by Cara Colter
Finally, all the phone calls had been made, all the files had been closed, all the boxes had been packed. A mover would come, pick everything up and schedule a delivery for a later date when they could combine several deliveries to Sunshine Cove into one. Thankfully, there was a basement under the cottage where she could store this stuff when it finally arrived.
It should have been a relief to finally have this looked after, all these loose ends tied up. Despite the fact June was a busy month for her, with school also winding up, she was ahead of the end-of-the-month deadline for clearing her aunt’s office.
She had given notice to the landlord. But instead of feeling relieved, Krissy felt oddly deflated as it hit her she would never come to this office again.
Match Made in Heaven was no more. Her aunt’s life mission—to bring lasting happiness through the discovery of love—was no more.
Krissy slipped into the small washroom. Hanging on the back of the door was the perfect little black dress.
She shucked her dusty work clothes and slid the dress over her head, and added a hint of makeup, and finally a simple pair of black pumps and a strand of pearls.
She could feel her eyes misting with tears as she snapped on the pearls her aunt had also given her. She remembered the particular excursion where she had gotten this dress. When Krissy had put it on, they had both known it was special, a kind of a once-in-a-lifetime dress that was so “go anywhere” flattering and so feminine—and breathtakingly expensive.
Aunt Jane, who loved shopping, and loved clothes, had insisted on buying it. She had bought the strand of pearls the same day.
No more Match Made in Heaven, no more shopping with her aunt. So many endings. Krissy burst into tears just as a knock came at the back door. Her eyes flew to her watch. She hadn’t even done anything with her hair, yet. Not that it mattered. Her makeup was now a mess.
She dabbed at her eyes, and the piece of tissue came away black. The knock came again.
Obviously, everything had changed. She went and opened the back door a crack.
“I came to the back,” Jonas said. “I didn’t want to set off the alarm.”
“I think we should postpone,” she said. “I’m not feeling up to it.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t go. I’m sorry. I just—”
He gently shoved the door open and came inside. He gazed down at her. “Krissy?”
“It’s over,” she wailed. “Match Made in Heaven. Shopping with my aunt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Aunt Jane bought me this dress. I said it was silly. I taught kindergarten. I needed wash-and-wear. I need comfortable, durable clothes that can go in the laundry. I might have even mentioned the forbidden polyester word.
“When I tried on this dress, she told me I looked like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She said it didn’t matter if I taught kindergarten. I needed to know what the perfect dress felt like.”
He took her shoulders and looked at her gravely. “You do,” he said. “You look like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“You probably don’t even know who Audrey Hepburn is,” she sniffed.
“My mom was a huge fan.”
“We just loved each other so much,” Krissy said. “I didn’t like shopping, but with her, I just basked in her enjoyment of it. Anyway, now I’m a mess. I can’t wear this dress without feeling heartbroken, so our date is off.”
“Okay,” he said soothingly.
“Besides, I look like a raccoon.”
“I’ll call the restaurant and cancel our reservation.”
“I do look like a raccoon, don’t I?”
Jonas stepped in close to her. He took his thumb and gently wiped mascara from beneath her eye. It was a useless effort, because the tears began to slide again.
He sighed, and his arms wrapped around her. His scent, so rich, so masculine, somehow so familiar, wrapped around her. It felt like a homecoming.
But that’s what she had to remember. Home was the biggest illusion of all. The only thing she’d ever had that was even close to it was the love of her aunt, and now that was gone, too.
Krissy pushed away from him reluctantly. “You should cancel that reservation.”
He nodded and took his phone from his pocket. He scrolled through and touched a button. She could hear the phone ringing on the other end.
“Why don’t we get takeout?” he said. “We’ll take it to the park. Oh, hi. I had a reservation. I have to—”
He looked at her. He smiled, that kind of hopeful smile that he had used when he wanted ice cream.
Note to self: Jonas Boyden, pretty much irresistible at any time, but when he gave you the charming smile? Hopeless.
She nodded.
“—change it to a takeout order. Surprise me. Dinner for two. Allergies?”
He looked over at her. She shook her head.
“No allergies. I need plates and cutlery, too. Pull out all stops,” he said. “I’m trying to impress a girl who looks exactly like Audrey Hepburn.” He paused. “That’s no object.”
He disconnected and looked at the phone, pleased. “There’s an item off my list already.”
“List?”
“The get-to-know-each-other list? Allergies. None.”
“Well, penicillin, but they hardly ever add that to food.”
Despite her deliberate effort to keep her tone light, his mentioning the list was a reminder what this was really about. Getting to know each other for fake mate purposes. She hadn’t expected it to be so much like a doctor’s appointment. She had thought it might be more personal.
“I’ll just go change,” she said. It wasn’t 100 percent social. She should have remembered that when she put on this dress in the first place. It was like a job interview, only in reverse, since she already had the job.
This was a dress a woman wore when she wanted to get to know someone in a different way. A way that had nothing to do with allergies!
“Don’t you dare.”
She was going to tell him it was no more practical to wear this dress on a picnic than it would be to teach kindergarten.
But somehow the words never came out of her mouth. It wasn’t just the look on his face, either, though his look made it clear this wasn’t 100 percent like an interview for him, either, even if that was what he wanted it to be.
It was as if her aunt was giving her yet another gift: not just the dress, but an ability to be open to life’s surprises.
Jonas wasn’t dressed for a picnic, either, but for dinner at one of New York’s finest restaurants. He looked completely at home in a dark charcoal suit and knife-pressed narrow slacks. The brilliant shirt looked—and had felt—like silk. The tie was also dark charcoal, with a raised pattern of darker swirls on it. The pocket square was a perfect, slender rectangle of white.
“I’ll just go wash my face,” Krissy said.
An hour later, Jonas had purchased a blanket and they had picked up the food from a restaurant that Krissy recognized as a New York hot spot, where it was nearly impossible to get a reservation. They made their way into Central Park.
He set out the blanket on the gentle slope of Cherry Hill, overlooking Bow Bridge. A confetti of finished pink petals drifted on the ground like snow.
Krissy sat down, thinking she would feel awkward, but no, she tucked her legs to one side and watched as Jonas got rid of the jacket, then the tie, tossing them casually on the blanket and then sitting down, stretching his legs out in front of him.
He began to take items out of the basket. She understood suddenly exactly what he had meant when he’d said, “That’s no object.”
Money, obviously.
“Did they give you real plates?”
“So it appears. And, look, real wineglasses.”
&nbs
p; “We’re not allowed to drink alcohol in Central Park!”
“Oh, well, they put in a bottle of wine.” He looked at it. “A very good bottle, too. And glasses, so we’ll live dangerously this once.”
“Somehow, I don’t think living dangerously is a one-off for you.”
For some reason, that made her look at his lips. And suddenly living dangerously felt altogether too enticing!
CHAPTER TEN
“ME LIVING DANGEROUSLY?” Jonas wagged his eyebrows at her. “It seems to me it’s you who has nearly gotten us arrested before, not me.”
“How do you figure that? It wasn’t me knocking on the door in the middle of the night.”
“It wasn’t exactly the middle of the night. And I did have an appointment.”
Krissy enjoyed this teasing, the back-and-forth banter, more than she should have. The setting was just so lovely, the evening light perfect, warmth in the air. A young couple went by in a rowboat, him putting his muscle into moving the boat, her trailing her hand in the water. She splashed him, and their laughter drifted up the hill.
“Remember you asked me if I’d ever done kid things?” she asked him. “How funny we would end up here today. My aunt brought me here once. We rented one of the rowboats. I think that was exactly her intention, to do a ‘kid’ activity with me.”
“And how was it?”
Krissy laughed. “You would have to know my aunt better than you did to know how funny it was. She had on high heels and a Chanel suit. She loved crazy hats and she had on this huge sunbonnet. She tried to row the boat, and she kept going in circles. So then we changed places and nearly capsized the boat. The wind came up and took her hat off, and we chased it all over the reservoir. She nearly fell in half a dozen times reaching to get the hat. Every time her fingers would touch it, it would drift away. I feel like I can hear her laughing now. Even though the hat was ruined by the time we did retrieve it, and we were both sunburned and exhausted, she said it was the best day ever.”
“What a great memory,” he said warmly.
Jonas finished unpacking the bag: beautiful white cardboard boxes came out, one by one, each with a handwritten label. Baked Brie with Pecans. Mixed Green Salad with Dates and Goat Cheese. Smoked Crab with Herbed Crème Fraîche. Assorted Dessert. With a sigh of surrender, Krissy realized it was exactly the kind of meal one would eat in this kind of dress.
He handed her a plate and an appetizer, then put wine in one of the tall, long-stemmed glasses.
“Cheers,” he said, and lifted his glass to her.
Somehow, as their glasses clinked and their eyes met over the rims, she knew her aunt would approve of her christening the dress like this.
“Here’s to getting to know each other,” he said, reminding her that there was a mission, after all. He pulled a list out of his wallet, carefully unfolded it and set it down on the blanket. He took a pen out of his breast pocket and wrote something down.
“What did you write?”
“Knows her way around a rowboat,” he said, and the laughter leaped up between them, easy and comfortable.
Krissy took a bite of the Brie. It was incredible.
“I don’t even know what you do for a living,” she said. “I mean aside from the fact it involves lawyers and owning all the hotels on the Monopoly board.”
Jonas laughed. “I own a company called Last Resort. Basically, I buy properties that are run-down or struggling or both, bring them up to standard, put an operational plan in place, run them until they’re making money again and then flip them.”
“That’s an interesting business.”
“I was born for it. I mentioned to you our family resort was pretty hand-to-mouth. When my parents died, there was an insurance policy. I took a chance that I could turn it around. I looked around at all the failing resorts in the Catskills and tried to figure out what to do differently. What would make people come back for that kind of vacation?
“I started researching to see what people wanted when they were looking for a place to have a vacation.
“The hardest issue for them to resolve seemed to be pets. People wanted to holiday with Rover, and resorts did not want pets. And so we became the first pet-friendly resort in our area. I brought the cabins up to a new standard, including dog bath stations outside each one. That first time, I hired Mike, and we did all the work ourselves. And then Theresa and I worked on dog-focused programs like weeklong obedience immersion.”
“I’d take that!” Krissy said.
“Exactly. We found a niche people wanted. We made our motto Dog-Gone Fun. My sister loved it—loves it—and was content with it, but I was bored within a year. About the same time Theresa had produced the first little monster. I noticed troubling changes in her. One day, she said to me, ‘I always thought I’d be a yummy mommy.’ She went on to say she felt fat and frumpy and like she always had some mystery smudge on the front of her blouse. She said she had days when she didn’t know whether to eat lunch or have a shower. Sometimes Mike came home from work, and she realized she hadn’t even combed her hair. The resort next door to ours had been boarded up for years, so I went and took a look. I was thinking a health and wellness of some sort, but after talking to my sister, I wanted to target her demographic. So I picked young moms. I revamped the whole place so it had a very spa-like aesthetic. We developed hour, day and weeklong retreats that focused on delicious food, quiet spaces, learning yoga or meditation or music or art. A mom could have a facial or a massage or a long walk or a soak. And then Theresa figured out the thing that really sold it: child care. Moms might not like the day in, day out drudgery of their kids, but they aren’t going to leave them for any length of time, either. We called it Yummy Mommy.”
“I’ve heard of that!” In fact, Krissy’s coworker, fifth grade teacher Martha Montrose, went every year.
“I sold the majority of the ownership a few months in. I realized my strength was in the concept, but the operational side bored me. And then I went on to the next one. I keep a percentage, I move on. I think I’m over a hundred properties in right now.”
“So you do own all the hotels on the game board!”
He laughed. “Working on it.”
“And you have no formal training in any of this? No university? No degree?”
“No, I kind of plunged right into the working world and all these massive projects when I was eighteen and never looked back.”
“You know what I like the best? That it’s about your family. The first one about saving your family business, and then the second one was about seeing a need in your sister. It’s about love for you, isn’t it?”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Love and business don’t mix.”
“I think you’re amazing.” She blushed. “I mean, that’s amazing.”
Jonas laughed, obviously trying to keep it light. “That’s exactly what we want—my fiancée to think I’m amazing. In fact—” he took his phone out of his pocket “—I’m going to take a picture of you looking amazed at me.”
“Just a sec.” She picked up her wineglass. “Here’s to the amazing Jonas.” Just as he took the picture she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Post that on Instagram.”
“I actually don’t use social media,” he said, still holding up his phone. As soon as she uncrossed her eyes and tucked her tongue back in her mouth, he took another picture. “The company does, and I have a specialist who puts together posts, but I don’t have any personal accounts. I don’t get the concept of living your life as if it’s an open book, seeing every event as a photo op to be posted instead of something just to be enjoyed. This is a great pic.”
He turned his phone to her and showed her both photos. The one was quite hilarious, but the other one had a loveliness to it she found startling. She had scrubbed all her makeup off and had never gotten around to doing anything with her hair.
Still, there was something about the photo she really liked. There was an expression on her face she didn’t see often.
She looked relaxed. Happy. With a faint undertone of hopefulness. Or maybe it was wistfulness.
“Do you do social media?” Jonas asked her. “You want a copy of it?”
She did want a copy of whatever he had captured that she usually did not see in herself, though in all fairness, she did not see many pictures of herself.
“No, send it to my phone. I don’t do social media, either. Mostly because of the teaching thing. Even though some teachers use it with a false name, I just don’t want my kids—or their parents—snooping around in my life.”
“We have something in common!” he crowed. He picked up his crumpled list off the blanket and pretended to write on it. “No social media. The fact that I don’t even have your phone number yet shows this is quite an old-fashioned kind of romance. My sister will approve.”
It was a much-needed reminder that this old-fashioned romance was really not a romance at all—a hard thing to keep in mind with the delicious food and the wine, and the growing ease of being with him. A hard thing to keep in mind when he talked about his sister.
It was the same as when he had talked about his mom.
He might protest; he might say otherwise, but Jonas was the rarest of things: a decent guy. She could feel herself falling just a little bit in love with him.
A little bit in love with him? She should watch the wine! He seemed to be topping her glass up more than his own. In fact, he might still be sipping his first one.
“I think I’ll send her this picture, kind of a little foreshadowing of what’s to come.”
“Foreshadowing,” she said wryly. “A literary term. Do you like to read, then?”
“Love it. Nothing literary, though. Espionage, suspense.”
“Me, too. Murder and mayhem.”
Just like that, it was so easy. The food and the wine disappeared as they talked about favorite books and favorite movies, favorite things they had done and planned to do. They talked about childhood friends and pets, naturally, no lists involved.
