by Cara Colter
He was unbelievably touched by that. Besides, what man wouldn’t want to come home to something like this?
“I actually got to use the double ovens,” she said, nodding at the pies cooling at her elbow. All of New York outside his door, and she was thrilled that she had used a double oven?
As Jamie looked at Jessica, he was aware of feeling a strange longing, a longing for the life he had not chosen. How easy it suddenly was to picture children tumbling across the room toward him, happy to see him, crying Daddy.
The vision was as shocking—and compelling—as imagining her in a field of lavender. What was it about this woman that so bewitched him? That made secrets he had kept, even from himself, thrust their way up to the surface?
Claim you have a meeting you forgot and get out of here, he ordered himself.
Instead, Jamie found himself drawn into the warmth she had created in his space. As he drew closer to her, he was acutely aware that the life he had chosen suddenly seemed empty—filled with things and lacking soul—and it made him feel alone in a way he had not felt before.
“What can I help with?” he asked gruffly, coming around to her side of the kitchen island, not wanting to reveal to her the full extent of the feelings clawing up through him.
“I’ve got an extra potato peeler.”
How could that invitation possibly sound sexy? And dangerous? When he took off his suit jacket and joined her at the sink, he knew why it was both sexy and dangerous.
“Here,” she said, “let’s get an apron on you. It will protect your clothes.”
“I don’t have an apron,” he protested, but she took a folded piece of cloth off the counter and shook it out.
“You do now.”
What was this let’s put the apron on? He had been dressing himself since he was two. Plus, she had obviously planned to get him involved, even knowing full well what had happened between them last night. But, no doubt on purpose, she had wisely chosen a very wholesome activity.
He should have backed away, but instead he ducked his head so that she could put the loop of the apron over it. She was so close. It reminded him of that kiss last night. It would be so easy to...
He steeled himself against unwholesome thoughts. They had no place in this most wholesome of activities.
He tilted his head down and read, upside down, the phrase on his apron. It said I’m cute AND I can cook.
“I think I got your apron,” Jamie said. “This is a lie.”
“Only half of it,” she told him with a sassy grin.
Was she flirting with him? He frowned at her. Hadn’t she got the memo? Flirting had no part in a wholesome activity!
Jessica went behind him and tied the apron securely. The apron snugging up against his waist and her hands at his back increased both the sense that there was potential here for unwholesomeness and the sense he had entered a scene of domestic bliss. She handed him a potato peeler.
“Your weapon,” she told him.
He looked at her lips, her weapon. He turned quickly away from her, grabbed a large potato and focused furiously on removing the skin from it.
They were shoulder to shoulder. Her scent was blending with the smell of a roast cooking and pies cooling. Her hair was shiny and begged his fingers to tangle in it like they had last night. Who could have imagined peeling potatoes could be so much fun and such an exercise in discipline?
An hour later, they sat down at his dining room table to eat. The roast was overcooked and the potatoes were lumpy because she had not considered the possibility he would neither have milk to mash them, nor an implement created specifically for that purpose. The gravy had not thickened properly and the apple pie was sour enough to make him pucker.
“Well, that was a disaster,” she said, sadly.
“Really?” he said. “I think it’s easily one of the most exquisite meals I’ve ever eaten. With the best company.”
“That’s a lie,” she said.
“Only half of it.”
And there was the laughter, again, springing up so easily between them.
“So, it’s your last night in New York. Is there anything I can do to make it special? To thank you for this?” He gestured at the table, littered with the remains of dinner.
Her eyes found his lips, and skittered away.
“No, no,” she said hastily, “you don’t have to thank me for this, this was to thank you. Oh, geez, I sound like those chipmunks who are always trying to outdo each other in politeness. After you. No, after you, I insist.”
He laughed at her great impression. “And then they end up fighting!” he reminded her.
And then they were both laughing at the absurdity of it.
“Come on,” he coaxed her, “what’s on your New York wish list?”
“Oh, no, I—”
“It’s an order.”
“Now you sound like Beast.”
He cocked his head at her.
“As in Beauty and the Beast?”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“You are so! Belle is the town bookworm.”
“Like you?”
She blushed. A man could live to make her blush. He made her tell him the whole story, pretending it was all new to him.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen that movie,” she said when she had finished.
He laughed and sang, “‘No one’s as slick as Gaston, no one’s as quick as Gaston—’”
She scowled at him. “Why did you let me go on and on about it?”
“You were so earnest. My sister made me watch that with her, over and over again, when she got chicken pox, not long after my dad died.”
Jessica looked at him, and the loveliest smile tilted her lips. A man could live to make her smile. “And you think you failed in some way?” she asked softly.
And a man could live for that, too. For a sense of his flaws being filtered through a gentler, more forgiving light than the one he held on himself.
“Pick something,” he insisted, now more determined than ever to give her some precious memory to take home with her, since, of course, he had no intention of giving in to the desire to do everything he did for her—for her blush, for her smile, for that light that came on in her eyes that made him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof.
She hesitated. “You’ll think it’s corny.”
“Cornier than my apron?”
“Maybe.”
“Try me.”
“I wanted to go on the horse-drawn carriage through the park.”
“You know, I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never done that.”
“I told you, corny.”
“I think it’s about time I did,” he told her softly. If his sister could see him pulling out his phone to check availability for the carriage ride tonight, she would no doubt repeat what she had said to him when he had texted her that first night that Jessica had arrived.
Who are you and what have you done with my brother?
He shushed that voice and pushed a single button to book the carriage ride. An hour later, Jamie watched, amused, as Jessica introduced herself to the horse. She blew into his nose, and despite her beautiful clothes, she didn’t even step back when he blew back on her. In fact, she threw back her head and laughed.
Jamie thought a world without her laughter to look forward to was going to feel empty in a way he had not realized the world could be empty just forty-eight hours ago.
“She knows horses,” the carriage driver said approvingly.
“Do you?” Jamie asked Jessica.
“Oh, sure. Timber Falls is rural. I always had a pony when I was growing up. Horse-crazy teenager, all that stuff.”
A reminder, as she settled in beside him, of what she was. Wholesome. Ponies and pies. Not the kind of woman a guy like him should
tangle with any further than he already had. But what was he going to do? Jump off the carriage and tell her to have a good time, he had just thought of something he needed to do?
Surrender, he told himself.
This was about her. Not about him. She was here only a short time more. And then what?
Was she leaving forever? Or was she coming back? Would she be working with him, day in and day out?
He took his place beside her in the carriage. He tried to keep some distance between them, but she shivered, and tonight he didn’t have a jacket to put over her shoulders.
He surrendered yet again. He moved closer to her, throwing what he hoped was a companionable arm over her slim shoulders.
“What are your thoughts about the job?” he asked. It was a desperate and pathetically late effort to keep all of this in some way businesslike. That already seemed hopeless. But he had to try.
* * *
Jessica felt like Cinderella, with Jamie’s arm around her shoulders, the steady clip-clop of the horse’s hooves, dusk falling over Central Park. She felt as exquisitely alive as she had ever felt, as if the night air was creating tiny explosions of sensation against her skin.
She wished Jamie wouldn’t have mentioned the job!
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “There’s a lot to think about. It’s not just my own business, though of course that is part of it. Who would look after it? And a big part of it is my mom and dad. They aren’t old—both in their late fifties—and they’re in good health and active, but they rely on me quite a bit.”
“In what way?”
“Technology baffles them. I think I get a call or a visit once a day at the store with questions about their television, or their phones. Don’t even get me going on their recent purchase of matching tablets!”
He laughed.
“My mom has taken to social media, though,” she said ruefully.
Even as she said it, she realized these sounded like weak reasons to put a life on hold.
“I think they would want you to do what is best for you,” he said.
“You’re right, of course. If you met them, you would see that instantly.”
Jamie Gilbert-Cooper meeting her parents? She couldn’t imagine what circumstances that would cause these two very different worlds to collide.
A wedding, something sighed within her. She instantly banished the thought as both embarrassing and ridiculous. Despite feeling she knew Jamie, the truth was she did not. This sense of intimacy was because he had rescued her. He had invited her into his life. He had treated her like a princess. Conversation flowed easily between them. They laughed together. There was definitely chemistry!
All that was not a reason to start humming someday my prince will come, even if she was riding in a horse-drawn carriage!
It probably was showing her that Aubrey and Daisy were absolutely right: Jessica had made her world too small. Her reaction to this close proximity to such a confident, charming, gorgeous man was a result of not having nearly enough encounters with men of any sort.
Not since Devon had died. Not since the fiasco with Ralph in Copenhagen. Ralph should really serve as her lesson: her romantic notions could get her in trouble.
Though, a voice insisted on pointing out, Jamie was the opposite of Ralph. Her illusions about Ralph had collapsed as they had spent more time together. The more time she spent with Jamie, the more enamored she felt!
“You must be leaning one way or the other, though,” he said. “The clients you met today loved you.”
“Did they?”
“Unequivocally.”
She wanted someone else to love her unequivocally! She ordered herself to stop being so teenager-with-a-crush.
She realized, in terms of the job, she didn’t have any idea what was best for her. It was all too heady, like trying to make a decision when you were full of champagne.
“I need to go home,” she said. “I have a place, beside the Falls, where I like to sit when I have a decision to make. It’s free of distractions. No phones, no computers.” Of course, she didn’t have those things now, but she did have the biggest distraction of all: Jamie.
“The right answer always comes when I’m there.”
“I envy you having a place like that.”
“You could come one day, and see it.” What was she doing? Trying to keep him in her life, even if she said no to the job? Trying to see what they would have left if they did not have this fabulous backdrop behind them?
“I could,” he said, and she scanned his face. Was he placating her? Being polite? Or would he really like to see Timber Falls? She felt as if she would genuinely like to see him on her home ground. It would help her know if the strength of her feelings for him were real.
But it was complicated, because if he did meet her parents, if he did ever come to Timber Falls to see her, her mom and dad would jump to the conclusion it was serious. Knowing her parents, they would start picking names for grandchildren, and sharing them with him!
She’d known the man two days. Yes, she had to go home and get her head on straight. There would be no making a rational decision under these present circumstances.
So she might as well just enjoy the experience while it lasted!
When they got in, it was late, and yet Jessica could not help but notice that he was as reluctant to say good-night as she was.
They cleaned up the kitchen together, and then went into his living room. He put on music, and then patted the couch beside him.
“So little time left,” he said. With relief? Or regret? Or some combination of both? “Tell me everything there is to know about you.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t know where to start. And it’s not interesting.”
“Start at the first day of school, when you told me you met your guy. And let me decide if it’s interesting.”
And so she found herself telling him about growing up in a small town, surrounded by people who knew you and were related to you. She told him about swimming in mountain lakes, and decorating the trees in their teachers’ yards with toilet paper rolls, and picking huckleberries on hot summer days, riding their horses down tree-shaded trails.
She told him of her and Devon, always together, best friends.
“It was such a perfect life,” she said, and heard the wistfulness in her own voice. “And then when he died, there was an awareness I had never had before. That life was not safe, that everything you loved could be taken from you in a blink.
“The bookstore was my grandmother’s. I had never considered owning her bookstore, though I had always worked there. But then she wanted to retire, and Devon had died and it seemed like a natural choice.”
“A way to make your world safe again. Predictable.”
Trust him to see that, so quickly, and so completely.
“Yes,” she said, with tears forming in her eyes. “Yes, I’ve played it very safe ever since Devon died. And it seems every time I’ve tried to step away from that safety net, all my fears about life are proven entirely correct.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I’ve hinted about my online dating disaster. The truth was, I didn’t really feel ready to meet anyone. I think it was a reaction to everyone in town suggesting it was time to get over it. One of the joys of small towns is that everyone knows your business, and weighs in on everything about your life, usually without an invitation.”
“So, you met a guy online, which takes the pressure off. Shows people you’re getting on with things, without really changing anything.”
“Quit being so astute! Anyway, it was a catastrophe. I finally decided to meet him. At the Annual Ascot Music Festival. Have you heard of it?
“Oh, yeah.”
Of course he would have heard of it! He was cosmopolitan.
“Well, I hadn’t. But I decided
to meet him. It was all on the up-and-up. I paid my own way, and insisted on my own room.”
“He let you? Pay your own way?”
“I insisted!”
“Okay,” he said in a tone that let her know that’s not how it would have happened with him.
“And anyway, I was glad I did, because then I didn’t owe him anything. And in person, he was an absolute jerk. Full of himself and self-centered. There was a lady at the music festival who had lost her dog and was hurt, and he acted as if he was more important than that. As if it was a big inconvenience to him. I made a decision, on the spot, to not let it go any further with him.”
“Good for you. So then you came home and licked your wounds until now?”
“Yes.”
“A perfect excuse to play it safe some more?” he suggested, his tone gentle.
She wasn’t used to this, someone seeing her so clearly.
“Well, that might be true, but I did meet two women who have become lifelong friends.”
“Uh-huh.”
“More safety?” she guessed from his tone.
He lifted a shoulder at her.
“Anyway, there is nothing wrong with playing it safe. Look at this time! I took another chance, and another catastrophe.”
“Really?” he said, softly. “I would think this is about the furthest thing from a catastrophe that I could imagine.”
He was right. He was 100 percent right. She was living an absolute dream.
“Maybe the message from life,” he suggested, “is that bad things happen. They happen to all of us. And we survive. Sometimes, if we look closely there can be a gift hidden in our worst moments.”
She looked deeply at him, and his eyes so full of wisdom, and felt herself falling deeper. Tumbling toward him and what he offered.
A world that rewarded bravery.
A world where she could trust someone to be honest with her.
She could feel herself leaning toward him, leaning toward the adventure. And he leaned toward her, too.
Their lips met. Two souls who knew each other, who had known each other since the beginning of time and would know each other until the end.
