I had to interview the owners. They won a big national award recently.”
“Oh, was it Old Red Barn?”
“It was.”
A thought occurred to Jessica then and she sat up straight, palms against the desk.
Sydney furrowed her brow and turned her head from one side to the other. “What?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
Jessica held up one finger as she crossed the room to the little corner fridge, pulled the door open, and took out two bottles. She held them up for Sydney to see. “Green-Eyed Beauty from Old Red Barn. Lisa brought me some a few weeks ago. How’s that for a coincidence?”
“Okay, that’s a little weird,” Sydney said, but with a grin.
“You up for one?”
“Absolutely.” She held her hand out. “Long day.”
Jessica pulled the bottle out of her reach. “You’re old enough, right?” she said with a wink.
“I’ll have you know that I am thirty, thank you very much.”
Jessica blinked at her, surprised. “You are?”
“Mm hmm.” After a beat, she added, “Do you need to see my ID?” And Jessica realized she hadn’t handed over the bottle yet.
With a laugh, she did so, used a bottle opener on her own beer, then set it on her desk. Sydney held up her bottle and Jessica closed a hand over hers to brace the bottle. She kept her eyes riveted to the bottle opener even as the smooth, warm skin registered under her own fingers, and she swallowed hard. She popped the top and retreated quickly, suddenly needing space between them. Jessica sat back down behind her desk with a thud and lifted the bottle to her lips, but stopped when she heard, “Wait!” Sydney stood up and leaned toward her. “You can’t sip without cheering. It’s bad luck.”
“Is it?”
“Absolutely. Trust me on this. My mom’s family is Irish. We know the rules around alcohol.” Raising her bottle, she said simply, “Here’s to it,” and touched her bottle to Jessica’s with a soft clink.
“That’s it? ‘Here’s to it’? I was all prepared for some wise, traditional anecdote.”
“Oh, no. I said we’re Irish, not poets. We want to drink as quickly as possible.” Sydney grinned, then sipped.
“I see.”
“Mm, this is really good.” Sydney licked her lips while Jessica tried not to watch. And failed. Is it getting warm in here?
The next hour went quickly as they finished their subs, then talked about the various volunteers Sydney thought would make for the best interviews. They went through her list and discussed each individual person or family so Jessica could add some extra information she might have that wasn’t in the files she made. Resistant as Jessica had been to the changing of the guards, so to speak, she had to admit that Sydney Taylor seemed to know what she was doing. She was creative and thorough and asked insightful questions. After the last one, Sydney closed her folder and smiled.
“You really know a lot about each person. There are so many; I can’t believe you remember them all.”
Jessica shrugged. “My grandmother taught me how important it is to actually see people. You know? To listen and remember. I think that’s something that is, sadly, becoming lost in this day of electronics. Everybody is looking down at their phones. Nobody is making eye contact. I’m as guilty as the next guy. Nobody is noticing the people around them. The actual people, not the avatars on their devices. You know?” She took a sip of beer and watched Sydney’s face. “That just made me sound super old, didn’t it?”
Sydney laughed that laugh that Jessica found so pleasant, the one that was genuine, not an act of a television personality. “No. Not at all. I was just realizing that I am probably one of those people who’s on her phone too much.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, God, yes. Between my job and my notes and trying to stay on top of the news and being away from my family, it’s my life. It’s the only way I can stay connected.”
“Well. It’s not the only way. People stayed connected before smart phones.”
“True. But everything moves so much faster now. Let me amend that to say it’s the only way I can stay quickly connected and therefore not get left behind by others in my field. Better?”
“Better. And it’s kind of amazing, the technology of it all.”
“Right? Everything is right there when you need it. And stuff has developed and grown so fast.” Sydney sat forward in her chair, her eyes crackling with excitement. “I mean, online dating? Come on. Hardly anybody met that way twenty years ago. Now? Everybody meets online.”
“Yeah, not sure I could do that,” Jessica said. The thought of not seeing somebody live beforehand just felt…wrong to her.
“No? Are you married?” Sydney asked.
“No.” Jessica shook her head and smoothly turned the conversation back to Sydney. “What about you?”
“Am I married? No. I don’t really have time,” Sydney said, and for some reason, Jessica felt like that was only a half-truth.
“Everybody has time for love. Come on. There’s nobody who interests you? Not even Anna?” Jessica meant it to come off as a lighthearted teasing, but Sydney’s face looked stricken and she immediately felt terrible. I should probably not be around people when I’m this tired. My filters are completely gone.
Sydney opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again before any sound came out. She opened it a second time and managed, “She mentioned that, huh?” Her cheeks flushed a deep red and Jessica had the urgent, inexplicable need to make her feel better. “I wondered when I met her here the other day.”
“You know what? It’s none of my business. It’s really not. I’m so sorry I said anything. It’s been a long, exhausting day, I’m really tired and just a little bit punchy, and my manners have evidently left for the night. That was totally out of line.” Jessica grimaced. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s totally okay.” Sydney waved it off, but was clearly very uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair, uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them the other way, took a large swig of her beer.
“Um, so, how do you like it here so far?” Jessica asked. It was a desperate, glaringly obvious attempt to change the subject, but Jessica ran with it anyway, and so did Sydney.
“It’s okay. It’ll do for now.” Sydney’s voice was a bit clipped, though Jessica could tell she was trying to fight it. “I really wanted a bigger market, but…that’s how this job works. So I’ll just wait and be ready.”
“For?”
“For the next job offer.”
“And you’ll move again?”
“Yup.”
“Just like that, huh?” Jessica sipped her beer, contemplated. “I don’t know if I could do that, just up and go at a moment’s notice.”
Sydney lifted one shoulder, seemingly still not quite comfortable with eye contact. She looked over Jessica’s shoulder and out the window as she spoke. “It comes with the territory. You get into this job and you know that’s one of the aspects of it if you want to develop your career.”
“Couldn’t you develop your career in one place? I know Janet Dobson, the woman who hosted the telethon before you, worked at Channel Six for…” Jessica gazed
up at the ceiling for a beat. “Almost twenty years. She’s an icon here.”
“I guess, if you don’t want to ever have a larger audience, that’s fine. But if you do, you’re going to have to move.” Sydney shrugged. “So you plan on it.”
“Plan on spontaneity,” Jessica said. “Interesting concept.”
Sydney smiled and it felt real and finally, the atmosphere in the room lightened just a touch.
“So, you don’t plan on staying here then?”
“No way,” Sydney said with a shake of her pretty head.
“I see.” A sharp stab of disappointment poked at Jessica then, but she wasn’t sure why and chose not to think about it. “That’s too bad. It’s a pretty cool place. Have you been able to see much of it?”
“Not really. I’ve only been here a short time and I got started on my job right away. My hours can be long.”
“You should try to do a little exploring. You might be surprised by what my city has to offer.”
“Your city?” Sydney smiled at the phrase.
“Lived here all my life.”
“If I decide I want a tour guide, I’ll give you a call.”
There was a beat of not-quite-awkward silence and then Jessica finally said, “Well. I guess that’s it for now then, right? Did you get everything you needed from me?”
Sydney nodded and crumpled up the wrappers from her sub. Jessica followed suit and the two of them cleaned up in silence. More than once, their proximity to one another was close, and neither of them did anything to put more space between them. Jessica wondered if Sydney was as aware of it as she was.
“I’ll walk you out,” Jessica said, and each of them packed up their belongings. At the front door, she stopped and turned to Sydney. Again, they stood very close together. Jessica could smell a pleasant scent—a spicy citrus of some sort—that seemed to radiate from Sydney’s skin. Ignoring the tightening in her lower body, she asked, “So, what’s next? When do we meet again?”
Sydney gazed off toward the goat house, quiet in the almost-dark, and Jessica was able to take the moment and study her face. The strong jawline that tapered into a softened chin, the angle of the shadow thrown by sharp-but-not-too-sharp cheekbones. Sydney reached up and absently tucked her hair behind her ear and Jessica saw the sparkle of a gold hoop. “It’ll be a week or so,” she said, looking back at Jessica and—not for the first time—surprising her with the color of her eyes, even in the dim light. “I’ll do some interviews with volunteers. We’ll make some rough cuts and then you can take a look and see if we’re on the right track.”
“That sounds great. I can fill Anna in until we can set up another time to meet.”
“Perfect.” Sydney’s voice sounded less than enthused by the prospect, something Jessica found unexpectedly amusing.
As they walked to their respective cars, Jessica was hit by two simultaneous desires. One was to stop Sydney, to talk to her seriously, to apologize once again for bringing up the Anna thing, to somehow take away that new, slightly shuttered expression she now wore. Two was to run away as quickly as possible, get home, hug her cats, and bring this cursed and horrid day to a close, once and for all.
Number two won out.
*
Sydney gave a small wave from the driver’s seat of her car as Jessica pulled away, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It wasn’t lost on her that she was about to be one of those people they’d discussed earlier, sitting and checking her phone while the world went by without her. In her own mind, she chalked it up to work, even though she was responding to a text from her best friend. Plus, she needed a minute to just decompress from this meeting, which felt like it had knocked her around a bit and left her head spinning.
It had turned out to be a very…interesting evening. She’d been nervous about meeting Jessica Barstow alone; the woman was intimidating, all authoritative and sexy. Yes, sexy. Sydney could admit that, and not for the first time. She was stunning, really, but a little bit aloof. Her confidence was magnetic, and without Connor to act as a buffer of some sort, Sydney worried she’d come off as less professional than she intended. She’d wavered all over the place about dinner. Was she being presumptuous? Or would Jessica think it was a nice gesture? Was there anything that could be read into it? That Sydney didn’t think her smart enough to feed herself? That she was just being nice? Was she overstepping boundaries? Sydney had gone back and forth eight times before deciding to bring the dinner in…mostly because she thought she might faint from hunger if she didn’t eat.
She’d made the right choice. Not only had Jessica been just as hungry, but that line about almost kissing Sydney hadn’t gone unnoticed. By either of them. It was just an off-the-cuff remark, a figure of speech. Sydney knew this. But the visual it threw at her unexpectedly was…enticing, to say the least. And how many times did they end up standing much closer than normal business acquaintances usually did?
“A lot, that’s how many,” she said aloud. “Okay, Syd, enough with the fantasizing about your hot subject, especially since she now knows you like girls. Thanks for that, Anna.” She groaned, and with a shake of her head, she finished typing her response to Laura, then reached for her key and turned it.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell?” she muttered and tried again. A click-click-click was the only sound the car made. “Noooooooo,” she breathed into the empty interior and tried one more time, even as she knew the dying battery Laura’s boyfriend, Zack, warned her to replace had apparently gone through its death throes while she’d been having a sub inside. She dropped her forehead to the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch.”
The loud rapping on her window scared her so badly, she jumped in her seat and let out a little squeak that would embarrass her later. Her fear was not lessened by the sight of the gigantic janitor from Junebug, his large, horror-movie-slasher glasses distorting his eyes so they made him look like a cartoon villain. A scary cartoon villain. She hadn’t realized he was still here.
“Need some help?” he asked through the glass, as Sydney couldn’t bring herself to roll down the window because it was dark and she was alone and freaking herself out. Rolling down the window in a dark parking lot was what stupid women in horror flicks did right before the scary guy reached in and strangled them to death.
“I have Triple A,” she replied, loudly through the closed window.
“Sounds like a dead battery. I’m happy to jump it for you.”
“It’s okay. Really.” She held up her cell for him to see, tilted it back and forth. “I can call them.”
He gave a shrug, but added, “It’ll probably take them an hour or more to get here.”
Sydney groaned quietly. Her phone told her it was after ten. She did not want to be there until midnight. She looked out the window at the guy who stood there, hands on his hips as if he had all the time in the world for her to make a decision.
“So he can murder me,” she muttered. “And bury my corpse under the goat house where nobody will ever find me. Or feed me to the—stop it!” She sat there, thoughts in a flurry. She was being ridiculous. And inexplicably rude to this man—again. The guy worked for Jessica. Jessica was a smart woman and, Sydney hoped, would never hire a creepy serial killer to be around the animals she so loved. Right? Taking a deep breath and deciding to accept this line of reasoning, she turned back to him and nodded. “Okay. I’d appreciate the help.”
The guy’s face lit up like Charlie unwrapping his candy bar and finding the last Golden Ticket. He held up a finger and said, “Be right back.” Then he disappeared into Junebug Farms.
Sydney sighed at her crappy luck, then sent another text off to Laura.
Battery dead. Don’t tell Zack. Having it jumped. If you never hear from me again, look for my corpse under the goat house at Junebug Farms.
Laura’s text came back just as headlights broke from around the side of the building.
You were a great friend. I’ll miss u. Kinda.
Sydney grinned at the note, then looked up as a pickup truck that might have seriously been older than she was pulled so it faced her, the headlights causing her to squint until she got used to the sudden light. He hopped out, which Sydney only knew when his silhouette appeared directly in front of her.
“Pop the hood,” he said loudly so she could hear him over the engine. She did, then watched as he opened his own hood, pulled jumper cables from the back of his truck, and hooked them up. She could see him through the opening between the bottom of her hood and the car, and she watched as he moved expertly. Zack would be impressed.
“Okay, give it a try.”
Sydney turned the key and the car sputtered, then roared to life. She gave a small whoop of joy while the man removed the cables and closed her hood. When he came around to her window a few moments later, it was obvious he didn’t expect her to roll it down.
“You should be good now,” he said through the glass. “But you should have it looked at and probably replaced or it’ll just keep happening.”
Sydney felt silly now. Embarrassed and a little foolish. She rolled the window down “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Taylor.”
She cocked her head to the side in question.
“I practically live here,” he said, but with no trace of sarcasm. Just fact. “I know who you are.”
“Well, then, you have me at a disadvantage, because I don’t know your name.”
“Bill Tracey.”
Sydney stuck her hand out the window. “It’s nice to officially meet you, Mr. Tracey. I owe you one.”
He shook her hand and smiled, and just like that, he looked much less scary and much more like a regular, hardworking, nice guy.
Sydney made it home before eleven, let herself into her apartment, and flopped onto the couch. She was overtired and needed to unwind a bit before she tried to sleep, so she simply sat and watched Marge and Homer as they wandered aimlessly around their tiny underwater world. The tank was small, but decked out—as Sydney liked to say—with glittering blue gravel on the bottom and a scuba diver discovering a treasure chest to liven the place up a bit. The small light was on at the top, and she reached over to click off the lamp on the end table so the room was only visible by the soft, bluish light from the fish tank.
Dare to Stay (Puppy Love Romances Book 3) Page 7
