Again.
Before he got hurt again.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Bri couldn’t sleep.
She crept across the attic loft toward the trunk, drawn as always by the late hour and the insatiable thirst for something emotionally solid, sturdy.
Gerard—well, he was getting harder to read by the moment. First, he kept invading her space, offering his unsolicited advice and generally butting into her business and acting like she was such a burden to him.
Then he was the first to rush to her rescue—however unnecessary it’d been—to protect her and her favorite place on earth. All that just days after having made fun of her for never traveling and basically declaring it didn’t matter whether Charles bought the bakery.
If he were a book, he’d be written in a foreign language—and most definitely not French.
But some things were dependable—like her parents’ romance. She’d just focus on that for a bit until she felt more centered. It’d always worked before, after a breakup or a bad date or lonely nights wondering if her prince would ever come. Of course, prayer helped too. But sometimes it was nice to hold a tangible reminder that her story wasn’t over yet.
Bri pulled the stack of letters free of the trunk. She shut the lid, nestled into her beanbag chair, and decided to mix it up a bit. This time she grabbed a letter toward the middle of the stack.
She tugged it from the others, smiling at the letter’s seeming resistance to let go, and gently opened the creased fold.
Fairest love,
Your beauty is like the Seine. Steady, constant, fluid. I can’t wait to walk beside you once again, to appreciate your beauty up close. I miss you tremendously. You are the breath in my lungs that keeps me alive. Without the hope of your love, I would cease to exist.
Until we meet again.
From Paris, with love
Bri tucked the letter back into place and pulled another one free. Letter after letter, she read, absorbing the love that flowed from her father to her mother, the poetic rhythm of the words that pulsed directly from his heart. Her father had such a sweet, sensitive side she rarely got to witness firsthand, but knowing these letters existed had reminded her, since his death, how deep still waters could be. How everyone had multiple layers to their soul, despite a gruffer exterior.
Her thoughts flitted to Gerard, and she quickly focused back on the letter.
Her father had really pined for her mother. He clearly missed her badly while he was gone to France. The inheritance settlement from his dad’s passing had taken almost a year to come through, from what she remembered her mom talking about when she was younger. It must have been a tough time for her mother—to be back in America alone with a toddler to raise, unable to comfort her husband mourning his father’s death in another country.
They were so brave. Young, in love, and courageous against all odds. It was a love worth holding out for. Surely it could exist again, in its own form, for her story.
Surely.
Bri kept reading, then yawned, covering her mouth with her hand. One more letter, then she really needed to go to bed. She’d regret this late-night cram session in the morning if she didn’t stop.
She pulled another one from the back half of the pile.
My dearest flower,
It’s been too long since our last memory. Yet I’ll never stop writing to you. I’ll never stop dreaming, or remembering. Time can steal a lot of things, but it cannot—will not—steal my love. That is timeless.
I’ll never forget you or our last night together. It’s permanently embedded in my heart, as are you. Never doubt your position there, my Queen.
Always yours.
From Paris, with love
She studied the letter—the loops and tucks of the scrawled, familiar handwriting—and sighed. Such passion. They couldn’t afford in those early years of marriage to travel back and forth, or she’d have bet her father would have been racking up the frequent flyer miles that year.
But they’d made it, and clearly absence had made their hearts grow fonder.
Gerard was leaving in a week.
Not that she would miss him.
Why had she even thought that?
She quickly closed the letter and dropped it in her distracted haste. It fluttered a foot away, and with a sigh, she bent over to retrieve it from her beanbag throne. The beans shifted as she leaned, as if giving her an extra boost toward her goal.
The letter lay on the dusty attic floor, closed, the crease slightly off center. The bottom half of the page hung slightly ajar from the top, underlining the signature—her favorite part of her father’s letters. The consistent “from Paris, with love” brought feelings of comfort and security.
Some things never changed, and that was one of them.
She ran her fingers over the familiar phrase. Then she frowned and looked closer. A slight smudge lay behind the word from, as if someone had tried to erase a previous penciled sentiment and written over it.
She stood and held the letter up to the dim attic light, squinting through the old, wrinkled paper, and could just make out two smudged, tightly scrawled capital letters.
T.R.
The paper fluttered from her grasp back to the attic floor. Her chest constricted. The room tilted, and she sank back, the beanbag catching her before she fully collapsed.
Those weren’t her father’s initials.
“I’m sure you’re just misunderstanding, dear.” Mabel poured Bri a second cup of coffee and nudged her breakfast muffin closer to her on the table. “People erase things all the time.”
She stared at the blueberries dotting the whole wheat muffin. She’d gotten up that morning in a trance, still hungover from both the lack of sleep and the surge of emotions from her discovery the night before, and had somehow stumbled into the bakery on time—sans makeup, back in her Wanderlust sweatshirt that she wasn’t sure was clean or dirty, and cutoff jeans with flip-flops.
She hadn’t realized her feet were cold until she was halfway through baking the morning’s orders. Then Mabel and Agnes had come in, a little earlier than usual, and started mothering her after realizing something was wrong. Mabel had even gone out to her car and gotten her pair of hot-pink slippers she’d left in her trunk. They had glittery unicorn horns on the toes.
“Sure, people erase things. But they don’t typically erase their initials from love letters.” Not unless they had something to hide. Bri picked a blueberry from the muffin and popped it in her mouth, unable to taste the tartness.
On that note, she probably shouldn’t have baked this morning—the dozens of macarons and petit fours and sugar cookies waiting to be frosted had probably all suffered from her distracted state. Casualties of war.
“I’m sorry, I can’t even focus with those ridiculous slippers in my line of sight.” Agnes leaned against the counter of the empty bakery, arms crossed. Her no-nonsense, elastic-waisted khaki pants were hiked up a little higher than usual, her feet shod in black loafers. “Mabel, why do you even own those?”
“Because floral patterns are so boring. As are navy and cream. Those were the only options in the store, so I ordered these online instead.” Mabel smiled. “And they matched my new lipstick.”
Bri didn’t even care. “I’ll take them off.” She started to slide her foot from the warmth of the slipper, but Mabel grabbed her arm.
“Of course you won’t. Agnes, don’t be ridiculous. She’s in shock.” She frowned at her sister.
“Because of a smudge on a letter?” Agnes let out a tsk. “Don’t cater to her fantasy, Mabel. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“You’re just grumpy because Mr. Hansen hasn’t been by in a few days.” Mabel rolled her eyes.
Agnes huffed and her neck flushed red. “Poppycock.”
“How do you know it’s nothing?” Bri’s voice cracked and she hated how frail she sounded—how frail she felt. Especially in front of Agnes—who possibly had a point. Everything was s
peculation right now, and she was very possibly jumping to huge conclusions.
But what explanation was there? Bri crossed her arms, unable to get warm despite the bulky material of her sweatshirt.
“Clearly, your father was starting to write something else, then realized he should stick to the usual.” Agnes shrugged. “Like I always say—if it isn’t broken, why fix it?”
“But they were initials. T.R.”
Agnes crossed her arms. “Fine. What if he had been about to write ‘truly yours’?”
Maybe. But . . . “In all capital letters?” The explanation didn’t ring true.
Mabel nodded eagerly. “Cursive is different—and remember, this was years ago. Maybe he was trying something new. Or maybe he was tired and started writing the wrong word. He’d just poured out his heart, after all. I’m sure that’s emotionally draining.”
Finding out her mother had potentially been receiving love letters from another man was also incredibly draining.
Mabel took a sip of her coffee, leaving a smudge of lip color on the edge of the mug. “People are allowed mistakes.”
True. After all, didn’t Bri make a mistake every time she attempted to re-create her mother’s macaron recipe? Or every time she allowed Gerard to stir her frustration and lashed out verbally?
Wait. Was Mabel talking about the mistake of writing the wrong word or the mistake of an affair? That made a difference.
She really didn’t want to think about this anymore.
Bri stood up, took a bite of the blueberry muffin, and tried to shake off the melancholy that clung like static. “You’re probably right. Both of you.”
Agnes nodded, as if to agree that of course she was. Mabel offered a sympathetic frown. “You’re just tired, honey. You said you were up late reading—everything looks worse when you’re exhausted.”
Also true. Her “aunts” were pretty wise—and they had known her mom well. If they weren’t worried, why should she be?
Yet as Bri headed to the kitchen to resume her baking activities, she couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow everything had just shifted.
And it might never shift back.
Gerard figured Bri would be back at Taylor’s again Friday morning for pizza, and his journalist instincts were correct. Someone didn’t eat pizza for breakfast without it being at least a semi-regular tradition.
He needed to get a few more quotes from her for the second part of the feature and confirm a few of the specifics for Casey’s wedding. He would much rather ask Bri than the bride-to-be. After their false alarm and truce in the bakery last night, he looked forward to seeing her.
He also needed to prove to himself that last night’s mash-up of feelings was nothing more than a bad combination of a late-night sugar rush and platonic bonding over family drama. He found her in the back-corner booth, facing the wall. Her golden hair, normally cascading over her shoulders, was tucked into a messy ponytail. He frowned. Were those shorts—in November? He averted his eyes from her long legs and slid into the booth across from her—platonically.
She met his gaze with red-rimmed eyes, not even a flicker of surprise registering. “Hey.”
He tucked his laptop bag on the seat beside him. “You look like you got as much sleep as I did.” Then he looked closer. Untouched pizza. Bags under her eyes. Pale face.
And that Wanderlust sweatshirt.
What could have happened overnight to merit this? His resolve not to care too much wafted away like the smell of burnt bacon. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, looking back at the single slice on her plate. She poked at a pepperoni.
“Is it Charles? Are you losing the war?” Maybe he’d launched a media sneak attack overnight. He’d been waiting for Charles to pop back up with a new scheme, but aside from a few posters stuck around town advertising the potential of the upcoming chain, he’d laid relatively low.
Which was good, because Gerard still needed to swing by Charles’s office to give him back that cash he’d slipped him—and he didn’t want any drama. But it was also bad, because how was he going to write an exciting conclusion to his two-part series in Trek if there was no drama or exciting conclusion?
“No, it’s not Charles.” Bri rubbed her hands over her face, which was free of makeup except for something glossy on her lips. Freckles he’d never seen before dotted her nose. They just added to her charm and innocence. “I’d almost forgotten about him.”
Gerard’s eyebrows shot up. Forgetting about Charles? He had been her priority since the moment he’d met her. Something was way off. “Okay, level with me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Maybe. Hopefully, anyway.” She pulled a pepperoni free of its cheesy prison. “You wouldn’t understand.”
He leaned back in the booth, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, it doesn’t sound like you fully understand either, Cupcake.”
She glared at him as she popped the pepperoni in her mouth. “Quit calling me that.”
Relief flooded his veins. There was the Bri he knew. The one who was going to get him in trouble if he didn’t put up a guardrail. He’d never been this invested in an article subject before. He’d interviewed shark cage divers, restaurant owners in Fiji, hula dancers, mountain bike designers, YouTube hiking experts, you name it—and never once had he checked on one having a bad day.
Nor given one a nickname.
A band of something suspiciously like fear tightened around his chest. Maybe last night had been exactly what he thought it’d been.
Gerard opened his mouth, but words wouldn’t come. The noise of the diner—the clanking of silverware, the buzz of low conversation, the screech of chair legs sliding across the floor, the fuss of a toddler two tables back—faded to a low murmur. His heartbeat roared in his ears, and his mouth dried.
She watched him, as if she could sense his fear. Blood in the water. He’d never had a weakness around women before. Not since Kelsey, especially.
He couldn’t afford to start now.
But the way she stared at him was almost his undoing. Vulnerable and seeking, as if he held some kind of answer. As if he could bring her hope and fix all her unspoken problems if he only knew which questions to ask. He sort of wished he could.
And that terrified him more than anything else.
She kept her blue-eyed gaze riveted on him, lips parted slightly. He was suddenly overcome by the urge to see if that pale pink gloss tasted as sweet as it looked.
He swallowed. “Bri—”
“There you are!” Casey appeared at their table, sliding into the seat beside Bri and bumping her over with her hip. “I had to tell you first. Well, second, because I had to tell the preacher first.” Her face flushed, and her eyes shone under the lid of her red ball cap. “We moved up the wedding.”
“Up? As in, sooner?” Bri’s gaze shifted from Gerard to Casey, surprise pitching her previously monotone voice.
“Yes! Nathan had a scheduling conflict with another guy at the fire station—long story.” Casey flipped her hand dismissively, as if the details weren’t important. As if this wasn’t her actual wedding day she was talking about rearranging. Gerard wasn’t sure if he was concerned or impressed at how chill she was about it—the exact opposite of a bridezilla. Interesting.
Casey crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward, bouncing a little in the booth. “So, to help make it easier on everyone, we’re getting married Sunday.”
“Sunday.” Bri’s face paled a shade lighter. “As in, this Sunday?”
“Yes!” Casey beamed.
Uh-oh. Gerard glanced at his watch. “You mean, the day after tomorrow?”
“Yes!” Casey grabbed Bri’s arm and shook it. “You’ll still be able to get the petit-four tower ready by then, right?”
“Of course.” She didn’t hesitate, but Gerard saw the flicker of doubt in her eyes. Whatever was going on with her was still attempting to take priority, but being Bri, she was going to push past it for the sake of someone else. H
e’d never met anyone who was such a pushover. He frowned. Or was it just plain selflessness on her part?
Maybe both. There had to be a balance, though, and Bri teetered precariously toward the extreme. Did she always get taken advantage of in Story?
“You’re the best.” Casey squealed and hugged Bri before popping back out of the booth. “I’ll come by tomorrow and help get stuff cleaned and set up outside by the wall.”
“You better not.” Bri pointed at Casey. “You better be getting your nails done and pampering yourself, like every other bride the day before her wedding. I can handle the setup. Just have the chairs and tables delivered ASAP, and I’ll get everything in place. In fact, I’ll start this afternoon.”
She was going to decorate the grounds and bake all the petit fours? Fat chance. “I’ll help.” The words cleared his lips before he could take them back or fully consider their repercussions.
Casey’s eyebrows raised a notch. “Really?”
“Of course.” He glanced at Bri, but his mimicking of her own words didn’t seem to register with her.
“Awesome.” Casey leaned over and slapped him a high five. “You guys are the best! It takes a village, you know?”
Apparently.
“I’ll see you soon. Text me if you want to tag along for a pedi.” She hugged Bri again before dashing off, humming “Here Comes the Bride.”
Like Bri would have time for something like doing her nails in the midst of all this sudden chaos. How in the world was she going to manage to pull this off?
He glanced back at her, but she wouldn’t look at him, keeping her eyes trained on her pizza instead. Good thing—she’d made him way too vulnerable earlier. Casey interrupting had been divine intervention, saving him from doing something stupid. Like admitting his misplaced, misunderstood attraction to Bri.
Or leaning over the syrup-sticky table and pressing his lips against hers.
He’d been uncharacteristically emotional, that was all. He was tired, ready to go home, and worried about his mom. He’d spent way too long in this romance-saturated town.
Bri finally looked up. This time, he was ready. He kept his expression neutral.
The Key to Love Page 14
