He took an interest in the sketchbook on the seat between them. “May I?”
Freesia shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”
One by one, he flipped and turned and scrutinized pages. “They’re so unique.”
“That code for ugly?”
“No,” he insisted. “Not at all. They have a point of view. They say something. Any woman who wears this one, for instance? Power move. Every single person in the boardroom would straighten and take notice.” He flipped to other sketches. “You drew these?”
“And sewed every last one.”
A low whistle skated past his lips. “Impressive.”
Jay immersed himself in the drawings, maybe because asking about them prevented her from tapping into the million and one questions she had for him. He insisted on buying lunch. The least he could do, he said. Instead of a meadow, Freesia laid the quilt on the truck bed under a metal roof that had once shielded a diesel gas pump, long since removed. Their first bites went everywhere, a culinary explosion that had him doubled over, eyes misted, and her stomach cramping from laughter well before the onslaught of spicy sauce and chilled slaw.
She pointed to a saucy trail soaking into his starched placket. “You’ve ruined your shirt.”
“Pretty sure it’s ruined me.”
She couldn’t imagine how formal dress could ruin a man, was about to ask, but he had sobered some, his legs suspended and swinging absently off the tailgate, and he forged ahead with a subject change. “Tell me about another place you’ve been. I want to go there, now, with you.”
Her senses ruffled. It was as though they were already lovers and he had asked for a confidence for the sole purpose of navigating this fatefully new and complex intersection of whimsy and reality. The more fanciful the tale, the less they had to remember their place as strangers.
“I washed my shirt in a river in West Bengal once.”
His brows registered surprise the moment he took another bite. He minded manners that she didn’t—waiting to speak until he had swallowed, using his paper napkin after each bite, small sips from the straw in his paper cup of root beer. In fact, he looked perfectly awkward eating gas station food with his hands, but he entered into the gastronomical experience with gusto.
“Aloo Poori, curry stain, not unlike your rib sauce there.”
Jay flushed, whether heat from the sauce’s red chili paste or her scrutiny, she couldn’t say.
“Spare no detail. I’ve always wanted to go to India.”
“I was headed north, to Darjeeling. Trains in India are this crazy, slow disconnect from the world until they stop and peddlers crowd the compartments. They bring with them the noise and the heat and the color, too much in too little space, exchanging bead strings and chewing tobacco for a couple of Rupees.”
“Sounds fantastic.”
“After four days of it, you might change your mind. I was ripe, body and mind. On the third day, the train made an unscheduled stop—something blocking the tracks, I think. Passengers spilled out and roamed the countryside to stretch their legs. I found a river—more like a stream—about a quarter of a mile walk from the last compartment. I stepped out on some rocks. The water was cool. There was no one around, so I stripped off my shirt and rinsed it. When I looked up, I wasn’t alone.”
“Oh, God. Not a tiger.”
Freesia nearly laughed at the rapture with which he held her words. “No, a man, downriver. He had pants on, but not much else. His fingers were disfigured, shortened. Lesions covered his arms and chest. I startled and dropped my shirt in the water. In the time it took me to worry about how he might see me, someone frightened of his appearance when that wasn’t it at all—I simply thought I was alone—he made his way into the rush of water and caught my shirt.”
Jay had stopped eating, his messy handful forgotten inside its paper carton. In the draw of his brows, the alight of his eyes, his absolute attention to her details, she saw all she needed to see of his compassion, his heart.
“When we met on the shore, he placed my shirt on a nearby rock like it was gold from the riverbed, then backed away. I wasn’t thinking about how exposed I was or getting back to the train so I wouldn’t be left behind. All I could think about was how I had never known heartbreak in that way before. Human touch is nothing, really, taken for granted until it’s impossible.”
Even now, her throat tightened. She smiled past it, remembering the man’s toothy grin. “I gave him the most valuable thing I had on me, a silver locket. Looped it around his neck. I wanted so badly to hug him, but we were remote and the uneducated in that part of the world would as likely isolate him as treat him. I put on my shirt and left. The rest of the train ride, I stayed disconnected. I regretted not doing more.”
“Maybe the necklace helped him to afford treatment.”
“Maybe.” Freesia looked down at her meal. The rock in her stomach didn’t leave much room for the half-eaten sandwich. “I was early in my travels, naïve. Today, I would’ve changed my plans, stayed with him until he got what he needed. I’m doing my best, of late, to try not to run.”
She had never admitted that aloud. That she had done so with a complete stranger made her skin itch.
“You’re not running now. I’d say that’s you doing your best.”
He set his paper carton on the tailgate beside him, made work of further mutilating the messy paper shreds that were once a napkin in an effort at decorum. His shoulder bumped hers but he made no effort to uncouple. Instead, the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt settled against her, a sunburn of warmth created together that left the rest of her wanting. The moments beside him, with him, whizzing by like the heady rocking motion of a train bound for Darjeeling, were a sophisticated peppering of madness where time slowed and she grieved a future without him. Absurd. They had just met, and by chance, and she had never been beholden to anyone. But she found she wanted more breadcrumbs of his life, if only to learn something that might dismiss him from her preoccupation.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s the best you have right now?”
He inhaled, deeply. His gaze settled on the horizon as if his best was somewhere else, anywhere but here. “Fill someone’s shoes. Try not to screw up.”
“Your shoes don’t fit?”
His mouth quirked, a smile he restrained. He swung his legs out and studied his feet with a critical bent to his neck. “They’re a little tight.”
“And muddy.”
Her humor pushed him past restraint, past decorum, past disconnect. He shared a smile with her. “And muddy.”
“Seems like muddy shoes make the best imprint.”
His confident gaze detoured her face, lingered on her mouth.
Arousal tickled her insides.
He remained a breath before he retreated from the moment, an internal battle waged. “My entire life has been about the smallest details. Luxury labels. Carefully chosen words that gild dysfunction. People who claim to love you, but then audit your imperfections in a public way, like a shaming into perfection. ‘The difference between good and great’ my father always said. But the thing about details? They lead to greatness at the expense of momentum. I had momentum, once. Thought maybe a drive would fuel it again, help me remember the big picture.”
“Did it?”
“All that kept running through my head was what they would label me if they found out.”
“The people who claim to love you?”
He nodded, studied his clasped hands. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“Because strangers take confidences with them and don’t know enough details to label.”
The word, strangers, didn’t quite fit. Freesia had driven up on the breakdown of this man’s car, but also his soul. Hard to be strangers after he laid his problems out like roadkill and tempted her to do the same. He studied her as if she were his oracle, divine intervention in a broken-down truck and hoop earrings, big as drums, and inside her every intent to keep her
distance, she squirmed.
He leaned close; he felt it too.
“Who are you?”
A voice as unhurried and inquisitive and intimate as his already had her imagination sprinting barefoot into heartache. She didn’t dare break the spell; she hadn’t yet found out the extent of his storm. He swallowed, hard, as if he tasted her in his mind first and she had proven to be a delectable, unexpected treat. He leaned close. Their hot breath mingled, an equally spicy union with enough newness to drive her eyes closed, to savor how it tasted to not run.
His nearness was sticky and magnetic and ill-advised, but the ache that traveled low from her belly to the apex of her legs was even more alluring than her capacity to resist temptation. And when his lips brushed hers, hidden beneath the hush of a car passing at speed and the folly of kissing a man she knew nothing about, was a connection she didn’t know she needed.
His lips demanded nothing, claimed nothing, persuaded nothing. The kiss was hello and goodbye and Greece and West Bengal and a forgotten Mississippi road, all at once. A heady, delicious offering of nothing beyond confidences they had shared with no one else.
He backed out of the kiss, lingered, spoke against her parted mouth, “If you had driven into my life in any other rainstorm, I’d find a way to make it rain forever.”
And that was it. He was unavailable, emotionally or otherwise. Freesia brought fingertips to her swollen lips and wicked away the lingering moisture. She wanted to add more of his saliva, devour him back to the moment when she was the woman who believed that, for once in her life, running might not be the answer, but preserving what dignity she had left seemed the better course.
“We should go,” she whispered, though they were the only ones around.
Jay gave a reluctant nod. They threw away their trash and climbed back into the truck. No old tune slipping free of the speakers. No conversation. Their kiss became the last greatest word between them for three country miles.
At his car, Freesia pulled onto the shoulder, headed the wrong way. When the truck came to a stop, he twisted against the bench seat, faced her.
“What is…this?” He spun an invisible thread between them. “I’ve never…”
“You’re finding real, and I’m finding another excuse to run. Simple as that.” Freesia leaned across his lap and popped open the door. “You take good care, Jay. Go back to whatever circumstance required a fancy shirt and ruined you and make sure that it doesn’t.”
He sat for a moment, studying his clasped hands, stunned, reluctant maybe. Her mind replayed the bit about turning him out, found her voice to be harsh and her demeanor to be cool, but she stuck by it, all the same. What was best for them both. How many times had her mother been swept up in the poetry of a man who made her think things she shouldn’t? And how had that turned out for her? When he spoke, his voice was quiet, immense.
“Goodbye, Freesia.”
Jay exited the truck and covered the distance to his car like the heavens were still crashing down. Freesia pressed the gas pedal, navigated back onto the road she’d traveled before, and headed back to Devon without a glance in her rearview mirror. Well, maybe one.
Plans change. Hers hadn’t.
“So…” At the faintest whiff of romance, Charlotte Strickland was a certified bloodhound. Never mind that she had spent most of her life inside a bridal shop; Charlotte was of the mind that love was a verb that must be acted upon, swiftly and often. “…I saw Ruthie Bush—the one who owns Talk Dirty to Me dry cleaning—at the diner this morning. Told her to be on the lookout for a red, oil-based protein stain on the breast of a man’s dress shirt.”
“You didn’t,” said Freesia. “Please say you didn’t.”
In Match Made in Devon’s back office, Freesia packed the last of her tools into her bag: tailor’s chalk, a rotary cutter, eight-inch Italian shears that were as heavy as a battleship anchor and cut through fabric as if it were rice pudding, the half-apron she always wore when sizing up a new bride-to-be. The last thing she wanted to do was resurrect details of her encounter with Jay. She shouldn’t have said anything at all, but she had come back to the March’s childhood home far earlier than planned, without a fresh sketch, and Charlotte had put together Freesia’s morose mood, a muttered comment about men littering life’s highways like broken bottles, and a blush, and the story came out. Freesia might have known Charlotte would turn A woman helps a lost motorist with a meal and a life decision into A young man and woman meet on an isolated road and spend eternity in the space of one sandwich.
Bloodhound.
“I did. And I put in a call to Dub Taylor over at the men’s shop in Marthasville to see if he remembered renting or selling any tuxedos to someone matching the description of your mystery man.”
Freesia paused her tool heist. “I never told you what he looked like.”
“Well, I said anyone who had movie-good looks and wasn’t from around here because I’d know him.”
“How do you know he had movie-good looks?”
“When you talked about him, you licked your lips and groomed your eyebrows like you do when that smokin’ hot FBI profiler comes on television.”
Freesia’s jaw dropped. First instinct: deny. Second instinct: own.
Alex entered the back room and plucked a catalog binder off the shelf. “She’s leaving for New York tomorrow, Charlotte. Let it go.”
For once, Freesia’s wishes aligned with Alex.
“Line one is for you,” Alex said to Freesia.
Charlotte’s expression went Christmas-morning delight. She gave an exaggerated whisper—“mystery man”—and followed Alex out of the office.
Odd that Freesia should receive a call on the shop’s landline. Everyone in New York had her cell number. She answered the on-hold call.
“This is Freesia Day.”
“Ms. Day, this is Neil Starnes, an intern at Southeast Regional Hospital in St. Simons, Georgia. Are you any relation to Camille Day?”
The arrow of her mother’s name hit her square in the chest. She breathed around the sharpness. “I’m her daughter.”
“We’ve been trying to get ahold of next of kin. My nurse located an article online regarding your place of employment.”
“Is everything….is she…?”
“Your mother was admitted the night before last. She’s very sick. Has been for some time.” He hesitated, his voice a discordant mix of clinical and concern. “I assume you didn’t know.”
“We’re estranged.”
“I see. I can’t speak to her current circumstances but it’s likely to become increasingly difficult for her to maintain self-care. Is there anyone she might have spoken with regarding long-term care plans she may have had?”
“A neighbor woman used to look in on her—Ester, Estelle, something.”
“What about an ex-husband, siblings, other children?”
“There’s no one.”
In the background, Freesia heard the soft prompts of a woman feeding him information. She wondered if it was the nurse who had found her, all these miles away, advocating for a woman who was impervious to human decency.
“I can put you in touch with resources…”
“Doctor Starnes, was it?”
“Yes.”
“When you see my mother, tell her you never found me.”
A brooding silence. “This might well be the end, Ms. Day. I want to be clear.”
“How long?”
“Hard to say. She’s…uncooperative regarding her prescribed regimen, her medication.”
The arrow lodged in Freesia’s chest twisted, a blade of anger she had tried desperately to leave behind a decade ago. “She’s been uncooperative her entire life. I don’t see death changing her any.”
“Ms. Day—”
“Thank you for calling.” Freesia hung up the phone, too fast, too loud. The receiver twisted out of its hold and skittered across the desk. She squeezed her hand into a fist, tried to remember how she breathed moments ear
lier when Charlotte had been teasing her and everything felt less tainted.
The shop’s phone rang again. Freesia’s heart squeezed. She couldn’t speak to the doctor again; she couldn’t speak to anyone.
Charlotte poked her head around the office door. “Someone’s here to see…you. Honey, what’s wrong? You’re shaking like a bank robber with a Chihuahua in her purse.” She frowned and circled the desk.
Freesia’s sinuses began to sting. She hated that Charlotte did that, with her out-there words and her sugar-dusted tone and her arms wide, coming in hot for a hug, always knowing where a person’s cry button was located, never hesitating to press it. It was like hearing the opening line from a song that inevitably caused tears to sprout. Might as well start at the beginning. Get it over with. Freesia pressed her steepled hands to the bridge of her nose to counter the gathering pressure, stave off any leaks past her eyeliner. Like a good wing woman, Charlotte fanned Freesia’s makeup with a copy of Bible Belt Bride, the monthly publication for brides with a distinctive flair for shapeless mumus and holy underwear with flaps. When that didn’t work, Charlotte yanked a bouquet of tissues from their box.
“Someone’s here?” asked Freesia.
“They can wait.”
“They?”
“Engaged couple. Drove from Georgetown specifically to meet the dress designer everyone is buzzing about.”
“Did you tell them I’m no longer doing custom wedding dresses?”
“I tried. Between you, me, and the shapewear, I’m pretty sure no one has ever told this bride-to-be no.”
But no was something Freesia was fierce to articulate. No emotional vampires ripe to drink away her creativity. No toxicity from the past, come to taint Freesia’s decision to move toward something, not away. No guilt for pretending her mother didn’t exist for that last third of Freesia’s life. No memories rushing back like a fresh wound. And certainly, no bridezillas who believed their agenda more important. Just no.
Freesia skimmed the tissues beneath her lashes, blew her nose, and squared her shoulders.
“Yes, queen, yes.”
The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3) Page 2
