Quinn had always had this type-A, control freak streak. Usually he managed to keep it in check or to channel his energy in more appropriate ways, like into work. Caryn seemed to bring out the worst sides of him. "If you're going to be in a relationship with her, you need to trust her. If that's a problem, then you shouldn't be in a relationship."
Quinn tilted the beer bottle against his lips, watching Nate the entire time. He let out a belch as he set the bottle back down on the table. "Me and Caryn have a dynamic. I wouldn't expect most people to understand it." The words came out like unnerstan it.
Nate thought he unnerstood it just fine. "Basically you're worried that Caryn's going to do to you what you did to Jessie. Isn't that it? Because in your mind, that's how people treat each other."
Even more than he hated the hostility in his voice, Nate hated the way his anger wound itself through his gut. Quinn had been his best friend for twenty-five years. He was part of himself. But Quinn was acting like a real asshole lately, and friends set each other straight.
"I didn't do anything to Jessie," Quinn said, lifting his finger to point at Nate across the table. "I did the honorable thing and broke up with her."
"Honorable my ass. Don't tell me that you weren't fooling around with Caryn before that night."
Quinn looked like he was going to argue, but then a slow smile spread across his lips. "It's hotter when it's wrong."
Nate wanted to throw the table across the room and have it out right then. Instead, he'd grabbed Quinn's bottle right out of his hand and stood up. "Hey!" Quinn said. "That's my —"
"You're finished." Nate threw a few bills on the bar and grabbed his friend by the upper arm. "Let's go. I'm driving you home." Again.
Quinn tried to jerk himself free of Nate's grip, but it was useless. "I wasn't done. Did you hear me? I said —"
"You're done, all right. When you start talking like cheating is hot, you're fucking done."
Nate yanked him out of his chair and pulled him across the floor. After a few steps, Quinn stopped fighting. "Man. You like Jessie," he slurred.
Nate's heart skipped. "She's a sweet girl. And she's not the type to get into casual dating."
"If you're so worried about her, then you should date her." Quinn stood by the SUV, rolling slightly in place as he put a hand on Nate's shoulder. "There. I'm giving you my blessing."
Nate clenched his jaw. "That's how much she meant to you, huh?" He lifted Quinn's heavy hand from his shoulder and allowed it to drop.
Quinn looked like he was about to answer, but then he fumbled for the car door. It wasn't like Nate had been posing a real question, anyway. He knew that to Quinn, Jessie was just a casual fling. He'd move on, like he had a hundred times before, and he'd brag about how easy it all was for him. But this time, Nate wouldn't listen. This time, Nate couldn't indulge the boasting and chest-thumping. Because it was Jessie, and she deserved better.
He'd driven Quinn home and left him on the front steps to his house. Then he'd headed home and tried to sleep. He might have managed to squeeze in a few hours before the alarm went off.
When he arrived at the cottage, Jessie was waiting on the sidewalk, touching her toes to stretch out her hamstrings. She righted herself when he pulled up, watching him. "'Morning," she said.
"'Morning." His eyes stung with fatigue, and he yawned into his arm. "Sorry."
"It's okay." Jessie folded her arms across her chest and stepped closer to him. "Are you all right? You look tired —"
"Fine."
"Nate." She set her hand lightly on his wrist. The contact sent his heart racing. "We can do this another time. Later this afternoon, even. Go get some sleep."
She looked tired herself, with those red-rimmed eyes. "I'm okay to run," Nate said. "Are you?"
A flicker of hesitation before she nodded and said, "Yes. Fine. I'm ready to push to the brink of death, but no further."
"Then let's go, but keep it easy."
Dawn seeped through the clouds, even at that hour. Before he and Jessie had started running together, Nate had never woken so early — not on purpose, at least. He was still finding the early alarm painful, but he enjoyed the stillness of the hour, the smell of salt air in the breeze. He glanced at her as they ran together. She was focused on the road ahead, her brows knit in concentration, her cheeks puffing with each quick breath. For the first time in all of their runs, she was avoiding him: his eyes, his company, his existence. He didn't know what he wanted from her anymore. He only knew that it wasn't this.
"I'm going to take you somewhere new," he said. When he saw her eyes widen, he said, "Just trust me on this one. I promise you'll come out alive."
After a couple weeks of running, her stamina was improving and so was her speed. They ran to the end of the neighborhood, which cut off suddenly into a copse of thin pines split down the middle by a narrow, sandy pathway. Jessie stopped short. "Are we going on that thing?"
Like he was asking her to travel by camelback. "It's a little off-road. Nothing you can't handle, I promise."
But she stayed back, her hands on her hips, her head cocked. "What, are we going into the woods to light a bonfire and do keg stands?" Bullshit meter on high.
"You know, it's not actually weird to run on a trail. Some people even seek these opportunities out."
He waited for her to fire back some smart reply, but instead she shrugged and grumbled, "I should've brought my bug spray."
"You're an outdoorsy kind of girl, Jess," Nate said as she brushed past him down the path. "That's why I love you."
Shit. He said that out loud. Did she notice? She was jogging down the path, ducking below some hanging fir branches to reach a clearing. Nate waited a moment, holding his breath. When it seemed like he'd possibly gotten away with it, he exhaled. That was close. Not that he couldn't have laughed it off, said it was just a figure of speech, but —
"That's a mean thing to say, Nate." Her voice was soft, barely audible above the sound of their breathing.
"What, are you saying that you're really outdoorsy?" He forced a laugh. "Come on, I'm teasing."
Beside him, she was quiet. "You know what I meant. I've had enough of people telling me they love me and not meaning it."
His throat constricted. He didn't dare try to follow up with an explanation. Or a confession.
The path broke through the trees and cut through a dense spread of vegetation: stretches of pink Carolina rose and bearberry that ended at a small sandy hill tufted with beach grass. When she reached the top of the hill, Jessie stopped again. There she stood.
"You've gotten faster," he said. "You didn't even take the walk breaks."
She stepped down the hill as if he weren't there at all. Nate followed with a sigh as they both arrived at a small sandy beach. Here, the waves lapped the shore softly, and thumbnail-sized pink seashells littered the beach, together with the occasional stray crab leg. "I used to come down here all the time when I was a kid," Nate explained. "It's a great place for catching crabs in a bucket. This one time, I found a tiny turtle —"
"Look at all of these seashells," Jessie whispered as she stooped to get a better look. "I could spend hours down here. I never knew about this beach."
"No one comes here," he said, feeling proud. "It's cut off from the town beaches, and it's too small for recreation."
Around them, insects creaked and stirred. A seagull circled lazily overhead. He'd brought her to this beautiful place, and Jessie wouldn't look at him. I almost punched my best friend out last night, he wanted to say. I was about to feed him my fist for cheating on you. Because I'm not teasing when I say that I love you. I'm actually not being mean.
"This seems like the kind of place where you're supposed to think deep thoughts, doesn't it? So, do you ever think about what you want from life?" Her voice sliced through the air. "I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Like, I want my own storefront, a pink polka-dotted awning, and maybe a thigh gap. Just a modest one. I think with those things, I'd be ha
ppy."
"A pink polka-dotted awning and a thigh gap is all it takes, huh?" He poked at a purple-freckled seashell with the toe of his right sneaker. "I guess I'd want similar things. Not the thigh gap, but to feel successful, professionally."
"What about personally?" Jessie was sitting in the sand, resting her chin on her knees as she gazed out over the water. "Do you think you'll settle down?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Maybe. If I find the One."
She turned her face to look at him. "How will you know she's the One?"
He considered the question. "She'll know when and where to use her teeth, and when we're done having sex, she won't start laughing."
"Ha!" Jessie beamed and lifted her head. "Spoken like a true romantic."
"You think I'm joking? I could tell you stories." But he was laughing, too, and for a moment, the tension between them slipped away.
He thought of his date with Emily. How childish and impulsive and wrong of him that was, when the only woman he could ever imagine himself with was sitting beside him already. Hell, she could break out in a fit of giggles after they had sex if she wanted, or bite him in all the wrong places. She'd still be the One.
He crouched beside her, allowing one knee to touch the sand. "Jess, I —"
"It's okay. Whatever it is. I can tell you're about to apologize to me for something, and don't worry about it." She patted his knee, allowing their eyes to meet briefly. "You showed me this place. I forgive you."
She forgave him? For what?
Then in an instant, she was on her feet again. "We should head back. I've got another chocolate order coming, and I want to get in early."
Every inch of his body was weary and beaten down with fatigue. He rose to his feet with great effort, suddenly feeling a hundred years old. "Sure. Chocolate orders come first."
He did his best to make it sound light, but man. All he wanted was for her to slow down and spend a few minutes on him, and she was spending all of her attention on everything else. She was even jogging again, damn it. Following the path back into the woods, taking off without him. And for half an instant he wondered what she was so mad about, and then it hit him on the head. Emily, that was what.
He'd asked Emily out to piss her off, maybe even make her a little jealous. He didn't expect it to actually work.
"Hey, Jess?" Nate came up behind her and stayed at her elbow. "Emily and I are going out on Friday."
"I know," she said brightly. "I'm so happy for you two. Really. You'll have a great time. Emily's a nice girl."
Said without a trace of sarcasm. Was she mad at him or not? It was messing with his head. "I was wondering if you'd like to join us," he said. "Not like it would be the three of us. I'd invite Max."
She turned her head. "The SEAL?"
"Navy SEAL, yes. Not the animal."
Jessie fluttered her lips and slowed to a walk. They had reached the copse of trees again. The needles of a fir tree slipped softly across his arm. "I don't know about that," she said. "Max seems a little intense, and I think he undressed me with his eyes while he ate that chicken salad sandwich."
She was probably right, Nate thought. High-strung, intense Max was probably a terrible match for Jessie. That's what made the situation perfect. "You know, between you and me, I don't want Emily to get the wrong idea. I want to keep the first date casual, not move too quickly."
That got her attention. She stopped dead in her tracks. "So, wait. You want to double date because you want me to be a buffer between you and Emily?"
"'Buffer' is the wrong word. I just want to get to know her before we go out alone." He shrugged. "Maybe I'll hate her guts by the time appetizers roll around."
"I highly doubt that will happen."
Jessie looked at the pine trees around them as she stretched her neck. She was quiet for so long that he wondered if she'd lost her train of thought and had perhaps started contemplating string theory. Then she said, "I guess it's fine. It's not like I have anything else to do."
"I love your enthusiasm. I'll ask Max to refrain from visually assaulting you."
"That's fair. I'll tell Emily to lower her expectations. But it seems she already has." She tried not to laugh at her own joke, and failed.
God, did he love everything about her. "Hilarious, Jessica. If the chocolate thing doesn't work, you should do stand-up."
"I'm here all week, folks. Try the prime rib."
Nate rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "And still you keep going. Come on, I'll race you home."
Jessie clutched the manila folder to her chest as she stepped into the bakery kitchen. Uncle Hank was there first, as usual. He whistled and cracked an egg into a stainless-steel bowl. Jessie took inventory of the ingredients surrounding his workspace: flour, butter, sugar, milk, and blueberries. Her stomach began to growl. "Muffins or coffee cake?" she asked.
"Neither. I'm making a vanilla blueberry loaf cake with a sugar glaze. It's great with tea."
Jessie strolled around the counter to stand beside him. She snuck a few blueberries out of the bowl and said, "Uncle Hank, this is my business loan application. I made it with my hands." The folder made a slapping noise as it struck the counter. "I was up all night documenting my personal financial history and making bar graphs. I used teal, magenta, and canary yellow for the bars." She opened the folder to the appropriate page to show him. "See, the teal is year one of sales, magenta is year two, and canary yellow is projected growth over the next twelve months. It's sort of aspirational, but I did an Internet search and I think it works."
"It's definitely aesthetically pleasing," Uncle Hank said.
"I thought so. You know, loan officers live such dull lives, looking at numbers all day, thinking about creditworthiness. I thought, they need a bar graph with some magenta, and they just don't know it yet." She popped a blueberry into her mouth. "Mmm. These are good."
"I'm proud of you, honey. It's not easy to put yourself out there like this. Whatever happens with the loan, you've succeeded."
Jessie shut the folder and pushed it out of the way. Uncle Hank was unwrapping sticks of butter and dropping them into the bowl, and she didn't want her hard work to get greasy. "Thank you. I had dinner with Wren last night, and she got me thinking that I need to do this, not just talk about doing it."
Opening her own chocolate shop, that is. She needed to do it for herself, not to impress Quinn. Sweets were her passion, and even if her life was messy and imperfect, at least it could be passionate.
She was waiting by the door when the First Bank of Spencer opened at nine o'clock, and she marched right in and up to Fred White. He was coming from a back room, carrying a cup of coffee in a plain white mug. He probably liked beige. "Mr. White! Here's my application for a small business loan. I hope you find it up to your standards."
He accepted the proffered file with a furrowed brow. "Thank you, Jessie. You could have emailed everything to me."
Ah. She laughed nervously. "I was in the neighborhood. Just wanted to make sure it reached you safely. My email's been down. Hackers." The excuses came rapid fire.
"That's fine. Maybe next time." He blew steam over the brim of his mug and took a tentative sip. "I look forward to reviewing it."
"And I look forward to your judgment," she said. Then, after a few painful seconds of silence, Jessie realized that she couldn't possibly help her case if she continued on in that vein. "I'll see you later. I put my phone number on the application."
"Perfect. I'll bet it's right where it's supposed to be. Have a good day." He ducked into his office and set his mug on his naked desk. Then he shut his door in her face.
Jessie swept her palms down her shirt and felt like mostly, she'd accomplished something great. She'd filed an application for a loan, and she'd exercised her business sense with Mr. White and not screwed anything up too badly. As she stepped outside and into the sunshine, a bolt of sparks burst in her stomach. Until that moment, with the application still un-filed, she hadn't allowed the thought to regi
ster: she was going on a sort-of date with Nate. As a buffer between him and Emily, but still. She was kind of his wingman, a position of honor and trust in the male kingdom. Maybe that was a good thing? Did guys kiss their wingmen?
She shook her head. No need to go there. It was a night out, that was all. But he wasn't serious about Emily. The window was open.
She hummed to herself as she strolled back to work. I am the one who knocks on the chocolate door. And things were starting to turn around for her.
Chapter 12
Sam's After Dark was set on the rooftop, under the stars and a crisscross of white lights. Jessie and Wren had gone there on occasion, usually when there was something to celebrate. That night, the specials were gazpacho prepared with watermelon, and spicy fish tacos garnished with mango salsa and fresh guacamole. Jessie had decided in advance of the date that she was suspending her diet for the evening. She ordered both.
She'd also curled her hair. It felt a little bit like trying too hard, but she didn't give a damn. She'd also splurged on a new black top with a wide neck that exposed more of her shoulders, a pair of dark jeans, and black heels. Jessie was running late, and so Emily, Nate, and Max were already seated when she came running in. "Sorry!" she gushed. "My car — I accidentally turned on the radio and had to ask a neighbor to jump the engine."
"No problem at all." Max rose to his feet, his eyes wide as he looked her over. "You're worth waiting for, Jessie."
The compliment embarrassed her, and she looked to Nate. But he didn't speak. He was watching her, his lips slightly parted. Looking, she realized, like a lost puppy.
Her heart stalled. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Jessie felt gorgeous.
Of course Emily looked beautiful, too. Her light brown hair was pulled into one of those romantic braids, and she was wearing a white dress with cap sleeves that was really very sweet and pretty. But Nate wasn't looking at Emily, no matter how much she touched his arm or tried to engage him in conversation. He would answer her questions, or ask politely about her interests, but then he'd turn back to Jessie, who was sitting across the table from him. Jessie's heart was pounding in her throat so strongly that it was a wonder she could breathe at all.
A Sweet Possibility (Archer Cove Series Book 2) Page 14
