by Lucy Kevin
The next thing she knew, he was hugging her. And, for a few moments, she was so stunned that she didn’t push him away.
Chapter Twelve
Jenn was the first person Daniel thought about when he woke up on Saturday. No surprise, given that he’d spent the entire drive back from the movie the previous night fighting to keep his eyes on the road. She was that wonderful, that beautiful, that fun. He didn’t normally come into work on a free Saturday, but after the kids won both their soccer games that morning, he’d been unable to stay away, knowing that she would be there.
When he’d told the kids that he was going in to work, Kayla had looked at Adam and said, “He’s going so he can see Jenn.”
“Yes!” Adam had high-fived his sister.
“We’ve got a really big project going right now,” Daniel had explained with a laugh. Of course, it had been really good to see just how much his kids liked Jenn.
And then, when he’d driven them over to his parents for the afternoon, his mother had said, “They work you far too hard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that you’re no longer traveling around the world being shot at. But I can’t imagine what’s so interesting that it has you going in there on a weekend when there isn’t even a wedding.”
Daniel had deliberately not looked at his kids’ giggly faces when his mother said that. If his parents got wind of Jenn, they’d probably go to Married in Malibu to beg her to go out with him. While her going out with him was exactly the result he wanted, he hoped he could pull it off without his mother intervening on his behalf.
“I’m working on a photo spread in a major magazine,” was the only explanation he’d given. “I really appreciate you stepping in with the kids today.”
“Well, this is obviously very important to you. But you’ve had plenty of spreads in magazines, so the moment you get back I’m expecting you to tell me what this is really about.” The kids had giggled even harder at that. They loved it when his mother talked to Daniel like he was their age.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d been happy to see that Jenn’s car was the only one in the Married in Malibu lot. He’d been tempted to dash straight into the kitchen to see her, but he liked surprising her with coffee and a pastry. So he had set off across the street to Malibu T & Coffee, more determined than ever to win her heart, whatever it took.
“Hi, Tamara,” Daniel said once he stepped inside the café. “One latte and one Americano, please.”
He was normally more talkative, but just then he was trying to come up with the perfect place to take Jenn to dinner. No kids this time, just the two of them. He wanted to sweep her off her feet so completely that there would be no doubt anymore about what was between them. Somewhere with candles and soft music and—
Wait a minute. Why was a man in a kaftan hugging Jenn in the corner? Especially when she looked so unhappy about it?
“Hey!” Daniel called out. “What do you think you’re doing, buddy? Get your hands off her.”
The bald man was surprisingly large and looked menacing as he drew back from Jenn with an irritated scowl. Daniel might have been intimidated if he hadn’t once spent an afternoon in a bunker taking photographs while bombs had gone off so close by that the ground shook.
“What Jenn and I do is none of your business,” the man said, trying his best to loom over Daniel. “And I should warn you that the branch of Buddhist meditation I practice has strong links to the Shaolin Monastery.”
“That’s enough, Oliver,” Jenn said.
“Oliver?” This was Oliver? The scumbag who had treated Jenn so badly? Who had cheated on her, then left her to pick up the pieces of her life in his wake?
“Daniel,” Jenn said, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just heading back to the office.”
Before Daniel could respond, Oliver stepped between them. “I’d appreciate it if you could leave me to continue this very important conversation I’m having with my wife—”
“Your ex-wife,” Daniel growled.
“—about our future together.”
Future together? Was this guy on something? There was no way that Jenn would ever go back to someone who had hurt her the way her ex-husband had.
“Oliver,” she said with a sigh, “I’ve already told you there’s no future for us.”
“Baby,” he crooned in the smarmiest way possible, “I know my offer to get back together with you is more than you ever expected, but I have faith that you’ll see the light soon.”
Daniel was tempted to shove the guy away from her, but even as furious as he was at her ex, he knew she wouldn’t be impressed by his brawling over her like some high school kid. Still, he took a step toward Oliver and said in a low voice, “Jenn has made herself clear. It’s time for you to leave.”
“How do you know anything about what my Jenn wants?”
“She’s not your anything,” Daniel snapped back. Everything about this guy was wrong for Jenn. It was hard to believe that he had ever meant anything to her, let alone been her husband.
“Oh, I see,” Oliver said suddenly, his eyes narrowed. “You’re here playing the big man because you want Jenn for yourself, don’t you?” He poked at Daniel’s chest. “Too bad, because she’s always been mine and still is.”
“Are you kidding me?” How could this man talk about Jenn like she was some sort of possession, rather than someone to be loved? “After what you did to her, do you really think she still wants to be with you?”
“Please,” Jenn said to both of them. “Please stop this.”
“Why?” Oliver’s kaftan flapped around him as he spun back to face her. “So that you can go running off with Daniel? I have a brilliant future mapped out for us. Do you think I’m going to throw all that away just because some guy wants to get you into bed?”
Daniel couldn’t stop himself from grabbing Oliver by the shoulders. “I care about Jenn.”
“Care about her?” Oliver snorted. “You want her. You want to put your grubby hands all over her and make her yours. You’re a parasite moving in where you’re not wanted. A scavenger. Well, I was here first. I was Jenn’s first, her one, her only. You can’t take that away, no matter how hard you try. She’s mine. She always was, and she always will be.”
Daniel had been determined not to sink to Oliver’s level. The smart thing to do would be to walk away from the argument. Be the bigger man.
But he couldn’t do it. Not when he needed to defend Jenn against this idiot.
“The fact that you think Jenn could ever be yours again shows how little you deserve to be with her. Do you even see her? Do you see how happy she is without you? Do you even know, do you even care, what she wants from her life? Because I know for sure that Jenn loves baking and you never supported her in a single moment of it.” Daniel knew his voice was loud enough for everyone in the café to hear, but he wasn’t done ripping into her ex yet. “You had years to see what an amazing, beautiful person she is, but instead you spent all your time trying to change her. Cheating on her.” His hands tightened into fists as he spoke. It would feel so good to connect with the other man’s jaw and see him go down. To punish him for what he had done. If anyone deserved it, Oliver did. “You must be a truly awful person to hurt someone so sweet.”
Oliver was just about to launch his right fist into Daniel’s face when Tamara called out, “Hey, no fighting in my shop!”
But Oliver had no intention of stopping. And Daniel was glad for the chance to grab the other man’s hand out of thin air and push him back against the counter.
“Jenn and I are special,” Oliver insisted as he tried to break Daniel’s grip.
But Daniel had had much bigger, stronger men try to intimidate him. He wasn’t going to let Oliver win. “You don’t deserve her in your life for another minute. You spent your entire marriage ignoring her and treating her like dirt. You didn’t deserve the time that you had with her, and you certainly don’t deserve to have any more now. Do everyone a favor, Oliver. Go away and don’t come
back.”
“Enough,” Tamara said, pushing her way between them.
“Spoilsport,” said an older woman who had been watching the show with relish. “We haven’t even gotten to see a good fight yet.”
“And you’re not going to,” Tamara said, holding the two men at arm’s length. She nodded to Oliver. “You need to leave.” She pinned Daniel with nearly as hard of a look. “Daniel, sit down.”
“You can’t—” Oliver began.
“If you have a problem with it, I suggest you meditate on it,” Tamara said with bite. “Now get the hell out of my coffee shop.”
Oliver swept away with what he probably thought was Zen-like calm, though it came off as petulance.
“Good riddance,” Daniel said.
Tamara lifted a warning finger. “I told you to sit down.”
Daniel recognized that voice. It was one he occasionally used with his kids when they’d behaved particularly badly. He took a seat.
“Now,” Tamara said, “take a look around my coffee shop and tell me what’s missing.”
Daniel turned to scan the café. “Jenn’s gone.”
“Exactly.” Tamara put a hand on his shoulder when he tried to stand. “You’re not going anywhere until you understand what an idiot you’ve just been.”
“But I—”
Tamara’s look was, yet again, one that he might give his kids at their most belligerent. “She left here in tears. Ran off while you were trying to go ten rounds with Mr. New Age.”
“I didn’t know,” Daniel said.
“No, you didn’t. Because you weren’t watching her. Because you weren’t even thinking about her.”
“That’s not true. I never wanted to hurt her.”
He would have done anything rather than upset her. Obviously, his expression said as much, because Tamara sighed.
“I know you didn’t. You wanted to defend her honor. You probably even thought that you were doing the right thing. But what just went down with her ex? Don’t try to pretend that it was about Jenn.” She shook her head at him. “That was about the two of you trying to prove who was the bigger man. When it only made both of you look like fools.”
“I thought they looked pretty good,” the gray-haired woman offered from a table in the corner. Both Tamara and Daniel ignored her.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Tamara continued. “That ex-husband of hers needed handling. But Jenn had handled him. She’d already told him to take a hike when you showed up and barged into the middle of it.”
“I didn’t mean to screw everything up. I just wanted—”
“Her. You wanted her. You were fighting over her like some kind of prize—instead of showing her how much you care about her. You should have been by her side no matter what. Instead, you didn’t even notice when she left.”
Daniel couldn’t believe how badly he’d blown it, all because he’d been caught up in the challenge of besting her ex. “I need to make this up to her.”
“You sure do. You need to apologize. You need to grovel. You need to ask her what’s in her heart and then really listen to what she says.” Tamara paused before adding, “And you need to tell her you love her.”
Chapter Thirteen
For once, Jenn didn’t head to the kitchen. Normally, whipping up a batch of decadent muffins or individually piping profiteroles drove away the pain. But her hands were shaking too badly right now to go anywhere near her cakes. If she tried to add the finishing touches for the Brides shoot now, she would just bring everything crashing down around her. Plus, she knew Daniel would come to the kitchen to find her, and she wasn’t ready to face him. Not yet.
Feeling numb, yet wired at the same time, she headed down to the beach. The cove in front of Married in Malibu was empty as always. The ocean lapped against the shore, blue and foaming with breakers. The sand reflected the warm sunshine above. And she was truly alone with her thoughts.
Right then, however, she didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
“Why does it have to be so hard?”
No answer came from the ocean, or the birds in the sky, or the shells scattered along the sand. As much as she wished for it, there was no carefully constructed recipe that would tell her everything she needed to feel. Not only about Oliver, but also about Daniel.
Everything had been going so well. Their outing with the kids had been fantastic, and she’d been sure that there would soon be more than that. But now that she’d ended up in the middle of a chest-beating competition between Daniel and Oliver…it felt as though everything had gone back to square one.
Not only with any potential romantic relationships, but also with her job. Soon, she knew, everyone at Married in Malibu would find out what had happened in the coffee shop. She was supposed to be an essential component of Married in Malibu’s growth, not get caught up in arguments with her ex-husband in the café across the street. If anyone had recorded the awful scene on their phone and recognized Jenn and Daniel as Married in Malibu employees, the wedding venue could end up getting the wrong kind of publicity.
Liz had given her the biggest chance of her life. The opportunity to put her past behind her and move on. Only to have Jenn betray that trust by dragging her old life into the picture.
It was impossible not to feel sick about the whole thing. Even the sight of the ocean in front of her wasn’t working to clear away the anxious thoughts buzzing around in her head.
“Jenn?”
At the sound of Daniel’s voice, she turned to see him standing on the sand, looking a little disheveled but unhurt. She hated the thought that he and Oliver might have had a fistfight over her.
“I’m sorry.”
His apology—with none of the excuses Oliver would have led with—touched her deep in the middle of her chest.
“I know you might not be ready to accept my apology yet,” he said softly when she remained silent, “but I needed to make sure you were okay.”
Once upon a time, she would have automatically said that she was fine, because she wouldn’t have wanted to make Daniel any more uncomfortable than he already was. But she wasn’t that woman anymore. Wasn’t a woman who could pretend to feel something she didn’t just to make someone else happy. Because that had never worked, had it? Not for her or anyone else.
“I’m not okay. Seeing you two behave like that in Tamara’s coffee shop was embarrassing, and scary, and overwhelming. I wish it never happened.”
“You’re right,” he said in a somber tone. “It’s just that when I saw him harassing you…” He swallowed hard. “I wanted to protect you. Instead, I let myself get drawn into an argument when I should have been focusing on you.” Daniel looked ashamed in a way that Oliver never would have. Her ex not only wouldn’t have understood what the problem was, he likely wouldn’t have understood that there was a problem in the first place. “I should have been supporting you, should have trusted you to have the situation well in hand.”
She’d been so mortified when the argument broke out. She’d felt like a spectator in her own life, forced into the background while Daniel and Oliver argued over her in front of Tamara’s customers. Even thinking about it brought back the shame of her private life being picked apart in public.
She wanted to let herself sink into Daniel’s arms. To just hold onto him until everything was better. Instead, she sank down on the sand, wrapped her arms around her knees, and admitted, “I didn’t have the situation in hand. Not really. Not when he grabbed me. I should have been tougher with him. I shouldn’t have met with him in the first place. But he seemed so desperate to meet that I didn’t know what else to do.”
Daniel sat down beside her on the sand. At any other time, it would have been a beautiful moment—the two of them on the beach, looking out over the ocean. But this wasn’t one of the perfect, romantic moments that Daniel captured with his camera at a wedding. This was real, messy, painful life.
“I know what it’s like to rebuild your life after things have gone w
rong,” he said in a gentle voice. “I know how hard it can shake you when you see a reminder of the past for the first time. But you deserve so much better than Oliver. That’s what makes me so angry. He had someone as wonderful as you in his life and he didn’t see it. He didn’t see how important you should have been to him. How perfect you are.”
“I’m not perfect.” She spoke so softly that her words could barely be heard above the surf. “I’m like everyone else. Maybe not even as together as that, because a normal person wouldn’t have just thrown away her future in a coffee shop.”
“You haven’t thrown away anything.”
“After I brought my personal life into work like this? If I just generated negative publicity for Married in Malibu, I’ll be lucky if Liz doesn’t fire me.”
“She won’t do that,” Daniel said. “I’ll explain to her what happened—”
“This is my life coming apart at the seams. My problems. I need to be the one to sort them out,” she insisted. “By myself.”
“You don’t have to do it alone, Jenn. Not anymore.” He reached out to touch her cheek, gently turning her head toward him so that she could see the certainty, the sincerity in his eyes. “I love you. I want to protect you and support you, hold you and be there for you, whatever happens.”
His declaration should have been a revelation, a ray of light. Instead, Jenn found herself struggling to take it in, especially coming so soon after what just happened with Oliver.
“You’re so sweet,” she finally said, turning her face so that his hand fell away from her skin. “Too sweet.”
“Jenn.” She could hear the emotion in his voice as he said her name. The frustration that she hadn’t leaped at his declaration…and also that she wasn’t saying the three little words back to him. “I didn’t say it to be sweet. I said it because it’s what I feel. What I’ve always felt for you from the first moment we met, the first moment we spoke, the first time I ever saw you smile, the first time you laughed—and it felt like everything was right with the world.”
