Because He's Perfect

by Anna Edwards

  Another ping sounds on my computer and I finally put the file away for Fleming Coffee and bring up my calendar finding two new meeting requests in my inbox. One for a staff meeting, then followed by a new account acquisition.

  Excellent.

  We’ve been so busy since word got out that we captured C.D. Development that businesses across town have been requesting Blake’s and Zack’s services. Luckily for me I just help make sure everything stays on track, meetings and such are on their shoulders.

  Grabbing my notebook, I head to our small conference room and prepare myself for a quick staff meeting, something we do every few days to make sure everyone is on track. I jot a note on my way about looking at hiring another account representative once we fill the receptionist position.

  The meeting is quick, and Blake and Zack both commend me on keeping them on schedule with their projects, and they also agree with my suggestion to hire another employee.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Blake asks as Zack takes that moment to leave the room.

  “I’m fine, why?” I snap and then quickly apologize. “Sorry, I’m not sleeping very well.” And that’s not far from the truth. No matter how many times I’ve washed my sheets or sprayed air freshener in my room all I can smell is Carter. And when I close my eyes, he’s all I see in my space. I’ve actually been considering moving to get away from his memory.

  “Why don’t you take the afternoon off? I’m worried about you. We’ve been friends for a long time and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear a T-shirt and jeans and not apply your makeup. You’re still beautiful, of course. Bitch,” she adds and we both chuckle. “Take the rest of the day, Sofie.”

  The thought of curling up on my couch is rather appealing right now.

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Yes, of course,” Blake tells me as she stands from the table and exits the room. From my seat, I can hear her exclaim, “Oh, you’re here. Wonderful.”

  Knowing that she’ll need the conference room I quickly stand, grab my notebook, and make my way to leave. But as I turn the corner, I’m frozen in place.

  “Carter?”

  At least, I think it’s him. His body is the same and I’d recognize the way he fills out a suit anywhere, but his hair is longer and a scruffy beard has grown over his chiseled jawline.

  Blake looks between the two of us and realization dawns as she smiles. “How about I leave you two alone and Zack and I will go get some lunch?”

  She scoots passed me but my eyes never waiver from Carter’s.

  “Why are you here?”

  Chapter Six

  Carter

  She looks surprised to see me. Hell I’m surprised I actually decided to show up for this meeting in person instead of the conference calls Blake and I have been holding. But I needed to be here, needed to see her.

  I’m shocked to find her in jeans and a T-shirt, not the suit I had expected, the suit with the red skirt that has haunted my dreams for weeks. Of course, she is probably surprised to find my long hair and beard. I gave up caring about my appearance after our night together. No one else would compare to her.

  Her eyes narrow in my direction and I imagine tiny little lasers shooting out from them aimed at me.

  “Carter. Why are you here?” she repeats with a bit of venom in her voice. She has every right to be outraged with me. Even though we agreed on one night together, I shouldn’t have snuck off in the middle of the night as she was curled up against me. But I had no choice. I had watched her fall asleep beside me and something inside me shifted. I was falling for a woman I had met just hours earlier.

  The next day I went to work assuming that having her out of my system had kicked my stuttering back into remission, but of course, I had been wrong. It had only amplified it. My anxiety had never been higher and it was starting to worry Camile.

  Then I remembered my night with Sofie and I made a change.

  “Music,” I blurt out carelessly.

  “What?”

  Taking a deep breath, I walk toward Sofie and reach for her hand, sighing when she allows me to grasp it.

  “Our night together changed my life,” I begin. The speech I’ve been practicing comes to the forefront of my mind. “No one has ever affected me the way that you have, and when you wanted to learn more about me that night, I freaked out. I don’t talk about my impairment, I hide it away. It’s a part of me that I’m ashamed of.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” she whispers and lifts her hand to rest on my cheek. Until that second I didn’t realize how much I needed her touch, her reassurance.

  “I freaked out when I told you about my past. There is a reason you won’t find me on any search engines. I keep it all locked away and I pay a lot of money to keep every part of my history hidden in the shadows. But I wanted you to know, needed to let you know how scared I was that there is a part of me I couldn’t control. Still can’t control.

  “You are this beautiful, high-class woman that literally pushed her way into my life and threw me for a spin. And that night something between us clicked. Tell me you felt it, Sofie.”

  With her hand still resting on my cheek, she nods. “I did.”

  “I’m not good enough for you, no one is. You’re the sun that men literally gravitate toward but know better than to touch you or they’d get burned. But to me, you’re more than just the sun shining brightly on everything, bringing the world to life. You’re this perfect star that beams down on me in my darkest moment even when you’re not there.

  “That night you mentioned music therapy and that’s what I’ve been doing since you agreed to my proposal. I found a specialist and we’ve been working together.

  “Sofie, you’ve given me something new, something to help better myself. I can’t ever thank you enough for that.”

  “You’ve been going to music therapy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you sing?”

  Chuckling I reach out and spin my hand in her hair. “Not well.”

  “Can I come next time?”

  “You better come every time,” I joke and smirk down at her, earning me a small smack on my cheek. Leaning down I tilt my head until our foreheads touch. “I’d like if you joined me.

  “Relationships are new to me, I usually shy away when things get serious, but I want it with you. I want to try.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you make me feel whole.”

  THE END

  About Renee Harless

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  Chapter One

  Jess

  I’d barely turned off the highway when the walls began closing in. Edging ever closer, strangling me, sucking the very life from my lungs. Bedrock Falls, Colorado, my childhood prison. The place I’d escaped at the age of eighteen—and good riddance, too.

  The closer I got to town, the more I felt myself changing from the person everyone back in Chicago would recognize, and morphing into the Jess of old.

  Chicago Jess… the woman who liked to socialize, who laughed so hard on occasion that she was known to spew water through her nose. The one who oftentimes dribbled Chinese food down her chin after pulling an all-night shift at the hospital, and simply left it there because she was too tired to wipe it away.

  Bedrock Falls Jess… the sullen disappointment of a daughter who didn’t play by the goddamn rules and remain in this town to slowly die like everyone else.

  I’d been back a few times over the years, but always under duress. Always because of some kind of emotional blackmail from Jasmine, my older sister. The
latest attempt to make me feel bad was a text she’d sent a couple of weeks back.

  Mom’s sick. You can’t leave me to handle it all, Jessica. It’s okay for you with your high-powered job in that fancy hospital. But some of us are still here, taking care of things—things that you should be helping out with, if you even gave a shit.

  My job wasn’t ‘high-powered’, nor was the hospital I worked in fancy. Far from it. On this occasion, Jasmine had been right about one thing, though. Mom really had been sick, and then she’d died. I kept expecting to feel something, but inside was an emptiness. I hadn’t grieved. I certainly hadn’t cried.

  If I think back, my distance from Mom had begun when Dad had died right before I’d started junior high. Then again, I’d never been very close to my mother. As soon as she’d realized I wanted to become a doctor, she’d automatically assumed I’d stick around and work in our tiny medical center. She hadn’t cared about what I wanted, what would make me happy. Her only concern had been how she expected me to behave, and that was to toe the party line. So when I’d chosen my own path, well… that meant she’d lost face in front of her gossipy friends in this two-bit town.

  After that, she’d treated me no better than a distant relative whose presence left a nasty taste in my mouth.

  Sometimes I wondered if I had it in me to care deeply about anything anymore. Or whether the horrors I’d seen over the years, the pain and suffering and death, had taken their toll. Or maybe it was my two divorces that had really sealed my fate as a soulless bitch.

  And then my mind turned to Wade, and I knew that wasn’t true.

  I cared all right. Too much.

  The sound of my heart beating at a million miles an hour thundered in my ears. Would Wade come to the funeral? I laughed. Of course he would. The former mayor’s only son would be expected to attend the funeral of one of the stalwarts of Bedrock Falls. Wade’s father had died last year after serving as the town’s mayor for three decades. Yet another thing Wade and I had in common; we were orphans—his mother had died when Wade was only eight. Then again, I wasn’t sure I could call myself an orphan at thirty-six.

  What would he look like? I’d last seen Wade Phillips right before my twentieth birthday, sixteen years earlier. I’d been at college in Chicago two years by then. We’d tried hard to keep our youthful relationship going, but distance at that age didn’t bring us closer. It pushed us apart.

  I took full responsibility for losing my first love—my only love. I was the one who’d left, the one with the exciting new life, and, back then, Wade had reminded me of everything I wanted to leave behind.

  Still, when news had reached me that he’d proposed to Clara Abraham—the blonde, petite head cheerleader at high school—well, it’d stung. I’d rushed home to see for myself and, sure enough, the rumors were true. I remember struggling to hold back the tears as I’d given him my blessing. Not that he needed it, but the wash of relief over his beautiful face, this man to whom I’d given my virginity, had told its own story.

  I’d rebounded right into the arms of another med student. We’d married the day after graduation, then divorced a few short months later. And now, here I was, on the wrong side of thirty, close to finalizing divorce number two. At least my professional life was a success. I was a well-respected consultant, specializing in autoimmune diseases working at a busy county hospital in the heart of Chicago. I could have secured a job in a top private hospital, but giving back to the community was an important part of my personal value system. Money had never motivated me, contrary to the beliefs of my family. I’d wanted to help those less fortunate, and I’d achieved that ambition.

  On the odd occasion I’d returned home, I’d managed to avoid seeing Wade, arriving under the cover of darkness and leaving before the orange glow of dawn broke over the horizon. I couldn’t help musing whether he still wore his hair the same way—slightly long on top but short at the back and sides. Would his piercing green eyes still be able to see right through me to my very core? Would my stomach flood with butterflies in the same way it had during my teenage years when he’d kissed me, touched me, made love to me?

  I searched for a parking spot and managed to squeeze my car in between two huge SUVs. I stared across the road at the people flooding into the church. Not much went on in Bedrock Falls, so a funeral was less of a sad occasion and more of a social event, a chance for gossip to flourish. Jasmine would lead the charge, surrounded by her minions. Women who loved to judge others; the clothes they wore, their hair, their weight.

  I hated this small town with its even smaller-minded people.

  I had to get through one funeral, play the dutiful daughter, try not to have my heart crushed by seeing Wade living in domestic bliss with Clara, and then I’d be outta here. With Mom gone, there was no reason to ever return. Certainly not for my sister who despised me as much as I abhorred her.

  My phone rang. I hunted through my purse, eventually locating it beneath a pile of receipts. I really do need to throw those away. When I saw the caller ID, I wished the phone had remained hidden. My beloved sister must have read my thoughts.

  “Hi, Jasmine,” I said wearily.

  “Where are you?” she snapped. “Everyone’s here. You better not be bailing on me, Jess. I’ve organized this whole funeral all by myself. The least you can do is show up!”

  I sighed. My sister, the drama queen. She loved playing the woe-is-me card, something she did to perfection. She’d conveniently forgotten I’d promised to come home a few days earlier so I could help with the arrangements, an offer she’d dismissed out of hand.

  “I’m right across the street. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “Well, hurry up.”

  Jasmine cut the call. I let my head fall back against the seat and closed my eyes.

  One day… I just had to survive this one day.

  Chapter Two

  Jess

  After locking my car, I trudged across the road. The wind whipped leaves around my ankles, and the air felt damp. I glanced at the sky covered in a thick coating of gray clouds. I checked in my purse for an umbrella. It would be just my luck for the heavens to open and soak me with a summer shower the second we stood by the graveside. Yep, I had one. A great prop to hide behind.

  “Jessica!”

  I found myself wrapped in a cloud of fake fur and perfume. When I wrestled free, I came face-to-face with Margaret, one of my mom’s oldest friends. I actually liked Margaret. She wasn’t like the rest of the people in this town, and yet she’d been accepted into the fold. She walked the line perfectly without letting it change her as a person, something I’d failed spectacularly at. I admired her enormously.

  “Hi, Margaret. You look marvelous.”

  She gave me a full-length eye sweep. “And you’re as beautiful as ever.” Giving me a comforting smile, she tilted her head and said, “I’m so sorry, darling. How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine. I just want to get today over with.”

  She nodded sympathetically. “Of course you do.” She linked her arm through mine. “Come on, let’s get you inside before Jasmine’s head explodes.”

  I grinned. “She called you, too, then?”

  “Honey, I think she’s called the entire town. Anyone would think it was her funeral.”

  “If she gets in my face, that could be a very real possibility.”

  Margaret chuckled. She patted my hand. “I’ve missed you, my darling.”

  I briefly touched my head to hers. “Missed you, too.”

  The inside of the church was exactly as I remembered it from the many events I’d been dragged to there over the years. Weddings, baptisms, funerals… especially Dad’s.

  My heart twisted. If Dad had lived, maybe things would have been different, or at least more bearable. Twenty-two years since he’d died, and I still missed him terribly. It hurt as acutely as if it had happened only yesterday.

  Jasmine glared at me as I walked up the center aisle with Margaret in
tow. As soon as I was close enough, she gripped my elbow and yanked me forward.

  “You’re late, Jess,” she hissed. “Everyone has been asking about you.”

  Yeah, right. No one cared about me in this town, and I didn’t care about them. Except Margaret, of course, and Wade. I glanced around nervously, anxiety churning in my gut at the idea of seeing him. I peered through a sea of faces, searching for the only one I really wanted to find.

  “Jess!” Another yank on my arm had me refocusing on Jasmine. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sorry I’m late. Terrible traffic.”

  “Well, now that Princess Jessica has arrived, maybe we can get on with saying goodbye to Mom.” She dashed away a tear with the back of her hand and gestured to the minister, then took her seat right at the front.

  Margaret gave me a nudge and a wink, and I responded with a grateful smile. I had a feeling Margaret would be the one person who’d get me through today.

  I sat beside Jasmine but might as well have been sitting beside a stranger. She sniffled throughout the entire service and constantly dabbed at her nose with a damp, torn tissue, but neither of us offered comfort to the other. I kept expecting to feel something, anything, but nope, that emptiness continued. Then again, I was so far removed from this life, this town, and all the people in it, maybe I should give myself a break. The grief could still hit me at any time, and I should be prepared for that.

  The service only lasted thirty minutes, and then we were walking back outside. I gulped a lungful of fresh, clean air, relieved to be out of there. I constantly scanned around for Wade, but I didn’t see him.