“You’re sure it’s not in your wallet? Or in your truck?” He liked to tuck business cards in the strap on the back of the sun visor.
“I double-checked both before I called. It’s probably on the counter. Or the coffee table. Probably. It’s there somewhere.”
“I’ll call you right back.” Maybe. Somewhere wasn’t a lot to go on.
There was no business card on the counter. Nor on the coffee table. It wasn’t in the spot he usually threw his keys or near the coffee mug where he tossed the coins he accumulated in his pockets. Maybe it was on his nightstand or dresser.
She hadn’t been in his bedroom. Maybe it was a subconscious effort at separation, but they’d always kept their doors closed. He’d been in hers, of course, but she still hadn’t been in his.
He’d said it was urgent, though, so she turned the handle and poked her head in.
The room was pretty much identical to hers. Beige. Brown. Blah. His bed was bigger and there was a straight-back chair next to his dresser, but that was it. He was surprisingly neat for a guy, and she didn’t have to wade through balled-up socks to get to the pile of scrap paper she saw on his dresser.
He might not throw his dirty socks on the floor, but the man would jot a note on just about anything. A reminder to check sprinkler system laws on the back of a gas receipt. A guy’s name and a number on the corner of a napkin. The deeper in the debris pile she sifted, the further back in renovations the notes referred to.
One crumpled piece of paper had the intriguing title of “Google searches.” Under that, in his slanted chicken scratch: trivia Concord, NH; bars trivia Concord, NH; Concord Tuesday trivia. In the margins were bar names and phone numbers. All had a line scratched through them. The next sheet of paper had the name of an auto garage. Then the Concord library’s number. And at the bottom of the pile was a small piece of paper that had obviously gotten very, very wet. She could make out the pattern across the top as that of her fridge memo pad, but her name and number were just a black smudge bleeding out into nothing.
He hadn’t been playing her, after all. He’d tried to call her. The evidence that he’d invested a lot of time and energy into trying to get in touch with her was spread across the dresser, and she felt the sting of tears in her eyes. Why hadn’t she listened to her heart instead of her stupid head and believed him when he told her that? Repeatedly.
It didn’t matter now. They’d moved past that, but seeing how hard he’d tried to find her after just one night together squeezed her heart.
She loved him. Maybe it had been love at first sight or maybe it had crept up on her, but she knew it was real and she knew it was twisting her up inside. She couldn’t imagine what life would be like without him—other than painful—but it was almost time to go home.
She had a home. And she missed Jasper’s Bar & Grille and Paulie and everybody else. Her friends. Movie theaters. Takeout.
Jake loved the life he was making here. She could see it in him. He thrived on it and there was more than pride in his eyes when he stood in the pub and looked at what they’d done together. There was affection. He’d made this his home.
His home and her home were three hours apart as the highway rolled, but worlds apart in reality. And she wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her. She knew he cared about her and enjoyed the sex and her company, but it would take the forever kind of love to work through the obstacles in their path. Anything less would crumble under the weight of logistics and distance and absences.
* * *
A WEEK LATER, Jake looked over the dining room of Jasper’s Pub and felt the warm glow of satisfaction. It was finally opening night and they weren’t packed, but there had been a steady enough stream of diners to call it good.
They’d done the advertising and radio spots. Kevin had handled getting the website and Facebook page up. Now it was up to word of mouth and, judging by the comments he’d overheard here and there over the course of the night, it would all be good.
Karen kept the wait staff on their toes while keeping a perfect balance with the customers. Her natural warmth and friendliness was a draw, but she didn’t cross over into too casual and chummy with them. Every dish was coming through the window perfectly cooked to order, and there was nothing for him to do but soak it in.
He spotted Darcy, who was acting as an unofficial hostess, coming toward him and smiled. She was wearing the same mulberry-colored Jasper’s Pub polo as the wait staff, which he thought was a lot nicer than the ones they wore at Jasper’s Bar & Grille.
“It’s going even better than I’d hoped,” she said a little breathlessly, keeping her voice low.
“And every single table has ordered at least one Jasper’s Big-Ass Steak.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve not giving you a hundred dollars.”
“I’m sure we can come to some other kind of arrangement.”
“Stop it. We’re working.” But she gave him a look that assured him they’d come to terms. “I’m really proud of this place.”
“You should be.” He hooked his pinky finger with hers, keeping their hands behind her hip to hide the contact from the dining room. “It was a lot of work and a lot of decision-making and you pulled it off.”
“We pulled it off.”
He liked the sound of that. Hopefully that we would be long term. “I think we’ll be ready for Valentine’s Day.”
They were running meal specials for couples, with packages that included dessert and a bottle of champagne. All the lodging establishments in the area had coupons on display, offering discounts at the pub. Kevin had launched an advertising blitz that ensured that practically every guy in New England who had a snowmobile knew Jasper’s Pub was the place to be on Valentine’s Day.
There would be flowers and a few special treats not available on the regular menu. They’d considered having a live band, but not only was space an issue, but sometimes people felt awkward having conversations while a band was playing, and that wasn’t the atmosphere they were going for.
He also had a diamond ring in his sock drawer. He’d bought it two days ago, when Darcy thought he’d had to go down to the city to handle a fictional problem with their liquor license.
“I hope I’ll be able to get back for that,” Darcy said, snapping him out of his happy thoughts.
“You have to come back. It’s what you’ve been working for.”
“No, tonight’s what I was working for. Everything’s set. Everybody knows their jobs. From here on out, it’s you and Karen.”
The glow dissipated and he stepped around her. “Come out back with me.”
She followed him through the kitchen and into his office. He took a deep breath as he closed the door, trying to figure out what he needed to say not to ruin everything.
“What’s the matter with you?”
He turned to face her, leaning back against the door. “That’s not the first time you’ve made reference to maybe not being here for Valentine’s Day. I don’t get it. Why would you work so hard and then not be here with me?”
“I have to go home. I’ve been gone over a month and I have a life there. I have a job and I have bills that need to be paid and plants to water. I have no idea how crazy it’s going to be.”
“What about us?” He kept his voice low, but the words were a deafening shout in his head. “Is there going to be time for me anywhere in there?”
He saw the temper rising in her face. “What is it you want from me? I’ve been here over a month and when I got home I’ll barely be unpacked before I have to leave everything again and come back. I’ll try. That’s all I can do.”
It wasn’t enough. He straightened up and opened the door. “All right. Maybe I’ll see you then. Maybe not.”
“What did you expect?”
“I expected you to come spend Valentine’
s Day with me. Then I expected to take a trip south to see you. I expected we’d figure it out as we went along. And I expected to be more of a priority than watering your fucking flowers.”
“Jake.”
“It’s been a pleasure working with you. Thanks for the help.”
CHAPTER SIX
AND, JUST LIKE THAT, they were done. Darcy watched him walk away, her heart breaking and her mind spinning, scrambling to come up with anything to say that might bring him back.
There was nothing. Maybe because she couldn’t quite figure out how it went so horribly wrong so fast.
Afraid she was going to come undone in front of the kitchen staff, she grabbed her coat off the hook and went up to the apartment, replaying the conversation over and over in her mind.
Maybe she hadn’t expressed herself well. Maybe he’d overreacted. Maybe it was a little of both, but there was no maybe about the fact that they were over. He’d been so cold at the end, his body language totally unforgiving.
She cried for an hour, drenching her pillow in her effort to be quiet in case Jake came upstairs. She never heard him, so either he was very quiet or he stayed downstairs until after she’d cried herself to sleep.
He was gone before she woke up, and she spent the morning packing her car. When the cooks and Karen showed up to start prepping and there was still no sign of Jake’s truck, she said her goodbyes, wished them all luck and hit the road.
It felt as if she were leaving her heart behind. The drive seemed endless as she fought to keep her emotions under control. She’d been right all along. The pain was too much to bear and she should have walked away the day she got there.
She gave herself twenty-four hours to wallow in heartbreak and then she showered, dressed and drove to Jasper’s Bar & Grille.
“Darcy!” Paulie was so glad to see her she gave everybody a round on the house.
The other woman had barely gotten her arms around Darcy for a welcome-home hug before she started sobbing on her shoulder.
“Shit. Office. Let’s go.”
She let Paulie lead her there like a little kid and push her into a chair. Once the door was closed, Paulie got comfortable in Kevin’s chair. “Okay, spill.”
So she spilled. The entire story, from meeting at trivia night to finding out Jake and J.P. were one and the same to the horrible end of the story the night Jasper’s Pub opened. By the time she was finished, she was pretty much cried out, which was good because she’d decimated the box of tissues Kevin kept on his desk.
“You know I love you,” Paulie said. “You also know I’m not good at the whole girl-talk thing, so I’m going to be straight with you. You’re both idiots.”
That surprised a laugh out of Darcy, and she knew she’d come to the right shoulder to cry on. “How did we screw it up so badly?”
“He’s a man and you’re a woman. Trust me, that comes naturally.” Paulie grabbed a bottle of water out of the mini fridge and handed it to her. “Obviously Valentine’s Day’s a big deal for him.”
“It’s a big deal for the pub, yes.”
“And he wanted you to be there with him and you told him you’d see if you could fit it in?”
“He wanted me to be there for the pub. That’s work.”
“Are you sure? It’s the most romantic holiday of the year, and you guys are supposed to be doing the falling-in-love thing, so what do you think it says to him that you don’t really care one way or the other if you spend it with him?”
Darcy picked at the label on the water bottle. “He kept saying I’d worked too hard to miss being there. Why didn’t he tell me he loves me and he wants me to be there with him?”
“I don’t know. Because he’s a guy?”
“Then tell me, Dr. Paulie, why wasn’t it more important to me to spend the most romantic night of the year with him?”
“I don’t know. The female mind is a screwed-up thing. Men are easier.”
“Great.” She drank some of the water just because Paulie had gotten it for her. “We were in work mode and Valentine’s Day has been a work thing. If he’d asked me while we were cuddling on the couch or in bed or something if I’d go back to spend the evening with him, it would have been different, I think.”
“So tell him that.”
Darcy shook her head, blinking back a new wave of tears. “When he walked away, it was like he flipped a switch. It was over.”
“Doesn’t work like that. There is no switch when it’s the right guy. It can be years and then you see him and—bam—you can’t even breathe.”
That’s how it had worked for Paulie and her husband. It had been years since she jilted Sam at the altar, but he’d walked into Jasper’s one day and, as she said, bam.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Paulie continued. “If you love him and you think there’s even the slimmest chance you might still work it out, you have to be there on Valentine’s Day.”
“Even if he won’t speak to me?”
“He will. Like I said, there’s no switch.”
“It’ll hurt if it’s not enough.”
“It hurts now, right? The important thing is that you let him know he is more important than whatever else you have going on. If it’s not enough for him, we’ll put his picture over the dartboard and have a tournament. But I’m thinking I won’t fire Courtney just yet.”
* * *
JAKE HAD HEARD THAT absence made the heart grow fonder. Now he knew it also gave a guy time to think and realize he’d acted like a total jerk.
On the first day, when he came home to find her car gone and a note on the counter that said nothing but good luck and her name, he’d stayed good and pissed off. The second day the heartache and the missing her kicked in. Day three had brought the first inklings of clarity. And today came the realization he’d totally blown it.
Darcy didn’t know the Valentine’s Day thing was about more than two-for-one Big-Ass Steaks and putting Jasper’s Pub on the map. She didn’t know he’d been working on the right words to say to make her want to stay with him. She didn’t know about the ring. She didn’t know he was going to tell her he loved her and ask her to be his wife.
He’d basically told her she’d worked too hard not to be there to watch happy couples eat their half-price steaks and then totally overreacted when she pointed out she had a life that had been on hold for over a month and might need some of her attention.
And to really top things off, he still didn’t have her freaking cell phone number. Wasn’t that just a kick in the ass?
There was nothing he could do but call the Bar & Grille and hope Kevin would give him the number without verbally taking his pound of flesh first. He’d screwed up, he knew it, and he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
“Jasper’s Bar & Grille, Paulie speaking.”
“Hey, it’s Jake Holland. Is Kevin around, by any chance?”
He was beginning to wonder if she’d hung up on him before she finally answered, “He’s not, actually. Something I can help you with?”
“I need Darcy’s number.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t give out our employees’ personal information.”
He knew she wouldn’t make it easy for him. “Technically, she’s been an employee of Kevin and me and I need to contact her, which is entirely different.”
“Really? That’s the way you want to play it?”
He sighed. “I love her and I fucked up and I need to make it right.”
“You got a pen?”
Screw pens. He had a fat-tipped permanent marker and a big beige wall. “I’m ready.
“Thanks, Paulie,” he said when he’d read it back to her just to make sure he didn’t screw that up, too. “I hope she’ll listen to me.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. The
re’s no off switch. Stop being idiots and work it out.”
He took a few minutes to gather his courage and give some profound speech time to pop into his head. Nothing came, so he took a slug of beer and dialed Darcy’s number.
And got sent straight to voice mail.
When it beeped, signaling it was his turn to talk, he still didn’t know what to say. “Hi, it’s Jake. I...uh. I’m sorry. That’s the most important thing. I’m sorry. I really want you to spend Valentine’s Day with me. There’s this great place called Jasper’s Pub and they’re having a special dinner. I’d like you to be here because...dammit, I’m not telling you I love you on your voice mail. I want you to be my date because it’s Valentine’s Day and it won’t be special without you. That’s it, I guess. I’m sorry and I hope you’ll come back.”
He hung up and rested his forehead against the kitchen cabinet. All he could do now was wait. And plan. It was going to be a Valentine’s Day she’d never forget.
If she came.
* * *
DARCY COULDN’T BELIEVE how many snowmobiles were parked up and down the road in front of Jasper’s Pub. There were some in the parking lot, too, along with a respectable number of cars and trucks. Jake and Kevin had pulled it off. With her help, of course.
Thankfully nobody had parked in the two spaces marked as reserved for the apartment, so she parked next to Jake’s truck, even though she technically shouldn’t. But she was wearing heels instead of boots and there was a limit to how far she could walk in the damn things. Especially in the cold.
She went around to the front door and stood inside, taking it all in. There were couples and laughter and roses and trays of chocolates and little candy hearts set around the dining room, as well as down the bar.
Nerves danced in her stomach and it took all of her self-control not to reach over and snatch a glass of champagne from the nearest table. She’d listened to his voice mail message a hundred times just to hear him say he wouldn’t tell her loved her on her voice mail, but she was still anxious about seeing him. She probably should have called him back, but she was afraid talking things through over the phone could go wrong so easily.
Alone With You Page 6
