“This is Sarge, Mr. Parker.” Snapping her fingers, she whistled for the golden retriever whose ears had perked up the instant she touched the latch. “Sarge? Here boy. Come on out and say hello.”
To her surprise, Jordan Parker squatted, putting himself on eye level with the rehabilitated retriever, held out his hand, and then waited for the dog to come to him. It took a moment, but the dog finally ambled cautiously out of the pen to sniff at his outstretched hand. A few seconds later, his tongue was lolling and his tail happily wagging.
“Hiya Sarge. How are you doing, boy? Enjoying yourself here, are you?” Mr. Parker asked as he reached out to ruffle the dog's fur, first behind his head and then beneath his chin. He leaned closer, tilting his head to the side as if to hear whatever Sarge's answer to his questions had been, and said, “Oh, I know. I think so, too. In fact, I was just about to.”
Turning on his haunches, the man looked up at Kaylee, offering a hesitant, almost shy smile that made her knees turn to gelatin and said, “How about it, Miss Dean? Do you think you'd like to try the best mocha crème latte this side of the city?”
Kaylee's brow rose sharply at his back-handed attempt to ask her out for coffee. “I don't think so.”
Turning back to Sarge, he shrugged and said, “Hey, I tried, old man, but you heard the lady.”
Despite her best intentions, Kaylee laughed. “What did he say?”
Jordan looked up at her, one brow arched. “That you are a very beautiful lady and I should probably ask you out, of course.”
She rolled her eyes, ignoring the warmth shooting through her at his pretended second-hand compliment. “Sure he did.”
“He also said he wanted to come home with me today but that you would insist I fill out a handful of papers first. Is this true, Miss Dean?” he asked, getting to his feet.
There was a hint of apology in his eyes when he glanced her way again and she wondered what it meant. Was he sorry he had asked her for a date? Inexplicably hurt by the thought, Kaylee nodded. “Yes, there are a few papers we would need you to complete, for our records.”
“Well, there you have it,” he said. Pushing his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, he rocked slightly on his feet and looked at the ground, motioning toward the dog with his elbow. “If old Sarge here didn't lie about the papers, why would he lie about you?”
There was sincerity in his questioning gaze this time when he looked at her, and Kaylee bit her lip, fighting an unexpected urge to reassure him—of what, she didn't know. Her brow furrowed and she turned away before she did something stupid. Like hug him.
“If you're serious about adopting Sarge, Mr. Parker, you can do the paperwork now. It'll be a few days before you can take him home, but—”
“I am absolutely serious about it, Miss Dean. As serious as I was about coffee. Are you sure you won't join me?”
Jordan Parker was no stranger to rejection. The first six investors he had approached about financing his fledgling IT business nine years ago had turned him down, too. Granted, he was only nineteen at the time, with very little experience to back up his business plan, but the numbers were right, and as it turned out, so was he.
Investor number seven had helped him prove it to the world.
Within five years, his company ranked in the top one hundred IT companies in the world. When he'd sold it off last year after he'd decided to retire, it was ranked number seven in the Fortune 500. But being turned down for coffee by the peppy Miss Dean was a rejection that felt personal.
Not that it should have. If he counted every minute since their first meeting until she walked away from him at the end of their last, they'd spent a total of eighteen minutes together—hardly enough time for him to turn her refusal to share his caffeine addiction into a personal jab—and yet, it had wounded him somehow. Not unlike the antique letter box he'd picked up last weekend at the antique shop, he thought, rubbing at his injured arm, but even that hadn't bothered him as much as this woman's whole I-don't-want-to-get-coffee-with-you thing, and he didn't know why.
It's probably just that over-inflated ego of yours, his conscience pricked as he followed her with his gaze. She put a pin in it and the pain you feel is the effect of it slowly shrinking down to size.
She hadn't waited around for him to finish the paperwork, either. After depositing him at one of the tables with a hasty mumble about someone being there to help him soon, she'd hurried off to see to another customer while he busied himself with watching her from afar as he made sure to dot all his “I's” and cross every “T”.
Shifting in the chair, he reached into his pocket to collect the dog license he'd unearthed from the letter box and held it up to the light, trying to make out something other than the name. He could clearly read the series of numbers, but rest of it was far too corroded to read. Still, it was responsible for his being here today. He'd come to the shelter to adopt a dog—not pick up a woman, he reminded himself.
Slipping the warm metal tag back into his pocket, Jordan signed his name on the last sheet of paper and walked to the front desk where he laid both the pen and clip board aside. “I've filled in the important bits, my cell number and my signature. If you need anything else, give me a call.”
Half an hour later, he was standing in his garage staring down in aggravated confusion at the antique letter box he'd moved to the worktable for dis-assembly. As he scowled down at it like it was some strangely intricate, impossibly difficult puzzle to be solved, he contemplated the ill-considered invitation he'd issued to Miss Dean to join him for coffee and then complained to the box that it was “just like a woman.”
And by that, he meant confusing. Not knowing the reason for disappointment at being turned down by the woman from the antique shop was as irritating as not knowing where his illogical passion for buying antique letter boxes came from. At the moment, both currently posed a mystery for him that was gnawing at his insides and adding equally to his growing surly mood until, glaring down at the box, he reached over and slammed the lid firmly shut.
Why did he keep buying the darn things, anyway?
Huntingdon's One Shot Coffee Cafe was a cozy little coffee shop located on the outskirts of town to which quite a lot of Hawthorne Grove's residents gravitated, both in the mornings, for that first steaming cup of brew that the owner guaranteed would knock the sleep out of their eyes, and in the evenings when the lighting was dim, the mugs were thinner, and the exquisite brew topping every cup became a lot more artistic than the caffeinated jolt Sam Huntingdon faithfully served his sleepy-eyed customers in the A.M..
Jo Dean Leavy was a regular. In the four years during which the cafe had been in operation, she hadn't once missed a morning of stopping in for what she called her “emergency wake up call.” But tonight, she was sitting at a ruby cloth-draped table, sipping a mocha crème latte for a different reason.
“Are you sure this whole lack of sleep thing is about Daniel? I mean, come on, Kaylee. It's been two years. You're concerned he's making you lose sleep again, but I know you. You're not the type to let a guy make you tuck tail and run—or hide,” she told her sister. “Besides, dreaming about him doesn't necessarily mean you're thinking about or worrying about him in particular. Maybe your dreams are trying to tell you it's time you moved on. Time you let yourself find a man, and get into a relationship again. Have some fun for a change!”
She sat her cup on the table, leaned back in her chair, and looked her sister straight in the eye. Then, her eyes narrowed. “Oh, my God. That's it, isn't it? There's a guy! You've met someone who makes you think about getting serious again, and … Kaylee Dean, you've been holding out on me, haven't you?”
Lifting the steaming cup to her lips, Kaylee almost felt guilty.
“There's no guy,” she said, but she could feel the heat of a blush stealing its way up her neck to her cheeks. “I mean, there was a guy. I ran into him. Or, rather, he ran into me. But that's not important. It's just—coincidence.”
Her sis
ter was still peering at her through narrowed eyelids. “What coincidence?”
Kaylee shrugged. “Remember last weekend when I promised Mindy I'd go to the antique place for her?”
Jo nodded. “The snow globe place? Yeah, you told me about it. Or I thought you had, but obviously you left out all the important bits.”
There was a not-so-subtle hint of accusation in her tone that made Kaylee want to wince.
“No, I didn't. Having a guy in a dark gray bomber jacket almost run me over on the sidewalk was nothing. It was—” she shrugged. “It was just one of those things. But then he showed up at the shelter, and—”
“And you freaked,” her sister filled in for her.
“I did not freak.” Feeling defensive now, Kaylee broke eye contact and squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.
“I just … turned him down. For coffee. Which we are having now,” she said, lifting her cup once more.
Jo's eyebrows shot upward. “He asked you out? Wait a minute.”
Leaning forward, she took Kaylee's cup from her and sat it aside before taking both her sister's hands in her own. “Let me make sure I get this straight. A guy almost knocks you off your feet at the antique shop, then he shows up at the shelter and asks you out. And you said no.”
Kaylee nodded, but her sister clearly did not understand.
“Why? Was he butt-ugly or something?”
“No.” Kaylee felt her nose crinkle, adding strength to her denial, and dropped back in her chair with a sigh. “He was actually quite handsome, especially after … ”
Realizing that she was about to reveal she had noticed a lot more about the guy than she cared to admit, Kaylee broke off with a shrug. “He looked decent enough, Jo. But he has nothing to do with my having gotten a total of four hours sleep every night since the day we ran into each other at Seville's.”
“But what if he does?” Jo suggested, giving her fingers a little squeeze of encouragement. “What if you met this guy and your subconscious realized you liked him? What if, deep down, you wondered if it was okay to have a man in your life again, okay to trust a man again, and your dreams are just an extension of that, hmm?”
“What if it remembered what happened last time and dredged up scenarios from my past to present to me in my sleep as a warning against it?” Kaylee offered wryly, pulling her fingers out of her sister's grasp.
Jo's head dropped back and she closed her eyes. When she raised her head again, it was to glare in annoyance at her sister. “You're impossible sometimes, you know?”
“Mmm,” Kaylee mumbled in agreement around her last swallow of coffee. “And sleepy. I think it's time I headed home. Thanks for the latte, Jo, and the chat. Next time, I'll buy.”
Jo fumbled in her purse for her credit card. “And maybe next time you'll listen to what I'm trying to tell you.”
The bells over the coffee shop door rang out, drawing their attention as well as the owners, who was busily wiping down the bar counter with a damp cloth. “Hey, man! You made it!”
He walked around the bar and met the new customer half- way. The two embraced for a second, one of those back-slapping, guy things, and then the newcomer said, “Sammy! It's good to see you again. How's business?”
Kaylee felt a tingle of awareness at the sound of his voice, but she had known it was him the moment he stepped inside the cafe. Hoping to avoid notice, she dropped her eyes and tucked her chin. “See you tomorrow, Jo.”
Half an hour later, still restless although she felt so tired she could barely hold her head up, Kaylee tied her bath robe and padded barefoot through the living room of her one bedroom apartment, making a bee-line for the snow globe. She still didn't know why she felt so drawn to the thing, but looking at it made her feel at ease somehow. Less troubled and less … alone. Everything seemed so perfect inside. So peaceful and serene and … .
Looking into the glass, she couldn't help but think the people in that house loved each other. Real love. The kind of love that didn't go away, ever, no matter what. The man inside would never walk out on his woman a month before their wedding, leaving her scarred and afraid to risk her heart again no matter how tempting it may be to do so.
Lifting the ball, she peered in at the beautiful abundance of thick, glistening snow covering the fence, the yard, the trees, the house, and Jo's words at the coffee shop came back to her. Was she finally getting over the pain of being jilted two years ago? Was she truly ready to start over, to try again for love?
Frowning now, she closed her eyes and shook the ball, thinking if her subconscious were really as smart as Jo seemed to think it was, it could have produced a much better sign or clue than torturing her from sleep with dreams of Daniel every night.
Give me a sign. The thought whispered unconsciously through her thoughts in the brief instant before she opened her eyes and looked down at the ball again. The snow, which moments before had blanketed every surface inside was in the air, was trickling slowly downward. But what caught her eye was the dog resting on his haunches on the path leading from the stoop outside the front door.
It looked a lot like Sarge, she thought. Definitely a golden retriever, but—how had she missed it before? Tilting the ball this way and that, she watched as artificial snow slowly covered the ground and walkway again, piling up over and around the dog while her thoughts drifted to a pair of fascinating gray eyes.
Setting the glass ball carefully back into its stand, she clicked off the lamp and headed into the bedroom. Slipping off her robe, she got into bed and pulled the quilt up to her chin. Staring unseeing through the darkness at the ceiling, she wondered if maybe Jo was right. Perhaps it was time she stopped letting what happened to her in the past keep her from enjoying the present.
Chapter 4
Kaylee woke the next morning feeling rested and strangely exhilarated. For the first time in a week, her sleep hadn't been interrupted by disturbing dreams of her ex-fiance; she'd actually slept the entire night through!
Still groggy, she stretched and turned to peer sleepily at her clock, wondering how long she had to laze in bed before her alarm went off. 8:00. Eight? No, that couldn't be right. She'd scheduled today's first grooming appointment for eight! Kaylee blinked once, then jolted into action. Springing up, she flung off the covers and grabbed her cell phone, quickly flipping through a few screens before punching the green call button with her thumb.
Her 8:00 a.m. appointment answered on the second ring. “Mrs. O'Reilly? Yes, it's Kaylee. I'm running a little late this morning, but I'm on my way. Can you give me fifteen minutes, or do we need to reschedule?”
“Fifteen minutes is fine,” Mrs. O'Reilly said. “Is there anything wrong, dear?”
After assuring Mrs. O nothing was wrong and embarrassingly admitting she'd just overslept—something quite unusual for her—Kaylee ended the call, rushed to the closet to gather a handful of clothes, and then locked herself in the bathroom for the quickest shower by a female, ever, and that rush seemed to set the tone of her day.
After her shower, she'd grabbed a banana and a granola bar from the kitchen and ate them both while getting dressed, and although she'd shamefully bent a few speeding laws in order to pull it off, somehow managed to make it to her shop, Kaylee's Pet Care and Grooming, with three minutes to spare before the fifteen she'd promised Mrs. O ran out.
Breathless from having run across half a parking lot and then up a flight of stairs, Kaylee used the time it took her to unlock and get inside her normal place of business to apologize again to Mrs. O for being late, and although Mrs. O'Reilly assured her it was no problem, Kaylee still only charged her half price for Mitzi's grooming to make up for her inexcusable tardiness.
The door had barely closed behind them when the phone rang. An emergency pet-icure, which she agreed to do in half an hour if they could make it in that short a time, then there were two walk-ins, plus her three regular Monday clients, and a bad delivery she'd had to send back to the supplier because half her order was missing and t
he other half was wrong—and it seemed like everyone in the county decided to call in after that to book a grooming for their pets. But when Marc called from the shelter at a little after two, Kaylee was still surprised to realize so much of the day was already gone.
“You okay? It's a quarter after two.”
Kaylee waved goodbye to her last client for the day and sat down in her chair behind her desk. With a swoop of her hand, she pushed a bit of hair that had come loose from her hastily banded pony-tail out of her eyes and blew out a slow breath. “I'm sorry, Marc. Today has been a special kind of crazy.”
“Yeah? Well, you can tell me about it when you get here. Daina had to leave early and Ren never showed, so step on it, lady. I need all the help I can get over here and you're already late.”
And so, for the second time that day, Kaylee grabbed her purse and her keys, locked the door, and rushed to her car to hurry to an appointment at which she should already have arrived.
By five thirty, she was more than ready for a break … a long one.
“Whew. It's been hectic today,” Marc said. He brought a folder to the table and dropped it in front of her. “Almost closing time, and I have to admit, I am definitely looking forward to it.”
Kaylee flipped open the folder. “What's this?”
“Mr. Parker's paperwork. Everything's in order. He can pick up the retriever whenever he's ready.” He walked away from the table, stopping at the door to collect his jacket. “I was hoping you'd call him before you leave. I've got a date I'd hate to be late for. It's a first, and you know how picky you ladies are about things like that.”
He didn't wait for her answer. Instead, he shrugged on his jacket and, smiling back at her over his shoulder as he stepped through the door, waved a jaunty goodbye. “See you tomorrow, Kaylee Bean!”
Something Magical (Witches of Hawthorne Grove Book 1) Page 3
